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by The Liberal Imagination (pdf)

Freud and Literature

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  able, as Freud sees well enough, even though his perception of its

  caused the traumatic neurosis." The dream, that is, is the effort to

  critical importance is not sufficiently strong to make him revise his

  reconstruct the bad situation in order that the failure to meet it may

  earlier views of the nature and function of art. The idea is one which

  be recouped; in these dreams there is no obscured intent to evade

  stands beside Aristotle's notion of the catharsis, in part to supbut only an attempt to meet the situation, to make a new effort of plement, in part to modify it.

  control. And in the play of children it seems to be that "the child

  Freud has come upon certain facts which are not to be reconciled

  repeats even the unpleasant experiences because through his own

  with his earlier theory of the dream. According to this theory, all

  activity he gains a far more thorough mastery of the strong im­

  �reams, even the unpleasant ones, could be understood upon analypression than was possible by mere passive experience."

  Freud, at this point, can scarcely help being put in mind of tragic

  �is to have �he intention of fulfilling the dreamer's wishes. They are

  m the service of what Freud calls the pleasure principle, which is

  drama; nevertheless, he does not wish to believe that this effort to

  opposed to the reality principle. It is, of course, this explanation of

  come to mental grips with a situation is involved in the attraction

  the dream which had so largely conditioned Freud's theory of art.

  of tragedy. He is, we might say, under the influence of the Aristo­

  But now there is thrust upon him the necessity for reconsidering

  telian tragic theory which emphasizes a qualified hedonism through

  the theory of the dream, for it was found that in cases of war neurosuffering. But the pleasure involved in tragedy is perhaps an amsis-what we once called shellshock-the patient, with the utmost biguous one; and sometimes we must feel that the famous sense of

  cathartic resolution is perhaps the result of glossing over terror with

  �nguish, r�curred in his dreams to the very situation, distressing as

  It was, which had precipitated his neurosis. It seemed imp'ossible to

  beautiful language rather than an evacuation of it. And sometimes

  interpret these dreams by any assumption of a hedonistic intent.

  the terror even bursts through the language to stand stark and iso­

  Nor did there seem to be the usual amount of distortion in them:

  lated from the play, as does Oedipus's sightless and bleeding face.

  t

  At any rate, the Aristotelian theory does not deny another function

  �e patient recurred to the terrible initiatory situation with great

  literalness. And the same pattern of psychic behavior could be obfor tragedy (and for comedy, too) which is suggested by Freud's served in the play of children; there were some games which, far

  theory of the traumatic neurosis-what might be called the mithfrom fulfilling wishes, seemed to concentrate upon the representaridatic function, by which tragedy is used as the homeopathic adtion of those aspects of the child's life which were most unpleasant ministration of pain to inure ourselves to the greater pain which life

  and threatening to his happiness.

  will force upon us. There is in the cathartic theory of tragedy, as it

  To explain such mental activities Freud evolved a theory for

  is usually understood, a conception of tragedy's function which is

  which he at first refused to claim much but to which, with the

  too negative and which inadequately suggests the sense of active

  years, he attached an increasing importance. He first makes the

  mastery which tragedy can give.

  assumption that there is indeed in the psychic life a repetition-com­

  In the same essay in which he sets forth the conception of the

  pulsion which goes beyond the pleasure principle. Such a compulmind embracing its own pain for some vital purpose, Freud also sion cannot be meaningless, it must have an intent. And that intent,

  expresses a provisional assent to the idea ( earlier stated, as he re­

  Freud comes to believe, is exactly and literally the developing of

  minds us, by Schopenhauer) that there is perhaps a human drive

  f ear. "Th ese d

  "h

  reams,

  e says, " are attempts at restoring control of

  which makes of death the final and desired goal. The death instinct

  the stimuli by developing apprehension, the pretermission of which

  is a conception that is rejected by many of even the most thorough-

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  THE LIBERAL IMAGINATION

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  Freud and Literature

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  going Freudian theorists ( as, in his last book, Freud mildly noted);

  agining for himself more in the way of pleasure and satisfaction

  the late Otto Fenichel in his authoritative work on the neurosis

  than he can possibly achieve. Everything that he gains he pays for

  argues cogently against it. Yet even if we reject the theory as not

  in more than equal coin; compromise and the compounding with

  fitting the facts in any operatively useful way, we still cannot miss

  defeat constitute his best way of getting through the world. His

  its grandeur, its ultimate tragic courage in acquiescence to fate. The

  best qualities are the result of a struggle whose outcome is tragic.

  idea of the reality principle and the idea of the death instinct form

  Yet he is a creature of love; it is Freud's sharpest criticism of the

  the crown of Freud's broader speculation on the life of man. Their

  Adlerian psychology that to aggression it gives everything and to

  quality of grim poetry is characteristic of Freud's system and the

  love nothing at all.

  ideas it generates for him.

  One is always aware in reading Freud how little cynicism there

  And as much as anything else that Freud gives to literature, this

  is in his thought. His desire for man is only that he should be

  quality of his thought is important. Although the artist is never

  human, and to this end his science is devoted. No view of life to

  finally determined in his work by the intellectual systems about

  which the artist responds can insure the quality of his work, but

  him, he cannot avoid their influence; and it can be said of various

  the poetic qualities of Freud's own principles, which are so clearly

  competing systems that some hold more promise for the artist than

  in the line of the classic tragic realism, suggest that this is a view

  others. When, for example, we think of the simple humanitarian

  which does not narrow and simplify the human world for the artist

  optimism which, for two decades, has been so pervasive, we must

  but on t
he contrary opens and complicates it.

  see that not only has it been politically and philosophically inadequate, but also that it implies, by the smallness of its view of the varieties of human possibility, a kind of check on the creative faculties. In Freud's view of life no such limitation is implied. To be sure, certain elements of his system seem hostile to the usual notions of man's dignity. Like every great critic of human natureand Freud is that-he finds in human pride the ultimate cause of human wretchedness, and he takes pleasure in knowing that his

  ideas stand with those of Copernicus and Darwin in making pride

  more difficult to maintain. Yet the Freudian man is, I venture to

  think, a creature of far more dignity and far more interest than the

  man which any other modern psychological system has been able to

  conceive. Despite popular belief to the contrary, man, as Freud conceives him, is not to be understood by any simple formula ( such as sex) but is rather an inextricable tangle of culture and biology. And

  not being simple, he is not simply good; he has, as Freud says somewhere, a kind of hell within him from which rise everlastingly the impulses which threaten his civilization. He has the faculty of im-

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  The Princess Casamassima

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  are most likely to make an immediate appeal to the reader of today.

  That they should not have delighted their contemporary public, but

  on the contrary should have turned it against James, makes a lively

  The Princess Casamassima

  problem in the history of taste.1

  In the masterpieces of his late years James became a difficult

  writer. This is the fact and nothing is gained for James by denying

  it. He himself knew that these late works were difficult; he wished

  them to be dealt with as if they were difficult. When a young man

  I

  I

  from Texas-it was Mr. Stark Young-inquired indirectly of James

  how he should go about reading his novels, James did not feel that

  N 1888, on the second of January, which in any year is likely

  this diffidence was provincial but happily drew up lists which would

  to be a sad day, Henry James wrote to his friend William

  lead the admirable young man from the easy to the hard. But the

  Dean Howells that his reputation had been dreadfully injured

  hostility with which The Bostonians and The Princess Casamassima

  by his last two novels. The desire for his productions, he said, had

  were received cannot be explained by any difficulty either of manbeen reduced to zero, editors no longer asked for his work, they ner or intention, for in these books there is none. The prose, aleven seemed ashamed to publish the stories they had already bought.

  though personally characteristic, is perfectly in the tradition of the

  But James was never without courage. "However, I don't despair,"

  nineteenth-century novel. It is warm, fluent, and on the whole

  he wrote, "for I think I am now really in better form than I ever

  rather less elaborate and virtuose than Dickens' prose. The motives

  have been in my life and I propose yet to do many things." And

  of the characters are clear and direct-certainly they are far from

  then, no doubt with the irony all writers use when they dare to

  the elaborate punctilio of the late masterpieces. And the charge that

  speak of future recognition, but also, surely, with the necessary faith,

  is sometimes made against the later work, that it exists in a social

  he concludes the matter: "Very likely too, some day, all my buried

  vacuum, clearly does not pertain here. In these novels James is at

  prose will kick off its various tombstones at once."

  the point in his career at which society, in the largest and even the

  And so it happened. The "some day" has arrived and we have

  grossest sense, is offering itself to his mind with great force. He unbeen hearing the clatter of marble as James's buried prose kicks off derstands society as crowds and police, as a field of justice and

  its monuments in a general resurrection. On all sides James is beinjustice, reform and revolution. The social texture of his work ing given the serious and joyous interest he longed for in his lifeis grainy and knotted with practicality and detail. And more: his time.

  One element of our interest must be the question of how some

  1 Whoever wishes to know what the courage of the artist must sometimes be

  of J ames's prose ever came to be buried at all. It is not hard to uncould do no better than to read the British reviews of The Bostonians and The

  derstand why certain of James's books did not catch the contem­

  Princess Casamassima. In a single year James brought out two major works; he

  thought they were his best to date and expected great things of them; he was told by

  porary fancy. But the two books on which James placed the blame

  the reviewers that they were not really novels at all; he was scorned and sneered at

  for his diminishing popularity were

  and condescended to and dismissed. In adjacent columns the ephemeral novels of

  The Bostonians and The Prin­

  the day were treated with gentle respect. The American press rivaled the British in

  cess Casamassima, and of all James's novels these are the two which

  the vehemence with which it condemned The Bostonians, but it was more tolerant

  of The Princess Casamassima.

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  The Princess Casamassima

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  social observation is of a kind that we must find startlingly prescient

  is passing over into rottenness, that the peculiarly beautiful light it

  when we consider that it was made some sixty years ago.

  gives forth is in part the reflection of a glorious past and in part

  It is just this prescience, of course, that explains the resistance of

  the phosphorescence of a present decay, that it may meet its end

  James's contemporaries. What James saw he saw truly, but it was

  by violence and that this is not wholly unjust, although never benot what the readers of his time were themselves equipped to see.

  fore has the old sinful continent made so proud and pathetic an

  That we now are able to share his vision required the passage of

  assault upon our affections.

  six decades and the events which brought them to climax. Henry

  James in the eighties understood what we have painfully learned

  II

  from our grim glossary of wars and concentration camps, after having seen the state and human nature laid open to our horrified in­

  The Princess Casamassima belongs to a great line of novels which

  spection. "But I have the imagination of disaster-and see life as

  runs through the nineteenth century as, one might say, the very

  ferocious and sinister": James wrote this to A. C. Benson in 1896,

  backbone of its fiction. These novels, which are defined as a group

  and what so bland a young man as Benson made of the statement,

  by the character and circumstance of their heroes, include Stendhal's
r />   what anyone then was likely to make of it, is hard to guess. But

  The Red and the Black, Balzac's Pere Goriot and Lost Illusions,

  nowadays we know that such an imagination is one of the keys to

  Dickens' Great Expectations, Flaubert's Sentimental Education;

  truth.

  only a very slight extension of the definition is needed to allow the

  It was, then, "the imagination of disaster" that cut James off

  inclusion of Tolstoi's War and Peace and Dostoevski's The Idiot.

  from his contemporaries and it is what recommends him to us now.

  The defining hero may be known as the Young Man from the

  We know something about the profound disturbance of the sexual

  Provinces. He need not come from the provinces in literal fact, his

  life which seems to go along with hypertrophy of the will and how

  social class may constitute his province. But a provincial birth and

  this excess of will seems to be a response to certain maladjustments

  rearing suggest the simplicity and the high hopes he begins within society and to direct itself back upon them; D. H. Lawrence he starts with a great demand upon life and a great wonder about

  taught us much about this, but Lawrence himself never attempted a

  its complexity and promise. He may be of good family but he must

  more daring conjunction of the sexual and the political life than

  be poor. He is intelligent, or at least aware, but not at all shrewd

  Henry James succeeds with in The Bostonians. We know much

  in worldly matters. He must have acquired a certain amount of

  about misery and downtroddenness and of what happens when

  education, should have learned something about life from books,

  strong and gifted personalities are put at a hopeless disadvantage,

  although not the truth.

  and about the possibilities of extreme violence, and about the sense

  The hero of The Princess Casamassima conforms very exactl.y to

  of guilt and unreality which may come to members of the upper

  type. The province from which Hyacinth Robinson comes is a city

  classes and the strange complex efforts they make to find innocence

  slum. "He sprang up at me out of the London pavement," says

  and reality, and about the conflict between the claims of art and of

  James in the preface to the novel in the New York Edition. In