James Strachey
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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| - | '''''Writings on art and literature''''' is an English language collection of writings by [[Sigmund Freud]] on [[art]] and [[literature]]: | ||
| - | From the publisher: | + | '''James Beaumont Strachey''' (1887 – 1967) was a British psychoanalyst, and, with his wife [[Alix Strachey|Alix]], a translator of [[Sigmund Freud]] into English. |
| - | :Despite Freud’s enormous influence on twentieth-century interpretations of the humanities, there has never before been in English a complete collection of his writings on art and literature. These fourteen essays cover the entire range of his work on these subjects, in chronological order beginning with his first published analysis of a work of literature, the [[1907]] “[[Delusion and Dreams in Jensen’s Gradiva]]” and concluding with the 1940 posthumous publication of “[[Medusa's Head]].” Many of the essays included in this collection have been crucial in contemporary literary and art criticism and theory. | + | He was a son of Lt-Gen Sir [[Richard Strachey]] & Lady (Jane) Strachey; called the ''enfant miracle'' as his father was 70 and his mother 47. Some of his nieces and nephews, who were considerably older than James, called him ''Jembeau'' or ''Uncle Baby''. His parents had thirteen children, of whom ten lived to adulthood. |
| - | :Among the subjects Freud engages are Shakespeare’s ''[[Hamlet]]'', ''[[The Merchant of Venice]]'', ''[[King Lear]]'', and ''[[Macbeth]]'', Goethe’s ''[[Dichtung und Wahrheit]]'', Michelangelo’s Moses, [[E. T. A. Hoffmann]]’s “''[[The Sand Man]]'',” Dostoevsky’s ''[[The Brothers Karamazov]]'', [[fairy tale]]s, the effect of and the meaning of beauty, mythology, and the games of aestheticization. All texts are drawn from ''[[The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud]]'', edited by [[James Strachey]]. The volume includes the notes prepared for that edition by the editor. | + | He was educated at [[Trinity College, Cambridge]], where he took over the rooms used by his older brother [[Lytton Strachey]], and was known as 'the Little Strachey'; Lytton was now 'the Great Strachey'. |
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| + | James was assistant editor of "[[The Spectator]]", and a member of the [[Bloomsbury Group]] or 'Bloomsberries' when he became familiar with [[Alix Strachey|Alix Sargant Florence]], though they first met in 1910. They moved in together in 1919 and married in 1920. | ||
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| + | Soon afterwards they moved to [[Vienna]], where James, an admirer of Freud, began a [[psychoanalysis]] with the great man. Freud asked the couple to translate some of his works into [[English language|English]], and this became their lives' work. Both became psychoanalysts themselves, and as well as Freud's works they also translated works by a number of other European psychoanalysts. Their translation of Freud's works, in twenty-four volumes, remains the standard edition of Freud's works to this day. According to [[Michael Holroyd|Holroyd]] a German publishing house considered retranslating their translation of the Master's works back into German, because they were a work of art and scholarship, with a maze of additional footnotes and introductions. | ||
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| + | James is mentioned in the text of Holroyd’s biography of Lytton Strachey, and in the introduction to the 1971 Penguin edition and the 1994-95 revised edition. James was the literary executor for his brother Lytton, so Holroyd saw James and Alix frequently over the five years from 1962 that he was researching and writing the first edition (published in 1967-68) of his biography of Lytton. He describes James as "almost an exact replica of Freud himself, though with some traces of Lytton’s physiognomy – the slightly bulbous nose in particular. He wore a short white beard because, he told me, of the difficulty of shaving. He had had it now for some fifty years. He also wore spectacles, one lens of which was transparent, the other translucent. It was only later that I learnt he had overcome with extraordinary patience a series of eye operations that had threatened to put an end to his magnum opus". | ||
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| + | James was also an authority on Haydn, Mozart and Wagner, and contributed notes and commentaries to [[Glyndebourne]] programmes. | ||
| - | :In addition to the writings on Jensen's [[Gradiva]] and Medusa, the essays are: “[[Psychopathic Characters on the Stage]],” “[[The Antithetical Meaning of Primal Words]],” “[[The Occurrence in Dreams of Material from Fairy Tales]],” “[[The Theme of the Three Caskets]],” “[[The Moses of Michelangelo]],” “[[Some Character Types Met with in Psychoanalytic Work]],” “[[On Transience]],” “[[A Mythological Parallel to a Visual Obsession]],” “[[A Childhood Recollection from Dichtung und Wahrheit]],” “[[The Uncanny]],” “[[Dostoevsky and Parricide]],” and “[[The Goethe Prize]].” | ||
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James Beaumont Strachey (1887 – 1967) was a British psychoanalyst, and, with his wife Alix, a translator of Sigmund Freud into English.
He was a son of Lt-Gen Sir Richard Strachey & Lady (Jane) Strachey; called the enfant miracle as his father was 70 and his mother 47. Some of his nieces and nephews, who were considerably older than James, called him Jembeau or Uncle Baby. His parents had thirteen children, of whom ten lived to adulthood.
He was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he took over the rooms used by his older brother Lytton Strachey, and was known as 'the Little Strachey'; Lytton was now 'the Great Strachey'.
James was assistant editor of "The Spectator", and a member of the Bloomsbury Group or 'Bloomsberries' when he became familiar with Alix Sargant Florence, though they first met in 1910. They moved in together in 1919 and married in 1920.
Soon afterwards they moved to Vienna, where James, an admirer of Freud, began a psychoanalysis with the great man. Freud asked the couple to translate some of his works into English, and this became their lives' work. Both became psychoanalysts themselves, and as well as Freud's works they also translated works by a number of other European psychoanalysts. Their translation of Freud's works, in twenty-four volumes, remains the standard edition of Freud's works to this day. According to Holroyd a German publishing house considered retranslating their translation of the Master's works back into German, because they were a work of art and scholarship, with a maze of additional footnotes and introductions.
James is mentioned in the text of Holroyd’s biography of Lytton Strachey, and in the introduction to the 1971 Penguin edition and the 1994-95 revised edition. James was the literary executor for his brother Lytton, so Holroyd saw James and Alix frequently over the five years from 1962 that he was researching and writing the first edition (published in 1967-68) of his biography of Lytton. He describes James as "almost an exact replica of Freud himself, though with some traces of Lytton’s physiognomy – the slightly bulbous nose in particular. He wore a short white beard because, he told me, of the difficulty of shaving. He had had it now for some fifty years. He also wore spectacles, one lens of which was transparent, the other translucent. It was only later that I learnt he had overcome with extraordinary patience a series of eye operations that had threatened to put an end to his magnum opus".
James was also an authority on Haydn, Mozart and Wagner, and contributed notes and commentaries to Glyndebourne programmes.
