'ARTISAN
R.'EVIEW
267
even the "real" Roethke; it is all there, but worse than we had
imagined:
You Will not be embarrassed by anything Kafka says or does; you
will not turn away in disgust or bewilderment; y.ou will w.onder if
perhaps he wasn't a kind .of saint, as his friend Jan.ouch suggests: "a
pr.ophet .of a consistent ethical resp.onsibility for every living thing."
If
it is' possible to fall in love with someone in this way, you will come
to love Kafka;
These are all excessive
claims,
but
Conversations With Kafka
jus–
tifies 'them. Filling in a gap (Kafka's diaries for 1920, when the seven–
teeri-yeai-old Janouch met him, contain .only a page or so of entries;
the rest had been tDrn out and destroyed by Kafka), bringing us intD
Kafka's physical as well as his intellectual presence, the book is almost
like another w.ork .of Kafka's, a long lost but n.ow triumphantly pub–
lished ' book of meditations, dreams, wisdom. And it is Kafka's m.ost
human bo.ok. It is a masterpiece .of its kind, especially
if
read together
With 'Kafka's .oWn diaries for the time.
,"Max
Brod seems t.o have wished that the diaries might have
shown 'Kafka m.ore as 'he was, in daily life; he comments .on the un–
fortunate "false impressi.on" that every diary makes, since the writer
rec.ords what is .oppressive .or irritating. What is there to say ab.out a
happy event? S.o the Kafka .of the
Diaries,
like the Kafka of some .of
his sh.ort fiction and
The Trial
and
The Oastle,
seems to us madden–
ing'ly preoccupied with the Self; it turns .out that this is .only half of
Kafka, the darker half, the half that we have accepted and absorbed
into .ourselves.
The boy Janouch me't Kafka in 1920, when Kafka was thirty-seven
years old, in the "cage .of his existence" as a lawyer f.or the Workmen's
Accident IO:suTance Instituti.on
in
Prague and als.o as a son, a perpetual
doomed s.on. It is amazing that Jan.ouch should present himself as a
person -,- almost a ficti.onal character - nDt .only intelligent enough
to record Kafka's conversati.on, but .one wh.o is spiritually and imagina–
tively worthy .of
~afka's
presence. There is n.o questi.on .of Kafka being
patr.onizing t.o
his
y.oung, insatiable friend (a w.ould-be poet, himself
the
son .of
~
good man, but made miserable by his parents' inc.ompati–
bility); Jan.ouch is exactly the kind of sensitive, precoci.ous bDy Kafka
could,relate to, and t.o wh.om he might speak much m.ore freely than
he 'c.ould t.oany.one else. And if .one suspects that J an.ouch has invented
part .of tJ:lls Kafka ," . . then he, himself is an.other Kafka, a genius
capable .of inventing such c.onversati.ons and such pe.ople.
Kafka .on ffiendship: "One huddles int.o .one's s.o-called private
