Stephen Blackwell:...I agree with the idea that
Nabokov's main opponent was (is) the popularized Freud...The public image of
Freud and Freudianism is its own, free-standing cultural beast (if you will),
in part caused by Freud's willingness to publish some things that seem to
authorize that beast's existence.
JM: Although I tried to move towards other
Nabokovian themes, I now gave in to a sudden urge to repeat, to regress,
to digress. When I read SB's "cultural beast" I was immediately
reminded of a sentence, attributed to Freud, that was suggestive of SB's
Beast. Trying to recover it by google-search I discovered an article
about Freud and Nannies (I haven't yet read the article in question...).
For a long time I mused about Freudian nannies, significantly
present in his earliest works, to Nabokov's experiences with Mademoiselle
- and a few other girls and young men. We know how important they were,
and how young Nabokov felt enthranced
by Mademoiselle's recitations in French, how appalled he felt by the
urine stench from her room, how another nurse Mlle Ida "de La Rivière" was
seen peeing in a river in Ardis, aso...).
The quote: "I read somewhere that, when entering New
York, in his first trip to America, Freud commented to Jung: "They do not
know that we are bringing them the pest". The pest, as a metaphor of
something brought from the exterior to the interior, certainly continues to
spray itself until this day, in the realm of Freudian history: there is always
a letter, an interview, or a document never seen before that shows that things
were not really as it was thought they were, that what was shown was not
all that was to be shown, or that what was shown did not correspond to
the analysis made. That is, the fantasies about this history are part of an
interminable analysis or an analysis without end."
Lacan's own words in relation to "America" explored this "Freudian
pest" anedocte.
.......................................................................................
* Here is another link, this one directly related to Nabokov and
Freud: Aeternus - LOLITA: FREUDIANS, KEEP OUT, PLEASE
Published in Portuguese, in a psychoanalytic magazine named "Alter"
[Alter - Volume: XXI - nº 1 - Ano: 2002 - Psicanálise: fronteiras (I)]
All private
editorial communications, without exception, are read by both co-editors.