Pictured above, a winter landscape in Russia (photographer not known)
From the final part of Red-Nosed Frost, a long folk-poem for children by Nikolay Nekrasov (born 10 December, 1821; died 8 January, 1878)
(In this scene, a young peasant woman is frozen to death in a winter forest.)
Not a sound! The soul leaves the world
of sorrow and passion. You stand
and feel this dead stillness
overcoming you.
Not a sound! All you see
is the blue sky, the sun and the forest
festively clad in the lusterless silver of frost,
full of marvels,
mysteriously attractive
and deeply impassive. Then , suddenly—
a chance sound, a kind of little rustle:
it is a squirrel passing from tree-top to tree-top.
The squirrel as it leaps onto the next pine
causes a lump of snow to drop on Daria
—and Daria stands and freezes
in her enchanted sleep
of sorrow and passion. You stand
and feel this dead stillness
overcoming you.
Not a sound! All you see
is the blue sky, the sun and the forest
festively clad in the lusterless silver of frost,
full of marvels,
mysteriously attractive
and deeply impassive. Then , suddenly—
a chance sound, a kind of little rustle:
it is a squirrel passing from tree-top to tree-top.
The squirrel as it leaps onto the next pine
causes a lump of snow to drop on Daria
—and Daria stands and freezes
in her enchanted sleep
(1864)
—translated from the Russian by Vladimir Nabokov between 1948 and 1951
