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Current classes
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Faculty
Slava Paperno (director) Krystyna Golovakova Raissa Krivitsky Viktoria Tsimberov Richard L. Leed (1929-2011) Lora Paperno (retired)
Russian minor
Courses
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Study in Russia
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Slava Paperno
Office: 211 Klarman Hall
sp27@cornell.edu
Current classes and office hours: see Rooms and times
I was born in Moscow, Russia, lived in Leningrad, and now hope to remain forever in Ithaca, NY.
I learned most of my English from Bob Dylan records and mystery novels, but after that I did get a degree in English
from The University in Leningrad, and later a degree
in Russian from The University in Ithaca.
While living in Russia, I translated respectable books from English
into Russian, and my translations were published by respectable publishing
houses. The most difficult book to sell was Washington Square
by Henry James. It is a novel about people who are wealthy and decent, most of the time.
The publishers were not sure why the Soviet public should read it.
I took up pipe smoking to remind myself that the true answers lay well below the surface.
I switched to cigarettes when working on my most lucrative translation,
A Whale for the Killing by the Canadian environmentalist
Falrey Mowat: it was reprinted several times by several publishers, while
the Soviet whaling fleet continued killing whales.
Books about saving whales were popular in the USSR both with the readers
and with the publishers. The readers read them and thought that they belonged
to a civilized nation. The publishers published them and knew that they
had the readers fooled. I let my hair grow very long in an attempt to disassociate
myself from the respectable publishers. But I did eat the food that I bought
with their money.
When Lora, our son Maxim, and I emigrated to Ithaca, NY, I stopped smoking
and translating, and cut my hair very short. I thought I was in a perfect
world, where no one tried to fool anyone else. I made wonderful new friends
and met an interesting animal called The Computer. Working with my friends,
I designed and published
computer software,
a few
books and dictionaries, and,
more recently, an anti-nostalgia Web site on
communal apartments
in the Soviet Union, all for my students and for other students of Russian
around the country. It was all very respectable.
Then I met another exciting animal called The Videocamera,
and made more wonderful friends. We made TV documentaries together, mostly
in Russia, but also in the U.S., and I discovered that in this part of
the world there are also plenty of respectable people who try to fool everybody
else, and even more people willing to be fooled. I grew my hair very long again.
My son started his Ithaca career by fixing cars and playing percussion instruments
at the local nightclubs and, of course, at the
GrassRoots Festival (yes, he's in that video,
and so is my granddaughter). He still does some of that today, but most of his time is now spent
running his own Internet
company and programming chips for small flying machines. His hair is way longer than mine, and his skepticism far surpasses that of his father. It must be something
we ate together back in Russia. We all love what we do. We are a very happy
family.
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Dept. of Comparative Literature
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Russian Language Program
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240 Goldwin Smith Hall
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Cornell University
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Ithaca, NY 14853-4701, USA
tel. 607/255-4155 • fax 607/255-8177 • email slava.paperno@cornell.edu |