Letter from Sigmund Freud to Sándor Ferenczi, May 26, 1918

Vienna, May 26, 1918
IX., Berggasse 19

Dear friend,

I admit that the request for three rooms in Csorbató already took into consideration the possibility that you might be able to use one more. At the time I was figuring on the validity of our reservation of one small and one large one. So, if it can be done this way, we will, of course, relinquish one to you, whereby I will again pass up the possibility of writing something there.

But now we still have no official understanding with the management, we don't know which rooms there are supposed to be and what the stay is costing us. If there are supposed to be three small rooms in the main house, then it would be impossible for us to be limited to two, and the plan for us to live together in Csorbató would founder.

This uncertainty and the annoyance of having to leave the place on August 1 without a clue as to where we are supposed to spend the rest of the time have as a consequence the fact that we still can't consider ourselves as Tátra guests. All three of us consider Dr. Freund's kind offer to be unacceptable. So we are urgently seeking an Austrian paradise where one isn't thrown out on a specific date, or we will even toy with the old intention of not leaving the house.

I would certainly like to grant Anna a place to stay for the summer, and Kótaj would be fine with me, but she is firmly resolved not to accept hospitality there if she can't pay for it, and I have to agree with her. I would like to offer twenty-five crowns per day, but Anna thinks your sister won't go along with that, and then that, too, would fall by the wayside.

Reik gave a splendid lecture about Kol Nidre1 on Wednesday, the 15th [of May], and went off to the front to Monte Asolone the next day. Let's hope his premonitions don't come true; he is at the point of the nicest productivity. Nothing new from the others.

I greet you kindly in a mood which is adapted to these beautiful times.

Yours,

Freud