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Haifa, Carmel
25. xii. 34
Dearest Father Freud,
I have been thinking about you constantly for several days. I dreamt about you too. I knew that I would be
writing by the next airmail, so that my New Year wishes would reach you in good time. And now today your letter of December 16th has arrived. You are ill again. I have far too great a respect for your personal achievement in this battle with your illness to be able to talk about it. But what you have endured and still endure is done for us, and the simple act of breathing, so dearly won, is one more thing you add to all the other deeds of succour and revelation you have achieved during your life. So when the radium in your mouth tortures you, the image of your suffering tortures us in our imagination, and we press your hand in ever deeper gratitude. If the year 1935 is better for you than the end of 1934, if your indefatigable creative genius should speak again and find some other theme for its expression than Moses, whom we will always go on waiting for, then—and even without all this—we rejoice to know that you are still there with us and we greet you in gratitude and joy.
Now as to your question about the Erziehung: the book is, of course, far from being in print and the booksellers are counting their chickens before they are hatched. Just now I am engaged in working through it for the last time. As soon as it has taken on physical shape, you shall get a copy before anyone else, you know that. I have let it grow far too large and I must shorten and cut a great deal in the beginning and middle. On the other hand, thanks to my analysis, the last sections, the last third, are really successful and I can imagine you reading them now without blushing. A compositor called Pahl, an Eberhard Kroysing, lieutenant in the pioneer corps, and a Nurse Kläre send you their regards, not to mention W. Bertin and a host of common or garden creatures.
But if the plans I lay before you seem manic, I can't help it. Big plans and little