364
PARTISAN REVIEW
A blade of straw? Many a man keeps his head above water by cling–
ing to a pencil mark. Does he? Drowned, he dreams of being saved.
Death had to lift him out of life, as a cripple is lifted out of a wheel
chair. He sat as solidly and heavily in his life as the cripple in the wheel
chair.
1923
June 12.
Always apprehensive when writing. I t is understandable
Every word turned in the hands of the specters-this swing of the hand
is their characteristic movement-becomes a spear turned against the
speaker. Especially a remark like this. And so on ad infinitum. The only
consolation is that it happens whether you wish it to happen or not.
And what you want helps only in an imperceptibly small way. More
than a consolation is this, that you too have weapons.
(Translated by Norbert Guterman)
(The excerpts from Kafka's diaries translated here for the first time are
contained in Volume VI of Kafka's
Gesammelte Schriften,
published in six
volumes in Berlin,
1935-1937,
by the former Schocken Verlag, the original copy–
right owner.
This fall Schocken Books Inc. of New Yorlc will publish, in its first American
list, an English translation of a volume of Kafka stories,
The Great Wall of
China.
This will be followed by an English edition of the biography written by
Max Brod, Fran<; Kafktis lifelong friend .
Kafka's posthumous papers were saved by Max Brod when he left Prague
in
1939
and are preserved in the archives of the Schocken Library in Jerusalem.
Schocken Books Inc. plans to publish these papers, under Dr. Brod's editorship,
both in the original German and in an English translation (two volumes of
diaries, two volumes of letters, and one volume of fragments).
Also scheduled for fall publication are a reprint of Volumes I -V of the
original
Gesamrnelte Schriften
and a reprint of the German edition of the Brod
biography.)
