In my novel, 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.
And I must wonder, if he were writing right now, what he would write with the knowledge that February has an extra day.
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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.
