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February 2024

Kafka Decides To Keep His Day Job

Franz Kafka (although a trained lawyer) had plans other than his job at The Workers’ Accident Insurance Institute for the Kingdom of Bohemia in Prague. He eventually found it was a good place to be.

Kafka was press-ganged to be a ‘silent partner’ and part-time manager for his brother-in-law’s asbestos factory, Prager Asbestwerke Hermann & Co. In his diary of 28 December 1911, he complains of ‘the torment that the factory causes me’. He also commented to his friend, Max Brod, that “. . . after writing well Sunday night [. . .] I had to stop for the following reason: my brother-in-law, the manufacturer, this morning left for a business trip.”

Needless to say, Kafka’s enthusiasm was not pure. The Factory did not survive.

Also, Kafka had the idea of moving to Berlin and opening a Café. He was to be owner, chef, and waiter. This idea sustained him a number of years, but happily (for everyone) it never came to fruition.

But, as this following story from The Goethe Institute reveals, Kafka has some plans to actually make money from his talent as a writer.

Making money as an author :

“Together with his mate Max Brod, Kafka wanted to publish a commercial bestseller series. Kafka wrote: “We had the idea of creating a new type of travel guide. It was to be called BILLIG or ON THE CHEAP. For example, On the Cheap through Switzerland, On the Cheap in Paris and so on.” It would only ever recommend one thing – the cheapest hotel, the cheapest restaurant, the cheapest means of transport. Linked to this was the idea of the On the Cheap language guide, which, given the impossibility of learning a foreign language completely, teaches the wrong thing straight away. In the end, the idea remained just a dream. Talks with publishers failed, and so Kafka did not become a millionaire. https://www.goethe.de/ins/pk/en/kul/mgz/ros/25439440.html “

DE

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Sister Darling Puts Paw, The Cat/Kitten, In His Place

I am submitting

To the blandishments

Of Sister Darling, of

The Rarefied Church of the World (reformed),

Because she is a woman of God.

(Though her take on the teachings of the Lord,

Do have a belligerent slant).

And,

She can play me like a fiddle.

So, at her suggestion,

I let her make, for Paw, my Cat/kitten,

Black as the night

With one white mitten,

A winter suit,

For days like today,

With wild winds cold

As an iceberg,

And snow enough to

Bury any cat.

She has knitted him a body suit,

And four booties,

Coloured blue, so we

Won’t lose him in the snow.

Paw is none too happy

Being press-ganged into this gear.

Nor does the chore,

Fill me with cheer.

But out she tosses him

Into a drift.

Two other days he protests,

But this morning, he is calm as a clam,

And stays out for hours.

I’m The Lighthouse Poet Laureate of Partridge Island /1821 – 2024 / A lot of stuff have I seen / A lot of stuff to report}

DE BA. UEL

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Kafka Greets February, The Shortest Month Of The Year, With Absolutely No Enthusiasm

This entry seems to be a favourite with folk, so who am I to argue? Mind you – Kafka might argue with that.

In Kafka In The Castle, I fill in the ‘missing’ diary entries from Kafka’s real diary. He either did not fill in these days himself, or he destroyed them. There are some estimates that Kafka destroyed 70% – 80% of everything he wrote.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

01 February 1917

A particularly tedious day at the office, which stretched like a bridge over an abyss.

Perhaps to mock yesterday’s comments – the month so short and the day so long.

I am sometimes afraid of the white, and sometimes of the black, but my deepest horror is for the destroying grey of life.

When it is grey and senseless, it starves your feelings of oxygen, and then you really and truly die.

It is said that Jesus raised the dead (though I never understood why), and our own Prague rabbi created the Golem to help out in this world.

All I can do is scratch ink upon the page.

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