The Vanessa atalanta butterfly is John Shade’s name for his personal muse. The butterfly also has associations in Pale Fire’s text, with Sybil primarily, but also Disa, Kinbote and even Gradus. If we accept Brian Boyd’s theory, at a deeper extra-text level the butterfly has associations with Hazel as well (B.Boyd, Nabokov’s Pale Fire). Boyd looks at Pale Fire from three “thetic” levels of interpretation. The text/plot level (thetic), the story behind (antithetic) and the re-reading/discovery level (synthetic). The higher synthetic level is where he hypothesizes the transmigration of Hazel’s spirit-as-muse into the Vanessa atalanta. Like Nabokov’s “fairy chess” where moves can take place off the board, solutions can be found outside the text on the synthetic level. A closer look at the “Vanessa” itself on this synthetic level reveals its crucial relationship to Hazel (which I see a bit differently from Boyd), as well as to all the associated characters.
Why did Nabokov choose this particular butterfly as emblematic of all the above characters? His personal butterfly/muse was the Parnassus Mnemosyne, a particularly apt choice for a poet, as it relates to the abode of, and mother of, the muses. The Vanessa atalanta, as John Shade’s muse, relates to several dove-tailing themes in Pale Fire: the theme of mirror images and the theme of marriage. These themes in turn point to the greater themes of Art and transcendence, and ultimately to the transcendence of Art. The stories and associations of the butterfly’s two eponymous women, “Vanessa” from Jonathan Swift’s Vanessa and Cadenus and Atalanta, from the Greek myth of Atalanta and Hippomenes, and how they express these themes, can be understood by looking at their relationship to mythology, alchemy and the theories of Carl Jung.
It may seem surprising to suggest that the man known to call psychiatrists “fakes” and “frauds,” who disliked symbols, allegory and sexual theory, used Carl Jung’s ideas as a pervasive, albeit hidden, substrate in his own work. However, Pale Fire is a masterful pastiche of parody and appropriation of the great, the near great and the not-so-great. Where Jung falls within that remains unknown, as Nabokov was silent on the man himself. I intend to demonstrate that looking at the Vanessa atalanta through Jung’s theories reveals satisfying solutions to the themes of Pale Fire, as well as convincing suggestions that this was done purposefully.
Carl Jung was largely responsible for resurrecting interest in alchemy with his insights into the psychological nature of the alchemists’ endeavors. He saw in the work of alchemy that the sought-after goal of “coniunctio” (sacred marriage) of the elements was psychologically parallel to achieving what he termed “individuation,” that is, wholeness or Oneness. He posited that the unconscious held repressed and unknown opposites to the contents of consciousness. Bringing the unconscious opposites to consciousness was the achievement of psychological unity of the individual. Like the alchemists who held the highest opposites to be King and Queen (Sol et Luna), the most potent opposites Jung considered to be the male/female duality. He theorized that each sex had in their unconscious an archetype of the opposite sex, which he termed the “anima” for men and the “animus” for women. An un-unified anima or animus could wreak havoc on one’s personality and relationships. The myth of Atalanta and the “mock-myth” of Vanessa both reflect this.
Pale Fire alludes frequently to glass, reflections, mirrors and “mirror opposites” suggestive of this process, beginning with the waxwing’s collision with its reflection. Cold, distant and fantastical Zembla, its upheaval and inhabitants, is a topsy-turvy mirror to the sunny harmonious “Arcady” of Appalachia.
The marriage relationships in the two lands are also opposite reflections. The Shades have an apparently unmarred forty-year union; Kinbote and Disa’s marriage remains unconsummated and problematical. Sybil and Disa are opposites in the mirrors of age and temperament. Marriage is a problem for another set of mirror opposites: Fleur and Hazel.
The Myth
In Greek mythology, Atalanta was a princess of Arcadia, the bucolic Isle of the Hesperides. Arcadia was a real place, located variously in myth but believed to be within modern Illyria. The Hesperides were mythic. Rather like a side-view look in the mirror to the quasi-mythical Zembla in the North, the Ile of the Hersperides had a romantic association with the West (Hesperus means “evening”, where the sun goes down in the West.) Atalanta’s father, who had rejected her because he had wanted a son, insisted she marry, but she had pledged herself to the virgin goddess Artemis, and refused. A huntress, like Artemis, she was extraordinarily fleet and could outrun any man, so she told her father that she would only marry a man who could beat her in a race; those who failed would be killed. Many were. An ardent youth, Hippomenes, prayed to the goddess Venus for help. She gave him three golden apples and instructed him to throw them down as he ran against Atalanta. He did, and, enchanted, Atalanta stopped each time to them pick up. This caused her to lose the race, but also, to her surprise and delight, to fall in love. The two raced off to slake their lust and consummated their union in the temple of Cybele. The Mother goddess, angry at the desecration of her temple, turned them into two red lions which she yoked to her chariot.
Alchemy
“The idea that the art can make something higher than nature is typically alchemical.” (C.G.Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, CW, Vol.12, p.135)
The myth of Atalanta was an essential myth of alchemy. Known also as “The Triumph of Art Over Nature” or “The Marriage of Art and Nature” the myth was used as a symbol for the phase of the alchemic process called the rubedo (red), which led to the coniunctio, or “sacred marriage.” This was considered the mystical union of duality into the One. Alchemists considered their work their “art” and themselves “artifex” (artist). Essentially, anything a man did of his own creation was considered “art.” They considered the highest art to be spiritual transformation, the aurum non vulgi, the uncommon gold, the aurum philosophicum, which is what the serious alchemists sought to achieve. This was the “stone” that had gone through the process of unification into the One.
Atalanta has associations with gold: not only through the golden apples, but also as the only woman Argonaut in the quest for the golden fleece. The alchemists used the myth of Atalanta to explain the transformative unification process of alchemy. The 16th century German alchemist, Michael Meier, wrote a treatise titled “Atalanta Fugiens” (Atalanta Fleeing) (M.Meier, Atalanta Fugiens, Old Book Publishing Ltd. 2015). Called an “emblem book,” it consisted of 50 discourses on alchemy, each accompanied by an engraved image (emblem), an epigrammatic verse, and a musical fugue. The fugue incorporated theories of counterpoint, and was to be sung by three characters: Atalanta, Hippomenes and… a golden apple. The title, “Atalanta Fugiens,” is a pun on the word “fugue.” The work employed contrapuntal motifs as well as anagrams and word play as secret subtext, which alchemists called “argot.” Nabokov, in fact, strongly alludes to this emblem book in Kinbote’s foreword:
“I am witnessing a unique physiological phenomenon: John Shade transforming the world, taking it in and taking it apart, recombining its elements in the very process of storing them up so as to produce at some unspecified date an organic miracle, a fusion of image and music, a line of verse.” (F. 20)
The recombining and transforming of elements is the basis of alchemy. Metaphorically, one could say, as Robert Alter eloquently does in his essay “Autobiography as Alchemy in Pale Fire,” (http://revel.unice.fr/cycnos/index.html?id=1313) that the novel Pale Fire is itself a miraculous work of alchemy. Kinbote means his statement as metaphor. Nabokov has Kinbote lay out many of the hidden themes in his foreword. This so closely suggests an allusion to Meier’s Atalanta that I take it to be a clear indication of Nabokov’s intent to use alchemy as a motif. As in the above quote, Meier’s book fused three arts: visual images (emblemata), music, and poetry in describing alchemical experiments. Meier’s verse below hints at the Atalanta myth’s importance to alchemy (M. Meier, op.cit., p.3):
He that can Cybele’s Mystic change Explain,
And those two Lions with true Redness stain,
Commands that treasure plenteous Nature gives
And free from Pain in Wisdom’s Splendor lives.
Cybele’s mystic change can be explained this way: The “red stain” is the final stage of the alchemic process, the rubedo, leading to the “sacred marriage” by the union of opposites. It means that Art may be wedded to Nature, but must not transgress the greater Nature. The red lions remain under the yoke of Cybele (Mother Nature) so that Art may be true to the laws of Nature found in alchemy. The alchemists warned of the perils of insanity to the artifex who did not work within Nature’s bounds. The “Art over Nature” theme of Atalanta may have a connotation of “trickery,” as in the ability to outdo Nature through human wiles. The alchemists did not actually seek to trick Nature, but to get Her to reveal Her spiritual secrets.
Nabokov claimed to enjoy employing “deceit to the point of diabolism” to deepen the levels of creative meaning. As in Atalanta’s myth, art not yoked in by the greater spiritual reality might result in either insanity, or worse, poshlost. Art, poetry, counterpoint, wordplay, sacred marriage; one can see why Nabokov would choose this work as a major substrate to his novel. Besides the contrapuntal fugue-like arrangement between the three main characters and word play like Atalanta Fugiens, Pale Fire also has many allusions to alchemy, including the “union of opposites” (sacred marriage), hidden treasure (the philosopher’s stone) and transforming base material (literary appropriation) into (literary) gold.
Vanessa
The name Vanessa did not exist until the poet/essayist/satirist Jonathan Swift created it in 1712 for his pupil/lover, Esther Vanhomrigh (Van+Esther), in his poem, Cadenus and Vanessa. The poem, referenced by Kinbote (C270), is a mock myth based partially on the myth of Atalanta.
Vanessa was a young woman who had an intellect that surpassed most men and seemed therefore doomed to never marry. She was in love with her tutor, Cadenus, an older man in his forties, who tried to dissuade her from her affections. Cadenus suggests the Greek hero, dragon slayer, and founder of Thebes, Cadmus, who married the goddess Harmonia (a union of opposites of the active and passive principles). “Cadenus” is an anagram of “decanus” (dean), a post held by Swift. Esther Vanhomrigh died brokenhearted shortly after Swift dropped her and married another. As a mentor Swift had been a father figure to her. Vanessa’s unsuccessful love is a mirror reversal of Atalanta’s fiery union. From the poem:
The goddess thus pronounced her doom
When, lo, Vanessa in her bloom,
Advanced like Atalanta's star
The goddess, who is also “Atalanta’s star,” is Venus. Venus is the “evening star” of Atalanta’s westerly land, Arcadia, where the sun sets. The goddess of Love is an important figure in both the Vanessa and Atalanta stories as her power brings lovers together. In Vanessa’s case, however, she errs. Venus endows the infant Vanessa with masculine intellect, which subverts the feminine beauty she also gives her. The result is that men are not attracted to her despite the “bloom” of her beauty.
Venus was associated with Atalanta’s land, Arcadia. The important things to note, however, are the word “doom” and the word “bloom.” Kinbote tells us that “emblem” means “blooming” in Zemblan. The alchemists used emblemata to illustrate their treatises. There is a connection, then, between doom-Vanessa-emblem-alchemy.
Marriage and Animus Issues
Vanessa and Atalanta were both young women whom Carl Jung would describe as “animus possessed” – that is, with a strong masculine identification, so that marriage becomes problematical. The Atalanta myth and Swift’s poem have parallels to Shade and Kinbote (as well as Nabokov) and their respective spouses. The women are beautiful and highly intelligent; their men are unsurpassable (or believe themselves to be). Both Shade and Nabokov “temper love and books together” with their wives, as Swift writes of Cadenus and Vanessa.
The poem resembles more closely Kinbote and Disa’s story. Nineteen-year-old Disa was the same age as Esther Vanhomrigh when she met Swift. Looking first like a boy (i.e. exhibiting her “animus” identification), she had some attraction for the 40-something Kinbote, but he could not return her love. Like poor Esther, faithful Disa is in unfaltering pain over this.
Ironically, the character perhaps most exemplifying the Vanessa atalanta has no actual direct textual reference: Hazel. Like Vanessa, Hazel is also rejected by a “decanus”: Pete Dean. Like Atalanta, she was also rejected by her father - her father who nevertheless wanted her to marry. Mathew Roth writes a convincing essay on this surprising conclusion, demonstrating that John Shade’s grief and concern over his “ugly cygnet” daughter is tantamount to a rejection. (Mathew Roth,“A Small Mad Hope: Pale Fire, Hazel Shade and the Oedipal Disaster”, in Nabokov’s Women, E.Rakhimova-Sommes, Ed., Chap. 3).
Like Atalanta’s father, it is he who feels the pressure that she should marry, which in turn would feel like pressure and rejection to her.
Red Admirable
The Vanessa atalanta is also known as the Red Admirable. The rubedo (red), as noted, is the stage in alchemy when the opposites are joined in the coniunctio. Opposites meet in the mirror, as in the topsy-turvy world of Through the Looking glass. Lewis Carroll’s book, which Nabokov had translated into Russian, features a chess game between red and white. The Red Queen is Alice’s nemesis.
Nabokov may have also constructed Pale Fire as a chess game. It seems that Sybil, the Red Admirable, may also be the Red Queen. Consider lines 463-471 of the Shade’s poem, where Sybil’s “ruby ring made life and laid the law” as she mercilessly chops off televised heads. The decapitated programs all relate to Pale Fire’s plot. “An open mouth in midsong was struck out” (P line 467) seems to indicate the fate of Shade and his poem. Whose nemesis is she?
On the “thetic” plot level, that would be Kinbote. On the “synthetic” level of alchemy and archetype, like the other women, Sybil evinces a strong animus identification. John Shade is rather passive and is said to resemble an old woman. There is apparently a polarity imbalance chez Shade. There may be some hidden antipathy in the Shade’s “sacred marriage.”
Butterfly of Doom
Nabokov, in an interview, remarked that the Vanessa alalanta was known in Russia as the “butterfly of doom” because “it first appeared in 1881, the year Tsar Alexander II was assassinated and the markings on the underside of its two hind wings seems to read ‘1881’.” (D.Zimmer, Guide to Nabokov’s butterflies, p.275) Note the date is palindromic; the wings are mirror opposites and mirrors within the date.
The Vanessa’s fatidic association with John Shade becomes apparent as he completes his work and is about to “rest on his laurels”: “Then the tide of the shade reached the laurels, and the magnificent, velvet-and-flame creature dissolved in it.” (C993-995, p. 221) A closer look at the butterfly’s meaning for the other associated characters reveals more indications of doom and gloom.
Miserable and rejected, like Vanessa, Hazel meets her doom. Disa’s innate melancholy (the Red Admirable is on her family escutcheon, C270) is intensified by Charles’ rejection. Called in Zemblan, “harvalda” (heraldic one), it is clearly a “herald of doom.” Kinbote, despite his “fou rire,” is likewise melancholy; in the index under Kinbote, Charles, Dr., he writes, “his limited knowledge of Lepidoptera and the sable gloom of his nature marked like a dark Vanessa with gay flashes, 270.” Kinbote, given his homosexuality and emotionalism, is clearly a man exhibiting what Carl Jung would call an “anima” identification. Gradus, the Shadow, the dark instrument of doom, reveals a connection to the butterfly in his attire, a fake silk tie “chocolate brown, barred with red.” (C949, p.211). He also would appear to have anima issues; Jung claimed that the mother –imago derived from the collective archetype of the anima. Gradus he had a sexual relationship with his mother(-in-law) and castrated himself (C271) Sybil, of course, is “My dark Vanessa” (P Line 270) and the ruthless Red Admirable.
Dark, gloom-and-doom, and danger: these are the associations of the Vanessa atalanta. This butterfly is the chthonic, Dionysian opposite of Nabokov’s supernal, Apollonian Parnassius mnemosyne; the Sol/Luna, Male/Female, Sulphur/Salt coniunctio of the alchemists, like the butterfly muses are Apollonian/Dionysian opposites.
Conclusion
Carl Jung saw in alchemy’s coniunctio (sacred marriage of opposites) a system of achieving psychological wholeness very similar to his theories of “individuation,” He claimed that coming to terms with the contrasexual archetypes (anima and animus) was the “masterpiece” in the individuation process. Vanessa, Hazel and Kinbote (as well as Gradus) on the textual level were not successful in this. If we take this synthetic move off the board, then neither was John Shade. The failures of these unions (as the alchemists warned) result in depression, madness and death. In other words, they failed at transcendence, like the waxwing hitting the glass.
John Shade does, of course, have moments of transcendence, but they do not last, and that may even be the point. Every instance of transcendent awareness Shade has is followed by unbelief – by doctors, by the IPH, by the fountain/mountain disappointment, and by Sybil’s disconnected and deflating “yes, dear?” when he comes in “stormcoated” with metaphysical resolve (P 834). His contented final lines of his poem and his “I’ve swung it, by God!” exultation are shortly followed by his unexpected death. His 999 line poem never achieves the wholeness of 1000. Fate is unpredictable. Life after death remains a mystery.
The Vanessa atalanta holds within its name two contrary stories of successful and failed unions. Shades muse is also a dark twin to Nabokov’s Parnassius mnemosyne. The motif of opposites in Pale Fire corresponds nicely (whether intended or not) to the alchemic and archetypal theories of Carl Jung. The “butterfly of doom” is thus the symbol, source and the means for conveying the theme of the union of opposites (“sacred marriage”) and the uncertain quest for transcendence through Art.
--Mary Ross, San Francisco, CA