Freud - Complete Works (392 page)
Leonardo Da Vinci And A Memory Of His Childhood
2278
Nothing is further from the
wishes of Leonardo’s biographers than to try to solve the
problems in their hero’s mental life by starting from his
small weaknesses and peculiarities; and the usual comment that they
make on these singular accounts is one which lays stress on the
artist’s kindness and consideration for his pupils. They
forget that what calls for explanation is not Leonardo’s
behaviour, but the fact that he left these pieces of evidence of it
behind him. As it is impossible to believe that his motive was that
of letting proofs of his good nature fall into our hands, we must
assume that it was another motive, an affective one, which led him
to write these notes down. What motive it was is not easy to guess,
and we should be unable to suggest one if there were not another
account found among Leonardo’s papers which throws a vivid
light on these strangely trifling notes about his pupils’
clothing, etc.:
Expenses after
Caterina’s death for her
funeral 27
florins
2 pounds of
wax . . . . . 18
“
For transporting
and erecting the
cross . .
12 “
Catafalque . . . . . 4 ”
Pall-bearers . . . . . 8 ”
For 4 priests
and 4
clerks . . . . 20 ”
Bell-ringing . . . . . 2 ”
For the
grave-diggers . . . . . 16 ”
For the licence
- to the
officials
. . . 1 ”
—————
Total 108 florins
Previous
expenses
For
the
doctor . . 4 florins
For
sugar and
candles . 12 ”
16 florins
—————
Grand
total 124
florins.¹
¹
Merezhkovsky (1903, 372). - As a melancholy
example of the uncertainty that surrounds the information, which is
in any case scanty enough, about Leonardo’s private life, I
may mention the fact that the same account is quoted by Solmi
(1908, 104) with considerable variations. The most serious one is
that soldi are given instead of florins. It may be assumed that
florins in this account do not mean the old ‘gold
florins’ but the monetary units which were used later and
were worth 1 2/3 lire or 33 1/3 soldi. Solmi makes Caterina a
servant who had looked after Leonardo’s household for some
time. The source from which the two versions of these accounts were
taken was not accessible to me.
Leonardo Da Vinci And A Memory Of His Childhood
2279
The novelist Merezhkovsky alone
is able to tell us who this Caterina was. From two other short
notes¹ he concludes that Leonardo’s mother, the poor
peasant woman of Vinci, came to Milan in 1493 to visit her son, who
was then 41; that she fell ill there, was taken to hospital by
Leonardo, and when she died was honoured by him with this costly
funeral.
This interpretation by the
psychological novelist cannot be put to the proof, but it can claim
so much inner probability, and is so much in harmony with all that
we otherwise know of Leonardo’s emotional activity, that I
cannot refrain from accepting it as correct. He had succeeded in
subjecting his feelings to the yoke of research and in inhibiting
their free utterance; but even for him there were occasions when
what had been suppressed obtained expression forcibly. The death of
the mother he had once loved so dearly was one of these. What we
have before us in the account of the costs of the funeral is the
expression - distorted out of all recognition - of his mourning for
his mother. We wonder how such distortion could come about, and
indeed we cannot understand it if we treat it as a normal mental
process. But similar processes are well known to us in the abnormal
conditions of neurosis and especially of what is known as
‘obsessional neurosis’. There we can see how the
expression of intense feelings, which have however become
unconscious through repression, is displaced on to trivial and even
foolish actions. The expression of these repressed feelings has
been lowered by the forces opposed to them to such a degree that
one would have had to form a most insignificant estimate of their
intensity; but the imperative compulsiveness with which this
trivial expressive act is performed betrays the real force of the
impulses - a force which is rooted in the unconscious and which
consciousness would like to deny. Only a comparison such as this
with what happens in obsessional neurosis can explain
Leonardo’s account of the expenses of his mother’s
funeral. In his unconscious he was still tied to her by erotically
coloured feelings, as he had been in childhood. The opposition that
came from the subsequent repression of this childhood love did not
allow him to set up a different and worthier memorial to her in his
diary. But what emerged as a compromise from this neurotic conflict
had to be carried out; and thus it was that the account was entered
in the diary, and has come to the knowledge of posterity as
something unintelligible.
¹
‘Caterina arrived on July 16,
1493.’ - ‘Giovannina - a fabulous face - Call on
Caterina in the hospital and make enquiries.’
Leonardo Da Vinci And A Memory Of His Childhood
2280
It does not seem a very
extravagant step to apply what we have learnt from the funeral
account to the reckonings of the pupils’ expenses. They would
then be another instance of the scanty remnants of Leonardo’s
libidinal impulses finding expression in a compulsive manner and in
a distorted form. On that view, his mother and his pupils, the
likenesses of his own boyish beauty, had been his sexual objects -
so far as the sexual repression which dominated his nature allows
us so to describe them - and the compulsion to note in laborious
detail the sums he spent on them betrayed in this strange way his
rudimentary conflicts. From this it would appear that
Leonardo’s erotic life did really belong to the type of
homosexuality whose psychical development we have succeeded in
disclosing, and the emergence of the homosexual situation in his
phantasy of the vulture would become intelligible to us: for its
meaning was exactly what we have already asserted of that type. We
should have to translate it thus: ‘It was through this erotic
relation with my mother that I became a
homosexual.’¹
¹
The forms of expression in which
Leonardo’s repressed libido was allowed to show itself -
circumstantiality and concern over money - are among the traits of
character which result from anal erotism. See my ‘Character
and Anal Erotism’ (1908
b
).
Leonardo Da Vinci And A Memory Of His Childhood
2281
IV
We have not yet done with Leonardo’s
vulture phantasy. In words which only too plainly recall a
description of a sexual act (‘and struck me many times with
its tail against my lips’), Leonardo stresses the intensity
of the erotic relations between mother and child. From this linking
of his mother’s (the vulture’s) activity with the
prominence of the mouth zone it is not difficult to guess that a
second memory is contained in the phantasy. This may be translated:
‘My mother pressed innumerable passionate kisses on my
mouth.’ The phantasy is compounded from the memory of being
suckled and being kissed by his mother.
Kindly nature has given the
artist the ability to express his most secret mental impulses,
which are hidden even from himself, by means of the works that he
creates; and these works have a powerful effect on others who are
strangers to the artist, and who are themselves unaware of the
source of their emotion. Can it be that there is nothing in
Leonardo’s life work to bear witness to what his memory
preserved as the strongest impression of his childhood? One would
certainly expect there to be something. Yet if one considers the
profound transformations through which an impression in an
artist’s life has to pass before it is allowed to make its
contribution to a work of art, one will be bound to keep any claim
to certainty in one’s demonstration within very modest
limits; and this is especially so in Leonardo’s case.
Anyone who thinks of
Leonardo’s paintings will be reminded of a remarkable smile,
at once fascinating and puzzling, which he conjured up on the lips
of his female subjects. It is an unchanging smile, on long, curved
lips; it has become a mark of his style and the name
‘Leonardesque’ has been chosen for it.¹ In the
strangely beautiful face of the Florentine Mona Lisa del Giocondo
it has produced the most powerful and confusing effect on whoever
looks at it. This smile has called for an interpretation, and it
has met with many of the most varied kinds, none of which has been
satisfactory. ‘Voilà quatre siècles
bientôt que Monna Lisa fait perdre la tête à
tous ceux qui parlent d’elle, après l’avoir
longtemps regardée.’²
¹
[
Footnote added
1919:] The
connoisseur of art will think here of the peculiar fixed smile
found in archaic Greek sculptures - in those, for example, from
Aegina; he will perhaps also discover something similar in the
figures of Leonardo’s teacher Verrocchio and therefore have
some misgivings in accepting the arguments that follow.
²
[‘For almost four centuries now Mona
Lisa has caused all who talk of her, after having gazed on her for
long, to lose their heads.’] The words are Gruyer’s,
quoted by von Seidlitz (1909,
2
, 280).
Leonardo Da Vinci And A Memory Of His Childhood
2282
Muther (1909,
1
, 314)
writes: ‘What especially casts a spell on the spectator is
the daemonic magic of this smile. Hundreds of poets and authors
have written about this woman who now appears to smile on us so
seductively, and now to stare coldly and without soul into space;
and no one has solved the riddle of her smile, no one has read the
meaning of her thoughts. Everything, even the landscape, is
mysteriously dream-like, and seems to be trembling in a kind of
sultry sensuality.’
The idea that two distinct
elements are combined in Mona Lisa’s smile is one that has
struck several critics. They accordingly find in the beautiful
Florentine’s expression the most perfect representation of
the contrasts which dominate the erotic life of women; the contrast
between reserve and seduction, and between the most devoted
tenderness and a sensuality that is ruthlessly demanding -
consuming men as if they were alien beings. This is the view of
Müntz (1899, 417): ‘On sait quelle énigme
indéchiffrable et passionnante Monna Lisa Gioconda ne cesse
depuis bientôt quatre siècles de proposer aux
admirateurs pressés devant elle. Jamais artiste
(j’emprunte la plume du délicat écrivain qui se
cache sous le pseudonyme de Pierre de Corlay) "a-t-il traduit
ainsi l’essence même de la fémininité:
tendresse et coquetterie, pudeur et sourde volupté, tout le
mystère d’un coeur qui se réserve, d’un
cerveau qui réfléchit, d’une
personnalité qui se garde et ne livre
d’elle-même que son
rayonnement . . ."'¹ The Italian
writer Angelo Conti (1910, 93) saw the picture in the Louvre
brought to life by a ray of sunshine. ‘La donna sorrideva in
una calma regale: i suoi istinti di conquista, di ferocia, tutta
l’eredità della specie, la volontà della
seduzione e dell’ agguato, la grazia del inganno, la
bontà che cela un proposito crudele, tutto ciò
appariva alternativamente e scompariva dietro il velo ridente e si
fondeva nel poema del suo sorriso . . . Buona e
malvagia, crudele e compassionevole, graziosa e felina, ella
rideva . . .’²
¹
[‘We know what an insoluble and
enthralling enigma Mona Lisa Gioconda has never ceased through
nearly four centuries to pose to the admirers that throng in front
of her. No artist (I borrow the words from the sensitive writer who
conceals himself behind the pseudonym of Pierre de Corlay)
"has ever expressed so well the very essence of femininity:
tenderness and coquetry, modesty and secret sensuous joy, all the
mystery of a heart that holds aloof, a brain that meditates, a
personality that holds back and yields nothing of itself save its
radiance".’]
²
[‘The lady smiled in regal calm: her
instincts of conquest, of ferocity, all the heredity of the
species, the will to seduce and to ensnare, the charm of deceit,
the kindness that conceals a cruel purpose, - all this appeared and
disappeared by turns behind the laughing veil and buried itself in
the poem of her smile . . . Good and wicked, cruel and
compassionate, graceful and feline, she
laughed . . .’]