FROM KAFKA'S DIARIES
363
February 13.
The possibility of serving with the whole heart.
February 18.
A stage director who must create everything from
the ground up, he must even beget the actors. A visitor is not admitted,
the director is busy with important theatrical business. What is this
business? Changing the diapers of a future actor.
February 26.
I admit-to whom do I admit it? to the letter?–
that there are possibilities in me, immediate possibilities, which I do not
yet know; but the thing is to find the path to them, and after finding
it, to dare! This means a great deal: there are possibilities, it means
even that a scoundrel can become an honorable man, a·man happily in
possession of honor.
Your recent half-awake fantasies.
March 9.
To use the aggressor's horse to ride on. The only pos–
sibility. But what forces and skills does this require? And how late is it
now?
March 9.
Pure feeling, and clarity about its causes. The sight of
children, particularly of a girl (upright carriage, short black hair), and
of another (blonde, indefinite features, indefinite smile), rousing music,
marching step. The feeling of one who is in trouble, and help comes,
but who does not rejoice over being saved-indeed, he is not saved–
but over the coming of new, young people, confident, ready to take up
the struggle; ignorant, it is true, as to what impends, but it is an ignor–
ance that does not make the spectator hopeless, but evokes admiration,
joy, tears. Also mixed with it is hatred of him against whom the struggle
is waged (but little Jewish feeling, I think).
April 10.
As a boy I was (and would have long remained,
if
I
had not forcibly been brought to sexual things) as innocent and uninter–
ested in regard to sexual matters as I am today, for instance, in regard
to the theory of relativity. Only trivialities (but these too after specific
instruction) came to my notice, for instance that the very women who
on the street seemed the most beautiful and best dressed were supposed
to be bad.
Eternal youth is impossible; even if there were no other obstacle,
introspection precludes it.
We dig the mine of Babel.
