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Re: THOUGHTS--Lolita and the Viennese child woman
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JM: Considering Nabokov's interest in "cosmic synchronization" and coincidences, there's one occurrence that I'd like to report, because it is connected, once again, with the Nab-List (surprisingly, the duplicitous emergence in my life of "misogyny", in such a short-time interval, didn't immediatly reach my conscience):
Last Saturday night I attended the staging of a play by Molière, with the title "The School for Wives"* and, after I opened the computer, I encountered a Nab-L posting on " Freud and the Child Woman: The Memoirs of Fritz Wittels ," from where I'll extract a single sentence to quote here as a demonstration:" If women weren’t people we would all be free." **
The XVII Century French dramatist's exhilarating satire illustrates how Art, "at first-sight," remains actual and infintely livelier, in its peculiar depiction of "life and mores," than opinion-making "Art-criticism," or theoretical digressions - challenging or delightful as they often prove to be.
Jim Twiggs (off-list) helped me to gain access to the LRB articles and re-affirmed his intention "not to judge either Freud or Nabokov, but merely to provide a historical curiosity in the same spirit as Couturier, Maar, and others have done in calling attention to works that foreshadow Lolita." and I'm once again thankful for his generosity. Anyway, as I see it, "Lolita" remains as totally original work of art, inspite of its potential ur-sources, since it's how the story is told that makes a difference.
........................................................................................................
* - wikipedia: The School for Wives (French: L'école des femmes) is a theatrical comedy written by the seventeenth century French playwright Molière and considered by some critics to be one of his finest achievements. It was first staged at the Palais Royal theatre on 26 December 1662 for the brother of the King. The play depicts a character who is so intimidated by femininity that he resolves to marry his young, naïve ward and proceeds to make clumsy advances to this purpose. It raised some outcry from the public, which seems to have recognized Molière as a bold playwright who would not be afraid to write about controversial issues. In June 1663, the playwright cunningly responded to the uproar against this play with another piece entitled La Critique de L'École des femmes, in which he provided some explanation for his unique style of comedy.[1] A musical adaptation entitled The Amorous Flea was staged off-Broadway in 1964.
** -Fortunately we have now (at least, at present) google-search and wikipedia, where I could read more about K. Kraus and therapist-editor Adam Phillips ( whose ideas about translation reminded me of Prof. Hoyt's views on Nabokov's "Eugene Onegin" and his own version, the subject of a recent posting) .From the LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS (http://www.lrb.co.uk/v18/n01/adam-phillips/women-what-are-they-for) Vol. 18 No. 1 · 4 January 1996 Women: what are they for? Adam Phillips [ on Fritz Wittels's " Freud and the Child Woman: The Memoirs of Fritz Wittels edited by Edward Timms, October 1995] I subtracted from it a few paragraphs related to "misogynies":
"Wittels, in short, was a rampant misogynist, as he almost admits in his unendearingly naive way..‘The mission of psychoanalysis,’ he writes in his memoir, ‘is to make our hearts free from anxiety and guilt and free for joy.’ ...Wittels’s contributions to the Vienna Society, backed up by this memoir so ably edited and reconstructed by Edward Timms, make possible a reconsideration of some of the most contentious issues in psychoanalysis...And indeed the question of why sexuality should be so easily linked to ideas of liberation. It is clear from this preposterous, hair-raising memoir why Wittels was such an embarrassing shadow for Freud. Wittels was showing the Vienna Society how easily the key psychoanalytic ideas about sexuality and the unconscious could be used as revenge – against women, against fathers and against the ill. It was as though Freud’s psychoanalysis could be liberating because it legitimated character assassination in the name of truth. For Wittels, as much of the memoir confirms, psychoanalysis was virtually a science of revenge... – the audience was unsettled by what Wittels seemed to be using psychoanalysis for...If women weren’t people we would all be free. For a woman to have a life of her own, he consistently implies, is a form of withholding. Before we condemn Wittels, however, we should consider whether we have never had this thought ourselves; and what we do with it once we have had it. Wittels, in other words, produces a particularly awkward distaste in the reader..."
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Last Saturday night I attended the staging of a play by Molière, with the title "The School for Wives"* and, after I opened the computer, I encountered a Nab-L posting on " Freud and the Child Woman: The Memoirs of Fritz Wittels ," from where I'll extract a single sentence to quote here as a demonstration:" If women weren’t people we would all be free." **
The XVII Century French dramatist's exhilarating satire illustrates how Art, "at first-sight," remains actual and infintely livelier, in its peculiar depiction of "life and mores," than opinion-making "Art-criticism," or theoretical digressions - challenging or delightful as they often prove to be.
Jim Twiggs (off-list) helped me to gain access to the LRB articles and re-affirmed his intention "not to judge either Freud or Nabokov, but merely to provide a historical curiosity in the same spirit as Couturier, Maar, and others have done in calling attention to works that foreshadow Lolita." and I'm once again thankful for his generosity. Anyway, as I see it, "Lolita" remains as totally original work of art, inspite of its potential ur-sources, since it's how the story is told that makes a difference.
........................................................................................................
* - wikipedia: The School for Wives (French: L'école des femmes) is a theatrical comedy written by the seventeenth century French playwright Molière and considered by some critics to be one of his finest achievements. It was first staged at the Palais Royal theatre on 26 December 1662 for the brother of the King. The play depicts a character who is so intimidated by femininity that he resolves to marry his young, naïve ward and proceeds to make clumsy advances to this purpose. It raised some outcry from the public, which seems to have recognized Molière as a bold playwright who would not be afraid to write about controversial issues. In June 1663, the playwright cunningly responded to the uproar against this play with another piece entitled La Critique de L'École des femmes, in which he provided some explanation for his unique style of comedy.[1] A musical adaptation entitled The Amorous Flea was staged off-Broadway in 1964.
** -Fortunately we have now (at least, at present) google-search and wikipedia, where I could read more about K. Kraus and therapist-editor Adam Phillips ( whose ideas about translation reminded me of Prof. Hoyt's views on Nabokov's "Eugene Onegin" and his own version, the subject of a recent posting) .From the LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS (http://www.lrb.co.uk/v18/n01/adam-phillips/women-what-are-they-for) Vol. 18 No. 1 · 4 January 1996 Women: what are they for? Adam Phillips [ on Fritz Wittels's " Freud and the Child Woman: The Memoirs of Fritz Wittels edited by Edward Timms, October 1995] I subtracted from it a few paragraphs related to "misogynies":
"Wittels, in short, was a rampant misogynist, as he almost admits in his unendearingly naive way..‘The mission of psychoanalysis,’ he writes in his memoir, ‘is to make our hearts free from anxiety and guilt and free for joy.’ ...Wittels’s contributions to the Vienna Society, backed up by this memoir so ably edited and reconstructed by Edward Timms, make possible a reconsideration of some of the most contentious issues in psychoanalysis...And indeed the question of why sexuality should be so easily linked to ideas of liberation. It is clear from this preposterous, hair-raising memoir why Wittels was such an embarrassing shadow for Freud. Wittels was showing the Vienna Society how easily the key psychoanalytic ideas about sexuality and the unconscious could be used as revenge – against women, against fathers and against the ill. It was as though Freud’s psychoanalysis could be liberating because it legitimated character assassination in the name of truth. For Wittels, as much of the memoir confirms, psychoanalysis was virtually a science of revenge... – the audience was unsettled by what Wittels seemed to be using psychoanalysis for...If women weren’t people we would all be free. For a woman to have a life of her own, he consistently implies, is a form of withholding. Before we condemn Wittels, however, we should consider whether we have never had this thought ourselves; and what we do with it once we have had it. Wittels, in other words, produces a particularly awkward distaste in the reader..."
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/