Subject
VN on Butterflies
From
Date
Body
From Sunday's NYT Book Review:
April 25, 1999
BOOKEND / By VLADIMIR NABOKOV
Invitation to a Transformation
There was a Chinese philosopher who all his life
pondered the problem
whether he was a Chinese philosopher dreaming that he was
a butterfly
or a butterfly dreaming that she was a philosopher. . . .
Transformation. Transformation is a
marvelous thing. I am thinking
especially of the transformation of
butterflies. Though wonderful to
watch, transformation from larva to
pupa or from pupa to butterfly is not
a particularly pleasant process for
the subject involved. There comes
for every caterpillar a difficult
moment when he begins to feel
pervaded by an odd sense of
discomfort. It is a tight feeling -- here
about the neck and elsewhere, and
then an unbearable itch. Of course
he has molted a few times before
but that is nothing in comparison to
the tickle and urge that he feels now.
He must shed that tight dry skin, or
die. As you have guessed, under that
skin, the armor of a pupa -- and how
uncomfortable to wear one's skin
over one's armor -- is already
forming: I am especially concerned
at the moment with those butterflies
that have carved golden pupa, called
also chrysalis, which hang from
some surface in the open air.
Well, the caterpillar must do
something about that horrible
feeling. He walks about looking for a
suitable place. He finds it. He crawls
up a wall or a tree trunk. He makes
for himself a little pad of silk on the
underside of that perch. He hangs
himself by the tip of his tail or last
legs, from the silk patch, so as to dangle head downwards in
the position of an
inverted question mark, and there is a question -- how to get
rid now of his skin.
One wriggle, another wriggle -- and zip the skin bursts down
the back, and he
gradually gets out of it working with shoulders and hips like a
person getting out
of a sausage dress. Then comes the most critical moment. You
understand that
we are hanging head down by our last pair of legs, and the
problem now is to
shed the whole skin -- even the skin of those last legs by
which we hang -- but
how to accomplish this without falling?
So what does he do, this courageous and stubborn little animal
who is already
partly disrobed? Very carefully he starts working out his hind
legs, dislodging
them from the patch of silk from which he is dangling, head
down -- and then
with an admirable twist and jerk he sort of jumps off the silk
pad, sheds his last
shred of hose, and immediately, in the process of the same
jerk-and-twist-jump
he attaches himself anew by means of a hook that was under the
shed skin on
the tip of his body. Now all the skin has come off, thank God,
and the bared
surface, now hard and glistening, is the pupa, a
swathed-baby-like thing hanging
from that twig -- a very beautiful chrysalis with golden knobs
and plate-armor
wing cases. This pupal stage lasts from a few days to a few
years. I remember
as a boy keeping a hawk moth's pupa in a box for something like
seven years,
so that I actually finished high school while the thing was
asleep -- and then
finally it hatched -- unfortunately, it happened during a
journey on the train -- a
nice case of misjudgment after all those years. But to come
back to our butterfly
pupa.
After, say, two or three weeks something begins to happen. The
pupa hangs
quite motionless, but you notice one day that through the wing
cases, which are
many times smaller than the wings of the future perfect insect
-- you notice that
through the hornlike texture of each wing case you can see in
miniature the
pattern of the future wing, the lovely flush of the ground
color, a dark margin, a
rudimentary eyespot. Another day or two -- and the final
transformation occurs.
The pupa splits as the caterpillar had split -- it is really a
last glorified molt, and
the butterfly creeps out -- and in its turn hangs down from the
twig to dry. She is
not handsome at first. She is very damp and bedraggled. But
those limp
implements of hers that she has disengaged gradually dry,
distend, the veins
branch and harden -- and in 20 minutes or so she is ready to
fly. You have
noticed that the caterpillar is a he, the pupa an it, and the
butterfly a she. You will
ask -- what is the feeling of hatching? Oh, no doubt, there is
a rush of panic to the
head, a thrill of breathless and strange sensation, but then
the eyes see, in a
flow of sunshine, the butterfly sees the world, the large and
awful face of the
gasping entomologist.
Let us now turn to the transformation of Jekyll into Hyde.
Vladimir Nabokov, who shared a birthday with Shakespeare, was
born 100
years ago this month, on April 23, 1899. This piece, which is
excerpted from the
forthcoming ''Nabokov's Butterflies,'' edited and annotated by
Brian Boyd and
Robert Michael Pyle, was written (but never delivered) as part
of the famous
series of classes Nabokov gave at Wellesley and Cornell in the
1940's and 50's.
The topic in this case is Robert Louis Stevenson's ''Strange
Case of Dr. Jekyll
and Mr. Hyde.''
April 25, 1999
BOOKEND / By VLADIMIR NABOKOV
Invitation to a Transformation
There was a Chinese philosopher who all his life
pondered the problem
whether he was a Chinese philosopher dreaming that he was
a butterfly
or a butterfly dreaming that she was a philosopher. . . .
Transformation. Transformation is a
marvelous thing. I am thinking
especially of the transformation of
butterflies. Though wonderful to
watch, transformation from larva to
pupa or from pupa to butterfly is not
a particularly pleasant process for
the subject involved. There comes
for every caterpillar a difficult
moment when he begins to feel
pervaded by an odd sense of
discomfort. It is a tight feeling -- here
about the neck and elsewhere, and
then an unbearable itch. Of course
he has molted a few times before
but that is nothing in comparison to
the tickle and urge that he feels now.
He must shed that tight dry skin, or
die. As you have guessed, under that
skin, the armor of a pupa -- and how
uncomfortable to wear one's skin
over one's armor -- is already
forming: I am especially concerned
at the moment with those butterflies
that have carved golden pupa, called
also chrysalis, which hang from
some surface in the open air.
Well, the caterpillar must do
something about that horrible
feeling. He walks about looking for a
suitable place. He finds it. He crawls
up a wall or a tree trunk. He makes
for himself a little pad of silk on the
underside of that perch. He hangs
himself by the tip of his tail or last
legs, from the silk patch, so as to dangle head downwards in
the position of an
inverted question mark, and there is a question -- how to get
rid now of his skin.
One wriggle, another wriggle -- and zip the skin bursts down
the back, and he
gradually gets out of it working with shoulders and hips like a
person getting out
of a sausage dress. Then comes the most critical moment. You
understand that
we are hanging head down by our last pair of legs, and the
problem now is to
shed the whole skin -- even the skin of those last legs by
which we hang -- but
how to accomplish this without falling?
So what does he do, this courageous and stubborn little animal
who is already
partly disrobed? Very carefully he starts working out his hind
legs, dislodging
them from the patch of silk from which he is dangling, head
down -- and then
with an admirable twist and jerk he sort of jumps off the silk
pad, sheds his last
shred of hose, and immediately, in the process of the same
jerk-and-twist-jump
he attaches himself anew by means of a hook that was under the
shed skin on
the tip of his body. Now all the skin has come off, thank God,
and the bared
surface, now hard and glistening, is the pupa, a
swathed-baby-like thing hanging
from that twig -- a very beautiful chrysalis with golden knobs
and plate-armor
wing cases. This pupal stage lasts from a few days to a few
years. I remember
as a boy keeping a hawk moth's pupa in a box for something like
seven years,
so that I actually finished high school while the thing was
asleep -- and then
finally it hatched -- unfortunately, it happened during a
journey on the train -- a
nice case of misjudgment after all those years. But to come
back to our butterfly
pupa.
After, say, two or three weeks something begins to happen. The
pupa hangs
quite motionless, but you notice one day that through the wing
cases, which are
many times smaller than the wings of the future perfect insect
-- you notice that
through the hornlike texture of each wing case you can see in
miniature the
pattern of the future wing, the lovely flush of the ground
color, a dark margin, a
rudimentary eyespot. Another day or two -- and the final
transformation occurs.
The pupa splits as the caterpillar had split -- it is really a
last glorified molt, and
the butterfly creeps out -- and in its turn hangs down from the
twig to dry. She is
not handsome at first. She is very damp and bedraggled. But
those limp
implements of hers that she has disengaged gradually dry,
distend, the veins
branch and harden -- and in 20 minutes or so she is ready to
fly. You have
noticed that the caterpillar is a he, the pupa an it, and the
butterfly a she. You will
ask -- what is the feeling of hatching? Oh, no doubt, there is
a rush of panic to the
head, a thrill of breathless and strange sensation, but then
the eyes see, in a
flow of sunshine, the butterfly sees the world, the large and
awful face of the
gasping entomologist.
Let us now turn to the transformation of Jekyll into Hyde.
Vladimir Nabokov, who shared a birthday with Shakespeare, was
born 100
years ago this month, on April 23, 1899. This piece, which is
excerpted from the
forthcoming ''Nabokov's Butterflies,'' edited and annotated by
Brian Boyd and
Robert Michael Pyle, was written (but never delivered) as part
of the famous
series of classes Nabokov gave at Wellesley and Cornell in the
1940's and 50's.
The topic in this case is Robert Louis Stevenson's ''Strange
Case of Dr. Jekyll
and Mr. Hyde.''