ABSTRACT
Nabokov testified a number of times to a lack of appreciation for music, such as in this 1964 interview:
I have no ear for music, a shortcoming I deplore bitterly. When I attend a concert-which happens about once in five years-1 endeavor gamely to follow the sequence and relationship of sounds but cannot keep it up for more than a few minutes. Visual impressions, reflections of hands in lacquered wood, a diligent bald spot over a fiddle, these take over, and soon I am bored beyond measure by the motions of the musicians. (SO 35)1
I assume that most readers have taken these statements at face value, especially since they are echoed in the fiction. In Nabokov ' s works, at least two of these concert recitals are viewed through the eyes, and recorded through the ears, of equally unmusical characters who are identically distracted: in The Defense (1930), Luzh in ' s father organizes a "musical evening," although he knows that "at concerts [he] listened to the piano only at the beginning, after which he contented himsel f with watching the pianist 's hands reflected in the black varnish" (Def 39); in " M u s i c " (1932), "Vic to r tried to concentrate on listening, but soon caught himself watching W o l f s hands and their spectral reflections" (329). Indeed, Vic to r then gets into a discussion
, . ert-whi t ars-I
r s t
, ,
. )1
22 Charles Nicol
with another equally bored spectator named Bok, who seems intended to be taken, l ike the Bok in the much later "Lance," to be an avatar of Nabokov himself. 2 Only in the very early "Bachmann" (1924) does Nabokov heroically attempt to provide some kind of description of what his title character's recitals sounded like. Nabokov noted that his own lack of an "ear" was especially curious since a number of his ancestors and near relatives had a substantial talent for composing and performing (SO 35; SM 55, 179), including his cousin Nicholas, a composer and critic, and his son Dmitr i , a prominent opera basso.
