You ask, How do you know VN had naturalist John Ray in mind?  Answer: he talked about Ray when I met him.  Although primarily a botanist Ray (1627-1795) wrote this celebrated quote translated from the Latin: "You ask what is the use of butterflies? I reply to adorn the world and delight the eyes of men; to brighten the countryside like so many golden jewels.  To contemplate their exquisite beauty and variety is to experience the truest pleasure. To gaze inquiringly at such elegance of colour and form designed by the ingenuity of nature and painted by her artist's pencil is to acknowledge and adore the imprint of the art of God." 

 Ray essentially laid down the scheme of plant and animal classification, an interest of VN, that Linnaeus improved upon with binomial nomenclature.  Perhaps not so Incidentally, Ray & VN both attended to Trinity College, Cambridge. 

   A must book for Nabokovians with a butterfly bent --- the celebrated Ray quote above is from it --- is Michael Salmon's The Aurelian Legacy, British Butterflies and Their Collectors.  A sumptuous work on coated stock with many color & b&w illustrations, it was published in the U. S. by the University of Cal. Press, Berkeley in arrangement with Harley Books in the UK.  Originally it must have cost at least $35, but was then obviously remaindered and is available on www.bookfinder.com for a bargain $11. 

    I am no student of Ada, but possibly some of the 90 collectors described in The Aurelian Legacy figure in VN's novel. Certainly some of them are VN quirky. My favorite is William Buckler (1814-1884) whose nine-volume opus, Larvae of the British Butterflies and Moths was published after his death by, yes, the Ray Society! Then and now, Larvae is considered to have the finest set of such illustrations ever made. Buckler was orginally a portrait painter, but the rise of photography undermined his career, and he got his revenge by always posing with a sullen expression whenever his picture was taken.

  BTW, The Aurelian Legacy opens with an extract from Speak, Memory, 1954, --- the sole time VN is cited --- followed by an extract from from Virginia Woolf's Jacob's Room. 

    Do get The Aurelian Legacy. Great read.  Cheers.  


On Fri, Aug 22, 2014 at 3:45 PM, Carolyn Kunin <chaiselongue@att.net> wrote:
Dear RHB,

If you don't mind my asking, how do you know? There are many references to arctic exploration in VN's work, as well. Why do you think he uses the name of someone he admires to make fun of? It seems a sort of reversal of a quirk of my father's - he used to name our pets after other physicians that he didn't like. Of course he loved them in spite of the spiteful names!

Carolyn


On Aug 22, 2014, at 10:59 AM, Robert Boyle wrote:

Naturalist John Ray was the Ray who interested VN.  RHB


On Thu, Aug 21, 2014 at 7:06 PM, Carolyn Kunin <chaiselongue@att.net> wrote:
De: Vladimir Nabokov Forum [mailto:[log in to unmask]] Em nome de Jansy Mello
Enviada em: segunda-feira, 11 de agosto de 2014 22:28
Para: [log in to unmask]
Assunto: [NABOKV-L] RES: [NABOKV-L] Parhelia
 
Carolyn Kunin: “ The parhelion reminds me of two related optical phenomena, the "Brocken Spectre" and "solar glory," which reinforce - to myself, that is - the possibility that VN was referencing Js. Hogg's Confessions of a Justified Sinner...”
 
Jansy Mello: What an amazing – and pertinent- link between Js. Hogg’s novel and “Pale Fire”,  not to mention the Wikipedia photograph of a brocken spectre halloed by glory and a link to a “fourth wall”.
Do you think there’s another reference to be found in “Lolita” ( HH’s “confessions” that were edited and prefaced by John Ray Jr)?
 
Dear Jansy,  
Today I do have something to add to your question about John Ray Jr, as he is designated in the Preface to Lolita. I am considering the purchase of a 1674 book by one John Ray, entitled "A Collection of English VVords Not Commonly Used", not thinking there was any relation to VN or Lolita. However, in checking out John Ray (1627-1705) I discovered that he was a naturalist and that his name was sometimes spelled Wray, which did ring a hazy bell, since I have always felt that Lolita's "wreal" surname was Hayes. Not sure if this has ever been discussed (the archives reveal that it has), and it has even been reported that "according to John Ray, Jr., 'Haze' only rhymes with the heroine's real surname" - a very rich rhyme, indeed. 
 
But in pursuing the question of any possible relationship between  17th century John [w]Ray and John Ray Jr., I have found two candidates for references possibly intended by VN. 

1) John Ray or Wray: (NB the initials form "Jr") An eminent naturalist and far ahead of his time especially in the field of fossils. One of his books was published byJohn Hayes, and the other combines a study of words with a catalogue of birds (shades of Pale Fire) and fishes along with minerals and metals in England.

Interestingly, he was the first to propose that the intricacies of the eye were evidence of a supreme designer. He preceded Linnaeus in understanding the importance of developing a system of taxonomy and proposed the use of Latin to do so.

2) the Scottish Arctic explorer John Rae, M.D., who earned the displeasure of the English public and John Franklin's widow when it was revealed that in his attempts to find out what had happened to the Franklin expedition, he heard of possible cannibalism from the Inuit. Although thoroughly reviled at the time, he was eventually vindicated when 140 years later physical evidence was discovered that more than suggested that some of the party had indeed resorted to cannibalism.

He  (and not Franklin) is also now recognized as the actual discoverer of the North West passage.

Both JRs it seems to me would appeal to VN - so why use the name for someone clearly contemptible in VN's eyes? That I can't begin to answer.

Carolyn





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