One of the
particular exciting Nabokovian elements reappears in TOoL: the
wealth of hidden associations which often stimulate me to pick up remnants of my
past experiences. This time, from Dr. Philip Wild's peculiar speculations
about the underside of the eyelid (the very tactile palpebrae) and bodily
sensations*, I was carried to Freud's theories about the"cortical homunculus
of the anatomists"
From the Nabokov&Wilson correspondence I
learned that Nabokov had read, at least, a good deal of the Freud's letters
to Fliess where a first schema was mentioned and gradually
developed into what one reads in Freud's "The Ego and the Id" (1923,p.26,SEXIX):
"The ego is first and foremost a bodily ego; it is
not merely a surface entity, but is itself a projection of a surface. If we wish
to find an anatomical analogy for it we can best identify it with the 'cortical
homunculus' of the anatomists, which stands on its head in the cortex, sticks up
its heels, faces backwards and, as we know, has its speech-area on the left-hand
side." **
The diagram on page 24 (reproduced in one of the
attached figures) links Freud's model to the diagram presented on
Lecture XXXI (1933a), to a simplified flat one in "The Interpretation
of Dreams" (1900a) and in Freud's letter to Fliess ( December 6, 1896, letter
52). In 1923 (following his initial work with aphasics) Freud
remarked that "in essence a word is after all the mnemic residue of a word
that has been heard." (page 21, 19123,XIX).
From fictional doctor Wild's words we
get closer to Shade, and Kinbote, than to the real anatomists of old.
The "homunculus" which is most familiar to every student of
neurophysiology is Penfield's. The nice (probably casual) item is related to
Penfield's name: Wilder***. I don't think that Dr. Philip Wild had
Penfield in mind because his theories diverge from the anatomist's researches
and finds.
* - TOoL (page 31): "The student who desires to die should learn first of all to
project a mental image of himself upon his inner black-board. This surface which
at its virgin best has a dark-plum, rather than black, depth of opacity is none
other than the underside of one's closed eyelids."
Compare to Shade's lines 30-40
in Pale Fire: "My eyes were such that literally
they/ Took photographs.
Whenever I’d permit,/Or, with a silent shiver, order it,/ Whatever in my field of vision dwelt
...Was printed on my
eyelids’ nether side/.../ And while this lasted all I
had to do/Was close my eyes to reproduce..."; Or
else, Kinbote's: "Such hearts, such brains, would be
unable to comprehend that one’s attachment to a masterpiece may be utterly
overwhelming, especially when it is the underside of the weave that entrances
the beholder and only begetter, whose own past intercoils there with the fate of
the innocent author."
** - Mascodagama inversions were first mentioned by VN
in LEL (and equally described by Chesterton - cf. old VN-L
postings with more information).
*** -Cf. Wilder
Penfield and T. Rasmunsen's homunculus
(1950)