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BIRTHDAY: Many happy returns, Hazel Brown!
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"All dates are given in the New Style," VN wrote in the introduction to *Speak,
Memory*: "we lagged twelve days behind the rest of the civilized world in
the nineteenth century, and thirteen in the beginning of the twentieth. By
the Old Style I was born on April 10, at daybreak, in the last year of the
last century; and that was (if I could have been whisked across the border
at once) April 22 in say, Germany; but since all my birthdays were
celebrated, with diminishing pomp, in the twentieth century, everybody,
including myself, upon being shifted by revolution and expatriation from
the Julian calendar to the Gregorian, used to add thirteen, instead of
twelve days to the 10th of April. The error is serious. What is to be
done? I find 'April 23' under 'birth date' in my most recent passport,
which is also the birth date of Shakespeare, my nephew Vladimir Sikorski,
Shirley Temple and Hazel Brown (who, moreover, shares my passport). This,
then, is the problem. Calculatory ineptitude prevents me from trying to
solve it."
. . . But that problem (a calendrical echo, perhaps, of the occasional
difficulty of pinpointing, spelling, or pronouncing Sirin-Nabokoff's name
outside of Russia) should not prevent us from continuing to celebrate, with
undiminished pomp, in the twenty-first!
,
--
Susan Elizabeth Sweeney
Co-Editor, NABOKV-L
Search archive with Google:
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Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/
Memory*: "we lagged twelve days behind the rest of the civilized world in
the nineteenth century, and thirteen in the beginning of the twentieth. By
the Old Style I was born on April 10, at daybreak, in the last year of the
last century; and that was (if I could have been whisked across the border
at once) April 22 in say, Germany; but since all my birthdays were
celebrated, with diminishing pomp, in the twentieth century, everybody,
including myself, upon being shifted by revolution and expatriation from
the Julian calendar to the Gregorian, used to add thirteen, instead of
twelve days to the 10th of April. The error is serious. What is to be
done? I find 'April 23' under 'birth date' in my most recent passport,
which is also the birth date of Shakespeare, my nephew Vladimir Sikorski,
Shirley Temple and Hazel Brown (who, moreover, shares my passport). This,
then, is the problem. Calculatory ineptitude prevents me from trying to
solve it."
. . . But that problem (a calendrical echo, perhaps, of the occasional
difficulty of pinpointing, spelling, or pronouncing Sirin-Nabokoff's name
outside of Russia) should not prevent us from continuing to celebrate, with
undiminished pomp, in the twenty-first!
,
--
Susan Elizabeth Sweeney
Co-Editor, NABOKV-L
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/