"It is evident that Kafka uses his diary as a tool to master his literary technique, to sharpen his observations, to clarify the loci of his interests on the diurnal page so that he could call upon these skills when needed, for larger, more serious work. There are passages in his diaries with descriptions, scenes, social commentary and unique insights that are precursory. That being said, there are also, in the sharpness and freedom of their perfunctoriness, passages that stand alone and rival the writing in his best work and the work of the greatest of European literature... Kafka's diary regularly approaches a masterwork in fragments and the author consciously designed it this way." - Harold Thenthis
Dec. 16, 1911
Sunday, 12 Noon. [28 years old - insurance agent and business partner with brother-in-law]
Idled away the morning with sleeping and reading newspapers. Afraid to finish a review for the Prager Tagblatt. Such fear of writing always expresses itself by my occasionally making up, away from my desk, initial sentences for what I am to write, which immediately prove unusable, dry, broken off long before their end and pointing with their towering fragments to a sad future.
The old tricks at the Christmas Fair. Two cockatoos on a crossbar pull fortunes. Mistakes: a girl has a lady-love predicted. A man offers artificial flowers for sale in rhyme: To jest ruze udelena z kuze [This is a rose, made of leather].
Young Pipes [possibly from Yiddish play by Gordin, Der Wilde Mensch. Kafka at this time becomes interested in Yiddish theater.] when singing. As sole gesture, he rolls his right forearm back and forth at the joint, he opens his hands a little and then draws them together again. Sweat covers his face, especially his uppe rlip, as though with splinters of glass. A buttonless dickey has been hurriedly tucked into the vest under his straight black coat.
The warm shadow in the soft red of Mrs. Klug's mouth when she sings.
Jewish streets in Paris, rue Rosier, side-street of rue de Rivoli.
If a disorganized education having only that minimum coherence indispensable for the merest uncertain existence is suddenly challenged to a task limited in time, therefore necessarily arduous, to self-development, to articulate speech, then the response can only be a bitterness in which are mingled arrogance over achievments which could be attained only by calling upon all one's untrained powers, a last glance at the knowledge that escapes in surprise and that is so very fluctuating because it was suspected rather than certain, and finally, hate and admiration for the environment...
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