Columbia Library columns (v.33(1983Nov-1984May))

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  v.33,no.3(1984:May): Page 13  



lmpressio7is of the Diaries                          13

first sentence of the first diary by heart from its translation in
Jessie Taft's biography of Rank:

Vienna, January 1, 1903

1 begin this book for my own enlightenment. Before everything, I
want to make progress in psychology. By that I understand not the
professional definition and explanation of certain technical terms
established by a few professors, but the comptehensivc knowledge
of mankind that explains the riddles of our thinking, acting and speak¬
ing, and leads back to certain basic characteristics. For an approach to
this idealistic goal, which only a few souls have tried to reach, self-
observation is a prime essential and to that end I am making these
notes. I am attempting in them to fix passing moods, impressions, and
feelings, to preserve the stripped-off layers that I have outgrown and
in this way to keep a picture of my abandoned way of life, whereby
if, in reading these notes later on I want to trace the inner connections
and external incidents of my development, I shall have the material for
it, namely, my overcome attitudes and viewpoints displayed in order
before me.

Yet, I was not prepared for what greeted me as I opened to that
first page. I gasped on two counts: first, the page was so beautiful
and so immediately revealing of the man's character that one could
not but regard it as a work of art; and secondly, it was written
(except for topical headings) in old-fashioned German script so
that, despite my fluent knowledge of German, I could scarcely
read it. Nevertheless, I felt inspired. A great deal was being com¬
municated in the beauty of that page and in those that followed. I
had been asked to write a small piece for this journal to commo-
rate the one hundredth anniversary of Rank's birth, and since I
had already spent many words describing Rank's ideas, I decided
to make a virtue of necessity and to write about my impressions of
Rank without content, to describe my feelings which were evoked
by this "song without words" that lay before me. I think that
Rank, who placed so much emphasis on the experiencing of feeling
  v.33,no.3(1984:May): Page 13