Subject
[NABOKOV] Stray patterns
From
Date
Body
Despite the wealth of information about an American author called Opal Wheeler*, I was unable to discover when she was born and the date her books for children were published. There are vague references to "mid-twentieth century" and to book prizes received in 1946, and later. The dates indicate that Wheeler's illustrated books couldn't have been in Vladimir Nabokov's mind when he wrote "The Defense" in Russian, since it was published in Berlin already in 1930. Anyway, it may happen that certain images from her books might have been inspired by other drawings and engravings from other, more famous, illustrators. I recollect particularly well one of these, with a small boy playing piano and his father, holding a candle and wearing a nightshirt, peering at him from the door. It appears in "Haendel at the Court of the Kings" and the story of Haendel's role at the English Court, under the patronage of King George I as told by Ms. Wheeler, would have appealed to Nabokov's sense of humor.** Various hints in the first chapters of 'The Defense' seem to gain a final shape in the woodcut on the wall of Luzhin's Berlin apartment which I always involuntarily associate to Opal Wheeler's caption in her book on Haendel. In Mr and Mrs Luzhin's new residence there "was a bay window and from there one could see a small public garden with a fountain at the end of the street....(In the bedroom)..."pressing close up to one another, stood two flocculent beds....and a woodcut in the wall space between the windows showed a child prodigy in a nightgown that reached to his heels playing on an enormous piano, while his father, wearing a gray dressing gown and carrying a candle, stood stock-still, with the door ajar." ( I brought this theme up once in the List, but at that time could not name the book, nor its author).
There's been a kind of paternal and editorial tussle over Luzhin as a child-prodigy (a musician? a violinist? a chess-player?)*** which is felt in the English translation of the book, as do the wonders of reading a musical score and playing chess without the concrete instruments at hand. We all remember that in his 1964 interview with Alvin Toffler, Vladimir Nabokov mentions that: "I have no ear for music, a shortcoming I deplore bitterly...My knowledge of music is very slight...I am perfectly aware of the many parallels between the art forms of music and those of literature, especially in matters of structure, but what can I do if ear and brain refuse to cooperate? I have found a queer substitute for music in chess-- more exactly, in the composing of chess problems." ****
..................................................................................................
* Handel at the Court of Kings
by Opal Wheeler
Publisher: Zeezok Publishing
©1971, Item: 11467
Trade Paperback, 166 pages
Price: $13.95
With clarity and with admirable simplicity, keyed to the understanding of children, Opal Wheeler has traced the many-sided career of George Frederic Handel, whose restless nature vied always with his tremendous ability as a composer and director.Handel's strange boyhood, clouded by the fact that his father did not want him to become a musician, and the later years when, thanks to the patronage of the Duke of Saxe-Weissenfels, his music was played before the greatest music lovers of Europe-all this makes absorbing reading. The selections of Handel's music included here are those best understood and most apt to be mastered by young musicians.One evening, back in 1691, conservative Doctor Handel was shocked and dismayed to find his small son carrying the torch at the head of a band of singers wandering through the little town of Halle. The good doctor never quite understood the all-consuming love of music which drove his son from childhood on and on to the great heights he eventually attained as the beloved Father of the Oratorio, the composer of the magnificent "Messiah". Opal Wheeler has given us here the most finished, most completely satisfying book on her list of fine music biographies. Handel at the Court of Kings should be a favorite of all children who love music, whether they are young musicians themselves or not.
**www.baroquemusic.org/bqxhandel.html: situates Wheeler's source: "It was obligatory for every cultural and music-loving person of any rank or nobility to do the Grand European Tour which naturally included the main Italian cultural centers. Thus on his travels around Italy Handel also made a number of useful contacts including the Duke of Manchester, the English Ambassador, and most significantly Prince Ernst August of Hanover, brother of the Elector (later King George I of England) who pressed him to visit Hanover...The Royal Houses of Britain and Germany had always been closely inter-related, and the Act of Settlement of 1701 which secured the Protestant succession to the Crown of England, had made Handel's Hanoverian employer George Louis' mother heiress-presumptive to the throne of Great Britain. Thus the Elector George Louis would have been anxious to have Handel spy out the land and report back to him on the London musical, social and political scene[...] and by September 1714 Britain had a new monarch. Thus it was that George Louis, Elector of Hanover and already naturalized by Act of Parliament in 1705, became King George I of England, initiating the Royal House of Hanover. One of the first engagements for the new George I was to attend morning service at the Chapel Royal where ''a Te Deum was sung, composed by Mr Handel" - and Handel's position with the new ruler appears to have been secured."
*** - (The Defense, Foreword): "in the late thirties when an American publisher showed interest in it, but he turned out to belong to the type of publisher who dreams of becoming a male muse to his author, and our brief conjunction ended abruptly upon his suggesting I replace chess by music and make Luzhin a demented violinist." and, in fact, we learn that Luzhin.."played in St. Petersburg, Moscow, Nizhny Novgorod, Kiev, Odessa. There appeared a certain Valentinov, a cross between tutor and manager. Luzhin senior wore a black armband - mourning for his wife - and told provincial journalists that he would never have made such a through survey of his native land had he not had a prodigy for a son." His father didn't "notice that he had endowed his son with the features of a musical rather than a chess-playing prodigy, the result being both sickly and angelic - eyes strangely veiled, curly hair, and a transparent pallor."//
**** - "Luzhin senior came in - on tiptoe. He had been prepared to find the violinist still talking on the telephone...and was brought up short upon seeing his son.... 'Excellent chessmen. Do you play?' 'Indifferently,' said Luzhin senior...'What a game, what a game,' said the violinist, tenderly closing the box. 'Combinations like melodies. You know, I can simply hear the moves.'...'The game of the gods. Infinite possibilities.' 'A very ancient invention,' said Luzhin senior and looked around at his son: 'What's the matter? Come with us!' " ... // "It was this old man who explained to Luzhin the simple method of notation in chess, and Luzhin, replaying the games given in the magazine, soon discovered in himself a quality he had once envied when his father used to tell somebody at table that he personally was unable to understand how his father-in-law could read a score for hours and hear in his mind all the movements of the music as he ran his eye over the notes, now smiling, now frowning, and sometimes turning back like a reader checking a detail in a novel - a name, the time of the year. 'It must be a great pleasure,' his father had said, 'to assimilate music in its natural state.' It was a similar pleasure that Luzhin himself now began to experience as he skimmed fluently over the letters and numbers representing moves...Luzhin ...contented himself with perceiving their melody mentally through the sequence of symbols and signs. Similarly he was able 'read' a game already perused once without using the board at all; and this was all the more pleasant in that he did not have to fiddle about with chessmen while constantly listening for someone coming..." //
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/
There's been a kind of paternal and editorial tussle over Luzhin as a child-prodigy (a musician? a violinist? a chess-player?)*** which is felt in the English translation of the book, as do the wonders of reading a musical score and playing chess without the concrete instruments at hand. We all remember that in his 1964 interview with Alvin Toffler, Vladimir Nabokov mentions that: "I have no ear for music, a shortcoming I deplore bitterly...My knowledge of music is very slight...I am perfectly aware of the many parallels between the art forms of music and those of literature, especially in matters of structure, but what can I do if ear and brain refuse to cooperate? I have found a queer substitute for music in chess-- more exactly, in the composing of chess problems." ****
..................................................................................................
* Handel at the Court of Kings
by Opal Wheeler
Publisher: Zeezok Publishing
©1971, Item: 11467
Trade Paperback, 166 pages
Price: $13.95
With clarity and with admirable simplicity, keyed to the understanding of children, Opal Wheeler has traced the many-sided career of George Frederic Handel, whose restless nature vied always with his tremendous ability as a composer and director.Handel's strange boyhood, clouded by the fact that his father did not want him to become a musician, and the later years when, thanks to the patronage of the Duke of Saxe-Weissenfels, his music was played before the greatest music lovers of Europe-all this makes absorbing reading. The selections of Handel's music included here are those best understood and most apt to be mastered by young musicians.One evening, back in 1691, conservative Doctor Handel was shocked and dismayed to find his small son carrying the torch at the head of a band of singers wandering through the little town of Halle. The good doctor never quite understood the all-consuming love of music which drove his son from childhood on and on to the great heights he eventually attained as the beloved Father of the Oratorio, the composer of the magnificent "Messiah". Opal Wheeler has given us here the most finished, most completely satisfying book on her list of fine music biographies. Handel at the Court of Kings should be a favorite of all children who love music, whether they are young musicians themselves or not.
**www.baroquemusic.org/bqxhandel.html: situates Wheeler's source: "It was obligatory for every cultural and music-loving person of any rank or nobility to do the Grand European Tour which naturally included the main Italian cultural centers. Thus on his travels around Italy Handel also made a number of useful contacts including the Duke of Manchester, the English Ambassador, and most significantly Prince Ernst August of Hanover, brother of the Elector (later King George I of England) who pressed him to visit Hanover...The Royal Houses of Britain and Germany had always been closely inter-related, and the Act of Settlement of 1701 which secured the Protestant succession to the Crown of England, had made Handel's Hanoverian employer George Louis' mother heiress-presumptive to the throne of Great Britain. Thus the Elector George Louis would have been anxious to have Handel spy out the land and report back to him on the London musical, social and political scene[...] and by September 1714 Britain had a new monarch. Thus it was that George Louis, Elector of Hanover and already naturalized by Act of Parliament in 1705, became King George I of England, initiating the Royal House of Hanover. One of the first engagements for the new George I was to attend morning service at the Chapel Royal where ''a Te Deum was sung, composed by Mr Handel" - and Handel's position with the new ruler appears to have been secured."
*** - (The Defense, Foreword): "in the late thirties when an American publisher showed interest in it, but he turned out to belong to the type of publisher who dreams of becoming a male muse to his author, and our brief conjunction ended abruptly upon his suggesting I replace chess by music and make Luzhin a demented violinist." and, in fact, we learn that Luzhin.."played in St. Petersburg, Moscow, Nizhny Novgorod, Kiev, Odessa. There appeared a certain Valentinov, a cross between tutor and manager. Luzhin senior wore a black armband - mourning for his wife - and told provincial journalists that he would never have made such a through survey of his native land had he not had a prodigy for a son." His father didn't "notice that he had endowed his son with the features of a musical rather than a chess-playing prodigy, the result being both sickly and angelic - eyes strangely veiled, curly hair, and a transparent pallor."//
**** - "Luzhin senior came in - on tiptoe. He had been prepared to find the violinist still talking on the telephone...and was brought up short upon seeing his son.... 'Excellent chessmen. Do you play?' 'Indifferently,' said Luzhin senior...'What a game, what a game,' said the violinist, tenderly closing the box. 'Combinations like melodies. You know, I can simply hear the moves.'...'The game of the gods. Infinite possibilities.' 'A very ancient invention,' said Luzhin senior and looked around at his son: 'What's the matter? Come with us!' " ... // "It was this old man who explained to Luzhin the simple method of notation in chess, and Luzhin, replaying the games given in the magazine, soon discovered in himself a quality he had once envied when his father used to tell somebody at table that he personally was unable to understand how his father-in-law could read a score for hours and hear in his mind all the movements of the music as he ran his eye over the notes, now smiling, now frowning, and sometimes turning back like a reader checking a detail in a novel - a name, the time of the year. 'It must be a great pleasure,' his father had said, 'to assimilate music in its natural state.' It was a similar pleasure that Luzhin himself now began to experience as he skimmed fluently over the letters and numbers representing moves...Luzhin ...contented himself with perceiving their melody mentally through the sequence of symbols and signs. Similarly he was able 'read' a game already perused once without using the board at all; and this was all the more pleasant in that he did not have to fiddle about with chessmen while constantly listening for someone coming..." //
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/
