SB, I agree that “old-fashioned” here refers to old representations of butterflies.  The combination of “old-fashioned” and “ill-spread” has always reminded me of VN’s comments regarding Audubon’s sketches of butterflies and moths.  In his letter to the NY Times Book Review, December 1952, he writes: “The exaggerated crenulation of hindwing edges, due to a naïve artist’s doing his best to render the dry, rumpled margins of carelessly spread specimens, is typical of the poorest entomological figures of earlier centuries and to these figures Audubon’s sketches are curiously close” (SO 330).

 

Matt Roth

 

 

Thanks, Don, for that post--great illustration!  I have a forthcoming piece on some trees in various works, including this ginkgo in PF.  Gerard de Vries also has written about it (and the Goethe poem) in his article on Zembla (date 2007-2008, according to the author).  I have been trying to figure out what an "old-fashioned butterfly" might be.  One thought I had was that it could be an old-fashioned representation of a butterfly--one in an old painting, which we know interested VN around the time he was writing the novel.  One of the butterflies he mentions--actually a strange, bird-headed butterfly or moth--does show a wing spread very much like the ginkgo leaf in some images (such as the one Don sent).  It's the one in Heironymus Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights, which looks like the wings of some sort of peacock moth --Saturnia pyri? I don't remember VN's identification-- affixed to a bird: e.g. See here for example.  De Vries' article makes valuable points about the role of the "muscat grape" in the poem.  I am still trying to figure it out.

Stephen Blackwell