Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Undulations and Vibrations, Tonalities and Harmonies: Nabokov, Acoustics and the Otherworld

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
The Five Senses in Nabokov's Works

  • 252 Accesses

Abstract

Nabokov’s fiction articulates a keen interest in the akoumenal (Smith Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale 73 (3): 328–343, 1968, passim.): he elaborates on sound as wave and vibration, on sound’s capacity to affect the listener bodily, and on what Simmel calls sound’s “supra-individuality.” Nabokov enquires into the impact of sound and into its physical aspects in particular, for it is precisely the latter from which the metaphysical dimension of the akoumenal derives. Poetic inspiration is described in terms of sympathetic vibrations, interpersonal relationships are conceived of in terms of intersubjective consonance, the “undulations” of sound become interchangeable with those of the soul, and Nabokov’s “cosmic synchronization” is accomplished by a getting attuned. If, as Stefan Helmreich contends, waves are omnipresent and “the basis of the cosmos” (Helmreich in Insight 3: 4, 2010) waves equally permeate what Nabokov calls “the Otherworld” that becomes thus accessible to the receptive and responsive ear.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
eBook
USD 16.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Bibliography

  • Abrams, M.H. 1957. The Correspondent Breeze: A Romantic Metaphor. The Kenyon Review 19 (1): 113–130.

    Google Scholar 

  • Alexandrov, Vladimir E. 1991. Nabokov’s Otherworld. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Barenboim, Daniel. 2006. The Neglected Sense. Lecture 2 of Reith Lectures 2006: In the Beginning There Was Sound. downloads.bbc.co.uk.mttp/radio4/transcripts/2006041-reith.pdf.

  • Bidney, Martin. 1985. The Aeolian Harp Reconsidered: Music of Unfulfilled Longing in Tjutchev, Mörike, Thoreau, and Others. Comparative Literary Studies 22 (3): 329–343.

    Google Scholar 

  • Blackstone, Lee. 2011. Remixing the Music of the Spheres: Listening to the Relevance of an Ancient Doctrine for the Sociology of Music. International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music 42 (1): 3–31.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bull, Michael, and Les Back (eds.). 2016. The Auditory Culture Reader. London, Oxford, and New York: Bloomsbury.

    Google Scholar 

  • Burnett, Charles et al. (eds.). 1991. The Second Sense: Studies in Hearing and Musical Judgement from Antiquity to the Seventeenth Century. London: The Warburg Institute.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chion, Michel. 1993. La voix au cinéma. Paris: Editions d’étoile.

    Google Scholar 

  • Coates, Peter A. 2005. The Strange Stillness of the Past: Toward an Environmental History of Sound and Noise. Environmental History 10 (4): 636–665.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Connolly, Julian. 2005. The Major Russian Novels. In The Cambridge Companion to Nabokov, ed. J. Connolly, 135–150. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Cook, Nicholas. 1998. Music: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Corbin, Alain. 1994. Village Bells: Sounds and Meaning in the 19th-Century French Countryside, trans. M. Thom. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998.

    Google Scholar 

  • Derrida, Jacques. 1972. Margins of Philosophy, trans. A. Bass. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982.

    Google Scholar 

  • Erlmann, Veit. 2014. Reason and Resonance: A History of Modern Aurality. New York: Zone Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Frangenberg, Thomas. 1991. Auditus visu prestantior: Comparisons of Hearing and Vision in Charles de Bovelles’s Liber de sensibus. In The Second Sense, ed. C. Burnett et al., 71–94. London: The Warburg Institute.

    Google Scholar 

  • Godwin, Joscelyn (ed.). 1993. The Harmony of the Spheres: A Sourcebook of the Pythagorean Tradition in Music. Rochester: Inner Traditions International.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gouk, Penelope. 1991. Some English Theories of Hearing in the Seventeenth Century: Before and After Descartes. In The Second Sense, ed. C. Burnett et al., 95–114. London: University of London.

    Google Scholar 

  • Helmreich, Stefan. 2010. Waves. Insights 3 (18): 2–11.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hendy, David. 2014. Noise: A Human History of Sound and Listening. London: Profile Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ihde, Don. 1976. Listening and Voice: A Phenomenology of Sound. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • James, Jamie. 1993. The Music of the Spheres: Music, Science and the Natural Order of the Universe. London: Abacus.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kahn, Douglas. 2001. Noise, Water, Meat: A History of Sound in the Arts. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kane, Brian. 2016. Sound Unseen: Acousmatic Sound in Theory and Practice. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Karlinsky, Simon. 1963. Vladimir Nabokov’s Novel Dar as a Work of Literary Criticism: A Structural Analysis. The Slavic and East European Journal 7 (3): 284–290.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Khesti, Roshanak. 2011. Touching Listening: The Aural Imaginary in the World Music Culture Industry. American Quarterly 63 (3): 711–731.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Koestler, Arthur. 2014. The Sleepwalkers: A History of Man’s Changing Vision of the Universe. London: Penguin.

    Google Scholar 

  • Levin, David Michael. 1989. The Listening Self: Personal Growth, Social Change, and the Closure of Metaphysics. London and New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Leving, Yuri. 2011. Keys to the Gift: A Guide to Vladimir Nabokov’s Novel. Boston: Academic Studies Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lipps, Theodor. 1883. Grundtatsachen des Seelenlebens. Bonn: Max Cohen & Sohn.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1902. Von Fühlen, Wollen und Denken: Eine psychologische Skizze. Leipzig: Johann Ambrosius Bart.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1903. Leitfaden der Psychologie. Leipzig: Wilhelm Engelmann.

    Google Scholar 

  • Metzger, Sabine. 2017. Dark Chambers: Nabokov and the Second Sense. Paper delivered at the International Nabokov Conference, St Petersburg, July 2017 (publication forthcoming).

    Google Scholar 

  • Nabokov, Vladimir. 1938. Laughter in the Dark. Reprint, New York: New Directions, 1960.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1941. The Real Life of Sebastian Knight. Reprint, New York: Vintage International, 1992.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1947. Bend Sinister. Reprint, New York: Vintage International, 1990.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1955. Lolita. Reprint, London: Penguin, 1988.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1959. Invitation to a Beheading. Reprint, New York: Vintage International, 1989.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1963. The Gift. Reprint, London: Penguin, 1988.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1966. Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited by Vladimir Nabokov. Reprint, London: Penguin, 2000.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1969. Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle. Reprint, New York: Vintage International, 1990.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1970. Mary. Reprint, London: Penguin, 2007.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1973. Strong Opinions. Reprint, New York: Vintage International, 1990.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1995. The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov. Reprint, New York: Vintage International, 1997.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nancy, Jean-Luc. 2002. Listening, trans. C. Mandell. New York: Fordham University Press, 2007.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nicol, Charles. 2003. Buzzwords and Dorophonemes: How Words Proliferate and Things Decay in Ada. In Nabokov at Cornell, ed. G. Shapiro, 91–102. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rosenfeld, Sophia. 2011. On Being Heard: A Case for Paying Attention to the Historical Ear. The American Historical Review 116 (2): 316–334.

    Google Scholar 

  • Russolo, Luigi, Francesco Balilla Pratella et al. 1913. The Art of Noise: Destruction of Music by Futurist Machines, ed. Candice Black, trans. Anna Battista et al. Los Angeles: Sun Vision Press, 2012.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schafer, Murray S. 1994. The Soundscape. The Tuning of the World. Rochester: Destiny Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schaeffer, Pierre. 1966. Traité des objets musicaux. Paris: Seuil.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schmidt, Leigh Eric. 2016. Hearing Loss. In The Auditory Culture Reader, ed. M. Bull and L. Back, 23–35. London: Bloomsbury.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sears, Elizabeth. 1991. The Iconography of Auditory perception in the Early Middle Ages: On Psalm Illustration and Psalm Exegesis. In The Second Sense, ed. C. Burnett et al., 19–42. London: The Warburg Institute.

    Google Scholar 

  • Shapiro, Gavriel (ed.). 2003. Nabokov at Cornell. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Shelley, Percy Busshe. 2009. The Major Works, ed. Z. Leader and M. O’Neill. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Simmel, Georg. 2008. Soziologie der Sinne. In Aufsätze und Abhandlungen 1901–1908, ed. A. Cavalli and V. Krech, 276–292. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.

    Google Scholar 

  • Smith, F.J. 1968. Vers une phénoménologie du son, trans. E. Baer. Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale 73 (3): 328–343.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sterne, Jonathan. 2013. Soundscape, Landscape, Escape. In Soundscapes of the Urban Past: Staged Sounds as Mediated Cultural Heritage, ed. K. Bijsterveld, 181–194. Bielefeld: Transcript.

    Google Scholar 

  • Toker, Leona. 1989. The Mystery of Literary Structures. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Trower, Shelley. 2008. Vibratory Movements. Senses and Society 3 (2): 133–136.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2009. Nerves, Vibration and the Aeolian Harp. Romanticism and Victorianism on the Net 54, https://www.erudit.org/en/journals/ravon/2009-n54-ravon3401/038761ar/. Accessed 1 August 2018.

  • Vögelin, Salomé. 2010. Listening to Sound and Silence: Towards a Philosophy of Sound Art. New York: Continuum.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Stuttgart University, Stuttgart, Germany

    Sabine Metzger

Authors
  1. Sabine Metzger
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Toulouse, Toulouse, France

    Marie Bouchet

  2. University of Lille, Lille, France

    Julie Loison-Charles

  3. University Bordeaux Montaigne, Bordeaux, France

    Isabelle Poulin

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2020 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Metzger, S. (2020). Undulations and Vibrations, Tonalities and Harmonies: Nabokov, Acoustics and the Otherworld. In: Bouchet, M., Loison-Charles, J., Poulin, I. (eds) The Five Senses in Nabokov's Works. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45406-7_17

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation