Freud/Nietzsche/Dostojewski (was: RE: TMoP - Chapter Two - The cemetery)

[Kai Frederik Lorentzen]

Moin Mark,
 
> > (I just mentioned fathers/sons in GR because it is there--and in my head. all you say might be relevant....we will come to see.)> 
> You have sparked a memory with Freud mention....Dostoevsky is seen as a writer about the depth psycholgy of human beings....
> ..Freud said something about him (and Nietzsche?) being the two writers who had gone where he was now going--into the depths 
>  of the psyche...
 
You are right. In "Götzen-Dämmerung" Nietzsche calls Dostojewski "the only psychologist I had to learn something from" (cf. the 
critical study-edition by Colli/Montinari, volume 6, p. 147). And Freud (cf. Studienausgabe, volume X, pp. 267-287) wrote an essay
titled "Dostojewski und die Vatertötung" [1927/8]. Freud himself didn't like the essay much, as he confessed in a letter to Theodor
Reik. In the same letter he also says that he does not have a special affection for Dostojewski, though he had no doubts about his
artistic skills. (In the essay Freud places the writer Dostojewski "not far behind Shakespeare".) When I was a teenager I read
"Notes from the Undergroud" [?], "The Gambler" [?] and "Crime & Punishment"; these books were my entry into serious literature. 
About two decades later, when my childhood epilepsy had returned, I read the first half of "The Idiot", but couldn't find again the
current connecting me to Dostojewski's art. Perhaps I'll try "The Brothers Kalaschnikov" some day. As far as GR is concerned, let's 
not forget about the influence of Norman O. Brown. In "Repression's Rainbow: The Presence of Norman O. Brown in Pynchon's Big
Novel" Lawrence C. Wolfley has made this connection transparent. Still a pretty readable text.
 
Kai
 
 
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