سيكون هذا آخر ما أكتبه إليكِ، يقولها كافكا بطعم الفراق المُر لحبيبته ميلينا:
«وداعاً يا عظيمتي، كان بإمكاننا إصلاح الأمور
أن تكوني أنتِ الطّرف الأفضل وتتنازلي قليلاً!
كما كنتُ أفعل أنا!
كان من الممكن أن تستمرّي بقول صباح الخير وأنا بدوري انتظر الصّباح إلى أن تقوليها وتودّعينني ليلاً، وأغلق الكون بعدك
ما أشعر به ليس حبّاً يا ميلينا!
أو قد يكون حبّاً ولكن ليس كما تتخيّلينه
إنّه أكبر من ذلك!
أنا الآن من دون روح من دون إحساس
ومن دون أيّ شيء!
لم أشعر يوماً أنّني بحاجة أحد كما أشعر الآن
صدّقيني أنتِ روعة الأشياء البائسة!
وانتِ الحياة لكلّ جذوري اليابسة!
أفتقدكِ كثيراً، أكثر ممّا تخيّلت بأنّ الفقد مؤلم!
ما الفائدة من إغلاقكِ للأبواب
إن كانت روحي عالقة على جدران بيتك
أنتِ الآن تزيدين البعد شوقاً أفتقدك
وداعاً يا عظيمتي».
تبدأ الحكاية حيث تنتهي، وتنتهي حيث يبدأ الألم تلك هي جدلية العاشق الذي لا يكتب رسائله ليُرسلها، بل ليُخلّد وجعه على الورق.
هكذا كان حال فرانز كافكا، حين كتب إلى حبيبته ميلينا آخر رسائله،
لم يكن يودّعها بقدر ما كان يودّع نفسه فيها. كانت الكلمات طريقته الوحيدة ليبقى حيّاً، لتظلّ روحه عالقةً بين الحبر واللهفة.
في رسالته، يتكشّف كافكا عارياً من كبريائه، خالياً من القناع الذي كان يرتديه أمام العالم.
رسالة وداع تختزن ألف حسرةٍ وسؤال!
ليست مجرّد ماضٍ، بل جرح مفتوح على احتمالاتٍ ضاعت.
كأنّ كافكا يعيد ترتيب الأقدار في ذهنه، يراجع النهايات التي كان يمكن أن تُكتب بطريقةٍ أقلّ وجعاً لو أنّ ميلينا تنازلت قليلاً.
لكنها لم تفعل، وربما لأنها مثل كثير من العاشقات أرادت رجلاً يقدر المسافة، لا رجلاً يختنق في القرب.
يبدو في كلماته كمن يكلّم ظلّاً لا يسمعه..
كان من الممكن أن تستمري بقول صباح الخير. وأنا بدوري أنتظر الصباح إلى أن تقوليها..
انتظار يحوّل الصباح إلى طقسٍ روحي كأنّ ميلينا شمس لا تشرق إلا حين تنطق، وكأنّ العالم بأسره كان معلقاً على حروفها وحين تغيب، يغلق الكون بعدك..
عبارة تهزّ القلب، ليست استعارة بقدر ما هي تجربة وجودية..
كلّ من أحبّ بصدقٍ يعرف أن غياب من يحبّه يشبه انطفاء الكون.
فالحبّ بالنسبة له وللصادقين حباً ليس عاطفة، بل حالة كونية، نوع من الوعي، امتدادٌ للذات نحو الآخر حتى الذوبان.
هو لا يحبّها كامرأة، بل كوجودٍ يستكمل به نقصه الأبدي.
فحين يقول أنا الآن من دون روح، من دون إحساس، ومن دون أيّ شيء لا، يتحدث عن الفقد، بل عن الفناء بعد التجربة.
كأنّ ميلينا لم تكن جزءاً من حياته، بل كانت حياته ذاتها.
تبلغ الرسالة ذروتها حين يخاطبها:
صدّقيني يا ميلينا، أنتِ روعة الأشياء البائسة، وأنتِ الحياة لكلّ جذوري اليابسة!
تلك هي المعادلة الكافكاوية التي لا يفهمها إلا من جرّب الحبّ في أقصى درجاته الوجودية.. أن تجتمع البهجة والبؤس في شخصٍ واحد، أن يكون الحبيب هو الجرح، والبلسم معاً.
حبّ يولد في الألم، ويتغذّى عليه، حتى يصبح الفقد شرطاً للاستمرار،
كما لو أن العاشق لا يعيش إلا حين يتألم.
ثم تأتي الخاتمة الموجعة: ما الفائدة من إغلاقك للأبواب، إن كانت روحي عالقة على جدران بيتك..
كم هي عميقة هذه الصورة!
إنه لا يتحدث عن الأبواب المادية، بل عن جدران الذاكرة.
فمن نحبه لا يسكن بيتنا، بل يسكن فينا.
وحين نغلق الأبواب، تبقى أرواحهم معلّقة في الزوايا، في رائحة المكان، في صدى الكلمات القديمة.
كافكا هنا يعلن استسلامه، لا لأنه تعب من الحب، بل لأنه أدرك استحالته.
أعدك سيكون هذا آخر ما أكتبه إليكِ وداعاً يا عظيمتي..
الوداع ليس نهاية، بل بداية مرحلةٍ من الحنين الصامت.
فالعاشق الحقيقي لا ينفصل أبداً، بل يتحوّل حُبّه إلى ذاكرةٍ أبدية، إلى حضورٍ يسكن الغياب.
تتجلّى مأساة كافكا في أنه لم يجد في العالم مكاناً يتّسع له، حتى في الحبّ.
ميلينا ألهمته أجمل رسائله لم تكن مجرّد امرأةٍ في حياته، بل كانت مرآته، ووجهه الآخر، النقطة التي يلتقي عندها الحبّ بالموت.
رسالتة ليست مروراً على كلماتٍ بين حبيبين، بل عبورٌ في ممرٍّ روحيّ يلامس جوهر الإنسان.
تذكّرنا أن الحبّ، في أرقى صوره، ليس امتلاكاً بل انتماء، وليس وعداً بالاستمرار، بل اعترافٌ بالعجز عن الفكاك.
كافكا، في وداعه لميلينا، ودّع كلّ عاشقٍ صدّق أن الكلمات قادرة على إنقاذ ما لم يستطع القلب احتماله.
كتب من عمق جرحه، فأنطق فينا أوجاعنا الصامتة وحبنا المفقود وعشقنا الممنوع..
بعد قرنٍ من رحيله، نقرأ كلماته بدهشة، كما لو كانت رسالته الأخيرة موجّهة إلينا جميعاً.. نحن الذين نحاول أن نُصلح الأمور، متأخرين دائماً، كما كان كافكا.
تابع قناة عكاظ على الواتساب
This will be the last thing I write to you, Kafka says it with the bitter taste of farewell to his beloved Milena:
“Goodbye, my great one, we could have fixed things
if you had been the better party and compromised a little!
Just as I did!
It could have continued with you saying good morning while I waited for the morning until you said it and bid me farewell at night, and I would close the universe after you.
What I feel is not love, Milena!
Or it may be love, but not as you imagine it
It is greater than that!
I am now without a soul, without feeling
and without anything!
I have never felt that I needed anyone as I do now
Believe me, you are the wonder of miserable things!
And you are life to all my dry roots!
I miss you so much, more than I imagined that loss could be painful!
What is the use of you closing the doors
if my soul is stuck on the walls of your house?
You are now increasing the distance with longing; I miss you.
Goodbye, my great one.”
The story begins where it ends, and ends where the pain begins; that is the dialectic of the lover who does not write his letters to send them, but to immortalize his pain on paper.
This was the case with Franz Kafka when he wrote to his beloved Milena his last letters,
he was not bidding her farewell as much as he was bidding farewell to himself in her. The words were his only way to stay alive, to keep his soul stuck between ink and longing.
In his letter, Kafka reveals himself naked of pride, devoid of the mask he wore in front of the world.
A farewell letter that holds a thousand regrets and questions!
It is not just a past, but an open wound on lost possibilities.
As if Kafka is rearranging destinies in his mind, reviewing the endings that could have been written in a less painful way if Milena had compromised a little.
But she did not, and perhaps because, like many lovers, she wanted a man who could handle the distance, not a man who suffocates in closeness.
He seems in his words as if he is speaking to a shadow that does not hear him..
It could have continued with you saying good morning. And I, in turn, wait for the morning until you say it..
A wait that turns the morning into a spiritual ritual as if Milena is a sun that only rises when she speaks, and as if the whole world was hanging on her letters, and when she disappears, the universe closes after you..
A phrase that shakes the heart, not a metaphor as much as it is an existential experience..
Everyone who has loved sincerely knows that the absence of the one they love is like the extinguishing of the universe.
For love, for him and for the sincere, is not an emotion, but a cosmic state, a kind of awareness, an extension of the self towards the other until merging.
He does not love her as a woman, but as an existence that completes his eternal deficiency.
So when he says, I am now without a soul, without feeling, and without anything, he is not talking about loss, but about annihilation after the experience.
As if Milena was not a part of his life, but was his life itself.
The letter reaches its climax when he addresses her:
Believe me, Milena, you are the wonder of miserable things, and you are life to all my dry roots!
That is the Kafkaesque equation that only those who have experienced love in its utmost existential degrees understand.. that joy and misery can coexist in one person, that the beloved can be both the wound and the balm together.
A love born in pain, and fed by it, until loss becomes a condition for continuity,
as if the lover only lives when he suffers.
Then comes the painful conclusion: what is the use of you closing the doors, if my soul is stuck on the walls of your house..
How deep this image is!
He is not talking about physical doors, but about the walls of memory.
For those we love do not reside in our house, but reside within us.
And when we close the doors, their souls remain suspended in the corners, in the scent of the place, in the echo of old words.
Kafka here declares his surrender, not because he is tired of love, but because he realized its impossibility.
I promise you this will be the last thing I write to you, goodbye my great one..
Farewell is not an end, but the beginning of a phase of silent longing.
For the true lover never separates, but his love transforms into an eternal memory, into a presence that inhabits absence.
Kafka’s tragedy is that he found no place in the world that could accommodate him, not even in love.
Milena inspired his most beautiful letters; she was not just a woman in his life, but his mirror, his other face, the point where love meets death.
His letter is not just a passage of words between two lovers, but a crossing in a spiritual corridor that touches the essence of humanity.
It reminds us that love, in its highest forms, is not possession but belonging, and not a promise of continuity, but a recognition of the inability to break free.
Kafka, in his farewell to Milena, bid farewell to every lover who believed that words could save what the heart could not bear.
He wrote from the depth of his wound, giving voice to our silent pains, our lost love, and our forbidden passion..
After a century of his departure, we read his words with astonishment, as if his last letter was addressed to all of us.. we who try to fix things, always late, just like Kafka.
“Goodbye, my great one, we could have fixed things
if you had been the better party and compromised a little!
Just as I did!
It could have continued with you saying good morning while I waited for the morning until you said it and bid me farewell at night, and I would close the universe after you.
What I feel is not love, Milena!
Or it may be love, but not as you imagine it
It is greater than that!
I am now without a soul, without feeling
and without anything!
I have never felt that I needed anyone as I do now
Believe me, you are the wonder of miserable things!
And you are life to all my dry roots!
I miss you so much, more than I imagined that loss could be painful!
What is the use of you closing the doors
if my soul is stuck on the walls of your house?
You are now increasing the distance with longing; I miss you.
Goodbye, my great one.”
The story begins where it ends, and ends where the pain begins; that is the dialectic of the lover who does not write his letters to send them, but to immortalize his pain on paper.
This was the case with Franz Kafka when he wrote to his beloved Milena his last letters,
he was not bidding her farewell as much as he was bidding farewell to himself in her. The words were his only way to stay alive, to keep his soul stuck between ink and longing.
In his letter, Kafka reveals himself naked of pride, devoid of the mask he wore in front of the world.
A farewell letter that holds a thousand regrets and questions!
It is not just a past, but an open wound on lost possibilities.
As if Kafka is rearranging destinies in his mind, reviewing the endings that could have been written in a less painful way if Milena had compromised a little.
But she did not, and perhaps because, like many lovers, she wanted a man who could handle the distance, not a man who suffocates in closeness.
He seems in his words as if he is speaking to a shadow that does not hear him..
It could have continued with you saying good morning. And I, in turn, wait for the morning until you say it..
A wait that turns the morning into a spiritual ritual as if Milena is a sun that only rises when she speaks, and as if the whole world was hanging on her letters, and when she disappears, the universe closes after you..
A phrase that shakes the heart, not a metaphor as much as it is an existential experience..
Everyone who has loved sincerely knows that the absence of the one they love is like the extinguishing of the universe.
For love, for him and for the sincere, is not an emotion, but a cosmic state, a kind of awareness, an extension of the self towards the other until merging.
He does not love her as a woman, but as an existence that completes his eternal deficiency.
So when he says, I am now without a soul, without feeling, and without anything, he is not talking about loss, but about annihilation after the experience.
As if Milena was not a part of his life, but was his life itself.
The letter reaches its climax when he addresses her:
Believe me, Milena, you are the wonder of miserable things, and you are life to all my dry roots!
That is the Kafkaesque equation that only those who have experienced love in its utmost existential degrees understand.. that joy and misery can coexist in one person, that the beloved can be both the wound and the balm together.
A love born in pain, and fed by it, until loss becomes a condition for continuity,
as if the lover only lives when he suffers.
Then comes the painful conclusion: what is the use of you closing the doors, if my soul is stuck on the walls of your house..
How deep this image is!
He is not talking about physical doors, but about the walls of memory.
For those we love do not reside in our house, but reside within us.
And when we close the doors, their souls remain suspended in the corners, in the scent of the place, in the echo of old words.
Kafka here declares his surrender, not because he is tired of love, but because he realized its impossibility.
I promise you this will be the last thing I write to you, goodbye my great one..
Farewell is not an end, but the beginning of a phase of silent longing.
For the true lover never separates, but his love transforms into an eternal memory, into a presence that inhabits absence.
Kafka’s tragedy is that he found no place in the world that could accommodate him, not even in love.
Milena inspired his most beautiful letters; she was not just a woman in his life, but his mirror, his other face, the point where love meets death.
His letter is not just a passage of words between two lovers, but a crossing in a spiritual corridor that touches the essence of humanity.
It reminds us that love, in its highest forms, is not possession but belonging, and not a promise of continuity, but a recognition of the inability to break free.
Kafka, in his farewell to Milena, bid farewell to every lover who believed that words could save what the heart could not bear.
He wrote from the depth of his wound, giving voice to our silent pains, our lost love, and our forbidden passion..
After a century of his departure, we read his words with astonishment, as if his last letter was addressed to all of us.. we who try to fix things, always late, just like Kafka.
