you’d think this sort of shit could only exist in the movies
“When I pulled your translation out of the large envelope, I was almost disappointed. I wanted to hear from you and not the voice from the old grave, the voice I know all too well. Why did it have to come between us? Then I realized that this same voice had also come between us, as a mediator. But apart from that it is inconceivable to me that you would take on such a troublesome task, and I am moved by your faithfulness toward every single little sentence, a faithfulness I would not have though possible to achieve in Czech, let alone with the full beautiful natural authority you attain.” yk. thinking about it. the most romantic couple would be like two excellent writers who write in different languages and who translate for one another. both must be good at both, but each must specialise
“Please write the address a little more legibly, once your letter is in the envelope then it’s already virtually my property and you should treat other people’s property more carefully, with a greater sense of responsibility” this guy is adorable
“I really am a paragon of stupidity. I am reading a book about Tibet; at the description of a settlement in the mountains on the Tibetan border my heart suddenly grows heavy, so hopelessly forlorn does the village seem to me, so far from Vienna. What I consider stupid is the idea that Tibet is far from Vienna. Would it really be far?”
“Sometimes I have the feeling that we're in one room with two opposite doors and each of us holds the handle of one door, one of us flicks an eyelash and the other is already behind his door, and now the first one has but to utter a word ad immediately the second one has closed his door behind him and can no longer be seen. He's sure to open the door again for it's a room which perhaps one cannot leave. If only the first one were not precisely like the second, if he were calm, if he would only pretend not to look at the other, if he slowly set the room in order as though it were a room like any other; but instead he does exactly the same as the other at his door, sometimes even both are behind the doors and the the beautiful room is empty.”
bro mentions his age every damn passage. 38 year old jew. 38 year old jew. her dad was just too based his aura bleeds over
“I reread the Sunday letter, it’s even more frightening than I thought at first. One ought, Milena, to take your face in both hands and look you square in the eye, so that you would see yourself in the eyes of the other person, then you could not even think the kinds of things you wrote there.”
ring discourse is dumb
oh he’s 38 that’s new info
“I can’t think of anything better to say: I’ll wait for you Wednesday starting at 10:00 A.M. in front of the hotel. Please, Milena, don’t surprise me by coming up from the side or from behind; I promise not to do this either.” this really is so cute
“A slight blow for me: a telegram from Paris, informing me that an old uncle of mine—whom I am really very fond of, who lives in Madrid, and who hasn’t been here for many years—is arriving tomorrow evening. It is a blow because it will take time and all the time I have and most of all I’d like to have all time there is just for you, for thinking about you, for breathing in you.”
“write me every day anyway, it can even be very brief, briefer than today’s letters, just 2 lines, just one, just one word, but if I had to go without them I would suffer terribly.”
“I’m tired, can’t think of anything and want only to lay my face in your lap, feel your hand on my head and remain like that through all eternity.”
“Was there ever any emperor in the history of the world better off than I am? I walk into my room and find three letters waiting for me, and I don’t have to do a thing except open them—my fingers are too slow!—lean back and—be unable to believe that I am so fortunate, so happy.”
i like how often he talks about her letters with no additional elaboration—her letters are her—he speaks of her.
“You are the knife I turn inside myself; that is love. That, my dear, is love.”
“the most beautiful thing you could have written me: ‘I know that you . . .’”
what is this torture stuff. sick and twisted wow this is why he wrote penal colony
“Why, Milena, do you write about our common future which will never be, or is that why you write about it?”
“By the way, autumn is playing games with me as well; I’m sometimes suspiciously warm, sometimes suspiciously cold, but I’m not going to look into that”
“I wish the world were ending tomorrow. Then I could take the next train, arrive at your doorstep in Vienna, and say: “Come with me, Milena. We are going to love each other without scruples or fear or restraint. Because the world is ending tomorrow.” Perhaps we don’t love unreasonably because we think we have time, or have to reckon with time. But what if we don't have time? Or what if time, as we know it, is irrelevant? Ah, if only the world were ending tomorrow. We could help each other very much.”
“In a way, you are poetry material; You are full of cloudy subtleties I am willing to spend a lifetime figuring out. Words burst in your essence and you carry their dust in the pores of your ethereal individuality.”