Subject
Birthday (fwd)
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Date
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From: Earl Sampson <esampson@cu.campuscwix.net>
I take the liberty of forwarding a private e-mail as a birthday tribute:
Dear Earl,
Got your note: I am not so very busy that I can't take a little
time off today for Volodya,
Speaking of whom (ah, if I were only a true computer whiz, to
put this to audio!--by the way, you can join in...)
Happy birthday to you,
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday dear Volodya,
Happy birthday to you
And Willy too.
One wonders if the Nabokov seniors could have looked into a
crystal ball a hundred years ago and seen what the next century would
hold: the jets whizzing, rockets and space travel, the New York City
Skyline, miraculous advances in creature comfort, technology, medicine not
to mention their son's extraordinary achievement. Could they have imagined
it all? But as they kept peering into the orb of course they would have
also seen mass marketing, billboards, tract housing, the wholesale
destruction of natural habitats everywhere, not to mention the Russian
Civil War, exile, Stalin, Hitler. I suppose when all is said and done
the redeeming irony of literature is such that Charles Kinbote and John
Shade, Godunov-Cherdyntsev and Hugh Person not to mention Dolores Haze,
Jakob Gradus and Professor Pnin will be the 20th Century denizens who
inhabit the minds and imaginations of future generations rather than the
likes of Michael Jackson, Schwarzenegger or Schwarzkopf, Monica Lewinsky
or Henry Kissinger.
Panayoti
(Panayoti Kelaidis is an amateur Nabokovian, the best student I ever had
in any of my Nabokov classes, and a professional botanist, a curator and
administrator at the Denver Botanic Gardens)
I take the liberty of forwarding a private e-mail as a birthday tribute:
Dear Earl,
Got your note: I am not so very busy that I can't take a little
time off today for Volodya,
Speaking of whom (ah, if I were only a true computer whiz, to
put this to audio!--by the way, you can join in...)
Happy birthday to you,
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday dear Volodya,
Happy birthday to you
And Willy too.
One wonders if the Nabokov seniors could have looked into a
crystal ball a hundred years ago and seen what the next century would
hold: the jets whizzing, rockets and space travel, the New York City
Skyline, miraculous advances in creature comfort, technology, medicine not
to mention their son's extraordinary achievement. Could they have imagined
it all? But as they kept peering into the orb of course they would have
also seen mass marketing, billboards, tract housing, the wholesale
destruction of natural habitats everywhere, not to mention the Russian
Civil War, exile, Stalin, Hitler. I suppose when all is said and done
the redeeming irony of literature is such that Charles Kinbote and John
Shade, Godunov-Cherdyntsev and Hugh Person not to mention Dolores Haze,
Jakob Gradus and Professor Pnin will be the 20th Century denizens who
inhabit the minds and imaginations of future generations rather than the
likes of Michael Jackson, Schwarzenegger or Schwarzkopf, Monica Lewinsky
or Henry Kissinger.
Panayoti
(Panayoti Kelaidis is an amateur Nabokovian, the best student I ever had
in any of my Nabokov classes, and a professional botanist, a curator and
administrator at the Denver Botanic Gardens)