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Abstract: This article considers the specific embodiment of the soteric myth and its basic figurative and semantic coordinates within the artistic paradigm of V. P. Astafyev’s short story “Geese in the Ice Hole” (from the cycle “The Last Tribute”). The aim of the study is to explicate the subtextual figurative codes of the short story, realized through a series of semiotic, symbolic, and allusive-metaphorical narrative elements. The study draws on the methodological principles of mythopoetic, structural-semantic, and systemic-comparative text analysis and demonstrates that the mythologized reality of the story reflects the archaic layers of both Slavic and global folk culture. The analysis of the motif complexes associated with the images of a flock of geese and the mother goose and of the boy and his friends demonstrates that the soteric myth of the short story is the plot-forming one and determines the internal logic of the events depicted. It turns out that the story’s central plot conflict draws parallels with the folk fairy tale “Teryoshechka”, while several of the tale’s motifs take on an inverted character in Astafyev’s interpretation. The protagonist of “Geese in the Ice Hole”, realizing his spiritual and psychological potential by fulfilling the role of savior, thereby experiences a sacred initiation. That is why at the associative-symbolic level of the narrative, the soteric myth is presented in unity with the myth of initiation. Astafyev’s depiction of the boy’s soteric deeds is also linked to solar-chthonic motifs: they are represented by the images of the Guard Bull, the ice hole, and the Yenisei River, embodying the ambivalent unity of Chaos and Cosmos. The article offers a detailed interpretation of these natural images as invariant projections of elements of the cosmogonic myth, which helps explain their world-modeling functions in the story. Mythopoetic allusions are also salient in the semantic aura of the image of the mother goose, epitomizing the elements of the Mother Goddess archetype, as well as through the symbolism of waterfowl, which perform cosmogonic functions. Accordingly, the study concludes that the artistic paradigm of the story reveals an internal semantic unity between the soteric myth and both the initiation myth and the cosmogonic myth.

About the author(s) :

Guzel M. Ibatullina

Ufa University of Science and Technology, Sterlitamak Branch
(Sterlitamak, Russian Federation)

ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9016-760X

Publication Timeline:

Date of receipt: 03.12.2025; date of publication: 30.06.2026

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