
Wings of Desire
When a Paris Review interviewer asked Vladimir Nabokov what he liked to do best besides writing novels, the author replied, “Oh, hunting butterflies, of course, and studying them. The pleasures and rewards of literary inspiration are nothing beside the rapture of discovering a new organ under the microscope or an undescribed species on a mountainside in Iran or Peru.”
Nabokov was far from alone in this passion. The particular rapture of butterfly collection and study, the sensuous delight of this most painterly branch of entomology, was commonly voiced by its nineteenth-century adherents, as