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Carolyn wrote:
"The viola d'amore (I had the pleasure of hearing a duet of viole
d'amore years ago) is distinguished by two sets of strings, one
to be played, the other to vibrate sympathetically."
MR: Like the "amorandola," it has seven strings (plus the seven
sympathizers). Fleur de Fyler plays a viola d'amore in PF.
I believe that the notion of sympathetic strings was important
to Nabokov.
As I have laid out before, it seems likely to me Nabokov knew of and
had read the works of the 17th C. British writer Joseph Glanvill.
Glanvill is the purported source of epigraphs in two of Poe's most
famous stories, and he is also the source of the "Scholar Gypsy" story,
which Matthew Arnold borrowed for the poem cited by Kinbote.
In the section from Glanvill in which the scholar gypsy appears,
Glanvill goes on to say that "I see not why the phancy of one man may
not determine the cogitation of another rightly qualified, as easily
as his bodily motion. This influence seems to be no more unreasonable,
then that of one string of a Lute upon another; when a stroak on it
causeth a proportionable motion in the sympathizing consort, which is
distant from it and not sensibly touched."
In his conclusion, Glanvill says: "So then, the agitated parts of the
Brain begetting a motion in the proxime aether; it is propogated
through the liquid medium, as we see the motion is which is caus'd
by a stone thrown into the water. Now, when the thus moved matter
meets with anything like that, from which it receives its primary
impress; it will proportionably move it, as it is in Musical Strings
tuned Unisons. And thus the motion being convey'd, from the Brain of
one man to the Phancy of another; it is there receiv'd from the
instrument of conveyance, the subtil matter; and the same kind of
strings being moved, and much what after the same manner as in the
first Imaginant; the Soul is awaken'd to the same apprehensions, as
were they that caus'd them."
These passages may be important for a number of reasons. Certainly
they bolster Brian Boyd's notion that one (dead) soul may guide the
imagination of another. But why else might these sympathetic strings
appear and reappear in Bend Sinister and PF? One idea: in PF, this is
but one more example of doubling. But why for Bend Sinister (which
I have not read)?
Matthew Roth