Saturday, June 16, 2012

Nabokov's Evidence of God

I recently read a book on Nabokov, whom I would never have guessed was an especially spiritual person.  But he believed deeply that we are surrounded with hints of a world beyond this one.  An expert in butterflies, he pointed to the way insects camouflage themselves as dead leaves.  What you see below are a chrysalis and a praying mantis.  Dead leaf camouflage is one of the oldest tricks in the insect kingdom, and why shouldn't it be?  No one, neither predators nor prey, pays much attention to dead leaves.  Darwin can explain this quite neatly, but...  why the holes?  Notice the holes in the "leaves" as if a grub had already been at work on them.  Darwin can explain everything else, Nabokov claims, but not the holes because the holes aren't necessary.  Another insect would be sufficiently fooled by the color and texture of the dead leaf without the holes.  It's unlikely an insect can even detect the holes.  This, says Nabokov, is evidence of an Artist at work.