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This is a 1992 study in English of a writer who belongs to a Russian philosophical tradition that includes Bakhtin and Pasternak.
Joseph Brodsky looked on Platonov as the equal of Joyce, Kafka and Proust. Platonov marked a new era in literature.
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"This volume gathers eight works that show Platonov at his tenderest, warmest, and subtlest. Among them are "The Return," about an officer's difficult homecoming at the end of World War II; "The River Potudan," an account of a troubled marriage; and the title novella, the tale of a young man unexpectedly transformed by his return to his Asian birthplace, where he finds his people deprived not only of food and dwelling, but of memory and speech."--BOOK JACKET.
Written at the height of Stalin's first "five-year plan" for the industrialization of Soviet Russia and the parallel campaign to collectivize Soviet agriculture, Andrei Platonov's The Foundation Pit registers a dissonant mixture of utopian longings and despair. Furthermore, it provides essential background to Platonov's parody of the mainstream Soviet "production" novel, which is widely recognized as one of the masterpieces of twentieth-century Russian prose. In addition to an overview of the work's key themes, it discusses their place within Platonov's oeuvre as a whole, his troubled relations with literary officialdom, the work's ideological and political background, and key critical responses since the work's first publication in the West in 1973.
Written at the height of Stalin's first "five-year plan" for the industrialization of Soviet Russia and the parallel campaign to collectivize Soviet agriculture, Andrei Platonov's The Foundation Pit registers a dissonant mixture of utopian longings and despair. Furthermore, it provides essential background to Platonov's parody of the mainstream Soviet "production" novel, which is widely recognized as one of the masterpieces of twentieth-century Russian prose. In addition to an overview of the work's key themes, it discusses their place within Platonov's oeuvre as a whole, his troubled relations with literary officialdom, the work's ideological and political background, and key critical responses since the work's first publication in the West in 1973.
"Reading Platonov, one gets a sense of the relentless, implacable absurdity built into the language and with each...utterance, that absurdity deepens" - Joseph Brodsky People are on the move in all ten stories in this collection, coming home as in "The Return", leaving home as in "Rubbish Wind", travelling far away from their country as in "The Locks of Epiphan", trying to improve their lives and those of others, running away, searching, fleeing. Their journeys are accompanied by two motives which characterize the writing of Andrey Platonov: optimism and faith in the goodness of humanity, and abject despair at the cruelty, randomness, and apparent senselessness of our existence. The protagon...
This book presents an existentialist reading of Andrey Platonov's perspective on the 1917 Russian Revolution. It brings the works of Platonov into a dialogue with the philosophy of Martin Heidegger, Maurice Blanchot, Georges Bataille, and Jean-Luc Nancy on issues of communality, groundlessness, memory, and interiority.
"Andrey Platonovich Platonov (1899-1951) is increasingly regarded as one of the greatest writers of the Soviet period. His linguistic virtuosity, philosophical rigour and political unorthodoxy combined to create some of the most captivatingly absurd works of literature in any language. Unsurprisingly, many of these remained unpublished in his lifetime, and indeed for many years thereafter. In this lively and original study, Philip Bullock traces the development of feminine imagery in Platonov's prose, from the seemingly misogynist outrage of his early works to the tender reconciliation with domesticity in his final stories, and argues that gender is a crucial feature of the author's audacious utopian vision."