Art, Woolf, and Freud

Art, Woolf, and Freud

-- Does the present writer intend on responding to the topic with a formal academic essay?

No!

-- How will the writer respond to the topic?

In a manner suggested by the seventeenth chapter of James Joyce’s Ulysses. (Woolf thought that  Joyce wrote for a clique. The present writer is a member of that clique in good standing.)

-- Did Woolf  read Freud’s writings?

The Woolfs owned the Hogarth Press which published translations of Freud’s papers. Woolf wrote to a friend,  “...we are publishing all Dr Freud, and I glance at the proof and read how Mr. A.B. threw a bottle of red ink in the sheets of his marriage bed to excuse his impotence to the housemaid, but threw it in the wrong place, which unhinged his wife’s mind, - and to this day she pours claret on the dinner table. We could all go on like that for hours; and yet these Germans think it proves something - besides their own gull-like imbecility.”

-- On what occasions did Virgina Woolf meet Sigmund Freud

Once, on January 28, 1939. Freud gave her a narcissus.

--  Her impression?

“A screwed up shrunk very old man: with a monkey’s light eyes, paralyzed spasmodic movements, inarticulate: but alert...Difficult talk. … an old fire now flickering...”

Woolf did not read Freud seriously until after meeting him.

-- Did Freud deliver lectures on the value of Art?

Yes.

"Art as Unrepressed Wish-Fulfillment" - -

“In phantasy,  man can continue to enjoy a freedom from the grip of the external world, (a freedom) which he has long relinquished in actuality. The meager satisfaction that (man) can extract from reality leaves him starving … There is, in fact, a path from phantasy back again to reality, and that is—art.”

-- What value does Freud think Art has for society?

The repressed desires of the artist are sublimated into an artistic product that fulfills the unconscious wishes of the spectators. Art transforms common neuroses into fantasies that are then shared by the culture.

-- In Civilization and it’s Discontents did Freud explain the necessity of Art?

“Life, as we find it, it too hard for us; it brings us too many pains, disappointment, and impossible tasks. In order to bear it we cannot dispense with palliative measures”.

-- What is a “palliative measure?

A measure for relieving pain or alleviating a problem without dealing with the underlying cause such as giving a person who has a broken leg an aspirin.

-- What proofs does Woolf’s  biographical evidence offer that Art was a palliative measure for relieving her suffering?

Woolf created more than twenty work of fiction, autobiography, and criticism that are still read, admired, and have great influence today.

As a child Woolf took great pleasure in trying to find the perfect pen for writing on paper.

From the age of 13 and for the next 46 years of  her life she suffered periods of severe depression, attempting suicide four times.

For a summer, Woolf believed that the birds were chirping in Greek and King Edward VII was uttering curses from behind nearby shrubbery.

-- At what point in her life did “Art” cease to be palliative for the underlying causes of her suffering?

On 28 March 1941, she put on her overcoat, filled its pockets with stones, walked into the River Ouse near her home, and drowned herself.

Her  body was not found until 18 April 1941.

-- Number of days from Saturday, January 28, 1939 to Friday, March 28, 1941?

790

-- Number of years?

2 years, 2 months, 1 day

-- On what important philosophical or psychological point did Woolf and Freud disagree?

On the perception of a harmony with the universe.

-- What perceptions of harmony does Mrs. Ramsey experience in To the Lighthouse?

At dinner she seats a group of acquaintances who have demonstrated their conflicts and alienation through many chapters. For the period of the meal, all come together in harmony with themselves and each other, an experience which, although transitory, binds them.

-- Does Freud affirm a personal experience of harmony with the universe?

“I cannot discover this 'oceanic' feeling in myself. that is to say, ... a feeling of an indissoluble bond, of being one with the external world as a whole.  It is not easy to deal scientifically with feelings. From my own experience I could not convince myself of the primary nature of such a feeling.”

"But this gives me no right to deny that it does in fact occur in other people."_______________________________________
References

The Letters of Virginia Woolf. Volume One. P. 92.

"Mr. Virginia Woolf". Commentary Magazine. Retrieved 8 September 2008.

"Art as Unrepressed Wish-Fulfillment" by Sigmund Freud

In a balloon over Paris

The brothers Joseph-Michel and Jacques-Etienne Montgolfier were scientists interested in exploring manned flight. On 19 September 1783, they launched  a hot air balloon attached to a large basket containing: a sheep, a duck and a rooster. The sheep was selected because its anatomy somewhat resembled that of a human. The duck because it could fly and the rooster because it could not. The flight lasted eight minutes, the passengers traveled eleven miles and landed safely. The brothers Montgolfier concluded that their balloon could safely carry human passengers. 

On September 24, 1860 the details of this experiment were explained to Charles Darwin as he climbed into the basket of a Montgolfier and prepared for a balloon tour of Paris.  He had been invited on this tour by Baron Haussmann, the chief city planner of Paris. It was Haussman who had redesigned the city, tearing down much of the medieval city, building wide boulevards that could not be barricaded by revolutionaries, and creating a transit system that for the first time caused the rich, the middle class, and the poor to pass by each other daily.

A third passenger, the poet Charles Baudelaire, arrived late. Darwin observed that in England this man would be called a “dandy.” He reeked of alcohol and opium smoke. He seemed to be in a permanent dark mood - a spleen. As the balloon floated over the city, the sullen Baudelaire commented on the location of each “maison close” and pointed out every opium den they passed over. His tone, his gestures were permeated with aggression, and an animal lust.   

Darwin thought to himself, "Man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin,” and continued his conversation with Haussmann, who had read Darwin’s Origin of the Species.

Darwin explained, “The main conclusion I arrived at, and now held by many naturalists who are well competent to form a sound judgment, is that man is descended from some less highly organized form.”

Haussmann was about to comment when Baudelaire interjected, "There is an invincible taste for prostitution in the heart of man, from which comes his horror of solitude. He wants to be 'two'. The man of genius wants to be 'one'... It is this horror of solitude, the need to lose oneself in the external flesh, that man nobly calls 'the need to love'."

Darwin continued,”We have seen that man incessantly presents individual differences in all parts of his body and in his mental faculties. These differences or variations seem to be induced by the same general causes, and to obey the same laws as with the lower animals. In both cases similar laws of inheritance prevail.”

Baudelaire pointed out a favorite “maison close” and said, "The more a man cultivates the arts, the less randy he becomes... Only the brute is good at coupling, copulation is the lyricism of the masses. To copulate is to enter into another–and the artist never emerges from himself."

Trying to ignore the drunken poet, Haussmann asked Darwin if his book had not encountered violent criticism from the church. Before Darwin could answer, Baudelaire turned a contorted face toward them and shouted, "Personally, I think that the unique and supreme delight lies in the certainty of doing 'evil'–and men and women know from birth that all pleasure lies in evil. But what matters an eternity of damnation to one who has found an infinity of joy in a single second?"

Darwin responded, “A moral being is one who is capable of reflecting on his past actions and their motives—of approving of some and disapproving of others; and the fact that man is the one being who certainly deserves this designation, is the greatest of all distinctions between him and the lower animals.”

For a moment Baudelaire seemed almost sober, his face reflective, he responded, “The vices of man, as full of horror as one might suppose them to be, contain the proof -- if in nothing else but their infinitely expandable nature -- of his taste for the infinite; only, it is a taste that often takes a wrong turn.”

“There are but three beings worthy of respect: the priest, the warrior and the poet.” continued Baudelaire. “ To know, to kill and to create. The rest of mankind may be taxed and drudged, they are born for the stable..."

“The moral faculties are generally and justly esteemed as of higher value than the intellectual powers.” Darwin responded. “Man may be excused for feeling some pride at having risen, though not through his own exertions, to the very summit of the organic scale; and the fact of his having thus risen, instead of having been aboriginally placed there, may give him hope for a still higher destiny in the distant future.”

Think of it this way

Think of it this way: For a long time the Republican establishment got its way by playing a con game with the party’s base. Voters would be mobilized as soldiers in an ideological crusade, fired up by warnings that liberals were going to turn the country over to gay married terrorists, not to mention taking your hard-earned dollars and giving them to Those People. Then, once the election was over, the establishment would get on with its real priorities — deregulation and lower taxes on the wealthy.

Chromebooks

I'm writing this on a Samsung Chromebook.

I've had lots of experience with the Chrome browser, so the operating system is comfortable. The hardware is going to require a period of adjustment. The computer is light, only two and a half pounds, comfortable to hold on my lap. So far the keyboard is as comfortable a my MacBook Pro. The screen is a matte finish. Some people prefer matte to glossy. They even pay a lot of money to Apple for the opinion. I miss the depth of color.

Wow! This keyboard is really nice. Best feature of the machine.

I bought my first Chromebook yesterday, an Acer with a fast Intel processor and four gigs of memory. It was thick, heavy, unbalanced and uncomfortable to hold -- basically an Acer netbook running Chrome OS. Only four hours or less of battery life. It was however very fast! Much faster than this Samsung. After less than ninety minutes of typing the spacebar and the M key stopped working. You really don't know how important the spacebar is until you don't have one. James Joyce and E.E. Cumming might get by without the spacebar for a while, but not me.

I repeat, this keyboard is really nice. I'm hoping it holds up more than ninety minutes.