Milena biography

Here you should return a few months ago, by the beginning of the year. Kafka is again in Prague; He resumed, as soon as he could, his service in the agency, despite the fact that his health continues to deteriorate to such an extent that in February he will have to contact the administration with a new request for vacation. He abandoned his intention to marry Julia Vokhrytsek, but continues to meet her.

The whole horizon is now darkened: he no longer has any plans. Max Brod at this time is most often absent in Prague. Life seems to him completely devoid of any meaning. But in the early days of January of the year, Kafka unexpectedly violates the silence in which he was closed for almost two years - he begins to write. True, this is not God the news that, no more than a dozen pages, a series of thoughts, sustained in the third person of the only number in which the same anonymous character appears.

For this reason, the posthumous publishers entitled a small cycle of texts of the "he", but scattered them in at least three places - in the "Diary", in "Wedding preparations in the village" and in the collection "Description of one struggle", so they escape the attention of readers, which is very regrettable, because these texts deserve the best fate: Kafka, of course, wrote for himself, not intending for himself, not intending for himself, not intending for himself, not intending Publish them.

Hence their darling, which he did not try to clarify. But they allow us to judge the writer at one of the most difficult moments of his life. And in fact, behind this “he”, his own features are easily recognized without a face. The point is not that the author draws his own portrait - he has long left the introduction and confession, but that he sets out his position in relation to life and to the world, states at the moment when he abandoned all kinds of ambitions and plans.

This is a kind of clarification of despair. One of the stories reproduces the once seen a picture representing a fragment of boat skiing on the Thames: a colorful day, a joyfully close-knit company. Or the same thought, expressed with the help of another image, - "he" found the Archimedan support, but used it against himself, only with this condition, apparently, it was given to find it.

"Thinking, undoubtedly, about his first writer's experiments and the hopes once assigned to literature, he recalls the time when he wanted to cover life in its entirety and at the same time, as a dream, as a dream. Like a simple swaying. " Now he understands that he was content with words; His desire was not even a desire. It was just a protective reaction, ovarjuaming of non -being, the cover of cheerfulness, which he wanted to give non -being, in which, barely realizing, he took the first steps, but which, however, recognized his element.

And what is he doing today? Sometimes he in his arrogance experiences more fear for peace than for himself. "Kafka, indeed, rarely has been expressed with such force - he contemplates himself in the maximum exposure, reached by him by absolute loneliness in which he was closed, and he is horrified by himself dug Nora. Thinking about his past, he represents that he was once part of the monumental group, where all the symbols appeared.

Life in society: the army, science, crafts, he left it for a long time and does not know where he was now in his former profession and even forgot what it was of this forgetfulness. And, nevertheless, this nostalgia is an important element of life force, maybe it is vitality itself. I would like to quote all these texts that Kafka throws at the limit of loneliness and doubt.

What can meditations, thoughts, revelations, always, of course, accompanied by satisfaction and well -being? For the moment comes, "when you are called upon to give an account of your life, when you remain mute, doomed to meditation, thoughts, etc. These words would emphasize if it were no longer obvious, the religious nature of thoughts: the expressed doubt here is not from nihilism, it is the support of the faith looking for its path.

This is the very thing that again appears in another reasoning:" The ability to deny the most natural expression of this The wrestling organism, which is the human organism that does not cease to transform, renew and, dying, always resurrect with us, but not courage, although at the same time life is denial and, therefore, denial is a statement. ” But this reflection is formed in a feeling of complete detachment, the deepest loneliness ever experienced by Kafka, without any support, and even - which is characteristic of this faith - without hope.

But since he does not notice anything, he cannot drink. "If these thoughts are given here thoroughly, then this is done only in order to show the state in the state at the moment when his life was supposed to experience the most unexpected and deepest metamorphosis. The writer's rise did not last long: after the first months of the year, creative infertility occurs again. It has already been said that Kafka's health requires new treatment; He is looking for a place of rest in the mountains; Its publisher Kurt Wolf offers him help and is ready to assist in finding a secluded place in Germany.

Ultimately, he stops on South Tyrol and arrives in a Meran in the early days of April. As soon as I settled down, Kafka has a correspondence with Milena Yesenskaya, who had just undertook to translate some of his stories into Czech. Finally, in such a sad and executed dissatisfaction of life, a lumen is planned, which soon turned into a devouring, devastating flame. The frozen love of Felitsa stretched for a long five years; Love for Milena was not destined to fade away, but the period of all-consuming passion lasts only a few months, only seven or eight.

This love will illuminate life with a powerful light that has lost hope, but then leave it even more devastated than ever. Kafka barely imagined who Milena was. He had long known in the face of her husband Ernst Pollak, but with Milena he had only a fleeting meeting in one of the Prague cafes last year, when she expressed a desire to translate some of his works. She was then twenty -three years old, Kafka is almost thirty -four, but she already had a stormy life behind her.

She was thirteen years old when her mother died from an illness, who had cooked her to bed for many years. Father, Jan Yesen, was a famous dentist, professor of the medical faculty of Prague University. He took a little care of his daughter, and the relationship between him and Milena was not slow to aggravate. And Milena’s personality soon made itself felt: fearless, generous, domineering, enthusiastic, drawing little attention to conventions and rules.

Since the lyceum times, she has a friendship with two fellow practitioners - Stezha Prokhazkova and Yarmila Ambrozhova, who continues during the period of connection with Kafka. Both of them see in her a role model, dress like her, imitate her gestures and tastes. Stasha and Milena were often called "Siamese sisters", and rumors attributed to them lesbian inclinations. Girls willingly advertised boyish manners.

They wear a haircut in the style of English pre -Raphaelites, they are thin as canes, there is nothing shallow -bourgeois in their behavior. Milena even gets to the point of stealing a few doses of cocaine. By the way, drugs appear in her life. Even Kafka once hints at cocaine, to which she sometimes resorts to calm her migraines.

Later, later, later, later. Being a sacrifice of sepsis due to severe births, she will cope with fierce pain only thanks to morphine. Later, Milena tried, but unsuccessfully, to fight drug addiction on her own, and she had to go through two voluntary disinxication courses in the sanatorium. Jan Yesensky wanted his daughter to study medicine. Milena listened to several courses, then she was tired of it, and she turned to the music, also abandoning classes soon.

Little by little life led her towards bohemia. At sixteen, she fell in love with one singer, but this first feeling was disappointing. Two years later, she met Ernst Pollak. He was an employee of one of the Prague banks and at the same time took part in the literary life of the city, was a friend of Willy Haas and Franz Verfel, a great expert on modern literature of France and England, an excellent musician, a fanatical lover of the opera.

Soon there was a connection between them, but Dr. Yesensky hated this Jew, a regular in Kabar, a participant in a restless literary environment, and at the end of the year had a fierce skirmish with him. Milena was always without a penny, she took the money apart from the money and went bankrupt on gifts and frivolous purchases. In June, Jan Yesensky puts his minor daughter Milena was born in August in a medical institution in Veleslavin, to the same where the poor Julia Vokhrushchek will follow her several years later.

In this decision, at first glance excessively strict and inhumane, lies a kind of mystery. Does Milena's disgust justify such a measure? Did Jan Yesen abused his paternal authority or his position of a physician? It is known, however, that the interval took place only after the approval of the doctor of the Prokhazka, the brother of Stesha, the city doctor Prague.

We also note that Milena was kept in Veleslaven until March, another seven months after his age. Be that as it may, she leaves a psychiatric institution at this time. Having freed himself, Milena immediately marries Pollak, and the married couple soon moves to Vienna, where Pollak finds a place in the Austrian branch of his bank.The correspondence of Milena and Kafka begins two years later, and Kafka is convinced that her family is as excellent as in the early days.

He is mistaken: married life was not slow to break up. Pollak is becoming more and more a regular of a cafe, he openly cheats on his wife and leaves her without money. To earn a living, Milena leads Czech lessons in schools, writes small notes, secular chronicles, various articles in many Prague magazines. At times, poverty in these post -war years is so great that it has to be equipped with a loader at the station.

This is reflected in her health, she coughs, and even blood. This is the situation at the time of the correspondence between it and Kafka. The initiative came from Kafka: he wrote her the first letter even before leaving Prague to go to the Meran. Undoubtedly, he found out that she had health problems, and wanted to know how she feels. Correspondence very soon acquires an intimate character.

Immediately he complains that he forgot the features of Milena's face; He recalls the "Movement of the camp, hands, so fast, so decisive, but he says, when I then want to raise my eyes to see your face, then my letter - what a parable! The first letters date back to April, and since the beginning of May it is difficult for him to read the answers received in one sitting, he is so afraid to stay day and night with thoughts about her.

Very soon Milena and he is annoyed by the banal appeal "Dear Madame Milen." Since mid -June, they decide to switch to "you", for these relations of lovers, as in the period of letters to Felitsa - although this is limited to the similarity of two adventures - they feed on words, progress according to the mysterious laws of rhetoric. For the first time in front of Kafka, a woman with whom he has a true understanding.

This is no longer the depressing monologue who reigned for so long during the time of Felitsa, the words of Kafka find an echo. He himself admires Milena’s small texts: “This prose is there,” he writes, “not for her, she is there as if in order to indicate the road that leads to the human being, the road that you always pass with a sense of great happiness, until you understand one of the moments of insight that you are no longer moving, but you are satisfied with your own labyrinth, but only more enthusiastic and only enthusiastic and only enthusiastic and only enthusiastic and only enthusiastic and more enthusiastic and only enthusiastic and more enthusiastic and only enthusiastic and more entertaining and only enthusiastic more concerned.

" He opens in Milena the interweaving of intelligence and passionate feelings, which he was still deprived of. And even the sentimental “excesses” of Milena, even the spirit of anarchy and riot accompanying her, answer some of his secret expectations. Soon he rushes to her, but Milena was ahead of him, he did not immediately realize that she was looking for help from him - she was unhappy and asks her shelter.

Kafka perceives this fact with surprise and horror: “For me,” he writes on June 12, when it was barely two months after her first letter, “is terrible what is happening: my world is crumbling, my world gets out of the ruins again, so look,” he continues to turn to himself, “look how you stay here. I am not complaining that he has been staggering, I have been sorry for a long time The fact that he gets up again that I was born into the light, and I complain about the light of the sun too.

" Only quiet letters can make me happy, ”he writes to Milena the next day,“ I would sit at their feet, happy without measure, it’s like rain to a glowing head. ” Milena is a jellyfish, in another place she is an angel of death, which is inclined over a dying man. But in the same letters, he also calls her “my baby” or “my child”.