Carolyn Kunin: "In today's L.A. Times, I read an interesting review [about "End of the Rainbow by] ...Charles McNulty in his analysis...actually quotes Edmund Wilson. "This portrayal of Garland brought back to me the provocative idea proposed long ago by literary critic Edmund Wilson in his classic treatise 'The Wound and the Bow' that 'genius and disease, like strength and mutilation, may be inextricably bound up together.' ..." These remarks seemed to me particularly striking in view of recent discussions here of PF & Lolita. They remind me, too, that I have felt something important is missing in our knowledge of the VN biography - yes, there is the traumatic loss of homeland and father, but these occurred in adulthood - early adulthood, but adulthood nonetheless. Do they really explain the dark side of Nabokov's works? or that nagging and troubling fact of his life - the chronic insomnia? If the insomnia had a physical explanation why has this not been discussed? or have I missed it?"

Jansy Mello: Carolyn brings up remnants from the "Dear Bunny-dear Volodya" friendship, disturbed at times by Wilson's misunderstanding Nabokov's Pushkin translation and by Wilson's application of Freudian theories to the understanding of Art. She is wise to call attention to the difference between early childhood traumas and those that happen later in life.

I remember having read, in the long past, Viennese psychoanalyst Kurt Eissler's book on Leonardo da Vinci, in which he develops the idea that an artist's sensitivity to the external worl is so great that he must suffer constant traumas, on a daily basis. Kind of a politraumatized art or some sort of psychossomatic response, like it happens in the tale by Hans Christian Andersen, "The Princess and the Pea" (I'd consider this aristocratic vulnerability.a kind of allergic reaction).
I wonder if any present day "psy" conjectures shall relieve V.V.Nabokov of his insomnia ... Do we really need to know "The Truth" to be able to truly, or truthfully, appreciate a work of art? (more about this in the next posting)