I was asked if Marat did, in fact, collect
butterflies. My source about this item came
from Nabokov, but he might have invented it...
(btw. Marat's name as a "scientist" is
linked to combustion and the phlogiston, not to the word aether).
Excerpts from an exchange with
Alvin Toffler, (Payboy -January, 1964) & gleaned from the internet.
AT:
"Can you tell us something more
about the actual creative process involved in
the germination of a book-- perhaps by
reading a few random notes for or excerpts from a work in
progress?"
Nabokov: "Certainly not.
No fetus should undergo an exploratory operation.
But I can do something else. This box contains index
cards with
some notes I made at various times more or less recently and
discarded when writing Pale Fire. It's a little
batch of rejects. Help yourself."
AT: "Selene, the moon..."Berry: the
black knob on the bill of the mute swan" . . .
"Naprapathy: the ugliest word in the language."...Snow
falling, young
father out with tiny child, nose like a pink
cherry..."Inter-columniation: dark-blue sky between two white columns."
"Not I, too,
lived in Arcadia,' but 'I,' says Death, even am in
Arcadia'-- Legend on a shepherd's tomb (Notes and Queries, June 13, 1868,
p. 561)" . . . "Marat collected butterflies" . . . What
inspires you to record and
collect such disconnected impressions and
quotations?
Nabokov: All I know is that at a
very early stage of the novel's development I get this urge to garner bits of
straw and fluff, and eat pebbles...
AT: In what sense
do you copy "the conceived picture" of a
novel?
Nabokov: A creative
writer must study carefully the works of his rivals, including the
Almighty. He must possess the inborn
capacity not only of recombining but of re-creating the given world.
In order to do this adequately, avoiding duplication of labor,
the artist should know the given
world.