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Abstract: The article is devoted to the study of the secret script layer of the Moscow episode in “Chevengur”. The main goal is to present the principle of constructing the image of the author “in the way of the ‘second sense’”. Platonov’s cryptography is carried out by several techniques: using the genre of the “insert” parable, in which the author’s view of the events of the 1920s is encoded by parable symbols; creating a prototype, easily recognizable by contemporaries, which dissolved the “shining” of the author’s image in the main character; the image of Simon Serbinov’s increasing craving for the female body, not as an object of love, but as a sign of sublimation of longing and loneliness; “retouching” in the Moscow episode of the author’s image by the figure of Sasha Dvanov, whose autobiography has been the subject of many studies. The interpretation of the “hidden” layer allowed us to see the very principle of modeling the author's figure in “Chevengur” as a novel unity in a different way. Two autobiographical heroes participate in his creation, representing different facets of Platonov’s worldview, correlated with different stages of his creative and human destiny: youth and perception of the revolution of 1917 as a great event and the second half of the 1920s, associated with the collapse of hopes for the socialist transformation of the country and the personal tragedy of the artist. The analysis made allows us to see in the Moscow episode a sketch of a new novel, the closest in terms of poetics to “Happy Moscow”.

About the author(s) :

Nina P. Khriashcheva

Ural State Pedagogical University (Ekaterinburg, Russia)

ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8434-7498

 

Acknowledgements: the article was prepared with the financial support of the RNF project No. 23-28-00905 "Aesthetic meanings and fractal poetics of the latest Russian prose: A. P. Platonov, L. M. Leonov, A.V. Ivanov".

Publication Timeline:

Date of receipt: 29.09.2023; date of publication: 31.10.2023.

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