St. Nicholas’s Day

St. Nicholas’s Day is the date Vladimir Petrovitch associates with the family’s move from Moscow to their summer country house. Identified in his recollection as May 9, it marks the beginning of the weeks in which he remembers youth as a state of restless expectation and vivid feeling.

Date and Setting

The family left Moscow on May 9, which Vladimir identifies as St. Nicholas’s Day. They were settling for the summer in a country house near the Kalouga gate, facing the Neskutchny Gardens. The feast day thus gives a precise calendar point to the seasonal move that opens his account of that summer.

Place in the Recollection

Vladimir frames the date through what followed: walks in the garden and beyond the town gates, books carried but seldom read, and poetry recited aloud. His recollection links the first weeks at the house with hope, anticipation, and the sense of youth rising through sadness. St. Nicholas’s Day is not described as the occasion for a ceremony; its narrative importance is as a temporal marker for the summer’s beginning and the emotional world he remembers.