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
50 Angelika Reichmann while the spring afternoon slowly darkened towards twilight" (Powys 66-67). When trying to imagine what it will be like to work for Mr Urquhart, he has a "dream of [a] writing-table by a mullioned window 'blushing with the blood of kings and queens' [which] turns out to be a literal presentiment" (Powys 61). When he feels that Miss Gault's drawing-room has "the Penn House atmosphere" it means that "there was something about this room which made him recall that old bow-window in Brunswick Terrace, Weymouth, where in his childhood he used to indulge in these queer, secretive pleasures" (Powys 132). And finally, when Christie moves to Weymouth, he flatters himself with the idea that their relationship will not end and "[sees] himself as an old grey-headed schoolmaster [...] walking with Christie on one arm and Olwen [...] on the other, past the bow windows of Brunswick Terrace!" (Powys 619). The second link to the "adulterated chapter" is supplied by the metonymical connection of the grandmother's house, and more specifically the bow-window, which is the location of the only pleasant memories of Wolf Solent's childhood, with reading: He recalled various agitating and shameful scenes between his highspirited mother and his drifting, unscrupulous father. He summoned up, as opposed to these, his own delicious memories of long, irresponsible holidays , lovely uninterrupted weeks of idleness , by the sea at Weymouth, when he read so many thrilling books in the sunlit bow-window at Brunswick Terrace. (Powys 37, italics mine) Thus reading in the literal sense of the word and 'sinking into his soul' become metonymically connected by being attached to the same location, the bow-window in the house of Wolf's grandmother in Weymouth. The location itself, as a scene of his infantile daydreaming, becomes subject to many-layered interpretation via its connection with the symptom that covers the traumatic event. In classic Freudian analysis houses are symbolic of the body and rooms are especially associated with women (The Interpretation of Dreams 471-472). In Wolf's case the female body represented by the house and its rooms is most probably his mother's, substituted with the slightly veiled corresponding element of the grandmother's figure. Thus Wolf's wish to return to his passive and pleasurable stay in Weymouth, where he was "irresponsible", that is, free from any moral obligations to act, becomes an embodiment of the return to the maternal womb in the symbolic sense as a combination of libido and desire for the ideal conditions before birth in the death-wish 1 2. Cf. Sigmund Freud, On Metapsychology — The Theory of Psychoanalysis —
