You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Vienna XIX, Strassergasse 47
Whitsunday, 16. 5. 37
Dear Meister Arnold,
No, I was just amused by your two pleasantries, as far as I am now capable of being amused, for weeks of pain have ended by making me grumpy and this time I find the postoperational reaction is lasting particularly long. Your essay on Goethe seems somehow to parody the Shakespeare theories with which, it appears, I had little success with you, but it is only a remote echo. I cannot tell you from here, Strassergasse, how many volumes there are in the Sophien-Ausgabe. The Encyclopaedia Britannica, Brockhaus and my own collected works make up my entire library here.
It has at last become lovely in the garden. One cannot help thinking of the words in the ‘Spring Song’:
Die Welt wird schöner mit jedem Tag,man weiss nicht, was noch werden mag.1
Then one is faced with the contradiction. One knows there cannot be much more.
With warmest greetings and auf Wiedersehen
Yours
Freud
Quotation from ‘Fröhlingsglauben’ by Ludwig Uhland. Translation: