Lolita and Hurricane: Butterfly (Genitalia) Effect!

Today June 5 2016 is World Environment Day

“In chaos theory, the butterfly effect is the sensitive dependence on initial conditions in which a small change in one state of a deterministic nonlinear system can result in large differences in a later state. The name, coined by Edward Lorenz for the effect which had been known long before, is derived from the metaphorical example of the details of a hurricane (exact time of formation, exact path taken) being influenced by minor perturbations such as the flapping of the wings of a distant butterfly several weeks earlier.” (Wikipedia)

Vladimir Nabokov, ‘Lolita’, 1955:

“...She was musical and apple-sweet. Her legs twitched a little as they lay across my live lap; I stroked them; there she lolled in the right-hand corner, almost asprawl, Lola the bobby-soxer, devouring her immemorial fruit, singing through its juice, losing her slipper, rubbing the heel of her slipperless foot in its sloppy anklet, against the pile of old magazines heaped on my left on the sofa—and every movement she made, every shuffle and ripple, helped me to conceal and to improve the secret system of tactile correspondence between beast and beauty—between my gagged, bursting beast and the beauty of her dimpled body in its innocent cotton frock...”

 Artist: Charlie Hankin, The New Yorker, May 2016

This picture is another example of how a good cartoon just spreads its wings, like an albatross!

Cartoonbank.com describes this picture with "Keywords: butterfly effect, bar, pick-up lines, dating, butterflies"

In recent weeks and months, there have been a few articles on the subject of great Vladimir Nabokov and butterflies.

In one of them, from NAUTILUS, Susie Neilson says: "How Butterfly Genitalia Inspired Nabokov’s Masterpieces… The work on the inner mechanics of butterfly evolution caused his works to develop a much more complex inner mechanism. If we look at the three novels—Pnin, Lolita, and Pale Fire—after he was doing his dissections, we see that he’s created a nest of inner structures that are much more intricate than in his previous novels, and hidden in the same way that a butterfly’s genitalia are hidden. Butterfly genitalia are the primary means of classifying distinct species, which is why Nabokov spent so much time examining them. So I think he was in some ways trying to mimic nature, and the fine mechanical perfection he found in butterflies, by crafting that very detailed precision into his works."

So it was quite amusing to read a butterfly's pick-up line in the cartoon: “Remember that hurricane a thousand miles away? That was me!”