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Göttingen, 2.v.23
Dear Professor,
Whether this will reach you exactly on 6 May I do not know, for Anna's last letters announced various dates for your journey. But I would rather be a little premature, for you can well imagine how intensely and with how full a heart my thoughts are concerned with you. May will surely bring something more pleasant for you than this horrible April has done. Its after-effects will have ceased, to some extent, even if not completely, although I can scarcely believe that you will yet be allowed the pleasure of a really good cigar. That would be the moment from which you could date your complete recovery.154 It was precisely while the pain and discomfort lasted that you most badly needed the stimulus of smoking—it was a thoroughly mean trick of fate that both things coincided at the same point. It is bad enough in itself if the mouth is affected, for it is after all the most unbandageable part of the human body and the part which reminds one of the sore spot with almost every breath one draws. How splendidly, for instance, the big toe would have served as the scene of battle, scarcely oneself any more, so far away does it lie, however unpleasant an ‘occupied territory’ it may be.
I admit to the base point of view that physical suffering is much the worst. Only then is one completely unprotected and defenceless. With psychological suffering after all one still has one's own greater or lesser defences. It seems to me moreover that human existence could well do without the former, even if the other evils remained. But in this respect my optimism, which is otherwise thick-skinned and resilient, breaks down.
How I should like, just for a moment, to be with you on the 6th. You have chosen your birthday so well that the very season joins in the celebrations, but this time it will be a quite particular May for all around you, even if the weather should forget to play its part. This morning I received a present from you which I shall thoroughly feast