I Have Landed (6 page)

No passion burned longer, or more deeply, in Nabokov's life than his love for the natural history and taxonomy of butterflies. He began in early childhood, encouraged by a traditional interest in natural history among the upper-class intelligentsia of Russia (not to mention the attendant economic advantages of time, resources, and opportunity). Nabokov stated in a 1962 interview (Zimmer, page 216): “One of the first things I ever wrote in English was a paper on Lepidoptera I prepared at age twelve. It wasn't published because a butterfly I described had been described by someone else.” Invoking a lovely entomological metaphor in a 1966 interview, Nabokov spoke of childhood fascination, continuous enthusiasm throughout life, and regret that political realities had precluded even more work on butterflies (Zimmer, page 216):

Nabokov published more than a dozen technical papers on the taxonomy and natural history of butterflies, mostly during his six years of full employment as Research Fellow (and unofficial curator) in Lepidoptery at the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University, where he occupied an office three floors above the laboratory that has been my principal scientific home for thirty years. (I arrived twenty years after Nabokov's departure and never had the pleasure of meeting him, although my knowledge of his former presence has always made this venerable institution, built by Louis Agassiz in 1859 and later tenanted by several of the foremost natural historians in America, seem even more special.)

Nabokov worked for Harvard, at a modest yearly salary of about one thousand dollars, between 1942 and 1948, when he accepted a teaching post in literature
at Cornell University. He was a respected and recognized professional in his chosen field of entomological systematics. The reasons often given for attributing to Nabokov either an amateur, or even only a dilettante's, status arise from simple ignorance of accepted definitions for professionalism in this field.

First, many leading experts in various groups of organisms have always been “amateurs” in the admirable and literal (as opposed to the opposite and pejorative) sense that their love for the subject has inspired their unparalleled knowledge, and that they do not receive adequate (or any) pay for their work. (Taxonomy is not as expensive, or as laboratory-driven, as many scientific fields. Careful and dedicated local observation from childhood, combined with diligence in reading and study, can supply all the needed tools for full expertise.)

Second, poorly remunerated and inadequately titled (but full-time) employment has, unfortunately, always been
de rigueur
in this field. The fact that Nabokov worked for little pay, and with the vague title Research Fellow, rather than a professorial (or even a curatorial) appointment, does not imply nonprofessional status. When I took my position at the same museum in 1968, several heads of collections, recognized as world's experts with copious publications, worked as “volunteers” for the symbolic “dollar a year” that gave them official status on the Harvard payroll.

Third, and most important, I do not argue that all duly employed taxonomists can claim enduring expertise and righteous status. Every field includes some clunkers and nitwits, even in high positions! I am not, myself, a professional entomologist (I work on snails among the Mollusca), and therefore cannot judge Nabokov's credentials on this crucial and final point. But leading taxonomic experts in the large and complex group of “blues” among the butterflies testify to the excellence of his work, and grant him the ultimate accolade of honor within the profession by praising his “good eye” for recognizing the (often subtle) distinctions that mark species and other natural groups of organisms (see the bibliography to this essay for two articles by leading butterfly taxonomists: Remington; and Johnson, Whitaker, and Balint). In fact, as many scholars have stated, before Nabokov achieved a conventional form of literary success with the publication of
Lolita
, he could have been identified (by conventional criteria of money earned and time spent) as a professional lepidopterist and amateur author!

In conjunction with this collegial testimony, we must also note Nabokov's own continual (and beautifully stated) affirmation of his love and devotion to all aspects of a professional lepidopterist's life. On the joys of fieldwork and collecting, he effuses in a letter to Edmund Wilson in 1942 (quoted in Zimmer, page 30): “Try, Bunny, it is the noblest sport in the world.” Of the tasks traditionally
deemed more dull and trying—the daily grind of the laboratory and microscope—he waxed with equal ardor in a letter to his sister in 1945, in the midst of his Harvard employment (in Zimmer, page 29):

Nabokov worked so long and so intensely in grueling and detailed observation of tiny bits of insect anatomy that his eyesight became permanently compromised—thus placing him in the company of several of history's most famous entomologists, especially Charles Bonnet in the eighteenth century and August Weismann in the nineteenth, who sacrificed their sight to years of eye-straining work. In a television interview in 1971, Nabokov stated (Zimmer, page 29):

Nonetheless, and as a touching, final testimony to his love and dedication to entomology, Nabokov stated in a 1975 interview (Zimmer, page 218) that his
enthusiasm would still pull him inexorably in (“like a moth to light” one is tempted to intone) if he ever allowed impulse to vanquish bodily reality:

Thus, in conclusion to this section, we cannot adopt the first solution to “the paradox of intellectual promiscuity” by arguing that Nabokov's lepidoptery represents only the harmless diversion of an amateur hobbyist, ultimately stealing no time that he might realistically have spent writing more novels. Nabokov loved his butterflies as much as his literature. He worked for years as a fully professional taxonomist, publishing more than a dozen papers that have stood the test of substantial time.

Can we therefore invoke the second solution by arguing that time lost to literature for the sake of lepidoptery nonetheless enhanced his novels, or at least distinguished his writing with a brand of uniqueness? I will eventually suggest a positive answer, but by an unconventional argument that exposes the entire inquiry as falsely parsed. I must first, however, show that the two most popular versions of this “second solution” cannot be defended, and that the paradox of intellectual promiscuity must itself be rejected and identified as an impediment to proper understanding of the relationships between art and science.

In surveying commentaries written by literary scholars and critics about Nabokov's work on butterflies, I have been struck by their nearly universal adherence to either of two solutions for the following supposed conundrum: Why did one of the greatest writers of our century spend so much time working and publishing in a markedly different domain of such limited interest to most of the literate public?

In this first solution, Nabokov's literary fans may bemoan their losses (just as any lover of music must lament the early deaths of Mozart and Schubert). Still, in seeking some explanation for legitimate grief, we may find solace in claiming
that Nabokov's transcendent genius permitted him to make as uniquely innovative and distinctive a contribution to lepidoptery as to literature. However much we may wish that he had chosen a different distribution for his time, we can at least, with appropriate generosity, grant his equal impact and benefit upon natural history. Adherents to this solution have therefore tried to develop arguments for regarding Nabokov's lepidoptery as specially informed by his general genius, and as possessing great transforming power for natural history.

But none of these claims can be granted even a whisper of plausibility by biologists who know the history of taxonomic practice and evolutionary theory. Nabokov, as documented above, was a fully professional and highly competent taxonomic specialist on an important group of butterflies—and for this fine work he gains nothing but honor in my world. However, no natural historian has ever viewed Nabokov as an innovator, or as an inhabitant of what humanists call the “vanguard” (not to mention the avant-garde) and scientists the “cutting edge.” Nabokov may have been a major general of literature, but he can only be ranked as a trustworthy, highly trained career infantryman in natural history.

Vladimir Nabokov practiced his science as a conservative specialist on a particular group of organisms, not in any way as a theorist or a purveyor of novel ideas or methods. He divided and meticulously described; he did not unify or generalize. (I will explain in the next section why a natural historian can make such a judgment without intending any condescension or lack of respect.) Nonetheless, four arguments have been advanced again and again by literary commentators who seem driven by a desire to depict Nabokov as a revolutionary spirit in natural history as well.

1.
The myth of innovation
. Many critics have tried, almost with an air of desperation, to identify some aspect of Nabokov's methodology that might be labeled as innovative. But taxonomic professionals will easily recognize these claims as fallacious—for the putative novelty represents either a fairly common (if admirable) practice, or else an idiosyncrasy (a “bee in the bonnet”) that Nabokov surely embraced with great ardor, but that cannot be regarded as a major issue of scientific importance.

As a primary example, many critics have stressed Nabokov's frequent complaints about scientists who fail to identify the original describers when citing the formal Latin name of a butterfly—either in listing species in popular field guides, or in identifying subspecies in technical publications. Zimmer (page 10), for example, writes: “A growing number of non- and semi-scientific publications
nowadays omit the author. Nabokov called it ‘a deplorable practice of commercial origin which impairs a number of recent zoological and botanical manuals in America.'”

By the rules of nomenclature, each organism must have a binomial designation consisting of a capitalized genus name
(Homo)
and a lowercase “trivial” name
(sapiens)
, with the two together forming the species name
(Homo sapiens)
. (Linnaean taxonomy is called “binomial” in reference to these two parts of a species's name.) It is also customary, but not required, to add (not in italics) the name of the first describer of the species after the binomial designation—as in
Homo sapiens
Linnaeus. This custom certainly helps specialists by permitting easier tracing of the history of a species's name. But this practice is also extremely time-consuming (locating the original describer is often tedious and difficult; I don't know the first authors tor several of the snail species most central to my own research). Moreover, when hundreds of names are to be listed (as in popular field guides), rigid adherence to this custom requires a great deal of space for rather limited benefit.

Therefore, popular publications (especially the manuals of Nabokov's ire above) generally omit the names of describers. In addition, and for the same reason, technical publications often compromise by including describers' names for species, but omitting them for subspecies (trinomial names for geographically defined subgroups within a species). Honorable people can argue either side of this issue; I tend to agree with Nabokov's critics in this case—but I cannot generate much personal passion over this relatively minor issue.

In another example, Boyd
(The American Years
, page 128) praises Nabokov's methods: “Nabokov's mode of presentation was ahead of his time. Instead of showing a photograph of a single specimen of a butterfly species or a diagram of the genitalia of a single specimen, he presented when necessary a range of specimens of certain subspecies in nine pages of crowded plates.” Here I side entirely with Nabokov and his proper recognition of natural history's primary subject matter: variation and diversity at all levels. But Nabokov did not proceed in either a unique or an unusually progressive manner in illustrating multiple specimens (I rather suspect that his decision reflected his fussy and meticulous thoroughness more than any innovative theoretical vision about the nature of variation.) This issue has provoked a long history of discussion and varying practice in taxonomy—and many other specialists have stood with Nabokov on the right side (as I would say) of this question.