FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   125   126   127   128   129   130   131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143   144   145   146   147   148   149  
150   151   152   153   154   155   156   157   158   159   160   161   162   163   164   165   166   167   168   169   170   171   172   173   174   >>   >|  
idly revisited and back at last to Prague, to the cold and the gray snow and the black sky. It was not strange, he thought, that his recollections of so many cities should be a little confused. A man would need a fine memory to catalogue the myriad sights which such a trip offers to the eye, the innumerable sounds, familiar and unfamiliar, which strike the ear, the countless sensations of comfort, discomfort, pleasure, annoyance and admiration, which occupy the nerves without intermission. There was something not wholly disagreeable in the hazy character of the retrospect, especially to a nature such as Kafka's, full of undeveloped artistic instincts and of a passionate love of all sensuous beauty, animate and inanimate. The gorgeous pictures rose one after the other in his imagination, and satisfied a longing of which he felt that he had been vaguely aware before beginning the journey. None of these lacked reality, any more than Keyork himself, thought it seemed strange to the young man that he should actually have seen so much in so short a time. But Keyork and Unorna understood their art and knew how much more easy it is to produce a fiction of continuity where an element of confusion is introduced by the multitude and variety of the quickly succeeding impressions and almost destitute of incident. One occurrence, indeed, he remembered with extraordinary distinctness, and could have affirmed under oath in all its details. It had taken place in Palermo. The heat had seemed intense by contrast with the bitter north he had left behind. Keyork had gone out and he had been alone in a strange hotel. His head swam in the stifling scirocco. He had sent for a local physician, and the old-fashioned doctor had then and there taken blood from his arm. He had lost so much that he had fainted. The doctor had been gone when Keyork returned, and the sage had been very angry, abusing in most violent terms the ignorance which could still apply such methods. Israel Kafka knew that the lancet had left a wound on his arm and that the scar was still visible. He remembered, too, that he had often felt tired since, and that Keyork had invariably reminded him of the circumstances, attributing to it the weariness from which he suffered, and indulging each time in fresh abuse of the benighted doctor. Very skilfully had the whole story been put together in all its minutest details, carefully thought out and written down in the form of a journ
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   125   126   127   128   129   130   131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143   144   145   146   147   148   149  
150   151   152   153   154   155   156   157   158   159   160   161   162   163   164   165   166   167   168   169   170   171   172   173   174   >>   >|  



Top keywords:
Keyork
 

doctor

 

thought

 

strange

 

remembered

 
details
 
stifling
 

cities

 
scirocco
 

fashioned


physician

 

revisited

 
bitter
 

extraordinary

 
distinctness
 

occurrence

 
impressions
 
destitute
 

incident

 

affirmed


Palermo

 

intense

 

contrast

 

confused

 

indulging

 

benighted

 

suffered

 

weariness

 

reminded

 

circumstances


attributing

 
skilfully
 

written

 

carefully

 

minutest

 
invariably
 

abusing

 
violent
 

ignorance

 
fainted

returned
 

recollections

 
visible
 
methods
 

Israel

 

lancet

 
succeeding
 

quickly

 
undeveloped
 

artistic