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[Vienna, Grinzing, 16 May 1934]
XIX, Strassergasse 47
My dear Lou,
Do not fail to note the address; it indicates the most beautiful garden and the most charming house in which we have ever spent our summer holiday. It turned up suddenly after a long search, and this time the owners are not impoverished Jews, but honest patricians (von Schöller) who incidentally have treated us in a most friendly manner. We got out here before 1 May, and the year in its caprice has let us enjoy an uncannily beautiful but unfortunately somewhat premature spring. Here would be the right place—at least for a native of Vienna—‘to die in beauty’.
I cannot agree with the eulogy of old age to which you give expression in your kind letter. For personal reasons, no doubt. I am glad that you adapt yourself to it so much better than I. But for that matter you are by no means so old and you do not get so angry. The suppressed rage exhausts one or what is still left over of one's former ego. And it is too late to create a new one at seventy-eight. A good friend of mine, Arnold Zweig, the author of Grischa, wants to devise and delineate a portrait of Nietzsche. He knows that you would be an invaluable mentor; but would you want to? As a matter of fact I have counselled him to give up the whole idea.*
Cordially, as ever,
Yours,
Freud