"On Transience" (German: Vergänglichkeit) is a philosophical essay by Sigmund Freud. It consists of a dialogue between Freud and Rainer Maria Rilke in which they discuss the meaning of transience. It was written in November 1915 and published the next year.1
Content
Freud frames the essay as a dialogue between him and Rainer Maria Rilke (referred to as "the poet" throughout).2 He reflects upon a most likely fictitious walk the pair went on, reportedly in the summer of 1913.3 Freud refers to a discussion they had (possibly in September of that year) on the matter of transience of which they had differing perceptions.3 Rilke found the transience of life disheartening whereas Freud viewed it as engendering value and beauty.4
Interpretations
Written during the midst of World War I, Jonathan Lear interpreted the essay as a response to the war's upheaval, describing it as "the problem that haunts it from the beginning", as well as mediation upon "a phenomenon that marks the human condition"; Lear did consider Freud's psyche more salient to the essay's conception than the mediation itself, writing that "This is not a thoughtful engagement between two serious people about the meaning of transience in human life: it is a polarized stand-off between caricatured figures in Freud’s imagination", a by-product of recent disillusionment.2 The psychoanalyst Matthew Von Unwerth described the essay as a "portrait in miniature of the world of [Freud]".5
Frances Wilson observed that Rilke and Freud represent passion and reason respectively.6
References
References
- Lear, Jonathan (2021). "Transience and hope: A return to Freud in a time of pandemic". The International Journal of Psychoanalysis. 102 (1): 3–15. doi:10.1080/00207578.2021.1875836. ISSN 0020-7578. PMID 33952008. S2CID 231878304.
- Lehmann, Herbert (1966). "A Conversation between Freud and Rilke". The Psychoanalytic Quarterly. 35 (3): 423–427. doi:10.1080/21674086.1966.11926399. ISSN 0033-2828. PMID 5328702.
- Razinsky, Liran (2015). "On Time, Transience and Literary Creation: Freud and Rilke a Century Ago". Forum for Modern Language Studies. 51 (4): 464–479. doi:10.1093/fmls/cqv056. ISSN 0015-8518.
- Unwerth, Matthew von (2006). Freud's Requiem: Mourning, Memory, and the Invisible History of a Summer Walk. Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 9781441120274.
- Wilson, Frances (2006-04-28). "Review: Freud's Requiem by Matthew von Unwerth". the Guardian. Retrieved 2022-04-05.