Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0024902, Tue, 17 Dec 2013 15:28:24 -0800

Subject
Re: Dr Mertvago & Dr Swissair
Date
Body
Dear Alexey,

You should be ashamed -  when I was growing up there was no one more highly respected.

Albert Schweitzer, OM (14 January 1875 – 4 September 1965) was a German—and later French—theologian, organist, philosopher, physician, and medical missionary in Africa, also known for his interpretive life of Jesus. He was born in the province of Alsace-Lorraine, at that time part of the German Empire. Schweitzer, a Lutheran, challenged both the secular view ofJesus as depicted by historical-critical methodology current at his time in certain academic circles, as well as the traditional Christian view. He depicted Jesus as one who literally believed the end of the world was coming in his own lifetime and believed himself to be a world savior. He received the 1952 Nobel Peace Prize for his philosophy of "Reverence for Life",[1] expressed in many ways, but most famously in founding and sustaining the Albert Schweitzer Hospital in Lambaréné, now in Gabon, west central Africa (then French Equatorial Africa). As a music scholar and
organist, he studied the music of German composerJohann Sebastian Bach and influenced the Organ reform movement (Orgelbewegung).


 There may be some link to those preterists in Pale Fire. I very much enjoyed reading his autobiography. He was the first person to understand how Bach's mind worked, a complex that included not only his mathematical cum architectural ability to produce complicated structure, but a kind of musical poetics that used musical and verbal quotes to create an internal universe. 


Well, enough of that - it's only Swissair.

Carolyn

p.s. As a physician working in "Lumbago" he was - well - a saint. But who cares? Not the shameless of this world, that's for sure. 

________________________________
From: Alexey Sklyarenko <skylark1970@MAIL.RU>
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Sent: Monday, December 16, 2013 8:01 AM
Subject: [NABOKV-L] Dr Mertvago & Dr Swissair




Why not just call a turnip a
turnip?
 
You mean "parsnip" (pasternak)?
 
Do you also despise that other nabokovian bete
noir, Albert Schweitzer?
 
Never heard of him (unless he is "Dr Swissair of Lumbago"
mentioned in Ada by Dorothy Vinelander).
 
There was once Doctor Mertvago
who lived in a place called Lumbago...
 
shamelessly,
Alexey

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