🦋 Pre-historic Migration
Another animal that migrated across the Bering land bridge and east and south throughout the Americas and eventually down as far as Chile: the polyommatus butterfly. Dr. Naomi Pierce of Harvard et al. have vindicated Nabokov's hypothesis regarding the introduction of this genus of butterfly to the Americas, as Carl Zimmer reports today for the NY Times. The slideshow attached to the article has to be seen to be believed.Below the fold, a piece from The Art of Resurrection that came to mind as I was reading this article. (I have that book on my brain now...)
 At the opening of Chapter 4, the Christ of Elqui is walking along the rail line through the pampa, from Sierra Gorda to Providencia (or as the two he met in Sierra Gorda told him it is known locally, La Piojo -- they also warned him to stick to the tracks so as not to get lost in the desert) --
Across the pampa's wide expanse, the dry four o'clock wind was beginning to blow. The Christ of Elqui, he had been hiking for a long hawl with no rest, his long hair blowing into his eyes, when he stopped; he lifted up his gaze, making a visor of his hands. All of a sudden it seemed as if he could make out the gravel lot of the plant over there where the hills began to rise -- in the pampa, such a sight gives one the illusion of seeing "a ship foundering on the desert plain," as some northern poet's verses call it. But the railroad line just followed its interminable southerly right-of-way.
Surely a little ways further, and it would turn off to that side. Just at that moment, miraculous in the open pampa, under the brutally incandescent midday sun, a butterfly crossed over the iron rails. "An ephemeral butterflyâ€, he said in wonder, the Christ of Elqui; he could not imagine from how far off it had flown. It was an orange butterfly with black markings.* As he watched it disappear, fluttering off to the east, that was when it occurred to him. Why not take the short cut, save some hiking, save some time? Clearly, more powerful than all the desert’s misdirections and illusions would be the Eternal Father, guiding his steps.
So he thought; and that is what he did.
(Is it clumsy, this having the two warn him to stay on the tracks, then having him take the short-cut and get lost? Possibly. But, very beautiful. Some of the subsequent portion of the chapter is quoted in this post from a few months back.)I wonder who the northern poet being quoted in the second paragraph is. The closest thing to the quoted phrase I have been able to find with Google is from Elisabeth Nox' recently published first novel La ciudad de los hombres perdidos, "Pero en ningún momento llegó a preguntarse cómo habÃa llegado el barco a encallar en mitad del desierto." Interesting but probably not what I'm looking for... * One of the butterflies that Nabokov named, the Pseudolucia aureliana, is native to the Atacama; however it is blue with yellow markings, oh well.
posted afternoon of Wednesday, January 26th, 2011
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eloquently describes
