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Vienna, July 10, 1919
IX., Berggasse 19
Dear friend,
Just received your letter of June 29. (None from Toni along with it.) Above all, thank good Aranka, when you see her in the lecture. I have, it seems, received all the letters to which you refer, the one with the confession, the reports about Toni's condition, etc. I don't want to use the rare opportunity to respond to you with reactions, but rather try to share matters of substance with you. It suffices to indicate that I have only now learned how much I can miss you.
So, to the substance. You have known for a long time that the mailing of that blue quarter has not arrived. The chance of forfeiting such a large piece of the Nibelung hoard1 did not have a refreshing effect on the total spirit of the International Psychoanalytic Verlag. Toni has, as Rank learned just today by telephone, a more favorable view of the matter. The works are now progressing quite slowly.
Tausk shot himself on July 4, a week before the date set for his wedding, leaving behind tender and conciliatory letters. Etiology obscure, probably Ψ impotence and the last act of his infantile struggle with the ghost of the father. Despite appreciation of his talent, no real sympathy in me.2—
I want to go to Gastein on the 15th of the month, Martha [wants to] get off in Salzburg (Sanatorium Parsch); Minna is coming along to Gastein on the direct orders, which don't seem unobjectionable to me, of her physician Prof. Braun;3 Anna will perhaps go to Bavaria (near Reichenhall)4 with a friend.—
I am very tired, what is more, ill-tempered, consumed by impotent rage. Have finished another—unnecessary—work on the “uncanny”5 for Imago. “Beyond the Pleasure Principle” is traveling with me to Gastein.6 Jones writes today that he can't get a passport to come here before peace is concluded, but he promises most certainly to come to Vienna afterwards.
We want to put a brief notice into the next Zeitschrift that we—Rank and I—because of the closing off of the central office