Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Sleepy by ANton Chekhov

When doing a little research for writing my paper on Sleepy by Anton Checkov, I found that there are many translations of the story since it was written in Russian. There are only slight differences like the description of the girl, Varka, as a "nanny" in one and a "nursemaid" in another. This has a profound influence on the reader I think even though it may not be completely obvious. Without using any sort of background information about the author I would have assumed that this story was set in the American south during the time of slavery and indentured servitude by the use of the word nanny and other setting descriptions but if I had read the version stating "nursemaid" as a description of the girl I would have been guided to the European context right away since the description is in the first line of the story.

Just a little observation. I decided to write my paper on Guests of the Nation instead.

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