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Art, Acuity and Lepidopterology

(Picture: rbth.ru; background picture: DS)

MICROSTORY OF ART
ONLINE JOURNAL FOR ART, CONNOISSEURSHIP AND CULTURAL JOURNALISM

It might be out of question that descriptions by writer Vladimir Nabokov (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Nabokov) are of an extraordinary precision. I am not saying this because Nabokov would figure among my favourite writers (he actually does not, although I have recently spoken of the most admirable issue of a cultural journal that actually was dedicated to this writer; see: http://www.seybold.ch/Dietrich/VladimirNabokov).
But what interests me here are two ways of explaining of this extraordinary precision of language, and both ways of explaining it associate this acuity of observing, i.e. the visual acuity of observing, with the passion that Nabokov had for butterflies, for lepidopterology, in brief, with his connoisseurship and expertise as a lepidopterologist (picture above: talainsphotographyblog.files.wordpress.com).
Only that these two ways of explaining it explain it somewhat differently.

Novelist John Updike, on the one hand (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Updike), who had this complicated relation with Nabokov (not least because his wife was an admirer of Nabokov’s connoisseurship of literature, displayed in his lectures that he held in the United States), considered, in linking lepidopterology and literature, the former as a sort of training for the latter:

»The visual pursuit of butterflies, in the field and under the examining light, trained his eyes to a supernatural acuity.«

And Updike goes on, in this review of a volume of stories by Nabokov from which we’re quoting of, to assemble passages in which Nabokov speaks of eyes (John Updike, More Matter, p. 289).

Nabokov connoisseur Dieter E. Zimmer, on the other hand (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dieter_E._Zimmer), offers a more complex analysis and suggests to think of the relation of lepidopterology and literature (with its implications as to descriptions in general, and thus also as to the descriptions of art works) in terms of a most basic analogy:

»Descriptions of landscapes, cities, interiors or also characters by Nabokov that have been praised for their precision, are not precise for him looking that intently or feeling that profoundly, but for his having the knowledge that yet arouses and guides perception.«
(source: see here; translation from the German: DS)

And this is the subtle difference between these two modes of looking at Nabokov’s acuity of observing. One focusses on the mere looking, the training, as it were, and the other on the having of knowledge, for we are only able to see of what we know.

MICROSTORY OF ART
ONLINE JOURNAL FOR ART, CONNOISSEURSHIP AND CULTURAL JOURNALISM

(Picture: rbth.ru; background picture: DS)

MICROSTORY OF ART
ONLINE JOURNAL FOR ART, CONNOISSEURSHIP AND CULTURAL JOURNALISM
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