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Fw: Bellevue, dreams and Freud in Ada ( J-2/april)
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----- Forwarded message from jansy@aetern.us -----
Date: Thu, 7 Apr 2005 13:59:16 -0300
From: Jansy Berndt de Souza Mello <jansy@aetern.us>
Jansy
----- Original Message -----
From: Jansy Berndt de Souza Mello
To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum
Sent: Wednesday, April 06, 2005 5:19 PM
Subject: Bellevue, dreams and Freud in Ada
Dear List,
Every re-reading of VN brings up a surprise, Ada´s in particular.
This time the name of a Hotel in Mont Roux, Switzerland ( Bellevue ) made me
remember Freud´s visit to Charcot at the Salpetrière and a connection with a
place named "Bellevue" and one of his most famous dream interpretations ( The
Irma Injection ).
In "Ada" the name Bellevue appeared in association with Dorothy Vinelander and
her insistent project of having Van "analyse her pet nightmare" and, later,
with the word "Sorcière".
I wonder if VN read Freud´s "Die Traumdeutung" in its entirety and if this was
the book that started to set him against the Viennese "quacks".
...................................................................
1. Dasha, my sister-in-law (...) asks me to add she hopes to 'renew' your
acquaintance - maybe in Switzerland, at the Bellevue in Mont Roux, in October
(...) She is very good at perceiving and pursuing originality and all kinds of
studies which I can't even name! (...)she attended (...) one of your public
lectures on dreams, after which she went up to you with her latest little
nightmare all typed out and neatly clipped together, and you scowled darkly and
refused to take it.
2. When he reached at long last the whitewashed and blue-shaded Bellevue
(patronized by wealthy Estotilanders, Rheinlanders, and Vinelanders, but not
placed in the same superclass as the old, tawny and gilt, huge, sprawling,
lovable Trois Cygnes).
3. ( At the Bellevue...) Dorothy preambled her long-delayed report on her pet
nightmare with a humble complaint ('Of course, I know that for your patients to
have bad dreams is a zhidovskaya prerogativa'), but her reluctant analyst's
attention (...) she thought fit to interrupt her narrative (which had to do
with the eruption of a dream volcano)
4. Friday morning, at nine o'clock - as bespoken on the eve - he drove over to
the Bellevue, with the pleasant plan of motoring to Sorcière to show her the
house.
Quick and very superficial data by "googling":
" In May1895 Freud together with Joseph Breuer published Studies on Hysteria.
The work maintains the sexual etiology of neurosis. Succeeds in the historic
analysis of Irma's Injection dream while in Bellevue, in July".
More information:
Freud´s "Die Traumdeutung" was published in 1900. Its translation into English
by James Strachey and his copious annotations date from 1953. There is a
reference by Freud that was added in another edition in 1930, mentioning there
were former translations - where he mentions N.Y doctor A.A.Brill´s in
particular.
The part that interested me in connection to "Bellevue" is found in the second
chapter of the first volume of Freud´s The Interpretation of Dreams.
" The Method of Interpreting Dreams: an Analysis of a Specimen Dream", where we
find the description of the famous "Dream of the Irma Injection".
The reason for the importance for detailing the name of the house where Freud
had had the dream comes in a foot-note at the end of the chapter.
It reads:
"[In a letter to Fliess on June 12, 1900 Freud describes a later visit to
Bellevue, the house where he had this dream. 'Do you suppose', he writes, '
that some day a marble tablet will be placed on the house, inscribed with these
words? -
In This House, on July 24th, 1895 the Secret of Dreams
was Revealed to Dr. Sigm. Freud
At the moment there seems little prospect of it']"
And yet, I this foot-note was not present in Freud´s original, perhaps not even
in the other translations, such as A.A.Brill´s. Bellevue is mentioned in
Freud´s original, though, when he begins to describe his "Analysis" of the
dream, when he states:
"We were spending that summer at Bellevue, a house standing by itself on one of
the hills adjoining the Kahlenberg. The house had formerly been designed as a
place of entertainment and its reception-rooms were in consequence unusually
lofty and hall-like" (...)
Considering the importance that the month of July has in Ada, I wondered about
the important dates VN mentioned. We have, of course, Ada´s birthday in July 21
and the two fundamental picnics that took place on that date. There were famous
encounters ( the most important took place in July 14 ) but quite often the
dating only points to "mid-July". I could not find the date of Van´s own
birthdate, though. Only a reference:
"The 195 days preceding that event being indistinguishable from infinite
unconsciousness, are not to be included in perceptual time, so that, insofar as
my mind and my pride of mind are concerned, I am today (mid-July, 1922) quite
exactly fifty-two, et trêve de mon style plafond peint.
Does anyone know when in July Van was born? He was presented as a
dream-interpreter, "an analyst" and not only as a psychiatrist...
Jansy
----- End forwarded message -----
EDNOTE. My only thought about this is that Bellevue is the name of a psychiatric
hospital in New York city.