I would not presume to argue with Anthony Stadlen and Jansy Mello about "latent" vs. "manifest" narratives, but VN's opinion of Diana Butler's "Lolita Lepidoptera" is a matter of record.
In a letter to Page Stegner of October 14, 1966, he writes: "You should have been warned that Mrs. Butler's article is pretentious nonsense from beginning to end" (SL p. 393)
In a letter to Alfred Appel Jr. of March 28, 1967, he speaks of Lepidoptera as a tricky subject "which led the unfortunate Diana so dreadfully astray" (SL p. 408).
In his Herbert Gold interview of September 1966, VN speaks of "the essay by a young lady who attempted to find entomological symbols in my fiction. The essay might have been amusing had she known something about Lepidoptera. Alas, she revealed complete ignorance and the muddle of terms she employed proved to be only jarring and absurd" (SO p. 96).
Jim Twiggs
--- On Thu, 3/22/12, Jansy <jansy@AETERN.US> wrote:
From: Jansy <jansy@AETERN.US>
Subject: Re: [NABOKV-L] Dieter Zimmer on the 56 Conundrum and Lolita Chronology
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Date: Thursday, March 22, 2012, 11:31 AM
Anthony Stadlen:[to JM's: "I
couldn't get your point"] I'm not sure what you couldn't get. Perhaps
my "rather than the reverse" is ambiguous? "My" point -- or rather, Diana
Butler's -- was her hypothesis that Nabokov simply reverses "Freudian"
symbolism.Butler's "Nabokov"'s "Freud" would presumably interpret a manifest
narrative "man hunts, catches, and impales butterfly" as a way of concealing and
revealing the latent narrative "man hunts, seduces, and rapes girl".Butler's
"Nabokov" allegedly invites us to interpret his manifest narrative "man hunts,
seduces, and rapes girl" as a way of concealing and revealing the latent
narrative "man hunts, catches, and impales butterfly".
JM: That part, about the reversion, is clear. What I didn't
understand was the point of attributing it to Nabokov, as
it apparently was intended by Diana
Butler's mockery. It's highly probable that Nabokov had read at least a
few of the books by "the Viennese quack" (although Freud wasn't born
in Vienna - but in Freiberg, Moravia)* and that he must have been
aware (for he was "a good reader") that the manifest content of a dream is
always related to an individual-dreamer's life, to the
events that happened to him in the previous day and to
his childhood memories. This means that the manifest
narrative cannot be generalized and fitted into an exact reversal
of its latent meaning, as we find in this attempted parody,
with its mirror-like transposition "man hunts girl...man
hunts butterfly and vice-versa." Besides, D.Butler's reversion, as applied to Freudian symbols,
denies the reality of the intense anguish and pain which repression
and dream-distortion keep at bay, while giving them expression through
symbolism at the same time Nabokov was fully aware of the torments
undergone by his characters (Humbert Humbert, Charles Kinbote), although I
have the impression that he worried too much about demonstrating his
compassion for them, for these "crazy," "despicable" beings.
Nabokov was capable of attaining a rare understanding of the Freudian
theory.Commenting on Gogol's obsession with his nose, he menetions
Gogol's description of the smoothness of a girl's face, because it lacked
the Freudian phallic protuberance, as can be found in his
comments about Gogol in Strong Opinions,
and in his Gogol biography.). Or his amusing letter about a
flag-pole, a Pole and the Russian "pol" (cf. Dear Bunny,
dear Volodya). In Lolita,
at a certain point Humbert says that if he had consulted a competent hypnotyzer,
perhaps the man would have extracted from him some fortuitous memories, making
them appear much sharper than the images that presented themselves in his own
mind, now that he knew what to search for in the past. In this sentence, we see
that, in spite of the irony, the novelist acknowledges he is aware of all that
psychoanalysis can offer, namely, the access to the repressed unconscious by
means of free association, or through the distortions introduced by secondary
elaboration of a dream.**
The insistent reappearance of a mysterious sort of truth kept
surprising Nabokov, as he, when re-reading his early works, kept coming across
certain episodes of his life that he had transformed into fiction, because these
events, as narrated in that form, seemed to him more faithful to his actual
experience than what he wrote on a much later date, with all sincerity, when
composing his autobiography. In his preface to Maschenka, he confessed
that he never failed being fascinated by the fact that, in spite of some
superimposed inventions, the fictional account contains a more concentrated
resolution of the personal reality than the scrupulously faithful description
attained by the autobiographer. What means other than his own experience could
Nabokov use, in order to describe those fantasies that are.peculiar to someone
who has intensely experienced, and vividly remembers, the ecstasy of a child who
has not yet recognized itself as boy or girl, and who offers itself to the
world, and takes possession of it, with its entire body. Although Nabokov had to
resort to psychiatric manuals and newspapers in order to describe Humbert
Humbert's pedophilia, Humbert's voyeuristic ecstasies, on the other hand, in his
complicity with Lolita's voluptuousness, must have arisen from memories Nabokov,
as an artist, had retained of his own experience as a child and later
transformed into art.
...........................................................................
* - ."I take gleeful pleasure every morning in
refuting the Viennese quack by recalling and explaining
the details of my dreams without using one single reference to sexual symbols or
mythical complexes. I urge my potential patients to do likewise." (1964, interview for Life Magazine)
Cf. also Preface to Bend Sinister [... "a mysterious intruder who takes advantage of Krug´s dream to
convey his own peculiar code message. The intruder is not the Viennese Quack
(all my books should be stamped Freudians, Keep Out) but an anthropomorphic
deity impersonated by me."; the foreword of King, Queen,
Knave: "As usual, I wish to observe that, as usual...the Viennese delegation
has not been invited. If, however, a resolute Freudian manages to slip in, he or
she should be warned that a number of cruel traps have been set here and there
in the novel;"; (Speak
Memory) "I have ransacked my oldest dreams for keys and clues - and let
me say at once that I reject completely the vulgar, shabby, fundamentally
medieval world of Freud, with its crankish quest for sexual symbols ... and its
bitter little embryo spying, from their natural nooks, upon the love life of
their parents."
** - "It
is just possible that had I gone to a strong hypnotist he might have extracted
from me and arrayed in a logical pattern certain chance memories that I have
threaded through my book with considerably more ostentation than they present
themselves with to my mind even now when I know what to seek in the past. At the
time I felt I was merely losing contact with reality...Here is something I
composed in my retreat: Wanted, wanted: Dolores Haze./Hair: brown. Lips:
scarlet./Age: five thousand three hundred days./Profession: none, or "starlet."
[...]Happy, happy is gnarled McFate/ Touring the States with a child
wife,...[ ]/Lolita, qu'ai — je fait de ta vie?/ Dying, dying, Lolita
Haze,/Of hate and remorse, I'm dying./And again my hairy fist I raise,/And again
I hear you crying./ My car is limping, Dolores Haze,/ And the last long lap
is the hardest,/ And I shall be dumped where the weed decays,/And the rest is
rust and stardust.// By psychoanalyzing this poem, I notice it is really a
maniac's masterpiece. The stark, stiff, lurid rhymes correspond very exactly to
certain perspectiveless and terrible landscapes and figures, and magnified parts
of landscapes and figures, as drawn by psychopaths in tests devised by their
astute trainers. I wrote many more poems. I immersed myself in the poetry of
others. But not for a second did I forget the load of revenge."
Cf. "The Annotated Lolita,"
Penguin, p.255-57.
All private editorial communications are
read by both co-editors.
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