A "STRANGE LIAISON": NABOKOV'S "BACHMANN" AS AN ORPHEUS AND POSSESSED-MUSICIAN STORY.

"Bachmann" (1924) reflects Vladimir Nabokov's interest in E. T. A. Hoffmann during his Berlin period, as well as his frequent use of orphic imagery. The story's protagonist, the composer and piano virtuoso Bachmann, has adopted Romanticism's notion, specifically as presented in Hoffmann's works, that a creative genius must dwell in the spheres of the sublime and, especially avoid domesticity and earthly love. If he has a muse, she must be adored from a distance and their love must be entirely spiritual. These notions explain why Bachmann holds his muse, Madame Perov, at a distance, even treating her with apparent contempt. Eventually he yields to his love, but, in an orphic vein, she dies at the very moment that he thinks he has saved her and their love from this, as he now believes, misconception. The story implies questions about the relevance to our times of aesthetic theories from the distant past. Although no conclusions are offered, Nabokov seems to suggest that the sublime and prosaic can be merged through uncompromising devotion to art. Genuine art is sublime enough to include and ennoble the prose of byt. The contribution to Nabokov Studies is to present a close reading of an infrequently discussed text by Nabokov. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]