The Hidden Man finale. “The Hidden Man”, analysis of Platonov’s story

What is the meaning of the title of the story?

It is known that the word “intimate” traditionally, following the definition in V. I. Dahl’s dictionary, “hidden, concealed, concealed, secret, hidden or hidden from someone” - means something opposite to the concepts of “frank”, “external” , "visual". In modern Russian, the definition of “secret” - “undetectable, sacredly kept” - is often added with “sincere”, “intimate”, “cordial”. However, in connection with Thomas Pukhov Platonova, an outright mockingbird, subjecting a harsh analysis to the holiness and sinlessness of the revolution itself, looking for this revolution not in posters and slogans, but in something else - in characters, in the structures of the new government, the concept of “hidden”, as always, is sharply modified and enriched. How secretive, “buried”, “closed” this Pukhov is, if... Pukhov reveals himself, opens up at every step, literally provokes dangerous suspicions about himself... He doesn’t want to enroll in the primitive political literacy circle: “Learning dirty your brains, but I want to live fresh." To the proposal of some workers - “You would become a leader now, why are you working?” - he mockingly replies: “There are already so many leaders. But there are no locomotives! I won’t be one of the parasites!” And to the offer to become a hero, to be in the vanguard, he answers even more frankly: “I am a natural fool!”

In addition to the concept of “intimate”, Andrei Platonov was very fond of the word “accidental”.

"I accidentally I began to walk alone and think,” says, for example, the boy in the story “Clay House in the District Garden.” And in “The Hidden Man” there is an identification of the concepts “accidental” and “hidden”: “ Unintentional sympathy for people... manifested itself in Pukhov’s soul, overgrown with life.” We would hardly be mistaken if, based on many of Platonov’s stories for children, his fairy tales, and in general “signs of abandoned childhood,” we say that children or people with an open, childishly spontaneous soul are the most “innermost”, behaving extremely naturally, without pretense, hiding, especially hypocrisy. Children are the most open, artless, and they are also the most “intimate.” All their actions are “accidental,” that is, not prescribed by anyone, sincere, “careless.” Foma Pukhov is constantly told: “You will achieve your goal, Pukhov! You’ll get spanked somewhere!”; “Why are you a grumbler and a non-party member, and not a hero of the era?” etc. And he continues his path as a free contemplator, an ironic spy, who does not fit into any bureaucratic system, hierarchy of positions and slogans. Pukhov’s “intimacy” lies in this freedom self-development, freedom of judgment and assessment of the revolution itself, its saints and angels in the conditions of the revolution stopped in a bureaucratic stupor.

“What are the features of the plot development of Pukhov’s character and what determines them?” - the teacher will ask the class.

Andrei Platonov does not explain the reasons for Pukhov’s continuous, endless wanderings through the revolution (this 1919-1920 gg.), his desire to seek good thoughts(i.e., confidence in the truth of the revolution) “not in comfort, but from crossing with people and events.” He also did not explain the deep autobiographical nature of the entire story (it was created in 1928 and precedes his story “The Doubting Makar,” which caused sharp rejection by the officialdom of Platonov’s entire position).

The story begins with a defiantly stated, visual theme of movement, the hero’s break with peace, with home comfort, with the theme of the onslaught of oncoming life on his soul; from the blows of the wind, storm. He enters a world where “there is wind, wind in the whole wide world” and “man cannot stand on his feet” (A. Blok). Foma Pukhov, still unknown to the reader, does not just go to the depot, to the locomotive, to clear the snow from the tracks for the red trains, - he enters space, into the universe, where “a blizzard unfolded terribly over Pukhov’s very head,” where “he was met by a blow snow in the face and the noise of the storm.” And this makes him happy: the revolution has entered nature, lives in it. Later in the story it appears more than once - and not at all as a passive background of events, picturesque landscape- an incredibly mobile world of nature, rapidly moving human masses.

“The blizzard howled evenly and persistently, stocked up with enormous tension somewhere in the steppes of the southeast."

"Cold Night was pouring storm, and lonely people felt sadness and bitterness.”

"At night, against the stronger wind, the detachment was heading to the port to land.”

« The wind grew hard and destroyed a huge space, going out somewhere hundreds of miles away. Water drops, plucked from the sea, rushed through the shaking air and hit my face like pebbles.”

“Sometimes past the Shani (a ship with a Red amphibious landing force. - V.Ch.) whole columns of water rushed by, engulfed in a whirlwind nor'east. Following them they exposed deep abyss, almost showing bottom seas».

“The train went on all night, rattling, suffering and pretending to be a nightmare into the bony heads of forgotten people... The wind moved the iron on the roof of the carriage, and Pukhov thought about the dreary life of this wind and felt sorry for it.”

Please note that among all the feelings of Foma Pukhov, one thing prevails: if only the storm does not stop, the majesty of contact with people heart to heart does not disappear, stagnation does not set in, “parade and order,” the kingdom of those who have been sitting! And if only he himself, Pukhov, was not placed as a hero civil war Maxim Pashintsev in “Chevengur”, in a kind of aquarium, “reserve”!

Platonov himself by 1927-1928 For years, as a former romantic of the revolution (see his 1922 collection of poems, “Blue Depth”), I felt terribly offended, insulted by the era of bureaucratization, the era of “inky darkness,” the kingdom of desks and meetings. He, like Foma Pukhov, asked himself: are those bureaucrats from his satirical story “City of Grads” (1926) right, who “philosophically” deny the very idea of movement, renewal, the idea of a path, saying: “what flows will flow and flow?” and - will stop”? In “The Hidden Man”, many of Pukhov’s contemporaries - both Sharikov and Zvorychny - had already “stopped”, sat down in bureaucratic chairs, and believed, to their advantage, in the “Cathedral of the Revolution”, that is, in the dogmas of the new Bible.

The character of Pukhov, a wanderer, a righteous man, a bearer of the idea of freedom, “accidentality” (i.e., naturalness, non-prescription of thoughts and actions, the naturalness of a person), is complexly unfolded precisely in his movements and meetings with people. He is not afraid of dangers, inconveniences, he is always prickly, unyielding, mocking, and careless. As soon as the dangerous trip with the snowplow ended, Pukhov immediately suggested to his new friend Pyotr Zvorychny: “Let’s get going, Pyotr!.. Let’s go, Petrush!.. The revolution will pass, but there will be nothing left for us!” He needs hot spots of the revolution, without the tutelage of bureaucrats. Subsequently, restless Pukhov, non-believer Foma, a mischievous man, a man of playful behavior, ends up in Novorossiysk, participates (as a mechanic on the landing ship "Shanya") in the liberation of Crimea from Wrangel, moves to Baku (on an empty oil tank), where he meets a curious character - sailor Sharikov.

This hero no longer wants to return to his pre-revolutionary working profession. And to Pukhov’s proposal “take a hammer and patch up the ships personally,” he, “who became a scribe...” being virtually illiterate, proudly declares: “You’re an eccentric, I’m the general leader of the Caspian Sea!”

The meeting with Sharikov did not stop Pukhov in his tracks, did not “get him to work,” although Sharikov offered him... command: “to become the commander of an oil flotilla.” “As if through smoke, Pukhov made his way in the stream of unhappy people towards Tsaritsyn. This always happened to him - almost unconsciously he chased life through all the gorges of the earth, sometimes into oblivion of himself,” writes Platonov, reproducing the confusion of road meetings, Pukhov’s conversations, and finally his arrival in his native Pokharinsk (certainly Platonov’s native Voronezh) . And finally, his participation in the battle with a certain white general Lyuboslavsky (“his cavalry is darkness”).

Of course, one should not look for any correspondence with specific historical situations in the routes of Pukhov’s wanderings and wanderings (albeit extremely active, active, full of dangers), or to look for the sequence of events of the Civil War. The entire space in which Pukhov moves is largely conditional, just like time 1919-1920 gg. Other contemporaries and eyewitnesses real events of those years, like Platonov’s friend and patron, editor of the “Voronezh Commune” G.Z. Litvin-Molotov, even reproached the writer for “deviating from the truth of history”: Wrangel was expelled in 1920, then what white general could Pokharinsk (Voronezh) besieged after that? After all, the raid by the corps of Denikin’s white generals Shkuro and Mamontov (they really had a lot of cavalry), which took Voronezh, happened in 1919!

“What made Pukhov happy about the revolution and what saddened him immensely and increased the flow of ironic judgments?” - the teacher will ask a question to the class.

Once in his youth, Andrei Platonov, who came from a large family of a railway foreman in Yamskaya Sloboda, admitted: “The words about the steam locomotive revolution turned the steam locomotive into a feeling of revolution for me.” For all his doubts, Foma Pukhov, although this is by no means heroic character and not a cold sage, not a conventional mockingbird, he still retained this same youthful trait, the romanticism of the author’s own feelings about life. Platonov put into Pukhov’s life perceptions much of his perception of the revolution as the most grandiose event of the 20th century, which changed all history, ending the old, “spoiled” history (or rather, prehistory) that was offensive to people. “Time stood all around like the end of the world,” “deep times breathed over these mountains” - similar assessments of time, of all the events that changed history, the fate of the past little man, a lot in the story. From Platonov’s early lyrics, from the book “Blue Depth”, the most important motif about the eternal mystery, the intimacy (freedom) of the human soul passed into the story:

In the story, such “unilluminated”, i.e., those who do not need the granted, prescribed, given from outside “light” (directives, orders, propaganda), are the young Red Army soldiers on the ship “Shanya”:

“They did not yet know the value of life, and therefore cowardice was unknown to them - the pity of losing their body... They were unknown to themselves. Therefore, the Red Army soldiers did not have chains in their souls that chained them to their own personality. Therefore, they lived a full life with nature and with history - and history ran in those years like a locomotive, dragging behind it the worldwide burden of poverty, despair and humble inertia.”

“What upsets Pukhov in the events, in the very atmosphere of time?” - the teacher will ask the children.

He, like the author himself, saw in the era of triumph of bureaucratic forces, the nomenklatura, the corps of all-powerful officials, signs of obvious inhibition, cooling, even “petrification”, petrification of everything - souls, deeds, general inspiration, extermination or vulgarization of the great dream. The engineer sending Pukhov on his flight is a complete fright: “they put him against the wall twice, he quickly turned gray and obeyed everything - without complaint and without reproach. But then he fell silent forever and spoke only orders.”

In Novorossiysk, as Pukhov noted, arrests and destruction of “prosperous people” were already underway, and his new friend the sailor Sharikov, already known to himself, realizing his right to proletarian benefits, the benefits of the “rising class,” is trying to turn Pukhov onto the path of careerism. If you are a worker, then... “-then why aren’t you at the forefront of the revolution?”

“Two Sharikovs: what do you think are their similarities and differences?” - the teacher will ask a question to the class.

Fortunately for Platonov, it was not noticed that in “The Hidden Man”... Plato’s own Sharikov had already appeared (after, but independently of Bulgakov’s grotesque story “The Heart of a Dog”, 1925). This yesterday’s sailor, also Platonov’s second “I,” does not yet give rise to the so-called “fear-laughter” (laughter after a forbidden anecdote, a scary allegory, ridicule of an official text, etc.). Sharikov is no longer averse to increasing his revival history, he does not want to remain among those snotty ones, without whom they will do without Wrangel, he does not enter, but intrudes... into power!

As a result, he - and there is no need for any fantastic surgery with the cute dog Sharik! - already with visible pleasure he writes his name on papers, orders for a bag of flour, a piece of textiles, a pile of firewood, and even, like a puppet, he goes to great lengths: “to sign his name so famously and figuratively, so that later the reader of his name will say: Comrade Sharikov is an intelligent man! "

A not idle question arises: what is the difference between Platonov’s Sharikov and his “Sharikovism” from the corresponding hero in M. Bulgakov’s story “The Heart of a Dog” (1925)? Essentially, two Sharikovs appeared in the literature of the 20s. Platonov did not have to seek the services of Professor Preobrazhensky and his assistant Bormental (the heroes of “ Heart of a Dog") to create the phenomenon of Sharikov - a smug, still simple-minded demagogue, a bearer of primitive proletarian swagger. There was no need for “material” in the form of the good-natured stray dog Sharik. Platonov’s Sharikov is not an extraordinary, not speculative and exceptional (like Bulgakov’s) phenomenon: he is simpler, more familiar, more everyday, autobiographical, and therefore probably more terrible. And it’s more painful for Platonov: in “Chevengur” he grows up into Kopenkina, and in “Kotlovan” into Zhachev. It is not the laboratory that grows it, but time. He is preparing a landing party in Crimea and is trying to somehow train the soldiers. At first, he simply “happily rushed around the ship and said something to everyone.” It is curious that he no longer spoke, but constantly agitated, not noticing the poverty of his lectures.

Platonovsky Sharikov, having learned to move “big papers on an expensive table”, becoming the “universal leader of the Caspian Sea,” will very soon learn to “buzz” and fool around in any area.

The ending of “The Hidden Man” as a whole is still optimistic: behind for Pukhov are the episodes of dying - the driver’s assistant, the worker Afonin, and the ghosts of “Sharikovism”, and threats against himself... He “again saw the luxury of life and the fury of bold nature”, “the unexpected returned to him in my soul.” However, these episodes of reconciliation, a kind of harmony between the hero-seeker and the hero-philosopher (the first titles of the story “The Land of Philosophers”), are very fragile and short-lived. A year later, another mockingbird, only more desperate, “doubting Makar”, having come to Moscow, the supreme governing city, will cry out: “Strength is not dear to us - we will put even the little things at home - our soul is dear to us... Give your soul, since you are an inventor " This is perhaps the main, dominant note in Platonov’s entire orchestra: “Everything is possible - and everything succeeds, but the main thing is to sow the soul in people.” Foma Pukhov is the first of the messengers of this Platonic dream-pain.

Questions and topics for review

1. How did Platonov understand the meaning of the word “hidden”?
2. Why did Platonov choose the plot of wandering, pilgrimage to reveal character?
3. What was the autobiographical nature of Pukhov’s image? Wasn’t Platonov himself the same wanderer, full of nostalgia for the revolution?
4. What is the difference between Sharikov and the character of the same name from “The Heart of a Dog” by M. A. Bulgakov? Which writer stood closer to his hero?
5. Can we say that Pukhov is partly of a specifically historical character, and partly a “floating point of view” (E. Tolstaya-Segal) of Platonov himself on the revolution, its ups and downs?

What is the meaning of the title of the story?

It is known that the word “intimate” traditionally, following the definition in V. I. Dahl’s dictionary, “hidden, concealed, concealed, secret, hidden or hidden from someone” - means something opposite to the concepts of “frank”, “external” , "visual". In modern Russian, the definition of “secret” - “undetectable, sacredly kept” - is often added with “sincere”, “intimate”, “cordial”. However, in connection with Platonov’s Foma Pukhov, an outspoken mockingbird, subjecting a harsh analysis to the holiness and sinlessness of the revolution itself, looking for this revolution not in posters and slogans, but in something else - in characters, in the structures of the new government, the concept of “hidden”, as always, is sharp modified, enriched. How secretive, “buried”, “closed” this Pukhov is, if at every step Pukhov reveals himself, opens up, literally provokes dangerous suspicions about himself. He doesn’t want to enroll in the circle of primitive political literacy: “Learning dirty my brains, but I want to live fresh " To the proposal of some workers - “You would become a leader now, why are you working?” - he mockingly replies: “There are already so many leaders. But there are no locomotives! I won’t be one of the parasites!” And to the offer to become a hero, to be in the vanguard, he answers even more frankly: “I am a natural fool!”

In addition to the concept of “intimate”, Andrei Platonov was very fond of the word “accidental”.

"I Accidentally I stood up, walked alone and thought,” says, for example, the boy in the story “Clay House in the District Garden.” And in “The Hidden Man” there is an identification of the concepts “accidental” and “hidden”: “ Unintentional Sympathy for people manifested itself in Pukhov’s soul, overgrown with life.” We would hardly be mistaken if, based on many of Platonov’s stories for children, his fairy tales, and in general “signs of abandoned childhood,” we say that children or people with an open, childishly spontaneous soul are the most “innermost”, behaving extremely naturally, without pretense, hiding, especially hypocrisy. Children are the most open, artless, and they are also the most “intimate.” All their actions are “accidental,” that is, not prescribed by anyone, sincere, “careless.” Foma Pukhov is constantly told: “You will achieve your goal, Pukhov! You’ll get spanked somewhere!”; “Why are you a grumbler and a non-party member, and not a hero of the era?” etc. And he continues his path as a free contemplator, an ironic spy, who does not fit into any bureaucratic system, hierarchy of positions and slogans. Pukhov’s “intimacy” lies in this Freedom Self-development, freedom of judgment and assessment of the revolution itself, its saints and angels in the conditions of the revolution stopped in a bureaucratic stupor.

“What are the features of the plot development of Pukhov’s character and what determines them?” - the teacher will ask the class.

Andrei Platonov does not explain the reasons for Pukhov’s continuous, endless wanderings through the revolution (this is 1919-1920), his desire to look for good thoughts (i.e., confidence in the truth of the revolution) “not in comfort, but from crossing with people and events.” He also did not explain the deep autobiographical nature of the entire story (it was created in 1928 and

It is preceded by his story “The Doubting Makar”, which caused sharp rejection by the officialdom of Platonov’s entire position).

The story begins with a defiantly stated, visual theme of movement, a break with peace, with home comfort, with the theme of the onslaught of oncoming life on his soul; from the blows of the wind, storm. He enters a world where “there is wind, wind in the whole wide world” and “man cannot stand on his feet” (A. Blok). Foma Pukhov, still unknown to the reader, does not just go to the depot, to the locomotive, to clear the snow from the tracks for the red trains, - he enters space, into the universe, where “a blizzard unfolded terribly over Pukhov’s very head,” where “he was met by a blow snow in the face and the noise of the storm.” And this makes him happy: the revolution has entered nature, lives in it. Later in the story, the incredibly mobile world of nature and rapidly moving human masses appears more than once - and not at all as a passive background of events, a picturesque landscape.

“The blizzard howled evenly and persistently, Armed with enormous tension Somewhere in the steppes of the southeast."

"Cold Night It was pouring There was a storm, and lonely people felt sadness and bitterness.”

"At night, Against the stronger wind, the detachment was heading to the port to land.”

« The wind grew hard And it destroyed a huge space, going out somewhere hundreds of miles away. Water drops, Plucked from the sea, rushed through the shaking air and hit my face like pebbles.”

“Sometimes past the Shani (a ship with a Red amphibious landing force. - V.Ch.) rushed by

Entire columns of water, engulfed in the whirlwind of the nor'easter.

Following them they exposed Deep abysses, Almost showing the bottom of the sea».

“The train went on all night, rattling, suffering and Faking a nightmare The wind stirred the iron on the roof of the carriage into the bony heads of forgotten people, and Pukhov thought about the dreary life of this wind and felt sorry for it.”

Please note that among all the feelings of Foma Pukhov, one thing prevails: if only the storm does not stop, the majesty of contact with people heart to heart does not disappear, stagnation does not set in, “parade and order,” the kingdom of those who have been sitting! And if only he himself, Pukhov, was not placed, like the civil war hero Maxim Pashintsev in “Chevengur”, in a kind of aquarium, a “reserve reserve”!

By 1927-1928, Platonov himself, a former romantic of the revolution (see his 1922 collection of poems, “Blue Depth”), felt terribly offended, offended by the era of bureaucratization, the era of “ink darkness,” the kingdom of desks and meetings. He, like Foma Pukhov, asked himself: are those bureaucrats from his satirical story “City of Grads” (1926) right, who “philosophically” deny the very idea of movement, renewal, the idea of a path, saying: “what flows will flow and flow?” and - will stop”? In “The Hidden Man”, many of Pukhov’s contemporaries - both Sharikov and Zvorychny - had already “stopped”, sat down in bureaucratic chairs, and believed, to their advantage, in the “Cathedral of the Revolution”, that is, in the dogmas of the new Bible.

Dangers, inconveniences, he is always prickly, unyielding, mocking, careless. As soon as the dangerous trip with the snowplow ended, Pukhov immediately suggested to his new friend Pyotr Zvorychny: “Let’s get going, Pyotr!.. Let’s go, Petrush!.. The revolution will pass, but there will be nothing left for us!” He needs hot spots of the revolution, without the tutelage of bureaucrats. Subsequently, restless Pukhov, non-believer Foma, a mischievous man, a man of playful behavior, ends up in Novorossiysk, participates (as a mechanic on the landing ship "Shanya") in the liberation of Crimea from Wrangel, moves to Baku (on an empty oil tank), where he meets a curious character - sailor Sharikov.

This hero no longer wants to return to his pre-revolutionary working profession. And in response to Pukhov’s proposal to “take a hammer and patch up the ships personally,” he, who “became a scribe,” being virtually illiterate, proudly declares: “You’re an eccentric, I’m the general leader of the Caspian Sea!”

The meeting with Sharikov did not stop Pukhov in his tracks, did not “get him to work,” although Sharikov offered him a command: “to become the commander of an oil flotilla.” “As if through, Pukhov made his way in the stream of unhappy people to Tsaritsyn. This always happened to him - almost unconsciously he chased life through all the gorges of the earth, sometimes into oblivion of himself,” writes Platonov, reproducing the confusion of road meetings, Pukhov’s conversations, and finally his arrival in his native Pokharinsk (certainly Platonov’s native Voronezh) . And finally, his participation in the battle with a certain white general Lyuboslavsky (“his cavalry is darkness”).

Of course, one should not look for any correspondence with specific historical situations in the routes of Pukhov’s wanderings and wanderings (albeit extremely active, active, full of dangers), or to look for the sequence of events of the Civil War. The entire space in which Pukhov moves is largely conditional, just like the time of 1919-1920. Some of the contemporaries and eyewitnesses of the real events of those years, such as Platonov’s friend and patron, editor of the “Voronezh Commune” G. Z. Litvin-Molotov, even reproached the writer for “deviating from the truth of history”: Wrangel was expelled in 1920, then what could the white general then besiege Pokharinsk (Voronezh)? After all, the raid by the corps of Denikin’s white generals Shkuro and Mamontov (they really had a lot of cavalry), which took Voronezh, happened in 1919!

“What made Pukhov happy about the revolution and what saddened him immensely and increased the flow of ironic judgments?” - the teacher will ask a question to the class.

This name, like dozens of others disliked by the regime, was consigned to oblivion and was not known to readers for several decades. Andrei Platonov occupies a strong place in the chain of “heretics” of Russian literature of the 19th century. However, he still has a special place here. Unlike Zamyatin, Akhmatova, Bulgakov, Mandelstam, he did not come from the intelligentsia, from the traditions of literature Silver Age. His social origin is proletarian, he himself went through working hardening. Writer Andrei Bitov will say about Platonov: “He was the first to understand everything from the inside.” I mean true essence socialism, understood everything from my experience, that is, from the working class.

Andrey was the first child in big family mechanic Platon Klimentov in Voronezh. Then 10 more children were born, so he had to help his father almost from the cradle. He started out as a laborer. The railway workshops instilled in the future great writer some kind of pathological passion for mechanics, perhaps this was a paternal trait in him, since he was not just an ordinary worker, but a talented inventor. Subsequently, Platonov himself would have a designation for this type of personality - a person with “smart” hands.

By the time the revolution took place, Platonov had already firmly recognized himself as the hegemon - the proletariat and firmly believed that socialism is a single system that can make all people in the world happy, therefore the writer’s perception of the revolution is traditionally enthusiastic. In the 20s, he dreams of a grandiose remaking of the world by the community happy people. About the dissolution of each person in the team, about the social depersonalization of the individual, that is, about the fact that in his mature creativity will be the subject of enormous, harsh criticism.

Andrei Platonov's first stories represent a utopia. His heroes dream and create beautiful world future. They usually creative people, inventors, self-taught people who dream of harnessing the colossal power of the energy of the sun, water or wind. Platonov himself believed that it was possible to turn the waters of the warm ocean and thereby melt the poles, and then plant them with gardens. He believes that the new system will colossally transform the whole Earth and the whole universe. By this time, he graduated from the railway technical school and became a reclamation engineer. In his profiles, until the end of his life, the writer wrote “meliorator” in the “profession” column. And he even published a brochure about land reclamation.

And then suddenly the rethinking began, the euphoria of delight faded away. This process begins from the moment of the story " Hidden Man" In Dahl's dictionary, the word “secret” means “hidden, concealed, secret,” but in the context of Plato’s story this concept takes on a different meaning. “Intimate” is unusual, non-standard, falling out of the usual stereotype of perceiving the world.

The image of Foma Pukhov

In the story itself, the expression “hidden man” does not appear even once. It's just in the name. However, it is clear that the main character, Foma Pukhov, became Platonov’s innermost person. Its unusualness and originality are perceived literally from the first pages of the work. The author begins the story with a description of how a hungry Pukhov cuts sausage on the lid of a coffin with his dead wife.

Foma is a man of work morality, a worker with “smart” hands and a “thinking” head. Pukhov perceives everything that happens during the revolutionary period from the position of a working man who is accustomed to doing good and necessary things. It is practical, economical, with “ labor system values." It is this mentality, this view of the world that is triggered by Pukhov’s perception of the revolution.

He, accustomed to using his head and hands, cannot understand that someone can work with their tongue. He is surprised by speakers who can talk for hours and do nothing but consider it work. He is surprised by the colossal wastefulness of the new government, why “carry a small body on four axles, they should give him a railcar and that’s enough, otherwise they are wasting an American locomotive” - this is how he perceived the commander’s train. Thus, if the revolution coincided with Pukhov’s working worldview, he perceived it, but if it did not coincide, then he was surprised by it and doubted it. It is these doubts of the hero that turn a lot of people away from him; he becomes a kind of social outcast. And among those who experience euphoria from the revolution, he is a black sheep.

This is the kind of character - thoughtful, doubtful, literally “breaking out” of the usual assessments of the revolution and the regime - and will become further creativity Platonov's main type of hero. The story “The Hidden Man” was the first signal for the writer’s arrival at social dystopia, and it will also become a signal for “hereticy”, for the consequences that the author had to experience in life.

Images of Makar Ganushkin and Lev Chumovoy

Shortly after “The Hidden Man,” the story “Doubting Makar” appeared, where this type gets its further development. The hero of the story Makar Ganushkin - talented person with “smart” hands, work ethic, who sees a lot of superficial, artificial, formal things in the revolution. Unlike the previous work, in this story Platonov brings out the antithesis of the innermost person. They are presented with Lev Chumovoy - the complete opposite of Ganushkin, a reasoner, an empty talker, a bureaucrat who was able to climb into leadership. A man with empty hands.

The symbolism of this image is emphasized with the help of the surname. People like Leo are like a plague epidemic in the new government. Trying to escape from Chumovoy, to find the truth, to explain to those at the helm of the state that the “freaky” are interfering with the new system and will destroy it, Ganushkin reaches Moscow. He finds the right office, in which, as it seems to him, he is sitting main man state, capable of hearing and understanding it. But, opening the office door, he sees Chumovoy at the desk. This ending is symbolic. The circle is closed. The entire state is in a web of freaks.

After the story about Makar, who doubted the revolution, the attitude towards Platonov from the state, censorship, and critics changes dramatically. He falls into long and deep disgrace. The bulk of the writer’s works were never published during his lifetime, and even Khrushchev's thaw returned only some of his texts to readers.

Platonov was not convicted, did not go through Stalin’s purges, he was dealt with differently. Their only son, Plato, was taken through everything possible and impossible. Having fallen ill with consumption in prison and already dying, he was allowed to be taken by his father, who cared for his son himself and could not protect himself from the disease. After the death of his son, A. Platonov did not last long in this world.

Article provided by Elena Antonova.

The artistic world of A.P. Platonov. A.P. Platonov’s faith in the power of goodness, in the light of the human soul, could not help but find its embodiment on the pages of the writer’s works. Platonov's heroes are people-transformers, boldly subjugating nature, striving for a bright future. Finding answers to eternal questions and the construction of a new one is often associated with the motive of wandering and orphanhood. These constantly doubting and thirsty people, the beloved heroes of A.P. Platonov, are looking for “the meaning of life in the heart.” The richness of the narrative, the philosophical nature and universality of generalizations distinguish the works of A.P. Platonov; the writer defined his method as follows: “One must write with essence, with a dry stream, in a direct way. This is my new path."

The story “The Hidden Man” (1928). The work is dedicated to events related to the revolution and the Civil War. Main character, driver Foma Pukhov, after the death of his wife he goes to the front and participates in the Novorossiysk landing. He does not understand the meaning of his existence, jokes and provokes people to argue, doubts everything, and the very name of the hero evokes an association with Thomas the Unbeliever. He is carried along the earth in the general human flow along the “country roads of the revolution.” At first the hero tries not to pay attention to complex life issues, but the innermost inner world takes precedence over everything external. Widespread in the “new” literature of the 20s, the “transformation” of the hero’s consciousness under the influence of the revolution does not happen with Pukhov. Against the background of the hidden degeneration of good ideas, the “natural fool” Pukhov acutely senses the discrepancy between expectations and reality and experiences disappointment, and therefore some of his jokes provoke the reader’s sadness. A striking episode of the exam that Foma Pukhov takes is indicative: “What is religion? — the examiner continued. — The prejudice of Karl Marx and the people's moonshine. —Why do the bourgeoisie need religion? - So that the people do not mourn. — Do you, Comrade Pukhov, love the proletariat as a whole and are you willing to lay down your life for it? “I love you, Comrade Commissar,” answered Pukhov, in order to pass the exam, “and I agree to shed blood, just so as not in vain and not as a fool!”

Feeling of disappointment in the late 1920s becomes acute and painful for Platonov himself. The element that was supposed to transform society submitted to official rituals. The joy of life born of the revolution and anxiety for its future are reflected in the story.

The entire composition of the story is subordinated to the author's intention, reflected in the title itself: to walk with the hero on his path, on which Pukhov tries to understand everything that is happening around him. The character’s self-development occurs along the way. “An unexpected sympathy for the people who were working alone against the substance of the whole world became clear in Pukhov’s soul, overgrown with life. Revolution is just best destiny for people, you can’t think of anything better. It was difficult, sharp and immediately easy, like birth.” The author does not openly state the reasons why the hero sets off, but the reader understands them on his own. A “hidden person” is a person with an unusual world hidden in the depths of his soul, striving to understand his surroundings and not succumbing to generally accepted ideas about life imposed from the outside.

IN modern civilization, according to the writer, kinship is lost human souls, the connection between man and the natural world. Long haul Foma Pukhov makes the discovery of truth in himself in order to change something around him. He is much more honest than the “builders of the future” around him. A “natural fool” does not seek to take advantage of the opportunity career growth. The hero goes to Novorossiysk, determining his decision by internal necessity: “We will see mountain horizons; and somehow it will become more honest! And then I saw that they were sending trainloads of typhoid patients, and we were sitting and getting rations!.. The revolution will pass, but there will be nothing left for us!” Indicative in this regard is another character in the story, embodying a different truth of the time - the sailor Sharikov. Foma does not tolerate sloganeering or empty chatter, but Sharikov perfectly assimilated the spirit of the times, found himself a “warm” place and, to Pukhov’s advice to personally “strengthen the revolution” with action (“take a hammer and patch up the ships”), he responds with a real master: “Eccentric you, I am the head of the Caspian Sea! Who will then be in charge of the entire red flotilla here?

It is significant that spiritual search does not lead to external changes in the main character: at the beginning of the story we see him as a snowplow driver, and at the end as an oil engine driver. The train (and in the works of A.P. Platonov it is a symbol of revolution; the writer himself noted: “The words about the locomotive-revolution turned the locomotive into the feeling of revolution for me”), which the hero boards, goes in an unknown direction ( this symbol takes on an epic character). The interest that flared up in his own future (“Where is it [the train] going?”) is quickly replaced by Pukhov’s humility (“The train was moving somewhere further. From its progress, Pukhov calmed down and fell asleep, feeling the warmth in his smoothly working heart "). Thomas needs to walk along the roads of the country himself, see everything with his own eyes, feel it with his heart (this is due to his unbelieving nature). Novorossiysk, the liberation of Crimea from Wrangel (a mechanic on the ship “Shanya”), a trip to Baku and a meeting with the sailor Sharikov constitute certain stages in the hero’s life and Pukhov’s acquisition of the meaning of his existence. The road itself, the movement, becomes the plot-forming beginning, and as soon as the hero stops somewhere, his life loses its sharpness, his spiritual search is lost. Zvorychny and Sharikov, for example, do not receive such development in their frozen state.

The hero’s attempt to understand how people’s lives have changed under the influence of the “historical storm” leads the character to the idea that the true goal, true feelings have been lost. The motif of death heard on the pages of the story is closely connected with the motif of universal orphanhood. (Both of them become central in the work of A.P. Platonov.) The theme of death is not introduced into the narrative by chance. The revolution not only failed to resurrect the dead ( philosophical idea N. Fedorova was perceived by A.P. Platonov himself), but brought, and the author constantly draws the reader’s attention to this, new deaths.

A certain insensibility of the main character’s heart at the beginning of the journey (cutting sausage on his wife’s coffin) is replaced by a feeling of deep unity with the world, which is understood as the meaning of life. At the end of the story, an epiphany occurs: “Pukhov walked with pleasure, feeling, as he had long ago, the kinship of all bodies to his body. He gradually realized what was most important and painful. He even stopped, lowering his eyes - the unexpected in his soul returned to him. Desperate nature passed into people and into the courage of the revolution.” Material from the site

The originality of the language. The work reflects the author’s idea of the indissolubility of the external and internal world, material and immaterial. In the story “The Hidden Man” the depiction of life is carried out in the unity of the comic and tragic principles. The language of Plato’s work reflected the search for a new language, under the sign of which the beginning of the 20th century passed. Symbolic images, which are repeated in a number of the writer’s works, begin to perform a leitmotif function. Platonov uses the “strange” language of the narrator to express inner world a hero who does not have words to convey his experiences and conclusions. The basis of Platonov’s language is bookish speech with an abundance of abstract vocabulary (On the walls of the station there was a manufactory with propaganda words), a displacement of the usual linguistic connections, when the subsequent word is difficult to predict, the folding and unfolding of sentences (Finally the train left, shooting at air - to scare transport-hungry bagmen), deliberate use of tautological repetitions, etc.

A.P. Platonov creates works in which he depicts not things, not objects, but their meaning; the writer is not interested in everyday life, but in being, the essence of things. The image of Foma Pukhov, combining “high tragic and humorous culture,” becomes one of a whole gallery of searching and doubting Platonic heroes.

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He is working on the story “The Hidden Man” and the novel “Chevengur”. In them Platonov (describes the events of recent history - the revolution. Chevengur - small town, in which a “group of comrades” tries to build communism. The first part of the novel tells about the search for happiness by wanderers. They wander through war-torn Russia. In the second part of the novel it is shown that the wandering heroes came to a certain city of Chevengur, where communism had already been built. However, the city seems to be removed from the flow of history.

Chevengurs live for their comrades, but first they exterminate all “unworthy of communism.” Regular units are sent in search of the city, which has disappeared from state power, and exterminate the Chevengurs. But surprisingly, the residents die with relief, freed from the boredom of the “built paradise.” With his novel “Chevengur,” Platonov showed the futility of the path that Russia took after the revolution. The heroes of the novel are victims of an incorrectly set goal. This is their problem, not their fault.

And what does “The Hidden Man” tell? Pukhov is not a traitor, but a doubter. What secret does he keep in his soul? In his soul, Thomas carries a passion for true knowledge, restlessness. Not everything is so simple and unambiguous in a person, although he himself wants to get to the “very essence”, and, first of all, to the essence of the revolution. Why is he Thomas? An allusion to the Apostle Thomas, the only one who comprehended the meaning of the teachings of Christ, its innermost essence. The author gives a real picture of those years: “All over the yard there were steam locomotives mutilated by incredible work. Echelons of the tsarist war, railways civil war - everyone saw the locomotives, and now they lay down in a mortal swoon, in the village grass, inappropriate next to the marina.” What sad music of farewell to the departed, the general defenselessness of plants, locomotives, people. Universal space orphanhood. An unusual view of the civil war for the reader.

The story begins with a terrible picture: a hungry Thomas cuts sausage on his wife’s coffin. The concepts of life and death, everyday life and eternity are sharply shifted. “Orphaned” Thomas needs to move on with his life. Why revolution? Does it help people or complicate their lives? Have people become happier? “Why revolution,” thinks Foma, “if it does not bring the highest justice. Just a feast of death, more and more victims.” Pukhov - eternal wanderer, he, like a feather drawn by the wind, travels, pushed by the secret requests of the soul. Foma is an outside observer, contemplating everything that the revolution brings with it: St. George the Victorious is smeared with poor paint, and in his place is a portrait of Trotsky.

A train arrives at a station overcrowded with passengers, carrying one commander, who explains that “the bourgeoisie is completely and completely bastard.” What depresses Pukhov is not the “stupidity of the revolution” itself, but the lack of a moral perspective in the minds of its participants. Dragged along the earth, Thomas finds no place for himself anywhere, since there is no place for his soul in the revolution. The movement itself brings joy and peace of mind to the hero. He wants peace and universal reconciliation, not hostility and struggle. “Good morning,” says Pukhov. “Yes, quite revolutionary,” answers the driver. And again doubt. Is it secure in the post-revolutionary world?

The story “The Pit” will answer this question. She describes the events of the “great turning point.” The story shows the death of workers sent to fight the kulaks and suppress the kulaks as an exploiting class. And work on the pit that is being dug to build not just a house, a city, but future happiness. And the pit becomes a grave for little Nastya. There is a parallel here with Dostoevsky, who, through the mouth of his hero, rejected the future universal happiness, which is based on a child’s tear. One tear! And what kind of happiness can you dream of if it is based on bones, including children. The pit - the foundation for the common proletarian house - is gradually turning into mass grave, in which not only dead workers are buried, but also hope for a “bright future.” The main character of the story is Votshchev. His surname can be interpreted as love for the material world, or in vain - in vain, or, even more harshly, he got caught like chickens in cabbage soup... Platonov appears here as a master of the episode. Every detail says a lot without words. The heroes of the story do not want to doubt, they stop thinking.

The unusual nature of Platonov’s works helps the author reveal to readers the meaning of his plans. “The rain flogged the earth,” that is, it tormented, but did not water. The speech of the author and his characters is hidden irony. Platonov deliberately distorts the phrase to show the absurdity of what is happening: “to continue to fly, silently... being killed...” His language is subordinated to the style of the era - the style of slogans and cliches. It turned out that the Russian language was lost, only verbal monsters remained. Gradually we come to understand the author’s symbolism. Platonov's works are finding more and more fans.