Subject
Nabokov carried tradition of gentleman ... (fwd)
From
Date
Body
---------- Forwarded Message ----------
Date: Wednesday, August 11, 2004 11:53 PM -0400
From: "Sandy P. Klein" <spklein52@hotmail.com>
To: spklein52@hotmail.com
Subject: Nabokov carried tradition of gentleman ...
------------------
NEWSLETTER
__________________________________________________
The Center for the Humanities
A MEMBER OF THE CONSORTIUM OF HUMANITIES CENTERS AND INSTITUTES
AUTZEN HOUSE OREGON STATE UNIVERSITY August 2004
__________________________________________________
http://oregonstate.edu/dept/humanities/newsletter/2000-spring/nabokov.html
Nabokov carried the tradition of gentleman naturalist into mid-century.
Although writer Vladimir Nabokov often used a hand lens for his taxonomic
study of butterflies, historian Daniel Alexandrov may be the first to treat
Nabokov himself as a "lens," specifically to provide a view of fundamental
changes in Western culture during the first half of the 1900s.
"A Russian aristocrat, writer and scientist, Nabokov represents the
features of a cultural world of 'aristocratic' natural history which
blended aesthetics and science," said Alexandrov, a Center Research Fellow
and historian of science from the European University of St. Petersburg.
"Through the lens of Nabokov and entomology, I'm studying major changes in
thought-style and lifestyle in the 20th century."
[Image: "Daniel Alexandrov"] The changes signaled the end of "genteel"
cultural practices rooted in 19th century culture, a shift that Alexandrov
said can be attributed to a number of factors, including World War I,
industrialism, and a move away from classical education. An important
aspect of the shift was the replacement of traditional taxonomy by modern
science, a transformation that Nabokov resisted. That he refused to change
his thinking in response to contemporary Darwinian views makes him a useful
focal point for Alexandrov's analysis of changing cultural practices in
Russia and the West.
Nabokov's science, like his writing, is inseparably rooted in a privileged
upbringing in a St. Petersburg house and country estate rich with paintings
and insects, art and nature. Butterflies and beetles were for him, as for
other aristocratic entomologists of the time, aesthetic objects akin to
paintings and engravings. Nature was equated with art, and the conservation
of nature with the preservation of art.
When the Bolsehvik revolution forced the family to emigrate to Europe, the
trappings of an aristocratic lifestyle were left behind although Nabokov's
aristocratic point of view remained intact even when he moved to the United
States in 1940. He taught at Wellesley and worked for six years as a
curator of butterflies in the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard.
Already a published novelist in Russian, Nabokov's first publication in
English was the article, "A Few Notes on Crimean Lepidoptera."
[Image: "Vladimir Nabokov"] His vision of nature and belief in the
immanent laws of form put Nabokov at the center of a debate in taxonomy and
evolutionary biology fueled by Darwinian ideas, including Ernst Mayr's
population concept of species, that is as an interbreeding population
rather than a set of individuals sharing observable "type" characteristics.
A sharp critic of Mayr, Nabokov wrote, "Taxonomists would be far better in
describing with precision all the morphological details of certain forms
than in studying so-called populations - what a dreadfully misused and
hideous word, anyway."
In his autobiographical Speak, Memory, Nabokov marvels at the elaborate
mimicry in larvae and butterflies aimed at fooling predators, and dismisses
Darwin's evolutionary explanation: "'Natural selection,' in the Darwinian
sense, could not explain the miraculous coincidence of imitative aspect and
imitative behavior, nor could one appeal to the theory of 'the struggle for
life' when a protective devise was carried to a point of mimetic subtlety,
exuberance, and luxury far in excess of a predator's power of appreciation.
Both were a form of magic, both were a game of intricate enchantment and
deception."
The new taxonomic approach attempted to eliminate aesthetics from science,
said Alexandrov, by its recognition of the boundaries between the
scientific and non-scientific, between science and art. Some characterize
the discarding of aesthetic principles for purposes of biological
classification as a "professionalization" of science but this is too narrow
a view - Nabokov and others like him were certainly "professional" in their
meticulousness. What changed was the notion of expertise. When the
aristocracy dominated public and professional life, fields such as
entomology, law and medicine were assumed to require a "gift" for the work.
Entomology, like painting, required a "special eye." In the new industrial
society, the keys to becoming an expert were training and education.
Science, in particular, was assumed to be accessible to anyone who could
learn the skills, and this, in turn, was linked to the education system. As
part of the move toward efficiency in schools after the war, high-brow
genteel education was replaced by modernist education, with a strong attack
on gentlemanly, "useless" Latin and Greek. Although Nabokov was sent to a
school in St. Petersburg that down-played Greek and Latin, his upbringing
formed him into a representative of high culture that, unlike many peers,
he never relinquished.
"Many who had been raised with aristocratic lifestyles 'surrendered' in the
1930's, that is, they changed their minds, not just because of arguments
against the past but because their daily lives changed - thought-style
changes with lifestyle. But Nabokov lived in his past and his prose. There
was no need for him to change his life and mode of thought."
Had he remained in Russia, it's possible, perhaps likely, that Nabokov
would have become an entomologist who wrote rather than a writer who did
entomology. Recognizing that both pursuits were of consuming seriousness -
and prodded by his wife, Vera - Nabokov focused on writing, and was not
employed as an entomologist again after the Harvard stint although he
collected and studied butterflies until his death in 1977.
Although Alexandrov will include several other expatriot Russian
entomologists in his study, Nabokov is the key figure. His loyalty to
aesthetic essentialism into the middle of the 20thcentury, said Alexandrov,
"allows us to view both the cultural richness of a form of life to which he
belonged and the ending of its existence brought about by general changes
in the modernization and professionalization of science."
---------- End Forwarded Message ----------
D. Barton Johnson
NABOKV-L
Date: Wednesday, August 11, 2004 11:53 PM -0400
From: "Sandy P. Klein" <spklein52@hotmail.com>
To: spklein52@hotmail.com
Subject: Nabokov carried tradition of gentleman ...
------------------
NEWSLETTER
__________________________________________________
The Center for the Humanities
A MEMBER OF THE CONSORTIUM OF HUMANITIES CENTERS AND INSTITUTES
AUTZEN HOUSE OREGON STATE UNIVERSITY August 2004
__________________________________________________
http://oregonstate.edu/dept/humanities/newsletter/2000-spring/nabokov.html
Nabokov carried the tradition of gentleman naturalist into mid-century.
Although writer Vladimir Nabokov often used a hand lens for his taxonomic
study of butterflies, historian Daniel Alexandrov may be the first to treat
Nabokov himself as a "lens," specifically to provide a view of fundamental
changes in Western culture during the first half of the 1900s.
"A Russian aristocrat, writer and scientist, Nabokov represents the
features of a cultural world of 'aristocratic' natural history which
blended aesthetics and science," said Alexandrov, a Center Research Fellow
and historian of science from the European University of St. Petersburg.
"Through the lens of Nabokov and entomology, I'm studying major changes in
thought-style and lifestyle in the 20th century."
[Image: "Daniel Alexandrov"] The changes signaled the end of "genteel"
cultural practices rooted in 19th century culture, a shift that Alexandrov
said can be attributed to a number of factors, including World War I,
industrialism, and a move away from classical education. An important
aspect of the shift was the replacement of traditional taxonomy by modern
science, a transformation that Nabokov resisted. That he refused to change
his thinking in response to contemporary Darwinian views makes him a useful
focal point for Alexandrov's analysis of changing cultural practices in
Russia and the West.
Nabokov's science, like his writing, is inseparably rooted in a privileged
upbringing in a St. Petersburg house and country estate rich with paintings
and insects, art and nature. Butterflies and beetles were for him, as for
other aristocratic entomologists of the time, aesthetic objects akin to
paintings and engravings. Nature was equated with art, and the conservation
of nature with the preservation of art.
When the Bolsehvik revolution forced the family to emigrate to Europe, the
trappings of an aristocratic lifestyle were left behind although Nabokov's
aristocratic point of view remained intact even when he moved to the United
States in 1940. He taught at Wellesley and worked for six years as a
curator of butterflies in the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard.
Already a published novelist in Russian, Nabokov's first publication in
English was the article, "A Few Notes on Crimean Lepidoptera."
[Image: "Vladimir Nabokov"] His vision of nature and belief in the
immanent laws of form put Nabokov at the center of a debate in taxonomy and
evolutionary biology fueled by Darwinian ideas, including Ernst Mayr's
population concept of species, that is as an interbreeding population
rather than a set of individuals sharing observable "type" characteristics.
A sharp critic of Mayr, Nabokov wrote, "Taxonomists would be far better in
describing with precision all the morphological details of certain forms
than in studying so-called populations - what a dreadfully misused and
hideous word, anyway."
In his autobiographical Speak, Memory, Nabokov marvels at the elaborate
mimicry in larvae and butterflies aimed at fooling predators, and dismisses
Darwin's evolutionary explanation: "'Natural selection,' in the Darwinian
sense, could not explain the miraculous coincidence of imitative aspect and
imitative behavior, nor could one appeal to the theory of 'the struggle for
life' when a protective devise was carried to a point of mimetic subtlety,
exuberance, and luxury far in excess of a predator's power of appreciation.
Both were a form of magic, both were a game of intricate enchantment and
deception."
The new taxonomic approach attempted to eliminate aesthetics from science,
said Alexandrov, by its recognition of the boundaries between the
scientific and non-scientific, between science and art. Some characterize
the discarding of aesthetic principles for purposes of biological
classification as a "professionalization" of science but this is too narrow
a view - Nabokov and others like him were certainly "professional" in their
meticulousness. What changed was the notion of expertise. When the
aristocracy dominated public and professional life, fields such as
entomology, law and medicine were assumed to require a "gift" for the work.
Entomology, like painting, required a "special eye." In the new industrial
society, the keys to becoming an expert were training and education.
Science, in particular, was assumed to be accessible to anyone who could
learn the skills, and this, in turn, was linked to the education system. As
part of the move toward efficiency in schools after the war, high-brow
genteel education was replaced by modernist education, with a strong attack
on gentlemanly, "useless" Latin and Greek. Although Nabokov was sent to a
school in St. Petersburg that down-played Greek and Latin, his upbringing
formed him into a representative of high culture that, unlike many peers,
he never relinquished.
"Many who had been raised with aristocratic lifestyles 'surrendered' in the
1930's, that is, they changed their minds, not just because of arguments
against the past but because their daily lives changed - thought-style
changes with lifestyle. But Nabokov lived in his past and his prose. There
was no need for him to change his life and mode of thought."
Had he remained in Russia, it's possible, perhaps likely, that Nabokov
would have become an entomologist who wrote rather than a writer who did
entomology. Recognizing that both pursuits were of consuming seriousness -
and prodded by his wife, Vera - Nabokov focused on writing, and was not
employed as an entomologist again after the Harvard stint although he
collected and studied butterflies until his death in 1977.
Although Alexandrov will include several other expatriot Russian
entomologists in his study, Nabokov is the key figure. His loyalty to
aesthetic essentialism into the middle of the 20thcentury, said Alexandrov,
"allows us to view both the cultural richness of a form of life to which he
belonged and the ending of its existence brought about by general changes
in the modernization and professionalization of science."
---------- End Forwarded Message ----------
D. Barton Johnson
NABOKV-L