I felt exhausted and restless. I made myself a hot lemon drink in my bedroom and took cibalgine. . a good night’s rest. It was blighting cold but I got out later in the morning in the sun.
19
Again, the Professor asked me if I “prepared” for my sessions with him. I said I had been writing letters up to the last. I had had a dream of the sea, fear. . and this connected with my youngest brother, who had been “the baby.”
Yes, we had had school entertainments if that was “acting.” There was a Kate Greenaway pageant or sequence and I had a poem to recite, “My Garden is Under the Window.” There was (the next year) Mother Goose but I was disappointed in my Miss Muffet spider rôle. The younger brother wore the Boy Blue costume that I afterwards appropriated. The older one was rather magnificent as King Cole.
I mentioned the circus “lady” who was “dressed up” in tights, taming the lions.
At school, when I was fifteen, one of the girls, half-French, whose name Moffat rather, now, recalls that other Miss Muffet disappointment. But with Renée I was featured as the hero in most of the plays or charades she arranged for us. Renée had seen Sarah Bernhardt in L’Aiglon and would act out whole scenes. The Professor suggested that I visit Schönbrun, and see for myself the apartments of the Duc de Reichstadt.
The Professor repeated that he wanted the work to be spontaneous. He does not encourage me to take notes, in fact, would rather I did not.
I went on with Renée. Her name was Renée Athené, she had been born in Athens where her father was in one of the services. It was at her house that I had my first (and last) experience with table-tapping. I must say very little came of it. But this period, early adolescence, was a return to happy childhood. My mother had Halloween games, fortune telling “for fun,” and various games such as telling the future from a small candle-end stuck in a nutshell that was set afloat on a tub of water. These games were only played at Halloween. Renée pretended to see a ghost — perhaps she did see one — that Halloween when I first went to Miss Gordon’s school. Her name of course fascinated me; very soon after this, I saw my first real Greek play, done by students at the university. Still later, my friend Frances Josepha, with whom I first came to Europe, showed me beautiful photographs of herself in Greek costume; she had been a boy or youth in some play.
Now I remember Anny Ahlers and how I heard her sing, with Dorothy (of the dream) in London. She stepped from a window. I read this in my usual café picture-paper. It was du Barry she was playing. She might, too, have been in L’Aiglon.
The only actual experience I had with “ghosts” was in Cornwall, the last war-year. But these presences, these “knockers” were famous, everybody heard them.
I recall, for some reason, the Siena wolf. Remus was the legendary founder of Siena. Perhaps, I am thinking of the lost companion, the sister that I never had, a twin sister best of all.
We discussed Greek names, commonly used; Helen, my mother, Ida our nurse, now this Renée Athené.
Renée’s mother taught the smaller children French at Miss Gordon’s. Frances’ mother was supervisor of kindergartens in Philadelphia. My own mother taught music and drawing at the old Seminary in Bethlehem.
The Greek came most vividly to me when I was seven; it was a Miss Helen who read us Tanglewood Tales, Friday afternoon at school. Those stories are my foundation or background, Pandora, Midas, the Gorgon-head — that particular story of Perseus and the guardian, Athené.
The miracle of the fairy tale is incontrovertible; Sigmund Freud would apply, rationalize it.
Wednesday, June 12, 1933
I leave Vienna, Saturday of this week.
I discontinued the notes, at the Professor’s suggestion.
We repeated and worked through more of the detail of the first Greek trip and my dream of hallucination of the dolphins and the “double” Van Eck.
We went over the Egyptian trip too, the opening of the tomb, Luxor and Philae.
I dream of two books; I have written them. “I have this book coming out,” I say; then, “I have a second book to follow.”
The Professor says that Athené is the veiled Isis, or Neith the warrior-goddess. He found and placed the small statue of Athené in my hands. There is another Athené, or winged Niké, on the vase that we looked at, when I was describing my Writing on the Wall.
I remembered again the lion-headed Sekmet and spoke of a cat-carving we found on the Acropolis.
June 15
Continued rumors are perhaps responsible for last night’s dream, a nightmare. An enormous black buffalo, bison, or bull is pursuing a cart or carriage in which we are all crowded.
Had the car plunged over a cliff? Were we in it?
Some of us, a group of six or eight, now seated on a mountain slope, ask, are we dead?
APPENDIX FREUD’S LETTERS TO H. D
Reading the letters from Freud to H. D., one early winter’s day in Switzerland, where she then lived, it was clear to me that they properly belonged in an appendix to her homage to “the Professor.” Not as affidavit, but as an extension of that companionable warmth which Freud extended toward the creative spirit and its search for identity and direction.
So I asked H. D. for the privilege of printing the letters here, and then, later, secured permission from Freud’s heirs for those which they selected from the number he had written her. Of these nine letters which they chose, the ones dated July 20, 1933;
December 28, 1935; May 1936; September 20, 1936; and February 26, 1937, were written in German and are printed in a translation by Annemarie Holborn. The others are in Freud’s own English. All of these letters in the appendix are included “By Permission of Sigmund Freud Copyrights Ltd.”
N.H.P.
Dec. 18th, 1932
Wien IX., Berggasse 19
Dear Mrs. Aldington
I am not sure of your knowing German so I beg to accept my bad English. It may be especially trying to a poet.
You will understand that I did not ask for your books in order to criticize or to appreciate your work, which I have been informed is highly praised by your readers. I am a bad judge on poetry especially in a foreign language. I wanted to get a glimpse of your personality as an introduction to making your personal acquaintance. Your books will be waiting with me for your arrival. (An American friend of mine brought me today “Palimpsest.”)
My relations to my patients (or pupils) are now especially complicated. I hope to arrange them in a few weeks and I will make an effort not to let you stay in waiting very long.
With kind regards
yours sincerely
Freud
26 January 1933
Wein IX., Berggasse 19
Dear Madam
I did not answer the charming letter you wrote to me late in December. At that time I hoped to be able to call you here very soon. But things have turned out differently. I did not succeed in finding time for you and kept postponing a decision. Now your second letter has reached me, together with the book on H. Ellis, which shall wait here for your arrival. I understand that a certain delay was quite agreeable to you. But I do not want to extend it too long, and I have made up my mind to make the necessary arrangements, even if it means using force. On the other hand, I cannot expect you to travel or change your place of residence in this present biting cold and at a time when an epidemic of grippe is spreading. I have heard that you are of delicate health. Would you prefer to come at the beginning of spring, in April/May? It is hard to control these hygienic factors and easy to make miscalculations.