Nabokov's Butterflies
A lepidopterist’s passion for Pugs, Satyrs, and Blues
His eye for detail and towering intellect led giants in the field to crave his approval
He fell for the Magdalena Alpine, the world’s only all-black butterfly
He wrote great novels, too
At the breakfast table recently, my partner Florence was reading the parlor game known as "The Proust Questionnaire." She put one of Proust's questions to me: "What is your idea of perfect happiness?" What came to mind was Nabokov's reply to Simona Moroni in a 1972 interview in Vogue: "What is the perfect walk for you?" asked Moroni. Nabokov replied, "Any first walk in any new place — especially a place where no lepidopterist has been before me. There still exist unexplored mountains in Europe and I can still walk 20 kilometers a day. The ordinary stroller might feel on sauntering out a twinge of pleasure, but the cold of the metal netstick in my right hand magnifies the pleasure to almost intolerable bliss." That Vladimir Nabokov was deeply enamored of butterflies and moths comes as news to almost no one who even knows his name, though many misconstrue this attraction as somehow symbolic, juvenile, or esoteric rather than as the grand passion it was. His attempted biographer Andrew …