ABSTRACT
In athletic confrontations, the participants and the spectator sublimate their murderous as well as sexual impulses whether or not there is physical contact. The English author Julian Barnes wrote of his encounter at the age of thirty-six with one of his cultural heroes, the seventy-seven-year-old writer Arthur Koestler. Nabokov, a playful and sometimes hateful verbal duellist, spent much passion and time on his “literal” English translation of Pushkin’s novel in verse, Eugene Onegin, one crucial turning point of which is the hero’s killing his poet friend Lenski in a duel with pistols. The relationships were predominantly emotionally sadomasochistic, although not sexually so except in fantasy. The love somewhat neutralises but never eradicates the concomitant potential presence of hate. Love-and-hate makes life easier than compulsive love-or-hate. Unlike sports or chess, there should not be a winner and a loser in the psychoanalytic encounter. If the analysis fails, both parties are losers.
