SEE EDITOR's COMMENT at end
-------- Original Message --------
There is not only one attractive phrase in Stan. Milkowsky's
letter. This may be implied, but psyche means both butterfly and soul in
Greek. For all I know, there is (or was) a lepidopterist magazine which
has Psyche for title. In a footnote to one of his poems Coleridge says that
'psyche means both butterfly and soul '. So to point out the resemblance
of soul to a butterfly does not seem so inadequate, at least as far as ety
mology is concerned.
Sergei
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Ed. Note. Yes, there is a lepdopterist journal PSYCHE and VN was well aware
of the analogy. He often used it in his Russian poetry. In response to
a Russian cleric who made the analogy, VN also remarked that butterflies
were attracted to corpses.