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Anna Karenin Versus Anna Karenina (fwd)
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From: Galya Diment <galya@u.washington.edu>
Sergei Aksenov wrote:
Even more so perhaps of those small minds that seek it out everywhere
(hate to admit it :). I wonder though if this Russianism was meant to
accentuate Pnin's attachment to the dear world of Russian literature in
spite of him existing now in a different linguistic context (where one is
expected to say Karenin). As Galya pointed out, Bolotov is more exact.
Maybe he has no trouble integrating into the new world?
I suspect it's more mundane than that. Chapter 4 appeared in the New
Yorker (Victor Meets Pnin, October 15, 1955) and the editor (I believe it
was still Katharine White before she retired as fiction editor that year)
must have changed it to the version of the title American readers would
have been most accustomed to. Chapter 5, on the other hand, was rejected
by the New Yorker (mostly because it was too "Russian") and thus a similar
editorial interference didn't take place there. As Nabokov was putting the
manuscript together he did change minor things in Chapter 4 but probably
overlooked the occurrence of _Anna Karenina_ there.
Galya Diment