FROM KAFKA'S DIARIES
355
As though sickness and despair could not be at least equally distracting.
I could round off this idea in various ways and thus develop it to
a conclusion favorable to myself, but I do not dare, and I believe-at
least today and so on most days-that there is no solution that can be
favorable for me.
I do not envy the married couple as a particular pair, I envy all
couples-and even when I envy only one couple, I actually envy all
marital happiness in its infinitely varied forms; in the happiness of one
marriage, I would probably, even in the most favorable case, despair.
I do not believe that there are people whose inner condition re–
sembles mine, though I can imagine such people; but that the mysterious
raven is always flying over their head as it flies over mine-that I cannot
even imagine.
The systematic destruction of myself in the course of years is astound–
ing, it was like a slowly developing breach in a dam, an action fully
deliberate. The spirit that accomplished this must now be celebrating
triumphs; why does he not let me in on them? But perhaps he has not
yet fulfilled ills purpose and therefore cannot think of anything else.
October 18.
Eternal time of childhood. Again a summons of life.
It
is quite conceivable that the glory of life is available to everyone
and always in its entire fulness, but veiled, in depths, invisible, far off.
But it is there not as a hostile force, not averse, not deaf.
If
it is summoned
by the right word, the right name, it comes. That is the essence of magic,
which does not create, but summons.
October 19.
The nature of the desert trail. A man, who as the
leader of his own being, takes this path, with a vestige (more is incon–
ceivable) of awareness of what is occurring. All his life he is on the trail
of Canaan; that he is to see it only just before his death is unbelievable.
This last view can have meaning only as symbolizing what an imperfect
instant human life is, imperfect because this kind of life could last end–
lessly and yet result in nothing but an instant. Moses failed to reach
Canaan not because his life was too short, but because it was a human
life. This ending of Deuteronomy has a likeness to the final scene of
The Sentimental Education.
He who does not master life while alive must use one hand some–
how to ward off his despair over his fate-that is done very imper-
