Happy New Year 2009

So I thought in keeping with the theme of Laika, I would post this Soviet-era New Years Day card. You can see more at this link. It has been interesting investigating Soviet-era art. I can remember as a child when the Soviet Union was our geo-political equal. "The Russians", it seems to me, tempered our ambitions in the world. The notion of nuclear war hung over my childhood as a real possibility. We always (eventually) understood our proxy wars in Africa and Asia to be engagements with the USSR. For some, the USSR represented a hope and an inspiration. For others, and I am particularly thinking of my own circle in college, understood Russia to be the failure not of Marxism, but a betrayal by politicians of the principals of Communism. We had to look beyond Soviet Communism to . . . . Chinese Communism for the better model of what Communism could be. Of course, now we realize that Mao was every bit as ruthless as Stalin. And what country in the world is more intertwined with world capitalism than China? The fortunes of the nation rise and fall on the fortunes of the USA and Europeans as much as any nation.

But I think I always had a soft spot for Russia. I suppose it was fueled by Dr. Zhivago and growing up in a similar climate. Those long trudges across open fields to get home from school in January, it was easy to imagine myself as a young poet Zhivago crossing the steppes to be with Laura. The movie was released for Christmas 1965. I would have been eight years old, but I have a distinct memory of going as a family to see it in the movie theater. Is that possible? Watching it now, I must have missed a good deal of the plot. I am sure, however, that I had a huge crush on Julie Christie. so maybe I did. The movie also has special resonance with me because it was what we saw on Dawn and my first date together. We saw it in the Fall of 1975 (ten years after its release) at the University of Maine.

Fairy Tales

I have been listening to a great podcast by a Jungian analyst in which he describes using Jungian techniques to interpret fairy tales. You can subscribe to the podcast here . Here is a tale I found while looking for images this week. A more detailed version is also available here.

The Snow Maiden

A Russian tale tells of a woodcutter and his wife who were childless. They were a good and kind couple but they were lonely. One winter day, to ease their loneliness, they began to roll large snowballs. together, and in short while they made a “snequrochka“, a Snow Maiden. She looked so beautiful that they called her their ‘daughter’.

At that same moment, hiding and crackling among the fir trees, was Grandfather Frost. He was an old winter god with a long, white beard and he carried a great staff that was filled with wonderful magic. He had overheard the couple and felt sorry for them. For people who were kind and good always touched his heart. And so he raised his great staff and suddenly the Snow Maiden came to life.

Some said the Snow Maiden was the daughter of Grandfather Frost and Mother Snow, sent to comfort the couple for a time. Others said she was really a spirit-princess come to earth. Whatever her nature, she remained with the couple as a true and dutiful daughter would be.

Now as spring approached and people began to leave their houses, the Snow Maiden fell in love with a young man from the village. But the price of surrendering her heart in love would be to lose her human mortality. Grandfather Frost continued to watch her from a distance for he knew what would soon happen to her.

One day she was walking with her beloved through a birch wood. The youth played his flute; the Snow Maiden walked beside him turning her face to the sun. Suddenly she gave the faintest sigh and began to melt. She was still a creature of ice and snow and could not stand the springtime sun. Soon there was nothing left but an icy mist, drifting upward into the blue sky. The frail creature could not survive the breath of spring.

But her spirit had leapt into the waiting arms of Grandfather Frost and Mother Snow and they carried her away over the stars to the far north where she plays all through the summer on the frozen seas.

But each year in winter, on the first day of the New Year, Grandfather Frost and the Snow Maiden return to Russia. And they continue to work their magic for those who are kind and good. And they visit, in particular, the children, bringing them gifts and helping them to make their dreams come true, as they did long ago for the woodcutter and his wife.

Edmund Dulac, The Ice Maiden, 1915, watercolour, The Royal Pavilion, Art Gallery & Museums, Brighton