Read stories by Andrei Platonov online. The artistic world of stories by Andrei Platonovich Platonov
Years of life: from 08/28/1899 to 01/05/1951
Andrei Platnov is a Russian writer and playwright, one of the most original Russian writers in style and language of the first half of the 20th century.
Andrei Platonovich Klimentov was born on August 28 (16), 1899 (his birthday is officially celebrated on September 1) in large family a mechanic at railway workshops in the settlement of Yamskaya on the outskirts of the city of Voronezh. He took the surname Platonov for himself already in the 20s, forming it on behalf of his father, Platon Firsovich Klimentov. Andrey was the eldest of eleven children. He studied first at a parochial school, and then at a city school. He started working at the age of 14. “We had a family... of 10 people, and I am the eldest son - the only worker, except for my father. My father... could not feed such a horde,” he later wrote in his memoirs. The young man worked as a delivery boy, a foundry worker at a pipe factory, an electrical engineer, and an assistant driver. The motif of the locomotive will run through all of his work.
After the revolution, in 1918, Andrei went back to school. Enters the Voronezh Railway Polytechnic in the electrical engineering department. Inspired by new socialist ideas and trends, he participated in discussions of the Communist Union of Journalists, published articles, stories, poems in Voronezh newspapers and magazines (“Voronezh Commune”, “Red Village”, “Iron Road”, etc.). But the Civil War confused all plans and in 1919 he went to the front as an ordinary rifleman in a railway detachment, and also as a “journalist for the Soviet press and writer.”
After the end of the Civil War, Andrei Platonov entered the Polytechnic Institute. His first book. In 1920, the First All-Russian Congress of Proletarian Writers took place in Moscow, where Platonov represented the Voronezh Writers' Organization. A survey was conducted at the congress. Platonov’s answers give an idea of him as an honest (not inventing a “revolutionary past” for himself, like others) and quite confident in his abilities as a young writer: “Did you participate in revolutionary movement, where and when?" - "No"; “Have you been subjected to repression before October revolution?.." - "No"; “What obstacles have hindered or are hindering your literary development? - “Low education, lack of free time”; “Which writers have influenced you the most?” - “None”; "What literary trends do you sympathize or belong?” - “No, I have my own.” At the same time, Andrei Platonov a short time was even a candidate member of the RCP(b), but for criticizing the “official revolutionaries” in the feuilleton “The Human Soul is an Indecent Animal” in 1921, he was expelled as a “shaky and unstable element.” In the same year, his first book (brochure) was published - a collection of essays "Electrification", which asserted the idea that "electrification is the same revolution in technology, with the same meaning as October 1917." IN next year in Krasnodar, a collection of poems “Blue Depth”, a collection compiled from his youthful pre-revolutionary and post-revolutionary poems. After the first published books literary work for a while Platonov takes second place and he gives himself completely practical work by specialty. A proletarian writer, in his opinion, was obliged to have a profession and to create “in his free weekend hours.” In 1921–1922 he served as chairman Extraordinary Commission to combat drought in the Voronezh province, and from 1923 to 1926 in the Voronezh provincial land administration he worked as a provincial land reclamation specialist, head of electrification work Agriculture. At that time, he was seriously passionate about the task of transforming the entire agricultural system, and these were not some violent or demonstrative labor feats, but the consistent materialization of the views of Platonov himself, which he outlined in the “Russian Kolymaga”: “The fight against hunger, the fight for The life of the revolution comes down to fighting drought. There is a way to defeat it. And this is the only means: hydrofication, that is, the construction of artificial irrigation systems for fields with cultivated plants. The revolution turns into a fight against nature.” Platonov of these years is a maximalist dreamer, a fighter against
elemental forces in nature and life, calling for the speedy transformation of Russia “into the country of thought and metal.” Later, as a technically educated and gifted person (having dozens of patents for his inventions), he will see the environmental danger of such a strategy. Despite his constant employment, in rare free moments Platonov continues to study literature. He publishes journalistic articles, stories and poems in Voronezh newspapers and magazines and even in the Moscow magazine “Kuznitsa”. Writes stories on topics village life(“In the Starry Desert”, 1921, “Chuldik and Epishka”, 1920), as well as science fiction stories and novellas (“Descendants of the Sun”, 1922, “Markun”, 1922, “Moon Bomb”, 1926), in which belief technical progress connects with the utopian idealism of the artisan-inventor.
In 1926, Andrei Platonov was elected to the Central Committee of the Union of Agriculture and Forestry at the All-Russian Congress of Land Reclamation Workers and moved with his family to Moscow. By that time he was married to Masha Kashintseva. He met her in 1920 at the Voronezh branch of literary writers, where she served. “Eternal Mary”, she became the writer’s muse, “Epiphanian Gates” and many poems that Platonov composed throughout his life are dedicated to her.
Work in the Central Committee of the Union of Agriculture did not go well. “This is partly to blame for the passion for thinking and writing,” Platonov admitted in a letter. For about three months he worked in Tambov as head of the land reclamation department. During this time, a series of stories were written in Russian historical topics, the fantastic story “Ethereal Tract” (1927), the story “Epiphanian Gateways” (about Peter’s transformations in Russia) and the first edition of “The City of Gradov” (a satirical interpretation of the new state philosophy).
Since 1927, Platonov and his family finally settled in Moscow: the writer in him defeated the engineer. The next two years, perhaps, can be called the most prosperous in his writer's fate, which Grigory Zakharovich Litvin-Molotov contributed a lot to. A member of the Voronezh provincial committee and the editorial board of the Voronezh Izvestia (he attracted the young Platonov to work in local newspapers), Litvin-Molotov then headed the Burevestnik publishing house in Krasnodar (where Platonov’s collection of poems was published), and from the mid-1920s he became the chief editor of the publishing house
“Young Guard” in Moscow (where the first two collections of Platonov’s stories and stories were published). At this time, Andrei Platonov created a new edition of “The City of Gradov”, a cycle of stories: “ Hidden Man"(an attempt to understand
Civil War and new social relations through the eyes of the “natural fool” Foma Pukhov), “Yamskaya Sloboda”, “Builders of the Country” (from which the novel “Chevengur” will grow). Collaborates in the magazines “Krasnaya Nov”, “ New world", "October", "Young Guard", publishes collections: "Epiphanian Locks" (1927), "Meadow Masters" (1928), "The Origin of the Master" (1929). Moscow literary life also inspired Platonov's satirical pen to create several parodies: “Factory of Literature” (written for the magazine “October”, but published there only in 1991),
“Moscow Society of Literature Consumers. MOPL", "Antisexus" (dialogue with LEF, Mayakovsky, Shklovsky, etc.).
At that time, everything in the writer’s life was going well: he was noticed by critics, and Maxim Gorky approved of him. Moreover, it was Platonov the satirist who liked Gorky: “In your psyche,” as I perceive it, “there is an affinity with Gogol. Therefore, try yourself at comedy, not drama. Leave drama for personal pleasure.” But Platonov did not listen to the recommendations, writing only a few satirical works. A critical turning point came in the writer’s fate in 1929, when critics of RAPP crushed his stories “Che-Che-O”, “State Resident”, “Doubting Makar”. “Doubting Makar” was also read by Stalin himself (who, unlike subsequent leaders, read everything even more or less noticeable) - he did not approve of the ideological ambiguity and anarchic nature of the story. Publishers
immediately, for ideological reasons, they begin to reject all of his works. The set of the novel “Chevengur”, which had already been completed to layout, was scattered (the novel will be released after death of the writer, in 1972 in Paris).
However, a wave of criticism and even the threat of reprisals did not force Andrei Platonov to put down his pen. He also did not become a dissident, as supporters of perestroika tried to make him out to be after his death. In a letter to Maxim Gorky in those difficult times, he writes: “I am writing this letter to you not to complain - I have nothing to complain about... I want to tell you that I am not a class enemy, and no matter how much I have suffered as a result of my mistakes, I cannot become a class enemy and it is impossible to bring me to this state, because the working class is my homeland, and my future is connected with the proletariat... to be rejected by my class and to be internally still with it is much more painful, than to recognize oneself as an alien... and step aside.”
And it was during this period that Platonov’s new poetics crystallized, the revolutionary aspiration for the future and the declarative and illustrative presentation of the utopian idea was replaced by searches deep meanings life - “the substance of existence.” The author’s unique style is emerging, based on poetic techniques and the word-formation mechanism of the language, which reveals the hidden, primary meaning of the word. Platonov’s expressive tongue-tiedness (for which he is so valued by some, but cannot be accepted by other readers) has no precedents in Russian literature, partly relying on the traditions of symbolism, as well as processing the experience of the avant-garde and the newspaper vocabulary of his time.
In the fall of 1929, Andrei Platonov, on instructions from the People's Commissariat of Agriculture, traveled a lot to state and collective farms Central Russia, thanks to materials from these trips, he begins to work on the story “The Pit,” which will become one of his main masterpieces, but will never be published during the author’s lifetime (first published in the USSR in 1987)).
In the mid-1930s, Platonov was a writer who wrote mainly on the table. The situation is aggravated by everyday troubles: the family wanders for a long time in temporary apartments, until in 1931 they settle in a wing of a mansion on Tverskoy Boulevard(now the Herzen Literary Institute). But no matter what, the abundance of ideas overwhelms the writer. At this time, he wrote the novel “Happy Moscow”, the play “The Voice of the Father”, the folk tragedy “14 Red Huts” (about the famine in the Russian province during the time of “dekulakization”), articles on literature (about Pushkin, Akhmatova, Hemingway, Chapek , Greene, Paustovsky). Business trips from the People's Commissariat of Agriculture to collective and state farms in the Volga region and the North Caucasus provided the writer with material for the story “The Juvenile Sea” (1932).
After “Chevengur” and “The Pit,” the writer gradually begins to move away from large-scale social canvases into the world of ordinary universal human motives - emotional experiences and love dramas. But at the same time, the psychological modeling of the characters is enhanced; ironic attitude towards love gives way to depth psychological reading. Collection lyrical stories“The Potudan River” was the first to be published after a long period of oblivion. The book was published in 1937, but immediately after its release it was subjected to derogatory criticism. Paradoxically, it was at this time that the first and only monographic study of his work was written during the writer’s lifetime. It was a large accusatory article by A. Gurvich “Andrei Platonov” in the magazine “Krasnaya Nov” (1937, No. 10). Tracing the creative evolution of the writer, Gurvich determined that the basis of Platonov’s artistic system is the “religious structure of the soul.” Essentially true, but against the backdrop of the “godless five-year plan” this was actually a political denunciation.
The situation is aggravated by another event - in 1938, Platonov’s fifteen-year-old son Tosha (Platon) was arrested and convicted under Article 58/10 (for anti-Soviet agitation) on a fabricated case. He was released only in the fall of 1940 thanks to the efforts of Mikhail Sholokhov (at that time a deputy Supreme Council USSR), who was friends with the Platonovs.
However, the joy was short-lived - the son returned terminally ill with tuberculosis and died in January 1943. Andrei Platonov, in his vain attempts to get rid of his son, became infected with tuberculosis.
In 1936-1941, Platonov appeared in print mainly as a literary critic. He publishes in magazines under various pseudonyms." Literary critic", "Literary Review", etc.. Works on the novel "Journey from Moscow to St. Petersburg" (its manuscript was lost at the beginning of the war), writes children's plays "Granny's Hut", "Good Titus", "Step-Daughter".
With the beginning of the Great Patriotic War The writer and his family are evacuated to Ufa, where a collection of his war stories “Under the Skies of the Motherland” is published. In 1942, he volunteered to go to the front as a private, but soon became a front-line correspondent for Red Star. During the war, four more books by Platonov were published: “Spiritualized People” (1942), “Stories about the Motherland”, “Armor” (both 1943), “Towards the Sunset” (1945). At the end of 1946, one of the best stories Platonov - “Return”, in which the author, using the example of “Ivanov’s family” (this is the original title), reflects on the fact that war cripples people not only physically, but also morally. Critics immediately branded the story as slander against the “hero soldier” and, in fact, thereby putting an end to the writer’s lifetime publications.
In the last years of his life, the seriously ill writer was forced to earn his living by transcribing Russian and Bashkir folk tales. He's working on satirical play on the theme of American reality (with allusions to the USSR) "Noah's Ark", but never manages to finish it. How could he be supported by the writers Sholokhov and Fadeev (the latter, who once “on duty” criticized “Doubting Makar”). With the help of Sholokhov, it was possible to publish books of fairy tales “Finist - Clear Falcon”, “Bashkir folk tales"(both 1947), "The Magic Ring" (1949). At that time, Platonov lived in a wing of the A. M. Gorky Literary Institute. One of the writers, seeing how he swept the yard under his windows, started a legend that he had to work as a janitor.
Tuberculosis, which he contracted from his son, makes itself felt more and more often, and on January 5, 1951, Andrei Platonov passed away. He was buried on Vagankovskoe cemetery next to my son.
One of the most significant writers of the 20th century passed away unrecognized. He never saw his main works - the novel “Chevengur”, the stories “The Pit”, “The Juvenile Sea”, “Dzhan” - published. Only in the Khrushchev sixties did the first Plato books timidly begin to appear. His main works were published only in the late 80s, and the master’s bright originality aroused a wave of interest in him around the world. Ernest Hemingway in his Nobel speech named Platonov among his teachers.
Bibliography
1920 - story “Chuldik and Epishka”
1921 - story “Markun”, brochure “Electrification”
1922 - book of poems “Blue Depth”
1926 - story “Antisexus”, story “Epiphanian Locks”
1927 - the story “City of Gradov”, the story “The Hidden Man” and
1928 - story “The Origin of the Master”, play “Fools on the Periphery” 1939 - story “The Motherland of Electricity”
1942 - “Under the skies of the motherland” (collection of stories), published in Ufa
1942 - “Spiritualized People” (collection of stories)
1943 - “Stories about the Motherland” (collection of stories)
1943 - “Armor” (collection of stories)
1945 - collection of stories “Towards the Sunset”, story “Nikita”
1946 - story “Ivanov’s Family” (“Return”)
1947 - books “Finist - Clear Falcon”, “Bashkir Folk Tales”
1948 - play “Lyceum Student”
1950 - “The Magic Ring” (collection of Russian folk tales)
1951 - (unfinished mystery play)
Film adaptations of works, theatrical performances
Fro (1964),
film by Rezo Esadze based on the story of the same name.
Lonely voice of a man (1978)
film by Alexander Sokurov based on the works of Andrei Platonov “The Potudan River”, “The Hidden Man”, “The Origin of the Master”.
Three brothers / Tre fratelli (1981)
French-Italian film directed by Francesco Rosi based on the story “The Third Son”, the action of the story is moved to Italy.
Maria's Lovers(1984)
A film by Andrei Konchalovsky based on “The Potudan River”, the location has been moved to the USA.
The beginning of an unknown century (1987)
Film almanac, which includes the short film “The Motherland of Electricity” by Larisa Efimovna Shepitko, based on the story of the same name
Cow (1990)
cartoon by Alexander Petrov based on the story of the same name.
I have to live again (2001)
film by Vasily Panin based on the stories "In the Beautiful and furious world", "At the Dawn of Misty Youth" and "The Hidden Man"
Random glance (2005)
a very strange film in the art-house style from Vladimir Mirzoev. It is alleged that the script is based on the story “The Pit” by Andrei Platonov
Father (2007)
film by Ivan Solovov based on the story “Return”.
ANDREY PLATONOV - Russian Soviet writer and playwright, one of the most original Russian writers in style and language of the first half of the 20th century.
Born on August 28, 1899 in Voronezh. Father - Klimentov Platon Firsovich - worked as a locomotive driver and mechanic in Voronezh railway workshops. Twice he was awarded the title of Hero of Labor (in 1920 and 1922), and in 1928 he joined the party. Mother - Lobochikhina Maria Vasilievna - daughter of a watchmaker, housewife, mother of eleven (ten) children, Andrey - the eldest. Maria Vasilievna gives birth to children almost every year, Andrey, as the eldest, takes part in raising and, later, feeding all his brothers and sisters. Both parents are buried at the Chugunovskoye cemetery in Voronezh.
In 1906 he entered the parochial school. From 1909 to 1913 he studied at a city 4-grade school.
From 1913 (or from the spring of 1914) to 1915 he worked as a day laborer and for hire, as a boy in the office of the Rossiya insurance company, as an assistant driver on a locomotive on the Ust estate of Colonel Bek-Marmarchev. In 1915 he worked as a foundry worker at a pipe factory. From the autumn of 1915 to the spring of 1918 - in many Voronezh workshops - for the production of millstones, casting, etc.
In 1918 he entered the electrical engineering department of the Voronezh Polytechnic Institute; serves on the main revolutionary committee of the South-Eastern Railways, on the editorial board of the magazine “Ironway”. Participated in Civil War as a frontline correspondent. Since 1919 he published his works, collaborating with several newspapers as a poet, publicist and critic. In the summer of 1919, he visited Novokhopyorsk as a correspondent for the newspaper Izvestia of the Defense Council of the Voronezh Fortified Region. Soon after this he was mobilized into the Red Army. He worked until the fall on a steam locomotive for military transportation as an assistant driver; then he was transferred to a Special Purpose Unit (CHON) in a railway detachment as an ordinary rifleman. In the summer of 1921 he graduated from a one-year provincial party school. In the same year, his first book, the brochure “Electrification,” was published, and his poems were also published in the collective collection “Poems.” In 1922 his son Plato was born. In the same year, Platonov’s book of poems “Blue Depth” was published in Krasnodar. In the same year, he was appointed chairman of the provincial Commission on Hydrofication under the Land Department. In 1923, Bryusov responded positively to Platonov’s book of poems. From 1923 to 1926 he worked in the province as a land reclamation engineer and specialist in agricultural electrification (head of the electrification department in the Gubernia Land Administration, built three power plants, one of them in the village of Rogachevka).
In the spring of 1924 he participated in the First All-Russian Hydrological Congress, he developed projects for hydrofication of the region, and plans for insuring crops against drought. At the same time, in the spring of 1924, he again submitted an application to join the RCP (b) and was accepted by the GZO cell as a candidate, but never joined. In June 1925, Platonov’s first meeting took place with V.B. Shklovsky, who flew to Voronezh on an Aviakhim plane to promote the achievements of Soviet aviation with the slogan “Facing the Village.” In the 1920s, he changed his last name from Klimentov to Platonov (the pseudonym was formed on behalf of the writer’s father).
In 1931, the published work “For Future Use” caused sharp criticism from A. A. Fadeev and I. V. Stalin. The writer had the opportunity to catch his breath only when RAPP itself was flogged for its excesses and dissolved. In 1934, Platonov was even included in a collective writing trip around Central Asia- and this was already a sign of some trust. The writer brought the story “Takyr” from Turkmenistan, and his persecution began again: a devastating article appeared in Pravda (January 18, 1935), after which the magazines again stopped accepting Plato’s texts and returned those already accepted. In 1936 the stories “Fro”, “Immortality”, “Clay House in the District Garden”, “The Third Son”, “Semyon” were published, and in 1937 the story “The Potudan River” was published.
In May 1938, the writer’s fifteen-year-old son was arrested, having returned from imprisonment in the fall of 1940, terminally ill with tuberculosis, after the troubles of Platonov’s friends. The writer gets infected from his son while caring for him, and from then on until his death he will carry tuberculosis within himself. In January 1943, Platonov's son died.
During the Great Patriotic War, the writer with the rank of captain served as a war correspondent for the newspaper "Red Star", Platonov's war stories appeared in print. There is an opinion that this was done with Stalin's personal permission.
At the end of 1946, Platonov’s story “Return” (“The Ivanov Family”) was published, for which the writer was attacked in 1947 and was accused of libel. In the late 1940s, deprived of the opportunity to earn a living by writing, Platonov was engaged in literary adaptation of Russian and Bashkir fairy tales, which were published in children's magazines. Platonov's worldview evolved from a belief in the reconstruction of socialism to an ironic image of the future.
He died on January 5, 1951 in Moscow from tuberculosis. He was buried in the Armenian cemetery. The writer left behind a daughter, Maria Platonova, who prepared her father’s books for publication.
The text is based on the books:
A. Platonov. Notebooks. Materials for the biography. M.: Heritage, 2000.
A Notebook of Other People's Ideas, Thoughts and Conversations (1936)
All about Andrey Platonov
Biography
Articles about Andrey Platonov:
Orlov V. Andrey Platonov: Recent years
Nagibin Yu. Fragment of the diary. Platonov's funeral
Rassadin S. Why the tyrant hated Zoshchenko and Platonov
Yuryeva A. The main biographers of Andrei Platonov were NKVD-OGPU informants
Andrey Platonov: Memories of friends and colleagues
The most important dates in the life and work of A. Platonov
Wikipedia
Joseph Brodsky about Andrei Platonov:
“Platonov was born in 1899 and died in 1951 from tuberculosis, having become infected from his son, whose release from prison he, after much effort, achieved, only for the son to die in his arms. A thin face looks at us from the photograph, as simple as countryside, looks patiently and as if willing to accept and overcome everything that befalls.” (Brodsky I. “Disasters in the Air”)
Brief biographical sketch
From the book: Mikheev M.Yu. Into the world of Platonov through his language. Assumptions, facts, interpretations, guesses. M.: Moscow State University Publishing House, 2002. 407 p.
“At the end of 1929, the writer was subjected to “ideological flogging” for publishing (together with B. Pilnyak) the essay “Che-Che-O”, and then, in 1931, for his own story “Doubting Makar” (published in the magazine October A. Fadeev, what Chief Editor immediately publicly repented and apologized, calling the story “ideologically unrestrained, anarchist”, for which, they say, he “got it right from Stalin.”
Insarov M. Andrey Platonovich Platonov (1899–1951). Life and creative path
Bolot N. Platonov Andrey Platonovich
Mikheev M.Yu. Notebooks and diaries (30s): Mikhail Prishvin, Pavel Filonov, Andrey Platonov, ...
The text is compiled from a lecture course given at the Faculty of History and Philology of the Russian State University for the Humanities in 2002.
“When reading Plato’s notebooks before a reader familiar with his main key topics, then the skeleton of a recognizable plot will flash, or suddenly an unknown variation of some already known character will appear. Or a thought that is not developed anywhere further, immediately torn off, will rush through, which in the future could be useful to the author and, in the event of a new return to it, would result, perhaps, in a story, tale, etc. But more often than not it happens that notebook Platonov’s thought, not completed (as if “not thought out” to us, the readers, and not presented, not understandable due to our lack of awareness), as if stopped by the author halfway.”
Kozhemyakin A. New pages in the life and work of writer Andrei Platonov
“As I see it, we should compare the activities of the hydromeliorator and electrifier Andrei Platonov with his first literary works.”
Simonov K. Through the eyes of a man of my generation. Reflections on I.V. Stalin
Fragment of the book by Konstantin Simonov (M., APN, 1989).
Kovrov M. Mystic of Russian victory (To the 100th anniversary of the birth of Andrei Platonov)
Dystopia is no worse than life
Conversation between correspondent G. Litvintsev and professor of Voronezh state university Vladislav Svitelsky, author of the collection of articles “Andrei Platonov Yesterday and Today.”
“It seems that if the author had ready-made answers, his works would not be so compelling and would not have such depth and power. He searched for the truth along with his heroes and his time. The crossroads of his thoughts are no less complex and tragic than the crossroads of history itself. Platonov lived in his questions and doubts. At the turn of the 20-30s, he made the necessary rethinking of ideology and practice Soviet era, to which we have only broken through on a large scale today.”
Iovanovic M. Genius at the fork in the road
From the notes of a literary critic.
“The most painful thing for the “impatient” Platonov and his heroes was the question of questions - the search for happiness (universal happiness). Russian literature, following Kant, who placed the moral law above eudaimonia (the desire for happiness), did not know this category; her heroes behaved like Pushkin, seeking not happiness, but peace and freedom. Platonov wanted to evade this tradition, to “invent” happiness both for the individual and for entire nations.”
Gumilevsky L.I. "Fate and Life"
“It’s not difficult to assume that readers’ assessments will be different. Some will be attracted by colorful pictures of the past, recreated using seemingly mundane, but artistically meaningful details. Others will be more interested in portraits of writers (we especially note the pages dedicated to Andrei Platonov).”
Basinsky P. No violinist needed
“Someday, of course, it will be modern. Someday... a day Last Judgment. When material grievances become meaningless, when it doesn’t matter where this day finds you, in a Merc or a Zaporozhets, when a shrimp seems no sweeter than a stale crust, and a luxurious car no smoother than a country road. When money won’t be needed.”
Malaya S. Platonov Andrey Platonovich
Works of Platonov
Electronic library "Librusek"
Most full meeting works by A. Platonov.
Library of Maxim Moshkov
Stories. Stories. Inhabitant of the State. Blue Depth (Book of Poems).
Classica.ru
Stories.
Stories: “The Pit”, “The Potudan River”, “The Hidden Man”, “The Juvenile Sea”.
Novels: “Happy Moscow”, “Chevengur”.
Fiction: online collection of works
“Anti-sexus”, “For future use”, “City of Gradov”, “State Resident”, “The Pit”, “Meadow Masters”, “Moscow Violin”, “Inanimate Enemy”, “Once in Love”, “Father-Mother” (script) , “Potudan River”, “Semyon”, “The Hidden Man”, “Happy Moscow”, “Doubting Makar”, “Fro”, “Chevengur”, “Juvenile Sea”.
Collection of rare texts
Once loved
Andrei Platonov in the documents of the OGPU-NKVD-NKGB.19301945 (Publication by Vladimir Goncharov and Vladimir Nekhotin)
Machinist (libretto)
Father-Mother (script)
In a beautiful and furious world (Machinist Maltsev)
Return (Ivanov Family)
City of Gradov
Pit
“Voshchev grabbed his bag and went into the night. The questioning sky shone over Voshchev with the tormenting power of the stars, but in the city the lights had already been extinguished, and whoever had the opportunity slept, having eaten his fill of dinner. Voshchev went down the crumbs of earth into the ravine and lay down there with his stomach down to fall asleep and part with himself. But sleep required peace of mind, trust in life, forgiveness of past grief, and Voshchev lay in the dry tension of consciousness and did not know whether he was useful in the world or whether everything would work out well without him? A wind blew from an unknown place so that people would not suffocate, and with a weak voice of doubt a suburban dog made its service known.”
Sandy teacher
“Four years have passed, the most indescribable years in a person’s life, when the buds burst in a young chest and femininity, consciousness blossoms, and the idea of life is born. It's strange that no one ever helps at this age young man overcome the anxieties that torment him; no one will support the thin trunk, which is torn by the wind of doubt and shaken by the earthquake of growth. Someday youth will not be defenseless.
Mary, of course, had both love and a thirst for suicide, and this bitter moisture waters every growing life.”
Hidden Man
Happy Moscow
"Clear and rising life Moscow Chestnova began with that autumn day, when she was sitting at school by the window, already in the second group, she looked into the death of leaves on the boulevard and read with interest the sign of the opposite house: Workers' and Peasants' Library and Reading Room named after A.V. Koltsova".
Doubting Makar
Fro
“The young woman stopped in surprise in the midst of such a strange light: in the twenty years of her life, she did not remember such an empty, shining, silent space, she felt that her heart was weakening from the lightness of the air, from the hope that her loved one would come back.”
Chevengur (in the first edition - “Builders of the Country”)
“A man appears with that vigilant and sadly emaciated face who can fix and equip everything, but he himself lived his life unequipped. Any product, from a frying pan to an alarm clock, has not escaped the hands of this man. He also did not refuse to throw out soles, pour wolf shot and stamp fake medals for sale at rural antique fairs. He never made anything for himself, neither a family nor a home.”
Juvenile Sea
Sea of Youth
Articles about creativity
Section “Platonic Studies” on the website of the CHRONOS project
Articles about Andrey Platonov
Bobrova O. Andrei Platonov is a great Russian writer of the twentieth century. To the 100th anniversary of his birth
“What is there in Platonov’s prose? There is life: its pain and blood, greatness and strangeness, logic and absurdity, its fragility and infinity. This prose seems to push a person into an open, uncomfortable world. Makes you feel loneliness, suffer along with the heroes and struggle to find the truth, the meaning of all things.”
Mikheev M.Yu. Into the world of Platonov - through his language. Assumptions, facts, interpretations, guesses
Platonov created in his works, in essence, something like a religion of new times, trying to resist both traditional forms of religious cult and the fusion of heterogeneous mythologies that formed within the framework of socialist realism.
Lyuty V. About the language of Andrei Platonov
Tarasov A.B. “The Third Kingdom” as an attempt to model the world of “new” righteousness: A. Platonov and M. Tsvetaeva
Surikov V. Free thing by Andrei Platonov
About the works "Chevengur", "Pit".
“It’s a little disgusting, but then it will be good... Who doesn’t know this simplest deception, the elementary exchange of mental suffering for mental comfort, that happens every second in the myriads of human thoughts and actions? Who knows how unbearably difficult it is to resist it in everyday, insignificant things and not to be seduced by the availability of peace? Is it through this exchange that in every act, in every thought, the unsteady, elusive line between good and evil passes? Is this where the danger of mass “temptation” lurks—when some superidea, teasing universal happiness, combines these elementary movements into a mad leap?
Andrei Platonov found himself in a different role - in the role of a doubting participant in the events, who did not want, did not allow himself to step aside and desperately rushed into the very thick of events, into the hottest and most dangerous place.
“You can’t come here, here is an abyss, here is unprecedented bloody suffering, here is brutality, you can only get out of here on four paws.” All this should not have been said, but shouted out to go out in front of the enraged, breaking loose common sense ideas.
What was required was no longer dissent, but code of action.”
Ordynskaya I.N. “Chevengur” by Andrei Platonov is a symbol of love for his people
This is a very thankless task - to write the truth about one’s time; as a rule, no one is forgiven for such attempts, especially talented writers, whose works themselves seem to begin to live. After all, destroying a book is often more difficult than real person. And the images fiction they often remain immortal altogether.
About the novel “Chevengur”
Whole line terrible sacrifices were made by the commune for the sake of increasing the “stuff of existence”, “stuff of life” repeatedly mentioned in the novel, which is the key concept of the novel.
Joseph Brodsky. Afterword to “The Pit” by A. Platonov
“In our time, it is not customary to consider a writer outside the social context, and Platonov would be the most suitable object for such an analysis if what he does with language did not go far beyond the framework of that utopia (building socialism in Russia), a witness and chronicler which he appears in “The pit”.
About the works “Epiphanian Gateways”, “Ethereal Route”, “City of Grads”
Barsht K.A. Truth in round and liquid form. Henri Bergson in “The Pit” by Andrei Platonov // Questions of Philosophy. – 2007. – No. 4. – P. 144–157.
The idea that A. Platonov’s “Pit” describes shock socialist construction is not so indisputable. The construction theme only covers, in the form of packaging material, what is hidden inside - a philosophical mystery filled with tension.
Olga Meyerson. Undefamiliarization of Andrei Platonov: danger and the power of inertia of perception
Review of a collection of two special issues of the journal “Essays in Poetics”, which published materials from a conference on the study of Plato’s creative heritage, held in 2001 in Oxford.
Loginov V. “Happy Moscow” by A. Platonov from the point of view of an inexperienced computer user
Henryk Chlystowski. Afterword to the translation of “Happy Moscow” by Andrei Platonov
“What kind of world is created in Platonov’s works? This world (especially in “Happy Moscow”) is completely devoid of history, memory and religion, a world that wants to build everything anew, but deprived of the main foundation is forced to constantly run into the future, into delirious unrealistic fantasies, and place its hopes there. This future is beautiful, wonderful and problem-free, but you need to somehow get to it, break through the inertia of matter and human vices.”
Bulygin A., Gushchin A. “Extraneous space”. Anthroponymy of the “Pit” (fragment)
Pin L.A. Andrey Platonovich Platonov. "Revolution is like a locomotive"
Gracheva E. “Inspiration”: The Unmade Film of Andrei Platonov
This was very important for Platonov. He had just begun to recover from the brutal pogrom that the Rappovites staged for his “poor peasant chronicle” “For Future Use” (“Krasnaya Nov”, 1931, No. 9). Stalin himself decorated the margins of the chronicle with the notes “Bastard!” and “Scoundrel!”, the frightened Fadeev declared that Platonov is “a kulak agent of the latest formation,” and off we go...
Andrey Platonov
Stories
ADVENTURE
Before Dvanov’s eyes, accustomed to distant horizons, a narrow valley of some ancient, long-dry river opened up. The valley was occupied by the settlement of Petropavlovka - a huge herd of hungry households huddled together at a cramped watering hole.
On Petropavlovka Street Dvanov saw boulders that had once been brought here by glaciers. Boulder stones now lay near the huts and served as a seat for thoughtful old people.
Dvanov remembered these stones when he was sitting in the Petropavlovsk village council. He went there to get a place to stay for the night and to write an article for the provincial newspaper. Dvanov wrote that nature does not create ordinary things, so it turns out well. But nature has no gift, she takes with patience. From the rare ravines of the steppe, from the deep soils, it is necessary to give water to the high steppe in order to establish socialism in the steppe. While hunting for water, Dvanov reported, we will simultaneously reach the goal of our hearts - indifferent peasants will understand and love us, because love is not a gift, but construction.
Dvanov knew how to combine the intimate with the social in order to preserve within himself an attraction to the social.
Dvanov began to be tormented by the certainty that he already knew how to create a socialist world in the steppe, but nothing had yet been accomplished. He could not endure the gap between truth and reality for long. His head sat on his warm neck, and what his head thought immediately turned into steps, manual labor and behavior. Dvanov felt his consciousness like hunger - you cannot renounce it and you will not forget it.
The Council refused the cart, and the man, whom everyone in Petropavlovka called God, showed Dvanov the way to the settlement of Kaverino, from where to railway twenty versts.
At noon Dvanov went out onto the mountain road. Below lay the gloomy Valley of a quiet steppe river. But it was clear that the river was dying: it was filled with ravines, and it was not so much flowing as being dissolved into swamps. Autumn melancholy hung over the swamps. The fish sank to the bottom, the birds flew away, the insects froze in the crevices of the dead sedge. Living creatures loved the warmth and the irritating light of the sun, their solemn ringing shrank into low holes and slowed down into a whisper.
Dvanov believed in the possibility of eavesdropping and collecting in nature all the most sonorous, sad and triumphant things in order to make songs as powerful as natural forces, and attracting like the wind. In this wilderness, Dvanov began talking to himself. He loved to talk alone open places. Talking to yourself is an art; talking to others is fun. That's why man walking into society, into fun, like water down a slope.
Dvanov made a semicircle with his head and looked around half visible world. And he spoke again to think:
“Nature is the basis of the matter. These glorified hillocks and streams are not only field poetry. They can water the soil, cows and people and move motors.”
In sight of the smoke from the village of Kaverino, the road went over a ravine. In the ravine the air thickened into darkness. There were some silent swamps there and, perhaps, huddled strange people, who have departed from the diversity of life for the monotony of thoughtfulness.
The snoring of tired horses was heard from the depths of the ravine. Some people were riding, and their horses were stuck in the clay.
There is in a distant country.
On the other side
What do we dream about in our sleep?
But the enemy got it...
The horses' stride straightened. The detachment covered the front singer in chorus, but in their own way and with a different tune.
Cut it out, apple.
Ripe gold.
The Council will cut you off
Hammer and sickle...
The lone singer continued at odds with the squad:
Here is my sword and soul,
And there is my happiness...
The squad crushed the end of the verse with a chorus:
Eh, apple.
Sincere,
You'll end up on rations, -
You will be rotten...
You grow on a tree
And by the way, the tree
And you will get into the Council
With stamp number...
People immediately whistled and finished the song recklessly:
Eh, apple.
You keep freedom:
Neither the Soviets nor the kings,
And to all the people...
The song died down. Dvanov stopped, interested in the procession in the ravine.
Hey top man! - they shouted to Dvanov from the detachment. - Get down to the beginningless people!
Dvanov remained in place.
Walk fast! - one said loudly in a thick voice, probably the one who sang. - Otherwise, count to half - and sit on the gun!
Dvanov did not understand what he needed to do, and answered what he wanted:
Come here yourself - it’s drier here! Why are you killing horses in the ravine, kulak guards!
The squad below stopped.
Nikitok, do it right through! - ordered a thick voice.
Nikitok drew his rifle, but first, at the expense of God, he relieved his depressed spirit:
On the scrotum of Jesus Christ, on the rib of the Virgin Mary and throughout the entire Christian generation - come on!
Dvanov saw a flash of intense, silent fire and rolled from the edge of the ravine to the bottom, as if he had been hit in the leg by a crowbar. He did not lose clear consciousness and, as he rolled down, he heard a terrible noise in the ground, to which his ears were pressed alternately as he walked. Dvanov knew that he was wounded in his right leg - an iron bird had dug into it and was moving with the prickly spines of its wings.
In the ravine, Dvanov grabbed the horse’s warm leg, and he felt no fear near that leg. My leg trembled quietly from fatigue and smelled of the sweat and grass of the roads I had traveled.
Protect him, Nikitok, from the fire of life! The clothes are yours.
Dvanov heard. He grabbed the horse's leg with both hands, the leg turned into a pressing living body. Dvanov’s heart rose to his throat, he cried out in the unconsciousness of that feeling when life moves from the heart to the skin, and immediately felt a relieving, satisfying peace. Nature did not fail to take from Dvanov what he was created for: the seed of reproduction. In his last time, embracing the soil and the horse, Dvanov for the first time recognized the echoing passion of life and was surprised at the insignificance of thought before this bird of immortality, which touched him with its weather-beaten, fluttering wing.
Nikitok came up and tried Dvanov’s forehead: was he still warm? The hand was big and hot. Dvanov didn’t want to; so that this hand would soon tear away from him, and he would place his caressing palm on it. But Dvanov knew that Nikitok was checking and helped him:
Hit the head, Nikita. Wedge the skull quickly!
Nikita did not look like his hand - Dvanov caught this - he cried out in a thin, lousy voice, without matching the peace of life stored in his hand.
Oh, are you okay? I won’t wedge you, but I’ll destroy you: why do you need to die right away - you’re not human? Suffer yourself, lie down - you'll die harder!
Platonov Andrey Platonovich (1899-1951) - real name Klimentov, Russian prose writer, playwright.
Andrei Platonov was born on August 28, 1899 in the city of Voronezh in the family of a railway mechanic, studied at a parish school, and then at a city school. The Platonov family needed funds, and the boy began to work early. He changed many professions: he worked as a mechanic, foundry worker, and auxiliary worker. In 1917, Andrei became a front-line correspondent and began to collaborate with newspapers as a publicist, critic and poet.
In 1921, after graduating from the party school, Platonov created his first work - the brochure “Electrification”, which received a lot of positive feedback critics. However, over time, the writer’s views changed towards complete rejection of revolutionary changes. His works “City of Grads” and “Doubting Makar” caused sharp condemnation by the party, and “Chevengur” was banned from publication. Published in 1931, the novel “For Future Use” was condemned by Stalin himself, after which Platonov was no longer published. Colleagues supported him - Brodsky, in his report at the Nobel Symposium, called Platonov one of the most remarkable writers of the outgoing century, and Solzhenitsyn noted that if he had to embark on a long journey with a single book, then this book would be Plato’s “The Pit.”
While in disgrace, Andrei Platonovich made a living by adapting Russian and Bashkir fairy tales. Deprived of the opportunity to publish, the writer did not leave creative work, but his worldview again made a “revolution”: he lost faith in the possibility of rebuilding the socialist political system and began to create works about the future mainly in an ironic manner.
Andrei Platonov died in 1951 in Moscow from tuberculosis. His works, which became dystopian classics, were translated into many languages and included in school curriculum. They were prepared for publication by the writer’s daughter Maria.
In Platonov’s prose, the world appears as a contradictory, often tragic integrity of human and natural existence: the stories “Epiphanian Locks” (1927), “City of Grads” (1928), “Potudan River” (1937). In the novels “Chevengur” (published in 1972, in Russia - 1988), “Happy Moscow” (not finished, published in 1991), the story “The Pit” (published in 1969), “Juvenile Sea” (published in 1979; in Russia both - in 1987), "Jan" (published in 1964) - rejection of the imposed forms of socialist reorganization of life. The originality of Platonov’s style is determined by the “tongue-tied” and “roughness” of the language, which are combined in the fabric of the narrative with abstract concepts and metaphorical images.
In a report at the Nobel Symposium at the Swedish Academy (1991), Brodsky called Platonov (along with Proust, Kafka, Musil, Faulkner and Beckett) one of the most remarkable writers of the past century. In his opinion, they deserved such an assessment by several general features: they were “loners, original, often to the point of eccentricity”; their work was considered “difficult” (due to which the reaction to it fluctuated between “open hostility” and “complete indifference”); This “difficulty” stemmed from their description of “a completely different quality of life” (in comparison with what characterized the literature of the previous century), namely “uncertainty,” for their art began where the logic, plots and composition systems of the past died; In the end, their style prevailed over the plot, and their language prevailed over the narrative, which makes it possible to call them also " greatest poets century." These thoughts coincided with what Brodsky wrote in the preface to the Ardis edition of "The Pit": the impersonal, folklore and mythological language of Platonov, the "first serious surrealist", was not escapist, but a creation of the era itself, testifying at the same time to the nation, victim of this language.
Solzhenitsyn expressed his admiration for Platonov much more simply, but no less convincingly: if he had to go on a long journey with one single book, then that book would be “The Pit.”
