first meeting

first meeting
october 2014
based on Reiner Stach’s description of Franz Kafka’s first meeting with Felice Bauer (see page 100, ‘Kafka: The Decisive Years’ by Reiner Stach)

Franz (on the far left) in Vienna, 1913, with recently acquainted friends, Albert Ehrenstein, Otto Pick & Lise Weltsch

only a few words
yet enough to
put you out
to sea
silly boy
you liked her
to the ‘point
of sighing’
you spilled out
to others there
and jammed yourself
into the revolving
door along side
her to keep
up with
her in
laughter

silly boy
you were out
to sea in a
boat of
pail and
shovel
sailing to
jerusalem

silly boy
with the finest
machinery of all
in that head
of yours

silly boy
a sigh is
never a
map
silly boy

Copyright ©2015 Peter Le Baige.  All Rights Reserved

The music for the reading is from the third movement of Leoš Janáček’s 1924 suite ‘Mládí’ (Youth) for flute, oboe, clarinet, bass clarient, bassoon and horn, recorded here in a 2017 live performance.  The musicians are: Artists: Sooyun Kim, flute; Stephen Taylor, oboe; Tommaso Lonquich, clarinet; Romie de Guise-Langlois, bass clarinet; Peter Kolkay, bassoon; David Jolley, horn