This paper analyses the receptive and semiotic aspects of N. A. Nekrasov’s poem «Frost the Red Nose» as, including both the interpretation of the key episode (the appearing of Frost) and the description of its structural and semantic connections with the variational final episode. Based on the principle of isomorphism of a part and the whole, both fragments are regarded as interpretants which ambiguate the interpretation of «the pictures from peasants’ life». The poetic capacity of intertextual and mythopoethical connotations, spreading over the entire text of the poem, as well as the relatedness between Daria and the personified creator (contemplating and
narrating) make the reader feel as if he was a coparticiupant of the act of writing in the process of «slowed down» reading. To sum it up, the episode of Frost’s appearance not only broadens the assosiations within the semantic field of «winter and death», but also externalizes the natural selfreferential
actualisation of Nekrasov’s work.