The Hunter Gracchus (a fragment)

"Gracchus, one request. First, tell me briefly but coherently how things are with you. To

be truthful: I really don't know. You of course take these things for granted and assume, as

is your way, that the whole world knows about them. But in this brief human life -- and life

really is brief, Gracchus, try to grasp that -- in this brief life it's as much as one can do to

get oneself and one's family through. Interesting as the Hunter Gracchus is -- this is

conviction, not flattery -- there's no time to think of him, to find out about him, let alone

worry about him. Perhaps on one's deathbed, like your Hamburger, this I don't know.

Perhaps the busy man will then have a chance to stretch out for the first time and let the

green Hunter Gracchus pass for once through his idle thoughts. But otherwise, it's as I've

said: I knew nothing about you, business brought me down here to the harbor, I saw the

bark, the gangplank lay ready, I walked across -- but now I'd like to know something

coherent about you. 

Ah, coherent. That old, old story.All the books are full of it, teachers draw it on the

blackboard in every school, the mother dreams of it while suckling her child, lovers murmur

it while embracing, merchants tell it to the customers, the customers to the merchants,

soldiers sing it on the march, preachers declaim it in church, historians in their studies

realize with open mouths what happened long ago and never cease describing it, it is

printed in the newspapers and people pass it from hand to hand, the telegraph was

invented so that it might encircle the world the faster, it is excavated from ruined cities, and

the elevator rushes it up to the top of the skyscraper. Railway passengers announce it

from the windows to the countries they are passing through, but even before that the

savages have howled it at them, it can be read in the stars and the lakes reflect it, the

streams bring it down from the mountains and the snow scatters it again on the summit,

and you, man, sit here and ask me for coherence. You must have had an exceptionally

dissipated youth.

Possibly, as is typical of any youth. But it would be very useful, I think, if you would go

and have a good look around the world. Strange as it may seem to you, and sitting here it

surprises even me, it's a fact that you are not the talk of the town, however many subjects

may be discussed you are not among them, the world goes its way and you go on your

journey, but until today I have never noticed that your paths have crossed." - Franz Kafka