Dear Volker März,
Shortly after your departure I found a message in my mailbox, informing me that the Swedish Academy of Sciences would like to award me the Nobel Prize for literature. Of course, I rejected immediately. You ask for the reasons?! Well, I wrote them, that I will only accept the Nobel Prize once I have died - and in the moment, I am missing the right male courage for that.
Franz Kafka, Tel Aviv 2007
"Among all human beings, the monkey is the only outsider"
Franz Kafka, at the beginning of his speech at the Knesset on the occasion of his 100th birthday Jerusalem 1984
Dear Miss Galit,
Yesterday I went once more to the complaining wall in Jerusalem. Suddenly, I had this osmotic urge to disappear with my small slip of paper/note in its little gaps.
My Dearest, do you think they would be ready to tear down the wall to seek the great Franz Kafka beneath it, once I succeeded in effecting this involuntary trick under the eyes of witnesses? Franz Kafka, Herzliya, 1969
Dear Gershom,
So finally, we have gained our own, independent country and I am, without having anything done to achieve it, an Israelite. It's a strange feeling ...it feels as if-- for the last years -- I had been rowing in circles on the bottom of a dark well, all day long... and suddenly, had reached the open sea under bright sunshine. However, there's no bank, no land that comes into view. Franz Kafka, Tel Aviv 1948
Dear Klaus,
The day before yesterday I bought the two pistols, of which I had written you in my last letter. Since then, I have spent the nights sitting on my roof top, shooting on empty chicken-soup tins -- all under the protection of the sound of the howling sirens. With every shot, I think of my father.
(By the way, thank you for sending me the royalties for "That venture in the stream") Franz Kafka., Tel Aviv 1991
Dear Max,
I have visited a kibbutz, where they execute gene experiments... successfully, but not undisputedly. My favourites are the chickens without feathers. I have never seen something so heartbreaking miserable. They are an optical punishment and look like creatures from my most painful day dreams - ridiculous embodiments of all our suffering-ding-dong.
Franz Kafka, Tel Aviv 2003
Dear Franz Kafka,
Why do you refuse to take a firm political stand -- even after the murder of Rabin through an Israelite. Since your speech at the Knesset, people listen to you. This murder by a Jewish fanatic could become the executer's axe for the peace process in the Near East.
Volker März, Berlin 1995
Dear Volker März
There will never be peace here and there shall not be peace here. For every peace is flat, and peace makes things look grey. Here, though, everything is brightly coloured and can, from one second to the other, turn black and white -- just like yesterday shortly after the assassination.
But it does not shock me, because I love the shadows. I love the shadows of things more than the things themselves. Franz Kafka, Tel Aviv 1995
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Franz Kafka and Mr Rotpeter in Tel Avivby volkermaerz965 views
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