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Title: Nabokov's Butterflies : Unpublished and Uncollected Writings by Robert Michael Pyle, Brian Boyd, Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov ISBN: 0807085405 Publisher: Beacon Press Pub. Date: July, 2000 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $45.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 5
Rating: 5
Summary: An orgy of Nabokoviana.
Comment: The prize is an unfinished short story, "The Admirable Anglewing", at an immediate stage of note-taking on index cards. It's an intriguing dead end, identifiably a two-strata Nabokov, but with a strikingly scientific directness not elsewhere seen.
The bonus is an unpublished continuation of The Gift (tr. Dmitri Nabokov), which formulates a general expression of evolutionary theory in a clear and useful way, as it relates to a larger understanding of problems in taxonomy, probably omitted for the same reason "The Admirable Anglewing" was dropped.
Notes for The Butterflies Of Europe, much of Nabokov's lepidopterological work (Russia obviously lost a lepidopterist of genius), "butterfly" excerpts from the fiction, and much, much more.
Rating: 5
Summary: It Always Came Down To Butterflies
Comment: "From the age of seven, everything I felt in connection with a rectangle of framed sunlight was dominated by a single passion," wrote Valdimir Nabokov. "If my first glance of the morning was for the sun, my first thought was for the butterflies it would engender." This was certainly an unusual way in which to view the world and one that not many readers, even those who adore Nabokov, have shared.
In fact, the ferocity of Nabokov's obsession with butterflies has only just begun to become clear with the publication of this gorgeous new book, a volume of heretofore unpublished and uncorrected writings on the subject of butterflies, edited by Nabokov's biographer Brian Boyd, together with Michael Pyle, an expert on butterflies. All translations were done by Nabokov's son, Dmitri, who has lavished his time and talent on his father's work for several decades.
Even those of us who cannot get enough of Nabokov and cannot praise him highly enough may find more than 700 densely-printed pages on the subject of butterflies a little much. As much as we love Nabokov, do we really want to read page after page of his highly technical descriptions of the various species of butterfly? Are these writings really important, from a scientific viewpoint? Is there any connection between Nabokov's passion for butterflies and his extraordinary fiction?
Although most people would probably answer "no" to the first two questions, the answer to the third is a surprisingly enthusiastic, "yes."
In his wonderful introduction, Boyd begins to elucidate the connections between Nabokov the writer and Nabokov the lepidopterist. We come to understand the novelist more completely and precisely by coming to understand that science that gave this unique author "a sense of reality that should not be confused with modern (or postmodern) epistemological nihilism."
It was while dissecting and deciphering his butterflies that Nabokov came to the conclusion that the more we inquire, the more we can discover, yet the more we discover, the more we find we do not know. The world, Nabokov says, is infinitely detailed, complex and deceptive.
Nabokov's important writings on butterflies are reproduced in this volume, but thankfully, in reduced form. And other kinds of writing by Nabokov have been blended over the scientific prose, beginning with the luminous meditation on butterflies from Chapter Six of Speak, Memory.
The poems, memoirs, letters, diary entries, criticism and fiction that make up this beautiful volume cover a period from 1941 to 1947, when Nabokov was at his most obsessive...as far as butterflies are concerned. This obsessiveness, however, is gorgeous to behold, as in a letter from Nabokov to Edmund Wilson about a lecture trip he made to Sweet Briar College. "The weather...was perfectly dreadful and except for a few Everes comyntas there was nothing on the wing." It always came down to butterflies.
Nabokov's interest in butterflies went far beyond sorting out and naming them. He was much more than a mere tabulator or categorizer. There is something exquisitely metaphysical, even mystical, about his approach to butterflies, something that also tells us of his quest to plumb the depths of nature's complexity. In his obsession, Nabokov sought to understand the sense of design that underlies the the physical world, and he also took enormous delight in the mysteries God chose to hide from human beings, leaving to them to seek them out or not.
As Boyd notes, Nabokov "preferred the small type to the main text, the obscure to the obvious, the thrill of finding for himself what was not common knowledge." His scientific writings overflow with minutiae, with obscure details, lovingly searched out, sorted, underlined, displayed. This preference for the complexity of life also underscores his writings, most notably his massive commentary on Pushkin's Onegin, the gorgeous and imaginative Pale Fire and Ada, a late masterpiece in which Nabokov's penchant for complexity reached spellbinding heights.
While only a small percentage of readers may want to study the scientific articles in this book, their very presence operates in the most subtle of ways to remind us that Nabokov, who referred to himself as VN, was also a student "of that other VN, Visible Nature." In his magnificent fiction, Nabokov offered the world a complete view of the complexity and richness of the human spirit. He might not have been so meticulous and so thorough were it not for his passion for the intricate world of butterflies, so beautifully on view in this book.
Rating: 5
Summary: Nabakov's butterflies
Comment: 12 Exotic Brazilian Butterflies In a high Quality Frame 12.5" x 8.5" (Current bid: $65.00) *12 Exotic Brazilian Butterflies In a high Quality Frame 12.5" x 8.5" (Current bid: $65.00)
I sincerely hope that these other items you recommend to potential buyers of this book, are NOT butterflies that were caught in Brazil and shipped to the USA, nor ideally even butterflies breed in the US especially for the purpose of later gracing someone's wall. Not very environmentally sound at all if the former, and karmically, still just as bad if the latter. I do not think that the editors of Nabakov's Butterflies would support this at all, even if they are all avid butterfly enthusiasts. Leave the butterflies in peace!
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Title: Nabokov's Blues: The Scientific Odyssey of a Literary Genius by Kurt Johnson, Steve Coates, Steven L. Coates ISBN: 0071373306 Publisher: McGraw-Hill/Contemporary Books Pub. Date: 19 March, 2001 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: Nabokov's Pale Fire: The Magic of Artistic Discovery by Brian Boyd ISBN: 0691089574 Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr Pub. Date: 01 December, 2001 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: Nabokov's Ada: The Place of Consciousness by Brian Boyd ISBN: 1877275301 Publisher: Cybereditions Corporation Pub. Date: October, 2002 List Price(USD): $22.95 |
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Title: Strong Opinions (Vintage International) by Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov ISBN: 0679726098 Publisher: Vintage Books Pub. Date: March, 1990 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: Ada or Ardor a Family Chronicle by Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov ISBN: 0679725229 Publisher: Vintage Books Pub. Date: February, 1990 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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