Virginia Woolf and Sigmund Freud[1].

Virginia Woolf in 1939 received by Freud who had just moved to London with his family a few months ago, also due to the Nazi threat.

Original painting by Stefano Frassetto[2] for TutorSalus.net

 

 

“…Repeatedly invited by Virginia and Leonard Woolf, Sigmund finally agreed… There was only one meeting… it would take place in the residence-studio of Freud in London, Maresfield Gardens n°20 and it did on January 28, 1939. Virginia, when seeing Freud, considered him not entirely pleased as instead she would have expected, but we know that Sigmund was in great pain at the time.

With his gentlemanly ways, though weary from sickness that bent him, Sigmund bowed to her -present her husband - and handed her a daffodil which she accepted apparently questioningly but showing appreciation, perhaps attributing the choice of the flower to the extravagance of the character. For Freud, however, the offering of the daffodil was the result of his own diagnosis as a psychoanalyst, towards the woman who refused to feed on him.

Virginia started the dialogue having in mind the famous correspondence between Freud and Einstein, ‘Why the war ?’, still suspended. She asked Sigmund : ‘We have often felt guilty… If we had lost the war, perhaps Hitler would not be there…’

Sigmund replied, surprisingly : ‘Oh. It would be infinitely worse, instead, if you hadn’t won the war…’

Virginia, who had received him with reluctance, suddenly lifted her face, paying attention to him.

She will say, then, she was very impressed by the meeting, after which she would have for the first time begun reading the works of Freud…”[3]

 

 

                                                 Marina Bilotta Membretti / Cernusco sul Naviglio – May 25, 2020

 

 

 

[1] In 2006, during the annual ‘Charleston Festival’ – event started in 1916 in London within the ‘Bloomsbury group’ founded by Virginia Woolf – Julia Briggs, journalist and Virginia Woolf’s biographer, reported the conversation she had with Virginia Woolf’s granddaughter, Virginia Nicholson about the unprecedented meeting and about the dialogue done at 20 of Maresfield Gardens between Sigmund Freud and Virginia Woolf, on January 28, 1939. Right in the Nazi years infact, Virginia Woolf insisted with her husband Leonard to get translated and published by ‘Hogarth Press’, the English publishing house they owned ‘The interpretation of dreams’ and ‘Psychopathology of daily life’, works by Freud unknown till then outside Austria : notwithstanding that, Virginia Woolf continued not to read Freud, limiting herself to a few reading samples. 

[2] Stefano Frassetto is born in Turin in 1968. After his degree in Architecture at ‘Politecnico’ he begun as graphic novelist for local magazines. In the ‘90s he edited in France too, on ‘Le Réverbère’ and on ‘Libération’ : then he created ‘Ippo’ for ‘Il Giornalino’ and then the stripe ‘35MQ’ for the swiss magazine ‘20 Minuti’. In 2000 he came into ‘La Stampa’ as portraitist for cultural page and the insert ‘Tuttolibri’, then for the weekly ‘Origami’. Today he works also for the swiss magazine ‘Le Temps’. 

[3] “Ereditare da un bambino. Perché no ?”, Marina Bilotta Membretti 2014 - Gruppo Editoriale ‘L’Espresso’ Isbn 978-88-91081-63-6, pg.19