Freud in Nabokov's Despair

Although Nabokov dismissed Freud as a trivial and vulgar thinker and derided him at every turn, the presence of Freud and Freudianism is quite conspicuous in his works. With great vigilance, Nabokov anticipates and short-circuits potential Freudian interpretations of his work through parody, travesty, and psychoanalytic pastiche.

Taking as points of departure Jenefer Shute's framing of Nabokov's conflict with Freud as an attempt to ensure hermeneutic control over his own texts and the cultural fields within which Nabokov's works were written and read, I analyze a literary mechanism within the 1966 text of Despair that both relies on and undermines a Freudian reading.

I identify a set of objects whose Freudian valence could easily mislead the unwary reader into taking them symbolically, thus overlooking their function as important clues to events in the novel. I also posit that prevailing discourses, coupled with what might be called the "cultural competence" of the reader or scholar, are co-determinants of literary devices, semantic structures, and textual patterning in Nabokov's texts.

In the case of the 1966 version of Despair, the resulting text is a palimpsest, as Nabokov adds, deletes, and reconfigures passages in translation, and the text itself is overwritten by discourses in the target culture. Moreover, by attending to cultural debates extant in mid-1930s émigré Berlin, where the Russian original was composed, it is possible to see within the canonical 1966 version vestiges of this originary text.

While I do not tackle the larger question of the nature of Nabokov's reliance on Freud head on, my analysis provides some purchase on this fraught relationship, its literary manifestations, and what may be learned by pursuing a line of questioning that Nabokov himself sought to stymie. [source]

Read More......

Essay Topics for Kafka's Metamorphosis

A first help to give a frame to your paper

1. Comment on the significance of the title "The Metamorphosis."

2. Construct an interpretation of The Metamorphosis based on your account of why Gregor Samsa "found himself in his bed transformed into a monstrous vermin."

3. What role do the boarders play in The Metamorphosis?

4. Compare the metamorphosis of Gregor Samsa with the awakening of Edna Pontellier.

5. Can Freud's notions of Eros and the death instinct illuminate Gregor's plight?

(From: Malaspina University College)

Read More......

Lecture on "The Metamorphosis" by Vladimir Nabokov

Of course, no matter how keenly, how admirably, a story, a piece of music, a picture is discussed and analyzed, there will be minds that remain blank and spines that remain unkindled. "To take upon us the mystery of things"—what King Lear so wistfully says for himself and for Cordelia—this is also my suggestion for everyone who takes art seriously. A poor man is robbed of his overcoat (Gogol's "The Greatcoat," or more correctly "The Carrick"); another poor fellow is turned into a beetle (Kafka's "The Metamorphosis)—so what? There is no rational answer to "so what." We can take the story apart, we can find out how the bits fit, how one part of the pattern responds to the other; but you have to have in you some cell, some gene, some germ that will vibrate in answer to sensations that you can neither define, nor dismiss. Beauty plus pity—that is the closest we can get to a definition of art. Where there is beauty there is pity for the simple reason that beauty must die: beauty always dies, the manner dies with the matter, the world dies with the individual. If Kafka's "The Metamorphosis" strikes anyone as something more than an entomological fantasy, then I congratulate him on having joined the ranks of good and great readers.



I want to discuss fantasy and reality, and their mutual relationship. If we consider the "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" story as an allegory—the struggle between Good and Evil within every man—then this allegory is tasteless and childish. To the type of mind that would see an allegory here, its shadow play would also postulate physical happenings which common sense knows to be impossible; but actually in the setting of the story, as viewed by a commonsensical mind, nothing at first sight seems to run counter to general human experience. I want to suggest, however, that a second look shows that the setting of the story does run counter to general human experience, and that Utterson and the other men around Jekyll are, in a sense, as fantastic as Mr. Hyde. Unless we see them in a fantastic light, there is no enchantment. And if the enchanter leaves and the storyteller and the teacher remain alone together, they make poor company.

read more here

Read More......