ANDREY PLATONOV IN SEARCH OF IDENTITY: FROM THE “FACTORY OF LITERATURE” TO MASTERY

Abstract

The article examines the transformation of A. Platonov as a writer — from his statements expressed in the article “The Factory of Literature” (1926), to the novels in tge 1930s (“Kotlovan” (“The Pit”) and “Vprok” (“For the Future”). Despite the ironic tone of the “Factory of Literature,” Platonov presented in it his view of the struggle of literary groups in the mid-1920s and joined the debate about the artistic method of the new Soviet literature, its form and content. The writer was deliberating on the ways to create a work that meets not only the social order, but also the criteria of genuine art. Exaggerating LEF terminology and constructivists close to it (factory, semifinished product, raw materials, useful product, object, fact montage), Platonov stops at an important preparatory stage — notebooks — and reveals his own methodology of working with them, including with the help of installation. Notebook entries are divided into several groups: brief descriptions that help define the images of the characters in the fiction text and show their dynamics; phrases that have passed into the text without modification or with minor changes; notes left in notebooks, as they are uncensored — later Platonov “hid” these ideas in the subtext of his work.Thus, Platonov’s path is traced from the ideas of the “Factory of Literature” — through notebooks — to the artistic text of the 1930s. In the novels of the 1930s, the writer continued to reflect on the LEF understanding of art: the concept of “life-building,” production in literature, the idea of the need for a “second profession” for a writer, expressed by V. Shklovsky and B. Arvatov. All this expands our understanding of the political, philosophical and literary contexts of the stories. However, as he followed the ideas of the Lefists at a certain stage of his work (synthesizing them with the ideas of other literary groups), Platonov was searching for his path to mastery, his creative method. At first, he believed in the need to create a “factory of literature,” but in the 1930s he was already doubting the possibility of building not only a common “proletarian house,” but also a literary factory. Doubt as a kind of artistic “method” of the writer (N. V. Kornienko) found its expression in the stories “The Pit” and “For the Future,” which became a metaphor not only for the new Soviet society being built, but also for new literature.