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The Quill and the Scalpel The Quill and the Scalpel The Quill and the Scalpel N AB O K O V’ S A R T A N D T H E W O RLD S O F S C IEN C E Stephen H. Blackwell T H E O H I O S T A T E U N I V E R S I T Y P R E ss | C O L U MB us Copyright © 2009 by The Ohio State University. All rights reserved. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Blackwell, Stephen H. (Stephen Hardwick), 1965– The quill and the scalpel : Nabokov’s art and the worlds of science / Stephen H. Blackwell. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8142-1099-4 (cloth : alk. paper)—ISBN 978-0-8142-9197-9 (cd-rom) 1. Nabokov, Vladimir Vladimirovich, 1899–1977—Criticism and interpretation. 2. Art and science. 3. Sci- ence—Philosophy. 4. Science and the humanities. I. Title. PS3527.A15Z63 2009 813.'54—dc22 2009012103 This book is available in the following editions: Cloth (ISBN 978-0-8142-1099-4) CD-ROM (ISBN 978-0-8142-9197-9) Cover design by Mia Risberg Text design by Juliet Williams Type set in Adobe Sabon Printed by Thomson-Shore, Inc. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials. ANSI Z39.48–1992. 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 For Aleka, Timothy, and Gabriel I’ve drawn my scalpel through spacetime, space being the tumor, which I assign to the slops. —Interview with Nicholas Garnham on BBC-2, 1968 contents List of Illustrations ix Preface xi Acknowledgments xiii INTRODuctION Nabokov’s Science and Art 1 CHAptER 1 Nabokov as a Scientist 21 CHAptER 2 Nabokovian Science and Goethean Science 53 CHAptER 3 Utility and Futility: Nabokov’s Biological Etudes 71 CHAptER 4 Anti-Psychological 97 CHAptER 5 Nabokov’s Physics: Particles, Waves, and Uncertainty 140 CHAptER 6 Minding the Gap: Discontinuities in Nature, Art, and Science 167 CONCLusION Art, Science, and Ethics 184 Notes 203 Bibliography 252 Index 266 list of illustrations FIGURE 1 Ciliated wing drawing. [Butterflies. Scrapbook] containing diagrams and notes on the evolution of wing patterns. Berg Collection, New York Public Library. 24 FIGURE 2 Triangles drawing. [Butterflies. Scrapbook] containing diagrams and notes on Lycaeides genitalia, dated Feb 20, 1946. Berg Collection, New York Public Library. 26 FIGURE 3 Spiral speciation. [Butterflies. Scrapbook] containing diagrams and notes on the evolution of wing patterns. Undated. Berg Collection, New York Public Library. 36–37 FIGURE 4 Poetry diagram: “Iambic hexameter rhythms of E. A. Baratynsky.” “Ritmy shestistopnago iamba. E. A. Baratynsky. Holograph notebook, described as Album 1B, unsigned. [c.1918].” Berg Collection, New York Public Library. 42–43 ix LI st O F I L L ust RAT I O N S FIGURE 5 Wing spot progression chart. [Butterflies. Scrapbook] containing diagrams and notes on the evolution of wing patterns. Berg Collection, New York Public Library. 44 FIGURE 6 Polynesian butterfly-hunter. Reproduced in Rul’, 21 June 1925; originally published in Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung, 1 April 1925, 445. 72 FIGURE 7 Wing image with mention of species gaps. [Butterflies. Scrapbook] containing diagrams and notes on the evolution of wing patterns. Berg Collection, New York Public Library. 166 x preface THIS BOOK SPANS two distinct intellectual domains—art and science— and it seeks to be of use to readers on both sides of that sometimes conten- tious boundary. Nabokov’s thought as an artist was heavily informed by his scientific passions: his lepidopteral research was guided by his aesthetic sense of the world around him. Everything Nabokov undertook had in it components of both discovery and expression, aesthetic evaluation and composition. Artistic creation becomes a kind of extension of scientific research, inasmuch as art is an explicit practice through which one can make known individual discoveries about life that would not find a place in the laboratory. If we treat artwork, no matter how strange or disturbing it might be, as something akin to a scientific experiment, then we cease to be troubled by art’s occasional obscurity or ambivalence or by the ten- dency of artistic meaning to slip out from under efforts to define it. These same problems exist in the world of empirical research, too. Like scientific advances, novels and other art forms can be thought of as tentative steps forward in a world full of the unknown. Some works may endure in their ability to lead humanity toward greater knowledge and vision; others are more quickly eclipsed and forgotten. In this sense, artistic progress undergoes a confirmation procedure not completely unlike the scientific method. This development is essentially non-Popperian: great xi P REFA C E artworks are not falsified (although lesser ones might be—there is such a thing as “flawed art”), but rather they may be outgrown when they cease to lead the mind toward new discoveries. Nabokov’s works in various genres offer the chance to consider art as part of the human quest for knowledge and understanding, to expand the traditional meaning of “science” to include art. It is not enough, how- ever, for literary or artistic theorists to note the “scientific” importance of their subject, as if in confirmation of their own intellectual significance. Scientists and philosophers or historians of science, too, must be invited to consider the significance of such a reconceptualization. For this reason, I have chosen to craft a book not only for literary specialists or Nabokov scholars, but also for those who think more specifically about the role of science in human life and history. As a result, Nabokov specialists will find here many things that they already know among many other things that perhaps they only barely suspected. On the other hand, scientists and related scholars will view this study as the work of an outsider. Neverthe- less, without their potential interest and engagement, a project such as this one means little. If, in fact, we believe that the arts have a role to play within the advance of knowledge, then what task could be more urgent than a consideration of a writer whose career blended the “passion of sci- ence” with the “precision of art”? This book makes no claim to definitiveness or comprehensiveness. It provides at most an overview of some of the major concepts and their vari- ations in Nabokov’s works. There is much that has been left out—most prominently, whole branches of natural science such as mathematics and chemistry. The first of these is being treated by others far more compe- tent for that task than I. There are, of course, more details to be discov- ered regarding each of the fields I have treated here, especially psychology, whose variegated reflections in Nabokov really warrant a book-length study in themselves. Nabokov’s likely relation to early modern philosophy of science has been barely hinted at. And there is much more to be learned about aesthetic qualities in Nabokov’s scientific work. Such explorations will require the efforts of many scholars, and I hope that some of my read- ers will join in mapping these uncharted domains. xii acknowledgments MANY PARts of this book could not have been written without access to restricted archival materials kindly granted by Dmitri Nabokov; likewise, I thank him for his permission to quote from unpublished sources and to reproduce here images from the archive. I am pleased to acknowledge sup- port provided by a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Sti- pend in 2005. In 2005 and 2006, the University of Tennessee granted me a research leave, without which the bulk of the work presented here could never have been completed, and in 2006 it provided Professional Develop- ment funding for trips to the Nabokov archives at the New York Public Library and the Library of Congress. The Department of Modern Foreign Languages and Literatures has been generous with travel funds, allowing me to present early versions of this work at various conferences during the last several years. Permission fees for the images in this book were paid by the University of Tennessee Exhibition, Performance, and Publication Expense fund. Stephen Crook of the Berg Collection at the New York Pub- lic Library was invaluable as a resource on the contents of the archive, and the staffs of the Berg and the Manuscript Room of the Library of Congress epitomized efficiency. Many friends and colleagues have generously shared their acumen and wisdom as I have worked on the materials for this book during the last xiii A C KN ow LEDGMEN ts decade. I am especially grateful to Dana Dragunoiu, who read the entire first draft and large portions of later drafts, making countless suggestions for improvements in substance and providing encouragement that helped sustain me through more difficult stretches. Victor Fet read a version of chapters 1 and 3 and saved me from important taxonomic blunders. Kurt Johnson kindly sent me an extended version of his ALA paper on Nabo- kov’s lepidoptery and offered feedback on early drafts of the biological sections. Eric Naiman read almost the complete manuscript in its penulti- mate form and challenged me, as always, to think about my subject from surprising angles. Dieter Zimmer provided guidance in absentia for navi- gating Berlin’s libraries during my visit there in 2004, as well as serving the discipline with background research of the highest importance in his incomparable Guide to Nabokov’s Butterflies and Moths. Victoria Alex- ander shared her own research with me and offered challenging sugges- tions on early phases of this project.
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