Nabokov's Butterflies
Vladimir Nabokov, 2000
This cover responds to Nabokov’s Cornell Lectures from March 1951, an excerpt from the larger collection of writings. In a beautiful narration, Nabokov describes fantasy, reality, transformation and metamorphosis as it relates to human lives using the butterfly as an example. “There was a Chinese philosopher who all his life pondered the problem whether he was a Chinese philosopher dreaming that he was a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming that she was a philosopher.” Each of our realities is different. “When we say reality, we are really thinking of... in one drop — an average sample of a mixture of a million individual realities.” We are constantly transforming, growing, changing and have capabilities inside of us that we are unaware of. “Some Joes and Janes do not know that they have wings.” I painted butterflies in sumi ink, and collaged pieces with Nabokov’s portrait as if he is emerging from the butterfly (or the butterfly is emerging from him), undergoing a transformation.
Portrait drawing by Ricky DeLucco.
