Letter from Sigmund Freud to Arnold Zweig, March 5, 1939

20, Maresfield Gardens, London N.W. 3
5 March 1939

Dear Meister Arnold,

In receipt of your letter of 27.2, which gives me the dates of your journey to New York (April 3-26. Is this definite?).

I think you are right to have chosen America instead of England. In most respects England is better, but it is very difficult to adapt oneself here and in any case you would not have my presence near you for much longer. America seems an Anti-Paradise to me, but it has so much space and so many possibilities and ultimately one does come to belong there. Einstein told a visitor recently that at first America seemed like a caricature of a country to him, but that now he feels quite at home there.

I cannot imagine what ‘consoling explanations’ you have discovered in my Civilisation and its Discontents. Nowadays this book has become very remote to me. I am only waiting for Moses, which is due to appear in March, and then I need not be interested in any book of mine again until my next reincarnation.

I have had some unpleasant weeks, not just being ill and in pain, but also complete indecision about the next steps to be taken. Operation and radium treatment (Paris) were finally abandoned and the external application of Roentgen ray was decided on; this is due to start tomorrow. (There is now no further doubt that I have a new recurrence of my dear old cancer with which I have been sharing my existence for sixteen years. At that time naturally no one could predict which of us would prove the stronger.)

I have received your sketch of a novel about Solomon. I will not disguise from you that I am not in agreement with your use of fairy-story motifs here. Even in the story of the liver sausage I found the incongruity disturbing. I would like to give you the reason for my objection but I am too weak to do so. You would be more successful analysing the character of a Nazi.

More news when I am sure of your address.

Ever yours
Freud