A. Sklyarenko [to JM: Rack as a Mozart-like figure? Why then Vienna, or Pushkin's little tragedies...] Rack and Mozart in Pushkin's "Mozart and Salieri" both die of poison...There are many duels in small tragedies. It is supposed that Pushkin completed "The Stone Guest" on the morning before his fatal duel (Jan. 27, OS, 1837). Mozart died in Vienna. Besides, "the Viennese delegation" includes not Freud alone.

 

JM: "Ada's" Rack, as a foreigner, could have simply misheard Van Veen's name without entertaining any second thoughts. We also cannot know what Van was thinking when he copied down Rack's words in his memoir. When we depart from a simple assertion ("Rack is a Mozart-like figure," for example) there are hundreds of possible  connections, "correspondances," "elective affinities," to outline but their subjective point of origin mainly provides us with enjoyable information, not a proof (btw, Mozart's poisoning by Salieri isn't a garanteed "historical fact"). Vienne, Isères, Ardennes, France, Wien, Austria are misleading indicators to what concerns Sigmund Freud. Like Mozart, Freud wasn't born in Wien. His place of birth is Freiburg (Moravia) and he died in London. Although I read Pushkin's "Mozart and Salieri" ("Verses and Versions") and watched "Amadeus" by Milos Forman, I  haven't read Alexey's articles on the subject, a lamentable omission on my part. 

 

Brian Boyd: Here is a New York Times report on a paper just published today that confirms Nabokov’s hypothesis about the colonization of the Americas by the Blues, in his most important paper, the 1945 “Notes on Neotropical Plebejinae,” his First Revision of the group. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/01/science/01butterfly.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1 ..."The driving force behind the work was Naomi Pierce of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard, Nabokov’s old workplace..."
Victor Fet: NY Times - Carl Zimmer, "Nabokov Butterfly Theory Is Vindicated" ...The Polyommatus paper reference is below, and the full paper is attached! Enjoy

 JM: Brian Boyd's enthusiastic description offers a wonderful additional read to Carl Zimmers article. Victor Fet adds a copy of "Phylogeny and palaeoecology of Polyommatus blue butterflies show Beringia was a climate-regulated gateway to the New World." - an occasion to celebrate Nabokov's vindication  - and revanche (for I'd just finished Couturier's chapter on "Lolita's Triumph," Le triomphe de Lolita, where he concludes that "Nabokov avait enfin sa revanche sur les intellectuels français qui l’avaient boudé à Paris à la fin des années trente.")