In a Brazilian writer's blog a small contest was
created concerning the choice for best first lines. The winner was
Tolstoi's Anna Karenin, followed by Nabokov's "Lolita" and, next. Camus ("L'
Étranger").
Começos inesquecíveis: Tolstoi é o
campeão: Sérgio Rodrigues, 07/10/2009.
The first lines in "Ada or Ardor" are more or less dissimilar to
Tolstoy's winning sentence: " ‘All happy families are more or less dissimilar; all unhappy ones
are more or less alike,’ says a great Russian writer in the beginning of a
famous novel (Anna Arkadievitch Karenina, transfigured 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, Detstvo i Otrochestvo
(Childhood and Fatherland, Pontius Press, 1858)."
Curious about the added information on Tolstoy's work, by Pontius
Press, I googled for more data. I was unable to discover to which work
Nabokov was referring.
One
of Tolstoy's first writings, in 1852, signed with the
initials L.N, was "Dietstvo" ( Childhood), which he sent to N. A.
Niekrassov to get it published in the magazine "Sovriemiênik."
He was very displeased with the title, as it came out ( as about other editorial
alterations).
Two other entries were intriguing:
Childhood "
(Dietstvo)
EUGENE SCHUYLER: SELECTED ESSAYS; WITH A MEMOIR BY EVELYN SCHUYLER
SCHAEFFER
NEW YORK - CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS - 1901
Is there a Pontius (Pilate) press?