Page:Psychology of the Unconscious (1916).djvu/505

 feelings of youth, in the dreamy state of stubbornly held remembrances, that the wheel rolls onward, nevertheless mercilessly does the gray hair, the relaxation of the skin and the wrinkles in the face tell us, that whether or not we expose the body to the destroying powers of the whole struggle of life, the poison of the stealthily creeping serpent of time consumes our bodies, which, alas! we so dearly love. Nor does it help if we cry out with the melancholy hero Chiwantopel, "I have kept my body inviolate"; flight from life does not free us from the law of age and death. The neurotic who seeks to get rid of the necessities of life wins nothing and lays upon himself the frightful burden of a premature age and death, which must appear especially cruel on account of the total emptiness and meaninglessness of his life. If the libido is not permitted to follow the progressive life, which is willing to accept all dangers and all losses, then it follows the other road, sinking into its own depths, working down into the old foreboding regarding the immortality of all life, to the longing for rebirth.

Hölderlin exemplifies this path in his poetry and his life. I leave the poet to speak in his song:

To the Rose.

"In the Mother-womb eternal, Sweetest queen of every lea, Still the living and supernal  Nature carries thee and me.

"Little rose, the storm's fierce power Strips our leaves and alters us; Yet the deathless germ will tower  To new blooms, miraculous."