QUASIUTOPIA IN A. PLATONOV’S WORKS OF THE 1930s

Abstract

A. Platonov’s artistic creation of the 1930s is called the “ordeal of utopia”. During this period, Platonov writes the short novels “The Foundation Pit” [“Kotlovan”], “For future use” [“Vprok”], “Bread and reading” [“Hleb i chtenie”], “Juvenile sea” [“Uvenil’noe more”], “Dzhan”. “The second nature” of the genre of these works in research interpretations has diff erent names: utopia, anti-utopia, metautopia, dystopia. The article is devoted to the analysis of the genre of Andrey Platonov’s short novel “Juvenile sea” defi ned as quazi-utopia. Quazi-utopia is implemented through the transformation of the genre of the production novel; through struggle and conciliation of two kinds of utopia used as the guiding principle for the confl ict and system of characters: utopia of “escape” and utopia of “reconstruction” (L. Mumford). This goal is achieved with the help of using traditional for Platonov’s poetics principle of conjunction (the contradistinction and comparison). It allows us to study “Juvenile sea” within the context of the novel “Bread and reading”. Moreover, both writings were conceived by the author as part of the so-called trilogy “Technical novel”. The principle of conjunction has become leading in the dialogue utopia/dystopia: in this regard Platonov’s short novels complement each other.

Keywords

• A. Platonov
• short novels of the 1930s
• “Juvenile sea”
• “Bread and reading”
• quazi-utopia
• the motive of the “ordeal of hope”