NPPF: Canto Two -- The Butterfly of Doom

[Jasper Fidget]

ln 270: "My dark Vanessa, crimson-barred, my blest"

The Vanessa atalanta Butterfly, aka the Red Admirable, aka the Red Admiral.
>From a 1970 interview with Alfred Appel:

Appel: "That particular butterfly appears frequently in your own work, too.
In _Pale Fire_, a Red Admirable lands on John  Shade's arm the minute before
he is killed, the insect appears in King, Queen Knave just after you've
withdrawn the authorial omniscience -- killing the characters, so to speak
-- and in the final chapter of _Speak, Memory_, you recall having seen in a
Paris park, just before the war, a live Red Admirable being promenaded on a
leash of thread by a little girl.  Why are you so fond of Vanessa atalanta?

VN: "Its coloring is quite splendid and I liked it very much in my youth.
Great numbers of them migrated from Africa to Northern Russia, where it was
called "The Butterfly of Doom" because it was especially abundant in 1881,
the year Tsar Alexander II was assassinated, and the  markings on the
underside of its two hind wings seem to read '1881.' The Red Admirable's
ability to travel so far is matched by  many  other migratory butterflies."
(_Strong Opinions_, 170)

Jasper