Focus 2002.tif


120 Fo(UJ on German Studies 

The "Wayward Gleam of the Lyrical": 
Freud's '1-!ostiliry Towards the Td" 

Katja Brunkhorst 

.. s a theorist who called upon the poetS "as reporters and wilnesses 
Ii3 of a knowledge which he sough I to explain in scientific speak, only 
to find , time and again, that his own explanations and case s(U(i1es ap~ 
proached the forbidden register of poetic (e."'-:t$" (Nagele 242), Freud sllg~ 
gests that truth depends on language. In contraSt to the consistent science~ 
worshippers of his day (Freud himself being a ralher inconsistent example), 
he, mostly even in spite of himsel f, t.estifies to the existence of a kind of 

truth which art - as reprcsemed by poetic language - can o ften capture 
more readily than hiS Pqchotmo!Jse. In a letter written to hun in 1916, Loll 
A.ndreas~Salome perfectly summarizes his dilemma: 

Ober das, was Sic 1m letZlcn Brief iiber [bre " aussetzende 
p rod uktive Stimmung", die Unsichcrheit in Bezug auf sic, 
sc hreibeo, muflte ieh nae hdenken. Obgleich sic das 
"Kiinstlerische", dem derartiges eher zustoBen d licfte, so sehe von 
sich ablehnen, scheinl es doch fragl.!ch, ob ein Week wie das Ihre 
so v6Uig o hoe das iiberhaupt erschaffbar gewesen ware f. .. ]. Aber 
ganz hiervo n abgesehn, ist es cine nadlden.k.liche Frage, inwiefern 
tier Gcgensrand Lhree Forschung, das Vim', es viclle1cht notwendig 
in steh begri.indet, our mit sokhen AussclZungen [dee produktiven 
Stimmung] an sich heranzulassen. D eno nut wie wissenschaftlic.he.r 
Me/hode das aueh geschicht, - es seiber w;rd ulUncc dahin tendicren , 
ih[ zu entsioken, wie Triiume dem Wachen emsinkcn [ .. .]. (pfeiffer, 
Briifultch.ltf FrtJld 57) 

"FUc einen, dee kein Kiinstlcr 1St und es gar nicln anstrebc" (Freud 
On himself; qrd. in Pfeiffee 57), Freud's supposedly sCientific style (and 

method) at times comes close to an "artistic" one not unlike the POC[S'. In 
" Ocr \Vahn und dic Triiwne in W Jensens Gradivd', concclVed in 1906 and 
published a year later. Feeud ponders about himsel f and the "Dichter" 



122 Foaa on German Studies 

that " [w]ir sch6pfen wahcscheinlich aus der gleichen Q ueUe" (SA 10: 82). 
He goes even further when he then grants lhat the poets are "die tiefsten 
Kenner des menschhchen Seelenlebens" (10: 15). However, he spells our 
his view on the hieracchy of me lWO dISciplines Or art (oems. psychoanaly. 
sis and literature, wah regard to cogrutive "supeciority" 010S1 clearly in the 
following Statement "die Wissenschaft besteht nicht vor der Leisrung des 
Dichters" (SA '10: 51). Although happily counting himsel f among the sci­
entists - '\venn dec Verfasscr [Freud] niimhch seine eigenen Arbeiten auch 
der Wissenschaft zurechnen dad" (SA 10: 51) - Freud men nonetheless 
announces his allegiance to the poet,. who would o l.hel.'Wise "allein gegen 
die gesanne Wissenschaft stehen" (SA 10: 51). As many psychoanalysts 
followed Freud in thus entenng into co-operacion. and sometimes even 
competition, as it were, with «the poetS", let us look further intO what Ule 
early Freud had to say about "den Dld ller".1 

A year after his srudy on jensen's Grotiit'O, Freud wrote his lecrure 
~'Der Dichter und das Phantasieren" (SA 10:169-179). H ere, he suggests 
what the main points o f contact between the creatwe writer and the an2-
lyst are: an awareness o f both the need to work through childhood and of 
the unport2nce o f chIld's play fo r creatiVlty. In dut lecrure Freud also 
maintains that all formal, or aesthetic, pleasure to be gamed from "Did llung" 
is merely a pn-pleasure subordinate to an OCINai, greater pleasure (Freud's 
emphasis; SA 10: 179). T he latter is derived from the content of a work o f 
an £amer than from its fo rm, wlule conSlstlllg III the ~'llefreiung von 
Spannungen in un5Crer Seele", and is claimed to be brought up from " tiefer 
ceichenden psychischen QucUen" (SA 10: 179). Thus, it is possible to say 
that Freud viewed the "message" of a poem as a "massage o f the soul", as 
it were. Although he acknowledges that what to him IS but the "surface" 
o f a te..'(:t, namely its style, contributes largely to the fact that poetry can 
communicate before It is fully understood, in this eady essay, Freud d early 
gnnrs "content" an Iffipona nce surpassing that of style. In IllS essay "Po­
erry and Psychoanalysis", Ad am Phillips reminds us that to Freud ulis con­
tent is, first and foremost, characterized by courageous honesty. "The art 
of poetry [ ... lls the an o f being happily unacceptable in public, of mak­
ing known one's o rherwise focbldden desires" (8). he wates, unforrunately 
rather narrowing than parap h.rasing Freud's definition o f "die eigentlichc 
A n POt/ied' (Freud, SA 10: 172).1 

In his lecrure Freud propounds that, come adolescence, daydreams 
rake over fro ffi child's play, albeIt only in unhappy, unsatisfied peoplc: "dcr 

The "Wayward Gleam o f the Lyncal" 123 

GlUckliche phantasicrr mc, nur der Unbcfnc<hgte" (S~ 10: 173).' 110,",:,­
cver because these daydreams ace all either of an ambluous or of an CrotK 
natu're and lhereforc socially unacceptable, they, in tum, Ulvest the already 
unhappy daydcea.mer WIth a sense of gUilt. The d ifference to d uld's play 
consists 10 the daydream renouncang the child's play's Imitation of rcal 
objects, but also in that newly acquued shamefulness. A l t.hou~~h they are 
far renloved &om the naivete of the daydream, Freud maLOtalOS that the 
poet's creations can still be linked t.o pattcrns of such "Phamasteren". In 
boUl actlVlties,. «der \l/unsch (benutzt) eLOen AnlaB d el" Gegenwart \ .. . J. 
urn slch nach cl em Mu stcr der Verga ngenhett em Zukllnft sblld zu 
eotwerfen" (175). .. , At this point. and especially in dlCcontcxt of t1us defirutton, Freud s 
authoritatlve assertion t11at, as qUOled above, the dayd ream is always the 
exclusive domain o f the unhappy, unsatisfied person should be contested . 
Adminedly, especially when practised tOO much, «Phanusieren: po ten­
ti3.1ly "stellt die Bedingungen fur den Verfall in NCUIOse oder I sychose 
her" (Freud SA 10: 175). It IS also true that poets, who arguably do d lef'­
ish daydreaJ~ls too much, "don't tend to be OUI" models fo r mental healdl" 
(Phillips 20). 

Surely, however, human beings need to create such a. sense of the 
IIltcrtcxnlahry of past, p'resent and f\Jnl re - the "ery defirutlon of day­
dreaming. accordmg to Freud - Wl dtin t11eir Iwes.. ll ow else could a11)"'one 
be able either to combat" a sense o f Lfe's meaninglessness or rcach any 
satisfaction at all; 10 shon, why would one go on? And surely poetry, that 
most sophisticated form of daydrearrung (or C<llIghr.nuring", III some of 
its beSt CllseS), creates a sense of connecuon to what are, esselltl~l y. 
pocticised but baSIC human quahtles in lhe reader. Indubitably Freu~ hllll­
self as shown both in Iu s many references to past and futu re Ifi Ius very 
wo:k and in his extensi\'e leaning on and borrowing from such daydream­
ing poets, is no exception . Notably, in tlus Iflstancc It is NIetzSche. ~h~m 
he might have borrowed from. as this quo te from Die GelmrJ rkr I raJO'd1t 
ails denl Ceifle tier ""tHSik chapter one, page one, clearly shows: "Der schone 
Schein der Traumwelte~, in deren Er:zeugung ]eder Mensch vo ller Kunsder 
ist, 1St die Voraussetzung aller blldenden Kunst. Ja aud l, W IC wlr schell 
werden, eUler wichtigen Iialfte der Poesie."~ However, the Wisdom of 
Silenus that for humans the (unattainable) very best tiling IS no t to have 
been born at all, and the second best, to die as quicUy as poSSible can, 
according to dlat same book of NIetzsche's, only be counteracted by art, 



124 FIntS on German Studies 

as the veil hiding the abyss that is nature's cruelty and the indifference of 
the universe. Although Freud elsewhere in fact endorsed the notion of an 
as life-enhancing and even life-preserving. in the case of Ius twO early 
essays on poets. he, unhke NiclZSChe, almost appears ro be packing art 
away 1Il a drawer mar:ked "pathology'. This IS shown clearly In «Ocr \Vahn 
Hod die Tciume [ ... 1" when he says of GrlJl/m/s protagonist, Norbert 
Hanold: 

Doeh harte vicUeicht in wohlmeinendcr Absicbt die Natur Ihm 
ein Ko[ccktiv duochaus unwissensdlaftlicher Art ins BluI gelcgt. 
cine tibetaus lebhafte Phantasie, d ie sich nieht nur in Traumen, 
sondem auch o ft im Wachen ZUt Ge\rung hangen konnte. Durch 
solehe Absooderung dec Phantasie vom Denkvenn6gen muRte er 
zum Dich ter oder zurn Neurocike:c besummt sei.n." (19) 

Phillips reminds us mal many of me more recent psychoanalytic [hoons(s 
such as WinniCOrt or Blon, themselves perhaps oper:atll1g from a Nietzsche­
influenced postmOdem perspective, would n01 agree widl such an illUSion 
of meaning. either. Phillips himself, however, interprets Freud's lectuce as 
providing the ground on wluch to argue that we are all poets, dIal "poetry 
becomes a descnpt10n of what the mind does" (20). According to tillS 

same lectu1"e, the very existence of plans, memones llIld ambitions cou1d 
also be undersrood as a pathological symptom of neuroses and psychoses. 
Is Phillips thus implytng that we are all riddled with mental Illness? Pcr­
h2ps, but in any case this is:l helpful swipe at the exclusionary, and literally 
normative, notion of normality; and as such wholly in the spirit of Freud 
himself, who frequently took care nOt to oppose such - illusory - «nor­
mality" to "illness".5 

Yet, here is a point of criticismdi.rected at both Freud and Ph.i lllps: 
to someone interested in lyric poetry, it is a disappointment that Freud's 
whole lecrure spans a mere nine pages, o nly a tiUrd of whidl acrually deal 
with the "'DIchter", a flaw which Freud is fully aware of, but does Ltde to 
remedy: "Sie werden sagen, dill ich Ihnen von den Phantasien welt melu: 
erzihlt habe al5 vom Dichtet: [ ... ). leh weill das und versuche es durch den 
Hinweis auf den heutigen Stand unserer Erkenmn..is zu entschuldigcn" 

(178). Also, whereas in "Oer \1'ahn und die Triiwne ( ... r Freud was still 
careful [0 POult out the potennal '<Schadlgungen, die mit der Aufnahme 
des lrunsdichen Einheltsbegriffes <dec Dichter' verbunden sind" (15); a 

The "Wayward Gleam of the Lyoca.l" I
'" -, 

year later, he wrote against his own advice, as It were, and enttrely f.uled to 

differentiate between different tndlVidual poets. 
Both of these flaws seem to have escaped Phillips' attention en­

tirely, along with the even more dlsappomcing fact that tillS uDichrer" is by 
no means the lyric poet nowadays Implted by the German word, and by 
Phillips' discussion. Freud's <Thcluer" turn out to be «d1i:!: anspnldlsloseren 
Erziihlet VOIl Romanen, Novellen und Gescilichten", I.e., wntees of popu­
lar prose, in whose work the hero IS "Seme Majestat das Ich" (176). 

This seems to derive from a tangible awe of lyric poetry, where 
tile 1d reigns supreme, shown In the FaCt that whenever Iyn c poets are 
mentioned, Freud shrouds h imself in mystica l, very un-scientific 
commonplaces and eX01ses: either UlOse poetS simply hold a "Geheimnis" 
(179), Ot - always a favourite excuse of Freud - his ,cErorterungen" (179) 
have conveniently come to an end. Both Phillips and Mid13el Molnar have 
their views on pOSSible reasons for such evasive behavio ur on Lhe part of 
the father of psychoanalysis. «Freud's unease about Iyoc poetry In partiCU­
lar may stem from his sense of It as vlCt\lally urunedlucd emotion''', Molnar 
offer.; by way o f expianatton. ThiS view corresponds to "Psychopalhische 
Personen auf der Biihne", where Freud makes one of his very few dtrect 
mentio ns of the word ULyrik": "Die Lynk dlent vor -aJlem dem Austoben 
intenslvet vielfacher Empfindungen, wie se.iner.u.tt dec Tam ( ... j" (SA 10: 
164). Molnar contmues: 

Judging both from hiS hbrary and Ius habit of quotatton, Freud 
never much app(ecialed lyrical poetry. His poellcal citattons o rigi­
nate in a limited repertoire of POtts, Goethe, Schiller or H eine, 
an d they tend ro carry non-lyrical (ap horistic, jocular or philo­
sophical) messages. 1 ... 1 Moulded by hlS educallon III the classics 
and an early admiration for Muton, his taste m poetry seems to 
have been pruTlanly 10 favouc of syntactic weight and semantic 
density rather than for lhe wayward gleam of the lyrical. 

"lndeed, the uses of l.lleramre ul psychoanalytic texts, start10gwlth 
Freud IlUnsele, betray a cectam unease", PllIllips Wmes. '<The crCatlVe arust 
is at once essentially human but also has got somcthUlg the anaJyst lust 
hasn't got. The arnst represents for Freud the hmtts of psychoanalysis" 

(12). Philhps, unlike Molnar, attributes th,S to the fact that " the wnter, 
unlike the psychoanalyst, IS the person who has not been dommated by 



126 FOOtS on Germ:m Studies 

someone else's vocabulary" (vl i ~. h seems probab le by now that Freud 
indeed shied away from what he perceived the vocabulary of lhe Id, which 
to him couJd ooly be accessed by l)Tric poets; whereas he o ften. and at 
times seemingly with regret. counted himself among sciennsts. 

Let us now tum 10 dIe poet's link widl daydreams and d lild's play, 
as according to Freud. Poets are likened to neurotics in their shared com­
pulsion to honesty, but revert to the shameless daydreaming of childhood. 
T hey tum embao::assment and, arguably, unhappiness intO pleasure for their 
readers by breaking the taboo of sharing highly subjective uErregungen". 
This is also why - in my c~shameless l y'" acknowledged adaptation o f dIe 
lecttlre CO lyric poetry despite Freud's own reluctance to do so (176) - dle 
nlOst «truthful" poems seem the most opaque, as described in a highly 
i.lJuminating way by Hannah Arendt C.\Valu:heiten, wiewohl sie niemals 
dunkel s ind, sind weder von Namr transparent noeh durch weitere 
Untersuchung transparent zu machen. Sie erhellen,:abee sie kennen selbst 

rucht weiter erhelh werden - so wie es in dec Natur des Lichts l.iegr, dafi es 
Helle verbreitet, aber selbsl nicht erhelh werden unn" (343). An "opaque" 
poem can thus be imagmed like a condensed ray of Itght, illuminating o ne 
SpOt alo ne while leaving a sea o f darkness around itse.1f, including the <Car_ 
ti6cially [or ar:tfully?J scceened -off"7 source of that liglu. 

Within a decade after the lecture on daydreami ng. Freud's writing 
had matured considenbly. In this excerpt £rom a lene.:: to Lou Andreas­
Salome, it comes very close to c"Dichrung" - bodl Ul Its dlematic aspects 
:and in the rather lyrical metaphorical form; and in the sense o f something 
both concentrated and concentrating. In a way indicative of his possible 
in£1uenceon Arendt, Freud adlTuts in a letter to Andrcas-Salome fro m May 
25·, 1916: «Teh weill, dill idl mich bei del" Arbeit Iriin st1ich abgeblendet 
habe, um alles Lidl tauf die eine dunkle Stelle Zli samme ln" (qtd. in Peiffer 
50). Here, Freud IS again implying the fundamental difference o f his ap­
proadl to that of Andreas-Salome - he being an analyst who IS blinkered 
by definition, and she tending mo re toward, and having a gift for, synthe­
sis.' H e then ":admits" his reluctance to acknowledge h imself as a wriler 
of what could also be <1iterature". He states that he forgoes litera ture, 
which he defines as " Zusanunenlung. Harmonie, Erhebung und alles, was 
Sic das Symbolische hei.Ben", fo r twO reasons. 

Ficsdy. to him lhe <oncept of unity operating widlin dtis world is 
already self-eVIdent: " Was m lch inte ressiert, ist die Scheldung und 
G tiederung dessen, was sonst in einen Urbrei zusammenAlel3en wlirde" 

The "Wayward G leam of the Lyrical" 127 

(191Slcn er; qtd. in Peiffer 36). Secondly, experience taught him that such 
"Iit"emry" ambitions toward the symbolic can contribute [0 the distortion 
o f «das zu Erkennende, wenn Isie es1 auch verschonerlnJ" (19 16 lettcr; 
qtd. i.n Pfeiffer, Britfnchstl FrtJldSO). However, he IS still aware of the need 
for the integration of such isolated findings «in SCUlC Beziehungen": c'meine 

rur das Dunkel adaptien en Augen vertragen wahrsehel1llidl kein starkes 
Lichnmd keillen weneH Gesichtskreis. Doeh bin tdlllld lt Maulwurf genug 
geworden, urn micb niclu :ln der Ahnungdes H eUeren und Umf2ssendcren 
zu e rfreuen, oder gar, um dessen Exis(enz zu verleugneo" (q(d. 10 Pfeiffer, 
Briefin(hstl FreNd 50). 

From a mere few sentences from two letters, one can thus a:lstallize 
Freud's view on the differences betw~en p sychoanalytic thcon st and crc­
ative writer, personified in Freud himself and Lou Andreas-Salome, re­
sp ectively. In sho rt, it is the d ifference between the " pacticularist" and rhe 
"generalist". To come back to Frcud's metaphor. t.he " pubculanst" is com­
pared to a mole wllh a restricted, if not entirely o bscured, View of the 
outside world. He is burrowing into the ground , on a vertical level, intcr­
ested m depth. The "gcnenlist", contrarily, strives upward, bird-Itke, con­
stanliy flying above a c<Wolkcnbedeck[tel Landschaft" .' The aim is co pen­
etrate the clouds, to boai.n a horizonral view on ''A lles'' (R1.lke'sand Andrcas­
Salo me's concept of the unity of all things living o r dead) o r, in less gran­
diose terms, to wade into the " Urbrei" - depeodlOg on whose vocabulary 
we wish to bor row. 

H owever, Freud himself imptics in the sta tcment quoted above 
how inextricably Imked both kinds of cognitive endeavo ur arc. His very 
style., which borrows nch metaphorical allusions and evocatio ns from the 
supposedly separa te realm of "the symbolic" , is further proof of ItS 
inlc rtwinedness with his own, and compamtively more I.heore tlcal, preoc­
cupatlons. Phillips would agree, posrulating that psychoanalySIS "is most 
imerestingiy poised r .. . J nOt simply between science and poet!)', but be­
tween poet1"yand epistemOlogy" (34). Fourteen years latcr, on the las[ page 
of Das Ullbtha,gtn in dtr IViIINr, Freud already expressed thscomfort about 
his mo le-dOIll: «Allein mich driingt es, auch eU1Jl1al mit den Won en des 
Sclullerschen Tauchecs -auszurufen: 'lis frt.'Ue sich, wer da :umet un rosigen 
ucht.'" Lastly, let thiS sta tement, made on [he occaSio n o f Freud's 70'" 
birthday, speak for itSelf: "The poets and philosophers he fore me discov­
ered dIe unconSCIOUs. \Vhat 1 discovered was the scientlfic method by 
which ule unconscious can be studied" (qtd. in Phillips 9). 



128 Forus on Gt:rm:w Studies 

Provided by tllls link with psychoanalysis, criteria emerge with 
which one can define « 2 poem. accorrlrng to Freud", Its creator must luve 
a Freudian "mole" withm tum or her. reaching deep down intO thetr own 
wells of psychic life and erperience.. HO\l,'ever, there also has to be enough 
of a Saloman high-flying «btrd" who lmks this experience with, as Freud 

says, "its re1:uions", malung It shareable, offering dIe possibility of mean­
ing to an "Other'" to iL This implies that the text itself nwstgo beyond the 
personal experience which occasIoned it, it muSt transcend the individual's 
limits enough in order [0 speak to another individual: "psychoanalysis is a 
medlOd for self.knowledge [ ... 1, poetry is not" (Phill ips 32) - necessarily. 
It can be thal, but, mo re importantly, it can also provide o thers with a way 
o f knowing what it is nOt to be onesel£ The "Flaschenpost.", as Celan 
called his poems, <'wird an Hecz-Land gespUir" if the poet has a gift for 
investing an individual voice in the paramount concerns of his time and 
place - and making them wcadler the test of o ther rimes and places. Au­

gustStah1. wriringabout Rilke thal he is "ein Kind seinerZeir in den meis[etl 
seiner Theorien" (36), would agtee when he men goes on to differentiate 
those dleories from his «Kunst: das Zeitbedingte und gam PCcsOnIiche SO 
zu verwandeln [ ... ], daB auch Menschen mit ganz anderen Schicksalen 
sich in seinem Werk wiedenuerkennen glauben und sich ven;randen fuhlen" 
(36). To St:lhl, then, Ifl contraSt to Phillips, poetry is a method for self­
knowledge - albeit for lhat of its readeL 

To Freud, it IS honesty about feelings which might usua1ly be con­
sidered shameful rather dWl the aspiration [0 an absolute trud) that is the 
marker of a good poem, provided we remain faithfu1 to his «sepacarist" 

viewlo and are nOI ulktngabout style yet This lets Phillips build his bridge 
from poetry to pSydlOanaJysis. In his view, the ho nesty informing and 
inhercot in the former helps to overcome, in Freud's words, the "Schranken 
( ... 1, welche sich zwischen Jedem einzelllen Ich und den anderen erheben" 
(qtd. in l)hillips 8). [n the sanle way, Phillips argues, psychoanalysis should 
be less imerested in " irs slaVIsh quest for [truth and] academic respectabil­
ity". bUl mo re in " truthfulness [and fellow feeliog}" (xiv). Both diSCiplines 
or art forms, he malOtains. cannot be institutionalised as "one doesn't nec­
essanly say or wnte something because one believes it, but to find out 
whether one belteves It" (xviii). 

Phillips not only observes. but a1so endorses a certain idealization 
of poetry by his profession. In his «not [bemg] sufficiendy [ ... 1 addiC[ed 
to safety". in his readmess to engender dle possibility of meeting another 

The "Wayward Gleam of the Lyrica.l~ 129 

self, the poet is "our bst hope for haPlliness" (Phillips S). The kind of 
poems which are full of sub)ecove allusio ns, often touching 00 [OPICS of 
loss, pain. Of violence, are frequently reguded the most obscure. Yet, when 
bnguage borders on silence as tl does io such poems, it :a.lso borders. on 
light and music (Steiner 72): the stlence that is cre:a.ted wh.en the . llleam~­
less tautologtes of conventional speech are disregatded or put Into a dlf~ 
ferem context makes room for true encounters. It engenders an under­
standing of tllat other self,:a.n emotional enb.gh/enment which. in tum, can 
o nly happen if lhe words come close enough to music to their "being able 
to communicate before they are fully understood": «so me of th e most 
brill iant acillcvement's of artlS1JC form will incorporate some o f the most 

revealing acts of self-formation" (l-Iufstader 19). 
However. Phillips also criticises Ihe way in which poetry has been 

depoliticized and dehistoricized by some of his peers in order to «align it 
wi th psydloanalysis" (5). What needs clarification here is thc natu.re of dle 

subjectivity often ascnbed to lyric poetry. After «that which happened" to 
hum.tnity and language during the NaZI regime, of course it is nOI the 
subjectivity iJl.herem m the " metaphYSIcal havens of intenority a?d tim~­
lessness"l1 dlat could prove Adorno's famous dictum about tIle unposSt­
bility of poetry after Auschwitz wrong. As Leonard Olsdmcr pomts out, 
wha.t is really needed to this day is constrUctive tOtrospectio n to make a 

poetry that is responsible towards history. 
Yet one n-...st ask again why Freud's psychoanalysis SO often quotes 

lyric poetry whenever Freud's own lh<."Oretic approach IS at a pomt where it 

apparently won't metro far enough. Accocdtng to Phillips. tl~ere are t~O 
reasons for this. Firstly, «the poet and poeIX}' are used to sustam our beiJef 
in meaniJlg", III tlle legitimacy of language. Possesslllg Keats ' "Negao\'C 
Capability" of ""Not Knowmg" - that is, tlle capability of '"being muncer­
tainties I ... J witllo ut any irritable reaching after fact and [cason" (Keats 
qtd . in Phillips 23) - Lhe analyst is being rewarded by a «grea t poem", o r a 
good intcrpretation derived from tlle patient's free association raw nute­
na\. This in mrn will «enablc dlC pa tienc" to make a grea t and truly 
performative poem himself. lIsingwords that will nOt be «J. substitutc" for 
action. but «a preludc to it'~ (PllIUjps 25). Secondly. and on a sltghtly lesser 

scale, due to his o r her apparen t drawing the most profound lfisights ~Ilh­
a lit real effort. "th e poet is a peculiarly difficult - and therefore pecuharly 

interesting - ego-ideal for the analyst" (Plullips 6). 
As we have seen. Freud's psychoanalysis has to some instances 



130 FOCNS on German Studies 

been guilty of "abusing» lyric poetry foc its purposes, of manhandling it 
into tOO narrow and dcconreX"tualised a discourse. This could be due to a 
mistruSt of fantasies left untreated and to a fear of the power of the raw, 
unal tered unconscious in the apparent control-addict Freud, which he at­
tesls to himself, after all. Psychoanalysis and poetry di ffer in language, 
method and e~:pcession. yet, they share the same goal: to reveal something 

which can go beyond the individual ego. Crucially, with a crea rive reader or 
patient, both the poet and the analySt might be able to share their respon­
sibility to the language; that of «getting rid of the garbage, cutting through 
the dutterwherevec [they] might find it, be it in the advertising slogan. the 
newspaperarticie, dlC politician 's speech, me preadlci s sermon" (Muldoon). 
In this, they, although being acutely aware of «having little or no place in 
the modern world" (lvfuldooo). are acrually vital for this modern world 
whidl otherwise will, as Goorge Steiner puts it, "end ncidlc£ with a bang 
00£ a whimper, but with a headline, a slogan. a pulp novel larger than the 
cedars of Lebanon" (73). 

Turnillg the Tabus: 'VIl[J",phafisch lind haarstrollbe!ld': ff7hen Rilkt fnet Frtlld 

We have seen how in ''Dcr Dichter und das Phantasieren" Freud, very 
much in character as the authocitative "scientist" , matter-of-factly states: 
"der Gllickliche phantasiert oie, nur der Unbefriedlgte" (SA 1 0: 173). Hav­
ing previously linked rum, O f her. who "phantasiert" to the poet, it could in 
faCt be said that in Freud 's view the activiry of poeric writing potentially 
marks him, or her. who is unhappy. "Poets. after aU, are not famous for 

their mental health", Phillips re.marks (11), sarcastically stating his doubts 
as to whether psychoanalysis wo uld have been a viable career option for 
Byron - as if saniry was a prerogative of his, Phillips', of all professions. 
After an. if, as Phillips states, psychoanalysis has so much in common with 
poetry, why shy away from the latter's shadows and bask only in its light? 
The degree of sensibility and the capacity for empathy demanded of dIe 
good analySt surely potentially gives way to mental instabilities not unlike 
those that the poet, wlnernble in his or her rcceptiviry, is prone to. 

It is however fair to say that SUdl a fo rm o f unhappiness was one 
that the poet Rainer Maria R.ilke was nor unfami liar widl . After all, 

Ullbefriedit,tseill also implies that one has not made one's peace with [he 
world, dlat one is restless. This apparent conditio .rine qlJD 11M (at least as fae 
as Freud was concetned) o f tile poeric profession botll calls for the exami-

TIle "\Vaywacd Gleam of the Lyrical" 131 

-nation of the nature of the mumal inAuence of life and work, and repre­
sents ti le main point o f contact between lh e poet and tile father o f psy­
dlOana.lysis. Although Rilke decided against psydloanalysis for himsel f, he 
viewed itas havlngilS strengths -as a theory. Also, he regarded his own art 
as therapeutic in itself - to a certain extent. Furthermore, like Freud, tile 

poet ruso emphasised "die Notwendigke.ll zur Au£arbeirung der Kindheit" 
(Schank 13); however, his working thro ugh took the shape of his poelTlS, 
mainly those from the years 1898-19 12. 

Both the correspondence between Andreas-Salome and Freud and 
tlla t between her and Rilke arc excellent sources for the documen tation of 
the actual points of contact between the allaJyst and the poet, as they help 
us establish when they met in person.. .elch freute mich, Rainer Freud zu 
bringen, und sic gefielen sich [ ... J", Andreas-Salome wrote in her Freud ­
diary (qtd. io Pfeiffer, Britjwu hJdFrmJ239). She is referring to introducing 
the two men to eadl other during the Second PSydlOanalyl1C Congrcss 1.11 

Munidl, on the seventh and eighth of Seplember 1913. 111eir firm places 
within her life in their respective uniqueness, and their equaLty in 1ll1por­

tance to her is empllasised by the fact that the dative and accusative objects 
in hee sentence ace ambivilent - that is, it is unclear who is being taken to 
whom. Their second and presumably last meeting took phce in December 
1915, when Rilke paid his only visir to the Freud family in Vienna. Unfor­
tunately, no (published) lener by Rilke himself docwnenting that meeting 
e.xiStS;1l however, according to a letter by Freud to Andreas-Salome from 
July 1916, Rilke " hat uns in Wien deul1d l genug zu erkennen gegeben. 
dafi 'lrein cwiger Sund mit ihm zu Aecllten' ist. So her.L1ich er bei eim:m 

ersten 13esuch war,es is[nich t gc\ungeo, ilm:cu einem zweiten zu bcwegenC< 
(qid . in P feiffer. BriefwtChsei Frelld 56-57). 

This seems to suggest that Freud was dIe keener of the twO in 
regard (0 the maintenance of their acquaintance. While d le father o f psy­
choanalysis was d eep ly fascinated by lyric poelS throughollf his life. as we 
have seen, Rilke's decision against psydlOanalysis llad in fact been cemented 
as early as January 1912, brought about by the birth of dIe first of the 
Dllillt.Itr Ektim. Although he had entertained ti,e possibihry of undcrgo­
ing therapy with Viktor Gebsattel in Mun.ich for a shoet while, II was the 
fear for his «angels", for his art, which finaJised Rilke's deciSIo n against 

analysis, as this letter to his "liebe Loll" shows: 

kh wein jettt, dill die Analyse fur ouch nur Sinn haue, wcnn der 



132 Focus on German Studies 

merkwlirdige Hintergedanke, 11 i c h t me h r z u sc h rei b e fl, 

den ich mir wahrend der Beendigung des Maltt ofters als eine Art 
Erleichterung vor die Nase hangte, mir wirklich ernst ware. Dann 
durfre man sich die Teufel austreiben lassen, da sie ja im 
Biirgerlichen wirklich nur st6rend und peinlich sind, und geheo 
die Engel moglicherweise mit aus, so miiBte man auch das als 
Verein fachuogau ffassen und sich sagen, daB sie ja in jenem neuen 
nichsten Beruf (welchem?) sicher nicht in Verwendung kamen. 
(qtd. in Pfeiffer, Briifwechsel Frtud 262-63) 

"Philosophy will clip an angel's wings [ ... ] Unweave a rainbow" ~ where 
Keats saw philosophy as a threat to art in "Lamia", Rilke saw psychoanaly­
sis as damaging the «angels" of the imagination. Yet, although he lamented 
the fact that his poetry was far from rendering his life " leidu" or"eio fadl", 
R.iJke regarded it as a form of self-treatment akin to pSydlOanalysis (see 
Rilke, Bn4e 1: 381; Schank 14). Reminding Andreas-Salome of the fact 
that Gebsattel had been treating Clara, bis wife, since the spring of 1911, 
he was quick to assure his concerned confidante that Clant's work never 
helped her, "wahrend die meine in gewissem Sinn von An fang an eine Art 
Selbstbehandlung war" (qtd. in Pfeiffer, Bn'ifwechsel Ri!ke 261). This view, 
which was perhaps slighdy self-deluding, was possibly adopted fcom 
Andreas-Salome herself who, too, "resisted the idea o f analysis for Rilke 
because she believed that his suffering and potential healing were both 
rooted in his access to preoedipal psychic material that might be damaged 
by analysis" (M:artin 45). 

However, Rilke's fina l decision against a talkiog cure was oor 
reached easily - after all, he still kept wldecgoing a Fe0111na!JSt, as it were, in 
hi.s correspondence with Andreas-Salome. His conflict between the need 
to protect his art from analysis and chat to protect himself from his :u:t is 
well documented in his letters to her from December 1911 and January 
1912. They testify that he knew the li.m.its of his art as a healing power and 
was still wlsure whether he would not need help outside it, and therefore 
outside himself, after all: «in demselben Maai3e, als sie [his art] sich 
entwickelte und etwas Selbstindiges wurde, verliert sie inuner mehr das 
T herapeutisd le l.111d Riicksichtsvolle und stellt Forderungen" (P feiffer, 
BriifWtchsel Rilke 261). Furthermore, although " der merkwu.rd ige 
I-lintergedanke, nicht mehr ZlI scbreiben" was nOt weighty enough to in­
fluence Rilk.e's decision, he used it as an escapist daydream whenever his 

The "Wayward Gleam of the Lyrical" 133 

art became «riicksichtslos" and when " mein Kbrperliches [ .. . ] Gefahr 
gaufq, die Karrikatur memer Geistigkeit zu werden" (qtd. in Pfeiffer, 
Sriifivechsel Rjfkt 261). Like Nietzsche, who longed for a little ''l.andgt~t'', 
Ritke dreamt o f bccommg a doctor with a practice in dIe countrYSide 
(pfeiffer, Brieju,tchse/ Rilkt 263), yet his reality was his " terrible" art: "es ist 
das Furchtbare an der Kunst, daB sie, je weiter man in ihr kommt, desto 
mehr zum Aufiersten, fast Unmoglichen verpfuchter" (qtd. in Pfeiffer, 

Bricfivechsellvlke 249). .. . . 
\Vas he the artist literally driven "zurn AuBersten" , Of outstde his 

own self, by IU; art? In clle case of Rilke and his rural fun tasies, Freud's 
claim of the daydreamer pertiejiniliofletll being dissatisfied with their situa­
tion within reality, and the (d ay-)dream being wish fulfillment, seems proven 
right. Despite this dissatisfaction - he was still undecided on the question 
of analytical help by January 18'" and complained to And reas-Salome a~lIt 
his "auf und ab lmd hin lIlld her" ~ Rilke at last came to the conclUSIon 
about psychoanalysis that "etwas wie eine desinfizierte Seele [ ... ] dabei 
herauslkommt], em Unding, em Lebendiges, rodl korrigiert, wle die Seire 
Ul einem Schulheft" (qtd. in Pfeiffer, Briefinchsel Rilke 260). Ultimately, his 
own fertile messiness was preferable to die sterile "Aufgerawntscin" of 

Freud's therapy. 
Rilke never agreed to a third meeting: "After his final visit to dIe 

Freuds in December 1915, at a time when he was crushed by his mili tary 
service in dle War Ardllve ill VielUla" (M:olnar), Rilke wrote: " t ··l ofters 
wa.r ieh daran, mir durch eine Ausprache mit limen aus der Verschiittung 
zu helfen. Aber sch..liesslich iiberwog der Entschluss, die Sache allein 
durchzumachen, soweitemem eben ooch em trllber Satz Alleinseins bleibr. 
Wenn ich es nadl und oadl zu etwas Fassung bringe, so frag ieh m..ich 
sidltl bei limen an und komme; ich weiss, das wird gu t sein"u. " Nothing 
came of dill hope", Molnar adds. But why, consideration fo r his art aside, 
was this glimpse of hope so purposefully trodden upon by the poet? In 
addition to dle reasons suggested above, a fear for dle perceived original­
ity o f his work might have been at play. One must only consider Freud's 
own and almost pathological refusal [Q go anywhere near the works of 
N ietzsche from 1876 onward s to be willing to give such deliberations one's 
credence. 14 Furthermore, rather than envy of preud's professional achieve­
ments, it could have been jealousy of a more personal namre wInch led (he 
poet to all but terminate d1e COflt-act with the psychoanalyst with whom he 
had been so "her.dich" and whose ideas were so similar to his. The woman 



134 Foan 011 German Studies 

whom he needed from the moment they met to make lurn feel «real" and 
who had, since mOre than a decade, been withdrawing from him puq>ose­
ful ly, now gave herself wholeheartedly to Sigmund Freud and his psycho­
analysis, tcymg to be in Vienna whenever she could. AndrC1s-Salo me re­
plied to Freud's disappointed letter thus: "Lieber Herr Professor, Itcm, 
deuten Sie Rainer sem Verhall'cn flIcht falsch: es ciltsprang kClOcr 
Entfremdung, nur seiner Zerbrochenhejt; ich weiB gut, wie er zu Ihnen 
steht" (qtd. in Pfeiffer. Briefo'tcbJtl Frllld 57). ThiS is test:unent to her pro­
tectiveness of Freud's feelings as well as to her diplomatIc skills, as Freud 
probably imerpceted Rllke's behaviour correctly a1l along. For, aJdlOUgh 
Rllke considered psychoanalysis or, as he caJled it, «die Sache selbst, die 
mit ihm (Freud] ducchgeht", as having «ihrc echten und swkcn Seiten"; 
his judgement of Freud's writings as known to tum 10 the ye:;r.t 1912 was 
mther harsher: «\Vas ich von Freud:; Schriften kennc, [t!l t mir] unsymphatisch 
und stellenweise luarstriiubend" (qtd. in Pfeiffer, BrnfiJ'trbkl Ri/h 259-60). 

For reasons about which we can all but specul:are, the lines o f 
communlcation between the two men, Ihe analyst and the poet, were no t 
truly open. md rime md again it was Andreas-Salome who had to «trans­
late" them to each other. Tn 1922, th e year in which Freud's formal address 
of her, "Verehrteste Frau", was finally replaced by dle inttmate <'Liebste 
Lou" in his letters, there was a laSt point of - albeit indirect - contact 
during Rilke's lifetime. The poet sent a book to Andreas-Salo me «tiber den 
Schizophrenen \V6lffli 1m Berner In::eohaus'' (qld. in Pfeiffer, BritJwtrhstl 
Fwd 119), which she promptly forwarded to Freud. The latter replied: 
<'Fill: die Sc.hrift iiber den geisteskranken Kiinstler danke ich [hnen oder 
Dr. Rilke sehr" (qtd , in P feiffer:, Driifnchstl Freud '120). 

After m.s. « there IS a curious silence around Itlke" (Molnar:) per­
vading the documents, le tters and writings of Freud. T his, along witll the 
latter's frequent evasions of the discussion of Iync poetty, might be due to 
a self-(:onfesseci "ever more clearly discernible partisansbip for: the pri­
macy of the intellect" in the father of psychoanalysis. fn rum, this was, 
according to Freud himself, u1umately has «expression of a hostility to­
wards the id".I~ 

T he "Wayward G leam of the LY(lcal" 135 

Notes 

I Jung. i.acw, \'(fjnnicott; to name but a few. ~ even longer last can be 
found in: Adam I~hllbps. PromiJu PromiIu. London: I-aber, 2000: 4. All P~llhps 
qUOtes are mken from dlis book. The essay "Poetry and PsychoanalYSIS lists 
examples m abundance of ~nalysts cblmmg their. in.debtedness to poe~. . 

l Sec Freud: "viele an sich eigenlhch peUlhche Errcgungen konnen fur 
den Horer und Zuschauer des Dlchrers zur QueUe det" Lust werden" (SA 10: 
172). 

lNB: I am nOl incorpontmg a dISCUSsion of Di, T1l1I1IIIdeidNII,gas I do 
no t wish to explode the limited frame of this essay; but also ~ I follow 
Rachell30wlby in disongulshlng daydreams from dreams. In her essay 'TIle ~ther 
day. The inlerpretaoon of day-dreams" (in: Sit,mlllld fuNds "The IlJfU/Jrttalton oj 
f)rramJ": Ne., lnferrlistiplirzaty Em!!J. E.d. Laurn [\·Iarcus. Manchester. UP~ 1999: 160-
182), she argues dlat daydreams, as opposed to dreams, .involve consciousness of 
the fact of the daydream no t being realny; the POSSlbiity of control over their 
events; and a different temporal direction of Wlshes (170.-1). . 

• The other importUl t hair is, of course, rhe DionYSian rrenzy, (Will of 
such Apolhnaan dream and indMduation. _ _ 

5 Sec particularly Drti AbhandiJlIIgtllllinrriie StxNalitlit, where !<reud speaks 
of me "sogenannten IIOt71lak" Sexualtrieb" (SA 5: 74); and "Der Wahn und die 
Trliume In W. Jensens Crodur/': "Ole Grenze aber zwclchen den normal und 
krankhaft benannten SeelenzlIsllinden 1st wm Teil eine konvenllonelle, ",-urn 
anderen eine so fllcl3ende, daB wahrschelOlich jeder von uns sie im Laufe ClUes 
Tages mehrmals libcrn:hreitet" (SA 10: 43). ,., 

6 Michael Molnar, "The Bizarre Chaar: A Slant on Freud s ught Readmg 
in the 19305". Given to me by the author III the Preud-mu.ieum In r-."aresfiel{~ 
Gardens in London. '!lIe essay is also included in the collection Rtadtng r"muil 
Rtmk·rzg, ed. Sander Gilman (New York.: UP, 1996). 

1 See next Freud quote. 
• This was first referred to in a Ictt(:r 10 Andreas-Salome from July 30.dl, 

1915 (qtd. Ln Pfeiffer 35-36). . 
19 Andreas-Salome might be responding to Freud's mole-memphor With 

this blrd-alluslon III a lener 10 him, 18th July, 1916 •. (qtd. in Pfeiffer 56). 
10 Freud's chOice to separate and prionrise Qlterary "content" over style) 

as represented m "Der Dichter und das Phanwierc:n" is referred to here. 
II From a conversation With Leonard Olschner. 
U ht dlls point in the BmjrnchitlWlth Lou Andre2s-Salome, there ~ a 

gap of a year and a half: between June 9th 1915 and January 6th 1917, llilke 
apparendy elmer did not wote m Andreas-Salome, or those letters have been lost 
or destroyed. Accordmg to E.rnst Pfeiffer, the latter option IS rather more likely, 



136 FOCUJ on Gcrm :m Studies 

as from the time of their pbtonic friendship. which lasted from June 1903 to the 
poet's death in December 1926, a tenth of Rilke's and a smggering third of Salome's 
letters have been lost. Pfelffee fiJ[ther reportS that at least those missing from 
"der ersren, leidenschanhchcn Phase dec Beziehung" - J\-lay 1897 until February 
1901 _ were definltdy destroyed by both lovers in a conscious and conce~ 
effort. 

uRLlke to Freud. February 17th, 1916. Copy held in Freud Museum. 
t.faresfield Gardens, London. 

\< Nietzsche's influence on Freud and Freud's denial of it is well docu· 
men ted by Reinhard Gassers Nit:~,he N"d mud, and by Ronald Lehrer's NUlzrdll} 
Pruenre ill fuNdi Lift PI.d TJxJlIJ.ht: 0" the Onlfll.1 0/ (l p~ oj Dynamic UII(OIf­
SOoNS Mental FNllaiOnilfg_ See also: Harold Bloom, The AfIXi4y of l'!fottna: A Thtory 
oj Poetry. 

U From a 1928 letter to Istvan l-Io ll6s, in: L\tichael .l\ lolnar (cd.), The 
Diary oj SiglllUlld mud 1929.1939, (New York: Scribner's, 1992),278. The fuJI 
quotation is: "I fmally admitted to myself that [ ... 1 I did not like these sick people, 
that I was angry With them at finding them 50 far from myself and everyt.h1Og 
h uman. A curious type of intolerance which of course makes me unfit to be a 
psycluarrist. In the course o f ume I have ceased to find myself mteresting. which 
is of course analytically incorrect. [ ... ] ... 1$ it the result of an ever more clearly 
discermble putisanshlp for the primacy of the intellect, the expression of a hos­
tility towards the Id?" 

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Bloom, Harold. Th, Atr>.i,D' of ltiflllena: A Theory of Poetry. London: Oxford 

University Press, 1971. 
Ce1an, Paul. Gesammelte Wtrke ill FunJ Balldel/. Eds. l3eda Allemann and Stefan 

Reichert with Rolf BUcher. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1983. 
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- - -. SluJitlltlllqpbt Balld V' SoomIltbell, 1972 
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