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258F
Vienna IX, Berggasse 19
11 December 1914
Dear Friend,
Correspondence is now so slow and sluggish that it is best to answer straight away. I understand that you are unwilling to hold out the hope of coming to see me at Christmas. Everything is too uncertain. My case history will remain lying for a long time to come.
With regard to the Jahrbuch, things are difficult. As it is, we shall have to abandon the idea of an annual report. The question is whether we have enough papers to form a volume and whether Deuticke will be prepared to bring one out at all in 1915. I have not talked to him yet, but incidentally I also fully expect Heller to propose ceasing publication of and the after the completion of the current year. We really have no material and are hardly in a position to demand anything else.
The situation is one of continual crumbling, in the face of which it is not easy to do what your Kaiser rightly called for, that is, keep “good nerves”. After some nice results, my own works have plunged into deep darkness; I go on because one cannot remain without “something to do besides” (que haceres, as the Spaniards say), but often without enthusiasm and with only a slight expectation of solving the very difficult problems. My way of working used to be different, I used to wait for an idea to come to me. Now I go out to meet it, and I do not know whether I will find it any more quickly for all that.
Rank and Sachs have both been deferred. Rank is making very fine progress with the problem of the epic, which he intends to use for his Habilitation.1 Reik is also very productive—in advance of his imminent call-up. I shall send the reprint to Liebermann.
My sons write cheerfully and indifferently, they are completely taken up in their training.
As you notice, I am not always in a radiant mood; apart from general circumstances, I am tormented by my own particular intestine, which has shaken off the effects of Karlsbad after four months.
Lou Salomé has written a t