Journal archive

Abstract: Along with utopian orientation, Platonov has an unconscious melancholic creative motive which can be defined with the help of the word yearning. The semantic volume of this key word of Russian culture is much broader in Platonov’s philosophy than in the literary tradition, and specifically in the literature of the epoch of Romanticism. Irrespective of the fact that the romantic interpretation of yearning radically differs from that of Platonov, the comparison of the two conceptions can throw new light on Platonov’s creative activity. A comparative study can be based on the plot of a travel lying at the basis of both numerous works of romantic fiction and Platonov’s novel “Chevengur”. Estranged from society, the romantic protagonist is characterized by his “asocial” nature. His yearning is an expression of individual mood, whereas in Platonov’s creative activity the word yearning often includes a salient “prosocial” meaning and orientation towards collective future. Thus, for instance, “yearning for the end of history” plays an outstanding role in “Chevengur”. In various Platonov’s texts of the early 1920s, we come across the expression “yearning for the impossible”, which undoubtedly originates from the “Eros of the Impossible” by the symbolist Vyacheslav Ivanov. As long as Ivanov opposes the striving for the “impossible” to the romantic “yearning for the impossible, it was not difficult for Platonov to support this criticism of romantic yearning. The “yearning for the impossible” is used by him for some years in connection with the idea of transformation of the universe. After the crash of the “Chevengur” utopia, nevertheless, the “hope for a better future” gives place to the “yearning for the past”.