An editorial nudge: "As for the line "not the dream"---I
think you are exactly right to associate this with Freud's analysis of dreams
and their place in a
person's life; I had never done so, and had wondered
what "dream" was meant here. Isn't he saying that one's dreams are not the
keys to hidden layers of a person's life, but rather that patterns of
coincidence are. That seems to mesh with what he said about dreams (and
coincidence) elsewhere, so it makes sense that Shade would have that view as
well..."
Just this: not text, but
texture; not the dream
But topsy-turvical coincidence,
Not flimsy
nonsense, but a web of sense.
JM: Stephen Blackwell clarified something
that remained in suspension at the time I wrote to the
Nab-L. Namely, Nabokov's disavowal of Freud's discovery about dreams, together
with his idea that "patterns of coincidence" can reveal hidden layers of a
person's life*.
S.Blackwell's vision about how revelatory "patterns of
coincidence" can be to someone like Shade and Nabokov is very
stimulating. Nevertheless, after I tried to pursue
Nabokov's observations on dreams ("Strong Opinions,") to locate SB's
allusions plus Nabokov's words on his "watermark," I became
rather disappointed by VN's admissions concerning his oneiric
life, which was mainly caleidoscopically hypnagogic and there seems to
have been no standard dreams which he'd decided to leave out
from his novels.
Like Nabokov, though, I believe
in revelatory "patterns of coincidence" but I could never make 'heads
or tails' from their design. I wonder how much influence Nabokov's
mother's amor fati wisdom exerted on
him...
And here Alexey
Sklyarenko's intriguing and informative message comes in:
"...Tolstoy's letter of February, 1888, to his
future biographer, P. I. Biryukov ("Posha"), begins with apologies that imitate
stammer: "Виноват... винов... вино... вин... ви... в...
в..."* Виноват
(mea culpa) means in Russian "guilty," Винов, "belonging to Veen" or "of the Veens," вино, "wine" or "vodka", вин,
"of the wines" (вiн is Ukrainian for "he") but, if capitalized
(Вин), becomes Russian spelling of the name
"Veen." "Нет в мире виноватых" ("There are no
Guilty People in the World," begun in 1908) is the title of Tolstoy's last
unfinished novella. On the other hand, the phrase архитектор виноват ("the
architect is to blame") became proverbial in the Tolstoy family. There is also виноват in the title of Herzen's novel
"Кто виноват?" ("Who is to Blame?" 1847). In the first months of 1888 Tolstoy
was reading Herzen ...History playing strange
tricks, the Bolshaya Morskaya street in St. Petersburg where VN was born was
renamed Herzen street by the Bolsheviks. This fact is mentioned in Speak,
Memory. The Russian title of VN's autobiography, Drugie berega, is
an allusion to a line in Pushkin ("Other shores, other waves") but it also
echoes the title of Herzen's book S togo berega ("From the Other
Shore," 1850)."
Yesterday I wrote that "Freud didn't believe that
our actions are a consequence of our free-will, nor that they
are inspired by mystical forces," but I didn't add that
Freud still considered humans as being responsible for their
deeds, even for their secret wishes**. He demonstrates his perspective in his writings
about Sophocles' "Oedipus"for, although
Oedipus wasn't guilty of the crimes he comitted - since didn't
know what he was doing - he was still to blame and this is
why he remained responsible for his acts, whatever their origin. This
is why Oedipus blinded himself and walked into exile, an
expiation which would deliver Thebes from the general blight his
sinning had provoked.
...............................................................................
*Personal secrets (when unrelated to our art) are
obviously only important as a source of inspiration or of anxiety to
ourselves, irrespective of their original source.
**The work of the
"true" psychoanalyst is to allow a person to exercise free-wil (this is
very different from Nabokov's opinions about Freud), by
clarifying some of the determining unconscious factors that weigh down
(to inhibit or to drive on) their actions and
decisions.