Subject
DN on anamorphosis
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Date
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Dear Eds and Jansy,
I hope I have not been one of the culprits. I do think all of my shots
have been "in," or at least on the line.
The reason for this post, however, is Jansy's most recent, interesting
entry. I wonder if she finds a nexus between the phenomena she mentions
and what follows:
The duration of a species, its sitting as a model, its presence
before nature' s mirror, cannot be measured in increments of time that
would presuppose radical changes incompatible with the preservation of
its idea. To say that, over the centuries, one species evolves into
another by a genealogical line is to disrupt, to the same degree, the
basic idea of species, as would admitting that between two extant
species intermediate forms were to be represented as well. Yet the
appearance of species is unarguable; and neither the evolutionist "how"
nor the metaphysical "whence" can be answered until we agree to admit it
was not species that evolved in nature, but the very concept of species.
To return to the question of the state of nature before the origin
of this concept, and imagine the immeasurably distant times when "the
specimen reigned supreme," we can, with the aid of parlor verse, if not
of armchair science, indistinctly perceive this undulating, iridescent
world, and nature's first attempts at stabilizing something. A crawling
root, the extremity of a tropical creeper vivified by the wind, turned
into a snake solely because nature, noticing movement, wished to
reproduce it, as a child amused by the flight of a forest leaf picks it
up and tosses it back into the air. But it is only in nature's fingers
that the leaf could turn into a Kallima. It would be more accurate to
say, though, that it was not the work of the wind, but some energizing,
thought-engendering rotation -- not just the earth's rotation, but the
even force that so festively animates the Dance of the Planets that is
the universe...
Greetings,
DN
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I hope I have not been one of the culprits. I do think all of my shots
have been "in," or at least on the line.
The reason for this post, however, is Jansy's most recent, interesting
entry. I wonder if she finds a nexus between the phenomena she mentions
and what follows:
The duration of a species, its sitting as a model, its presence
before nature' s mirror, cannot be measured in increments of time that
would presuppose radical changes incompatible with the preservation of
its idea. To say that, over the centuries, one species evolves into
another by a genealogical line is to disrupt, to the same degree, the
basic idea of species, as would admitting that between two extant
species intermediate forms were to be represented as well. Yet the
appearance of species is unarguable; and neither the evolutionist "how"
nor the metaphysical "whence" can be answered until we agree to admit it
was not species that evolved in nature, but the very concept of species.
To return to the question of the state of nature before the origin
of this concept, and imagine the immeasurably distant times when "the
specimen reigned supreme," we can, with the aid of parlor verse, if not
of armchair science, indistinctly perceive this undulating, iridescent
world, and nature's first attempts at stabilizing something. A crawling
root, the extremity of a tropical creeper vivified by the wind, turned
into a snake solely because nature, noticing movement, wished to
reproduce it, as a child amused by the flight of a forest leaf picks it
up and tosses it back into the air. But it is only in nature's fingers
that the leaf could turn into a Kallima. It would be more accurate to
say, though, that it was not the work of the wind, but some energizing,
thought-engendering rotation -- not just the earth's rotation, but the
even force that so festively animates the Dance of the Planets that is
the universe...
Greetings,
DN
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
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