Notes on “Tribute to Freud”
Helen Cixois: “I understood that the only way to live was to seek refuge, to perch oneself in a private tree, to live on a different planet – one made of paper that stratches above murder and conflict.” Dazed and Confused – July 00 [64].
HD visits no other planets in ‘Tribute to Freud’ but our own unconscious collective mind. Her prose is transcendent in its simplicity, its clarity of description. I am moved, most moved when I read §53: “HE HAD SAID, he had dared to say that the dream had its worth and value in translatable terms, not the dream merely of a Pharaoh or a Pharaoh’s butler, . . . but the dream of everyone, everywhere.” This description of Sigmund Freud’s dream interpretations is simple and eloquent. By assuming dreams arise from a common well of human expression and symbolism, Freud makes psychoanalysis possible. As empirical evidence increases, the analysand may begin to understand how the roots of their neuroses are made explicit when in dream–time.
It goes deeper than that, though, superficially, this is his main discovery, but deeper still, diving down into the mud of our consciousness, and down into the subatomic strata of our mind, we find the spraying fountain of collective memory. Such images arise from HD’s singing praise:
And HD’s delight in Freud’s understanding of the sciences from the East, the buddhist and yogic traditions of consciousness stamp this knowledge large: we are all one people and we have but to learn to listen to our deep ocean, to dive into the ocean and in the logical extension of such transcendent access, in the words of Theodore Sturgeon in his equally brilliant “To Marry Medusa”:
Can you see how Freud is extrapolated beyond humanity’s collective understanding into a cross-species understanding – the glory of the self within the all-knowing, all-understanding hive mind across the cosmos? Sturgeon, perhaps the greatest undiscovered American writer of this century, has captured the Buddhist reality of the cosmic mind where each of us are motes, aware of the billions beyond billions of motes about us. This, the cosmic mind we find what Freud calls the collective unconscious, is the sea of dreams.
HD blasts the past into existence with her blitz on Freud’s importance to human consciousness – the art of self-discovery in a form the puritanical, supremacist mind could find reasonable and appreciate the subtle interpretation of ancient knowledge, from another facet, as it were, of consciousness. HD’s 85 petaled lotus flower swims serenely in literature: one is reminded instantly of Paramahansa Yogananda’s ‘Autobiography of a Yogi’ and Soygal Rinpoche’s ‘Book of the Living’. Both are divinely inspired, both, as is ‘Tribute to Freud’, are read with the utmost ease – as if the magnetic attraction on the receptors of language created its frictionless glide.
I am stunned by HD’s recall of Freud’s anger: “ I did not know what enraged him suddenly. I veered round off the couch, my feet on the floor. I do not know exactly what I had said . . .. The Professor himself is uncanonical enough; he is beathing with his hand, with his fist, on the head-piece of the old-fashioned horseheair sofa hat had heard more secrets than the confession box of any popular Roman Catholic father-confessor in his heyday . . .. Consciously, I was not aware of having said anything that might account for the Professor’s outburst. And even as I veered around, facing him, my mind was detached enough to wonder if this was some idea of his for speeding up the analytic content or redirectiong the flow of associated images. The Professor said, ‘The trouble is – I am an old man – you do not think it worth your while to love me.’ [16] This, this reveals more of Freud’s humanity in a few words than everything by Seigmund,
Peter Fogarty A4 15 000815
HD visits no other planets in ‘Tribute to Freud’ but our own unconscious collective mind. Her prose is transcendent in its simplicity, its clarity of description. I am moved, most moved when I read §53: “HE HAD SAID, he had dared to say that the dream had its worth and value in translatable terms, not the dream merely of a Pharaoh or a Pharaoh’s butler, . . . but the dream of everyone, everywhere.” This description of Sigmund Freud’s dream interpretations is simple and eloquent. By assuming dreams arise from a common well of human expression and symbolism, Freud makes psychoanalysis possible. As empirical evidence increases, the analysand may begin to understand how the roots of their neuroses are made explicit when in dream–time.
It goes deeper than that, though, superficially, this is his main discovery, but deeper still, diving down into the mud of our consciousness, and down into the subatomic strata of our mind, we find the spraying fountain of collective memory. Such images arise from HD’s singing praise:
“He had dared to say that the dream came from an unexplored depth in man’s consciousness and that this unexplored depth ran like a great stream or ocean underground, and that vast depth of that ocean was the same vast depth that today, as in joseph’s day, overflowing in man’s small consciousness, produced inspiration, madness, creative idea, or the dregs of the dreariest symptoms of mental unrest and disease.”
And HD’s delight in Freud’s understanding of the sciences from the East, the buddhist and yogic traditions of consciousness stamp this knowledge large: we are all one people and we have but to learn to listen to our deep ocean, to dive into the ocean and in the logical extension of such transcendent access, in the words of Theodore Sturgeon in his equally brilliant “To Marry Medusa”:
“Humanity had passed the barriers of language and of individual isolation on its planet. It passed the barriers of species now, and of isolation in its cosmos. The faith of Mbala was available to Guido, and so were the crystal symphonies of the black plants past Orphiuchus . . .. As one man could share the being of another here on Earth, so both, and perhaps a small child with them, could fuse their inner selves with some ancient contemplative mind leeched to the rocks in some roaring methane cataract, or soar with some insubstantial life–forms adrift where they were born in the high layers of atmosphere around some unheard–of planet.
“So ended mankind, to be born again as hive – humanity, so ended the hive of Earth to become star – man, the immeasurable, the limitless, the growing; maker of music beyond music, poetry beyond words, and full of wonder, full of worship.” [149]
Can you see how Freud is extrapolated beyond humanity’s collective understanding into a cross-species understanding – the glory of the self within the all-knowing, all-understanding hive mind across the cosmos? Sturgeon, perhaps the greatest undiscovered American writer of this century, has captured the Buddhist reality of the cosmic mind where each of us are motes, aware of the billions beyond billions of motes about us. This, the cosmic mind we find what Freud calls the collective unconscious, is the sea of dreams.
HD blasts the past into existence with her blitz on Freud’s importance to human consciousness – the art of self-discovery in a form the puritanical, supremacist mind could find reasonable and appreciate the subtle interpretation of ancient knowledge, from another facet, as it were, of consciousness. HD’s 85 petaled lotus flower swims serenely in literature: one is reminded instantly of Paramahansa Yogananda’s ‘Autobiography of a Yogi’ and Soygal Rinpoche’s ‘Book of the Living’. Both are divinely inspired, both, as is ‘Tribute to Freud’, are read with the utmost ease – as if the magnetic attraction on the receptors of language created its frictionless glide.
I am stunned by HD’s recall of Freud’s anger: “ I did not know what enraged him suddenly. I veered round off the couch, my feet on the floor. I do not know exactly what I had said . . .. The Professor himself is uncanonical enough; he is beathing with his hand, with his fist, on the head-piece of the old-fashioned horseheair sofa hat had heard more secrets than the confession box of any popular Roman Catholic father-confessor in his heyday . . .. Consciously, I was not aware of having said anything that might account for the Professor’s outburst. And even as I veered around, facing him, my mind was detached enough to wonder if this was some idea of his for speeding up the analytic content or redirectiong the flow of associated images. The Professor said, ‘The trouble is – I am an old man – you do not think it worth your while to love me.’ [16] This, this reveals more of Freud’s humanity in a few words than everything by Seigmund,
“The victorious mouth or voice or utterance.” [88].
Peter Fogarty A4 15 000815
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