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Re: Dieter Zimmer on the 56 Conundrum and Lolita Chronology
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Anthony Stadlen:[to JM's: "I couldn't get your point"] I'm not sure what you couldn't get. Perhaps my "rather than the reverse" is ambiguous? "My" point -- or rather, Diana Butler's -- was her hypothesis that Nabokov simply reverses "Freudian" symbolism.Butler's "Nabokov"'s "Freud" would presumably interpret a manifest narrative "man hunts, catches, and impales butterfly" as a way of concealing and revealing the latent narrative "man hunts, seduces, and rapes girl".Butler's "Nabokov" allegedly invites us to interpret his manifest narrative "man hunts, seduces, and rapes girl" as a way of concealing and revealing the latent narrative "man hunts, catches, and impales butterfly".
JM: That part, about the reversion, is clear. What I didn't understand was the point of attributing it to Nabokov, as it apparently was intended by Diana Butler's mockery. It's highly probable that Nabokov had read at least a few of the books by "the Viennese quack" (although Freud wasn't born in Vienna - but in Freiberg, Moravia)* and that he must have been aware (for he was "a good reader") that the manifest content of a dream is always related to an individual-dreamer's life, to the events that happened to him in the previous day and to his childhood memories. This means that the manifest narrative cannot be generalized and fitted into an exact reversal of its latent meaning, as we find in this attempted parody, with its mirror-like transposition "man hunts girl...man hunts butterfly and vice-versa." Besides, D.Butler's reversion, as applied to Freudian symbols, denies the reality of the intense anguish and pain which repression and dream-distortion keep at bay, while giving them expression through symbolism at the same time Nabokov was fully aware of the torments undergone by his characters (Humbert Humbert, Charles Kinbote), although I have the impression that he worried too much about demonstrating his compassion for them, for these "crazy," "despicable" beings.
Nabokov was capable of attaining a rare understanding of the Freudian theory.Commenting on Gogol's obsession with his nose, he menetions Gogol's description of the smoothness of a girl's face, because it lacked the Freudian phallic protuberance, as can be found in his comments about Gogol in Strong Opinions, and in his Gogol biography.). Or his amusing letter about a flag-pole, a Pole and the Russian "pol" (cf. Dear Bunny, dear Volodya). In Lolita, at a certain point Humbert says that if he had consulted a competent hypnotyzer, perhaps the man would have extracted from him some fortuitous memories, making them appear much sharper than the images that presented themselves in his own mind, now that he knew what to search for in the past. In this sentence, we see that, in spite of the irony, the novelist acknowledges he is aware of all that psychoanalysis can offer, namely, the access to the repressed unconscious by means of free association, or through the distortions introduced by secondary elaboration of a dream.**
The insistent reappearance of a mysterious sort of truth kept surprising Nabokov, as he, when re-reading his early works, kept coming across certain episodes of his life that he had transformed into fiction, because these events, as narrated in that form, seemed to him more faithful to his actual experience than what he wrote on a much later date, with all sincerity, when composing his autobiography. In his preface to Maschenka, he confessed that he never failed being fascinated by the fact that, in spite of some superimposed inventions, the fictional account contains a more concentrated resolution of the personal reality than the scrupulously faithful description attained by the autobiographer. What means other than his own experience could Nabokov use, in order to describe those fantasies that are.peculiar to someone who has intensely experienced, and vividly remembers, the ecstasy of a child who has not yet recognized itself as boy or girl, and who offers itself to the world, and takes possession of it, with its entire body. Although Nabokov had to resort to psychiatric manuals and newspapers in order to describe Humbert Humbert's pedophilia, Humbert's voyeuristic ecstasies, on the other hand, in his complicity with Lolita's voluptuousness, must have arisen from memories Nabokov, as an artist, had retained of his own experience as a child and later transformed into art.
...........................................................................
* - ."I take gleeful pleasure every morning in refuting the Viennese quack by recalling and explaining the details of my dreams without using one single reference to sexual symbols or mythical complexes. I urge my potential patients to do likewise." (1964, interview for Life Magazine)
Cf. also Preface to Bend Sinister [... "a mysterious intruder who takes advantage of Krug´s dream to convey his own peculiar code message. The intruder is not the Viennese Quack (all my books should be stamped Freudians, Keep Out) but an anthropomorphic deity impersonated by me."; the foreword of King, Queen, Knave: "As usual, I wish to observe that, as usual...the Viennese delegation has not been invited. If, however, a resolute Freudian manages to slip in, he or she should be warned that a number of cruel traps have been set here and there in the novel;"; (Speak Memory) "I have ransacked my oldest dreams for keys and clues - and let me say at once that I reject completely the vulgar, shabby, fundamentally medieval world of Freud, with its crankish quest for sexual symbols ... and its bitter little embryo spying, from their natural nooks, upon the love life of their parents."
** - "It is just possible that had I gone to a strong hypnotist he might have extracted from me and arrayed in a logical pattern certain chance memories that I have threaded through my book with considerably more ostentation than they present themselves with to my mind even now when I know what to seek in the past. At the time I felt I was merely losing contact with reality...Here is something I composed in my retreat: Wanted, wanted: Dolores Haze./Hair: brown. Lips: scarlet./Age: five thousand three hundred days./Profession: none, or "starlet." [...]Happy, happy is gnarled McFate/ Touring the States with a child wife,...[ ]/Lolita, qu'ai — je fait de ta vie?/ Dying, dying, Lolita Haze,/Of hate and remorse, I'm dying./And again my hairy fist I raise,/And again I hear you crying./ My car is limping, Dolores Haze,/ And the last long lap is the hardest,/ And I shall be dumped where the weed decays,/And the rest is rust and stardust.// By psychoanalyzing this poem, I notice it is really a maniac's masterpiece. The stark, stiff, lurid rhymes correspond very exactly to certain perspectiveless and terrible landscapes and figures, and magnified parts of landscapes and figures, as drawn by psychopaths in tests devised by their astute trainers. I wrote many more poems. I immersed myself in the poetry of others. But not for a second did I forget the load of revenge." Cf. "The Annotated Lolita," Penguin, p.255-57.
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JM: That part, about the reversion, is clear. What I didn't understand was the point of attributing it to Nabokov, as it apparently was intended by Diana Butler's mockery. It's highly probable that Nabokov had read at least a few of the books by "the Viennese quack" (although Freud wasn't born in Vienna - but in Freiberg, Moravia)* and that he must have been aware (for he was "a good reader") that the manifest content of a dream is always related to an individual-dreamer's life, to the events that happened to him in the previous day and to his childhood memories. This means that the manifest narrative cannot be generalized and fitted into an exact reversal of its latent meaning, as we find in this attempted parody, with its mirror-like transposition "man hunts girl...man hunts butterfly and vice-versa." Besides, D.Butler's reversion, as applied to Freudian symbols, denies the reality of the intense anguish and pain which repression and dream-distortion keep at bay, while giving them expression through symbolism at the same time Nabokov was fully aware of the torments undergone by his characters (Humbert Humbert, Charles Kinbote), although I have the impression that he worried too much about demonstrating his compassion for them, for these "crazy," "despicable" beings.
Nabokov was capable of attaining a rare understanding of the Freudian theory.Commenting on Gogol's obsession with his nose, he menetions Gogol's description of the smoothness of a girl's face, because it lacked the Freudian phallic protuberance, as can be found in his comments about Gogol in Strong Opinions, and in his Gogol biography.). Or his amusing letter about a flag-pole, a Pole and the Russian "pol" (cf. Dear Bunny, dear Volodya). In Lolita, at a certain point Humbert says that if he had consulted a competent hypnotyzer, perhaps the man would have extracted from him some fortuitous memories, making them appear much sharper than the images that presented themselves in his own mind, now that he knew what to search for in the past. In this sentence, we see that, in spite of the irony, the novelist acknowledges he is aware of all that psychoanalysis can offer, namely, the access to the repressed unconscious by means of free association, or through the distortions introduced by secondary elaboration of a dream.**
The insistent reappearance of a mysterious sort of truth kept surprising Nabokov, as he, when re-reading his early works, kept coming across certain episodes of his life that he had transformed into fiction, because these events, as narrated in that form, seemed to him more faithful to his actual experience than what he wrote on a much later date, with all sincerity, when composing his autobiography. In his preface to Maschenka, he confessed that he never failed being fascinated by the fact that, in spite of some superimposed inventions, the fictional account contains a more concentrated resolution of the personal reality than the scrupulously faithful description attained by the autobiographer. What means other than his own experience could Nabokov use, in order to describe those fantasies that are.peculiar to someone who has intensely experienced, and vividly remembers, the ecstasy of a child who has not yet recognized itself as boy or girl, and who offers itself to the world, and takes possession of it, with its entire body. Although Nabokov had to resort to psychiatric manuals and newspapers in order to describe Humbert Humbert's pedophilia, Humbert's voyeuristic ecstasies, on the other hand, in his complicity with Lolita's voluptuousness, must have arisen from memories Nabokov, as an artist, had retained of his own experience as a child and later transformed into art.
...........................................................................
* - ."I take gleeful pleasure every morning in refuting the Viennese quack by recalling and explaining the details of my dreams without using one single reference to sexual symbols or mythical complexes. I urge my potential patients to do likewise." (1964, interview for Life Magazine)
Cf. also Preface to Bend Sinister [... "a mysterious intruder who takes advantage of Krug´s dream to convey his own peculiar code message. The intruder is not the Viennese Quack (all my books should be stamped Freudians, Keep Out) but an anthropomorphic deity impersonated by me."; the foreword of King, Queen, Knave: "As usual, I wish to observe that, as usual...the Viennese delegation has not been invited. If, however, a resolute Freudian manages to slip in, he or she should be warned that a number of cruel traps have been set here and there in the novel;"; (Speak Memory) "I have ransacked my oldest dreams for keys and clues - and let me say at once that I reject completely the vulgar, shabby, fundamentally medieval world of Freud, with its crankish quest for sexual symbols ... and its bitter little embryo spying, from their natural nooks, upon the love life of their parents."
** - "It is just possible that had I gone to a strong hypnotist he might have extracted from me and arrayed in a logical pattern certain chance memories that I have threaded through my book with considerably more ostentation than they present themselves with to my mind even now when I know what to seek in the past. At the time I felt I was merely losing contact with reality...Here is something I composed in my retreat: Wanted, wanted: Dolores Haze./Hair: brown. Lips: scarlet./Age: five thousand three hundred days./Profession: none, or "starlet." [...]Happy, happy is gnarled McFate/ Touring the States with a child wife,...[ ]/Lolita, qu'ai — je fait de ta vie?/ Dying, dying, Lolita Haze,/Of hate and remorse, I'm dying./And again my hairy fist I raise,/And again I hear you crying./ My car is limping, Dolores Haze,/ And the last long lap is the hardest,/ And I shall be dumped where the weed decays,/And the rest is rust and stardust.// By psychoanalyzing this poem, I notice it is really a maniac's masterpiece. The stark, stiff, lurid rhymes correspond very exactly to certain perspectiveless and terrible landscapes and figures, and magnified parts of landscapes and figures, as drawn by psychopaths in tests devised by their astute trainers. I wrote many more poems. I immersed myself in the poetry of others. But not for a second did I forget the load of revenge." Cf. "The Annotated Lolita," Penguin, p.255-57.
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/