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Re: VN and Freud
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Jerry Friedman: "On the subject of reputable philosophers, I'm not going to add to my "onslaught" about what Nabokov believed, but I will say that I don't see why Shade should be closer to them than to Mme. Blavatsky [...] Freud stated that "dreams of flying, so familiar and often so delightful, have to be interpreted as dreams of general sexual excitement, as erection-dreams". I think what Nabokov is talking about with those umbrellas and balloons is this simplistic "have to be", with its implication that everyone's mind is so similar that Freud knows every individual's (that is, Nabokov's) psyche better than the individual."
JM: When we are offered a thread we may follow it either with a positive or a negative disposition. The choice itself is revelatory about the chooser.
For example, in the recent Nab-L about Wittels, we find a quote: "Wittels was showing the Vienna Society how easily the key psychoanalytic ideas about sexuality and the unconscious could be used as revenge ... For Wittels...psychoanalysis was virtually a science of revenge... (his) audience was unsettled by what Wittels seemed to be using psychoanalysis for...." Here we learn more about Wittels than about Psychoanalysis, even though Wittels may attract a host of followers, similarly shy of femininity and intent on a revenge.
Now I must make a "mea culpa" to Jim Twiggs. I was certain that Nabokov couldn't have been acquainted with the story concerning Wittels's Irma, and still have written "Lolita" since, in the background, there's a very sick mind intent on using and tormenting a real child. Now I'm not so sure because, when one changes one's focus, everything can be examined under a different light.
My first reaction arose because I had set the focus on "Irma-Lolita". However Nabokov might have creatively "solipsized" her, almost like Wittels did, but to look at a different feature which he could use as a source. Namely, Wittel's explicit, detailed and clear-cut misogyny.
If Wittels informed Nabokov about Humbert Humbert, if that was the "focus" of a possible connection bt. Wittels and Nabokov, Nabokov wouldn't be involved with "Irma" in any way, and Lolita would become an exemplary presentation about the dire consequences of a man's hatred against women ( even if unintenionally so).
Both Humbert Humbert and Shade (perhaps Pnin and VN's other characters?) show various developments and inroads related to misogyny and the denial of the "other sex". And there are various ways to behave like a misanthrope, or as a "poet".
I just came accross an example from G.K Chesterton's "The Club of Queer Trades" when a lack of interest in people is not a product of revenge nor specific hates*: "Very few people knew anything of Basil; not because he was in the least unsociable... Few people knew him, because, like all poets, he could do without them; he welcomed a human face as he might welcome a sudden blend of colour in a sunset; but he no more felt the need of going out to parties than he felt the need of altering the sunset clouds."
Actually, when one considers Humbert Humbert, among other things, as being a portrait of a misogynist, many puzzling questions related to Lolita's destiny call for a revision. So now I'm finally able to see the point Jim Twiggs has raised here concerning "The Child-Woman" memoirs.
..........................
*- While I was searching after Chesterton's lines, I found a curious batch of others, related to "poets". A small sample from "Orthodoxy":
"It is true that some speak lightly and loosely of insanity as in itself attractive. But a moment's thought will show that if disease is beautiful, it is generally some one else's disease...And similarly even the wildest poetry of insanity can only be enjoyed by the sane. To the insane man his insanity is quite prosaic, because it is quite true....Imagination does not breed insanity. Exactly what does breed insanity is reason. Poets do not go mad; but chess-players do. Mathematicians go mad, and cashiers; but creative artists very seldom. I am not, as will be seen, in any sense attacking logic: I only say that this danger does lie in logic, not in imagination ." (nb: I don't think I agree completely with Chesterton, but these lines related to poets, insanity and imagination, are mistifying enough..).
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JM: When we are offered a thread we may follow it either with a positive or a negative disposition. The choice itself is revelatory about the chooser.
For example, in the recent Nab-L about Wittels, we find a quote: "Wittels was showing the Vienna Society how easily the key psychoanalytic ideas about sexuality and the unconscious could be used as revenge ... For Wittels...psychoanalysis was virtually a science of revenge... (his) audience was unsettled by what Wittels seemed to be using psychoanalysis for...." Here we learn more about Wittels than about Psychoanalysis, even though Wittels may attract a host of followers, similarly shy of femininity and intent on a revenge.
Now I must make a "mea culpa" to Jim Twiggs. I was certain that Nabokov couldn't have been acquainted with the story concerning Wittels's Irma, and still have written "Lolita" since, in the background, there's a very sick mind intent on using and tormenting a real child. Now I'm not so sure because, when one changes one's focus, everything can be examined under a different light.
My first reaction arose because I had set the focus on "Irma-Lolita". However Nabokov might have creatively "solipsized" her, almost like Wittels did, but to look at a different feature which he could use as a source. Namely, Wittel's explicit, detailed and clear-cut misogyny.
If Wittels informed Nabokov about Humbert Humbert, if that was the "focus" of a possible connection bt. Wittels and Nabokov, Nabokov wouldn't be involved with "Irma" in any way, and Lolita would become an exemplary presentation about the dire consequences of a man's hatred against women ( even if unintenionally so).
Both Humbert Humbert and Shade (perhaps Pnin and VN's other characters?) show various developments and inroads related to misogyny and the denial of the "other sex". And there are various ways to behave like a misanthrope, or as a "poet".
I just came accross an example from G.K Chesterton's "The Club of Queer Trades" when a lack of interest in people is not a product of revenge nor specific hates*: "Very few people knew anything of Basil; not because he was in the least unsociable... Few people knew him, because, like all poets, he could do without them; he welcomed a human face as he might welcome a sudden blend of colour in a sunset; but he no more felt the need of going out to parties than he felt the need of altering the sunset clouds."
Actually, when one considers Humbert Humbert, among other things, as being a portrait of a misogynist, many puzzling questions related to Lolita's destiny call for a revision. So now I'm finally able to see the point Jim Twiggs has raised here concerning "The Child-Woman" memoirs.
..........................
*- While I was searching after Chesterton's lines, I found a curious batch of others, related to "poets". A small sample from "Orthodoxy":
"It is true that some speak lightly and loosely of insanity as in itself attractive. But a moment's thought will show that if disease is beautiful, it is generally some one else's disease...And similarly even the wildest poetry of insanity can only be enjoyed by the sane. To the insane man his insanity is quite prosaic, because it is quite true....Imagination does not breed insanity. Exactly what does breed insanity is reason. Poets do not go mad; but chess-players do. Mathematicians go mad, and cashiers; but creative artists very seldom. I am not, as will be seen, in any sense attacking logic: I only say that this danger does lie in logic, not in imagination ." (nb: I don't think I agree completely with Chesterton, but these lines related to poets, insanity and imagination, are mistifying enough..).
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/