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Re: VN vs. Freud (fwd)
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From: Brian Walter <bwalter@dobson.ozarks.edu>
I no longer have the student's message that prompted this discussion, but
if s/he is still looking for a more extensive but highly readable
assessment of the topic, a very good place to start would be THE GARLAND
COMPANION volume, specifically Jennifer Shute's article, "Nabokov and
Freud" (412-20).
I will also throw in here the response I got from a professor several
years ago now when I first lobbed him the inevitable Nabokov-Freud
question: Nabokov doesn't like him because Freud would take away his happy
childhood. A simplified explanation, certainly, but not far off target,
I've come to think. The idea that we are inevitably scarred by our
childhood experiences, that we are inescapably victimized by (sexual)
neuroses developed in the early years of life (however simplified a
version of Freud's teaching this understanding is) must have seemed not
only inimical to the author of SPEAK, MEMORY, but downright repulsive. The
portrait of the father in SPEAK, MEMORY -- particularly with the "charm of
[their] perfect accord" that Nabokov takes some pains to detail (p. 191 in
the Vintage edition) -- seems calculated especially to undermine Oedipal
models of the son's hateful jealousy of the father. Nabokov too much
loved his childhood experiences and the formative influence they had on
his artistic sensibilities to suffer even the threat of their
characterization as the waystations of a forced march to adult neurosis.
BW
Brian Walter, Assistant Professor
HFA-English
University of the Ozarks
Clarksville, AR 72830
(501) 979-1339 or 754-3499
bwalter@dobson.ozarks.edu
I no longer have the student's message that prompted this discussion, but
if s/he is still looking for a more extensive but highly readable
assessment of the topic, a very good place to start would be THE GARLAND
COMPANION volume, specifically Jennifer Shute's article, "Nabokov and
Freud" (412-20).
I will also throw in here the response I got from a professor several
years ago now when I first lobbed him the inevitable Nabokov-Freud
question: Nabokov doesn't like him because Freud would take away his happy
childhood. A simplified explanation, certainly, but not far off target,
I've come to think. The idea that we are inevitably scarred by our
childhood experiences, that we are inescapably victimized by (sexual)
neuroses developed in the early years of life (however simplified a
version of Freud's teaching this understanding is) must have seemed not
only inimical to the author of SPEAK, MEMORY, but downright repulsive. The
portrait of the father in SPEAK, MEMORY -- particularly with the "charm of
[their] perfect accord" that Nabokov takes some pains to detail (p. 191 in
the Vintage edition) -- seems calculated especially to undermine Oedipal
models of the son's hateful jealousy of the father. Nabokov too much
loved his childhood experiences and the formative influence they had on
his artistic sensibilities to suffer even the threat of their
characterization as the waystations of a forced march to adult neurosis.
BW
Brian Walter, Assistant Professor
HFA-English
University of the Ozarks
Clarksville, AR 72830
(501) 979-1339 or 754-3499
bwalter@dobson.ozarks.edu