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Rudolfshof, Karlsbad
July 30, 1915
My dear Frau Lou
I am writing from an idyll which we, my wife and I, have defiantly and stubbornly created for ourselves but which is continually being interrupted by the demands of the times. About a week ago our eldest son wrote that a bullet had gone through his
cap and another had grazed his arm, neither of which, however, had interfered with his activities. And today the other warrior1 announces that he has received his marching orders for tomorrow, also northwards. My little daughter, whom you may remember and who is staying with her eighty-year-old grandmother2 in Ischl,3 has written to us in concern: “How am I going to take the place of six children all by myself next year?” Since we don't dare to look into the future, we just live for the day and try to get out of it what it is willing to yield.
Your letters are now a doubly precious reward for my dispatches. I say now, for I am almost entirely alone; of all collaborators I see only Ferenczi resisting the military influence and sticking to the group. But since he too is tied to his garrison in Pápa,4 I often feel as alone as during the first ten years when I was surrounded by a desert, but I was younger then and still endowed with an infinite capacity for holding out. Fruit of the present time will probably take the form of a book consisting of twelve essays beginning with one on instincts and their vicissitudes. But I seem to remember that I have already told you about this. The book is finished except for the necessary revision caused by the arranging and fitting in of the individual essays.
Every time I read one of your discerning letters I am surprised by your talent for going beyond what has been said, for completing it and making it converge at some distant point. Needless to say, I don't go along all the way. I so rarely feel the need for synthesis. The unity of this world seems to me something self-understood, something unworthy of emphasis. What interests me is the s