Роман с бабочками. Как человек влюбился в насекомое

"Sharman Russell makes the words sing," remarked one critic. Her books are devoted to the history of human hobbies, in all and sundry, sometimes very unexpected, manifestations. She wrote about archeology as one of the most exciting and dramatic fields of science. She explored the amazing destinies and labors of people who dedicated their lives to flowers: roses, tulips and orchids. She studied famine as a force that set in motion entire nations and determined entire historical epochs. Again and again, she tries to understand passion: she is fascinated by the strong feelings of people, no matter how they manifest themselves.

“Happiness, if in childhood we have a good ear: if we hear how beauty, love and uselessness loudly praise each other every minute, from every corner of the natural world,” writes the American writer Sharman Ept Russell in her “Romance with butterflies." On the pages of this elegant book, all the characters are equal and all the same interesting: from the insidious parasitic ichneumons that lie in wait for the caterpillar, and the queen butterflies intertwined in an eight-hour postnuptial flight, and the 18th-century English naturalist Eleanor Glanville, who was denounced as crazy for her passion for Lepidoptera, and American professor Vladimir Nabokov lecturing about butterflies to dumbfounded Slavic students. A true insect education novel flavored with the history of science, more specifically, the history of scientific obsession. “The butterfly is the Creator flying over the world in search of a place suitable for human life. Butterflies are the souls of the dead. Butterflies bring spring on their wings. Butterflies are thoughts that suddenly overshadow us; dreams that we savor." Fascinating reading.