James Twiggs: "...VN's opinion of
Diana Butler's "Lolita Lepidoptera" is a matter of record...to Page Stegner:
"You should have been warned that Mrs. Butler's article is pretentious nonsense
from beginning to end";...to Alfred Appel Jr....he speaks of Lepidoptera as a
tricky subject "which led the unfortunate Diana so dreadfully astray";
in his Herbert Gold interview VN speaks of "the essay by a young lady
who attempted to find entomological symbols in my fiction. The essay might have
been amusing had she known something about Lepidoptera. Alas, she revealed
complete ignorance and the muddle of terms she employed proved to be only
jarring and absurd"
JM: Great collection of quotes.
They illustrate how Nabokov seemed to be mainly concerned
with Diana Butler's muddled presentation of Lepidoptera.
Although he didn't miss the chance to add that
"the essay might have been amusing," he didn't mention Freud's name in
connection to DB's "entomological symbols." It
seems that she produced in fact "pretentious nonsense from beginning
to end."