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..."