The Beginning of Terror. David Kleinbard
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The Beginning of Terror
Literature and Psychoanalysis
General Editor: Jeffrey Berman
1. The Beginning of Terror: A Psychological Study of
Rainer Maria Rilke’s Life and Work
DAVID KLEINBARD
The Beginning of Terror
A Psychological Study of
Rainer Maria Rilke’s Life and Work
David Kleinbard
NEW YORK UNIVERSITY
New York and London
Copyright © 1993 by New York University
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kleinbard, David
The beginning of terror : psychological study of Rainer Maria
Rilke’s life and work / David Kleinbard.
p. cm. — (Literature and psychoanalysis: 1)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8147-4626-8 (alk. paper)
1. Rilke, Rainer Maria, 1875-1926—Biography—Psychology.
2. Authors, German—20th century—Biography. I. Title.
II. Series.
PT2635.I65Z753 1993
831’.912—dc2o 92-32630
[B] CIP
New York University Press books are printed on acid-free paper, and
their binding materials are chosen for strength and durability.
Manufactured in the United States of America
c 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
This book is dedicated to Maureen Waters, my wife, and Joseph Kleinbard, my father, with much love.
For beauty is nothing
but the beginning of terror, which we are just able to bear,
and we wonder at it so because it calmly disdains
to destroy us.
Contents
3. A Mask of Him Roams in His Place
Differentiation between Self and Others in The Notebooks and Rilke’s Letters
Phia Rilke and the Maternal Figures in The Notebooks
5. Take Me, Give Me Form, Finish Me
6. To Fill All the Rooms of Your Soul
7. This Always Secret Influence
The Poet’s Changing Relationship with His Father
Developments Leading to The Sonnets to Orpheus and the Completion of the Duino Elegies
Foreword
As New York University Press inaugurates a new series of books on literature and psychoanalysis, it seems appropriate to pause and reflect briefly upon the history of psychoanalytic literary criticism. For a century now it has struggled to define its relationship to its two contentious progenitors and to come of age. After glancing at its origins, we may be in a better position to speculate on its future.
Psychoanalytic literary criticism was conceived at the precise moment in which Freud, reflecting upon his self-analysis, made a connection to two plays and thus gave us a radically new approach to reading literature. Writing to his friend Wilhelm Fliess in 1897, Freud breathlessly advanced the idea that “love of the mother and jealousy of the father” are universal phenomena of early childhood (Origins, 223-24). He referred immediately to the gripping power of Oedipus Rex and Hamlet for confirmation of, and perhaps inspiration for, his compelling perception of family drama, naming his theory the “Oedipus complex” after Sophocles’ legendary fictional hero.
Freud acknowledged repeatedly his indebtedness to literature, mythology, and philosophy. There is no doubt that he was a great humanist, steeped in world literature, able to read several languages and range across disciplinary boundaries. He regarded creative