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225F
Vienna
5 July 1914
Dear Friend,
A bad time for letter-writing. The most intensive work of the entire year (8 [a.m.] to 10 in the evening), and with it a paralysing heat, which one can bear only because one has no time to worry about it. I have stood up to it very well, am now waiting for the end of the week that starts today.1 Unfortunately our departure has itself now become uncertain. I am finishing work in any case by the said deadline. My sister-in-law took to her bed eight days ago with very severe influenza, is still feverish today, and is developing focuses of bronchopneumonia, the course of which, as is well known, is particularly lengthy and insidious. If eight days from now she is free from fever and convalescent, we shall bring her to a sanatorium and go to Karlsbad; if not, everything is of course uncertain.
I assume that you too have had no reaction yet to the bombshell. We can still wait a fortnight, about up to the date of the day of the Congress,2 then you will probably have to come out with the direct inquiry, which you so nobly formulated. Every further step depends on the success of this one.
Among the written replies to the sending of the “bombshell”, those of Lou Salomé3 and Liebermann seemed to me to be the most sincere. Attitudes in Vienna are “ambivalent”.
Our meeting in the summer is still on. It cannot yet be decided whether it can be in Seis, as absolutely everything has now become uncertain. But you probably will not mind changing your last travel plans according to where we are.
The Interpretation of Dreams is finished but has not yet appeared.4 Your Dutch Dreams and Myths pleased me very much.5
I hope all is well with you and send cordial greetings,
Yours,