Observations on several Nabokov’s works (Pale Fire, Lolita) where geographic or zoological names provide sources for puns and hidden parallels

Fet, Victor

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Notes on Eryx, Omega, and Ata

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Marshall UniversityMarshall Digital ScholarBiological Sciences Faculty Research Biological Sciences2003Notes on Eryx, Omega, and AtaVictor FetMarshall University, fet@marshall.eduFollow this and additional works at: http://mds.marshall.edu/bio_sciences_facultyPart of the American Literature Commons, Earth Sciences Commons, Other Life SciencesCommons, and the Russian Literature CommonsThis Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Biological Sciences at Marshall Digital Scholar. It has been accepted for inclusion inBiological Sciences Faculty Research by an authorized administrator of Marshall Digital Scholar. For more information, please contactzhangj@marshall.edu, martj@marshall.edu.Recommended CitationFet, Victor. Notes on Eryx, Omega, and Ata. The Nabokovian (Lawrence, Kansas), 2003, 51: 21-27.The Nabokovian Number 51 Fall 2003 ·~ Index I- L NOTES ON ERYX, OMEGA AND AJ'fA ATA 1. Eryx and Onyx The names of Onyx and Eryx 'two small lakes in the wood" near arnp Q and Lake Climax in Lolita (I, 32) happen -21-to be also lycaenid butterfly names not li ted in the recent exhaustive literature on Nabokov's lepidoptery (see: Brian Boyd & Robert M. Pyle, eds. Nabokov's Butterflies: Unpublished and Uncollected Writings, 2000· Kurt Johnson & Steven L. Coates. Nabokov's Blues: The Scientific Ody sey of a Literary Genius, 2001; Dieter E. Zimmer. A Guide to Nabokov Butterjlie and Moths 2001). In the Annotated Lolita(l 991,p. 384),Appel commented on the lakes' names but did not mention any lycaenid connection. However there are two species bearing eryx name in Lycaenidae: one named Papilio eryx by Linnaeus himself the father of zoological nomenclature now Artipe eryx (L. 1771) from East Asia. There i also Theclopsi eryx (Cramer, 1777), quite common in South America. In addition, there is Horaga onyx (Moore, 1881) from South-East Asia. All three are in Lycaenidae, subfamilyTheclinae and should have been familiar to Nabokov. Thus na1nes Onyx and Eryx definitely look as a playful reference to lycaenids, in addition to the more direct hints toward the "column of onyx" and Venus Erycina. There are also at least two more eryx Lepidoptera: one in the family Danaidae the East Asian Papilio eryx Fabricius 1798, synonym of Parantica agleoides (C. & R. Felder, 1860) and a so-called homonym (i.e. the sa1ne Latin name offered by a later author for another species; see International Code of Zoological Nomenclature. 4th ed. London 1999) of the Linnean Papilio eryx. Another is a South American inoth, Belemnia eryx (Fabricius 1775) family Arctiidae. Finally, Eryx Daudin 1803 is a genus of snakes, a small sand boa (family Boidae) from Africa and Central Asia, which should have been quite familiar to Godunov-Cherdyntsev senior of The Gift and his zoologist colleagues-and possibly to young Nabokov from his readings on Central Asian zoological travels. The snake nan1e is cu1Tently valid· thus, no other ani1nal genus can be named Eryx since it wi 11 violate "the inexorable law of -22-taxonomic priority" (Ada, 1, 8) - while eryx species names (epithets) can persist, in Lepidoptera or elsewhere. 2. Omega and Onega Continuing on lakes theme: Lake Omega in Pale Fire was interpreted as Cornell's Lake Cayuga; another allusion is of course to ' alpha and omega" (Brian Boyd, Nabokov's Pale Fire: The Magic of Artistic Discovery, 1999). However, Boyd's image of Hazel Shade as a "woman spurned" immediately recalls the most famous woman spumed in Russian literature - Tatiana Larina. In his commentary on Eugene Onegin (2°d ed., 1975), Nabokov (vol. 2, p. 37) says that "the name [Onegin] is derived from a Russian river, the Onega ... ; and there is an Onega Lake in the province of Olonets". Thus, Onegin's name is derived both frotn a river - as Lensky's is from Lena (ibid., vol. 2 p. 228) - and a lake. In a later commentary, Yu. Lotman (Roman A. S. Pushkina "Evgeni Onegin ", 1983, pp. 114-115) did not mention Lake Onega but discussed river-derived surnames in detail (noting also that for Pushkin's contemporaries such surnames had a clear artificiality of a literary character's name, being impossible as a real gentry surname). To my knowledge, nobody yet commented on this obvious connection of Lake Omega to Lake Onega. The Russian Lake Onega is mentioned in Pnin (5, 2). Its geographic twin, Lake Ladoga (located closer to St. Petersburg), finds its place on Antiterra as a burg in Mayne and mutates to Ladore (Russ. Ladora) in Ada (1, l; 1, 22). A geographically familiar to a Russian's eye sequence of three northern (i.e. closest to Zembla) lakes (west to east: Chudskoe [=Peipus], Ladoga, and Onega) rhymes visually with Omega, Ozero, and Zero (Pale Fire) - as well as with Onyx, Eryx, and Climax (Lolita). Tatiana Dmitrievna, of course, did not drown herself; but her precursor, Liza in Karamzin's Poor Liza (1792), did - in a "moonlit pond", spurned by "a frivolous nobleman graced with -23-the comedy name of Era t (Nabokov Eugene Onegin vol. 3, p. 143 . So did another Liza in Que n of Spade - although not in Pushkin's 1834 original but in Tchaikovsky s I 90 silly opera" (ibid., vol. 3, p. 333 ). Thi latter Liza pumed by Hermann· cf. De pair i 111entioned in Nabokov Mary (' under the same arch wh re Liza die in Tchaikov ky The Queen of Spades' ; this place in St. P t r burg i Zimnyaya Kanavka (Winter Canal) connecting Moika with Neva; Neva of course flows from Lake Ladoga). Incidentally no omega name is currently valid in Lepidoptera; however, there are two moth synonyms bearing the e names: Argyrogramn1a verruca (Fabriciu 1794) ( A. om ga Hubner 1823) and Graphiphora augur (Fabriciu , 1775) (= G. omega sper 17 8) (both in Noctuidae). 3. Ata, Atalanta, Atala Inspir d by Brian Boyd's marvelous book on Pale Fire I venture to suggest a further decoding to his interpretation for the Haunted Barn message of Aunt Maud containing the broken name 'atalanta''. Boyd interpreted the first word of th me sage pada") as equivalent of padre' i.e. Latinized father' . 1 wonder if the second full word "ata' could b Nabokov' indication of the same meaning. Ata mean "father" in Turkic languages and the word is perfectly known to any ducated Russian. Although it may be too farfetched for Aunt Maud, even from beyond the grave to u e a Turkic-origin word I am sure that Nabokov was perfectly familiar with the word. Not only was it part of the name of his famous contemporary, A ta turk (Moustafa Kemal· father of all Turks 1881-1938) but furthermore many toponym that Konstantin Godunov-Cherdyntsev had to list in hi Lepidoptera Asiatica would include '-Ata as a part of a city name, the closest to Nabokov's childhood reading being the famed Aulie-Ata ( 'The Holy Father center ofSyrdaya Region· later Dzhambul now Taraz -24-in Kazakhstan). Of course the largest modem Kazakh city s nameofAlma-Ata(before1921 Verny)wa kn wntoNabok v as well · it etymology however( Father of Appl ) i likely an artificial derivation by analogy with Aulie-Ata. Turkic (including Tatar, or Tartar) linguistic in flu nee are nothing alien for Nabokov starting with hi own name - he claimed the Tatar prince (Murza) Nabok as his ance tor (Speak, Memory· note that the Godunov name come from the baptized Murza Chet of the same 14th century). The perva ive Turkic lingui tic influence (through the Golden Horde Tatar yoke' and Turkic tribes of the North Caucasus and Crimea) on Ru ian language in general and especially on Ru ian l iteratur is well known. Thi influ nee can be traced from Derzhavin to Pu hkin to L rm nt v t Tol toy - and to Nabokov Tartary an ind p ndent inb mo n Antiterra. Nabokov s life in Crimea added it load of Turkic, and Crimean Tatars address their elders a ata . Ata' i also a Turkic root for the common Ru sian word ataman' (title of a ossack chieftain). Even if tymologically unrelated th Sanskrit Atman -"soul' "spirit' (which gave u Greek 'atmos') always looks suspiciou ly closet "ataman' for Russian readers. Brian Boyd (pers . co1nm. 2003) confirms that Nabokov wa quite familiar with this word: "in Tran parent Things ( h. 8) he refers to a notorious fraud the late ymbolist Atman' · and he also had been thinking of using the name for a le incidental character in the early 1950s.' Given all this it is not inconceivabl that atalanta hides another ' father' in it. Interestingly, Ata' i not only a Turkic (=Altaic) word· it m ans 'father in many other languag : lndo-Europ an atta Basque 'ata' Sumerian adda Dravidian atu ' · Finnie atti etc. In fact ata (father) a well as dada' papa etc.) occurs in so many languages that philologist often consider uch words a ound symbolism the r sult f universal childish babble rather than of their common origin). Finally I should -25-add that Ata' is just on letter removed fron1 4 Ada - as 'Ada i from Ad' (h 11) and Adam (man). Etymology of the name 'Atalanta it elf is intriguing. The dictionary (www.etymonline.com) ay : Atalanta - daughter of king Schoeneu , famou for her swiftn ss, L., from Gk. Atalante fem. of atalantos ' having the ame value a a man) ' from a- "one together' + talanton balan e weight value' (cf. talent) . In Ovid sword "She had~ ature which in a boy would have been called girlish but in a girl th y were like a boy Metamorphose VIII 322-32 ). Thu ' Ata- part is not detachable etymologically but Aunt Maud mes age create an w 'otherworldly" etymology (which Nabokov was always glad to provide) breaking off father after' father (pada - ata - ). till an ther matryo hka/Scrabble part of atalanta app ar to be Chateaubriand ' s Atala the in1portant reading in Ada (1 14) (on it significance see: A. Cancogni. Nabokov and hateaubriand. The Garland Companion to Vladimir Naboko v (V. E. Alexandrov ed.) 1995 pp. 382-3 ). Her i a I pidopteran connection as well so far unnoticed in the literature: Atala Hairstreak, or Eumaeus atala (Poey 1832 (Lyca nida ), from outhea tern Florida is the large t and mo t pectacular ea tern U. . Hair treak butterfly (al o found in Cuba and the Bahamas). With its apo ematic (warning) coloration Atala Hair treak is unpalatable to birds ince it eque ter the toxi ch mical cyca in from its food plants. It wa not collect d in Florida from 1937 until 1959 but was redi cover d in 1961. Nab ko h uld have been quite aware of this pecie . Moreover its generic name Eumaeu (after Homer win h rd in Itha a) i a literary pointer to both The Od e and UI; ab kov s library contains a copy of a lepidopterologicaljoumal Atala published from 1973to1992 by the Xerces ociety in Ithaca NY (Boyd & Pyle op. cit. p. 55). Two other atala are junior synonym : the Canadian moth Catocala atala Ca sino 191 (valid name C. emirelicta -26-Grote 1874) (Noctuidae: Catocalinae); and the Australian moth He tiarcha atala Turner 1922 (valid name Th rmeola ta manica Hampson, 1900) (Arctiidae: Lithosiinae ). Unfortunate Atala's lover Chactas was also in1mortalized in zoological no1nenclature in 1844 by a French zoologist Paul Gervais (probably an eccentric admirer of Chateaubriand) as a genus of scorpions, co1nmon in South America (family Chactidae ). I thank Dr. Brian Boyd who encouraged publication of the e notes and Dr. Dieter Zi1nmer for the important information. - Victor Fet, Department of Biological Sciences, Mar hall University -27-

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Notes on Eryx, Omega, and Ata

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