Potudaň – Platonov Andrej (2024)

A small selection of stories by Andrei Platonov - includes five stories from 1926-1936 - The Village of the Carriers, The Clay House in the District Park, The Unfathomable Man, The Potudan River, and The Fertile Wind. The Unfathomable Man (Sokrověnnyj čelověk) is a partly autobiographical narrative from the time of the Russian Civil War, where the immediate brutality of the battles alternates with moments that are almost mythically adventurous (the volunteers' voyage to Crimea). The Village of the Carriers (Jamskaja sloboda) captures the author's village memories from his pre-revolutionary childhood. The main character represents a typically Platonovian type of hero, the very last of the last - a simple laborer without ambitions or goals. The Fertile Wind travels abroad, to Germany just after Hitler's rise to power, but in its horrifying depiction of Nazi atrocities, it somewhat surreptitiously denounces the Soviet famine of the early 1930s. The Potudan River represents the author's work from the 1930s, where pre-revolutionary childhood and the Civil War recede into the historical background in favor of the post-Bolshevik victory era. The building of peaceful life in the USSR is, however, again presented in a completely Platonovian way through the example of the simplest people, unequipped with signs of heroism, weary from long suffering and searching...