Subject: RE: prize etc
From: "Brian Boyd (FOA ENG)" <[email-masked]>
To: "'D. Barton Johnson '" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 9 Nov 2000 23:10:19 +1300

Dear Don,

Please cut and paste rather than post in toto.

You may wish to pass on the information that my Nabokov biography has been
awarded the Einhard Biography Prize (awarded every two years for biographies
published in Europe) on the basis of the German edition of the first volume,
Vladimir Nabokov: Die russischen Jahre, 1899-1940 (Rowohlt, 1999), a revised
and expanded version, coming in at 943 pp. (and this is the skimpy volume!).

The Nabokov Museum is being radically, but it seems quite sensitively,
renovated. There's a press conference there today for Vladimir Nabokov:
Russkie Gody and Vladimir Nabokov: Amerikanskie Gody (Symposium/Nezavisimaya
gazeta), which however will now not be out until the end of January, and for
a Copyright Monitoring Program being run through the Museum.

St Petersburg's skies look grey but the streets seem brighter than last
year. Olga sends her regards.

Off to the Crimea tomorrow! Pray for me - if you ever pray.

Cheers,
Brian

PS Here's some info on the prize:

  The Einhard Prize is called after Einhard or Eginhard (c.770 - 840), a
  contemporary of Charlemagne, who lived and worked at the imperial court in

  Aachen as well as in Seligenstadt. (The region around Seligenstadt was the

  fiefdom of Einhard). Among other things,  Einhard, who is buried in
  Seligenstadt, has written the first biography of Charlemagne ("Vita Caroli

  Magni") which was copied many times during the Middle Ages; several
  historians consider that biography as one of the reasons for the still
vast
  popularity of Charlemagne in Continental Europe. It is assumed, that the
  "Virta Caroli Magni" was actually written in Seligenstadt.

  According to our information, the Einhard Prize is the only international
  award for a biography. The only other literature prize for a biography is
  the Pulitzer Prize; to our knowledge, that award is, however, a purely
  American matter. Each laureate of the Einhard Prize is chosen by an
  international jury. Presently that jury consists of Jean Favier, Professor

  at the Sorbonne in Paris, Professor Roberto Zapperi, Rome, and Dr. Gustav
  Seibt, one of the most prominent German literature critics on the staff of

  "Die Zeit", the leading German weekly. The jury has unanimously chosen you

  as the recipient of the Prize for 2001.

  The Einhard Prize is handed to the laureate in Seligenstadt on the day
  Einhard died; in 2001 this date will fall on  March 17. The Prize is
endowed
  with DM 20.000.-.

-----Original Message-----
From: D. Barton Johnson
To: Brian Boyd (FOA ENG)
Sent: 11/3/2000 5:25 AM
Subject: Re: peacocks and butterflies

Dear Bryan,
    Many thanks. I got your MLA paper but haven't read it yet. Re the
peacock moths. I found an unsourced reference to Marco d'a. in a 1923
guide
to the Palazzo. Just the name along with Del Brina and the other guy. He
is
not in any of the reference books I checked.
    You may be right re overinterpretation. My earlier da Vinci
suggestion
re art & imagination looks limp on the morning after the inspiration.
But
that May, 1547 must mean something. April -May is, BTW, the  time when
the
Peacock flies.
    I can try Tooby again-if you like.
                                                Best, Don
PS I notice a scholar named Filppo Ferro in a new essay on Tanzio da
Varallo
IDs a Saturnia pyri in a 1615 painting and also specifies the month of
May.
The popular Italian name of the critter is "del pero" (pear) although
itmay
not be by chance that "pero" is the older Russian word for "pen, quill."
Ain't scholarship fun?

----- Original Message -----
From: "Brian Boyd (FOA ENG)" <[email-masked]>
To: <[email-masked]>
Sent: Wednesday, November 01, 2000 6:39 PM
Subject: RE: peacocks and butterflies

> Dear Don,
>
> Attached is a response to your Pear Peacock query, which I have left
as a
> Word attachment because it seems unlikely to transfer well into e-mail
> format (though I might also try capturing it and sending it via
e-mail). I
> think a good part of scholarship is knowing when to stop, and there
does
not
> seem to be any additional hidden fact to dig for here. Of course, with
> Nabokov, that CAN be the very sign that there's more.
>
> If you ask the Berg for a photograph of the diary page, therefore, I
think
> you'll have all you need (I have merely my own pen sketch of Nabokov's
> sketch in my notes of twenty years ago, or I'd send you a .jpg file).
I
did
> venture into the Elements room with a camera once but didn't have the
> information I needed at hand or, really, enough time or inclination (I
was
> in tourist mode), and emerged without a photograph. And while I have
the
> relevant butterfly books, I don't have any moth guides; see Dieter's
guide,
> image 72 in the 1998 version, for Saturnia pyri, but I presume that in
your
> request you meant a photo of the painted insects in the fresco and not
the
> insects in a guide.
>
> I never found out anything on Marco d'Andrea. Is he real? Sounds
> suspiciously like a play on "mark of man" or "mark of Andrew" (= sign
of
the
> cross, X, a play on anonymity AND martyrdom on a diagonal krestik?).
>
> John Tooby and Leda Cosmides aren't answering so either they're away
or
> don't want to be associated with another paper of mine. I guess I will
not
> be seeing you, therefore, in December.
>
> Did you receive the paper for Washington? Were there problems in it?
>
> I am about to set off (November 6) for Russia and the Crimea, then
London,
> Princeton and Madison, arriving back here December 4. So if you have
more
> ADA pix ?s I will probably see them from wherever I am but won't be
able
to
> check my files.
>
> How's the project coming along?
>
> Best,
> Brian
>
> PS Here's the text, which you can snip if it comes out ungarbled this
way:
>
> Nabokov loved the obscure fact over the obvious symbol, but despite
his
> strategic deployment of arcana, it is a mistake to attribute
omniscience
to
> him. Like Van, he was often "an apprentice who learned fast, and kept
his
> labeled phials in a cool place"; he uses imagination to vivify a
single
> cluster of isolated facts about which he may know little else.
>
> In the endpapers of his little 1966 diary (which should now be in the
Berg
> Collection at the New York Public Library), while travelling through
Italy
> on his Butterflies in Art project, and with ADA already under way,
Nabokov
> notes in rough sketches the images of a few butterflies he has found
in
> Florence. One entry reads thus:
>
> Fresco
> --> school of Vasari
>
> [drawing of female Pear Peacock, [drawing of male Pear
> Peacock,
> with "plain threads" for antennae] with "feathery antennae"]
>
> stylized S. pyri   <-- in other words, hopeless bugs
> long necks
> on right side of window niche
> Appartment [sic] of the Elements Signoria
>
> That, the names of Vasari's assistants and a date for his frescos, and
a
> knowledge of Saturnia pyri (the largest European moth, which in flight
can
> indeed be mistaken for a bat) was enough for Nabokov to elaborate this
> scholarly find and lovingly attribute it to Lucette.
>
>