Freud’s Trip to Orvieto

_{Freud’s Trip to Orvieto:}

_{The Great Doctor’s Unresolved Confrontation with Antisemitism, Death, and Homoeroticism; His Passion for Paintings; and the Writer in His Footsteps
By Nicholas Fox Weber}

 

_{“The finest paintings I have ever seen.” Freud states this with rare humility.  Presenting this as personal preference,  based on his own limited experience, surely, this is not the towering know-it-all we have come to expect?}

_{Freud traveled to Orvieto in September of 1897. He was not a religious man. He was neither raised in the Jewish faith, nor practiced it as an adult. What he was, was thoroughly steeped in the languages of myths and literature. From ancient Greek mythology to the imagery of Dante and Cervantes, Freud knew his stuff.}

_{--I knew about his obsession with the Quixote--but not about Hannibal. I knew about Signorelli, but never knew about his love of Dostoevsky.} 

_{Nicolas Fox Weber, you have written the best book I have read in years. Totally original, this book is a testament that life is endlessly interesting...} 

_{Arriving in the small town mere months after the death of his father, Freud was still in the early days of his own self-analysis. Orvieto would be one of the significant pilgrimages of his life. It would also make its mark on his work— in the form of an inexplicable inability to remember something.}

_{The way we sometimes substitute one name for another is known to us today as “Signorelli parapraxis.” A form of “Freudian slip,” it transports us back to the days before Google, when people used to get tripped up by temporary forgetting, mis-readings and mis-writings.}

_{Nowadays, we just grab our mobile phones and “google it!” –when someone can’t come up with a name. But back in Freud’s day, people had to wait it out until someone could help them remember or the person recalled the name for themselves. This was the origin of the Signorelli parapraxis, when Freud, in casual conversation with someone he had met on a train, was unable to remember Signorelli’s name. He could visualize the colors and figures in the frescoes, but for the life of him, he couldn’t recall the painter’s name. It took several days, which Freud described as “inner torment,” before he remembered the painter’s name.}

_{How could Freud forget the name of his favorite painter? Freud himself would ponder this question in great depth, not only writing three different and opposing accounts of what happened on the train that day, but conclude that the forgetting was caused by a kind of repression. He was, after all, working on the puzzling case of Anna O at the time.  If this wasn’t enough, Freud would go on to forget Signorelli’s name two more times—in 1902 and 1907.}

_{In one of the most unique and original books I’ve ever read, Freud’s Trip to Orvieto, writer and art-historian Nicolas Fox Weber follows Freud to Orvieto a hundred years later to try and get to the bottom of what happened. Weber begins with Freud’s idiosyncratic predilection.}

_{Freud loves Signorelli’s frescoes.}

_{Well, it was an odd choice. Weber, for example--probably like many people (myself included) -- prefers Signorelli’s teacher Piero della Francesca. Though Signorelli started off as an apprentice in Piero’s studio in Arezzo, his work lacks the sublime transcendent quality of that of his teacher. Weber continues—and I agree—that Signorelli’s work also lacks the jewel-like coloring of Duccio or the “more-real-than-real” vibrancy of Mantegna. And even fans of the robust style usually go for Michelangelo or Tintoretto.}

_{Why Signorelli? That is Weber’s mission: to try and find out.} 

_{For me, part of the delight of this book was that I had followed the same path as Weber... from Maud Cruttwell and Berenson to Piero, Titian, and Michelangelo...}

_{What works of art work for you are not necessarily those you like-- puzzle-like quality and the way they make life feel meaningful.} 

_{Like Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose, this is a book that you didn't know you were looking for--but you were.} 

_{So quirky was his story of Susie, his youthful love that follows him through life till she is 80! About the tricks of the mind and how wonderful it is to NOT go through life in a foggy daze. How art can change the way we think and feel, this is one of my favorite books of all time.}

_{I have created a class--for those interested (it's not a real class)} 

_{https://www.borges-library.com/2020/06/mini-syllabus-when-freud-met-the-antichrist-at-orvieto.html}

_{For really thinking along with Weber about the time Freud met the antichrist at Orvieto...} 

_{If I could, I would give this book 10 stars.}