1055

Company at table or table d’hôte . . . spinach was being eaten . . . Frau E. L. was sitting beside me; she was turning her whole attention to me and laid her hand on my knee in an intimate manner. I removed her hand unresponsively. She then said: "But you’ve always had such beautiful eyes." . . . I then had an indistinct picture of two eyes, as though it were a drawing or like the outline of a pair of spectacles . . . .’

This was the whole of the dream, or at least all that I could remember of it. It seemed to me obscure and meaningless, but above all surprising. Frau E. L. is a person with whom I have hardly at any time been on friendly terms, nor, so far as I know, have I ever wished to have any closer relations with her. I have not seen her for a long time, and her name has not, I believe, been mentioned during the last few days. The dream-process was not accompanied by affects of any kind.

Reflecting over this dream brought me no nearer to understanding it. I determined, however, to set down without any premeditation or criticism the associations which presented themselves to my self-observation. As I have found, it is advisable for this purpose to divide a dream-into its elements and to find the associations attaching to each of these fragments separately.

Company at table or table d’hôte. This at once reminded me of an episode which occurred late yesterday evening. I came away from a small party in the company of a friend who offered to take a cab and drive me home in it. ‘I prefer taking a cab with a taximeter’, he said, ‘it occupies one’s mind so agreeably; one always has something to look at.’ When we had taken our places in the cab and the driver had set the dial, so that the first charge of sixty hellers became visible, I carried the joke further. ‘We’ve only just got in’, I said, ‘and already we owe him sixty hellers. A cab with a taximeter always reminds me of a table d’hôte. It makes me avaricious and selfish, because it keeps on reminding me of what I owe. My debt seems to be growing too fast, and I’m afraid of getting the worst of the bargain; and in just the same way at a table d’hôte I can’t avoid feeling in a comic way that I m getting too little, and must keep an eye on my own interests.’ I went on to quote, somewhat discursively:

‘Ihr führt ins Leben uns hinein,

Ihr lasst den Armen schuldig werden.’¹

¹ [These lines are from one of the Harp-player’s songs in Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister. In the original the words are addressed to the Heavenly Powers and may be translated literally: ‘You lead us into life, you make the poor creature guilty.’ But the words ‘Armen’ and ‘schuldig’ are both capable of bearing another meaning. ‘Armen’ might mean ‘poor’ in the financial sense and ‘schulding’ might mean ‘in debt.’ So in the present context the last line could be rendered: ‘You make the poor man fall into debt.’]