Subject
New York Times article on VN the Lepidopterist
Date
Body
EDITOR's NOTE. The full text of the NEW YORK TIMES article can be obtained
on the Web by reaching the URL http://www.nytimes.com and then executing a
search command for nabokov & lepidopterist. Much of the story derives from
the cited article by Kurt Johnson, Zsolt Balint, & G. Warren Whitaker in
NABOKOV STUDIES #3 (1996) as supplemented by recent interviews with
Johnson and others.
---------------------------------------
Vladimir Nabokov: A Lover of
Literature and Lepidoptera
By STEVE COATES
Lepidopterists have substantially completed an ambitious project begun 50
years ago by an extraordinary colleague: the novelist Vladimir Nabokov,
author of "Lolita."
In the 1940s, Nabokov held a part-time position at the
Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University and published several
papers on a widespread group of small blue butterflies known as
Polyommatini, or blues. Among them was a seminal taxonomic classification
of the Latin American, or neotropical, Polyommatini, which lepidopterists
know casually as Nabokov's blues.
The two researchers say their recent work dispels
longstanding doubts that Nabokov's pioneering study would stand the test
of time. Moreover, they have paid honor to Nabokov by naming more than 25
recently discovered species of neotropical Polyommatini after characters
or places in his novels, including one called Madeleinea lolita.
"The neotropical blues are in a sense Nabokov's territory,"
one of the researchers, Dr. Kurt Johnson, said in a recent interview.
Johnson, a lepidopterist with the Florida State Collection of Arthropods,
is one of the authors of "Nabokov as Lepidopterist: An Informed
Appraisal," an article in the current issue of Nabokov Studies, an annual
literary journal. He did his research when he worked at the American
Museum of Natural History in New York. The other authors of the article
are Dr. Zsolt Balint, a lepidopterist at the Hungarian Museum of Natural
History in Budapest, and G. Warren Whitaker, a New York lawyer who guided
the writing. The article summarizes work that Dr. Johnson and Balint have
recently published in various scientific journals.
Nabokov's passion for butterflies was much publicized after
the success of "Lolita" in 1958, and indeed few lives have combined
literature and science so intimately. "It was as if Nabokov was a
bigamist, as if he had two wives he loved passionately, literature and
Lepidoptera," Dr. Brian Boyd, Nabokov's principal biographer ("Vladimir
Nabokov: The Russian Years," Princeton University Press, 1990, and
"Vladimir Nabokov: The American Years" Princeton, 1991), said in an
interview. But readers have never been in a position to judge the quality
of Nabokov's scientific work for themselves, with cynics going so far as
to label his lepidoptery as nothing more than an elaborate literary pose.
And because Nabokov lacked formal training in biology, there have always
been professional entomologists who have been inclined to dismiss his
studies as the work of an amateur.
"Eyebrows were raised when Nabokov published his research,"
said Charles L. Remington, professor emeritus of evolutionary genetics at
Yale University and a lepidopterist who has written about Nabokov's work.
"A lot of people have been uneasy about how well his work would stand up
under the scrutiny of good professionals." But Nabokov was remarkably
capable, and so it was very good to have this high-quality work," he
added, referring to Johnson and Balint's research. "No one before has done this kind
of elegant morphological analysis of the Latin American
blues."
Nabokov, a Russian aristocrat who fled the Russian
revolution, fled yet again from the Nazis, arriving in the United States
in 1940 at age 41. With many professional researchers joining the
military, he found unusual opportunities. Beginning as a volunteer, he
worked first at the American Museum of Natural History and later at
Harvard, where he drew a salary of $1,200 a year. His classification of
the Latin American Polyommatini appeared in the journal Psyche in 1945.
Nabokov did other significant work on butterflies, but
Johnson maintains that his ultimate place in science will largely depend
on that study. By outlining the taxonomy of the Latin American blues, a
large and complicated group that was little known at the time, Johnson
said, "Nabokov inevitably put his mark on that branch of entomology
forever."
Dissecting a relatively small sampling of 120 specimens,
Nabokov aimed primarily to divide the Latin American Polyommatini into
genera (the taxonomic grouping larger than species), establishing a
skeletal classification for them. He did not try to cover all of the few
species of neotropical blues then known, less than one-tenth of those
known today, Johnson estimates, or even all the species he himself had
noted.
This approach to classification is called a "synoptic
review," or abbreviated study, as opposed to the authors' more rigorous
full technical "revision." Synoptic reviews are perfectly acceptable
science, Johnson said, but inherently susceptible to sampling error; when
a larger percentage of the entire group can be examined, its taxonomy, and
the appropriate nomenclature, may appear very different.
But Nabokov, increasingly devoted to his writing, did not
pursue the work he had begun. Nor, the authors say, did anyone else. Until
1993, when their articles began to appear, along with work by other
researchers, there was little scientific literature affecting the status
of Nabokov's names.
Recent collaboration between American and European
scientists has allowed easier access to crucial older material, and with a
flood of new specimens from biodiversity surveys in Central and South
America, Johnson and Balint guess that up to 95 percent of the species of
blue butterflies of the New World tropics can now be classified, making
possible a well-informed judgment of Nabokov's achievement.
Nabokov named seven new genera of Latin American blues and
restricted two genera that had been established previously; he named a new
species and grouped 28 others into his new genera. Examining nearly 2,000
specimens, Johnson and Balint have recognized three additional genera,
none of whose members Nabokov ever saw, and have themselves discovered
more than two dozen species to add to Nabokov's classification. Of
Nabokov's seven generic names, Johnson and Balint consider five still
valid today, a success rate they say is excellent, given the circumstances
under which Nabokov worked.
Johnson said that under the code developed after World War
II to govern scientific names, one Nabokovian generic name, Pseudothecla,
was invalid because it was a "homonymn." That is, unknown to Nabokov, it
had already been used for a group of Old World butterflies. (The genus was
later named Nabokovia.) The other invalid genus, Parachilades, Johnson
said, was a "subjective synonym," meaning that the group had already been
given a name, Itylos, based on a different benchmark, or "type," species.
"It was a historical technicality," Johnson said. "Classification rules
adopted 20 years after he did his work dictated that first-published types
be considered normative." The weaknesses in Nabokov's study, he said,
resulted mainly from the unavailability of specimens and reliance on some
old literature. "It had nothing to do with any lack of discriminatory
power," he said. "In the whole study, Nabokov actually misidentified only
three species, a remarkable success rate, really."
"Nabokov was blessed with what taxonomists call a 'good
eye,' " Johnson added -- the ability of some early researchers to
recognize complex physical distinctions that are ultimately borne out by
the more sophisticated methods used today.
Robert Michael Pyle is the author of "The Audubon Society
Field Guide to North American Butterflies" and co-editor with Boyd and
Dmitri Nabokov, the novelist's son, of a coming book on Nabokov's
butterfly writings. "I am always amazed," Pyle said, "that Nabokov was
able to balance both his scientific and literary output as he did and
achieve such a high standard of productivity in both areas, drawing upon
both sides of his mind and his passions."
Nabokov seems to have been careful not to allow literary
affectations to influence his scientific prose. But butterflies influenced
his fiction in countless ways, from the use of lepidopterists as major
characters to the sly use of lepidoptery to supply his works with proper
names. In "Lolita," the names of Vanessa van Ness, Percy Elphinstone,
Electra Gold and Avis Chapman all recall names of specific butterflies;
the name of the town Schmetterling is German for butterfly, and the town
of Lepingville hides an insider's term for butterfly hunting -- leping.
"There are beautiful parallels between Nabokov's creative
writing and his lepidoptery," Pyle said. Nabokov's devotion to
lepidoptery never waned. In 1975, on a collecting outing in Davos,
Switzerland, Nabokov, a vigorous 76, was hurt in a fall. His injuries did
not appear serious, but some people close to him thought that the accident
began a decline in health that led to Nabokov's death two years later.
In his biography, Boyd describes a scene shortly before
Nabokov's death. At the end of a visit, Dmitri Nabokov kissed his father's
forehead: "Nabokov's eyes suddenly welled with tears. When Dmitri asked
him why, he replied that a certain butterfly was already on the wing, and
his eyes made clear that he expected never to see it again."
on the Web by reaching the URL http://www.nytimes.com and then executing a
search command for nabokov & lepidopterist. Much of the story derives from
the cited article by Kurt Johnson, Zsolt Balint, & G. Warren Whitaker in
NABOKOV STUDIES #3 (1996) as supplemented by recent interviews with
Johnson and others.
---------------------------------------
Vladimir Nabokov: A Lover of
Literature and Lepidoptera
By STEVE COATES
Lepidopterists have substantially completed an ambitious project begun 50
years ago by an extraordinary colleague: the novelist Vladimir Nabokov,
author of "Lolita."
In the 1940s, Nabokov held a part-time position at the
Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University and published several
papers on a widespread group of small blue butterflies known as
Polyommatini, or blues. Among them was a seminal taxonomic classification
of the Latin American, or neotropical, Polyommatini, which lepidopterists
know casually as Nabokov's blues.
The two researchers say their recent work dispels
longstanding doubts that Nabokov's pioneering study would stand the test
of time. Moreover, they have paid honor to Nabokov by naming more than 25
recently discovered species of neotropical Polyommatini after characters
or places in his novels, including one called Madeleinea lolita.
"The neotropical blues are in a sense Nabokov's territory,"
one of the researchers, Dr. Kurt Johnson, said in a recent interview.
Johnson, a lepidopterist with the Florida State Collection of Arthropods,
is one of the authors of "Nabokov as Lepidopterist: An Informed
Appraisal," an article in the current issue of Nabokov Studies, an annual
literary journal. He did his research when he worked at the American
Museum of Natural History in New York. The other authors of the article
are Dr. Zsolt Balint, a lepidopterist at the Hungarian Museum of Natural
History in Budapest, and G. Warren Whitaker, a New York lawyer who guided
the writing. The article summarizes work that Dr. Johnson and Balint have
recently published in various scientific journals.
Nabokov's passion for butterflies was much publicized after
the success of "Lolita" in 1958, and indeed few lives have combined
literature and science so intimately. "It was as if Nabokov was a
bigamist, as if he had two wives he loved passionately, literature and
Lepidoptera," Dr. Brian Boyd, Nabokov's principal biographer ("Vladimir
Nabokov: The Russian Years," Princeton University Press, 1990, and
"Vladimir Nabokov: The American Years" Princeton, 1991), said in an
interview. But readers have never been in a position to judge the quality
of Nabokov's scientific work for themselves, with cynics going so far as
to label his lepidoptery as nothing more than an elaborate literary pose.
And because Nabokov lacked formal training in biology, there have always
been professional entomologists who have been inclined to dismiss his
studies as the work of an amateur.
"Eyebrows were raised when Nabokov published his research,"
said Charles L. Remington, professor emeritus of evolutionary genetics at
Yale University and a lepidopterist who has written about Nabokov's work.
"A lot of people have been uneasy about how well his work would stand up
under the scrutiny of good professionals." But Nabokov was remarkably
capable, and so it was very good to have this high-quality work," he
added, referring to Johnson and Balint's research. "No one before has done this kind
of elegant morphological analysis of the Latin American
blues."
Nabokov, a Russian aristocrat who fled the Russian
revolution, fled yet again from the Nazis, arriving in the United States
in 1940 at age 41. With many professional researchers joining the
military, he found unusual opportunities. Beginning as a volunteer, he
worked first at the American Museum of Natural History and later at
Harvard, where he drew a salary of $1,200 a year. His classification of
the Latin American Polyommatini appeared in the journal Psyche in 1945.
Nabokov did other significant work on butterflies, but
Johnson maintains that his ultimate place in science will largely depend
on that study. By outlining the taxonomy of the Latin American blues, a
large and complicated group that was little known at the time, Johnson
said, "Nabokov inevitably put his mark on that branch of entomology
forever."
Dissecting a relatively small sampling of 120 specimens,
Nabokov aimed primarily to divide the Latin American Polyommatini into
genera (the taxonomic grouping larger than species), establishing a
skeletal classification for them. He did not try to cover all of the few
species of neotropical blues then known, less than one-tenth of those
known today, Johnson estimates, or even all the species he himself had
noted.
This approach to classification is called a "synoptic
review," or abbreviated study, as opposed to the authors' more rigorous
full technical "revision." Synoptic reviews are perfectly acceptable
science, Johnson said, but inherently susceptible to sampling error; when
a larger percentage of the entire group can be examined, its taxonomy, and
the appropriate nomenclature, may appear very different.
But Nabokov, increasingly devoted to his writing, did not
pursue the work he had begun. Nor, the authors say, did anyone else. Until
1993, when their articles began to appear, along with work by other
researchers, there was little scientific literature affecting the status
of Nabokov's names.
Recent collaboration between American and European
scientists has allowed easier access to crucial older material, and with a
flood of new specimens from biodiversity surveys in Central and South
America, Johnson and Balint guess that up to 95 percent of the species of
blue butterflies of the New World tropics can now be classified, making
possible a well-informed judgment of Nabokov's achievement.
Nabokov named seven new genera of Latin American blues and
restricted two genera that had been established previously; he named a new
species and grouped 28 others into his new genera. Examining nearly 2,000
specimens, Johnson and Balint have recognized three additional genera,
none of whose members Nabokov ever saw, and have themselves discovered
more than two dozen species to add to Nabokov's classification. Of
Nabokov's seven generic names, Johnson and Balint consider five still
valid today, a success rate they say is excellent, given the circumstances
under which Nabokov worked.
Johnson said that under the code developed after World War
II to govern scientific names, one Nabokovian generic name, Pseudothecla,
was invalid because it was a "homonymn." That is, unknown to Nabokov, it
had already been used for a group of Old World butterflies. (The genus was
later named Nabokovia.) The other invalid genus, Parachilades, Johnson
said, was a "subjective synonym," meaning that the group had already been
given a name, Itylos, based on a different benchmark, or "type," species.
"It was a historical technicality," Johnson said. "Classification rules
adopted 20 years after he did his work dictated that first-published types
be considered normative." The weaknesses in Nabokov's study, he said,
resulted mainly from the unavailability of specimens and reliance on some
old literature. "It had nothing to do with any lack of discriminatory
power," he said. "In the whole study, Nabokov actually misidentified only
three species, a remarkable success rate, really."
"Nabokov was blessed with what taxonomists call a 'good
eye,' " Johnson added -- the ability of some early researchers to
recognize complex physical distinctions that are ultimately borne out by
the more sophisticated methods used today.
Robert Michael Pyle is the author of "The Audubon Society
Field Guide to North American Butterflies" and co-editor with Boyd and
Dmitri Nabokov, the novelist's son, of a coming book on Nabokov's
butterfly writings. "I am always amazed," Pyle said, "that Nabokov was
able to balance both his scientific and literary output as he did and
achieve such a high standard of productivity in both areas, drawing upon
both sides of his mind and his passions."
Nabokov seems to have been careful not to allow literary
affectations to influence his scientific prose. But butterflies influenced
his fiction in countless ways, from the use of lepidopterists as major
characters to the sly use of lepidoptery to supply his works with proper
names. In "Lolita," the names of Vanessa van Ness, Percy Elphinstone,
Electra Gold and Avis Chapman all recall names of specific butterflies;
the name of the town Schmetterling is German for butterfly, and the town
of Lepingville hides an insider's term for butterfly hunting -- leping.
"There are beautiful parallels between Nabokov's creative
writing and his lepidoptery," Pyle said. Nabokov's devotion to
lepidoptery never waned. In 1975, on a collecting outing in Davos,
Switzerland, Nabokov, a vigorous 76, was hurt in a fall. His injuries did
not appear serious, but some people close to him thought that the accident
began a decline in health that led to Nabokov's death two years later.
In his biography, Boyd describes a scene shortly before
Nabokov's death. At the end of a visit, Dmitri Nabokov kissed his father's
forehead: "Nabokov's eyes suddenly welled with tears. When Dmitri asked
him why, he replied that a certain butterfly was already on the wing, and
his eyes made clear that he expected never to see it again."