Letter from Lou Andreas-Salomé to Freud, September, 1923

[Göttingen, Sept. 1923]

Dear Professor,

I cannot write to Anna without sending you a greeting on your homecoming to your old rooms again. You will soon be confronted

by so much work and worry, not to mention this most wintry of autumns (if you are having the same weather as we are), but you and your Roman companion will still be ‘full of sunshine’, even though the moon in Rome162 seems to have gone on strike (I remember it particularly from 1882, from my first walks with Nietzsche, whose presence interfered considerably with my exploration of the antiquities).

I thought it better not to reply too immediately to your card from Rome, but if the occult gentlemen are right, you would have felt in touch with me every day. I can only say, I receive almost too much at your hands. (Perhaps I have altogether had more from life than should be the lot of any individual—if only I don't become thoroughly arrogant in my old age!)

My husband, who sends his warm greetings, is all right again. I keep on looking at him, for I shall not be seeing him again for some time. But he too will be away from home from time to time, perhaps in Berlin. It is just a year ago from now that I met you in Berlin—one can only go on hoping from one Congress to another, for that will be our next possibility of meeting. I am glad that my daily occupation till then will continue to be in the service of psychoanalysis. And if the next holidays are destined to contain our meeting, what holidays those will be!

Perhaps it will be evening when this reaches you and you will be sitting at your writing desk, with Anna perched on the library steps. May all good spirits attend you, dear, dear Professor!

Warmest greetings to your wife.

Your grateful
Lou