As Harrison points out, "This delay in Rachmaninoff's collapse has never been, and presumably never will be, satisfactorily explained." One question some scholars have asked is whether the symphony had an autobiographical element that gave its failure a more personal dimension. According to many sources, the original manuscript, now lost, carried a dedication to "A. L." plus the epigraph to Leo Tolstoy's novel "Anna Karenina", "Vengeance is mine; I will repay." A. L. was Anna Lodyzhenskaya, the beautiful Gypsy wife of his friend Peter Lodyzhensky. He had also dedicated the "Caprice Bohémien" to her. Whether Rachmaninoff's regard for her was merely infatuation or something more serious cannot be known. Neither can the connection between the two of them and "Anna Karenina", or between the biblical quotation and the religious chants providing the basis for the symphony's thematic material.