a knife which I turn within myself

Reading Idris Parry's introduction to Franz Kafka's The Castle, I can't help but feel a certain fondness for the fragile in Kafka. It must be pure conceit that allows me to relate anything with myself, but I couldn't help but find my own heart reflected in Kafka's letters to Milena and in the diary entries where he confessed his fearfulness.

Those happy days become in retrospect merely a time when "I looked over my fence... I held myself up by my hands, then I fell back again..."