'Parnassians'

The Lepidopterolgoist Vladimir Nabokov, who is loathed and loved for his linguistic tricks that spill across his infamous novels Lolita, Pnin, Pale fire, And Speak Memory amongst others, is so fascinating to read and reread that when writing you cannot help but slip a few snips of his style into you’re writing; perhaps a few hidden metaphors and meanings to mime his thoughts as your own. So it should come as no surprise to any Nabokovian that his own autobiography would be plum full of precise parallels. In fact, to know this, you need only read the back of Vintage Internationals version of Speak Memory.
Though I doubt ‘Parnassians’ will ever be associated with Nabokov as Waterproof is with Humbert Humbert, our nymphean obsessed hero, looking into the stories that these two words dredge up in our subjects minds shall show a carefully concocted correlation.
In Lolita, rewinding from the two syllables waterproof escaping Charlotte’s fishy mouth, we watch as a gum-smiling Chestnut Mare slowly transfigures into Jean Farlows moon walking with easel and things back towards her center of concealment where she had been spying upon our nymphette lusting hero and his semi-nude wife. Now in forward motion, as Jean is talking to our hero, she mentions how, “She always felt a traitor to Cavall and Melampus…..” Melampus which just happens to be the name of the Greek Hunter Actaeons Hound that viciously rips him apart after he becomes transfigured into a Stag for looking lustfully upon Artemis, the Greek goddess of virginity, as she bathes in a pool amongst other girls (Lolita, 88-9).
Following Farlow and Actaeon in accordance with the water and women Nabokov’s own life seems to have a bit of a Humbertish rub-off. Under similar situations to Actaeon, Nabokov, while a child in Russia hunting for Parnassius Mnemosyne’s, or Parnassians, in the forest Vladimir mistakenly comes across his love interest Polenka bathing nude with four or five other children. He “crept away in a dismal haze of disgust and desire,” but as he is leaving the spring he spouts a description of Polenka that can only be described as “ a nymphean incarnation of her pitiful beauty that were better left alone (Speak, 210)”;
“I saw a strange Polenka shiver and squat on the boards of the half-broken wharf, covering her breasts against the east wind with her crossed arms, while with the tip of her tongue she taunted her pursuers.”
Polenka also just happens to be a Russian spelling of Polina. Polina is the Russian derivative of the Greek name “appolinaria”, which just happens to be Apollo. Polina just happens to mean “one who belongs to Apollo”. For anyone who hasn’t brushed up on their Greek mythology lately, Apollo and Artemis are twin siblings of the Greek gods Zeus and Leto. The “Parnassians’ that Vlad just happens to be hunting for when he stumbles across “one who belongs to Apollo” just happen to nicknamed Clouded Apollo’s.
With happenings justified the realization that the coincidences in Nabokov’s non-fiction are as fast-firing as those in his fiction makes you ponder the possibility that perhaps the “reality” that Nabokov wishes to be left in is a riddle. Perhaps primates drawing bars are really stories bare of enchantment. Maybe Nabokov finds the need to fill in the landscape. But I think he just can’t help himself.