Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 2004. Vol. 4. Eger Journal of English Studies. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 30)
ANGELIKA REICHMANN Reading Wolf Solent Reading
Reading Wolf Solent Reading 47 these bitter-sweet qualities of reading with the major ironies making them possible and the solitary celebration of the joys given by the openness of the reading procedure identify it as a "reduced" form of the carnivalesque 7 — probably the only form possible in the 20 t h century. The function of reading as a central determiner of Wolf Solent's identity is established by its metonymical/metaphorical connection with his metaphor for the core of his consciousness, his 'mythology'. The latter is a concept that conspicuously resists further interpretation in itself, taken out of its context. On the one hand, Wolf "use[s] it entirely in a private sense of his own" (Powys 19). On the other hand, it is most often represented in further images which usually undermine each other. In other words, it is a metaphor leading only to other metaphors, for example his 'mythology' as "hushed, expanding leaves", "secret vegetation —the roots of whose being hid themselves beneath the dark waters of his consciousness" (Powys 20-21). The "roots" evidently lead from the conscious to the unconscious, in Lacanian terms Wolf's 'mythology' covers his 'true' identity, it screens "the adulterated chapter" of his history, which can be read most conspicuously in the transference neurosis, in the compulsively repeated symptoms surrounding the gap in the story (The Language of the Self 2024). Wolf introduces his 'mythology' in the following manner: This was a certain trick he had of doing what he called 'sinking into his soul'. This trick had been a furtive custom with him from very early days. In his childhood his mother had often rallied him about it in her light-hearted way, and had applied to these trances, or these fits of absent-mindedness, an amusing but rather indecent nursery name. His father , on the other hand, had encouraged him in these moods, taking them very gravely, and treating him, when under their spell, as if he were a sort of infant magician. (Powys 19, italics mine) The exact circumstances of the generation of his 'mythology', as it Shlomith Rimmon-Kennan (London, Routledge, 1987), 1-18] also connects Bakhtinian dialogue with Lacanian psychoanalysis and his own psychoanalytic literary criticism, more concretely with textual analysis through the application of the Freudian concept of transferential situation to literary analysis (11). 7 Cf. Bakhtin's description of the changes of the grotesque, a phenomenon belonging to the core of the carnivalesque. He claims that in the Romantic period the grotesque and thus the carnivalesque became relevant only to the personal sphere of the individual, their universal character gradually diminished and finally disappeared. The original carnivalesque laughter also changed its nature, its regenerative power was brought to the minimum, which resulted in the dominance of its "reduced" forms, humour, irony and sarcasm (Bahtyin 50-51).
