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Re: [NABOKOV-L] Michael Maar's "Speak,Nabokov"
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Matt Roth (to JM's " What I find strange in Maar's title and Banville's commentary about the "Medusa" theme is that although both mention Freud and his work "The Uncanny" (Das Unheimliche), they fail to mention Freud's "The Medusa head" (1922/1940, Das Medusenhaupt"..) Maar uses the medusa metaphor in two ways, the latter of which bears some resemblance to Freud's conception, as I understand it.The first kind of medusa experience is as you've described it, a feeling of oneness with the universe...(the universe filtered through the individual, as light through a jellyfish). But Maar's point is that in VN's books, this "shimmer" doesn't last and is replaced by the Medusa experience...--the moment of clear perception, quickly followed by the scales falling from the disillusioned person's eyes. Is this a particular feature of Russian lit in general...
JM: My surprise derived from the absence of a clear reference to Freud's works (particularly the one about the Medusa), although Freud is mentioned here and there. Your comment is very rich and I hope there'll be participants helping along with your inquiry related to the moment of "shimmer" followed by "disillusionment," in Russian literature.
A quick aside: the feeling of oneness with the universe (Romain Rolland's "oceanic feeling"* ) is not really "filtered through the individual" but it comes closer to a pantheistic dissolution and mingling bt. self and world.
The "Medusa" experience (presented by Maar and Banville in connection to "the uncanny") is mainly related to "castration anxiety."
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*remember that Nabokov translated some of his works. Also Freud often returned to RR, Cf. in particular "A disturbance of Memory in the Acropolis," 1936 and "Civilization and its discontents" (1929).
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