Nabokov’s Memory War against Freud

Nabokov rejects systematic thinkers who engage in social and ideological generalizations. Reading Nabokov and Freud side by side, the author examines the origin of the Russian writer’s antipathy toward the psychoanalyst in three steps. First, she surveys the criticism addressing Nabokov’s views on Freud to determine if anything has been overlooked. Next, she compares Freud’s concept of screen memories to Nabokov’s childhood memories. Finally, she juxtaposes Nabokov’s art of memory, which is reflected in Lolita, and Freud’s system of remembering informing his analysis of the Wolf Man. Throughout, the author suggests how the delight Nabokov finds in both butterfly hunting and fiction writing leads him to engage in generalizations in his own way. This poet, who was also a scientist, engaged in a playful, even joyful, negation of Freud, a scientist who was also a poet. Freud, as a scientist, was compelled to generalize a theory, while Nabokov, as a poet, was ultimately unable to avoid generalizing the deceptive magic of the human psyche, art, and nature. Moreover, without the memory system to which Freud devoted his life, it would have been impossible for Nabokov to produce fiction based on a recollection of the past.