J.Aisenberg: ...Vivian Darkbloom, according to John
Ray Jr., has written a biography called "My Cue" "her best book"--clearly this
is a pun title given to a manuscript which must be an indiscreet book about her
relationship with the murdered playwright, Quilty, as in "My Q"? But if his name
wasn't really Clare Quilty...Lolita's first name is the only "real" one in the
book... then the pun would be literally meaningless in the world of the of the
book.
[...] it seems John Ray is pretty clear that he edited the final
manusript [...] he left all those quirky instructions...In other words I
disagree with you a bit. I think obviously, in the world of the book, Humbert
initially did begin his text as a part of his defense for killing Quilty, but it
metamorphosed into an arty confession to expiate his guilt; to Ray, it really is
a case study, and a work of art...
JM: I retained only general guidelines related
to my present comments:
(a) That's an excellent point about V.Darkbloom's "My Cue" and the
substitution of "real" names in the novel.
Perhaps Quilty's "real" name also began with the letter Q? Would
it then preserve the pun?
(b) Would J.Ray be qualified to judge HH's book from the point of view of
an art critic?
(c) "Confessions of a White Widowed Male", even with J.Ray's
introduction, doesn't represent a "case study". Case studies demand the
study of a case: J.Ray Jr had very little to say about HH.
Freud's famous "Schreber Case" is only based on Daniel Paul Schreber's
published memoirs* which, in themselves,don't constitute a case
study. Schreber's book inspired various different psychiatrists and
psychoanalysts to write their "case history" based on their
theoretical understanding while studying Schreber's book and other clinical
data obtainable at the clinics where he underwent treatment under the care of
different doctors.
(d) I agree with you that it is possible that Humbert began his text as
part of his defense for Quilty's murder and then it became an "arty confession".
John Rays' role in transforming HH's "confessions" into
"Lolita" remains mysterious to me.
Fran Assa: Sybil Shade could be Vladimir's
pseudonym. But consider the possibility of it being Vera's
translation. Are there any handwritten versions in existence? My
wild stab in the dark is due to having always pictured the Sybil of Pale Fire as
Vera, for some reason.
JM: Vera participating in VN's texts, like Ada
in Van's? It makes sense...It might very well have been Vera's
translation! Or both had a go, since there is a variant offered in the PS.
(I was intrigued by their choice of the word "bark" for barque, ship. I
kept being led to a mischievous dog in Shade's last verses,
instead of embarking in the rythm of their
translation)
...............................................................................................................................................................................
* -Wikipedia: Daniel Paul Schreber (25 July 1842 - 14 April 1911) was a
German judge who suffered from what was then diagnosed as dementia praecox. He
described his second mental illness (1893-1902), making also a brief reference
to the first illness (1884-1885) in his book Memoirs of My Nervous Illness
(original German title Denkwürdigkeiten eines Nervenkranken). The Memoirs became
one of the most influential books in the history of psychiatry and
psychoanalysis thanks to its interpretation by Sigmund Freud.[...] Schreber was
a successful and highly respected judge until middle age when the onset of his
psychosis occurred. He woke up one morning with the thought that it would be
pleasant to "succumb" to sexual intercourse as a woman. He was alarmed and felt
that this thought had come from somewhere else, not from himself. He even
hypothesized that the thought had come from a doctor who had experimented with
hypnosis on him; he thought that the doctor had telepathically invaded his
mind.As his psychosis progressed, he believed that God was turning him into a
woman, sending rays down to enact 'miracles' upon him, including little men to
torture him.Schreber died in 1911, in an asylum.
Although Freud never
interviewed Schreber himself, he read his Memoirs and drew his own conclusions
from it. Freud thought that Schreber wanted to be turned into a woman so that he
could be the sole object of sexual desire of God (who represented Schreber's
father, Daniel Gottlob Moritz Schreber). Freud's diagnotics was paranoid
dementia.This view has been contested by a number of subsequent theorists, most
notably Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari ... Elias Canetti also devoted the
closing chapters of his theoretical magnum opus Crowds and Power to a reading of
Schreber. Finally (though by no means exhaustively), Jacques Lacan's Seminar on
the Psychoses is predominantly concerned with reading and evaluating Schreber's
text over-against Freud's original and originating
interpretation....