Letter to Sister on Nephew's Birthday
Feb. 28, 1936
Dear Liza,
My best wishes to Kirill on his birthday, and also to his parents, who are successfully fulfilling the plan prescribed by nature of raising a human offshoot unable to walk up to the age of two years, but then, with time, beginning to destroy everything in sight and finally, in the attainment of a young preschool age, using a voltmeter stolen from his father's desk to smash the head of his beloved mother who had failed to dodge an especially agile attack conducted by her not as yet completely matured child, already planning in his immature occiput that once having knocked off his parents, he could turn his attention to his grandfather, grizzled with silver hairs, thereby proving his mental development, so abnormal for his age, in honor of which on the 28th of February, some of the admirers of this truly extraordinary phenomenon are gathering, among whom, to my great regret, I will be unable to count myself since I find myself at the given moment in a certain state of tension, going into raptures on the coast of the Gulf of Finland, with the ability characteristic of me since my childhood years, once I've grabbed a steel pen and dipped it into an inkwell to express in short and distinct phrases my profound and, at times even, to a certain extent, highly elevated thought.
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