Subject
Re: Nabokov and Darwin
Date
Body
The Nabokov-Darwin issue is much more complex than these Discovery
institute people imagine. For the record, Nabokov did believe in
Darwinian selection, but he also thought there were other evolutionary
mechanisms (now understood as self-organizing mechanisms) that were
responsible for some phenomena, particularly mimicry. I hate to have
to lay on my own horn, but I wrote about this in
2003 “Nabokov,Teleology, and Insect Mimicry," Nabokov Studies 7
(2003): 177-213.
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/nabokov_studies/summary/v007/7.alexander.html
Biologist Stanley Salthe and I have further elaborated on Nabokov's
attitude toward evolution here
2010 with Stanley Salthe, “Monstrous Fate: The Problem of Authorship
and Evolution by Natural Selection,” Annals of Scholarship 19 (1):
45-66.
http://torialexander.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/monstrousfate2010.pdf
Victoria N. Alexander, Ph.D.
Dactyl Foundation
64 Grand Street
New York, NY 10013
212 219-2344
www.torialexander.com
www.dactyl.org
On Dec 7, 2010, at 2:22 PM, Jansy wrote:
> Sandy Klein sends:" Natalie Portman showed up at the New York
> premiere of "Black Swan" with a long black Dior gown, immaculate
> Dior makeup, and a purse made out of a copy of 'Lolita' by Vladimir
> Nabokov.The purse is by French designer Olympia Le-Tan. Her book
> bags feature a hand-stitched version of the books' covers, usually
> of titles or editions from the mid-20th century."
> http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy/2010/12/natalie-portmans-lolita-clutch.html
> and http://fashion.telegraph.co.uk/galleries/TMG8175857/Bags-get-bookish-intellectual-clutch-bags-by-Olympia-Le-Tan.html
> JM: Interesting coincidence. the bookish bag by Olympia Le-Tan
> reproduces the Olympia Press 'Lolita' cover...
> Sandy P. Klein: Butterflies Made a Darwin Doubter of Vladimir
> Nabokov - December 5, 2010 by Monika Maeckle
> http://texasbutterflyranch.wordpress.com/2010/12/05/butterflies-made-a-darwin-doubter-of-vladimir-nabokov/
> "The celebrated Russian-American novelist Vladimir Nabokov embodies
> the best of right and left brain thinking. Known for his great
> novels (Lolita, Pale Fire, Pnin), he was also a passionate student
> of butterflies...That a great mind like Nabokov’s doubted Darwin and
> challenged evolution makes us take pause. Surely it’s a testament
> to the infinite intrigue of butterflies."
> JM: I wish our Nab-list experts (biologists, engineers, savants)
> would deign to opine on this "darwinian" issue, as it has reached us
> poor lay-people, because new questions are always possible,
> independently of their source. There must be more to Darwin than the
> theory about the "survival of the fittest" and some other, equally
> important, tenets of his evolutionary theory. Sweeping statements,
> as those about "a great mind...makes us pause, etc etc," are only
> journalistic stuff but...OK, let's pause. Did Nabokov in fact
> "challenge evolution" (whatever M.Maeckle means by that)?
> Take the new form of life that's just been announced, ie, bacteria
> thriving on arsenium and not constituted by phosphorus. Doesn't this
> illustrate how transient all classificatory systems must be, for we
> need to keep on adapting and altering the "limits" we've set to
> nature, and to our conscious minds?
> Would Nabokov's intuitions about a "divine design" accept that
> identifiable patterns evolve, together with our ability to detect
> them, not only in our apprehension of the natural world but, also,
> in relation to Art (ie, his finished novels will continue to
> develop, thanks to their readers)?
>
> G.S. Lipon: I assume that VN(Shade) has inverted the sense of the
> original when he writes: Lafontaine was wrong:/ Dead is the
> mandible, alive the song. - but I've never been able to track down
> the original. Does anybody know anything about this?
> JM: This item has often been discussed in the Nab-List (the ravenous
> ant and its mandibular claws. The ever-living song of the cicada,
> like the waxwing's flying and dancing reflection on a window
> pane...) Lafontaine ( La Fontaine, the fountain, written both ways
> by Shade/Kinbote) inspired his verses in one of Aesop's fables.
> In Shade's poem (lines 238/240) the couple finds "An empty emerald
> case, squat and frog-eyed,/Hugging the trunk; and its companion
> piece,/ A gum-logged ant."
> indicating that a living cicada is out of its case, but that the ant
> (its companion piece, somehow) has perished... Here is what I found
> in the internet: atwww.bewilderingstories.com/issue209/cigale.html -
> La Cigale et la fourmi
>
> by Jean de La Fontaine
>
>
> La cigale ayant chanté
> Tout l'été,
> Se trouva fort dépourvue
> Quand la bise fut venue :
> Pas un seul petit morceau
> De mouche ou de vermisseau.
> Elle alla crier famine
> Chez la fourmi sa voisine,
> La priant de lui prêter
> Quelque grain pour subsister
> Jusqu’à la saison nouvelle.
> « Je vous paierai, lui dit-elle,
> Avant l’août, foi d’animal,
> Intérêt et principal. »
> La fourmi n’est pas prêteuse :
> C’est là son moindre défaut.
> « Que faisiez-vous au temps chaud ?
> Dit-elle à cette emprunteuse.
> — Nuit et jour à tout venant
> Je chantais, ne vous déplaise.
> — Vous chantiez ? J’en suis fort aise :
> Eh bien ! Dansez maintenant. »
>
> The Cricket and the Ant
>
> translation by Don Webb
>
>
> The cricket had sung her song
> all summer long
> but found her victuals too few
> when the north wind blew.
> Nowhere could she espy
> a single morsel of worm or fly.
>
> Her neighbor, the ant, might,
> she thought, help her in her plight,
> and she begged her for a little grain
> till summer would come back again.
>
> “By next August I’ll repay both
> Interest and principal; animal’s oath.”
>
> Now, the ant may have a fault or two
> But lending is not something she will do.
> She asked what the cricket did in summer.
>
> “By night and day, to any comer
> I sang whenever I had the chance.”
>
> “You sang, did you? That’s nice. Now dance.”
>
> La Fontaine (1621-1695) put La Cigale et la fourmi first in the
> first book of his Fables precisely because it was his personal
> favorite. It and others in his twelve books of fables are a cultural
> treasure and have been memorized by generations upon generations of
> school children. And well they ought to be: two hundred years would
> pass till lyric poetry met the standard he set.
>
> The cigale is, strictly speaking, a cicada. I use “cricket” by
> poetic license because the figure is more familiar to English-
> speaking readers.
>
> La Fontaine’s fable is unique in that it does not end with the
> traditional moral, which would sum up the meaning of the poem lest
> an inattentive listener miss it. Rather, La Fontaine forces the
> readers to choose their own interpretation: is the cricket an artist
> or a profligate wastrel? Is the ant economical and prudent or a
> bourgeois philistine?
>
> Walt Disney took his film sketch from Æsop’s dreary Fables, where
> the self-styled thrifty and provident have no shred of mercy for
> their neighbor, the singer. La Fontaine’s untraditional silence at
> the end of the poem speaks volumes: things are not always as simple
> as we’re told or as we might like to think.
>
> La Cigale et la fourmi sets the style and tone for the rest of La
> Fontaine’s fables. Sweet little poems about animals? No, they are
> tales of terror about people living in the ancien régime — and today.
>
>
> Copyright © 2006 by Don Webb
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Search the archive Contact the Editors Visit "Nabokov Online Journal"
> Visit Zembla View Nabokv-L Policies Manage subscription options
> All private editorial communications, without exception, are read by
> both co-editors.
>
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/
institute people imagine. For the record, Nabokov did believe in
Darwinian selection, but he also thought there were other evolutionary
mechanisms (now understood as self-organizing mechanisms) that were
responsible for some phenomena, particularly mimicry. I hate to have
to lay on my own horn, but I wrote about this in
2003 “Nabokov,Teleology, and Insect Mimicry," Nabokov Studies 7
(2003): 177-213.
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/nabokov_studies/summary/v007/7.alexander.html
Biologist Stanley Salthe and I have further elaborated on Nabokov's
attitude toward evolution here
2010 with Stanley Salthe, “Monstrous Fate: The Problem of Authorship
and Evolution by Natural Selection,” Annals of Scholarship 19 (1):
45-66.
http://torialexander.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/monstrousfate2010.pdf
Victoria N. Alexander, Ph.D.
Dactyl Foundation
64 Grand Street
New York, NY 10013
212 219-2344
www.torialexander.com
www.dactyl.org
On Dec 7, 2010, at 2:22 PM, Jansy wrote:
> Sandy Klein sends:" Natalie Portman showed up at the New York
> premiere of "Black Swan" with a long black Dior gown, immaculate
> Dior makeup, and a purse made out of a copy of 'Lolita' by Vladimir
> Nabokov.The purse is by French designer Olympia Le-Tan. Her book
> bags feature a hand-stitched version of the books' covers, usually
> of titles or editions from the mid-20th century."
> http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy/2010/12/natalie-portmans-lolita-clutch.html
> and http://fashion.telegraph.co.uk/galleries/TMG8175857/Bags-get-bookish-intellectual-clutch-bags-by-Olympia-Le-Tan.html
> JM: Interesting coincidence. the bookish bag by Olympia Le-Tan
> reproduces the Olympia Press 'Lolita' cover...
> Sandy P. Klein: Butterflies Made a Darwin Doubter of Vladimir
> Nabokov - December 5, 2010 by Monika Maeckle
> http://texasbutterflyranch.wordpress.com/2010/12/05/butterflies-made-a-darwin-doubter-of-vladimir-nabokov/
> "The celebrated Russian-American novelist Vladimir Nabokov embodies
> the best of right and left brain thinking. Known for his great
> novels (Lolita, Pale Fire, Pnin), he was also a passionate student
> of butterflies...That a great mind like Nabokov’s doubted Darwin and
> challenged evolution makes us take pause. Surely it’s a testament
> to the infinite intrigue of butterflies."
> JM: I wish our Nab-list experts (biologists, engineers, savants)
> would deign to opine on this "darwinian" issue, as it has reached us
> poor lay-people, because new questions are always possible,
> independently of their source. There must be more to Darwin than the
> theory about the "survival of the fittest" and some other, equally
> important, tenets of his evolutionary theory. Sweeping statements,
> as those about "a great mind...makes us pause, etc etc," are only
> journalistic stuff but...OK, let's pause. Did Nabokov in fact
> "challenge evolution" (whatever M.Maeckle means by that)?
> Take the new form of life that's just been announced, ie, bacteria
> thriving on arsenium and not constituted by phosphorus. Doesn't this
> illustrate how transient all classificatory systems must be, for we
> need to keep on adapting and altering the "limits" we've set to
> nature, and to our conscious minds?
> Would Nabokov's intuitions about a "divine design" accept that
> identifiable patterns evolve, together with our ability to detect
> them, not only in our apprehension of the natural world but, also,
> in relation to Art (ie, his finished novels will continue to
> develop, thanks to their readers)?
>
> G.S. Lipon: I assume that VN(Shade) has inverted the sense of the
> original when he writes: Lafontaine was wrong:/ Dead is the
> mandible, alive the song. - but I've never been able to track down
> the original. Does anybody know anything about this?
> JM: This item has often been discussed in the Nab-List (the ravenous
> ant and its mandibular claws. The ever-living song of the cicada,
> like the waxwing's flying and dancing reflection on a window
> pane...) Lafontaine ( La Fontaine, the fountain, written both ways
> by Shade/Kinbote) inspired his verses in one of Aesop's fables.
> In Shade's poem (lines 238/240) the couple finds "An empty emerald
> case, squat and frog-eyed,/Hugging the trunk; and its companion
> piece,/ A gum-logged ant."
> indicating that a living cicada is out of its case, but that the ant
> (its companion piece, somehow) has perished... Here is what I found
> in the internet: atwww.bewilderingstories.com/issue209/cigale.html -
> La Cigale et la fourmi
>
> by Jean de La Fontaine
>
>
> La cigale ayant chanté
> Tout l'été,
> Se trouva fort dépourvue
> Quand la bise fut venue :
> Pas un seul petit morceau
> De mouche ou de vermisseau.
> Elle alla crier famine
> Chez la fourmi sa voisine,
> La priant de lui prêter
> Quelque grain pour subsister
> Jusqu’à la saison nouvelle.
> « Je vous paierai, lui dit-elle,
> Avant l’août, foi d’animal,
> Intérêt et principal. »
> La fourmi n’est pas prêteuse :
> C’est là son moindre défaut.
> « Que faisiez-vous au temps chaud ?
> Dit-elle à cette emprunteuse.
> — Nuit et jour à tout venant
> Je chantais, ne vous déplaise.
> — Vous chantiez ? J’en suis fort aise :
> Eh bien ! Dansez maintenant. »
>
> The Cricket and the Ant
>
> translation by Don Webb
>
>
> The cricket had sung her song
> all summer long
> but found her victuals too few
> when the north wind blew.
> Nowhere could she espy
> a single morsel of worm or fly.
>
> Her neighbor, the ant, might,
> she thought, help her in her plight,
> and she begged her for a little grain
> till summer would come back again.
>
> “By next August I’ll repay both
> Interest and principal; animal’s oath.”
>
> Now, the ant may have a fault or two
> But lending is not something she will do.
> She asked what the cricket did in summer.
>
> “By night and day, to any comer
> I sang whenever I had the chance.”
>
> “You sang, did you? That’s nice. Now dance.”
>
> La Fontaine (1621-1695) put La Cigale et la fourmi first in the
> first book of his Fables precisely because it was his personal
> favorite. It and others in his twelve books of fables are a cultural
> treasure and have been memorized by generations upon generations of
> school children. And well they ought to be: two hundred years would
> pass till lyric poetry met the standard he set.
>
> The cigale is, strictly speaking, a cicada. I use “cricket” by
> poetic license because the figure is more familiar to English-
> speaking readers.
>
> La Fontaine’s fable is unique in that it does not end with the
> traditional moral, which would sum up the meaning of the poem lest
> an inattentive listener miss it. Rather, La Fontaine forces the
> readers to choose their own interpretation: is the cricket an artist
> or a profligate wastrel? Is the ant economical and prudent or a
> bourgeois philistine?
>
> Walt Disney took his film sketch from Æsop’s dreary Fables, where
> the self-styled thrifty and provident have no shred of mercy for
> their neighbor, the singer. La Fontaine’s untraditional silence at
> the end of the poem speaks volumes: things are not always as simple
> as we’re told or as we might like to think.
>
> La Cigale et la fourmi sets the style and tone for the rest of La
> Fontaine’s fables. Sweet little poems about animals? No, they are
> tales of terror about people living in the ancien régime — and today.
>
>
> Copyright © 2006 by Don Webb
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Search the archive Contact the Editors Visit "Nabokov Online Journal"
> Visit Zembla View Nabokv-L Policies Manage subscription options
> All private editorial communications, without exception, are read by
> both co-editors.
>
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/