By showing us that anxiety is a mode of expectation, closely resembling desire, Freud allows us to understand why poetry, which loves love, also seems to love anxiety. Literary and human romance both are exposed as being anxious quests that could not bear to be cured of their anxieties, even if such cures were possible.<< (bloom: freud and the sublime.)

Crater Lake

There was a war between good and evil. We decided to call the body good.

That made death evil. It turned the soul against death completely.

Like a foot soldier wanting to serve a great warrier, the soul wanted to side with the body.

It turned against the dark, against the forms of death it recognized.

Where does the voice come from that says suppose the war is evil, that says

suppose the body did this to us, made us afraid of love -

(louise glück: averno.)

In Trauer und Melancholie schreibt Freud diesen schönen Satz von der "konservativen Natur der Triebe", die selbst dann nur ungern ein Liebesobjekt aufgeben, wenn ein (sogar besserer) Ersatz schon in Aussicht steht.