Chevengur by Andrei Platonov: excerpt in Asymptote journal

I've only given a handful of books my highest recommendation (when I add a semi-ranking), and Chevengur by Andrei Platonov was one. Robert Chandler (a polite but definite critic of the only previous available English translation), Elizabeth Chandler, and Olga Meerson will have a new translation of Chevengur, hopefully available soon. Fortunately there are a couple of articles about the book in the January 2015 issue of Asymptote journal:

• An excerpt from the new translation, and
• Robert Chandler's essay on translating Platonov.

I love the closing lines of Chandler's essay about Platonov:

Like a great many of the finest twentieth-century Russian prose-writers—Andrey Bely, Ivan Bunin, Vladimir Nabokov, Varlam Shalamov, Nadezhda Teffi, amongst others—Platonov began his writing career as a poet. Though he abandoned verse, his imagination remained as bold, and his use of language as creative, as that of any Russian writer since Pushkin.

The excerpt covers a pivotal event in the novel. (The start of the quote corresponds to page 49 of the Anthony Olcott translation.) The big event in the excerpt involves a train wreck between two locomotives of the Red Army. The collision of two huge engines provides a metaphor for the rest of the novel, the collision between ideology (communism) and the attempt at utopia.

Andrei Platonov on YouTube

Another YouTube videos post, where the videos have under 1,000 views, this time related to Andrei Platonov. I guess there is a tie-in between the previous post and this one: Vasily Grossman gave the main speech at the funeral of Platonov.

The first video is Alexander Petrov's animation of the Platonov story "The Cow" (which can be found in Soul: And Other Stories from NYRB). There are some changes from the short story but I still enjoyed it--the message of love, compassion, and inconsolable grief comes through just as clear as in the story. Platonov wrote the short story close to the time his son was arrested and sent to a labor camp.

On the surface, the second animated video "Chevengur" by Mikhail Maximov has little to do with the book. Many of the ideas of it, though, are captured in a very dark 5 minutes. Haunting.

The page for "The Nikita" quotes Platonov but I'm not sure of the source material. It seems like a composite of a couple of his stories from the collection in Soul. Whatever the source (and I'm trying to find out more on this), I really enjoyed this short film. I'll stop there on descriptions...please watch and enjoy it, too.

The final videos are from The Dialogues with Solzhenitsyn, a documentary filmed by Alexander Sokurov with the Russian writer. In the documentary Sokurov presents Solzhenitsyn with topics and questions, following up (and sometimes trying to guide him) on topics that are listed in the "About" section below the videos. Part of the documentary focuses on Solzhenitsyn's thoughts on Platonov, stressing the language used (particularly his syntax).

I've included an attempt at a transcription based on the subtitles--any errors in copying what was presented are mine. There seems to be a dig at a particular writer by Sokurov by saying Platonov wasn't a "count-writer." Solzhenitsyn is correct in saying Platonov wasn't a "malicious anti-Soviet critic" since he was a believer in the revolution. He was a strident critic on how the revolution had developed, though. There is a beautiful passage in Chevengur I don't believe I quoted when reviewing the novel where a peasant rebukes someone adhering to the party line that having the land is great but the government shouldn't have taken all their wheat. After cursing the Bolshevik, hoping he chokes on the land, the peasant says "All you've left us is the horizon...you can't fool us." (I'm quoting from memory since I had to return the book).

The Dialogues with Solzhenitsyn, part 15 of 19 (the subject of Platonov starts at the 8:10 mark):

The Dialogues with Solzhenitsyn, part 16 of 19 (the subject of Platonov goes through 6:40):

Transcript:
Starting at the 8:10 mark in video 15 (of 19), Solzhenitsyn (AS below) and filmmaker Alexander Sokurov begin to talk about Andrei Platonov. From the subtitles:

Sokurov: “When did you read Andrei Platonov?

AS: “Late. When did I read him? In the end of the 1960s. I still want to write about him, but can’t find the moment.”

Sokurov: “How could it come into being? Can you help me to understand? What’s this language? Where from? I have the impression his language was formed under the influence of the provincial Soviet press of the time.”
AS: “Not the press. Not the Soviet.

Sokurov: “Of some people who…”

AS: “No.”

Sokurov: “who wrote much, as if his language was formed in a quite different way.”

AS: “No, he did not absorb an influence of a high culture. Thanks to God. Were he not an assistant to a locomotive-driver, were he to began [begin] from the Academy, we would have no Platonov. He is such a …”

Sokurov: “His language is a living one.”

AS: “He is just a living image of our simple people, who are caught by the revolution and try, by their own understanding, to understand and to express it. Hence, his expression is like groping. [End video 15] [Video 16] The world is so complex intersecting the traditional world, where he had grown, his parents, his family and the rest, and this incredibly new Soviet world he wants to believe in, he wants to believe, he’s not a ‘malicious anti-Soviet critic’ as they described him, he wants to understand by himself. This is why he gropes, almost like a blind man. He is touching his words, looking for their combinations.”

Sokurov: “Is it stylistics or philosophy?”

AS: “Both. The process of cognition. His style, his syntax is an imprint of the cognition.”

Sokurov: “Of the language, of life?”

AS: “Of both. Language is only an accessory tool. He is studying life. But his expression is always from the inside. And his amazing combinations of words show what we were speaking about, only we were speaking of words, that all of them already exist. But syntax too! The syntax, the constructions, and the government, the government of words, it’s all there. It’s all there, but before him… And he only started it. Still, he was not the first. Some combinations can be found…”

Sokurov: “How do you imagine him? What kind of man? How did he walk, speak? What was he like?”
AS: “Like a genial self-taught man. A genial autodidact invents a steam engine. Like Polzunov. Who else did we have?”

Sokurov: “He’s not a count-writer?”

AS: “No, no. Not a who?”

Sokurov: “A count-writer.”

AS: “No, no, no, no. An absolutely genial autodidact. Interesting. Yes. I studied his syntax. To write about him, and I want to write about him. I have to work a lot. No time… Perhaps one day I’ll have time.”

Sokurov: “How terribly sad it is, that his life was so hard, so unbearable. All was so cruel.”

AS: “That disaster with his son. He was forced to write some pro-Soviet things. I feel pity for those who wrote anything pro-Soviet. He wrote just a bit of it.”

Sokurov: “Yes, just a bit.”

AS: “A bit.”

Sokurov: “But still it is amazing, and resembles nothing.”

AS: “No one.”

Sokurov: “Suddenly a man appears, like a plant, like a unique plant in a forest. He could have not existed.”
AS: “He could. A unique one.”

Sokurov: “Now look: such a writer appeared, but what changed in the Russian literature? Or such people doesn’t [don’t] matter so much? They make a tremendous impression on us, the readers. They are a part of our life, as literature in general. Nothing is so important as literature for our life. But among the fellow writers, among the literary workers, what does mean [is the meaning of] the arrival to the world of such a…”

AS: “You mean, internationally?”

Sokurov: “Even if only for the Russian practice.”

AS: “Remember that in Russia, the Bolshevik censorship made many work underground. Poems and novels were born without anyone knowing them. They returned to the surface with such a delay, unpardonable. In their time, they could have tremendous social effect. They were weakened by being released only 50 years later.”

Sokurov: “For example, Astafiev, Belov, Rasputin?”

AS: “They came in time…”

Sokurov: “I know they did.”

AS: “Yes, yes.”

Sokurov: “Were they influenced by that extraordinary language…”

AS: “Of Platonov?”

Sokurov: “Does a writer feel such an influence?”

AS: “They all have succulent language. A fine vocabulary. All have good, bright vocabulary. By its origin a natural vocabulary. But the syntax…Platonov, on the contrary, doesn’t have any special vocabulary. He’s all syntax. But in the syntax of all the three, I can’t see any [of] Platonov’s influence. I don’t know.”

Sokurov: “I’m not even so interested in the influence of his literature, as in the influence of his personality upon the milieu of writers.”

AS: “Platonov is too uncommon …”

Sokurov: “No way to capture it?

AS: “No. No, there were such cases before, even there were such combinations, one could start … Not long ago I gave an example of a pre-Platonov writing. An early Platonov. There was a bit of it in the works of Apollon Grigoriev, of Hetzen, some few and scattered elements. I mean only syntax. Expressions. Government of words. I had one more example, I forgot it. Before Platonov, but very alike. But of course, Platonov is the king.” [change of subject at 6:40]

Chevengur by Andrei Platonov

Chevengur by Andrei Platonov (Ann Arbor: Ardis Publishers, 1978), translated by Anthony Olcott


Posts on the novel:

• Links on Platanov and Chevengur: helpful posts and articles, not intended to be all-inclusive
• A note on translations: when Robert Chandler's translation comes out I will happily read this again. In the meantime, read Chandler's ideal translator of Platonov
• They existed as slaves to the reservoir: the early pages of the novel, focusing on some of the secondary themes and motifs
• “Down with earthly toiling for the poor / The soil will nourish us for free!”: Sasha's journey around the countryside for the report he is supposed write. Shades of Gogol's Dead Souls in the absurdity he finds.
• A leader derives his essential from the mass: a quick post noting the tendency of deferral to a leader (at least in this setting)
• Train wrecks: the heart of the novel, focusing on the collision between communist ideology and utopia while factoring in human nature and bureaucracy. And more...
• Andrei Platonov on YouTube, which includes animated adaptations of some of his stories and an interview with Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Update: a large pdf file of the novel (the Olcott translation) is available here.

A quick overview of the novel: the orphan Sasha Dvanov joins the Red Army during the Russian civil war. After the war Sasha is asked to look for spontaneous outbreaks of socialism in the countryside and report on his findings. He meets and befriends the revolutionary Kopenkin, a Don Quixote-like figure with the dead Rosa Luxemburg as his Dolcinea and the horse Proletarian Strength for his Rocinante (although, to be fair, PS is an extremely able horse…one of the few survivors to the end of the novel). Their journeys in the countryside take them from situations ranging from silly to ludicrous, and much in between. While taking a break in his home village Sasha hears about the town of Chevengur where communism has reportedly arrived. Sasha writes to Kopenkin, requesting him to investigate the situation and promising to follow as soon as he can. Kopenkin finds a parody of a utopia in Chevengur, no one there certain as to what communism means beyond their naïve faith in slogans they have heard. They believe communism will be something tangible, a force that will allow the sun to provide for everyone without their having to do any work. After slaughtering the bourgeois and semi-bourgeois, the remaining villagers send a delegate to find more proletariats and “miscellaneous” (societal cast-offs) to share their utopia. A funny thing happens –the Chevegurians begin to develop a communal spirit and desire to help each other. After a government official reports on what he finds in Chevengur, soldiers appear and wipe out most of the town.

A major theme in the novel focuses on the conflict between communist ideology and a utopian society, with other factors thrown in such as bureaucracy and human nature, which aren’t tied to any ideology. In the above posts I’ve highlighted some of the sub-themes and motifs in the novel, such as the importance of water, the feeling that the promise of the revolution is fading, although they didn’t receive the emphasis I was hoping to give them. Water turns out to be a constant in the novel, although not always what you would expect from the hydrologist Platonov—water is constantly associated with death in the novel or, at best an absence of life (and ideology). It even invades Sasha’s dreams, providing a link to his dead father.

First and foremost, though, Chevengur is a study of what happened during the Russian Revolution. Platonov shows a rhythm of life and nature throughout the novel, starting with descriptions in the opening passages. While drought and famine were part of the normal cycle, under Soviet policies they occurred more often and lasted longer. For many of the characters there is a feeling that the revolution has not lived up to its promise or that something had sullied the revolution. In Chevengur the question arises whether or not the utopia promised is possible. Literally following the ideology didn’t achieve it, while cutting “short the length of history” leaves mounds of murdered people in its wake. Just as the communal feelings of a utopia begin in the town of Chevengur the people behind the ideology wipe it out. The utopia wasn’t guaranteed to succeed anyway since human nature had plans to highjack the village for its own profit. Simon, the bureaucrat, recognizes “socialism had been replaced with bureaucracy,” dooming the utopian village.

I wanted to include an excerpt that provided a representative insight into the novel as well as being indicative of Platonov’s style. The following paragraphs focus on the revolution and different meanings ascribed to it as well as many themes and images that run throughout the book. People in the quote are Sasha Dvanov, his father (the “fisherman Dvanov”), and Chepurny (the president of Chevengur’s Revolutionary Committee):

The revolution was passing like the day. Shooting died slowly in the steppes, the districts, and the whole Russian hinterlands, while the roads used by the army, horses, and entire infantry of Russian Bolsheviks gradually grew over with grass. The expanses of plains and fields lay in emptiness and silence, exhaling vapors like new-mown hay, while the late sun toiled alone in the slumbering heights above Chevengur. Now no one appeared in the steppe on a war horse, for some were killed, their corpses not found and their names forgotten, while others had demobilized their horses and were leading the poor of their home villages forward, not into the steppes, but into a better future. And if someone did appear out in the steppe, no one took a second look at him, since it would have to be a safe and peaceful man who was riding past on the business of his own concerns.

When he and Gopner arrived in Chevengur, Dvanov noticed that nature lacked its former alarm, while the villages along the road were filled with danger and poverty. The revolution had passed these places by, freeing the fields for peaceful despond, while it went off Lord knows where, as though it had hidden in the inner darkness of man, exhausted by the paths it had traversed. It was as though it was evening in the world, and Dvanov sensed that evening was gathering within him as well, a time of maturity, a time of happiness or regret. It was in precisely this sort of sundown of life that Dvanov’s father had hidden permanently in the depths of Lake Mutevo, wishing before his time to see the future morning. Now another evening was beginning. Perhaps that day whose morning the fisherman Dvanov had wished to see was already passed, his son once again suffering evening. Alexander Dvanov did not love himself too deeply to achieve communism for his own personal life, but he went forward with everyone else because everyone was going and it was frightening to remain behind alone. He wanted to be with people because he had no father or family of his own. On the other hand, communism tormented Chepurny the was the secret of life after death had tormented Dvanov’s father. Chepurny could not bear the mystery of time, so he cut short the length of history by the rapid construction of communism in Chevengur, just as the fisherman Dvanov could not bear his own life and so had transformed it into death, in order to experience the beauty of the world. However, Dvanov loved his father not because of his curiosity and he liked Chepurny not because of his passion for immediate communism. In and of himself his father had been vital to Dvanov as the first friend he was ever to lose, while Chepurny was essential as a homeless comrade whom no one would clasp to themselves if there were communism. Dvanov loved Kopenkin, Chepurny, and many others because all of them, just as his father, would perish of impatience with life while he would stay alone among strangers. (258-9)

I love the contrast between Sasha and Cherpurny, how communism soothed one and tormented the other. Linking Chepurny’s torment with Sasha’s father highlights the fluid and natural transformations in life, including revolution. It also highlights how people become a part of you, reflected again in this excerpt from near the end of the book. Sasha has returned to Lake Mutevo, where his father drowned himself:

He sought that same road along which once his father had passed in his curiosity about death, though Dvanov walked it in a feeling of shame at living in the face of that weak, forgotten body whose remains suffered in the grave because Dvanov remained ever and the same, bearing the same warming traces of his father’s existence in a still undestroyed form. (332)

Highest recommendation.

Chevengur by Andrei Platonov: train wrecks

Chevengur by Andrei Platonov (Ann Arbor: Ardis Publishers, 1978), translated by Anthony Olcott

This will be the hardest post on Chevengur since it gets to the heart (and main character) of the novel, the town. The difficulty lies in both the complexity of the message and some ambiguity Platonov leaves in the story. I’ll apologize now for the length of the post but I don’t think I can break this into multiple posts and keep intact the flow of what happens.

I’ve mentioned before that if you read only one link I’ve provided make it Platonov’s Chevengur: The Ambivalent Space by Natalia Poltavtseva. One of the central topics of the novel she focuses on is the correlation between ideology and utopia. Which is true, and there’s more…so much more, even just on that topic. Early in the novel the main human character, Sasha, is involved in a train wreck between two locomotives of the Red Army. His heroics minimize the damage that could have happened. This collision of two huge engines is reflected later on in the novel in the conflict between ideology (particularly communism) and utopia, the damage compounded or minimized by human nature. Bureaucracy turns out (unsurprisingly) to be an enemy of utopia while inherent in ideology.

A quick run-through of this section of the novel: The introduction to Chevengur comes from Chepurny, nicknamed “the Jap” because of his looks. He is introduced as president of Chevengur’s Revolutionary Committee. He meets Alexander Dvanova (Sasha) at a party conference. He describes Chevengur as having already obtained communism, which intrigues Sasha. Sasha writes to Kopenkin (see previous posts on the novel), urging him to visit the town and see if the village has reached that goal. After Kopenkin arrives Platonov flashes back (for 60 pages) on how the town arrived at their current state—they kill the bourgeois and semi-bourgeois of the town, while the remaining villagers round up nearby proletariat and ‘miscellania’ (homeless people of the steppe) to populate the town. Sasha arrives in Chevengur and the town changes, making steps to become an actual utopian society after being a parody of one. Simon Serbinov, an investigator for the government, is asked to inspect the province to see if the reported acreage under cultivation has dropped significantly. This leads him to Chevengur, where he stays for a while after filing his report. Soldiers arrive in Chevengur and…well, it’s easy to guess the rest.

I’m going to include numerous quotes for the remainder of the post as I look at what Chevengur was “before communism,” the changes it makes in an attempt to forge their utopian society, and why that utopia was not allowed to stand. When asked about the ideology in Chevengur, Chepurny answers “They don’t have any,” “they are waiting for the end of the world.” (162) The bourgeois of Chevengur have been anticipating the Second Coming, not sowing or planting anything for the past three years. A government agent arrives in town and spouts the usual slogans of the Communist party, such as “Purge the town of the oppressing element for me!” (182) The rabble of Chevengur take the directives literally and slaughter the bourgeois: “The bourgeoisie of Chevengur had been beaten solidly, honestly, and in such a way that even their posthumous life would bring them no joy, for after their bodies, their souls had been shot too.” (180) The Second Coming didn’t come for the murdered townspeople:

Former stewards and dismissed civil servants lay by the fences in the comfort of the burdocks and whispered to one another of the Reign of the Lord, the Thousand-Year Kingdom of Christ, and about the future peace of a world freshened by suffering. Those conversations were vitally necessary for walking through the pit of communism’s hell. Forgotten reserves of accumulated ageless spirituality helped the old Chevengurians to bear the remainder of their lives with the full dignity of endurance and hope. By the same token, this was a misfortune for Chepurny and his rare comrades. Nowhere, neither in books nor in fairytales, was communism written out as a comprehensible song that might be recalled for comfort in a dangerous hour. Karl Marx looked down from the walls like an alien Sabaoth, and his fearsome books could not carry a man off in reassuring daydreams about communism. Posters in Moscow and the provinces depicted a hydra of counterrevolution and trains filled with calico and broadcloth chugging into villages that had cooperatives, but nowhere was there a touching picture of that future, for the sake of which the hydra’s head had to be lopped off and the heavy freight trains had to be pulled. (199)

It’s not clear to the remaining villagers that communism has arrived—it feels like nothing has changed. In order to help things along, they round up the “semi-bourgeois”( even though many had been counted as “reliable revolutionaries”) simply because they own homes. The semi-bourgeois were to be exiled but end up being slaughtered, too. There’s a horrific scene where the remaining townsfolk find a half-witted girl in an old boiler with her dead brother. Not satisfied with her staying on the outskirts of town they roll the boiler through the fields until it falls into a ravine.

Surely communism must have come to Chevengur now since the oppressing element has been eliminated. Labor is to be completely eliminated, with the exception of alternate Saturday assistance moving houses (more on that in a minute):

The next day they would have no work or assignments, because in Chevengur the sole sun worked for all, in place of each, for in Chevengur the sun had been declared the world-wide proletarian. At the incitement of the Jap Prokofy had given labor a special interpretation, where labor was declared once and for all to be a survival of greed and animal exploitative voluptuousness, because labor encourages the formation of property, and property is oppression. However the sun released normal rations which are completely adequate for people to live on, and any increase of those rations through deliberate human labor goes to feed the bonfire of class warfare, since it creates a surplus of dangerous objects. (171)

Chevengur turns into a parody of a utopia while the villagers mouth the slogans of communism. The villagers expect nature to change for them. They are fortunate that nature truly is keeping care of them, with plenty of grains growing wild on the steppe and the vegetable gardens replenishing themselves:

The bourgeois of Chevengur had sown and planted nothing for three years now, since they had been counting on the end of the world, but the plants multiplied from their parents and established among themselves a particular balance between wheat and thistle, three thistle roots for every stalk of wheat. When Chepurny looked at the overgrown steppe he always said that it too was an International of grass and flowers, and thus all men were guaranteed abundant food without the interference of labor and exploitation. The Chevengurians saw that it was thanks to that that nature refused to oppress man with work, instead of making the unpropertied consumer a gift of food and other necessities. In its time the Chevengur Revolutionary Committee had taken official note of the submissiveness of conquered nature and decided to erect a monument in its honor at some future point. (223)

The villagers plan for nothing, depleting matches and bullets without looking for any type of replacement. To assist in the slogan of not allowing anything to come between men they decide to move all houses close together while moving the gardens to the outskirts of town. Still…everyone feels empty in the town. They send Prokofy (the eldest son of Sasha’s ‘second father,’ see this post for more detail) to search for the proletariat who “had been tormented enough already” (210) and miscellaneous people to help share the new world they have created. While he is gone the villagers take the slogan to protect communism literally, spending each night vigilantly guarding their town from enemies who must surely plan to attack.

Even with all these changes, “not a single proletarian was hurrying into Chevengur, probably because they did not know that communism had been prepared there for them, as well as peace and common property.” (225) Underlying the disappointment of the people in Chevengur is the feeling that something has gone wrong with the revolution. They were expecting communism to be something tangible. The disappointment is sometimes described as the felling that “the revolution is slipping away” or referring back to 1917 when it was an “unsullied revolution.” Kopenkin, of course, thinks the village rude for not worshiping Rosa Luxemburg like he does: “It was as though Rosa Luxemburg had died for nothing, and not for their sake at all.” (242) Prokofy arrives with people, mostly ‘miscellania’.

Two things happen just after the miscellaneous arrive in Chevengur, significantly changing what happens in the town. The first is when the bureaucracy is eliminated when the Revolutionary Committee disbands. The miscellaneous make it clear that they will demand nothing from the committee or the town, they just want to exist unmolested. The hindrance in achieving utopia because of (communist) ideology becomes clear after the second event. The townspeople first try to keep a sick baby alive—they believe death should not occur where there is communism (reflecting their belief that nature will change). When the baby does die they try to revive it so it will live one more minute under communism, proving the correct ideology exists in their town. The mother’s love for her sick baby proves to be radically different than the propaganda being spouted. She chides the villagers for trying to revive the baby, realizing their motivation lies in selfish reasons rather than altruism. There is plenty of symbolism in this passage, too, since Platonov takes great pains to build a symbolic structure linking the sun with fatherhood as compared to the moon and motherhood. It’s beyond the scope of this post to delve further into these metaphors, but I will note that at this point the villagers realize the sun will not provide everything for them. It’s also important to note that the proletariat and miscellaneous that enter Chevengur are all described as fatherless. The villagers begin to complain about the lack of women in the town, so Prokofy is tasked again to find people, this time wives for the villagers.

The villagers completely change—instead of lazing around all day they feel the need to do something for other residents in the town. They begin to chop wood, build dams, derive fire, concoct millstones, and gather food and herbs in order to help other people in the town. Usually the desire is a longing to help a particular person, but once such a perceived need is satisfied they feel empty. The torment the miscellaneous feel, that they were “useless to themselves,” leads to the call for wives and working for others. Part of the parody continues—work is allowed as long as it does not benefit the one doing the work. But they are in the embryonic stages of caring for others, something practically foreign in the world Platonov has described up to this point. The ideological slogans have been replaced with actual concern for others.

I want to take a temporary diversion on ideology again, focusing on the bureaucracy inherent in it. Prokofy represents the bureaucracy, something supposedly to help the ideology but really supporting his power and status. Which, in this case, proves to cause existential problems between ideology in general, communism specifically, and the utopia promised by that ideology. Prokofy is the Secretary of the district executive committee and interprets much of the ideology for Chevengur, providing an important job as decision-maker for many of the characters—they feel like everyone else is smarter than they are so they defer judgment on actions and events. Prokofy is quite blunt in his assessment of those around him: “He knew that correct government was lacking in Chevengur and that the reasonable and intelligent elements had to live within a retarded class in order to raise it up gradually, under their own authority.”(257) We’re back to the mass insuring “their vain hopes with a leader,” no matter how ill informed or lacking in concern he is for others. While he reliably did what was asked of him in bringing in others to the town, “Prokofy regretted having to give up ownership of Chevengur, to hand it over to the wives of the proletarians and the miscellaneous.” (268) Prokofy tries to rationalize bureaucracy, echoing the ideology and the masses' need for a leader:

“You can see it yourself, Sasha,” Prokofy continued convincingly, “That the satisfaction of their desires will make them repeat again and make them even start wanting something anew. And each citizen will want to realize his own feelings as quickly as possible so as to feel himself and his suffering at [as] little as he can. But even so you’d never get everything ready for them. Today it’s give them property, tomorrow it’s a wife, then round the clock happiness, and history just won’t be able to manage it.” … “I want to organize the miscellaneous. I’ve noticed already that wherever you’ve got an organization there’s never more than one man doing the thinking, while the others live like empty pots, following along behind the first man. Organization is the smartest thing of all. Everybody knows himself but no one possesses himself. And things are great for everyone and only bad for the first man, because he’s doing the thinking. When there’s an organization you can take a lot of the superfluous from a man. (269)

Platonov captures a lot of Russian literature in Prokofy’s statement that “in the Russian village misery is not torment but a habit.” He also introduces a crucial element (in addition to bureaucracy) to either the ideology or utopia conflict—human nature. Near the end of the novel Prokofy begins to take an inventory of the town, intent on taking over everything. In a sense he got what he wanted as the government…the ideology…has to destroy the utopia, since it can’t have these pesky, independent people actually believing and living what has been preached. On the other hand, Prokofy lost everything since while he inherits the inventory list he compiled he has no power without the people of the town.

I’m going to stop here even though I haven’t talked about many important elements of this section, such as the focus on water (again), Sasha’s ties to his father (an expanded and specific piece of the father/sun theme), and the importance of dreams (including the song of the half-witted girl in the boiler). Chevengur proves to be a very dense work that rewards patient reading, even though I feel I only understood a fraction of what Platonov intended.

Chevengur by Andrei Platonov: a note on translation(s)

Chevengur by Andrei Platonov (Ann Arbor: Ardis Publishers, 1978), translated by Anthony Olcott

In reply to a comment from Miguel I ended up linking three articles related to Platonov and translator Robert Chandler, info I think worthy of its own post.

The first article is an interview with Chandler at the Guardian, mostly focused on his second translation of The Foundation Pit. Yeah, that’s a book I HAVE to read soon.

The second article is at Ready Steady Book, posted in October 2005. In it he mentions working on a translation of Chevengur, a project I hope is still in the works. Chandler’s work on translating short works by Nikolai Leskov and Pushkin, works that have been reviewed often by other book bloggers, are worth noting. The hopeful takeaway related to this article, besides the notice of translating Chevengur: “Platonov, nevertheless, remains surprisingly little known in the English-speaking world. This will change.”

The interview at the School of Russian and Asian Studies provides the most in-depth information of the three as it focuses on translation in general. The particulars on Platonov, though, are what I wanted to focus on here. Chevengur may have been “only” 333 pages in the translation I read (and for what it’s worth, Chandler has noted his displeasure with Olcott’s translation elsewhere, although usually in more diplomatic terms than I’m making here), but they are a very dense, difficult 333 pages. Or at least I thought so. Chandler’s take on Platonov’s style and the difficulty in translating him explain a large part of the challenge in reading (and obviously translating) his work:

But here are a couple of paragraphs I wrote earlier, in my introduction to The Portable Platonov:

"The ideal translator of Platonov would be bilingual and have an encyclopedic knowledge of Soviet life. He would be able to detect buried allusions not only to the classics of Russian and European literature, but also to speeches by Stalin, to articles by such varied figures as Bertrand Russell and Anatoly Lunacharsky (the first Bolshevik Commissar for Enlightenment), to copies of Pravda from the 1930s and to long-forgotten works of Soviet literature. He would be familiar with Soviet-speak, with the rituals and language of Russian Orthodoxy, with everyday details of Russian peasant life, with the terminology of mechanical and electrical engineering, and with the digging of wells and the operation of steam locomotives. This imaginary translator would also be a gifted and subtle punster. Most important of all, his ear for English speech patterns would be so fine that he could maintain the illusion of a speaking voice, or voices, even while the narrator or the individual characters are using extraordinary language or expressing extraordinary thoughts. Much has been written about Platonov’s creativity with language; not enough has been written about the subtlety with which—even in narrative—he reproduces the music of speech, its shifts of intonation and rhythm. If Platonov's command of tone and idiom were less than perfect, his infringements of linguistic norms would by now seem self-conscious and dated. In short, Platonov is a poet, and almost every line of his finest work poses problems for a translator. A perfect translation, like the original, would sound not only extraordinary and shocking, but also—in some indefinable way—right and natural."

And so . . . I realized long ago that the only way to go about the task of translating Platonov was to find collaborators.

Chevengur by Andrei Platonov: a leader derives his essential from the mass

Chevengur by Andrei Platonov (Ann Arbor: Ardis Publishers, 1978), translated by Anthony Olcott

I'll apologize in advance for lack of moving the story forward...

After Kopenkin and Sasha leave Chernovka, Sasha heads home and experiences the first fruits of the New Economic Policy. Shumilin, the person Sasha was to report to about possible spontaneous developments of communism in the countryside, chides Sasha for overstepping his authority. Sasha attends a provincial meeting (and at almost the halfway point of the novel) and he, and the reader, hear the first mention of Chevengur. Sasha is intrigued by the man in front of him at the meeting so he stops to talk with him after the meeting. Chepurny, otherwise known as "the Jap" (for his looks), is the president of Chevengur’s Revolutionary Committee. He tells Sasha about Chevengur, where communism has truly taken hold. In Chepurny's thoughts, 'the citizens had long preferred a happy life to labor of any sort.' (149) Sasha, intrigued by the possibility of true communism, writes to his friend Kopenkin to check out the town of Chevengur to see what is happening there.

More on the ideology and reality of Chevengur next week, but I wanted to correct an omission in the previous post. There is an aside within the description of Sasha traveling by train that stands out (appropriately?) for some of what follows in the novel, maybe capturing one aspect of the tendency to acquiesce before a strong leader. This scene takes place in a railway car that has just left the station:

Wherever there is a mass of people, a leader immediately appears as well. The mass insures their vain hopes with a leader, while a leader derives his essential from the mass. The brake platform of the car, where some twenty people had found a place, acknowledged as their leader that man who had squeezed them all onto the platform as he could get on himself. The leader knew nothing, but made announcements about everything. For this reason the people believed him. (88)

Chevengur by Andrei Platonov: “Down with earthly toiling for the poor / The soil will nourish us for free!”

Chevengur by Andrei Platonov (Ann Arbor: Ardis Publishers, 1978), translated by Anthony Olcott

When we last left Alexander “Sasha” Dvanova, he was wandering the countryside at the request of the provincial executive committee president looking for spontaneous outbreaks of socialism in the countryside. Sasha is shot by anarchists but rescued by Stepan Efimovich Kopenkin, commander of the Bolsheviks in the field in the area. It’s difficult to keep a straight face when reading about Kopenkin. He named his horse Proletarian Strength and pines away for the dead Rosa Luxemburg. Kopenkin wanders the area, threatening and enforcing a socialist outlook, although he's not quite sure exactly what that is. Sasha and Kopenkin respect each other and bond in order to help build Socialism in the countryside. Their wanderings feel like something out of Gogol’s Dead Souls.

When they arrive at the village of Khansky Dvorik, the leader of the town has changed his name to Fyodor Dostoevsky to “encourage the self-perfection of the citizenry.” (94) A few follow suit, changing their names to Christopher Columbus and Franz Merring. Sasha and Kopenkin provide more than their fair share of absurdity to the countryside. At a stop in a forest in the Bittermanovsky tract, Kopenkin orders the warden to clear the entire grove and plant rye instead, believing rye to be more useful than trees. His basis, though, comes from the value of the crop as compared to hardwood, not what is actually needed.

The next stop for the two is at the commune “Friendship of the Poor Man.” Kopenkin quizzes the president of the commune and seizes on his comment that a commune “is a mighty business,” “a complication of life,” believing it to mean that the purpose of the commune was to complicate life. Kopenkin believes he can help complicate their life by thinking “up something unclear for them,” which has the benefit of repulsing kulaks by making things difficult. At the next daily assembly Kopenkin proposes some complications, which are put to a vote. (ellipsis in original unless noted)

Everyone raised their hands at once, straight up, thus showing their good habits. “Now this just won’t do!” Kopenkin announced loudly.

“What’s wrong?” the president [of the commune] grew alarmed.

Kopenkin waved an irritated hand at the meeting.

“At least have one of the girls always vote against…”

“But why, comrade Kopenkin?”

“What’s the matter, are you all queer in the head? For complication, that’s why…”

“Got it! Right you are!” the president rejoiced, when moved that the assembly designate directress of rye and fowl Malanya Otvershkova as the permanent nay-sayer.

[I’ll skip the long speech Alexander Dvanov makes, proposing ways to make things complicated for roaming bandit hoards. His proposals were put to a vote.]

“Unanimously, then, with one against?” the president said. The business, however, turned out even more complexly. Malanya Otvershkova of course voted nay, but in addition to her the director of soil enrichment, a redheaded member of the commune with a monotonous, common face, abstained. “What’s your story?” the president asked, perplexed.

“I abstain for the further complication!” he answered, having invented the idea himself. So, following the motion of the president, he was appointed the permanent abstainer. (106-7)

They obviously got the hang of things rather quickly. But the weirdness doesn’t stop. Sasha and Kopenkin’s next stop is at an old estate with a sign reading “The World-Wide Communism Memorial Revolutionary National Park of Comrade Pashintsev.” Pashintsev turns out to be dressed like a knight, wearing armor, chain mail, helmet, and metal boots. He sings the praises of his commune where people don’t have to do anything, living off the estate’s store of goods. No plans are made, of course, for when things run out. Pashintsev's poem sums up the plans for the National Park:

The bourgeois’s gone, so there’ll be work.
Again the muzhik bears the load.
Believe, oh peasant toiling there,
That in the fields the lilies live far better!
So leave your plowing, sowing, reaping—
Let the field seed itself!
You go live and make your merry
For you won’t be round again!
Oh holy commune, all grab hands
And thundering shout to all:
Enough of being poor and sad
It’s time we all put on some fat!
Down with earthly toiling for the poor
The soil will nourish us for free! (116)

We’ll see a similar outlook once we reach Chevengur. But first there’s the town of Chernovka, where Soviet authority collapsed since the peasant elected president received no respect and couldn’t govern. Despite Chernovka’s pleas for help from neighboring towns, they were told to govern themselves. Since no one respects anyone else in the town, nothing happened. Meanwhile the tillable land stays barren.

I’ve mentioned the importance of water in the novel and wanted to close this post with an excerpt that symbolically reflects what Sasha is seeing as he travels through the countryside (ellipsis in original):

While the people argued and trampled flat the differences among themselves the age-old labor of nature continued. The river grew old, beating down its virginal stands of grass beneath the fatal liquids of the swamp, through which only the hard spiky reeds could poke their way. Now the dead tufts of the valley heard only the apathetic songs of the wind. At the end of the summer there was always an uneven battle there between the weakened current of the river and the alluvial sand washed from the gulches and gulleys, the minor flakes of which were cutting the river off forever from the distant sea.

“Over there, comrade Dvanov [Sasha], look over there to the left,” Kopenkin pointed at the blue of a flood meadow. “I used to come here with my father when I was still a little boy. It was an unforgettable place. You could smell good grass a mile away, and now there’s nothing here but rotting water…”

Out in the steppe Dvanov had rarely encountered such large mysterious lands as those he found in the valleys. Why when they die do the rivers stop their water and cover their grassy and protective shores with impassable much? Probably the entire land around the valley grows paler from the death of a river. (127-8)

Andrei Platonov
Picture source

Chevengur by Andrei Platonov: they existed as slaves to the reservoirs

Chevengur by Andrei Platonov (Ann Arbor: Ardis Publishers, 1978), translated by Anthony Olcott

I plan on several posts as I read through Platonov’s Chevengur, focusing on what strikes me as I go. The English translation is out of print but can be obtained from other libraries through interlibrary loans--please do so! Don’t expect any unifying theme in or between my posts—the headcold I have seems to be blocking coherent thoughts (more than usual), so I apologize in advance for the rambling…

The opening has several layers of meaning, many of which are revealed the further as you go in the novel. Here are two sections from the opening pages:

There are fringes of decay around old provincial towns. People come here to live straight out of nature. One such man appeared, his piercing face exhausted to the point of melancholy.

…

Every fifth year half the village used to leave for the mines and the cities and the other half went into the forest, because of crop failures. It had been known for ages that even in dry years grass, vegetables, and grain ripened well in the forest clearings, and half of the village that stayed threw themselves on these clearings to save their greens from being snatched away by floods of greedy wanderers. This time, though, the drought repeated itself in the second year too. The village locked its huts and went out on the highroad in two detachments, one to beg its way to Kiev, the other to Lugansk to work. Some few villagers returned to the forest and the overgrown gulches and went wild, eating raw grass, clay, and bark. Virtually all who left were adults; the children had either died off on their own accord earlier or had run away to become beggars. Mothers who were nursing gradually tormented their infants to death by not allowing them to nurse their fill. (3-4)

We start with men leaving nature, gathering for civilization. The harsh cycles of nature, though, drive people from the decayed fringes back to nature or to a more urban (allegedly more organized) setting. In this case, the extended drought takes place just before World War I and turns out to be a foretaste of what will happen with the World War, the civil war, and the programs to follow. Water turns out to be an important element in Chevengur—Platonov trained as an electronic technician but later specialized as a hydrologist, focusing on land reclamation and watershed control.

The man mentioned in the first sentences of the text is Zakhar Pavlovich, a mechanic interested in understanding things. Zakhar isn’t the brainiest of men but he tends to come to his understandings “using just the heat of his own impressionable feelings.” (34) Zakhar’s importance, though, turns out to be our introduction to Alexander (Sasha) Dvanova. Chevengur is many things, one of which includes the coming-of-age story of Sasha. In my post on links to Platonov and Chevengur I include the essay "Platonov’s Chevengur: the Ambivalent Space" by Natalia Poltavtseva. If you read only one link from that post I recommend her essay. She covers the importance and symbolism of Sasha’s three fathers (even if I disagree some on the particulars). Her comment “In terms of mythological interpretation, all of them represent different stages of man’s attempts to overcome the chaos of the world, the powerful and sluggish force of attraction to first matter” beautifully captures the importance of the three men. Sasha’s father, a fisherman, was insatiably curious about death while at the same time didn’t believe in it. His preoccupation, denying the power and course of nature, leads to his drowning in Lake Mutevo. Sasha goes to live with Prokhor Abramovich Dvanov, who tries to overcome nature through propagation. His wife gives birth to eighteen children (I believe) before Sasha is chased away from the house by the eldest son, who sees Sasha as a rival to his birthright. Zakhar becomes the third father figure for Sasha. Zakhar doesn’t necessarily try to “conquer nature by means of technology and culture”; instead, he attempt to understand technology (though his impressions) by looking at their essence. He tires of this life and rejects technology:

The warm fog of love for machines in which Zakhar Pavlovich had lived so peacefully and hopefully was now blown away by a clean wind, and before Zakhar Pavlovich opened the defenseless, solitary life of the people who live naked, with no self-deceiving faith in the aid of machines. (35)

Zakhar’s underlying philosophy, during and after his interest in technology, resides in people living harmoniously. He may not have been the brightest peasant but his statements apply to questions raised in pre- and post-revolutionary Russia. In reply to Sasha’s question how things ought to be, Zakhar replies

“Just different, somehow. If they had sent me to the Germans just as soon as the quarrel got started, I’d have come to an agreement with them straight off, and the war would have come out a lot cheaper. But instead they send the brainiest ones!” Zakhar Pavlovich could not imagine a man with whom he would not be able to sit and chat in a neighborly way. Yet it could hardly be that up there on top the Tsar and all his servants were all fools. Which meant that war is not a serious affair, but a deliberate one. And here Zakhar Pavlovich reached a blind alley, wondering whether it is possible to chat in a neighborly way with someone who deliberately kills people, or must one first take away his dangerous weapons, wealth, and worth. (39)

Sasha joins the Red side of the civil war, fighting Cossacks. The president of the provincial executive committee, Shumilin, has the idea that Socialist elements were developing an “emerging spontaneous generation of socialism among the masses” (62) so he sends Sasha to study and report about what was happening in the countryside. One of the first things Sasha notes is that people live near “tracks of water. They existed as slaves to the reservoirs.” (64) Sasha looks at the upper steppes and see potential flourishing there…all it lacks is water. He dreams of water glistening “in the dry uplands. That would be socialism.” (65) It’s a leap of faith, but no sillier than any other reasoning in the novel to bring about socialism. Not to mention it involves a lot of symbolism, such as nomads vs. development and plenty vs. scarcity.

It’s at this point that Sasha stops and provides his only written report to Shumilin, articulating his belief on the key to developing socialism, something that wouldn’t spontaneously occur but would take plenty of work and patience.

Soon the narrow valley of some ancient, long ago dried up river opened before him. The valley was occupied by the post town of Petrpavloka, an enormous herd of greedy houses bunched up around a tiny watering hole.

Dvanov saw boulders on the streets of Petropavlovka which had once been brought there by glaciers. Now the glacial boulders lay by the huts and served as seats for old men.

Dvanov later remembered these stones when he was sitting in the Petropavlovka village soviet. He had dropped in there so that they would give him lodgings for the approaching night and so he could write Shumilin a letter. Dvanov did not know how letters begin, and informed Shumilin that nature had no particular gifts for creations, that it succeeds through patience. Boulders had crawled from Finland across the plains and the sorrowful expanse of time into Petropavlovka on the tongue of a glacier. Water had to be brought from the rare steppe washes and the deeper layers out onto the high steppe, so as to establish socialism in the steppe. That’s nearer than dragging boulders from Finland.

Yep, that’s exactly the report I would want if I were waiting for information on outbreaks of socialism in the countryside. Except…this is probably the best you are going to get. In this situation everyone speaks in metaphors or non-sequiturs since what they feel can’t be expressed in their thoughts or feelings. While partially a barb at education under the tsarist system it's also a reflection on the difficulty of organizing society in a peaceful manner. Or, to steal again from Natalia Poltavtseva's essay,

What happens when Platonov’s characters — whom he endues with murky consciousness and lack of feeling — are forced to face the enormous problem of the consequences and meaning of the Russian Revolution, the predominant theme of his creative work, and the problem considered first and foremost by Platonov himself, and all those who study him? It is that same anthropological quality that enables man to look for the necessary harmony and balance between fiction and what we would conditionally call reality, and what Frank Ankersmit called the “correlation between historical experience and memory”.

Things get even more interesting as Sasha continues on his mission and he becomes determined to help socialism along instead of just reporting on it. Without realizing it, Sasha enters the world of Gogol’s Dead Souls. I should add he does so much to the reader’s enjoyment.

Andrei Platonov and Chevengur links

I'm going to try and post on Andrei Platonov's Chevengur later this week but wanted to pass on some links I enjoyed related to the author and/or the work. This isn't meant to be a comprehensive list of what's available on one or the other.

Update: a large pdf file of the novel (the Olcott translation) is available here.

The New Yorker ran a short story of Platonov's a few years ago: Among Animals and Plants, translated by Robert and Elizabeth Chandler and Olga Meerson. There is also an interview with Robert Chandler.

Perhaps only a third of his best work was published during his lifetime, but that does not mean that the other two-thirds was unknown. Even today, Russia is a world where word of mouth is unusually important. His long novel “Chevengur” was accepted by a major publishing house and even reached the stage of being typeset. Boris Pasternak knew Platonov from at least the beginning of 1930, and there are a remarkable number of parallels between the lives of Yuri Zhivago and the hero of “Chevengur.” Also, Platonov was a close friend of both Vasily Grossman and Mikhail Sholokhov, the two greatest prose writers among his contemporaries. And, in 1932, Mikhail Bulgakov tried very hard, if unsuccessfully, to get one of Platonov’s plays performed in Moscow.

Platonov's short story "No-Arms," translated by Robert Chandler, can be found here.

The essay Platonov’s Chevengur: the Ambivalent Space by Natalia Poltavtseva is available at Baltic Worlds. Be sure to click on the short biographical note at the end of the article:

It is then that the next feature emerges, which is most important for understanding and realizing the meaning of Platonov’s works. This feature concerns the correlation between ideology and utopia. I once dealt with this problem when I used a work by Karl Mannheim on ideology and utopia in order to identify the correlation between these two basic elements: the utopian and the ideological in Platonov’s Chevengur. What happens when Platonov’s characters — whom he endues with murky consciousness and lack of feeling — are forced to face the enormous problem of the consequences and meaning of the Russian Revolution, the predominant theme of his creative work, and the problem considered first and foremost by Platonov himself, and all those who study him? It is that same anthropological quality that enables man to look for the necessary harmony and balance between fiction and what we would conditionally call reality, and what Frank Ankersmit called the “correlation between historical experience and memory”.

Cardinal Points Literary Journal has Two extracts from Chevengur online. Cardinal Points also has an article by Robert Chandler titled Varlam Shalamov and Andrey 'Fyodorovich' Platonov, looking at the possibility that Shalamov's story "The Snake Charmer" is an "argument" with Platonov.

A short article at Russia Beyond the Headlines, "Sarcasm and fairy tales", provides a quick overview of Platonov's work.

I only read the introduction of Seungdo Ra's dissertation Waterworks: Andrei Platonov’s Fluid Anti-Utopia. In Chevengur water appears often and Platonov is clearly interested in the importance of water beyond just his history as a hydrologist. Some of the symbolism of the novel revolves around the need to 'import' water to the steppes in order to fully realize their potential of increasing food production, trying to improve on nature without success. Water, though, isn't just a positive thing but is responsible for several deaths. The novel contains much more symbolism and importance tied to water.

Languagehat has a few posts on Chevengur:
     One
     Two
     Three

If you know of additional links you found helpful in reading Platonov or Chevengur let me know and I'll be happy to add them to the list.