There is something about reading the love letters of the great thinkers, artists, politicians. This probably has to do with the very way of how we see Love. Although it can be not always happy or tender, we do expect it to make people who experience it tenderer and happier. And even if we know that those great people may have had the character difficult to live with, or were indeed powerful and even authocratic, in their love letters they suddenly appear to be just as vulnerable, insecure and hopelessly devoted, as we expect a lover to be.
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| Sigmund and Martha Freud |
This is precisely the case of Sigmund Freud, whose letters to his future wife span the years from 1882 (their engagement) till 1886 (the year of marriage). This is the Freud we barely know: insecure, passionate, yet certain about one thing: if he is to marry the love of his life, he’d better do the best of his research. Freud, as we can trace through some of his letters to his bride, had some inklings about the importance of his research, yet again he could hardly imagine that almost 70 years after his death (he died in 1939) people would still be making up their mind about his findings. Yet in his early letters to the girl five years his junior he is still at the threshold of his research, and one can safely say after reading the letters that Love made Freud.
Freud met his future wife, Martha Bernays, at the house of his parents. Martha’s grandfather, Isaac Bernays (1792-1849) was the chief rabbi in Hamburg. In his letter from Hamburg on 23 July 1882, which begins with a citation from Lessing’s poem, Freud narrates the story of his visit to the Jewish printer who kindly agreed to produce specially monogrammed writing paper for Freud and his wife-to-be: the paper was to bear the initials “S” and “M”. The printer happened to have known the Bernays family (he had grown up with Isaac Bernays’s sons), and Freud meticulously retells everything he had heard from the old man.
The original 1968 German edition of Freud’s letters to Martha (edited by Ernst Freud for Fischer).
Freud’s “despotism”, which he acknowledged in that very letter, consisted particularly in the fact that he wanted Martha to use this specially produced paper to write to him. But then is it not also particularly romantic, especially bearing in mind the fact that at the time Freud’s research was still in its birthpangs, and he was yet unable to sustain his family life? What comes across as despotism at first glance, at second looks more like a complete devotion – something that we may have lost these days.
His love for Martha was instant. I have recently read a short autobiographical essay by Thomas Mann, in which he tells, in very similar to Freud’s terms, about his meeting, falling in love and marrying his wife, with whom he was to live for a very long time. The long period of solitary life, Mann says, didn’t let him learn to hide his feelings. Freud states precisely the same in one of the letters, and all the letters breathe with the hitherto unused language of love, affection and friendship.
The latter – friendship – is important to underline, for, as Freud correctly points out in his letter from Vienna on September 25th, 1882, those in love must be ready to share with one another their concerns, heartaches, they must be mutually trustful, mutually reliable, and to realise that to live together is no pleasant thing, but an everyday labour.
Martha Bernays was receiving letters from her beloved from all over Europe: in the volume there are letters not only from Germany and Austria (1882-1884), but the Alps (1885) and France (1885-86). As such, the letters are an indispensable resource for researchers, even – unexpectedly – for those interested in Parisian fin-de-siecle, particularly, theatre. Several times Freud narrates, in a very comic way, of his sufferings for the sake of culture in the hot and stuffy atmosphere of a Parisian theatre. However, his troubles somehow turn out to be well worth themselves, for on one occasion he happened to see Sarah Bernhardt in Fedora (Theodora) by Victorien Sardou (a letter from Paris per November 8th, 1885).
The love for Martha virtually gave Freud a focus – not that he didn’t know what to do with his life, but the necessity to make his work and research successful in order to be able to marry the girl he loved and to ensure her love for him changed him altogether. This is noticeable in the change of the tone of the letters: in 1882, when Freud is 26, he is insecure yet determined, he is laying the foundations for his happy marriage by writing long letters in which he professes his love and teaches his future wife how to love him. However, his spirits are not yet soaring. It should be correct to say that they never quite get to soar, for even by 1886, the year of marriage, Freud is still not sure of many things. But the influence of Martha is clear in that, while he is not sure of the income, he is sure of his love, or better, he is sure that his love is requited. Several times between 1882 and 1884 Freud noted that knowing Martha had made him determined and taught to respect himself. If in 1882 or 1884 he could occasionally reproach his bride for not writing regularly or in much detail, by 1886 he had to apologise himself for not being able to compose lengthy letters. Moreover, as time went on, the young scientist began to dream, as the letter per 20th of June, 1885, plainly manifests:
Princess, my little Princess,
Oh, how wonderful it will be! I am coming with money and staying a long time and bringing something beautiful for you and then go on to Paris and become a great scholar and then come back to Vienna with a huge, enormous halo, and then we will soon get married, and I will cure all the incurable nervous cases and through you I shall be healthy and I will go on kissing you till you are strong and gay and happy – and “if they haven’t died, they are still alive today”.
Last but not least, the letters contain meditations on life, art, philosophy, as well as Freud’s reflections on himself. At no point does he seem to be totally aware of himself – of his talents, abilities, the traits of character. It is quite possible, however, that this lack of awareness, and hence the lack of self-security, the compensation for which he found in his love for Martha, was precisely the driving force behind his research.
More on Freud-Bernays relationship:
Sigmund Freud Museum in Vienna
The image is courtesy of Sigmund Freud Museum.
