Word: edel
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
STUFF OF SLEEP AND DREAMS: EXPERIMENTS IN LITERARY PSYCHOLOGY by Leon Edel; Harper & Row; 352 pages...
...Analysis, we all plead innocent with an explanation. Literary critics have remained productively blameless by fitting books and authors to psychoanalytic theory. Leon Edel, 74, knows the limits of this approach. In his new work, the teacher, critic and prizewinning biographer of Henry James explains: "We take from Freud perhaps the richest part of his work, his insights into man's ways of thinking, dreaming, imagining-those elements which have also an influence on motivations and behavior...
...Edel's search for meaning in the sleep life of other literary figures turns up some choice curiosities. A Henry James dream begins in fear and ends in exhilaration as the author of The Turn of the Screw and other ghost stories chases a terrified phantom down a great hall that resembles a gallery in the Louvre. The unconscious of most writers remains a dark nursery of anxiety and chaos. But James, one of the most controlled novelists in history, can symbolize discipline and order in his sleep. This is the triumph of art at its most intimidating...
...Weigel's point. There is no drama in this drama-no rush, no reason, no alternative, no future. The junkie's world is not a series of adrenaline highs and remorseful lows; it is one endless anguish. The victims are zombies, gray-faced, living dead. Director Ulrich Edel hews to a semidocumentary style, but his message is out of the classic German monster movies: There is a golem inside us all, and its name is apathy...
...these moments are rare. For the most part, Strouse provides a fascinating and balanced portrait of a talented and frustrated woman. Her book is highly illuminating and eminently readable, in its own way as definitive a biography as Leon Edel's massive five-volume study of Henry. Alice James: A Biography is an enduring contribution to the growing collection of James family literature, and a moving and suggestive portrait of a woman of wasted potential...