Music (short story)

"Music" is a short story by Russian American author Vladimir Nabokov originally published in Russian in 1932.

Summary

The story uses third-person narration and tells the story of Victor, a self-conscious man for whom "music he did not know... could be likened to the patter of a conversation in a strange tongue." [1] When Victor arrives at a party, he finds the other guests listening with varying degrees of engagement to a man named Wolfe play the piano. As Victor does not know the song being played, he loses interest. He catches a glimpse of his ex-wife at the party, but cannot look at her. He laments the fact that now he must "start all over" the long task of forgetting her (in a flashback, it's revealed that she left him for another, who may or may not be at the party). Throughout the entire story, Victor views the music as a structure that has him encaged in an awkward situation with his ex-wife; it had seemed to him "a narrow dungeon" until it ends, thus giving his ex-wife the opportunity to leave, which she does. Victor then realizes that the music was not a dungeon, but actually "incredible bliss, a magic glass dome that had embraced and imprisoned him and her," and which allowed him to "breathe the same air as she."[2] After she leaves, another party-goer comments to Victor that he looked immune to the music and that he didn't think such a thing possible. His own inanity is revealed when Victor asks him what was played and he cannot tell whether it was Beethoven's Kreutzer Sonata or Tekla Bądarzewska-Baranowska's rather easy piece, Maiden's Prayer.

Comments

The story features a few examples of Nabokov's fascination with reflections and doubles, even though they don't have any thematic importance. He gives us Victor's reflection in a mirror straightening a reflected tie, as well as Wolfe's hands reflected "in the lacquered depths of the open keyboard lid... engaged in a ghostly, intricate, even somewhat clownish mimicry." [3]

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References
  1. Nabokov, Vladimir (2008). The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov. Vintage Books. p. 332.
  2. Nabokov, Vladimir (2008). The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov. Vintage Books. p. 336.
  3. Nabokov, Vladimir (2008). The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov. Vintage Books. p. 332.
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