Subject
Re: Baron von Wien]
From
Date
Body
Stan Kelly-Bootle was fascinated "to learn from Antony Beevor’s BERLIN that Freud’s works were banned in Soviet Union following that ever-so-brief avant-garde ‘flurry’ in the 1920s...it seemed remarkable that Nabokov and Stalin shared Freud, as it were, as a common ‘enemy.’ On the other hand, of course, Freud and Nabokov shared Stalin as a common suppresser...Beevor is relating the still largely-unmentionable cases of mass rape of German women by the Red Army ...He adds the factor of suppressed Soviet male sexual appetites, associated with the enforced ‘puritanical’ streak found in Stalinism and most totalitarian regimes. Individual ‘love’ being directed toward the State ... I leave these vague notions to be refined by those more versed in the complex issues. How did Freud and Nabokov react to Soviet suppression of sexual ’openness?’"
Serge Soloviev noted that he found "several imprecisions...the works of Freud were not completely banned in 60-es and 70-es...the Red Army didn't go to Berlin through East Prussia.. and the stories about massive rape concern mostly this military operation, not all military operations of Red Army ...Other remarks:in France all women that were "collaborating" with Nazis were treated after "liberation" quite brutally, and this had also a strong sexual streak - what about Wilhelm Reich? There is his famous book about sexual oppression under Nazis (but he was banned - suppressed also by Freud himself, as a charlatan) Could Nabokov have in mind Wilhelm Reich? Quite well known person,from Wien as well."
JM: Not only did I read Beevor's Berlin 1945, but various reports on human rights (by journalists, such as John Pilger in "The New Rulers of the World," and by non-governmental institutions) from which I learned that rape and infanticide are practically a routine in any war ( an officer was reported to consider them "inevitable hazards"): the French, British, American and, even, groups of UN soldiers have practiced plunder and rape - and this is still taking place now, during the tribal wars in Africa.
When I suggested a possible link between the Baron von Wien and a Baron in an anedocte retold by Freud, I hadn't considered all the other "Vienna-related" psychoanalysts (Nabokov mentions pastor Oskar Pfister and probably various other practitioners, whose names I forgot), I was simply relating two incidences of a "Baron" placed close to a childbirth. It's now clear to me that Nabokov had not intention to present links of this kind.
Freud's works about "sexual openness" aren't as simple as the trends that got their inspiration from his articles.(Cf. "Civilization and its Discontents" or "The Future of an Illusion"). Following G.W.Sebald's investigation about hidden patterns in history, I returned to Nabokov's lines in "Pale Fire" (for it's such a search for recurring "designs" that which more strongly binds me to Nabokov, Freud and, now, to G.W.Sebald):
Just this: not text, but texture; not the dream
But topsy-turvical coincidence,
Not flimsy nonsense, but a web of sense.
...
Plexed artistry, and something of the same
Pleasure in it as they who played it found.
It was when I realized more clearly wherein lies one of Nabokov's oppositions to Freud. Nabokov's resistance to Psychoanalysis doesn't seem to be related to matters of sex and repression as much as to Freud's ideas about psychic determinism. It's more a matter of mastery than of "sex". Freud didn't believe that our actions are a consequence of our free-will, nor that they are inspired by mystical forces. He held that human behavior in a present situation necessarily derives from significant ("libidinal") prior events, in an endless chain of causations. For him, our dreams are never a random production because their unravelling reveals the dreamer's unconscious desires, and his "style" of finding his way for their satisfaction (Freud was more interested in the latter, i.e, how dreams reveal the structure of an indivual's symptom-formation, constructed as a barrier against perceiving the nature of his forbidden wishes.)
Although, through John Shade, we hear that life and dreams are "not flimsy nonsense" - and here Nabokov and Freud share the same view about "a web of sense" - 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. For him, there are hidden forces that arise from a clash between pressures, determined by human culture, and an individual's drives. There's nothing transcendental in this process. There are no gods and behavioral coincidences simply do not exist.
Freud was concerned about human suffering, mental anguish and the psychic mechanisms that distort our hability to "think clear" because of "repression" (in its wider, psychological, sense): he was not an agent of "symbolic" tyranny, nor was he an advocate for sexual liberation. The sentence that struck me today is still mysterious. 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).
Sorry for oversimplifying matters psychoanalytical and viennese.
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/
Serge Soloviev noted that he found "several imprecisions...the works of Freud were not completely banned in 60-es and 70-es...the Red Army didn't go to Berlin through East Prussia.. and the stories about massive rape concern mostly this military operation, not all military operations of Red Army ...Other remarks:in France all women that were "collaborating" with Nazis were treated after "liberation" quite brutally, and this had also a strong sexual streak - what about Wilhelm Reich? There is his famous book about sexual oppression under Nazis (but he was banned - suppressed also by Freud himself, as a charlatan) Could Nabokov have in mind Wilhelm Reich? Quite well known person,from Wien as well."
JM: Not only did I read Beevor's Berlin 1945, but various reports on human rights (by journalists, such as John Pilger in "The New Rulers of the World," and by non-governmental institutions) from which I learned that rape and infanticide are practically a routine in any war ( an officer was reported to consider them "inevitable hazards"): the French, British, American and, even, groups of UN soldiers have practiced plunder and rape - and this is still taking place now, during the tribal wars in Africa.
When I suggested a possible link between the Baron von Wien and a Baron in an anedocte retold by Freud, I hadn't considered all the other "Vienna-related" psychoanalysts (Nabokov mentions pastor Oskar Pfister and probably various other practitioners, whose names I forgot), I was simply relating two incidences of a "Baron" placed close to a childbirth. It's now clear to me that Nabokov had not intention to present links of this kind.
Freud's works about "sexual openness" aren't as simple as the trends that got their inspiration from his articles.(Cf. "Civilization and its Discontents" or "The Future of an Illusion"). Following G.W.Sebald's investigation about hidden patterns in history, I returned to Nabokov's lines in "Pale Fire" (for it's such a search for recurring "designs" that which more strongly binds me to Nabokov, Freud and, now, to G.W.Sebald):
Just this: not text, but texture; not the dream
But topsy-turvical coincidence,
Not flimsy nonsense, but a web of sense.
...
Plexed artistry, and something of the same
Pleasure in it as they who played it found.
It was when I realized more clearly wherein lies one of Nabokov's oppositions to Freud. Nabokov's resistance to Psychoanalysis doesn't seem to be related to matters of sex and repression as much as to Freud's ideas about psychic determinism. It's more a matter of mastery than of "sex". Freud didn't believe that our actions are a consequence of our free-will, nor that they are inspired by mystical forces. He held that human behavior in a present situation necessarily derives from significant ("libidinal") prior events, in an endless chain of causations. For him, our dreams are never a random production because their unravelling reveals the dreamer's unconscious desires, and his "style" of finding his way for their satisfaction (Freud was more interested in the latter, i.e, how dreams reveal the structure of an indivual's symptom-formation, constructed as a barrier against perceiving the nature of his forbidden wishes.)
Although, through John Shade, we hear that life and dreams are "not flimsy nonsense" - and here Nabokov and Freud share the same view about "a web of sense" - 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. For him, there are hidden forces that arise from a clash between pressures, determined by human culture, and an individual's drives. There's nothing transcendental in this process. There are no gods and behavioral coincidences simply do not exist.
Freud was concerned about human suffering, mental anguish and the psychic mechanisms that distort our hability to "think clear" because of "repression" (in its wider, psychological, sense): he was not an agent of "symbolic" tyranny, nor was he an advocate for sexual liberation. The sentence that struck me today is still mysterious. 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).
Sorry for oversimplifying matters psychoanalytical and viennese.
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/