Article

Name: Allusions of A. Platonov in the later prose of V. Rasputin

Authors: E. N. Proskurina

Institute of Philology of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences Novosibirsk, Russian Federation

In the section Study of literature

Abstract: The paper identifies and analyses the art of crossing the late prose of V. Rasputin with the works of A. Platonov. The study of the story by V. Rasputin «The same earth» through the prism of creativity of Platonov showed the richness of the receptive layer, where one can hear echoes of the story «The Pit», the story «The Third son». Creative dialogues with Platonov’s prose are held on a poetic and philosophical level. In poetics, the main motives are the motives of the pit, the ravine, and the grave which are of central importance in Platonov’s creative work. Philosophically, a community is manifested in ideas about reviving nature of the earth. The basis for both authors is the archetypal concept of the earth as the primary source of life, the guardian, and the parent. However, the main object of the Rasputin’s reception was the novel «Happy Moscow». In the image of the «building» youth of the main character, in the strategy of her fate, the echoes of the Chestnova’s biography of Moscow are heard. Of resonance is the parallel «a woman – a city» which is the leading one in the poetics of the image of the Platonov’s heroine. At the same time, the poetics of Rasputin lacks the ambivalent characteristics which are the key ones in Platonov’s creativity. Platonov carefully hides the true meaning of his statements in the density of letters, applies the principle of ambiguous characteristics in the depiction of his artistic world, which gives semantic ambiguity to his texts. Rasputin, on the contrary, carefully writes a meaningful plan of his works, motivating the acts of heroes, puts semantic accents in their images and the images-symbols of a pit, a grave, snow, etc., as if he fears any discrepancies and interpretations different from his author's intention. This difference in the ways of writing confirms that the authors’ creativities belong to two different literary paradigms: classical traditionalism in Rasputin and non-classical artistry in Platonov. The analysis proved that one could hardly speak with confidence about the Platonic tradition formed in the literature. It is possible to identify some points of convergence of contemporary authors with Platonov, those that are in different ways consonant with the artistic searches of each of them. One of such these cases is the work of V. Rasputin.

Keywords: A. Platonov, V. Rasputin, creative dialogue, traditionalism, non-classical artistry

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