ANALYZING F R E U D

LETTERS OF H.D., BRYHER, AND THEIR CIRCLE

~

EDITED BY SUSAN STANFORD FRIEDMAN

Frontispiece. H.D., Freud, and Vienna, 1933-34. Civil war in Vienna, 1934. Statue of Athena from Freud's antiquities collection. Ferdinand Schmutzer's ~ 1926 etching of Freud. Portion of Freud's bookshelf. H.D., early to mid-1930s. A NEW DIRECTIONS BOOK Copyright© 2002 by The Estate of Perdita Schaffner For

Copyright © 2002 by Susan Sranf~rd Friedman Perdita Schaffner All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in a newspaper, magazine, or television review, no part of this 1919-2001 book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including phorocopying and recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in wriring from the Publisher. who survived them all Letters by Anna Freud, Copyright © 2002 The Estate of Anna Freud, are printed by arrangement with Paterson Marsh Agency, London. Letters by Sigmund Freud, Copyright © 2002 A.W. Freud et al.I with wit, grace, and generosity of spirit Sigmund Freud Copyrights, London.

The collages following page 352 were composed by and used with the permission of Susan Stanford Friedman. and

Book design by Sylvia Frezzolini Severance Manufactured in the United States of America Louis H. Silverstein New Directions Books are printed on acid-free paper. First published clothbound by New Directions in 2002 Published simultaneously in Canada by Penguin Books Canada Limited 1938-2001

Library of Congress Caraloging-in-Publication Oat who curated their papers

Analyzing Freud: letters ofH.D., Btyher, and their circle I edited by with joy, precision, and tenderness for them all Susan Sranford Friedman. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8112-1499-0 (alk. paper) ~ 1. Freud, Sigmund, 1856-1939-Correspondence. 2. H. D. (Hilda Doolittle), 1886-1961---Correspondence. 3. Bryher, 1894--Correspondence 4. Psychoanalysrs~Ausrria---Correspondence. I. Freud, Sigmund, 1856-1939. II. H. D. (Hilda Doolittle), 1886-1961. III. Bryher, 1894- N. Friedman, Susan Stanford. BF109.F74 A845 2002 150.19'52'092--dc21 2002003980

New Directions Books are published for James Laughlin by New Directions Publishing Corporation, 80 Eighth Avenue, New York, NY 10011 .Xll • 1\1-.JH.. I L,ll'JV l"l\.I:lU.U

Figure 6. Kenneth Macpherson, H.D., and the cinema. Macpherson, by Ker­ INTRODUCTION Seymer, 1934. Logo for POOL Productions, Bryher's film and pub­ lishing company. H.D., probable photograph or film cut by Macpherson. H.D. and Macpherson on set of Borderline, 1929. A MOST LUSCIOUS Macpherson and camera. Cover uf Borderline pamphlet, by H.D. (Bryher Papers, Beinecke.) VERS-LIBRE RELATIONSHIP Figure 7. Menage at Villa Kenwin: Bryher, Perdita, H.D., and Kenneth Macpherson. Bryher, 1932. Macpherson and Perdita's cat Peter, early 1930s. Macpherson laughing, 1930s. Bryher and Perdita, mid-1930s. H.D., 1937-38. (Bryher and H.D. Papers.) Figure 8. Bryher with Hanns Sachs, Havelock Ellis, Robert McAlmon, and Robert Herring with his dogs. Sachs with Kenwin monkey, c. 1932. magine the drama. The performance. The play of two great minds. Two Bryher, 1930s. H.D.'s photograph of Ellis, n.d. McAlmon, 1920s' Herring, 1930s. (Bryher and H.D. Papers.) supple phrasemakers in the wordshop of the dim Viennese study dotted Figure 9: Freud and H.D. with Pups and Pusses-Yofi, Kenwin cats, the with antiquities from around the world. It was March of 1933 when chow pups, and Perdita a.k.a. Pup and sometimes Puss. H.D.'s pho­ H.D. first encountered the famous patriarch of psychoanalysis in the flesh. tograph of Freud and Yofi, intended for Tribute to Freud, but denied Statues symbolizing ancient forms of human desire, devotion, and fear permission to use in 1956. H.D., 1937-38. Photograph of Freud gazed out from the walls, desks, and tables of his rooms at 19 Berggasse. and chow pups intended for Kenwin, sent by Freud to Bryher, 1933. She greeted them in response to his welcome. In defiance of his warning, Perdita, Cornwall, 1935-36. (H.D. and Bryher Papers, Beinecke.) she nuzzled his fierce dog, the chow Yofi. Here, for three months in 1933 Figure 10. Elizabeth Bergner-H.D.'s postcards from Vienna to Bryher. Cards H.D. purchased in Vienna and sent to Bryher, 1933. (Bryher Papers, and then again for five weeks in 1934, the Poet and the Master performed Beinecke.) for each other. "We are having a most luscious sort of vers-libre relation­ Figure 11. Selections from ]'Accuse.', the British anti-Nazi pamphlet, May ship," H.D. writes to Kenneth Macpherson in April of 1933. Virtuosos, 1933. (Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.) each in their own medium. Their free-verse relationship found its own Figure 12. Signatures in the letters.ofH.D., Bryher, and Kenneth Macpherson. improvisational rhythms and artistry beyond the borders of conventional (H.D. and Bryher Papers, Beinecke.) analysis. It was luscious in the pleasure of adventure, in the richness of its Figure 13. H.D.'s letter to Bryher, December 22, 1932. (Bryher Papers, treasures, in the reciprocity of its gifts. Beinecke.) Figure 14. Sigmund Freud's letter ro H.D., probably June 1934. (H.D. Papers, Outside, Hitler's storm brewed. Confetti swastikas wafted through Beinecke.) the streets. Crowds formed. Bombs went off. Soldiers marched. The Opera Figure 15. Bryher's letter to H.D., with note from Kenneth .. Macpherson, House in the City of Mozart still staged the grand performances of passion, March 3, 1933. (H.D. Papers, Beinecke.) death, and dying. Vienna's famed coffeehouses still teemed with student Figure 16. Bryher's letter to H.D. from the Psycho-Analytical Congress at culture, and the cinos carried all the latest films. But it was the eve of holo­ Lucerne, Switzerland, August 30, 1934. (H.D. Papers, Beinecke.) caust. H.D. knew it and came to Freud to fortify herself against the war­ Photographs and images from the H.D. and Bryher Papers at Beinecke Rare terror she felt in her very bones would engulf the world once again. It was Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, are used by permission. scarcely fifteen years since the Armistice that ended the Great War. She would undo the cultural amnesia of the lost generation by digging

• xiii X1V + ANALYZING tK.tlUU through the shards of personal and social myth and memory. How else to an Illusion had laid the foundation for this final decade of creativity. With shore up these ruins against further loss? Things fall apart; the center can­ . Nazism and its virulent anti-Semitism on the rise, the future of his fami­ not hold. But inside Freud's study, the demons of civilization and its dis­ ly, people, movement, and nation was in jeopardy. He stubbornly refused contents met their match-not their defeat, mind you, but at the least, to leave, apparently believing that the Austrian strategy of rightist inde­ pendence could stave off the Anschluss. But his European disciples were their match. The grand patriarch of a revered and reviled movement, Freud was old, scattering for the unknown, especially the United States, a place he dis­ fragile, and frequently ill. But he remained vigorously eager in his pursuit liked and distrusted. In Germany, Jews were attacked in the streets and of the soul's secrets. He still maintained a nearly full roster of analysands. stripped of all rights. His books were hanned and burned in Berlin. His The habits of science required it, but so did his efforts to sustain his legacy was up for grabs. He might have hoped for a Nobel Prize in science expanding family financially and to keep the world and his own illness at to recognize the Darwinian reach of his achievements. But presciently, hay. Though screened by his daughter Anna and the most devoted of his what he got was the Goethe Prize for Literature, not long before H.D. disciples, he was still negotiating the treacherous waters of a conflict-rid­ came knocking at his door. den international psychoanalytical movement, riven as it was with his own H.D. was in the prime of life, widely known for her revolutionary role and sibling jealousy, theoretical division, and institutional competition. in forging a modern poetic idiom in rhythmically sparse free verse­ Fleeing ceremonies honoring his foundational status, he was nonetheless sculpted, precise, free of romantic slither. At forty-six, she had won prizes, pleased by his growing fame, acutely attuned to wayward disciples and published her Collected Poems, appeared alongside her companions in the mindful of old grudges. Psychoanalysis wavered between being an expand­ overthrow of Victorian and Edwardian mores and poetics, and carved out a ing revolutionary science and an ingrown fundamentalist sect. distinctive voice in poetry, prose, essay, and translation amidst the clamor Above all, the pessimistic old man with the lively mind, sharp wit, of manifesto modernism. Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, William Carlos and capacity for gracious kindness on the one hand and biting pettiness on Williams, Ford Maddox Ford, D. H. Lawrence, Richard Aldington, the other was still writing. One of his most perversely speculative fictions, Rebecca West, Violet Hunt, May Sinclair, Dorothy Richardson, Marianne Moses and Monotheism, a fable about the Egyptian origin of the Jews, was Moore, Robert McAlmon, Mina Loy, Mary Butts, John Cournos, Nancy much on his mind. And one of his bleakest clinical papers calling into Cunard, Paul Robeson, Gertrude Stein, Carl Van Vetchen, Langston question the efficacy of psychoanalytic cure-"Analysis Terminable and Hughes, Conrad Aiken, Edith Sitwell, Osbert Sitwell, W B. Pabst, Interminable"-was still to be written. What would become his most Katherine Burdekin, Havelock Ellis, Bryher-all these and more were part influential work in cultural theory, Civilization and Its Discontents, had just of her network-some intimately, some through loose affiliation. Her been published, warning against the dangers of too much societal repres­ immediate web of relations was the Other Bloomsbury, expanding out to sion of desire but affirming some degree of self-denial as the defining the expatriate and bohemian centers in Paris and Rome, New York, and necessity of the social contract. His New Introductory Lectures, where he Berlin. They were the crowd who tried to "make it new." returned to his early fascination with dreams and worked through new But H.D.'s success at forty-six was also her undoing. She felt she'd ideas on the occult and femininity, followed soon after. Why War?, the reached a vanishing point of sterility in her writing. The river of inspira­ "Open Letters" between Einstein and Freud, shows him thinking in the tion was clogged with the flotsam and jetsam of postwar angst and paral­ broadest of terms about the causes of human violence and brutality in the ~sis in the face of the violence to come. It was a borderline existence that context of utopian pacifism. His frontal attack on religion in The Future of e and a drifting generation led-not the narrow borderline of clinical

I diagnosis, but life on the edge, life with spiritual and emotional moorings to the conventions of femininity, though content to theorize and reify shattered by the aftershocks of a brutal war. An asbestos curtain dropped rather than challenge restricting and inequitable notions of women's between life before and life after The War, she said. Her shelves were full nature. ~j'-~!,ld.Qj,J}JJ.Q.!... Q~Ji~ye t~at women were capable of_genius! and with of unfinished manuscripts, above all the War Novel that she wrote, took the exception of weaving he did not think women had made any signifi­ apart, reassembled, but never seemed to finish. It's Penelope's web I'm cant contributions to the development -0f civilization. Intelligent women weaving, she said-woven, unwoven, and rewoven in a repetitive cycle of fascinated Freud, but he regarded them as mannish exceptions, not repre­ endless displacements and disguises that concealed and revealed the catas­ sentatives of their sex. ~_.D. was aware of her difference, but foE_ her this trophes of a generation through the repetitive stories of a wandering few. "gift" was woven into the fabric of womanhood, not distinct from it. Evenji\:Lj)oetry had reached a dead end. Her last volume, Red Roses for Of all people, how could it be Freud who helped restore the lava flow ------~--~,,·---~----~-----·-··------..... Bronze, was largely incantatory spells that didn't work, pitched in staccato of creativity? What does his transformative impact on H.D. tell us about lines that set the nerves on edge. him as a man, a thinker, a writer, a clinician, a teacher? About her as a By 1933, she was hardly writing at all. Yet to come, but nowhere on woman, a thinker, a writer, an analysand, a pupil? About psychoanalysis as the horizon, were the magisterial achievements of the 1940s and 1950s­ ·a theory, a practice, a movement, a cult? Even more broadly, what does especially her war Tr~dHelenJ~.FJJ;}jit2.)ong poerns.whosecosmic their collaboration teach about the endurance, agency, and creativity of scope,_p~ilosophic ambition, visionary spirit, pictorial pre~-~-~-i~_IJ., and r_J:iyth- women working within paradigms of thought and human relations that ---~--"--·-··------"------·" ---... ,_ ----.. ______------··-·~·---- ..... ------mic... m,us······i···c.,,P: _l_a._ce __ h·····e····r····as·····o-·n·_.e_o_.f ·t;h····e· cg.. r.e __ a····t;p···o··-·e:_ts _ :·i·n·····t··h····e·· -~~!:1:~---~Pi~--~E-~?~:io_~· And appear to be dead set against women's independence and achievement? not these poems emerged, 7 also lyric sequences, memoirs, novels, Conversely, what do we learn about the needs and desires of men who short stories, and translations that erupted with volcanic force as the bombs overtly disdain women but covertly draw on their gifts and perceptions for fell on London during the long months of rhe Battle of Britain and contin­ inspiration and pleasure? Such questions take on greater urgency as we ued to flow until her death in 1961. She would become the first woman ro remember Freud's failure with Ida Bauer-the woman he called Dora in a receive the Award of Merit Medal for Poetry from the American Academy case history that reads like a cross between a modernist novel, a cover-up of Arts and Letters in 1960. Generations of poets, writers, and readers­ for his own unacknowledged desires, and a brief for his supreme authority. men as well as women-would find enchantment and stimulation in this Unlike Dora, H.D. stayed. S!ie_could defyJ.lr"l1cl.w!iile re".etif1ghim, Slue_ work. Such a future would have been hard to imagine in 1933. could •[la~ him while being analy>;t;g, What, then, can we learn from .. ------' -~~--~-~-~~~,~-~"'"-"" ""' Somehow, H.D.'s .. sea,r1~-~ with Freud was the point of transition, the their nuanced contest of wills about the widening impact of feminism in f\i-nnel into which her memories of the past an~l'-asso'Ciati6ns <:)_f the present the early part of the twentieth century? poured and out of which she emerged. reb9.rn. "l:ll1t how? This is a great Freud and psychoanalysis have a curious status in the Age of Prozac. enigma. Though it."bored him, Freud needed and demanded loyalty from On the one hand, his claims to Science have been endlessly disputed and his associates and analysands. H.D. was a quietly defiant sort of woman, largely discarded by all but a few. Once the reigning form of psychothera­ not well suited to the sort of dire mastery and discipleship de rigueur in psy­ py, psychoanalysis continues today mainly in isolated enclaves, entirely choanalytic circles. At nearly six feet, she towered above him, and for all absent from many clinical training programs and practices, or present only her adulation of "papa" she understood their profound differences and left in token form. In the decades after his death in 1939, Freud's Talking Cure his ~')ven more certain of her .rightness than when she arrived. Freud's had increasingly evolved into a time-consuming and expensive proposition movement attracted streams of brilliant women resistant 1n their own lives available mainly ro the few. But by the 1960s, talking therapy moved well beyond the confines of classical psychoanalysis to include many competing psychoanalysis. They have become ordinary nouns of psychological and theories, faster therapies, and diverse clinical methods. The rise of psychi­ cultural discourse. Even more strikingly, Freud's stature in the history of atric social work, guidance counseling, and self-help movements continued ideas expands with each passing decade. Whether admired, used, adapted, the diffusion of therapeutic approaches. A stream of psychobabble has or attacked, his system of thought and his extraordinary corpus of writings increasingly permeated the mass media and popular culture as psychother­ are insistently there-an intellectual presence to be wrestled with in one way apy hit the mainstream and became widely available to different classes of or another. people. In its clinical form, psych6analysis became a world apart, firmly H.D. was presciently in touch with the man whose reputation as a entrenched in its very active but separate institutions and less integrated thinker, writer, and philosopher would increase over time-not only by into tbe expanding disciplines of psychiatry and psychology. reading his work as we must, but more directly by experiencing his And then, by the 1990s, along came the Drugs. The new chemistry of thought in the flesh. J'..!:: ..':"Jl"lJgr~(iQ!l \¥itg Freud reveals a great deal the brain has rendered older mind-body distinctions obsolete and recon­ .about t~~-S()cial history __ anc! theory of psychoanalysis. It surely belongs as figured the causes and possible cures for mental anguish and distress. The a vivid chapter of this specialized story and should be of great interest to spread of the Drug Cure has accomplished the medicalization of psychia­ historians and practitioners of psychoanalysis today. Moreover, Freud's try that Freud so opposed even as he anticipated its coming. In the United intuitively inspired artistry in conducting H.D.'s analysis suggests ways States, psychiatry has increasingly dispensed more drugs and less talking that talking therapies of various kinds can still creatively adapt aspects of therapy. Psychologists and other psychological health providers either his deep philosophy and capacity for reciprocal warmth in a healing rela­ work with or rail against this trend, but few today would argue for the tionship to the changing spirit and science of the times. Freud's thought classical analysis that prevailed in the 1940s and 1950s. Insurance restric­ does not have to be reduced to a dogma to be either swallowed or rejected tions and managed health care foster streamlined therapies. On this evolv­ in toto. Nor does H.D.'s experience with him have to be dismissed as too ing therapeutic landscape, H.D.'s collaboration with Freud appears like a exceptional for general relevance. Instead, their work together can be quaint vestige of ancient times. Curious? Yes. But relevant? Hardly. mined for veins of general psychological insight, for ways in which self­ On the other hand, Freud's reputation as one of the great thinkers of discovery and self-invention lie at the core of many therapeutic situations all times continues to expand. The more he is ignored or reviled as a sci­ as well as everyday life. entist and psychologist, the more his stature as a cultural theorist conver­ The greatest significance of their exchange, however, lies in the broad sant in the arts, literature, philosophy, history, religion, folklore, and cultural arena of the arts, philosophy, and humanities. What they accom­ archaeology grows. The less relevant his ideas and methods seem to experts plished together existed outside the ordinary channels of the psychoana­ in a clinical setting, the more mainstreamed many of his basic tenets have lytic establishment and remained until recently largely ignored by it. become. Repression, resistance, displacement, overdeterminationJ narcissism, nega­ H.D.'s Freud was not the patriarch whose approval could make or break a tion, complexes, repetition compulsion, wish-fulfillment, sadomasochism, Oedipus person's career in the competitive, back-biting world of psychoanalysts, cornplex, fantasy, free association, and above all, the unconscious itself-these where discipleships, desertions, and expulsions abounded. The Freud who and many other terms have entered the domain of common cultural liter­ could be authoritarian, petty, and even cruel in his dealings with defectors acy. Often the memory of their specific origins in Freud's work or the par­ and rivals within the movement was hardly in evidence with someone ticular spin he gave to concepts he adapted from others has faded. Like whose sphere of creativity lay elsewhere. kleenex or xerox, Freud's terms have lost their brand affiliation with him and As a H.D. was free in a sense to forge her own pathways of XX + ANALYZING FREUD H'JlKVUULllVl" • .AAl inspiration §..qd_ rf;sistance outside the limiting ruts of the factionalized are- So H.D. writes in her poem about Freud, "The Master," a lyric nar­ nas·---· of the psychoanalytical sgcii;:ties in which so many of Freud's dutiful rative she refused to publish in her lifetime for fear it would spoil her sorls and-daughi:eiSh;;e--b;~n caugh;·As··;-~oet)~h~---~ould--b~-- nourished in analysis. She returned again and again to write about her experience with th~'"-~tffiOSpher·e- Of quest, advent~r~, and Il\Yth-making. Fre~~~~-~.1:~Y was him, as if by telling it she could understand it better and sustain its pow­ not so much a scene .of cure as it wa~_ ~ __ _privileged place of memory, ass~ci­ erful effects. What she published about their exchange appeared in high­ ;_tilln, and storytelling-a place of joint adventure, a discipline ~f pleasu-re ly disguised or partial form. There's a hint of the Freud she defied in 'anapaififul dtllling dedicated to tecoveting the shatp-edged shards of life Trilogy's wise man, the Mage Kaspar who is startled by the insistent pres­ . ana-- reassembling them into coherent narratives. It was a studio With tWo ence of Mary Magdalene, then awed as he glimpses the radiance of the aftlsts at work, enjoying the hµnt for secrets, the search for deeper mean­ lost Atlantis in a fleck of her unseemly hair. Freud appears transfigured ings and endless connections.M. nd the result fot her' Psyche the butterfly, in the motherly form of an aged Theseus who warms Belen's cold feet and out of the cocoon, she would ~rite. For him? A window into the creative buffeted soul in the glowing embers of his kindly concern in Helen in process, a writer restored, a poet who could contribute to his legacy out­ Egypt. Advent, not published until 1973, is written in journal form and the confines of clinical practice. \ assembled from the lost notes she kept on her dreams and their conver­ J sations for the first three weeks of her analysis, before Freud forbid their And it was he himself, he who set me free continuation. Borrowing froffi the conventions of diary writing, Advent is to prophesy, more personally revealing than her other accounts, but still carefully composed, explaining events and people that she would not have had to he did not say elaborate for herself For public consumption, she writes most extensive­ "stay, ly about their collaboration in Tribute to Freud, which she first published my disciple," in serial form as "Writing on the Wall" in Life and Letters To-Day in the he did not say, final months of the war and then revised slightly for book form in 1956. "write, This memoir brilliantly reproduces the associational flow of her analysis, each word I say is sacred," the magic of the seance, and the warmth of affection unfolding amidst he did not say, "teach" the surrounding threats of fascism and war. But the nuanced and vivid he did not, say, portrait of their charged encounter is also very discreet, screened, and "heal mythologized, so much so that many have concluded from it that her ses­ or seal sions were "not real analysis." documents in my name," LETTERS HOME no, he was rather casual, H.D.'s letters home from Vienna fill the gap. They are the "leak" in the "we won't argue about that" analysis that Freud tried to plug in asking her not to prepare for their ses­ (he said) sions, write about them in her journal, or talk about them with her friends, "you are a poet." most especially her greatest intimate and steadfast companion, Bryher. In x:xii + ANALYZING FREUD INTRODUCTION • xxiii one of his early papers on clinical technique, Freud expounds on the dangers of the encounter between H.D. and Freud, one that subjects Freud as well as of preparation and any form of communication to others for the success of herself and her family to the spyglass of analysis. analysis. It was critical, he writes, for the analyst to prevent "everyone else H.D.'s letters from Vienna-particularly those to Bryher-are not from sharing in it, no matter how close to ~im they may be, or how inquis­ "literary" in the ordinary sense of the term. They are not self-consciously itive" (SE 12: 36). Otherwise, the treatment suffers "from a leak which lets composed, not laboratories for more finished products, not philosophical through precisely what is most valuable." H.D. obeyed his request that she meditations. "Don't count me in the epistolary school," H.D. writes to stop writing in her journal, but she continued to write daily letters to Bryher between trips to Vienna. "My slogan always has been 'a writer can't Bryhet throughout her two stays in Vienna. And not only to Bryher. She write letters.' I mean, one is depleated" (August 30, 1934). "De-pleated." also penned accounts and assessments of her analysis in letters to others, Characteristically, one of H.D.'s frequent misspellings shades impercepti­ like Havelock Ellis, Pound, Kenneth Macpherson, Robert Herring, Robert bly into the fun of punning. The starch of ordered creases is missing from McAlmon, Conrad Aiken, and Silvia Dobson. Ideally) these letters require these letters. The discipline to write, to report every day, is there. But blending with all her other memoirs and poems rooted in her encounter thankfully, the spontaneity of a writer thoroughly at home with words with Freud. Each is distinct, with its own unique and partial coloration in takes over. Both H.D. and Bryher knew the importance of these letters for the prism of the whole. history-they were carefully dated, filed, and saved for a later day. But like H.D.'s letters from Vienna are breezy, informal, irreverent, vibrant the tape recorder whose whirring seems forgotten in the best of oral histo­ with detail-full of a raw energy and sprawl elsewhere contained in her ries, the letters have the immediacy of a diary, the intimacy of profound sculpted poetry and polished prose. They revolve centrally around her ses­ bonds, and the sense of suspense that comes with an endpoint yet sions with Freud, but are never systematically limited to them. They are unknown. free-associational, woven haphazardly out of disparate threads that clash These qualities make H.D.'s letters from Vienna unique among all the and jostle each other in patterns that revel in the irregularities and accounts of analysis with Freud. What they reveal about Freud's clinical unmatched colors of everyday life. Hieratic dreams bump up against racy practice is far more vividly detailed than what appears in the brief recol­ gossip. Lyrical portraits of Freud accompany tidbits of what he says and lections of such Freud analysands as Helene Deutsch, Maryse Choisy, Joan does and glimpses of his family life. The memories of past companions like Riviere, and Roy Grinker. The more sustained reports of Smiley Blanton, D. H. Lawrence spill into fantasies of the present, then jar against reports Joseph Wortis, John Dorsey, Abram Kardiner, and the Wolf-Man lack the of the palpable fear of her Jewish friends. Hair-raising accounts of street spontaneity and intimacy ofH.D.'s accounts-not to mention the creative violence are jumbled on top of reports about food and sleep, operas and writer's narrative flair and craft. Blanton's Diary of My Analysis with films, cafe life and the lesbian who runs the pboto shop where H.D. buys Sigmund Freud is ploddingly systematic in its attempt to record every promotional stills of Bryher's current passion, the actress Elizabeth aspect of Freud's clinical technique, but evasive in its refusal to reveal the Bergner. Technical terms of Freud's psychoanalytic arsenal-entirely substance of the analysis. In editing his journal, his wife cut out any per­ absent from Tribute to Freud-pepper the letters with a semiprofessional sonal revelations that had made theirAvay past his own censor. Wortis was expertise and a strong commitment to the intellectual discipline of psy­ less controlled in his diary, but Fragment of an Analysis with Freud tells the choanalysis. The books and writing of a dedication to the exhilaration and story of an aborted analysis. It is an account of irritation, anger, and out­ despair of creative life are everywhere present. The letters don't tell the right rebellion. Neither man liked the other. The immediate bone of con­ complete story of analysis. But they reveal enough to suggest a rich narrative tention was Wortis's great admiration for Havelock Ellis, whom he H~i"-VLJU'-.,.l.LV.l'I T AAY XXIV • ANALY£1NG !'KhUlJ repeatedly brought into the analysis as a greater authority than Freud. ]arly illuminating insight. Bored, he could fall asleep or remain largely Dorsey also based An American Psychiatrist in Vienna, 1935-1937, and His silent, as he did with the two who would become his authorized transla­ Sigmund Freud on his journal, but his book is more a series of disconnected rors, James and Alix Strachey. He fed the hungry Rat Man and advised fragments of the people, ideas, and techntques he encountered than a nar­ Ruth Brunswick to divorce her first husband and marry Mark Brunswick, rative of his own unfolding analysis. News of Vienna's psychoanalytic com­ whom he then told to have an affair. Above all, he analyzed first himself munity dominates, with only occasional notes about something Freud said and then his own daughter, hardly the acts of an impartial, distanced, neu­ or what he told Freud. On the whole, these American analysts-in-training tral doctor. H.D.'s letters from Vienna provide vivid additional testimony produced accounts that carefully protected their privacy, hiding the inti­ to Freud's capacity to blend his humanity with a scientific devotion to mate details of dream and association and promoting their particular view truth in a form of nuanced, intuitively inspired artistry.1 of Freud's clinical didactics. Psychoanalysis in H.D.'s letters from Vienna is not a thing apart, her­ Abram Kardiner and the Wolf-Man were far more revealing about metically sealed from the rest of life as an intensely private affair between themselves, not to mention more interesting as writers. But their an analyst and an analysand. For Freud as much as for H.D., it's more than accounts came many years after their direct experience with Freud and a theory to be debated, a set of clinical practices to be codified and modi­ with a purpose that is intently autobiograpbicaL Much like Tribute to fied, a network of people to be gossiped about, wooed, or resisted. It is all Freud, they are memoirs written after the fact, through the lens of mem­ these things for sure. Most strikingly, however, the letters show how psy­ ory and the needs of their present selves. For all their fascinations, they choanalysis could thread its way through all of the strands of ordinary life lack the immediacy that daily letters can provide of an unfolding experi­ and the extraordinary events of history as Europe began to face the impli­ ence. Paul Roazen's in-depth interviews with a number of Freud's cations of Hitler's rise to power in]anuary of 193 3. H.D.'s letters stitch a analysands drawn upon in How Freud Worked and The Historiography of patchwork in which psychoanalysis as a fully lived experience is a part of Psychoanalysis provide other useful contexts for H.D., but the perceptions the full richness of life~from high to low, tragic to comic, prophetic to of others are not only affected by the passage of time but also by the par­ ironic, spiritual to mundane, beautiful to ugly. They document a social ticular concerns of Roazen himself. history of psychoanalysis that is unique in the spectrum of reminiscences, Unique as they are, H.D.'s letters from Vienna do more to confirm journals, memoirs, and biographies swirling around the legacy of Freud than contest the portrait of Freud as clinician that emerges from all the and the movement he founded. various reminiscences and observations of other analysands, colleagues, and As a window on psychoanalysis, H.D.'s letters from Vienna offer only biographers. Freud did not, for the most part, follow rhe rules for disen­ a partial view of course, one that reflects her particular interests, views, and gagement that he prescribed for others in his series of papers on the clini­ needs. Moreover, letters are always affected by the people to whom they are cal setting, most of which appeared in the teens. By no means was he the written. H.D.'s relationship with Bryher was a complex one defying all "blank screen" that came much later to be associated with "classical analy­ labels, existing apart from but thoroughly woven into the fabric of their sis" as promoted by establishment analysts like Kurt Eissler in the United For discussioos of Freud's actions as a clinician in the context of his papers on technique and later States. Particularly with analysands who engaged his curiosity, Freud was concepts of classical psychoanalysis, see especially Lohser and Newton; Fine, 499-5 33; Thompson; lively, directive, talkative, gossipy, emotional, anxious for news, and often Braatoy; Langs; Lipton; Friedman, "Against Discipleship" and "Vers Libre Relationship"; Ruitenbeek; Sachs, Freud; Breger, esp. 185-86, 269-88; Roazen, How Freud Worked. Many of these eager to offer advice about people's lives and families. Excited, he would suggest that Freud's papers on technique foster more flexibility than the later creators of"classical" pound the couch, rub his hands, or light up a cigar to celebrate a particu- analytic technique have acknowledged. Xll.Vl • .lU~1'.LIL..H~\J I'J:\-J_:,UlJ lNTRUDUCTION • XXV11

lives with others. Bryher was a knowledgeable and passionate advocate of affection between the two. 2 Carefully saved, Freud's nineteen letters to psychoanalysis as a panacea for the evils of civilization. She was heavily Bryher have never been published. Their letters to him, along with those involved in the movement itself, as analysand, analyst-in-training, and of their daughter, Perdita, have not survived. At the suggestion of her ana­ patron. The Nazi threat to the Jewish analysts who made up the bulk of lyst, Hanns Sachs, Bryher wrote Freud in the fall of 1932 describing H.D., the European psychoanalytic community• mobilized her to support the in hopes of arranging some sessions. Unfortunately, that letter and all the migration and exile of countless refugees. H.D. was often her conduit to others-a number of which must have been significantly substantive­ get news of the political situation to a grateful Freud. Bryher was paying probably disappeared along with the many papers Freud had to leave the bills for H.D.'s trips to Vienna, along with those of many other friends behind when he fled Vienna in 1938. she herded into the psychoanalytic fold. H.D.'s letters back home Freud may also have written notes on H.D. in keeping with the prac­ returned Bryher's gift as symbolic payment of sorts. Certainly, they were tice Sachs describes in his tribute, Freud: Master and Friend. He recounts affected by what Bryher wanted or was able to hear. They need to be read how Freud often scribbled brief notes during sessions with people who par­ in the context of the unusual bond between the women. For this reason, ticularly interested him, then wrote up the more important parts in coher­ this volume includes a substantial number of letters from Bryher to H.D. ent narratives at the end of each week. What a treasure such notes would Every letter H.D. wrote to Bryher from Vienna appears in this collection, be, if he actually kept them on H.D.! To juxtapose what each great writer along with a selection of her letters before, between, and after her analy­ said about the other would be a delicious feast of words indeed. Whatever sis with Freud. might have existed, nothing survived the flight to Britain. His daughter As H.D.'s lifeline to the ordinary, Bryher kept up a constant stream of Anna and the Princess, Marie Bonaparte, apparently made the decisions on humorous reports on daily life-" newsreels," she called them-of family what to save and destroy in the frantic, terrifying hours just before their and friends, monkeys and cats, books and magazines, politics and money, departure.3 Could the destruction of H.D. material in Freud's papers have art and film. Her steadily ironic, matter-of-fact, bossy voice supported been intentional, that is, an all too convenient necessity where some choice H.D. in the headier dimensions of isolated spiritual adventure in Vienna. had to be made? Evidence exists of a major fight between Anna and Bryher Their letters back and forth present a portrait, frozen in time and lan­ at the 1938 International Psycho-Analytical Congress in Paris and a sub­ guage, oflove and loyalty between women that fed the fires of H.D.'s cre­ sequent falling out between the two who had been allies. Bryher further ativity and Bryher's activism. In turn, H.D.'s letters about analysis to told Norman Holmes Pearson that Anna was jealous of Freud's pleasure in others in their circle bring into focus how much her relationship with H.D. It is certainly possible that personal factors entered the decision to Bryher served as hidden censor, shaping their correspondence. With less destroy the materials related to H.D. and Bryher in Freud's possession. frequency, but with considerable significance, H.D. wrote about her life in Stranger things have happened in the emotionally entangled relations of Vienna differently to friends like Ellis, Macpherson, McAlmon, Aiken, and those in Freud's circle. Silvia Dobson. A selection of her letters to others are included in this vol­ 2 Norman Holmes Pearson, H.D.'s executor, asked Ernst Freud for permission to include all of his ume to enhance a comparative perspective. father's letters in the 1956 edition of Trib11te to Frettd. But Ernst allowed only nine ro be included, And what of Freud himself? H.D. kept the twenty-four letters he saying the others were either "unimportant" or "too personal." He also added, "By the way, I remember H.D.'s article from Life and Letters and I cannot fully share your enthusiasm about it" wrote to her in a shoebox that survived the bombings of London and (Letter to Pearson, April 4, 1956). turned up nnexpectedly in the 1950s as she was preparing Tribute to Freud. 3 See Jones, Lifa 3: 223., Elisabeth Young-Bruehl writes that Freud went through his papers with Anna and the Princess to decide what to keep, but provides no evidence for his presence (228). Other Nine of those letters appeared in its pages, suggesting great warmth and unfortunate destructions of materials related to H.D. include Aldington's burning of her correspon­ dence with him and Lawrence and her father's disposal of her early correspondence with Pound. )\._)\._VH.l • .tH"lil..LIL..li"IV !:'J:\.1'1JLJ ll"llKULJULllUN + XX1X

LIVES: H.D. AND BRYHER of Victorian feminine domesticity and duty. In London, she could develop the untamed, sparse spirit of her poetry. There she fell in love with Richard Two more different companions could scarcely be imagined. The one was Aldington, an aspiring poet and son of an English publican, whom she tall, elusive, hauntingly beautiful-a cp.arismatic muse figure for many married in 1913. And there, at Pound's suggestion, she adopted her ini­ prominent artists. The other was short, feisty, and piercingly direct-a tials as her penname, leaving behind the hidden mockery she felt in her Napoleon of a woman. They met in July of 1918 in Cornwall, when the surname-Do-little-and taking up the androgynous mask of an identity young admirer ofH.D.'s Sea Garden came to call, not knowing whether the beyond gender. In the avant-garde little magazines of London, New York, person behind the poet's enigmatic initials was a man or a woman. They and Chicago, "H.D." became known as the "perfect imagist," the enig­ lived together on and off from 1919 until 1946 and remained in daily con­ matic presence behind the highly touted Sea Garden, published in the mid­ tact until H.D.'s death in 1961, bonded by a strong love and need for each dle of World War I. other, by their dedication to their creative work, and by their emotional The Great War shattered the personal lives of a generation and set the ties to Perdita, H.D.'s natural and Bryher's adopted daughter. Whenever world adrift, the heart of darkness within European civilization unveiled they were apart, they wrote to each other every day, sometimes several for the astute to see. H.D. suffered intensely during the war, epitomizing times a day-with a morning cigarette, afternoon tea, or over late evening the particular agony and loss of many on the Home Front. In 1915, she reflections. lost her baby girl in a stillbirth brought on, she believed, by the harsh Born in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, in 1886, Hilda Doolittle was the way she heard about the sinking of the Lusitania, the cruelty of the head daughter of a distinguished professor of astronomy and a Moravian mother nurse who chastised her for taking beds needed by soldiers, and the gifted in the arts. She grew up in the tightly knit Moravian community of sounds everywhere of marching feet. Facing the draft, Aldington began a Bethlehem, where her family had been prominent teachers and musicians series of affairs, finally enlisted in 1916, and came home from the front since the cosmopolitan, persecuted refugees left Eastern Europe and founded with death in his breath and sex on his mind. H.D. lost her cerebrally the city in the 1700s. When she was about ten, her father left Lehigh intense friendship with Lawrence after she began, with Aldington's University to become director of the Flower Observatory near encouragement, an affair with the music critic Cecil Gray that ended with Philadelphia. H.D. attended Quaker schools and met the university stu­ her unexpected pregnancy. Her favorite brother, Gilbert, died soon after dent Ezra Pound when she was fifteen, starting a friendship shadowed by in France. Aldington alternately railed against the coming child and a hovering and equally attracted William Carlos Williams. From 1904 promised to care for them both, torn between his love for H.D. and rhe until 1910, she and the excitingly iconoclastic Pound read and wrote poet­ American beauty Dorothy Yorke. Her father died suddenly, of shock she ry together, and fell in and out of love. They were engaged for a time, a believed, just as she came down with the deadly flu that would kill forty relationship broken by her family's disapproval, Pound's other amours and million in 1919. Near death with double pneumonia, somehow she and travels to Europe, and her falling in love with a woman she considered a the baby survived, only to face Aldington's particularly brutal final rejec­ twin soul, Frances Gregg, also an aspiring poet. tion, brought on no doubt by his own shell shock and suffering in the In 1911, H.D. left the United States for France and England with trenches of France. "If I had been a little maladjusted or even mildy Gregg and returned only four times over the next fifty years, although her deranged," H.D. would later write wryly in Tribute to Freud, "it would identification as an American remained profound throughout her life. In have been no small wonder" (41). Europe, H.D. found freedom from what she called the "sheltered garden" Bryher's love and care saved H.D.'s life during her severe illness and XXX + ANALYL.ING l'K.l:lUU 11~ 1 KUUUl, I JUN + XXXl gradual recovery. In turn, H.D. provided the rebellious, intelligent daugh­ Macpherson of cinema's first art journal, Close Up. Her book Film Problems ter of England's wealthiest shipowner, Sir John Ellerman, with a reason to in Soviet Russia gave her room to blend her interests in politics and art live and a respectable home away from the Ellerman mansion at stuffy, form. It wasn't until after World War II that she began to write histori­ posh South Audley Street. Bryher was. born illegitimately as Winifred cal novels like Beowulf and Roman Wall and memoirs like The Days of Mars Ellerman in 1894 to a self-made man whose knighthood and rise to great and The Heart to Artemis. wealth was a result of his role in the Great War. Wishing for a life of Bryher and H.D. found in silent film the perfect blend of modern adventure as a boy at sea, Bryher was suicidal when she met H.D., and technology and the flickering light that could project the inner subjectiv­ with her encouragement decided to become a writer. She took the name of ity of the soul and the borderline existence of shattered societies in the Bryher, a wild Scilly Isle off the coast of Cornwall, to symbolize her dream postwar period. Through the great German director, G. W. Pabst, Bryher of escape from the obligations of her powerful family. She moved into a flat met Hanns Sachs in 1927 and added intense involvement in the world of with H.D. and then traveled widely with her in the 1920s-the Scilly psychoanalysis to her enthusiasms. H.D. had heard of Freud's work from Isles, Greece, Corfu, the United States, Egypt, Paris, Italy, Turkey, Berlin, Pound in the prewar period. But it was Havelock Ellis who had introduced and Switzerland. Bryher's two marriages of convenience-first to Robert the women more substantively to psychoanalysis right after the war. McAlmon (1921~27) and then to Kenneth Macpherson (1927-48)­ Bryher had subscribed to the International journal of Psycho-Analysis since screened the relationship of the two women and offered her the status of a the early twenties and was already well versed in the field by the time she married woman. met Freud briefly in 1927 and began analysis with Sachs the year after­ During the '20s, H.D. and Bryher dedicated themselves to their cre­ ward. Bryher quickly became convinced that neurosis blocked the artistic ative work. H.D.'s output was both innovative and prodigious as she talents of many in her circle, and for years she put enormous pressure on sought new directions in fiction, essay, verse drama, translation, and poet­ her friends and acquaintances to sign on to the new movement she believed ry itself. Haunted by the ghosts of the war at home and abroad, she was to be the cure-all for the modern age. For herself, she was forever loyal to looking for a way to express the longing for spirit, connection, and art in Sachs. She continued her analysis with him whenever they met, well past what she would later call in the opening lines of her war novel, Bid Me to his flight from Berlin to Boston in 1932. In their frequent visits, she would Live (A Madrigal), "the cosmic, comic, crucifying times of history." She take a "spot of analysis," and for a time she regarded their work as a train­ also had to write herself out of the cage of perfect imagism, beyond the ing analysis that would lead to her acquiring the authorization to be an crystalline gems of whirling sea-pines, the kind of poems she told Pearson analyst herself. she could "turn out by the barrel." Palimpsest, published in 1926, was per­ haps the best known of these new published works, a novel whose exper­ THE MENAGE iments with stream of consciousness resonate with Joyce, Woolf, Katherine Mansfield, and Dorothy Richardson. Bryher created something Psychoanalysis may center on the individual, but behind every person of a modest niche for herself in the literary world by her two autobio­ lurks a whole family constellation. "The family romance," Freud calls it in graphical novels, Development and Two Selves, her advocacy of educational one of his papers-there is a story of entangled desires behind fragments reform, and her patronage of McAlmon's Contact Editions, which pub­ of association in the scene of retellings. As Freud shifted through his parts lished many of the modernist luminaries, including Joyce, Stein, and in the drama of transference with H.D.-from mother to father-there Hemingway. Although she refused the title, she was in effect coeditor with was another family that captured his imagination. That was the unusual INTRODUCTION • :x::xxiii menage in which H.D. lived, a family so different from what his own at of the menage throughout H.D.'s analysis. By 1935, Macpherson had least appeared to be, but perhaps not so different from the roiling emotions moved on, residing for months at a time on his own in New York. beneath the surface of the man who had tantalizingly revealed and con­ Deeply hurt by his affairs, H.D. had brief flings with men and at least cealed his own neuroses and mixed desires in the analysis of his dreams in one other woman, while Bryher's lesbian identification at this point carried The Interpretation of Dreams. H.D.'s ~ddly configured family and all the her into a fantastical courtship with the androgynous film star Elizabeth loves of her adult life clearly fascinated him-and not just as symbolic Bergner, almost as famous in her day as Marlene Dietrich and Greta Garbo replays of earlier desires, but for themselves. In some sense, what she rep­ for appearing fey and feminine ~n one scene, then alluring in pants in resented was the breakup of the patriarchal nuclear family, rhe blending of another. It was not an easy world for their teenage daughter Perdita to sexual and gender identities, and the growing recognition of the full spec­ grow up in-a blended family with a vengeance, stimulating for sure, but trum of desires that has come to characterize the changing landscape of hardly offering much stability. That she did so with such grace and family life in the twenty-first century. humanity is a testament to her strength and inner gifts, as well as to the "The Macphersons are almost MYSELF," H.D. writes to Havelock love that bonded the family together in spite of its melodramatic vicissi­ Ellis, her protoconfessor, in 1928. "We seem to be a composite beast tudes. Freud got to know them all and wove his life into theirs, as gifts and with three faces." This is a somewhat bleak Shakespearean echo of Iago's letters made their way back and forth between London, Vienna, and Villa notorious characterization of love-making as a beast with two backs. But Kenwin in Switzerland. by 1928, H.D., Bryher, and Macpherson had already been living in a The changing nature of their intimacy over the years-its riffs, menage a trois that defied simple categories. H.D. and Bryher had most silences, and hard edges along with its pleasures, stimulations, and com­ likely been lovers in the early period of their relationship, but in spite of forts-never challenged the fundamental interdependence of H.D. and the profundity of their bond, tbe sexual phase of their relationship had Bryher. As these letters show, each woman anchored the other in the realm almost definitely faded when H.D. and Macpherson became lovers in she needed to pursue her creative life. Bryher's constant gift-giving to 1926. In 1927, Bryher divorced McAlmon, married Macpherson, and artists originated partially in her own insecurity as a writer. She was self­ legally adopted Perdita-in part to protect the affair, in part to hold on effacing about her work, in spite of H.D. 's constant encouragement. to H.D. Aldington was long gone from her life, with only occasional Money gave her a place, a role in the service of art, particularly at the altar contact when he left Yorke for Brigit Patmore in 1928. Gray too had dis­ ofH.D.'s creativity. As vestal virgin guarding H.D.'s flame, she could par­ appeared, refusing to support or even meet his daughter. And then, after take of its light. Hearing daily about H.D.'s analysis with Freud, she could H.D. had an abortion in Berlin at age forty-three, the much younger experience vicariously the kind of visionary life she in fact never lived. Macpherson started roving. His pet name in the family-Rover-was H.D., in turn, could bask in the light of the ordinary, the material, the more than a joke. This time, it wasn't women like Frances Gregg-a ironic, by reading Bryher's seriocomic sagas of life at Villa Kenwin. probable lover before 1926-that drew his eye, bur rather men-main­ Bryher's brusquely maternal, common-sense letters kept H.D.'s reveries ly artists and musicians in the racially mixed world of the Harlem tied to the concrete world, kept her from going off the deep end. Perdita Renaissance and the Mediterranean mecca of off-beat life, Capri. His understood their difference and symbiosis perfectly. She said to H.D., bisexual orientation in the early 1930s became more exclusively homo­ "Fido cuts the knots, but you untangle them. "4 sexual by the end of 1932, when he acquired a new lover, the tubercular youth from Barbados, David Wickham, who hovered in the background 4 H.D., Letter to Bryher, April 11, 1936. lUUUV • .tl.Nl\.LXL.J:l'l\J t'.lUlULJ INTRODUCTION + XXXV

H.D.'S "MIXED ANALYSIS" H.D. believed that what she called a "mixed analysis" with Chadwick, Sachs, and Freud gave her "an added sense of values-as if one had been "It is a long and slimy process, this of un-UNKing the UNK ot de-bunk­ having music lessons, first with a good teacher, then with a master, then ing the junk," H.D. writes Btyher (M~y 2, 1936). Although her sessions with a genius."5 But her "lessons" did not end with Freud. Instead, with with Freud were clearly a world apart from the others, he was not her only his blessing, H.D. began analysis in October 1935 with Walter Schmide­ analyst. Her experience with him comes more sharply into focus in the berg, the young Austrian analyst and husband of Melitta Schmideberg, context of her other encounters. Macpherson's homosexual affairs and daughter of Anna Freud's arch enemy, Melanie Klein. Nicknamed in their breakdown in 1931 precipitated H.D.'s plunge into analysis with the circle Bear or Polar Bear, Schmideberg was seeing not only H.D., but also English analyst Macy Chadwick of Tavistock Square, London, in 1931. In Macpherson, Robert Herring, Silvia Dobson, and later, Perdita. twenty-four sessions between April 13 and July 6, H.D. met with Comparing him to Freud, H.D. writes Bryher that he "is really so nice and Chadwick, who was a personal friend and member of her circle. Soon after, reliable, more like a feather-bed than gem-like flame, but for that, cozy she saw Sachs for five sessions held in Berlin and Prague in late November and always helpful, and makes us all laugh so." With Freud, she had and December of 1931. Sachs recommended that she go directly to the sketched in the framework; with Schmideberg, she filled in the gaps. Freud Master himself and arranged for her sessions with Freud to begin as soon "was like a bar of radium at the back of my head," while the Bear was "so as possible. While waiting to hear from Freud in the fall of 1932, H.D. good at re-threading and re-stitching" that she could feel "well knitted.' began keeping dream records, writing preparatory notes, and doing inten­ By May of 1937, H.D. reports to Bryher that Schmideberg considered her sive reading in Bryher's superb collection of psychoanalytic literature. Her "graduated," that she could always return for an "occasional 'hour'" if familiarity with psychoanalysis even in the 1920s was already evident in "something out-of-the-way crops up," but that formal analysis was no her roman a clef, HER, about the triangulated romances of herself, Gregg, longer necessary. Aldington's sudden demand for a divorce in 193 7 led her and Pound in 1910, a novel peppered with psychoanalytic concepts and back to occasional talks with the comforting Bear, who helped her through terms that she completed in 1927 but suppressed until after her death, the period of crisis until the divorce became final in July of 1938. when it was published as HERmione (1981). Years later, after the strain of living through World War II in London Moreover, Bryher's frequent residence in Berlin and H.D.'s less common with the outpouring of creativity that accompanied the rain of bombs, visits had included attending various lectures in the cross-over world of cine­ H.D. had the most serious mental breakdown of her life. Experiencing her ma and psychoanalysis. H.D. clearly felt that the chance to work with Freud first psychotic break with reality, she believed the Third World War had required even more serious and sustained preparation. To help Freud himself begun with bombs exploding in her back yard, and she tore out the per­ to prepare, she sent him several of her books, and an American brought him sonal bookplates in many of her books, slashing at her very identity in so a copy of Palimpsest. Delayed by his illness, their sessions began on March 1, doing. With the help of the British analyst Edward Glover, Bryher flew 1933, and were interrupted a few days before their contracted end when H.D. H.D. to Klinik Dr. Brunner in Ktisnacht, near Zurich, Switzerland, where got caught up in a bombing incident on a tram on June 12th, during a peri­ she remained for several months in 1946 until, as she later writes, "I got od of particularly virulent street violence in Vienna. She returned for another

five weeks, from October 30th to December 2nd, 1934, after which Freud 5 letter to Conrad Aiken, September 23 or 30?, 1933. pronounced her analysis "finished" and marked its completion with a parting 6 H.D.'s statements about Freud and Schmideberg come from letters to Bryher, March 24, 1936, August 20, 1933, May 9, 1936. See Edmunds for a discussion of Schmideberg's use of Kleinian gift of a branch from an orange tree, a golden bough of fertile promise. concepts in H.D.'s analysis. A.11..11..Vl • IH,..l\LILll"LT J:'l\.DUU 1.N l'KUlJUCTlON + XXXVU well" in the "bee-hive."7 After breaking her hip in 1953, she returned to every discovery, the romance of scientific quest. Her reflection many years Kiisnacht, where she made her home at Dr. Brunner's clinic, not as a psy­ later captures Freud's pleasure in the living collaboration of analysis: "Of chiatric patient but as a resident guest. Thomas Mann and Carl Jung lived course, as the Professor said, 'There is always something new to find out.' up the street, but our of loyalty to ~reud she refused to meet Jung. I felt that he was speaking for himself (an informal moment; as I was about Kiisnacht was her Magic Mountain, she reflects in her memoir, to leave). It was almost as if something I had said was new, that he even felt Compassionate Friendship. There she had informal "tea sessions" with the that I was a new experience. He must have thought the same of everyone, existentialist analyst Erich Heydt from 1953 through 1960. An erudite but I felt his personal delight, I was new. Everyone else was new. After the man thoroughly versed in the arts, Heydt had met Pound at St. Elizabeths. years and years of patient plodding research, it was all new." 10 He played an important role as stimulant and sounding board for H.D.'s H.D.'s response to Freud's call is no mere idealization of the analyst by final creative outpouring. In what she called a "semi-professional relation­ an analysand still caught in the snares of the transference. Rather, it repre­ ship," she helped Heydt with some of the patients and felt at home alter­ sents an uncannily prescient anticipation of the realms of Freud's most last­ nating between the communal life of the sanitarium and the sanctum of ing influence. For sure, as a man whose ambitions lay in the arena of her room, where she read, dreamed, and wrote. B Three times she made the science, he would have been uncomfortable with her characterization of trip back home to the United States, to enjoy the births of two grandchil­ him as alchemist or artist. But whatever the disputed status of his work as dren, see the exhibition of her work at Yale University, and receive her science, Freud's broadest influence lies in the pathways he developed for Award of Merit Medal in the company of many distinguished writers. exploring the domains of the human psyche or soul that are not fully Through letters, she remained in close touch with scores of friends and known, rationally ideurifiable, or controllable-whether existent on a per­ renewed warm relations with Pound and Aldington. During the last sonal level or across the larger landscapes of history. He called this dimen­ decade of her life, Switzerland became a stable center for the wandering sion of humanity simply, "the unconscious." He was fond of crediting soul of the visionary poet. Freud's wish that H.D. would fulfill her drive to artists and storytellers with the earliest and most vivid discoveries of this create came true, as H.D.'s great works of the 1950s emerged-Helen in hidden layer and thought of himself as their follower, systematizing in the Eygpt, Winter Love, End to Torment, Hermetic Definition, along with a host of language of science their anarchic acts of imagination and daydreaming. other poems, novels, memoirs, and journals. As a vigorous and gifted writer himself, he created a multi-faceted para­ For H.D., Freud remained the "Artist," "the Maestro," the "Master," digm for interpreting personal and social memory, cultural myth, and the the "Professor," the "midwife to the soul," the alchemist sf remarkable"-the acts and artifacts of the human imagination. "My discoveries are not pri­ pioneering thinker who paved the way for all the other analysts with marily a heal-all," Freud told H.D. "My discoveries are a basis for a very whom she engaged in "un-UNKing the UNK or de-bunking the junk."9 grave philosophy."11 Above all, he made her feel the excitement of the chase, the newness of Desire, terror, anguish, joy, despair, hope, hate, envy, aggression, com­ passion, and love are the subjects of this "very grave philosophy." These are 7 CompaJsionate Friendship 110. the feelings that bring together and tear apart individuals, families, soci­ 8 See Erich Heydt's description of her residencies at Klinik Dr. Brunner in "Corrections" and H.D.'s accoWltS in her unpublished memoirs Compassionate Friendship and Thorn Thir.:ket, her novel Magir.: eties, and nations. H.D. and Freud met at a time when the catastrophic and Mirror, and her journal "Hirslanden Notebooks." In CompaSJionate Friendship, she refers to her rela­ genocidal potential for violence of these emotions was beginning to crest for tionship with Heydt as "colleagial" and "semi-professional" (1, 8, 106). 9 See particularly Advent (116-17) and Compassionate Friendship (29, 31, passim) for H.D.'s reflections 10 H.D., HN 2:15. on the imporrance of Freud for her later work and her use of terms like alrhemiJt and sianr.:e in ref­ 11 H.D., TF 18. erence to him. AA.lt.\l.LH T l'l.l,.l'l.Ll£,ll"V J:K.CU.LJ yet another crashing wave of human brutality. H.D. did not seek a cure­ EDITORIAL all, a heal-all, or a feel-good therapy from Freud. What she found in his STATEMENT presence, warm affection, and very grave philosophy was a way to endure, to seek understanding, and to keep the :pirit alive in the face of death. She knew that she did not have to accept all his theories. "The Professor was not always right," she repeats again and again in her two-edged Tribute to Freud. Her refrain reveals the streak of resistance underlying the success of their collaboration. Given her independence of intellect and spirit, Freud's analysis of H.D. enabled her analysis of both him and herself. His gift to later generations lay not so much in the doctrine of psychoanalysis but in the persistence and processes of his search. He taught that every fragment H.D.'s analysis with Freud is the centerpiece of this selection of letters of the psyche, every shard of a civilization has meaning, is indeed a link in taken mostly from the vast archive of the H.D. Papers and the Bryher an endless chain of meanings, a web of connections that need only be Papers at rhe Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library ar Yale touched to set the whole aquiver. It was Freud as the master of hermeneu­ University. The spotlight on H.D. and Freud shares the stage with a num­ tics whom she met in Vienna, the Professor who could teach her to do on ber of subplots encompassing art, politics, psychoanalysis, and the general her own through her writing what they had done together in their talk. history of the times. The letters reveal rhe interplay berween H.D. and This is rheir joint legacy. Bryher, her main correspondent about her analysis with Freud. The selec­ tion outlines as well Bryher's thorough engagement in the drama and social history of psychoanalysis during the period when Nazi policies and pogroms began to drive so many analysts into exile. The selection also fol­ lows the story of H.D.'s writing block and the release from its confines, which she credited to her work with Freud. Adding perspective to H.D.'s main accounts of analysis in Vienna to Bryher are a series of letters she wrote to others about her experience. A thearrical metaphor-inspired by the way a Freudian analysis is a form of collaborative drama and play-provides the shaping motif for the selection and clustering of letters. I have likened the letters to a two-act play preceded by a prologue, separated by an interval, and followed by an epilogue. The Prologue includes a selection of letters from and to H.D. or Bryher that have some bearing on H.D.'s analysis in the four months prior to her journey to Vienna at the end of February 1933. Act 1 includes the complete correspondence from H.D. to Bryher during her initial analysis with Freud--every letter and all of every letter from March 1 through June 15, 1933. So that readers can see how the relationship of the women plays

+ xxxix EDITORIAL STATEMENT + xb out in their daily correspondence, Act 1 also includes all of Bryher's letters Throughout, the desire to let the story of H.D.'s analysis with Freud to H.D., without deletion, from March 1 to March 27, 1933. Thereafter, unfold for the reader in all its personal, aesthetic, and historical ramifica­ Bryher's letters have been selected and excerpted to maintain the focus of tions has shaped the principle of selection. As in a play that one reads, the the volume on H.D.'s analysis and to save space. Between the Acts-cov­ evidence of stage direction-the controlling hand of the editor-is ering the interval between June 15, i933, and her return to Vienna on unabashedly present. I have attempted to meet the highest possible stan­ October 28, 1934-contains a selection of letters to and from H.D. or dards of scholarly accuracy while remaining aware that editing always Bryher that deal with the entanglements of psychoanalysis, creative work, involves acts of interpretation. Commentaries on the volume's major sec­ and their familial menage. Act 2 presents every letter in full that H.D. tions and each grouping of letters provide biographical, historical, aes­ wrote to Bryher during her second trip to Vienna from October 29 thetic, and theoretical contexts for the letters that follow-in part as through December 2, 1934. Also included are selected letters from and to interpretive story-essays in themselves, in part as annotation that aims to H.D. from friends and excerpts from many of the daily letters Bryher minimize footnotes. To facilitate ease of reading, I have divided the letters wrote to her. The Epilogue-spanning the departure from Vienna on in Act I into weekly clusters, the letters in Between the Acts into annual December 2, 1934, to Freud's congratulatory note on the publication of clusters, and the letters in Act 2 into two groups. An introduction pre­ Euripides' Ion in February 1937-includes excerpts from H.D.'s letters to cedes each grouping of letters to clarify various contexts. Footnotes others that give a flavor of her postpartum separation from Freud and its throughout provide relevant information. The Cast of Characters explains related impact on her creative productivity. A Coda provides a final, brief the pet names and abbreviations H.D. and Bryher used for many people commentary on H.D. and Freud, to bring the volume to a close. and things. The Biographical Notes summarize important information The volume also includes a selection of the twenty-four letters that about frequently mentioned people or those with particular importance for Freud wrote to H.D. and the nineteen letters he wrote to Bryher. H.D .' s analysis. Unfortunately, their letters to him did not survive the destruction of many In reproducing the letters themselves, I have tried to balance the desire of his papers during his flight from Vienna in 1938. Kenneth for pleasurable reading in sequence with the demands of scholarly integri­ Macpherson-Bryher's husband and H.D.'s former lover-hovers in the ty, the conventions of print media, and the requirements of readers who dip background, sometimes present, sometimes absent as writer or reader in into the book for specialized needs. The letters, of course, do not look like the exchange of letters between the two women. And when Bryher visited the originals. H.D.'s idiosyncratic typing is double-spaced and messy, Vienna, Bryher's letters to Macpherson almost fill the gap in H.D.'s daily instantly recognizable as her own-full of spaces, dots, dashes, typos, inser­ accounts, providing some clues to the scene in Vienna. H.D. and Bryher tions, marginalia, corrections, odd spellings, dubious paragraphing, shift­ also corresponded with many friends in letters that interweave the threads ing ribbon colors for emphasis or thrift, uneven returns, line jumping, and of psychoanalysis, the arts, love, and their unusual family. To reflect the a variety of cat signatures. Bryher's letters are predictably neat, tightly con­ larger web of entanglements and negotiation, I have included a selection trolled, contained. Even her sketches are tiny. Macpherson frequently pig­ of H.D.'s letters to Havelock Ellis, Kenneth Macpherson, Robert gybacked onto Bryher's letters, his flourishing scrawl expressively McAlmon, Ezra Pound, Conrad Aiken, George Plank, and Silvia Dobson; supplemented by humorous sketches. Freud's letters-whether in German Bryher's letters to Macpherson, Robert Herring, and Aiken; Macpherson's or English-are written in a strong hand with thick ink, commanding the letters to H.D. and Bryher; letters of Robert McAlmon and Aiken to H.D.; page and reader, belying the fragility of his health. The figures featuring and letters of Aiken and Anna Freud to Bryher. sample letters give a feel for the signature "look" of the correspondents. !ll.Jl 1Vll..Jll_L~111_1.J<.MJ<.N 1 • X.1111 11...11.l • ll_l'\Jll_LIL.1.NlJ t•KbUU

In editing the letters, I have standardized the irregularities of the orig­ I have silently corrected what I determine to be clear typing mistakes, inal typescripts and manuscripts. Paragraph indentations, addresses, dates, but I have not corrected what look like genuine spelling and punctuation salutations, and sign-offs have been regularized. The addresses provided aberrations. Readers may wince at times (I do). No doubt these errors look reflect stamped stationary, what appea:s on the letter, or in cases with no worse in print. But I have left them as they are because, especially for address the location editorially indicated in brackets. I have used the con­ H.D., they indicate a more fluid relation to language in her epistolary ventional indentation to mark the shift in paragraph for all letters, which, mode than in her published work. The chiseled perfection of her crisp however, does not do justice to H.D.'s letters. The blocking of prose into poetic lines is greatly at odds with the loose, chaotic look of her typed let­ paragraphs clearly delineated by indentation is too crude an indicator for ters. Words are not so much consistently misspelled as they are different­ her use of spatial rhythm to mark the change or interconnectedness of ly spelled, as if H.D. lived in the days before the whole notion of fixed thought. At times, she indicated new paragraphs through indentation or spelling gelled. The same goes for punctuation. A number of the odd starting a sentence flush left. But she also regularly used some three to fif­ spellings create curious puns, odd homonyms, suggestions of wordplay teen spaces between phrases or sentences within the same p'aragraph to that I was loath to erase. capture on the page something of the flow of association and abrupt juxta­ Moreover, as editor, I have been haunted by H.D.'s serious resentment position as thought swoops and dives and veers about. Sometimes, howev­ of her husband Richard Aldington's corrections. H.D. writes Bryher on er, this signature spacing reflects the random jumps and jerks of a poor April 19, 1919, for example, that Aldington "criticized the punctuation of typewriter and typist. With some regret, I have made no attempt to repro­ the 'Cuckoo Song' (it is set up for Anglo-French Review) until I could not duce this elaborate play with spacing. Conserving space in an already stand it any more. Then he turned & said, 'Can't you understand that I tear lengthy volume was a consideration, as well as the sheer difficulty of repro­ it to pieces because I care for it.' He said the same of your novel. But the ducing her spacing accurately. method is a bit brutal-almost pathological." Then on the next day, she I have silently respected all corrections the letter writers made, indicat­ writes again to Bryher that "R. said again he only took the minute mis­ ing the original version only in cases of clear significance. H.D. and Bryher takes because he cared so much for your prose, he didn't want others to proofed their typed letters, which are filled with transposition marks and criticize it. But I admit this manner does at times paralyze one" (April 20, other corrections. Sentences added to the margins appear at the end of letters 1919). H.D. was herself very particular about such things as punctuation without notation of original placement. Letters written by hand are so indi­ and lineation in her published poetry. Consequently, I decided to let her cated; all others are originally in typescript. Handwritten notes of substan­ spellings and punctuation stand, without silent correction or the disrup­ tial length on typed letters are identified as such, although brief manuscript tive sic, with its undertone of editorial superiority. Editing feels, at times, notes are simply reproduced as part of the typescript. Many of the letters are like a pathological project, an obsessing about details that can potentially signed by hand, with all or part of the signature underlined. I have not repro­ violate or drown out the voice of the writer. I prefer to suppress my urge duced these signature underlinings. Sketches that accompany signatures are to correct and save the interpretive aspects of editing for the larger shap­ indicated in brackets. Underlined words in the letters appear without indi­ ing of a story through selection and contextualization. cation of the number of times underlined, except in cases of particular inter­ With only one exception, Freud signed all his letters to H.D. and est. H.D. often switched her ribbon from black or blue to red for emphasis Bryher-whether in English or German-with a lower-case "f," as in or to mark off a section of a letter for another reader, especially Macpherson. "freud." For a man deeply concerned about issues of fame and stature, this I have not attempted to indicate these shifts of color, except in special cases. signature is a curious practice-perhaps playful, perhaps genuinely modest, or perhaps ironically so. I have reproduced his name as he wrote it, unlike ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Anna Marie Holborn, whose translations of some of Freud's letters to H.D. appear in Tribute to Freud with the signature reproduced as "Freud." Anna Freud regularly signed her typed and ~andwritten letters in script in one word, as in "Annafreud," a modification of her father's practice that I have respected. Square brackets appear for all editorial intrusions~identifications, information, missing words, ellipses, and so forth. In excerpted letters and in quotations located in commentaries and notes, I indicate all deletions with [ ... }. H.D. frequently used different numbers of dots in her letters to indicate an expressive train of thought. Such dots do not represent dele­ am deeply grateful to the many people who have encouraged me over the tions. I have tried to minimize the clutter of bracketed information, but I years in what has been a difficult, seemingly unending project to com­ have resorted to them to facilitate reading by identifying various abbrevi­ Iplete. I am particularly grateful to Perdita Schaffner, for her generous ations, initials, and code names in the text. All such people not identified willingness to have the lives and work of her two mothers, H.D. and with brackets appear in the Cast of Characters. Bryher, so openly exposed; Dr. Joseph G. Kepecs, who helped me get a The originals of a number of H.D.'s letters contain lines carefully cut grant from the American Psychoanalytic Association to get the project out, most likely in an effort to remove explicit references to sexuality. underway and introduced me to the practicing psychoanalysts in the Square brackets identify all such instances of censorship. Bryher probably Wisconsin Psychoanalytic Study Group and the Chicago Institute of did the cutting. In a letter to Norman Holmes Pearson, H.D. told him not Psychoanalysis; Silvia Dobson, whose interviews with me shed vital to worry about any "indiscretions" in the papers she had sent him for safe­ insight and whose beautifully written commentaries for her unpublished keeping at Yale, because "Bryher has charge of all my papers & will always volume of H.D.'s letters to her inspired the method of this book; Wendy be trusted to censor them" (August 12, 1949). McGown, the graduate student who met the challenge of getting the let­ The originals of all letters reside at Beinecke Library unless otherwise ters onto computer and setting up the initial files for annotation; Peggy indicated in a note. Letters originally written in German appear in trans­ Fox of New Directions, whose editorial brilliance helped sharpen this vol­ lation, with the translator duly noted. Foreign words and phrases appear as ume and make me better understand its broad significance; Peter they do in the original letters, with translations supplied if the meaning Glassgold, whose gifts as an author in his own right have given me the does not seem obvious. benefit of a writer's eye and ear in his deft editing of the manuscript for SUSAN STANFORD FRIEDMAN New Directions; Louis Silverstein, whose superb cataloguing of the H.D. and Bryher Papers at Beinecke and generosity in sharing his vast knowl­ edge have fostered the research of a whole generation of scholars making the trek to Yale; Patricia Willis, Curator of the Collection of American Literature at Beinecke, and the entire Beinecke Library staff, especially Steven C. Jones, for their eagerness to facilitate this project; Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Wendy Dietelbaum, Edward Friedman, Norman Holland,

• xlv ACT l

ANALYSIS WITH FREUD, MARCH 1 - JUNE 15, 1933

ryher arranged with Freud for H.D.'s analysis to last approximately three months, with six sessions a week. Miraculously to H.D., Freud Bselected her favorite hour of the day-after tea, from 5:00 to 6:00, when she was accustomed to retreat into reverie, reflection, or reading. The analysis actually lasted about fifteen weeks, when it was interrupted by a bomb scare on June 13th. H.D., Bryher, and Freud agreed that she should leave Vienna immediately, with perhaps a return for more analysis in the fall. H.D.'s complete letters to Bryher during her stay in Vienna are includ­ ed without any deletions, arranged in chronological clusters based on the weeks of her analysis. Both women had a sense of the importance of these sessions and the historical significance of H.D.'s letters about Freud. H.D. clearly intended to write in detail about her sessions to an intensely curi­ ous and partially envious Bryher. But a juxtaposition of her letters with her reflections in Tribute to Freud and Advent shows that she by no means told Bryher everything. Bryher in turn knew that her own letters would be a much-needed emotional support for H.D., with bits of gossip, news of home, and whimsical, irreverent portraits of people and events. There is a hiatus in their letters during Bryher's two visits to Vienna, first from March 28th to April 17th and then from June 3rd until they both left on June 17th. The first few weeks of their correspondence (March 1-28) has been printed in full, without deletion, so that the delicate nuance and rhythm of their epistolary communication can be enjoyed. Bryher's letters from April 17th through June 3rd have been selected and excerpted for reasons of space. On the whole, I have deleted sections from Bryher's let-

• 29 ters about travel plans, household affairs, gardening, difficulty with her THE FIRST WEEK-March 1-5, 1933 parents, and neighbors. I have retained all references to psychoanalysis, H.D. 's revelations, the dynamics of their immediate menage, well-known H.D.'s analysis began dramatically, with confrontations, a contest of wills, people, sexuality, and the political situation. and tears. Her first letter home should be read alongside the portrait of her Kenneth Macpherson hovers occasiohally and ambiguously as a third , first meeting with Freud in the final section of Tribute to Freud (95-99). presence-both as writer and reader-in the letters of H.D. and Bryher. Here she recalls how she greeted his legendary collection of antiquities When at Kenwin, he often adds notes to H.D. on Bryher's letters; and before she looked at him and how she defied his warning that she not touch H.D. sometimes adds messages for him or addresses him directly in her his dog-"'Do not touch her-she snaps-she is very difficult with letters to Bryher. At times, H.D. clearly invites his reading, not quite sure, \ strangers.'" Sensing that she was no stranger to Freud in the deepest sense, however, that he will be interested or approve. But at other times, she she reached out to the chow, who nuzzled her head against H.D.'s shoul- clearly directs her letters to Bryher, sometimes even instructing her to keep der "in delicate sympathy."('My intuition challenges the Professor, though a letter, part of a letter, or certain information completely private. not in words," she recalls in Tribute to Freud (99), a "wordless challenge') Macpherson left for London shortly after the analysis began and was clear­ that is also evident in her report to Bryher on how she and Freud compared ly "out of the loop," at least until his return to Kenwin on March 21st. their heights-she clearly taller at nearly six feet. H.D. instructs Bryher to fill him in about her analysis, but Bryher°s letters Freud's chows, his companions in the last years of his life, were nearly to Macpherson rarely comply with H.D.'s request. Then in May, he as legendary as his collection of antiquities. Dorothy Burlingham, the remained at Kenwin while Bryher was in London taking care of her ailing American child analyst and close family friend, had given him his first father and was once again clearly not included in the correspondence chow, Lun Yu, in the late 1920s. After her death, Yofi (also spelled Jo-Ii) between the women. became his favorite, remaining at his side until her death seven years later By 1933, Macpherson had already begun his withdrawal from the in 1937. In bis memoir of his father, Glory Reflected, Martin Freud remem­ menage. His shadowy, marginal presence in the letters between the women bers Yofi lay in the study all day, signaling the end of each hour by getting inscribes his changing place in their emotional lives and the new directions up to yawn. Everyone who visited was judged by his or her reception from of his own desire, which was increasingly directed toward his new lover, the chows, who were very "selective, even judicious." "When the dogs," David Wickham (EN), a youth from Barbados they all called the Black especially Yofi, "condescended to be stroked, the visitor enjoyed the best Borzoi, after the wolfhound that was Macpherson's animal totem. In possible introduction·· (190-91). With Yo/i's immediate acceptance, H.D. January, Macpherson had temporarily placed the tubercular Wickham in a made a splendid beginning, and the chows continued to play a central role hospital in London before heading for Switzerland. In March, he returned in her analysis.1 to London to bring Wickham back to a sanitarium near Kenwin, where he The first short week of analysis-from Wednesday through could visit frequently and oversee his care. Sarurday-covered critically important psychic territory. Tribute to Freud Selected letters from H.D. and Bryher to their friends have also been and Advent expand at length "the Moses dream" to which H.D. briefly included. These letters present a significant counterbalance to the repre­ alludes in her letter to Bryher. Called her "Princess dream" in Tribute to sentations they make in their letters to each other. Macpherson is the most Freud, H.D. had dreamed of a beautiful Egyptian princess descending the frequent recipient of such letters, and in particular, Bryher's letters to him while she was in Vienna help fill the gap in the correspondence with H.D. Martin Freud remembers Marie Booaparte as the source of Freud's first chow, but Jones credits Burlingham with the gift (Life 3: 211-12)_ ACT I: MARCH 1 - JUNE 15, 1933 + jj

stairs to find a baby in a basket, like the Gustav Dore illustration that both and the idyllic month they spent in the Scilly Isles off the coast of Cornwall Freud and H.D. admired. The question was: who was Moses? Was it in July of 1919. Here H.D. had the first of the psychic experiences that she Freud, or did she, as Freud surmised, picture herself as the baby, wanting wrote about in Notes on Thought and Vision and discussed with Freud: the to be the "founder of a new religion" (TF 36-39; A 118-20). "'jelly-fish' experience," as Bryher named it. In Advent, she writes that a Perhaps he singled out his favorite Statue-a tiny bronze of Pallas "bell-jar or half-globe as of transparent glass spread over my head like a Athena-to show her as answer. "'She is perfect,'" he told her, "'only she has diving-bell and another manifested from my feet, so enclosed I was ( ... ] lost her spear'" (TF 69). Freud"s delicate allusion to his theory of women's immunized or insulated from the war disaster" (116). She suggested that penis envy goes unmentioned in H.D.'s letter, but she writes at length it must be "some form of pre-natal fantasy." "'Yes, obviously,"' Freud about it in "The Master," a poem about her analysis that she refused to replied; '"you have found the answer, good-good"' (A 168). publish. "I was angry with the old man/ with his talk of the man­ The intensities of analysis were balanced by H.D.'s great pleasure in strength," she writes; "I argued till day-break/( ... ] I woman is perfect" (CP the "student life" of Vienna's coffeehouses. Her joy in being taken for an 455). Freud had begun his collection of antiquities a few months after his American "arzstudenten" should be read in the context of her father's plan father's death in 1896, and some 2,000 precious objects lined his desk, for his favorite daughter to become a new Marie Curie and her failure at waiting room, and study. The tiny 4 1/8 inch bronze Athena-a 1st or 2nd Bryn Mawr College. She withdrew from college, ill and broken, in 1906, century A.D. Roman copy of a lost 5th century B.C. Greek original-had after a semester and a half, having done poorly in English, Latin, and math. pride of place in the center of his desk. He later selected this as the sole She had wanted to go to art school, she later writes, but her father had for­ object to smuggle out of Austria in 1938, before Marie Bonaparte man­ bidden it (HN 2:26-27). aged to transport the whole collection. She presented the statue to him in Paris as the family fled from Austria to London, putting them, as he writes ••• her in thanks, "under the protection of Athena."2 18: H.D. to Bryher and Kenneth Macpherson' More indirect exploration of the issues raised by the spearless Athena {Hotel Regina, Vienna] must have come up in their discussions of her birthplace, Bethlehem, and March 1. (1933) the Moravian custom of holding lighted candles during the Christmas Eve Wed. after dinner. service. '"The girls as well as the boys had candles>"' Freud asked. "It I wrote Alice, and will see her, at her convenience, to-morrow or day seemed odd that he should ask this," H.D. reflects in Advent (124). But she after. was pleased when he concluded: '"If every child had a lighted candle given, I staggered down Berg Gasse, having timed it to take about ten slow as you say they were given at your grandfather's Christmas Eve service, by minutes, or eight fast, this morning. The entrance was lovely with wide the grace of God, we would have no more problems .... That is the true steps and a statue in a court-yard before a trellis and gave me time to pow­ heart of all religion'" (124). der, only a gent with an attache case emerged and looked at me knowingly, By the end of the first week, H.D. reassures Bryher, she had told Freud and I thought, "ah-the Professor's last" and found the door still open from his exit, to let enter cat, who was moaned over by a tiny stage-maid who all about the "H.D.-Bryher saga." He had learned about her pregnancy in took off the gun-metal rubbers and said I should not wear my coat. I stuck 1919, the fatherless child, Bryher's saving promise of the trip to Greece, to the coat, was ushered into waiting room, and before I could adjust before

2 Young-Bruehl 229. For discussion and photos of Freud's collection, see Gamwell and Wells. Less for­ 3 This letter is typed in red, except for two sentences which appear in black for emphasis: "YOU tunate than his collection, Freud's four sisters perished at Auschwitz and Theresienstadt (Gay 649). WERE DISAPPOINTED, AND YOU ARE DISAPPOINTED IN ME"; and "what am I?" H'...L L LVLI1.i>.'...D 1 -JU1".I:l 1.J, 1'.J)) • JJ

joyless-street4 mirror, a little white ghost emerged at my elbow and I nearly maybe I was disappointed that he was not a giant, as being taller made me fainted, it said "enter fair madame" and I did and a small but furry chow got grown up; in my dreams now I was always a child. We compromised ... but up in the other room, and came and stood at my feet. God. I think if the chow he seemed to have won. Then I got as far as the door and the professor said "ah" hadn't liked me, I would have left, I was so scared by Oedipus. I shook all ovet, and there, snug under the rug, were my bags (I had taken two small ones he said I must take off my coat, I said I was cold, he led me around room and instead of a big one). So I did win after all, he saw then that I was not disap- I admired bits of Pompeii in red, a bit of Egyptian cloth and some authentic pointe. d in him ... but it was all too awful, I shall never get over Oedipus and J coffin paintings. A sphynx faces the bed. I did not want to go to bed, the white I go tomorrow and on and on. He is terrible, dope and dope and dope. We "napkin for the head" was the only professional touch, there were dim lights, talked of race and the war, he said I was English from America and that was like an opium dive. I started to talk about Sachs and Chaddie ·[Mary ~not difficult, "what am I?' I said, "well, a Jew he seemed to want me to.-

Chadwick} and my experience with ps-a. He said he would prefer me to ____~°'St3.tement. ,__ I thell went on tO say that that too was ~--~~--a reTigious bond recline. He has a real fur rug, and I started to tell him how turtle had none, ,.,~~sJew ~~s the only member of antiquity that Still lrved 1n the world. He said, he seemed vaguely shocked, then remarked, "I see you are going to be very dif­ "in fragmen~~u..said-h. wetllcl set talk aacl lre-ta!Ked half the ficult. Now although it is against the rules, 5 I will tell you something: YOU time and he would not let me lie and dream and made me talk; not with WERE DISAPPOINTED, AND YOU ARE DISAPPOINTED IN ME." I T. and Chaddie, I was never at a loss for a word, but this old Oedipus Rex has then let out a howl, and screamed, ~ut do you not realize you are everything, got me I told him so, sobbing, and said I had not cried in the other you are priest, you are magician."(He said, "no. It is you who are poet and hours. 0 Lord, write me! magician.") then cried so I could hardly utter and he said that I had looked This is to you both ... I can't think of you separate as you both saw me at the pictdres, preferring the mere dead shreds of antiquity to his living pres­ off ... 0 Gawd! ence. I then yelled, "but you see your dog liked me, when your dog came, I Then I couldn't come back here as I was sobbing so. I found a most knew it was all right, as it would not have liked me if you had not." He said, exquisite old, old wooden place where they serve white wine and apples, off "ah, an English proverb but reversed, like me and you like my dog." I correct­ a courtyard through snow. I asked some girls in a bake-shop for a restaurant ed him, "love me, love my dog" and he growled and purred with delight. He for "ladies." They showed me this which is a real old old trouvaille, I doubt then gave me a long speech on how sad it was for a poet to listen to his bad if even Alice knows it, 0 marvelous with old mellowed brown paintings on English. I then howled some more and said he was not a person but a voice, and the wall and such apples. Well . come. I will show you that "Wien and that (n looking at antiquity, I was looking at him~e said I had got to the same der Wein" still exists, so funny. How did it happen that I fell in on that? No place as he, we met, he in the childhood of humanity-antiquity-I in my own film has ever done more ... it is the old stuff that people say is non-est. Come childhood. I cried some more and the hour was already more than half gone. It to Wien ...... in lilac time. was terrible. I go now at five regularly. I could not tackle him about money but This is silly, hysterical and mad. There was no returned wire, so I judged will try to-morrow. He is not there at all, is simply a ghost and I simply shake you had it, so did not send your pre-paid. If the return "not known" comes to­ all over and cry. He kept asking me if I wanted the lights changed. He sat, not morrow, I will get them to call up the house. at, but on the pillow and hammered with his fist to point his remarks and Must stop, the dog [Yofi} is called yo-si or fi-yo or something Chinese. It mine. I am terrified of Oedipus Rex. What am I to do? He finally made me came and sat in a chair at my feet ... but I suppose it is trained to give the stand beside him and said though I was taller, he was nearly as tall. I had said· analysands confidence. Anyhow .... long live Oedipus. Love to all and sundry. I don't dare write in a frivolous and lightsome manner except to you two. Tell T. what it means to me, Dr. F. spoke of him 4 An allusion to G. W Pabst's 1925 film]oyless Street, starring Greta Garbo. H.D. greatly admired the film, became a friend of Pabst (BN), and described it in a Close Up essay as a classical postwar and he knew of Chaddie but didn't want me to talk of them. film embodying the essence of modernity ("The Cinema and the Classics"). Love to old Puss, tell bet about it and rhe Chow. It is faun and buff. 5 Freud himself laid down the "rules" of clinical piactice in a series of essays mostly published in the MOG. teens. In "Beginning the Treatment," Freud writes that "on the whole one lets the patient talk, and explains nothing more than is absolutely necessary to get him to go on with what he is saying" and that "I hold to the plan of getting the patient to lie on a sofa" (124, 133). ACTI:MARCH1-JUNE15,1933 + j/

19: Bryher to H.D., with note from Kenneth Macpherson believe you like the man's writings but remember in Vienna to read Kapek is Villa Kenwin equivalent to reading the Sat. Evening Post in Harvard University. Burier sur Vevey {Switzerland] I shall endeavour to keep you well fed with books and as you are through 2nd March [1933} Kat darling, • you can either lend them to Papa, or send them here. I took a peep at Mouse's passport though I pretended I hadn't and she is Your first Wien letter has arrived also I enclose the wire whereby you may seventy this year. She HAS got nerve. Her friend can't get a berth-all are see we were somewhat puzzled. On the phone it sounded as if a fire had com­ booked. But has put down for the first vacancy. pelled you to return to Zurich but then we got your Strassburg letter at the same time so judged all was comparatively well. All your kat possessions and hats etc are reposing on my bed as I have had your entire cupboard scrubbed. But took out the things myself. This evening How exciting about the hotel and Freud. I know we had to write, not new paper and I will personally put them back again, then I am locking them telephone, when we wanted to see him [in 1927). I do hope all went well and all up until you return. that you were not too alarmed. Trust you to pick someone up in the train too! Rover now takes his tea upstairs and hardly sees the dragon, who is try­ News; Mouse {Blanche Lewin] comes to lunch, the Sylvana sanitarium ing to get round me by pretending Pup is such a wonder. I wonder what the replied and Kenneth goes there to-morrow to visit them. 6 I had a row of a sort English boy-cook will be like. Will you let me know how many you have sent with the dragon {Dorothy Hull] as I gave orders your room was not to be postcards to, with the news of Papa? For when I write them. touched till I went in, I went in and the dirt under the bed was prodigious, I My dear Kat, look well to its whiskers, blew Marthe up, then to get even the dragon started your cupboard where your Love, fur coat was, while I was with Pup, so I came up and rowed generally all round Fido and I am going to work there after tea. They are connecting the drains to-day The Bloodhound barks' and have taken up a bit of the hedge. But it will be good to have it done. I hard­ Dear cat dearcatcatcatcatdearcat,-imagine it. You in a bistrot taking ly saw Rover yesterday as he was writing and I was generally blowing the meals at a long table, quaffing rough wine, hacking hunks off loaves, quipping kitchen up and counting chips on plates! Robert told the queen {Dorothy Hull] he had bought four pairs of drawers to please her. and quirking with the bandits brigands and other travellers of that historic city! It sounds TOOTOO Stanley Weyman!9 I thought that's where you'd put Rover makes much of what he calls "the substitute cat" who comes and your money, and was only nervous you'd want to pippy in a hurry and put sits in your place at table and purrs. We had rotten meals yesterday as the dragon took to fish only and mortification. them on the line with the contents of the dessus-le-lavabo-se-trouve-un­ vase. Is Freud the Man of Your Dreams? I mean in every sense? I'm panting I ordered you a set of lectures offered to Frazer last year, an expensive book for your Impressions, languishing for comment, desirous and slavering for but it contains they say, a very interesting article by Evans on Cretan religion, gossip and what the room looks like, feels like, if you're in seventh heaven or which seemed to be the kind of thing you enjoy. 7 You might too like to lend seventy-seventh hell or where in betwixt and between. Keep up the Marlene it to Papa, though I should myself eventually like to read it, but no hurry [Dietrich} touch. You'll have them yawping round your whatnot like dogs when you return will do. I also had a new little Kapek bookB sent you as I round a bitch as Flecker would say "in the season of water-melons."10 Anyway its goodly and right that if you can't make a silk purse out of a saw's ear you 6 Macpherson was looking for a suitable sanitarium near Kenwin for his lover, David Wickham. can make a darned good porte-monnaie out of a cat's quim! Believe it or not! 7 Warren R. Dawson, ed. The Frazer Lectures, 1922-1932, by Divers Hands (1932), including Sir GrussGort, All my Liebe in 3/4Takt. Arthur Evans's essay, "The Earlier Religion of Greece in the Light of Cretan Discoveries." Sir James Rover Frazer (1854-1941) is the comparative anthropologist whose best-known work, The Golden Bough, influenced many modernist writers. Sir Arthur Evans (1851-1941) is the archaeologist whose exca~ [dog sketch] vations of Knossos on Crete uncovered Minoan culture, including worship of the snake goddess. 8 Perhaps The World We Live In 0933) or Letters from Holland (1933), by Karel Capek (1890-1938), the Czech playwright, novelist, and travel writer who was deeply engaged in the political issues of 9 Stanley Weyman (1855-1928), British author of popular historical romances. H.D. was an avid Europe between-the-wars. reader of historical novels. 10 James Flecker (1884-1915), British poet and playwright. ALl l: MAKLtt l -JUNb l), l';.ljj + -:J/

20: H.D. to Bryher it. There were some Sat. post studs who had been out in the hills and they [Hotel Regina, Vienna} said the snow was "lousy." I keep mum and "pass" all-British. I go then to a Mar. 2. Thurs. evening. (1933] cafe across the street where I get coffee with five inches of cream, and there they bring me the Daily Mail and the Sunday Chronicle. I am getting on, no Alice blew in about 3.30. She is coming to-morrow and I am to take her to end. You will love this Wien, Fido. I am afraid its too "low" for Kex but I the Wien und der Wein, she has never heard of it, and thinks it was a "phanta­ do think of him, you Kex, a lot. You are right, Kex, about the little wizard, sy" of mine. She is anxious to see you, "I have so much to ask Br about analy­ he is everything you said, too beautiful, with his cases of bronzes. He got, off sis." She is terribly nice and looks a little thinner, I gave her some of the his desk, an ivory Vishnu that the Calcutta psychs sent him, and dug out a chocolates you got me. She says yo-fi. (Freud's chow] is famous. She is terribly Pallas, about six inches high that he said was his favourite.13 0 lovely, love­ appreciative, sent love to you and Kex, asked most sweetly after P., and said she ly little old papa. I am so calm, so peaceful. Fido, he said he would attend to got "lonely often for Perdita." I have a list of questions to ask her to-morrow, the money, he never would take it BEFORE and he will send you in the she will come after my hour. She was on the way to her dentist this afternoon. I "note" at the end of the month: he was adamant about it, a stubborn little will have more to write after I see her, she loves ps-a, but I am to be coached not old Oedipus. Well, I have struck psychic oil . . he gave me some private to tell Trudy [Weiss] ANYTHINGH dirt on Otto Rank.14 Really ... I don't know myself ... all on the strength of a Dore bible and a dream of Moses in the bull-rushes and the fact that I I had a most charming "hour." I was solemnly taken to the inner room had been to Egypt.15 which was filled with glass cases of the most lovely little Greek bronzes, I Blessings. I love you all three, love you all, did not see the "emperior," Kex. Was it, Kex, a Kex-phantasy? Anyhow, I KAT. was talked to and talked. He is terribly sweet about my memories of rhe Gustav Dore illustrations for the Old T.12 Funny. He knows them all and in bits, and we had an orgy going over the Moses-saga, quite wonderful. He 21: Bryher to H.D., with handwritten note from said a Moses-dream I had was of the utmost mythical importance. I was not Kenneth Macpherson so scared. Yo-fi came and sat and looked and "papa" drew my attention to her Villa Kenwin interest in my utterance. Papa says I have a very "delicate" voice, and I have Burier sur Vevey to pitch it rather strong, as he says "at 77, one does not always hear every­ Vaud Switzerland thing." I was terribly, terribly happy, but more calm. Now I do not cry. It is 3rd March (1933] very, very right for me here. I tried, on my own, a student hang-out, where My DEAR Kat, they cook the chops over a huge open WOOD fire, it is terribly sweet and I WHAT an adventure. Personally I am a bit inclined to agree with Papa, was absolutely clans le mouvement, as I had the inspiration to change back you ARE more interested in antiquity than anything else but I don't think it into old tweeds and old shoes and wrote ps-a notes in a note-book. They matters. What I must know is-does the chow share the analysis hour? It all would not take a tip, it is not done, we are all studenten, and the cook, in a sounds most exciting and I am glad you have a nice warm rug and that words starched apron and spats came and asked how the chop was and inquired of of great wisdom drop from the herr professor's lips. the students how their exams were going. It is odd, how I just strike

13 Girindrashekhar Bose founded a psychoanalytic association in Calcutta in 1922, and the movement flourished in India, becoming especially well integrated into psychology departments (Fine 147---48). 11 A friend of Alice Modern's, Gertrude Weiss had studied medicine in Vienna in the late twenties, 14 Otto Rank (1884-1939), Freud's "heir apparent" until the publication of his The Birth Trauma in when she was hired co teach Perdita German until September of 1929. While serving as the Vienna 1924 (a book that challenges the primacy of the Oedipus complex) led to his leaving the psycho­ correspondent for Close Up, she and Bryher wrote a textbook called The Lighthearted Students for vis­ itors to Germany in 1931. analytic fold amidst much dissension. In Advent, H.D. notes that Freud told her to read his Myths on the Birth of the Hero (1909) in connection with her Moses dream (120). 12 Gustave Dore 0832-83), French illustrator whose illustrated edition of the Bible appeared in 1866 and was owned by the Doolittle family. 15 H.D., Bryher, and Helen Doolittle went to Egypt in February 1923, the month when the contents of King Tut's tomb were brought to light. ACi J; MA.H.CH l ~JUNE 15, 1933 + 41

I enclose letter from Turtle but please return as one flattering remark in What a marvelous beginning' The GHOST-I hadn't thought of it which must be treasured.16 that! But I suppose he is one! Geist, Holy Ghost or[?} just plain family! Was Marianne's letter also.17 terribly amused by your letter and to know you & he were so damned Delphic! I do not know how long I shall remain here as the Queen [Dorothy Hull) Woof has annihilated us ALL. Kenneth went to see sanitarium run by a sort of good luck & love Fido, female, and liked it, and we waited outside, while I told Jules [chauf­ Rover [dog sketch) feur] about an ami of Mr. [Paul] Robeson's which went down very well and now Dog has booked to leave for England on Monday evening. Arriving SloanelB incog on Tuesday, my family not knowing. He plans to return about 22: H.D. to Bryher the 18th. I may be driven out with Pup and Mouse [Blanche Lewin] to Hotel Regina, 1 Venice or to have lotte 9 down, as really the Queen is raving shrieking mad Vienna [sketch labelled "Queen shreiking mad!" in margin]. Probably former but March 3, Friday. (1933) say nothing.

Your mirror is being properly fixed, your Kat cage scrubbed-I have The bird [stamped on Bryher's stationary] comes out marvelously. I will locked all cupboards (and how mad the Quex is, she went to sniff and said have to get K. to cut me an owl for my pages later. It is most striking and with hurt air "I found rhem locked") and I think your cat bin will be alright cosy-ly-y strident. How sorry I was about that first wire, but surely now the till your return. second one got to you, and moreover, some of the letters. I am glad the If you ever have a moment which I am sure you never will have, enquire Strassburg one did get to you. I have written long pages to you, every day; I how the old gentleman likes griffons. expect now, they are arriving on time. I am posting this, however, out of the The Oil 0 Marie have arrived and say we may blow up or off our chim­ usual order, as Alice comes to me after the "hour," my usual time for sending ney but they have now got a fleet of mechanicians to work. Pup somewhat you the dirt. Then when I get back, it will probably be too late, but I will send recovered and sulkily writing an essay on [Walt] Whitman. a resume of our talk and of papa, to-morrow as per usual. love my dear Kat,. we all envy you, except that I would rather have The water here is "like champagne" as the old dame in the train TURTLE. remarked. I drink coffee in the morning and make tea for myself before my Fido [griffon sketch] hour. I have been doing notes all morning, evidently I have got in right with my early Dore, most odd. I wrote Cole and will write Eileen. 20 The air is ter­ ribly invigorating, "from the mountains," they keep telling me, and merciful­ 16 On February 19, 1933, Sachs describes how upset he is about the situation in Germany, how much ly it is dry overhead, anyhow, the streets are piled with snow but pavements he appreciates her efforts for Heinrich Mann, along with the observation that "What has happened are cleared. Its all terribly dope-making. I am afraid this is my home-town. It to H. M. is such a small drop of injustice in a sea of brutality, meanness and cnielty. You see, your countrymen-they are neither angels nor philosophers-but such things could have never hap­ is more like Paris before the war, this "quarter" has no relationship to the other pened amoog them and knowing that gave me always a warm feeliog towards them." His letters part where I was, and as there are lots of Amuuuurican· corn-belt students, I to Bryher in 1932-34 regularly lament and condemn Nazism. can't see that the regulations can be so terribly strict. I see very, very few 17 Marianoe Moore (BN) describes the intense sufferiog caused by the Depression, reports oo the anglaises, no queens, it is Boston and corn-belt, all very worth-while yet at the drastic loss of her savings, thanks Bryher for her gifr of money, accepts the invitation to write for Close Up, notes the publication of poems, and comments on the work ofViolet Hunt, Mary Butts, same time, bawdy. I may remark that Boston and the belt do not mix, but and H.D. glare. I split the difference by pretending to be Bloomsbury. The waiter who 18 While in London, Macpherson stayed in H.D.'s flat at 26 Sloane Street, Knightsbridge, her London residence from 1932-1934. brought me that Vienna Herald yesterday was evidently out for "dirt" as he 19 Lotte Reiniger (1899-?), an animated film specialist and theatrical stage designer from Berlin, best told me the "American doctor" told him that the write-up by Sinclair Lewis known for her silhouette films often reviewed in Close Up. A dose friend of Bryher's from her vis­ its to Berlin, Reiniger was married rn and collaborated with documentary filmmaker Carl Koch (1892-1963). 20 Dorothy Cole l:lenderson (BN), member of H.D. and Bryher's London circle of friends; Eileen Macpherson, sister of Kenneth Macpherson. ""u~~ii i .)~"'~ i~, ·~JJ

21 and Beverly N. was a fake, "did the gracious dame also think so?" I read the paper over calves-chop and then told him I thought it was oak, as I knew peo­ Kex dear, are you listening in? I think of you all, and do trust you remem­ ber me in your prayers . . as I am very shake-y in the knee-joints at about ple who knew people who knew Mr. S. L I thought that would get back to the belt anyway. It is all most luciously dirtful. The dining-room gets funnier five daily. as one recognizes the inmates. There is a sort of Spanish youth, with an old Love to old, old Puss and Peter-the-puss {Perdita's car), mother, I think another doctor. from KAT Alice tells me with bated breath that her sister [Klara] takes a certain weekly paper to the Freuds' door, as old Madame Freud is so kind and always So sorry about your cold, but trust it is better now. I was most rheumy goes to that shop for her weekly-something. The sister is to be brought round about the eyes, but put it down to wind here and weeping over ps-a. I don't later, she is away for the week-end. Alice is pale with apprehension lest Trude weep now, its all very day-after-the-resurrection, complete with madonna-lily, [Weiss} learn of her ps-a. But I am to hear all about that, this evening. I told his ivory Vishnu . 23 A. I would love to see her people later, but must make some arrangement lest Trude feel slighted, and I must see T. [Hanns Sachs] later. All in the best small-town manner. Trust you think I am a good kat-on. 23: H.D. to Bryher {Hotel Regina, Vienna] Please tell Rover he must read all these letters, if they don't bore him. Freud Mar. 4. [1933} has not been to Egypt, as you know, and wept when I told him of the live scarabs in the yellow sand. I imagine he will sit tight over Easter, but am asking him to-day. I doubt ifhe ever moves out of his bug-run. It is, as I told you, lined with Fitho darling, "Mrs. Burlingham" [Dorothy Burlingham] seems to be a little gods . a really priceless collection of little bronzes . I wonder, Viennese by-word. A. [Alice Modern] told me when her brother finally learned though, if you saw these rooms as, so far, there has been no Roman, all Greek, she was to do ps-a, he said, "Ah-you will be another Mrs. Burlingham." A. is Greek . . . and orient. busting herself to learn that I have an introduction {from Hanns Sachs], but Please tell Mouse [Blanche Lewin] that I love it and am simply wallow­ she is raking the quarter for dirt first. It appears these Americans are, with a ing. Deliver some chaste message to the Q [Dorothy Hull] from the "untouch­ few musical exceptions, ALL, en masse, attending the psychological and psy­ able." I am so touched that P is gold-digging like mad. But she can be quite cho-analytical lectures at the university, and anyone who gets within ten miles oak and be "educated" here nach Wien. I feel she would love it, there are the of Papa is a sort of minor god-in-the-machine. Mrs. B. seems to be papa's strangest pups, right out of the Katje whatshername vibration ... they sit (15 super-dragon. Now I feel I really must have a look in as she seems even to have to 22) in cafes wirh elabourate note-books and dictionaries spread out among bit the Turtle. I think it possible that she stage-managed papa's finances at the the cigarette Stubs and coffee-cups. Its my infant ideal of the quarrier . . . that end of the war, in the best Bryher manner, and has since constituted herself his, I never realized in Paris. I am quite sure Pup couldn't do better, boys and girls dragon-in-chief.24 A. does not know, she does not know ifher brother knows, mix naturally, in the States manner. Then too, if there was any trouble, there

would always be Anna F. (I now meet Anna's bunch barging out of another 23 A condensed allusion to a dream she discussed with Freud and describes in the March 3rd entry of door and hunting out rubbers-there was also a pup yesterday waiting to go Advent in which she wanders as a child in a very old garden where an old man chooses her, out of 22 in to Anna, I presume.) I never felt so protective-colourared in my life as just all the children, to whom he presents a gift. She selects a precious "Easter-lily or Madonna~lily," here. which he cuts for her, a flower she links with Freud's statue of Vishnu, the Hindu deity frequently portrayed sitting on a lotus blossom (A 120-23). 24 The American child analyst and mother of four, Dorothy Burlingham left her manic-depressive hus­ 21 Sinclair Lewis, the Nobel Prize American novelist, lived in Vienna with his wife, the journalist band in 1925 for Vienna, where she arranged for her children's analysis with Anna, attended lec­ Dorothy Thompson, during the winter of 1932-33. At this time, his marriage was disintegrating; tures at the Vienna Institute, and underwent analysis by Theodor Reik and Freud. By 1929 she had he had a single session with a psychoanalyst and then guit; and his novel about a feminist, Anne moved into the apartment above the Freuds and maintained a dose intimacy with Anna for life, Vi"ckers, was being serialized (Scherer 576-92). Beverly N. and the incident to which H.D. alludes one that Anna's biographer Elisabeth Young-Bruehl insists was not sexual despite persistant rumors have not been identified. to the contrary. Although the lives of the Freud and Burlingham families were thoroughly inter­ 22 As a child analyst, Anna Freud saw patients in another room of the Freud family compound. woven, she does not seem to have had the financial or managerial role that H.D. imagines for her. See Jones, Life 3:141, 218; Gay 540--41; Young-Bruehl 136-39. ACT I: MARCH 1-JUNE 15, 1933 • 4,

no one seems to know, but the sheer whisper of the magic words like a terrific old hibou sacre, it scared me to death. He is so old and so majic "Burlingham" sends people scattering. Alice and I are both quite sure that and so sweet. I find myself chirping to him (in my mind-) like as if he was already a slight aura has got about and it will be fatal if I go to call on Mrs Bill [Kenwin monkey} or the cat, "little, old, old, old, old papa--dear little B. It will then be, "ah that Mrs. Aldington, you know, she another old, old papa." He keeps telling me to speak out what is in my mind, but I Mrs. Burlingham." However, as soon as I J;iear SOMETHING of what the don't, just lie there and chirp to him (in my mind) "little, old, old hibou. You Burlingham consists of, I will climb past papa's door, one day and beard the are nothing but a little old, old owl."26 dragon in its lair, a flight up. There is a room to let next papa, that I would I can never thank you, Fido, for this experience ... at the moment, it is like to take, A. says there is a nice pension there. Do you think you will be too much to speak of ... but please realize always what a very, very, very proud coming, dear Frimbo? Papa does not take any vacation, maybe one or at most and grateful cat it is, purrrrrrrrring away from five to six daily, like mad! two days over Easter, that is all, so it won't be worth my while to move away. Let me know if you think you may be coming and I will be on the look­ \,Thank you for Dorothy W. [Maclean's Dorothy Wordsworth), just come, splen­ out for a little place, or not ... as you want. I feel this is really a little expen­ , did over Sunday. I go to-day, mercifully, and always 6 times per week. There sive. You see A. got me a beautiful room, not asking the price and it is 12S is a stunning photo of the Turtle in the waiting room, next in honour to Karl (Austrian schillings), and the half-board, is another S. 5.50.25 I am not mov­ Abraham, Turtle is a beau of the nineties, with high collar, no chins, terribly ing from this room to a smaller as it is so terribly cosy, but I thought maybe -dandy-of-the-period; he must have been a very smart shiny brushed up pol­ in about two weeks, I might go to a smaller place in Berg Street or near; there ished Terrapin of a Turtle of the period. are a number, all well known. But I won't do anything in a hurry, and would Can you send me Shepherd of Israel27 off my shelf? I want to re-read it wait for your advice anyhow. A. said rather hungry-ly, when I told her of my \and lend to Alice. Swiss notes "there would be many people now, glad to get hold of those notes News of A. in Kex letter. She is a darling and much changed, but I fear for the profit on exchange." I said, "dear Alice, you take them." She was then Wien has a subduing effect on her. MUCH love to the old, old, old Mouse very upset. She told me not to go to Dr. Sachs nephew for advice as her broth­ :Blanche Lewin]. What a collection of sacred white animals we are getting. I er was working for a bank, and would do it. I told her to let her brother give feel we should have a new white-Bill to add thereto! me the normal exchange, and then make a little profit if he could extra for May Pup be petted and cuffed and told her "darling mother" will welcome himself. A. was shocked yet excited at the same time. Her brother is to g01nto at any time to the fold of Wien und der Wein and the student-corpse. the matter. They all seem to be very sweet people, and I am to go to the house Love and much more love and thanks and gri.issgott and all that from a one day soon. A. was anxious to take me last night, but I thought I better see Trudy [Weiss} first. very puffed-out, sacred KAT. I had rather an upsetting time with papa as .he was very excited and pleased rhat I had been born in Bethlehem. IHe said "Bethlehem­ I have so far only written Cole [Dorothy Cole Henderson], but will send Bethlehem-that accounts for everythini'x He see~d interested in the early _cards over week-end. But PLEASE broad-cast everything you want, to Turtle, candle-service and gave me a little lect;n) on the phallic significance of the Chaddie {Mary Chadwick), to anyone, anywhere, anytime .. lighted candle, and said of the early Moravian service as I described it, "that is the heart of true religion." I was shattered and had some filthy dreams after all

that exhaltation, last night, but I look forward to to-day. Its all very uncanny, 26 For March 4th, Advent includes a lengthy reverie on Freud as an "hibou sacre" (sacred owl) that much more "magic" than I had anticipated, a collection of green and blue reminds her of the stuffed snow-owl that her father kept in a bell-jar in his office (124-28). antique Greek and Crete-like glass jars in another case, there is so much I can't 27 A historical novel (1929) by Leonora Eyles about Moses, the Egyptian Princess who saves him, the stern Miriam who forces their mother to tell him of his Jewish origin on her deathbed, and the dif­ take it all in. He is like an old, old bird, he jerks out his arm, commandingly ficulties he faces in embracing the hated Jews and in renouncing his priesthood of Osiris and his future as Pharaoh. Unlike much of H.D.'s reading about religion in the ancient Near-East and Egypt, this novel is not syncretist, instead stressing the Jews as the chosen of God, a special peo­ 25 The official exchange rate in 1933 was 5.72 schillings for 1 U.S. dollar; the effective rate was 6.99. H.D.'s room and board at the Hotel Regina came to about $5.80 per day. ple wirh a unique covenant and destiny. Freud's speculative retelling of the story in lvfoser and Monotheism is markedly different from Eyles's recreation. 1\.Ll 1: 1\111\.KCti l - JUl-.l:l l), l';lj:i • '-ti

24: H.D. to Kenneth Macpherson question of dollars, anyhow, I am touched and rather upset by this new, much [Hotel Regina, Vienna} inner, subdued Alice, so unlike the old swash-buckling elephant of the Queen Mar. 4. Saturday. (1933] . I will see her sister30 in a day or so. A. sent all kinds of love and wanted Dearest Rover, ~e history in full of every mood of Kenwin. I told her something of the Quex I hear you have a boy-cook as well as an aisle for the boy-friend, congrat­ 1orothy Hull}. Miss M. is not very happy, but has a job in a little town out­ ulations. The word "fire" in the telegram was not "fine" as the hall-porter ,,~ide Wien. I am to see Trudy [Weiss] later. I am not scared of them now, either wanted to write it, but "five," being the hour I was to go Freud, as I had pre­ is papa, or else it is I, who feel young and free and "colourated" to all this real­ explained to Fido. Evidently, the porter or the bureau split the difference, but terrifically wallowingly sweet and debonaire and serious and bawdy studen­ this will be a lesson in awaredness toward Wien's telegram system. I assure "set." All it needs is a loud speaker, off somewhere in the soho manner, you I have little criticism else. I have fallen into the most wallowing studen­ 1uring out Congress Tantz "Wien und der Wein."31 ten-quarter, the world's worst. There is the world's most famOus anatomical Well darling, write me everything, thanks for paw-pat, what does college half a block down the street and students from Finnland, South :::314Takt" mean, your last word??????????????????? Dakota, the Balkins, the Baleric isles and Liverpool, spill out onto the pave­ LUF ments in brother-groups, along the in-rushing corpses. I wear my oldest MOG. clothes, sit in bistros with a note-book and relays of sharpened pencils. The Please read Fido letter for latest news of the hibou sacre. waitress waits with her hands on her hips to see what language I am writing (she would be burned at the steak if she so much as interrupted a distin­ guished foreign student) and thinks it must be Sweedish or Polish . . any­ Bryber to H.D., with handwritten note from how I do not give myself too much away, and am I not, as I ask Alice, a student Kenneth Macpherson of Herr Professor Freud? Alice, really being a student, is sulky about it. She Villa Kenwin sits and sulks in another enourmous structure, just across a little park, out of Burier sur Vevey {Switzerland] my window, criss-cross ... and is going to make it her business to pop in here 5th March [1933] every other day or so for dirt on papa, about 3.30 when she is dead-beat with y dear Kat, her theseus, whatever it is. Alice tells me every other cafe down "our" famous You and your myths! You and Moses. You and that chow! Well, well, I corpse-rue, is dedicated to the studs, and that there is an old tradition of lppose you will never want to leave Vienna for the rest of your life! friendship and doing things on the cheap and not taking tips and not inter­ We had the most fearful scene with the dragon [Dorothy Hull} yesterday rupting and leav}ng the studs for hours at a table without their paying more :~hen she tried to weep on K's shoulder and nearly wrung my hands off and than five sous for a cup of black-coffee to keep them going over till the next ,\!hen went to bed with nervous prostration. We dashed to town and in reac­ chapter ... terrific esprit de corpses. I have written Br but I ask you as the -,ti:On took tickets for a concert and lecture Arthur Honegger (one of Les Six) is cheeeilds "gardie darling"2s if you do not think this is the place for her iving to-morrow night. I know he wrote a symphony founded on a Rugby [Perdita} to be wallowingly "educated" in? _fQotball match and another called Pacific and I thought maybe he would be a Alice asks of you. She is oddly and somewhat pathetically subdued here, :-counter irritant to Sibelius.32 Rover finally confessed he hadn't heard anything poor darling, I suppose HERE, she is jew-conscious, poor, poor girl. I took her :flonegger had done so we plunge-hoping to be inspired. to a quaint little wine shop restaurant, where she ate more than I ever saw her Thence mid-time Rover rushes station and London incog and unoffi- eat, even to ham, rather rakishly. She told me she had never been there, in fact, had never been to a "real" restaurant in Vienna, only sometimes in the more ,JO As Alice's sister, Klara Modern, had visited K.enwin and wrote a few reviews for Close Up. communal studenten barracks pubs. I don't know if she is verboten,29 or if it is Allusion to celebrations commemorating the Congress of Vienna, 1814-15, the international con­ ference that reconfigured Europe after the defeat of Napoleon. Arthur Honegger (1892-1955), a French composer of Swiss descent whose avant-garde work 28 An allusion to Perdita's adoption by Bryher and Macpherson in 1928. included opera, ballet, symphonies, chamber music, radio and film scores, and the orchestral works 29 Probably an allusion to the rising tide of anti-Semitism in Vienna. Pacific 231 (1923) and Rugby (1928). Jean Sibelius (1865-1957), the Finnish composer. 1''-i A. i'AHi'-'-H L ~) UHD L.I, 17:.>:J ... --:£/

cial. Buddy [Robert Herring] wenr our wirh Nancy [Cunard] and rhey called Your paper KAT-I am too shocked to write of it. Wien is no place for me. on Zaidee Uackson] but Bud was apparently simply scared.33 Idiot. Rover is Pulieez toin de page. due back about March 18th (that is in about 10-12 days). IfI get desperate I atMog shall simply have to go to Venice with Mouse [Blanche Lewin} and Pup ahead How wonderful it all sounds! Like-like not receiving manna, but of time but I would rather stay here if the Queen [Dorothy Hull} is at all pos­ sible as I would like to go away rather about Easter. oming manna, if you know what I mean-sky-drifting god-sustenance and de bunk! However if you should get agitated wires saying gone Florence or Venice But you've got into a pretty web alright & the Yoly Ghost sounds "too, or Berlin you'll know what HAS happened. Miss Maundsey [Lewin's friend] has got a berth at last. io pet, the precious!" Wharra Life! Me, I go to London. Is there aught I can do for you there? Let ma know. We bought the most beautiful little flowering pink daphne yesterday at 0 the Quex [Dorothy Hull]: Schlageter which reminds me of south Spain. Lovely only so strongly scented it has to remain outside. It can go later on rockery. "Listen here you two dear people! Weount you listen. You know I meust 1eulogise fur yistiddy. I'm nert laike that rahlly. Y'knew? I lerv you tew dear I was very glad indeed for your news of Alice. Is she REALLY better do 1ple sew merch, you know thert dont yeh? 'Cause I rahlly rahlly deu! Ai get you think for p.a.? Only I agree, we must be awfully careful about Trude erpset by those beuys! It's the beuys! It's the beuys!"- And took Fido to [Weiss} who has set the Welt buhne people on to me (not Mrs]. but the rest of the staff) only say nothing.34 breast. "Kerm-take my hands! Look at me. You do like .me dont yeu?" do "that's alright. Just go & get a good sleep." We spent last evening in a discussion of what a griffon might be MYGOD' called. Kenneth suggests "Sebastian" and I said I should prefer "Hanns" but that love. [Macpherson's dog sketch} would be unwise! We then wondered about Sigmund but agreeed that a griffon was hardly an analytical beast. He is perhaps the symbol of aggressiveness. It arose because Dog said my slumbers would be disturbed in the morning if I had H.D. to Bryher one and I said certainly not. I should just say to Marthe when she brought break­ [Hotel Regina, Vienna] fast "Marthe, je vous prie d'amener Monsieur-pour son promenade." Sunday, Mar. 5. (1933} We tremble now when the dragon appears. Simply shiver with apprehen­ sion. She feels she needs a change so if I don't move perhaps I can get her to 1arling Fido, your note and encloseds. I will keep and forward later, thank Berne for a bit. Oh, the Dutch boy wants to come as soon as Kenneth can see ~u so much. Please tell T. anything and say I think much of him and will try him and will valet chimps or cook our dinner, anything for the job. I think he must be a little- O.B.35 In which case Dog is sniffy. write. Fido, why don't you hop on a train and come straight here? There It rains-is fairly warm-but rains. uld surely be heaps for you to do, A. [Alice Modern] knows all lectures, taries and so on, and after all, it is the Turtle's [Sachs's} home-town, any- Love my dear Kat, and do pass on all dirt. Rover says do drop him a line . ng you learn of stimmung here will be addition to your Turtle saga. Come to Sloane-I'm not forwarding my letters [from H.D.J to him for I think and he thinks they should be preserved as a historical record. ng. I will get you a room here in the hotel; you will like it, it is most pri­ ,'.:..;te and you can do anything. There are tons of psycho people to meet, what LOVE and best greetings, ,,, ith this and what with, as they say, that. You really can NOT stay there alone Fido [griffon sketch] ith that old bitch [Dorothy Hull}. We will meet you at station and you will the hero of the hour, bands and bunting. Probably you will wait till P. is

33 ZaideeJackson, blues singer prominent in the Harlem Renaissance. See BN for Herring and Cunard. , but come here either direct or from Venice. You really should, it DOES 34 The Welt Buhne was a popular, left-wing alternative theater of the 1920s. ~em "indicated" and I am sure the Turtle would approve. I talked all last hour 35 Oswell Blakeston (Henry Joseph Hasslacher, 1907~85), British critic, writer, filmmaker, and edi­ out us at the Scilly Isles and Papa was MOST sweet about you. He seems to tor. He coedited the literary journal SEED and was a frequent contributor to Close Up and Life and Letters To-Day. His extensive correspondence with Bryher is at Heinecke. ~ve some very clear idea of the jelly-fish saga, and says you, by a miracle of J\.\..,~ L"UU~~••• J~-·- 50 + ANALYZING FREUD love and intuition, understood what Dr. {Havelock} Ellis could never have THE SECOND WEEK-March 6-12, 1933 understood: (this apropos fish-notes {Notes on Thought and Vision].) So, you see, papa thoroughly approves and you have been "in" the analysis all along, via .D. was horrified to discover that Freud didn't like cats and greatly pre­ the first Greek trip and your rescue of the war-time stray-cat with cat-on. The red dogs-she appears not to have told him at this point (if ever) about H.D.-Bryher saga is well established; now all You need is to put in an appear­ r own animal totem and pet-name or the various dog manifestations of ance. By that time, I shall have looked up Mrs. B. [Dorothy Burlingham) and tyher, Macpherson, and Perdita. Years later, she remembers that she will know everyone and everything. You come along, I am sure it is a "fish" necessity and intention. rofessor Freud did not like cats. I was distressed once when he told me I had a dream of you, last night, with white stiff flea-whiskers and now a cat-and-dog fight. He was for the dog-some of his own chows---0f you ask me to ask papa of the griffon. I will do so as soon as it works, he is so ,urse. But I was not happy at the fate of the cat. 'Like that-' said the funny, you know how it is, one never knows what one is about to embark on, rofessor. I visualized a broken neck or a broken back, the end of the cat but he is most keen on dogs and his old chow walked out on me the last hour; .yway. I did not comment on this. It seemed final, as far as the Professor I think she was sick with the Fido-saga, anyhow, she sat tight for two hours, slept on the floor the third and walked out last time. Someone that A. knows as concerned" (HN 2: 1). has one of fi-yo's [Yofi's} pups. I wish I could get one, for sentiment, but would Nonetheless, the second week of analysis moved rapidly forward, fill­ prefer a large white cat or owl. g in what H.D. called "the war-ourline"-her marriage to Aldingron, Dorothy W. {Maclean's Dorothy Wordsworth} is soothing and pleasant to Ler friendship with Lawrence, her postwar relationships with Bryher and the mind, otherwise too, too hectic-made. :llis. Freud had immediately reminded her of Lawrence. Dreams, I had note from Pitt, saying his own added date was legal and oak!36 The Sign of the Cross is here and I will try to see it to-day as no hour-37 oughts, and feelings about him-extensively reviewed in Advent- Food is excellent and the cafes (the smart ones) the OTHER side of the £ormed an important part of her analysis in the second week. Preferring his square are piled up with magazines and all the English and American oetry and early novels, she had disliked the manuscript of Women in Love papers. One gets a coffee with cream and can sit all night; you would like it, 'hat he sent her in 1916 and felt profoundly alienated from his later fic­ as they are separate little alcoves and full of Llllllllllls [lesbians). Papa asked J:lon, Fantasia, and other essays. But The Man Who Died, his last Osirian me most sweetly, as I was leaving, if I was lonely. I told him I had friends and plenty to do. But he is very informal and sweet . . he did not make me lie ,__ novella about Jesus's rebirth through the agency of rhe priestess of Isis, down yesterday while I told him Scilly Saga. He knew of Scillies and was real­ "reconciled me to him" (A 150). Stephen Guest, the nephew of British ly most intrigued, and licked his lips audibly over Chiron-dirt {Havelock psychoanalyst Barbara Low and for a brief moment H.D.'s lover in the Ellis). Of course, you like Turtle, he is more like "dada" but this little old early thirties, had brought the book to her and said, "'Did you know that mummy of an Oedipus-Rex is right out of my own phantasy world, as you you are the priestess of Isis in this book?'" (A 141). yourself saw and recognized. I like T. too, but he is younger, more dada-vibra­ The transference, H.D. and Freud agreed, was fully established and tion. Much, much love. Your note this morning is registered, you speak of PU:p -:«already under discussion as a focus of the analysis. So too were the signs being better so I judge there is a note missing. :_~~nd symptoms of her resistance to analysis.(As Freud writes in his papers much much devotion from CAT. on clinical technique, analysis begins in earnest when the analyst begins Enclosed for Puss. _:_to take on the role of family members from the analysand's past, so that

36 Hewett Pitt, Bryher's London lawyer. ctepressed feelings are acted out in the interaction between the two') 37 Cecil B. DeMille's Hollywood epic (1932) about Christians seeking religious freedom; its reissue in -;:--Resistance to this transferential repetition of what has been forgotten is 1944 cut many lurid sexual and sadistic sceoes, sioce restored on the 1995 video release.