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He himself must clear away his own rubbish, before his particular stream, his personal life, could run clear of obstruction into the great river of humanity, hence to the sea of superhuman perfection, the “Absolute,” as Socrates or Plato called it.
63
But we are here today in a city of ruin, a world ruined, it might seem, almost past redemption. We must forgo a flight from reality into the green pastures or the cool recesses of the Academe; though those pastures and those gardens have outlasted many ruined cities and threat of world ruin; we are not ready for discussion of the Absolute, Absolute Beauty, Absolute Truth, Absolute Goodness. We have rested in the pastures, we have wandered beside those still waters, we have sensed the fragrance of the myrtle thickets beyond distant hedges, and the groves of flowering citrons. Kennst du das Land? Oh yes, Professor, I know it very well. But I am remembering the injunction you laid upon me and I am thinking of my fellow-pupil whose place you say I have taken, my brother-in-arms, the Flying Dutchman, who, intellectually gifted beyond the ordinary run of man, endowed with Eastern islands and plantations, trained to a Western discipline of mind and body, yet flew too high and flew too quickly.
64
The Professor is speaking to me very seriously. This is in his study in Vienna a few weeks after I had first begun my work there. “I am asking only one thing of you,” he said. Even as I write the words, I have the same sense of anxiety, of tension, of imminent responsibility that I had at that moment. What can he possibly be going to say? What can he ask me to do? Or not to do? More likely a shalt not than a demand for some specific act or course of action. His manner was serious yet kindly. Yet in spite of that or because of that, I felt like a child, summoned to my father’s study or my mother’s sewing room or told by a teacher to wait in after school, after the others had left, for those “few words” that were for myself alone. Stop thief! What had I done? What was I likely to do? “I ask only one thing of you children” — my mother’s very words.
65
For the Professor is standing in his study. The Professor is asking only one thing of me. I was right in my premonition, it is a shalt not. He is asking something of me, confiding in me, treating me in his courteous, subtle way as an intellectual equal. He is very firm about this, however, and he is patiently explaining it to me. “Of course, you understand” is the offhand way in which he offers me, from time to time, some rare discovery, some priceless finding, or “Perhaps you may feel differently,” as if my feelings, my discoveries, were on a par with his own. He does not lay down the law, only this once — this one law. He says, “Please, never — I mean, never at any time, in any circumstance, endeavor to defend me, if and when you hear abusive remarks made about me and my work.”
He explained it carefully. He might have been giving a lesson in geometry or demonstrating the inevitable course of a disease once the virus has entered the system. At this point, he seemed to indicate (as if there were a chart of a fever patient, pinned on the wall before us), at the least suggestion that you may be about to begin a counter-argument in my defense, the anger or the frustration of the assailant will be driven deeper. You will do no good to the detractor by mistakenly beginning a logical defense. You will drive the hatred or the fear or the prejudice in deeper. You will do no good to yourself, for you will only expose your own feelings — I take for granted that you have deep feelings about my discoveries, or you would not be here. You will do no good to me and my work, for antagonism, once taking hold, cannot be rooted out from above the surface, and it thrives, in a way, on heated argument and digs in deeper. The only way to extract the fear or prejudice would be from within, from below, and as naturally this type of prejudiced or frightened mind would dodge any hint of a suggestion of psychoanalytic treatment or even, put it, study and research along these lines, you cannot get at the root of the trouble. Every word, spoken in my defense, I mean, to already prejudiced individuals, serves to drive the root in deeper. If the matter is ignored, the attacker may forgo his anger — or in time, even, his unconscious mind may find another object on which to fix its tentacles. .
This was the gist of the matter. In our talks together he rarely used any of the now rather overworked technical terms, invented by himself and elaborated on by the growing body of doctors, psychologists, and nerve specialists who form the somewhat formidable body of the International Psycho-Analytical Association. When, on one occasion, I was endeavoring to explain a matter in which my mind tugged two ways, I said, “I suppose you would say it was a matter of ambivalence?” And as he did not answer me, I said, “Or do you say am-bi-valence? I don’t know whether it’s pronounced ambi-valence or am-bi-valence.” The Professor’s arm shot forward as it did on those occasions when he wished to stress a finding or focus my attention to some point in hand; he said, in his curiously casual ironical manner, “Do you know, I myself have always wondered. I often wish that I could find someone to explain these matters to me.”
66
There was so much to be explained, so little time in which to do it. My serpent-and-thistle motive, for instance, or Leitmotiv, I had almost written. It was a sign, a symbol certainly — it must have been — but even if I had found another seal-ring like the one I saw in Paris, among that handful of old rings in the corner of the shelf in the other room, it wouldn’t have proved anything and might have led us too far a field in a discussion or reconstruction of cause and effect, which might indeed have included priceless treasures, gems, and jewels, among the so-called findings of the unconscious mind revealed by the dream-content or associated thought and memory, yet have side-tracked the issue in hand. My serpent and thistle — what did it remind me of? There was Aaron’s rod, of course, which when flung to the ground turned into a living reptile. Reptile? Aaron’s rod, if I am not mistaken, was originally the staff of Moses. There was Moses in the bulrushes, “our” dream and “our” Princess. There was the ground, cursed by God because Adam and Eve had eaten of the Fruit of the Tree. Henceforth, it would bring forth thorns and thistles — thorns, thistles, the words conjure up the same scene, the barren, unproductive waste or desert. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Another question, another question mark, a half-S, the other way round, S for seal, symbol, serpent certainly, signet, Sigmund.
67
Sigmund, the singing voice; no, it is Siegmund really, the victorious mouth or voice or utterance. There was Victory, our sign on the wall, our hieroglyph, our writing. There was the tiny bronze, his favorite among the semicircle of the Gods or as “other people read: Goods” on his table. There was Niké, Victory, and Niké A-pteros, the Wingless Victory, for Victory could never, would never fly away from Athens. There was Athens, a city set on a hill; hill, mountain; there was Berggasse, the hill, Berg, and the path or street or way, gasse. There were designs, weren’t there, of acanthus leaves to crown upright Corinthian capitals? And the Latin acanthus, and the related Greek word akantha, is thorn or prickle. There were patterns, decorative hieroglyphs of acanthus leaves, a very classic symbol; and there was a crown, we have been told, in the end, of thorns.