"'It is now 10:30 on Monday morning,' he wrote to Felice Bauer on November 4, 1912. 'I have been waiting for a letter since 10:30 on Saturday morning, but again nothing has come. I have written every day but don't I deserve even a word? One single word? Even if it were only to say 'I never want to hear from you again.' ' This anxious, hectoring tone was not a one-off indulgence. 'Dearest, what have I done that makes you torment me so?' he pleaded just over two weeks later."
"She was a relative of Max Brod, Kafka's friend and eventual literary executor, and according to Kafka's diaries, made a fairly unprepossessing first impression: 'Bony, empty face that wore its emptiness openly. Bare throat. A blouse thrown on. Looked very domestic in her dress although, as it turned out, she by no means was.' Yet during their ensuing five-year correspondence, he was moved to write her more than 500 letters, some of them sent one day after the other - and more than a few berating her for not writing back quickly enough."
Franz Kafka and Felice Bauer met after her introduction through Max Brod and maintained a fraught five-year correspondence. Kafka often expressed acute anxiety and impatience, writing over 500 letters and frequently reproaching Bauer for delayed replies. Kafka's diary recorded a blunt, unflattering first impression of Bauer's appearance, yet the emotional intensity of his letters led to two engagements that ultimately failed to result in marriage. Bauer preserved all of Kafka's letters, which were later collected and published, providing a detailed record of his pleading, oscillating moods, and the unresolved nature of their relationship.
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