Features of the novel “Chevengur”
Platonov is not like anyone else. Anyone who opens his books for the first time is immediately forced to abandon the usual fluency of reading: the eye is ready to glide over the familiar outlines of words, but at the same time the mind refuses to keep up with time. Some force delays the reader’s perception of every word, every combination of words.
And here is not the mystery of mastery, but the mystery of man, the solution of which, according to Dostoevsky, is the only task worthy of devoting one’s life to it. Platonov’s heroes speak of “proletarian substance” (Platonov himself spoke of “socialist substance”). In these concepts he includes living people. For Platonov, the idea and the person do not merge. An idea does not close a person tightly.
In his works we see precisely the “socialist substance”, which strives to build an absolute ideal out of itself. What does Platonov’s living “socialist substance” consist of? From the romantics of life in the fullest sense of the word. They think in large-scale universal human categories, and are free from any manifestations of selfishness.
At first glance, it may seem that these are people with asocial thinking, since their minds do not know any social and administrative restrictions. They are unpretentious and easily endure the inconveniences of everyday life, as if not noticing them at all. Where these people come from, what their past is, cannot always be established, since for Platonov this is not the most important thing. All of them are world transformers.
The humanism of these people and the very definite social orientation of their aspirations lies in the stated goal of subordinating the forces of nature to man. It is from them that we should expect to achieve our dreams. It is they who will someday be able to turn fantasy into reality and not even notice it themselves. This type of people is represented by engineers, mechanics, inventors, philosophers, dreamers - people of liberated thought.
Platonov’s romantic heroes do not engage in politics as such. They view the accomplished revolution as a settled political issue. Everyone who did not want this was defeated and swept away. And another reason they are not involved in politics is that at the beginning of the 20s the new Soviet state had not yet taken shape, the power and apparatus of power had not yet been formed.
The second group of characters are the romantics of the battle, people who were formed on the fronts of the civil war. Fighters. Extremely limited natures, such as the era of battles usually produces en masse. Fearless, selfless, honest, extremely frank. Everything about them is programmed for action. For obvious reasons, it was they who returned from the front who enjoyed unconditional trust and moral right to leadership positions in the victorious republic. They set to work with the best intentions and with their characteristic energy, but it soon turns out that most of them, in the new conditions, purely automatically lead the way they commanded regiments and squadrons in the war.
Having received positions in management, they did not know how to manage them. Lack of understanding of what was happening gave rise to increased suspicion in them. They became entangled in deviations, bends, distortions, and slopes.
Illiteracy was the soil on which violence flourished. In the novel "Chevengur" Andrei Platonov portrayed just such people.
Having received unlimited power over the district, they decided by order to abolish labor. They reasoned something like this: labor is the reason people's suffering. Because labor creates material values that lead to wealth inequality. Therefore, it is necessary to eliminate the root cause of inequality: labor. You should feed yourself on what nature gives you.
Thus, due to their illiteracy, they come to substantiate the theory of primitive communal communism. Platonov’s heroes had no knowledge and no past, so faith replaced everything for them. Since the thirties, Platonov has been calling us with his special, honest and bitter, talented voice, reminding us that the path of a person, no matter what social and political system he lives in, is always difficult, full of gains and losses.
For Platonov, it is important that a person is not destroyed. The writer Andrei Platonov has many things in common with his truth-seekers: the same belief in the existence of some “plan for a common life”, the same dreams of a revolutionary reorganization of all life and, no less, on the scale of all humanity, the universe; the same utopia of universal collective creativity of life, in the process of which " new person" and "new world".
Features of the composition of A. Platonov's novel Chevengur - page No. 1/1
ABSTRACT
on the topic
“Features of the composition of A. Platonov’s novel “Chevengur”
Completed:
Checked:
Novokuznetsk 2008
What is composition?……………………………………………………. 4
The difference between plot and plot……………………………………….. 6
Plot features of Platonov’s novel “Chevengur”………………8
List of sources used…………………………………………… 14
INTRODUCTION
The composition of any work of art is very important for the reader and researcher. It combines plot elements, determines the composition and sequence of arrangement of parts of literary works, as well as the connection between individual artistic images. Of particular interest from the point of view of composition are the works of the master of the tale, story, and novel of the twentieth century, Andrei Platonov (1899-1951).
Topic of the abstract: “Features of the composition of A. Platonov’s novel “Chevengur”. This topic is relevant for the following reasons.
Firstly, Andrei Platonov is one of the writers whose work remains little studied both in Russia and abroad, due to the fact that the publication of his works was prohibited in Russia for a long time, until the end of the 80s of the twentieth century.
Secondly, the problem of composition and plot of works in lately undeservedly receded into the background.
Thirdly, the novel “Chevengur” may be of research interest from the point of view of its composition.
The problem of the compositional features of Platonov’s work and the novel “Chevengur”, in particular, was studied by the following literary scholars: L. Shubin in his work “Search for the meaning of separate and common existence”, N.V. Kornienko in the monograph “History of the text and biography of A.P. Platonov." However, creativity researchers have given holistic analysis works of Andrei Platonov, without delving into the subtleties of the problem of plot and composition.
The purpose of this work: based on familiarity with the content of the novel “Chevengur”, to highlight the main elements of the composition and determine their features and role in revealing the plot.
To achieve the goal, it is necessary to set and solve the following tasks:
Find out the meaning of the terms “composition”, “plot” and the difference between the latter and the plot;
Identify the features of the composition of the novel “Chevengur”.
This work may be of practical value when studying the work of the writer Platonov in literature lessons and elective course on this subject.
1.What is composition?
Literary encyclopedic dictionary defines composition (from Latin сompositio - composition, connection) as the arrangement and correlation of the components of an artistic form, i.e. the construction of a work, determined by its content and genre. 1
In works of art, according to L.N. Tolstoy, it often happens “... you cannot take one verse, one scene, one figure, one bar from its place and put it in another without violating the meaning of the entire work” 2.
The terms “architectonics” (from the Greek architektonike – building art) and “structure” (from the Latin structura – structure, arrangement) are often used as synonyms for the term “composition”. Like an architect, a prose writer or poet develops some kind of plan, a project for a future work. But since the author himself acts as the builder of his work, the compositional plan may change during the course of creative work.
The composition of a literary work includes:
1) “arrangement” of characters (i.e., a system of images);
2) events and actions (compositional plot);
3) methods of narration (change of compositional plan);
4) details of the situation;
5) behavior and experiences (compositional details);
6) stylistic devices (speech composition);
The compositional plot includes mandatory elements (plot, development of action, climax and denouement) and additional ones (exposition, prologue, epilogue), as well as extra-plot elements of the composition.
The most important aspect of composition, especially in works of large form, is their compositional plot. At the same time, the compositional design of the plot varies. The plot composition can be sequential (events develop gradually in chronological order), reverse (events are given to the reader in reverse chronological order), retrospective (sequentially presented events are combined with digressions into the past).
The internal objectives of the composition are continuity of movement artistic thought and feelings. To do this, it is necessary that each new compositional element be included in connection with all previous ones. Such a connection between parts and the whole can be considered the ideal of artistic composition.
The laws of composition differ for poetry and prose, for different types and genres of literature. Thus, in poetic works, especially lyrical ones, the composition is marked by strict proportionality of intonation-syntactic and metric-rhythmic units (verse, stanza).
And in a dramatic work, dialogue plays an important role, and descriptions and characteristics are reduced to brief remarks. The plot of the novel contains more plot lines and twists than the plot of the story.
But both in verse and in prose - in a work of any genre, true artistic depth is achieved when the word, the individual author's language, and its own unique intonation actively participate in the compositional construction. A strong connection between composition techniques and language techniques is one of the most important conditions artistic talent.
The difference between plot and plot.
Fabula (from Latin fabula - story, fable) 4 - a narration about the events depicted in epic, dramatic works, in contrast to the events themselves - from the plot of the works.
In modern literary critical and school practice, the terms “plot” and “fable” are understood as synonyms, or the plot is the entire course of events, and the plot is the main conflict that develops in them. Often these terms are used in reverse relation. The plot is the “subject”, i.e. what is being narrated, and the plot, from the same point of view, is the very narration about the “subject”.
The plot may differ from the plot:
order of narration - events are told not in the sequence in which they occur in the lives of the heroes, but with rearrangements, omissions, and subsequent recognitions (“Hero of Our Time M.Yu. Lermontova”);
the subject of the narrative - it can be conducted not only from the author, who does not show himself in any way (“The Artamonov Case” by M. Gorky), but also on behalf of an eyewitness to the events (“Demons” by F.M. Dostoevsky), or on behalf of the hero (“Farewell, weapons! "E. Hemingway);
motivation of the narrative (memory - “Hadji Murat” by L.N. Tolstoy, diary - “Notes of a Madman” by N.V. Gogol, chronicle - “The History of a City” by M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, etc.);
The entire structure of the plot and its conflicts must be studied functionally, in its connections with the content, in its aesthetic meaning.
There is a point of view, which does not seem substantiated, that the term “plot” is redundant, since the range of its meanings is covered by the concepts of “plot”, “plot scheme”, “plot composition”.
Only on the basis of plot analysis can one functionally analyze the plot of a work in all the complex relationships of its own aspects.
Plot features of Platonov’s novel “Chevengur”.
The novel “Chevengur,” which Andrei Platonov began writing at the age of twenty-seven, is not just his most extensive text, but also a kind of milestone in the artist’s work: here the writer subjected to a critical revision, often reducing to the point of absurdity, “ultra-revolutionary” ideas that found expression in his poetry, journalism and fiction of the early 20s. Writing the novel lasted four years (1926-1929).
“Chevengur” is one of the most striking images of the surrealist style of A.P. Platonov, which was formed by the mid-20s. Recognizable features of reality in the first decades of the twentieth century. Accepted here grotesque-mythological view (the influence of “Dead Souls” by Gogol, “The History of a City” by Saltykov-Shchedrin is noticeable).
“Journey with an Open Heart” is the subtitle of the novel. In addition to the direct meaning related to the journey to the amazing city of Chevengur of the main character - Sasha Dvanova, there is in the subtitle, as always happens with Platonov, and another, hidden meaning: the advancement of all humanity towards the future is possible, according to Platonov, only if it is done with an open heart. And another, completely hidden meaning of the subtitle states that the heroes’ search for Chevengur, reflections on him, as well as the entire story, were written without malicious intent, without a stone in their bosom - from the bottom of their hearts. The author, along with the heroes and together with the readers, makes attempts to comprehend the ways of the new world order.
IN genre In relation, “Chevengur” combines the features of an “educational novel” and a “travel novel.” The theme of the city of Chevengur, a symbol and at the same time a very specific place of a future happy life, appears gradually, anonymously. This often happens with Platonov: the topic is already present, but not verbally indicated or named. For now it sounds vague, distant, but that makes it even more attractive.
The novel describes the long and distant journey of the main character Sasha Dvanov and his comrades to Chevengur. The name of the city of Chevengur is phonetically associated primarily with the word “eternal [city]”. And the very name of the main character, Dvanov, denotes the fundamental duality of his personality and life behavior - the “Hamlet” separation of the doer and the contemplator: taking a more or less active part in events, he at the same time remains an outsider to everything that happens. The phrase of Dvanov’s adoptive father, Zakhar Pavlovich, is indicative: “A Bolshevik must have an empty heart so that everything can fit in there.” Image duality the hero corresponds to one of the fundamental ideas of the novel, which is that the infinite forms of existence do not lend themselves to rigid schematization; in the absence of a criterion of truth, preference cannot be given to any of the many models of the world. Symbolic in this regard is the episode of the novel when trains heading towards each other collide on the railway track (the steam locomotive in one of them is driven by Dvanov); Thus, Marx’s realized metaphor receives a grotesque development: “Revolutions are the locomotives of history.” The alarming note set at the beginning of the second part of the novel (“Revolution is on the prowl…”), unknown to readers until recent years, sounds more and more clearly: a crash is a sign of trouble.
The artistic time of the novel, which at the beginning of the plot is life-like and homogeneous, gradually, with the onset of the era of revolution and civil war, breaks up into separate streams, depending on the nature and depth of revolutionary transformations in a particular locality, each of which forms its own chronotope (Bitterman’s forestry, Pashintseva “reserve”, Khanskie Dvoriki farm, “Friendship of the Poor” commune, etc.). The inhabitants of these places, whom the wandering heroes Alexander Dvanov and Stepan Kopenkin meet, participate in their own way in the discussion of current socio-philosophical problems. Before us is a kind of “inverted” Gogol’s “Dead Souls”. There is the adventure of a profit-hungry Chichikov and a number of Sobakevichs, Manilovs, Korobocheks who profess the religion of hoarding, as if by the wave of a wand, against the backdrop of Russia they become small, toy-like. Here are the “spiritual poor”, ready to endure any hardship for the sake of a somewhat tolerable future, and their selfless guide Sasha Dvanov. What remained “behind the scenes” in Gogol, embodied in the symbol of the flashing “bird-three,” turns out to be at the center of Platonov’s narrative. Close-ups - hard, sharp, dramatic portraits.
As soon as Dvanov finds out that communism is “established” in the city of Chevengur, he immediately goes there. Following him are the “field Bolshevik commander” Kopenkin, the worker Gopner and the peasant Aleksey Alekseevich. This is how the third, final, most ideologically and emotionally rich part of the novel begins. If before the journey lasted, spreading in breadth and distance, now it rushes deeper. The narrative focuses on the main thing: the search for the essence of human life and human happiness.
Here, a group of communists led by Chepurny and Alexander Dvanov’s named brother Prokofiy, intending to make an instant “leap” into communism, organizes the end of the world - the “second coming” for the local bourgeoisie; As a result of a mass shooting, all residents of the city were killed. From this moment, according to the communists, the “end of history” comes: the old time stopped, and a blissful existence began in a world without exploitation, in which the only worker is the sun (the image of Chevengur is directly focused on the mythologeme of the utopian “City of the Sun”). With the appearance of aliens from the big world (Alexander Dvanov and Simon Serbinov), it turns out that time there actually moved faster than in Chevengur.
The people gathered in Chevengur want to learn to live somehow differently - more intelligently, spiritually, brightly. But this turns out to be an overwhelming task that cannot be solved individually. This is probably the only way humanity can survive. Otherwise, it will fail, just as the inspiredly imagined but never realized Chevengur failed.
Platonov’s novel “Chevengur” is a sad tale about bitter human experience, which contains many, many meanings.
Here is the hero of spirit Kopenkin, a mighty horse in the epic style with the metaphorical name Proletarian Strength, trusting and simple-minded, like the fairytale Ivan the Fool, Sasha Dvanov...
But, in addition to the fairy-tale outline of the narrative, there is clearly another intonation in the novel that coexists with, and perhaps stems from, the fairy-tale: hagiographic. It is the hagiographic motif that protects the work from being perceived as “caricatured” or “irocomic”.
Before us is the life of Alexander Dvanov, who carries the idea of understanding and sympathy, the idea of organizing the world according to truly human laws. The life of Kopenkin, who devoted himself to the establishment of the revolution. The life of Pashintsev with his defense of the revolution “in the untouched heroic category.”
This theme - the theme of high spiritual pathos - sounds at the end of the novel.
The death of the Chevengur commune, destroyed by a certain “mechanical” armed detachment, is perceived not so much as the long-awaited collapse of an inhuman utopia, but as a tragic misunderstanding.
So what do we see at the end of the novel? Here, in a small fragment, but full of extraordinary spiritual energy, it speaks of a hero leaving and continuing his life “in search of the road along which his father once walked in curiosity about death, and Dvanov walked in a feeling of shame of life in front of a weak, forgotten body ..." The road is not outgoing, but ascending, directed into the distance, deep, upward - in short, into the future. If Sasha Dvanov dissolves in space and time, remaining in memory and continuing his existence in us today, then Prokofy Dvanov, without leaving the boundaries of a modest everyday narrative, more suitable to his character, seems to swear allegiance to the memory of Sasha and, remembering, - transforms. His words convincing Zakhar Pavlovich that Sasha will be returned: “I’ll bring you for free!” - not an empty promise. They sound like an oath.
There is Proletarian Power, returning to Chevengur with measured steps. There is Zakhar Pavlovich who is looking for his adopted son. There is a humanized Prokofy Dvanov. And they have in their memory Alexander Dvanov and the dreamed but never realized city of Chevengur.
Here is the ending of the story - a finale that promises a difficult, painful, but inevitable beginning.
CONCLUSION
In the course of studying the topic of the essay, theoretical issues of the composition of a work of art, its elements and significance for a work of art were considered; definitions are given of both the composition itself and its compositional plot and plot, with consideration of the differences between them.
During the study, the critical works of researchers of A. Platonov’s work were studied to identify the plot and compositional features of the writer’s novel “Chevengur” and the following works were done:
the genre of the novel and its style are determined;
the influence of literary classics on the writer when creating images of characters in the novel;
the meaning of the novel's subtitle is revealed;
the development of the compositional plot throughout the three parts of the novel and their changing chronology are considered;
the intonation of the work and its pathos are determined.
During the study, an attempt was made to achieve the goal of identifying the distinctive compositional features of A. Platonov’s novel “Chevengur”, its place in the writer’s work and among the works of the early Soviet period.
List of sources used.
Gunther G. Genre problems utopias and “Chevengur” by A. Platonov // Utopia and utopian thinking. M., 1991.
Dmitrovskaya M.A. The problem of human consciousness in A. Platonov’s novel “Chevengur”.
Zolotonosov M. “False Sun”: “Chevengur” and “Pit Pit” in context Soviet culture 20s//Andrey Platonov: World of Creativity. M., 1994.
Literary encyclopedic dictionary/Under the general. ed. V.M. Kozhevnikova, P.A. Nikolaeva.-M.: Sov. encyclopedia, 1987.-752p.
Paramonov B. Chevengur and surroundings // Continent, 1987, No. 54.
Platonov A.P. For future use: Prose/Comp. M. Platonova; Entry article by T. Shekhanova.-M.: Khudozh. Lit., 1990.- 655 p.
"Russian writers about literary work." vol.3, 1955, p.537.
Encyclopedia of World Literature. – St. Petersburg: Nevskaya Book, 2000. -656 p.
Yablokov E.A. [Commentary]//Platonov A. Chevengur. M., 1991.
1 Literary encyclopedic dictionary/Under general. ed. V.M. Kozhevnikova, P.A. Nikolaeva.-M.: Sov. encyclopedia, 1987.-752p.
2 “Russian writers about literary work.” vol.3, 1955, p.537
3 Literary encyclopedic dictionary/Under general. ed. V.M. Kozhevnikova, P.A. Nikolaeva.-M.: Sov. encyclopedia, 1987.-752p.
4 Literary encyclopedic dictionary/Under general. ed. V.M. Kozhevnikova, P.A. Nikolaeva.-M.: Sov. encyclopedia, 1987.-752p.
Russian writer Andrei Platonov lived and worked in the first half of the last century - the most difficult period in the history of our country. It’s as if someone from above ordered to give the era of major social changes a chronicler unlike any previously known. Together with his people, A. Platonov survived and destructive wars, and the Great October Revolution. He witnessed the industrialization of the country and the collectivization of the countryside, which became both a high achievement of the new society and a source of human suffering.
Recognizing life as the highest human value, Platonov, at the same time, did not consider every life worthy of a person. AND central theme His work was a search for the true meaning of existence, “so that sad and unselfish suspicions about the expediency of man’s stay on earth would not arise.”
The writer’s most significant work was the novel “Chevengur,” which very accurately recreated the multi-structure of Russia during the period of transition from “war communism” to the NEP. According to its genre characteristics, the novel refers to a social utopia with elements of satire.
“We will organize fountains, we will wet the ground in a dry year, the women will have geese, everyone will have feather and fluff - a flourishing business!” - this eternal dream of the poor about an earthly paradise, intertwined with revolutionary ideas, gave rise to a peculiar myth among the Chevengurians about the imminent joyful triumph of socialism and communism. In the summer of 1922, after the devastating Civil War, the heroes reflect, without recognizing any protests, about the need to “make socialism in time for the new year.” “Commander of the field Bolsheviks” - Kopenkin gives the command: “Finish socialism by the summer!”, To which the newly-minted “transformers” cheerfully answer: “The rye will not yet ripen, but socialism will be ready!”
In order to “organize” socialism, the Chevengurians needed to liquidate the petty “bourgeoisie” by shooting them twice: “after the body, their soul was shot” in order to destroy not only “the flesh of unearned elements”, but also “the reserves of captivated by age-old soulfulness.”
To make communism more authentic, all the poor and miserable people were gathered in Chevengur, who received the name “others.” According to Proshka Dvinov, they are “worse than the proletariat,” “not Russians, not Armenians, not Tatars, but nobody.” The image of “others” brings to mind sad thoughts about the future of Russia, about the tragedy of a nation that has destroyed its best part, leaving only “others”, “nobody”, people without kinship, memory and Fatherland.
Having thus created a new society, the Chevengurs began to live without doing anything, since “labor contributes to the origin of property, and property contributes to oppression.” Moreover, work is “a relic of greed and exploitation.” All week long, the townspeople “rest”, suffering from idleness, and once a week, on clean-up days, they “hand-carry” gardens and houses closer to the city center. For socialism in Che-vengur now only the sun works, “... declared... by the world proletarian.”
Chevengur's characters, like all Platonov's heroes, are philosophers. But their thinking, although quite imaginative, is not yet mature enough to solve pressing social issues. Here, for example, is Chepurnoy: “In his head, like in a quiet lake, floated the fragments of a world he had once seen and the events he had encountered.” These are poorly educated people; even the most active “Marxist” admits: “I haven’t read him (Marx) myself. So, I heard something at rallies - so I’m campaigning.”
And it seems quite natural that Kopenkin, who arrived in the city, “has not yet... noticed obvious and obvious socialism in Che-vengur...”. He arrests Chepurnov because he did not provide that poor people with communism.
Now, when the history of that time has been rethought, when everyone can have their own opinion about the events of those days, we can say that Platonov’s novel has become a kind of prophecy, a warning, in a grotesque form showing the future of a socialist country, built by the hands of the most recent and dispossessed proletariats. As according to the scenario, the flower of the nation was destroyed during the Stalinist years, “who was nothing” became “everything”, the people were periodically announced, without any reason, about the imminent completion of the construction of communism. All this was already described by Platonov in his novel, created in 1929. But no one thought about the consequences of building “ideological” socialism, the fruits of which are being reaped to this day.
On both sides of utopia. Contexts of A. Platonov's creativity Gunter Hans
1. Questions of the genre and typology of utopia in the novel “Chevengur”
When comparing the novel “Chevengur” with such famous dystopias as “We” by Zamyatin or “1984” by Orwell, a much more complex genre structure of Plato’s work is striking. In “Chevengur” there is no unambiguously negative image of utopian thought, characteristic of Orwell and Zamyatin, in whom the “beautiful world” is exposed from the inside, “through the feelings of its individual inhabitant, who endures its laws and is placed before us as a neighbor.”
Plato's novel is not just an inversion of utopian intention: here a new and, one might say, unique in its complexity genre in the literature of the 20th century arises, the main features of which require special explication. One of its features is the procedural nature of the plot, characteristic of both the novel “Chevengur” and the stories “The Pit” and “The Juvenile Sea”. In this regard, Platonov’s predecessor can be considered H. Wells, the author of the novel “The Time Machine” (1895), who argued that the utopia of modernity should not be static, but kinetic. As Platonov’s stories and tales of the first half of the 1920s show, such dynamization initially had the features of science fiction, but then the center of gravity moves to social and historical processes. This is especially evidenced by the novel “Chevengur” and the story “The Pit”. Unlike classical dystopias, in which the ideal stage of development of society already exists in a ready-made form, the utopian structure in Plato’s works is in formation - and at the same time in decay. One gets the impression that Platonov writes “failed” utopias all the time. All of his characters strive for a better world, but the contours of an ideal future do not have time to be clearly defined.
Reflecting certain stages of Soviet history, Platonov’s utopian genre absorbs the structural features of the “construction novel” genre, widespread in Soviet Russia. Platonov’s plot schemes are confirmed by a huge amount of documentary material - from newspapers, party documents, etc. Thus, in Platonov, the framework of the utopian genre is constantly adapting to new situations.
Many of Platonov’s utopian texts are based on a peculiar concept of cyclical historical “waves.” In the article “Future October” (1920), the writer claims that “communism is only a wave in the ocean of the eternity of history.” The novel “Chevengur” is a clear illustration of this idea, according to which utopian “explosions” are sporadically born, aimed at achieving the end of times, at final deliverance from eternal return. The Chevengurians strive precisely to “put an end to the movement of unhappiness in life.” But the “evening of history” that came in Chevengur indicates that hopes of overcoming time were deceived. Chevengur returns to the vicious circle of history, but the longing for a better world does not fade away completely, it only goes from the surface into the depths - just as Sasha Dvanov at the end of the novel goes into the lake “in search of the road along which his father once walked” . From this point of view, Dvanov's immersion in the water of Lake Mutevo, in which his father drowned in search of the truth, can be interpreted as both death and rebirth. The utopian “wave” is temporarily subsiding, and in the depths of the “ocean of history” a new rise is being prepared. A similar meaning is contained in Platonov’s note about another work: “The dead in the pit are the seed of the future in the hole in the earth.”
Platonov's works are distinguished by the peculiar effect of contradictory movements within the plot structure. On the one hand, the mechanism of progress inherent in the utopian genre works, achieving ever new technical and social successes, approaching the ideal goal. On the other hand, during the actual implementation of construction tasks, this upward line is constantly undermined. The result is a typical Platonic dialectic of opposing tendencies. The further the action develops and the more achievements, the brighter the descending line appears. In “Chevengur” all the conditions for communism seem to have been fulfilled - and at the same time, the opposite of what was planned is being realized. They want to build a big house in Kotlovan, but what they end up with is a coffin pit. In his Notebook for 1930, Platonov writes: “By building houses, a person upsets himself, people disappear. With the construction, man is destroyed.” In The Juvenile Sea, the growing grandeur of the plans is matched by the progressive collapse of agriculture. Platonov's prose moves on both sides of utopia - on the line between hope and disappointment, construction and decay, order and chaos. If there was only a clearly negative tendency in the development of the plot, the works would not be distinguished by the paradoxical mixture of satire and tragedy that is characteristic of Platonov.
It is worth mentioning one more property of Plato’s utopia - its auto-reflectivity. In most of his works there is a philosophizing “seeker of truth” who is close to the author’s semantic position and continuously comments and evaluates the course of events. The chronotope of travel, typical of Platonov, which has a long tradition in the utopian genre, is also connected with this. In Platonov, the journey takes the form of wandering, which allows the free movement of the reflecting hero in search of the truth. The desire of this hero is aimed at reorganizing the world, but at the same time he is rooted in a kind of “ontological” structure based on folk mythological ideas about human life, nature and the cosmos. Many works have been devoted to the study of this layer of Plato’s world. In our opinion, it performs an extremely important function of correction and measurement in relation to utopian intention and social action. If the vector of utopia is directed forward, into the future, then the natural-cosmic layer refers to the eternal structure of the world. The future must justify itself before the past, before memory, before the stable being of the world. If a utopian explosion violates the basic laws of existence, this means that it has failed. The theme of many of Platonov's works is the testing of utopia in the light of cosmic values.
Platonov's central reflective hero is closely connected with basic ideas about the world, but at the same time he is filled with a thirst for technical and social revolution and tries to reconcile these two principles. He wanders across Soviet soil, and his voice is constantly superimposed on the voices of other characters. Thus, reflection on what is happening in Platonov turns out to be more important than the action itself. The pace of development of the plot slows down, always developing in the form of an alternation of individual scenes. There isn't an episode where there isn't some intense discussion of the action from different angles. From this point of view, we can call the novel a meta-utopia - utopia and dystopia in it enter into an open-ended dialogue.
Plato's utopia not only lies at the intersection of different literary genres, but also combines various types utopian thinking. Based on general spatial and structural features, one can distinguish two elementary utopian chronotopes - “city” and “garden”. A common feature of all utopias is their spatial or temporal remoteness and pronounced marking of boundaries, so a remote island is often chosen as the location of action. Campanella’s “City of the Sun” and Zamyatin’s “Unified State” are separated from the outside world by a wall, and the name of the Garden of Eden (in Greek ??????????, in Latin paradisus) traces its ancestry to the ancient Iranian word, which means a place fenced on all sides.
The contours of an ideal city can form a square - such as the New Jerusalem in the Apocalypse or the “almost square” city of Amaroth by Thomas More - or be round (such as the City of the Sun laid out in concentric circles). The symmetry of geometric shapes symbolizes unsurpassed harmony and perfection that cannot be improved. In all utopian designs, there is a coincidence of aesthetic and functional aspects. A similar phenomenon is typical, for example, of the utopian topos of the machine, which in the modern era often serves as a model of man and society. Here the beautiful and the useful form an indissoluble harmonious unity. The brilliance of the machine almost perfectly embodies the temptation emanating from all utopian designs.
The space of the garden differs significantly from urban utopias focused on the model of an archaic city. As the Old Testament idea of paradise or the ancient idea of the Golden Age shows, the space of the garden does not have a radial and functional geometric shape. The garden is based on the ideal of cultivated nature. From this stems the peculiar attractiveness of the “garden,” suggestively described by Dostoevsky in Versilov’s dream about Claude Lorrain’s painting “Asis and Galatea,” for which he coined the name “The Golden Age.” If the center of attention in the image of the city is the social-state and technical-civilizational aspects of life, then the garden version embodies the ideal of the archaic closeness of man to nature and relaxed family life. In the first case, we are dealing with a rationally developed, planned space, in the second - with the original harmony between people and nature. The development of the urban type subsequently leads to rationalistic social and technical utopias, while the version of the Garden of Eden, reflecting ancient mythological ideas, underlies the pastoral and idyllic genres.
The city and garden as basic utopian chronotopes in their original form are purely descriptive and plotless. They do not represent events, but rather everyday ritualized actions. Eventfulness leads, as a rule, to the destruction of utopian harmony, as evidenced by the dystopian genre. Along with spatial utopias, which are characterized by a cyclical time structure or achrony, i.e., absence of time, there are also temporary utopias. Their main feature- stadiality, the division of history into the necessary sequence of phases. Temporal utopias often include one of the mentioned spatial chronotopes. At the end of the movement, time “cools down”, stops, and a timeless structure arises, which leads to the end of the stage “jumps”. This end-time model comes in two flavors, as it can be either "progressive" or apocalyptic in nature. In addition, there is also a degradative type of temporary utopia, for which Bakhtin uses the concept of historical inversion. This type of utopia starts from an ideal primitive state, after which various stages of deterioration occur: the Golden Age is followed by the Silver, Copper and finally the Bronze Age.
A common version of a temporary utopia is chiliasm (or millenarianism), i.e., a religiously based dream of a thousand-year kingdom. Millenarianism arose in the Middle Ages as a secularization of the apocalypticism of the New Testament, suggesting the catastrophic destruction of the old world and the onset of the Kingdom of God. Paradigmatic significance here is given to the teachings of Joachim of Flora, who distinguished three eras of history - the era of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. The prophecies of Joachim of Flora (according to which the birth of the Antichrist and the onset of a new era were to take place in 1260) not only contributed to the emergence of a variety of heretical trends in the late Middle Ages, but also played a large role in the process of “modernizing” utopia in general. Social utopias of the industrial period of the 18th–19th centuries, including Marxism, generally follow a triadic model.
But how and to what extent could Platonov have detailed information about the history of heretics in the West? Based on the writer’s undoubted closeness to the ideas of proletarian culture, it can be assumed that he was familiar with A. Lunacharsky’s book “Religion and Socialism,” which gave him access to the history and ideology of early Christian and medieval chiliasm. The third and fourth chapters of the second volume are of particular importance. Describing the aspirations of the first Christians, Lunacharsky explains the expectation of the end of the world and the coming consumer communism as the consequences of social oppression. He finds an apology for poverty and criticism of wealth primarily in the Gospel of Luke. Even more interesting in our connection are reflections on Christian socialism of the Middle Ages. Considering the teaching of Joachim of Flora about the future Kingdom of the spirit, distinguished by contemplation and monastic asceticism, Lunacharsky presents further development these ideas in the Eternal Gospel of Gerard di Borgo San Domino, as well as in Dolcino, Thomas Munzer and many others. In Lunacharsky’s book, Platonov could find many examples of the combination of apocalyptic rhetoric with the revolutionary wrath of the proletariat. Let us recall, for example, the terrifying image of the god of hosts in the Chevengur church. Lunacharsky distinguishes two faces of the Christian God - the punishing and vengeful God of the Old Testament, whose terrible features are reborn in the Christ of the Last Judgment, and the meek, all-forgiving Christ of the New Testament.
But even more important for Platonov could be another source, to which Lunacharsky often refers in his book. This is the work of the German socialist K. Kautsky, “The Predecessors of Modern Socialism,” which was published many times in Russian translation. In the first part of the book, “From Plato to the Anabaptists,” Kautsky sets out in detail the history of European messianism from early Christian communism to the Czech Taborites, Anabaptists and the Reformation in Germany. The preface to the Russian edition of the book points out the connection between the chiliasm of the European Middle Ages and Russian sectarianism. Kautsky writes: “What for us in Western Europe is only of historical interest, in Russia it is a means for understanding a certain part of the present. On the other hand, in Russia all of life, all of the present, provides the key to a completely different understanding of the Christian opposition sects of the past.” And in Lunacharsky we find the idea that “Russia will face a revolution in religious clothing rather than openly economic, because in terms of its numbers the peasantry will play the main role in it and will put its stamp on it.”
Kautsky's theses on the analogy between medieval Western European chiliasm and the spirit of Russian sectarianism, as well as on the position of Russia at the stage of transition from peasant-sectarian protest to social revolution, should have been of great interest to Platonov. Thus, in “Chevengur” a peculiar layering and interweaving of three thematic layers is revealed - Russian sectarianism, medieval chiliasm and the Bolshevik revolution. Between these layers there is “not only similarity, but direct, albeit hidden, continuity.” It seems to us that in the novel one can even find a direct hint of an analogy between Bolshevism and its historical predecessors: “Where are you from? - the warden thought about the Bolsheviks. “You probably already were once, nothing happens without resemblance to something, without theft of something that existed.”
As in genre aspect, and in relation to the typology of utopian thought, the novel “Chevengur” turns out to be a complex construction, consisting of different ideological layers. Its closeness to the pattern of chiliastic movements of the late European Middle Ages is striking. This was pointed out by V. Varshavsky, for whom Platonov’s novel is a “crazy, terrible and pitiful eschatological drama.” The protagonists of the novel, imbued with an apocalyptic spirit, believe in the cosmic nature of the revolution and in the need for the destruction of the rich by “God’s people” for the sake of the coming Kingdom of God. Varshavsky calls Chevengur the Russian Munster by analogy with the Westphalian city in which the Anabaptists erected their New Zion in 1534–1535.
There is much in common between Chevengur and the Münster events during the reign of the Anabaptists. Just as in Münster, after the proclamation of the New Zion, the atheists were expelled and their property was taken away, so in Chevengur, after the liquidation of the bourgeoisie, the proletariat and others occupy empty houses and eat up food supplies. In Münster, they burn all books except the Bible, and trust only the authority of religious leaders - in Chevengur they listen to representatives of the revolutionary avant-garde, citing the writings of Karl Marx. A kind of polygamy is introduced in Munster, since poor women choose their patrons - poor women are brought to the city of Chevengur, despite sectarian asceticism. In the end, Munster fell under the onslaught of the bishop's landsknechts - and, like him, Chevengur was defeated by the troops attacking the city.
In Platonov’s novel we also find numerous parallels with the history of the Bohemian Taborites of the 15th century. However, a remarkable inversion in the course of historical events is striking. While among the Taborites, after the absence of the expected second coming of Christ in 1419–1420, peaceful Adventism abruptly gives way to revolutionary chiliasm, in Platonov’s novel the action develops just the opposite: after the liquidation of the bourgeoisie, the activity of the Chevengurs cools down, giving way to a fatalistic expectation of the end of time.
The fate of the Taborites is described in some detail by Kautsky. After the burning of John Hus in 1415, supporters of various factions, influenced by radical preachers, began to implement their egalitarian ideas. Since they could not stay in the “City of the Sun” Pilsen, they moved to Tabor, founded on one of the Lužnice hills. The name of this settlement, which served as the center of the Taborite movement after 1420, recalls Mount Tabor, where the Transfiguration of Christ took place. The Taborites' belief in a millennial kingdom was based on Joachimist and apocalyptic ideas, as well as legends about the Golden Age. Prague, the “great harlot” and “Babylon,” was doomed to destruction in their eyes. The Taborites hoped that after the destruction of Prague and other cities, after the extermination of the rich and noble, there would come an eternal kingdom without property, domination and social disasters, in which the “children of God” would live as brothers and sisters. There will be no suffering in the new kingdom, and children born in it will not die. The words of John the Theologian “And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death; there will be no more mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore” (Revelation 21:4) were accepted by them as a description of a really existing new society. Against this background, it becomes clear, for example, that Yakov Titych’s illness and the death of a child are a turning point, foreshadowing the end of the Chevengur utopia.
The city of Tabor attracted crowds of people from all over Europe, quite comparable to the “international proletariat” and “others” arriving in Chevengur. In Tabor, the dream of the Kingdom of God is dying due to the growing contradictions between the poor and the rich, the city is becoming bourgeois. In Platonov's novel, this tendency is manifested in the image of Prokofy Dvanov with his lust and thirst for hoarding. An eyewitness account relating to Tabor in 1451 paints a sad picture. Residents of the city have appropriated other people's property, but they are not able to preserve it; the adobe houses stand haphazardly in disarray. This picture comes to mind when you read about the state of Chevengur, in which there was a “voluntary destruction of the petty-bourgeois inheritance”: “It was difficult to enter Chevengur and difficult to leave it - the houses stood without streets, in disarray and crowded conditions, as if people were huddled together through dwellings , and weeds grew in the gorges between the houses.” The very end of Chevengur is similar to the end of Tabor: in the Battle of Lipany, the Taborites suffer a bloody defeat from the army of feudal lords.
Since the significance of the ideas of Joachim of Flora for the medieval chiliastic movements has already been discussed, it would not be out of place to point out some similarities between his teaching and “Chevengur”. The “comradely state” of the Chevengurs is in many ways reminiscent of the monastic ideal of Joachim. In his tripartite scheme, three statuses of man are distinguished: “The first was the slavery of servants, the second was the service of sons, the third was freedom. The first is in sorrow, the second is in action, the third is in contemplation. The first is in fear, the second is in faith, the third is in love.” The “contemplative” and comradely state is precisely realized in Chevengur, where it is mobilized “for eternal work"The sun, declared the "world proletarian." The same idea is expressed by the idea of the alternation of six eras (etates), corresponding to the six days of creation. The last age is the "Sabbath" which is given to God's people "to rest from the want and suffering which they have endured in all six times." And in Chevengur the “Sabbath” of history began, during which “its inhabitants rested from centuries of oppression and could not rest.” According to the teachings of Joachim, in the pre-Christian era people lived in the flesh, and at the present time, until the era of pure spirituality comes, they live between the flesh and the spirit. The coming church is represented in the image of the Virgin Mary. In "Chevengur" the ideal of chastity and celibacy is also valued - only Klavdyusha, Proshka Dvanov's mistress, embodies the kingdom of the future in a compromised form. The alternation of historical eras occurs in Joachim in accordance with cosmic cycles: “The first state is in starlight, the second is in the sunrise, the third is in the full light of day. The first occurs in winter, the second in early spring, and the third in summer.” The Chevengur utopia is associated with the sun, the eternal symbol of utopias, and with summer. The disaster of Chevengur finds its symbolic expression in the fact that in place of the sun, “the luminary of communism, warmth and camaraderie,” comes the moon, “the luminary of the lonely, the luminary of vagabonds wandering in vain,” and the warmth of summer gives way to cold autumn.
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Yun Yun Sun. Forms of expression author's position in the prose of A.P. Platonov: 01.10.01 Yun Yun Sun Forms of expression of the author's position in the prose of A.P. Platonov (Based on the material of the novel "Chevengur"): Dis. ...cand. Philol. Sciences: 10.01.01 Moscow, 2005 166 p. RSL OD, 61:05-10/1131
1. Narrative features and speech characteristics in the novel “Chevengur”: monologue in the form of dialogue 51
1-1. The word as the dominant feature of A.P.’s works Platonova 54
1-2. Point of view and its bearers 62
2. The system of characters as one of the ways to express the author’s position 75
2-1. The phenomenon of duality in the character system 78
Chapter III. Plot and compositional organization of the novel “Chevengur” as an extra-subjective form of expression of the author’s position 100
1. The novel “Chevengur”: from myth to reality, or “both this way and back” 100
1-1. Plato's “little trilogy” 103
1-2. Crossing the border: the principle of establishing a chronotope 116
2. The idea of a novel and the “novel idea” 126
Conclusion 132
List of used literature 143
Literature, in particular Russian literature, cannot be perceived outside the context of time. Among the writers who fully shared the fate of the “harsh and furious” era of the 20th century, Andrei Platonovich Platonov occupies a special place. His work is dedicated to revealing the “crushing universal secret” - the mystery of life and death, the very “stuff of existence.” A.P. Platonov “perceived the revolution not only politically, but also philosophically - as a manifestation of a universal movement, as the most important step to the transformation of the world and man" 1. V.V. Vasiliev, characterizing the artist’s work, saw in his works not only a depiction of the tragic fate of the people in the revolutionary era, but also “the painful worldview drama of the artist himself, deeply hidden in the comically foolish style.”
In the second half of the 20s of the last century A.P. Platonov wrote a number of major works in a short period. Among them, the novel “Chevengur” and the story “The Pit”, being the creative pinnacle of the young writer, occupy a central place in the legacy of A.P. Platonova 3. In the novel “Chevengur” the features of the style and artistic thinking of A.P. are most clearly manifested. Platonov. It is not for nothing that researchers call this work “precious crystal” (SP Semenov), “creative laboratory” (V.Yu. Vyugin), “artistic result” (E.G.
1 Trubima L.A. Russian literature of the 20th century. M., 2002. P. 199.
Vasiliev V.V. Andrey Platonov. Essay on life and creativity. M., 1990. P. 190.
Many Russian and foreign researchers agree that “The Pit” and “Chevengur” are the culmination of the talent of the young Platonov. On this see, for example, Vyugin V.Yu. “Chevengur” and “Pit”: the formation of Platonov’s style in the light of textual criticism. SFAP. Vol. 4. M, 2000; Langerak T., Andrey Platonov. Amsterdam, 1995; Seifrid T. Andrei Platonov - Uncertainties oGsprit. Cambridge University Press, 1992; Teskey A. Platonov and Fyodorov, The Influence of Christian Philosophy on a Soviet Writer. Avebury, 1982, etc.
Muschenko) of the writer’s creativity.
The fate of the novel “Chevengur” was dramatic. As is known, “Chevengur” was not published during the writer’s lifetime. The novel became known in its entirety to a wide range of readers in Russia in the second half of the 1980s. Until this time, only in the early 70s were some fragments and excerpts from the novel published.
Readers in the West became acquainted with this work earlier than in the writer’s homeland. In 1972, in Paris, the novel “Chevengur” was published in Russian with a foreword by M.Ya. Geller. Although this edition did not contain the first part of the novel (“The Origin of the Master”), it can be said that A.P.’s fame began with this publication. Platonov abroad. The full text of the novel was first published in London in 1978 in English, and only ten years later it appeared in Russia 5.
Despite the fact that in the Soviet Union readers were deprived of the opportunity to get acquainted with literary heritage A.P. Platonov, some researchers had the opportunity to access the author’s archive, which preserved many letters, records, and manuscripts known only to the people closest to the writer. Although "Chevengur" was not published in the Soviet Union, it was known, apparently, in a handwritten version, although not to a very wide circle of readers. For example, L.A. Shubin, in the article “Andrei Platonov”, which appeared in 1967 in the magazine “New World”, covers the work of A.P. Platonov, based on specific texts, including those that were not
4 As is known, during the writer’s lifetime some fragments of the novel were published.
For example, "The Origin of the Master"; "Adventure"; "The Death of Kopenkin." However, when
all the efforts of A.P. Platonov (for example, an appeal to A.M. Gorky), the entire novel is not
came out. In the 1970s, one of the
final episodes entitled “The Death of Kopenkin”, in the same year another
one excerpt from the novel “Journey with an Open Heart” in Literaturnaya Gazeta
(1971. Oct. 6).
5 In 1988, “Chevengur” was published in the magazine “Friendship of Peoples” (No. 3, 4). IN
the same year full text The novel was published as a separate edition (with an introduction, art. S.G.
known to the reader of that time, from early publications to critical notes writer. In addition to already published works (stories), L.A. Shubin often mentions the novel “Chevengur”. In this article, the scientist asks the question: “whether the social consciousness, filling in the gaps and omissions of its knowledge, will be able to perceive this new organically and holistically, as “a chapter between chapters, as an event between events”” 6. It is thanks to the work of L.A. Shubin, a large gap in the history of Russian literature began to be filled. The article “Andrei Platonov” marked the beginning of the “real study” of A.P. Platonov, in particular, to the study of the novel “Chevengur”.
Following L.A. Shubin in the 70s, many researchers both in Russia and abroad began to actively study the novel “Chevengur”. Researchers considered the novel in the most different angles, while two approaches to the study of the work were noted: the first approach is aimed at studying the context of the work (in connection with the political situation, philosophical and natural science theories, etc.), the second - at studying the poetics of the writer.
At the initial stage, researchers gave preference to the first approach, that is, the study of A.P.’s creativity. Platonov in the context of the socio-political situation of the 20s. Particular attention was paid to the writer’s philosophical system and the influence of various Russian and foreign philosophers on its formation. Many in the novel “Chevengur” (not only in the novel, but also in the artistic system of A.P. Platonov in general) noted the influence of “Philosophy of a Common Cause” by N.F. Fedorov: his ideas about the transformation of the world, about overcoming death, about immortality, about the victory of man over natural forces, about human brotherhood, about the construction of a “common home” and so on. This trend
Semenova). Shubin L.A. Searches for the meaning of separate and common existence. M., 1987. P. 188.
was especially relevant from the early 70s to the mid-80s. The ideological and philosophical context of the writer is studied in the works of N.V. Kornienko, Sh. Lyubushkina, N.M. Malygina, S.G. Semenova, A. Teski, E. Tolstoy-Segal, V.A. Chalmaeva and others.
Shifting the focus to the study of the poetics of the novel “Chevengur”
observed relatively later, most likely after the publication of the novel in
Russia. Researchers in this area can be divided into two
groups: the first was interested mainly in thematic
aspects of A.P.’s creativity Platonov; the second was attracted by the problem
the unique form of his works. The first group includes
researchers interested in aesthetic problems,
thematic, mythopoetic, anthropological; to the second - considering, first of all, the problems of linguistic features, narrative, point of view, structure and architectonics of the work. Despite the fact that these two groups of researchers had different starting positions, they had one common goal: to reveal and illuminate the author’s position in the work of A.P. Platonov, who is sometimes even “unknown to himself.”
In the 1980s, a number of works appeared devoted to creative biography A.P. Platonov, not only in Russia, but also abroad. In 1982, two significant works were published, in which separate chapters are devoted to the novel “Chevengur”. A book by V.V. appeared in Russia. Vasiliev “Andrei Platonov: an essay on life and work”, a monograph by M.Ya. was published in Paris. Geller "Andrei Platonov in search of happiness." V.V. Vasiliev analyzes the “secret” utopian ideal of A.P. Platonov, shows the formation of the writer, based on facts from his biography, and the scientist also reveals some characteristic features poetics of the artist. As the titles of the chapters show (“Platonov vs. Platonov,” “Projects and Reality”), the scientist noticed the initial
contradiction and conflict in the artistic concept of the world by A.P. Platonov. V.V. Vasiliev emphasizes the peculiarity of the author’s position as follows: A.P. Platonov, as a proletarian writer, “is organically alien to the position “above the people”, “above history” 7 - he goes to the future from history, with the people.” Thus, highly appreciating the nationality of the writer’s creativity, V.V. Vasiliev believes A.P. Platonov "the true heir and continuer of the Russian tradition
literature".
M.Ya. Heller in chapters entitled "Faith"; "Doubt"; "The temptation of utopia"; “Total collectivization”; "Happiness or Freedom"; “The New Socialist Man”, which show the change in the writer’s attitude towards his time and ideal, outlines the literary route of A.P. Platonov from a young communist and aspiring writer to a mature master. The scientist showed particular interest in the novel “Chevengur”. Attributing the novel “Chevengur” to the menippea genre, M.Ya. Geller first defines it as an “adventure novel,” for which the “adventure of ideas” is important 9 . The scientist raised a number of questions that relate to the ways and forms of expressing the author’s position and are still relevant: the question of the genre, the plot-compositional structure of the novel and its context, etc.
Characterizing the work of A.P. Platonov, literary scholars unanimously call him “the most philosophical” (V. Chalmaev), “the most metaphysical” (S.G. Semenova) writer in Russian literature of the 20th century. V.V. Agenosov considers “Chevengur” “one of the pinnacles of the Soviet
7 Vasilyev V.V. Andrey Platonov. M. 1982 (1990) P. 95.
Vasiliev V.V. Ibid. P. 118. About the nationality of A.P. Platonov, see also: Malygina N.M. Aesthetics of Andrey Platonov. Irkutsk, 1985. P. 107-118; Skobelev V.P. ABOUT national character in Platonov’s prose of the 20s // Creativity of A. Platonov: Articles and messages. Voronezh, 1970.
Geller M. Ya. Andrei Platonov in search of happiness. Paris, 1982 (M., 1999). P. 188.
philosophical novel" and rightly writes about the polyphonism characteristic of the novel: "if this idea" (utopian) was "the main and only one", then "Platonov would not need to write "Chevengur", it would be enough to create "Pit" 11. E.A. Yablokov, supporting this tradition, considers “Chevengur” as a “novel of questioning”, a novel of “last questions”. The researcher notes the difficulty of determining the author's position, since it is often “not clear how the author himself relates to what he depicts” 12.
T. Seyfried defines “Chevengur” not only as a dialogue between the writer and Marxism and Leninism, but also as “a novel about ontological issues” 13 . Emphasizing the ambivalence of the author's position, the scientist classifies the novel as a meta-utopia (the term of G.S. Morson) 14. Dutch researcher T. Langerak also considers the ambivalence of the novel distinctive feature poetics A.P. Platonov. According to the scientist, A.P.’s ambivalence Platonov manifests itself not only at the structural level, but also “permeates all levels of “Chevengur”” 15.
Traditionally, many researchers resort to the mythopoetic approach, focusing on special attention“mythological consciousness” in the novel by A.P. Platonov and the archetypes of Platonic images and motifs. This tradition is still relevant and one of the main ones in the study of the writer’s poetics. The mythopoetic approach received multifaceted development in the works of N.G. Poltavtseva, M.A. Dmitrovskaya, Yu.G. Pastushenko, X. Gunther and others.
0 Agenosov V.V. Soviet philosophical novel. M. 1989. P. 144. 11 Ibid. P. 127.
Yablokov E. A. Hopeless sky (introduction, article) // Platonov A. Chevengur. M., 1991. P.8.
Seifrid T. Andrei Platonov - Uncertainties of sprit. Cambridge University Press, 1992. 14 Ibid. C 131.
Langerak T. Andrei Platonov: Materials for the biography of 1899-1929. Amsterdam, 1995, p. 190.
In the 90s, especially after the appearance of the monograph by N.V. Kornienko “Here and Now”, notes the balance of philosophical-historical, linguistic and literary approaches to the study of the work of A.P. Platonov |6. In this work N.V. Kornienko, based on textual research, traces the writer’s creative path to the novel “Chevengur”. Having defined the structure of the novel as “polyphonic,” she sees this as the difficulty of determining the author’s position.
Thanks to the efforts of scientists during these years, many of the writer’s texts were reconstructed and published. Dissertation studies have appeared that examine the poetics of A.P.’s works. Platonov with different points vision: mythopoetic (V.A. Kolotaev, Ya.V. Soldatkina); linguistic (M.A. Dmitrovskaya, T.B. Radbil); anthropological (K.A. Barsht, O. Moroz), etc. At the same time, serious attempts were made to provide a textual analysis of the novel “Chevengur”. In the dissertation of V.Yu. Vyugin textual analysis is combined with the study creative history novel "Chevengur" |7. Comparing the novel in various aspects with its first version, “The Builders of the Country,” the researcher notes the imagery and conciseness of the form and content of “Chevengur” in comparison with its previous version. Among the works on “Chevengur”, the monograph by E.A. deserves special attention. Yablokov, where materials related to the novel are presented and systematized.
In addition, not only in Moscow (IMLI), in St. Petersburg (IRLI), but also in Voronezh, the writer’s homeland, are regularly held
16 Kornienko N.V. History of the text and biography of A.P. Platonov (1926-1946) // Here and
Now. 1993 No. 1.M, 1993.
17 Vyugin V.Yu. “Chevengur” by Andrei Platonov (to the creative history of the novel). dis.
...kan. Philol. Sciences, IRLShchPushkinsky House) RAS, St. Petersburg, 1991; also see: Vyugin V.Yu.
From observations on the manuscript of the novel Chevengur // TAP 1. St. Petersburg, 1995; Story by A.
Platonov “Builders of the Country”. Towards the reconstruction of the work // From creative
heritage of Russian writers of the 20th century. St. Petersburg, 1995.
conferences dedicated to the work of A.P. Platonov, as a result of which the collections “The Land of Philosophers of Andrei Platonov” (issues 1-5) were published; “The Work of Andrei Platonov” (issue 1.2), etc. In particular, the conference held at IMLI in 2004 was entirely devoted to the novel “Chevengur”. This shows the continued interest of researchers in this novel, which can unconditionally be considered one of the highest artistic achievements of A.P. Platonov.
However, despite the attention of literary scholars to the work of A.P. Platonov, many questions still remain unresolved. Firstly, although in recent years Plato scholars are actively engaged in textual research; there is not yet a canonical text of the novel “Chevengur”. Therefore, when studying the work, one must keep in mind that there are different versions of the text 19. Secondly, the opinions of researchers regarding the interpretation of the author’s position, individual episodes, even phrases of the work often differ. For these reasons, coverage of the author’s position in the works of A.P. Platonov deserves special attention and special research. Thus, with all the literary interest in the novel “Chevengur”, the problem of the author’s position is still one of the most controversial. Understanding this problem opens up new perspectives for understanding a number of fundamental issues in the poetics of A.P. Platonov, in particular, when studying the so-called chain of novel works of the writer
18 Yablokov E.A. On the shore of the sky. Andrey Platonov's novel "Chevengur". St. Petersburg, 2001.
19 In this regard literary fate“Kotlovana” turned out to be happier than
"Chevengura". In 2000, an academic edition of the story was published,
prepared by employees of IRLI (Pushkin House). Below are all links to
the main text of the story “The Pit” is given according to this edition, indicating the pages in
in parentheses. Platonov A. Pit, St. Petersburg, Nauka, 2000; If we are talking about
“Chevengure”, then there are two more or less “mass publications”: 1) Platonov A.P.
Chevengur. M: Fiction, 1988. 2) Platonov A.P. Chevengur. M.:
Higher School, 1991. Between these publications there are almost no textual
discrepancies. Further, all links to the main text of the novel “Chevengur” are given according to
second edition with page numbers in parentheses.
(“Chevengur”, “Pit pit”, “Happy Moscow”), which are a trilogy of the “utopian project” of A.P. Platonov.
Thus, relevance of the dissertation is determined by the increased interest of researchers in the problem of the author’s position in works of art and the insufficient knowledge of A.P.’s work. Platonov in this theoretical aspect.
The main material of the study served as the novel "Chevengur". The dissertation compares the novel “Chevengur” with the story “The Pit” and the novel “Happy Moscow”, which made it possible to identify typological patterns and emphasize the originality of the main work of A.P. Platonov.
Scientific novelty of the research is due to the fact that the text of the novel “Chevengur” is analyzed for the first time as an artistic whole in a selected theoretical aspect. The dissertation syncretically examines subjective and extra-subjective forms of expression of the author's position and comprehends their relationship with the author's philosophical and aesthetic position. The works under study (“Chevengur”, “The pit”, “Happy Moscow”) are considered for the first time as a novel trilogy.
Purpose of the dissertation - reveal the features of the poetics of A.P. Platonov through the study of the specific forms of artistic embodiment of the writer’s ideals in his work.
To achieve this goal, the following tasks are solved : 1. Theoretically comprehend the problem of the author and the author’s position:
Clarify and make a terminological distinction between the concepts of “author”, “image of the author”, “author’s position”, “point of view”;
Conventionally, we will attribute three works by A.P. Platonov (“Chevengur”, “The pit”, “Happy Moscow”) to the novel genre.
work.
2. Analyze the novel “Chevengur” in selected theoretical
aspect, based on the relationship between subjective and extra-subjective forms
expressions of the author's position. To do this:
consider the forms of narration in the novel “Chevengur”;
reveal ways of expressing different “points of view” in the novel;
characterize the system of characters, paying special attention to the phenomenon of “doubleness” as a form of identifying the author’s position, as well as the use of dialogic relationships in the work;
Study the plot and compositional structure of the novel as a “small trilogy”, consider the features of the chronotope of the work.
3. consider artistic forms of expressing the author’s position and
identify the relationship between the forms of embodiment of the author’s position and
the author's ideals.
Methodology and specific research methodology determined by the theoretical aspect and specific research material. The methodological basis of the work is the works of Russian and foreign scientists on the problems of the author and hero (M.M. Bakhtin, V.V. Vinogradov, V.V. Kozhinov, B.O. Korman, Yu.M. Lotman, N.D. Tamarchenko etc.), style, narration, correlation of points of view (N. Kozhevnikova, J. Gennet, B.A. Uspensky, V. Schmid, F. Shtanzel, etc.). The dissertation takes into account the results of research on the problems of the author's position in the work of A.P. Platonova (V.V. Agenosova, JV Bocharov, V.Yu. Vyugina, M.Ya. Geller, M.A. Dmitrovskaya, N.V. Kornienko, V. Rister, T. Seyfried, E. Tolstoy-Segal, A .A. Kharitonova, L.A. Shubina, E.A. Yablokova, etc.
The work uses comparative historical and genetic
methods that allow us to reveal the philosophical and aesthetic basis of the writer’s work in the context of the era. The use of the principles of the structural method is due to the need to study the means of expressing the author’s position in the text.
Practical significance of the dissertation due to the fact that the materials and results of the study, as well as its methodology, can be used in the development teaching aids and conducting classes on the history of Russian literature of the 20th century and the work of A.P. Platonov at university and school.
Approbation.
The main provisions of the study were discussed at
postgraduate seminar of the department of Russian literature of the 20th century. MPGU,
tested in presentations at two international conferences
(“The legacy of V.V. Kozhinov and current problems of criticism,
literary criticism, history of philosophy" (Armavir, 2002), "VI
International scientific conference dedicated to the 105th anniversary of
birth of A.P. Platonov" (Moscow, 2004)) and at the interuniversity
conference (“IX Sheshukov Readings” (2004)). Basic provisions
dissertations are presented in four publications. *
Dissertation structure determined by the purpose of the study and the assigned tasks. The dissertation consists of an introduction, three chapters, a conclusion, a list of references and a summary in English. The total volume of work is 166 pages. The bibliography includes 230 titles.
The problem of the author and the author's position in modern literary criticism
In antiquity and the Middle Ages, the author played the role of only “a medium, an intermediary connecting the impersonal creative force with the audience.” According to Yu.M. Lotman, before the era of romanticism, especially in the Middle Ages, each culture created in its model a type of person, “whose behavior is completely predetermined by a system of cultural codes,” and the author simply needed to summarize “general rules of behavior, ideally embodied in the actions of a certain person,”2 which has its own biography. If the author fulfilled his role as a chronicler well, then, in principle, it did not matter what personality or what position the author of this work had, the main thing is that he neutrally and objectively described in his work the general life ideal that society. Thus, until the 17th-18th centuries. the author’s creative personality “was limited” and “shackled by the requirements (norms, canons) of already established genres and styles.”3 The author had a universal and “common face”; in his work he was present in a hidden and forgotten form, yielding his subjectivity to the canon of the society of that time.
German classical rationalism also emphasized the power of abstract truth over the subject. In Hegel’s “Aesthetics,” one of the most important theses is the coincidence of the author’s personality, i.e., subjectivity, with “true objectivity” in the depiction of the subject. Hegel substantiates the idea of the unity of the objective and subjective principles of a work of art, therefore Hegel’s problem of the author does not know any contradiction.
The flourishing of romanticism, the essence of which lies in the full disclosure of the unique uniqueness of the subject and the endless emphasis on its role, forced the disruption of the long “unequal balance” between the subject and the object, that is, the author and the subject he depicts. In the poetics of romanticism, creativity “is perceived as the embodiment of the “spirit of authorship””5. Now in the space of the work the main, and only, aesthetic event becomes “self-realization of the author”, as a result of which work of art takes on the character of a monologue or confession of one subject. So, the emergence of romanticism and sentimentalism radically changed the idea of the role of the author in literature. The work began to be perceived as the realization of individual creative power.
With the development of realism in the 19th century. the problem of the author as a subject has entered a new stage. The goal of a realistic work is a complete reproduction of the life and reality of modern times, in contrast to romanticism or sentimentalism, the center of which is the extreme expansion of the personal principle. The diversity of life depicted did not allow the author to delve into his own experience and stay there. In this complex and confusing world of a realistic work, the author-subject could not find a suitable place for himself; the author “with his voice and position was somehow lost”6. Therefore, the dominant feature of the work is not the author’s genius, not his personal origin, but the generality, abstractness and life-likeness of the work itself. This is where the non-authorial, purely objective nature of realistic literature lies. But on the other hand, any work of art is the creation of the author, as a result of which it is inevitably connected in one way or another with the personality of the author. Thus, the author’s principle recedes into the background, and the author’s problem as a literary one takes on a new (more precisely, modern) sound in a more complex semiotic sense.
Against this historical background, the question is raised about the “presence” of the author in the work or, conversely, his “disappearance” from the work: the idea of “immanent” authorship arises, “i.e. e. the possibility and necessity of reader and research reconstruction of the “organizing artistic will” from the composition and structure of the aesthetic reality created by it”7. This means that there is a need to clarify the difference between a real and an abstract author (the image of the author or other subjects), i.e. disguised by the real author as an image and by the author as a historical figure. Thus, at the beginning of the 20th century, the problem of the author (and hero) again becomes relevant. This is closely related to the epochal crisis problems of our time, which are reflected in all areas of science and culture. The intelligentsia was faced with the fundamental problem for the philosophy of the 20th century of “man” as a “subject”, the problem of alienation and dehumanization of man as an individual. Against such a dramatic historical background, interest arises in the author's principle, which is perceived as an omnipotent and creating being, at least in the artistic world.
In Russian literary criticism, interest in the problem of authorship developed intensively in the 20s of the last century. The revolution destroyed the existing social system and forced us to re-address the problem of man as the only being who independently acts and is responsible to History. The role of the author and character in literary works also changes. People are “thrown out of their biographies”; the individual as the main character of the plot seems to have disappeared. In this regard, the hero as a subject loses his meaning in the space of the work, and the role of the author is also weakened.
The category “image of the author,” which, unlike the real author, is present in the work as “normative linguistic consciousness,” was first introduced into literary criticism by V.V. Vinogradov. Based on the well-known system of F. Saussure “language - speech (langue - parole)”, which assumes that each speech reflects the general structure of the language, V.V. Vinogradov argues that “in each individual creativity, the general properties and processes of linguistic development are revealed more fully and sharply”9. Therefore, all fiction, according to Vinogradov, is a normative linguistic microcosm, reflecting the general essence of the development of the normative linguistic macrocosm of a given era. In this macrocosm (i.e. in a common language) there is a common normative linguistic consciousness that prevails over each speaker. The language of fiction as a “microcosm of the macrocosm of a common language” must have this kind of linguistic “normative consciousness” so that it is more static and more abstract than a random speaking subject of this work(real author). The bearer of this consciousness does not have the subjective ideas and experiences of the speaker.
Forms of embodiment of the author’s position: subjective and extra-subjective
IN fiction, especially in prose, except autobiographical work(often in it), the author cannot be directly in the text. The essence of the author is determined by his “extra-locality”, as a result of which he is always “mediated” in the text - by subjective or extra-subjective forms. As for the forms of the author’s presence in the work, they are very diverse. The main “depicting” subjective forms of expressing the author’s position in prose work are the “image of the author”, narrator, narrator, or, using the terms of modern Western (especially German) literary studies, “implicit author”, narrator 29, etc. The problem of point of view is closely related to these different “expressive” forms (B.A. Uspensky), the words “one’s own and someone else’s” (M.M. Bakhtin), that is, the problem of narration and style.
“Image of the author”, “narrator”, “storyteller” - literary scholars still interpret these terms ambiguously, sometimes even contradictorily. Often the very concept of “author” is confused with these concepts. For example, B.O. Corman “author” is the subject (carrier) of consciousness, “the expression of which is the entire work or their totality” 30. The main position of the researcher is formulated as follows: “the subject of consciousness is the closer to the author, the more he is dissolved in the text and unnoticed in it.” Here the limits between the real author and the other “subjects of consciousness” are not clearly demarcated. According to B.O. Corman, “as the subject becomes an object of consciousness, he moves away from the author” (but in our opinion, he moves away only in the external plane). In other words, according to B.O. Corman, “the more the subject of consciousness becomes a certain personality with his own special way of speech, character, biography, the less he expresses the author’s position”32. As we can see, one is allowed here important point in terms of “aesthetic distance”: here only external distance and dissimilarity between the author and other subjects of consciousness are meant. The author's artistic intention, or its intentional “outside-ness,” as it seems to us, is not taken into account.
The concept of “image of the author,” which was introduced into literary criticism by V.V. Vinogradov, different scientists put different content into it. Thus, the interpretation of M.M. Bakhtin can be applied not only to fiction. “The image of the author” is one of the forms of existence of the author in his creation, but “unlike the real author, the image of the author created by him is deprived of direct participation in the real dialogue (He can participate in it only through the whole work), but he can participate in the plot of the work and perform in the depicted dialogue with the characters” (emphasis added). Here the secondary nature of this image and its difference from the real author are emphasized. This means that there is a certain hierarchical system: “the author is real,” who cannot express direct speech and cannot exist as an image; “author image” created by the primary author. This image can be located in the space of the work; it is freer and more mobile than the real author; the “hero” created by the author as real can deal with the image of the author. The desire of the “primary, formal author” to “intervene in the conversation of the characters” and to contact the depicted world “makes it possible for the author’s image to appear in the image field”34.
In contrast to the concept of "author image", the terms "narrator" and "narrator" are more specifically defined, although they too are used and interpreted differently in connection with different types of narration. Traditionally, researchers believe that the fundamental difference between these two terms lies in which world the depicting subject belongs to. If he lives in the same world where these heroes are, then he is an “I-narrator”35. And if the narrator lives outside that world, then - “he is the narrator”36. But this definition requires a reservation, since the “I-narrator” can be divided into two categories: the first is the one who lives in the same world and actively participates in events, while his horizons are limited to his own emotions and assessment, the second is simply observing everything that happens from the outside, this time he becomes just a chronicler.
According to the definition of V.E. Khalizeva, the narrator describes the events from the third person, the narrator - from the first. B.O. Corman defines these concepts by the degree of their identification (or solubility) in the text: “the narrator is a speaker of speech, not identified, not named, dissolved in the text, the “narrator” is a speaker of speech, openly organizing the entire text with his personality.”
Opinion of V.V. Kozhinova differs from researchers who see the narrator and the storyteller as opposite or different concepts, in that for him the narrator represents one of the options for the existence of the narrator 8. The scientist defines the narrator as “a conventional image of a person on whose behalf the narration in a literary work is conducted,” thanks to which “a “neutral,” “objective” narration is possible, in which the author himself, as it were, steps aside and directly creates before us pictures of life.” In fiction, according to the researcher, one can find different options for the existence of the image of the narrator. This is perhaps “the image of the author himself, which directly appeals to the reader’s consciousness” and, naturally, this is “the artistic image of the author, which is created in the creative process, like all other images of the work.” Very often a work introduces “a special image of the narrator, who acts as a person separate from the author. This image may be close to the author, or may be very far from him in character and social status.
Features of narration and speech characteristics in the novel “Chevengur”: monologue in the form of dialogue
Traditionally, in Platonic studies, the author’s position is characterized by such terms as “polarity,” “ambivalence,” “duality,” “dichotomy,” etc. This assessment by researchers largely depends on the characteristics of the author’s attitude to the depicted world. The famous remark of A.M. Gorky about the nature of the novel “Chevengur” (“lyric-satirical”)1 gave direction to the search. The very antinomy of the phrase “lyrical-satirical” explains the difficulty in determining the author’s position of this work.
The difficulty of interpreting the text of A.P. Platonov and the definition of the author’s position, first of all, lies in the unique language of the writer. Unlike his contemporaries (I.E. Babel, M.M. Zoshchenko, B.A. Pilnyak, E.I. Zamyatin, etc.), as stated by I.A. Brodsky, A.P. Platonov wrote in “the language of his time.” He plunged into the depths of the consciousness of his era, completely subordinating “himself to the language of the era”2. Thanks to the peculiar language and its “wrong charm” (N.I. Gumilevsky) A.P. Platonov was able to achieve his characteristic ambivalence and “excess” of meaning.
The fundamental features of the young writer’s unique language are present in the novel “Chevengur”. Firstly, as the first reader of “Chevengur” rightly noted, G.Z. Litvin-Molotov, the novel is “abundant with conversations,” especially the “Chevengur” part of the novel itself, which consists of dialogues between the characters. No wonder A.M. Gorky, having read the manuscript, proposed turning the novel into a play. This is the thought of A.M. Gorky was “inspired” by the language of A.P. Platonov. According to the great writer, from the stage, from “the lips of intelligent artists, it (the novel) would sound excellent”3.
Secondly, despite the fact that the novel is “abundant with conversations” of the heroes, the characters think and speak absolutely “Platonic”. In the novel, according to many researchers, the linguistic characteristics of each character, including the narrator, represent one of the varieties of the author’s own language. The author's language dominates everything: the language of the characters, the plot line, even the space-time structure. Or, on the contrary, as L.A. writes. Shubin, author’s speech in the works of A.P. Platonova strives, as to her limit, for the speech of the heroes. In any case, in the novel the language of different subjects is essentially the same. In other words, the novel could become a monologue by a young writer.
But this is a monologue of a special kind, since the author’s position, varying, is embodied in the linguistic dialogue of different characters. The basis for such an interpretation is given by the author himself in the following statement: “my ideals are monotonous and constant. I will not be a writer if I present only my unchanging ideas, they will not read me. I must vulgarize and vary my thoughts in order to produce acceptable works.”4
Another important feature of language is the “redundancy” of meaning: “to live main life"; “think into your thoughts”; “think in your head”; “know in mind”, etc. 5. Maybe, as E.A. suggests. Yablokov, A.P. has the truth. Platonov is not a given - “it is a process: therefore, every word about the world is at best partly true.” Because of this, one gets the impression that “not only the characters, but also the very language of Plato’s prose suffer from the inability to “speak out””6. The inability to “speak out” results in A.P.’s “redundancy” of language. Platonov. The opposite phenomena - “silence” or “lack of words” - occur for the same reason.
In addition to “redundancy”, in the language of A.P. Platonov, there is still a well-known antinomic phenomenon - combinations of incongruous things: “words come together that seem to pull in different directions”7, as in the following expressions: “poor but necessary pleasure”; "stuff of existence"; "cruel pitiful force." It is precisely this phenomenon that contributes to the expression of the author’s “lyrical-satirical” attitude towards the depicted.
We must not lose sight of the fact that in the novel not only the spoken word, but also the “written word” also plays an important role. The forms of written text in “Chevengur” are very diverse and productive: these are documents, protocols, letters, signs, slogans, songs, excerpts from books and even inscriptions on a grave. All these “inserted elements” make the compositional unity of the novel rather conditional, determined primarily by the unity of the author’s position. Thus, a peculiar fusion of written and oral speech arises as different, although closely interconnected, forms of expression of the artist’s ideal, his philosophical aesthetic position.
The novel “Chevengur”: from myth to reality, or “both this way and back”
Despite the fact that the novel “Chevengur” is in the area of constant attention of researchers, many questions still remain unresolved, including such as the definition of the canonical author’s text, the characteristics of the genre, the principles of constructing a chronotope, etc. As V.P. rightly noted. Skobelev, since it is “the plot-forming gender-genre structure that sets the initial impetus artistic activity» 2, the plot-compositional structure associated with the genre features of the work is of key importance when studying the author’s position.
When studying genre features, it is necessary to keep in mind that the novel as a genre is considered one of the most non-canonical and unfinished in the history of literature, i.e., “not constructed as a reproduction of ready-made, already existing types artistic whole,” however, it is precisely because of this that the novel can actively borrow in terms of both form and content from other narrative genres3.
Researchers believe that the “crisis of the novel genre” begins already in late XIX century. It has a close connection with the destruction of the achieved balance in the “I - other” system. At the beginning of the 20th century, this phenomenon “led to the destruction of the “traditional novel” as an autonomously existing work of art.” As you know, in the 20s of the last century O.E. Mandelstam proclaimed “the end of the novel.” By the word “novel” the writer meant “a compositional, closed, extended and complete narrative about the fate of one person or a whole group of people”5. Therefore, for O.E. Mandelstam “the compositional measure of a novel is a human biography”6. However, the writer’s contemporaries could not become the “thematic core” of the novel, since they were “thrown out of their biographies.”
Most often, in the works of writers of the 20s, there is a so-called “crisis” of the novel genre, noticed by O.E. Mandelstam. For example, as is known, in the works of B.A. Pilnyak and E.I. Zamyatin’s biography of a person does not constitute the compositional structure of the work, it no longer worries the author, now, first of all, the image of the masses becomes the dominant feature of the work. In their works there is no plot as such; often the novel is a collection of fragments that are not connected to each other. Or, for example, in the works of M. Proust, J. Joyce, J. P. Sartre, not the biography of the hero, but his inner world and “stream of consciousness” become the plot of the novel. However, no matter how paradoxical this may sound, in the 20th century it was with the “death” and “end of the novel” (i.e., a certain, “classical” stage of its development) that new era this genre, one of the most significant “narrative genres” of our time. Thanks to the artistic experiments of Russian and foreign writers who wanted to create perfect shape for a person who “lost” his biography, a novel in the 20th century. has blossomed again as a major narrative genre. Now, acquiring new life, the novel is an open genre, in the making; the essence of the novel genre is not limited to traditional qualities, that is, eventfulness and plot.
In the above context, “Chevengur” as a novel is an interesting object of study, because at first it was written in fragments, and only then designed by the author as a single whole, and therefore it seems unconventional in terms of the form and content of the novel genre. The chronotope and plot structure of the work are not continuous, but discrete, not linear, but fragmentary, not eventful, but anecdotal. In this regard, the novel is dominated by the cyclical world order characteristic of the mythological worldview: a repeating beginning; the absence of the concept of “beginning and end” not only in the space-time structure, but also in the perception of the heroes. Thus, the novel contains a number of elements of a mythological text7.
Assuming that the novel “Chevengur” is a small trilogy with its own artistic patterns in terms of form and content, we will consider its plot and compositional structure in different ways (especially in relation to genre features). Next, we will reveal the role of the novel “Chevengur” from an evolutionary perspective: from “Chevengur” (from a small trilogy) to a large novel trilogy (“Chevengur”, “The Pit”, “Happy Moscow”).