Subject
Re: [NABOKOV] Stray patterns
From
Date
Body
Dear Jansy,
I suppose that Opal Wheeler's illustration was based on Margaret Isabel Dicksee's painting of the young Handel discovered in the attic of his family's house playing the cembalo (you may find a color reproduction of it at
http://www.google.fr/imgres?imgurl=http://media.artfinder.com/works/r/bal/4/7/2/126274_full_570x422.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.artfinder.com/work/the-child-handel-discovered-by-his-parents-margaret-isabel-dicks/&usg=__MIMZlMFo_4NRiR5K_qKlkMCeHvg=&h=422&w=570&sz=43&hl=fr&start=0&zoom=1&tbnid=MUxLwtRt_GRThM:&tbnh=131&tbnw=175&ei=v_3ETaDpPM2XOuvdwaII&prev=/search%3Fq%3DHandel%2BMargaret%2BI%2BDicksee%2Bpics%26hl%3Dfr%26biw%3D1408%26bih%3D882%26tbm%3Disch&itbs=1&iact=hc&vpx=499&vpy=372&dur=855&hovh=183&hovw=248&tx=125&ty=100&page=1&ndsp=36&ved=1t:429,r:16,s:0
and a black-and-white one at
http://picasaweb.google.com/SonsuzSanat.Com/GeorgeFridericHandel#5222777422974278674).
The painting was made in 1893 and gravures based on it were soon circulated rather widely (I don't know where the painting is housed today).
Best,
Didier Machu
Jansy <jansy@AETERN.US> a écrit :
> 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/
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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/
I suppose that Opal Wheeler's illustration was based on Margaret Isabel Dicksee's painting of the young Handel discovered in the attic of his family's house playing the cembalo (you may find a color reproduction of it at
http://www.google.fr/imgres?imgurl=http://media.artfinder.com/works/r/bal/4/7/2/126274_full_570x422.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.artfinder.com/work/the-child-handel-discovered-by-his-parents-margaret-isabel-dicks/&usg=__MIMZlMFo_4NRiR5K_qKlkMCeHvg=&h=422&w=570&sz=43&hl=fr&start=0&zoom=1&tbnid=MUxLwtRt_GRThM:&tbnh=131&tbnw=175&ei=v_3ETaDpPM2XOuvdwaII&prev=/search%3Fq%3DHandel%2BMargaret%2BI%2BDicksee%2Bpics%26hl%3Dfr%26biw%3D1408%26bih%3D882%26tbm%3Disch&itbs=1&iact=hc&vpx=499&vpy=372&dur=855&hovh=183&hovw=248&tx=125&ty=100&page=1&ndsp=36&ved=1t:429,r:16,s:0
and a black-and-white one at
http://picasaweb.google.com/SonsuzSanat.Com/GeorgeFridericHandel#5222777422974278674).
The painting was made in 1893 and gravures based on it were soon circulated rather widely (I don't know where the painting is housed today).
Best,
Didier Machu
Jansy <jansy@AETERN.US> a écrit :
> 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/
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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/