Strauss: Reisefieber

During these years . . .
Erik H. Erikson, Insight and Responsibility.
. . . the seemingly stable days of the 1890's . . .
Donald A. Wollheim, Introduction to H.G. Wells, The Time Machine.
. . . Freud at times expressed some despair and confessed to some neurotic symptoms which reveal phenomological aspects of a creative crisis. He suffered from a “railroad phobia” and from acute fears of an early death—both symptoms of an over-concern with the all too rapid passage of time. “Railroad phobia” is an awkwardly clinical way of translating Reisefieber—a feverish combination of pleasant excitement and anxiety. But it all meant, it seems, on more than one level that he was “coming too late,” that he was “missing the train,” that he would perish before reaching some “promised land.” He could not see how he could complete what he had visualized if every single step took so much "work, time and error."
Erik H. Erikson, Insight and Responsibility.
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There's actaully a piece of music titled "Reisefieber," travel fever, written by Strauss. It's an orchestral interlude from his opera Intermezzo.