Yvettin glas

Yvette Guilbert was a great singer and diseuse whose career spanned over almost 70 years. The article presents her artistic achievements, closely scrutinizes two of her famous songs and finally concentrates on her close relationship and correspondence with Sigmund Freud. Their correspondence from the early 1930s surprisingly focuses on the very nature of art, where the views of the two correspondents significantly differ. Yvette Guilbert's views, naive as they may seem, actually present a strong counterpoint to Freud's theoretical take on art. The paper presents the starting point of a more extensive book-length research into this unlikely and instructive exchange.