What is the meaning of the name hidden man? The hidden man in the work of A

The main character of the work, Foma Pukhov, looks very strange against the background of characters of proletarian origin traditional in Soviet art. Unlike the doubtless heroes A.A. Fadeev and N.A. Ostrovsky, Pukhov does not believe in the revolution, he doubts it. He worries about “where and to what end of the world all the revolutions and all human anxiety are going.” Rooted in his soul is a deep passion for true knowledge of the world, the desire to check everything and see for himself. A parallel arises with the Evangelical Apostle Thomas the Unbeliever. He was not with the other apostles when the resurrected Jesus Christ came to them, and Thomas refuses to believe in the resurrection of the Teacher until he himself touches his wounds. There is an interpretation according to which Thomas was the only apostle who was able to comprehend the secret, hidden meaning of the teachings of Christ.

Platonov’s hero, like Nekrasov’s men in the poem “Who Lives Well in Rus',” is attracted by the eternal mystery of happiness. He is interested not so much in everyday life as in being. The story opens with a very strange scene: a hungry Thomas cuts sausage on his wife’s coffin. In this episode, the eternal and the momentary are expressively correlated with each other, and the full extent of Thomas’s difference from an ordinary person is shown. Thomas is orphaned, but he has to continue living.

Thus, from the first episode, the story intertwines the everyday and philosophical dimensions of life. All the questions that concern Thomas will be of both an abstract spiritual and practical, everyday nature. Why, after all, a revolution, thinks Thomas, if it does not bring the highest justice and does not solve the problem of death? For Foma’s acquaintances, the goal of the revolution is quite specific - material equality, practical improvement in the lives of workers. Pukhov is concerned that, apart from this material goal, there is nothing in the revolution.

Foma Pukhov is an eternal wanderer. At first glance, he travels aimlessly, while everyone around him is busy with very specific things. He does not find a permanent refuge for himself, because there is no place for his soul in the revolution. Others find their place: Zvorychny, becoming the secretary of the party cell; sailor Sharikov, who became a labor recruitment commissioner in Baku, became the foreman of the Perevoshchikov assembly shop. From their point of view, the revolution is fulfilling its promise to bring happiness to everyone. Thomas is looking - alas, to no avail - for confirmation of the revolutionary faith. Only the reality of the revolutionary storm is revealed to him - the reality of dying. Having left the house after the death of his wife, he works on a railway snowplow. Before his eyes, an assistant driver dies in a locomotive accident, a white officer kills an engineer, a red armored train is shot “outright” by a Cossack detachment. And there is no end to this feast of death.

Three deaths are depicted especially vividly in the story. Death of the worker Afonin, who fought on the side of the Reds. The death of the white officer Mayevsky, who shot himself: “and his despair was so great that he died before his shot.” The death of an engineer, the head of the distance, who is “saved” by a Cossack officer’s bullet from execution by decision of the Revolutionary Tribunal. The reality of the revolution that Thomas sees only strengthens his doubts about its holiness.

Does this mean that Pukhov does not find happiness in the world? Not at all. Joy and spiritual peace give him a feeling of communication with the whole world (and not with part of it). Platonov carefully describes Pukhov’s feeling of the fullness of life: “The wind stirred Pukhov, like the living hands of a large unknown body, revealing its virginity to the wanderer and not giving it, and Pukhov made noise with his blood from such happiness. This conjugal love of a whole, immaculate land aroused master's feelings in Pukhov. With homely tenderness he looked at all the accessories of nature and found everything appropriate and living in its essence.” This is Thomas’s happiness - the feeling of the need and relevance of everything in life, the organic connection and cooperation of all beings. It is interconnection and cooperation, not struggle and destruction. Foma is a person to whom all the hardships of the country’s life in conditions of civil war and the “luxury” of “desperate nature” are equally open to him, “Good morning!” - Pukhov says to the driver he replaces at the end of the story. And he answers: “Completely revolutionary.”

Another work in which the holiness of the revolutionary cause is “tested” is the novel “Chevengur” (1929). Chevengur is the name of a small town in which a group of Bolsheviks tried to build communism. In the first part of the novel, its heroes wander in search of happiness in Russia, engulfed in civil war. In the second part, they come to the peculiar city of the Sun - Chevengur, where communism has already come true. In revolutionary fervor, the Chevengurs exterminated most of the population “unworthy” to live under communism. Now they have to confront a regular army sent to pacify the city, which is evading state power. The ending of the novel is tragic: the road to communism ends in death. For the heroes, this death has the character of a collective suicide. The Cheven-Gurs die in battle with a feeling of joyful liberation from the futility of the earthly “paradise” they built. "Chevengur" - awareness of the falsity of the goals proclaimed by the Bolshevik revolution. True, there is no unequivocal condemnation of Platonov’s attitude towards his heroes. The author is on their side in a passionate desire to “make the fairy tale come true”, to bring the age-old dream to life. But he leaves them when they begin to divide people into “clean” and “impure”. Chevengur's heroes appear as victims of an incorrectly set goal, a misunderstood idea. This is their fault and misfortune.

The writer will return to the problems posed in the novel until the end of his creative career. Gradually the range of these problems will narrow, because in the 1930s. It will become more and more difficult to discuss them in print. However, the main result of the time travel undertaken by Platonov in the 20s, the result of the test of the past and the future, is the recognition of the “falseness of the project,” the falsity of the plan for a revolutionary remake of life. In the writer's work of the late 1920s - 1930s. the place of the alluring mirages of utopia will be taken by a formidable reality.

Such works of Platonov as the irony-filled story “City of Gradov” (1927), the “organizational-philosophical” essay “Che-Che-O” (1929), and the story “Doubting Makar” (1929) are devoted to the “test of the present.” Literary scholars sometimes call these works a “philosophical-satirical trilogy.” Platonov’s plays “Fourteen Red Huts” (1937-1938, published in 1987) and “Hurdy Organ” (1933, published in 1988) were created using modern material. The most significant works of this period are the stories “The Pit” (1930, published in 1986), “The Juvenile Sea” (1934, published in 1987) and “Jan” (1934).

The story “The Hidden Man” by Platonov, written in 1927, tells the story of the civil war, which became the cause of great human grief, endless wanderings and deprivations. The work has the features of a philosophical and historical story.

Main characters

Foma Pukhov- a mechanic, a widower, searching for himself and the meaning of life during the civil war.

Other characters

Zvorychny- mechanic, assistant to Pukhov.

Sharikov- a friend of Pukhov, a former sailor, and now an organizer in production.

Chapter 1

Foma Pukhov is not particularly sensitive. Without unnecessary emotional worries, he cuts “boiled sausage on his wife’s coffin” and has a snack when he gets hungry.

Immediately after the funeral, he goes to bed, “because he was very tired and tired.” However, he is not destined to get enough sleep - the watchman hands over a ticket, according to which Foma must appear at four o'clock to clear the railway track of snow drifts.

The driver laments: “Again, no sleep for a week!”, but Foma is even glad of this, since “life will somehow go more unnoticed and faster.”

The front is only sixty miles away, and the whites regularly attack the railway line, “looking for comfort in carriages and station buildings, tired in the snowy steppe on thin horses.”

In a particularly snowy area, the snow blower suddenly gets stuck and begins to slip. The sudden stop causes the driver to be injured, his assistant to die, and Pukhov to lose four teeth.

At this moment, a small Cossack detachment approaches the snowplow and decides to capture the snowplow. But the Red Army soldiers who arrived in time on an armored train recapture it. The snowplow, rescued from snow captivity, continues on its way.

Chapter 2

In Liski, Foma rests with the brigade for three days. He exchanges “ten pounds of shag for oleonaft,” examines all the hanging posters, but continues to be bored.

Here Pukhov comes across an advertisement that invites all proletarians with skillful hands to form voluntary detachments “to serve the front-line needs of the Red armies operating in the North Caucasus, Kuban and the Black Sea coast.”

After the death of his wife, Foma is no longer kept in one place, and he begins to persuade his assistant, locksmith Zvorychny, to go south with him. However, he refuses - his wife and little son are waiting for him at home.

A week later, Foma and five other volunteer mechanics go to Novorossiysk. Having arrived at the place, Pukhov goes through a verification commission, and he is appointed “to the port as a fitter to repair some ship.”

Suddenly, at night, Pukhov is called to army headquarters, where he, together with the Red Army soldiers, receives the task of “strike in the rear of Wrangel, who is now burning out in the Crimea.” He asks to be appointed as an assistant mechanic on the ship "Shanyu", which should sail to the Crimean coast.

When approaching the Kerch Strait, the ships encounter a strong storm. "Shanya" is forced to take on board people from other ships that crashed and return back to Novorossiysk.

Chapter 3

After the unsuccessful sea voyage, four months pass, and all this time Pukhov works in Novorossiysk as a “senior fitter of the coastal base of the Azov-Black Sea Shipping Company.” His responsibilities include daily inspection of ships and writing reports on the impossibility of repairing breakdowns.

“Longing for one’s native place” touches Foma’s heartstrings, and he decides to return. He gets to Baku, where he meets an acquaintance, sailor Sharikov, who is tasked with establishing the Caspian Shipping Company.

After staying in Baku for a week, Pukhov continues on his way, despite Sharikov’s tempting offer to “become the commander of an oil flotilla.” He goes to Tsaritsyn, where he must attract workers to Baku.

Chapter 4

On the road to Tsaritsyn, Thomas rides “with his mouth open - the different people were so amazing.” He meets Tver women who, having been in Turkey, know all the “prices for all products of the Anatolian coast.” A cripple returns home from distant Argentina. And each of Pukhov’s amazing travel companions takes home the exchanged food supplies.

Having found a plant in Tsaritsyn, Pukhov shows Sharikov’s mandate to the mechanic, but he only “smeared the mandate with his tongue and applied it to the fence.” Foma returns to the station and boards a “train of unknown route and destination.”

Chapters 5-6

Returning to his homeland, to the small town of Pokharinsk, Foma first goes to his friend Zvorychny. He finds a rifle in his house, but the locksmith explains that he needs the weapon “in case of sudden counter-revolutionary actions by the enemy.” Now he is a party member, and communism for him is a “sacred duty.”

Pukhov asks his friend to get him a job, and the next day he is appointed “a mechanic for a hydraulic press.” He returns to his room, but is very bored alone. To escape from sad thoughts, he began to “visit Zvorychny every day” and tell stories about his journey to the south.

Chapter 7

At dawn, Foma is awakened by powerful gun salvoes. He goes to find out what is happening, and on the station tracks he notices an armored train, which was "beating in the direction of the morning dawn, where there was a bridge." There is a desperate firefight between the Red Army and the White Guards.

Pukhov is given a grenade and a rifle. He goes to the ravine to the workers, who are aimlessly shooting towards the White Guards. At the other end of the city, the Red Army is barely holding off General Luboslavsky's cavalry.

Foma sees what great sacrifices the workers are making, and suggests that the commander “use mental cunning, since the whites cannot be driven away by direct force” - launch loaded platforms from the slope towards the white armored car, and thus crush it. The commander agrees, but the platforms are broken without reaching their goal.

Only in the evening the red detachments manage to defeat the enemy armored train and recapture Lyuboslavsky’s cavalry detachment.

Chapter 8

After a difficult battle, many workers, including Zvorychny, turn away from Pukhov, considering him a traitor. However, he does not want to admit his guilt. He is kicked out everywhere, and only after the party cell meeting reaches a verdict that Pukhov is not an enemy, but “just a stupid guy,” does his position in society stabilize.

However, Thomas’s restless soul knows no peace, and even “work in the workshop burdened him - not with heaviness, but with despondency.” He writes a letter to Sharikov, and he invites Pukhov to work at an oil mine.

At the factory, Pukhov is quickly fired, considering that although he is “not an enemy, but some kind of wind blowing past the sails of the revolution.”

Chapter 9

In Baku, Sharikov is now in charge of oil as a commissioner for “labor recruitment.” He appoints Pukhov as a “machinist for an oil engine - pumping oil from a well to an oil storage facility.” He likes the work, but he has no housing, and he has to sleep “on a toolbox in the machine shed.”

New acquaintances tried to marry Pukhov and assign him family status, but he always refused, assuring that he was a “lite type of person.”

Foma manages to get out of joining the party, because he is a “natural fool.”

In Baku, Pukhov finally finds peace of mind. “For the second time - after youth” he is able to see the beauty and riot of colors of the world around him. An epiphany occurs in his soul: “Revolution is just the best fate for people, you can’t think of anything better.”

Conclusion

The main idea of the work is the superiority of the natural principle of man over the social: having survived all the horrors of the revolution and civil war, he is able to lead an easy and joyful life again.

A brief retelling of “The Hidden Man” will be useful for the reader’s diary and when doing homework on literature.

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The work belongs to the writer’s fiction, dedicated to the events taking place during the revolution and civil war, revealing the images of ordinary Russian people.

The main character of the story is Foma Pukhov, presented by the writer in the image of a machinist who, after the death of his wife, finds himself in the thick of hostilities in the Novorossiysk direction, portrayed as a person who does not understand the meaning of his own life, a joker and an arguer, constantly doubting everything that is happening around him.

The compositional structure of the story is the embodiment of the author's idea, which is to study the self-development of the protagonist under the influence of the revolutionary events that have taken place, who is capable of preserving his own innermost inner world in these difficult external conditions.

Foma Pukhov is described in the story in the image of an eternal restless wanderer, trying to find his place in the vast world, listening to revolutionary calls for every person to find a happy future.

Having left his home after his wife’s funeral, Foma gets a job as a railway cleaner driver, during which he witnesses the terrible death of an assistant driver in a transport accident. Having subsequently got to the front, Thomas again encounters numerous deaths, seeing how thousands of innocent victims, including children and women, are shot and killed.

Narrating the movements of the main character, the writer introduces into the story a plot-forming image of the road, movement, symbolizing Pukhov’s spiritual transformation, since in episodes in which the hero makes a stop on his way, his spiritual explorations lose their brightness and sharpness, frozen in limbo.

A distinctive feature of the story is the writer’s masterful use of symbolic images expressing the unity of comic and tragic principles. In addition, the narrative content of the work contains the author’s use of deliberate tautological repetitions, displacement of traditional language techniques, an abundance of abstract vocabulary, as well as the folding and unfolding of text sentences. The strange speech structure of the story reflects the inner world of the main character, since, in accordance with the author's plan, the hero is not able to express his experiences and conclusions.

The semantic load of the story “The Hidden Man” lies in the author’s acute, painful disappointment with the revolutionary element, which is destined to play the role of transformer of the social system, bringing the joy of life to every citizen, which ultimately submits to bureaucratic rituals. Using the example of the spiritual development of the protagonist and his final epiphany, seeking to understand human changes that arose as a result of historical turbulent events, the writer demonstrates the loss of true revolutionary goals, as well as genuine human feelings.

Analysis 2

In his works, the author valued words most of all, and dreamed of bringing man closer to nature. In the story "The Hidden Man" He showed an organic personality that does not change its beliefs, an inner world without embellishment. And he contrasted him with his comrades who received new positions, but did not develop morally. Plato, the main character of the story, is looking for himself in the social order that exists around him.

The novel takes place during the Civil War, it changed the destinies of people:

families were destroyed;
people experienced separation;
Front-line soldiers were tested by combat operations.

Different destinies

Fates are different for everyone, something worked out, something didn’t work out, love endured or survived! People were simply looking for a use for themselves. Any work by Platonov, any actions of his heroes, is, first of all, an attempt to find oneself, to integrate into the life that exists.

After the war

The writer characterizes the post-war period as colossal restlessness, a constant desire to move. In the work, the main character travels all the time and searches for himself and an easy life. The movement of the main character can be judged by his personality.

He is not gifted with sensitivity, remember his wife’s funeral, at her grave he cut and ate sausage. Although he knew perfectly well that his wife died of hunger, he has his own truth: “nature takes over.” He represents a person who could not cope with grief and loneliness. For him, in clearing the snow, there was salvation. Throughout the entire route, the snowplow was with him different events happen:

meeting with the Cossacks;
death of an old man;
mutilation and violence.

Death and blood were everywhere, people of the same nationality, with different positions, fought. Pukhov resembles a wanderer and pilgrim. “The spiritual foreignness left Pukhov in the place where he stood, and he recognized the warmth of his homeland, as if he had returned to his children’s mother from an unnecessary wife.” This phrase contains the main meaning of soul searching. Platonov’s hero doubts that he is right and is constantly in search of the truth.

Many events happen in the life of this character. The bosses scold him and give him a certificate for not attending. To which he boldly replies that everything can be learned from books.

Plot

The story has several plots:

Pukhov's travels;
snow removal work with a snow blower;
Pukhov is a mechanic on the ship Shan in Crimea;
living in Baku;
work in Tsaritsyn at a factory.

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... 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 look for good thoughts (i.e., confidence in the truth of the revolution) “not in comfort, but from intersections 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, 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, 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, like the civil war hero Maxim Pashintsev in “Chevengur”, in a kind of aquarium, a “reserve 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. 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.

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 he is by no means a heroic character and not a cold sage, not a conventional mockingbird, still retained the 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” - there are a lot of similar assessments of time, of all the events that changed history, the fate of the former little man. 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, there were already arrests and defeat of “wealthy people,” and his new friend, 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 need 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?