Letter from Sigmund Freud to Arnold Zweig, December 10, 1931

Vienna IX, Berggasse 19
10. 12. 31

Dear Mr. Zweig,

Thank you for your fine book.2 My time is taken up with my treatments, both active and passive, and so I am taking small sips of it in my free half-hours. Every little chapter is a

delicious morsel. It is true that so far I am still in the idyllic prologue; I imagine it will get more tragic. When I have finished it, I will write to you with my usual candour. Somehow I conclude from the words of your dedication (glad to have got as far as that) that your eyes and therefore you yourself are in good fettle and I trust I am not wrong in this.

There is little to report about myself, little that would be worth telling; my vitality is diminishing to a peculiar degree, etc. etc.

Kiepenheuer's offer is very tempting for its advertisement value, but it would be suicidal for the Internationaler Verlag to take it up. Naturally he wants the book that is doing best, the Introductory Lectures. I am in the very act of pulling the Verlag out of the abyss of bankruptcy by means of donations and considerable financial sacrifices of my own, and I cannot impose such a renunciation (for only 7500 marks) upon it. I would not risk a single mark in the Nobel Prize stakes.

Well, I wish you a good, happy and stimulating journey and please send a little card now and then to

your sincerely devoted
Freud