Rainbow Dust; The Moth Snowstorm; and In Pursuit of Butterflies review – three tributes to the humble Lepidoptera
The chronicles of the 14th-century French writer Jean Froissart provide a rare glimpse into a medieval childhood. As a boy, Froissart built dams across streams and made mud pies. He also constructed living kites from butterflies, fastening a fine flaxen thread to their tiny bodies and tying the other end to his hat, the captured insects fluttering around his smiling face like "tethered elves", as Peter Marren writes in Rainbow Dust.
Our long relationship with Lepidoptera, the order of insects (moths and butterflies) with scaly, intricately patterned wings, is often representative of the state of nature and the state of our relationship to it. Butterflies appear on Minoan artefacts, while Pyrenean cave paintings depict eyed hawkmoths. The ancient Greeks gave butterflies and souls the same name: psyche.
Continue reading...