Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 2000. [Vol. 6.] Eger Journal of American Studies. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 26)
Studies - Tibor Tóth: The Golden Cradle: Philip Roth's Revision of the Golden Bough Tradition
Spielvogel, in his article "Creativity: The Narcissism of the Artist" besides altering Tarnopol's case history identifies the search for freedom of the artist with narcissism. The protagonist revolts against this definition, but later cannot entirely cope with it. And if I may, sir - his self is to many a novelist what his own physiognomy is to a painter of portraits: the closest subject at hand demanding scrutiny, a problem of his art to solve - given the enormous obstacles of truthfulness, the artistic problem. He is not simply looking into the mirror because he is transfixed by what he sees. Rather, the artist's success depends as much as anything else on his powers of detachment, on Je-narcissizing himself. That's where the excitement comes in. That hard conscious work that makes it art\ Freud, Dr. Spielvogel, studied his own dreams not because he was a 'narcissist,' but because he was a student of dreams. And whose were at once the least and the most accessible of dreams if not his own. (M. L. A. M. 240) What Tarnopol articulates as the 'problem' of art in this passage is, precisely, the problem of the 'subject' scrutinising himself in the hand-held mirror of writing - holding the mirror, he would argue, at a distance, thus guaranteeing freedom, the detachment and authenticity of self-scrutiny. But the question of how the 'closest' subject at hand refers to himself inevitably touches upon the cause and effect as well as the role of fiction, aspects that are interrelated and determine the protagonist's perception of his duties and possibilities. The forces at work, be they psychic or related to artistic creativity result in a strange detachment which involves Tarnopol's meditation on 'autobiography.' This meditation connects the process of the fictional artist's search for artistic and existential freedom with the relation of subjectivity to textuality. Most sophisticated among all dilemmas is perhaps the extent to which Tarnopol's detachment determines his authority as an artist over art and reality, over the subjective and the objective factors at work. His fear is that the fictional artist as a subject becomes a prisoner of his own reflection, confined in a state of inability to feed on the outside world. This fear brings about yet another danger a namely that entering fiction, trying to master art for the sake of artistic privacy and 122
