Unfortunately, I don't think a direct quotation is going to be of much use. Here it is, just in case:
"All happy families are more or less dissimilar; all unhappy ones are more or less alike," says a great Russian writer at the beginning of a famous novel (Anna Arkadievitch Karenina, transifgured into English by R. G. Stonelower, Mount Tabor Ltd., 1880). That pronouncement has little if any relation to the story to be unfolded now, a family chronicle, the first part of which is, perhaps, closer to another Tolstoy work, Destvo i Otrochestvo (Childhood and Fatherland, Pontius Press, 1858).
In his own footnotes to Ada, supposedly written by Vivan Darkbloom (a side character from Lolita), Nabakov has this to say:
p. 3 - All happy families etc.: mistranslations of Russian classics are ridiculed here. The opening sentence of Tolstoy's novel is turned inside out and Anna Arkadievna's patronymic given an absurd masculine ending, while an incorrect feminine one is added to her surname. "Mounta Tabor" and "Pontius" allude to the transfigurations (Mr. G. Steiner's term, I believe) and betrayals to which great texts are subjected by pretentious and ignorant versionists.
A cursery google search would suggest that G. Steiner, at least, is a real person.
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Date: 2003-10-22 04:34 pm (UTC)In his own footnotes to Ada, supposedly written by Vivan Darkbloom (a side character from Lolita), Nabakov has this to say:
A cursery google search would suggest that G. Steiner, at least, is a real person.