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Vienna, May 22, 1917
IX., Berggasse 19
Dear friend,
Good deeds are, if you don't know it yet, a very dubious thing, which must engender difficulties which are constantly renewed. As proof: you will receive a letter from my wife, which will teach you everything that we all still want to expect and learn from our summer asylum. I won't dispute the fact that the prospect of not acquiring a (third) room of my own, in which I can smoke or write (or both simultaneously), strongly dims my joy in vacation. Moreover, I can't promise to bring along much of a good mood into the earthly paradise.
Since Martin can't eat as much as the mail brings him, he requests by way of me that you consider him well taken care of for this entire week. Especially since an official of the municipal brewery in Budapest1 has simultaneously brought a monstrous gigantic bread [Monstreriesenbrot],2 not so fine as yours. Before, my intestine was better than the bread; now the bread would be worthy of a better intestine.
There are layers of coincidence in which the same kinds of things occur in abundance. Thus, during the past two days I received in addition: a charming letter from the daughter of a deceased psychiatrist in Linz (would you believe that Ψ A can have adherents in Linz?), along with an enclosed volume of dreams; two blooming potted orchids from a [female] patient who ran away; a manuscript, 700 pages strong, “On the Metaphysics of Feelings,” by a Professor Haberl, which is supposedly modeled on the theory of dreams and purports to be published by Karger! Let us hope this isn't another Weininger case. The Lectures, in the meantime, haven't made use of this impetus.
Sophie went to Schwerin with her husband after a week of much torment. Let us hope they will stay there together and will be able to nourish themselves.
If I am already supposed to be in Hungary from July 1 on, I do expect in exchange for that to see something of my friends of that nation there. Didn't the altitude do you much good? A