Milena Jesenska

(Narodni Listy, June 6th 1924) Dr Franz Kafka, a German writer who lived in Prague, died the day before yesterday in a sanatorium close by Klosterneuburg/Vienna. Only few people know him here, because he was a solitary, a knowing man, frightened by life; for years he had been suffering from a lung disease and though he had gotten medical treatment for this disease he consciously nourished and promoted it with his thoughts. “When soul and heart cannot bear the burden, then the lungs take half of the burden on themselves so that the weight is equally distributed” he once wrote in a letter, and that was what his disease was like to him. It gave him an almost magical tenderness and a surprisingly merciless mental subtlety; as a human being he had been putting all his intellectual fear of live on the shoulders of this disease. He was timid, scared, tender and good, but wrote brutal and hurtful books. To him the world was full of demons, that destroy and break an unprotected person. He w...

(Nadroni Listy, March 6th, 1927) On a train ride to the mountains we can find ourselves quite suddenly in a bend from where we have a wonderful view. From this spot we can look at the mountain and see clearly and vividly the magnificent picture in its entirety, the mighty contours and the colossal stillness. We freeze with respect, love and admiration, and if we were to turn around and go home we would forever keep this memory of the magnificence of a mountain. However, the train is panting on and suddenly stops close to the bottom of the mountain. We look at the top, turn our necks, and the more we look, the less we see of the mountain. It is colossal, but we cannot see it in its entirety, we cannot see how its top is set against the sky, cannot see its shape, and we only see the few things we can see from close by. With people it is exactly the same. We immediately comprehend a person when we see him for the first time. We see the light in his eyes and get a glimpse of his inn...