absolutely,VN planted a lot of treasures for us sailors to find.

 

Mary Efremov

 

 

Dear Matt (and the List),

I'm not entirely convinced that Kinbote is aware of the connection between the genus Vanessa and Swift's poem beyond the simple fact that it is the same name. The first sentence (rather cryptic with its "so like the heart of a scholar": why scholar? isn't it the poet who searches and finds a fond name for his wife?), could be read as demonstrating just what sort of scholar Kinbote is: he giddily trots all his references out without realizing that not all of them are of equal value. When discussing the butterfly Vanessa atalanta, he appreciates the pleasant weirdness of the fact that Vanessa and Atalanta appear close together in an old poem, but I'm not sure he realizes that this is the very poem which was used to name the butterfly genus and that the weirdness is actually almost magical, aesthetic. The reference to Phanes could then serve as proof that Kinbote accepts Sodoffsky's etymology (Phanes / "Phanessa" -> butterfly genus) and misses the truth (Swift's poem -> butterfly genus).

All the best,
Sergey

On May 31, 2013, at 2:03 PM, Roth, Matthew wrote:

> Many thanks to Sergey Karpukhin for clarifying the origins of the Vanessa/Phanessa conflation. I had not been able to locate that information myself, so I am grateful to have it. Kinbote’s knowledge of this very obscure connection between the genus name and the divinity remains puzzling to me, as it would seem to be an area of knowledge well beyond his expertise. I feel sure that he makes the connection between the butterfly and Swift, especially since he quotes the lines where Vanessa and Atalanta appear together. But he could hardly have known about this obscure etymological-entomological debate. Perhaps the more important question is why did Nabokov want us to find (as he surely did) the divinity Phanes?
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> Matt
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