دون ژوان اثر اتو رنک بخش۱۰
CHAPTER IO
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE POET
WE have followed in rough outline the process of poetic shaping and modification of the subject matter. This process shows the double function and effect of the poetic art. Up to a certain point, the primal motives underlying the poetic fantasy construction are expressed. As the guilt feelings increase and become intolerable, this expression gradually gives way to a devaluation of the tragic subject matter. The devaluation corresponds to the mastery of the problem of guilt. Beyond a certain definite point, however, the presentation of the unconscious motive becomes repellent through its coarseness just as it becomes ineffectual and inartistic through psychological interpretation. In both extremes, poetic art approaches a limit. Beyond this limit is the domain of psychoanalysis, which is able to judge and criticize on an intellectual basis rather than devaluing on affective grounds. The artistic function of poetic art corresponds to this catharsis: presenting in the content of poetry the primitive complexes of mankind, in their actual state of repression at any particular time. As is shown especially in the development of tragic subject matter, this repression occurs when the primitive fantasy wishes are bound up with a continually increasing sense of guilt. One of the foremost functions of the poetic art is to relieve these guilt feelings that have accumulated in the course of mankind's repressions. In the first instance, this takes place through the artistic presentation itself, but later it is brought about by the psychological interpretation of the character, and finally by the increasingly conscious devaluation. In the course of this process, the poet has set himself up as an analytical agency of conscience for humanity, which fully accords with the individual goals and purposes of poetry in the service of the ego ideal. Now in the poet we see a very special function, since the ego ideal appears as the critical agency in its formation of the ideal itself, so that it is continually valuing and devaluing itself.
Therefore we see that the poet embodies the double function of the ego ideal. Seen from the outside, the poet creates a new personal ideal for the masses, a creation to which he was driven by his inner conflicts arising from the formation of his own ideal. Dissatisfied with the ideal of the group,1 he forms his own individual ideal in order to proffer it to the group, without whose recognition his creation remains very unsatisfactory. The impetus to his formation of an individual ideal obviously comes from a very strong narcissism, which prevents him from accepting the common ideal and makes it necessary for him to create an individual one. Seen from the inside, the pressure that the poet feels to solicit recognition of his new ideal from the group reveals that he created it not only to satisfy his own narcissism, but also to replace the old common ideal with a new one. In a psychological sense the poet thereby repeats the primal crime, for the new ideal which he has created is his own —it is himself in identification with the primal father. With unrelenting acuteness, Shaw expressed this psychological state of affairs in his Don Juan play. He characterized the artist as an anti-social, inconsiderate, cruel and primitive man who consciously placed himself outside society, proclaimed the freedom of his desire, and ruptured all family and connubial life. At this point it becomes very clear that characterologically the poet type converges with the "hero" type—the type that in its most extreme characteristics is truly shown in the Don Juan figure. Perhaps these psychological facts explain why all the poets necessarily failed in the presentation of this all too unadorned self-portrait; why on the one hand they flattered it, and on the other hand they tried to devalue it. It was too true to life, and it was the ego ideal, strengthened by the guilt feeling, that gradually prohibited the presentation of this original type in order to make a romantic ideal figure out of it. Only in this deeper sense can one agree with Plato, who wanted to banish the poet from his ideal state as a liar (and only permit the physician to lie in order to comfort others) ,2 because the poet is distinguished from the hero by a socially important characteristic. The poet makes the falsification of presentation his own inherent, special right, thereby advancing the claim that he has replaced the heroic fantasy construction with a moral form of the ideal. The tragedy of every great poetic personality is that when this aim succeeds, it must finally lead to disappointment instead of satisfaction, just as the primal deed does. The reason is that as his personal ideal is generally recognized and appreciated, it becomes established as another group ideal, the very thing that he wishes to shun. He uses recognition only as evidence of his exoneration, as it were. It is evidence that he is not the only person with the inclination toward the primal deed, although he alone carried it out and repeats it by creating a new ideal—his own. Yet he is disturbed by the general popularizing of this ideal that necessarily goes along with recognition, for it demonstrates to him that with his personal creation he has accomplished nothing original, that on the contrary he can only repeat the original ideal which has been denied. In the same way, still another expectation of the poet is necessarily disappointed. The strong primary narcissism that we have postulated makes him less inclined toward object love and places him in the more feminine situation of being loved. He transfers a great part of this primary narcissism secondarily on to his work, which he loves, values, and admires as an immortal part of his ego.3 Yet when he evokes the same orientation in the masses, then the primary libidinal gain—aspiring to be loved oneself—escapes him.
It would be very instructive to pursue these two phases of the poetic orientation in detail with several poets, but we must here be content with the general point that whenever we find distinct periods in the work of a poet,1 such a process of devaluation of the poet's previous ego ideal formation is at work. (The poet becomes more critical, more conscious, more pessimistic, etc.) We certainly do not need to go even that far; for the fact that the poet generally keeps producing, even must produce, shows us the process of devaluation of the most recent ideal formation and a renewed attempt at a fresh ideal formation—really all in a constant flow. From another perspective, a psychoanalytic glance at the developmental history of poetry is sufficient to show us that, on the whole, the same process runs its course and continually recurs. According to Freud, the first epic tale was a mythic-ideal formation, as also were many of the early works of the poetic Sturm und Drang period. Soon, however, the critical voice of the ego ideal comes into play, supporting the punishment tendency. Thus the consciousness of guilt mounts, rising to a peak at an end point of our western literary development in Ibsen's conscious recognition:5
To live is—a war with trolls in the vaults of heart and mind.
To write poetry—that is to hold judgment day on one's self.
Naturally, we do not know much about the creator of the Don Juan figure, nor which personal motives gave rise to that magnificent creation of fantasy. We do, however, know a biographical fact about Mozart—the artist who endowed this creation with its immortal form—that clearly illuminates his attitude toward the whole subject of Don Juan, as well as the essence of artistic production itself. Once again, it was not the erotic motive that inspired the great composer, but rather a tragic motive, the important effect of which Freud has already made clear in the life of another great artist.® The fact is that just as Mozart had begun to occupy himself with the material that his librettist Da Ponte had submitted, his father died and a few months later his best friend Barisani also died.7 The biographers themselves emphasize that the artist sought an opportunity to set free his distressed heart, and the great intensity with which he plunged into the work is reported everywhere. The clearest evidence of the artistic "possession" that his associates observed in him is that he wrote down the overture in a single night. According to our psychoanalytic experience, the death of the father arouses deeply ambivalent stirrings of affect, especially in the creating artist. These affective stirrings explain the artistic penetration and mastery of the subject matter, an attainment that is made possible only on the basis of a far-reaching identification [with the father]. Of all the authors who attempted this mastery, only Mozart succeeded.8
Because of our limited psychological understanding of musical forms of expression, we can only surmise what share the particular art form of music may have had in this accomplishment, along with the personal motives already mentioned. It appears that the capability of expressing different emotions simultaneously makes music especially well suited to the presentation and affective resolution of ambivalence. Now from the beginning, the principal feature (not only dynamic but also formal) of the Don Juan character is a tension between unchecked sensuality and the guilt and punishment tendency. Through the suppleness and immediacy of musical expression these two elements are again unified in an artistic harmony. Thus while on the one hand the force of the musical chords announcing the Commander raises the hero's conflict of conscience to the most agonizing level, over it there soars the passionate rhythm of an unbroken conquering nature—a nature of such sensuality as we look for in vain in the whole of the vast Don Juan literature. And while the primal guilt that is released in the grieving son rages in the sounds of the Stone Guest's appearance at the banquet, there is an equally high point of sensual joy—in unbroken high spirits, Don Juan drinks "to the noble Mozart!"
NOTES
1 [Dei Ideal der Masse']
2 [The Republic, sections 376-92 and 595-607. The phrase in parentheses was added by Rank in the proofs of B.]
3 [This phrase suggests the transition to Rank's later vocabulary, in which "ego ideal" (never "superego") was replaced by "immortal soul" or "immortal self."]
4 Cf. Rank (1912), especially the footnote on page 97.
5 ["Et Vers" (A verse) in Henrik Ibsen, Samlede Vcerker, vol. 4, p. 433 (Copenhagen: Gyldendalske Boghandels Forlag, 1899). The present version has been translated directly from the Norwegian. The emphases are Rank's. The German version used by Rank is as follows:
Leben heisst—dunkler Gewalten
Spuk bekampfen in sich,
Dichten—Gerichstag halten
Uber sein eigenes Ich.
Source: Henrik lbsens Samtliche Werke, vol. 1, p. 167 (Ed. G. Brandes, J. Elias, and P. Schleuther), 1903.
The two preceding paragraphs of the text, along with the verse from Ibsen, appear in almost exactly this form as the conclusion of Rank's Foreword to the fourth, expanded edition of Der Kiinstler (Rank's first publication, 1907), which was published in 1925· Rank dated that Foreword "Vienna, Easter, 1924," seven days before his first departure for America and the formal beginning of the break with Freud.]
6[Rank cites no specific work of Freud's, but probably refers to Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of his Childhood (1910a).]
7 Da Ponte showed the Don Giovanni material to the composer in the spring of 1787, after the return journey from Prague to Vienna. Mozart himself had a great share in the actual dramatic form of the opera. His father died on May 28, 1787; his friend died on September 3; and the first performance of the opera took place on October 29. The ink on the musical score of the overture was still wet, with grains of blotting sand clinging to it, when the musicians received it.
8 A hundred years ago, Stendhal (1814), one of the most subtle connoisseurs of Mozart, pointed to the melancholy at the root of his "cheerful" art. Now the most recent Mozart biographer, Artur Schurig (1913) has again returned to this demoniacal feature of Mozart's personality. [This footnote, added in version C, is a close paraphrase of an article reviewing Schurig's book, "Mozart in neuem Lichte," in the Neues Wiener Journal, March 1, 1913, p. 4. The article is preserved in the Rank papers.]
