The Image of a Snow in the “Childhood” Cycle of Short Stories by V. A. Nikiforov-Volgin

The article examines the semantics of the image of snow — one of the pervasive images of the “Childhood” short story cycle, which opens the first book by V. A. Nikiforov-Volgin “The Birthday Girl Earth.” Snow for the author, as well as for the emigrant poets who left Russia after the 1917 revolution, is a symbol of the lost homeland. At the same time, the analyzed texts of the writer comprise both a mythopoetic tradition of the image of snow, associated with the natural cycle of changing seasons, and a biblical tradition that implies the connotation of sacredness. In the “Childhood” cycle, snow is subject to metamorphoses: it turns into ice, icicles, and water, indicating the coming spring and Easter. The appearance of snow in the cycle of stories is associated with the onset of spiritual spring — Lent. The image of snow is multi-meaningful: if the melting of snow in “Communion” is likened to death, then in the last story “Silver Blizzard” it is used to introduce a revival motif associated with Easter semantics. Easter is the central event of the cycle. Thanks to the image of snow, the last Christmas story is also correlated with the dominant theme of the Resurrection of the Lord. The image of a snowstorm, integrated with the image of snow, appears in the last story of the “Childhood” cycle. The blizzard for V. A. Nikiforov-Volgin is one of the symbols of the Nativity of Christ, endowed with the semantics of joy and festivity. The dynamism of the image of snow in the “Silver Blizzard,” which completes the cycle, emphasizes the meaning of renewal that is embedded in it: Christmas for the writer is the starting point of God’s path in the world to a Bright Resurrection.