Kafka Letter To His Father Quotes

You are free and that is why you are lost.

... it is, after all, not necessary to fly right into the middle of the sun, but it is necessary to crawl to a clean little spot on Earth where the sun sometimes shines and one can warm oneself a little.

there is nothing bad to fear; once you have crossed that threshold, all is well. Another world, and you do not have to speak

My writing was all about you; all I did there, after all, was to bemoan what I could not bemoan upon your breast.

In a way, I was safe writing

He is afraid the shame will outlive him.

It is as if a person were a prisoner, and he had not only the intention to escape, which would perhaps be attainable, but also, and indeed simultaneously, the intention to rebuild the prison as a pleasure dome for himself. But if he escapes, he cannot rebuild, and if he rebuilds, he cannot escape.

Since there was nothing at all I was certain of, since I needed to be provided at every instant with a new confirmation of my existence, since nothing was in my very own, undoubted, sole possession, determined unequivocally only by me — in sober truth a disinherited son — naturally I became unsure even of the thing nearest to me, my own body.

Kafka, you know, wrote in a letter to his father, the only thing a parent can do for a child is to welcome it when it arrives.

All I did there, after all, was to bemoan what I could not bemoan upon your breast.

Not every child has the endurance and fearlessness to go on searching until it comes to the kindliness that lies beneath the surface. You can only treat a child in the way you yourself are constituted.

It is a long dark road from there to where I have really come

Early Morning in Your Room It's morning. The brown scoops of coffee, the wasp-like Coffee grinder, the neighbors still asleep. The gray light as you pour gleaming water-- It seems you've traveled years to get here. Finally you deserve a house. If not deserve It, have it; no one can get you out. Misery Had its way, poverty, no money at least. Or maybe it was confusion. But that's over. Now you have a room. Those lighthearted books: The Anatomy of Melancholy, Kafka's Letter to his Father, are all here. You can dance With only one leg, and see the snowflake falling With only one eye. Even the blind man Can see. That's what they say. If you had A sad childhood, so what? When Robert Burton Said he was melancholy, he meant he was home.

On se bojao da će ga stid nadživeti.

La comparación del pájaro en mano y ciento volando sólo se puede aplicar aquí muy relativamente. En la mano no tengo nada, volando está todo y sin embargo -así lo determinan las condiciones del combate y las necesidades de la vida- tengo que elegir la nada.

I was convinced I would never even get through the first year at school, but I succeeded, I was even awarded a prize; but I would certainly never pass the grammar-school entrance exam, yet again I succeeded; but then I would certainly fail my year at school, but no, I did not fail, in fact I kept on succeeding. But this did not give me confidence, on the contrary, I became convinced - and your disapproving face was formal proof of this - that the more I succeeded, the worse my eventual downfall would be.

Now Sentimental Education doesn't read as if Flaubert was having fun; Letter to His Father doesn't read as if Kafka was having fun; The Sorrows of Young Werther sure as hell doesn't read as if Goethe was having fun. Sure, Henry Miller seems like he's having fun, but he had to cross three thousand miles of Atlantic before saying 'cunt'.

Querido padre: Me preguntaste una vez por qué afirmaba yo que te tengo miedo. Como de costumbre, no supe qué contestar, en parte, justamente por el miedo que te tengo, y en parte porque en los fundamentos de ese miedo entran demasiados detalles como para que pueda mantenerlos reunidos en el curso de una conversación. Y, aunque intente ahora contestarte por escrito, mi respuesta será, no obstante, muy incomprensible, porque también al escribir el miedo y sus consecuencias me inhiben ante ti, y porque la magnitud del tema excede mi memoria y mi entendimiento.

Whenever I started doing something you didn't like and you threatened me with the prospect of failure, my reverence for your opinion was so great that failure was, even if only at a later time, inevitable. I lost confidence in my own abilities. I was unsteady, doubtful. The older I got, the more material you could hold against me as proof of my worthlessness; gradually, in a certain regard, you began actually to be right.

Ja sam kraj ili početak.

U ruci nemam ništa, na krovu je sve, a ipak moram izabrati ništa. Tako određuju borbeni odnosi i životna potreba.

Keines der Mädchen hat mich enttäuscht, nur ich sie beide. Mein Urteil über sie ist heute genau das gleiche, wie damals als ich sie heiraten wollte.

...Con viết là viết về bố, con than vãn ở đó vì con không thể than vãn trên ngực bố.

...nije ipak potrebno vinuti se do sama sunca nego se dovući do nekog čistog mjestašca na zemlji koje sunce kadikad obasja i na kojem se čovjek može malo ugrijati.

Probably I am constitutionally not lazy at all, but there was nothing for me to do.

Die Erklärung wird mir auch deshalb schwer werden, weil ich hier alles in sovielen Tagen und Nächten durchdacht und durchgraben habe, daß selbst mich jetzt der Anblick schon verwirrt.

Sa svog naslonjača vladao si svijetom. Tvoje mišljenje bilo je pravilno, svako drugo bilo je ludo, prenapeto, nenormalno. Pri tome, bilo je tvoje samopouzdanje tako veliko da nisi ni morao biti dosljedan,a ipak si još uvijek imao pravo.

The simile of the bird in the hand and the two in the bush has only a very remote application here. In my hand I have nothing, in the bush is everything, and yet—so it is decided by the conditions of battle and the exigency of life—I must choose the nothing.

Es ist so wie wenn einer fünf niedrige Treppenstufen hinaufzusteigen hat und ein zweiter nur eine Treppenstufe, die aber so hoch ist wie jene fünf zusammen; der Erste wird nicht nur die fünf bewältigen, sondern noch hunderte und tausende weitere, er wird ein großes und sehr anstrengendes Leben geführt haben, aber keine der Stufen, die er erstiegen hat, wird für ihn eine solche Bedeutung gehabt haben, wie für den Zweiten jene eine, erste, hohe, für alle seine Kräfte unmöglich zu ersteigende Stufe, zu der er nicht hinauf und über die er natürlich auch nicht hinauskommt.

For example, my choice of career. You generously and patiently gave me complete freedom.  Though this followed the habits, or at least the values, of the Jewish middle class concerning their sons.  And here your misunder-standing of my character worked its effect, which – together with your father’s pride – blinded you to my real nature: to my weakness.  In your opinion, I was always studying as a child, and  later I was always writing.  Looking back that      is certainly not true.  I can say with very little exaggeration, I barely studied and I learnt nothing; to have retained something after so many years of education wasn’t remarkable for a man with a memory and some intelligence;  but given the vast expenditure of time and money, and my outwardly easy, unburdened life, what I achieved with regard to knowledge, especially sound knowledge, was nothing – certainly when compared to what others managed.  It is lamentable, but for me understandable.  I always had such a deep concern about the continued existence of my mind and spirit, that I was indifferent to everything else.  Jewish schoolboys have a reputation, for amongst them one finds the most improbable things; but my cold, barely disguised, permanent, childish, ridiculous, animal, self-satisfied indifference, and my cold and fantastical mind, are not things that I have ever met again – though admittedly they were just a defence against nervous destruction through fear and guilt.  And I was worried about myself in all manner of ways.  For example, I was worried about my health: I was worried about my hair falling out, my digestion, and my back – for it was stooped.  And my worries turned to fear and it all ended in true sickness.  But what was all that?  Not actual bodily sickness.  I was sick because I was a disinherited son, who needed constant reassurance about his own peculiar existence, who in the most profound sense never owned anything, and who was even insecure about the thing which was next to him: his own body. 

Hace poco me preguntaste por qué decía que te tenía miedo. Como de costumbre, no supe qué contestarte, en parte, precisamente, por el miedo que me das, y en parte porque son demasiados los detalles que fundamentan ese miedo, muchos más de los que podría coordinar a medias mientras hablo. Su magnitud excede en mucho tanto mi memoria como mi entendimiento.

In Kafka’s works the family table locks the child into a site where Father presides; it offers one of the prime occasions for paternity to enthrone itself, conducting prescriptive raids on the child’s bearing—invading his plate, entering and altering his body, adjusting his manner of being. The table becomes the metonymy for all law, the place where sovereign exceptionalism asserts itself: Father does not have to obey his own law, he can pick his teeth or clean his ears while the eaters submit to the severity of his rule. The children, in Kafka at least, and in the simulacrum of home in which many others were grown, are consistently downgraded to the status of unshakable refugees, parasites, those who quiver under the thickness of anxiety while laws, like platters, are passed and forced down one’s delicate throat. Give us this day our daily dread: it is difficult to imagine the Kafka family going out to eat, though that is what it would have taken for the death grip of mealtime to loosen, let go. At home, at the table, little Franz Kafka was eaten alive. By the time of the famous “Letter to Father,” he was vaporized. He says so himself: A good deal of the damage done to the young psyche occurred at table. The neighborhood restaurant might have rerouted the oppressive domesticity of home rule—it might have introduced a hiatus or suspensive regime change that would allow for hunger’s pacing. Part of a spectacle of public generality, the theater of ingestion—possibly also of incorporation—the restaurant causes the hold on the child to slacken, if only because there are witnesses and waiters whose work consists in diminishing the intensities of paternal law and the sacrificial rites that underlie their daily distribution—the daily apportionment of dread.

But I want to get closer to an explanation. My desire to be married forcibly unites two seemingly contradictory things that shape my relationship with you.  Marriage guarantees the highest liberation and independence.  I would have a family, which I believe is the best a man can achieve – it is the best that you have achieved – and I would be your equal, my shame and your tyranny would be at an end.  It would be just like a fairy story; so hard to believe.  It is too much; so it can’t happen.  It is as if a prisoner wanted not only to escape from his prison (which perhaps could be done) but also to convert his prison into a holiday camp for himself.  If he runs away he can’t re-build it, and if he re-builds it he can’t run away.  And I stand in an especially unfortunate relationship with you, for to be independent I must be nothing like you, yet marriage is the best form of independence, but if I were married I would be closer to you.  To try and solve this is madness, and whenever I try I become a little more mad. It

Niciodată nu am înţeles totala ta lipsă de sensibilitate pentru suferinţa şi ruşinea pe care puteai să mi le provoci cu vorbele şi judecă ţile tale, ca şi cum nu ţi- ai fi bănuit de fapt puterea. Sigur, şi eu te-a m rănit adesea cu vorbele mele, însă eu am ştiut- o întotdeauna, şi mă durea şi pe mine, dar nu mă puteam stăpâni, nu- mi puteam reţine cuvintele, şi mă căiam chiar în clipa când le pronunţam. Tu însă loveai cu vor bele tale fără să stai să te gândeşti, nu-ţi părea rău de nimeni, nici în timp ce le spuneai, nici după aceea, în faţa ta ceilalţi erau cu totul lipsiţi de apărare. Dar aşa era întreaga ta metodă de educaţie.

Căsătoria este desigur atestarea celei mai masive forme de autoeliberare și de independență.

Căsătoria este cel mai important dintre lucrurile acestea și ea acordă independența cea mai onorabilă, însă, în același timp, ea se află în cea mai strânsă legătură cu tine.

Obstacolul cel mai important însă în calea căsătoriei este convingerea, de acum cu neputință de dezrădăcinat, că pentru întreținerea unei familii, și mai ales pentru îndrumarea ei, sunt necesare.

Viața este ceva mai mult decât un asemenea joc de răbdare în care să potrivești piesele unele într-altele; dar cu corectura pe care o aduce această obiecție a ta, o corectură pe care eu nu pot și nici nu vreau să o detaliez, se ajunge totuși, după părerea mea,la ceva care se apropie atât de mult de adevăr, încât poate să ne liniștească pe amândoi puțin și să ne facă mai ușoare viața și moartea.

En cierta forma cuando escribo estoy a salvo (p. 52)

Mí única mortificación era yo mismo, y ésta preocupación se manifestaba de varias maneras. Una de ellas era la hipocondría, la cual se manifestó desde muy temprana edad. Constantemente me preocupaba por la digestión, por la caída del cabello, por una posible malformación en mi columna vertebral... Este temor se desarrollaba con incontables matices, hasta que al final derivaba en una enfermedad real. Debido a que no me sentía seguro de nada, necesitaba a cada momento confirmar que existía, careciendo de algo que fuera mío de un modo definitivo, sin ninguna duda, y solamente mío (p. 54)

¿Podían interesarme las clases en estas situaciones? ¿Quién podía ser tan hábil como para despertar en mí el más mínimo interés? (p. 56)

Pienso que nunca antes me habías humillado tanto con tus expresiones, ni habías demostrado más fehacientemente tu desprecio (p. 64)

Desafortunadamente el inconveniente principal, ajeno a los casos mismos, es que parece que espiritualmente estoy imposibilitado para contraer matrimonio. Esto se puede comprobar en el hecho de que desde el instante en que tomo esa determinación, no puedo dormir, siento que la cabeza me hierve día y noche, una gran desesperación e irascibilidad se apoderan de mi, y al caminar me tambaleó de un lado a otro (p. 66)

La vida es algo más que un rompecabezas que se debe armar, pero con el ajuste derivado de esta carta, puede conseguirse algo muy cercano a la verdad, que quizá pueda calmarnos un poco y permitirnos aceptar con gran tranquilidad la vida y la muerte (p. 75)

Nothing alive can be calculated.

It is, after all, not necessary to fly right into the middle of the sun, but it is necessary to crawl to a clean little spot on earth where the sun sometimes shines and one can warm oneself a little.

I venture to say that nothing has happened to you in your whole life that had such importance for you as the attempts at marriage have had for me. By this I do not mean that you have not experienced anything in itself as important; on the contrary, your life was much richer and more care-laden and more concentrated than mine, but for that very reason nothing of this sort has happened to you. It is as if one person had to climb five low steps and another person only one step, but one that is, at least for him, as high as all the other five put together; the first person will not only manage the five, but hundreds and thousands more as well, he will have led a great and very strenuous life, but none of the steps he has climbed will have been of such importance to him as for the second person that one, first, high step, that step which it is impossible for him to climb even by exerting all his strength, that step which he cannot get up on and which he naturally cannot get past either.

You see us as insolent conspirators. An odd sort of conspirators. Admittedly you are a prominent subject of our conversations, as you have been of our thoughts since the very beginning, however, we do not come together with the intention of plotting against you, but rather to talk through with one another - in every detail, from all angles, at every oppurtunity, from near and far, under stress, in jest, in sincerity, with love, defiance, anger, revulsion, resignation, guilt, with all the strenght of our heads and hearts - that terrible trial that hangs over us and separates us from you, a trial in which you always claim the role of judge although, at least for the most part, you are just as weak and blinded as we are.

For me you took on the enigmatic quality that all tyrants have whose rights are based on their person and not on reason. At least so it seemed to me.

The simile of a bird in the hand and two in the bush doesn't really fit here. For there is nothing in my hand and everything in the bush, and yet I choose the nothing-

E de asemenea adevărat că nu s-ar putea spune că m-ai bătut vreodată. Însă ţipetele, felul în care te înroşeai la faţă, în care îţi desfăceai în grabă bretelele şi le aşezai la îndemână pe speteaza scaunului însemnau pentru mine ceva aproape mai rău decât bătaia. Era ca şi cum ai fi dus pe cineva la spân zurătoare. Dacă te spânzură cu adevărat, mori şi totul s-a terminat. Când însă trebuie să asişti şi la toate pregătirile pentru spânzurătoare, şi când abia din clipa când ştreangul îţi atârnă în faţa ochilor afli că ai fost graţiat, atunci s-ar putea în tâmpla să suferi de pe urma acestei experienţe toată viaţa. Pe lângă asta, din numeroasele împrejurări când, după opinia ta limpede exprimată, aş fi meritat bătaia şi scăpam în ultimul moment din milă, se acumula un sentiment şi mai mare al propriei vinovăţii.

(...) my cold, hardly disguised, indestructible, childishly helpless to the point of being ridiculous, brutishly self-satisfied indifference, the indifference of a self-sufficient but coldly imaginative child, I have never found anywhere else; to be sure, it was here too the only protection against a nervous breakdown brought on by fear and a sense of guilt. All that occupied my mind was concern for myself, and this in various ways.

«Con ésa no se puede hablar, enseguida le salta a uno a la cara», sueles decir tú; pero en realidad no es ella la que salta; tú confundes la cosa con la persona; es la cosa la que te salta a la vista, y tú te formas un juicio al momento sin escuchar a la persona; lo que se pueda aducir después, a ti sólo te puede irritar más, nunca convencerte. Lo único que sale entonces de tu boca (...) con ese tono, ronco y terrible, de la cólera y del más absoluto rechazo, un tono que si hoy me produce menos temblor que en la infancia es sólo porque el exclusivo sentimiento de culpabilidad del niño ha sido parcialmente sustituido por la clara visión de nuestro mutuo desvalimiento.

En esa misma proporción estaba tu superioridad espiritual. Tú habías llegado tan lejos debido única y exclusivamente a tu propio esfuerzo, por consiguiente tenías ilimitada confianza en tu opinión. Eso para mí, de niño, ni siquiera era tan fascinante como lo fue más tarde para el adolescente. Desde tu butaca gobernabas el mundo. Tu opinión era acertada, cualquier otra era absurda, exaltada, de locos, anormal. Y tu confianza en ti mismo era tan grande que no necesitabas ser consecuente para tener siempre razón.

Tú estabas dotado para mí de eso tan enigmático que poseen los tiranos, cuyo derecho está basado en la propia persona, no en el pensamiento.

Una vez visto mi modo de explicar el miedo que te tengo, podrías responder: «Tú afirmas que yo simplifico las cosas cuando te doy toda la culpa de la relación que tengo contigo, pero creo que tú, pese a tus aparentes esfuerzos, simplificas cuando menos tanto como yo y además lo haces de manera mucho más ventajosa para ti. En primer lugar, tú también rechazas cualquier culpa o responsabilidad de tu parte, en eso procedemos, pues, de la misma manera. Pero mientras que yo con toda sinceridad, tal y como lo pienso, te inculpo únicamente a ti, tú quieres ser al mismo tiempo “superlisto” y “superdelicado” absolviéndome también a mí de toda culpa. Esto último, obviamente, sólo lo consigues en apariencia (y eso es lo que quieres), y a pesar de toda tu “fraseología” sobre esencia y naturaleza y contraste y desvalimiento, lo que resulta entre líneas es que yo he sido en realidad el agresor, mientras que tú, todo lo que has hecho, lo hiciste en defensa propia. Con esa falta de sinceridad, ya habrías conseguido bastante, pues has demostrado tres cosas, primero que eres inocente, segundo que yo soy culpable, y tercero que tú, por pura magnanimidad, estás dispuesto no sólo a perdonarme sino incluso -lo que es más pero también menos a probar y hasta a creer -en contra por supuesto de la verdad- que también yo soy inocente. Con eso ya te podría bastar, pero todavía no te basta. Se te ha metido en la cabeza que vives enteramente a mi costa. Admito que luchamos el uno contra el otro, pero hay dos clases de lucha. La lucha entre caballeros, en la que miden las fuerzas adversarios independientes: cada uno está solo, pierde solo, vence solo. Y la lucha del parásito, que no sólo pica sino que chupa instantáneamente la sangre que necesita para vivir. Eso es en el fondo el soldado profesional y eso eres tú también. Eres incapaz de vivir; pero con el fin de instalarte en la vida cómodamente, libre de preocupaciones y sin reprocharte nada, demuestras que yo te he quitado toda la capacidad de vivir y que me la he metido en el bolsillo. Qué te importa entonces no ser capaz de vivir, yo soy el culpable de ello, tú en cambio te tumbas tranquilamente y dejas que yo te arrastre, física y espiritualmente, por la vida. (...)». A ello respondo que la totalidad de esa objeción, que en parte puede volverse contra ti mismo, no viene de ti sino de mí, precisamente. Esa desconfianza que tú tienes hacia todo no es, sin embargo, tan grande como la que yo tengo frente a mí mismo y en la que tú me has educado.

To je isto kao kad se jedan čovjek ima popeti uz pet nižih stepenica a drugi samo uz jednu, koja je međutim za njega isto tako visoka kao svih onih pet zajedno; prvi će savladati ne samo onih pet nego i stotine i tisuće drugih stepenica, on će proživjeti velik i vrlo naporan život, ali ni jedna od stepenica uz koje se popeo neće za njega imati onakvo značenje kakvo je za onoga drugoga imala ona jedna, prva, visoka stepenica, uz koju on nema snage popeti se, uz koju se ne može popeti i s koje, naravno, ne može ni sići.

Auch ich habe Dich sicher oft mit Worten gekränkt, aber dann wußte ich es immer, es schmerzte mich, aber ich konnte mich nicht beherrschen, das Wort nicht zurückhalten, aber ich bereute es schon, während ich es sagte.

Has trabajado a destajo tu vida entera, lo has sacrificado todo por tus hijos, muy especialmente por mí, lo que me ha permitido vivir «por todo lo alto», he tenido completa libertad para estudiar lo que me ha apetecido, no tengo motivos de preocupación en cuanto al pan de cada día, o sea, no tengo motivo alguno de preocupación; tú no has exigido a cambio gratitud, conoces «la gratitud de los hijos», pero sí al menos una cierta diferencia, alguna que otra muestra de simpatía; en lugar de eso, yo siempre me he escabullido de tu presencia, refugiándome en mi habitación, en los libros, en amigos chalados, en ideas exaltadas; nunca he hablado abiertamente contigo (...)

Si resumes lo que piensas de mí, el resultado es que no me echas en cara nada propiamente inmoral o malo (a excepción tal vez de mi último proyecto matrimonial), pero sí frialdad, rareza, ingratitud. Y me lo echas en cara de una manera como si fuese culpa mía, como si yo hubiese podido cambiarlo todo con sólo dar un giro al volante, mientras que tú no tienes la menor culpa, como no sea la de haber sido demasiado bueno conmigo.

Avrei avuto bisogno di qualche incoraggiamento, di un po' di gentilezza, che mi si lasciasse aperta la strada, e invece tu me la sbarravi

ma non tutti i bambini hanno la costanza e la fermezza necessarie per continuare a cercare la bontà finché non l'hanno trovata