#240 - Reading Kafka's Diaries

An episode from 9/14/26: Tonight, I read my favorite passages from the Diaries of Franz Kafka. (The edition of his diaries that I read has since been replaced by this one). When you approach these passages, as I do here, with almost no comment or connecting links to his life or his work, let alone to the library of Kafka scholarship that has developed in the last century, he suddenly appears very familiar. He sounds like you, or somebody you know, struggling by themselves with whatever it is.

We all know somebody who, Ahab-like, has made remarks like these: “What will be my fate as a writer is very simple. My talent for portraying my dreamlike inner life has thrust all other matters into the background; my life has dwindled dreadfully, nor will it cease to dwindle. Nothing else will ever satisfy me.”

You can find the text for all the excerpts I read from here.

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