that such events, whose striking affinities are realized only decades later, are particularly fascinating, for the
farther we are removed from them the more clearly they manifest the working of what we sometimes preten-
tiously call the "spirit of the age." This is the point where Kafka and Braque met. It is not mentioned in their
biographies for it is situated outside their conscious lives, in the domain where the various arts, despite their
different media, reach a peculiar kind of agreement.

Braque was born in 1882, Kafka a year later. It is not my intention to imply any parallelism in these facts,
nor to bring Providence into play. It is possible that Kafka -- he was a draftsman himself, and his biographer
speaks of "the parallelism between his vision as a storyteller and as a draftsman" -- would not have detected
the visual equivalent of his "crosshatched Paris" in the work of Braque. Moreover, we must keep in mind
that the diary entry, though it does transform reality and hence interprets it, is far from a complete artistic
transformation of this reality. This distinguishes Kafka's description from Braque's etching. And this is why
the comparison must be confined to the subject. This alone promises to be fruitful, more fruitful than a com-
parison between an writer and a painter; it may give us direct insight -- independent of any aesthetic theory--
into the mystery and ambiguity of what the textbooks call "Cubism."

Kafka knew nothing about the Fauves or Cubists when he visited Paris. In the Louvre he was primarily inter-
ested in the old masters. He did not share the ambition of many Parisian men of letters to write Cubist prose.
His descriptive writing was not influenced by the form programs of the painters; this gives it the added charm
of spontaneity. Kafka does not lose his way among the blocks of houses, in the crowded forest of architecture
which wearies the eye with edgesand cubes. He seems to be aware only of fragile systems of lines and Gothic-
like intersections. The image of the city is entirely "linearized," divested of substance. The eye follows grids,
wires. Everywhere it encounters the openness of scaffoldings and leaves this maze only to encounter other
systems of lines. All this is observed accurately and sharply. What we have is not a quick sketch, but an image
of order, almost of a harmonious style.

This diary entry expresses a certain satisfaction -- that of a man who succeeded in taking possession of some-
thing. The eye has discovered the key to the reality of the big city, and now everything is open to it. It rec-
ognizes the rhythm that articulates this city landscape. It detects the leitmotiv of linearity upon which every
structure, whether broad or narrow, curved or straight, is based. This rhythm is jerky. It does not let the eye
linger, but it introduces a visual order into the world, a "style" which unifies its disparate features. Line,

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