CODA: The most famous celebration of the power of winter movement in all the world’s literature is in the last paragraphs of Gogol’s “Dead Souls,” where the novelist celebrates Russia itself as a troika racing through the snow:
The forest flies on both sides of the road with its dark rows of firs and pines, echoing with the ring of axes and the cawing of crows. The whole road is flying, no one knows where into the unseen distance…. Where art thou soaring away to, Russia? Give me the answer! But Russia gives none.