Like fluttering shards of stained glass, butterflies possess a unique
power to pierce and stir the human soul. Indeed, the ancient Greeks
explicitly equated the two in a single word, psyche, so that from
early times butterflies were not only a form of life, but also an idea.
Profound and deeply personal, written with both wisdom and wit, Peter
Marren's Rainbow Dust explores this idea of butterflies--the why
behind the mysterious power of these insects we do not flee, but rather
chase.
At the age of five, Marren had his "Nabokov Moment," catching his first
butterfly and feeling the dust of its colored scales between his
fingers. It was a moment that would launch a lifetime's fascination
rivaling that of the famed novelist--a fascination that put both in good
company. From the butterfly collecting and rearing craze that consumed
North America and Europe for more than two hundred years (a hobby that
in some cases bordered on madness), to the potent allure of butterfly
iconography in contemporary advertisements and their use in spearheading
calls to conserve and restore habitats (even though butterflies are
essentially economically worthless), Marren unveils the many ways in
which butterflies inspire us as objects of beauty and as symbols both
transient and transcendent.
Floating around the globe and through the whole gamut of human thought,
from art and literature to religion and science, Rainbow Dust is a
cultural history rather than merely a natural one, a tribute to
butterflies' power to surprise, entertain, and obsess us. With a sway
that far surpasses their fragile anatomy and gentle beat, butterfly
wings draw us into the prismatic wonders of the natural world--and, in
the words of Marren, these wonders take flight.
