Subject
JM on geomorphism, crawling roots, evolution
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Date
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Dear List,
I had not had the opportunity to read VN's collected and unpublished essays until Dmitri Nabokov extracted a paragraph from one of its chapters and posted it to the VN-List - and set me on this trail.
As Dmitri described, "The elder Godunov- Cherdyntsev's non-evolutionary theory of the universe proposes a fascinating logic of its own for what is commonly considered lepidopterological mimicry, or for the transformation of a creeping root into a snake, or a host of other wonders only nature can perform, not for the sake of needlessly elaborate tricks but to prepare a whole show for the arrival of its spectator, Man."
In "Strong Opinions" Nabokov expressed his opposition to the ideas of Freud and Marx. His critical view of Einstein's theory of space/time and Darwin's evolutionism cannot be as easily accessed because, in the first case, it comes through the voice of Van Veen (with whom Nabokov is not always in agreement), who wrote an essay on the "Texture of Time''. A new perspective for Darwin's "The Origin of Species" is found in a chapter VN had considered as one of the ways to continue "The Gift". It was published as a separate text in "Nabokov's Butterflies" under the title: "Father's Butterflies" and this is the text about which DN has been writing to the List.
The pursuits of Godunov-Cherdyntsev's father and the transforming roots and the Kallima butterfly must be read using various conceptual frames and distinct frames of mind ( as some psychoanalysts say: "every scientific theory is a delirium shared by a particular group").
When employing some sort of protetive mimicry ourselves, while reading Nabokov's essay, we'll encounter references to those who can enjoy the gifts of beauty and humor bestowed on them by a withdrawing God and his "half-smile of averted lips, a conspiratorial sign..." (page 220). Violets and iridules, caterpillars and haze are addressed to the artists and the scientists who can see the "the butterfly behind its carnival mask"( page 206), also a very beautiful metaphor about the interconnectedness of natural phenomena.
VN's butterfly-text may be perceived as an essay on etymology, and the permanent transformation of signs and referents, in the guise of comments about entomology.
It may also be understood as an advance in the practice of the literary representation of metamorphosis - its the metatropological functions - or as a play with the distinction between the literal and the figurative, "mime and model", inanimate and animate ... "one can doubt the ability of a genius to animate marble, but one cannot doubt that one afflicted by idiocy will never create a Galatea", page 219.
( but who shall ask "Encore moi"? )
Godunov-Cherdyntsev's critical view about Aristoteles, Linnaeus and Darwin and his description of his father's "principles of natural classification" ( "a method of stellar elegance for organizing the gathered materials", a "spherical classification...applicable to all areas of nature") is, literally, revolutionary. Interspersed bits of irony may confuse the reader who looks for the author's premises or some reference point as, for example, when he informs the reader that his father, " A partisan of research in the definition of metamorphoses, he subtly berated those whom he called 'genitalists' ",i.e, as someone who despised V.Nabokov's work as Lepidopterologist (page 208).
( I wish I had learned more about "Prosopopoeia", specially when it is employed with additional mirrors...)
Part of the chapter (its "Supplement") reminded me at first of Gustav Fechner, a scientist whose work on thresholds of perception influenced Freud and attracted William James, in GF's small essay "About The Comparative Anatomy of the Angels" ( described as a kind of "spiritual orbiting eyes"), where satire and serious conjecture are hopelessly intermingled.
G-C explanation of his father's "Addendum" starts by defining the concept of species, "the original of a being, nonexistent in our reality but unique and definite in concept, that recurrs ad infinitum ture, reflections..." What human intelligence perceives in this mirror, he adds, is also "reflected in that selfsame glass and acquiring its reality solely within it, as a living individual of the given species". But there are flaws in this surface that engender chance deviations and consistent aberrations. Besides their spacial links, G-C Père also found repetitions of individual reflections in time: "If one imagines a sphere, then its equator will denote the spatial cycle of a species in its ideal period, and an average meridian the cycle of possible changes of the type in time. And at the center resides the heart of the species, its idea, its original." (page 217)
( I surmise that this mirror of nature is not flat, but "geomorphic". And yet, for me, "the original of a being" bears a platonic ring. )
The evolutionary ladder itself is but a "mimicry of truth" and, since the development of human thought takes part in the same speculative process [ "the development of human ratiocination, in both the individual and historic senses, is extraordinarily linked to nature" (page219)], the multiplication of concepts results from an increase in the complexity of the brain ( "nature grows wiser as time passes".) Initially "nature was ignorant of genera and species; the specimen reigned supreme" and there was no distinction between the animal kingdom and the vegetable one: "The very order ( and, in part, the spirit) of classification will have to vary naturally through the ages" for... "it was not species that evolved in nature, but the very concept of species."
(In a world that consists of permanently changing forms would only human consciousness "evolve"?)
I am certain that I was unable to understand one-tenth of the richness presented in this original work. Despite its delightful descriptions ( such as those high-lighted by DN) and the pleasurable demand to reason along very unusual strands of thought, I cannot see myself as a definite spectator of this mirroring globe. The entire spectacle belongs to Nabokov's words that transform nature into art - as if one could distinguish between them.
Jansy
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
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
I had not had the opportunity to read VN's collected and unpublished essays until Dmitri Nabokov extracted a paragraph from one of its chapters and posted it to the VN-List - and set me on this trail.
As Dmitri described, "The elder Godunov- Cherdyntsev's non-evolutionary theory of the universe proposes a fascinating logic of its own for what is commonly considered lepidopterological mimicry, or for the transformation of a creeping root into a snake, or a host of other wonders only nature can perform, not for the sake of needlessly elaborate tricks but to prepare a whole show for the arrival of its spectator, Man."
In "Strong Opinions" Nabokov expressed his opposition to the ideas of Freud and Marx. His critical view of Einstein's theory of space/time and Darwin's evolutionism cannot be as easily accessed because, in the first case, it comes through the voice of Van Veen (with whom Nabokov is not always in agreement), who wrote an essay on the "Texture of Time''. A new perspective for Darwin's "The Origin of Species" is found in a chapter VN had considered as one of the ways to continue "The Gift". It was published as a separate text in "Nabokov's Butterflies" under the title: "Father's Butterflies" and this is the text about which DN has been writing to the List.
The pursuits of Godunov-Cherdyntsev's father and the transforming roots and the Kallima butterfly must be read using various conceptual frames and distinct frames of mind ( as some psychoanalysts say: "every scientific theory is a delirium shared by a particular group").
When employing some sort of protetive mimicry ourselves, while reading Nabokov's essay, we'll encounter references to those who can enjoy the gifts of beauty and humor bestowed on them by a withdrawing God and his "half-smile of averted lips, a conspiratorial sign..." (page 220). Violets and iridules, caterpillars and haze are addressed to the artists and the scientists who can see the "the butterfly behind its carnival mask"( page 206), also a very beautiful metaphor about the interconnectedness of natural phenomena.
VN's butterfly-text may be perceived as an essay on etymology, and the permanent transformation of signs and referents, in the guise of comments about entomology.
It may also be understood as an advance in the practice of the literary representation of metamorphosis - its the metatropological functions - or as a play with the distinction between the literal and the figurative, "mime and model", inanimate and animate ... "one can doubt the ability of a genius to animate marble, but one cannot doubt that one afflicted by idiocy will never create a Galatea", page 219.
( but who shall ask "Encore moi"? )
Godunov-Cherdyntsev's critical view about Aristoteles, Linnaeus and Darwin and his description of his father's "principles of natural classification" ( "a method of stellar elegance for organizing the gathered materials", a "spherical classification...applicable to all areas of nature") is, literally, revolutionary. Interspersed bits of irony may confuse the reader who looks for the author's premises or some reference point as, for example, when he informs the reader that his father, " A partisan of research in the definition of metamorphoses, he subtly berated those whom he called 'genitalists' ",i.e, as someone who despised V.Nabokov's work as Lepidopterologist (page 208).
( I wish I had learned more about "Prosopopoeia", specially when it is employed with additional mirrors...)
Part of the chapter (its "Supplement") reminded me at first of Gustav Fechner, a scientist whose work on thresholds of perception influenced Freud and attracted William James, in GF's small essay "About The Comparative Anatomy of the Angels" ( described as a kind of "spiritual orbiting eyes"), where satire and serious conjecture are hopelessly intermingled.
G-C explanation of his father's "Addendum" starts by defining the concept of species, "the original of a being, nonexistent in our reality but unique and definite in concept, that recurrs ad infinitum ture, reflections..." What human intelligence perceives in this mirror, he adds, is also "reflected in that selfsame glass and acquiring its reality solely within it, as a living individual of the given species". But there are flaws in this surface that engender chance deviations and consistent aberrations. Besides their spacial links, G-C Père also found repetitions of individual reflections in time: "If one imagines a sphere, then its equator will denote the spatial cycle of a species in its ideal period, and an average meridian the cycle of possible changes of the type in time. And at the center resides the heart of the species, its idea, its original." (page 217)
( I surmise that this mirror of nature is not flat, but "geomorphic". And yet, for me, "the original of a being" bears a platonic ring. )
The evolutionary ladder itself is but a "mimicry of truth" and, since the development of human thought takes part in the same speculative process [ "the development of human ratiocination, in both the individual and historic senses, is extraordinarily linked to nature" (page219)], the multiplication of concepts results from an increase in the complexity of the brain ( "nature grows wiser as time passes".) Initially "nature was ignorant of genera and species; the specimen reigned supreme" and there was no distinction between the animal kingdom and the vegetable one: "The very order ( and, in part, the spirit) of classification will have to vary naturally through the ages" for... "it was not species that evolved in nature, but the very concept of species."
(In a world that consists of permanently changing forms would only human consciousness "evolve"?)
I am certain that I was unable to understand one-tenth of the richness presented in this original work. Despite its delightful descriptions ( such as those high-lighted by DN) and the pleasurable demand to reason along very unusual strands of thought, I cannot see myself as a definite spectator of this mirroring globe. The entire spectacle belongs to Nabokov's words that transform nature into art - as if one could distinguish between them.
Jansy
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
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