Word: norbert
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Fool! Donkey! Ass!" Papa Wiener was a character in his own right. Omnivorous scholar, fanatical Tolstoyan rigid vegetarian, amateur farmer and heterodox Slavic philologist, Bialystok-born Leo Wiener was an austere and aloof yet somehow lovable paterfamilias. Papa was dissatisfied with ordinary schools and instructed Norbert personally until the boy went to high school. Papa, a good teacher was also an irascible man, and whenever Norbert stumbled, there would come streaming down upon him a flood of invective in German: "Fool! Donkey...
Even when Norbert started going to school, the parental tyranny continued...
...this time, in addition to teaching his regular classes at Harvard, papa had undertaken to translate 24 volumes of Tolstoy in 24 months, and in the evenings, while scribbling furiously and peering into proofs, he would hear out Norbert's lessons. And though he was listening with only half an ear, that was quite enough to catch Norbert in his mistakes...
Inevitably, little Norbert turned out to be something of an infantile monster. Once, when a Latin tutor annoyed him, he turned the garden hose on the fellow. Another time, when his parents sent him to a Unitarian Sunday school to give him some contact with other children, little Atheist Norbert got into debates with the minister on the existence...
Greek v. Trivialities. The crisis in young Norbert's life came after his graduation from college at 14. Neither child nor man, he was physically exhausted and suddenly troubled by "one of the greatest realizations that the infant prodigy must make: he is not wanted by the community." Enrolled as a graduate student at Harvard, Norbert was frequently miserable. "I had no proper idea of personal cleanliness and personal neatness, and I myself never knew when I was to blurt out some unpardonable rudeness." By now, he wanted to rebel against papa, yet he lacked the daring...