Interesting Emendations: Elif Batuman's "The Ice Renaissance"

To gain insight into Elif Batuman’s compositional process, I want to compare her “The House of Ice,” included in her excellent recent essay collection The Possessed, with an earlier version, “The Ice Renaissance,” published in The New Yorker, May 29, 2006. Both pieces tell the story behind a replica of Empress Anna Ioannovna’s ice palace built in downtown St. Petersburg, but each tells it in a different way. The magazine article is all historical facts told in the third person for most of its five thousand words, whereas the longer book version is narrated in the first person and is much more immediate and personal. It shows Batuman arriving in St. Petersburg (“Copious, fine-grained snow gusted and swirled through the night skies, rattling against the windows of the taxi”), describes her hostel room (“A chandelier hung from the ceiling – not from the center of the ceiling, but almost in a corner, like a sleeping bat”), takes us on a visit to a workshop for the restoration of eighteenth-century clocks at the Hermitage (“Grandfather clocks lined the walls, doors ajar, like recently evacuated coffins”), describes a dinner that Batuman and her friend Luba had with an eighty-four-year-old literary translator that consisted of “egg salad, black bread, and rassolnik (a soup made with pickles and brine).” It even lets us in on Batuman pitching the ice palace story to The New Yorker (“The New Yorker conceded that it might be nice to have a ‘Postcard from St. Petersburg’ about the ice palace – but only so long as I was ‘already going to be in Petersburg anyway’”). In many ways, “The House of Ice” is the story of how the “The Ice Renaissance” came to be written, and I much prefer it.

While there are many scenes and details in “The House of Ice” that are not in “The Ice Renaissance,” there is a core of material, e.g., the history of the original 1740 ice palace, the description of the 2006 replica, that is common to both articles. But there are interesting differences between the two pieces in the way this material is written. For example, in the magazine version, the giant hollow ice elephant that was part of the original frozen palace is described as follows:

Connected by pipes to the Admiralty Canal, the elephant had a trunk that spouted water twenty-four feet in the air; at night the water was replaced by flaming oil. The elephant could trumpet just like a real one by means of a man sitting inside, blowing into a pipe.

In the book version, the “ice elephant” passage is worded slightly differently:

The elephant’s trunk, connected by pipes to the Admiralty Canal, spouted water twenty-four feet in the air. At night the water was replaced by flaming oil. The elephant could trumpet in a highly realistic fashion, thanks to a man sitting inside, blowing into a trumpet.

I find the variation between these two passages fascinating. Notice that the New Yorker passage consists of two sentences, whereas the book version changes the semi-colon after “air” into a period, resulting in three sentences. Notice that the pipe connection in the magazine version is with the elephant; in the book version, it’s with the elephant’s trunk. Notice the simpler “just like a real one” in the New Yorker version, as compared to the book version’s “in a highly realistic fashion,” which is a bit more of a mouthful. And notice also that in the New Yorker passage, the man blows into a pipe; in the book, he blows into a trumpet. Overall, I’d have to say that I like the New Yorker version better; it’s simpler, more fluid and avoids the repetition of “trumpet” in the last sentence.

Let’s look at another example. Here is the magazine version’s description of the interior of the original ice palace:

With the exception of a few real playing cards frozen to an ice table, everything in the palace was ice. The doorframes and window frames had been dyed to resemble green marble. There was a dressing table with an ice “mirror” and a canopy bed with pillows, blankets, slippers, and nightcaps. On shelves and tables were cups, saucers, plates, cutlery, wineglasses, and figurines; several pocket watches and table clocks had visible mechanisms: cogs and gears cut from ice.

Here is the book version’s description of the ice palace interior:

With the exception of a few real playing cards, frozen into an ice table, everything in the palace was made of ice, some of it dyed to resemble other materials. The bedroom was equipped with a dressing table, “mirror,” canopy bed, pillows, blankets, slippers, and nightcaps. On shelves and tables stood cups, saucers, plates, cutlery, wineglasses, figurines, and even transparent pocket watches and table clocks, with dyed cogs and gears.

I love this passage. Either version is fine, but the specificity of the New Yorker’s “The doorframes and window frames had been dyed to resemble green marble,” as compared to the book’s “everything in the palace was made of ice, some of it dyed to resemble other materials,” strikes me as more vivid, as does “ice ‘mirror’” (magazine) instead of just “‘mirror’” (book) and “cogs and gears cut from ice” (magazine), instead of “dyed cogs and gears” (book). It makes you wonder what accounts for these differences. If the book version came first, why didn’t Batuman rewrite the above passages to retain the New Yorker edits? In the alternative, if the New Yorker version came first, why did Batuman decide to rewrite them for the book?

Whatever the explanation, it’s pleasing to note that the loveliest passage in “The Ice Renaissance” – one that evinces the superbness of Batuman’s work when she’s writing in the descriptive mode – makes it into “The House of Ice” unchanged:

What appeared to be a Renaissance marble angel had been sculpted from snow, as had two albatross-size songbirds perched atop two hearts. In the corner hulked a massive snow wedding cake, and staring impassively at the cake was a life-size, bluish Anna Ioannovna, shimmering in her throne like some sort of hologram.

Well, actually, now that I look more closely, I see there is one tiny amendment. “The House of Ice” version changes “shimmering in her throne” to “shimmering on her throne.” I wonder what meaning Batuman was trying to get at when she used “in” in the New Yorker version – maybe that the ice sculpture of the Empress and the ice sculpture of the throne had melted together such that Ioannovna appeared more in the throne than on it?