Dear List,
We don´t have to accept the verdict of anybody´s
technical opinion to stop us from realizing that the description:
"... Clouds in the staring sky transmit to one another,
by means of slow signs, incredibly detailed information regarding him. His
inmost thoughts are discussed at nightfall, in manual alphabet, by darkly
gesticulating trees 9...). Everything is a cipher and of everything he is the
theme. Some of the spies are detached observers, such are glass surfaces and
still pools; others,such as coats in store windows, are prejudiced witnesses,
lynchers at heart; others again (running water, storms) are hysterical to the
point of insanity, have a distorted opinion of him and grotesquely misinterpret
his actions (...) With distance the torrents of wild scandal increase in
volume and volubility. The silhouettes of his blood corpuscles, magnified a
million times, flit over vast plains; and still farther, great mountains of
unbearable solidity and height sum up in terms of granite and groaning firs the
ultimate truth of his being". ...
isn´t really altogether delusional, despite the apt
"referential mania" Dr. Brink (!) diagnosed.
In my opinion, these
gorgeous metaphors describe the flights of the purest poetic
imagination: Nabokov´s!
Anthony Stadlen wrote: Why should we accept, just because it
is poetically presented, the jargon of clinical psychiatric generalisation,
medicalisation, reification, dehumanisation, and hopelessness? Or is it the case
that VN saw through psychoanalysis but did not see through the far worse insult
to human dignity that is presented by clinical psychiatry?
And yet, although I agree with Stadlen that the story (
read through the vertex he adopted ) can offer us an example of
possible wrong uses of clinical psychiatry - of which VN was certainly
aware here - I don´t think that it was simply the "jargon of
clinical psychiatric generalization" that had been " poetically
presented"!
It was VN´s brilliant rendering of the boy´s
sensations in a way that allowed us to see the proximity of a
"sane" poet´s imagination and "madness".
Just one of a thousand examples, here I link VN´s
sentence: " his inmost thoughts are discussed at nightfall, in manual
alphabet, by darkly gesticulating trees" to Charles Baudelaire.
CORRESPONDENCES
Nature is a temple where some
living
Columns sometimes let confused words escape;
Man
passes there through forests of symbols
Which look at him with familiar
glances.
Charles Baudelaire
Andrew Brown observed that "an omniscient narrator
requires the writer to count on the reader's coming through with the old
'willing suspension of disbelief' stuff". But he decided
that " the 'incurable madness' of the young man is a condition we're
obliged to accept
at face value, just as we are the statement that the
father's dentures are 'hopelessly uncomfortable'", because for him " in
S&S we have a deranged son instead of a unprepossessing daughter", incapable
of "art and artifice". But the author is capable of art and artifice
and of portraying a situation in various levels: a deranged son´s referential
mania, his parent´s understanding, the author´s Author compassion, and a double
entry for "corrrespondences" .
Andrew Brown´s conclusion about VN´s
compassion and his ability to convey infinite tenderness in S&S is
brilliantly conveyed, as are the psychotic´s sufferings and a deranged
son´s family´s plight as it also was delineated by him. But, at the same
time, we can also find in S&S a glimpse of every great
poet´s visions.Jansy
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Monday, December 20, 2004 2:33
PM
Subject: Fwd: Re: Signs and Symbols
----- Forwarded message from STADLEN@aol.com -----
Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2004 05:46:09 EST
From: STADLEN@aol.com
Andrew Brown
makes some good points. I withdraw my statement that it was
presumably
because of "embarrassment" that the son was deposited in the
sanatorium.
Nevertheless, the father does imply that he is going to have to
justify
to
"the Prince" removing his son from the santorium .
The couple
have a two-roomed flat with only one bedroom, but it is evidently
expensive
to keep their son in the sanatorium. The implication is that,
although the
money for the sanatorium might have been used to rent
a
two-bedroomed
flat, the couple has had no expectation, perhaps for
four years, that the son
will ever return home. How is the son supposed to
feel about that? Or are we
simply supposed to take it, as we have to
according to Mr Brown, because we must
treat the narrator as "omniscient",
that the son has no "desires" in this
matter?
If the narrator told
us the earth was flat, would we have to accept that? If
the narrator
started spouting Freudian jargon would we have to accept that? We
would
surely take it that there was a tension between author and narrator, if
the
author were VN. Why should we accept, just because it is
poetically
presented, the jargon of clinical psychiatric generalisation,
medicalisation,
reification, dehumanisation, and hopelessness? Or is it the
case that VN saw
through psychoanalysis but did not see through the far
worse insult to human
dignity
that is presented by clinical
psychiatry?
Anthony Stadlen
----- End forwarded message
-----
Andrew Brown makes some good points. I withdraw
my statement that it was presumably because of "embarrassment" that the son
was deposited in the sanatorium. Nevertheless, the father does imply that he
is going to have to justify to "the Prince" removing his son from the
santorium .
The couple have a two-roomed flat with only one bedroom,
but it is evidently expensive to keep their son in the sanatorium. The
implication is that, although the money for the sanatorium might have been
used to rent a two-bedroomed flat, the couple has had no expectation, perhaps
for four years, that the son will ever return home. How is the son supposed to
feel about that? Or are we simply supposed to take it, as we have to according
to Mr Brown, because we must treat the narrator as "omniscient", that the son
has no "desires" in this matter?
If the narrator told us the earth was
flat, would we have to accept that? If the narrator started spouting Freudian
jargon would we have to accept that? We would surely take it that there was a
tension between author and narrator, if the author were VN. Why should we
accept, just because it is poetically presented, the jargon of clinical
psychiatric generalisation, medicalisation, reification, dehumanisation, and
hopelessness? Or is it the case that VN saw through psychoanalysis but did not
see through the far worse insult to human dignity that is presented by
clinical psychiatry?
Anthony Stadlen