The Soviet writer Andrei Platonov (1899-1951) belongs to a Russian philosophical tradition that includes such figures as Vladimir Solov'ev, Mikhail Bakhtin, and Boris Pasternak. This study investigates the interrelation of themes, imagery, and the use of language in his prose. Thomas Seifrid shows how Platonov was particularly influenced by Russian utopian thought of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and how his world view was also shaped by its implicit dialogue with the "official" Soviet philosophy of Marxism-Leninism, and later with Stalinist utopianism.
The Soviet writer Andrei Platonov (1899-1951) belongs to a Russian philosophical tradition that includes such figures as Vladimir Solov'ev, Mikhail Ba...
When Osip Mandelstam wrote that the Russian word was "sentient and breathing flesh," he voiced one of the most powerful themes in his culture. In The Word Made Self, Thomas Seifrid explores this Russian fascination with the power of the word as expressed in the work of philosophers, theologians, and artists of the Silver Age and early Soviet period. He shows that their diverse works (poems, novels, philosophical and religious tracts) share an attempt to articulate "a model of selfhood within the phenomenon of language." The thinkers included in this book among them Pavel Florenskii, Roman...
When Osip Mandelstam wrote that the Russian word was "sentient and breathing flesh," he voiced one of the most powerful themes in his culture. In The ...
Written at the height of Stalin's first "five-year plan" for the industrialization of Soviet Russia and the parallel campaign to collectivize Soviet agriculture, Andrei Platonov's The Foundation Pit registers a dissonant mixture of utopian longings and despair. Furthermore, it provides essential background to Platonov's parody of the mainstream Soviet "production" novel, which is widely recognized as one of the masterpieces of twentieth-century Russian prose. In addition to an overview of the work's key themes, it discusses their place within Platonov's oeuvre as a whole, his troubled...
Written at the height of Stalin's first "five-year plan" for the industrialization of Soviet Russia and the parallel campaign to collectivize Soviet a...
Written at the height of Stalin's first "five-year plan" for the industrialization of Soviet Russia and the parallel campaign to collectivize Soviet agriculture, Andrei Platonov's The Foundation Pit registers a dissonant mixture of utopian longings and despair. Furthermore, it provides essential background to Platonov's parody of the mainstream Soviet "production" novel, which is widely recognized as one of the masterpieces of twentieth-century Russian prose. In addition to an overview of the work's key themes, it discusses their place within Platonov's oeuvre as a whole, his troubled...
Written at the height of Stalin's first "five-year plan" for the industrialization of Soviet Russia and the parallel campaign to collectivize Soviet a...
