Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0021365, Sun, 20 Feb 2011 22:34:56 -0700

Subject
Re: VN and Freud
Date
Body
I thank Jim for the reference to Karshan's book. I see, among other things,
that I have to read more Swift and Pope!

As Jim notes, Karshan says Shade didn't believe his own theory at the end of
Canto 3, but Karshan doesn't give the evidence for that. I'm not sure what
it could be. Shade was an atheist from childhood on, but his story in Canto
3 suggests a change of mind. Karshan quotes his conversation with Kinbote,
but Shade's side consists mostly of evasions (because he doesn't want to
talk about the subject of the poem he'll start soon?). What he does imply
is that he can accept an afterlife and a psychopompos though maybe not "the
Big G", which seems entirely consistent with Canto 3. He also makes a
comparison with chess, as in the poem, though with chess problems rather
than over-the-board play. Another point might be that undermines his "firm
conviction" with the anticlimax "faint hope". I'd read this, however, as
his recognition that he has nothing like proof--I believe Jim when he says
no reputable philosopher has put forward anything like Shade's ideas--and as
disarming criticism but not as diminishing the value the ideas have for him
and that he may thinks they'd have for his readers.

On the subject of reputable philosophers, I'm not going to add to my
"onslaught" about what Nabokov believed, but I will say that I don't see why
Shade should be closer to them than to Mme. Blavatsky. Yeats really did
follow Blavatsky among others, and that did not keep him from being a far
better poet than Shade.

I think Jansy Mello makes a very interesting point about Russia being the
thing, or one thing, behind all of *Pale Fire*'s mirrors. How often he
presents the image of his connection to Russia or his childhood with the
imagery of fantasy and mystery and denial of common sense, as he refused to
return to the real Russia. Jansy mentions the handful of snow in
"Mademoiselle O", still real forty-five years later, which I'd forgotten as
I'm sure I've forgotten others.

She notes that Freud didn't invent phallic references to sticks, poles, and
the like (and added that "sometimes a post is only a post," which I wish I'd
said.) But Freud stated that "dreams of flying, so familiar and often so
delightful, have to be interpreted as dreams of general sexual excitement,
as erection-dreams". I think what Nabokov is talking about with those
umbrellas and balloons is this simplistic "have to be", with its implication
that everyone's mind is so similar that Freud knows every individual's (that
is, Nabokov's) psyche better than the individual. Anthony Stadlen says that
Freud stated more nuanced and plausible views both earlier and later, but if
Nabokov knew about that, he doesn't seem to have seen it as mitigation.

I thank Jansy for her convincing argument that, if I may summarize, when
Shade smiled as he suggested Freudians might call polls "political
pollination," Nabokov (if not Shade too) smiled to think of the Russian word
*pol*, meaning sex.

Jerry Friedman

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