Long ago, in ancient times, an old-looking man lived on our street. He worked in a smithy at the big Moscow road; he worked as an assistant to the chief blacksmith, because he could not see well with his eyes and had little strength in his hands. He carried water, sand, and coal to the smithy; he fanned the forge with fur; he held hot iron on the anvil with tongs while the head blacksmith forged it; They called him Yefim, but all the people called him Yushka. He was short and thin; on his wrinkled face, instead of a mustache and a beard, sparse gray hair grew separately; his eyes were white, like those of a blind man, and there was always moisture in them, like never-ceasing tears.
Yushka lived in the apartment of the owner of the forge, in the kitchen. In the morning he went to the smithy, and in the evening he went back to sleep. The owner fed him bread, cabbage soup and porridge for his work, and Yushka had his own tea, sugar and clothes; he must buy them for his salary - seven rubles and sixty kopecks a month. But Yushka did not drink tea and did not buy sugar, he drank water, and wore clothes long years one and the same without changing: in the summer he went about in trousers and a blouse, black and smoked from work, burned through by sparks, so that in several places his white body could be seen, and barefoot, in the winter he put on over the blouse another short fur coat, from his dead father, and shod his feet in felt boots, which he hemmed in the fall, and wore the same pair every winter all his life.
When Yushka walked down the street to the smithy early in the morning, the old men and women got up and said that Yushka had already gone to work, it was time to get up, and they woke up the young. And in the evening, when Yushka went to sleep, people said that it was time to have dinner and go to bed - out and Yushka had already gone to bed.
And small children, and even those who had become teenagers, when they saw old Yushka quietly wandering, stopped playing in the street, ran after Yushka and shouted:
There Yushka is coming! There Yushka!
Children picked up dry branches, pebbles, rubbish in handfuls from the ground and threw them at Yushka.
Yushka! the children shouted. Are you really Yushka?
The old man did not answer the children and was not offended by them; he walked as quietly as before, and did not cover his face, into which pebbles and earthen rubbish fell.
The children were surprised Yushka that he was alive, but he himself was not angry with them. And they again called out to the old man:
Yushka, are you true or not?
Then the children again threw objects at him from the ground, ran up to him, touched him and pushed him, not understanding why he would not scold them, take a twig and chase them, as all big people do. The children did not know another such person, and they thought - is Yushka really alive? Touching Yushka with their hands or hitting him, they saw that he was hard and alive.
Then the children again pushed Yushka and threw clods of earth at him - let him be angry, since he really lives in the world. But Yushka walked and was silent. Then the children themselves began to get angry at Yushka. It was boring and not good for them to play if Yushka is always silent, does not frighten them and does not chase after them. And they pushed the old man even harder and shouted around him so that he would respond to them with evil and cheer them up. Then they would have run away from him, and in fright, in joy, they would have teased him from afar again and called him to them, then running away to hide in the dusk of the evening, in the canopy of houses, in the thickets of gardens and orchards. But Yushka did not touch them and did not answer them.
When the children completely stopped Yushka or hurt him too much, he told them:
Why are you, my relatives, what are you, little ones! .. You must love me! .. Why do you all need me?
The children did not hear or understand him. They still pushed Yushka and laughed at him. They rejoiced that you can do whatever you want with him, but he does nothing for them.
Yushka was also happy. He knew why the children laughed at him and tormented him. He believed that children love him, that they need him, only they do not know how to love a person and do not know what to do for love, and therefore they torment him.
At home, fathers and mothers reproached the children when they studied poorly or did not obey their parents: “Here you will be the same as Yushka! “Grow up and you’ll walk barefoot in the summer, and in thin felt boots in the winter, and everyone will torment you, and you won’t drink tea with sugar, but only water!”
Adult elderly people, having met Yushka on the street, also sometimes offended him. Grown-up people have had evil grief or resentment, or they were drunk, then their hearts were filled with fierce rage. Seeing Yushka going to the smithy or to the courtyard for the night, an adult said to him:
Why are you so blessed, unlike walking around here? What do you think is so special?
Yushka stopped, listened and was silent in response.
You have no words, what an animal! You live simply and honestly, as I live, but secretly think nothing! Tell me, will you live like this? You will not? Aha! .. Well, okay!
And after the conversation, during which Yushka was silent, the adult was convinced that Yushka was to blame for everything, and immediately beat him. From the meekness of Yushka, an adult man came to bitterness and beat him more than he wanted at first, and in this evil he forgot his grief for a while.
Yushka then lay in the dust on the road for a long time. When he woke up, he got up himself, and sometimes the daughter of the owner of the forge came for him, she raised him and took him away with her.
It would be better if you died, Yushka, - said the master's daughter. - Why do you live? Yushka looked at her in surprise. He did not understand why he should die when he
born to live.
It was my father-mother who gave birth to me, their will was, - answered Yushka, - I can’t die, and I help your father in the forge.
There would be another in your place, what an assistant!
Dasha, people love me! Dasha laughed.
You now have blood on your cheek, and last week your ear was torn off, and you say - the people love you! ..
He loves me without a clue, - said Yushka. - The heart in people is blind.
Their hearts are blind, but their eyes are sighted! Dasha said. - Go faster, eh! They love according to their hearts, but they beat you according to calculation.
By calculation, they are angry with me, it's true, - Yushka agreed. “They don’t tell me to walk the street and mutilate my body.
Oh, Yushka, Yushka! Dasha sighed. - And you, father said, are not old yet!
How old I am! .. I have been suffering from breastfeeding since childhood, it was I who blundered from the disease and became old ...
Due to this illness, Yushka left his owner for a month every summer. He went on foot to a remote remote village, where he must have lived relatives. Nobody knew who they were.
Even Yushka himself forgot, and one summer he said that his widowed sister lived in the village, and the next that his niece lived there. Sometimes he said that he was going to the village, and at other times, that he was going to Moscow itself. And people thought that Yushkin's beloved daughter lived in a distant village, just as gentle and superfluous to people, as Father.
In July or August, Yushka put a knapsack of bread on his shoulders and left our city. On the way, he breathed the fragrance of herbs and forests, looked at the white clouds that were born in the sky, floating and dying in the light air warmth, listened to the voice of the rivers, mumbling on stone rifts, and Yushka's sore chest rested, he no longer felt his illness - consumption. Having gone far away, where it was completely deserted, Yushka no longer hid his love for living beings. He bowed to the ground and kissed the flowers, trying not to breathe on them, so that they would not be spoiled by his breath, he stroked the bark on the trees and picked up butterflies and beetles that had fallen dead from the path, and peered into their faces for a long time, feeling himself without them. orphaned. But living birds sang in the sky, dragonflies, beetles and industrious grasshoppers made cheerful sounds in the grass, and therefore Yushka's soul was light, the sweet air of flowers, smelling of moisture and sunlight, entered his chest.
On the way, Yushka rested. He sat in the shade of a roadside tree and dozed in peace and warmth. Having rested, having recovered his breath in the field, he no longer remembered the illness and walked merrily on, as healthy man. Yushka was forty years old, but the disease had long tormented him and made him old before his time, so that he seemed to everyone to be decrepit.
A. Platonov. unknown flower
In the family of Platon Firsovich Klimentov, a mechanic at railway workshops, Andrey was the eldest of eleven children. After studying at the diocesan and city schools, at the age of fourteen he began working as a messenger, foundry worker, assistant driver on a steam locomotive, during the civil war - on an armored train. “... Except for the field, village, mother and bell ringing, I also loved (and the more I live, the more I love) locomotives, a car, a whining whistle and sweaty work "(Autobiographical letter). In Voronezh, Andrey Platonov was called a “philosopher-worker” or “poet-worker” - under this surname he published poems and philosophical studies in local newspapers: for example, “Audible steps. Revolution and Mathematics. In 1921, his pamphlet Electrification. General concepts", and in 1922 - a book of poems" Blue Depth ".
He was an electrical engineer and reclamator, built a hydroelectric power station on the Don, cleaned the Chernaya Kalitva and Quiet Pine rivers, invented "experimental gas locomotive" And "electric aircraft powered by long-distance power lines", developed the project "half metro". With regard to the transformations of the earth and mankind, the ideas of A.A. Bogdanov, K.A. Timiryazev, N.F. Fedorov, K.E. Tsiolkovsky were close to him. However, he said: "I love more wisdom than philosophy, and more knowledge than science".
In 1927, Platonov received an appointment from the People's Commissariat of Agriculture to Tambov as the head of the provincial department of land reclamation. “Wandering through the backwoods, I saw such sad things that I did not believe that luxurious Moscow, art and prose existed somewhere”. In Tambov, he almost simultaneously wrote fantastic story"Ether Path" historical story"Epifan Gateways", the satire "City of Gradov" and the novel "Chevengur" ("Builders of the Country").
A completely original writer appeared in Russian literature. Until now, both readers and researchers are often perplexed: is his style of writing naive or refined? According to Platonov himself, “A writer is a victim and an experimenter rolled into one. But this is not done on purpose, but by itself it happens so..
Very soon, especially after the publication of the story "Doubting Makar" and the poor chronicle "For the future", the frantic zealots of ideological purity declared Platonov's works ambiguous, petty-bourgeois and harmful.
In the thirties, in Moscow, Platonov worked a lot, but rarely published. "Chevengur", the stories "Pit" and "Juvenile Sea", the play "14 Red Huts", the novel "Happy Moscow" will be published decades after the death of the author.
"... Can I be a Soviet writer, or is it objectively impossible?"- Platonov asked M. Gorky in 1933. However, before the First Congress of Soviet Writers, he was included in the so-called writers' brigade, heading to Central Asia, and also - as a meliorator - in the detachment of the Turkmen complex expedition of the USSR Academy of Sciences.
"I traveled far into the desert, where there is an eternal sandstorm".
“... There is nothing there but rare muddy wells, reptile reptiles, the sky and empty sand ...”
“The ruins (walls) are clay, but terribly strong. All of Asia is made of clay, poor and empty.”.
“The desert under the stars made a huge impression on me. I realized something that I didn’t understand before.”.
(From letters to his wife Maria Alexandrovna)
This trip gave Platonov the idea of the story "Takyr" and the story "Dzhan", but only "Takyr" was published immediately. 
The collection of short stories The Potudan River (1937) caused a wave of frantic criticism. Platonov was blamed "Jewish performances" And "religious psyche". In May 1938, the writer's fifteen-year-old son, Plato, was arrested on a terrifying slander. Thanks to the intercession of M. Sholokhov, the boy was released from the camp, but he soon died. “... I did so here in the war important findings of his death, which you will learn about later, and this will console you a little in your grief.- Platonov wrote to his wife from the front.
He achieved his appointment as a war correspondent in the army. D. Ortenberg recalls: “The modest and outwardly inconspicuous figure of Platonov probably did not correspond to the reader's idea of \u200b\u200bthe appearance of the writer. The soldiers with him did not feel constrained and spoke freely on their soldier topics ". Platonov's military stories were published in the newspapers and magazines Znamya, Krasnaya Zvezda, Krasnoarmeets, Krasnoflotets. Three collections of these stories were published in Moscow. Official criticism regarded them as "literary twists". At the front, Platonov was shell-shocked and fell ill with tuberculosis; demobilized in February 1946.
He wrote a lot, especially at the end of his life, for children and about children: retellings of Bashkir and Russian folk tales (published with the assistance of M. Sholokhov), several plays for children's theater("Grandma's Hut", "Kind Titus", "Native Daughter", "Student of the Lyceum" - young viewers never saw them), collections of stories "July Thunderstorm" and "All Life" (the first book was published in 1939, the second was banned). In his work, Platonov always had a close interest in childhood, old age, poverty and other extremes of existence, because he knew and remembered for a long time: people near non-existence understand such meanings of life that are inaccessible to them in the hustle and bustle. And in the human soul, he said, there are even larger spaces than in interstellar deserts.
Svetlana Malaya
WORKS OF A.P. PLATONOV
COLLECTED WORKS: In 3 volumes / Comp., Intro. Art. and note. V. Chalmaeva. - M.: Sov. Russia, 1984-1985.
COLLECTED WORKS: In 5 volumes: To the 100th anniversary of the birth of the writer. - M.: Informpress, 1998.
WORKS: [In 12 volumes]. - M.: IMLI RAN, 2004-.
And this edition is announced only as an approximation to full assembly writings by Andrey Platonov.
- Works,
included in the reading circle of high school students -
« Intimate Man»
“Pukhov was always surprised by space. It calmed him in suffering and increased joy, if there was a little of it..
The machinist, Red Army soldier and wanderer Foma Pukhov is a secret person, “because you can’t find the end of a person anywhere and you can’t make a large-scale map of his soul”.
"Jan"
In the region of the Amudarya delta, a small nomadic people from different nationalities: fugitives and orphans from everywhere and old, exhausted slaves who were driven away, girls who fell in love with those who suddenly died, but they did not want anyone else as husbands, people who do not know God, mockers of the world ... This people was not named in any way, but to itself gave the name - jan. According to Turkmen belief, jan is a soul that seeks happiness.
"Epiphany Gateways"
In the spring of 1709, the English engineer Bertrand Perry came to Russia to build a canal between the Don and the Oka. But already on the way to Epifan he “Peter was horrified at the idea: the land turned out to be so large, the vast nature is so famous, through which it is necessary to arrange a waterway for ships. On the tablets in St. Petersburg it was clear and handy, but here, on the midday passage to Tanaid, it turned out to be cunning, difficult and powerful..
"Pit"
The diggers and the restless worker Voshchev, who has stuck with them, are digging a foundation pit for the foundation of the future common proletarian home.
“The mowed wasteland smelled of dead grass and the dampness of bare places, which made the general sadness of life and the melancholy of futility more clearly felt. Voshchev was given a shovel, and with the cruelty of the despair of his life, he squeezed it with his hands, as if he wanted to extract the truth from the middle of the earth's dust ... "
"Juvenile Sea (Sea of Youth)"
State farm meeting in Parent Yards “decided to build wind heating and dig deep into the earth, down to the mysterious virgin seas, in order to release compressed water from there onto the daytime surface of the earth, and then clog the well, and then a new fresh sea will remain among the steppe - to quench the thirst of herbs and cows”.
"Chevengur"
Chevengur is a county town somewhere in central Russia. Comrade Chepurny, nicknamed the Japanese, organized communism in him. “The indigenous people of Chevengur thought that everything was about to end: something that had never happened could not continue for a long time”.
Utopia "Chevengur" or dystopia is a moot point. Initially, Platonov gave the novel the title “The Builders of the Country. Journey with an open heart.
- Editions -
RECOVERY OF THE DEAD: Tales; stories; Play; Articles / Comp. M. Platonov; Intro. Art. S. Semyonova; Biochronicle, comment. N. Kornienko. - M.: School-Press, 1995. - 672 p. - (Reading range: School curriculum).
Contents: Tales: Epiphany gateways; City Gradov; Intimate person; foundation pit; Juvenile Sea; Stories: Doubting Makar; Garbage wind; Another mother; Fro and others; Play: Barrel Organ; Articles: Literature Factory; Pushkin is our comrade; From letters to his wife.
PIT: [Novels, stories, story]. - St. Petersburg: Azbuka-classika, 2005. - 797 p. - (ABC-classic).
Contents: Chevengur; Happy Moscow; foundation pit; Epiphany locks; Soulful people.
PIT: [Sat.]. - M.: AST, 2007. - 473 p.: ill. - (World classics).
Contents: Juvenile Sea; ethereal path; Epiphany locks; Yamskaya Sloboda; City of Gradov.
PIT; CITY OF GRADS; JAN; STORIES. - M.: Synergy, 2002. - 462 p.: ill. - (New school library).
AT THE DAWN OF MISTY YOUTH: Novels and Stories / Entry. Art. N. Kornienko. - M.: Det. lit., 2003. - 318 p. - (School library).
Contents: Intimate Man; foundation pit; Sand teacher; Fro; At the dawn of a misty youth; In a beautiful and furious world (Machinist Maltsev); Return.
IN THE SKY OF MIDNIGHT: Stories / Comp. M. Platonova; Foreword M. Kovrova. - St. Petersburg: Azbuka-klassika, 2002. - 315 p. - (ABC-classic).
Contents: Doubting Makar; Potudan River; Third son; Fro; Through the midnight sky, etc.
TALES; STORIES. - M.: Bustard, 2007. - 318 p. - (B-ka classical. art. literature).
Contents: Pit; Intimate person; Doubting Makar; Fro; In a beautiful and furious world (Machinist Maltsev).
DESCENDANTS OF THE SUN. - M.: Pravda, 1987. - 432 p. - (Adventure World).
Contents: Lunar bomb; Descendants of the Sun; ethereal path; Armor; Jan and others
CHEVENGUR: A novel. - M.: Synergy, 2002. - 492 p. - (New school library).
CHEVENGUR: [Novel] / Comp., intro. Art., comment. E. Yablokova. - M.: Higher. school, 1991. - 654 p. - (B-ka language student).
- Stories and fairy tales for children -
MAGIC RING: Fairy tales, stories / Khudozh. V.Yudin. - M.: Oniks, 2007. - 192 p.: ill. - (B-ka younger student).
Contents: Tales: magic ring; Ivan the untalented and Elena the Wise; smart granddaughter; Moroka; Stories: Unknown flower; Nikita; Flower on the ground; July thunderstorm; Another mother; Cow; Dry bread.
UNKNOWN FLOWER: Stories and tales. - M.: Det. lit., 2007. - 240 p.: ill. - (School library).
Contents: Unknown flower; July thunderstorm; Nikita; Flower on the ground; dry bread; Another mother; Ulya; Cow; Love for the Motherland, or the Journey of the Sparrow; Smart granddaughter; Finist - Clear Falcon; Ivan the untalented and Elena the Wise; Handless; Moroka; Soldier and queen; Magic ring.
STORIES. - M.: Drofa-Plus, 2008. - 160 p. - (School reading).
Contents: Cow; Sand teacher; Little soldier; Ulya; dry bread; At the dawn of a misty youth.
“In the depths of our memory, both dreams and reality are preserved; and after a while it is no longer possible to distinguish what once really appeared and what was dreamed - especially if many years have passed and the memory goes back to childhood, to the distant light of the original life. In this memory of childhood long ago bygone world exists immutably and immortally…”(A. Platonov. Light of life).
- Retellings of folk tales,
made by Andrey Platonov -
BASHKIR FOLK TALES / Lit. processed A. Platonova; Foreword prof. N. Dmitrieva. - Ufa: Bashkirknigoizdat, 1969. - 112 p.: ill.
The book was first published in Moscow and Leningrad in 1947.
PLATONOV A.P. MAGIC RING: Rus. nar. fairy tales. - Fryazino: Century 2, 2002. - 155 p.: ill.
PLATONOV A.P. MAGIC RING: Rus. nar. fairy tales / [Art. M. Romadin]. - M.: Rus. book, 1993. - 157 p.: ill.
The first edition of The Magic Ring was published in 1950.
SOLDIER AND QUEEN: Rus. nar. fairy tales retold by A. Platonov / Khudozh. Yu.Kosmynin. - M.: Modern. writer, 1993. - 123 p. - (Wonderland).
Read more about these retellings in the section "Myths, legends, folk tales": Platonov A.P. Magic ring.
Svetlana Malaya
LITERATURE ABOUT A.P. PLATONOV'S LIFE AND WORK
Platonov A.P. Notebooks: Materials for a biography / Comp., prepared. text, foreword and note. N. Kornienko. - M.: IMLI RAN, 2006. - 418 p.
Andrey Platonov: World of creativity: [Sat.] / Comp. N. Kornienko, E. Shubina. - M.: Modern. writer, 1994. - 430 p.
Creativity of Andrey Platonov: Research and materials; Bibliography. - St. Petersburg: Nauka, 1995. - 356 p.
Babinsky M.B. How to read fiction: A manual for students, applicants, teachers: On the example of the works of M. Bulgakov ("The Master and Margarita") and A. Platonov ("The Secret Man", "The Pit", etc.) - M .: Valent, 1998. - 128 p. .
Vasiliev V.V. Andrei Platonov: Essay on life and work. - M.: Sovremennik, 1990. - 285 p. - (B-ka "To lovers of Russian literature").
Geller M.Ya. Andrei Platonov in search of happiness. - M.: MIK, 1999. - 432 p.
Lasunsky O.G. Inhabitant of the native city: Andrey Platonov's Voronezh years, 1899-1926. - Voronezh: Center for the Spiritual Revival of the Chernozem Territory, 2007. - 277 p.: ill.
Mikheev M.Yu. Into the world of Platonov through his language: Suggestions, facts, interpretations, conjectures. - M.: Publishing House of Moscow State University, 2003. - 408 p.: ill.
Svitelsky V.A. Andrey Platonov yesterday and today. - Voronezh: Rus. literature, 1998. - 156 p.
Chalmaev V.A. Andrey Platonov: To help teachers, high school students and applicants. - M.: Publishing House of Moscow State University, 2002. - 141 p. - (Rereading the classics).
Chalmaev V.A. Andrey Platonov: To the secret person. - M.: Sov. writer, 1989. - 448 p.
Shubin L.A. The search for the meaning of separate and common existence: About Andrey Platonov. - M.: Sov. writer, 1987. - 365 p.
Yablokov E.A. Unregulated intersections: About Platonov, Bulgakov and many others. - M.: Fifth country, 2005. - 246 p. -( Latest Research Russian culture).
CM.
SCREENSING OF THE WORKS OF A.P. PLATONOV
- ART FILMS -
The lonely voice of a man. Based on the story "The Potudan River", as well as the stories "The Hidden Man" and "The Origin of the Master". Scene. Y. Arabova. Dir. A. Sokurov. USSR, 1978-1987. Cast: T. Goryacheva, A. Gradov and others.
Father. Based on the story "Return". Dir. I.Solovov. Comp. A. Rybnikov. Russia, 2007. Cast: A. Guskov, P. Kutepova and others. 
Homeland of electricity: Novella from the film almanac "The Beginning of an Unknown Age". Scene. and dir. L. Shepitko. Comp. R. Ledenev. USSR, 1967. Cast: E. Goryunov, S. Gorbatyuk, A. Popova and others.
- CARTOONS -
Eric. Dir. M. Titov. Art director M. Cherkasskaya. Comp. V. Bystryakov. USSR, 1989.
Cow. Dir. A. Petrov. USSR, 1989.
One of the most notable Russian writers XX century - Andrey Platonov. The list of works by this author allows you to scrupulously study national history the first half of the 20th century.
Andrey Platonov
Andrei Platonov, whose list of works is well known to every schoolchild, became famous after the release of the novels "The Pit" and "Chevengur". But besides them there were many significant works.
The writer himself was born in Voronezh in 1899. Served in the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army civil war took part as a war correspondent. He began publishing his works in 1919.
In 1921, his first book was published, which was called "Electrification". His poems also appeared in a collective collection. And in 1922, his son Plato was born and a collection of poems, Blue Clay, was published.
In addition to writing, he was engaged in hydrology. In particular, he developed own projects on hydrofication of the region to protect the fields from drought.
In the mid-1920s, Platonov worked fruitfully in Tambov. The list of the writer's works is supplemented by such works as "Ethereal Path", "City of Gradov", "Epifan Gateways".
The following are his most significant works for domestic literature- these are "Pit" and "Chevengur". These are very unexpected and innovative works that differ modern language. Both works are created in a fantastic spirit, they describe the utopian construction of a new communist society, the formation of a man of a new generation.
"Epiphany Gateways"
"Epifanskie sluices" appeared in 1926. Actions take place in Peter's Russia. In the center of the story is the English engineer William Perry, master of the construction of locks. He calls his brother to Russia to help him fulfill the new imperial order. The British need to build a ship canal that would connect the Oka and Don rivers.
Whether the brothers will be able to carry out this plan is the subject of Platonov's story.
"Chevengur"
In 1929, Platonov wrote one of his most famous works is a socio-philosophical novel "Chevengur".
The actions of this work have already been transferred to contemporary writer Russia. War communism and the New Economic Policy are in full swing in the south. Main character- Alexander Dvanov, who lost his father. Father drowned himself, dreaming about a better life, so Alexander has to live with foster parent. These events described in the novel are largely autobiographical, similarly the fate of the author himself.
Dvanov goes to look for his communism. Along the way, he meets many of the most various people. Platonov revels in their description. The works, the list, the most famous of them are presented in this article, but "Chevengur" stands out even against this background.
Dvanov encounters revolutions Kopenkin, who resembles the medieval character Don Quixote. Appears and his Dulcinea, which becomes Rosa Luxembourg.
Finding the truth and the truth in the new world, even with knights errant, is not at all easy.
"Pit"
In 1930, Platonov created the anti-utopian story "The Pit". Communism is already being built here literally this word. A group of builders is instructed to build a common proletarian house, a building that should become the basis of a utopian city of the future, in which everyone will be happy.
Andrei Platonov describes their work in detail. The works listed in this article are required reading if you want to get to know this original author better. The story "The Pit" can help you a lot with this.
The construction of a common proletarian house is interrupted suddenly, even at the stage of excavation. The case cannot move forward. Builders are aware that it is useless and futile to create something on the ruins of the past. Also, the ends don't always justify the means.
In parallel, the story of the girl Nastya, who was left homeless, is told. She is a vivid embodiment of the living future of the country, of those residents who should live in this house when it is built. In the meantime, she lives at a construction site. She doesn’t even have a bed, so the builders give her two coffins, which were previously taken from the peasants. One of them serves as her bed, and the second as a toy box. In the end, Nastya dies without waiting for the construction of a utopian house.
In this story, Andrey Platonov tried to show the cruelty and senselessness of the totalitarian system. The list of works by this author often reflects this one point of view. In this story, the whole history of Bolshevism during the collectivization period, when people were fed only with promises of a brighter future.
"Potudan River"
Platonov's short works, a list of which is also in this article, represent big interest for readers. These include, first of all, the story "The Potudan River".
It tells the story of the Red Army soldier Nikita Firsov, who returns on foot from service to his homeland. Everywhere he meets signs of hunger and want. He goes out to the distance and notices the first lights of his hometown. At home, he is met by his father, who no longer expected his son from the front, he changed his mind a lot after the death of his wife.
The meeting of father and son after a long separation passes without unnecessary sentimentality. Nikita soon notices that his father is being disturbed. serious problems. He is on the very edge of poverty. There is practically no furniture left in the house, even though my father works in a carpentry workshop.
The next morning Nikita meets his childhood friend Lyubov. She is the daughter of a teacher, their house was always clean and tidy, they seemed to be the main intellectuals. For that reason alone, he had long since abandoned the idea of asking for her hand. But now everything has changed. Poverty and devastation came to this house too. Everything around has changed.
"Return"
One of the last significant works Platonov - the story "Return". This time the events after the end of the Great Patriotic War.
Captain Ivanov returns from the front. At the station, he meets young Masha and arrives at her hometown. At this time, his wife and two children are waiting for him at home, with whom he broke up for 4 years. When he finally gets to his home, he discovers amazing picture. 12-year-old Petya runs everything, Ivanov feels out of place, he cannot fully enjoy his return.
ANDREY PLATONOV - Russian Soviet writer and playwright, one of the most original in style and language of Russian writers of the first half of the 20th century.
Born August 28, 1899 in Voronezh. Father - Klimentov Platon Firsovich - worked as a locomotive driver and a mechanic in the Voronezh railway workshops. Twice he was awarded the title of Hero of Labor (in 1920 and in 1922), and in 1928 he joined the party. Mother - Lobochikhina Maria Vasilievna - daughter of a watchmaker, housewife, mother of eleven (ten) children, Andrey is the eldest. Maria Vasilievna gives birth to children almost every year, Andrei, as the eldest, takes part in the upbringing and, later, feeding all his brothers and sisters. Both parents are buried at the Chugunovsky cemetery in Voronezh.
In 1906 he entered the parochial school. From 1909 to 1913 he studied at the city's 4-class school.
From 1913 (or from the spring of 1914) to 1915 he worked as a day laborer and for hire, as a boy in the office of the Rossiya insurance company, as an assistant driver on a locomobile in the Ust estate of Colonel Bek-Marmarchev. In 1915 he worked as a foundry worker at a pipe factory. From the autumn of 1915 to the spring of 1918 - in many Voronezh workshops - on the product of millstones, casting, etc.
In 1918 he entered the electrical engineering department of the Voronezh Polytechnic Institute; serves on the main revolutionary committee of the South-Eastern railways, in the editorial office of the magazine "Iron Way". Participated in the Civil War as a front-line correspondent. From 1919 he published his works, collaborating with several newspapers as a poet, essayist and critic. In the summer of 1919 he visited Novokhopyorsk as a correspondent for the newspaper Izvestia of the Defense Council of the Voronezh Fortified Region. Soon after that he was mobilized in the Red Army. Until the autumn he worked on a locomotive for military transport as an assistant driver; then he was transferred to the Special Purpose Unit (CHON) in the railway detachment as an ordinary shooter. In the summer of 1921 he graduated from the provincial party school for a year. In the same year, his first book, the brochure "Electrification", was published, and his poems were also published in the collective collection "Poems". In 1922 his son Plato was born. In the same year, Platonov's book of poems "Blue Depth" was published in Krasnodar. In the same year, he was appointed chairman of the provincial commission for hydrofication at the land department. In 1923, Bryusov responded positively to Platonov's book of poems. From 1923 to 1926 he worked in the province as a land reclamation engineer and an electrification specialist. Agriculture(Head of the Department of Electrification in the Gubzem Administration, built three power plants, one of them in the village of Rogachevka).
In the spring of 1924, he participated in the First All-Russian Hydrological Congress, he had projects for hydrofication of the region, plans for insuring crops from drought. At the same time, in the spring of 1924, he again applied for membership in the RCP(b) and was accepted as a candidate by the GZO cell, but did not join. In June 1925, Platonov first met with V. B. Shklovsky, who flew to Voronezh on an Aviakhim plane to promote the achievements of Soviet aviation with the slogan “Face to the Village”. In the 1920s, he changed his last name from Klimentov to Platonov (a pseudonym derived from the name of the writer's father).
In 1931, the published work For the Future drew sharp criticism from A. A. Fadeev and I. V. Stalin. The writer got the opportunity to take a breath only when the RAPP itself was flogged for excesses and dissolved. In 1934, Platonov was even included in a collective writing trip to Central Asia- and this was already a sign of some trust. The writer brought the story "Takyr" from Turkmenistan, and his persecution began again: a devastating article appeared in Pravda (January 18, 1935), after which the magazines again stopped taking Plato's texts and returned those already accepted. In 1936 the stories "Fro", "Immortality", "The Clay House in the District Garden", "The Third Son", "Semyon" were published, in 1937 - the story "The Potudan River".
In May 1938, the writer's fifteen-year-old son was arrested, having returned after the hassle of Platonov's friends from prison in the autumn of 1940, terminally ill with tuberculosis. The writer will become infected from his son, caring for him, from now until his death he will carry tuberculosis in himself. In January 1943 Platonov's son died.
During the Great Patriotic War, the writer with the rank of captain served as a war correspondent for the Krasnaya Zvezda newspaper, and Platonov's military stories appeared in print. There is an opinion that this was done with the personal permission of Stalin.
At the end of 1946, Platonov's story The Return (Ivanov's Family) was published, for which the writer was attacked in 1947 and accused of slander. In the late 1940s, deprived of the opportunity to earn a living by writing, Platonov engaged in literary processing Russian and Bashkir fairy tales, which are published in children's magazines. Platonov's worldview evolved from a belief in the reorganization of socialism to an ironic depiction of the future.
He died on January 5, 1951 in Moscow from tuberculosis. Buried at the Armenian cemetery. The writer left a daughter - Maria Platonova, who prepared her father's books for publication.
In the harsh years of hard trials that befell the people during the Great Patriotic War, the writer turns to the theme of childhood in order to find and show the most intimate sources in man.
In the stories "Nikita", "Still Mom", "Iron Old Woman", "Flower on the Ground", "Cow", "Little Soldier", "At the Dawn of Misty Youth", "Grandfather-Soldier", "Dry Bread", creating images of children, the writer consistently holds the idea that a person is formed as a social, moral being in early childhood.
“Still Mom” was first published in the magazine “Vozhaty”, 1965, No. 9. “A mother, giving birth to a son, always thinks: are you the one?” Platonov wrote in his notes. Memories of his first teacher A. N. Kulagina acquire in Plato's prose the inherent high symbolic meaning. "Mother" in the world of artistic Platonic prose is a symbol of the soul, feelings, "necessary homeland", "salvation from unconsciousness and oblivion." That is why the "still mother" - the one who introduces the child into the "beautiful and furious" world, teaches to walk along its roads, gives moral guidelines.
The behavior of an adult as a patriot, defender of his homeland, the writer explains by this most important and defining childhood experience. For a small person, the knowledge of the surrounding world turns out to be a difficult process of knowing oneself. In the course of this cognition, the hero must take a certain position in relation to his social environment. The choice of this position is extremely important, since it determines all subsequent human behavior.
Platonov's world of childhood is a special cosmos, entry into which is not allowed to everyone on an equal footing. This world is a prototype big universe, her social portrait, drawing and outline of hopes and great losses. The image of a child in the prose of the 20th century is always deeply symbolic. The image of a child in Platonov's prose is not only symbolic - it is poignantly concrete: it is ourselves, our life, its possibilities and its losses ... truly, "great is the world in childhood ...".
“A child learns to live for a long time,” writes in notebooks Platonov, - he is self-taught, but he is also helped by older people who have already learned to live, to exist. Watching the development of consciousness in a child and his awareness of the surrounding unknown reality is a joy for us.
Platonov is a sensitive and attentive researcher of childhood. Sometimes the very name of the story ("Nikita") is given by the name of the child - the protagonist of the work. In the center of the July Thunderstorm are nine-year-old Natasha and her brother Antoshka.
"The Origin of the Master" before the reader in unforgettable detail pass the childhood, adolescence and youth of Sasha Dvanov, unique children's images in other Platonic stories. Afonya from the story “A Flower on the Earth”, Aydym from the story “Dzhan”, easily remembered, although not named, children from the stories “The Motherland of Electricity”, “Fro”, “Moon Bomb” ...
Each of these children is endowed from birth with precious properties necessary for harmonious physical and spiritual growth: an unconscious sense of the joy of being, greedy curiosity and irrepressible energy, innocence, goodwill, the need to love and act.
“... In youth,” Platonov wrote, “there is always the possibility of the noble greatness of the coming life: if only human society does not mutilate, distort, destroy this gift of nature, inherited by every baby.”
However, not only a special interest in childhood and youth as decisive moments human life, preferred image young hero or frank instructiveness, but also by the very essence of his talent, striving to cover the whole world, as if with a single, unprejudiced and all-pervading look, Platonov is close to the young. It is not for nothing that his first books and The Secret Man (1928) were published by the Young Guard publishing house, and the last lifetime collections Soldier's Heart (1946), The Magic Ring (1950) and others were published by the Children's Literature publishing house.
It would seem that the circumstances of the life of two little poor fellows, Sasha and Proshka Dvanov, who live in a poor peasant family. The only difference is that Sasha is an orphan, adopted in Proshkin's house. But this is enough to gradually form characters that are basically diametrically opposed: the disinterested, honest, recklessly kind and open to all people Sasha and the cunning, predatory, smart, dodgy Proshka
Of course, the point is not that Sasha is an orphan, but that, with the help of good people- Proshkin's mother, but most of all Zakhar Pavlovich - Sasha overcomes his biographical orphanhood, and social orphanhood. "The country of former orphans" called Soviet Russia Platonov in the 30s. As if about Sasha Dvanov, independent, who has known true price bread and human kindness, said, looking back from the forties, Mikhail Prishvin in the story-tale “Ship Thicket”: “The time of our national orphanhood is over, and new person goes down in history with a feeling of selfless love for his mother - native land- not a full consciousness of their cultural world dignity.
Prishvin's thought is organically close to Platonov. Mother - Motherland - Father - Fatherland - family - home - nature - space - earth - this is another series of basic concepts characteristic of Plato's prose. “Mother ... is the closest relative of all people,” we read in one of the writer's articles. What amazingly poignant images of the mother are captured on the pages of his books: Vera and Gulchatai (“Jan”), Lyuba Ivanova (“Return”), the nameless ancient old woman in the “Motherland of Electricity” ... It seems that they embody all the hypostases of motherhood, which yourself and love, and selflessness, and strength, and wisdom, and forgiveness.
The history of the formation of a person as a spiritualized personality is the main theme of A. Platonov's stories, the heroes of which are children. Analyzing the story "Nikita", where the hero of this story, the peasant boy Nikita, overcoming age-related egocentrism with difficulty and difficulty, reveals himself from the side of his kindness, is formed as a "Kind Whale" (under this title, the story was published in the magazine "Murzilka").
The image of the complex process of the transition of a hotel person to life "with everyone and for everyone" is dedicated to A. Platonov's story "Still Mom". The hero of this story, the young Artem, through the image of his mother, learns and comprehends the whole world, joins the great community of people of his homeland.
In the stories "The Iron Old Woman" and "The Flower on the Earth" the same hero - a little man, but under a different name - Egor, Afonya, in the process of knowing the world for the first time encounters good and evil, determines for himself the main life tasks and goals - finally defeat the greatest evil - death ("The Iron Old Woman"), discover the secret of the greatest good - eternal life ("Flower on Earth").
The path to a feat in the name of life on earth, its moral origins and roots are manifested in beautiful story"At the Dawn of Misty Youth", which testifies to the unity of problems and detail in the work of the writer of the war and pre-war years.
On the connections of creativity. A. Platonov with folklore was written by both folklorists and ethnographers, without focusing on the fact that the narrator's thought is aimed primarily at revealing the moral side of the actions of the heroes of the tale. The connection between A. Platonov's creativity and folklore is much deeper and more organic. In a number of stories ("Nikita", "Still Mom", "Ulya", "Fro"). A. Platonov refers to the compositional scheme fairy tale described in the classic work of V. Ya. Propp. A. Platonov does not write fairy tales, but stories, but they are based on archaic genre structures. In that genre originality many stories of A. Platonov, which is explained not only by the stability genre forms, but also by the features of the writer's artistic thinking, focused on the analysis and depiction of the root causes and fundamental principles of human existence.
Usually such stylistic means of creation artistic expressiveness, as a metaphor, metonymy, personification are considered as elements of poetics. With regard to a number of works by A. Platonov ("Nikita", "The Iron Old Woman", "Still Mom", "At the Dawn of Misty Youth"), it is impossible to talk about the usual use of these techniques as stylistic devices. The peculiarity of their use by A. Platonov lies in the fact that in the stories, the heroes of which are children, they have become a natural and organic form of perception of the world. It should not be about metaphor, but metaphorization, not about metonymy, but metonymization, not about personification, but about personifying apperception and its varieties. This "style" appears especially clearly in the story "Nikita". The way of cognition and perception of the world through one or another emotionally colored and ethically significant image-concept is almost the norm for the heroes of A. Platonov's works.
So, the hero of the story "Still Mom" "makes" his way into Big world people of their homeland, armed with a single "tool" - the image-concept of their own mother. The hero, metaphorically and metonymically trying it on to all unknown creatures, things and phenomena of the surrounding world, through this image expands his inner world. This is how A. Platonov depicts the first meeting of a person with his homeland, complex and hard way self-knowledge and socialization of a person.
