Dear fellow travellers,
From Montreux station, close to the shore of Lac Léman, the train to Montbovon and Gstaad winds its way up through the town and its suburbs and into the hills. Modern trains make light work of the slope, and it is not long before we have left the town behind and find ourselves in a high valley of green fields surrounded by pine forests, and some rocky peaks beyond.
We are here to follow the Narcissus Path, a gentle hiking trail out from the village of Les Avants that crosses meadows where the white and yellow flowers grow, pollinated by the butterflies and bees whose buzz and hum fills the air as we make our way along the track. From here we can see through a gap in the pine trees below to glimpse a sliver of the brilliant blue lake far beneath and some high, high mountains in the distance.
Our view is shared with the black silhouette of a man that stands beside the trail. It has been placed here in memory of another walker, who spent many days in these hills more than half a century ago. At the time, Vladimir Nabokov was living down by the water, in the Montreux Palace Hotel. Those who remember him recall his walks along the promenade, newspapers under his arm and a notebook in his pocket in case literary inspiration struck. But it was up here, in the hills above the town, that he went in search of the other great love of his life.
On his memorial by the path, there is economy in how Nabokov is introduced to us:
American writer and lepidopterist, of Russian origin.
There’s an awful lot of identity and personal history wrapped up in those seven words. Tales of exile and borders, passports and novels written in different languages, and, yes, of the butterflies that dance before us as we stand with Nabokov’s silhouette and take in the view.
Butterflies and literature. “It is not improbable,” Nabokov said in an interview with The Paris Review in 1967, “that had there been no revolution in Russia, I would have devoted myself entirely to lepidopterology and never written any novels at all.” Instead he maintained his twin passions throughout his life, right into those final years of his life in Montreux. Butterflies appear more than 500 times in his literary works and it was a butterfly hunting road trip across the United States that would provide the inspiration for the journey at the heart of Lolita, his most famous (and infamous) novel.
Judging by the butterflies that share the meadow with us today, it is no wonder Montreux suited him so well. When he died, Nabokov left behind not only his writing but his enormous butterfly collection, now housed in the Cantonal Museum of Zoology in Lausanne. As we follow in his footsteps, across the meadow and into the woods, there is something special about imagining him being here before us, finding inspiration in this landscape and all it contains.
If we took the train back down to Montreux, we could join Nabokov again on the promenade, along with Hemingway and Tolstoy, and Byron and Stravinsky, and all those others whose memory mingles with today’s visitors to the lakeshore. But it is crowded down there, whereas on the Narcissus Path we have the place pretty much to ourselves, and it feels possible to imagine we are seeing it as Nabokov did, near the end of his life, all those years ago.
Paul Scraton
