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.