Andrei Platonov Uncertainties of Spirit [Paperback]

This is a 1992 study in English of a writer who belongs to a Russian philosophical tradition that includes Bakhtin and Pasternak.This is a 1992 study in English of Andrei Platonov, a writer who belongs to a Russian philosophical tradition that includes Solov'ev, Bakhtin and Pasternak. The book investigates the interrelation of themes, imagery and the use of language in his prose.This is a 1992 study in English of Andrei Platonov, a writer who belongs to a Russian philosophical tradition that includes Solov'ev, Bakhtin and Pasternak. The book investigates the interrelation of themes, imagery and the use of language in his prose.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.Preface; List of abbreviations; Introduction: the problem of reading Platonov; 1. Consciousness and matter: Platonov in Voronezh and Tambov (191726); 2. Learning the language of being (19267); 3. Chevengur and the utopian genre; 4. Platonov and the culture of the Five-Year Plan (192931); 5. 'Socialist Realist' Platonov (193451); Conclusion; Notes; Select bibliography; Index. This book is a very welcome addition to Platonov studies, utopian studies, and the study of early twentieth-century Russian intellectual history. Building on a number of previous works, Seifrid does a convincing job synthesizing the literary and philosophical currents within which this writer, so unique and difficult to place, should be interpreted....this is a very valuable addition that, it isl&