Subject
[NABOKOV-L] Stabian Gradiva, Jensen/Freud, and Greek Horae
From
Date
Body
A more extended note on the Stabian girl, in "Ada" is present in Vladimir Nabokov and the art of painting Gerard de Vries, Donald Barton Johnson, Liana Ashenden - 2006 :It launches Ada on a flight of not quite free association: 'Bear-Foot,' not barefoot, as are she and Van or the Stabian flower girl in a fresco known to ... books.google.com.br/books?isbn=9053567909...
The rich information contained in de Vries/DBJohnson/Ashenden related to the Stabian "Primavera," and Nabokov's familiarity with it, seems to exclude every possibility of there being a reference, in "Ada" to Freud's study of Jensen's novel "Gradiva."
I picked up Freud's article to check the items quoted in the internet about it* and my conviction grew about my partially discordant indication. Even if Nabokov didn't consciously intend to allude to Freud or to Jensen the points in common between the pompeian fresco and the Gradiva relief, as presented by Jensen and Freud, are too many to ignore. There are mysogenous scientists (neurotically!) blending art and science, birds, butterflies, etymology, asphodels, hallucinations, bare feet stepping up in splendour. There is the rebirth of a repressed childhood love in the shape of a goddess and the analogy of Pompei as a town that was initially buried and then escaveted and restored to the light... I imagine that, had Nabokov read this particular essay by Freud (published in German in 1907. In English, its first appearance was in 1917, NY and 1921, London.), he could have been affected and irritated by its revelations.
I can only suggest that those interested in a fascinating read get hold of either Jensen's novel or Freud's interpretation of it - I'm sure they'll see my point.
The Gradiva tablet, united to other reliefs obtained in Munich and Florence, reveals the girl to be one of the three goddesses of vegetation, the Hours.**
...............................................................................................................
*- Several excerpts of Freud's abridged retelling, and quotes, from Gradiva, a Pompeiian Fancy, by Wilhelm Jensen. ... There Gradiva walked over the stepping-stones and scared away from them a ...... from the Porta di Stabia to the Porta del Vesuvio through the Street of ... www.bartleby.com › ... › Sigmund Freud › Delusion and Dream - 1917.
"On a visit to one of the great antique collections of Rome, Norbert Hanold had discovered a bas-relief which was exceptionally attractive to him.... About one-third life-size, the bas-relief represented a complete female figure in the act of walking... a Roman virgin about in her twentieth year. In no way did she remind one of the numerous extant bas-reliefs of a Venus, a Diana, or other Olympian goddess, and equally little of a Psyche or nymph. In her was embodied something humanly commonplace...—not in a bad sense—to a degree a sense of present time, as if the artist, instead of making a pencil sketch of her on a sheet of paper, as is done in our day, had fixed her in a clay model quickly, from life, as she passed on the street, a tall, slight figure...So the young woman was fascinating, not at all because of plastic beauty of form, but because she possessed something rare in antique sculpture, a realistic, simple, maidenly grace which gave the impression of imparting life to the relief. This was effected chiefly by the movement represented in the picture. With her head bent forward a little, she held slightly raised in her left hand, so that her sandaled feet became visible, her garment which fell in exceedingly voluminous folds from her throat to her ankles. The left foot had advanced, and the right, about to follow, touched the ground only lightly with the tips of the toes... Where had she walked thus and whither was she going? Doctor Norbert Hanold, docent of archaeology, really found in the relief nothing noteworthy for his science...In order to bestow a name upon the piece of sculpture, he had called it to himself Gradiva, “the girl splendid in walking.” That was an epithet applied by the ancient poets solely to Mars Gradivus, the war-god going out to battle, yet to Norbert it seemed the most appropriate designation for the bearing and movement of the young girl..."
" On his Italian journey, he had spent several weeks in Pompeii...There Gradiva walked over the stepping-stones and scared away from them a shimmering, golden-green lizard...The cut of her features seemed to him, more and more, not Roman or Latin, but Greek, so that her Hellenic ancestry gradually became for him a certainty...women had formerly been for him only a conception in marble or bronze and he had never given his feminine contemporaries the least consideration; but his desire for knowledge transported him into a scientific passion..."
"...he had dreamed some time ago that he had been present at the destruction of Pompeii by the volcanic eruption of 79. Wandering around for hours made him tired and half-sleepy, of course, yet he felt not the least suggestion of anything dreamlike, but there lay about him only a confusion of fragments of ancient gate arches, pillars and walls significant to the highest degree for archaeology, but, viewed without the esoteric aid of this science, really not much else than a big pile of rubbish...and although science and dreams were wont formerly to stand on footings exactly opposed, they had apparently here to-day come to an agreement to withdraw their aid from Norbert Hanold and deliver him over absolutely to the aimlessness of his walking and standing around. So he had wandered in all directions from the Forum to the Amphitheater, from the Porta di Stabia to the Porta del Vesuvio through the Street of Tombs ...the noon sun of May was decidedly well disposed toward the lizards, butterflies and other winged inhabitants or visitors of the extensive mass of ruins...What had formerly been the city of Pompeii assumed an entirely changed appearance, but not a living one; it now appeared rather to be becoming completely petrified in dead immobility. Yet out of it stirred a feeling that death was beginning to talk, although not in a manner intelligible to human ears..."
** - wiki: In Greek mythology the Horae or Hours (Greek: Ὧραι, Hōrai, "seasons") were the goddesses of the seasons and the natural portions of time. They were originally the personifications of nature in its different seasonal aspects, but in later times they were regarded as goddessess of order in general and natural justice. ...Traditionally they guarded the gates of Olympus, promoted the fertility of the earth, and rallied the stars and constellations.The course of the seasons was also symbolically described as the dance of the Horae, and they were accordingly given the attributes of spring flowers, fragrance and graceful freshness. For example, in Hesiod's Works and Days, the fair-haired Horai, together with the Charites and Peitho crown Pandora—she of "all gifts"— with garlands of flowers. Similarly Aphrodite, emerging from the sea and coming ashore at Cyprus, is dressed and adorned by the Horai, and, according to a surviving fragment of the epic Cypria, Aphrodite wore clothing made for her by the Charites and Horai, dyed with spring flowers, such as the Horai themselves wear.The number of Horae varied according to different sources, but was most commonly three, either the trio of Thallo, Auxo and Carpo, who were goddesses of the order of nature; or Eunomia, Diké, and Eirene, who were law-and-order goddesses.
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/
The rich information contained in de Vries/DBJohnson/Ashenden related to the Stabian "Primavera," and Nabokov's familiarity with it, seems to exclude every possibility of there being a reference, in "Ada" to Freud's study of Jensen's novel "Gradiva."
I picked up Freud's article to check the items quoted in the internet about it* and my conviction grew about my partially discordant indication. Even if Nabokov didn't consciously intend to allude to Freud or to Jensen the points in common between the pompeian fresco and the Gradiva relief, as presented by Jensen and Freud, are too many to ignore. There are mysogenous scientists (neurotically!) blending art and science, birds, butterflies, etymology, asphodels, hallucinations, bare feet stepping up in splendour. There is the rebirth of a repressed childhood love in the shape of a goddess and the analogy of Pompei as a town that was initially buried and then escaveted and restored to the light... I imagine that, had Nabokov read this particular essay by Freud (published in German in 1907. In English, its first appearance was in 1917, NY and 1921, London.), he could have been affected and irritated by its revelations.
I can only suggest that those interested in a fascinating read get hold of either Jensen's novel or Freud's interpretation of it - I'm sure they'll see my point.
The Gradiva tablet, united to other reliefs obtained in Munich and Florence, reveals the girl to be one of the three goddesses of vegetation, the Hours.**
...............................................................................................................
*- Several excerpts of Freud's abridged retelling, and quotes, from Gradiva, a Pompeiian Fancy, by Wilhelm Jensen. ... There Gradiva walked over the stepping-stones and scared away from them a ...... from the Porta di Stabia to the Porta del Vesuvio through the Street of ... www.bartleby.com › ... › Sigmund Freud › Delusion and Dream - 1917.
"On a visit to one of the great antique collections of Rome, Norbert Hanold had discovered a bas-relief which was exceptionally attractive to him.... About one-third life-size, the bas-relief represented a complete female figure in the act of walking... a Roman virgin about in her twentieth year. In no way did she remind one of the numerous extant bas-reliefs of a Venus, a Diana, or other Olympian goddess, and equally little of a Psyche or nymph. In her was embodied something humanly commonplace...—not in a bad sense—to a degree a sense of present time, as if the artist, instead of making a pencil sketch of her on a sheet of paper, as is done in our day, had fixed her in a clay model quickly, from life, as she passed on the street, a tall, slight figure...So the young woman was fascinating, not at all because of plastic beauty of form, but because she possessed something rare in antique sculpture, a realistic, simple, maidenly grace which gave the impression of imparting life to the relief. This was effected chiefly by the movement represented in the picture. With her head bent forward a little, she held slightly raised in her left hand, so that her sandaled feet became visible, her garment which fell in exceedingly voluminous folds from her throat to her ankles. The left foot had advanced, and the right, about to follow, touched the ground only lightly with the tips of the toes... Where had she walked thus and whither was she going? Doctor Norbert Hanold, docent of archaeology, really found in the relief nothing noteworthy for his science...In order to bestow a name upon the piece of sculpture, he had called it to himself Gradiva, “the girl splendid in walking.” That was an epithet applied by the ancient poets solely to Mars Gradivus, the war-god going out to battle, yet to Norbert it seemed the most appropriate designation for the bearing and movement of the young girl..."
" On his Italian journey, he had spent several weeks in Pompeii...There Gradiva walked over the stepping-stones and scared away from them a shimmering, golden-green lizard...The cut of her features seemed to him, more and more, not Roman or Latin, but Greek, so that her Hellenic ancestry gradually became for him a certainty...women had formerly been for him only a conception in marble or bronze and he had never given his feminine contemporaries the least consideration; but his desire for knowledge transported him into a scientific passion..."
"...he had dreamed some time ago that he had been present at the destruction of Pompeii by the volcanic eruption of 79. Wandering around for hours made him tired and half-sleepy, of course, yet he felt not the least suggestion of anything dreamlike, but there lay about him only a confusion of fragments of ancient gate arches, pillars and walls significant to the highest degree for archaeology, but, viewed without the esoteric aid of this science, really not much else than a big pile of rubbish...and although science and dreams were wont formerly to stand on footings exactly opposed, they had apparently here to-day come to an agreement to withdraw their aid from Norbert Hanold and deliver him over absolutely to the aimlessness of his walking and standing around. So he had wandered in all directions from the Forum to the Amphitheater, from the Porta di Stabia to the Porta del Vesuvio through the Street of Tombs ...the noon sun of May was decidedly well disposed toward the lizards, butterflies and other winged inhabitants or visitors of the extensive mass of ruins...What had formerly been the city of Pompeii assumed an entirely changed appearance, but not a living one; it now appeared rather to be becoming completely petrified in dead immobility. Yet out of it stirred a feeling that death was beginning to talk, although not in a manner intelligible to human ears..."
** - wiki: In Greek mythology the Horae or Hours (Greek: Ὧραι, Hōrai, "seasons") were the goddesses of the seasons and the natural portions of time. They were originally the personifications of nature in its different seasonal aspects, but in later times they were regarded as goddessess of order in general and natural justice. ...Traditionally they guarded the gates of Olympus, promoted the fertility of the earth, and rallied the stars and constellations.The course of the seasons was also symbolically described as the dance of the Horae, and they were accordingly given the attributes of spring flowers, fragrance and graceful freshness. For example, in Hesiod's Works and Days, the fair-haired Horai, together with the Charites and Peitho crown Pandora—she of "all gifts"— with garlands of flowers. Similarly Aphrodite, emerging from the sea and coming ashore at Cyprus, is dressed and adorned by the Horai, and, according to a surviving fragment of the epic Cypria, Aphrodite wore clothing made for her by the Charites and Horai, dyed with spring flowers, such as the Horai themselves wear.The number of Horae varied according to different sources, but was most commonly three, either the trio of Thallo, Auxo and Carpo, who were goddesses of the order of nature; or Eunomia, Diké, and Eirene, who were law-and-order goddesses.
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/