Showing posts with label Austria. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Austria. Show all posts

Tuesday, December 6, 2022

A dead chicken in my chest

‘Suddenly, in the midst of all the people who crowded around me or spoke to me, I felt as if there were a dead chicken in my chest.’ This is Peter Handke - avant-garde writer and film-maker born 80 years ago today - writing in a diary he kept in 1976 during the early years of his literary fame in Austria. In recent years, he has courted much controversy by defending Slobodan Milošević, nevertheless, very recently, he won the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Peter was born on 6 December 1942 in Griffen, then in the German Reich province Gau Carinthia, now in Austria. His Slovenian mother married Bruno Handke, a tram conductor (not Peter’s father), with whom she lived in the Soviet-occupied Pankow district of Berlin in 1944, and where she had two more children. In 1948, they moved back to Griffen. Peter was sent to a Catholic boarding school at Tanzenberg Castle. After high school in Klagenfurt, he began to study law at the University of Graz in 1961. There he teamed up with the Grazer Gruppe, an association of young writers, which published their own works in an avant-garde literary magazine -  manuskripte. He abandoned his studies in 1965 after the German publisher Suhrkamp Verlag accepted his novel Die Hornissen (The Hornets).

Handke came to public notice as an anti-conventional playwright with Publikumsbeschimpfung (Offending the Audience) in 1966; several more plays - lacking conventional plot, dialogue, and characters - followed. In 1970, he published what would become his best known novel, Die Angst des Tormanns beim Elfmeter (The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick). After leaving Graz, Handke lived in Düsseldorf, Berlin, Kronberg, Paris, the US (1978 to 1979) and Salzburg (1979 to 1988). Since 1990, he has lived in Chaville near Paris.

Handke collaborated with director Wim Wenders on several films, including writing the script for Wings of Desire, and he has also directed films, including adaptations from his novels. In 1978, The Left-Handed Woman was nominated for the Golden Palm Award at the Cannes Film Festival and it won the Gold Award for German Arthouse Cinema in 1980. From around 2006, Handke’s literary renown has been overshadowed by his public support for Slobodan Milošević, the former president of Yugoslavia accused of war crimes who died that year in a prison cell. 

The controversy surrounding Handke was rekindled in 2019 when he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literatur - even though four years earlier he had called for the prize to be abolished. The Swedish Academy chose it for being ‘an influential work that with linguistic ingenuity has explored the periphery and the specificity of human experience’. Further information on Handke can be found at Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica, The New Yorker, or in the Nobel Prize’s biobibliography.

In 1984, Secker & Warburg published Handke’s The Weight of the World (as translated by Ralph Manheim). This is described as: ‘A combination of professional notebook and personal diary that records - both in short, informal jottings and through more formal, extended meditations - the details of Handke’s daily life in Paris from November 1975 through March 1977.’ The book offers ‘a complete offering of Handke’s moods and insights, ranging from the outrageous, sarcastic, and bitter to the humorous and gentle’. But, it continues, ‘it is not, in the end, a retreat into himself, but a gesture of friendliness towards the world’.

Here is more from the publisher’s blurb: ‘Along with references to such mentors as Truffaut, John Cowper Powys, Robert DeNiro and Goethe, the journal recounts Handke's passing impressions of strangers; the deep and delicate nature of his relationship with his daughter; and a brief hospital stay which stirs his ever-present fear of death. Aspiring to a condition of “strained attentiveness”, Handke cultivates privacy and solitude, and deplores the all-too-frequent intrusion of the media (“Down with the news!”). His goal is to have a kind of creative “worksheet”, a vehicle through which he can preserve and explore sources of aesthetic inspiration, and also to have a place where he can “practice reacting with language to everything that happens”, a means of discovering a “universal moment of language”.

The Weight of the World can freely borrowed to read online at Internet Archive. Here are several extracts.

1 March 1976
‘Suddenly, in the midst of all the people who crowded around me or spoke to me, I felt as if there were a dead chicken in my chest

This evening I got back from Austria and Germany. Suddenly, at the dark Porte de la Muette on the edge of the Bois de Boulogne, it seemed to me that my life - a kind of second, secret biography - was simultaneously continuing back home in southern Carinthia, continuing very concretely before the eyes of the villagers, and that my body at that moment was painfully, yet almost consolingly stretched over the length and breadth of Europe, that I became a standard of measurement and lost myself’

12 March 1976
‘Waking from sheltered sleep: like being tripped up while taking a quiet stroll

Waking with the thought that I’ve strangled the child; not daring to reach out and touch her; at last a sigh beside me

Ruins of memory: I try to remember the details of places, houses, faces, and all I see is ruins

Powdered sugar on my shoes from eating doughnuts (Austria)

The sensation of moving about like a sleeper who wants to look at the clock and in his dreams does indeed keep looking at the clock (because he has to get up soon), but never actually does look at the clock

If I could only look calmly at someone who hates me

A beggar holds out his hand in front of me and I shake my head angrily because he has put me into such a situation (other people just turn away in indifference)

People who have what’s needed for every emergency: umbrella, aspirin, etc.

A girl who for once does not ooze tears in that well-behaved way but lets the corners of her mouth droop and bawls out loud

The salesgirl in an empty shop that stays open at lunch hour is dreamily munching a sandwich (I wrote this outside the open shop door, which someone closed at that very moment)

The teacher who had just taken the children to the farm show (bus ride, street crossings) told me she was always in a bad humor on days when she was going to have to take the children out; at the beginning of the school year, she said, she refused to take them anywhere until she knew all about each one of them, their way of walking, etc.

The sheep at the farm show breathed mechanically, like pumps: it’s their sense of doom that turns them into machines 

“What would you like to accomplish by writing?” - “To make people laugh and cry” (I imagine being able to say such things in all seriousness)

Years ago, someone said the nice thing about me was that I had no habits. And now?

People are always claiming to be a mixture of “good and bad”; as for me, I am either all good or all bad

Nice, seeing my child with other children, as if she belonged with them

That day a pale, solemn, unknown child came in out of the rain with other children, and I didn’t recognize her as my own: horror, and at the same time marvel’

14 October 1976
‘Fantasy: an express train thundering through the suburban station; someone running ahead of it but refusing to scream

On the street today, the feeling that many people knew “who I am” but passed by without a thought of betraying me; some even tried to reassure me with a quick glance

The leaves racing over the ground; impression of a cavalcade, especially when I climb steps to reach the park where the leaves are blowing; there’s one place where the leaves disperse in all directions, leaving a clean empty circle in the middle of the park

How much more domesticated I am, after all, when I’m talking to someone than when I’m roaming around alone! (Fantasy: unaware that I’m watching them, some people, including my calm friends, made almost unrecognizable by their adventurous loneliness, race through the cities of the world with wild, glaring eyes)

Toward midnight, objects, seen out of the corners of my eyes, are starting to crawl again’

Friday, April 15, 2022

A man with qualities

The Austrian author, Robert Musil, died 80 years ago today. His most famous work and one of the masterpieces of 20th century European literature - The Man Without Qualities - preoccupied him for much of the latter part of his life, but even so was never completed. He was an inveterate keeper of notebooks, only a few of which, though, read like conventional diaries.

Musil was born in Klagenfurt, Austria, in 1880, the only son of an engineering professor. He studied at a military academy and then moved to Vienna university where his father taught. Later in his 20s, though, he went to study philosophy and psychology in Berlin. His first novel, published in 1906 (later translated as Confusions of Young Torless), was a great success.

In 1911, Musil married Martha Marcovaldi, an older Jewish woman who had already been married and had children. From that same year until 1914 he worked as a librarian in Vienna. During the war he served in the Austrian army. After being hospitalised in 1916, he edited an army newspaper, and, subsequently, worked in the defence ministry until he was made redundant in the 1920s. Thereafter, he became a full-time writer, achieving some success with plays.

While trying to write what he hoped would become his masterpiece, The Man Without Qualities, Musil fell into financial difficulties; and, in 1929, he suffered a mental breakdown. The first parts of Qualities were published in the early 1930s (but not in English until the late 1950s and early 1960s). He moved again to Berlin in the early 1930s, and then back to Vienna. In 1938, he and his wife fled to Switzerland, where they settled in Geneva. He died on 15 April 1942. For further biographical information see Wikipedia, New World Encyclopedia, or Jerry van Beers’ website on Musil.

Musil kept notebooks for much of his life, but most of these are not recognisably diaries. They were first edited by Adolf Frisé and published in their original German in the early 1980s by Rowohlt (Hamburg). An English translation by Philip Payne followed in 1998 (Basic Books, New York) entitled simply Diaries, 1899-1941.

The chapters in the published book relate to individual notebooks kept by Musil, the highest numbered one being 35 - but there are not 35 notebooks included in Diaries, nor are they all in numerical order. Furthermore, the notebooks rarely reveal material that looks or reads like a conventional diary. There are some dated entries in some of the notebooks, but, for the most part, the contents resemble a writer’s notes not a diary. According to Mark Mirsky, who wrote an introduction for the English edition, the diaries are ‘angry, at times pathetic, but always thinking, aware, vulnerable’ and, through them, thus, ‘Musil lets us approach him’.

November 1913.
‘Waiting: I look at my work. It is motionless; as if of stone. Not without meaning, but the sentences do not move. I have two hours, in round terms, before I can leave. Every fifth minute I look at the clock; it is always less, not than I had estimated but than I hope - as if by some miracle - it will be. I see for the first time the furniture in my room standing quietly there. This way is different from the way one sees five points as a five in a game of cards. The table, the two chairs, the sofa, the cupboard. This is what it must be like for people without ideas when their day’s work is done. An excess of joyful expectation rises in me. An excess of joy like the end of the day on 24 December before everything gets under way.

Someone is whistling on the street, someone says something, goes on by. Many sounds come at the same moment; someone is speaking, in the upper storey someone is playing the piano; the telephone is ringing. (While I write this down, time tears past.)’

2 April 1905
‘Today I’m beginning a diary; I do not usually keep one but I feel a distinct need to do so now. After four years of diffusion it will give me the opportunity to find that line of spiritual development again that I consider to be properly mine. . . I shall try to carry forward into it “banners from a battle that has never been fought.” Thoughts from that time of great upheaval are to be re-examined, sorted through and developed. One or other of my scattered notes is to be taken up in this process but only when it captures my attention again.’

6 January 1930
‘Since the start of the year I’ve been wanting to write things down. Aim: to record how my 50th year of life turns out! But also, in a quite aimless fashion, to record facts. I have become too abstract and would like to use this method to help me retrain as a narrator by paying attention to the circumstances of everyday life.’

8 February 1930
‘Art has to have an immediate effect! This is one of the most dangerous prejudices. Yet it remains a goal that one constantly tries to achieve. After all, it wouldn’t be difficult to analyze what is required of something to have an immediate effect. The most difficult thing about this is somewhat like a meeting. The immediate impression that some people give is that of peace, sublimity, etc., and this is what is demanded of art. People want to be won over from the very first word, etc. This is not completely unjustified but leads to neglect of books that are demonic, Titanic, (unpleasant) and so forth.’

9 March 1930
‘Yesterday evening I had the following train of thought: I’m correcting a passage in the proofs, get stuck, and note down around 5 variants, none of which pleases me. After a walk, the whole thing - which has already upset me - seems a matter of no consequence, and I feel I’ll probably find the right course without difficulty. The same experience, writ large, when one sets aside a completed piece of work for a few weeks. It is evident that one then looks down upon the work, as it were, from on high. What is the psychological significance of this?

In emotional terms, it means freedom from ambivalence. One had started to be uncertain, beset with a host of little vacillations that eventually made a disproportionate impression - very similar to hesitating for too long before going along a dangerous path. One has, so to speak, subjected the situation to emotional overload. One frees oneself by renouncing the situation?

But it appears that an intellectual process takes effect in the same sort of way. An insight that eluded one in the course of the day may come during the night; or, generally, the way a reflection “sits itself down and sorts itself out.” This even seems to be something physiological, for the same thing happens when one learns new movements. In other words switch the brain to a state of rest; introduce spells of relaxation according to the Kogerer method; take one’s mind off things? But at which point? Make oneself indifferent. Clearly this only works when one has come halfway to achieving something.’

26 August 1930
‘This evening I finished [proofreading] the manuscript of Vol. I [of The Man Without Qualities]’.

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 15 April 2012.

Saturday, August 31, 2019

The talented Mrs Mahler

Alma Mahler-Werfel, the Austrian musician and wife/lover of several celebrated artistic figures, was born 140 years ago today. She was a significant musician in her own right, but on marrying Gustav Mahler, her talent was suppressed. Marriages to the architect Walter Gropius and the writer Franz Werfel followed, and, after emigrating to the US, she became a culture figure herself in New York. More than 30 years after her death, her diaries - kept as a young woman - were published in English.

Alma was born in Vienna on 31 August 1879 into a privileged and cultured family, her father being a landscape painter. She was tutored at home, and raised as a Roman Catholic. Her father died when she was a young teenager, and thereafter she focused her studies on the piano. She contracted measles which left her with a hearing defective. When her mother married again, to Carl Moll, the painter Gustav Klimt and the composer Alexander Zemlinsky became regular visitors. Zemlinsky, in fact, taught Alma, and became her first lover. In 1902, though, she married Gustav Mahler, then the director of the Royal Opera, and nearly 20 years older. It seems, he showed no interest in her music, and even wished for her to stop composing. They had two daughters, one of whom died young. In the wake of her daughter’s death, Alma became depressed and began an affair with the young architect Walter Gropius.

Shortly thereafter, in 1911, Mahler died. Alma distanced herself from Gropius, but had an affair with the young painter Oskar Kokoschka. Both Gropius and Kokoschka enlisted in the army at the start of the war in 1914, but it was Gropius who Alma married, during one of his military leaves, in mid-1915. They had one daughter who died of polio aged 18. She then began a relationship with the Jewish poet Franz Werfel, and gave birth to another child, who died aged only 18 months. Alma and Gropius divorced, but it was not until 1929 that she married Werfel, taking the name Mahler-Werfel. In the 1930s, the couple fled Germany, first to France, and then to the US, where they lived in Hollywood. After Werfel’s death, Alma moved to New York where she became a cultural figure, and lived until 1964. Further information is available from Wikipedia, the Alma play website, or All Music.

In 1998, extracts from Alma’s diaries were published, covering the years from 1898 until her marriage to Mahler. The original manuscripts consist of 22 exercise books, and are full of her text in diversely coloured inks, pencil and crayon, with ornately written headlines, as well as many black ink line drawings. The extracts were translated into English and edited by Antony Beaumont and Susanne Rode-Breymann for publication in the UK by Faber and Faber as Alma Mahler-Werfel, Diaries 1898-1902. A few extracts can be read online at The New York Times book pages or at Amazon.

27 January 1898
‘This morning: practised. This evening: Dr Pollack and Narziss Prasch. Yesterday I played ‘Die Walküre’ until late at night. I like the first act best, particularly the close, ‘Blühe, Wälsungen Blut’. And the passage where Siegfried draws Sieglinde passionately towards him is wonderful - such fire, genuine erotic ardour. Is there anything to equal it?

My throat is very sore today.’

4 February 1898
‘This morning: a wealthy collector by the name of Schreiber. I sat at the piano, shivering. ‘I hope to God he buys something,’ I thought to myself. But no - the silly ass didn’t. He promised to come again. But that was it. If someone doesn’t take the plunge straight away, they’ll think twice before doing so later.’

13 February 1898
‘Spent the morning with the Lichtenheld girls. Mizzi gave me a delightful picture of herself.

This afternoon Gretl Hellmann called and, since today marks the Death of Richard Wagner, I played ‘Tristan’, ‘Walküre’ and ‘Götterdammerung’ to her all afternoon. The latter was supposed to be performed at the Opera but was cancelled due to the indisposition of Winkelmann. They gave ‘Norma’ instead. How mean not to play W. on the anniversary of his death.’

10 March 1898
‘This evening: tarot party with the Zierers, Frau Duschnitz, Spitzer, Lehmann, Hellmer, Epstein & Klimt. After dinner we took black coffee in the studio, danced and sang. Lehmann sang Rubinstein’s duet ‘Über allen Gipfeln ist Ruh’ with Mama. Klimt is such a dear man. I’m writing this because they went back to playing cards and roped Klimt in too. At 2:00 the Zierers and Frau Duschnitz went home. Then the fun really began. Mama and Marie Lehmann danced a pas de deux, then we all sang glees and had a whale of a time. After we’d danced our fill, the party ended at 3:30. Mama said: The Zierers are bound to make remarks, because Klimt sat with you (Alma) all evening and spoke to you so much.

But he was delightful, talked about his painting etc., then we talked about ‘Faust’, a work which he loves as much as I do. No, he’s a really delightful fellow. So natural, so modest - a true artist!’

23 March 1898
‘Frau Radnitzky came to give Gretl her lesson. I avoided her, like a dog that’s committed some misdemeanour. She vented her fury on the innocent Gretl. Well, on Saturday I’ll probably hear all about it. I’m looking forward to it already. Mama and I went to Taubenrauch to order our spring oufit - frightfully expensive - 90 fl! Mama said: You know, Alma, I still have 100 fl in a savings account that nobody knows about, I shall use it to foot the bill.

My eyes filled with tears, and I resolved to withdraw the 20 fl in Gretl’s and my post office book and give them to Mama. Gretl agreed.

This evening: Mama was at Dr Herz’s. We went to the Zierers’. Something funny happened: Flora wasn’t quite certain whether we’d be coming, and had invited Amelie Engel. All of a sudden she came along, kicked up a hell of a fuss and said: Do you think I came here to hobnob with the Schindlers?

But she stayed all the same, and we - Lilli, Gretl and I - treated her with utter contempt. Lilli was even rude to her, just for our sake. After dinner I was asked to play. I didn’t. Then Amelie came to me and said: Fräulein, you must have heard what I said. I’m really sorry, you must surely have misunderstood me.

And she made her apologies as prettily as you could imagine - far better than I ever could. So then I played, and so did she. She played waltzes beautifully, and I played quite well for the first time in days.’

The Diary Junction


Tuesday, June 19, 2018

Diaries of a musical theorist

‘D-minor Quartet of Schoenberg, by [the] Rosé [Quartet]. A single, long-drawn-out atrocity! If there were such a thing as criminals in the realm of art, one would have to count this composer among their ranks, as one born such or perhaps merely turned criminal.’ This strident judgement of the Austrian atonal composer Arnold Schoenberg can be found in the diaries of another Austrian composer, Heinrich Schenker. Though not remembered for his compositions, Schenker, born 150 years ago today, is considered one of the 20th century’s leading theorists and analysts of tonal musical.

Schenker was born in Wiśniowczyk, Austrian Galicia (present-day Ukraine) on 19 June 1868 into a Jewish doctor ’s family. He attended German school in Lemberg (now Lviv), studying piano from an early age. He enrolled in the Law Faculty of the University of Vienna in 1884, and studied concurrently at the Vienna Conservatory of Music. He received his Doctor of Law in 1890, decided to remain in Vienna, and chose to devote himself entirely to music, giving piano lessons, working as a music critic, as well as accompanying others on stage, conducting and publishing small-scale compositions.

But Schenker also began to analyse and theorise about music, and it is for this that he is best remembered. For Universal Edition, newly founded in Vienna in 1901, he edited keyboard works by C. P. E. Bach (1903) and later J. S. Bach ’s Chromatic Fantasy & Fugue (1910). These editions, it is said, marked the beginning of a life-long involvement with composers autograph manuscripts, copies, and early printed sources, the contents of which he sought to transmit without editorial intervention, save for footnoted commentary. His most important theory, expounded in Das Meisterwerk in der Musik (The Masterpiece in Music), was, according to Encyclopaedia Britannica, that great musical compositions grow from a single idea and that their contrasting themes represent only a different aspect of this one basic thought . His work greatly influenced other 20th-century theoreticians.

Around 1903, Schenker met Jeanette Kornfeld (born Schiff), the wife of a friend, and over several years a relationship developed between the two. By 1910, she had left her husband to be with Schenker and to help him with his work. It was not until 1919, though, that she was able to divorce her husband, and marry Schenker. By then, Schenker had been diagnosed with diabetes, a condition which would affect his day-to-day life, and ultimately cause his death in 1935.

Schenker Documents Online has this assessment of his legacy: ‘Already in January 1930, the rise of the National Socialists in Germany had cast its shadow on Schenker ’s life, putting beyond reach a prospective official appointment in Berlin. Soon after his death, his students, his living legacy, most of whom were Jewish, were scattered: many emigrated to the USA and elsewhere, others remained and were deported (as was his own wife) to the camps. The Schenker Institute established in Vienna a few months after his death was closed down in 1938, as had been a similar institute in Hamburg in 1934. Copies of his publications at UE were confiscated by the Gestapo, and he himself was characterized grotesquely [. . .] The dissemination of his ideas was to come not from Europe but from the USA, through his students [. . .]. The influence of Schenker ’s theories blossomed there in the 1950s and 1960s, and gradually extended back to Europe and to other parts of the world during the later 20th century. Further information is also available at Wikipedia and at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.

Schenker kept a diary for most of his life, as well as engaging in regular correspondence with a large number of friends and colleagues. Most of this literary material remained unpublished through the 20th century, and it was only with the Schenker Documents Online project, starting in 2003, that much of it became freely available to the public. The project counted on over 20 contributing scholars from both sides of the Atlantic, as well as a dozen research faculty and staff (consultants, programmers, and web designers, most affiliated with the Department of Digital Humanities, King’s College London), and considerable financial support from British and Austrian funders, including the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the Leverhulme Trust, and the Austrian Science Fund. 


Today, the interactive digital archive includes Schenker ’s diaries, from 1896 to 1935, lesson books, and a large volume of two-way correspondence, all presented both in transcription and in parallel English translation. A review in the Journal of the American Musicological Society sums up its value: ‘[The] diverse contents record economic hardships, significant political events, quarrels with publishers, intense musical debates, student successes, simple pleasures (a cigar after lunch, an evening radio broadcast), and even dreams (some amusing, others poignant). Public and private, life and work - all are commingled. As in Schenker’s late theory, insight emerges only through the interrelationship of many coexisting levels. ’

The following extracts have all been taken from Schenker Documents Online.


5 February 1907
‘D-minor Quartet of Schoenberg, by [the] Rosé [Quartet]. A single, long-drawn-out atrocity! If there were such a thing as criminals in the realm of art, one would have to count this composer among their ranks, as one born such or perhaps merely turned criminal. Without feeling for key, motive, measure, on its own terms just utterly threadbare, without a trace of technique, and nevertheless at the same time constantly the hugest non-existent, the total sham . . . ’

16 February 1907
‘Exceptionally, at Privy Counselor Redlich’s place, played with companions’ quartet. Unbearable atmosphere; good looks made for bad playing. ’

2 May 1907
‘In the morning, a walk in the Botanic Garden.

Egypt at the Panorama. Reading: ”On Cultivated Plants” by Prof. Giesenhagen (Teubner) has a lovely, profound and liberating effect! ’

14 May 1907
‘My electoral “duty ” fulfilled for the first time, compelled to cast my vote for a socialist. ’

22 May 1907
‘Very gloomy fog, right down to the ground.

Open letter to Mahler signed in a deliberate frame of mind; situation not without humor. ’

2 December 1912
‘My mother found completely at ease, despite having suffered my vehemence. (She had, yet again, inferior evidence of anguish from Mozio).

A joint visit to the Urania suggested by Floriz initially declined. ’

25 September 1913
‘A day of madness: just when I am supposed to go see Mama, the piano tuner appears, Mr. Wolfram gets in my way, the Court Library must be visited as well as the historical exhibition. In the Court Library there are only very few Beethoven autographs to be found, and there I also learn from officials that the Artaria collection went to the Berlin library because the consent to purchase it, in accordance with typical Austrian behavior, arrived believe it or not four hours too late!!! In the historical exhibition, we see quite wonderful pieces of the Rainer papyrus collection, valuable individual documents of Xenophon, and so on.

In the afternoon, at Hertzka ’s. A run-of-the-mill idiot! He again speaks loudly only of his sacrifices and only quietly of my accommodation - speaks loudly about the [costs of] advertising [my work] but is happy to ignore my counter-reckoning - inquires about Weisse as if he wished to publish his work, but immediately curtails his devotion by pretending to await a later opus - inquires again about my works, would like to have some of them, would gladly like to see the Little Library; and since I constantly let him feel that he is, however, too miserly for such business, he replies by saying that he would be prepared, as proof of his not being miserly, to put down 50 Kronen for any well-intended gesture!! And national treasures find their way into hands such as these! I kept him in the dark with regard to Peters, and he is, for the time being, also satisfied with that!! ’

30 November 1913.
‘Express letter from Floriz, in which he expresses his delight that the matter has once again been put right. He already sees the matter as finished, from a simple inclination towards comfort and laxity; he wants to see it as finished so that he - even if prematurely - can proceed towards enjoyment and avoid any effort that might possibly be required if order is to be achieved! In one sense the letter was, however, gratifying, since a small distancing from the sister could be detected, which carried a lot of weight. I hasten to reply to his letter immediately, and finally explain to him that I was almost at the point of resenting him for identifying with his sister even when she perpetrates a serious wrong against someone else! I hope that Floriz will now keep his word and think that his sister ought to behave in a more civilized way!!

Excursion to Hetzendorf; an exceedingly violent gale rages through the downright springlike, sunlit world; a gale that almost has the power to force our imagination out into space, from where we could perceive the whirling of the earth upon its axis. We felt as if we were experiencing the gale not beneath our feet on firm ground but beyond the atmosphere, as observers of the mighty celestial orbit. The sun drew out sap, just as in the springtime; many bushes succumbed to the lure of its rays and sprouted buds, which sparkled joyfully in the sunlight, without realizing how near they were to freezing to death.

The competency of a man. I ask the conductor on the streetcar, who is only temporarily covering our line, whether he is knowledgeable about the distant lines? He replies: Yes, we are obliged to know the entire network, otherwise our job would indeed be very easy. The tone in which he spoke these words would, even from the mouth of a Moltke or a Napoleon, have made a poor impression!

Typically Viennese: a steam laundry adheres to neither its collection nor its delivery times, and does not even respond to an urgent postcard! ’

5 February 1925
‘At Dr. Baumgarten’s: I show him the last statement of account; he writes a letter to UE threatening legal action. We give Mozio 120 dollars. I cannot refrain from mentioning that I could have made Tonwille myself for 32 million, to my own benefit and to the benefit of the world - he plays deaf! Lie-Liechen cannot refrain from reminding him about Frieda - he plays deaf! He offers to intervene with the Philharmonischer Verlag - through Elbemühl; I take his boasting word right out of his mouth, saying: I dismissed this publishing house. Lie-Liechen writes the fair copy of the Largo. ’

22 April 1933
‘The installment from Mozio. Day of Music-Making at the Palais Kinsky. Bamberger incomparable in Mozart ’s Divertimento; in making this judgment, I encounter opposition from people [in the audience]: “Really?” ’

16 February 1934
‘From Sophie (letter): concerning her husband’s health. From UE, account: 82.04 shillings; 47 copies of Brahms, and one volume - Theory of Harmony!! - Via a telephone call to Deutsch, Mrs. van Hoboken gets in touch! Lie-Liechen invites her for afternoon snack tomorrow. I play two movements from suites by Handel to the members of my seminar. After teatime, at Fritz ’s. From Oppel (postcard): he provides the [relevant] issue of Die Zukunft. ’

Friday, March 24, 2017

The existence of orgonity

Wilhelm Reich, an Austrian psychoanalyst who claimed to have discovered healing powers in the biological energy of orgasms, was born 120 years ago today. He was a controversial figure, increasingly, as he got older, finding himself ostracised and outlawed by the establishment. He kept diaries for much of his life, most of which have been published, revealing as much about his professional ambitions as his personal delusions.

Reich was born on 24 March 1957 in Galicia, which was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (although it is now in Ukraine). Shortly after his father’s death in 1914, he was obliged to flee his home when the Russian army invaded. During the First World War he served with the Austrian Army, and then entered medical school at the University of Vienna. In October 1920, he joined the Vienna Psychoanalytic Association, and thereafter worked at University Hospital and at Freud’s Polyanalytic Polyclinic. He also studied neuropsychiatry under the nobel prize winner, Professor Wagner-Jauregg.

In 1924, Reich married Annie Pink, a fellow analyst-in-training. Their first daughter, Eva, was born the same year; a second daughter followed in 1928. 
In 1930, Reich moved to Berlin where he joined the Communist Party, but the party did not accept his views on birth control and sex education and expelled him in 1933. His unique ideas on sexuality and politics were leading him increasingly to be outside mainstream medicine. In 1934, the International Psychological Association expelled Reich.

Subsequently, Reich fled from the Nazis, spending a few years in Scandinavia before going to the US in 1939. He re-married in 1946; his second wife, Ilse Ollendorf, having already born him a son, Peter, two years earlier. Most of the latter part of Reich’s life was dedicated to developing controversial ideas on ‘orgone’ energy, through his Orgone Institute. He died in 1957 in prison, where he was serving a two year term for illegalities in the selling of his ‘orgone energy accumulator’. Further information is available from Wikipedia, Wilhelm Reich Trust, or Logos Journal.

Reich began to keep a diary in 1919 when still a medical student, at the time he also wrote a memoir. This material was used by editors Mary Boyd Higgins and Chester M. Raphael for Passion of Youth: An Autobiography 1897-1922 published in 1988 by Farrar, Straus, Giroux (New York). Subsequently, the same publisher produced three further volumes of Reich’s personal writing, as edited by Higgins: Beyond Psychology: Letters and Journals 1934-1939 (1994), American Odyssey: Letters and Journals 1940-1947 (1999), Where's the Truth?: Letters and Journals, 1948-1957 (2012). The first three of these books are freely available online thanks to Ross Wolfe (Passion of YouthBeyond Psychology, American Odyssey), and substantial parts of the fourth (Where’s the Truth?) can be previewed at Googlebooks.

The following extracts are taken from American Odyssey.


7 February 1941
‘I am actually a decent, self-critical fellow and people who call me a charlatan ought to be ashamed of themselves. Just reviewed my journals on the orgone from two years ago. How precisely I felt mv way through all that!! I feel somewhat moved by my own actions. How easy it is for someone to criticize from his high horse, but how difficult it is to overcome the worry, doubt, hesitation, the sleepless nights, the feelings of worthlessness, because one's thoughts are so “verboten.”

12 April 1941
‘Clarity of thought dwells in immense loneliness, in spaces like those separating the stars, billions of light-years wide, so that the bodies do not clash but simply revolve in solitude. Bodies are unhappy and cannot think clearly when they are crowded, where one foot treads upon another. Occasionally they feel impelled toward the crowd. in order to see whether it has changed and whether they still fit in But the members of the crowd have not changed. They continue to push and shove for a little space. They do not sense, cannot imagine the vast infinities, for they fancy themselves secure when they inhale a neighbor’s sweaty scent. Once in a while you find a person who looks as if he were able to imagine the infinities. You speak to him of loneliness and as he listens a glow brightens his face. He appears to understand even though he does not. Finally you discover that he is commonplace, extremely banal, narrow, lethargic, vain. He has sighted loneliness in the mirror - and he flees - or he accompanies you a part of the way, soars with you, only to crash back down into the crowd - wasted energy! Then you live in solitude once again where you can think and breathe freely.
It is good to dive into the crowd once in a while, to convince oneself that it is a mere shuffling, back and forth, with no purpose or goal, just shuffling, back and forth.
Then you return to breathing the pure, fresh air of the mountains, where it storms and worlds collide. Happy? No! But alive!’


28 September 1941
‘One illusion numbers among the prerequisites of all achievement: the lofty feeling of succeeding someday. I am aware, however, that it lies in the nature of all development to turn against itself.

This is a law of nature; it belongs to the knowledge of functional biophysics! According to this, when sex economy spreads, as Marxism, psychoanalysis, and Christianity did, it will be a living corpse. It is not human malice but rather biological degeneration which causes the destruction. Unarmored plasma repeatedly attempts to raise itself to the stature of cosmic functioning by making discoveries, striving “ahead.” It’s as powerless as a drop of water on a sea of fire. We don’t even know what “consciousness” is. Thus we always sink back into lifelessness after our mighty efforts.

Only one thing could suspend this law: a gigantic discovery transcending the cosmic, natural law, like the disclosure of how consciousness perceives itself. In other words, a discovery which would put the natural law at mankind’s disposal. This will begin with the discovery of the function of self-perception in living plasma. Until then there is no solace.’


14 November 1941
‘Apparatus returned by Einstein. His behavior is inexplicable. 1. He is a coward? 2. He doesn't want to get involved. 3. He was turned against me.’

3 April 1944
‘A new member of society: Ernst Peter Robert Reich, my son. Bom at 1 a.m. after great pain. His facial expression is “earnest” and “pensive.” I hope he remains that way. Eva and the nurses claim that he’s very much like me. He immediately began nursing with quiet eagerness. No difficulties at all. In utero he experienced many a wave of his parents’ orgastic pleasure.

Numerous interrelated facts have given rise to my conviction that sexual lifelessness in a mother is harmful to the child in her womb. Conversely, I feel that experiencing the pleasure of the mother’s body is natural and promotes a child's development.’


19 November 1946
‘Further changes. I have been told that “everyone” in New York is talking about my work. “Everyone”!

The Soviet Russians news agency, Tass, has ordered a copy of The Mass Psychology of Fascism for a book review.

There is a new movement among church people: away from the church toward social work on diseased mankind!

Until now antireligious mechanism and religious mysticism were in direct opposition. In the U.S.S.R. the conflict was clear and outspoken.

Now, through the discovery of the orgone, a unification of natural science and religion has become possible. Natural science will have to accept the existence of emotional or biological energy, and religion will have to accept the existence of orgonity.

The age-old conflict which divided me against myself for twenty-five years was that between science and politics. Today, in 1946, this conflict has manifested itself socially in the form of a clash between Wolfe, who favors the strictly scientific, and the church people, who incline toward social work.

One cannot dismiss this invasion of sex economy into the church (as Wolfe does) simply because one is against the church!

Wolfe and Gladys Meyer, his wife, do not want Protestant ministers to be trained as sex-economic social workers. Meyer herself was once a member of the church and now hates it. They feel that the important thing is the orgone, and that people are only a secondary consideration. The ministers, they say, should leave the church if they want to work in the field of sex economy.

Today I invited Wolfe to have a talk. His reply was: “I don’t feel there’s any sense in it under the present circumstances.” What are the present circumstances”? Just today I sent Wolfe two patients.’


27 November 1947
‘I wonder about the Midwest of the U.S.A. Different human beings?

Should I step into the open, into the masses?

Am I sitting like a crab on its hind legs? Should I wait for invitations to lecture or arrange them myself? West Coast wanted lectures. There is this deadly deadlock between people’s wanting and not being capable of doing.


I must wait until they come to me, socially, and not only sexologically.’

28 November 1947
‘Danger.


Karl Frank just told me that Mildred Brady’s husband is a communist, and Wertham also. This miserable pack of political hounds should be driven out by force.’9 December 1947
‘They, the lawyers themselves, do not believe in the existence of the orgone. They did not read the literature. Culver said, when I gave him the letters of the physicians about the orgone: “Now I feel better” - that is, he did not believe a word before that.

It is obvious, quite obvious, that I have become unfit for dealings with average people. I am too far off in my ways of being.’


16 December 1947
‘The Food and Drug Administration retracted its vice suspicion; but now “I am sending out orgone accumulators to cancer patients”? The FDA is surely pushed by someone all out to kill the accumulator. This is a fight of Pest + State + Politics against open, honest work. The BIG GAME is on.’

The Diary Junction

Sunday, February 5, 2017

A sort of Christmas present

‘When Freud said laughingly “I really think you look on analysis as a sort of Christmas present,” I could only agree.’ This is from the diary of Lou Andreas-Salomé, a Russian born writer, psychoanalyst and lover, who died 80 years ago today. She had very significant relationships/associations with several of the most important turn-of-the-century figures in Continental Europe - not least Nietzsche, Freud, and Rilke - and wrote about them in her autobiographical works. Diaries from only two short periods have been published, one concerning a journey with Rilke, and the other about her association with Freud.

Louise von Salomé was born in St Petersburg in 1861, the sixth child and only daughter of a former general in the Imperial Russian army. She grew up speaking French and German as well as Russian, and as a teenager found her first mentor, a Dutch-born minister named Hendrik Gillot. He taught her philosophy, theology and world religions. He confirmed her in the German Lutheran church, gave her the nickname of Lou, and nurtured in her a spirit of independence and self-regard. However, when the relationship broke down, her mother went with her to Zurich first, and then Rome. There she met two young philosophers, Paul Rée and Friedrich Nietzsche, both of whom fell in love with her. The three of them and Salomé’s mother travelled through Italy with the idea of finding a place to launch a commune, but they never did.

After a time, Salomé and Rée separated from Nietzsche and moved to Berlin to live together. Nietzsche’s work Also sprach Zarathustra (Thus Spoke Zarathustra) was written soon after the break-up, and was inspired by 
Salomé: According to the Dictionary of Literary Biography, he wrote, ‘My disciple became my teacher - the god of irony achieved a perfect triumph! . . . She inspired me with the thought of Zarathustra: my greatest poem celebrates our union, and our tragic separation.’ In 1885 she published, under a pseudonym, her first book, an autobiographical novel (Im Kampf um Gott). That same year, the relationship with Rée came to end. Two years later, she married linguistics scholar Friedrich Carl Andreas. She remained married to him until his death his 1930, though the marriage was never consummated, and the two separated in the late 1890s.

Andreas-Salomé continued to publish books, a study of Nietzsche in 1894, another novel in 1895, and collections of stories, often erotic. She had an affair with the Viennese doctor, Friedrich Pineles, and another, famously, with the much younger poet, Rainer Maria Rilke. In 1911, she met Sigmund Freud, with whom she studied and collaborated, writing essays on psychoanalytic theory. In 1913, she began to practice psychoanalysis, and by the early 1920s was widely recognised as an analyst. Partly as a result of an ongoing friendship with Rilke, she wrote several essays on psychology and creativity; she also wrote a play and further studies of authors she had known. She died on 5 February 1937. Further information is available from Wikipedia, Brainpickings, Encyclopedia.com or 3:AM Magazine.

Andreas-Salomé started keeping notebooks when still a girl, and she certainly kept journals at some points in her adult life. However, I can only find published texts in English relating to two periods in her life: in 1900 during a trip to Russia with Rilke, and in 1912-1913 while studying with Freud. The former was published in George C. Schoolfield’s Young Rilke and His Time (Camden House, 2009) - for more on Rilke’s own journals see Art but no artists.

The Freud Journal of Lou Andreas-Salomé, translated and with an introduction by Stanley A. Leavy, was published much earlier, in 1964, by Basic Books. The whole book can be read/downloaded freely from Monoskop (a wiki for collaborative studies of the arts, media and humanities). Here are two extracts.

9 December 1912
‘Adler writes me complaining of Stekel’s “disloyalty” - which I think is funny; it could not have been documented with greater speed. But he also complains of mine, and justly. We met and talked for two hours while racing all over town. But really it is perfectly possible to overcome all the differences between Freud and Adler insofar as Adler’s feeling of inferiority already comprises a primal repression experienced as a basic slight, and also insofar as Freud’s “repressed” is founded on psychized material which had already in the past attained consciousness. If we call this material “sexual” we do so by assuming it to be distinguished from “mental”; the two belong together to emphasize their duality. On the other hand, when Adler emphasizes the “ego protest,” he does so only by contrasting it with the murky totality which in a certain sense is sexuality. The mark of sexuality is that it may be viewed from two sides, from both the mental and the physical; it is here where all mental disorders and neuroses meet, as if at the point of intersection which exemplifies the whole. But only Freud has appropriated the word “compromise” for this, and only he has done justice to the double character of the process, even though he has predominantly emphasized the sexual side (especially in the beginning, when hysteria was under consideration). Only he has uncovered the intermediate range of unconscious mental functions, and only thereby has he succeeded in making room for the positive mechanisms of the process; and only this is important. Beyond merely elucidating illness, and led that far by the pathological process, we find our way into the mystery of the normal unconscious state, in which sexuality and the ego maintain their narcissistic union and the true enigma of mankind begins. For Adler there can be no enigma strictly speaking; he secs the ego confronted only by its own game.’

2 February 1913
‘Spent Sunday afternoon until evening at Freud’s. This time much more personal conversation, during which he told me of his life, and I promised to bring photographs next time. Most personal of all perhaps was his charming account of the “narcissistic cat.” While Freud maintained his office on the ground floor, the cat had climbed in through the open window. He did not care much for cats or dogs or animals generally, and in the beginning the cat aroused mixed feelings in him, especially when it climbed down from the sofa on which it had made itself comfortable and began to inspect in passing the antique objects which he had placed for the time being on the floor. He was afraid that by chasing it away he might cause it to move recklessly in the midst of these precious treasures of his. But when the cat proceeded to make known its archaeological satisfaction by purring and with its lithe grace did not cause the slightest damage, Freud’s heart melted and he ordered milk for it. From then on the cat claimed its rights daily to take a place on the sofa, inspect the antiques, and get its bowl of milk. However, despite Freud’s increasing affection and admiration, the cat paid him not a bit of attention and coldly turned its green eyes with their slanting pupils toward him as toward any other object. When for an instant he wanted more of the cat than its egoistic-narcissistic purring, he had to put his foot down from his comfortable chaise and court its attention with the ingenious enticement of his shoe-toe. Finally, after this unequal relationship had lasted a long time without change, one day he found the cat feverish and gasping on the sofa. And although it was most painstakingly treated with hot fomentations and other remedies, it succumbed to pneumonia, leaving naught of itself behind but a symbolic picture of all the peaceful and playful charm of true egoism.

Freud also talked about why I had become so deeply involved in psychoanalysis. To begin with, it was nothing but the kind of neutral objective interest that one feels when embarking on new researches. Then the opportunity came in all its liveliness and personal urgency to stand in the presence of a new science, again and again to be at a beginning and thus related to the problems of the science in an increasingly intimate way. What settled the matter for me, however, was the third and most personal reason that psychoanalysis bestowed a gift on me personally, its radiant enrichment of my own life that came from slowly groping the way to the roots by which it is embedded in the totality. When Freud said laughingly “I really think you look on analysis as a sort of Christmas present,” I could only agree, since for me it was not a question of resolving conflicts between the depth and the surface. And quite possibly neither joy nor anguish are ever so vividly impressed on us as when they proceed from the unconscious to the level of experience; just as bliss once enjoyed can be horribly transformed into pain in the course of the night, so too it is likely that the memory of hours of crucifixion may be transformed to a life beyond, a resurrection glistening with the stars. In the homeland of our emotional life it is true that heaven and hell - in other respects only fictions - are preserved for us in the unconscious as our eternal reality.’

Tuesday, January 31, 2017

Schubert’s diary fragment

The great Austrian composer Franz Schubert was born 220 years ago today. His life was tragically short - he died aged only 31 - and yet he managed to leave behind an astonishing collection of musical masterpieces. However, he did not leave behind much written material, to the frustration of biographers, which is why a four-day diary fragment, from when he was just 19, is considered so important.

Schubert was born in Vienna on 31 January 1797 son of a schoolteacher and his wife who had many children, more than half dying in infancy. His first lessons in violin and piano came from his father and a brother respectively. By the age of seven, though, he was receiving instruction from a local organist and choirmaster. In 1808, he won a scholarship that earned him a place with the imperial court chapel choir and an education at the Stadtkonvikt, the principal boarding school for commoners in Vienna which had its own orchestra. By the age of 14, encouraged by the violinist Joseph von Spaun, Schubert was already composing various types of music, quartets, piano solos and duets, and even part of an opera.

In 1812, Schubert’s voice broke. No longer of service to the choir, he found little interest in further academic schooling and soon left the Stadtkonvikt to focus on composition. He took private lessons with Antonio Salieri, but under pressure from his family, he also went to work in his father’s school as a teacher from 1814. During this period, he wrote many Lieder (a kind of German song of the Romantic period usually for solo voice and piano), church works and symphonies. In 1818, he left his teaching work to concentrate on music, in part inspired by a first public performance of one his works, Italian Overture in C Major.

Although Schubert and his compositions were becoming increasingly popular, he had trouble earning a living. Compositions for two opera houses were not a success; and music publishers were afraid to take a risk on such a young composer, his music being far from traditional. By the early 1820s, he was offering his songs on a subscription basis, and across Vienna the wealthy began hosting concert parties - 
Schubertiaden - with Schubert’s song and dances.

In late 1822, Schubert fell ill, biographers suggest this was because of syphilis. Nevertheless, he continued to compose prolifically, producing masterpieces, the song cycles, Die schöne Müllerin and Winterreise, the Eighth (Unfinished) and Ninth (Great) Symphonies, Octet in F Major and the Wanderer Fantasy. By the late 1820s, Schubert’s health was failing and he even confided to friends that he feared being near to death. Some of his symptoms are known to have matched those of mercury poisoning (mercury being a common treatment for syphilis). He died in November 1828, aged but 31. Only in the decades after his death did interest in, and appreciation of, Schubert’s music spread, as many other 19th century composers began to champion his works. Further information is available at The Schubert Institute, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Franzpeterschubert.com, Wikipedia, or Bio.com

Schubert appears to have kept a diary only once or twice during his short life, and only fragments have survived. One fragment, in particular, covering the period 13-16 June 1816, has been much studied by biographers. Christopher H. Gibbs, for example, writing in Current Musicology (no. 75, spring 2003) says the 16 June diary entry is ‘notorious’, and ’has long played a role in accounts of Schubert’s life’. He goes on in his essay - entitled Writing Under the Influence?: Salieri and Schubert’s Early Opinion of Beethoven - to analyse the diary entries in some detail. Gibbs also notes: ‘Schubert’s only other known diary, or rather fragments from it, dates from 1824 and survives only in copies by Eduard von Bauernfeld that may well be incomplete and inaccurate [. . .]. Given so little from Schubert himself, a problem compounded by the fact that so few of his letters survive, each word assumes extraordinary weight.’

Henry Frost’s 1881 biography Schubert (available at Internet Archive) gives a little more information: ‘Whether Schubert was averse to letter writing there is no evidence one way or the other, but very little of his correspondence remains; and so one great asset which we find in the study of the lives of Mozart and Mendelssohn, and to a lesser extent of Beethoven and Weber, is denied to us. The remnants of his diaries that are still with us barely compensate for this loss.

It appears that he kept a daily record of his thoughts and experiences in 1816, but owing to that wanton carelessness with which Schubert’s precious manuscripts seem to have been generally treated, only a small portion of these remain. Aloys Fuchs, in his Schubertiana, tells the story thus: “Some years ago I found at an autograph dealer’s in Vienna the fragment of one of Schubert’s diaries in his own handwriting, but several of the pages were missing. On my asking the reason of this, the wretched owner of the relic replied that he had for a long time been in the habit of distributing single pages of this manuscript to hunters of Schubert relics or autograph collectors. Having expressed my indignation at this vandalism, I took care to save what was left.” ’

The following translation of the extant fragment of Schubert’s diary can be found online at Internet Archive in The Life of Franz Schubert by Kreissle Von Hellborn (volume 1) as translated by Arthur Duke Coleridge (Longmans, Green, and Co, 1869).

13 June 1816
‘This day will haunt me for the rest of my life as a bright, clear, and lovely one. Gently, and as from a distance, the magic tones of Mozart’s music sound in my ears. With what alternate force and tenderness, with what masterly power did Schlesinger’s playing of that music impress it deep, deep in my heart! Thus do these sweet impressions, passing into our souls, work beneficently on our inmost being, and no time, do change of circumstances, can obliterate them. In the darkness of this life, they show a light, a clear, beautiful distance, from which we gather confidence and hope. Mozart! immortal Mozart! how many and what countless images of a brighter, better world hast thou stamped on our souls! This quintett may be called one of the greatest amongst his smaller works. I too was moved on this occasion to introduce myself. I played variations by Beethoven, sang Göthe’s “Rastlose Liebe,” and Schiller’s “Amalia.” The first met with universal, the second with qualified applause. Although I myself think my “Rastlose Liebe” more successful than “Amalia,” yet I cannot deny that to Göthe’s musical genius must be attri-buted in a large measure the applause which greeted the song. I also made acquaintance with Mdlle. Jenny, a pianoforte-player with extraordinary powers of execution; but I think her wanting in true and pure expression.’

14 June 1816
‘After the lapse of a few months, I took once more an evening walk. There can hardly be anything more delightful than, of an evening, after a hot summer’s day, to stroll about on the green grass: the meadows between Währing and Döbling seem to have been created for this very purpose. I felt so peaceful and happy as my brother Carl and I walked together in the struggling twilight. “How lovely!” I thought and exclaimed, and then stood still enchanted. The neighbourhood of the churchyard reminded us of our excellent mother. Whiling the time away with melancholy talk, we arrived at the point where the Döbling road branches off, and I heard a well-known voice issuing as though from heaven - which is our home: the voice came from a carriage which was being pulled up. I looked up, and there was Herr Weinmüller, who got out and greeted us with his hearty, manly, cheerful-toned voice. How vainly does many a man strive to show the candour and honesty of his mind by conversation equally sincere and candid! - how would many a man be the laughing-stock of his fellow-creatures were he to make the effort! Such gifts must come naturally; no efforts can acquire them.’

15 June 1816
‘It usually happens that we form exaggerated notions of what we expect to see. At least, I found it so when I saw the exhibition of pictures of native artists, held at Saint Anna. The work I liked best in the whole exhibition was a Madonna and Child, by Abel. I was much disappointed by the velvet mantle of a prince. I am convinced that one must see things of this sort much more frequently, and give them a longer trial, if one hopes to find and retain the proper expression and impression intended to be conveyed.’

16 June 1816 [After returning home from Salieri’s jubilee festival]
‘It must be pleasant and invigorating to the artist to see all his pupils collected around him, every one striving to do his best in honour of his master’s jubilee fete; to hear in all their compositions a simple, natural expression, free from all that bizarrerie which, with the majority of composers of our time, is the prevailing element, and for which we are almost mainly indebted to one of our greatest German artists; free, I say, from that bizarrerie which links the tragic with the comic, the agreeable with the odious, the heroic with whining (Heulerei), the most sacred subjects with buffoonery - all this without discrimination; so that men become mad and frantic instead of being dissolved in tears, and tickled to idiotic laughter rather than elevated towards God. The fact that this miserable bizarrerie has been proscribed and exiled from the circle of his pupils, so that their eyes may rest on pure holy Nature, must be a source of the liveliest pleasure to the artist who, with a Gluck for his pioneer, has learned to know Nature, and has clung to her in spite of the most unnatural influences of our day.

Herr Salieri celebrated by a jubilee his fifty years’ residence in Vienna, and an almost equally long period of service under the Emperor. His Majesty presented him with a gold medal; and numbers of his pupils, both male and female, were invited to the ceremony. The compositions of his pupils, written specially for the occasion, were produced seriatim [i], according to the date of admission of each pupil, as he had received them when sent to him. The music concluded with a chorus from Salieri’s Oratorio, “Jesu al Limbo” (“Christ in Hades”). The Oratorio is worked out in the true Gluck spirit. Everyone was interested in the entertainment.

To-day I composed the first time for money - namely, a Cantata (“Prometheus “) for the name-day festival of Herr Professor Watteroth von Dräxler. The honorarium 100 florins, Viennese currency.

Man is like a ball between chance and passion. I have often heard it said by writers: “The world is like a stage, where every man plays his part. Praise and blame follow in the other world.” Still, every man has one part assigned him - we have had our part given us - and who can say if he has played it well or ill? He is a bad theatrical manager who distributes amongst his players parts which they are not qualified to act. Carelessness here is not to be thought of. The world has no example of an actor being dismissed because of his bad declamation. As soon as he has a part adapted to his powers, he will play it well enough. Whether he is applauded or not, depends on a public with its thousand caprices. In the other world, praise or blame depends on the Grand Manager of the world. Blame, therefore, is balanced.

Natural disposition and education determine the bent of man’s heart and understanding. The heart is ruler; the mind should be.

Take men as they are, not as they ought to be.

Happy is he who finds a true friend. Happier still is he who finds in his own wife a true friend. To the free man, at this time, marriage is a fearful thought; he confounds it either with melancholy or low sensuality.

Monarchs of our day, you see this and keep silence! Or do ye not see it? Then, God, throw a veil over our senses, and steep our feelings in Lethe! Yet once, I pray, draw back the veil!

Man bears misfortune uncomplainingly; and, for that very reason, feels it all the more acutely. For what purpose did God create in us these keen sympathies?

Light mind, light heart: a mind that is too light generally harbours a heart that is too heavy.

Town politeness is a powerful hindrance to men’s integrity in dealing with one another. The greatest misery of the wise man and the greatest happiness of the fool is based on conventionalism.

A noble-minded unfortunate man feels the depth of his misery and intensity of his joy; just so does the nobly prosperous man feel his good fortune or the opposite.

Now I know nothing more! To-morrow I am sure to know something fresh! Whence comes this? Is my understanding to-day duller than it will be to-morrow? Because I am full and sleepy? Why doesn’t my mind think when my body sleeps? I suppose it goes for a walk. Certainly, it can’t sleep!

Odd questions!
I hear everyone saying;
We can’t venture here on an answer,
We must bear it all patiently.
Now good night
Until ye awake.’

Tuesday, September 20, 2016

The king of Madagascar

Maurice, Count de Benyovszky, was born 270 years ago today. A gloriously romantic figure, a nobleman who fought for different countries across Europe and during the American revolution, he was also the self-declared king of Madagascar, having claimed it, at various times, for France, Austria, and American business associates. He died, killed in a skirmish with the French, when only 39; nevertheless, he left behind a journal/memoir of his colourful life.

Benyovszky (spelled in various ways) was born into a noble family on 20 September 1746 in Verbó (then within Hungary, part of the Hapsburg Emprire, now near Trnava in Slovakia). His parents died when he was 14, and two years later he began his career as an officer of the Habsburg army during the Seven Years’ War. He became involved in a legal dispute over family inheritances, which led to him fleeing the country.


In 1768 Benyovszky joined the Confederation of Bar, a Polish national movement against Russian intervention. He was captured by the Russians, interned in Kazan, and later exiled to Kamchatka, in the east of Siberia. Before long, though, he had organised a rebellion of Polish prisoners, seized weapons as well as a Russian vessel. He sailed through the northern Pacific Ocean, landing at Taiwan, Macau (where he and the rebels exchanged their vessel) and Madagascar, reaching France in mid-1772, where he learned of his promotion to general in the Polish Confederation.

Benyovszky returned to Madagascar in 1774, with French royal approval and a large number of volunteers, to establish a colony. He set about unifying local tribes, building a fortified garrison with a hospital, and even introduced a Latin script for the language. Having been appointed governor by the French king, the island’s inhabitants named him emperor. On returning to France, he was made a French general and awarded the Order of Saint Louis. He became friends with Benjamin Franklin, in Paris at the time, and the Polish nobleman and military commander, Cazimir Pulaski. However, his further proposals for Madagascar were rejected by the French, and he returned to Central Europe. There, he obtained a pardon from the Austrian Empress and Queen of Hungary, Maria Teresa, who also promoted him to the status of Count in 1778. He was empowered to take control of Madagascar in the the name of Austria, though nothing seems to have come of this.

After serving in the Austrian army during the War of the Bavarian Succession, Benyovszky followed his friend Pulaski to the American colonies and fought on the side of the revolution. Pulaski is said to have died in his arms at the siege of Savannah, after which Benyovszky returned to Austria. In 1781, he was again in North America, and, with a plan to raise a body of German troops for America, was introduced to George and Mary Washington. Although initially well received, the plan failed to materialise. Back in Europe, he approached the British government to give support for an expedition to Madagascar, which was not forthcoming. With the help of Franklin and Hyacinth de Magellan, he founded an American-British company for trading with Madagascar. In 1785, he arrived once again on the island, where he developed a trade settlement (Mauritania, named after himself). The French, though, were outraged by his alliance with the Americans; and during one attack, in May 1786, Benyovszky was killed. Further information is available from Wikipedia, Slovakopedia, Polish History, or a website managed by the Benyovszky family.

In the early 1780s, Benyovszky gave his friend Magellan four volumes of memoirs written in French. Magellan had them translated into English and they were published for the first time in 1789. A century later, at the end of the 19th century, they were published again by T. Fisher Unwin as Memoirs and Travels of Mauritius Augustus Count de Benyowsky Magnate of the Kingdoms of Hungary and Poland, one of the Chiefs of the Confederation of Poland etc. etc. with an introduction, notes and bibliography by Captain S. Pasfield Oliver. This, and earlier editions, are freely available at Internet Archive. The memoir starts with a biographical account of Benyovszky’s early life, written in the third person but nonetheless inspired by Benyovszky himself. Benyovszky’s journal/memoir commences in January 1770 and finishes in late 1776. Some of the narrative does read like a journal, with dated entries, but more often it reads like a memoir written in retrospect (e.g. ‘On the 6th, in the Straits, we joined a Spanish armed frigate, named the Pallas; and on the 16th of March, we arrived safely in France.’) The following extracts come from the Oliver edition.

15 October 1771
‘On the 15th, the associates met by my order. I informed them, that I was assured that a number among them were discontented with me; for which reason 1 thought proper to declare to them, that all those who were desirous of seeking their fortune elsewhere, were at liberty to quit me; and that as they had all received a retribution at my hands at the island of Formosa, I thought myself acquitted from them. I had scarcely made an end, before Mr. Stephanow loaded me with invectives, and charged me with an intention of depriving the company of their share of the advantages I was about to receive, from the knowledge I had acquired during the voyage; and that the moderation I had shewn at Formosa, in delivering my share of the presents of Prince Huapo, was merely a scheme to deprive them of greater advantages. He then excited the companions to throw off my authority, by assuring them that he would secure them a large fortune the instant they should determine to put my papers in his hands, and follow his party. The infamous plot of this wretch was nothing extraordinary; hut when I understood that he was supported by Sir. Wynbladth, my ancient Major, the companion of my exile, and my friend, I was incapable of setting bounds to my indignation, and could not avoid declaring, that their proceedings were highly disgraceful; and to confound them, I displayed their secret projects to the company, and justified my words by shewing Mr. Jackson’s letter, which convinced them that Messrs. Stephanow and Wynbladth, under pretence of serving the company, were desirous of securing the five thousand pounds to their own use. They were highly irritated, and threatened them; but Stephanow preserved a party of eleven, with whom he went to my lodgings; and while I remained in conversation with my friends, he seized my box, in which he supposed my papers were deposited. As soon as I heard of this outrage, I went to his chamber, followed by twenty associates; and as he refused to open the door, I broke it down. On my entrance he fired a pistol at me, which missed. In consequence of this attempt, I gave orders for seizing and keeping him in strict confinement; and as it was necessary likewise to secure Mr. Wynbladth, I went to his chamber; but he had retired into the garden, armed with a pair of pistols and a sabre. I determined to shut him in, being convinced that he could not get over the walls on account of their great height. This whole affair passed without the least alarm without, as the doors of the house were shut.’

16 October 1771
‘On the 16th, Mr. Wynbladth, fatigued by a continual rain, and perhaps urged by hunger, requested forgiveness, and surrendered himself to two companions I had appointed to watch him. Having thus made sure of these two turbulent men, I thought it proper they should be separated from the company; and they were therefore conducted to the castle by permission of the Governor: the officers of our company, being desirous of avenging themselves on the English emissaries, played them a trick, the whole effect of which fell upon a Jewish agent, who was severely flogged. Upon this wretch there were found minutes of proposals which he made to the companions, as follow:
1. That the English would pay to each associate one thousand piastres, in case they would serve the company, and put my papers in his hands.
2. That in case the associates refused to take the English party, the company would arrest them by force, in the name of the Empress of Russia, to deliver them up.
3. That the company would answer for obtaining the Empress’s pardon for them, if they would determine to make a voyage to Japan, and the Aleuthes Islands.

Such proceedings cannot attributed to men of sense. It was in my opinion a forgery, concerted between Mr. Stephanow and the Jew, to excite the associates against me.’

2 January 1772
‘On the 2d, I sold my vessel to a Portugueze merchant, for the sum of four thousand five hundred piastres, ready money, and as much on credit: the Governor reserved to himself the whole of the stores.’


14 January 1772
‘On the 14th, we quitted Macao, where the Governor saluted me with twenty-one guns, from the principal fortress; and, after a tedious passage, we arrived at last at the mouth of the Tigu; where we were very civilly received by a Mandarin, though he at first refused to permit us to go on shore: the sight of a purse of piastres, however, abated his severity; which was so much altered by this circumstance, that he offered permission for us to take lodgings in the fort.’

12 April 1772
‘On the 12th, we anchored at the Island of Madagascar, where I went on shore at Fort Dauphin. Some particulars of information I had received from the Governor of the isle of France, induced me to wish for more ample information, respecting this fine and extensive island; but unfortunately for this purpose, I could not prolong my stay.’

Saturday, June 25, 2016

Bachmann’s diary fragment

My mind’s still in a whirl. Jack Hamesh was here. [. . .] We talked until evening and he kissed my hand before he left. No one’s ever kissed my hand before. I’m out of my mind I’m so happy and after he’d gone I climbed up the apple tree, it was already dark and I cried my eyes out and thought I never wanted to wash my hand again.’ This is a diary fragment written by the Austrian Ingeborg Bachmann, born 90 years go today, in the aftermath of the Second World War. She would go on to become an important German language poet and author, and to be much studied, after her tragically early death, by feminist scholars.

Bachmann was born on 25 June 1926 in Klagenfurt, Austria, the daughter of a headmaster. She studied at several universities before, in 1949, finishing her doctorate on the philosophy of Martin Heidegger at Vienna university. She worked for the Allied radio stations, which also produced her first radio dramas, and she became involved with a literary circle known as Gruppe 47, which included Hans Weigel, Heinrich Böll, and Günter Grass among its members.

In 1953, Bachmann moved to Rome, where she developed her literary work, with poems initially, successfully publishing Gestundete Zeit (Deferred Time) and Anrufung des Großen Bären (Invocation of the Great Bear). In 1958 she started a relationship with the Swiss writer and architect, Max Frisch, and consequently moved to Zurich. The relationship lasted only until 1962, and the break-up caused Bachmann much distress. She spent a year in Berlin before returning to Rome.

Bachmann also wrote essays, short stories and opera libretti, the latter in collaboration with Hans Werner Henze (Der Prinz von Homburg in 1960, and Der junge Lord in 1965). In 1971, she published her only novel, Malina. One night, in September 1973, she was seriously injured by a fire which occurred in her bedroom, and was taken to hospital. She died a few weeks later, possibly because the doctors that treated her had been unaware of her barbiturate addiction.

According to the Literary Encyclopedia, ‘Ingeborg Bachmann has been recognized as one of post-1945 German literature’s most important writers at least since 1954, when she was featured on the cover of West Germany’s prominent news magazine, Der Spiegel. Der Spiegel acclaimed Bachmann’s poetry a “stenograph of its time”, treating her poems as a turning point in post-war writing, a signal that German literature had overcome the Nazi past and resumed its proper place on the stage of world literature.’ Further information can be found at Wikipedia (more details in the German language entry), The Poetry Foundation, Institute of Modern Languages Research, or About Vienna.

There is no evidence that Bachmann was a diarist, but, in 2011, Seagull Books (University of Chicago Press) published a small book called War Diary with a few pages of a diary she kept in 1944 -1945, more in odd notes than a day-to-day form. Most of the book is taken up with letters written to her by a British officer, Jack Hamesh. According to the publisher, ‘War Diary provides unusual insight into the formation of Bachmann as a writer and will be cherished by the many fans of her work. But it is also a poignant glimpse into life in Austria in the immediate aftermath of the war.’ A review can be read at The Quarterly Conversation, which concludes with this comment: ‘It is somewhat curious that this and other juvenilia, such as the Letters to Felician, have been translated into English while so much of her critical writing remains unavailable.’

Here though are a couple of extracts (among the only ones which are actually dated) from the brief diary portion of the book.

11 June 1944
‘Liesl’s falllen in love with an Englishman, he’s immensely lean and tall and he’s called Bob. She says he’s very rich and went to Oxford. She talks of nothing else but him. Yesterday she said her only wish was to get away from here and go to England. I think she hopes he’ll marry her. But marriage between the English and Austrian women is forbidden by the military government. She said the wretched conditions here are never going to end and she’s been through too much, she can’t take any more and she wants to have a life at last. I can well understand her but then I get annoyed with her because she thinks I ought to marry an Englishman too and get away from here. Of course I want to get away but so that I can go to university and I’ve no desire to get married at all, not even to an Englishman for a few tins of food and silk stockings. Most of the English who are here are very nice and, I believe, decent. But I’m much too young, Arthur and Bill are very nice and we often talk a lot together and laugh a lot. We often play games like ‘Drop the Handkerchief’ and ‘Statues’ in the garden. Arthur’s always giving little Heinerle chocolate and a few days ago he suddenly went to Mummy, who’s still bedridden, and put some tea and biscuits on the quilt for her. She calls him Carrot-top because he has such red hair and she likes him best. I think he’s in love with Liesl as well. Bill too, but even more, and Arthur’s terribly jealous of Bob. Bob is quite unapproachable, we once spoke a couple of words but never again, not even when I thanked him for letting Liesl have the car to bring her mother back from hospital.’

14 June 1944
‘My mind’s still in a whirl. Jack Hamesh was here, this time he came in a jeep. Naturally, everyone in the village stared and Frau S. came over the stream twice to have a look in the garden. I took him into the garden because Mummy’s in bed upstairs. We sat on the bench and at first I was all of a tremble so that he must have thought I’m mad or have a bad conscience or God knows what. And I’ve no idea why. I can’t remember what we talked about at first but all at once we were on to books, to Thomas Mann and Stefan Zweig and Schnitzler and Hofmannsthal. I was so happy, he knows everything and he told me he never thought he’d find a young girl in Austria who’d read all that despite her Nazi upbringing. And suddenly everything was quite different and I told him everything about the books. He told me he was taken to England in a kindertransport with other Jewish children in ’38, he was actually eighteen then but an uncle managed to arrange it, his parents were already dead. So now I know how he comes to speak such good German, then he went into the British army and now in the zones of occupation there are lots of former Germans and Austrians working in the FSS offices, because of the language and because they know conditions in the country better. We talked until evening and he kissed my hand before he left. No one’s ever kissed my hand before. I’m out of my mind I’m so happy and after he’d gone I climbed up the apple tree, it was already dark and I cried my eyes out and thought I never wanted to wash my hand again.’

Thursday, December 3, 2015

Anna with Gestapo

Anna Freud, a key figure in the development of psychoanalytic child psychology, was born 120 years ago today. It seems unlikely that she never kept a diary, but her papers remain under the control of the Freud archive and, to date, there has been no published evidence of any journals or diaries. Her famous father wasn’t much of a diary keeper either, but, in the latter years of his life, he kept a ‘chronicle’ consisting of no more than a single phrase for most days. This has been published in a large book - as The Diary of Sigmund Freud - with half-page explanations for every phrase! According to the editors, Anna’s name ‘absolutely dominates’ the record - with entries such as ‘Anna with Gestapo’.

Anna Freud was born in Vienna on 3 December 1895 to Sigmund Freud and Martha Bernays, the youngest of six children. She is said to have been competitive with her siblings, and to have been naughty, learning more at home than at school. From 1915, she worked as a teacher in her old school, the Cottage Lyceum, remaining there until 1920. She left, apparently, due to illness. By this time, she was already undergoing analysis by her father.

Having had the chance to observe children on a daily basis while teaching, Anna Freud was drawn to child psychology, and began her own psychoanalytical practice. From 1927 until 1934, she was General Secretary of the International Psychoanalytical Association, originally started by her father, where she presented papers outlining her approach to child psychoanalysis. Having taught at the Vienna Psychoanalytical Training Institute for some years, she became its director in 1935. The following year, she published The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence, a founding work of ego psychology, establishing her reputation as a pioneering theoretician.

In 1938, the Freuds fled from Austria in response to Nazi harassment of Jews - indeed Anna had been arrested by the Gestapo. They immigrated to London, to a house in Maresfield Gardens, Hampstead, (not a 100 metres, in fact, from where I spent my early childhood in the 1950s). Sigmund Freud died a year later, but Anna continued to live in the same house 
(now a museumfor the rest of her life. Anna’s teaching in London led to a conflict between her and Melanie Klein - who had evolved her own theory and technique for child analysis - which threatened to split the British Psychoanalytical Society. A series of war-time ‘Controversial Discussions’ ended with the formation of parallel training courses for the two groups.

During the war, Anna set up the Hampstead War Nursery to provide foster care for over 80 children of single-parent families. Together with her lifelong friend Dorothy Burlingham, she published studies of children under stress in Young Children in War-Time and Infants without Families. By 1947, Freud and Kate Friedlaender had established the Hampstead Child Therapy Courses, training English and US child therapists, and a children’s clinic was added a few years later. From the 1950s, Freud travelled regularly to the US to lecture and teach. At Yale Law School, for example, she taught seminars on crime and the family, leading to publication of Beyond the Best Interests of the Child (1973) with Joseph Goldstein and Albert Solnit.

The publication of her collected works was begun in 1968, but the last of the eight volumes did not appear until 1983, a year after her death. The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis put out a memorial issue, and the clinic was renamed the Anna Freud Centre. Further information is available from The Freud Museum, Wikipedia, the BBC, Psychology’s Feminist Voices or The Philosophers’ Mail.

If Anna Freud kept a diary at any point in her life, there’s been no sign of it being published or being used for biographical purposes. The only diaries kept by Anna held in the Freud Museum archives are appointment diaries. The so-called Freud Archive, held by the US Library of Congress, has a significant number of documents which remain sealed for years to come - see an article by Joseph L. Sax in RBM. But, whether any of these are Anna’s or not is hard to tell. A review of the fictional Hysterical: Anna Freud’s Story by Rebecca Coffey states, ‘Anna’s papers and diaries remain under the control of the Freud Archives’.

In the absence of any diaries left by Anna, I turned to her father. But he wasn’t much of a diary writer either. Ilse Grubrich-Simitis, in her book Back to Freud's Texts: Making Silent Documents Speak (Yale University Press, 1996, see Googlebooks) refers to his ‘diary like personal jottings’ and specifies: ‘the slim “Geheim-Chronik” [secret chronicle] kept jointly with his fiancée from 1883 to 1886; the “Resiejournal” [travel diary], also comprising only a few pages, on the beginning of the voyage to America in 1909 with Ferenczi and Jung; the entries in “Prochaskas Familien-Kalender”; the “Kürzeste Chronik”.’

This latter, the “Kürzeste Chronik” or “Shortest Chronicle”, was published in English by the Hogarth Press in 1992 as The Diary of Sigmund Freud 1929-1939: A Record of the Final Decade (translated and annotated by Michael Molnar). The book is large and thick, and lavishly illustrated with many black and white photographs, but the actual diary entries by Freud are so short - a few words - that they are even included verbatim within the index (as well as at least three times elsewhere)! The bulk of the book, however, is taken up with extensive annotations of each diary entry - explanations, embellishments and analysis of Freud’s daily life.

Molnar explains in his introduction that, in 1986, the papers stored all over the house were assigned to an archive, and how, at that point, Freud’s diary was handed over to him. He goes on to say: ‘It is worth noting how frequently various names are mentioned in the diary. Not surprisingly, it is Anna’s name which absolutely dominates the record, for it was during these years of sickness that she became Freud’s constant companion, his faithful “Anna-Antigone”.’ Here are some, but not all, of Sigmund Freud’s laconic diary entries mentioning his daughter.

3 December 1929
‘Anna’s birthday 34 yrs’

17 December 1929
‘Anna to Essen - cut stones bought’

21 December 1929
‘Anna back’

26 March 1930
‘Anna to Bpest. Elkuss +’

27 March 1930
‘Anna back - Eitington from Paris’

15 April 1930
‘Anna & Dorothy to Paris’

17 April 1930
‘Anna & Dorothy back’

14 September 1930
‘Anna at Mother’s burial’

22 February 1932
‘Anna and I have infectious cold’

3 December 1933
‘Anna 38 yr’

23 January 1935
‘Anna’s lecture’

11 June 1937
‘Anna’s accident’

22 March 1938
‘Anna with Gestapo’

20 May 1939
‘Anna to Amsterdam’