Dear List,

I received some assistance concerning Maria Sybilla Merian's works:

(a)Maria Sibylla Merian: The St. Petersburg Watercolours
This gorgeous collection of flora and fauna illustrations by famous woman artist Maria Sibylla Merian (1647-1717) has been mostly hidden from the public eye—until now. During a trip to Amsterdam in 1719, Peter the Great encountered a collection of watercolor by a little-known female artist. The tsar was entranced by the opulent color, exquisite detail and refined lines of the collection—pictures of flowers, plants, sea creatures and insects, each depicted with remarkable scientific accuracy. Peter brought the watercolors back to St. Petersburg and with them opened Russia’s first museum. After Peter’s death, the paintings were given to the Academy of Sciences, where they have resided ever since. These remarkable images, known as the 'St. Petersburg Watercolors', are now available to the public in this beautiful book. This volume features fifty full-page images presented in double-page spreads, with descriptions of the flora and fauna shown. The collection’s remaining one hundred and forty-four illustrations are also presented in full color, accompanied by brief commentary. An introductory essay describes the life and work of Maria Sibylla Merian, as well as the origins and history of the St. Petersburg Watercolors. Students of art history, bibliophiles and nature lovers alike will delight in these beautifully precise images, which are every bit as fascinating as the history behind them.
FIRST NATURAL-SCIENTIFIC COLLECTIONS OF THE KUNSTKAMERA
http://web1.kunstkamera.ru/collection/ruysch/eng/eruysch.htm

There are also informations about Sybilla's daughter, Dorothea Maria Gsell:The Kunstkamera was decorated by Dorothea Maria Gsell, the first woman to be commissioned by the Academy of Sciences that Peter I founded in 1724. Dorothea's task was to provide a decorative arrangement for the exhibits in the Kunstkamera, to make watercolours of the objects as well as to guide visitors and answer their questions. She was the daughter of the famous Maria Sibylla Merian (1647-1717). The latter was fascinated by the growth and study of insects. In her native Frankfurt she had published a richly illustrated book "Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium" (The Metamorphosis of Surinam Insects). Later she was commissioned by collectors to draw insects from the collections of Ruysch and Seba. When Merian died in 1717 in Amsterdam, Peter I invited Dorothea Maria and her husband, Georg Gsell to come to Russia.

Query: As V.Fet surmises [Kunstkamera, still existing, is the first Russian museum (including animals and insects). VN should have been taken there as a child. Part of it developed into the great Zoological Museum of St.Petersburg where all the greatest Russian zoologists were working and studying, including one Victor Fet (1955--??) who obtained hid PhD there in 1984...] VN must have been taken there as a child and visited Maria Sybilla's exposition or seen Dorothea Maria's decorations or museum-guides.

Are there more positive informations about VN and the Kunstkamera?

(b) Zimmer gives a brief biography of M.S. Merian in his A Guide to Nabokov’s Butterflies & Moths (2001), and I quote page 354, “Nabokov spoke of its [Metamorphosis insectorum Surinamensium] “lovely plates.” Speak, Memory 122.” ( A.Bouazza)

While I was checking M.S.Merian in "speak,memory" ( Vintage International,1989 ) after this short reference that had been skipped over in the past, I could now recover it as it lies, exactly, on page 122, following Zimmer ( whose book I haven't yet in my collection).

VN simply wrote:"lovely plates of Surinam insects" and made no reference to a theme so dear to his heart, namely, Merian's pioneer work with insect metamorphosis ( defying the "spontaneous generation" predominant conception) and her effort to work from life specimens, not dry or bottled ones, linking flora and fauna apparently for the first time.

The Vintage edition does not carry titles for each chapter, only numbers. Their original names are to be found in Nabokov's Foreword, where he also explains "Although I had been composing these chapters in the erratic sequence reflected by the dates of first publication given above, they had been neatly filling numbered gaps in my mind which followed the present order of chapters. That order had been estanlished in 1936... I had no trouble therefore in assembling a volume which Harper & Bros. of New York brought out in 1951, under the title Conclusive Evidence..."

Query:

(i) Is there any other edition in which one may find chapters indicated by the titles of their original publication? Did they carry titles in the Harper & Bros. 1951 edition (such as 1:Perfect Past; 2. Portrait of My Mother; 3. Portrait of My Uncle; 4. My English Education; 5.Mademoiselle O; 6. Butterflies; 7. Colette; 8. Lantern Slides; 9. My Russian Education; 10. Curtain Raiser; 11. First Poem; 12. Tamara; 13. Lodgings in Trinity Lane; 14. Exile; 15.Gardens and Parks)? (Cf. V. Nabokov, "A Pessoa em Questão: uma autobiografia revisitada", Companhia das Letras,1994).

(ii) Why was VN's reference to Merian sooooooooo succint?

(c) Maria Sybilla Merian, daughter of a wealthy Frankfurt publisher and engraver, later became a follower of the Labdacists. ( More detailed information on the Wikipedia). The last item forced me to give up the idea of trying to link Ada, with her careful drawings and watercolours of orchids...and Maria Sybilla.