Franz Kafka gets left on read

Imagine getting a letter everyday, from Franz Kafka. The writer had two largely epistolary relationships in his life, and the letters from his first show a picture of what seems to have been a rather lopsided affair, with Kafka waiting long spans between letters from his beloved, while he writes near-daily. When they do write in turn, they often write about writing "the way others talk about money." Seen through his eyes, getting ‘left on read’ feels like an event of literary import, rather than an all-too routine social disappointment. Translation from the German my own.

13 May 1913
…
When Max was in Berlin then, and spoke with you on the telephone, you were, as I can so well imagine, very cheerful and confident, you laughed a lot, but among other things you said, “there's no point, he writes me rather a lot, but he makes no sense in the letters, I don’t know what he’s bargaining for, we’re not coming closer to one another and there’s no chance, for the time being.” But it was just the beginning then, and you’ve come closer with great strides, …

Are you still to think today like you spoke back then? Your look, your words, your silence…

25 May 1913
God, why haven’t you written me? One week, no word. That’s just terrible.

29 June 1913
Nothing? You had letters from me from Friday and Saturday and you didn’t write me a word? I had to work in the office today, Sunday, and now I come home (my family is in the country), my heart pounding while I am opening the door, not as if I am to receive the expected, nay assured letter, but to meet the most beloved person alive – and nothing.

There must be a meaning, I tell myself, and not difficult to figure out.

Franz

9 July 1913
Dearest Felice, if you can’t write me, don’t write me, but let me write you and repeat day after day what you just as well know, that I love you so far as I have strength at all for love, and that I want to and have to serve you so long as I am alive.

Franz

19 July 1913
I haven’t gotten a letter from you since Sunday. I can’t know what happened. My letter must have made you sick, nothing else is possible. But if it made you sick, then you have misunderstood it, although indeed that is again unbelievable since you have known me for an entire year…. Felice, please write me one word, be it good or bad, don’t make my misery greater than it is, your silence is the worst punishment that you can come up with.

Franz

28 July 1913
Again no letter. How you can only torment me so, Felice! So unnecessarily torment! Where but a few words would do me well and could relieve my headache a little, in which my head is stuck like under a hood. Write that you haven’t decided yet or that you can’t write or that you don’t want to. With 3 words I’d be happy, but nothing! nothing!

~And when you finally do write~

10 August 1913
Felice, I have your telegram, thank you many times for it, and I beg your pardon on account of the unjust accusations and embittering of your holiday that perhaps came from me. Now today in the office I got your letter from Friday. (From Thursday, if you wrote, I haven’t got anything, perhaps it was addressed to the apartment and will come first thing tomorrow), but it doesn’t come down to – I’m not a devil watching over your writing, I’m just frightened by the contents of your letters, according to which I truly seem to be such a devil which has only to be somehow assuaged so that it doesn’t torture. That theme occurs in everything I have from you from the last few days. In the second-to-last letter, “now you certainly can’t moan etc.” In the last, “Erna scolds etc.” In today’s card, “it would be a sin to stay in the room…” but dearest Felice! Do we not write about writing as others talk about money? Is the latter worse than the former? It’s dreadful if you’re only writing for my sake.

I’m afraid to send this letter, maybe I’m not entirely able to judge; but if I can’t, it comes from the same reason and so there’s a legitimate sense to it. Is it the vast distance that chases you away from me, do you really feel that I have temporarily overwhelmed your feelings? But you’re persistent, your insight is clear enough, you have yourself together – though this makes these forever recurring pauses all the more exasperating and meaningful.

Your Franz