What we are most anxious about is our anxiety itself: the greatest of all sins, Auden learns from Kafka, is impatience — and he decides that the hero… - Randall Jarrell

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What we are most anxious about is our anxiety itself: the greatest of all sins, Auden learns from Kafka, is impatience — and he decides that the hero “is, in fact, one who is not anxious.” But it was inevitable that Auden should arrive at this point. His anxiety is fundamental; and the one thing that anxiety cannot do is to accept itself, to do nothing about itself — consequently it admires more than anything else in the world doing nothing, sitting still, waiting.