Talk:Anna Karenina

Oprah's Thesis?

Hmmm. Wikipedia isn't exactly a place to promote an interpretation or thesis, so I'm not sure the new rewrites should stand. Surely this reader got the idea after the last Oprah installment on TV? Mandel 06:38, Dec 9, 2004 (UTC)

Russian diminutives in synopsis; note on transliteration

Someone recently changed the names Kitty and Dolly to "Katya" and "Dasha." While these are both correct in general, they are not correct in the context of AK. English was a fashionable language among the upper classes (though not as much as French), and these English names (along with Betsy and Annie) appear phonetically spelled out in the original Russian text as Кити, Долли, Бетси, and Ани.

I never quite knew why these characters had such diminutives, but I'm guessing it was one of Tolstoy's jabs at aristocratic affectations. In any case, if anyone would like to check out the original, here's a link to the original Russian text.

Also, I strongly feel that the Russian letter Щ should be transliterated as "shch", and not as "shtch", as a previous contributor had done. (Actually, I feel it should just be transliterated as "sh," since it's easier for us, and it's pretty much how most Russians pronounce it anyway, but I guess that's not linguistically accurate...)

Wikipedia also recommends the "shch" transliteration (see Transliteration of Russian into English), as it's the standard in the U.N., RF, blah blah blah. And frankly, I've never seen "shtch" before. I'm not a native speaker, but I've been studying and speaking Russian for over 15 years (including time spent living in the FSU), and this is a new one to me. "Shch" is jarring enough in English, and even though I understand the logic behind it, "shtch" is just too much!

--dablaze 16:59, Mar 25, 2005 (UTC)

Aha, now I see why Dasha and Katya were abbreviated to Dolly and Kitty. I thought it was just someone being lazy and using anglicised versions. Olga Raskolnikova 13:32, 26 March 2005 (UTC)

I checked Wikipedia's article in ANNA KARENINA in several languages: French, German, Italian. They all use the English nicknames "Kitty" and "Dolly" for Ekaterina and Darya, presumably reflecting how the novel is translated in those languages. So I guess that even in Russian, Tolstoy had the English nicknames in mind. A previous poster said this was "one of Tolstoy's jabs at aristocratic affectations"; yet the novel treats the Sherbatskis sympathetically, not as pompous aristocrats.71.59.43.26 (talk) 04:00, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

Thought here was best place for my query. Why is it Anna Karenina when my copy is Anna Karenin (Penguin Classic) throughout and in title. Timmytimtimmy (talk) 02:50, 18 December 2022 (UTC)

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New lede

I have tried to expand/ improve the lead of this article. I think it's better now but happy if anyone else wants to pitch in as well. Budapest Joe (talk) 00:06, 17 July 2018 (UTC)BudapestJoe

Opening line and "A Tale of the Tub"

Compare Karenina's opening line to this from Jonathan Swift's Preface to "A Tale of the Tub":

For, as health is but one thing, and has been always the same, whereas diseases are by thousands, besides new and daily additions; so, all the virtues that have been ever in mankind, are to be counted upon a few fingers, but his follies and vices are innumerable, and time adds hourly to the heap.

Snapdragon630 (talk) 02:21, 29 August 2024 (UTC)