Enjoying this exchange. The
following oft-quoted quote from Michael Wood’s NYRB [June 21 2001]
review of “The Scientific Odyssey of a Literary Genius” (Kurt Johnson
& Steve Coates) seems relevant — esp. the final Nabokovian warning
sting. Worth recalling, too, that VN’s Q&A interviews were always
carefully planned: on- rather than off-the-cuff.
Stan Kelly-Bootle
For them the work of Nabokov's
which counts definitively is his 1945 "Notes on Neotropical
Plebejinae," a feat, they say, of "wondrous taxonomic daring." "With a
mere handful of specimens from a few far-flung localities in that
intricate biological mosaic, he circumscribed a basic nomenclature for
South American Blues." They remind us, too, that Nabokov never set foot
in South America, or even the Caribbean Islands, only analyzed samples
of these kinds of Blues in the museum, so that his work represents the
blend of detailed observation and imaginative reach he always called
for in both science and art. "There is no science without fancy," he
said in an interview, "and no art without facts." He also attacked such
aphorisms in the next sentence, which is worth remembering too:
"Aphoristicism is a symptom of arteriosclerosis."