The Diaries of Franz Kafka

"28 March 1911. The painter Pollak-Karlin, his wife with two large wide front teeth tapering her large, rather flat face, Frau Hofrath Bittner, the composer’s mother, whose age so brings out her strong skeleton that at least while sitting she looks like a man: - Dr. Steiner is so very occupied with his absent students - At the lecture the dead crowd around him so. Intellectual curiosity? But do they actually need it. Apparently so. - Sleeps 2 hours. Ever since his electric lights were once cut off, he always has a candle by him. - He stood very near Christ. - He staged his theater piece in Munich. (”You can study it a whole year and still not understand it.”) He designed the costumes, wrote the music. - He gave instruction to a chemist. Simon Löwy, silk merchant in Paris, Quai Moncey, got the best business advice from him. He translated his work into French. Thus the Hofrat’s wife has written in her notebook, “How does one achieve the knowledge of higher worlds? At S. Löwy’s in Paris.” - In the Vienna lodge is a 65-year-old Theosophist, strong as a giant, formerly a great drunkard with a thick head, who continually believes and continually has doubts. Supposedly it was very funny when, once at a congress in Budapest, at a dinner on Blocksberg one moonlit night, Dr. Steiner came unexpectedly into the gathering and he hid in fear behind a beer barrel with a mug (though Dr. Steiner would not have been angry at this) - Perhaps he is not the greatest living psychic researcher, but he alone has received the task of uniting Theosophy with science. That’s also why he knows everything..."

"The Diaries of Franz Kafka"
This site aims to supplement that work by providing a public-domain translation in English and a space for discussion (in the event of a talkative readership).

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