In the story of K. Paust's "Snow", written in 1943, takes place during the war, and the landscape of pre-winter, which opens the story, is filled with hidden anxiety: "Behind the house, behind the leafless garden, there was a white birch grove. In it, from morning till dusk, jackdaws screamed, flew in clouds over the bare peaks, called bad weather."

The description of nature, which creates an atmosphere of orphanhood and homelessness, is deeply in tune with the inner state of a young lieutenant Potapov, who returns to the front after being wounded and accidentally learns that his father has died: "Potapov went through the city to the river. The sky was blue above her. A rare snowball was flying obliquely between the sky and the ground... It was getting dark. The wind was blowing from the other side, from the woods, blowing tears away." The lieutenant doubts whether he should go to his own home now: "The idea that strangers, indifferent people live in his father's house, was unbearable." But he does not know that the singer Tatyana Petrovna, who was evacuated from Moscow, who settled in the house, read his letter from the front, addressed to his father, who by that time was no longer alive: "I close my eyes and then I see: I open the gate and enter the garden. Winter, snow, but the path to the old gazebo above the garden is open.-

page 9

it's been cleared with a jerk, and the lilac bushes are all covered in frost. The stoves crackle in the rooms. It smells like birch smoke."

When she learns that the lieutenant may arrive from the front any day, she realizes that "it will be hard for him to meet strangers here and see everything completely different from what he would like to see.

In the morning, Tatyana Petrovna told Varya to take a wooden shovel and clear a path to the gazebo over the cliff." And indeed, Potapov thinks: "Now it's all like a stranger to me - and this town, and the river, and the house", but, approaching the house, he sees: "A path cleared in the snow led to the gazebo." This particular detail of the winter garden is repeated: "The woman took him by the sleeve and led him along the cleared path." Its metaphorical meaning is obvious: throughout the story, both the singer and Potapov try to remember where they saw each other before, to clear, so to speak, the paths of memory. At the end of the story, repeated three times, the motif of the trail appears. Potapov writes in a letter to Tatyana Petrovna that he saw her "on the path to Oreanda. A girl was sitting on a bench near the path... She saw me, got up, and went to meet me... Since then, I fell in love with the Crimea and this path...". The characters manage to find a path to each other's hearts. This landscape image becomes a symbol of the contact found by people who have never actually met before: Tatyana Petrovna has never been to the Crimea, and Potapov was mistaken.

The meeting of two people who suddenly feel a deep spiritual kinship takes place surrounded by a traditional romantic landscape: a garden, a gazebo, a lilac tree, and the moon. The only unusual thing is that their meeting takes place in winter-the garden is covered with snow, lilacs are covered with frost. The writer lovingly describes the dilapidated gazebo: "Potapov went into the gazebo, put his hands on the old railing." The gazebo, like the garden, seems to be alive: "The garden seemed to shudder. Snow fell from the branches and rustled." This detail-light snow falling-appears twice more in the story, creating a special atmosphere of fragility, awe, and poetry: "A bird silently fell from a tree, shook off the snow. For a long time he sprinkled white dust, powdered the windows"; " On her eyelashes and on her cheeks, snow melted, which must have fallen from the branches." Such a "lightened", soft, lyrical tone of the landscape corresponds to the psychological mood of the characters.

In everyday consciousness, the winter landscape is associated with cleanliness, whiteness, light, and peace. If we turn to the symbolism of snow in the mythopoetic tradition, then its role takes on a special depth in Paustovsky's story: "The snow covering the fields in the winter months aroused the idea of a white cover in which the earth is clothed (...) Winter is the death of nature, this cover is called a shroud" (Afanasyev A. N. Poetic views of the Slavs on nature. In 3 vols. Vol. 1. Moscow, 1995, p. 122). Potapov learns in the winter that his father is dead, he comes to his grave, covered with snow.

page 10

But snow also has another important mythological meaning: on the feast of the Intercession of the Virgin, snow often fell, and "it was natural to bring the wedding veil of the heavenly goddess closer to the snow canopy "(Ibid., p. 123). Hence the proverb quoted by A. N. Afanasyev: "Mother-Protection! Cover the ground with a snowball, my fiance!", and the falling snow promised happiness to the young.

Researchers call the story "Snow"the most delicate lyrical watercolor. Indeed, the landscape is given in semitones: "The days were soft, gray. The river did not freeze for a long time; steam rose from its green water"; "The sky was muddy pink"; " The misty moon had already risen high. Birches glowed faintly in its light, casting light shadows on the snow"; "The snows shone dimly through the windows"; "The fading sky, the pale sea"; "The soft sunset could not go out".

Paustovsky's keen sense of nature was fully manifested in the story "Snow".

In describing the landscape, he uses the entire range of artistic possibilities from impressionistic detail that captures the flying moments of life, realistic accurate sketches of everyday life to the symbolically multi-valued image of snow. After reading the story to the end, we understand why Paustovsky called it that way - "Snow".

During the war years, the writer was looking for something to support a person's courage to live and fight. Paustovsky tried to recall the realities of the desired peaceful life. The image of a small provincial house combines the features of urban and rural life: Potapov's house "stood on a mountain, above the northern river, at the very exit from the town", that is, on the outskirts. It is, in fact, no different from an ordinary country house - with a creaking gate, with an ancient bell in the hall, on which was cast a funny inscription: "I'm hanging at the door-ring the bell cheerfully!"; " Down under the mountain, women were rattling empty buckets-they were going to the ice hole for water." This measured provincial life now seems so attractive to Potapov: "Does the bell ring at the door? "What is it?" he asks in a letter to his father. "Am I going to wash my face out of the way with our pitcher of well water again?" Remember? Oh, if you only knew how much I loved it all from here, from afar... I remembered this in the most terrible moments of the battle. I knew that I was protecting not only the whole country, but also this small and most dear corner of it for me - and you, and our garden, and our curly-haired boys, and the birch groves across the river, and even the cat Arkhip."

Thanks to the landscape, Paustovsky managed to create a touching, lyrical, concrete and at the same time generalized image of his native corner, which lives in the soul of every person.

Permanent link to this publication: