A, in both senses of the word, retelling of Kafka's trip to Italy. A pragmatic response to, as well as a demonstration of https://beautifulkvadra.substack.com/p/the-divination-of-meaning-through
In a better state because I read Strindberg (Separated). I don’t read him to read him, but rather to lie on his breast. He holds me on his left arm like a child. I sit there like a man on a statue. Ten times I almost slip off, but at the eleventh attempt I sit there firmly, feel secure, and have a wide view…. Chotek Park in the afternoon, read Strindberg, who sustains me
A little over a hundred years ago Franz Kafka traveled to Lago di Garda, an Italian lake close to Verona. Kafka suffered from tuberculosis, and had gone to a peaceful sanatorium to bath, drink Fernet-Branca, read and relax.
One hundred years later Peter Mueller, a young man born into a moderately affluent American family, went to Bumrungrad International Hospital
in Bangkok to Commit a bit of Medical Tourism.
Riva, the small town a few kilometers from Kafka’s sanatorium, sat in a mountain pass only connected by a road going north-west into the mountains, and a railroad going straight east to west, strapping the town down. Two cafés served waiters and hotel managers with Fernet-Branca and espressos.
When Kafka arrived to the U-shaped building where he would stay the next fortnight he immediately sat down to write in his diary. He made two entries which I will note here (in my translation from a scanned facsimile published online):
16 June. Left flat early, took the train to Venice (Venedig). On the way a nervous state Stronger Than Ever gripped me. I tried to read Giacomo Casanova’s memoir, but I felt sick and dizzy. Nausea as I left Venice for Verona. Walked as a drunk, shaking — I haven’t drank For a week — to the hotel.
17 June. Stayed in dreadful lodging, the floors were dirty and I could feel through my skin(s) the neighbour Smoking. Had a cough-attack worse than usual before taking the ruddy road to Riva. I Drank a small glass of Fernet-Branca at Giacomo’s,
a café. Connection to Casanova frightens me. Now Finally at the sanatorium. I opened the window to my cell and Searched through every corner — there is only emptiness.
Mueller arrived to the hospital the 17th of June 2010 and did whatever1 he was there to do. The procedure might have been quick, but to rehabilitate he had to stay for two weeks and slowly gain back his strength. His roommate, a South African man named John Coetzee, had come to the hospital to receive treatment for his pneumonia. Coetzee had suffered from pneumonia for several years then, and spent his last money on this trip to Bangkok to Commit a bit of Medical Tourism.
Mueller needed company — he had felt phlegmatic ever since the procedure so he immediately invited Coetzee for a drink (large) and a cigarette (long). The two of them (only separated by 40=50 years) talked all night about Baudelaire, truth, and interpretation (interpretative care and interpretative optéones). They became close friends, they even started calling each other Grandpa and Tiger, in true midwestern
American fashion.
The guests of the sanatorium had to cook their own food, and Kafka, if his diary tells the truth, always cooked the same thing: for every meal he grilled an aubergine (no salt) and boiled two eggs (with some herb salt). To that he either drank two glasses of red wine or one glass of Fernet-Branca. (See his diary 21 June, 24 June and 2 July 1910)
While grilling on his second day Kafka noticed an elderly man sitting by himself, deep in thought. In Front of the man there was a book without a title or author — Kafka took his aubergine off the fire and walked up to the man.
The two men (because they were men) then small-talked about the book: what it Might be about,
what the message is, what can be learned from it. The book had only one page. Kafka took a seat next to the man, a retired doctor, Dottore Giacomo Rossi, and squinted.
Tiger and Grandpa had now talked for hours and hours every day for ten days. They knew each other inside-out. They had not only done the literal moving-of-mouths-and-ears — they had divined one-another with rods, forecasts and induction.
Kafka and Rossi on the other hand never got further. Rossi was found cross-eyed and lethargic with the book tied to his chest with a piece of string on the day Kafka had planned to departure. He never recovered and died four years later in Bern, at the age of sixty-five.
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Parallelity
These two stories took place a hundred year apart — yet together they demonstrate the dangers and virtues of text divination.
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Voyelles
A noir, E blanc, I rouge, U vert, O bleu:
This illustrates the point of this text.
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Post-Scriptum
beautiful kvadra wrote in a brilliant post (of which in the traditional sense of “reading” I’ve only read a little bit) that reading can (and even should) be done through Hypermetropic Vibrational induction. This idea has always been part of my reading- and learning process, but beautiful kvadra managed to put it into words in a nice way. After I divined the text’s meaning I was inspired to write my own (in all senses of the word) inductive text, where every idea has been divined (not read or copied) from previous texts. This frees the writer from
Responsibility
Historical or factual constraints
Readers’ expectations
What scares me is that others might not get to experience this, or even worse — someone might try too hard and fail. beautiful kvadra wrote to me:
ungifted or unsightly readers are indeed posed with danger; this form of divination must be applied exclusively by the ascending spirit... the attempt to divine from a single page over a week's time sure signifies a declining spirit... this leads to liver dysfunction and in bad cases, death
i had a good friend who succumbed to illness after tiring over a fortune cookie aphorism for two weeks time
I hope with all my heart that my text will not cause any injury, no matter how small.
As Kafka wrote: All things resist being written down. Thanks for divining.
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I met Peter Mueller in an anonymous chatroom, and he didn’t tell me what procedure he was in Bangkok for. But he did tell me his story, which shook me. It made me remember Kafka’s trip to Italy and inspired me to write it down. (He didn’t even know who Kafka is. (Un)heimlich.)
This was beautiful! My heart flutters with the feedback loop of mutual inspiration.