Vladimir Nabokov complained that the novel should be called Anna Karenin in English, since it makes no sense to English-language speakers that Anna's last name is not the same as her husband's. Why the extra vowel?
In Russian you can tell people's gender from their last name. This is true of the Karenins -- his surname ends in a consonant, while hers ends in a vowel -- and of many families (although there are exceptions, especially of non-Russian surnames, which can be "indeclinable," or not change for case or gender -- my last name in Russian is the same as it would be in English or in German, Brintlinger, even though I am female). You will notice that "real" first names follow this convention, but nicknames do not. Stiva's real name is Stepan, and Constantin's nickname is Kostya; thus shortened (or "diminutive") names in Russian often end in "a" even if they refer to men.
So why call our heroine Anna Karenina? For one thing, it has a nice rhythm and almost-rhyming quality to it. The name forms a "double dactyl" -- in poetry, two sets of three syllables with the first syllable of each set stressed. (My name is also a double dactyl -- Angela Brintlinger -- and there are whole societies of people who play with this verse form [see http://www.poetryfoundation.org/learning/glossary-term/Double%20dactyl].)
More importantly, by leaving the final "a" on her surname, we remind ourselves that we are reading in translation. Keeping this reminder in the forefront (Anna is living her life in a foreign place, time, and language -- though of course sometimes that language is French or even English, like her novel on the train) helps us notice those details which we don't understand and let some things go. (Do you really need to comprehend the political intrigues in St. Petersburg government, or can you simply know that Karenin is an important official, and Anna is so estranged from him psychologically, emotionally, and intellectually, that she has no idea what he does for a living?)
But this post is called "wordless communication," so I want to get to that. We know that Anna and Alexei are not communicating at all. And it's hard to forget Stiva's assumption that Dolly knew all along that she was getting old and ugly and he was cheating on her, or his shock when he realized that she thought he was true to her. So this married couple is hardly ideal; they have completely separate lives, and the only things tying them together are the house, the children, and the money (represented by Dolly's forest which Stiva hopes to sell).
If the Oblonsky brother and sister are mismatched and cannot communicate with their spouses, who in the novel does communicate? Much of what Anna and Vronsky say aloud has no meaning; we know that they feel each other more than they speak of their thoughts and emotions. What of Levin? With whom is he on the same wavelength, with whom is he able to communicate?
The best communicators, Tolstoy would argue, do so without words. Think about how he represents that in the novel.
In Russian you can tell people's gender from their last name. This is true of the Karenins -- his surname ends in a consonant, while hers ends in a vowel -- and of many families (although there are exceptions, especially of non-Russian surnames, which can be "indeclinable," or not change for case or gender -- my last name in Russian is the same as it would be in English or in German, Brintlinger, even though I am female). You will notice that "real" first names follow this convention, but nicknames do not. Stiva's real name is Stepan, and Constantin's nickname is Kostya; thus shortened (or "diminutive") names in Russian often end in "a" even if they refer to men.
So why call our heroine Anna Karenina? For one thing, it has a nice rhythm and almost-rhyming quality to it. The name forms a "double dactyl" -- in poetry, two sets of three syllables with the first syllable of each set stressed. (My name is also a double dactyl -- Angela Brintlinger -- and there are whole societies of people who play with this verse form [see http://www.poetryfoundation.org/learning/glossary-term/Double%20dactyl].)
More importantly, by leaving the final "a" on her surname, we remind ourselves that we are reading in translation. Keeping this reminder in the forefront (Anna is living her life in a foreign place, time, and language -- though of course sometimes that language is French or even English, like her novel on the train) helps us notice those details which we don't understand and let some things go. (Do you really need to comprehend the political intrigues in St. Petersburg government, or can you simply know that Karenin is an important official, and Anna is so estranged from him psychologically, emotionally, and intellectually, that she has no idea what he does for a living?)
But this post is called "wordless communication," so I want to get to that. We know that Anna and Alexei are not communicating at all. And it's hard to forget Stiva's assumption that Dolly knew all along that she was getting old and ugly and he was cheating on her, or his shock when he realized that she thought he was true to her. So this married couple is hardly ideal; they have completely separate lives, and the only things tying them together are the house, the children, and the money (represented by Dolly's forest which Stiva hopes to sell).
If the Oblonsky brother and sister are mismatched and cannot communicate with their spouses, who in the novel does communicate? Much of what Anna and Vronsky say aloud has no meaning; we know that they feel each other more than they speak of their thoughts and emotions. What of Levin? With whom is he on the same wavelength, with whom is he able to communicate?
The best communicators, Tolstoy would argue, do so without words. Think about how he represents that in the novel.