Abstract
The savoring of yellow Tyrolean laburnum blossoms became a summer vacation rite of the Freud family. It was reminiscent of their paterfamilias's infantile “Dandelion in the Green Meadow” dream-scape. We may ponder whether Freud's adolescent olfactory memories were similarly “re-rooted” in Freiberg as a 17 year-old where many hours were “passed by him in solitary walks through the lovely woods” he had found once more.
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Notes
An omitted clause in the quoted phraseology—as translated by James Strachey (italics added for emphasis) reads thusly: “Not long ago I went on a summer walk through a smiling countryside in the company of a taciturn friend and a young but already famous poet” (Freud, 1915, p. 305).
According to von Unwerth: “The poet with whom Freud walked that afternoon has been recognized as Ranier Maria Rilke, and the taciturn friend as Lou Andreas-Salomé, the poet's former lover and eternal muse, and a psychoanalyst and well known writer” (pp. 3–4). He credited Heinz Lehmann as one of the affirming authorities for his cited text (ibid., Note 3, pp. 221). Michael Molnar was also listed by von Unwerth for his “dissenting view” (ibid.). Yet, even Lehmann (1966) remained tolerant of skeptics who doubted “Freud's remark that the conversation took place ‘…on a summer walk through a smiling countryside’…” (i.e.,one of his subject's favorite metaphors by commenting) “however, even if they (i.e.,Freud, Andreas-Salomé and Rilke) did not go for a walk in the country that summer evening, we should grant Freud some poetic license in setting the mood for his essay” (ibid. p. 423).
Lieselotte Pouh (2000) points out that “after David's death, some of his friends under the guidance of Erich Schmidt, started to publish his works in seven volumes and looked for subscribers. Among the subscribers, were the name of Arthur Schnitzler, Stefan Zweig, Josef Kassin, Richard Beer-Hofmann, L. Lipchuetz, Ottile Natter, Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach as well as Sigmund and Alexander Freud” (p. 91).
Fictionalized “meditations” may appear confusing to readers. In von Unwerth's imagined Freud/Rilke/Andreas-Salomé dialogue, he has—unobtrusively but clearly—confused what's fact and what's authorial invention. See supra footnote 2 for Lehmann's comment about tolerance for an author's “poetic license.”
Unacknowledged is the fact that Federn had “doubled” as David's personal physician in the referenced exchange (Ibid., Pouh),
Siegfried Bernfeld (1946) had occasion to comment about Freud's penchant for alpine wildflora as has von Unwerth (2005). By way of contrast, Freud's wife ostensibly favored “cultivated” flowers produced by the genus cyclaman,while he favored a “delicate small variety of authurium,” (Sterba, 1982, p. 154) both of which were marketed by Viennese florists. Bernfeld mentions an incident that occurred at Freud's 80th birthday when the teachers' seminar of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Institute pondered how to honor Freud. To quote Bernfeld: “Finally the suggestion was made that a bunch of wild alpine flowers would be very much appreciated by him and it would be different than the ordinary gift. It happened that a friend of ours was going to the high mountains at this time and was entrusted with finding the flowers. He came back with a lovely bunch of Primula auricular. The youngest one of our group, a 17 year-old girl, went out to deliver the flowers. To her surprise, Freud called her in and thanked her personally. He emphasized how much these flowers meant to him” (p. 16). While he might have smelled the alpine Primula auricula as exuding a fragrant odor, the bouquet undoubtedly included this variety's typically yellow flowers.
In a collateral context, it has been noted that “the erotic courtship and defloration fantasies engendered by Moravian folk customs also merit further study in understanding the local milieu revisited by Freud in the 1870s during his adolescent years” (Ginsburg and Ginsburg, 1992, p. 297). At the same time, it seems almost inconceivable that the Bohemian-born author Adalbert Stifter's novella, “Der Hochwald,” (1842) could not have also fed Freud's sentimental fantasy world at this stage of his life.
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1Lawrence M. Ginsburg, J.D., Former Officer of Atlanta Foundation for Psychoanalysis.
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Ginsburg, L. Meditation, The Freud Family and Poets. Am J Psychoanal 68, 295–300 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1057/ajp.2008.23
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/ajp.2008.23