Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0022646, Mon, 26 Mar 2012 13:15:27 -0300

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Re: Nabokov on Tolstoy's timing in "Anna Karenina"
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Ljuba Tarvi - "Nabokov insists in both Pnin and Lectures that “The action of the book starts in February, 1872, and goes on to July, 1876: in all, four years and a half” (Lectures, 148). A careful examinations of the novel makes, however, it possible to argue that the action starts in ‘mid-winter’, either in December 1873 or in January 1874, and goes on till the unquestionable (the Crimean war) end in July 1876, which reduces Nabokov’s timing by at least two years. As can be argued, not only the year of the beginning, which is 1874 rather than 1872, and not only the month, which is December rather than February, but even the day, which might be Thursday rather than Friday, could be disputed.Sorry for self-reference: Ljuba Tarvi, 2010. «В поисках замкового камня: загадки времени в «Анне Карениной» Толстого» [In Search of the Key Stone: Time Riddles in Tolstoy's «Anna Karenina»]. Helsinki: Literarus (3) 2011, 93-96.

JM: How do you interpret Nabokov's observation about "relativity in literature" when he returns to the theme, when Pnin adds:" 'You will notice,' he said, 'that there is a significant difference between Lyovin's spiritual time and Vronski's physical one. In mid book, Lyovin and Kitty lag behind Vronski and Anna by a whole year. When, on a Sunday evening in May 1876, Anna throws herself under that freight train, she has existed more than four years since the beginning of the novel, but in the case of the Lyovins, during the same period, 1872 to 1876, hardly three years have elapsed. It is the best example of relativity in literature that is known to me'." ? The discrepancy between "physical and spiritual time" that engenders the aforementioned relativity might have arisen simply because Nabokov chose to ignore the different arguments about Tolstoy's novel timing?

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