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Noel's Reviews > Letters to Milena
Letters to Milena
by
by
This book is everything I wanted to say but never could, until now.
“It’s a long time since I wrote to you, Frau Milena, and even today I’m writing only as the result of an incident. Actually, I don’t have to apologize for my not writing, you know after all how I hate letters. All the misfortune of my life—I don’t wish to complain, but to make a generally instructive remark—derives, one could say, from letters or from the possibility of writing letters. People have hardly ever deceived me, but letters always—and as a matter of fact not only those of other people, but my own. In my case this is a special misfortune of which I won’t say more, but at the same time also a general one. The easy possibility of letter-writing must—seen merely theoretically—have brought into the world a terrible disintegration of souls. It is, in fact, an intercourse with ghosts, and not only with the ghost of the recipient but also with one’s own ghost which develops between the lines of the letter one is writing and even more so in a series of letters where one letter corroborates the other and can refer to it as a witness. How on earth did anyone get the idea that people can communicate with one another by letter! Of a distant person one can think, and of a person who is near one can catch hold—all else goes beyond human strength. Writing letters, however, means to denude oneself before the ghosts, something for which they greedily wait. Written kisses don’t reach their destination, rather they are drunk on the way by the ghosts. It is on this ample nourishment that they multiply so enormously. Humanity senses this and fights against it and in order to eliminate as far as possible the ghostly element between people and to create a natural communication, the peace of souls, it has invented the railway, the motor car, the aeroplane. But it’s no longer any good, these are evidently inventions being made at the moment of crashing. The opposing side is so much calmer and stronger; after the postal service it has invented the telegraph, the telephone, the radiograph. The ghosts won’t starve, but we will perish.�
“It’s a long time since I wrote to you, Frau Milena, and even today I’m writing only as the result of an incident. Actually, I don’t have to apologize for my not writing, you know after all how I hate letters. All the misfortune of my life—I don’t wish to complain, but to make a generally instructive remark—derives, one could say, from letters or from the possibility of writing letters. People have hardly ever deceived me, but letters always—and as a matter of fact not only those of other people, but my own. In my case this is a special misfortune of which I won’t say more, but at the same time also a general one. The easy possibility of letter-writing must—seen merely theoretically—have brought into the world a terrible disintegration of souls. It is, in fact, an intercourse with ghosts, and not only with the ghost of the recipient but also with one’s own ghost which develops between the lines of the letter one is writing and even more so in a series of letters where one letter corroborates the other and can refer to it as a witness. How on earth did anyone get the idea that people can communicate with one another by letter! Of a distant person one can think, and of a person who is near one can catch hold—all else goes beyond human strength. Writing letters, however, means to denude oneself before the ghosts, something for which they greedily wait. Written kisses don’t reach their destination, rather they are drunk on the way by the ghosts. It is on this ample nourishment that they multiply so enormously. Humanity senses this and fights against it and in order to eliminate as far as possible the ghostly element between people and to create a natural communication, the peace of souls, it has invented the railway, the motor car, the aeroplane. But it’s no longer any good, these are evidently inventions being made at the moment of crashing. The opposing side is so much calmer and stronger; after the postal service it has invented the telegraph, the telephone, the radiograph. The ghosts won’t starve, but we will perish.�
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Reading Progress
September 16, 2024
– Shelved
September 18, 2024
–
16.0%
"“It has always seemed quite incomprehensible to me when someone got entangled with me, and I have destroyed several human relationships (that for instance with Weiss) from a logical disposition of mind that always believed more in an error of the other person than in miracles (at least so far as I was concerned).�
ڰDzԳ’d"
ڰDzԳ’d"
September 21, 2024
–
20.0%
"“Sometimes I have the feeling that we're in one room with two opposite doors and each of us holds the handle of one door, one of us flicks an eyelash and the other is already behind his door, and now the first one has but to utter a word and immediately the second one has closed his door behind him and can no longer be seen.�
ڰDzԳ’d"
ڰDzԳ’d"
September 21, 2024
–
21.0%
"Ooh, I’ve lighted on a fascinating but puzzling passage. I almost hesitate to post it, but I want to read up on it later�
ڰDzԳ’d"
ڰDzԳ’d"
September 22, 2024
–
25.0%
"Is it possible that Kafka was simply delusional? He weaves this enormous fantasy around a woman he’d barely even touched, and in fact would only meet twice in his life, and completely loses himself in it. That’s a penpal, not a lover, if you ask me�"
September 27, 2024
–
29.0%
"“All right, and now Milena calls you with a voice which penetrates your reason and your heart with equal intensity. Of course Milena doesn’t know you, a few stories and letters have dazzled her; she is like the sea, strong as the sea with its vast volume of water, and yet, mistaken, tumbling down with all its strength when the dead and above all distant moon desires it.�
ڰDzԳ’d"
ڰDzԳ’d"
September 27, 2024
–
30.0%
"“My relationship to you I know (you belong to me even if I were never to see you again)—I know it in so far as it doesn't belong to the unfathomable realm of fear…�
(Kafka’s letters remind me a lot of Proust’s concept of love—that is, an anxiety-filled relationship wholly independent of reciprocity since it precedes it in time.)"
(Kafka’s letters remind me a lot of Proust’s concept of love—that is, an anxiety-filled relationship wholly independent of reciprocity since it precedes it in time.)"
September 28, 2024
–
31.0%
"“What I’m afraid of, afraid of with wide-open eyes, helplessly drowned in fear (if I could drown in sleep as I drown in fear I would be no longer alive) is only this inner conspiracy against myself � which is perhaps based on the fact that I who, in the great Game of Chess am not even Pawn of a Pawn, far from it, yet now, against all the rules of the game and to the confusion of the game…�
ڰDzԳ’d"
ڰDzԳ’d"
October 10, 2024
–
36.0%
"“And in spite of everything I sometimes believe: If one can perish from happiness, then this must happen to me. And if a person designated to die, can stay alive through happiness, then I will stay alive.�"
October 10, 2024
–
42.0%
"“If only you were already here! As it is, I have no one, no one here but the Fear, locked together we toss through the nights. There is really something very serious about this Fear (which strangely enough used to be directed only towards the future, no, that isn’t true), which in a certain sense can be explained by the fact that it shows me continuously the necessity for the great admission:�
ڰDzԳ’d"
ڰDzԳ’d"
October 10, 2024
–
42.0%
"“Why, by the way, am I a human being with all the tortures of this vaguest and so terribly responsible condition? Why am I not, for instance, the fortunate wardrobe in your room which looks straight at you as you sit in the armchair or at your desk or when you lie down or go to sleep (all blessings on your sleep), why am I not it?�"
October 11, 2024
–
42.0%
"“Yesterday I advised you not to write to me every day, this is still my opinion today and it would be very good for us both and I suggest it once more today, and even more urgently—only please, Milena, don’t act upon it, but write me daily all the same, it can be quite short, shorter than today’s letters, just two lines, just one, just a word, but to be deprived of this word would mean terrible suffering.�"
October 11, 2024
–
45.0%
"“I’m tired, can’t think of anything and want only to lay my face in your lap, feel your hand on my head and remain like that through all eternity.
ճԱ�"
ճԱ�"
October 11, 2024
–
48.0%
"“Once as a very small boy I was given a Sechserl [a ten-Kreuzer piece during the Austro-Hungarian monarchy] and felt a great urge to hand it to an old beggar woman who sat between the Grosse and the Kleine Ring. But the sum seemed to me enormous, a sum which probably never before and been given to a beggar, so I was ashamed in front of the beggar woman to do something so unheard-of…�
ڰDzԳ’d"
ڰDzԳ’d"
October 13, 2024
–
66.0%
"I can’t help wondering what Kafka’s feelings would be on Zionism today. I guess simply being able to understand the question would completely change his life�
“I won’t meddle in the fight between you and Max [Brod, always an active Zionist]. I stand aside, see each one’s point of view, and am safe. You are undoubtedly right in what you say, but now we are changing places.�
ڰDzԳ’d"
“I won’t meddle in the fight between you and Max [Brod, always an active Zionist]. I stand aside, see each one’s point of view, and am safe. You are undoubtedly right in what you say, but now we are changing places.�
ڰDzԳ’d"
October 14, 2024
–
78.0%
"“I’m dirty, Milena, infinitely dirty, which is why I make so much fuss about purity. No people sing with such pure voices as those who live in deepest hell; what we take for the song of angels is their song.�"
October 14, 2024
–
85.0%
"“Lonely imperfection has to be endured through every moment, imperfection shared by two does not have to be endured. Hasn’t one got eyes to tear them out and a heart for the same purpose? And yet it isn’t so bad, it’s all an exaggeration and a lie, everything is an exaggeration, only the longing is true, this cannot be exaggerated.�
ڰDzԳ’d"
ڰDzԳ’d"
Started Reading
October 15, 2024
–
89.0%
"“I’m reading a Chinese book, “bubácká kniha�. I mention it because it’s concerned exclusively with death. A man lies on his death-bed and in the independence given him by the proximity of death, he says: “I’ve spent my life trying to fight lust and to put an end to it.� Then a pupil mocks his teacher who speaks of nothing but death:�
ڰDzԳ’d"
ڰDzԳ’d"
October 15, 2024
–
89.0%
"“I’ve spent all afternoon in the streets, wallowing in the Jew-baiting. “Prasivé plemeno”—“filthy rabble� I heard someone call the Jews the other day. Isn’t it the natural thing to leave the place where one is hated so much? (For this, Zionism or national feeling is not needed.) The heroism which consists of staying on in spite of it all is that of cockroaches…�
ڰDzԳ’d"
ڰDzԳ’d"
October 15, 2024
–
91.0%
"“Yes, torturing is extremely important to me, I’m preoccupied with nothing but being tortured and torturing. � The stupidity inherent in this (realization of stupidity doesn’t help) I once expressed as follows: “The animal wrenches the whip from the master and whips itself so as to become master, and doesn’t realize…�
ڰDzԳ’d"
ڰDzԳ’d"
October 15, 2024
–
92.0%
"“You say, Milena, that you don’t understand it. Try to understand it by calling it illness. It’s one of the many manifestations of illness which psychoanalysis believes it has uncovered. I don’t call it illness and I consider the therapeutic part of psychoanalysis to be a hopeless error. All these so-called illnesses, sad as they may appear, are matters of faith,�
ڰDzԳ’d"
ڰDzԳ’d"
October 15, 2024
–
92.0%
"“[A]ll the time I’m trying to convey something unconveyable, to explain something inexplicable, to tell of something which I have in my bones and which can be experienced only in these bones. Fundamentally it’s perhaps nothing but that fear of which we have already talked so often, but fear extended to everything, fear of the greatest as of the smallest—�
ڰDzԳ’d"
ڰDzԳ’d"
October 15, 2024
–
98.0%
"“[L]iving authors have a living connection with their books. With their very existence they fight for or against them. The real independent life of the book begins only after the death of the writer, or, more correctly, some time after his death, for these eager men still go on fighting awhile for their book beyond their death. Then, however, it is alone and can rely only on the strength of its own heartbeat.�"
October 15, 2024
–
Finished Reading
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by
Ilse
(new)
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rated it 5 stars
Sep 16, 2024 11:02PM
Noel, reading your lovely comment this morning on the train to work, I am elated that you started reading this ♥️. It resonated with me in a way very few books ever did, possibly also because of the state I was in at that time - I so hope you’ll connect with it as well�
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Thanks Ilse, I have about forty pages left. I’ll probably finish it tomorrow. I thought the whole thing was going to be gently romantic but it’s turning into a hellish nightmare. I can certainly see why it became one of your favorite books as it’s become one of mine, too. As you might have guessed I identify profoundly with Kafka’s obsessions—the misery of chronic illness, guilt, self-estrangement, failure. I also identify profoundly with his insecurities about relationships, how much they scared him, and yet how he saw Milena as a possibility of salvation [now that I’ve finished the book I’m not sure whether this is a misreading, a paradoxical claim, or whether Kafka simply changed his mind, because he later says she’s made salvation impossible for him]—which is of course too great an expectation to put on any one person. Just before starting this book I made things official with the sweetest, most gorgeous guy I’ve ever met, but right now he’s hurting me terribly. I’ve bought all Kafka’s books and I’m planning to work through them the rest of the year.(Wasn’t it Nabokov who said identification is the worst form of reading? I think identification may be the only moral justification for reading such personal writings that were never meant to be published—but it’s the only form of reading that’s really worth it to me nowadays, anyway. I have such a dependence on literature.)
Interesting topic if there is any! How much you would say you identify when reading a book? Are there genres with which you are more prone to experience this than others?
Actually, I don’t identify very much with most books I read. But in that case I’m reading them just to read them, if that makes sense. I don’t identify with genres but I do identify with general ideas: alienation, yearning, and more generally the inhabitation of misfortune. Kafka and Proust when I like them together probably represent the twin poles of what I seek from literature.
