The Butterfly Writer Loved: How Nabokov's Winged Muses Became His Fatal Passion

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Vladimir Nabokov caught the first butterfly in the Vyra family estate near St. Petersburg, when he was six. It was a magnificent swallowtail. The boy put him in a glass cabinet. In the morning, when the door was opened, the winged creature flew away. The next butterfly caught by the future writer, the mother helped to put to sleep with ether. This is how Vladimir Nabokov's passionate love for lepidoptera began. He also loved chess and boxed. But it was precisely the passion for butterflies, according to his son, that became fatal for the writer.

His father is an official and amateur collector. A lot of scientific literature was kept in the house. Nabokov Jr. became interested in insects seriously. Eight-year-old Volodya excitedly read Newman's Butterflies of Britain encyclopedia. And he began to draw winged beauties even then, more precisely, to paint the illustrations in the book. A thick tome, painted by a young scientist, is now kept in the "House of Nabokov" in the Northern capital on Bolshaya Morskaya.

Vladimir Nabokov's interest in butterflies has only increased over the years. He was closely engaged in scientific activities. He has his own unique system for studying patterns on the wings. Nabokov, a scientist, as well as a writer, was distinguished by unprecedented scrupulousness. The butterfly's wing is composed of scales. Nabokov counted the scales. Then I used the rows as latitudes and veins as meridians. The task was to describe the position of each spot. This method is incredibly time consuming, and it seems that no other scientist has used such a system anymore.

Nabokov wrote to his sister:

He didn't choose hobby, it chose him. Nabokov is an entomologist, or rather, a lepidopterist: he worked at the Harvard Museum for 8 years and published 19 scientific articles and notes on entomology Collected 4323 copies (stored in Switzerland in the Zoological Museum)

Nabokov is the world's most famous entomologist. But in the scientific world, there is an ambiguous attitude towards him. After all, the fame of a scientist was brought to him not by loud discoveries, but by brilliant works of art. Someone even accuses Nabokov of deliberately "decorating" his texts.

Biographer Andrew Field called the writer's passion for insects: In the 60s, the nabokologist Dieter Zimmer began his first translations into German and compiled a complete collection of all the butterflies mentioned by Vladimir Nabokov.

But what about Nabokov himself? The butterfly becomes his literary business card, signature, unique sign, inspiring symbol. Variegated, light, free. They are everywhere in his texts. Sometimes, the author sharpens his attention, and even embarks on a description of the instance. And sometimes, butterflies are mentioned in passing. They fly silently through the paragraphs of his stories and novels. Researchers of Vladimir Nabokov's work have calculated: he mentioned butterflies in his works 570 times. He also discovered several species. The names of the heroes of his books bear more than 20 - this is how modern scientists show respect for the scientific activities of the writer. The genus of bluebirds was named after the author himself - "Nabokovia".

- Nabokov wrote in his autobiographical novel Other Shores.

By the way, it was entomology that saved the family from poverty. Nabokov earned his first money in the United States not by literary work. Harvard University offered him a job. The writer was promoted to curator at the Museum of Comparative Zoology. This activity gave him time for rehabilitation. New language, new readers, different life. Butterflies helped Nabokov to know and love the New World. The writer began to travel around the country, catch lepidoptera, describe them and the area in his scandalous novel "Lolita".

This novel brought commercial success to Nabokov. It began to be actively published, and he received royalties from Hollywood. The writer left America. He first returned to Paris. And later he moved to Switzerland. There, in the alpine meadows, he continued to collect and study butterflies. There he decided to live the rest of his life. Eyewitnesses said that he left early in the morning and spent many hours with a net in his hands.

In 2009, Dmitry Nabokov decided to publish his father's unfinished novel. The son transcribed and, with the help of editors, combined the sketches into a book. In the introduction to Laura and Her Original, Dmitry Nabokov says that it was this hobby that triggered the writer's illness and death.

In 1972, Vladimir Nabokov wrote, paraphrasing Gumilyov:

And these words turned out to be prophetic. In the summer of 1975, Vladimir Nabokov stumbled and fell unsuccessfully while hunting for butterflies.

It happened on a steep slope in Davos. The tourists who passed over him on the funicular did not understand that the writer was in trouble. He waved his arms and asked for help. And the onlookers laughed and sent him greetings. Nabokov spent many hours on the ground before help arrived.

- wrote Dmitry Nabokov.

He conceived a large scientific work - "Butterflies in Art". This work was supposed to describe all references to these creatures in the visual arts. From Ancient Egypt to the Renaissance. Nabokov not only wanted to pay tribute to the winged muses, he dreamed of tracing the evolution of species. The work was not finished. You can quickly get to know the butterflies in Nabokov's work by reading the stories: "Christmas", "Pilgram", "Wing Kick".

And in continuation of the theme, a story about 10 great writers with their secret weaknesses and vices.