Friday, April 21, 2006

"Do you despair?"

I write this very decidedly out of despair over my body and over a future with a body. When despair shows itself so definitely, it is so tied to its object, so pent up, as in a soldier who covers a retreat and thus lets himself be torn to pieces, then it is not true despair. True despair overreaches its goal immediately and always, (at this comma it became clear that only the first sentence was correct).

Do you despair?
Yes? You despair?
You run away? You want to hide?

- Franz Kafka, Diaries 1910

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