Snow Maiden

The old Russian folk tale of the Snow Maiden is deceptively simple. It actually reveals much about the inner reality of the people from whom it originates, their sense of the elusiveness and fragility of earthly happiness.

Briefly told: An aging and childless couple playfully build a snowgirl one winter day, which miraculously turns into a real girl. With “skin as white as ivory and eyes as dark as a raven’s wing,” she grows to be the delight of her elderly parents. But with the warming days of early spring a strange melancholy seems to take hold of her. She grows silent and sits for hours in the cool shadows of the house. She seems fearful of the warm light of the lengthening days.

One day her mother, concerned by her unnatural solitude, sends her berry picking with the village girls. In the evening they build a fire in the forest and take turns at leaping over it. The Snow Maiden draws back in fear from the crackling tongues of flame, but is pushed into taking her turn at last. Vaulting over the fire, she vanishes with a hiss into a cloud of white vapor, and is never seen again.

Like so many of the sweeter things in life she appears out of nowhere and to nowhere returns.