“You are the knife I turn inside myself; that is love. That, my dear, is love,” wrote the Czech writer Franz Kafka to his lover, Milena, in 1920. In other dispatches, he grows more desperate: “I miss you deeply, unfathomably, senselessly, terribly.
” His letters—so overwrought, so earnest—serves as a reminder that lovesickness can burn like a fever. They’re also, at times, bizarre and unsettling. In one, Kafka fantasizes about the world ending so he can meet his lover one last time.
Kafka had only met Milena twice. Their fiery was scattered over five days and two cities, and then Kafka broke up with her. In a modern context, Kafka might be accused of Milena—after all, she was a woman he barely knew.
In modern dating culture and pop psychology, we’ve been advised to steer clear of bombastic pronouncements of love. has almost 50,000 posts where people dole out truisms like, “Love-bombing comes from someone who has a serious void in himself.” They have poor impulse control and no filter.
Someone who comes on too strong, too quickly, is regarded as bad news in a dating culture preoccupied with identifying . We’re taught to be on the lookout for disingenuousness everywhere, parsing through text messages for deception. I have a friend who wondered if a potential date was love-bombing her with the message: “I’m really looking forward to meeting you!” I have another good friend who is frustratingly endearing, funny, and good-looking.
In the years of our f.
