Snow Maiden

A little light froth for the winter season with a Russian story. Last day of lecturing before the Christmas holidays for me (a productive conference on the ethics of substance misuse - which has stimulated a lot of thought for me, hearing what the other speakers had to say). I may write more on that later, thinking of an animist ethos in drug use (which was largely the angle that I spoke on). It was lovely catching up with people that I used to work with a decade back.

This story is one version (there are several) of the Snow Maiden Snegurochka, and her adventures with Ded Moroz, Grandfather Frost. This version is the one that Ostrovsky worked into a play and Rimsky-Korsakov later converted into a popular opera. Love sometimes comes at a high cost, as this take indicates. Old Moroz strikes me as a far more interesting figure than the western Santa Claus.