Greta Garbo or the Gorky Theater: Rival Visions of 'Anna Karenina'

• In Event: The Liberation of Anna Karenina: From Criticism to Canonization

Abstract

This paper discusses the 1937 staging of Anna Karenina by the Gorky Moscow Art Theater (MKhAT imeni M. Gorkogo) directed by Nemirovich-Danchenko. Drawing on materials in the archives of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Dana, a Harvard drama scholar who traveled to the Soviet Union, the paper aims to show the production's ambition to challenge and transcend Western interpretations of Anna Karenina, particularly the well-known 1935 film directed by Clarence Brown and featuring Greta Garbo. In the émigré press the Gorky Theater production was discussed alongside the Brown/Garbo film, criticism that provoked reappraisals of Tolstoy's novel and of Anna's moral character and fate. This discourse, I suggest, helps illuminate the dynamic dialogue between Soviet and émigré readers of Tolstoy, revealing their cultural exchanges and conflicting values, particularly in relation to the so-called "woman question.”

Author

• Tatyana Gershkovich, Carnegie Mellon U