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Fw: karamazov
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Shade wrote, in Pale Fire:
A medium smuggled in
640 Pale jellies and a floating mandolin.
Fra Karamazov, mumbling his inept
All is allowed, into some classes crept;
And to fulfill the fish wish of the womb,
A school of Freudians headed for the tomb.
Today I began to wonder if this reference to Karamazov's "All is allowed", coming so close to another, about "a school of Freudians", could indicate Nabokov's familiarity with one of Freud's 1928 articles: "Dostoevsky and Parricide" (Standard Edition. vol. XXI):
"Four facets may be distinguished in the rich personality of Doestoevsky: the creative artist, the neurotic, the moralist and the sinner [...]
Doestoevsky's place is not far behind Shakespeare. "The Brothers Karamazov" is the most magnificent novel ever written[...] Before the problem of the creative artist analysis must, alas, lay down its arms[...]
The moralist in Doestoevsky is the most readily assailable[...] He has not achieved the essence of morality, renunciation[...] He reminds one of the barbarians of the great migrations, who murdered and did penance for it, till penance became an actual technique for enabling murder to be done[...] indeed this compromise with morality is a particularly Russian trait[...]
To consider Doestoevsky as a sinner or a criminal rouses violent opposition, which need not be based upon a philistine assessment of criminals[...]
... it must be asked why there is any temptation to reckon Dostoevsky among the criminals. The answer is that it comes from his choice of material, which singles out from all others violent, murderous and egoistic characters, thus pointing to the existence of similar tendencies within himself, and also from certain facts in his life, like his passion for gambling and his possible confession to a sexual assault upon a young girl[...]
The excerpts cited above underline particularly scathing comments. Therefore they don't make justice to Freud's literary style and I recommend that those who are interested in the theme, and in a hypothetical Nabokovian reference, should pick up Freud's article to read it in full.
There is not a line in it which would not have infuriated VN in one way or another. Actually I think that, had he read this specific article, his comments about "freudian schools of fish" in Shade's verses would probably be even more dismissive and satirical than they appear to be.
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