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Pápa, July 8, 1915
Dear Professor,
I would have liked to have seen you before your departure; unfortunately, certain changes in duty make this impossible. In place of the commandant whom I have befriended, another, unfriendly one has been transferred here, and, worst of all, he has canceled all these short leaves. It is possible that I won't get away from here anymore until peace has been made.
My host, Count Esterházy,1 was killed in Galicia; the castle was closed by court order, and I had to move out.
After two miserable, sleepless nights in a dirty hotel room I finally found a tolerable room; naturally not one so comfortable as the one that I became so accustomed to in the castle, where I had quiet, coolness, and only greenery to see.
Our regiment (Honvéd-Hussars, Reg. no. 7) had frightful losses on June 26. The brigade commander (the Territorial Cavalry Brigade) was taken prisoner, forty-one officers and approximately 1,000 men were killed or taken prisoner; we mostly mourn the death of a cavalry captain whom we all loved. The Cherkassians (they carried out the attack) cut off a young cadet's penis and put it in his mouth. I think to myself: this strange and very widespread act of vengeance can be traced to ambivalence. Consciousness is only filled with hate, but repressed sympathy expresses itself in the means of punishment (as in the curse: fuck your mother, etc.). This debacle was played out in Bukovina, on the Bessarabian border; the brigade belonged to the Pflanzer-Baltin Army.
All these things have paralyzed my energy for work; last week—in Budapest—I was still in form and could also marvel at the ability with which Frau G. follows the most difficult trains of thought—in fact, even goes beyond them. Our relationship is getting better day by day.
I send kind regards and ask for news.
Yours truly,
Ferenczi