The work of Andrei Platonovich Platonov is characterized by stable, cross-cutting themes. And one of the key images in his works is the image of a wanderer. Here comes Foma Pukhov, the hero of the story " Hidden Man", sets out on a journey to search for the meaning of the proletarian revolution and eternal truth. The writer called his favorite hero a “secret man,” spiritually gifted, “hidden,” that is, outwardly seemingly simple, even indifferent, some kind of Ivan the Fool, but in reality a deep philosopher and truth-seeker. “Without me, the people are incomplete,” he says, making it clear that he is connected with the nation by blood and flesh. He is used to traveling, this Pukhov, and if the people go on a campaign for the Golden Fleece, then he also leaves his home. The geography of the story is extremely vast: from provincial Pokharinsk the hero goes first to Baku, then to Novorossiysk, then to Tsaritsyn, then again to Baku. Most often we see him on the road. The road was the most important leitmotif in the works of Radishchev and Gogol, Leskov and Nekrasov. Like the Russian classics, Platonov’s road is a plot-forming element. The plot of the story does not consist in a clash between Reds and Whites, not in the hero’s confrontation with hostile forces, but in tense life's quest Foma Pukhov, therefore plot movement is only possible when the hero is on the road. As soon as he stops, his life loses historical perspective. This is what happens with Zvorychny, Sharikov, Perevoshchikov. Becoming synonymous spiritual search, the road near Platonov is gradually losing its spatial significance. Pukhov’s movements across the expanses of Russia are very chaotic, not logically motivated: “almost unconsciously he was chased by life through all sorts of gorges of the earth” (chapter 4). Moreover, despite the accuracy geographical names, the cities mentioned in the story do not have specific signs and could well be replaced by others. The fact is that the hero does not have a spatial goal; he is looking not for a place, but for meaning. The wanderings of the soul do not need a real, objective frame.
Composition
Andrei Platonovich Platonov began publishing in 1921. He made his debut with poetry and journalism, published a collection of short stories in 1927, and became famous. The story “The Hidden Man” was published in 1928. Art world Platonov is contradictory and tragic. He addresses the theme of the “little man” with his innermost soul, continuing the traditions of N. M. Karamzin, A. S. Pushkin, N. V. Gogol, F. M. Dostoevsky, A. P. Chekhov. In Platonov's small man"is called "secret" because it is special, unusual, even eccentric.
For example, the machinist Foma Pukhov, the hero of the story “The Hidden Man,” is distinguished by his spontaneity, childish, naive perception of the world. Pukhov has a keen sense of people and nature, he meets different people and tries to understand something important about himself. Those around him cannot understand Thomas. He seems to them either a “silly man”, or “a wind blowing past the sails of the revolution”, a “gnarly man” who cuts sausage on his wife’s coffin. But no one understands that he does this out of hunger, and not out of a desire to be violated. The word “hidden” in the context of the story is understood as natural, with an open soul, having that treasure that cannot be lost.
Such heroes are fused with nature and have preserved the ideal human life and a feeling of kinship with all people. Platonov's heroes are not typical, they are endowed with the same features, they are all " hidden people».
Pukhov searches for the meaning of the revolution, setting out on the road. He breaks with his settled way of life and home comfort and enthusiastically begins to move. The most important thing for a hero is comfort in his soul. Pukhov thinks about his place in life, his connection with nature. To reveal the character of his hero, Platonov chooses the motif of wandering. And the image of a righteous man in search of truth is closely connected with this motif in Russian literature. In the story, the plot of the journey has a secondary plan: it symbolizes the new birth of a person. This theme runs through Platonov’s works related to the revolution. From it the author moves on to the theme of the awakening of the entire people. The leitmotif of the road, the journey of Pukhov traveling to Baku, Novorossiysk, and Tsaritsyn forms the plot of the story, it is a symbol of the hero’s spiritual search. He walks without a goal and without looking for it.
Pukhov cannot bear loneliness and, imbued with feelings for the world, seeks eternal truths that could fill the emptiness in his soul. It is not by chance that he is called Thomas: like Thomas, an unbeliever, he wants to see everything for himself, and he is not afraid of dangers. And the Apostle Thomas is also the only one who understood the innermost, secret meaning of the teachings of Christ. Pukhov wants to comprehend the meaning and results of the revolution, looking at it from the inside of people's life. Not everything he sees pleases him. “Why revolution if it does not bring the highest justice? Only a feast of death, more and more victims,” thinks Thomas, not finding a place for it in his soul. As an observer, Thomas sees that the revolution has no moral future. This disappointment gives rise to irony. The ironic author shows us a portrait of Trotsky painted over St. George the Victorious with “bad paint.” The era of bureaucracy and nomenklatura vulgarized the revolution. “History ran in those years like a locomotive, dragging behind it the worldwide burden of poverty, despair and humble inertia,” the writer testifies.
We can say that Platonov's hero is autobiographical and expresses the feelings and thoughts of the author. For Platonov, the main thing in creativity was not skill, but sincerity. In his works about war and revolution, the writer reflects on how people exist during a period of revolutionary catastrophe. In particular, the fate of a person from the people in the pre-revolutionary and revolutionary era is considered. The author did not believe in revolution. Platonov’s journalism of these years expresses a utopian view of what is happening, a sense of history as an apocalypse.
Platonov has a satirical beginning in works that are not so in terms of pathos. Unusual language in the style of slogans and cliches, the author’s hidden irony, grotesque and hyperbole reveal to the reader the meaning of the work. Platonov quickly felt what bureaucracy was and showed the reader how the “innermost man” changes and degenerates, turning into an official, like the former “simple” sailor Sharikov, who now considers himself the “universal leader of the Caspian Sea” and drives around in a car. He is practicing the ability to “sign his name so famously and figuratively that later the reader of his name will say: Comrade Sharikov is an intelligent person,” he says, “ large papers on an expensive table." Sharikov does not speak, but agitates. He also offers Pukhov “to become the commander of an oil flotilla,” but the hero does not want to be in charge. Sarcastic satire and skepticism regarding the revolutionary process, “depicting the terrible features of my people,” as Platonov wrote, caused constant rejection of criticism. The author does not support poeticization civil war in literature. “Platonov’s irony was an expression of the pain of a writer who believed in both utopia and its language... Platonov alone shows that collectivization was, from a psychological point of view, the infantilization of the peasantry... Platonov can be called a religious writer, despite the fact that his heroes the writer is aware of this, they are looking for an “imaginary faith”, they are the apostles of pseudo-religion,” concludes M. Geller in his book “Andrei Platonov in Search of Happiness.” He believes that Platonov's heroes accept communism as a new religion, but one that distorts Christianity.
The hero goes through a rather difficult path from the “external” in himself to the “inner.” In the finale, Pukhov sees “the luxury of life and the fury of bold nature” and is reconciled in his moral and philosophical quests. He sees his uniqueness and sows the soul in people, which is the main thing, according to Platonov. The writer expresses a thesis about the unique value of each person, his warmth and compassion, saying that everyone should find their “I”, like Pukhov. This is his faith in man. In the finale, Pukhov feels “his life in all its depth to the innermost pulse” and comes to the conclusion that universal brotherhood is necessary for the integrity of the world.
The hero of the story “The Hidden Man” Foma Pukhov and mature years has not lost his naive perception of the world.
At the beginning of the story, he simply brushes everyone off complex issues. The mechanic Pukhov values only one thing: his work. But on the other hand, he appears as a spontaneous philosopher, in some ways a mischief-maker, in some ways a moralizer.
The party cell even concludes “that Pukhov is not a traitor, but just a stupid guy.”
The effort of the “stupid peasant” to understand the revolution is expressed in the special individual language of Plato’s prose - sometimes inert, as if illiterate, but always precise and expressive. The speech of the narrator and the characters bears the stamp of a special humor, manifested in the most unexpected fragments of the text: “Athanas, you are now not a whole person, but a defective one!” - Pukhov said with regret.
“The Hidden Man,” throughout the story, seems to gather into one whole his ever-hungry flesh, practical intelligence, mind and soul: “If you only think, you won’t go far either, you also need to have a feeling!”
Foma Pukhov not only loves nature, but also understands
her. Unity with nature evokes a whole range of feelings in him: “One day, during the sunshine, Pukhov was walking around the city and thought - how much vicious stupidity there is in people, how much inattention to such a single activity as life and the entire natural environment.”
Understanding the events of the Civil War in his mind takes on a fantastic character. However, basically, in the main thing, he does not lie, but on the contrary, he seeks the truth.
In a difficult, confused time, when the illiterate poor rose up against the learned “white guard” and with an impossible, unimaginable feat - and a thirst for feat! - defeated the enemy, from an “external”, thoughtless, empty person, Foma Pukhov, testing everything from his own experience, turns into a “hidden person”.
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The purpose of the lesson:
- Comprehend the most important features of Plato’s hero;
- Determine the specifics of the spatio-temporal organization of the text.
Teacher: “Foma Pukhov is not gifted with sensitivity: he cut boiled sausage on his wife’s coffin, hungry due to the absence of the hostess...”
The first phrase of the story makes you think about the hero and comprehend his actions. Who is Platonov’s “hidden man”?
What characteristics does the hero give himself?
Students: “A stupid guy”, “A confused person”, I am a natural fool”, “I am a lightweight person”. (The entry appears on the board)
Teacher: Today we will try to understand the features of Plato’s hero, the features of his worldview and understanding of the world.
The writer loved the word “hidden”, in which one can simultaneously hear shelter, blood, frankness, cover, and treasure.
Today in the lesson we will lift the veils of the secrets in a person.
Teacher: What is the meaning of the word “hidden”?
Student: Kept secret, protected from others, secret; kept in the depths of the soul, cherished. We find this definition in the Russian language dictionary. In the dictionary V.I. Dahl we read the following definition: “Hidden, concealed, concealed, secret, hidden, hidden or hidden from someone.” (The student is prepared in advance. Write on the board)
Teacher: What is behind the concept of the innermost in a person?
Student: The sacred, kept in the depths of the soul, is what determines the essence of a person, the truth.
Student: Through the portrait of the hero, attitude towards other people, actions, attitude towards oneself...
Student: In the story there is no picturesque, fine portrait as a description of appearance. There is only a behavioral portrait. Nevertheless, we can imagine a hero: simple, primitive, a man from the crowd, a working bone...
Teacher: How does the story reveal the essence of Foma Pukhov?
Student: Through the hero’s attitude to work. Foma Pukhov “...feels a strange pleasure from the upcoming difficult anxiety...”
Teacher: B notebook Andrei Platonov wrote: “Work is conscience.” How do you understand this statement? Let us turn to the meaning of the concept of “conscience”.
Student: The essence of the hero is revealed through his attitude to the revolution. In the story we read: “He jealously followed the revolution, ashamed of every stupidity, although he had little to do with it.”
After the death of his wife, “I sensed where and to what end of the world all revolutions were going.”
“I’m ready to shed blood myself, just so that it’s not in vain and I’m not being a fool.”
If Thomas saw a higher goal in the revolution, he might have given his life for it, but he does not find such a goal. The hero doubted the sanctity of the revolution. Foma is not convinced by other people’s attitudes and political literacy courses; he personally needs to be convinced of the sanctity of the revolution.
Teacher: This disbelief brings Plato’s hero closer to the biblical Thomas.
Disciple: (prepared in advance) Thomas is a faithful and practical, down-to-earth disciple of Jesus, who lived by the principle of “seeing is believing,” whose doubts about the Resurrection of Christ were dispelled only in the presence of the risen Lord.
Teacher: But the image of Thomas is most clearly revealed through his attitude towards the machine. How does the author show this inextricable connection?
- “If only he had a car, he considered himself at home there...”
- “He was always good-natured around the car...”
- “Wrote reports about machine illnesses...”
- “I rebuilt the engine according to my understanding...”
Teacher: We can hardly call such a person a natural fool. Originality of self-expression is the principle of his behavior.
In relation to the machine, Platonov creates his own philosophy, the philosophy of technology. What is its essence?
Student: She is a living being. “The machine rotates day and night - smart, like a living thing, tireless and faithful, like a heart.”
Teacher: A car is a special substance for Platonov. “There are many people, few cars; people are alive and can stand up for themselves, but a machine is a gentle, defenseless, fragile creature…” the author continues in “Chevengur”. Next to the car, Foma seems to release hidden feelings hidden somewhere in his soul - care, love, kindness. Initially, Foma feels the fullness and joy of life only in communication with the machine, because he sees in a well-functioning mechanism a harmonious combination of parts.
What else seems harmonious to Pukhov? What gives you the feeling of happiness?
Student: The natural world, space, movement.
- “Pukhov was always surprised by space...”
- “I felt the ground...
- “An unexperienced feeling of complete pleasure...”
Teacher: How then can one come to terms with the words “Pukhov is not gifted with sensitivity...”?
Teacher: Andrei Platonov points out another reason for Pukhov’s action: he was hungry. Gesture of an eccentric person. The first phrase of the story reveals the key opposition: life and death, the unity of the eternal and the everyday, the everyday and the existential. The hero is shown not only through his attitude towards nature and people, but also through the movement, the path made by him. The student presents a map of Foma Pukhov’s travels.
Teacher: Pukhov’s movements are very chaotic, not logically motivated: “almost unconsciously he chased life through all the gorges of the earth.” The hero does not have a spatial goal, he is looking not for a place, but for meaning, so Platonov’s road loses its spatial meaning, becoming synonymous with spiritual search.
In many mythopoetic and religious traditions, the mythologem of the path appears metaphorically, as a designation of a line of behavior, especially spiritual. The structure of the path archetype is characterized by testing. A constant and inalienable property of the path is its difficulty. The path is built along a line of ever-increasing difficulties and dangers, so overcoming the path is a feat. The marking of the beginning and end of the path as two extreme points - states - is expressed objectively - by a change in the status of the character who has reached the end.
How do we see the hero at the end of the journey?
Student: Pukhov passed the tests, did not commit meanness, found friends, did not betray, comprehended himself, retained a pure, bright beginning, a pure soul.
Teacher: Thus, Andrei Platonov leads us to a global conclusion, to the idea of possibilities human soul, to the thought that was his torment, his joy, an ever elusive and enticing mystery: “The main thing is to sow souls in people.”
What is the meaning of the title of the story?
It is known that the word “intimate” traditionally, following the definition in V. I. Dahl’s dictionary, “hidden, concealed, concealed, secret, hidden or hidden from someone” - means something opposite to the concepts of “frank”, “external” , "visual". In modern Russian, the definition of “secret” - “undetectable, sacredly kept” - is often added with “sincere”, “intimate”, “cordial”. However, in connection with Platonov’s Foma Pukhov, an outspoken mockingbird, subjecting a harsh analysis to the holiness and sinlessness of the revolution itself, looking for this revolution not in posters and slogans, but in something else - in characters, in the structures of the new government, the concept of “hidden”, as always, is sharp modified, enriched. How secretive, “buried”, “closed” this Pukhov is, if at every step Pukhov reveals himself, opens up, literally provokes dangerous suspicions about himself. He doesn’t want to enroll in the primitive political literacy circle: “Learning dirty my brains, but I want to live fresh " To the proposal of some workers - “You would become a leader now, why are you working?” - he mockingly replies: “There are already so many leaders. But there are no locomotives! I won’t be one of the parasites!” And to the offer to become a hero, to be in the vanguard, he answers even more frankly: “I am a natural fool!”
In addition to the concept of “intimate”, Andrei Platonov was very fond of the word “accidental”.
"I Accidentally I stood up, walked alone and thought,” says, for example, the boy in the story “Clay House in the District Garden.” And in “The Hidden Man” there is an identification of the concepts “accidental” and “hidden”: “ Unintentional Sympathy for people manifested itself in Pukhov’s soul, overgrown with life.” We are unlikely to be mistaken if, based on many of Platonov’s stories for children, his fairy tales, and “signs” in general abandoned childhood“Let’s say that children or people with an open, childishly spontaneous soul are the most “innermost”, behaving extremely naturally, without pretense, hiding, much less hypocrisy. Children are the most open, artless, and they are also the most “intimate.” All their actions are “accidental,” that is, not prescribed by anyone, sincere, “careless.” Foma Pukhov is constantly told: “You will achieve your goal, Pukhov! You’ll get spanked somewhere!”; “Why are you a grumbler and a non-party member, and not a hero of the era?” etc. And he continues his path as a free contemplator, an ironic spy, who does not fit into any bureaucratic system, hierarchy of positions and slogans. Pukhov’s “intimacy” lies in this Freedom Self-development, freedom of judgment and assessment of the revolution itself, its saints and angels in the conditions of the revolution stopped in a bureaucratic stupor.
“What are the features of the plot development of Pukhov’s character and what determines them?” - the teacher will ask the class.
Andrei Platonov does not explain the reasons for Pukhov’s continuous, endless wanderings through the revolution (this is 1919-1920), his desire to look for good thoughts (i.e., confidence in the truth of the revolution) “not in comfort, but from crossing with people and events.” He also did not explain the deep autobiographical nature of the entire story (it was created in 1928 and
It is preceded by his story “The Doubting Makar”, which caused sharp rejection by the officialdom of Platonov’s entire position).
The story begins with a defiantly stated, visual theme of movement, a break with peace, with home comfort, with the theme of the onslaught of oncoming life on his soul; from the blows of the wind, storm. He enters a world where “there is wind, wind in the whole wide world” and “man cannot stand on his feet” (A. Blok). Foma Pukhov, still unknown to the reader, does not just go to the depot, to the locomotive, to clear the snow from the tracks for the red trains, - he enters space, into the universe, where “a blizzard unfolded terribly over Pukhov’s very head,” where “he was met by a blow snow in the face and the noise of the storm.” And this makes him happy: the revolution has entered nature, lives in it. Later in the story it appears more than once - and not at all as a passive background of events, picturesque landscape- an incredibly mobile world of nature, rapidly moving human masses.
“The blizzard howled evenly and persistently, Armed with enormous tension Somewhere in the steppes of the southeast."
"Cold Night It was pouring There was a storm, and lonely people felt sadness and bitterness.”
"At night, Against the stronger wind, the detachment was heading to the port to land.”
« The wind grew hard And it destroyed a huge space, going out somewhere hundreds of miles away. Water drops, Plucked from the sea, rushed through the shaking air and hit my face like pebbles.”
“Sometimes past the Shani (a ship with a Red amphibious landing force. - V.Ch.) rushed by
Entire columns of water, engulfed in the whirlwind of the nor’easter.
Following them they exposed Deep abysses, Almost showing the bottom of the sea».
“The train went on all night, rattling, suffering and Faking a nightmare The wind stirred the iron on the roof of the carriage into the bony heads of forgotten people, and Pukhov thought about the dreary life of this wind and felt sorry for it.”
Please note that among all the feelings of Foma Pukhov, one thing prevails: if only the storm does not stop, the majesty of contact with people heart to heart does not disappear, stagnation does not set in, “parade and order”, the kingdom of the procrastinators! And if only he himself, Pukhov, was not placed, like the civil war hero Maxim Pashintsev in “Chevengur,” in a kind of aquarium, a “reserve reserve”!
By 1927-1928, Platonov himself, a former romantic of the revolution (see his 1922 collection of poems, “Blue Depth”), felt terribly offended, offended by the era of bureaucratization, the era of “ink darkness,” the kingdom of desks and meetings. He, like Foma Pukhov, asked himself: were those bureaucrats from his satirical story “City of Grads” (1926) right, who “philosophically” denied the very idea of movement, renewal, the idea of a path, saying: “what flows will flow and flow?” and - will stop”? In “The Hidden Man”, many of Pukhov’s contemporaries - both Sharikov and Zvorychny - had already “stopped”, sat down in bureaucratic chairs, and believed, to their advantage, in the “Cathedral of the Revolution”, that is, in the dogmas of the new Bible.
The character of Pukhov, a wanderer, a righteous man, a bearer of the idea of freedom, “accidentality” (i.e., naturalness, non-prescription of thoughts and actions, the naturalness of a person), is complexly unfolded precisely in his movements and meetings with people. He's not afraid
Dangers, inconveniences, he is always prickly, unyielding, mocking, careless. As soon as the dangerous trip with the snowplow ended, Pukhov immediately suggested to his new friend Pyotr Zvorychny: “Let’s get going, Pyotr!.. Let’s go, Petrush!.. The revolution will pass, but there will be nothing left for us!” He needs hot spots of the revolution, without the tutelage of bureaucrats. Subsequently, restless Pukhov, non-believer Foma, a mischievous man, a man of playful behavior, ends up in Novorossiysk, participates (as a mechanic on the landing ship "Shanya") in the liberation of Crimea from Wrangel, moves to Baku (on an empty oil tank), where he meets a curious character - sailor Sharikov.
This hero no longer wants to return to his pre-revolutionary working profession. And to Pukhov’s proposal to “take a hammer and patch up the ships personally,” he, who “became a scribe,” being virtually illiterate, proudly declares: “You’re an eccentric, I’m the general leader of the Caspian Sea!”
The meeting with Sharikov did not stop Pukhov in his tracks, did not “get him to work,” although Sharikov offered him a command: “to become the commander of an oil flotilla.” “As if through, Pukhov made his way in the stream of unhappy people to Tsaritsyn. This always happened to him - almost unconsciously he chased life through all the gorges of the earth, sometimes into oblivion of himself,” writes Platonov, reproducing the confusion of road meetings, Pukhov’s conversations, and finally his arrival in his native Pokharinsk (certainly Platonov’s native Voronezh) . And finally, his participation in the battle with a certain white general Lyuboslavsky (“his cavalry is darkness”).
Of course, one should not look for any correspondence with specific historical situations in the routes of Pukhov’s wanderings and wanderings (albeit extremely active, active, full of dangers), or to look for the sequence of events of the Civil War. The entire space in which Pukhov moves is largely conditional, just like the time of 1919-1920. Some of the contemporaries and eyewitnesses of the real events of those years, such as Platonov’s friend and patron, editor of the “Voronezh Commune” G. Z. Litvin-Molotov, even reproached the writer for “deviating from the truth of history”: Wrangel was expelled in 1920, then what Could the white general then besiege Pokharinsk (Voronezh)? After all, the raid by the corps of Denikin’s white generals Shkuro and Mamontov (they really had a lot of cavalry), which took Voronezh, happened in 1919!
“What made Pukhov happy about the revolution and what saddened him immensely and increased the flow of ironic judgments?” - the teacher will ask a question to the class.