Significant Moments: Part 18

. . . had left him a toy theater for which he made himself some puppets, and at some point he started to write a play about knights of old.
Martin Gregor-Dellin, Richard Wagner: His Life, His Work, His Century.
“ . . . I made a little boat out of a cigar box and rag figures, with red and white shirts . . . blue ribbons around the head, and I put them out into the sunlight . . . ”
Helen A. Cooper, Thomas Eakins The Rowing Pictures.
. . . with all the men armed and arrayed in battle formation.
Medieval Sourcebook: The Battle of Hattin 1187.
The opening scene of this gory melodrama fell into his sisters' hands, and their scornful laughter was terrible to hear. It may well have been a similar play that Cacilie . . .
Martin Gregor-Dellin, Richard Wagner: His Life, His Work, His Century.
. . . Richard's eldest sister . . .
Hollis Alpert, Burton.
. . . recalled him presenting during a summer excursion to Loschwitz, where the Geyers owned a cottage.
Martin Gregor-Dellin, Richard Wagner: His Life, His Work, His Century.
May had begun, and after weeks of cold and wet a mock summer had set in.
Thomas Mann, Death in Venice.
The young adventurer who was planning dramas on a Shakespearean scale almost as soon as . . .
Ernest Newman, The Life of Richard Wagner.
. . . the family had made its . . .
Alice Ferguson, Mouton brothers stake claim in Vermilionville.
. . . arrival in the country . . .
Ludwig van Beethoven, Symphony No. 6 ("The Pastoral").
. . . set up his miniature stage beside the steps on the castle hill.
Martin Gregor-Dellin, Richard Wagner: His Life, His Work, His Century.
On this high note the puppet show commences.
Herman Wouk, War and Remembrance.
As a boy, even as a child, I was thrown much upon myself.
Anthony Trollope, An Autobiography.
To be sure no one was aware of him. The family was entirely absorbed in . . .
Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis.
. . . the continuing "ordinary cares of life."
Martin Gregor-Dellin, Richard Wagner: His Life, His Work, His Century.
Thus it came to pass that I . . .
Anthony Trollope, An Autobiography.
. . . an invisible scourge . . .
Richard Wagner, Das Rheingold.
. . . was always going about with some castle in the air firmly built within my mind.
Anthony Trollope, An Autobiography.
A seventh child, eight years after the last-born, I . . .
Arthur Rubinstein, My Young Years.
—fortunately or unfortunately—
Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis.
. . . rang the bell at the gates of life as a belated and rather unwanted guest.
Arthur Rubinstein, My Young Years.
The family . . .
Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis.
. . . were but . . .
Charles Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop.
. . . used to him, it seemed; they suffered him among them . . .
Thomas Mann, Death in Venice.
. . . while he, for his part, . . .
Leo Tolstoy, Boyhood.
. . . simply detached himself from the cold and unrewarding world and retreated into phantasy.
Frances Donaldson, P.G. Wodehouse.
Such was Wagner's response to a deep existential need—his means of escape.
Martin Gregor-Dellin, Richard Wagner: His Life, His Work, His Century.
His dreams . . .
Michael Chabon, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay: A Novel.
. . . obscure and ambiguous . . .
Henry James, In the Cage.
. . . dreams of transcendence—
Richard Schickel, They Sorta Got Rhythm.
. . . had always been Houdiniesque: they were the dreams of a pupa struggling in its blind cocoon, mad for a taste of light and air . . .
Michael Chabon, The Amazing Adventure of Kavalier & Clay: A Novel.
. . . yet enjoying in some curious way . . .
J. Moussaieff Masson, The Psychology of the Ascetic.
. . . the glory of its aloneness.
Roger Zelazny, Auto-da-Fe.
Through his sensibility and charm he was sought after as a friend. . . . But what he was searching for, and never found, was real spiritual involvement with another person.
Vivien Noakes, Edward Lear.
"I shall surely leave the world with my great longing to have seen and known a man I truly venerate, who has given me something, unsatisfied. In my childhood years I used to dream I had been with Shakespeare, had conversed with him; that was my longing finding expression."
Cosima Wagner's Diaries (Friday, May 26, 1871).
He loved Geyer . . .
Robert W. Gutman, Richard Wagner: The Man, His Mind, and His Music.
. . . and gilded with mythical significance . . .
Thomas Mann, Death in Venice.
. . . several lines from . . .
Harry Rusche, John Hamilton Mortimer. The Poet, 1775.
. . . a little play that Geyer wrote for the family circle in . . .
Ernest Newman, The Life of Richard Wagner.
. . . I think it was toward the end of December, 1817.
Ludwig van Beethoven, Conversation Book.
" . . . As for Richard, there's no need to worry about him. He goes his own way so quietly, . . .
Ludwig Geyer, Die Uberraschung.
. . . but he . . .
William Shakespeare, Hamlet.
. . . will find his public."
Ludwig Geyer, Die Uberraschung.
They are words, mere words, are they not? . . . But yet there is something in them—
Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Der Rosenkavalier.
Had Geyer been gifted with prophetic vision he could not have painted a truer picture of . . .
Ernest Newman, The Life of Richard Wagner.
. . . a son . . .
Richard Wagner, Siegfried.
. . . who later became great—
Erik H. Erikson, Young Man Luther.
. . . by preserving in . . .
Charles Darwin, The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication.
. . . himself the clear eye of the . . .
Erik H. Erikson, Insight and Responsibility.
. . . child who satisfies . . .
U.S. Social Security Administration, Disability Requirement to Entitle a Grandchild When a Parent is Disabled.
. . . the charismatic hunger of mankind . . .
Erik H. Erikson, Young Man Luther.
. . . by waving . . .
Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels.
. . . his wand of magic over the world
Richard Wagner, Die Walkure.
Geyer pinned all his brightest hopes on Richard . . .
Martin Gregor-Dellin, Richard Wagner: His Life, His Work, His Century.
. . . his tender heir . . .
William Shakespeare, Sonnet No. I
. . . and it was with a feeling of placid exultation that . . .
Mark Twain, Roughing It.
. . . the older man perceived that the lad was not entirely unresponsive to all the tender notice lavished on him.
Thomas Mann, Death in Venice.
But by the autumn of 1821, when the boy was barely eight and a half years old, Geyer was already dead.
Hans Mayer, Portrait of Wagner.
On the afternoon of . . .
Adam Gopnik, The City and the Pillars: Taking a Long Walk Home.
. . . the day my father died . . .
Richard Ford, Love Lost.
. . . the old schoolmaster . . .
Charles Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop.
. . . came and took me . . .
Richard Wagner, My Life.
. . . for a journey . . .
Charles Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop.
. . . to the country. We walked all the way, and did not arrive until nightfall. On the way I asked him many questions about the stars, about which he gave me my first intelligent notions.
Richard Wagner, My Life.
I never saw the heavens so . . .
William Shakespeare, The Winter’s Tale.
. . . brim with . . .
Charles Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop.
. . . stars—countless stars.
Bertolt Brecht, Galileo.
I thought of their unfathomable distance, and the slow inevitable drift of their movements out of the unknown past into the unknown future.
H.G. Wells, The Time Machine.
It was a . . .
Mark Twain, Roughing It.
. . . dream night, the comet, the Wain, Orion, full moon, the mildest air, and motionless silence!
Cosima Wagner’s Diaries (Tuesday, October 31, 1882).
I believe I was too frightened and amazed to cry.
Richard Wagner, My Life.
In Richard’s account, . . .
Hollis Alpert, Burton.
. . . his schoolmaster had said . . .
Jerome Jerome, Three Men In A Boat.
. . . “Of you he hoped to make something.”
Richard Wagner, My Life.
I remember that for a long time after I used to imagine . . .
Richard Wagner, Autobiographical Sketch.
. . . father's posthumous approval . . .
Michael Elkin, Jerry Lewis: The former Borscht Belter, now 69, plays the Devil in Damn Yankees on Broadway.
. . . and . . .
Albert Bigelow Paine, Mark Twain: A Biography. 1907-1910.
. . . desired to please . . .
Thomas Mann, Death in Venice.
. . . him; . . .
Albert Bigelow Paine, Mark Twain: A Biography. 1907-1910.
. . . suffered agonies at the thought of failure
Thomas Mann, Death in Venice.
I could not help thinking . . .
Jack London, The Mutiny of the Elsinore.
'If my father were alive, what would he say to this?'
Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams.
The earliest recollections of my childhood are fixed on this stepfather and pass from him to the theater.
Richard Wagner, My Life.
Incidentally, a word about Wagner's . . .
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Case of Wagner.
. . . Autobiographical . . .
Sigmund Freud, An Autobiographical Study.
. . . writings:
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Case of Wagner.
Throughout his life . . .
Hollis Alpert, Burton.
. . . he was an . . .
Mark Twain, Roughing It.
. . . endless and remarkable raconteur. He liked most of all to delve into the past and tell of his origins
Hollis Alpert, Burton.
The reader will already have noticed . . .
K.R. Eissler, Talent and Genius.
. . . that Wagner . . .
Mark Twain, At the Shrine of St. Wagner.
. . . is above all an actor.
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Case of Wagner.
But to continue:—
George Gordon, Lord Byron, Don Juan.
What attracted me so strongly to the theater, in which I include the stage itself, the compartments behind the scenes, and the dressing-rooms, was not so much the desire for entertainment and diversion, such as motivates today's theatergoers, but rather a tingling delight in finding myself in an atmosphere that represented such a contrast to normal life by its purely fantastic and almost appallingly attractive quality. Thus a set, or even a flat—perhaps representing a bush—or a costume or even only a characteristic piece of one, appeared to me to emanate from another world and be in a certain sense interesting as apparitions, and contact with all this would serve as a lever to lift me out of a monotonous everyday reality into that fascinating demoniacal realm.
Richard Wagner, My Life.
And so I learned that there were two kinds of reality, but that of the stage was far more real.
Arthur Miller, Timebends.
One birthday, probably his tenth, was made memorable by a sudden storm that swept the flimsy . . .
Martin Gregor-Dellin, Richard Wagner: His Life, His Work, His Century.
. . . toy . . .
Albert Bigelow Paine, Mark Twain: A Biography. 1907-1910.
. . . theater into the air, ripped the curtain to shreds, and scattered the puppets in all directions. The heavens opened, sending the audience scampering down the steps . . .
Martin Gregor-Dellin, Richard Wagner: His Life, His Work, His Century.
. . . they had to turn this way and that . . .
John Russell Brown, Shakespeare and His Theatre.
. . . in search of shelter but the bedraggled playwright continued his performance in a voice choked with tears, clasping the remains of his ruined theater in his arms.
Martin Gregor-Dellin, Richard Wagner: His Life, His Work, His Century.
The others called him, at first gaily, then imploringly; he would not hear.
Thomas Mann, Death in Venice.
He eventually consented to be taken home, still weeping. For some time afterward, mutilated puppets would occasionally be discovered and returned to him by sympathetic playmates.
That was how it all began. It was his first theatrical rumpus, a characteristic clash with incalculable forces.
Martin Gregor-Dellin, Richard Wagner: His Life, His Work, His Century.
In the space of a few minutes the sky had turned black and it began to rain. Soon the rain increased until it became a stubborn downpour and the thick earth . . . changed to a blanket of mud, a hands-breadth deep.
Primo Levi, Moments of Reprieve: A Memoir of Auschwitz.
What is difficult to render in adult language is the combination, almost the fusion of delight and menace, of fascination and unease I experienced as I retreated to my room, the drains spitting under the rain-lashed eaves, and sat, hour after entranced hour, turning the pages, committing to memory . . .
George Steiner, Errata: An Examined Life.
Hardly was he well inside his room when the door was hastily pushed shut, bolted and locked. The sudden noise in his rear startled him so much that his little legs gave beneath him. It was his sister who had shown such haste.
Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis.
Until then I had had so many ways out of everything, and now I had none.
Franz Kafka, A Report to an Academy.
I was glad . . .
Hermann Hesse, Demian.
. . . glad and grateful . . .
Ludwig van Beethoven, Symphony No. 6 ("The Pastoral").
. . . when I finally lay in my bed.
Hermann Hesse, Demian.
I felt that it had become my . . .
Ulrich Baer, Listening to Survivors’ Testimonies.
. . . haven of refuge
Isaac Deutscher, Israel’s Tenth Birthday.
Beyond the open window . . .
William Faulkner, Light in August (Chapter 16).
—one could hear rain drops beating on the window gutter—
Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis.
. . . the sound of insects has not ceased, not faltered.
William Faulkner, Light in August (Chapter 16).
When I had lain in bed awhile, enveloped by its warmth and safety, my fearful heart turned back once more in confusion and hovered anxiously above what was now past.
Hermann Hesse, Demian.
There I lay aside . . .
Arnold Schoenberg, A Survivor From Warsaw.
. . . turning the pages, committing to memory . . .
George Steiner, Errata: An Examined Life.
. . . the contents of . . .
Jack London, The Mutiny of the Elsinore.
. . . a small book in blue waxen covers.

It was a pictorial guide to coats of arms in the princely city [of Salzburg] and surrounding fiefs. Each blazon was reproduced in color, together with a brief historical notice as to the castle, family-domain, bishopric, or abbey which it identified. The little manual closed with a map marking the relevant sites, including ruins, and with a glossary of heraldic terms.
Even today, I can feel the pressure of wonder, the inward shock which this chance "pacifier" triggered.
George Steiner, Errata: An Examined Life.
The creative writer does the same as the child at play. He creates a world of phantasy which he takes very seriously—that is, which he invests with large amounts of emotion—while separating it sharply from reality.
Sigmund Freud, Creative Writers and Day-Dreaming.
Delving back into the past, immersing himself in his childhood and adolescence, contemplating his early career, conjuring up all the joy and anguish of a lifelong quest for fulfillment—all the errors and delusions, too—Wagner was inundated with a profusion of mental images during his weeks and months in Venice . . .
Martin Gregor-Dellin, Richard Wagner: His Life, His Work, His Century.
. . . the city from which . . .
H.G. Wells, When the Sleeper Wakes.
. . . a shocked and respectful world received the news of his decease.
Thomas Mann, Death in Venice.
He lived off the past and was haunted by it. He dreamed of going skating . . .
Martin Gregor-Dellin, Richard Wagner: His Life, His Work, His Century.
. . . on a frozen lake, . . .
Alan Lightman, Einstein’s Dreams.
. . . recalled scenes from his childhood and described them to Cosima, was once more addressed in his dreams as Richard Geyer . . .
Martin Gregor-Dellin, Richard Wagner: His Life, His Work, His Century.
. . . Geyer, . . .
Theodor Herzl, Old-New Land.
. . . the name of the musician’s real father
Desmond Stewart, Theodor Herzl: Artist and Politician. A Biography of the Father of Modern Israel.
I had the lonely child's habit of making up stories and holding conversations with imaginary persons, and I think from the very start my literary ambitions were mixed up with the feeling of being isolated and undervalued. I knew that I had a facility with words and a power of facing unpleasant facts, and I felt that this created a sort of private world in which I could get my own back for my failure in everyday life.
George Orwell, Why I Write.
I remember a little incident in connection with . . .
Arthur Rubinstein, My Young Years.
. . . Grandmother Geyer, who was still alive, . . .
Martin Gregor-Dellin, Richard Wagner: His Life, His Work, His Century.
. . . and shared . . .
Charles Dickens, Bleak House.
. . . her gloomy back room with some captive robin redbreasts.
Martin Gregor-Dellin, Richard Wagner: His Life, His Work, His Century.
Lest it . . .
William Shakespeare, The Winter’s Tale.
. . . grieve her deeply . . .
Richard Wagner, Gotterdammerung.
. . . her eldest . . .
Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.
. . . son's death had to be . . .
Martin Gregor-Dellin, Richard Wagner: His Life, His Work, His Century.
. . . hidden from her . . .
Richard Wagner, Gotterdammerung.
. . . a pretense in which Richard, too, was expected to join. He took off his mourning and talked to the ailing old woman as though Ludwig still existed—strangely enough, without difficulty.
Martin Gregor-Dellin, Richard Wagner: His Life, His Work, His Century.
Be that as it may.
Thomas Mann, Death in Venice.
I felt adventure in my blood . . .
Arthur Rubinstein, My Young Years.
I had put together a drama in which Shakespeare, principally through . . .
Richard Wagner, My Life.
. . . both Hamlet and Lear . . .
K.R. Eissler, Discourse on Hamlet and HAMLET.
. . . had contributed.
Richard Wagner, My Life.
Once more:
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Case of Wagner.
Words, words, mere words . . .
William Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida.
The plot was essentially a variation of Hamlet; my alteration consisted in the fact that my hero, upon the appearance of the ghost of a father murdered in similar circumstances and calling for vengeance, is galvanized into immediate action and goes mad after a series of murders.
Richard Wagner, My Life.
The unreality of the writer's imaginative world, however, has very important consequences for the technique of his art; for many things which, if they were real, could give no enjoyment, can do so in the play of phantasy, and many excitements which, in themselves, are actually distressing, can become a source of pleasure for the hearers and spectators at the performance of a writer's work.

There is another consideration for the sake of which we will dwell a moment longer on this contrast between reality and play. When the child has grown up and has ceased to play, and after he has been labouring for decades to envisage the realities of life with proper seriousness, he may one day find himself in a mental situation which once more undoes the contrast between play and reality. As an adult he can look back on the intense seriousness with which he once carried on his games in childhood; and, by equating his ostensibly serious occupations of to-day with his childhood games, he can throw off the too heavy burden imposed on him by life and win the high yield of pleasure afforded by humour.
Sigmund Freud, Creative Writers and Day-Dreaming.
Oh, that is my salvation, this ability to convert the most serious of things into nonsense in a flash—it has always kept me from going over the brink. Thus, for example, in the midst of my composing today, I . . .
Cosima Wagner's Diaries (Tuesday, August 6, 1878).
. . . found it quite impossible to compose . . .
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Elective Affinities.
. . . a single modulation or turn.
Cosima Wagner's Diaries (Friday, April 12, 1878).
He took up his pen several times and laid it down again because he could not make up his mind what he ought to . . .
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Elective Affinities.
. . . write and . . .
Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.
. . . rose up and wandered . . .
Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.
. . . through the rooms and now and again . . .
Cosima Wagner’s Diaries (Tuesday, October 3, 1882).
. . . wrote . . .
Albert Bigelow Paine, Mark Twain: A Biography. 1907-1910.
. . . down a joke . . .
Cosima Wagner’s Diaries (Tuesday, October 3, 1882).
. . . but was . . .
Albert Bigelow Paine, Mark Twain: A Biography. 1907-1910.
. . . indisposed.
Cosima Wagner's Diaries (Tuesday, October 3, 1882).
He resolved, he rose to his feet . . .
Thomas Mann, Death in Venice.
. . . to leave the . . .
Mark Twain, Roughing It.
. . . noble apartment of the palace . . .
Mark Twain, The Prince and the Pauper.
. . . where he lived . . .
Mark Twain, A Burlesque Biography.
—and now undertook a walk, in the hope that air and exercise might send him back refreshed to a good evening's work.
Thomas Mann, Death in Venice.
Moored at ground-floor level and ready for use at all times was the gondola presided over by Luigi, Wagner's favorite gondolier. Luigi used to ferry him to St. Mark's Square, . . .
Martin Gregor-Dellin, Richard Wagner: His Life, His Work, His Century.
. . . beneath balconies of delicate marble traceries flanked by carven lions . . .
Thomas Mann, Death in Venice.
. . . through the canal under the Bridge of Sighs . . .
Cosima Wagner's Diaries (Thursday, November 16, 1882).
. . . round slippery corners of wall, past melancholy fa¸ades with ancient business shields reflected in the rocking water.
Thomas Mann, Death in Venice.
There, there . . .
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Wilhelm Meister.
. . among the . . .
Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.
. . . Notable Sights of Venice . . .
Mark Twain, Innocents Abroad.
. . . Wagner . . .
Mark Twain, At the Shrine of St. Wagner.
. . . liked to sit on the stone bench in front of the basilica, unrecognized and unnoticed by the strollers and tourists who gazed up at the four bronze horses on the portico. He would sit there hunched with his elbows propped on his knees, a pose in which he half-humorously predicted that his corpse would someday be discovered.
Martin Gregor-Dellin, Richard Wagner: His Life, His Work, His Century.
This leads to many jokes!
Cosima Wagner's Diaries (Sunday, November 26, 1882).
The Sense of Humor . . .
Max Eastman, The Sense of Humor.
. . . was a palliative that never failed to ease the strain and pain of his relations with the world around him.
Martin Gregor-Dellin, Richard Wagner: His Life, His Work, His Century.
"It would be my greatest triumph if I were to make you all laugh in my final hour."—
Cosima Wagner's Diaries (Wednesday, May 19, 1880).
When we know what all are, we must bewail us,
But ne'ertheless I hope it is no crime
To laugh at all things—for I wish to know
What, after all, are all things—but a show?
George Gordon, Lord Byron, Excerpt from Don Juan.
But yet . . .
Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Der Rosenkavalier.
The human theater of life, . . .
Erik H. Erikson, Young Man Luther.
. . whether . . .
Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger.
. . . circumscribed for each . . .
Erik H. Erikson, Young Man Luther.
. . . person . . .
Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger.
. . . by the power of . . .
Erik H. Erikson, Young Man Luther.
. . . comedy or tragedy . . .
R.D. Laing, The Self and Others.
. . . Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, . . .
William Shakespeare, The Tempest.
. . . and will not be recall'd
George Gordon, Lord Byron, Manfred.
Not that he knew it, Wagner's own bond with Venice was already sealed.
Martin Gregor-Dellin, Richard Wagner: His Life, His Work, His Century.
Wagner had, in fact, signed his own death warrant in going . . .
Ernest Newman, The Life of Richard Wagner.
. . . to Venice, . . .
Thomas Mann, Death in Venice.
. . . though his resilient temperament and his indomitable will were able to postpone execution of the sentence for a few . . .
Ernest Newman, The Life of Richard Wagner.
. . . priceless, equable days . . .
Thomas Mann, Death in Venice.
. . . yet.
Ernest Newman, The Life of Richard Wagner.
—Ah, this old magician!
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Case of Wagner.
Verily, . . .
William Shakespeare, The Winter’s Tale.
. . . like an aging actor . . .
Mike Wilson, Death of a Pumpkin: Day 8.
. . . set down in the middle of a Shakespeare play!
Cosima Wagner's Diaries (Friday, September 5, 1879).
—But, alas, . . .
William Shakespeare, Cymbeline.
. . . the old wizard . . .
Joseph Conrad, Tales Of Unrest.
. . . no longer had the strength to play a part.
Robert W. Gutman, Richard Wagner: The Man, His Mind, and His Music.
My friends! His death . . .
Is Jesus The Son Of God.
. . . was as glorious as his life.
Paul von Joukowsky, Letter to Malwida von Meysenbug Describing the Death of Wagner.
Our adventurer felt his senses wooed by . . .
Thomas Mann, Death in Venice.
. . . the shrill, folklike singing of a boy rowing a gondola through storm and rain . . .
Cosima Wagner's Diaries (Saturday, October 28, 1882).
It seemed to him the pale and lovely Summoner out there smiled at him and beckoned; . . .
Thomas Mann, Death in Venice.
. . . the journey home, beneath glittering stars with the bells tolling, is wonderful.
Cosima Wagner's Diaries (Tuesday, October 31, 1882).
Already the burning Pleiades descend into the sea.
Arrigo Boito, Otello (after the play by William Shakespeare).
And in the evening . . .
Cosima Wagner's Diaries (Tuesday, October 31, 1882).
. . . as the . . .
Mark Twain, Christian Science.
. . . deathly stillness grows ever deeper . . .
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Elective Affinities.
—it was an . . .
Mark Twain, Christian Science.
. . . unforgettable moment . . .
Hermann Levi, Letter to His Father (Rabbi Levi of Giessen).
. . . when with weary eyes . . .
Celia Moss, Mordecai: A Tale of the English Jews in the Thirteenth Century.
. . . he remarked slowly,
Emma Goldman, Living My Life.
. . . laying down his pen, . . .
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness.
"I am like Othello. The long day's task is done."
Martin Gregor-Dellin, Richard Wagner: His Life, His Work, His Century.
_______________________________________________________________

The Universe is infinite but bounded, and therefore a beam of light, in whatever direction it may travel, will after billions of centuries return—if powerful enough—to the point of its departure; and it is no different with rumor, that flies about from star to star and makes the rounds of every planet.
Stanislaw Lem, The Seventh Sally or How Trurl’s Own Perfection Led to No Good.
__________________________________________________________________

As one who aired his views on all and sundry, . . .
Martin Gregor-Dellin, Richard Wagner: His Life, His Work, His Century.
. . . Wagner . . .
Rexford G. Tugwell, The Democratic Roosevelt.
. . . was forever being quoted. Without even wanting to, he constantly became embroiled in public controversies that made him the subject and object of journalistic debate—and, coincidentally, "good box office." He once wrote to [a friend] from Tribschen: "Of myself there's nothing much to tell, since so much is said about me. If a man pondered from dawn till dusk how to set about making a scandal of himself, he couldn't set about it one whit better than I. I think I'm very much envied for my skill in that respect."
Martin Gregor-Dellin, Richard Wagner: His Life, His Work, His Century.
In castle and in humble hut,
the evil slander ended not.
Richard Wagner, Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg.
At first the town gossips said of him, 'He's simply out to make money.' When it was found that he enriched the community before enriching himself they said, 'He has political ambitions.' This seemed the more likely since he was religious and attended church service, which was considered highly commendable at that time.
Victor Hugo, Les Miserables.
It is interesting in the first place to note that . . . he makes no attempt whatever to deny that his activities in May, 1849, warranted his being placed on trial. He does not protest his perfect innocence: he only pleads now, after ten years, he is "no longer, politically speaking, the same man", . . . and that he cannot take any steps that might possibly lead to his imprisonment for "an act of folly long ago repented."
Ernest Newman, The Life of Richard Wagner.
He went to early mass every Sunday. The local deputy, always on his guard against competition, viewed this religious tendency with some apprehension. He had himself been a member of the corps legislatif under Fouch¾, the Duke of Otranto, whose creature and friend he had been. In private he was amiably derisive of God. But when he learned that Madeleine, the wealthy manufacturer, went to seven o'clock mass, he scented a possible rival and resolved to outdo him. He engaged a Jesuit confessor and went to high mass and vespers. Political rivalry in those days was, almost literally, a race to the alter-steps. The poor, as well as God, benefited by the deputy's misgivings, for he also endowed two hospital beds—making twelve in all.
Victor Hugo, Les Miserables.
He was fortunate in finding there, among the civic authorities of the little place, some men of the utmost disinterestedness and highest probity who from the beginning made his cause their own.
Ernest Newman, The Life of Richard Wagner.
In 1819 it was rumored in the town that on the recommendation of the prefect, and in consideration of his public services, the king was to nominate M. Madeleine mayor of Montreuil-sur-mer. Those who had declared him to be a political careerist seized upon this with the delight men always feel in exclaiming, 'I told you so.' The town was in a state of high excitement. And the rumor turned out to be correct. A few days later the nomination appeared in Le Moniteur. The next day M. Madeleine refused it.
Victor Hugo, Les Miserables.
Still, suspicion was in the air, and there was much talk.
Mark Twain, The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg.
The hospitable city fathers were eager to attract money . . .
Robert Gutman, Richard Wagner: The Man, His Mind, and His Music.
. . . to the whole community . . .
Mark Twain, The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg.
. . . but most of the population seemed less than enthusiastic about a new neighbor who had earned such a notorious reputation . . .
Robert Gutman, Richard Wagner: The Man, His Mind, and His Music.
During the same year, 1819, the products of Madeleine's new manufacturing process were displayed at the Industrial Exhibition, and acting on the jury's report the king appointed the inventor to be a Chevalier of the Legion d'honneur. This led to a new theory in the town—'So that's what he was really after!' But M. Madeleine refused to accept the Grand Cross.
Victor Hugo, Les Miserables.
He paused. "Well! I'm sure that my enemies would love to hear that!" he said, laughing.
Monica Crowley, Nixon in Winter.
Decidedly the man was an enigma. The know-alls saved their faces by saying, 'Well anyway he's up to something.'
Victor Hugo, Les Miserables.
His political enemies were at their foul work again, scheming to get rid of him, exaggerating some of his "eccentricities" and inventing others, and talking once more about his "madness."
Ernest Newman, The Life of Richard Wagner.
When he was seen to be making money they had said, 'He's a business man.' When he scattered his money in charity they said, 'He's a careerist.' When he refused to accept honors they said, 'He's an adventurer.' When he rejected polite society they said, 'He's a peasant.'
Victor Hugo, Les Miserables.
It was a process that had already begun in childhood . . .
Alice Miller, The Untouched Key.
I noticed that Demian exerted equal fascination over the other students. I hadn't told anyone about his version of the story of Cain, but the others seemed to be interested in him, too. At any rate, many rumors were in circulation about the "new boy." If I could remember them all now, each one would throw some light on him and could be interpreted. I remember first that Demian's mother was reported to be wealthy and also, supposedly, neither she nor her son ever attended church. One story had it that they were Jewish but they might well have been secret Mohammedans. Then there was Max Demian's legendary physical prowess. But this could be corroborated: when the strongest boy in Demian's class had taunted him, calling him a coward when he refused to fight back, Demian had humiliated him. Those who were present told that Demian had grasped the boy with one hand by the neck and squeezed until the boy went pale; afterwards, the boy had slunk away and had not been able to use his arm for a whole week.
Hermann Hesse, Demian.
His schoolfellows cannot have found it easy to cope with these alternating bouts of irascibility and exuberance, and the stupid ones among them must have detested him for his mordant sarcasm.
Martin Gregor-Dellin, Richard Wagner: His Life, His Work, His Century.
One evening some boys even claimed that he was dead. For a time everything, even the most extravagant assertions were believed. Then everyone seemed to have their fill of Demian for a while, though not much later gossip again flourished: some boys reported that Demian was intimate with girls and that he "knew everything."
Hermann Hesse, Demian.
I should be unable to muster a dozen friends, although I have enemies by the dozen and of all shapes and sizes—a veritable pattern book.
Sigmund Freud, Letter to Eduard Silberstein.
There is a certain prurient aspect to posterity's curiosity over the intimate dealings of the man whose genius lay in probing the most intimate secrets of others. But perhaps nowhere else in history, scholars note, has a scientific discovery been so interwoven with the mental life of the discoverer. Thus everything that happened to Freud, everything he felt, saw, did and said—and naturally everything that he did not feel, see, do or say—takes on significance for scholars tracing the development of psychoanalysis.
Ralph Blumenthal, Scholars Seek the Hidden Freud in Newly Emerging Letters.
I remember once, when we saw a silent film of Freud speaking in the last year of his life to a childhood friend, Eissler wondered if it would be possible to analyze the movements of the mouth to discover what words Freud was uttering at the time. No word from Freud, written, remembered, or recorded was ever trivial for Eissler.
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
Concerning this sorcerer dark things are said. No one has seen him: he is known only by his power. That power is magic. . . . Who is Klingsor? Vague, incomprehensible rumours. Nothing else is known of him. Maybe he is known to old Titurel? But nothing can be gathered from him: dulled by his great age, he is kept alive only by the wondrous power of the Grail.
Richard Wagner, Parzival: First Prose Sketch.
Kurt Eissler was clearly a member of the inner circle of psychoanalysis. Moreover, he was rumored (falsely, as it turned out) to have been close to Anna Freud's father as well.
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
Other rumors, such as always gather around a controversial name, have as little substance as that one.
Hermann Hesse, Klingsor's Last Summer.
There were many rumors circulating about Eissler, who was called the pope of orthodox analysis. He would give no interviews. He would not allow himself to be photographed. He was a hermit.
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
Many years ago, when I began to be intrigued by the problem of gossip, I retrieved instances of gossip about myself in my home town, where it was not difficult to do, and thus was able to assay the truth value that may be considered in detraction. . . .

I have formed the conviction that even in instances in which the content of a detraction seems totally alien to the victim in all respects—that is, no link with his objective behavior as well as subjective (psychic) reality can be discovered—the defamation is a derivative of the defamed person's most deeply repressed. The derogation then would contain the return of the repressed, which has found no previous outlet whatsoever in the defamed victim's imagery, ideation, action, symptom, or other kinds of psychopathology. . . .

One may vary Nietzsche's statement and say: The slanderer says, "That is what you are." The slandered says, "No, I am not that," but an imperspicuous voice gives assent. According to this construction, man can elude the voice of his unconscious, but not the voice of the slanderer.
K.R. Eissler, Three Instances of Injustice.
_____________________________________________________________

HONORED MEMBERS of the Academy!
You have done me the honor of inviting me to give your Academy an account of . . .
Franz Kafka, A Report to an Academy.
. . . an episode from . . .
Aldous Huxley, Crome Yellow.
. . . the life I formerly led as . . .
Franz Kafka, A Report to an Academy.
. . . the secretary of . . .
K.R. Eissler, Talent and Genius.
. . . the “Archives”
Eliot Gregory, The Ways of Men.
What I have to tell the Academy will contribute nothing essentially new, and will fall far behind what you have asked of me and what with the best will in the world I cannot communicate—
Franz Kafka, A Report to an Academy.
I will say at once . . .
Sigmund Freud, The ‘Uncanny’.
. . . esteemed friends . . .
James Fenimore Cooper, The Pioneers.
Can you hear me now?
Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers.
The defamation of Freud's personality is not a new approach toward psychoanalysis, but I have the impression that it has been gaining in momentum. Whereas this had previously been a matter of mere mud-slinging, now it is done with the added pretense of using "documentary evidence."
K.R. Eissler, Talent and Genius.
To put it plainly, much as I like expressing myself in images, to put it plainly:
Franz Kafka, A Report to an Academy.
The book Brother Animal, by Paul Roazen, a professor at Harvard, published in 1969 by Alfred A. Knopf, a distinguished publisher, and favorably reviewed by such persons as Arthur Koestler and Maxwell Geismar, both outsiders to psychoanalysis, compels me to enter into a polemic against it. The late Dr. Max Schur, who was Freud's personal physician and who had finished a carefully detailed study of one critical phase in Freud's life, the Fliess period, was ready to write a critical review of this book when death cruelly annulled his intention. He would have been far better prepared for that task than I am.
K.R. Eissler, Talent and Genius.
In the last analysis . . .
Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace.
. . . my tools remain the humble ones of my craft in general, and the knowledge I bring to bear that of my discipline in particular.
Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, Freud's Moses.
I never met Freud and I know little more about his life than does any reader who has studied the pertinent literature. How this happens to be the case, although I have been the secretary of the Sigmund Freud Archives since their inception, I shall not go into here. Since the Archives are supported financially by the contributions of many psychoanalysts, however, it was suggested, after Dr. Schur's death, that I look into what is true and what is untrue in Roazen's book. . . .
The central theme of Roazen's book is Freud's relationship to Victor Tausk (1879-1919), who met Freud in 1908, became a successful psychoanalyst, and committed suicide in 1919, at the age of 40.
K.R. Eissler, Talent and Genius.
I presume that the bare plot (though not the essential drama) . . .
Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, Freud's Moses.
. . . of that book . . .
H.G. Wells, The Secret Places of the Heart.
—that it was . . .
Hugh Lofting, Dr. Dolittle.
. . . Freud who was ultimately responsible for Tausk's untimely death[,] . . .
K.R. Eissler, Talent and Genius.
. . . is, by now, notorious.
Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, Freud's Moses.
If someone at present—as had happened not too infrequently in the past—were to describe Freud in consistently abject terms, he would not arouse much interest thereby.
K.R. Eissler, Talent and Genius.
The man had always had his detractors, and even enemies. He was provocative, he had firm opinions on a whole range of controversial subjects, he could easily be curt and condescending, he did not suffer fools gladly. He was, all told, not the kind of person who generates a calm consensus about himself. But this . . .
Nina Sutton, Bettelheim: A Life and a Legacy.
. . . that it was Freud who was ultimately responsible for Tausk's untimely death . . .
K.R. Eissler, Talent and Genius.
. . . was something else.
Nina Sutton, Bettelheim: A Life and a Legacy.
The improbable and undocumented conclusions Roazen has drawn . . .
K.R. Eissler, Talent and Genius.
. . . one has to remember that the probable need not necessarily be the truth, and the truth not always probable . . .
Sigmund Freud, Moses and Monotheism.
. . . the misrepresentation of information allegedly given to him, the distortion by way of omissions in quotations, the outright wrong quotations—any of these alone, and certainly all of them taken together, make this a painful book to read. It is, indeed, a book that one wishes one had not ever had to read.
K.R. Eissler, Talent and Genius.
All this is quite shocking, of course, though it will be less so to those with a prior psychoanalytic orientation or with a certain fund of historical information at their disposal.
Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, Freud's Moses.
And with that we are back to Tausk.
K.R. Eissler, Talent and Genius.
Tausk, . . .
Peter Gay, Freud: A Life For Our Time.
. . . before his disillusionment in World War I . . .
Encyclopedia Americana.
. . . had rapidly distinguished himself in Vienna's analytic circles with a handful of important papers and . . .
Peter Gay, Freud: A Life For Our Time.
. . . was preparing a scientific paper on the nervous elements of the retina for the University Gold Medal competition. Though he had qualified only in . . .
Boris Pasternak, Dr. Zhivago.
. . . psychiatry, . . .
Gary N. Goldsmith, Freud's Aesthetic Response to Michelangelo's Moses.
. . . he had a specialist's knowledge of the eye. His interest in the physiology of sight was in keeping with other sides of his character—his creative gifts and his preoccupation with imagery in art and the logical structure of ideas.
Boris Pasternak, Dr. Zhivago.
His talents . . .
Edgar Allan Poe, The Premature Burial.
. . . comprised . . .
Charles Dickens, Great Expectations.
. . .“a rare combination of artist and scientist.”
Helen A. Cooper, Thomas Eakins The Rowing Pictures.
But Tausk's war experiences had been exceptionally wearing, and Freud publicly attributed his mental deterioration to the strains of his military service.
Peter Gay, Freud: A Life For Our Time.
According to the Red Cross International Convention, the army medical personnel must not take part in the military operations of the belligerents. But on one occasion the doctor was forced to break this rule. He was in the field when an engagement began and he had to share the fate of the combatants and shoot in self-defense.
Boris Pasternak, Dr. Zhivago.
When at last it was over, the war had many diverse results and one dominant one transcending all others: disillusion.
Barbara W. Tuchman, Guns of August.
Long depressed, and increasingly distraught, he had asked Freud to take him into analysis, . . .
Peter Gay, Freud: A Life For Our Time.
Yet Tausk must have known that his presence caused Freud discomfort, and the latter's answer was no.
Paul Roazen, Freud and His Followers.
I would suggest provisionally, that if we first allow Freud to speak for himself . . .
Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, Freud's Moses.
—and I shall guard against doing anything that would serve his interests—
Sigmund Freud, Moses and Monotheism.
. . . we can arrive at a very different assessment of . . .
Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, Freud's Moses.
. . . Freud's decision.
K.R. Eissler, Talent and Genius.
"Some people are simply unsuited for analysis—ungeeignet," said Freud. "I don't know whether you have ever examined protozoa under the microscope. Some animals are completely transparent, others are opaque, even though they only consist of a single cell like the others: they have too much pigment in them. Some people are like that too, and one cannot see through them."
Joseph Wortis, Fragments of an Analysis with Freud.
Freud tried to work out a compromise with Tausk. He recommended that he go into analysis with a psychiatrist more than five years Tausk's junior, Helene Deutsch, . . .
Paul Roazen, Freud and His Followers.
. . . a young adherent who was herself in analysis with Freud.
Peter Gay, Freud: A Life For Our Time.
Freud was restless and uncomfortable with Tausk, . . .
Paul Roazen, Freud and His Followers.
. . . as we know from Lou Andreas-Salome's diary
K.R. Eissler, Talent and Genius.
Lou met Tausk when she started her career as a lay analyst and began to work with Freud.
Walter Sorell, Three Women: Lives of Sex and Genius.
She had come to . . .
Thomas Hardy, Life’s Little Ironies.
. . . think of Tausk as somehow dangerous to Freud and to psychoanalysis.
Peter Gay, Freud: A Life For Our Time.
And why was Tausk potentially troublesome?
K.R. Eissler, Talent and Genius.
Freud's ideas were still very much in flux, and he told Helene Deutsch that it made an "uncanny" impression on him to have Tausk at the [Vienna Psychoanalytic] Society, where he could take an idea of Freud's and develop it before Freud had quite finished it. The referral was flattering to Helene Deutsch but a terrible insult to Tausk. Despite her psychiatric experience,
as an analyst she was a nobody.
Paul Roazen, Freud and His Followers.
The result was a complex triangle which did not work out well: Tausk talked to Deutsch about Freud, and Deutsch talked to Freud about Tausk.
Peter Gay, Freud: A Life for Our Time.
Lest her patient interfere with her own analysis, Freud brought the whole triangular relationship to an end, giving Helene Deutsch the choice between terminating her own analysis with Freud or Tausk's with her. To Helene Deutsch . . .
Paul Roazen, Encountering Freud: The Politics and Histories of Psychoanalysis.
. . . who . . .
Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary.
. . . once said she knew what duty meant but not sacrifice . . .
Jean-Paul Sartre, L’Idiot de la famille.
. . . it was an order, and Tausk's treatment, which had lasted three months, was abruptly ended.
Paul Roazen, Encountering Freud: The Politics and Histories of Psychoanalysis.
This was a heretical gesture for a psychoanalyst:
Peter Gay, Freud: A Life for Our Time.
. . . it is not the job of the analyst to interfere in this direct contact between . . .
Lucy Beckett: Richard Wagner: Parsifal quoting Arnold Whittal.
I mean . . .
Henry James, The Art of Fiction.
. . . it is not the job of . . .
Lucy Beckett: Richard Wagner: Parsifal quoting Arnold Whittal.
. . . a training and supervising psychoanalyst . . .
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
. . . to engage in . .
Feodor Dostoyevsky, The Gambler.
. . . authoritarian interference.
Anthony Storr, The Art of Psychotherapy.
But Freud would violate normal analytic procedures in the spirit of “the Rabbi may”—for the Rabbi special exemptions were permitted.
Paul Roazen, Freud and His Followers.
Psychoanalytic reports are kinds of biographies and autobiographies . . .
Paul Ricoeur, The Question of Proof in Freud’s Psychoanalytic Writings.
. . . as a . . .
Henry James, In the Cage.
. . . novel is in its broadest definition a personal, a direct impression of life: that, to begin with, constitutes its value, which is greater or less according to the intensity of the impression . . .
Henry James, The Art of Fiction.
. . . of the causally relevant events in the patient’s early and current life.
Donald P. Spence, Narrative Truth and Historical Truth: Meaning and Interpretation in Psychoanalysis quoting Adolf Grunbaum.
But there will be no intensity at all, and therefore no value, unless there is freedom to feel and say.
Henry James, The Art of Fiction.
It is evident that . . .
K.R. Eissler, Talent and Genius.
. . . to interfere in . . .
Lucy Beckett, Richard Wagner: Parsifal quoting Arnold Whittal.
. . . the psychoanalytic dialogue . . .
Donald P. Spence, Narrative Truth and Historical Truth: Meaning and Interpretation in Psychoanalysis.
. . . is a limitation of that freedom and a suppression of the very thing that we are most curious about.
Henry James, The Art of Fiction.
It is obvious that Roazen is certain that anybody would have had to react . . .
K.R. Eissler, Talent and Genius.
. . . with rage at this interference, . . .
G.A. Henty, With Lee in Virginia.
. . . would have had to react . . .
K.R. Eissler, Talent and Genius.
. . . with . . .
Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband.
. . . an act of stupidity, . . .
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Elective Affinities.
. . . an act . . .
Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband.
. . . bearing the stigma of moral cowardice, of suicide.
Mary Roberts Rinehart, Sight Unseen.
This is, however, incorrect, as I . . .
K.R. Eissler, Talent and Genius.
. . . am sure you will agree.
Jack London, Moon-Face.
Self-destruction, when it is not an act of madness, implies some acuteness of feeling—sensibility to remorse or to shame, or perhaps a distorted idea of making atonement.
Wilkie Collins, The Legacy of Cain.
One thing is plain from the record:
Peter Gay, Freud: A Life for Our Time.
There . . .
Wilkie Collins, The Legacy of Cain.
. . . was . . .
K.R. Eissler, Talent and Genius.
. . . no such thing as remorse or shame, or hope of making atonement, in . . .
Wilkie Collins, The Legacy of Cain.
. . . Tausk’s . . .
K.R. Eissler, Talent and Genius.
. . . nature.
Wilkie Collins, The Legacy of Cain.
The facts are these:
Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.
Tausk, who was . . .
K.R. Eissler, Talent and Genius.
. . . struggling with his feelings of rage at . . .
Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, Freud's Moses.
. . . this peculiar form of disgrace . . .
Martin Gregor-Dellin, Richard Wagner: His Life, His Work, His Century.
—namely, . . .
Feodor Dostoyevsky, The Gambler.
. . . the Termination—
Mark Twain, Italian with Grammar.
. . . was suddenly depressed.
Feodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov.
The next day, he lamented: “Reaction—sunk—worn out—depressed—sad that . . .
Stephen A. Black, Eugene O’Neill: Beyond Mourning and Tragedy quoting O’Neill Diary Entry.
. . . Freud and his circle . . .
Paul Gray, The Assault on Freud.
. . . exist no more—for me”
Stephen A. Black, Eugene O’Neill: Beyond Mourning and Tragedy quoting O’Neill Diary Entry.
As I set down these recollections, I realize that it should have been plain to me that I . . .
William Styron, Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness.
. . . had often been depressed before, and there was nothing surprising at . . .
Feodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov.
. . . the thought . . .
Albert Camus, The Fall.
No, no, no!
Douglas R. Hofstadter and Daniel C. Dennett, The Mind’s I: Fantasies and Reflections on Self and Soul.
. . . the sure understanding that tomorrow, when the pain descended once more, or the tomorrow after that—certainly on some not-too-distant tomorrow—I would be forced to judge . . .
William Styron, Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness.
. . . whether life is or is not worth living . . .
Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus.
. . . and thereby answer, for myself at least, the fundamental question of philosophy.
William Styron, Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness.
Frankly, was what I was doing worth continuing?
Albert Camus, The Fall.
No!
Clifford Odets, Paradise Lost.
I am done! done with chasing my febrile self down the nights and days.
Clifford Odets, Quoted in Margaret Brenman-Gibson, Clifford Odets: American Playwright.
For the most part he lurked in his quarters, absorbed in deep matters, shy of visitors . . .
John N. Burk, The Life and Works of Beethoven.
. . . emerging from his state of depression and resuming his work only to fall back, after a short flare-up of activity, in long periods of indifference to himself and to everything in the world.
Boris Pasternak, Dr. Zhivago.
Bear in mind that . . .
Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, Freud’s Moses.
The equilibrium he had maintained . . .
Martin Gregor-Dellin, Richard Wagner: His Life, His Work, His Century.
. . . in the course of his analysis . . .
Peter Gay, Freud: A Life for Our Time.
. . . was deserting him.
Martin Gregor-Dellin, Richard Wagner: His Life, His Work, His Century.
His mind turned to its accustomed round of thoughts—
Boris Pasternak, Dr. Zhivago.
. . . Freud and his theories, and . . .
Joseph Wortis, Fragments of an Analysis with Freud.
. . . a fantasized relationship of the ideal father and son—
Phyllis Grosskurth, The Secret Ring: Freud's Inner Circle and the Politics of Psychoanalysis.
For the . . .
Andrew Barton Paterson, Excerpt from Ambition and Art.
. . . errant disciple, . . .
Peter Gay, Freud: A Life For Our Time.
. . . analysis with Freud . . .
K.R. Eissler, Talent and Genius.
. . . remained an elusive Promised Land that he, like Moses, could only glimpse from afar.
Jeffrey L. Sheler, A Pilgrim In The Holy Land.
Needless to say, . . .
Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, Freud's Moses.
. . . the cumulative effect of several sleepless nights . . .
Boris Pasternak, Dr. Zhivago.
. . . contributed much to his . . .
Dr. Friedrich Keppler, The Medical Case History of Richard Wagner.
. . . suffering at that time.
K.R. Eissler, Talent and Genius.
He looked pale and wraithlike—
Martin Gregor-Dellin, Richard Wagner: His Life, His Work, His Century.
Exhaustion combined with sleeplessness is a rare torture.
William Styron, Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness.
More than exhaustion, though, had been working in him.
Peter Gay, Freud: A Life For Our Time.
His wakeful consciousness, not finding any rest, worked feverishly of its own momentum. Thoughts whirled and wheeled inside his head, his mind was knocking like a faulty engine. This inner confusion . . .
Boris Pasternak, Dr. Zhivago.
. . . a disposition akin to madness, separated only from it by a writing table, . . .
Erich Heller, Franz Kafka.
. . . worried and exasperated him.
Boris Pasternak, Dr. Zhivago.
I could no longer concentrate during those afternoon hours, which for years had been my working time, and the act of writing itself, becoming more and more difficult and exhausting, stalled, then finally ceased.
William Styron, Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness.
The handwriting slipped before the mental grip. . . . His strikingly beautiful regular script continued to decline, like a Bach fugue suddenly erring in tempo. The spacing and proportions became less regular. The delicate, intricate harmony unravelled. The letters grew larger and straighter, less distinct one from another, and phrases ended with dashes.
Lesley Chamberlain, Nietzsche in Turin: An Intimate Biography.
The man of many ideas, now that his first dream of impossible things was over, vibrated too far in the contrary direction; and . . .
Thomas Hardy, A Pair of Blue Eyes.
. . . numberless paragraphs . . .
Jack London, The People of the Abyss.
. . . broke off in mid-sentence.
H.G. Wells, Secret Places of the Heart.
It would be as if Bach, after developing numerous intertwining voices to fill out an ingenious pattern of musical symmetry, left out the final, resolving measure . . .
Brian Greene, The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory.
. . . leaving behind him a . . .
D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers.
. . . provokingly indeterminate . . .
Edgar Allan Poe, Landor’s Cottage.
. . . tumult of thoughts . . .
Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage.
. . . frozen in time and space.
Harry Sumrall, Master Glass.
He took up his pen several times and laid it down again . . .
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Elective Affinities.
O word, thou word, that I lack!
Arnold Schoenberg, Moses und Aron.
Agitated as he was, he found it quite impossible to compose [even] a tranquil letter.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Elective Affinities.
A phenomenon that a number of people have noted while in deep depression is the sense of being accompanied by a second self—a wraithlike observer who, not sharing the dementia of his double, is able to watch with dispassionate curiosity as his companion struggles against the oncoming disaster, or decides to embrace it. There is a theatrical quality about all this, and during the next several days, as I went about stolidly preparing for extinction, I couldn't shake off a sense of melodrama—a melodrama in which I, the victim-to-be of self-murder, was both the solitary actor and one member of the audience.
William Styron, Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness.
Three months later . . .
Paul Roazen, Encountering Freud: The Politics and Histories of Psychoanalysis.
. . . he committed . . .
John Dos Passos, 1919.
. . .suicide, blowing out his brains; . . .
Paul Roazen, Encountering Freud: The Politics and Histories of Psychoanalysis.
The shell had his number on it.
John Dos Passos, 1919.
. . . he had also tied a curtain cord around his neck, so that as he fell he was strangled.
Paul Roazen, Encountering Freud: The Politics and Histories of Psychoanalysis.
Desperate remedies.
Franz Kafka, A Report to an Academy.
He killed himself because that was the only way he could live.
Clifford Odets, The Big Knife.
I had not thought . . .
T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land.
. . . the war . . .
Walt Whitman, Excerpt from When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d.
. . . had undone so many . . .
T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land.
. . . as yet untouched by its destructive breath
Joseph A. Altsheler, The Guns of Bull Run.
For the story of . . .
Franz Kafka, A Report to an Academy.
. . . the proximate circumstances surrounding the actual suicide . . .
K.R. Eissler, Talent and Genius.
. . . I must depend on the evidence of others.
Franz Kafka, A Report to an Academy.
The tragedy was not discovered until three days later when . . .
Gaston Diehl, Pascin.
. . . friends, . . .
Hermann Hesse, Klingsor’s Last Summer.
. . . alarmed at his absence . . .
Gaston Diehl, Pascin.
. . . from scientific receptions . . .
Franz Kafka, A Report to an Academy.
. . . alerted . . .
Gaston Diehl, Pascin.
. . . Lou von Salome. . .
Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo.
. . . and broke down the door in her presence. Together . . .
Gaston Diehl, Pascin.
. . . the small circle of his intimates . . .
Hermann Hesse, Klingsor’s Last Summer.
. . . attempted to straighten up the studio.
Gaston Diehl, Pascin.
Just imagine this:
H.G. Wells, The War of the Worlds.
A desk and high stool are in one corner. A table with papers, stacks of pamphlets, chairs about it, is at center. The whole is decidedly cheap, banal, commonplace and unmysterious as a room could well be.
Eugene O’Neill, The Hairy Ape.
The floor was strewn with cigarette butts, and . . .
Gaston Diehl, Pascin.
. . . books of the deceased . . .
Wilkie Collins, The Law and the Lady.
. . were piled up all over.
Gaston Diehl, Pascin.
A Report to an Academy . . .
Franz Kafka, A Report to an Academy.
. . . and other documents . . .
Thomas Hardy, Desperate Remedies.
. . . were found later among his papers . . .
Boris Pasternak, Dr. Zhivago.
. . . along with two letters, one to Freud . . .
K.R. Eissler, Talent and Genius.
. . . a peremptory, irritating note . . .
Eugene O’Neill, The Hairy Ape.
. . . and one to his fiancée.
K.R. Eissler, Talent and Genius.
The body . . .
Gaston Diehl, Pascin.
—by the way, . . .
Franz Kafka, A Report to an Academy.
. . . was laid out on a sofa placed, as if for the occasion, under the huge painting entitled Socrates and His Disciples Mocked By Courtesans.
Gaston Diehl, Pascin.
Tausk had incurred reality guilt as the result of his conduct toward women, and no analysis can free a man from such guilt. The power of the psychoanalytic technique ends at the border of neurotic guilt feelings. What lies beyond calls for the power of the priest, who alone can give absolution. In terms of classical psychoanalysis, Tausk was incurable.
K.R. Eissler, Talent and Genius.
Madness would be something definite, a point of arrival, a relief. . . . But 'real' madness eludes him, as much as 'real' sanity.
R.D. Laing, The Self and Others.
My book reports that shortly after the end of Tausk's analysis, he met and fell in love with a patient, Hilde Loewi.
Paul Roazen, Encountering Freud: The Politics and Histories of Psychoanalysis.
Tausk had . . .
K.R. Eissler, Talent and Genius.
. . . pledged his eternal troth to . . .
Richard Osborne, Triebschen Idyll, with Fidi's Bird-song and Orange Sunrise, presented as a Symphonic Birthday Greeting to his Cosima by her Richard, 1870.
. . . Hilde . . .
Paul Roazen, Encountering Freud: The Politics and Histories of Psychoanalysis.
. . . at the Zoo . . .
Eugene O’Neill, The Hairy Ape.
. . . in the zoo at Berlin, . . .
Richard Osborne, Triebschen Idyll, with Fidi's Bird-song and Orange Sunrise, presented as a Symphonic Birthday Greeting to his Cosima by her Richard, 1870.
. . . the Zoological Gardens . . .
Franz Kafka, A Report to an Academy.
. . . the Hofgarten, . . .
T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land.
. . . in the Tiergarten . . .
Otto Friedrich, Before the Deluge: A Portrait of Berlin in the 1920’s.
. . . or some such place like that.
Victor Appleton, Tom Swift in the Caves of Ice.
The precipitating cause of the suicide, according to his own account in his last will, was his inability (once again) to go through with a marriage. Eissler claims that Hilde had become pregnant, having been a virgin whom Tausk seduced . . .
Paul Roazen, Encountering Freud: The Politics and Histories of Psychoanalysis.
. . . in a Krafft-Ebing-style affair . . .
Judith Rossner, August.
. . on her first clinical visit to him. Eissler states that only after attempts to abort had failed did Tausk become engaged to her and that later, after Tausk's death, she miscarried.
Paul Roazen, Encountering Freud: The Politics and Histories of Psychoanalysis.
It turned out that putting together a suicide note, which I felt obsessed with a necessity to compose, was the most difficult task of writing that I had ever tackled. There were too many people to acknowledge, to thank, to bequeath final bouquets. And finally I couldn't manage the sheer dirgelike solemnity of it; there was something I found almost comically offensive in the pomposity of such a comment as "For some time now I have sensed in my work a growing psychosis that is doubtless a reflection of the psychotic strain tainting my life" (this is one of the few lines I recall verbatim), as well as something degrading in the prospect of a testament, which I wished to infuse with at least some dignity and eloquence, reduced to an exhausted stutter of inadequate apologies and self-serving explanations. I should have used as an example the mordant statement of the Italian writer Cesare Pavese, who in parting wrote simply: No more words. An act. I'll never write again. But even a few words came to seem to me too long-winded, and I tore up all my efforts, resolving to go out in silence.
William Styron, Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness.
In the last analysis, . . .
Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil.
—and, as the saying goes, . . .
Luc Sante, The Factory of Facts.
. . . silence may be an expression of unspeakable truth.
Sidney H. Phillips, Trauma and War: A Fragment of an Analysis with a Vietnam Veteran.