By Danny Lewis
SMITHSONIAN.COM
JUNE 1, 2016
Vladimir Nabokov
might be best known as a novelist, specifically as the author of Lolita, but
what many might not know is that one of his deepest passions was studying
butterflies.
Now, a new book from
Yale University Press honors his dedication to the delicate creatures. The
book, Fine Lines, is a collection of more
than 150 of his scientific illustrations of butterflies, rivaling John James
Audubon in their detail.
Nabokov began
collecting butterflies when he was seven years old and continued his study
of the insects his entire life. He dreamed of naming a butterfly since he
was a child, Elif Batumen writes for the New Yorker.
Thanks to his diligence, he named several, most notably a species called the
Karner blue (Lycaeides melissa samuelis).
Even so,
Nabokov’s studies sometimes proved controversial. In Fine
Lines, the editors Stephen Blackwell and Kurt Johnson lament that Nabokov
was never taken seriously by professional scientists and entomologists because
of his literary career.
Take, for example,
Nabokov’s hypothesis of the evolution of a group of butterflies called
“Polyommatus blues.” After making many detailed observations of these North
American butterflies, Nabokov proposed that the species had evolved from an
Asian species over millions of years as they traveled to the Americas in waves.
For decades, scientists
chided this idea, and few lepidopterists took him seriously, Carl Zimmer wrote for the New York Times. In 2011,
however, a group of scientists decided to test his proposal with DNA
analysis and discovered, to their astonishment, that Nabokov had been right all along.
“I couldn’t get over
it—I was blown away,” Naomi Pierce, one of the study authors, told Zimmer at
the time.
Nabokov once called
literature and butterflies “the two sweetest passions known to man,” according
to The Guardian, and in many ways his two loves informed
each other. Over the course of years, Nabokov and his wife, Véra, racked up
thousands of miles crisscrossing the U.S. in search of butterflies, during
which time he began making notes that would later turn into Lolita, Landon Jones writes for the New York Times:
His travels over the
years took him from the Bright Angel Trail in the Grand Canyon to Utah,
Colorado and Oregon. But one of the best places to find many different species
of butterflies congregating at one time was at nosebleed-high altitudes along
the Continental Divide in Wyoming. Along the way the shape of the novel took
root, and he started to take notes during his butterfly hunts and write them up
back in his motel rooms.
Nabokov’s contributions to the
study of butterflies may have been small compared to his literary
accomplishments, but his appreciation for the delicate beauty of the
creatures may have been the magic that gave many of his novels wings.
Read more:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/vladimir-nabokovs-butterfly-drawings-take-flight-new-book-180959264/#PZjx1TKcyIwrdvbD.99
![](https://t1.daumcdn.net/cfile/cafe/9974DA4F5DE0CF2F04)
![](https://t1.daumcdn.net/cfile/cafe/99C2BF4F5DE0CF2F0B)
![](https://t1.daumcdn.net/cfile/cafe/9947244F5DE0CF2F10)
![](https://t1.daumcdn.net/cfile/cafe/99CFD34F5DE0CF300A)
![](https://t1.daumcdn.net/cfile/cafe/9928E94F5DE0CF301A)
![](https://t1.daumcdn.net/cfile/cafe/99F9C34F5DE0CF3013)
![](https://t1.daumcdn.net/cfile/cafe/99E0B44C5DE0D05514)