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Plot Elements And Motives of the Novel “Chevengur” in Platonov’s Short Story “Potudan River”
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DOI: 10.51762/1FK-2021-26-01-03
Abstract: The relevance of the article is determined by the researcher of the semantic poetics of Platonov’s
story “Potudan River”. We carry out an analytical review of the lifetime criticism and articles of modern researchers about the story, on the basis of which we formulate the purpose of the study, due to the need for a new approach to the interpretation of the work and the identification of the principles of its poetics. The novelty of the
article is determined by the identification of the multilayered symbolism of the title of the story, which allows
to establish the insufficiency of the conclusions that the content of the “Potudan River” is limited to the family
theme. At the level of micropoetics we reveal symbolic details that connect the content of the story with the motive of love for the distant, medical and construction subjects and revealing the planetary scale of the author’s
thinking. For the first time, it was established that Platonov’s story “Potudan River” was written based on part of
the plot of the novel “Chevengur” – the love story of Alexander Dvanov and Sonya Mandrova. We show that the
heroes of the story “Potudan River” Nikita Firsov, Lyuba Kuznetsova and Nikita’s father are doubles of the characters in the novel “Chevengur” by Sasha Dvanov, Sonya Mandrova, and Zakhar Pavlovich. The connection of the
image of Lyuba with the archetype of the bride is considered. The paper reveals for the first time the intertextual
connections of the story “Potudan River” with the poem “The Bronze Horseman” and the novel in verse “Eugene
Onegin” by A. Pushkin, in the texts of which the writer found material for modeling the ordinary fate of the hero.
Multi-level connections of the content of the story “Potudan River” with Platonov’s artistic world, which is a complete metatext, are found, which opens up new opportunities for determining the role of the editing technique
and the principles of returning to the plots and motives of the works of the 1920s, as well as their transformation
in the writer’s work of the 1930s.
Key words: A. Platonov; A. Pushkin; intertextuality, semantic poetics; Platonov’s stories of the 1930s; the novel
“Chevengur”; the novel “Happy Moscow”; “A story about many interesting things”; the history of Russian literature
of the XX century.
For citation
Malygina, N. M. (2021). Plot Elements And Motives of the Novel “Chevengur” in Platonov’s Short Story “Potudan River”. In Philological Class. 2021. Vol. 26 ⋅ №1. P. 44–55. DOI 10.51762/1FK-2021-26-01-03.