The third scene contributing to the formation of the
first situation in the dream takes place in my early student life. There
was a discussion in the German students’ club about the relation of
philosophy to the general sciences. A green youth, full of the
materialistic doctrine, I thrust myself forward and defended a very
one-sided view. Thereupon a sagacious older school-fellow, who has since
shown his capacity for leading men and organising the masses, and who,
moreover, bears a name belonging to the animal kingdom, arose and called
us down thoroughly; he too, he said, had herded swine in his youth, and
had come back repentant to the house of his father. I started up (as in
the dream), became very uncivil, and answered that since I knew he had
herded swine, I was not surprised at the tone of his discourse. (In the
dream I am surprised at my national German sentiment.) There was great
commotion; and the demand came from all sides that I take back what I
had said, but I remained steadfast. The man who had been insulted was
too sensible to take the advice, which was given him, to send a
challenge, and let the matter drop.
The remaining elements of this scene of the dream are of more remote
origin. What is the meaning of the Count’s proclaiming the colt’s foot?
Here I must consult my train of associations. Colt’s-foot (German:
_Huflattich_)—lattice—lettuce—salad-dog (the dog that grudges others
what he cannot eat himself). Here plenty of opprobrious epithets may be
discerned: Gir-affe (German _Affe_ = monkey, ape), pig, sow, dog; I
might even find means to arrive at donkey, on a detour by way of a name,
and thus again at contempt for an academic teacher. Furthermore I
translate colt’s-foot (_Huflattich_)—I do not know how correctly—by
“pisse-en-lit.” I got this idea from Zola’s _Germinal_, in which
children are ordered to bring salad of this kind. The dog—_chien_—has a
name sounding like the major function (_chier_, as _pisser_ stands for
the minor one). Now we shall soon have before us the indecent in all
three of its categories; for in the same _Germinal_, which has a lot to
do with the future revolution there is described a very peculiar
contest, depending upon the production of gaseous excretions, called
flatus.[BK] And now I must remark how the way to this flatus has been
for a long while preparing, beginning with the flowers, and proceeding
to the Spanish rhyme of Isabelita to Ferdinand and Isabella, and, by way
of Henry VIII., to English history at the time of the expedition of the
Armada against England, after the victorious termination of which the
English struck a medal with the inscription: “_Afflavit_ et dissipati
sunt,” for the storm had scattered the Spanish fleet. I had thought of
taking this phrase for the title of a chapter on “Therapeutics”—to be
meant half jokingly—if I should ever have occasion to give a detailed
account of my conception and treatment of hysteria.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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