Alexey Sklyarenko: On Antiterra (the planet on which Ada is set), Sigmund Freud
is represented by the Dr Froit of Signy-Mondieu-Mondieu in the Ardennes and his
émigré brother (who may be the same man) with a passport-changed name, a Dr
Froid (1.3). As I pointed out before, "Signy-Mondieu-Mondieu" seems to
refer to Ostap Bender's words in Ilf and Petrov's "The Golden Calf"
(1931)....
JM: Perhaps Nabokov was also indicating
that he read Freud's book on "Jokes and their relation to the
Unconscious,"* by using this specific wordplay with
his name in a context where there are babies and crazed Aqua. It seems
to be a rather far-fetched joke-inside-a-joke but, in Freud's
report, we encounter an anedocte related to a Baroness who was in
labor. The criteria employed by her
obstetrician to determine when the time was ripe for him to
intervene were simple. The doctor remained undisturbed after
hearing her first cries in fashionable French: “Ah, mon
Dieu, que je souffre!” or, soon afterwards, when she switched to
German: “Mein Gott, mein Gott, was für Schmerzen!,” he still
remained calm. Finally, after he heard: “Ai, waih, waih"
(yelling in her mother tongue), he rushed in to attend to the
Baroness.
Did Fraud explain it well enough?
...................................................
* Cf. Freud, S. [ “Der Witz und seine Beziehung zum Unbewussten”,
in Gesammelte Werke, Frankfurt am Main, S. Ficher, 1969, v. VI, p. 86; English
Standard Edition, translated by L.Strachey, vol.VIII (1905) Introduction,
ch.11 ].