I got intrigued. The limits of the internet fascinate me.  And the more I looked for Kochergin images, the more I realized how familiar I was with his imagery.  To some extent, he has the corner on classic Russian fairytale imagery.  He owes a debt to Ivan Bilibin (1876-1942)--one of those innocent, tremendous "Golden Age of Illustration" artists who got caught up in weird Central European Nationalism (much to the detriment of their illustrations, I'd put Alphonse Mucha in this category also). But from what I can tell, Kochergin is a creature of a different generation.

I say "from what I can tell," because the internet isn't telling me anything about these next pieces, except that they are all images created by artists named, variously, "N. Kochergin," "Nikolai Kochergin," and "Nikolai Mikhailovich Kochergin," all of whom appear to have lived 1897-1974. I am pretty sure that these are all the same person. But--this is just from the internet, so maybe not.  In any case, Kochergin's images:

And then come these (POSTCARDS: 1960s. N. KOCHERGIN). Okay, I can see the Social Realism influence here, but there's a step (in history) that I'm feeling gets glossed over:

What was the progression from the young man who created the top image to the old(er) man who created these last images? I don't know if it would make a book. But it's something I'd like to know something more about.

I ordered it about a week back. My childhood copy had gone missing.

I love Paul Gallico's writing.  He's probably known best these days for The Poseidon Adventure (1969), but I hope not. This one, The Man Who Was Magic (1966), remains one of my favorite books--not least for its portrayal of magic. My grandmother gave me my copy, back in the day. I vividly disliked the cover at the time, and consequently it was years before I actually opened it and read it.  But from the first chapter, I was in love. I don't think I slept until I'd finished it.

Gallico was a bestselling writer in his own day, and he's one of those writer's whose prolific output hasn't served to cement his literary legacy. There is a tendency to dismiss him as a great "storyteller" rather than a writer, and certainly the archetypes in his narratives... could use some updating.i But when he hits it, he really hits it. There is a description of a little girl's uncomfortable spangled tights in this book--forty years after I first read that passage, it still has a special niche in my brain. There was an observed sympathy for her situation that Gallico understood, and I understood that he understood.

Gallico was a man who could write convincingly about human goodness, and human bravery. That's a rare and under-rated talent in our culture.

Snihurónka is the Ukrainian Snow Maiden, companion to Did Moróz, Grandfather Frost.

Moróz has been identified with Morozko, the pre-Christian pan-Slavic personification of the snow (an animistic spirit, god, or demon, depending on your perspective), but it is widely accepted that his companion, Snihurónka, dates back only to the 19th century, and Alexander Afanasyev's 1869 ""The Poetic Outlook of Slavs about Nature."

I have yet to resolve to my own satisfaction why this should be. Afanasyev is, effectively, the Russian equivalent of the Grimm brothers, and his folktale collection techniques, where "he never tried to give any definitive version of a folktale: so, if he gathered 7 versions of one folk type, he edited them all,"* is considered to have been intellectually sophisticated and ahead of its time. Why Snihurónka should be relegated as Afanasyev's personal invention, rather than one among many folk figures that he collected--I have not seen the scholarship that tells me this is anything other than bias against the story--the Moróz figure, in other cultures, does not have a female companion.

Very little is known definitively about Slavic mythology, but one thing that is known is that the Slavic pantheon was full of unusual gender assignments, gods who are variously represented as female or male in different times and locations, and god-pairs with male and female partners. So--why not Did Moróz and Snihurónka?

I am moving some things around behind the scenes.  This site may become unavailable for a few days.

In the meantime. Squirrels.

I am currently going through a French language obsession. Or, more precisely, a French word obsession. In trying to understand why, I'm seeing myself loitering (with great pleasure) at the building blocks stage of things.

I'm very much enjoying these Sicklemoon decks on Tinycards (that's a vocabulary App, a subsidiary of the language learning Duolingo program, and a log in is probably needed to see them). Each of these decks, like a sort of "sonnet plus one," has fifteen entries, each on a closely related theme. I think that's related to the way the program is set up, but to me, they are like fifteen word poems, introducing me, almost from a child's point of view, to snippets of French life: "Les Animaux de L'Étang." "Les Animaux de la Plage." "Les Fruits de la Forêt."

The pond one is a particular favorite (also the berries). Who needs to know the French words for waterstrider and whirlygig beetle? Evidently... me.

They're words--they are names--in an Ursula K. Le Guin sort of sense. Knowing the names... I think that still bestows real power--even if only a brief flare of it.

And... drat. The formatting has cropped off the accent aigu from the capital "E" of étang.

Actually, I was tidying something boring and this sketchbook turned out to have been shoved in there by mistake.

I'm pleased that it turned up, and really like what I'd forgotten I had drawn.

I'm going to try something new... I'm reconfiguring my social media use.
When you've maintained (in a general, if not in a organized, ongoing sense) a website since 1995, you periodically realize that what you are doing with your site isn't working.
Facebook has been a part of that--it's so easy to share my ideas there, that I haven't taken the time to share them here.
But today... I have a new App installed today, and I am going to see how this goes.

Thus far, the book has lived up to my expectations. So far, Marie is 16 years old, and I have moved only a little on from her early entries as a precocious 13 year old. But what an odd privilege, to read the words of this petted young woman, as she rackets around some fine estates in Italy and France:

Something tells me that both Nice and Paris must have been nice... in 1873, when Marie was living there.

Marie is known best these days for her journal, which she herself predicted... and somewhat for her paintings. She did some very fine paintings--not enough of which are on the internet (as of 2017). Here's hoping that will be rectified in the next couple of years.  I very much like these portraits.