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When one traces back to the authentic way of this double reading of the human mind in the context of the Derridian twosomeness, one can reach Freudian insights which prompt us to recall both pleasure and terror in reading latent texts or unconscious texts. Freudian double mood of pleasure and terror in reading an individual mind contextualizes the “future anterior” of the postmodern sublime reading. In this Freudian/Lacanian context doubling of the uncanny, Vladimir Nabokov’s fictional world reflecting “myriad traces of Freud’s influence” is intriguing, as Teckyoung Kwon’s Nobokov’s Mimicry of Freud (2017) demonstrates. Kwon’s spectrum of Nobokov’s artistic mimicry or doubling of Freud is revealing: The Luzhin Defense and Despair mimic Freud’s “interpretations of dream”; Lolita describes childhood as a stage of “infantile sexuality”; Pale Fire implies the “primal scene” of the Wolf Man, Ada presents “Oedipus complex” and “incest taboo.” Kwon employs mimicry as “an essential gift of Nature” as well as “a tool of survival amid upheaval and uncertainty” (18), and argues that “Nabokov and Freud are literary siblings” in that “the artistic merit of Nabokov’s work depends largely upon Freud, whom he imitates, borrows from, and ultimately repudiates” (24). Although the author briefly mentions by passing in “Chapter One: Mimicry as a Form of Art,” one would expect more elaboration of “the process of disguising the unconscious in Nabokov’s fictional world” in terms of “the gaze, a beautiful act of mimicry that functions as a lure” (32). Nevertheless, this book is one of the most intriguing and challenging book in the study of Nabokov’s fiction as well as of the psychoanalytic approach to comparative literature at large.
