THE MORNING LIST
This week, we discover the correspondence between Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, and Marie Bonaparte, its introducer in France. We travel across Europe from one Benedictine monastery to another alongside Paolo Rumiz, we follow in the footsteps of Messaoud Djebari with the historian Arthur Asseraf, and two novels take us to the Great East: Last workthe Thierry Beinstingel, et A dog at my table, by Claudie Hunzinger.
UNPRECEDENTED. “Complete correspondence. 1925-1939”, by Marie Bonaparte and Sigmund Freud
This publication has been awaited for a long time by historians of psychoanalysis, curious to know the details of the role of Marie Bonaparte (1882-1962), this singular woman, whose letters, allied to those of Freud, are a work in their own right. . Finally, we discover the exceptional friendship between Napoleon’s great-grandniece and the founder of psychoanalysis.
Over the letters and meetings, a magnificent relationship is woven between Freud and this extraordinary princess, both transgressive and conservative. She entrusts him with the rawest details of her intimacy and never ceases to describe her experiences: coitus, penetration, masturbation, measurement of the genitals. So she transforms the Freudian theory of sexuality into a kind of savage battle with her body. Freud encourages him to work. She listens to him and thanks him but will never cease to be obsessed with these questions. In 1926, she participated in the founding of the Psychoanalytical Society of Paris, started the translation of the works of the master, devoted her fortune to the psychoanalytical cause. This commitment gives meaning to his life and keeps him away from suicide.
In her last, moving letter, written on September 23, 1939, she still speaks to him regarding her children, the war, her suffering. She will never send it. At dawn on the 24th, she learns of the death of her “beloved father”. A Freudian princess, Marie Bonaparte was a genius letter writer who made her life a work, revealing a Freud of dazzling subtlety. Elisabeth Roudinesco
NARRATIVE. The Endless Thread by Paolo Rumiz
Paolo Rumiz, one of the finest writers on the contemporary Italian literary scene, is a tireless travel writer. After crossing the Alps in the footsteps of Hannibal (Hannibal’s Shadow, Hoëbeke, 2012) or surveyed Ukraine in memory of a grandfather who fell at the front during the First World War (Like horses who sleep standing up, Arthaud, 2018), it is on a spiritual journey that he invites us here. In endless thread, cet “atheist curious regarding the sacred” indeed follows in the footsteps of Benedict of Nursia (480-547), the founder of the Benedictine order.
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