think: is it a dream or not a dream?
A wing will emerge from under a black shawl.
The light of flickering eyes is clear.
It seems that I will remember sweetly in the grave:
The rustling of sly butterflies,
A spot on the golden wing…]
Mary K. O’Melveny
Chrysalis
This was going to be a poem
about hope’s power. Of emergence
from our weeks in sheltered spaces,
transformed to newer selves.
Healed, our imaginations ran wild.
Our shells melted, turned rainbow-hued,
translucent scales unfolded, stretched.
Lifted from retreat, how we soared.
But I am writing from my tent
in Idlib, Syria. Shared by
three families, our cocoons are
cobalt blue sheets of thin plastic.
All we see here is mud or dirt.
I stand in daily water lines,
imagine which body part can be
washed once my tin jug is filled.
More queues form when medics arrive.
Like our neighborhoods, barrel bombs
transmuted our hospitals to dust.
Despite our pasts, we seek healing.
Prayers are as fragile here as
butterflies. Once I saw a False
Apollo resting on a rock.
Its wings were black and white, dots
of royal blue, eye spots of russet.
I tried to imagine how it might
mimic its mythic namesake.
How it might soar like a poem.
Modern art
In modern art, images of Parnassians (and especially the Apollo butterfly) are used quite widely. I will give a few examples, without going into the subject in depth, since such a depth would lead us to a huge number of works of art by modern artists, and this is not the purpose of this book.
Murals. A lot of street art contains depictions of different butterflies. The most famous street painter (mural creator) is Youri Cansell known also as Mantra. He is a consummate artist and naturalist. Mantra is especially fascinated by entomology, the world of insects. Mining memories of his childhood garden in France, he now paints exquisite murals, often of moths and butterflies, on urban surfaces where these ephemeral beings are seldom seen in the wild.
Mantra’s mural with Parnassius apollo (Linnaeus, 1758)
Mantra’s mural with Parnassius apollo (Linnaeus, 1758)
Mantra works with entomological collections to create new art.
Coins. Some countries are producing coins as pieces of art, not for wide usage, but for coin collectors. Mostly these pieces of art are precise and beautiful, but sometimes they can be very funny. One of such funny examples I would like to present here – a coin from Cameroun which (according the writing) depicts Parnassius apollo (Linnaeus, 1758), but in fact it is something different, sharing features of Morpho and some Satyridae butterflies.
A coin from Cameroon, with erroneous depiction of «Parnassius apollo’
Chinese coin with a depiction of Parnassius actius (Eversmann, 1843)
Apollo Butterfly or Parnassius Apollo digital artwork by SP JE Art which was uploaded on November 17th, 2020
Charlton’s Apollo, digital vector artwork, which was made basing the image of scienceart user of 123rf internet pages.
Digital artwork.
Modern art is unimaginable without digital content. Various images are created using graphic programs and are undoubtedly works of art. Here I provide examples of two such digital works.
Jewelry.
Modern jewelry uses very precise reproductions of animal details, including butterflies of the subfamily Parnassiinae. A couple of examples of such jewelry are given on the next page.
Apollo Butterfly earrings.
The price of a dream
Human emotions sometimes are very valuable side of the butterfly catchers. Not all of them are greedy and bad, some of them can demonstrate very honorable behavior.
This is a story from Yuri Stshetkin, a well known Lepidoptera expert. It shows some psychiatry diagnoses which can actually come across for butterfly collector.
«We set up camp in the village of Darai-Nazarak, lost among the harsh mountains of the Peter the Great Range. It was 1980, and our team had new faces – two collectors from Moscow.
Kipnis and Samodurov came for a dream. Koramius cardinal (Grumm-Grshimailo, 1887). A magnificent butterfly, a rare find even in these parts. I knew the spot where you could get it, but the road there is not for the weak: one and a half kilometers up the vertical by about ten kilometers over rough terrain.
Samodurov was younger and more resilient, but Kipnis was older, but obsessed. We climbed slowly. Kipnis often stopped, clutched his knees, and breathed noisily. We waited patiently.
We reached the place by two o’clock in the afternoon. In these parts, a butterfly is a real success. If you catch five or six specimens per day, consider yourself lucky.
I caught three. Samodurov caught five. But Kipnis was unlucky.
He crept up to each sitting butterfly with extreme caution, froze, held out the net, some five or ten centimeters remained… and the butterfly soared into the sky, disappearing in the sun’s rays.
Attempt after attempt, failure after failure.
At some point, his nerves gave out.
«Damn you all!» Kipnis screamed. His face turned red; his lips trembled. «Damn fate!»
He was shaking with rage and despair.
«I’ll rip this net! I’ll burn the whole collection! Why do I need all this?!»
He threw the net on the ground and began to tear his clothes.
We froze. There was no point in saying anything at such moments.
Samodurov silently approached, opened the box, took out one of his butterflies – a fresh, perfect Koramius cardinal (Grumm-Grshimailo, 1887) – and handed it to Kipnis.
He looked up, his eyes full of tears.
«Take it,» Samodurov said briefly.
Kipnis’s