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The Arts in Psychotherapy, Vol. 23, No. I, pp. 77-81, 1996 Copyright 0 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd Printed in the USA. All rights reserved

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BRIEF REPORT

DUAL SERENDIPITY: CREATIVE WRITING AND SELF-ANALYSIS OF

ASSOCIATIONS TO POETRY AND MUSIC

CORA L. DiAZ DE CHUMACEIRO. PhD

In a first article in The Arts in Psychotherapy, Wal- poles (1754) term serendipity was amply discussed, applied to psychotherapy and the creative arts thera- pies (Diaz de Chumaceiro, 1995). A second article proposed the use of the term serendipity analogues, instead of Roberts (1989) pseudoserendipiv, applied to psychotherapy research with music (Diaz de Chu- maceiro & Yaber 0, 1995). This paper introduces the term dual serendipity for cases in which both types of serendipity occur, to differentiate them from the more usual ones with only one occurrence

78 CORA L. DiAZ DE CHUMACEIRO

For when true love awakens, Dies the self, the dark tyrant (p. 79)

The haunting poem remained unidentified yet he was sure that he had read the lines once as a boy and that they belonged to the poems middle section. Fi- nally, giving up the search-in anthologies, asking friends, acquaintances and poets-he decided not to quote them in the book, pretending more indifference than really felt. However, he remembered an imagery of the printed paper as being of the old-fashioned type and vaguely sensed that the question, rather than a literary one, was a secret personal one. Yet curiously enough, he did not initially attempt to identify them with a systematic self-analysis. In his view, the way he discovered the data, on an unusual side road, was as interesting, psychologically, as the reasons why they had not been remembered.

Not knowing why, he did know that these lines for him had a touch of oriental flavor. During one of many instances when he was being haunted by them while writing, he recalled, visually, his mothers small bookcase in her room and a small gilt-edged volume with yellowish pages (p. 81) and that he had read the poem in it when young. He then tried to remember the names of the books in this bookcase, especially poetry.

Goethes West-Eastern Divan was discarded be- cause he had learned most of these poems by heart during his college years. The next associations were to Hammer-Purgstall, a publisher of translated orien- tal poems; Friedrich Bodenstedts The Sangs ufkfirza ShafJ (translated Persian poems); Platens Ghazals; The Poet Firdusi, from Heines Romancero as well as his The Hebrew Melodies. Then followed Divan, the principal work of Jehuda-ha-Levi, the Spanish- Hebrew poet, and Omar Khayyams Rubaiyat. Yet he was certain, for one reason or another, that the lines in question did not belong to these works.

The poem was either an oriental poets translated verses or a German writers original verses, with a cleverly copied style of oriental poetry. His inclina- tion leaned toward the first alternative. Then surfaced Hans Bethges The Chinese Flute (a poem anthology from the Far East). However, he had not been ac- quainted with them until heard in Gustav Mahlers Song of the Earth, in 1911. By then he was 23 years old. He then quietly sang Song of the Earth, which he knew by heart. There they were not, of course. At this point he stopped searching. Again, he had the strange

sensation of being haunted by something that eluded him when trying to catch it.

A few weeks later, he found the poem. .It is one of the ghazals of Dali1 al-Din Rumi, the greatest of the Persian mystical poets. . He not only is a great poet but one of the great thinkers and searchers after truth (p. 83). This is the poem (with his slight mod- ifications of William Hasties English version):

Death ends lifes misery and pain, Yet life afraid would Death retain. We only see Deaths threatening hand, Not that bright cup it offered plain. So shrinks from love the tender heart As if from threat of being slain, For when true love awakens, dies The self, that despot, dark and vain. Then let him die in nights black hour And freely breathe in dawn again!

Reik arrived at the poem and the poets name as follows. Several weeks after his apparently futile in- vestigation, the name of the poems translator, famil- iar to him, surfaced in a strange manner. One eve- ning, tired after having practiced psychoanalysis for 10 hours and in a rather depressive mood, he listened to some records. First, he heard Mahlers Ninth Sym- phony, which he specially liked and listened to often. Suddenly, he remembered Mahlers tragic phrase, ut- tered a few days shortly before his death: I lived falsely (p. 83). Then came the remembrance of Mahlers regrets of having spent life in an intense zealousness for work, his ambition having burnt him up. In his ending days, his wife, child and friends received many expressions of tenderness mixed with regrets.

Next, he wanted to hear Mahlers Kindertoten- lieder, not knowing if it was thoughts of death or regrets or a musical passage that had triggered the wish. When listening to them, he was impressed by something in addition to the music: Everyday life sim- ple expressions were evident in the way the song was worded, penned by Friedrich Rueckert, a forgotten German poet who lived about a hundred years ago. In that moment I knew at once and with surprising cer- tainty that the poem I had hunted for so long was by Rueckert. I saw his name printed in golden letters on one of my mothers books (p. 83). Simultaneously, he knew that it was one of his translations rather than an original one. Thus, he left to search for them in the

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public library and immediately found the lost verses. When reading them, he strangely felt that they had never been forgotten, although certain that for over 40 years he had not recalled them once.

For him, the intact preservation of these lines for so many years, like a mummy in an undiscovered Egyptian tomb, seemed strange (p. 84). [Tlhe seed of my theory of love was sowed when reading Rumis poem at 13 years of age. How long it takes to recognize something you always knew uncon- sciously. Seven hundred years ago, in faraway Per- sia, this books central idea had been anticipated by Rumi. I never thought I owed it to some mysterious verses I had read as a boy (p. 84).

Reik then explained why he had forgotten the names of Rueckert and Rumi, and the psychological implications of the recurrence of the two lines while writing his book. At the time, worried about Arthur, his son, and his wife and three-year-old grandson who he had not met as they were living in Jerusalem, it appeared (in 1943) that Palestine and Syria would be attacked by the Germans. He hoped his family could obtain immigration visas to the United States and travel, as he longed to see them. The only possibility was the Persian route, yet a revolt was brewing there and thus to travel through Persia and China also seemed unsafe.

Other thoughts and fears, survivors from the past, preoccupied him. That the war would be long-lasting and Reik would die young before reuniting with his son and family was a hidden fear expressed in the two lines. (In a note, he admitted that these fears were unjustified; they all arrived in 1945). As he consid- ered himself the despot dark and vain who would perish just when awakened by love, there must have been traces of unconscious regret and repentance of past possessive behavior with his son. The recurrent gloomy lines were a reminder of what had been missed and a threat of punishment for omissions, while transcending the personal sphere by expressing the basic idea that loves triumph is associated with defeating possessive and selfish trends. In Reiks view, it was noteworthy that Rueckerts name came to mind only after re-hearing Mahlers compositions. They contained hidden the psychic threads that linked the past with the present and his fears for the future.

Mahler had greatly influenced Reik when he was in his twenties; his identification with the composer then had been unconscious. Mahlers Ninth Sym- phony had been composed when knowing that he

would soon die and the work expresses this mood. Reiks desire to hear this symphony was hardly ac- cidental. There was a correspondence between his odd feelings that evening when tired and depressed and the score. Strange how the way led from hearing the symphony to the name I had been searching for! It was certainly unconsciously prepared by thoughts of the last days of the composer (p. 85).

The Kindertotenlieder led to a past panic Reik and his wife had experienced when once, Arthur, as a child, had been very ill, fearing his death. (After two of his children died, Rueckert wrote the Kindertoten- lieder . Mahler, before a small daughter died, put some of them to music, always thinking he must have foreseen her death . Arthurs favorite composer is Mahler; in a letter Arthur told him that his three-year- old son already likes Mahlers music.) Reiks thoughts were enveloped in a milieu full of anxiety and fears of death-that it would be too late for him also.

Reik then discontinued his self-analysis, recogniz- ing that these fears were survivors of obsessive ideas that concerned him when younger-which recurrence is the rule rather than an exception in any analysis. Another connection between Mahler and Reiks early- death fear was that the latters first wife (the mother of Arthur) had died shortly after attending together a concert of the Song of the Earth. Rueckerts name had been avoided because it was a reminder of the fearful days they experienced when their son was so ill.

How was the problem solved? As said before, Kindertotenlieders words allowed him to recall the name. It was as if an inner suspense became loos- ened, as if an unconscious question got its answer. It is clear to me how that happened. The Kindertoten- lieder awakened the memory of the illness of my son consciously where my unconscious fears had blocked the thought-road before (p. 86). Simultaneously, the lyrics appeared to say to him: unjustified are your fears now, as they were in the past. It is not necessary to die when beginning to feel a novel tenderness. Fear not that change signals the nearness of death; only the old self has to be changed, letting it die so that a new and improved one can replace it.

The lines, For when true love awakens, Dies the self, the dark tyrant, formed a somber omen; but the last lines of Rumis poem say, Let it die and change; take the risk and dare to

CORA L. DiAZ DE CHUMACEIRO

love. As I thus regained courage, the old shad- ows evaporated and I was able to remember the name Rueckert and to find the poem and its author. The hearing of the Kindertotenlieder thus marks the psychological turning-point. (p. 87)

By his own account, the substitute names that came to mind are all drawn from the sphere linked with the forgotten poet and his work. Persian poets led the associative train (danger of sons travel through Persia). The speaker in Goethes West- Eastern Divan is Hafis. In West-Eastern Divan, Goethe translated a ghazal by Rtimi and in his notes praised his profound thoughts, which had been read by Reik many times. Rumi also has a collection of poems entitled Divan. Hammer-Purgstalls many translations of Persian poetry into German included Rtimi. The Persian poet Mirza Shaffy and Platens ghazals which are copies of this national poetry, are linked. Firdusi by Heine-another great Persian poet. Omar Khayyam-another Persian.

The associative train leaves behind Persian poetry with Heines Firdusi, and Jehuda-ha-Levi appears via Heines Hebrew Melodies; a Divan was also written by this Spanish-Hebrew poet. The associations ap- proach the source of not remembering-fear prohib- iting the remembrance of Rueckert and Rtimis names. The Spanish-Hebrews Divan is the connect- ing bridge to the Persians, yet it is the Hebrew Mel- odies that led to worry about Arthur. Before he died, Jehuda-ha-Levi wanted to see Jerusalem; he saw it and died. Reiks son was living in Jerusalem with Jehuda-ha-Levis family. However, Reik never con- sciously thought about his son during this search- process, even though he was so close. It seemed like an unconscious thought-avoidance (p. 88).

His associations turned to translated Chinese poets collected in Bethges Chinese Flute (sons journey Persia/China). Then Mahler and Song of the Earth. Kindertotenlieder and Rueckert should have fol- lowed. However, the dangerous nearness to themes of his own death and memories of his sons childhood illness made him stop the attempt as useless.

When finding the names, his feeling resembled a re-finding in a drawer a mislaid object, which was all the time near, yet unknown. And sometimes, as here, it is part of yourself that you mislaid many years ago (italics added, p. 88). The reason for the thought-avoidance has become clear: the supersti- tious fear that either he or his son would die before

reuniting. In consciousness, however, there was not even a slight trace of these fears.

In a footnote, he added that he immediately knew that the two lines in question had anticipated his books main theme: love. However, he had been to- tally unaware that he himself was the dark tyrant or that these lines revealed the clear text to an un- conscious fear founded on an old superstition (p. 89) he had considered resolved in the past.

Reik, with his story of a lost Persian poem, high- lighted his personal process of discovery of unknown or disassociated parts of himself in which the different art forms (poetry and music) served as the stimulus for a personal research process that culminated in sig- nificant findings for him. His case, then, is an excel- lent example of dual serendipity due to purely inter- nal accidental events (writing a book and haunting verses). To his description, You may be looking for something else and accidentally find a fragment of an unknown you (p. 78), can be added: in addition to the finding of the original object. This completed statement more clearly expresses the duality of find- ings in his case-Rumi and Rueckert being seren- dipity analogues he had desired to find and his self-discovery, the unexpected, true serendipitous outcome.

Wallas (1926) stages of the creative process are evident in Reiks narrative. The initial research ques- tion was: To whom am 1 indebted for this book? fol- lowed by the unidentified haunting verses. The asso- ciations up to when he quit the search process are the preparation phase, followed by incubation during a few weeks, illumination on the night he heard Mah- lers music and verification in the library.

Conclusions

This paper has introduced the term dual serendip- ity, highlighting a condensation of a previously pub- lished psychoanalytic example heretofore unclassified in this category. Reiks search for haunting verses is unique in the early literature on the analysts affective responses to artworks. His personal experience sug- gests that, depending on writers background in the world of art, different combinations of art forms may haunt us during the creative writing process and that the process of discovery, although arduous, is neces- sary for personal growth. To have the courage to pub- lish personal data comes later. The first step is to engage in the private, self-analytic process.

Many of the artworks cited by Reik may be un-

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known to contemporary audiences, yet the principles demonstrated in his case are timeless. It is up to younger generations of therapists, in different fields, to explore all the possible combinations of the differ- ent artworks that can surface in associations when attempting to overcome resistances to remembering during the creative writing of book chapters, disser- tations, theses and journal articles.

References

Diaz de Chumaceiro, C. L. (1995). Serendipitys role in psycho- therapy: A bridge to the creative arts therapies. The Arts in Psychotherapy, 22(l), 3948.

Diaz de Chumaceiro, C. L., & YQber 0, G. E. (1995). Serendipity analogues: Approval of modifications of the traditional case study for a psychotherapy research with music. The Am in Psychotherapy, 22(2), 155-159.

Reik, T. (1944). A psychoanalyst looks at love. New York: Farrar and Reinhart.

Reik, T. (1983). Listening with the third ear: The inner experience of a psychoanalyst. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. (Original work published 1948)

Roberts, R. M. (1989). Serendipity: Accidental discoveries in sci- ence. New York: Wiley.

Wallas, G. (1926). The art of thought. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

Walpole, H. (1754). Letter from Walpole to Mann, January 28, 1754. In W. S. Lewis (Ed.), Walpoles Correspondence (Vol. 20, pp. 407P408). New Haven, CT: The Yale Edition.