I Have Landed (9 page)

This difficult and tough-minded theme must be emphasized in literature (as the elitist and uncompromising Nabokov understood so well), particularly to younger students of the present generation, because an ancient, and basically anti-intellectual, current in the creative arts has now begun to flow more strongly than ever before in recent memory—the tempting Siren song of a claim that the spirit of human creativity stands in direct opposition to the rigor in education and observation that breeds both our love for factual detail and our gain of sufficient knowledge and understanding to utilize this record of human achievement and natural wonder.

No more harmful nonsense exists than this common supposition that deepest insight into great questions about the meaning of life or the structure of reality emerges most readily when a free, undisciplined, and uncluttered (read, rather, ignorant and uneducated) mind soars above mere earthly knowledge and concern. The primary reason for emphasizing the supreme aesthetic and moral value of detailed factual accuracy, as Nabokov understood so well, lies in our need to combat this alluring brand of philistinism if we wish to maintain artistic excellence as both a craft and an inspiration. (Anyone who thinks that success in revolutionary innovation can arise
sui generis
, without apprenticeship for basic skills and education for understanding, should visit the first [chronological] room of the Turner annex at the Tate Gallery in London—to see the early products of Turner's extensive education in tools of classical perspective and representation, the necessary skills that he had to master before moving far beyond into a world of personal innovation.)

This Nabokovian argument for a strictly
positive
correlation (as opposed to the usual philistine claim for negative opposition) between extensive training and potential for creative innovation may be more familiar to scientists than to creative artists. But this crucial key to professional achievement must be actively promoted within science as well. Among less thoughtful scientists, we often encounter a different version of the phony argument for disassociation of attention to detail and capacity for creativity—the fallacy embedded in Zaleski's statement (cited on page 44) that Nabokov's obsessive love of detail made him a “laboratory drudge,” even while opening prospects of greatness in literature.

The false (and unstated) view of mind that must lie behind this assertion—and that most supporters of the argument would reject if their unconscious allegiance were made explicit—assumes a fixed and limited amount of mental “stuff” for each intellect. Thus, if we assign too much of our total allotment to the mastery of detail, we will have nothing left for general theory and integrative wonder. But such a silly model of mental functioning can only arise from a false metaphorical comparison of human creativity with irrelevant systems based on fixed and filled containers—pennies in a piggy bank or cookies in a jar.

Many of the most brilliant and revolutionary theoreticians in the history of science have also been meticulous compilers of detailed evidence. Darwin developed his theory of natural selection in 1838, but prevailed because, when he finally published in 1859, he had also amassed the first credible factual compendium (overwhelming in thoroughness and diversity) for the evolutionary basis of life's history. (All previous evolutionary systems, including Lamarck's, had been based on speculation, however cogent and complex the theoretical basis.) Many key discoveries emerged and prevailed because great theoreticians respected empirical details ignored by others. In the most familiar example, Kepler established the ellipticity of planetary orbits when he realized that Tycho Brahe's data yielded tiny discrepancies from circularity that most astronomers would have disregarded as “close enough”—whereas Kepler knew that he could trust the accuracy of Tycho's observations.

I do not deny that some scientists see trees but not forests, thereby functioning as trustworthy experts of meticulous detail, but showing little interest or skill in handling more general, theoretical questions. I also do not deny that Nabokov's work on butterfly systematics falls under this rubric. But I strenuously reject the argument that Nabokov's attention to descriptive particulars, or his cherishing of intricate factuality, precluded strength in theory on principle. I do not understand Nabokov's psyche or his ontogeny well enough to speculate about his conservative approach to theoretical questions, or his disinclination to grapple with general issues in evolutionary biology. We can only, I
suspect, intone some clichés about the world's breadth (including the domain of science), and about the legitimate places contained therein for people with widely divergent sets of skills.

I therefore strongly reject any attempt to characterize Nabokov as a laboratory drudge for his love of detail and his lack of attention to theoretical issues. The science of taxonomy has always honored, without condescension, professionals who develop Nabokov's dedication to the details of a particular group, and who establish the skills and “good eye” to forge order from nature's mire of confusing particulars. Yes, to be frank, if Nabokov had pursued only butterfly taxonomy as a complete career, he would now be highly respected in very limited professional circles, but not at all renowned in the world at large. But do we not honor the dedicated professional who achieves maximal excellence in an admittedly restricted domain of notoriety or power? After all, if Macbeth had been content to remain Thane of Cawdor—a perfectly respectable job—think of the lives and grief that would thus have been spared. But, of course, we would then have to lament a lost play. So let us celebrate Nabokov's excellence in natural history, and let us also rejoice that he could use the same mental skills and inclinations to follow another form of bliss.

Most intellectuals favor a dialogue between professionals in science and the arts. But we also assume that these two subjects stand as polar opposites in the domain of learning, and that diplomatic contact for understanding between adversaries sets the basic context for such a dialogue. At best, we hope to dissipate stereotypes and to become friends (or at least neutrals), able to put aside our genuine differences for temporary bonding in the practical service of a few broader issues demanding joint action by all educated folk.

A set of stereotypes still rules perceptions of “otherness” in these two domains—images based on little more than ignorance and parochial fear, but powerful nonetheless. Scientists are soulless dial-twirlers; artists are arrogant, illogical, self-absorbed blowhards. Dialogue remains a good idea, but the two fields, and the personalities attracted to them, remain truly and deeply different.

I do not wish to forge a false union in an artificial love feast. The two domains differ, truly and distinctly, in their chosen subject matter and established modes of validation. The magisterium (teaching authority) of science extends over the factual status of the natural world, and to the development of theories proposed to explain why these facts, and not others, characterize our universe. The magisteria of the arts and humanities treat ethical and aesthetic
questions about morality, style, and beauty. Since the facts of nature cannot, in logic or principle, yield ethical or aesthetic conclusions, the domains must remain formally distinct on these criteria.

But many of us who labor in both domains (if only as an amateur in one) strongly feel that an overarching mental unity builds a deeper similarity than disparate subject matter can divide. Human creativity seems to work much as a coordinated and complex piece, whatever the different emphases demanded by disparate subjects—and we will miss the underlying commonality if we only stress the distinctions of external subjects and ignore the unities of internal procedure. If we do not recognize the common concerns and characteristics of all creative human activity, we will fail to grasp several important aspects of intellectual excellence—including the necessary interplay of imagination and observation (theory and empirics) as an intellectual theme, and the confluence of beauty and factuality as a psychological theme—because one field or the other traditionally downplays one side of a requisite duality.

Moreover, we must use the method of “replication with difference” if we wish to study and understand the human quintessence behind our varying activities. I cannot imagine a better test case for extracting the universals of human creativity than the study of deep similarities in intellectual procedure between the arts and sciences.

No one grasped the extent of this underlying unity better than Vladimir Nabokov, who worked with different excellences as a complete professional in both domains. Nabokov often insisted that his literary and entomological pursuits shared a common mental and psychological ground. In
Ada
, while invoking a common anagram for “insect,” one of Nabokov's characters beautifully expresses the oneness of creative impulse and the pervasive beauty of chosen subject matter: “‘If I could write,' mused Demon, ‘I would describe, in too many words no doubt, how passionately, how incandescently, how incestuously—
c'est le mot
—art and science meet in an insect.' ”

Returning to his central theme of aesthetic beauty in both the external existence and our internal knowledge of scientific detail, Nabokov wrote in 1959 (quoted in Zimmer, page 33): “I cannot separate the aesthetic pleasure of seeing a butterfly and the scientific pleasure of knowing what it is.” When Nabokov spoke of “the precision of poetry in taxonomic description”—no doubt with conscious intent to dissipate a paradox that leads most people to regard art and science as inexorably distinct and opposed—he used his literary skills in the service of generosity (a high, if underappreciated, virtue underlying all attempts to unify warring camps). He thus sought to explicate the common ground of his two professional worlds, and to illustrate the inevitably paired components
of any integrated view that could merit the label of our oldest and fondest dream of fulfillment—the biblical ideal of “wisdom.” Thus, in a 1966 interview, Nabokov broke the boundaries of art and science by stating that the most precious desideratum of each domain must also characterize any excellence in the other—for, after all, truth is beauty, and beauty truth. I could not devise a more fitting title for this essay, and I can imagine no better ending for this text:

 

Boyd, B. 1990.
Valdimir Nabokov: The American Years
. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.

Gould, S. J. 1983. The Hardening of the Modern Synthesis. In Marjorie Greene, ed.,
Dimensions of Darwinism
. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.

Johnson, K., G. W. Whitaker, and Z. Balint. 1996. Nabokov as lepidopterist: An informed appraisal.
Nabokov Studies
. Volume 3, 123–44.

Karges, J. 1985.
Nabokov's Lepidoptera: Genres and Genera
. Ann Arbor, Mich.: Ardis.

Kinsey, A. C., W. B. Pomeroy, and C. E. Martin. 1948.
Sexual Behavior in the Human Male
. Philadelphia: W. B. Saunders.

Provine, W. 1986.
Sewall Wright and Evolutionary Biology
. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Remington, C. R. 1990. Lepidoptera studies. In the
Garland Companion to Vladimir Nabokov
, 274–82.

Robson, G. C., and O. W. Richards. 1936.
The Variation of Animals in Nature
. London: Longmans, Green & Co.

Zaleski, P., 1986, Nabokov's blue period.
Harvard Magazine
, July–August, 34–38.

Zimmer, D. E. 1998.
A Guide to Nabokov's Butterflies and Moths
. Hamburg.

C
HARLIE
C
ROKER
,
FORMER FOOTBALL HERO OF
G
EORGIA
Tech and recently bankrupted builder of the new Atlanta—a world of schlock and soulless office towers, now largely unoccupied and hemorrhaging money—seeks inspiration, as his world disintegrates, from the one item of culture that stirs his limited inner self: a painting, originally done to illustrate a children's book (“the only book Charlie could remember his father and mother ever possessing”), by N. C. Wyeth of “Jim Bowie rising up from his deathbed to fight the Mexicans at the Alamo.” On “one of the happiest days of his entire life,” Charlie spent $190,000 at a Sotheby's auction to buy this archetypal scene for a man of action. He then mounted his treasure in the ultimate shrine for successful men of our age—above the ornate desk on his private jet.

Tom Wolfe describes how his prototype for redneck moguls (in his novel
A Man in Full)
draws strength from his inspirational painting:

Nations need heroes, and Jim Bowie did die in action at the Alamo, along with Davy Crockett and about 180 fighters for Texian independence (using the
i
then included in the name), under the command of William B. Travis, an articulate twenty-six-year-old lawyer with a lust for martyrdom combined with a fearlessness that should not be disparaged, whatever one may think of his judgment. In fact, I have no desire to question Bowie's legitimate status as a hero at the Alamo at all. But I do wish to explicate his virtues by debunking the legend portrayed in Charlie Croker's painting, and by suggesting that our admiration should flow for quite different reasons that have never been hidden, but that the legend leads us to disregard.