I accept that the world is changing, but this change, this closing of my used bookshop--it's a bad one.

I wish Carlson all the best as she works her way through this painful episode. Hope she makes it to the other side & back to joy.

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.