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
48 Angelika Reichmann suits any screen memory covering a traumatic experience, remain hidden. However, its relationship with early childhood, the antithetical reaction of the two parents, the "indecency" attached to it by the mother and the imaginary power position implied by the "infant magician" practically cry for a psychoanalytic interpretation. In a Ereudian-Lacanian context 8 , Wolf Solent's 'mythology' is a classical case of infantile regression to wish fulfilment in daydreaming, instead of the core of his consciousness it is a symptom, a (false) construction 9 with the function of hiding the seemingly forgotten traumatic knot in the unconscious 1 0, which must be read and reread to form a more authentic story of Wolf Solent's identity. For this reason the readable links which connect the "censored chapter" of the unconscious to this ominous gap give extremely useful help for the analyst. If Wolf Solent's 'mythology' is a case of daydreaming, it is directed at the repetition of an idealistic situation in which the wish fulfilment was granted in his childhood 1 1. For Wolf Solent the perfect situation that is to be repeated is sitting at the bow-window of his grandmother's house — a re-enactment of the circumstances of finding the word 'mythology' for his special habit —thus supplying the first useful links to the "public" and "untouched" chapters of his identity: It was, however, when staying in his grandmother's house at Weymouth that the word had come to him which he now always used in his own mind to describe these obsessions. It was the word 'mythologyand he used it entirely in a private sense of his own. He could remember very well where he first came upon the word. It was in a curious room, called 'the ante-room', which was comiected by folding-doors with his grandmother's drawing-room [...] The window of his grandmother's room opened upon the sea; and Wolf, carrying the word 'mythology 1 into this bow-window , allowed it to become his own secret name for his own secret habit. (Powys 19-20, italics mine) As it turns out, the central element which dominates the scene is the Q Cf. Sigmund Freud, "A költő és a fantáziamüködéstrans. Szilágyi Lilla, Művészeti írások, Müvei IX, ed. Erős Ferenc (Budapest, Filum Kiadó, 2001), 115-200, Jacques Lacan, The Language of the Self — The Function of Language in Psychoanalysis, trans, with notes and commentary Anthony Wilden (Baltimore and London, The John Hopkins University Press, 1981). A critique of the Freudian text relevant here is introduced by Peter Brooks in "The idea of a psychoanalytic literary criticism" and Psychoanalysis and Storytelling (Oxford, UK, Cambridge, USA, Blackwell, 1994). 9 Ibid. 1 0 Ibid. 1 1 Ibid.
