Victor Fet [
Why did Nabokov choose to name
it "samuelis"?] It was named after Samuel Hubbard Scudder
(1837-1911), the most famous American lepidopterist [...] Nabokov read as
a child and called “stupendous” (Speak, Memory). Scudder worked in the same
Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University, as VN[...]
The famous Karner Blue, Lycaeides (now Plebejus) melissa samuelis
Nabokov, 1943; its holotype [the unique specimen on which species description
should be based] was collected by Scudder. The story of Karner Blue is told in
Zimmer’s A Guide to Nabokov’s Butterflies and Moths and detailed in Johnson
& Coates’ Nabokov’s Blues.(from “Adakisme, Dolikisme: the Kirkaldy
connection” The Nabokovian, 2006, 56: 14-19.) http://victorfet.com/blog/?page_id=210
Robert H.
Boyle: Elementary, My Dear J...Nabokov said (in fact he told me
personally in 1959) that he named the Karner Blue subspecies (which now may turn
out to be a species in its own right) samuelis in honor Samuel Scudder, one of
the great American entomologists of the 19th century and one of the two leading
authorities on the Lepidoptera of North America. (The other was William H.
Edwards, born in the Catskills, who inspired Henry Walter Bates & Alfred
Russsel Wallace to explore & collect in the Amazon Basin. Bates was
the father of Batesian mimicry --- ponder that you students of VN's magical
imagery ---while Wallace gave Darwin a run for the roses.) For all the
blizzard of emails that I receive every time I turn on my computer about VN
lit'ry matters, allusions, this & that small point, etc. his deeply rich
entomological side gets short shrift. There must be, God knows, doctoral theses
in this vein to mine. Hey, C. P. Snow was right.
JM: A good chiding and hiding from Victor Fet
and R.H.Boyle, concerning the matter of a little "samuelis." The latter's
reference to Snow, just to bring up to our collective recollection, indicates
(wiki) "Charles Percy Snow, Baron
Snow, English physicist and novelist,best known for a series of novels
known collectively as "Strangers and Brothers", and for "The Two Cultures", a
1959 lecture in which he laments the gulf between scientists and "literary
intellectuals",cf. 1959 Rede Lecture, subsequently published as The Two
Cultures and the Scientific Revolution, the lecture argued that the breakdown of
communication between the "two cultures" of modern society — the sciences and
the humanities — was a major hindrance to solving the world's problems. In
particular, Snow argues that the quality of education in the world is on the
decline."
Indeed. There are fewer Leonardo's at large in the present
world: perhaps they decided to work silently or joined a big corporation after
funds. Unfortunately for me I don't like butterflies, catterpillars and
things "qui rampent", nor are orchids, gladioly or tulips my favorite
flowers, which turns me into a flawed Nabokovian-fan.
Just like VN, in the above quoted screenplay by
M.Bouchet, patiently explains "specimen" and "species", I count on expert
outside help: Fet and Boyle didn't disappoint me.
In the past I asked a question (related to magical imagery)
but got no answer. Perhaps I'll be luckier now.
Do biologists take "kinetic art" into consideration? (I have
in mind Duchamp's "Nude descending the stairs").
Butterflies and dragonflies often carry a little,
almost luminous, spot on the extremities of their wings. When they
beat their wings very fast, these spots draw semi-circles in the air
and create a volume in space.
For me this transient visual effect is as important as
the permanent, static dot. Has Nabokov written scientifically about
phenomena like these?
Like Shade considering his spiritual form in IPH,
or Paradise, I'm particularly puzzled by such insects
which metamorphose. Do they have a "true face" (three in one) from the
options puppa/nymph, catterpilar, butterfly? Or is it only as winged
samuelis that they reach heaven?
Victor, a quirk in time or overlapping pattern in the
carpeting of your post suggested to me a new stretch of longevity
in VN, when you mentioned that "Scudder worked in the same Museum of
Comparative Zoology as Nabokov". It took me a second to find out my
mistake, but actually, when sharing the same external "object" Scudder
and Nabokov would in fact become contemporaneous... When we
laugh at an old joke our present joy transcends time...