J.Aisenberg: Obviously I adore to the nth degree
Nabokov's literary flourishes, but I very firmly feel he's morre
artist-scientist than scientist-scientist[...]his thoughts on specificity over
generalization [...]to do away with Darwin and suggest a vaguely eaterny concept
of intelligent design[...]
JM: I haven't read VN's
scientific articles on butterflies, but I was charmed by such
writings as Victor Fet's, on the "Zoological Label as Literary Form"
(The Nabokovian 60,2008) or Stephen Blackwell's exposition
about VN and evolutionism, which helped me gain a special perspective
to understand, for example, VN's lines: "One is
tempted to compare the evolutionist to a passenger who, observing through a
railroad-car window a series of phenomena that implies a certain logic of
structure (such as the appearance of cultivated fields, followed by factory
buildings as a city approaches), would discern in these results and
illustrations of movement the reality and laws of the very force governing the
shift of his gaze." or
"Let us begin,
as he did, by defining the concept of species. By "species" he intends the
original of a being, nonexistent in our reality but unique and definite in
concept, that recurs ad infinitum in the mirror of nature, creating countless
reflections; each one of them perceived by our intelligence, reflected in that
selfsame glass and acquiring its reality solely within it, as a living
individual of the given species[...] "Father's
Butterflies"
J.A... if you think this refers to
the burning barn episode, what is the time frame [...] if you do read the scene
with Dack as menstrual, as I definitely do, it has an interesting echo in
Lolita, since Dolly apparently begins menstruating the day after the Enchanted
Hunters [...]
JM:I should
have checked the chronologies. Your arguments are convincing enough, plus an
excellent reference to Lolita. My
mistake.