O, no, I’m not going out after butterflies this morning. It’s too cold. I’m afraid of catching colds….You could say that the season, in Switzerland, ends about August 15.
Have you found interesting species?
I’m happy to hear you say “species” and not “specimen,” for specimens are only samples. I spent the month of June in the Valais, in the Rhone Valley, where I could pursue interesting inquiries. Flowers, which are the breeding plants, are abundant enough there. On the Simplon I saw things one doesn’t find anywhere else.
My passion for butterflies was born sixty years ago, when I was only five. Russia is an enormous country that encompasses all sorts of species. In the steppes, on the high mountains, there are some that are very little known. A lot has been written about grasshoppers, because they risk being destroyed by harvests, but far too little on butterflies.
Do you have a nostalgia for your country of birth?
For certain landscapes, certain trails. But nostalgia is Chateaubriand, and that I don’t experience. I have no wish to see Moscow as I might visit Belgrade or any other town. I think in fact I’ll never go to Russia again. Factories don’t interest me, and the only thing that attracts me is a little landscape near Petersburg, because it represents my childhood.
What was the genesis of Lolita?
I thought you’d come to talk about butterflies?
Haven’t I repeated often enough that I had no moral, political or ethical idea? I am an inventor, I’m interested only in the construction of the novel and only artistic creation counts for me.
But I assure you that nothing in this case is based on real facts. Besides, I don’t know a single little girl, whether she be American, Russian, or French. Simone de Beauvoir wrote an essay on the Lolita syndrome that I don’t agree with at all. I’d rather show you something that will interest you.
You’re rather critical of American society in your novels.
But I adore America, it’s my country. American universities are very fine. It’s so easy to get rare works, even Russian editions that the USSR itself doesn’t have. In Paris, just try to buy a book….
What do you think of young Russian literature?
Evtushenko? He’s a little Aragon. These aren’t real artists, journalists at most. Dostoevsky? A journalist, like Balzac. I divide writers into journalist and poets. Camus is a third-rate novelist. Flaubert, a poet. Goethe, a very great poet; but Schiller is nothing.
What do you think of Switzerland?
It’s perfect, but I don’t like the cows much. They drive off the butterflies.
* “Vladimir Nabokov, auteur de Lolita: Je ne connais pas une seule petite fille” (“Vladimir Nabokov, Author of Lolita: I Don’t Know a Single Little Girl”), Tribune de Lausanne, Sept. 1, 1963, 11. Blanc visited VN in early Aug., while he was staying at the Grand Hôtel, Les Diablerets, in Vaud Canton, in pursuit of butterflies.