B. Boyd: Here’s a story on Nabokov the lepidopterist: not as accurate as it
could be, but better than it might have been:
http://nautil.us/issue/8/home/speak-butterflyJansy
Mello: I extracted these lines from "Speak Butterfly."
"Butterflies
were so entwined with the novel that Nabokov celebrated an especially important
find—discovering the first known female of Lycaeides
sublivens above Telluride, Colo. in the summer of
1951—by making the town the site of the novel’s final scene."
This is why I was suddenly curious about the meaning of the
Latin word "sublivens".While trying to find a translation (I
didn't reach it, though) I came to one interesting reference to Nabokov,
emphasizing Véra's participation in her husband's creations. I'd read Stacy
Schiff's Pullitzer winning biography of "Véra" a long time ago and now it is
difficult for me to recollect it well enough to compare Alexandra
Popoff's instances to S.Schiff's research and interpretation (I didn't
manage to open the full quote from Véra's angry lines against Pasternak
either).
Here is the [SIGHTING]
The Wives: The Women Behind Russia's Literary Giants
Por
Alexandra Popoff
"After days of hunting among rocks and lavender, he caught the
first female Lycaeides sublivens, "this extremely rare goddaugther of
mine". He would
describe his triumph in a poem, "A Discovery."* 'I found it and I named it, being versed in taxonomic Latin; thus
became godfather to an insect and its first describer - and I want no outher
fame.' Nabokov's butterfly passion seems related to Humbert's desire to
possess Lolita, a nymphet with a sensual Spanish name."
"Nabokov once said he would be remembered for Lolita and his translation of
Pushkin's Eugene Onegin, projects to which Véra contributed.
Translating the
poem was her idea: she told Nabokov that if the existing
English versions did not satisfy him, he should try making his own."
"The couple's success was soured when a novel by another Russian writer
began to compete. Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago, released in America in
September 1958, four weeks after Lolita, was soon outselling it. Clearly
jealous, the Nabokov referred to Pasternak's novel as "trash" and portrayed the
author as a "Bolshevik". They claimed that Pasternak's abuse at home was
fabricated and that Zhivago was a Soviet plant. Véra complained to a friend that
Lolita was "squeezed out by that pitiful and miserable
'book' by the lowly..."
....................................................
* "A Discovery" (A.P) and "On Discovering a
Butterfly"
I found it in a legendary
land
all rocks and lavender and tufted grass,
where it was settled on some
sodden sand
hard by the torrent of a mountain pass.
The features it combines
mark it as new
to science shape and shade — the special tinge,
akin to
moonlight, tempering its blue,
the dingy underside, the checkered
fringe.
My needles have teased out
its sculptured sex;
corroded tissues could no longer hide
that priceless
mote now dimpling the convex
and limpid teardrop on a lighted
slide.
Smoothly a screw is turned;
out of the mist
two ambered hooks symmetrically slope,
or scales like
battledores of amethyst
cross the charmed circle of the
microscope.
I found it and I named it,
being versed
in taxonomic Latin; thus became
godfather to an insect and
its first
describer — and I want no other fame.
Wide open on its pin
(though fast asleep)
and safe from creeping relatives and rust,
in the
secluded stronghold where we keep
type specimens it will transcend its
dust.
Dark pictures, thrones, the
stones that pilgrims kiss,
poems that take a thousand years to die
but ape
the immortality of this
red label on a little butterfly.
- Vladimir Nabokov
http://theondioline.wordpress.com/2012/02/27/on-discovering-a-butterfly/