repetition I

“when i think about it, i must say that my education has done me great harm in some respects,” franz kafka reveals in a diary entry dated 19 july, 1910. if only he’d been born a little freer, in the country, perhaps on a mountain where he could be baked beneath the sun, then eventually his good qualities would have sprung up in him naturally, “with the might of weeds.”

he starts over. “when i think about it,” he begins. he unravels each detail with a heightened degree of scrutiny—he must press each “tightly together in [his] memory, otherwise one would drop out here and there—but since [he has] pressed them together so, the whole mass crumbles bit by bit anyhow.”

so he starts again. “often i think it over, and then i always have to say that my education has done me great harm in some ways.” longer, more granular this time, he unfurls his childhood, his upbringing, his school in the middle of the city, as though an endless scroll of paper which leads up and into the heightened crescendo of “the might of weeds.”

“often i think it over and give my thoughts free rein,” he starts again.

again. “often i think it over and give my thoughts free rein, without interfering, but i always come to the conclusion that my education has spoiled me more than i can understand.” the details have exploded by now into a story which fills several pages. “the reproaches lie around inside me like strange tools that i hardly have the courage to seize and lift any longer.” kafka doubts, he doubts himself, he doubts his abilities as a thinker, as a writer—and yet how can he, when he’s writing right now?

“i often think it over and give my thoughts free rein without interfering, but i always come to the same conclusion: that my education has spoiled me more than all the people i know and more than i can conceive.” kafka seems to have found the perfect expression for this thought, because it is never reformulated again.