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Baden Baden, December 31, 1920
Dear Professor,
With my compliments for the New Year I am sending you a somewhat mis-shapen article43 for Imago. If nothing else, it is characteristic of my condition. In the first half everything is dense and well-structured, then it becomes threadbare and finally there are only a few connected strips enclosing enormous
holes. The whole thing deserves the name ‘product of laziness’.
Meanwhile the proof copy of The Seeker of Souls has arrived. Cover and title page are marvellous and the whole lay-out is dignified. I am very glad to see the fool run around in such good clothes. Now we have to wait and see what the world has got to say about it. I have not yet received your new work and shall thus be able to look forward to it a little longer. I wish I could somehow give you back part of the joie de vivre I have received from you. Yet I can only do what good boys do for their fathers, namely resolve to work well and prove worthy of them.
On Monday I shall go on holiday, for the first time in 6 years, to the Black Forest, a little house away from people, accompanied by my assistant only, without servant and without running the risk of seeing anybody. She will cook and I shall chop wood and sweep rooms; we shall roam about the forests, feed birds and deer and sleep a lot. And if the heavens are merciful I shall start the book on the unconscious. Something popular. A few years ago I had the urge to write it, now I have to force myself.
I shall not be able to collaborate on the children's book I was asked to by the publisher.
Outside the boys are setting off bangs and rockets and yet the night is as warm as if it were April. Every now and then the wind shakes the trees in front of my window and life is really very nice.
With warmest greetings as ever in gratitude and devotion Groddeck