Subject
VN Bibliography: Rev. of NABOKOV's BUTTERFLIES
Date
Body
George Walden under the title GREAT LEPIDOPTERIST reviews NABOKOV's
BUTTERFLIES: UNPUBLISHED and UNCORRECTED WRITINGS. Edited and annotated by
Brian Boyd and Robert Michael Pyle (Translations by Dmitri Nabokov) Allen
Lane The PenguinPress 760pp. In LITERARY REVIEW (London) March 2000,
p. 30-1.
This volume which has appeared in the UK and will appear next month in the
US is collection of ALL of Nabokov's writings about butterflies, including
an unpublished "Appendix to THE GIFT" which is, in part, a meditation on
mimicry in butterflies and its evolutionary and philosophical
implications. See the current ATLANTIC cover story for a foretaste.
----------------
The reviewer, George Walden, former MP for Buckingham and
1995 Booker Prize chairman, opens his piece with a series of deliberately
ludicrous interpretations about the role of butterflies in VN's psychic
life. AT the end of the series, neatly confusing VN with Fyodor
Godunov-Cherdyntsev, he writes "I shall even refrain from...[the]
self-evident truth that Nabokov's passion for butterflies was an attempt
to live up to his father, the greatest entomologist in Russia." Walden
writes admiringly of the introductory essays by Boyd and Pyle.
In closing, Walden takes glancing notice of Pia Pera LO's DIARY remarking
that "its only claims to interest are the preface by Dmitri Nabokov
denouncing Ms Pera as a would-be plagarist, the fact that such a
groaningly obvious thing was done at all, and the thought that it could
have been even worse."
BUTTERFLIES: UNPUBLISHED and UNCORRECTED WRITINGS. Edited and annotated by
Brian Boyd and Robert Michael Pyle (Translations by Dmitri Nabokov) Allen
Lane The PenguinPress 760pp. In LITERARY REVIEW (London) March 2000,
p. 30-1.
This volume which has appeared in the UK and will appear next month in the
US is collection of ALL of Nabokov's writings about butterflies, including
an unpublished "Appendix to THE GIFT" which is, in part, a meditation on
mimicry in butterflies and its evolutionary and philosophical
implications. See the current ATLANTIC cover story for a foretaste.
----------------
The reviewer, George Walden, former MP for Buckingham and
1995 Booker Prize chairman, opens his piece with a series of deliberately
ludicrous interpretations about the role of butterflies in VN's psychic
life. AT the end of the series, neatly confusing VN with Fyodor
Godunov-Cherdyntsev, he writes "I shall even refrain from...[the]
self-evident truth that Nabokov's passion for butterflies was an attempt
to live up to his father, the greatest entomologist in Russia." Walden
writes admiringly of the introductory essays by Boyd and Pyle.
In closing, Walden takes glancing notice of Pia Pera LO's DIARY remarking
that "its only claims to interest are the preface by Dmitri Nabokov
denouncing Ms Pera as a would-be plagarist, the fact that such a
groaningly obvious thing was done at all, and the thought that it could
have been even worse."