Subject
VN trivia
Date
Body
By odd chance the last three books I read, although having
nothing to do with VN, mentioned him. In order of improbability:
1.Robert Pyle, _Handbook for Butterfly Watchers_ (Houghton Miffliln, 1992)
Opening sentence: A butterfly passes by, and only a few heads turn--what
a pity....As Vladimir Nabokov observed in his memoirs, "It is astonishing
how few people notice butterflies."
This is not so surprizing a reference since VN is well known to
all Lepidopterists and his name serves as a handy bridge from them to a
wider audience. Pyle, by the way, is co-editing with Brian Boyd a full
collection of all of VN's writings, factual, fictional, and epistolary
about Leps.
2. In evidence of the same phenomenon -- VN as a bridge from
from the lepidopterist to the public: _California Butterflies_, Garth &
Tilden (UC Press, 1986) uses VN's poem "On Dsicovering a Butterfly" as an
epigraph. ALthoughit strangely quotes it from a publiation of the
Smithsonian Institution _The Magnificent Foragers_.
3. Least likely. I was reading myself to sleep with Petronius' famously
scabrous _Satyricon_ in William Arrowsmith's 1958 translation. (Petronius
was Nero's court aesthetician on matters sexual.) In Arrowsmith's
"Introduction" he writes:
"And it is this wonderful blending of satire and
comedy that makes Petronius, to my mind, unique among Roman satirists and
the _Satyricon_ a genre of its own.*" In a footnote Arrowsmith adds: "The
latest example of the genre is, I suspect, Nabokov's _Lolita_. At least it
seems to me the Nabokov is attempting a satire along Petronian lines and
the comparative failure is instructive. Unlike the _Satyricon_, that is,
_Lolita_ almost never succeeds in rising from satire to comedy and
therefore finally rides unhappily suspended at some level between the two,
pulled down again and again by a sad prurience and cleverness of
sophistication that prevent comedy. Almost everything is there but the
gaiety which would have redeemed the strategy of perversion." (vii)
D. Barton Johnson
Department of Germanic, Slavic and Semitic Studies
Phelps Hall
University of California at Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, CA 93106
Phone and Fax: (805) 687-1825
Home Phone: (805) 682-4618
nothing to do with VN, mentioned him. In order of improbability:
1.Robert Pyle, _Handbook for Butterfly Watchers_ (Houghton Miffliln, 1992)
Opening sentence: A butterfly passes by, and only a few heads turn--what
a pity....As Vladimir Nabokov observed in his memoirs, "It is astonishing
how few people notice butterflies."
This is not so surprizing a reference since VN is well known to
all Lepidopterists and his name serves as a handy bridge from them to a
wider audience. Pyle, by the way, is co-editing with Brian Boyd a full
collection of all of VN's writings, factual, fictional, and epistolary
about Leps.
2. In evidence of the same phenomenon -- VN as a bridge from
from the lepidopterist to the public: _California Butterflies_, Garth &
Tilden (UC Press, 1986) uses VN's poem "On Dsicovering a Butterfly" as an
epigraph. ALthoughit strangely quotes it from a publiation of the
Smithsonian Institution _The Magnificent Foragers_.
3. Least likely. I was reading myself to sleep with Petronius' famously
scabrous _Satyricon_ in William Arrowsmith's 1958 translation. (Petronius
was Nero's court aesthetician on matters sexual.) In Arrowsmith's
"Introduction" he writes:
"And it is this wonderful blending of satire and
comedy that makes Petronius, to my mind, unique among Roman satirists and
the _Satyricon_ a genre of its own.*" In a footnote Arrowsmith adds: "The
latest example of the genre is, I suspect, Nabokov's _Lolita_. At least it
seems to me the Nabokov is attempting a satire along Petronian lines and
the comparative failure is instructive. Unlike the _Satyricon_, that is,
_Lolita_ almost never succeeds in rising from satire to comedy and
therefore finally rides unhappily suspended at some level between the two,
pulled down again and again by a sad prurience and cleverness of
sophistication that prevent comedy. Almost everything is there but the
gaiety which would have redeemed the strategy of perversion." (vii)
D. Barton Johnson
Department of Germanic, Slavic and Semitic Studies
Phelps Hall
University of California at Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, CA 93106
Phone and Fax: (805) 687-1825
Home Phone: (805) 682-4618