JM: Thank you for both articles. You focused on
"pavonine Lolita" and the pastoral tradition,* but your argumentation
enriched my conjectures about Nabokov's PF "links and bobo-links," mainly
because until now I'd failed to associate Shade's words to Nabokov's theories
about mimicry (a misapprehension derived from my particular bias that leads
me to see "nature" as a product of "language").
John Shade: "all at once it dawned on me that
this/ Was the real point/... topsy-turvical coincidence,/ ... some kind of/
correlated pattern in the game,/...and something of the same/ Pleasure in it as
they who played it found./ It did not matter who they were.../Making ornaments/
Of accidents and possibilities."
Alexander/Salthe: "Since such cases of false mimicry confer no
reproductive advantage—they merely amuse—Nabokov notes they "seemed to have been invented by some waggish artists precisely for
the intelligent eyes of man"...For Nabokov it was the task of the poet to
imitate this tendency in nature, for to do so illustrates so well the author
behind agent X..."**
......................................................................................................
* "Nabokov's Humbert, who he describes as "pavonine" (Lolita 163), may
be seen as a fine example of the kind of peacock ostentatiousness we've been
describing here. A monster of the pastoral tradition, Humbert shows little or no
restraint and takes bucolic conventions, such as hyperbole, idealized love,
incongruous mixing of the urbane and uncouth, and self-consciousness, to further
and further extremes...Brian Boyd, arguably heretofore Nabokov's most excellent
reader, has recently turned Literary Darwinist, and now insists that Humbert's
intensely literary and artful pose and our appreciation of them "are biological
adaptations..."...Boyd is here ignoring Nabokov's self-proclaimed preference for
the "non-utilitarian delights" of art...he claims that we take pleasure in
Nabokov because we are being controlled by our programmed genetic drives which
favor new and interesting reproductive fitness narratives, but Nabokov needs no
such help..."
** "Nabokov, outspoken on evolutionary theory, provides us with
examples of self-organized butterfly wing patterns... Since such cases of false
mimicry confer no reproductive advantage—they merely amuse—Nabokov notes they
"seemed to have been invented by some waggish artists precisely for the
intelligent eyes of man" (Boyd Nabokov Butterflies 178). For Nabokov it was the
task of the poet to imitate this tendency in nature, for to do so illustrates so
well the author behind agent X..." (since, as Nabokov states) "Three forces make and mold a human being: heredity, environment,
and the unknown agent X. Of these the second, environment, is by far the least
important, while the last, agent X, is by far the most influential. In the case
of characters living in books, it is of course the author who controls, directs,
and applies the three forces." (Lectures 126)... Original, purposeful
authorship, in nature and in literature, cannot be explained (away) by the
theory of evolution by natural selection. Indeed, a new theory of authorship
availing itself of 21st century neuroscience and complexity science can be used
to help describe evolutionary processes..."