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Re: Pages of VN lecture still AWOL?
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PS: Pertinent moments of one of Freud's interviews, related to VN and Shade's thoughts about IPH or The Grand Potato. *
"I do not rebel against the universal order. After all...I have lived over seventy years. I had enough to eat. I enjoyed many things–the comradeship of my wife, my children, the sunsets. I watched the plants grow in the springtime.Now and then the grasp of a friendlyhand was mine. Once or twice I met a human being who almost understood me. What more can I ask?"
"You have had," I said, "fame. Your work affects the literature of every land. Man looks at life and himself with different eyes because of you. And recently on your seventieth birthday the world united to honor you–with the exception of your own university!»
"If the University of Vienna had recognized me, they would have only embarrassed me. There is no reason why they should embrace either me or my doctrine because I am seventy. I attach no unreasonable importance to decimals. "Fame comes to us only after we are dead, and, frankly, what comes afterwards does not concern me. I have no aspiration to posthumous glory. My modesty is no virtue."
"Does it not mean something to you that your name will live?"
"Nothing whatsoever, even if it should live, which is by no means certain. I am far more interested in the fate of my children. I hope that their life will not be so hard. I cannot make their life much easier. The war practically wiped out my modest fortune, the savings of a lifetime.However, fortunately, age is not too heavy a burden. I can carry on! My work still gives me pleasure."
We were walking up and down a little pathway in the steep garden of the house. Freud tenderly caressed a blossoming bush with his sensitive hands.
"I am far more interested in this blossom," he said, "than in anything that may happen to me after I am dead."
"Then you are, after all, a profound pessimist?"
"I am not. I permit no philosophic reflection to spoil my enjoyment of the simple things of life."
"Do you believe in the persistence of personality after death in any form whatsoever?"
"I give no thought to the matter. Everything that lives perishes. Why should I survive?"
"Would you like to come back in some form, to be reintegrated from the dust? Have you, in other words, no wish for immortality?"
"Frankly, no. If one recognizes the selfish motives which underlie all human conduct, one has not the slightest desire to return. Life, moving in a circle, would still be the same."Moreover, even if the eternal recurrence of things, to use Nietzsche’s phrase, were to reinvest us with our fleshly habiliments, of what avail would this be without memory? There would be no link between past and future."So far as I am concerned, I am perfectly content to know that the eternal nuisance of living will be finally done with. Our life is necessarily a series of compromises, a never-ending struggle between the ego and his environment. The wish to prolong life unduly, trikes me as absurd."
(the complete interview with G.S.Viereck can be read here: An Interview with Freud www.psychanalyse.lu/articles/FreudInterview.pdf )
....................................................................
* - Carolyn Kunin to Brian Tomba: "...I have recently been wondering if VN's antagonism to Freud hasn't been mis-interpreted. In other words I wonder if it isn't Freud's belief in what he called Todestrieb, that is the death drive, that VN actually objected to [ ] Mozart's own words, "Death is the true goal of our existence, and mankind’s best friend..." Personally I find this a very sane and healthy attitude, and if I may be allowed my own prejudices, I find it rather 'Jewish,' although we too have our seekers after immortality. This inability to allow nature to take her age-old course I find very distasteful in VN. It is in an odd way a life defeating attitude. Our works should live on after us, not our selves."
Jansy Mello: In one of Freud's last interviews he made explicit the same idea that afflicted John Shade: 523: "I’m ready to become a floweret/ Or a fat fly, but never, to forget./ And I’ll turn down eternity unless/ The melancholy and the tenderness/ Of mortal life; the passion and the pain;[ ] Are found in Heaven by the newlydead/ Stored in its strongholds through the years.":537
.......................................
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"I do not rebel against the universal order. After all...I have lived over seventy years. I had enough to eat. I enjoyed many things–the comradeship of my wife, my children, the sunsets. I watched the plants grow in the springtime.Now and then the grasp of a friendlyhand was mine. Once or twice I met a human being who almost understood me. What more can I ask?"
"You have had," I said, "fame. Your work affects the literature of every land. Man looks at life and himself with different eyes because of you. And recently on your seventieth birthday the world united to honor you–with the exception of your own university!»
"If the University of Vienna had recognized me, they would have only embarrassed me. There is no reason why they should embrace either me or my doctrine because I am seventy. I attach no unreasonable importance to decimals. "Fame comes to us only after we are dead, and, frankly, what comes afterwards does not concern me. I have no aspiration to posthumous glory. My modesty is no virtue."
"Does it not mean something to you that your name will live?"
"Nothing whatsoever, even if it should live, which is by no means certain. I am far more interested in the fate of my children. I hope that their life will not be so hard. I cannot make their life much easier. The war practically wiped out my modest fortune, the savings of a lifetime.However, fortunately, age is not too heavy a burden. I can carry on! My work still gives me pleasure."
We were walking up and down a little pathway in the steep garden of the house. Freud tenderly caressed a blossoming bush with his sensitive hands.
"I am far more interested in this blossom," he said, "than in anything that may happen to me after I am dead."
"Then you are, after all, a profound pessimist?"
"I am not. I permit no philosophic reflection to spoil my enjoyment of the simple things of life."
"Do you believe in the persistence of personality after death in any form whatsoever?"
"I give no thought to the matter. Everything that lives perishes. Why should I survive?"
"Would you like to come back in some form, to be reintegrated from the dust? Have you, in other words, no wish for immortality?"
"Frankly, no. If one recognizes the selfish motives which underlie all human conduct, one has not the slightest desire to return. Life, moving in a circle, would still be the same."Moreover, even if the eternal recurrence of things, to use Nietzsche’s phrase, were to reinvest us with our fleshly habiliments, of what avail would this be without memory? There would be no link between past and future."So far as I am concerned, I am perfectly content to know that the eternal nuisance of living will be finally done with. Our life is necessarily a series of compromises, a never-ending struggle between the ego and his environment. The wish to prolong life unduly, trikes me as absurd."
(the complete interview with G.S.Viereck can be read here: An Interview with Freud www.psychanalyse.lu/articles/FreudInterview.pdf )
....................................................................
* - Carolyn Kunin to Brian Tomba: "...I have recently been wondering if VN's antagonism to Freud hasn't been mis-interpreted. In other words I wonder if it isn't Freud's belief in what he called Todestrieb, that is the death drive, that VN actually objected to [ ] Mozart's own words, "Death is the true goal of our existence, and mankind’s best friend..." Personally I find this a very sane and healthy attitude, and if I may be allowed my own prejudices, I find it rather 'Jewish,' although we too have our seekers after immortality. This inability to allow nature to take her age-old course I find very distasteful in VN. It is in an odd way a life defeating attitude. Our works should live on after us, not our selves."
Jansy Mello: In one of Freud's last interviews he made explicit the same idea that afflicted John Shade: 523: "I’m ready to become a floweret/ Or a fat fly, but never, to forget./ And I’ll turn down eternity unless/ The melancholy and the tenderness/ Of mortal life; the passion and the pain;[ ] Are found in Heaven by the newlydead/ Stored in its strongholds through the years.":537
.......................................
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/