Stephen Blackwell (ED): "Marmelady" are an old favorite of
mine--they are usually made with a high proportion of real fruit, berries, etc.,
along with sugar and pectin. I discovered them in my study abroad days in
St. Petersburg (the term could be different in Moscow, in fact--I do not know).
Doing a quick search, I see that they are also called (in France, but in fine
candy shops and recipe books in the US as well), "Pâté de fruits." A google
image search for this term will give the basic idea. However, the "Signs
and Symbols" version, with "little jars" and the absence of the word "candied",
makes be believe that the items in that story are not 'pate de fruits' or
marmelady but simply 'fruit jelly' in the American sense. I've never seen "pate
de fruits" sold in jars.
JM:Thanks, Steve, for helping me to imagine the "Pâté de
fruits" you found in St.Petersuburg and how they might differ from the
jellied fruit in jars found in "Signs and Symbols." The term "marmelady"
(unlike the one VN has attributed to Dickens, at least in a translation used by
Dostoievsky*) is now clear.
What seems to be at stake now are fruits and edibles in literary
translations?
..............................................................................................
*
- "Marmlad in Dickens: or rather Marmeladov in Dostoevsky, whom Dickens
(in translation) greatly influenced,p.283". Cf. Nabokov V. Ada or Ardor nabokovandko.narod.ru/Texts/Ada_eng01.html
From last year's contribution to Nabokov-L, by Alexei Sklyarenko:
"Dostoevski and other members of Butashevich-Petrashevski's political circle
were arrested on April 23, 1849 (Old Style). After eight months of imprisonment
in the Peter-and-Paul Fortress they went through a terrible farce: the mock
execution that took place on December 22 (January 3, 1850, by the New
Style)...The mock execution of the Petrashevskians took place on the Semyonovski
square in St. Petersburg.Semyon Marmeladov is a character in Dostoevski's Crime
and Punishment (1867). "Marmlad and his Marmlady" are mentioned in Ada: "when I
worked on my earliest fiction, and pleaded abjectly with a very frail muse
('kneeling and wringing my hands' like the dusty-trousered Marmlad before his
Marmlady in Dickens)" (2.4). Van Veen's first novel is Letters from Terra, but
Nabokov's had the same title as Maykov's long poem:"Mashen'ka" (Mary, 1926). The
heroine of Van's novel is a
girl named Theresa (2.2). Tereza is character in
Dostoevski's first novel, Bednye lyudi ("The Poor People", 1846), a servant
woman who brings letters from Makar Devushkin to Varen'ka Dobrosyolov and back.
In the old Russian alphabet the letter L was calledlyudi. The letter D (its
Cyrillic counterpart) was called dobro ("good," as opposed to "evil"). Devushka
is Russian for "girl, maid, miss". Re: [NABOKV-L] L (M, N) disaster in ADA:
Lenin, Marx, Maykov and ...
https://listserv.ucsb.edu/lsv.../wa?...
In
Brian Boyd's Ada Online (Part 2, ch.4, annotations forthcoming) we read:
"360.05In the professional dreams that especially obsessed me when I worked
on my earliest fiction, and pleaded abjectly with a very frail muse
("kneeling and wringing my hands" like the dusty-trousered Marmlad before his
Marmlady in Dickens), I might see for example that I was correcting galley
proofs but..."