The Erotic Motive in Literature

by Albert Mordell

II

Probably the greatest objection to the application of psychoanalytic methods to literature will be made to the transference of the sexual interpretation of symbols from the realm of dreams to that of art. But if the interpretation is correct in one sphere it is also true in the other. Civilisation has made it necessary to refer in actual speech to sexual matters in hidden ways, by symbolic representations; our faculty of wit, due to the exercise of the censorship, also uses various devices of symbolisation. Dreams and literature both make use of the same symbols.

When Freud attributed sexual significance to certain typical dreams like those of riding, flying, swimming, climbing, and to certain objects, like rooms, boxes, snakes, trees, burglars, etc., he made no artificial interpretations. He merely pointed out the natural and concrete language of the unconscious.

Now the same interpretation must inevitably follow in literature, much as authors and readers may object. If flying in dreams is symbolic of sex, then an author who is occupied considerably with wishes to be a bird and fly or with descriptions of birds flying—I do not mean an isolated instance—is like the man who is always dreaming he is flying; he is unconsciously expressing a symbolical wish. Many poems written to birds in literature show unconscious sexual manifestations. Shelley's "To A Skylark," Keats's "To A Nightingale" and Poe's "Raven" are poems where the authors sang of repressed love; there is unconscious sex symbolism in them.

Wordsworth, one of the poets who rarely mentioned sex, has in his "To a Skylark" unconsciously given us a poem of sexual significance. The motive of the poem is the intense longing to fly. But beneath the wish to fly in the poem, as in the imaginary flying in the dream, a sexual meaning is concealed. The poet is sad when he writes the poem "I have walked through wildernesses dreary, and to-day my heart is weary." He also thinks of the fact that the bird is satisfied in love. "Thou hast a nest for thy love and thy rest."

Very few of the poems addressed to birds harp on the wish to fly to the extent that Wordsworth does in this poem. Nearly half of the poem is taken up with this wish, and for this reason the sexual interpretation is unmistakable.

The first two stanzas are as follows:

"Up with me! up with me into the clouds!

For thy song, Lark, is strong;

Up with me, up with me into the clouds!

Singing, singing,

With clouds and sky about thee ringing,

Lift me, guide me till I find

That spot which seems so to thy mind!

"I have walked through wildernesses dreary

And to-day my heart is weary;

Had I now the wings of a Fairy,

Up to thee would I fly.

There is madness about thee, and joy divine,

In that song of thine;

Lift me, guide me high and high

To thy banqueting place in the sky."

The wish in literature corresponds to the fulfilment in the dream, and the psychology of the poet who wishes to fly is like that of the dreamer who does fly. Unconscious sex symbolism is voiced in poems where the poet expresses a desire to be a bird, or fly like one, such as those by Bernard de Ventadorn, the great Troubadour of the twelfth century, "The Cuckoo," by Michael Bruce, the Scotch poet who died young from consumption, and others.

I quote from memory the chorus of a poem sung in my school days:

"Oh, had I wings to fly like you

Then would I seek my love so true,

And never more we'd parted be,

But live and love eternally."

The author here tells us most plainly why he or she wants to fly like a bird—for the satisfaction of love. He says practically that merely by flying like the bird, he would have the embrace of the loved one. The opening lines of the chorus show that it is no far-fetched idea, that of seeing sex or love symbolism in birds flying or singing.

We recall Burns's famous poem to the bonny bird that sings happily and reminds him of the time when his love was true. "Thou'll break my heart, thou bonny bird," he sings in despair. A false lover stole the rose and left the thorn with him. The entire poem is full of sex symbolism. That he too would like to have love, is what he says when he speaks of the bird singing.

"The more one is occupied with the solution of dreams," says Freud, "the more willingly one must become to acknowledge that the majority of the dreams of adults treat of sexual material and give expression to erotic wishes.... No other impulse has had to undergo as much suppression from the time of childhood as the sex impulses in its numerous components; from no other impulse has survived so many and such intense unconscious wishes, which now act in the sleeping state in such a manner as to produce dreams."

This, to my mind, can not be contested, and these wishes appear largely in the form of symbols. In early times sex was given great significance, and we know that in early myths and literature many events and things were sex symbols. When we dream symbolically, we go back to a method of picturing events that in early history had value, but of which the significance has been forgotten. The law of symbol formation is in dreams not an arbitrary one; it is based on forms of speech in the past and on witty conceptions of to-day. Folklore and wit are full of sexual symbols corresponding to those in dreams. All doubt has been removed of sexual symbolism in dreams by an experiment made by means of hypnotism, where a patient was told to dream some sexual situation. Instead of doing so directly she dreamed a situation in symbolic form corresponding to that in ordinary dream life. Rank and Sachs in their The Significance of Psychoanalysis for the Mental Sciences have given us an excellent study of the nature of symbol formation. Freud has furnished us a list of objects and actions that are of sexual significance. W. Stekel has made an exhaustive study of the subject in his Sprache des Traumes (1911). Freud recognises R. A. Scherner as the true discoverer of symbolism in dreams in his book Das Leben des Traumes (1896), but he admits that Artemidorus in the second century A.D. also interpreted dreams symbolically.

Freud ventures the opinion that dreams about complicated machinery and landscapes and trees have a definite sexual significance. If this is so, and he gives his reason therefor, it would mean that all those authors who have a partiality for describing landscapes and machinery in their works continually, are unconsciously revealing a personal trait they never intended to convey. Ruskin for example is rich in landscapes in his works. Is there any connection between his propensity for such description and his attachment to his mamma, his youthful love disappointment, his unsuccessful marriage and his sad love for Rose La Touche? Is it not likely that many of the painters who made a specialty of landscape painting were driven to this special choice by an unconscious cause that the world has not fathomed, a sexual one? No doubt there is a connection between paintings of female nudes and the sex life of the author in his unconscious; why should not the same be true of the landscape painters and all the writers who abound in landscape descriptions? Is it not possible that Turgenev, who has given us so many landscapes, was unconsciously thinking of his first love disappointment and also of his love for Madame Viardot? We find landscapes in every literary work that deals with the country, but Freud's theory can have applicability only to the author who has a mania for them.

Why does Kipling have a keen interest in bringing descriptions of machinery into his works? If dreams of machinery relate to sex, then we must follow the logical conclusion that an undue interest in machinery must evince a sexual meaning. We are also aware that a large number of popular sexual terms are taken from instruments in the machine-shop.

I do not maintain that objects do not have a literal significance, free from any symbolic intent.

There can be no doubt about the significance of the phallic worship of old times, in which the serpent was symbolic. Dreams where the serpent figures and folk tales telling of dragons who are symbolic of the lustful side of man both have a sexually symbolic meaning.

Again, if Freud is right in claiming that the dream of a woman throwing herself in the water is a parturition dream, then one would have to conclude that a woman occupied constantly with stories about herself swimming was probably absorbed with thoughts about child-bearing. That this significance for such a dream is not absurd may be seen from the following statement by Freud: "In dreams, as in mythology, the delivery of a child from the uterine waters is commonly presented by distortion as the entry of the child into water; among many others, the births of Adonis, Osiris, Moses and Bacchus are well known illustrations of this."