FROM KAFKA'S DIARIES
359
for fresh introspection. Second, this chase takes a direction away from
mankind. The solitude that has for the most part always been forced
upon me and in part sought by me-though this too was nothing but
compulsion-now becomes quite unequivocal and goes to the very ex–
treme. Where does it lead? It can-this seems the most pressing con–
clusion-lead to insanity, nothing more can be said about this; the
chase goes right through me, tearing me to pieces. Or else I can-can
I?-were it only to the slightest extent, keep my balance, and thus let
myself be borne along by the chase. Where does that take me, then?
"Chase" is after all only an image, I might also say "onslaught against
the last earthly limit," namely onslaught from below, from man, and I
might, since this too is only an image, replace it with the image of
onslaught from above, downward toward me.
This entire literature is an onslaught against a terminus, and if
Zionism had not interposed itself, it might easily have developed into
a new secret doctrine, a kabbala. There are tendencies toward this. It is
true that an almost inconceivable genius is required here, which will
drive its roots anew into the old centuries or re-create them, but which
with all that is not squandered but only now begins to spend itself.
January
19.
The infinite, deep, warm, liberating joy of sitting
near the crib of one's child, facing its mother.
There is also in it something of the feeling: things no longer depend
on you, unless you want it so. In contrast, the feeling of the childless:
Everything depends on you, always, whether you want it or not, every
moment until the. end, every nerve-racking moment depends now on
you, and without result. Sisyphus was a bachelor.
Nothing evil: if you have crossed the threshold everything is as it
should be. Another world, and you ·must not speak.
M. is right regarding me: "Everything is glorious, only not for me,
and rightly so." Rightly so, I say, showing that I have at least this con–
fidence. But do I really have it? For I do not actually think of "right";
life, out of sheer convincing force, has no room in it for right and
wrong. As in the desperate hour of death, so in desperate living, there
is no meditating about right and wrong. It suffices that the arrows fit
exactly into the wounds inflicted.
But of a general censure of the generation there is no trace in me.
January
21.
So far as I know the task has never been so difficult.
One might say: it is not a task, not even an impossible one, it is not
even impossibility itself, it is nothing, not even so much a child as the
