Nabokov's Type: Lysandra cormion

In 1989, it was discovered that Nabokov’s specimen, above, is a hybrid of two blue butterflies. But this does not preclude it from being a distinct species—in fact, some new species evolve through hybridization. DNA analysis would be needed to settle the question. © AMNH/D. Finnin

In his poem “On Discovering a Butterfly,” Lolita author Vladimir Nabokov wrote of “the secluded stronghold” where specimens are kept “safe from creeping relatives and rust.” When Nabokov caught a frosty-blue butterfly in France in 1938, he brought it to the stronghold of the American Museum of Natural History, where it still sits with a bright red label, crowning it the first and official representative, or holotype, of Lysandra cormion.

While Nabokov is most famous for his fancy prose style, he was also devoted to lepidopterology, the study of moths and butterflies. After fleeing Russia in 1940, Nabokov started his American life volunteering in the Museum’s entomology collections. He once told an interviewer, “It is not improbable that had there been no revolution in Russia, I would have devoted myself entirely to lepidopterology and never written any novels at all.”

The L. cormion specimen was only the beginning of the author’s contributions to the collections. In 1941, Nabokov sent nearly 500 field-caught butterflies to the Museum as he traveled with his family from the East Coast to California with stops in the Southwest. David Grimaldi, curator in the Division of Invertebrate Zoology, and Suzanne Rab Green, a curatorial assistant, are in the process of transferring these butterflies from small wax envelopes to display cases, relaxing the specimens in a vinegar vapor to soften and spread their brittle wings.

“Thanks to this treasure and Nabokov’s careful handwritten notes on each envelope, we can map his journey across the country,” says Dr. Grimaldi. Using the butterfly specimens as guideposts and Google Earth software, the team has plotted Nabokov’s “lepping” trip westward. On this particular expedition, Nabokov discoveredNeonympha dorothea with the help of a special research permit from the Museum that allowed him to take his butterfly net to the rim of the Grand Canyon.

Using Google Earth and Nabokov's hand-wrapped butterfly specimens as guideposts, David Grimaldi and Suzanne Rab Green plotted the author's 1941 “lepping” trip westward. © Google. Click to enlarge screenshot.

The Department of Entomology receives near-monthly inquiries about Nabokov’s work and collections from documentary filmmakers, writers, professors, and other curious minds. Nabokov may have been right when he predicted of his collections that the “locality labels pinned under these butterflies will be a boon to some twenty-first-century scholar with a taste for recondite biography.” He laid his trails well.

See specimens that Nabokov studied at the Museum in a glass display case at the entrance to the vivarium in The Butterfly Conservatory, open through May 28.

A version of this story originally appeared in the Spring issue of Rotunda, the Member magazine.