Wednesday 12 May 2010

K and F


Love Letter From Franz Kafka to Felice Bauer-11-11-1912 (Exerpt)


Fräulein Felice!


I am now going to ask you a favor which sounds quite crazy, and which I should regard as such, were I the one to receive the letter. It is also the very greatest test that even the kindest person could be put to. Well, this is it:

Write to me only once a week, so that your letter arrives on Sunday—for I cannot endure your daily letters, I am incapable of enduring them. For instance, I answer one of your letters, then lie in bed in apparent calm, but my heart beats through my entire body and is conscious only of you. I belong to you; there is really no other way of expressing it, and that is not strong enough. But for this very reason I don’t want to know what you are wearing; it confuses me so much that I cannot deal with life; and that’s why I don’t want to know that you are fond of me. If I did, how could I, fool that I am, go on sitting in my office, or here at home, instead of leaping onto a train with my eyes shut and opening them only when I am with you?...



13 comments:

  1. Maravillosa toda la serie de K.

    ¿Y cómo está Buenos Aires?

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  2. Todavia esta en el mismo lugar, aunque no se hasta cuando.

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  3. Muchas gracias; pero no tiene que mentir.

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  4. Elvis is alive... Kafka is alive too. I feel it.

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  5. Thank you.
    That was the sign, that I was waiting for.

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  6. "could be put to"...

    No hace falta saber inglés para entender la calumnia que se está levantando contra un hombre bueno. Total, como no puede defenderse es fácil decir cualquier barbaridad...

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  7. "To put" the thing back to front, Gustavo.

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