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Fw: [NABOKV-L] Baron von Wien - a PS with several quotations from
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A few Nab quotes, from Strong Opinions, related to "Shade seems to differ radically from Freud when he admits the influence of "topsy-turvical coincidence," ordained by "they who play" the game of worlds to weave "plexed artistry." Besides, Shade considers it possible to mimic the gods to extract a similar pleasure solely through his inventiveness: his art would transform him into a god's equal (an idea Shade shares with Nabokov, as he made them explicit in an interview in SO). Therefore an author, like Shade's, should have divine authorial rights to determine the fates of his characters: he mustn't feel helpless by the dictates of his creature's destiny, nor should he fear that he'll be revealing undesirable secrets of his own (his galley-slaves become as "gargoyles" who lie outside his cathedral). A completely different perspective emerges from an attentive reading of Freud...I cannot be sure that what Shade means by a "dream" is applicable to a sleeping person's productions, as those Freud described in his "The Interpretation of Dreams." ( ideals, and hallucinations, are often confused with real dreams). "
Strong Opinions, Vintage International (1964, Playboy interview by Alvin Toffler)
p31-32:"When I remember afterwards the force that made me jot down the correct names of things, or the inches and tints of things, even before I actually needed the information, I am inclined to assume that what I call, for want of a better term, inspiration, had been already at work, mutely pointing at this or that, having me accumulate the known materials for an unknown structure...I feel a kind of gentle development, an uncurling inside, and I know that the details are there already...but I prefer to wait until what is loosely called inspiration has completed the task for me...When finally I feel that the conceived picture has been copied by me as faithfully as physically possible... - then I dictate the novel to my wife..." "A CREATIVE WRITER MUST STUDY CAREFULLY THE WORKS OF HIS RIVALS, INCLUDING THE ALMIGHTY. He must possess the inborn capacity not only of recombining but of re-creating the given world..."
(AT,p.23-24: Some critics have felt that your barbed comments about the fahionability of Freudianism, as practiced by American analysts, suggest a contempt based upon familirity) "Bookish familiarity only...Freudism and all it has tainted with its grotesque implications and methods appears to me to be one of the vilest deceits practiced by people on themselves and on others. I reject it utterly, along with a few other medieval items still adored by the ignorant, the conventional, or the very sick." *
Strong Opinions, Vintage International (1962 BBC television Peter Duval Smith and Christopher Burstall)
p.13: " I am very careful to keep my characters beyond the limits of my own identity. Only the background of the novel [The Gift]can be said to contain some biographical touches." p.15: [Lolita] "It was my most difficult book - the book that treated of a theme which was so distant, so remote, from my own emotional life that it gave me a special pleasure to use my combinantional talent to make it real." p.19: "Some of my characters are, no doubt, pretty beastly, but I really don't care, they are outside my inner self like the mournful monsters of a cathedral façade - demons placed there merely to show that they have been booted out. Actually, I'm a mild old gentleman who loathes cruelty."
* nb: In the AT interview Nabokov was asked about "Freudism, as practiced by American analysts" and his answer echoes the word "Freudism," which is not synonymous of Sigmund Freud and Psychoanalysis, about whom he is no less contemptuous.
There is one curious fact to add to my former posting, and about which Nabokov is perfectly correct when he dismisses Freudian "symbolism," umbrellas related to hypnosis or, to "The Interpretation of Dreams" - at least as applied in connection to the inner-life of his characters.
In fact, Freud's dream-interpretation is not valid for any mental production other than a neurotic's, with his "Id/Ego/Superego muddles and internal conflicts.
Psychotic dreams, and hallucinations confused with dreams, are totally distinct from what takes place in the ordinary neurotic ones. They cannot be interpreted!
Besides, their "symbolic" expression demands novel approaches, unrelated to the operation that takes place in regular dream-works.
They often represent an attempt by the patient to achieve a cure for his mental pain through the re-invention of the world (external commmon-sense reality), without the symbolic, rational and emotional resources which a true creative artist has at his disposal when he mimics a hallucinatory universe.
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Strong Opinions, Vintage International (1964, Playboy interview by Alvin Toffler)
p31-32:"When I remember afterwards the force that made me jot down the correct names of things, or the inches and tints of things, even before I actually needed the information, I am inclined to assume that what I call, for want of a better term, inspiration, had been already at work, mutely pointing at this or that, having me accumulate the known materials for an unknown structure...I feel a kind of gentle development, an uncurling inside, and I know that the details are there already...but I prefer to wait until what is loosely called inspiration has completed the task for me...When finally I feel that the conceived picture has been copied by me as faithfully as physically possible... - then I dictate the novel to my wife..." "A CREATIVE WRITER MUST STUDY CAREFULLY THE WORKS OF HIS RIVALS, INCLUDING THE ALMIGHTY. He must possess the inborn capacity not only of recombining but of re-creating the given world..."
(AT,p.23-24: Some critics have felt that your barbed comments about the fahionability of Freudianism, as practiced by American analysts, suggest a contempt based upon familirity) "Bookish familiarity only...Freudism and all it has tainted with its grotesque implications and methods appears to me to be one of the vilest deceits practiced by people on themselves and on others. I reject it utterly, along with a few other medieval items still adored by the ignorant, the conventional, or the very sick." *
Strong Opinions, Vintage International (1962 BBC television Peter Duval Smith and Christopher Burstall)
p.13: " I am very careful to keep my characters beyond the limits of my own identity. Only the background of the novel [The Gift]can be said to contain some biographical touches." p.15: [Lolita] "It was my most difficult book - the book that treated of a theme which was so distant, so remote, from my own emotional life that it gave me a special pleasure to use my combinantional talent to make it real." p.19: "Some of my characters are, no doubt, pretty beastly, but I really don't care, they are outside my inner self like the mournful monsters of a cathedral façade - demons placed there merely to show that they have been booted out. Actually, I'm a mild old gentleman who loathes cruelty."
* nb: In the AT interview Nabokov was asked about "Freudism, as practiced by American analysts" and his answer echoes the word "Freudism," which is not synonymous of Sigmund Freud and Psychoanalysis, about whom he is no less contemptuous.
There is one curious fact to add to my former posting, and about which Nabokov is perfectly correct when he dismisses Freudian "symbolism," umbrellas related to hypnosis or, to "The Interpretation of Dreams" - at least as applied in connection to the inner-life of his characters.
In fact, Freud's dream-interpretation is not valid for any mental production other than a neurotic's, with his "Id/Ego/Superego muddles and internal conflicts.
Psychotic dreams, and hallucinations confused with dreams, are totally distinct from what takes place in the ordinary neurotic ones. They cannot be interpreted!
Besides, their "symbolic" expression demands novel approaches, unrelated to the operation that takes place in regular dream-works.
They often represent an attempt by the patient to achieve a cure for his mental pain through the re-invention of the world (external commmon-sense reality), without the symbolic, rational and emotional resources which a true creative artist has at his disposal when he mimics a hallucinatory universe.
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/