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[Fwd: RE: butterflies & souls]
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-------- Original Message --------
Subject: RE: butterflies & souls
Date: Mon, 14 Jan 2002 12:07:10 -0500
From: "Johnson, Kurt" <JohnsonK@Coudert.com>
To: "'Vladimir Nabokov Forum'" <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
And, or course, re: this etymology of Psyche, it is equally rich that
Nabokov's major papers in science were published in that journal. As
an aside to these comments, many lepidopterists are equally grateful to
the student's of Nabokov's literature-- who have enriched
lepidopterists' perspective on "the great man". So, the "doings" of
the last decade have worked very well, both ways.
KURT JOHNSON
-----Original Message-----
From: D. Barton Johnson [mailto:chtodel@gte.net]
Sent: Saturday, January 12, 2002 12:29 PM
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Subject: butterflies & souls
SEE EDITOR's COMMENT at end
-------- Original Message --------
Date: Sat, 12 Jan 2002 19:54:21 +0800
From: Сергей Карпухин <shrewd@irk.ru>
To: <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
There is not only one attractive phrase in Stan. Milkowsky's letter.
This may be implied, but psyche means both butterfly and soul in
Greek. For all I know, there is (or was) a lepidopterist magazine which
has Psyche for title. In a footnote to one of his poems Coleridge says
that 'psyche means both butterfly and soul '. So to point out the
resemblance of soul to a butterfly does not seem so inadequate, at least
as far as ety mology is concerned.
Sergei
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Ed. Note. Yes, there is a lepdopterist journal PSYCHE and VN was well
aware of the analogy. He often used it in his Russian poetry. In
response to a Russian cleric who made the analogy, VN also remarked
that butterflies were attracted to corpses.