: Their love was fraught with obstacles: Milena was married to Ernst Pollak, and Kafka was battling tuberculosis and his own deep-seated fear of physical intimacy and commitment.

language of love: kafka's affective meaning in briefe an milena

: Milena Jesenská was a 23-year-old Czech translator who first contacted the 36-year-old Kafka to translate his story The Stoker into Czech. While Kafka wrote in German, she often replied in Czech, a language he understood and admired for its "mother tongue" intimacy.