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Re: [NABOKOV-L] Hoffman's Berklinger and TOoL
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JM, a PS (to While reading E.T.A Hoffmann's "Des Vetters Eckfenster," his last work, I was reminded of Nabokov's "Laura" *)
A reference to a story, similar to Hoffmann's was brought up in the Nab-L, but I could not locate the posting. It is one of Honoré Balzac's tales, "The Unknown Masterpiece" ( "Le Chef d'Oeuvre Inconnu") about "...a painter [ Frenhofer] who, depending on one's perspective, is either an abject failure or a transcendental genius-or both.... In a translation "by poet Richard Howard, "The Unknown Masterpiece" appears, as Balzac intended, with Gambara, a grotesque and tragic novella about a musician undone by his dreams." Actually both, "The Unknown Masterpiece" and "Gambara" have been inspired by ETA Hoffman writings ( "Der Artushof" and "Der Baron von B."). There's at least one reference to this connection, in English, made by Lewis, Timothy William. "The influence of E.T.A. Hoffmann on Balzac." Thesis: (PhD) University of London, 1991.
I devoted so much space to amplify the comparison between Hoffmann and Balzac (and, perhaps Proust's Vinteuil) because, besides the actual parallel with Nabokov's imagined novel and his real index-cards for "TOoL," I was further reminded of two early short-stories written by Nabokov, dealing with musicians and transcendental experiences: "Sounds" and "Music". ** Because of Hoffmann's link to Romanticism and his technique of "defamiliarization" (related to the "Unheimlich"), a whiff of this kind of failed, or achieved transposition from art into the "transcendental" realm, may be felt through Kinbote's distorted plans concerning his influence over Shade's writings in "Pale Fire." I'm uncertain if we should add to this list Nabokov's other novels related to music, or with "uncanny" madness. There is a connection bt "Sounds" and "La Veneziana" (here the theme is painting and a life-like model) by one striking image (which in turn reapears through Shade's lemniscate as an indication of infinity): In "La Veneziana" Frank's racquet is turned into a figure eight by the damp and, in "Sounds": "On a bench, glistening like Danish china, lay your forgotten racquet; the strings had turned brown from the rain, and the frame had twisted into a figure eight..."
...........................................................................................
*[ when he mentions his "not quite finished manuscript of a novel which I had begun writing and reworking before my illness and which was completed in my mind." and informs that he "kept reading it aloud to a small dream audience in a walled garden. My audience consisted of peacocks, pigeons, my long dead parents, two cypresses, several young nurses crouching around, and a family doctor so old as to be almost invisible." ] ...The story begins with its narrator comparing his cousin's illness to one which struck a physically paralised, mentally active Paul Scarron....Hoffmann inserts a reference to one of his novels with the story of a painter called Berklinger ( from "Der Artushof"), who used to stand for hours in front of an almost empty canvas on which only a neutral background had been painted. Delirious Berklinger would proudly display the canvas to his visitors, instructing them about the lavish scenes and marvellous details it contained...
** from "Sounds": "You were playing Bach.... as, incessantly, magnificently, the June shower slashed the win-dowpanes.... A feeling of freshness welled in me like the fragrance of wet carnations that trickled down everywhere, from the shelves, from the piano's wing, from the oblong diamonds of the chandelier... I had a feeling of enraptured equilibrium as I sensed the musical relationship between the silvery specters of rain and your inclined shoulders, which would give a shudder when you pressed your fingers into the rippling luster. And when I withdrew deep into myself the whole world seemed like that-homogeneous, congruent, bound by the laws of harmony...I realized that everything in the world was an interplay of identical particles comprising different kinds of consonance: the trees, the water, you... All was unified, equivalent, divine. ...And thus everything in the world decants and modulates."
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A reference to a story, similar to Hoffmann's was brought up in the Nab-L, but I could not locate the posting. It is one of Honoré Balzac's tales, "The Unknown Masterpiece" ( "Le Chef d'Oeuvre Inconnu") about "...a painter [ Frenhofer] who, depending on one's perspective, is either an abject failure or a transcendental genius-or both.... In a translation "by poet Richard Howard, "The Unknown Masterpiece" appears, as Balzac intended, with Gambara, a grotesque and tragic novella about a musician undone by his dreams." Actually both, "The Unknown Masterpiece" and "Gambara" have been inspired by ETA Hoffman writings ( "Der Artushof" and "Der Baron von B."). There's at least one reference to this connection, in English, made by Lewis, Timothy William. "The influence of E.T.A. Hoffmann on Balzac." Thesis: (PhD) University of London, 1991.
I devoted so much space to amplify the comparison between Hoffmann and Balzac (and, perhaps Proust's Vinteuil) because, besides the actual parallel with Nabokov's imagined novel and his real index-cards for "TOoL," I was further reminded of two early short-stories written by Nabokov, dealing with musicians and transcendental experiences: "Sounds" and "Music". ** Because of Hoffmann's link to Romanticism and his technique of "defamiliarization" (related to the "Unheimlich"), a whiff of this kind of failed, or achieved transposition from art into the "transcendental" realm, may be felt through Kinbote's distorted plans concerning his influence over Shade's writings in "Pale Fire." I'm uncertain if we should add to this list Nabokov's other novels related to music, or with "uncanny" madness. There is a connection bt "Sounds" and "La Veneziana" (here the theme is painting and a life-like model) by one striking image (which in turn reapears through Shade's lemniscate as an indication of infinity): In "La Veneziana" Frank's racquet is turned into a figure eight by the damp and, in "Sounds": "On a bench, glistening like Danish china, lay your forgotten racquet; the strings had turned brown from the rain, and the frame had twisted into a figure eight..."
...........................................................................................
*[ when he mentions his "not quite finished manuscript of a novel which I had begun writing and reworking before my illness and which was completed in my mind." and informs that he "kept reading it aloud to a small dream audience in a walled garden. My audience consisted of peacocks, pigeons, my long dead parents, two cypresses, several young nurses crouching around, and a family doctor so old as to be almost invisible." ] ...The story begins with its narrator comparing his cousin's illness to one which struck a physically paralised, mentally active Paul Scarron....Hoffmann inserts a reference to one of his novels with the story of a painter called Berklinger ( from "Der Artushof"), who used to stand for hours in front of an almost empty canvas on which only a neutral background had been painted. Delirious Berklinger would proudly display the canvas to his visitors, instructing them about the lavish scenes and marvellous details it contained...
** from "Sounds": "You were playing Bach.... as, incessantly, magnificently, the June shower slashed the win-dowpanes.... A feeling of freshness welled in me like the fragrance of wet carnations that trickled down everywhere, from the shelves, from the piano's wing, from the oblong diamonds of the chandelier... I had a feeling of enraptured equilibrium as I sensed the musical relationship between the silvery specters of rain and your inclined shoulders, which would give a shudder when you pressed your fingers into the rippling luster. And when I withdrew deep into myself the whole world seemed like that-homogeneous, congruent, bound by the laws of harmony...I realized that everything in the world was an interplay of identical particles comprising different kinds of consonance: the trees, the water, you... All was unified, equivalent, divine. ...And thus everything in the world decants and modulates."
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/