Vladimir Nabokov is known for his novels Lolita and Pale Fire, but he was also one of the most famous lepidopterists in the world, that is he studied and collected butterflies and moths. We discover how this butterfly passion influenced his literary and scientific life.
Through his research Nabokov came up with a hypothesis for the evolution of the striking Blue butterflies in South America.
When he first presented his theory in 1945, the scientific community didn't test his research but now a research team using DNA analysis has confirmed that Nabokov's hypothesis was correct.
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Images of him hunting butterflys . com
Chess problems
Nabokov spent considerable time during his exile on the composition of chess problems. Such compositions he published in the Russian émigré press, Poems and Problems (18 chess compositions) and Speak, Memory (one problem). He describes the process of composing and constructing in his memoir: "The strain on the mind is formidable; the element of time drops out of one's consciousness..." To him, the "originality, invention, conciseness, harmony, complexity, and splendid insincerity" of creating a chess problem was similar to that in any other art.
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In Speak Memory, Nabokov writes of this composition: I remember one particular problem I had been trying to compose for months. There came a night when I managed at last to express that particular theme. It was meant for the delectation of the expert solver. The unsophisticated might miss the point of the problem entirely, and discover its fairly simple, “thetic” solution without having passed through the pleasurable torments prepared for the sophisticated one. The latter would start by falling for an illusory pattern of play based on a fashionable avant-garde theme (exposing White’s King to checks), which the composed had taken the greatest pains to “plant” (with only one obscure little move by an inconspicuous pawn to upset it). Having passed through this “antithetic” inferno the by now ultra-sophisticated solver would reach the simple key move (bishop to c2) as somebody on a wild goose chase might go from Albany to New York by way of Vancouver, Eurasia and the Azores. The pleasant experience of the roundabout route (strange landscapes, gongs, tigers, exotic customs, the thrice-repeated circuit of a newly married couple around the sacred fire of an earthen brazier) would amply reward him for the misery of the deceit, and after that, his arrival at the simple key move would provide him with a synthesis of poignant artistic delight (note 5).
problems here . com
"Drunk at the matinee" is a collection of candid poetry about stupid shit that we all experience from day to day.
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