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Bödele bei Dornbirn, 8 April 1936
182B
Dear Professor Freud,
Lest this letter, too, strike you as a ‘mixed pleasure’, I am sending it home first to have it ‘translated’ onto a typewriter, which will save you the bother of having to decipher the original!
I am here working at my usual retreat for ten days,1 occupying myself this time entirely with you. I was tremendously pleased to see your handwriting once again and to hear that you are well, for your friendship is one of my life's most precious possessions. Your reservations about my lecture have in no way diminished the pleasure I shall have in delivering it. In the first place I scarcely think that the people you mentioned will be among my audience. The last time it consisted mostly of young people; young people were probably responsible for the invitation, and it is to youth above all that I want to address myself. In the second place, I would remind you of some lines by Goethe with which you are familiar and of which I shall be thinking during my address:
‘Was klagst Du über Feinde?
Sollten solche je werden Freunde,
Denen das Wesen, wie Du bist,
Im Stillen eine ewiger Vorwurf ist?’
[Why do you complain of foes? Could those to whom a man like you is an eternal, silent reproach, ever become your friends?]2