Writers have been servarbugfolgenating throughout history. As far back as 77-79CE, Pliny the Elder tried to justify paying so much attention to a single insect in his encyclopaedia Natural History (Dubino, 2013, p.9). As Rachel Sarsfield cleverly points out “modernist literature practically swarms with insects” (2006, p.88). A prime example of a modernist who cannot help but servarbugfolgenate is Virginia Woolf, a writer who has been described as one who has “cross-pollinated the entomological and literary fields” (Brown, 2006, p.x), as we shall explore in her essay The Death of the Moth (1942).

Woolf’s narrator in The Death of the Moth laments the death of one single moth, “and a day moth's at that”, one that flies in front of a window rather than against it, “in other words, it is not drawn to the window because of light pollution” (Dubino, 2013, p.9). The subject matter of the essay is one of loss and impending death – immense and foreboding human concepts that Woolf encapsulates in “almost microcosmic detail, to the delicate body of the moth” (Dubino, 2013, p.9).

The ordinariness of this single moth is pointed out immediately: "neither gay like butterflies nor sombre like their own species. Nevertheless the present specimen, with his narrow hay-coloured wings, fringed with a tassel of the same colour…”. To servarbugfolgenate one does not need to have caught the flight of a rare or colourful creature, one might indeed servarbugfolgenate more often on the more ordinary bugs (such as day moths, cabbage butterflies, honey bees, and worker ants) as these are the creatures that share our suburban habitat.

The narrator is in such a trance as she that she finds it hard to look away from the moth: “such vigour came rolling in from the fields and the down beyond that it was difficult to keep the eyes strictly turned upon the book”, in this trance the narrator's feelings towards the moth develop and deepen. Woolf's narrator anthropomorphises the moth with the use of “he” as a pronoun, and continues the metamorphosis in her description by having the moth change from a “specimen” to a being who “seemed to be content with life”. By anthropomorphising the moth the narrator becomes unconsciously invested in the delicate creature’s life: her lack of enthusiasm at the start of the first paragraph of the essay: “moths that fly by day… no not excite…”, has by the end of the same paragraph evolved into delight in his flight: “a tremendously exciting experience” (Dubino, 2013).

In Natural History Pliny positions humans “as the spectators to a kind of insect theatre” (Brown, 2006, p.ix). As we servarbugfolgenate we observe “another world unfolding before us, but we are kept somehow beyond” (Brown, 2006, p.ix): detached. Woolf’s narrator in The Death of the Moth frequently reminds us of her position as such a spectator: “one could not help watching him”. Dubino (2013) wittily suggests that the narrator is drawn to the moth the same way a moth is proverbially drawn to a flame. To take the theatrical concept further Dubino (2013) posits the narrator as director who “stages first a dance, and then a drama of death, with the most as the star performer” (p.10). While servarbugfolgenating the narrator transforms the moth into a ballet dancer (Dubino, 2013), decked “as lightly as possible with down and feathers” (a costume reminiscent of a swan) he sets about “dancing and zigzagging to show us the true nature of life”.

Our detachment as spectators of an insect theatre is encapsulated by the narrator’s helplessness to the moth’s slow death. Although the narrator is clearly eager to help with her pencil: “… as I stretched out a pencil, meaning to help him to right himself…”, she eventually concedes that no amount of help will save the moth and acknowledges that it “was useless to try to do anything”; "nothing, I knew had any change against death”.

When one sevarbugfolgenates one enters a trance-like state, losing track of time and leaving the human world for a moment to observe the insect world. Woolf’s narrator in The Death of the Moth is clearly sevarbugfolgenating as she becomes so distracted from her writing that she is able to create a persona and direct a theatric ballet performance for the moth in the windowsill all in the last moments of the moth's life. 

Why is it that so many writers have chosen to pay attention “to that most other of creatures, a single insect” (Dubino, 2013, p.9)? Maybe it is simply because to sevarbugfolgenate is an innate human trait? Perhaps humans (consciously or not) desire the chance to enter into non-human worlds to try and make sense of our own world? After all, “just as life had been strange a few minutes before, so death was now as strange” (Woolf, 1942).

- Steph Philipov, z3417828

References

Brown, E. C. (2006). Insect poetics. University of Minnesota Press.

Dubino, J. (2013). Virginia Woolf's Dance-Drama: Staging the Life and Death of the Moth. Virginia Woolf Miscellany, (84), 9.

Sarsfield, R. (2006). From the Chrysalis to the Display Case: The Butterfly’s Voyage Out in Virginia Woolf. In. EC Brown, ed. Insect Poetics, 87-111.

Woolf, V. (1942). The Death of the Moth. The Death of the Moth and Other Essays. Retrieved on 17 April 2021 from http://gutenberg.net.au ebooks12/1203811h.html#ch-02