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 a member 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 precedes 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, the hero’s 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.) whole columns of water rushed by, 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 those who have been sitting! And if only he himself, Pukhov, was not placed as a hero civil war Maxim Pashintsev in “Chevengur”, in a kind of aquarium, “reserve”! By 1927-1928, Platonov himself felt like a former romantic of the revolution (see.
his 1922 collection of poems “Blue Depth”), terribly offended, insulted 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, “accident” (i.e.
naturalness, unprescribed thoughts and actions, the naturalness of a person) is complexly unfolded precisely in his movements and meetings with people. He is not afraid of dangers, inconveniences, he is always prickly, unyielding, mocking, and 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, and 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 smoke, Pukhov made his way in the stream of unhappy people towards 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 the class a question. Once in his youth, Andrei Platonov, a native of large family railway foreman in Yamskaya Sloboda, admitted: “The words about the steam locomotive revolution turned the steam locomotive into a feeling of revolution for me.” For all his doubts, Foma Pukhov, although this is by no means heroic character and not a cold sage, not a conventional mockingbird, he still retained this same youthful trait, the romanticism of the author’s own feelings about life. Platonov put into Pukhov’s life perceptions much of his perception of the revolution as the most grandiose event of the 20th century, which changed all history, ending the old, “spoiled” history (or rather, prehistory) that was offensive to people.
“Time stood all around like the end of the world,” “deep times breathed over these mountains” - there are a lot of similar assessments of time, of all the events that changed history, the fate of the former little man. From Platonov’s early lyrics, from the book “Blue Depth”, the most important motif about eternal mystery, secrecy (freedom) passed into the story. human soul: I am still unknown to myself, No one has yet illuminated the path for me. In the story, such “unilluminated”, i.e., those who do not need the given, prescribed, given from outside “light” (directives, orders, propaganda), are the young Red Army soldiers on the ship “Shanya”: “They did not yet know the value of life, and therefore they were unknown to cowardice - the pity of losing their body. They were unknown to themselves. Therefore, the Red Army soldiers did not have chains in their souls that chained them to their own personality.
That's why they lived life to the fullest with nature and with history - and history ran in those years like a locomotive, dragging behind it the worldwide burden of poverty, despair and humble inertia.” “What upsets Pukhov in the events, in the very atmosphere of time?” - the teacher will ask the children. He, like the author himself, saw in the era of triumph of bureaucratic forces, the nomenklatura, the corps of all-powerful officials, signs of obvious inhibition, cooling, even “petrification,” petrification of everything - souls, deeds, general inspiration, extermination or vulgarization of the great dream. The engineer sending Pukhov on his flight is a complete fright: “they put him up against the wall twice, he quickly turned gray and obeyed everything - without complaint and without reproach. But then he fell silent forever and spoke only orders.” In Novorossiysk, as Pukhov noted, there were already arrests and defeat of “wealthy people,” and his new friend, sailor Sharikov, already known to himself, realizing his right to proletarian benefits, the benefits of the “rising class,” is trying to turn Pukhov onto the path of careerism.
If you are a worker, then “then why are you not at the forefront of the revolution?” “Two Sharikovs: what do you think are their similarities and differences?” - the teacher will ask a question to the class. Fortunately for Platonov, it was not noticed that in “The Hidden Man” Plato’s own Sharikov had already appeared (after, but independently of, Bulgakov’s grotesque story “The Heart of a Dog”, 1925).
This yesterday’s sailor, also Platonov’s second “I,” does not yet give rise to the so-called “fear-laughter” (laughter after a forbidden anecdote, a scary allegory, ridicule of an official text, etc.). Sharikov is no longer averse to increasing his revival history, he does not want to remain among those snotty ones, without whom they will do without Wrangel, he is not entering, but interfering with power! As a result, he - and there is no need for any fantastic surgery with the cute dog Sharik! - already with visible pleasure he writes his name on papers, orders for a bag of flour, a piece of textiles, a pile of firewood, and even, like a puppet, he goes to great lengths: “to sign his name so famously and figuratively, so that later the reader of his name will say: Comrade Sharikov is an intelligent man! " A not idle question arises: what is the difference between Platonov’s Sharikov and his “Sharikovism” from the corresponding hero in the story by M.
Bulgakov's "Heart of a Dog" (1925)? Essentially, two Sharikovs appeared in the literature of the 20s. Platonov did not have to seek the services of Professor Preobrazhensky and his assistant Bormental (the heroes of “ Heart of a Dog") to create the phenomenon of Sharikov - a smug, still Rustic demagogue, a bearer of primitive proletarian swagger. There was no need for “material” in the form of the good-natured stray dog Sharik. Platonov’s Sharikov is not an extraordinary, not speculative and exceptional (like Bulgakov’s) phenomenon: he is simpler, more familiar, more everyday, autobiographical, and therefore probably more terrible. And it’s more painful for Platonov: in “Chevengur” he grows up into Kopenkina, and in “Kotlovan” into Zhachev. It is not the laboratory that grows it, but time.
He is preparing a landing party in Crimea and is trying to somehow train the soldiers. At first, he simply “happily rushed around the ship and said something to everyone.” It is curious that he no longer spoke, but constantly agitated, not noticing the poverty of his lectures. Platonovsky Sharikov, having learned to move " large papers on an expensive table”, having become “the general leader of the Caspian Sea”, he will very soon learn to “be bully” and fool around in any area. The ending of “The Hidden Man” as a whole is still optimistic: behind for Pukhov are the episodes of dying - the driver’s assistant, the worker Afonin, and the ghosts of “Sharikovism”, and threats against himself. He “again saw the luxury of life and the fury of brave nature”, “the unexpected in the soul returned to him.” However, these episodes of reconciliation, a kind of harmony between the hero-seeker and the hero-philosopher (the first titles of the story “The Land of Philosophers”), are very fragile and short-lived.
A year later, another mockingbird, only more desperate, “doubting Makar”, having come to Moscow, the supreme, governing city, will cry out: “Strength is not dear to us - we will put even the little things at home - the soul is dear to us. Give your soul, since you are an inventor.” . This is perhaps the main, dominant note in Platonov’s entire orchestra: “Everything is possible - and everything succeeds, but the main thing is to sow the soul in people.” Foma Pukhov is the first of the messengers of this Platonic dream-pain. Questions and topics for review 1. How did Platonov understand the meaning of the word “hidden”? 2. Why did Platonov choose the plot of wandering, pilgrimage to reveal character? 3. What was the autobiographical nature of Pukhov’s image? Wasn’t Platonov himself the same wanderer, full of nostalgia for the revolution? 4. What is the difference between Sharikov and the character of the same name from “The Heart of a Dog” by M. A. Bulgakov? Which writer stood closer to his hero? 5. Can we say that Pukhov is partly of a specifically historical character, and partly a “floating point of view” (E. Tolstaya-Segal) of Platonov himself on the revolution, its ups and downs? Recommended reading Andrey Platonov: Memoirs of contemporaries.
Biography materials / Comp. N. Kornienko, E.
Shubina. - M., 1994. Vasiliev V.
V. Andrey Platonov: Essay on life and creativity. - M., 1990.
Kornienko N.V.
History of the text and biography of A.P. Platonov (1926-1946). - M.
Andrey Platonov.
"Hidden Man"
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”, “heartfelt”. 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... Pukhov reveals himself at every step, flings himself open, literally provokes dangerous suspicions about himself... He doesn’t want to enroll in the primitive political literacy circle: “Learning dirty your 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 a member 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 began to walk alone and think,” 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 would hardly be mistaken if, based on many of Platonov’s stories for children, his fairy tales, and in general “signs of abandoned childhood,” we say that children or people with an open, childishly spontaneous soul are the most “innermost”, behaving extremely naturally, without pretense, hiding, especially 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 seek 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 precedes 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, the hero’s 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, not only goes to the depot, to the locomotive, to clear the snow from the tracks for the red trains, but 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, the incredibly mobile world of nature and rapidly moving human masses appears more than once - and not at all as a passive background of events, a picturesque landscape.
“The blizzard howled evenly and persistently, stocked up with enormous tension somewhere in the steppes of the southeast."
"Cold Night was pouring 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 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.) whole columns of water rushed by, engulfed in the whirlwind of the nor'easter. Following them they exposed deep abyss, almost showing bottom seas».
“The train went on all night, rattling, suffering and pretending to be a nightmare into the bony heads of forgotten people... The wind moved the iron on the roof of the carriage, 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 those who have been sitting! 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 - 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 is not afraid of dangers, inconveniences, he is always prickly, unyielding, mocking, and 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 “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... command: “to become the commander of an oil flotilla.” “As if through smoke, Pukhov made his way in the stream of unhappy people towards 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.
Once in his youth, Andrei Platonov, who came from a large family of a railway foreman in Yamskaya Sloboda, admitted: “The words about the steam locomotive revolution turned the steam locomotive into a feeling of revolution for me.” For all his doubts, Foma Pukhov, although he is by no means a heroic character and not a cold sage, not a conventional mockingbird, still retained the same youthful trait, the romanticism of the author’s own feelings about life. Platonov put into Pukhov’s life perceptions much of his perception of the revolution as the most grandiose event of the 20th century, which changed all history, ending the old, “spoiled” history (or rather, prehistory) that was offensive to people. “Time stood all around like the end of the world”, “deep times breathed over these mountains” - there are a lot of similar assessments of time, of all the events that changed history, the fate of the former little man. From Platonov’s early lyrics, from the book “Blue Depth”, the most important motif about the eternal mystery, the intimacy (freedom) of the human soul passed into the story:
In the story, such “unilluminated”, i.e., those who do not need the granted, prescribed, given from outside “light” (directives, orders, propaganda), are the young Red Army soldiers on the ship “Shanya”:
“They did not yet know the value of life, and therefore cowardice was unknown to them - the pity of losing their body... They were unknown to themselves. Therefore, the Red Army soldiers did not have chains in their souls that chained them to their own personality. Therefore, they lived a full life with nature and with history - and history ran in those years like a locomotive, dragging behind it the worldwide burden of poverty, despair and humble inertia.”
“What upsets Pukhov in the events, in the very atmosphere of time?” - the teacher will ask the children.
He, like the author himself, saw in the era of triumph of bureaucratic forces, the nomenklatura, the corps of all-powerful officials, signs of obvious inhibition, cooling, even “petrification,” petrification of everything - souls, deeds, general inspiration, extermination or vulgarization of the great dream. The engineer sending Pukhov on his flight is a complete fright: “they put him against the wall twice, he quickly turned gray and obeyed everything - without complaint and without reproach. But then he fell silent forever and spoke only orders.”
In Novorossiysk, as Pukhov noted, there were already arrests and defeat of “wealthy people,” and his new friend, sailor Sharikov, already known to himself, realizing his right to proletarian benefits, the benefits of the “rising class,” is trying to turn Pukhov onto the path of careerism. If you are a worker, then... “-then why aren’t you at the forefront of the revolution?”
“Two Sharikovs: what do you think are their similarities and differences?” - the teacher will ask the class a question.
Fortunately for Platonov, it was not noticed that in “The Hidden Man”... Plato’s own Sharikov had already appeared (after, but independently of Bulgakov’s grotesque story “The Heart of a Dog”, 1925). This yesterday’s sailor, also Platonov’s second “I,” does not yet give rise to the so-called “fear-laughter” (laughter after a forbidden anecdote, a scary allegory, ridicule of an official text, etc.). Sharikov is no longer averse to increasing his revival history, he does not want to remain among those snotty ones, without whom they will do without Wrangel, he does not enter, but intrudes... into power!
As a result, he - and there is no need for any fantastic surgery with the cute dog Sharik! - already with visible pleasure he writes his name on papers, orders for a bag of flour, a piece of textiles, a pile of firewood, and even, like a puppet, he goes to great lengths: “to sign his name so famously and figuratively, so that later the reader of his name will say: Comrade Sharikov is an intelligent man! "
A not idle question arises: what is the difference between Platonov’s Sharikov and his “Sharikovism” from the corresponding hero in M. Bulgakov’s story “The Heart of a Dog” (1925)? Essentially, two Sharikovs appeared in the literature of the 20s. Platonov did not need to seek the services of Professor Preobrazhensky and his assistant Bormental (the heroes of “Heart of a Dog”) to create the phenomenon of Sharikov - a smug, still simple-minded demagogue, a bearer of primitive proletarian swagger. There was no need for “material” in the form of the good-natured stray dog Sharik. Platonov’s Sharikov is not an extraordinary, not speculative and exceptional (like Bulgakov’s) phenomenon: he is simpler, more familiar, more everyday, autobiographical, and therefore probably more terrible. And it’s more painful for Platonov: in “Chevengur” he grows up into Kopenkina, and in “Kotlovan” into Zhachev. It is not the laboratory that grows it, but time. He is preparing a landing party in Crimea and is trying to somehow train the soldiers. At first, he simply “happily rushed around the ship and said something to everyone.” It is curious that he no longer spoke, but constantly agitated, not noticing the poverty of his lectures.
Platonovsky Sharikov, having learned to move “big papers on an expensive table”, becoming the “universal leader of the Caspian Sea,” will very soon learn to “buzz” and fool around in any area.
The ending of “The Hidden Man” as a whole is still optimistic: behind for Pukhov are the episodes of dying - the driver’s assistant, the worker Afonin, and the ghosts of “Sharikovism”, and threats against himself... He “again saw the luxury of life and the fury of bold nature”, “the unexpected returned to him in my soul.” However, these episodes of reconciliation, a kind of harmony between the hero-seeker and the hero-philosopher (the first titles of the story “The Land of Philosophers”), are very fragile and short-lived. A year later, another mockingbird, only more desperate, “doubting Makar”, having come to Moscow, the supreme, governing city, will cry: “Power is not dear to us - we will put even the little things at home - our soul is dear to us... Give your soul, since you are an inventor " This is perhaps the main, dominant note in Platonov’s entire orchestra: “Everything is possible - and everything succeeds, but the main thing is to sow the soul in people.” Foma Pukhov is the first of the messengers of this Platonic dream-pain.
Questions and topics for review1. How did Platonov understand the meaning of the word “hidden”?
2. Why did Platonov choose the plot of wandering, pilgrimage to reveal character?
3. What was the autobiographical nature of Pukhov’s image? Wasn’t Platonov himself the same wanderer, full of nostalgia for the revolution?
4. What is the difference between Sharikov and the character of the same name from “The Heart of a Dog” by M. A. Bulgakov? Which writer stood closer to his hero?
5. Can we say that Pukhov is partly of a specifically historical character, and partly a “floating point of view” (E. Tolstaya-Segal) of Platonov himself on the revolution, its ups and downs?
Andrey Platonov: Memoirs of contemporaries. Biography materials / Comp. N. Kornienko, E. Shubina. - M., 1994.
Vasiliev V.V. Andrei Platonov: Essay on life and creativity. - M., 1990.
Kornienko N.V. History of the text and biography of A.P. Platonov (1926-1946). - M., 1993.
Literary direction and genre
The question of whether Platonov belongs to a certain literary direction very complicated. We can only say for sure that his work never fit into the framework socialist realism. Platonov is a follower of Russian realists of the 19th century, while many researchers find features of modernism in his work, and many even argue that he was a hundred years ahead of his time. Such a story could well have come from the pen of a postmodernist.
“The Hidden Man” has the features of a historical and philosophical story.
Topic, main idea and issues
The theme of the story is civil war as a source of human grief, wanderings and deaths.
The main idea is that a person experiences revolutions and wars as a natural disaster and then again lives a natural good and easy life. The whole story asserts the superiority of the natural over the social.
The problem of premature death, the senseless sacrifice of revolution and civil war is perhaps the most common in Platonov’s works. The heroes accept death as deliverance (the head of the distance, Afonin, the white officer Mayevsky). They try to save themselves from mortal wounds with the help of bread placed on the wound and wrapped in a footcloth, wiping ends, and a nail driven into the ear. That is, useful objects surrounding a person are close to the living body.
Platonov’s heroes are not afraid of death; before death, the crew of the sinking “Mars” plays the harmonica, “scaring all the laws of human nature.” Death is also personified in the novel; it acts with calmness. The heroes, except Pukhov, perceive death as protection from life's torment. But Pukhov knows that this is not so, perhaps that is why death passes him by, like a fairy-tale invulnerable fool.
The problem of meaning is important in the text human life, the rightness of man, the collapse of human lives during the revolution and war. A satirical problem is outlined of the correspondence of the mind of communist leaders to the place they occupy, the problem of understanding.
Plot
The story takes place during the Civil War, in 1920-1921. The story begins with Foma Pukhov cutting sausage on the coffin of his wife, who died “prematurely, from hunger, neglected diseases and in obscurity.” Foma works on the railroad as a snowplow and is given the task of clearing the railroad tracks for the People's Commissar's train. But two locomotives hauling a snowplow buried themselves in the snow. As a result, the driver and workers were injured, Foma had 4 teeth knocked out, and the assistant hit his head on a pin and died.
At the moment of the stop, a Cossack detachment approached the train, but was defeated.
While on vacation in Liski, Pukhov read an advertisement calling for enrollment in technical forces units helping the Red Army. This is how he ended up in Novorossiysk, where he first served as a fitter on a ship, and then went to the Crimea to cut off Wrangel’s escape route. Thomas is ready to sacrifice “the dignity of life for the good of the revolution.” He likes to be busy" common life».
The story falls into several separate plots, connected by the journey of the restless Thomas. The first story is connected with Foma’s work as a mechanic on a snowplow, the second with his work as a mechanic on the ship “Shanya,” which unsuccessfully attempted to land in the Crimea in order to hit Wrangel in the rear. After the unsuccessful landing, Pukhov lived in Novorossiysk for 4 months. The next episode is connected with Foma’s life in Baku, where he met the sailor Sharikov from the Shani. The sailor was now in charge of the Caspian Fleet. He sent Pukhov to Tsaritsyn to order submarines from the factories.
Foma failed to complete the task, left again in an unknown direction and unexpectedly found himself in his homeland. The fourth episode involves an attack on hometown armored trains and cavalry of General Lyuboslavsky. Foma figured out how to defeat the white armored train. He lowered loaded carriages without a locomotive towards him down the slope.
For this act, Zvorychny called Pukhov a murderer, because a detachment of railway workers, and then sailors, was shot from an armored train, which turned out to be undamaged.
This is the final episode of the story. In Baku, Foma “felt good forever.” The story ends with a description of a “good revolutionary morning”, in which Thomas feels his unity with nature, rebirth and accepts the revolution as a continuation of nature.
Heroes
Main character In the story, Foma Pukhov is first described as a person devoid of sensuality. He also does not feel a heartfelt attachment to home, considering himself at home in a car or next to a car. By the middle of the story, it turns out that Pukhov was grieving for his wife, but never told anyone about it.
The title “The Hidden Man,” referring to Foma Pukhov, means that Pukhov lives according to some of his own natural laws, which do not fit well with social laws. Thomas not only feels himself to be a part of nature, no more important than the grass that died for the winter, but he also perceives all of nature as a person; for him it is anthropomorphic. Nature has hands like the wind, shaking travelers; she is desirable to man, like a virgin. Pukhov loves the earth conjugal love and feels like a master of it.
Nature is opposed to history and the evil forces of the ferocious world substance that tremble and kill people.
Pukhov's personality is completely inconvenient for the new government. However, no government likes such people and cannot control them. From Pukhov’s point of view, one must live not according to someone’s orders, but according to the dictates of the heart, checking everything with oneself. So the hero telling name, not a surname. Thomas is like his unbelieving namesake in the Bible, who must put his hands into the wounds of the nails to believe in the death and resurrection of Jesus.
Foma does not believe in revolution, honestly speaking about this to the sailor Sharikov, who considers him a handicraft of the Soviet regime.
The Commissioner calls Pukhov a complete contrarian. And Pukhov feels himself a rootless, lost man.
Foma accuses the commissioner of not making things, but relationships, “but Pukhov understood relationships like nothing.” Foma’s answers to the questions of the commission, which tested not so much the knowledge of specialists as their political literacy, are indicative. Thomas agrees to shed blood for the people, “but not in vain and not as a fool.”
And indeed, a year after this conversation, returning home, Thomas observes the general homelessness of the “huge empty land” and sees “the people turned into beggars.” Pukhov’s conclusion is completely “anti-revolutionary”: “There is soil, but there is no bread, which means fools live.”
At the end of the story, Pukhov calls himself a natural fool, that is, he becomes a kind of folk fairy-tale invincible hero.
Zvorychny is an assistant mechanic on the locomotive and Pukhov’s comrade. He refuses to go to Novorossiysk, feeling sorry for his family. Pukhov calls him a prejudiced person. When Pukhov returns to his homeland a year later, Zvorychny is already a member of the special forces detachment and the party. Pukhov understands that Zvorychny is grieving over the death of his son.
People living during civil war are deeply unhappy. The head of the course was put against the wall twice, so that he turned gray and waited for death every moment. In addition, he is under investigation because a bridge near Tsaritsyn, which was being restored by unskilled workers under the engineering supervision of the head of the route, sank under a military train. The murder of this man by a detachment of Cossacks became a way out of trial and execution.
An amazing story is the story of a cripple who wanted to exchange knives for wheat and had already reached Argentina, and in Mesopotamia he had an accident in a tunnel, and his crippled leg was cut off in a Baghdad hospital.
The author's point of view in the novel is sympathy for people who are ready to “sacrifice the dignity of life for the good of the revolution”, who are busy with “common life”. The author is an exponent of common sense. He mentally objects to the Red Army soldiers gathered to die that there is nothing to rejoice at, he calls the world destroyed by war and revolution perishing.
The Red Army in the novel is depicted as peasants dressed in greatcoats, “hidden farmers.” Their victories are due to the fact that they do not value their lives, that they are ready to “be torn to pieces twice” if only the enemy would die with them. Warriors are like hidden hunters, with an anxious delight simmering in their hearts. They are a natural force, an element. Platonov notes with bitterness that their dream of happiness is not their own, but imposed by the political instructor. They are contrasted with white officers, individualists, for example, officer Mayevsky, who did not believe in human society.
Stylistic features
Time and space behave surprisingly in the story. The main character travels a lot, but almost does not notice the travel time “in oblivion of himself,” because the journey is “long and difficult.” Platonov’s symbol of the true traveler is the wind, which with courage “fights over defenseless spaces.” When the trains stop, time stands around Pukhov like the end of the world.
The heroes overcome space with the help of trains, and they go in the direction where the train is taking them, regardless of which direction they are interested in, accidentally ending up where they need to go.
Spaces resist human movement through them. The expanses of land are covered with snow, the sea rises in waves. Even the darkness of night is like a mess that you have to wade through. The elements are mixed, as are the destinies of people. The wind becomes hard, drops of water hit your face like pebbles. During a sea storm, top and bottom change places, so that the Red Army soldiers, caught in their boat on the crest of a wave, find themselves just above another ship and are saved by jumping down.
Even the history of these years is compared to a steam locomotive, which drags behind it “the load of poverty, despair and humble inertia.”
Time for Pukhov at the moment of his stops passes “without brakes.” On the other hand, every day for a person is the creation of the world, so that everyone lives as if at the beginning of time. The revolution, from Thomas’s point of view, is the end of the world.
He is working on the story “The Hidden Man” and the novel “Chevengur”. In them, Platonov (describes the events of recent history - the revolution. Chevengur is a small town in which a “group of comrades” is trying to build communism. The first part of the novel tells about the search for happiness by wanderers. They wander around war-torn Russia. In the second part of the novel it is shown that the wandering heroes came to a certain city of Chevengur, where communism had already been built. However, the city seemed to be withdrawn from the stream of history.
Chevengurs live for their comrades, but first they exterminate all “unworthy of communism.” Regular units are sent in search of the city, which has disappeared from state power, and exterminate the Chevengurs. But surprisingly, the residents die with relief, freed from the boredom of the “built paradise.” With his novel “Chevengur,” Platonov showed the futility of the path that Russia took after the revolution. The heroes of the novel are victims of an incorrectly set goal. This is their problem, not their fault.
And what does “The Hidden Man” tell? Pukhov is not a traitor, but a doubter. What secret does he keep in his soul? In his soul, Thomas carries a passion for true knowledge, restlessness. Not everything is so simple and unambiguous in a person, although he himself wants to get to the “very essence”, and, first of all, to the essence of the revolution. Why is he Thomas? An allusion to the Apostle Thomas, the only one who comprehended the meaning of the teachings of Christ, its innermost essence. The author gives a real picture of those years: “All over the yard there were steam locomotives mutilated by incredible work. Echelons of the tsarist war, railways civil war - everyone saw the locomotives, and now they lay down in a mortal swoon, in the village grass, inappropriate next to the marina.” What sad music of farewell to the departed, the general defenselessness of plants, locomotives, people. Universal space orphanhood. An unusual view of the civil war for the reader.
The story begins with a terrible picture: a hungry Thomas cuts sausage on his wife’s coffin. The concepts of life and death, everyday life and eternity are sharply shifted. “Orphaned” Thomas needs to move on with his life. Why revolution? Does it help people or complicate their lives? Have people become happier? “Why revolution,” thinks Foma, “if it does not bring the highest justice. Just a feast of death, more and more victims.” Pukhov is an eternal wanderer, like a feather drawn by the wind, he travels, pushed by the secret needs of the soul. Foma is an outside observer, contemplating everything that the revolution brings with it: St. George the Victorious is smeared with poor paint, and in his place is a portrait of Trotsky.
A train arrives at a station overcrowded with passengers, carrying one commander, who explains that “the bourgeoisie is completely and completely bastard.” What depresses Pukhov is not the “stupidity of the revolution” itself, but the lack of a moral perspective in the minds of its participants. Dragged along the earth, Thomas finds no place for himself anywhere, since there is no place for his soul in the revolution. The movement itself brings joy to the hero and peace of mind. He wants peace and universal reconciliation, not hostility and struggle. “Good morning,” says Pukhov. “Yes, quite revolutionary,” answers the driver. And again doubt. Is it secure in the post-revolutionary world?
The story “The Pit” will answer this question. She describes the events of the “great turning point.” The story shows the death of workers sent to fight the kulaks and suppress the kulaks as an exploiting class. And work on the pit that is being dug to build not just a house, a city, but future happiness. And the pit becomes a grave for little Nastya. There is a parallel here with Dostoevsky, who, through the mouth of his hero, rejected the future universal happiness, which is based on a child’s tear. One tear! And what kind of happiness can you dream of if it is based on bones, including children. The pit - the foundation for the common proletarian house - is gradually turning into mass grave, in which not only dead workers are buried, but also hope for a “bright future.” The main character of the story is Votshchev. His surname can be interpreted as love for the material world, or in vain - in vain, or, even more harshly, he got caught like chickens in cabbage soup... Platonov appears here as a master of the episode. Every detail says a lot without words. The heroes of the story do not want to doubt, they stop thinking.
The unusual nature of Platonov’s works helps the author reveal to readers the meaning of his plans. “The rain flogged the earth,” that is, it tormented, but did not water. The speech of the author and his characters is hidden irony. Platonov deliberately distorts the phrase to show the absurdity of what is happening: “to continue to fly, silently... being killed...” His language is subordinated to the style of the era - the style of slogans and cliches. It turned out that the Russian language was lost, only verbal monsters remained. Gradually we come to understand the author’s symbolism. Platonov's works are finding more and more fans.
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, have preserved the ideal of human life and a sense 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 meaning: 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, Tsaritsyn forms the plot of the story, it is a symbol spiritual search hero. 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 man from the people in the pre-revolutionary and revolutionary era is examined. 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 trains himself in the ability to “sign his name so famously and figuratively that later the reader of his name will say: Comrade Sharikov is an intelligent man,” he moves “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 the poeticization of the 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.