Subject
Re: Freud, Umbrella and Bernheim's experiments.
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Jerry Friedman: Despite the interesting mentions of umbrellas that Anthony Stadlen brought up, I feel sure the main reason Nabokov referred to Freud's "shabby umbrellas" is ..."The more striking and for both sexes the more interesting component of the genitals, the male organ, finds symbolic substitutes in the first instance in things that resemble it in shape--things, accordingly, that are long and up-standing, such as sticks, umbrellas, posts, trees and so on..." This sort of simple decoding of symbols seems to be something Nabokov objected to particularly strongly...Jerry Friedman is checking his post carefully for parapraxes.
JM: But phallic sticks and poles were not symbols which were found or established by Freud! You only need to read Shakespeare to find equivalent images and verbal games or, if so inclined, consult ancient Hindu poetry, aso... Freud's point lies elsewhere ("far far away").
Even Nabokov didn't reject them (in his correspondence with E. Wilson, p.142: "I rather liked the phallic implications of the pistl with which Joan toyed, in between her "act of intimacy" with the "completely disrobed" Charles Chaplin...", written at the time he'd been correcting proofs of "Gogol", where again he toys with Gogol's noseless ladies; and his other letter to Wilson, p. 97 ending with "next day I noticed him tingle for a moment when I happened to mention Pland and Poles. Good case for the Viennese Wizard (who might also observe that 'pol' imeans "sex" in Russian)."*
btw: Thanks, Anthony, for having reminded me of the story where an impatient Freud caught himself, so to say, trying to hypnotize an umbrella. What a treat to read it in his words, he has an impeccable sense of humor. And, as the famous saying goes, "sometimes a cigar is only a cigar."
PS to "I'll use the present opportunity to correct something...The addition of a fundamental "Todestrieb" interacting with life, changes the initial picture...There's no "hereafter", no transmigrating souls and no "metempsychosis" to be read in Freud and his dire vision of 'eternity'." My correction about Freud x Nabokov was, again, full of imprecisions. I failed to distinguish "entropy" (in the material world), from Freud's "Todestrieb" (operating in the realm of human psychic functioning). Besides, I added, almost in the same breath, a reference to transmigrating souls and eternity, right after Freud's postulation of a "death drive", as if the two items were related in anyway.
Sorry.
(Would there be any echo, issuing from Nabokov's views about an individual's after-life, to be found in his scientific papers?)
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* Hey! I just found out (but cannot check this right now) that Nabokov must have been playing with the meaning of "pol" in Russian, while criticizing Freud, because he uses the word "pollination" and, perhaps, also "urns and polls."
Perhaps even Hazel's grip on a "stang" must have been Shade's attempt to avoid any reference to poles and sticks to preserve his daughter's innocence.
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JM: But phallic sticks and poles were not symbols which were found or established by Freud! You only need to read Shakespeare to find equivalent images and verbal games or, if so inclined, consult ancient Hindu poetry, aso... Freud's point lies elsewhere ("far far away").
Even Nabokov didn't reject them (in his correspondence with E. Wilson, p.142: "I rather liked the phallic implications of the pistl with which Joan toyed, in between her "act of intimacy" with the "completely disrobed" Charles Chaplin...", written at the time he'd been correcting proofs of "Gogol", where again he toys with Gogol's noseless ladies; and his other letter to Wilson, p. 97 ending with "next day I noticed him tingle for a moment when I happened to mention Pland and Poles. Good case for the Viennese Wizard (who might also observe that 'pol' imeans "sex" in Russian)."*
btw: Thanks, Anthony, for having reminded me of the story where an impatient Freud caught himself, so to say, trying to hypnotize an umbrella. What a treat to read it in his words, he has an impeccable sense of humor. And, as the famous saying goes, "sometimes a cigar is only a cigar."
PS to "I'll use the present opportunity to correct something...The addition of a fundamental "Todestrieb" interacting with life, changes the initial picture...There's no "hereafter", no transmigrating souls and no "metempsychosis" to be read in Freud and his dire vision of 'eternity'." My correction about Freud x Nabokov was, again, full of imprecisions. I failed to distinguish "entropy" (in the material world), from Freud's "Todestrieb" (operating in the realm of human psychic functioning). Besides, I added, almost in the same breath, a reference to transmigrating souls and eternity, right after Freud's postulation of a "death drive", as if the two items were related in anyway.
Sorry.
(Would there be any echo, issuing from Nabokov's views about an individual's after-life, to be found in his scientific papers?)
.........................................................................................................................................................................................................
* Hey! I just found out (but cannot check this right now) that Nabokov must have been playing with the meaning of "pol" in Russian, while criticizing Freud, because he uses the word "pollination" and, perhaps, also "urns and polls."
Perhaps even Hazel's grip on a "stang" must have been Shade's attempt to avoid any reference to poles and sticks to preserve his daughter's innocence.
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/