#NerdAlert: Why am I so turned on by Nabokov and butterflies?
#TalkNerdyToMeLover's Dusty Cooper
SO, perhaps you may have seen in the NY Times this week that Nabokov’s theory on Polyommatus evolution was proved to be true. Wait... what? I just blacked out.
Apparently, Nabokov, also known as the author of Lolita and Pale Fire, was an accomplished lepidopterist. A.K.A. someone who is really obsessed with butterflies and moths. When he was 8, his father was in prison and little Nabokov brought him a butterfly as a gift. Later, he went on to be the curator of lepidoptera at the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard.
He spent years collecting this one type of blue butterfly and posited that it had come to the United States from Asia millions of years ago. No one took him seriously because he was Nabokov the novelist, not Nabokov the science guy. Turns out, he was right. BOOM!
Are you turned on yet? Because I totally am.
All I’ve ever really wanted was a lover who was a genius writer and would bring me butterflies. After I read that article, I seriously had a 2 hour day dream in which it was the 1930s and I was a young ingenue in France where I met Nabokov and we had a short but steamy affair during which he sketched me naked every day and kept some butterflies fluttering around in his atilier for me... good lord. This is the problem with my love life.
#facepalm
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