the other hand we recognize that the accidental circumstances of his
childhood produced a far reaching disturbing effect. His illegitimate
birth deprived him of the influence of a father until perhaps his fifth
year, and left him to the tender seduction of a mother whose only
consolation he was. Having been kissed by her into sexual prematurity,
he surely must have entered into a phase of infantile sexual activity of
which only one single manifestation was definitely evinced, namely, the
intensity of his infantile sexual investigation. The impulse for looking
and inquisitiveness were most strongly stimulated by his impressions
from early childhood; the enormous mouth-zone received its accentuation
which it had never given up. From his later contrasting behavior, as the
exaggerated sympathy for animals, we can conclude that this infantile
period did not lack in strong sadistic traits.
An energetic shift of repression put an end to this infantile excess,
and established the dispositions which became manifest in the years of
puberty. The most striking result of this transformation was a turning
away from all gross sensual activities. Leonardo was able to lead a life
of abstinence and made the impression of an asexual person. When the
floods of pubescent excitement came over the boy they did not make him
ill by forcing him to costly and harmful substitutive formations; owing
to the early preference for sexual inquisitiveness, the greater part of
the sexual needs could be sublimated into a general thirst after
knowledge and so elude repression. A much smaller portion of the libido
was applied to sexual aims, and represented the stunted sexual life of
the grown up. In consequence of the repression of the love for the
mother this portion assumed a homosexual attitude and manifested itself
as ideal love for boys. The fixation on the mother, as well as the happy
reminiscences of his relations with her, was preserved in his
unconscious but remained for the time in an inactive state. In this
manner the repression, fixation, and sublimation participated in the
disposal of the contributions which the sexual impulse furnished to
Leonardo's psychic life.
From the obscure age of boyhood Leonardo appears to us as an artist, a
painter, and sculptor, thanks to a specific talent which was probably
enforced by the early awakening of the impulse for looking in the first
years of childhood. We would gladly report in what way the artistic
activity depends on the psychic primitive forces were it not that our
material is inadequate just here. We content ourselves by emphasizing
the fact, concerning which hardly any doubt still exists, that the
productions of the artist give outlet also to his sexual desire, and in
the case of Leonardo we can refer to the information imparted by Vasari,
namely, that heads of laughing women and pretty boys, or representations
of his sexual objects, attracted attention among his first artistic
attempts. It seems that during his flourishing youth Leonardo at first
worked in an uninhibited manner. As he took his father as a model for
his outer conduct in life, he passed through a period of manly creative
power and artistic productivity in Milan, where favored by fate he found
a substitute for his father in the duke Lodovico Moro. But the
experience of others was soon confirmed in him, to wit, that the almost
complete suppression of the real sexual life does not furnish the most
favorable conditions for the activity of the sublimated sexual
strivings. The figurativeness of his sexual life asserted itself, his
activity and ability to quick decisions began to weaken, the tendency to
reflection and delay was already noticeable as a disturbance in The
Holy Supper, and with the influence of the technique determined the fate
of this magnificent work. Slowly a process developed in him which can be
put parallel only to the regressions of neurotics. His development at
puberty into the artist was outstripped by the early infantile
determinant of the investigator, the second sublimation of his erotic
impulses turned back to the primitive one which was prepared at the
first repression. He became an investigator, first in service of his
art, later independently and away from his art. With the loss of his
patron, the substitute for his father, and with the increasing
difficulties in his life, the regressive displacement extended in
dimension. He became _"impacientissimo al pennello"_ (most impatient
with the brush) as reported by a correspondent of the countess Isabella
d'Este who desired to possess at any cost a painting from his hand.[77]
His infantile past had obtained control over him. The investigation,
however, which now took the place of his artistic production, seems to
have born certain traits which betrayed the activity of unconscious
impulses; this was seen in his insatiability, his regardless obstinacy,
and in his lack of ability to adjust himself to actual conditions.
At the summit of his life, in the age of the first fifties, at a time
when the sex characteristics of the woman have already undergone a
regressive change, and when the libido in the man not infrequently
ventures into an energetic advance, a new transformation came over him.
Still deeper strata of his psychic content became active again, but this
further regression was of benefit to his art which was in a state of
deterioration. He met the woman who awakened in him the memory of the
happy and sensuously enraptured smile of his mother, and under the
influence of this awakening he acquired back the stimulus which guided
him in the beginning of his artistic efforts when he formed the smiling
woman. He painted Monna Lisa, Saint Anne, and a number of mystic
pictures which were characterized by the enigmatic smile. With the help
of his oldest erotic feelings he triumphed in conquering once more the
inhibition in his art. This last development faded away in the obscurity
of the approaching old age. But before this his intellect rose to the
highest capacity of a view of life, which was far in advance of his
time.
In the preceding chapters I have shown what justification one may have
for such representation of Leonardo's course of development, for this
manner of arranging his life and explaining his wavering between art and
science. If after accomplishing these things I should provoke the
criticism from even friends and adepts of psychoanalysis, that I have
only written a psychoanalytic romance, I should answer that I certainly
did not overestimate the reliability of these results. Like others I
succumbed to the attraction emanating from this great and mysterious
man, in whose being one seems to feel powerful propelling passions,
which after all can only evince themselves so remarkably subdued.
But whatever may be the truth about Leonardo's life we cannot relinquish
our effort to investigate it psychoanalytically before we have finished
another task. In general we must mark out the limits which are set up
for the working capacity of psychoanalysis in biography so that every
omitted explanation should not be held up to us as a failure.
Psychoanalytic investigation has at its disposal the data of the history
of the person's life, which on the one hand consists of accidental
events and environmental influences, and on the other hand of the
reported reactions of the individual. Based on the knowledge of psychic
mechanisms it now seeks to investigate dynamically the character of the
individual from his reactions, and to lay bare his earliest psychic
motive forces as well as their later transformations and developments.
If this succeeds then the reaction of the personality is explained
through the cooeperation of constitutional and accidental factors or
through inner and outer forces. If such an undertaking, as perhaps in
the case of Leonardo, does not yield definite results then the blame for
it is not to be laid to the faulty or inadequate psychoanalytic method,
but to the vague and fragmentary material left by tradition about this
person. It is, therefore, only the author who forced psychoanalysis to
furnish an expert opinion on such insufficient material, who is to be
held responsible for the failure.
However, even if one had at his disposal a very rich historical material
and could manage the psychic mechanism with the greatest certainty, a
psychoanalytic investigation could not possibly furnish the definite
view, if it concerns two important questions, that the individual could
turn out only so and not differently. Concerning Leonardo we had to
represent the view that the accident of his illegitimate birth and the
pampering of his mother exerted the most decisive influence on his
character formation and his later fate, through the fact that the sexual
repression following this infantile phase caused him to sublimate his
libido into a thirst after knowledge, and thus determined his sexual
inactivity for his entire later life. The repression, however, which
followed the first erotic gratification of childhood did not have to
take place, in another individual it would perhaps not have taken place
or it would have turned out not nearly as profuse. We must recognize
here a degree of freedom which can no longer be solved psychoanalytically.
One is as little justified in representing the issue of this shift of
repression as the only possible issue. It is quite probable that another
person would not have succeeded in withdrawing the main part of his
libido from the repression through sublimation into a desire for
knowledge; under the same influences as Leonardo another person might
have sustained a permanent injury to his intellectual work or an
uncontrollable disposition to compulsion neurosis. The two
characteristics of Leonardo which remained unexplained through
psychoanalytic effort are first, his particular tendency to repress his
impulses, and second, his extraordinary ability to sublimate the
primitive impulses.
The impulses and their transformations are the last things that
psychoanalysis can discern. Henceforth it leaves the place to biological
investigation. The tendency to repression, as well as the ability to
sublimate, must be traced back to the organic bases of the character,
upon which alone the psychic structure springs up. As artistic talent
and productive ability are intimately connected with sublimation we
have to admit that also the nature of artistic attainment is
psychoanalytically inaccessible to us. Biological investigation of our
time endeavors to explain the chief traits of the organic constitution
of a person through the fusion of male and female predispositions in the
material sense; Leonardo's physical beauty as well as his
left-handedness furnish here some support. However, we do not wish to
leave the ground of pure psychologic investigation. Our aim remains to
demonstrate the connection between outer experiences and reactions of
the person over the path of the activity of the impulses. Even if
psychoanalysis does not explain to us the fact of Leonardo's artistic
accomplishment, it still gives us an understanding of the expressions
and limitations of the same. It does seem as if only a man with
Leonardo's childhood experiences could have painted Monna Lisa and Saint
Anne, and could have supplied his works with that sad fate and so obtain
unheard of fame as a natural historian; it seems as if the key to all
his attainments and failures was hidden in the childhood phantasy of
the vulture.
But may one not take offense at the results of an investigation which
concede to the accidents of the parental constellation so decisive an
influence on the fate of a person, which, for example, subordinates
Leonardo's fate to his illegitimate birth and to the sterility of his
first step-mother Donna Albiera? I believe that one has no right to feel
so; if one considers accident as unworthy of determining our fate, it is
only a relapse to the pious aspect of life, the overcoming of which
Leonardo himself prepared when he put down in writing that the sun does
not move. We are naturally grieved over the fact that a just God and a
kindly providence do not guard us better against such influences in our
most defenseless age. We thereby gladly forget that as a matter of fact
everything in our life is accident from our very origin through the
meeting of spermatozoa and ovum, accident, which nevertheless
participates in the lawfulness and fatalities of nature, and lacks only
the connection to our wishes and illusions. The division of life's
determinants into the "fatalities" of our constitution and the
"accidents" of our childhood may still be indefinite in individual
cases, but taken altogether one can no longer entertain any doubt about
the importance of precisely our first years of childhood. We all still
show too little respect for nature, which in Leonardo's deep words
recalling Hamlet's speech _"is full of infinite reasons which never
appeared in experience."_[78] Every one of us human beings corresponds
to one of the infinite experiments in which these "reasons of nature"
force themselves into experience.
THE END
FOOTNOTES:
[1] In the words of J. Burckhard, cited by Alexandra Konstantinowa, Die
Entwicklung des Madonnentypus by Leonardo da Vinci, Strassburg, 1907.
[2] Vite, etc. LXXXIII. 1550-1584.
[3] Traktat von der Malerei, new edition and introduction by Marie
Herzfeld, E. Diederichs, Jena, 1909.
[4] Solmi. La resurrezione dell' opera di Leonardo in the collected
work; Leonardo da Vinci. Conferenze Florentine, Milan, 1910.
[5] Scognamiglio Ricerche e Documenti sulla giovinezza di Leonardo da
Vinci. Napoli, 1900.
[6] W. v. Seidlitz. Leonardo da Vinci, der Wendepunkt der Renaissance,
1909, Bd. I, p. 203.
[7] W. v. Seidlitz, l. c. Bd. II, p. 48
[8] W. Pater. The Renaissance, p. 107, The Macmillan Co., 1910. "But it
is certain that at one period of his life he had almost ceased to be an
artist."
[9] Cf. v. Seidlitz, Bd. I die Geschichte der Restaurations--und
Rettungsversuche.
[10] Muentz. Leonard de Vinci, Paris, 1899, p. 18. (A letter of a
contemporary from India to a Medici alludes to this peculiarity of
Leonardo. Given by Richter: The literary Works of Leonardo da Vinci.)
[11] F. Botazzi. Leonardo biologo e anatomico. Conferenze Florentine, p.
186, 1910.
[12] E. Solmi: Leonardo da Vinci. German Translation by Emmi Hirschberg.
Berlin, 1908.
[13] Marie Herzfeld: Leonardo da Vinci der Denker, Forscher und Poet.
Second edition. Jena, 1906.
[14] His collected witticisms--belle facezie,--which are not translated,
may be an exception. Cf. Herzfeld, Leonardo da Vinci, p. 151.
[15] According to Scognamiglio (l. c. p. 49) reference is made to this
episode in an obscure and even variously interpreted passage of the
Codex Atlanticus: "Quando io feci Domeneddio putto voi mi metteste in
prigione, ora s'io lo fo grande, voi mi farete peggio."
[16] Merejkowski: The Romance of Leonardo da Vinci, translated by
Herbert Trench, G. P. Putnam Sons, New York. It forms the second of the
historical Trilogy entitled Christ and Anti-Christ, of which the first
volume is Julian Apostata, and the third volume is Peter the Great and
Alexei.
[17] Solmi l. c. p. 46.
[18] Filippo Botazzi, l. c. p. 193.
[19] Marie Herzfeld: Leonardo da Vinci, Traktat von der Malerei, Jena,
1909 (Chap. I, 64).
[20] "Such transfiguration of science and of nature into emotions, or
one might say, religion, is one of the characteristic traits of da
Vinci's manuscripts, which one finds expressed hundreds of times."
Solmi: La resurrezione, etc, p. 11.
[21] La resurrezione, etc., p. 8: "Leonardo placed the study of nature
as a precept to painting ... later the passion for study became
dominating, he no longer wished to acquire science for art, but science
for science' sake."
[22] For an enumeration of his scientific attainments see Marie
Herzfeld's interesting introduction (Jena, 1906) to the essays of the
Conference Florentine, 1910, and elsewhere.
[23] For a corroboration of this improbable sounding assertion see the
"Analysis of the Phobia of a Five-year-old Boy," Jahrbuch fuer
Psychoanalytische und Psychopathologische Forschungen, Bd. I, 1909, and
the similar observation in Bd. II, 1910. In an essay concerning
"Infantile Theories of Sex" (Sammlungen kleiner Schriften zur
Neurosenlehre, p. 167, Second Series, 1909), I wrote: "But this
reasoning and doubting serves as a model for all later intellectual work
in problems, and the first failure acts as a paralyzer for all times."
[24] Scognamiglio 1. c., p. 15.
[25] Cited by Scognamiglio from the Codex Atlanticus, p. 65.
[26] Cf. here the "Bruchstueck einer Hysterieanalyse," in Neurosenlehre,
Second series, 1909.
[27] Horapollo: Hieroglyphica I, II. [Greek: Metera de graphontex ...
gupa zographonsin].
[28] Roscher: Ausf. Lexicon der griechischen und roemischen Mythologie.
Artikel Mut, II Bd., 1894-1897.--Lanzone. Dizionario di Mitologia
egizia. Torino, 1882.
[29] H. Hartleben, Champollion. Sein Leben und sein Werk, 1906.
[30] "[Greek: gypa de arrena ou phasigenesthai pote, aila pheleias
apasas]," cited by v. Roemer. Ueber die androgynische Idee des Lebens,
Jahrb. f. Sexuelle Zwischenstufen, V, 1903, p. 732.
[31] Plutarch: Veluti scarabaeos mares tantum esse putarunt Aegyptii sic
inter vultures mares non inveniri statuerunt
[32] Horapollinis Niloi Hieroglyphica edidit Conradus Leemans
Amstelodami, 1835. The words referring to the sex of the vulture read as
follows (p. 14): "[Greek: petera men hepeide arren en touto genei ton
zoon ouch hyparchei.]."
[33] E. Muentz, 1. c., p. 282.
[34] E. Muentz, 1. c.
[35] See the illustrations in Lanzone l. c. T. CXXXVI-VIII.
[36] v. Roemer l. c.
[37] Cf. the observations in the Jahrbuch fuer Psychoanalytische und
Psychopathologische Forschungen, Vol. I, 1909.
[38] Cf. Richard Payne Knight: The Cult of Priapus.
[39] Prominently among those who undertook these investigations are I.
Sadger, whose results I can essentially corroborate from my own
experience. I am also aware that Stekel of Vienna, Ferenczi of Budapest,
and Brill of New York, came to the same conclusions.
[40] Edm. Solmi: Leonardo da Vinci, German translation, p. 152.
[41] Solmi, 1. c. p. 203.
[42] Leonardo thus behaves like one who was in the habit of making a
daily confession to another person whom he now replaced by his diary.
For an assumption as to who this person may have been see Merejkowski,
p. 309.
[43] M. Herzfeld: Leonardo da Vinci, 1906, p. 141.
[44] The wording is that of Merejkowski, 1. c. p. 237.
[45] The equestrian monument of Francesco Sforza.
[46] The full wording is found in M. Herzfeld, 1. c. p. 45.
[47] Merejkowski 1. c.--As a disappointing illustration of the vagueness
of the information concerning Leonardo's intimate life, meager as it is,
I mention the fact that the same expense account is given by Solmi with
considerable variation (German translation, p. 104). The most serious
difference is the substitution of florins by soldi. One may assume that
in this account florins do not mean the old "gold florins," but those
used at a later period which amounted to 1-2/3 lira or 33-1/2
soldi.--Solmi represents Caterina as a servant who had taken care of
Leonardo's household for a certain time. The source from which the two
representations of this account were taken was not accessible to me.
[48] "Caterina came in July, 1493."
[49] The manner of expression through which the repressed libidio could
manifest itself in Leonardo, such as circumstantiality and marked
interest in money, belongs to those traits of character which emanate
from anal eroticism. Cf. Character und Analerotik in the second series
of my Sammlung zur Neurosenlehre, 1909, also Brill's Psychoanalysis, its
Theories and Practical Applications, Chap. XIII, Anal Eroticism and
Character, Saunders, Philadelphia.
[50] Seidlitz: Leonardo da Vinci, II Bd., p. 280.
[51] Geschichte der Malerei, Bd. I, p. 314.
[52] l. c. p. 417.
[53] A. Conti: Leonardo pittore, Conferenze Fiorentine, l. c. p. 93.
[54] l. c. p. 45.
[55] W. Pater: The Renaissance, p. 124, The Macmillan Co., 1910.
[56] M. Herzfeld: Leonardo da Vinci, p. 88.
[57] Scognamiglio, l. c. p. 32.
[58] L. Schorn, Bd. III, 1843, p. 6.
[59] The same is assumed by Merejkowski, who imagined a childhood for
Leonardo which deviates in the essential points from ours, drawn from
the results of the vulture phantasy. But if Leonardo himself had
displayed this smile, tradition hardly would have failed to report to us
this coincidence.
[60] l. c. p. 309.
[61] A. Konstantinowa, l. c., says: "Mary looks tenderly down on her
beloved child with a smile that recalls the mysterious expression of la
Gioconda." Elsewhere speaking of Mary she says: "The smile of Gioconda
floats upon her features."
[62] Cf. v. Seidlitz, l. c. Bd. II, p. 274.
[63] Cf. Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex, translated by A. A.
Brill, 2nd edition, 1916, Monograph series.
[64] "On the 9th of July, 1504, Wednesday at 7 o'clock died Ser Piero da
Vinci, notary at the palace of the Podesta, my father, at 7 o'clock. He
was 80 years old, left 10 sons and 2 daughters." (E. Muentz, l. c. p.
13.)
[65] I shall overlook a greater error committed by Leonardo in his
notice in that he gives his 77-year-old father 80 years.
[66] "He who usurps on earth my place, my place, my place, which is void
in the presence of the Son of God, has made out of my cemetery a sewer."
Canto XXXVII.
[67] It seems that in that passage of the diary Leonardo also erred in
the number of his sisters and brothers, which stands in remarkable
contrast to the apparent exactness of the same.
[68] v. Seidlitz, l. c., II, p. 270.
[69] Solmi, Conf. fior, p. 13.
[70] Muentz, l. c., La Religion de Leonardo, p. 292, etc.
[71] Herzfeld, p. 292.
[72] Vasari, translated by Schorn, 1843.
[73] Ebenda, p. 39.
[74] Concerning these letters and the combinations connected with them
see Muentz, l. c., p. 82; for the wording of the same and for the notices
connected with them see Herzfeld, l. c., p. 223.
[75] Besides, he lost some time in that he even made a drawing of a
braided cord in which one could follow the thread from one end to the
other, until it formed a perfectly circular figure; a very difficult and
beautiful drawing of this kind is engraved on copper, in the center of
it one can read the words: "Leonardus Vinci Academia" (p. 8).
[76] This criticism holds quite generally and is not aimed at Leonardo's
biographers in particular.
[77] Seidlitz II, p. 271.
[78] La natura e piena d'infinite ragione che non furono mai in
isperienza, M. Herzfeld, l. c. p. II.