I perused two indexes ( Nabokov's
butterflies and Boyd's AY) but found no reference to Thomas Henry
Huxley (1825 - 1895) a British biologist, defender of Charles
Darwin's theory of evolution. I did find an interesting entry on Julian (his
grandson): "While accepting the fact of evolution,Nabokov
thought the Darwinian account of its mechanisms in error." A
footnote informs us: "At that time, his position was not so
unusual as it may seem now. Among professional biologists it was only in the
decade 1937-1947 that what Julian Huxley called "the evolutionary synthesis"
itself evolved, and settled the differences between naturalist and
geneticists..." (B.Boyd AY, page 37)
It is always possible to depart from a novel
that mentions the natural sciences, chess, astronomy
or writers and, next, find a link between that novel and
VN, even if later these connections or
its derivatives are disproved.
This time my curiosity alighted on Ellery Queen's
1963 crime novel "The Player on the Other Side". The author's
pen-name hides two writers': Frederic Dannay and Manfred B. Lee,
whereas the story develops the theory about "split personality", of Stevenson's
Dr.Jekyll and Mr.Hyde kind. It also plays with the reversal of names
( the familiar god-dog and a midas-sadim) in a game using initials
that indicate chess moves and point to YHWH (God)
For the "Y" (as in York or in Yahweh), we also
find a mispelling that turns it into WYE.
For E.Queen, this "Wye" stands for "the player on the
other side.", in a quote from grandpa Huxley: "The
chess board is the world, the pieces the phenomena of the universe, the rules of
the game are what we call the laws of nature. The player on the other side is
hidden from us.*"
So many promising leads towards Pale Fire's New Wye and
IPH. None of them true. Or so it seems to me. But the idea of "Wye" as "Y" (
God? The Enemy?) remains interesting.
............................................................................................
*
"Suppose it were perfectly certain that the life and fortune of every one of us
would one day or other depend upon his winning or losing a game of chess. Don't
you think that we should all consider it to be a primary duty to learn at least
the names and the moves of the pieces; to have a notion of a gambit and a keen
eye for all the means of giving and getting out of check? Do you not think that
we should look with a disapprobation amounting to scorn upon the father who
allowed his son, or the State which allowed its members, to grow up without
knowing a pawn from a knight? Now, it is a very plain and elementary truth that
the life, the fortune and the happiness of every one of us, and, more or less,
of those who are connected with us, do depend upon our knowing something of the
rules of a game infinitely more difficult and complicated than chess. It is a
game which has been played for untold ages, every man and woman of us being one
of the two players in a game of his or her own. The chess board is the world,
the pieces the phenomena of the universe, the rules of the game are what we call
the laws of nature. The player on the other side is hidden from us. All we know
is that his play is always fair, just and patient. But, also, that he never
overlooks a mistake or makes the smallest allowance for ignorance. To the man
who plays well the highest stakes are paid with that sort of overflowing
generosity with which the strong shows delight in strength. And one who plays
ill is checkmated without haste, but without remorse. My metaphor will remind
some of you of the famous picture in which Retzsch has depicted Satan playing at
chess with man for his soul. Substitute for the mocking fiend in that picture a
calm, strong angel who is playing for love as we say, and would rather lose than
win, and I should accept it as an image of human life. Well, now what I mean by
education is learning the rules of this mighty game. In other words, education
is the instruction of the intellect in the laws of nature; and the fashioning of
the affections, and of the will, into harmony with those
laws."