Short stories
Silent Snow, Secret Snow
Conrad Aiken · 1932
Synopsis
Paul Hasleman, twelve years old, hears every morning from his bed the postman approaching house by house. One December morning, the footsteps reach him muffled, as if it had snowed during the night; he looks out of the window and sees only bare paving stones. The snow returns on the following days, closer and thicker, and Paul keeps it to himself as a secret, at school in front of Miss Buell as at home in front of his parents. Worried, they eventually send for a doctor.
Context
The story appeared in autumn 1932 in the Virginia Quarterly Review, then in a collection of 1934. Its author took a close interest in psychoanalysis: Freud wished to analyse it, which he declined. Aiken said the story was drawn from his own inclination to madness, and critics have offered Freudian readings of it. Gene Kearney adapted it in 1966, then again for the television series Night Gallery in 1971.
Who it is for
A short story, entirely interior, without action. Translated into French by Joëlle Naïm in 2014, in a small volume.
Prizes and reception
Reprinted in many anthologies, it is, together with “Strange Moonlight”, one of the two best-known stories by its author.
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