True love can really “bite”, can it not? So, let’s philosophize about it about, starting with the picture quote above. What we have here, dear readers, are two vastly different philosophers (may they both be resting in peace) by way of their waxing some of life’s burning questions, with even more vastly different truths about how they survived “love’s bite”.
I’ve been reading Franz Kafka since my freshman year of college, by the way, and very much align with his inner beetle. I’m “Kafkaesque” to the core in my grave disdain for all things alienation and bureaucratic absurdity, and do quite often find the human condition surreal and nightmarish. Lol! To think that those who know personally thought I was just a bird brain!
Dostoevsky? He stayed in love because his truth was that it was worth every last nibble, no matter bittersweet, painful, or brief. So? He’d “hold on for dear life“, because for him, love required fully surrendering to and losing himself in it.
Kafka, on the other hand, would just leave love behind, because his truth was that it all but demanded he save HIMSELF. So? He’d “let go for dear life”, because loving HIMSELF meant walking away from anything he’d once thought he couldn’t live without that harmed him.
As for me? I have scars from both sets of love’s teeth, BUT, now that I’ve come this far in my journey and fallen completely in love with MYSELF, I can honestly say I’m more “Kafkaesque” in my relationships of ANY kind going forward. As a “crucified mother”, however, I’m also “Dostoevsky” and in it to win it, win, lose, or draw with my babies for LIFE! Jean-Claude Van DAMN, ain’t love a many splendored thing?
So? Which of love’s chomps do you keep close to the bit? Do you tend to “stay” even if it’s breaking you, or “leave” even if it means breaking your own heart? Pretty deep stuff, right? Hi everyone! It’s me, “The REAL Cat Fyodor Kafka Williamson” … writer, mother, and LOVE BITTEN philosopher extraordinaire!”
For the record, for those of you who wanna be in the know. our beloved, tortured Kafka died this day 100 years ago at the relatively young age of 40:
How often Kafka had longed to leave his Prague! He noted the desire “to go away from Prague. To take action against this, the greatest human damage I have ever suffered, with the strongest chemical agent I have at my disposal” in his diary on 9th March 1914. This wish was fulfilled in the most tragic way: the final phase of his life was spent in Dr Hoffmann’s sanatorium in Kierling near Klosterneuburg, a picturesque village a few miles outside Vienna. Here, on 3rd June 1924, the ill-fated author succumbed to tuberculosis; he was cared for in his last agonizing weeks by his friend Dr Robert Klopstock, and his lover Dora Diamant. Franz Kafka thus gave sleepy Kierling a place in the annals of literary history.
(“Kafka’s World“)
The Diary Of My Perfection 
You must be logged in to post a comment.