From: Cervantes: Bulletin of the Cervantes Society of America
14.1 (1994): 3-18.
Copyright © 1994, The Cervantes Society of America
“Cipión” Writes to “Berganza” in the
Freudian Academia Española
| |
“In the realm of fiction we find the plurality of lives
we need.” |
| —Freud |
HE recent
publication of letters written between 1871 and 1881 by Sigmund Freud to
his bosom friend Eduard Silberstein throws light on a relatively undocumented
period of Freud's adolescence and young manhood. These letters have been
known about for some time. A few samples were published by the Rumanian scholar
Heinz Stanescu.1 The originals now repose
in the Library of Congress. Only recently, however, have they been made fully
accessible in several languages. The German edition, edited by Walter Boehlich,
was published in 1989. It was quickly followed by editions in French (1990),
English (1990), Italian
1 Heinz
Stanescu, “Unbekannte Briefe des jungen Sigmund Freud an einen
rumänische Freund,” Zeitschrift des Schriftstellerverbandes
des RVR 16 (1965): 12-29; and “Young Freud's Letters to His Rumanian
Friend, Silberstein,” Israel Annals of Psychiatry and Related
Disciplines 9 (1971): 195-207.
3
(1991), and Spanish (1992).2 The chief interest
of the correspondence is biographical of course. It contains a good deal
of information about the young Freud's activities, opinions, and aspirations,
his scientific, philosophical, and literary interests, and his emotional
life at the time. There are also examples of creative writing of different
kinds, and even some drawings. By a curious quirk the letters are of some
incidental interest to the Hispanist and to the student of Cervantes too.
The two boys taught themselves Spanish in
out-of-school hours and subsequently kept up a ten-year correspondence, partly
in that language. They invented a sort of secret society which they called
their “Academia Española” (or “Castellana”). And
they called themselves by the names of the two talking dogs in Cervantes's
Coloquio de los perros. Freud told his fiancée Martha Bernays
the basic facts in a letter dated 7 February 1884:
We learned Spanish together, had our own mythology and secret names, which
we took from some dialogue of the great Cervantes. Once in our Spanish primer
we found a humorous-philosophical conversation between two dogs which lie
peacefully at the door of a hospital, and appropriated their names; in writing
as well as in conversation he was known as Berganza, I as Cipion. How often
have I written: Querido Berganza! and signed myself Tu fidel Cipio,
pero en el Hospital de Sevilla [sic]. Together we founded a strange scholarly
society, the “Academia Castellana” (AC), compiled a great mass
of humorous work which must still exist somewhere among my old
papers.3
2 Walter
Boehlich, ed., Sigmund Freud: Jugendbriefe an Eduard Silberstein
1871-1881 (Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer Verlag, 1989). Sigmund Freud,
Lettres de jeunesse, trans. Cornélius Heim (Paris: Gallimard,
1990). Walter Boehlich, ed., The Letters of Sigmund Freud to Eduard
Silberstein 1871-1881, trans. Arnold J. Pomerans (Cambridge, MA: The
Belknap Press of Harvard Univ. Press, 1990). Sigmund Freud, “Querido
amigo . . .” Lettere della giovinezza a Eduard Silberstein
1871-1881, ed. Marco Conci, trans. Giuseppina Quatrocchi (Torino: Bollati
Boringheri, 1991). Sigmund Freud, Cartas de juventud, ed. and trans.
Angela Ackermann Pilári (Barcelona: Gedisa, 1992).
I am most grateful to Francisco García
Sarriá for drawing them to my attention.
In this article references to the letters are
by the number, date, and page number in the Spanish edition, except for
quotations from the letters in German, where I quote from the edition in
English and give the page references in square brackets.
3 Letters
of Sigmund Freud, ed. Ernest L. Freud, trans. Tania and James Stern (New
York: Basic Books, 1961), pp. 96-7.
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He was pleased to inform the Spanish translator of his works many years later:
“Siendo yo un joven estudiante, el deseo de leer el immortal D. Quixote
e[n] el original cervantino, me llevo a apprender, sin maestros, la bella
castellana” [sic].4 Appearances
notwithstanding, Freud's command of the language improved with practice in
the early years, but it was always far from perfect. All the same, given
the absence of formal instruction, and the apparently complete dependence
upon the “Spanish primer” (which so far remains unidentified),
plus, at least at a later stage, the use of a dictionary, Freud's youthful
linguistic achievement was considerable.
Their Spanish primer presumably contained an
extract or selections from the Coloquio de los perros, which furnished
them with the names Cipión and Berganza. It apparently also included
some writing by Fernán Caballero and maybe Mesonero Romanos. It seems
unlikely that the complete Coloquio was represented, and less likely
still that the companion piece El casamiento engañoso was there
too. Surely there could not have been room for all that. But even if he never
read more than a part or parts of it, Freud read enough of the
Coloquio to be moved to identify with one of the two dogs, while
Silberstein took the name of the other. In the light of all that is known
about Freud and the little that is known about Silberstein, the choice of
roles was obvious. Freud/Cipión was the dominant one and the more
didactic of the two, the driving force in their game and their epistolary
exchange.
The most intriguing fact, of course, is that
the future founder of psychoanalysis should have been even partially familiar
with this particular work —and not merely familiar with it, but stimulated
to appropriate the name, and thus identify in at least some degree with the
role, of Cipión. For this exceptional novella is cast in the form
of a dialogue which centres around the lifestory told by Berganza, with
Cipión listening and commenting. This situation has an immediately
obvious resemblance to that of psychoanalyst and analysand —a teller
and a listener who actively intervenes in the telling. Could a shadowy notion
of modern psychoanalysis conceivably have been awakened in
4 As cited
by John E. Gedo and Ernest S. Wolf, “Freud's Novelas ejemplares,”
Psychological Issues 34-35 (1976) (Monograph ix: Freud: The Fusion
of Science and Humanism), p. 89, note 1. Freud's Spanish here is quietly
corrected in the published letter to the translator prefacing vol. 4 of the
Obras completas del Profesor Sigmund Freud (Madrid, 1937), p. 7.
Freud by a story of Cervantes? It is a fascinating notion. Not surprisingly,
it has provoked some speculation.5
But there is no hard evidence for it, only
conjecture. Accordingly, in an article published in the Modern Language
Review, 88 (January 1993), I tried instead to describe what the Coloquio
de los perros and psychoanalysis have in common in terms of narrative
theory.6 This seemed to me, and still seems,
a more profitable line of inquiry. However, it was only at a late stage after
the article had gone to press that the recently published letters of Freud
to Silberstein came into my hands. Nothing I have read in them makes me want
to alter the substance of that article in any way. But it is now possible
to make a better guess at how well Freud knew Cervantes's dialogue-novella.
The main purpose of this article is to take a closer look at the Cervantes
connection as it appears in the letters. This should help to derail any possible
misconceptions, prompted by my previous article, about the impact of the
Coloquio on Freud. I am not concerned to give an account of the Hispanic
content of the letters except incidentally. The reader is recommended to
sample them, preferably in the Spanish edition, for him/herself; and for
informed comment on their biographical and general interest to read the
introductory and other material furnished by Walter Boehlich and Angela Ackermann
Pilári.7
Seventy-five communications, dating from December
1871 to January 1881, all from Freud to Silberstein, have been retrieved
and published. More than this were certainly written. Those we have range
from a two-line postcard to a letter of eight and a half pages (in the Spanish
edition), complete with drawings. There are sixteen postcards. Twenty-seven
missives, mostly short, are wholly in Spanish. In seventeen more there is
a portion in Spanish, in some cases sizable, in others a few lines or words
only, excluding the opening and closing phrases. Silberstein is
5 By Gedo
and Wolf —see note 4 above. Also: S. B. Vranich,
“Sigmund Freud and ‘The Case History of Berganza’: Freud's
Psychoanalytic Beginnings,” Psychoanalytic Review 63 (1976):
73-82; and Leon Grimberg and Juan Francisco Rodríguez, “La influencia
de Cervantes sobre el futuro creador del Psicoanálisis,” Anales
Cervantinos 25-26 (1987-88): 157-74.
6 E. C. Riley,
“Cervantes, Freud and Psychoanalytic Narrative Theory,” Modern
Language Review 88 (1993): 1-14.
7 See
note 2 above. Also on the correspondence, Ronald W. Clark,
Freud the Man and the Cause (London: Cape and Weidenfeld & Nicholson,
1980), pp. 21-31.
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addressed as Berganza thirty-six times; Freud signs himself Cipión
fifty-five times.
The first communication wholly in Spanish is
no. 3, a two-line postcard dated 12 December 1871 (p. 39):
| Le ruego á Vm, que vine mañana debajo a la setima clase,
porqué no habrá tiempo de venir á el. |
| |
Quedo su atento servidor |
| Cipion |
|
In postcard no. 5 (19 January 1872, p. 40) he signs himself “Su
Braganza,” presumably a slip for “Berganza.” Probably they
had not yet settled into their respective roles. The first time he addresses
Eduard as Berganza is in the postcard of 27 July 1872 (no. 8, p. 43). This
is consolidated on 9 August (no. 10, p. 48), when he records that
“escribí en la mesa dos renglones castellanos y hice memoria
de vuestro nombre D. Berganza.” Three years later he reprimands his
friend with mock-solemnity for calling himself Cipión:
| Parece, que no sabeis, Señor Don Berganza, como os habeis de llamar,
pues que á vuestra carta de 2. Junio subscribís Cipion, lo
que es usurpacion de mi nombre. Pero si quereis, que mudemos de nombre, como
Jean Paul dice, que Siebenkäs y Leibgeber hicieron, consiento y espero
vuestro arbitrio. |
| |
El que hasta ahora se llama |
| Cipion |
| (no. 45, 13 June 1875, p. 173) |
|
Nothing came of this suggestion. No. 51, written from Manchester on 3 August
1875 (p. 178), begins: “Si tu no fueras el celebrado Don Berganza y
yo no fuera D. Cipion, ambos los unicos miembros de la A. E
. . .”
Appellative descriptions such as “miembro
vitalicio de la famosa A. E.” (“Academia Española)
appear.8 The initials “m.d.l.A.E.”
(“miembro de la Academia Española”) are used frequently.
So are “p.e.e.h.d.S.” (“perro en el hospital de Sevilla”).
The occasional addition like “e.d.l.s.n.y.p.” is less easily decoded.
As the Spanish editor suggests, the letters could stand for “en dos
lenguas sin nación y
patria.”9
8 On the
Academia Española see W. Boehlich, The Letters, pp. xv-xviiii,
or in the Spanish translation, Cartas, pp. 272-5.
9 Cartas,
p. 128, note 6.
Freud persistently assigns the dogs to the
hospital of Seville, not Valladolid. At no point does he correct this mistake,
and presumably Silberstein never pointed it out to him either. This argues
either forgetfulness from a very early stage or an incomplete reading. It
suggests that Freud may only have read that part of the Coloquio where
the locale of the events narrated is Seville, as Boehlich
notes.10 This would cover the early part
of Berganza's story: his puppyhood in the abbatoir of Seville, the events
at the house of the rich merchant, and his service with the
constable.11 This is a substantial fragment,
but of course we do now know how much of it was contained in the Spanish
primer. The title of the Coloquio refers to the hospital as being
in —or just outside— Valladolid, to which the action of Berganza's
story reverts near the end, when he joins Cipión and old
Mahudes.12 The dogs' conversation takes place
there throughout, but there is no mention of the hospital being there, except,
indirectly, in the opening and closing sections referred to. Seville is named
much more frequently than Valladolid in the novella. It is possible that
the author of the primer, introducing the extract, got it wrong. Freud made
another, slighter error when he described the dogs' conversation as taking
place at the door of the hospital, as he does in the letter to Martha.
This was probably a detail supplied by his imagination. In any event, it
looks very much as though Freud did not read the Coloquio in any other
text.
At his suggestion, the game with names was
extended. The lengthy letter of 7 March 1875 (no. 39), written partly in
German, partly in Spanish, concludes with a “Parte Oficial. Cosas
de la Academia Española o Castellana,” in the course of which
he proposes:
la introduccion de siguientes terminos en el estilo oficial de la A. E.,
cuales términos no son nuevos, pero viejos y bien conocidos y merecen
ser sacados en limpio para el uso de los miembros de la A. E. Llamanse los
miemb. d.l.A.E. “perros,” que es su mayor titulo, que tienen ni
tendrán, llamese “Sevilla” el mundo, en que estan y el hospital
de Sevilla el pais en que viven, es decir la Alemania. Llamese en fin el
paradero, en que estan, la “cerra” (o si otra palabra es, que quiere
decir
10 The
Letters, p. xvi.
11 Coloquio
de los perros, Cervantes, Novelas ejemplares, ed. J. B. Avalle-Arce
(Madrid: Clásicos Castalia, 1985), t. 3, pp. 245-9 and 257-85.
12
Coloquio, p. 241 and 315-21.
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| “Dicke” y que el famoso Cervantes en el lugar, que V. conoce,
ha usado, sea esa otra palabra).13 Asi los
m.d.l.A.E. jamas digan de alguien “ha muerto,” sino ha salido de
Sevilla, jamas digan, ha dejado la Alemania sino ha quitado el hospital de
Sevilla y jamas digan, ha viajado en Alemania, de Viena á Berlin,
sino digan ha mudado de cerra. Viena llamese con otro nombre y así
tambien Berlin, pero los nombres no quiero proponer, sino dejo á Vm
de proponerlos, que viva mil y doscientos años |
| |
y sea dos mil años mantenido como |
| desea su D. Cipion (pp. 150-51) |
|
Accordingly, a week later (13 March, no. 40) Freud, writing in German, expresses
surprise that his friend has preferred to stay in Cádiz (i.e., probably
Leipzig) rather than visit Madrid
(Berlin).14 Letter no. 61 is headed
“Sevilla, el 13 de Ag. 1876.” And so this pleasant fiction is kept
up, off and on, until the last letter (no. 75, p. 241), written in Spanish,
headed “Sevilla 24 Januar 1881,” and subscribed “Saludote
y quedo tu fiel Cipion p.e.e.h.d.S. m.d.l.A.E. etc.” Freud was twenty-four
years old.
If we look for references to Cervantes in the
correspondence, there is not much to be found. He is mentioned as author
of the Tratos de Argel (probably), as noted above (see
note 13). He is mentioned in company with Fernán
Caballero and Mesonero Romanos (no. 21, 20 August 1873, p. 84). Freud recalls
the meal-spoiling Dr. Pedro Recio of Tirteafuera (Don Quixote II,
47) (no. 36, 30 January 1875, p. 138). And he gives his own treasured copy
of Don Quixote to Eduard as a birthday present (no. 34, 31 December
1874, p. 130, and no. 36, 30 January 1875, p. 138). But there is no allusion
directly to the Coloquio de los perros. It may be that the Academia's
frequently mentioned “archive” of miscellaneous literary efforts
and other papers and writings contained
13 I
reproduce most of Angela Ackermann's note on this passage: “En la comedia
de Cervantes, El trato de Argel (tercera jornada), dos esclavos cristianos
hablan de sus planes de fuga: ‘Cerca de Mostagán, y a mano derecha,
está una levantada y grande cuesta, que dicen que se llama el Cerro
Gordo . . .’ La palabra Dicke (gorda) hace pensar que
Freud pensaba en este pasaje. Hay que señalar además que al
principio de esta tercera jornada los esclavos cristianos llaman
‘perros’ a unos muchachos moros . . . La insistencia
en el título ‘perro’ en esta carta puede significar que
Freud hubiera descubierto este nuevo sentido de la palabra, relacionado con
su condición judía, compartida con Silberstein”
(Cartas, p. 151, note 7).
14
Cartas, p. 157, note 1. Boehlich less convincingly suggests that
Cádiz represents “the ‘harbor’ of Braila” (Rumania),
The Letters, p. 105, note 1.
some imitation or something closely reminiscent of the Coloquio, but
little of the archive appears to have
survived.15
So we just do not know how much of the
Coloquio de los perros Freud read. The repeated references to Seville
suggest that he did not know it very well. In default of new evidence it
would be foolish to credit him with more than a very limited acquaintance.
Had any part of it besides the names and the idea of the dogs in conversation
made a special impression on him, one would have expected this to show up
in his letters to Silberstein, if anywhere, but it does not. However, he
would probably have retained an impression of the tone of the work, the
half-jocular, half-serious manner which predominates in the dogs' conversation.
His own style in the letters —as may be seen in the passages I quote—
sometimes resembles it. No doubt it came to him naturally, but the resemblance
is there.
Be all that as it may, the Coloquio de los
perros moved the young Sigmund Freud to identify with one of the two
talking dogs. And it was no mere passing fancy, because he and Silberstein
kept up the game for at least ten years —perhaps more, if it began before
the correspondence did. They evidently sensed a parallel in the two relationships
—or at least Freud did. So it might make most sense to look for signs
of the Coloquio in the relationship of the two young men as it appears
in the letters. The difficulty here is that it is very hard to know what
to ascribe to the conscious or unconscious inspiration of the Coloquio
and what to the nature and circumstances of the pre-existing relationship.
We seem to be driven back to the fact that what the Coloquio and the
letters have most fundamentally in common is their dialogic character. This
is also what the Coloquio most particularly shares with psychoanalysis.
So I will indicate a few features and passages of the correspondence-dialogue
which point back to the Coloquio and forward to the as yet undiscovered
method of psychoanalysis.
15 Three
items of poetry (two of them not original) are included as papers of the
Academia Española in Cartas, anexo, pp. 254-62, and The
Letters, appendix, pp. 187-9, 195-7. The contents of a handful of Freud's
letters to Silberstein would also seem to qualify as archival material. On
the contents of the archive, see no. 37, 25 February 1875, and no. 66, 7
September 1877, in which Freud speaks of the prospect of himself and Silberstein
destroying the archive in a solemn autodafé. Although this act is
not borne out by the comment that the papers “must still exist,”
made in the letter to Martha of 4 February 1884, quoted above, it is confirmed
in another letter to her, dated 28 April 1885 (cited by Ackermann,
Cartas, p. 252, note 3).
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But first we must remind ourselves that, unlike
the other two dialogues, the Freud-Silberstein correspondence is seriously
defective. It is totally one-sided, only half a dialogue, inasmuch as there
are no letters from Silberstein to Freud. It is like listening to someone
speaking to someone else on the telephone. Or like reading only what Cipión
says and leaving out everything uttered by Berganza. Still, it would be much
more unsatisfactory and more tantalizing if the letters which had disappeared
were Freud's.
We cannot cast Freud fully in the role of
Cipión-listener-analyst. He had plenty to say about his own life.
However, he was clearly the more authoritarian of the two. It looks as though
he took the lead in the elaboration of their Academic game at various times,
in rather the same way as Cipión arranges the storytelling schedule
in the Coloquio.16 He also judges,
advises, and admonishes his friend. No doubt the similarity with Cipión
here was a temperamental coincidence; Freud would surely not have written
differently if he had never heard of Cipión. He was much the same
with members of his family when he was a
boy.17 But there is a functional coincidence
too between the dog of the dialogue and the youth who signed himself Cipión
in correspondence with his friend. Recurrent topics on which Freud likes
to give Silberstein useful advice are, for instance, travel and living abroad
(nos. 25, 27), studying (nos. 27, 30, 66), and notably matters of gallantry,
love, and young women (nos. 19, 20, 21, 38, 39, 40). On occasion he adopts
a tone of high moral severity with his more flirtatious friend:
This, and our old friendship, may persuade you to grant me the right to pass
judgment on your latest affair, and encourages me to say straight out that
it is very wrong of you, and causes grave harm to yourself and deep sorrow
to me, to encourage the imprudent affection of a sixteen-year-old girl and
—the inevitable outcome— to take advantage of it. I do not think
badly of you and cannot persuade myself that you
16 “Sea
ésta la manera, Berganza amigo: que esta noche me cuentes tu vida
y los trances por donde has venido al punto en que ahora te hallas, y si
mañana en la noche estuviéremos con habla, yo te contaré
la mía” (Coloquio, p. 244).
17 “He
was an attentive but somewhat authoritarian brother, helping his brother
and sister with their lessons and lecturing them about the world: his didactic
streak was marked from his school days on. He also acted as a rather priggish
censor” —Peter Gay, Freud. A Life for Our Time (London:
M. Papermac, 1989), p. 14.
| are being deliberately frivolous; rather I feel that what attracts you
is the romantic aspect of the matter, the unconstrained freedom on both sides,
the opposition to the sham and sanctimonious stolidity and stupidity of so-called
good society. But remember, dear friend, that it is only the initiation of
our actions that lies in our hands, i.e., is determined by the admixture
of an inner urge, while their course is rarely so determined and their outcome
never. |
| |
(no. 38, 27 February 1875 [p. 92]) |
|
And so on. He argues, moralises, philosophises, analyses, and prescribes
indefatigably, lucidly, picturesquely, pedantically, and humorously, mostly
in German, but occasionally in Spanish (cf. letter no. 21, 20 August 1873,
pp. 82-5, for example).
However, his judicial manner in no way obscures
the ardour of his desire to establish the most intimate correspondence possible.
With affection and sometimes almost passionate intensity of feeling he seeks
through their letters a two-way channel of communication, wherein each shall
record his daily life and secret thoughts for the other with utmost candour.
For this it was necessary to keep a diary:
| Para informar á Vm. de mi vida, preparo un librito de viaje, en
qué se hallarán borradas [forradas] todas las partidas [=outings]
que jamas emprenderé —Pienso á Vm todos los dias
. . . |
| |
(no. 10, 9 August 1872, p. 48) |
|
| |
| I notice that you have only let me have a selection from your experiences,
but you have kept your thoughts to yourself. I hope that your telling of
them will more than make up for this . . . It is my need for
communication which is causing me to write the diary you will be reading
in the first week of the school year. It contains little you will find
incomprehensible; yesterday and the day before I wrote so frankly in my annoyance
as I would never have thought myself capable of. I shall try to be just as
frank now, in the confident belief that no one else will catch a glimpse
of this letter. I shall try to make my confessions easier by framing them
in our official language [i.e., Spanish]. |
| |
(no. 11, 17 August 1872 [p.11]) |
|
| |
| You will find me an informative oral source and my notebook and diary
a written source, and these will relate the events of this month more than
amply. [I] expect the same from you by word of mouth . . . I suspect
we have enough to tell each |
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| other to dispense with a third for an audience . . . I felt
the urge to speak my mind fully and that I could only do in the mother tongue
. . . A strange letter, you will exclaim, not a word about what
has been occupying me most of the time . . . |
| |
(no. 12, 4 September 1872 |
| [pp. 15-16]) |
|
The diary, unfortunately, has not survived. Their candour requires
confidentiality:
| Espero que no muestras mis cartillas a nadie si alguien se
las pide de ti, porqué quiero escribir con toda ingenuidad y sobre
todas las cosas, que me empeñan. |
| |
(no. 15, 16 July 1873, p. 64) |
|
Freud seems to want a sort of mutual secular
confessional. And, what is still more significant, he wants to systematise
the correspondence. He presents proposals for this which are worth quoting
at some length:
Hence my proposal amounts to stipulating that every Sunday each of us, the
two sole luminaries of the A. E., send the other a letter that is nothing
short of an entire encyclopedia of the past week and that with total veracity
reports all our doings, commissions and omissions, and those of all strangers
we encounter, in addition to all outstanding thoughts and observations and
at least an adumbration, as it were, of the unavoidable emotions. In that
way, each of us may come to know the surroundings and condition of his friend
most precisely, perhaps more precisely than was possible even at the time
when we could meet in the same city. Our letters, which, when the year had
passed, may constitute the ornament of the A. E. archives, will then be as
diverse as our very lives. In our letters we shall transmute the six prosaic
and unrelenting working days of the week into the pure gold of poetry and
may perhaps find that there is enough of interest within us, and in what
remains and changes around us, if only we learn to pay attention
. . .
He seems to be striving after the high goal of the novelist, but the realm
of inquiry is not an imagined world. It is the real life, outer and inner,
of each of the writers. And the medium of communication must be regularized
into a recognized ongoing serial form:
While all these are serious matters, I request, in order to preserve some
spirit of romanticism, with which no A. E. can
dispense, that every letter be treated as an issue of a weekly journal
or periodical of the A. E., appearing as a double edition at two distinct
places of publication —or rather writing— as the only officially
accredited organ of the A. E. Indeed, no other form but that of the journal
is suited to the inclusion of so varied a content as our letters must possess,
according to my plan. The familiar circle of readers, however, for whom the
paper is written (consisting, as it does, of but a single person, the recipient)
will be spared the disadvantages of the major journals. To what extent we
must adhere to the journal form may be the subject of special discussion
between us, provided, of course, that you agree to the principle. I would
advocate strict observance of the form. An objection one might make to this
proposal is that it is too sweeping and that one cannot expect to have, each
week at the same time, the mood and skill needed to survey the past six days'
life and to give an appealing description of it to a friend. As to the first
objection, it can be said that it is truly worth the trouble to sacrifice
one or two hours in the week to an end that can establish such lively
communication between two people who are separated. And as to the second,
I would reply that one should not question in advance one's ability to keep
a critical diary and to spice it with a bit of humor, and also that such
an issue of the periodico de la A. E. is not a set school composition, but
an informal piece and a communication whose greater or lesser success will
naturally depend on both the material and the occasion.
In any case, I look forward to your
counter-proposals or additions . . . |
| |
(no. 26, 4 September 1874 |
| [pp. 57-9]) |
|
In the next letter he is awaiting a full statement
of his friend's reactions with great impatience and a firm disinclination
to tolerate any tepidity of interest:
I look forward ardently and with great expectations to your proposals for
the Periodico d.l.A.E.; though your preliminary remarks lead me to think
that you are not greatly in favour of the form, I am still inclined to defend
it. One's disappointment is extremely disagreeable when, on tearing open
a letter from a distant friend in the hopes of learning his latest news,
one is told in a few brief words that he feels bored at the moment and has
nothing at all to report . . .
There follows a short lecture on the selfishness of failing in one's duty
to correspond properly with a friend. The letter concludes:
|
| 14.1 (1994) |
“Cipión” Writes to
“Berganza” |
15 |
|
That I have decided upon a jocular form for our letters is connected
with the fact that since I have ceased keeping a diary I have had no chance
during the six weekdays to deposit anywhere the little humor and good fun
one produces along with everything else in those six weekdays, which does
not mean that I wish to turn my letter into madhouse. You yourself have a
goodly supply of wit and irony, why should their expression not benefit a
friend who prizes the humor of it, as Pistol says, above all things? For
the rest, the form is immaterial and if our journal permits the inclusion
of a learned treatise or a few thoughts worthy of Werther, so much the better
—there is no duress in the Spanish Academy.
Meanwhile accept my sincerest regards and reply
soon to |
| |
Your Sigismund |
| ó Cipion |
| M.d.l.A.E. |
| (no. 27, 18 September 1874 |
| [pp. 61-2]) |
|
Expressing feelings in a letter can be easier
than doing so in conversation, for which reason two friends should always
be separated from time to time. Writing makes it easier, although, he concedes,
correspondence cannot replace conversation as a form of communication (no.
32, 11 December 1874, pp. 125-6). A few weeks later he attempts to redress
somewhat the balance of confessional correspondence:
It may be wrong of me to keep asking about
your own pursuits, while providing no details or secrets about my activities.
That I shall now proceed to do and make you a small general confession whose
secrets I know to be safe with a brother confessor. Hear this, then: I am
most diligent in theory, and not entirely indolent in practice . . .
His secrets turn out to be his predilection for late-night study and his
“strange habit of living in accordance with the phases of the moon,
and [preferring] to start a new book, a new subject, or a new method at the
beginning of the week, and if possible of the month.” There follows
a short and pedestrian account of his course of study and current leisure
reading (which includes Don
Quixote)18 (no. 36, 30 January 1875 [pp.
86-7]). Freud is noticeably uncommunicative of really personal details about
himself.
18 On
Freud and Don Quixote see E.C. Riley, “Cervantes y Freud,”
Insula 538 (octubre, 1991): 34-5, and Grimberg y Rodríguez,
article cited in note 5 above.
He certainly demanded more of Silberstein than Silberstein apparently got
out of him. Nevertheless, even discounting a degree of possible jocular
over-emphasis, the strength of the attachment on Freud's part and of his
desire to exchange complete and candid information about the daily life of
himself and his friend are striking features of the correspondence. Both
are apparent in this final excerpt:
| I am delighted that you recently had occasion to use the noble lengua
castellana and once again managed to exercise your verbal skills at some
length, and I am longing for the hours and walks next year during which,
after a twelve months' separation interrupted by a three days' meeting, we
shall be able to exchange words for words and, God willing, thoughts for
thoughts as well: I really believe that we shall never be rid of each other;
though we became friends from free choice, we are as attached to one another
as if nature had put [us] on this earth as blood relations; I believe that
we have come so far that the one loves the very person of the other and not,
as before, merely his good qualities, and I am afraid that were you, by an
unworthy act, to prove quite different from the image I keep of you, I could
still not cease to wish you well. That is a weakness, and I have taken myself
to task for it several times. |
| |
(no. 52, 9 September 1875 [p. 126]) |
|
This brotherhood was not to last. But while it did, the latterday Cipión
felt as close to being blood brother to his Berganza as their original namesakes
may have been.
To summarise and conclude. The “Academia
Española” was a private fiction or game devised by Sigmund Freud
and Eduard Silberstein when they were boys at school in their mid-teens.
Unlike most such juvenile creations, it was modelled on an institution of
learning. This was because it served as a kind of umbrella for their practising
of the Spanish language and associated activities. It added a note of fun
to an essentially serious enterprise. The borrowing of roles, via their Spanish
primer, from Cervantes's Coloquio de los perros was part of the fun.
It is unlikely that the primer contained the complete work, and there is
no evidence that Freud read it anywhere else, or that he read the companion
piece, the Casamiento engañoso. He shows no sign of knowing
the Coloquio, or any part of it, particularly well. Neither is there
any way of being sure that the work had a marked effect on him at some less
conscious level, such as to exert a perceptible
|
| 14.1 (1994) |
“Cipión” Writes to
“Berganza” |
17 |
|
influence on his creation of the clinical method of psychoanalysis in the
1890s.
On the other hand, the fact remains that Freud
and Silberstein privately adopted the names Cipión and Berganza and
continued to use them in correspondence with each other for ten years —too
long for a merely passing whim. The role of Cipión suited Freud. Like
Cipión, he was the more authoritarian of the two, the one more inclined
to innovate and legislate in the course of their game. And like his canine
model, he was apt to advise and moralise about conduct. No doubt there were
other temperamental and accidental resemblances between them.
His role differs from Cipión's, however:
it is more active. He is more than recipient and commentator; he talks at
length about himself and his own life too. Indeed, the Coloquio and
the letters are different kinds of dialogue. And psychoanalysis is yet another,
of course. But more fundamental than the difference between them is the fact
that all three are dialogue, a conversation between two people (counting
dogs as people on this occasion). The correspondence with Silberstein is
a link —however accidental— between Freud's reading of the
Coloquio and his discovery, invention, or creation of
psychoanalysis.
For most of his life Freud was an indefatigable
letter-writer, conspicuously good at establishing a close rapport with his
correspondents. It is a talent which one is not surprised to find in a
psychoanalyst. So just because it would be extravagant to label the letters
to Silberstein in the 1870s “proto-psychoanalysis,” we are not
therefore obliged to close our eyes to the early manifestation of aptitudes
and interests consonant with his development of psychoanalytic method at
a later date.19 It seems as natural to notice
in the youthful Freud some inclination relevant to psychoanalysis as to register
a penchant for mathematics in the boy Einstein or a talent for drawing in
the young Picasso.
19 In
a perspicacious note Angela Ackermann observes: “Es cierto que la gran
necesidad de este tipo de comunicación guarda una relación
con el proceso autoanalítico de Freud, pero tal vez no habría
que extender esta calificación a las correspendencias anteriores a
la mantenida con Wilhelm Fliess.” She distinguishes this from “las
‘semillas’ autoanalíticas que pueden encontrarse en las
cartas a Silberstein, o incluso a su prometida.” And she draws attention
to “un ideal de sinceridad que se remonta a Aristóteles,
Cicerón (especialmente su obra De amicitia), San Agustín
y, por supuesto, a Cervantes y la tradición que él asimila
y subvierte” (Cartas, pp. 12-13, note 2). This is a timely caution.
However, it is “semillas” which I am considering, together with
the common dialogue structure.
Especially relevant in the letters to Silberstein
is his fervent expression of the desire that, under the aegis of the Academia
Española, they should recount to each other as fully and candidly
as possible their day-to-day lives. Although they apparently never came very
close to a full realization of Freud's intention, his insistence on the subject
leaves no doubt as to the strength of his aspiration. More than sentimental
effusions of adolescent friendship were intended, though affection was obviously
there, and it was not just a solipsistic exercise. Freud wanted effective
intimate communication. What mattered was the communication of friend with
friend —the in-depth dialogue. The establishment of a comparable rapport
would be the axis of
psychoanalysis.20
Freud further proposes that they regularize
their letters, turning them into a weekly bulletin or periodical of the Academia
Española. This is an attempt to systematize the dialogue in a manner
which may be described as
quasi-scientific.21 The methodology points
—though still from a distance— toward psychoanalysis. At the same
time, Freud does not lose sight of the literary-creative angle when he speaks
of transmutation “into the pure gold of poetry” and the “spirit
of romanticism.” There is nothing incongruous in this. He was always
to acknowledge the affinity of his psychoanalytic method with literary fiction
(“the case histories I write read like novellas . . . they,
so to speak, lack the serious stamp of scientific
method”).22 The case history is a new
kind of biography.23 Freud's proposals for
his correspondence with Silberstein have a biographical intention. The
Coloquio de los perros, though fictional, is another member of the
same family.
20 “No
matter how one-sided, the psychoanalytic situation is a dialogue. The analyst,
though largely a silent partner, offers interpretations that the analysand
presumably could not have reached on his own” —Gay, Freud,
p. 97.
21 The reference
to their journal being “not a set school composition but an informal
piece” is obviously directed at enlisting the cooperation of Silberstein.
22 Quoted in
Gay, Freud, p. 89.
23 “A case
history is the story of an individual presented to the public for didactic
purposes: it is a form of exemplary biography” —Peter Brooks,
Reading for the Plot (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), p. 183. See
Riley, “Cervantes, Freud and Psychoanalytic Theory,” pp. 8-9.
|
Prepared with
the help of Sue Dirrim |
|