Damn the mail!

Keeping up with Kafka

Franz Kafka and Felice Bauer in Budapest, July 1917. (Photo by Apic/Bridgeman via Getty Images)

Franz Kafka, born on this day in 1883, and Felice Bauer, born four years later, first met in August of 1912 at a dinner party hosted by a mutual friend. Kafka was smitten, and a few weeks later wrote to Bauer to reintroduce himself. Physically incapable of playing it cool, Kafka was almost instantly writing to her every day, often more than once, and whenever she failed to keep up with the pace of his letter-writing—and who possibly could?—Kafka would panic, presume the worst, and write again. I’ve plucked the following excerpts from a two month period that began not long after their relationship began. I could have continued well into the next year.

Kafka and Bauer became engaged the next year but their romantic relationship eventually failed, with Bauer marrying another man in 1919. Kafka died in 1924 of tuberculosis. 

---

November 4, 1912

It is now 10:30 on Monday morning. I have been waiting for a letter since 10:30 on Saturday morning, but again nothing has come. I have written every day but don’t I deserve even a word? One single word? Even if it were only to say “I never want to hear from you again.” Had a letter arrived, I would have answered it at once, and the answer would be bound to have begun with a complaint about the length of those two endless days. But you leave me sitting wretchedly at my wretched desk!

November 15, 1912