Anna Seghers' Diary

Sunday, 16th November 1924
Travel preparation like yesterday. Thereby thinking about a story: the repentance of the Bishop of Priepournous. “The holy Bishop of Priepournous, tralilatralilalala. He healed many women for 20 Sous tralilatralilalala.” Reading “Education to Christianity” with lots of comfort. Spasm in the forehead. Fear that my talent will abandon me, -but only rarely. Rodi and Rodi again. Is it right that I am at home?

…

Saturday, 29th November
I cannot bear it if I don't get to work, I have to write, I desperately feel the wish and will.
Visited Lotte Mar., Ria, Fr. Schwarz
The fear and remorse, the fear of non-strictness, of the fading tension between Me and the Others is again not [?] there. Bishop continued.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The devil at the hearth

The devil at the hearth ( Milena Jesenska, 18. Jan 1923, Narodni Listy) Why all, or almost all, of today’s marriages are unhappy (as if marriages had been happier in the old times), is a fashionable question and the topic of -to be taken seriously- a whole section of literature and -not to be taken seriously- each Five o’clock chat. Any question in the world is suited for social idle talk as well as for philosophical discourse, and questions that, in a manner of speaking, lie on the street are also being picked up by us journalists. This particular question however puzzles me every time; of course I could answer why today’s marriages are unhappy -what question could a journalist not answer? But I ask myself time and again: Why should they be happy? That is where it begins. Two people - two small, lonely human beings, exposed to the entire hopelessness, dismay and forlornness of life, two children of men on the gigantic earth, that is so unbelievably,  unbearably and scarin...
Read more

Franz Kafka

(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...
Read more

Short Bio

Prague born 10 August 1896 1907: starts attending the first gymnasium for girls, Minerva 1913: mother dies after a long sickness 1915: finishing the Gymnasium and starting to study medicine, after 2 semesters she switches to Music 1916: socializing with artists (Ernst Pollak, Max Brod, Ernst Haas, Franz Kafka, etc) in Cafe Arco and starting a romantic relationship with Ernst Pollak 1917: Milena’s father is committing her to a social institute, most likely to separate her from Pollak 1918: marriage with Ernst Pollak, moving to Vienna Vienna 1919-1925: writing articles for “Tribuna” and Nadroni Listi, translating some of Kafka's books 1920 - 1921: intense exchange of letters with Kafka 1923/1924: separation and divorce from Pollak 1924/1925: relationship with Franz Xaver Schaffgotsch, living with friends in Dresden before moving back to Prague Prague 1925-1929: editor for Nadroni Listi 1926: taking on the magazine Pestry tyden ...
Read more