Ja und Nein: an imagined encounter with objects and subjects in Freud's Vienna. Performed at the Royal College of Art in October 2008 for an event titled" Fiction in Freud's Vienna."

Ja und Nein
(The Psychopathology of Every Day Café Life in Freud's Vienna)

Is there a single silver teaspoon that has not stirred up the memory of seduction and rage?

A single umbrella that has not probed the source of a symptom?

A single fraulein without vague disabling despair?

Ah the fresh and full aroma of hysteria as delicate waxy limbed fraulein weep under a constellation of coffee cups

May the waiter (how his nose tickles and leaks) please bring to the table the shivering perversion of sachertorte, its oily dark cacao (kah kow) grown in the tropical rainforest of Eden. Did birds and beasts once feed from the pods sweet pulp and spit out the bitter seeds?

Ah the groomed gentlemen in their great coats lined with fur! Bring to the table a plate of goose livers simmered in onions for the white haired industrialists!

Tomorrow at noon they will send their clever suicidal daughters (parental conflicts, the laws of society, lecherous uncles) to the curer of souls at Berggasse 19 where they will learn that desire must not always win the day but it always does.

There will forever be a snake in the cake box!

© Copyright Deborah Levy. London. October 2008  All Rights Reserved  The above text may not be used in any other context either in part or in whole without the express written consent of the author.