Strange heroes of Platonov and the meaning of their existence. Why did Platonov choose such a psychoanalytic meaning of the existence of Platonov's heroes as the main character of his story?

In one of his early articles - "The Flame of Knowledge" A. Platonov wrote: "It was necessary to understand what the existence of people is, is it serious or on purpose?" All themes, plots, motives of his work are an attempt to answer this question.

In the literary world of the writer, a special type of hero has been formed - a "secret man": a dreamer, an eccentric, a seeker of truth, who cognizes the world with an open heart.

In Platonov's world, people live "like grass at the bottom of a hollow." They do not know their interests, they are heroes who have "forgotten themselves." But it is these eccentrics that support life, preserve it. They are the "stuff of life." Platonov's "secret people" cannot be called strong. A "pensive person" can hardly be strong. Most often they are fragile, physically weak. But their "futility of existence" lasts despite any pressure and, as a result, overcomes the power of the harsh world that surrounds them. There is no logic in this, but Platonov does not strive for it. Weakness suddenly turns into strength. “Non-heroic” characters at some moments of life show, it would seem, qualities that are unusual for them: willpower, the ability to sacrifice, spiritual strength. Thus, the heroine of the story "At the Dawn of Hazy Youth", a weak girl, substitutes her steam locomotive under the carriages in which the soldiers are unhooked from another train, realizing that she herself may perish.

About his heroes - and about his people - Platonov said: "They lived a full and common life with nature and history, - and history fled in those years like a locomotive, dragging the world load of poverty, despair and humble inertia along with it." In his world, "living socialist substance" consists of "innermost people." It is often not known where these people come from, what are the details of their biography. They, as a rule, have simple, not very euphonious, or the most common surnames: Pukhov, Ganushkin, Voshchev, Dvanov, Kopenkin, Ivanov, etc. By this the author emphasizes the ordinariness of his characters. But all of them are passionately looking for the truth, "the meaning of separate and common existence", think in universal human categories.

Favorite Platonic heroes are people of labor. Many of them are connected with the railway, with steam locomotives. They are delighted with machines, their perfection and power. "Why is a man so-so: neither bad nor good, and cars are uniformly famous?" - asks one of the heroes of "Chevengur", Zakhar Pavlovich, who has become a repair worker at the depot. And his mentor, the driver, loves cars even more than people: “He loved steam locomotives so painfully and jealously that he looked with horror when they drove. If his will were, he would put all the locomotives to eternal rest, so that they would not be injured by the rude hands of the ignorant. He believed that there are many people, few cars; people are alive and stand up for themselves, and the machine is a gentle, defenseless, fragile creature ... "

Zakhar Pavlovich is undergoing a transformation that is very important for the artistic world of Platonov: being in love with machines, mechanisms, he suddenly realizes that mechanical "products and devices" do not change the life of the people, exist, as it were, in parallel with it. To this conclusion he is led by childhood suffering, which cannot be changed with the help of a machine: “The warm fog of love for cars ... was blown away by a clean wind, and a defenseless, lonely life of people who lived naked opened up before Zakhar Pavlovich, without deceiving oneself by faith in help cars". Alexander Dvanov, one of the main characters of "Chevengur", also discovers the value of every human life: "... people live here, they cannot be adjusted until they settle themselves. I used to think that the revolution is a locomotive, but now I see it is not. "

As a rule, Platonov's heroes do not engage in politics. For them, the revolution is an accomplished historical fact, a resolved political issue, it brings with it beneficial changes. In the story "The Pit" and the novel "Chevengur", the heroes are arguing about how exactly the revolution should end the injustice of life.

Platonov's heroes are transformers of the world. The revolution requires a truly universal transformation. And the forces of nature, in their opinion, should also be subordinated to man. The heroes of the "Juvenile Sea" plan to drill the earth with a "voltaic arc" and get to the ancient - juvenile - waters in order to bring the moisture it needs to the arid steppe. It is precisely this scale of the planned changes that is characteristic of Platonov's artistic world.

A life in which everything was set in motion after the revolution is the main subject of depiction in most of the writer's works. Worker Zakhar Pavlovich in "Chevengur" remarks about the revolutionary people: "They roam! They will get to the bottom of something. " Hence the constant motive of wandering for Platonov. Platonic truth-seekers strive to do as much as possible for universal happiness, to find out the answer to the most important question, and this requires them to move, strive for something.

But a life in which everything is in motion determines not only the motive of wandering. This explains in many ways the "shift" of the entire artistic world of Platonov. In his works, fiction, often very bizarre, and reality coexist. The heroines of the "Juvenile Sea" - milkmaids who do not have housing - spend the night in huge pumpkins. Phantasmagoric is the transformation of Makar and Peter, the heroes of the story "Doubted Makar," from truth seekers who went through the hell of the "institute of the mentally ill" into officials. One of the heroes of the novel "Chevengur" travels on a horse, Proletarian Power, in order to find, dig from the grave and revive the German revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg.

"The composition of an unknown route and destination", into which the hero of "The Intimate Man" Foma Pukhov climbs during his journey across the country, in a certain sense can be considered a symbol of the revolution. For Platonov, revolution appears not only as a creative force, but also as a randomly acting force. The leader of the Che-Hungarians Chepurny says: "You always live forward and in the dark." Life "in darkness", "in emptiness" leads to the fact that the revolution often becomes force and destructive. People are "taught by the political instructor" to be happy, but the model he proposes turns out to be too simplistic. Foma Pukhov ("The Secret Man") asserts: "Revolution is simplicity ..." This simplicity leads to bloody sacrifices. Reality resists the hopes of people. Their activity to build a new society turns out to be destructive, and as a result of sincere efforts something monstrous happens - for example, in "Chevengur" the builders of a new life are killed by a sudden raid of "regular troops".

Andrei Platonovich Platonov began writing very early. His fame flared up more and more. He wrote about everything: about the hard work of workers and peasants, about the intelligentsia, about the Great Patriotic War. The main problem for him was the problem of human freedom, true harmony, which manifests itself at all levels. In real life, it could not be, therefore, Platonov had tragic notes caused by the impossibility of momentary universal happiness. The greatness of simple hearts ... The greatness of people, their ability to transform the world, to live when it seems impossible to live - these are truly Platonic heroes.

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"What is the peculiarity of the heroes of A. Platonov."

Novosibirsk Institute for Advanced Studies

and retraining of educators

Department of Humanities Education

What is the peculiarity of the heroes of A. Platonov.

The work was prepared by the teacher of the Russian language and literature of the MKOU Troitskaya secondary school of the Chistoozerny district of the Novosibirsk region Safinrader Olga Anatolyevna.

Novosibirsk, 2012.

Everything is possible - and everything succeeds

But the main thing is to sow souls in people.

A. Platonov.

Andrei Platonovich Platonov began writing very early. His fame flared up more and more. He wrote about everything: about the hard work of workers and peasants, about the intelligentsia, about the Great Patriotic War. The main problem for him was the problem of human freedom, true harmony, which manifests itself at all levels. In real life, it could not be, therefore, Platonov had tragic notes caused by the impossibility of momentary universal happiness. The greatness of simple hearts ... The greatness of people, their ability to transform the world, to live when it seems impossible to live - these are truly Platonic heroes.

Platonov was one of those writers who felt the revolution with their skin. He was faced with the fact that good intentions correspond to bad deeds. With a writer, a person does not merge with an idea, an idea does not completely close a person. The heroes sometimes did not understand what was happening, so they became suspicious. All these deviations and excesses have confused them. Platonov's characters would never and for anything could not become those faceless people, over whom ideology has labored.

The writer with his heroes went against the current, refused to participate in the creation of a new man in the era of socialism. Platonov's images are helpless in the face of experiments that have brought down something alien, incomprehensible, and tempting on the people. His characters are unassuming, easily endure difficulties in everyday life, sometimes they do not notice them at all. It is not always known where these people came from, what their past is. But for Platonov, this is not the most important thing. After all, his heroes are transformers of the world, they strive to subordinate the forces of nature to man. It is from such people that you need to expect the achievement of your dreams. These are ordinary engineers, mechanics, visionaries, philosophers, inventors. Such people have liberated thoughts. They are not keen on politics; they view the revolution from a political point of view. All who did not want to follow this path were defeated.

Platonov conveyed an inspired dedication to work to his heroes. He wrote: "Besides the field, the village, the mother and the bell ringing, I also loved locomotives, the car, the aching whistle and sweaty work."

The writer chose for his heroes the thorny path of suffering in search of the truth, which should restore the disturbed order of life and spirit. Platonov's heroes are looking for a clue to death, they believe in the scientific resurrection of the dead. Orphanhood from the characterization of the hero can unfold into the whole plot of the work and turn into a symbol of the destroyed integrity of life, "the great silent grief of the universe." An orphan and a child live in practically every Platonov's hero; they are abandoned, abandoned, without a home, mother and father.

The main aspiration of man in Platonov's world is to become involved in people, nature, the universe, to feel his continuous connection with them, to overcome the sadness of an unrequited existence. His characters are romantics in the full sense of the word. They think big and are freed from selfishness.

And also the heroes of Platonov are romantics of battle, people whose worldview was formed during the civil war. They are fearless, unselfish, honest and outspoken, with the best of intentions. These people seem eccentric to us, and their lives are devoid of integrity and meaning. Maxim Gorky called them "eccentrics and madmen." Indeed, many of them do not know life for themselves, they marvel, succumbing to some idea, saturated with the life of nature, live to benefit others. This is the authenticity of their characters.

Platonov's heroes are like nature. They live in a dense and multiple interweaving of ties, with their entire mass at once, because these people are so defenseless against the cruel "surgical intervention that mercilessly dissects these ties.

His images do not have a sufficient amount of knowledge, they have no past, all this is replaced by faith. The most important thing for a writer is that the person is not destroyed.

Throughout the space of Platonov's prose, there is a "beautiful and furious world" of people, which does not need someone else's interference, since it itself has many faces. Why are Platonov's heroes so selflessly believing in socialism? It's just that these unenlightened people are subordinate to pagan traditions, the most difficult living conditions, hence their faith in a good king and in a collective mind.

Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy once said about a person's capabilities: “I am convinced that not only an infinite moral, but also physical strength is invested in a person, but at the same time a terrible brake is put on this power - love for oneself, memory of oneself, which produces powerlessness. But as soon as a person breaks free from this brake, he receives omnipotence. Platonov's heroes live by this principle, they are ordinary people with their own merits and demerits, but they are all united by the greatness of simple hearts. "

The work of Andrei Platonov, a writer who was erased from the history of Russian literature for many years, is still very difficult to perceive. His concept of the world is unusual, his language is complicated. Anyone who opens his books for the first time is immediately forced to abandon the usual fluency of reading: the eye is ready to slide over the familiar outlines of words, but at the same time the mind refuses to keep up with the expressed thought. Some kind of force delays the reader's perception on every word, every combination of words. And here is not the mystery of skill, but the mystery of man, the solution of which, according to F. M. Dostoevsky, is the only deed worthy of dedicating his life to him. The works of A. Platonov are based on the same humanistic ideals that Russian literature has always preached.

An incorrigible idealist and romantic, Platonov believed in "life's creativity of good", in "peace and light" stored in the human soul, in the "dawn of human progress" on the horizon of history. A realist writer, Platonov saw the reasons forcing people to "save their nature", "turn off consciousness", go "from the inside out", without leaving a single "personal feeling" in their souls, "to lose the feeling of themselves." He understood why “life for a while leaves one or another person, subjecting him without a trace to a fierce struggle, why“ an inextinguishable life and business is extinguished in people, giving rise to darkness and war around. “It is necessary to write not with talent, but with humanity - with a direct sense of life - this is the writer's credo. For A. Platonov, the idea and the person expressing it do not merge, but the idea does not close the person from us.

In Plato's works, we see precisely the "socialist substance" that seeks to build an absolute ideal out of itself. Who does the living "socialist substance of A. Platonov consist of? Of the romantics of life in the truest sense of the word."

They think in large-scale, universal human categories and are free from any manifestations of selfishness. At first glance, it may seem that these are people with asocial thinking, since their mind does not know any socio-administrative restrictions. They are unpretentious, they easily endure the inconveniences of everyday life, as if not noticing them at all.

All of them are transformers of the world. The humanism of these people and the quite definite social orientation of their aspirations consists in the goal set to subordinate the forces of nature to man. It is from them that one must expect the achievement of the dream. It is they who will someday be able to turn fantasy into reality and they themselves will not notice it. This type of people is represented by engineers, mechanics, inventors, philosophers, visionaries - people of liberated thought.

The heroes of A. Platonov's first stories are inventors who dream of reorganizing the world and know how to do it ("Markun"). In later work, a missionary hero appears who believes that he knows the truth and is ready to bring the light of his consciousness to people. “I thought strongly, for everyone,” say Plato's preachers.

However, Platonov's most interesting hero is undoubtedly a doubting person, a “natural”, “organic” person. Foma Pukhov (story "The Secret Man") resists external circumstances. His pilgrimage is undertaken for the sake of finding inner truth.

The fate of the builders-philosophers in the works of A. Platonov, as a rule, is tragic. And this was consistent with the logic of the era. A. Platonov belongs to those few authors who heard not only "music" in the revolution, but also a desperate cry.

He saw that evil deeds sometimes correspond to good desires, and in plans for good, someone provided for the destruction of many innocent people, allegedly interfering with the common good, to strengthen their power. The romantic heroes of Platonov do not engage in politics as such. Because they see the accomplished revolution as a settled political issue. All who did not want this were defeated and swept away. The second group of characters are romantics of the battle, people who formed on the fronts of the civil war.

Fighters. Extremely limited natures, such as the era of battles usually engenders in droves. Fearless, disinterested, honest, utterly frank.

Everything in them is programmed for action. For obvious reasons, it was they who, returning from the front, enjoyed unconditional trust and moral right to leading posts in the victorious republic. They get down to business with the best intentions and with their inherent energy, but soon it turns out that most of them, under the new conditions, are purely automatic in leading the way they commanded regiments and squadrons in war. Having received posts in management, they did not know how to dispose of them.

The lack of understanding of what was happening gave rise to increased suspicion in them. They are entangled in deviations, bends, distortions, inclinations. Illiteracy was the soil on which violence flourished. In the novel "Chevengur, Andrei Platonov portrayed just such people.

Having received unlimited power over the county, they, by order, decided to abolish labor. They reasoned something like this: labor is the cause of people's suffering, since labor creates material values ​​that lead to property inequality. Therefore, it is necessary to eliminate the root cause of inequality - labor.

One should feed on what nature gives birth to. So, due to their illiteracy, they come to the substantiation of the theory of primitive communism. Platonov's heroes had no knowledge and no past, so faith replaced everything.

The confrontation between the "external" internal man comes to an end tragically for the hero "Chevengur Sasha Dvanov. He lives for a long time only by the idea, by faith, and therefore goes into the lake from the life that has lost its value. The hero of the novel" Pit Voshchev wants to "invent something like happiness", but the happiness of a concrete, material ... He wants to materialize an idea and fill matter with meaning.

That is why he rejoices upon learning about the "substance of existence" and remains to work on the foundation pit. The test of this idea is the fate of the child, the little girl Nastya, who is perceived by the workers as "a little man destined to be a universal element."

Nastya dies, and the surviving heroes of the story lose their vitality. "Why...

do you need the meaning of life and the truth of universal origin, if there is no small, faithful person in whom truth would become joy and movement? - Voshchev reflects. And the writer exposes the created "worldwide happiness". The enthusiasm of the first years of the revolution turns out to be only digging one's own grave. The peasants who appear at the construction of the foundation pit work "with such zeal of life, as if they wanted to be saved forever in the abyss of the foundation pit."

But from what can one be saved in the abyss? So gradually A. Platonov comes to the idea of ​​alienating people from the truth to which they were ready to devote themselves without a trace. That is why, in my opinion, the tragedy of a generation is fully embodied in his works.

Andrei Platonov is one of the brightest phenomena in Russian literature of the 20th century. Platonov was born in 1899, died in 1951. Thus, Platonov's life became a kind of frame for the first half of the 20th century. And the first half of the 20th century is a very interesting time.

Literature and painting are making a powerful leap, cinema is getting on its feet. At the same time, one after the other, two world wars occur at once. There is a total recoding of human life. In Russian prose, these changes were introduced and approved by Andrei Platonov.

Platonic hero

Plato's hero is superfluous, redundant. He should not be on Earth, but he is. You can often hear that it is very difficult to read Platonov, almost impossible. The point here, I think, is this. All of us, being victims of the Renaissance and Enlightenment, carry some idea of ​​man. This is a person saturated with ideas, a thinking person, a person whose inner world is full of emotions and feelings. We were taught so, We used to think so. It flatters us in the end. Platonov's man is completely different.

As Makar said about himself from the story "Doubted Makar": "I am empty." Emptiness is the main characteristic of the Platonic world. Accordingly, steppes and fields are the main landscape. Also heroes stories by Platonov- are always thoughtless. Knowledge suddenly comes to them from nowhere. Thought gives way to feeling. And when the reader gets acquainted with the Platonic character, who is his complete opposite, the reader is intimidated. The reader is not used to living in emptiness. It's scary to say the least.

The psychoanalytic meaning of the existence of Platonov's heroes

Platonov at one time was extremely keen on psychoanalysis, therefore, the interpretation of his characters from this side will be very justified. So, for example, almost all heroes have psychopathological disorders. The main one is schizophrenia. Sasha Dvanov, the protagonist of the novel "Chevengur", is a schizophrenic even at the level of his surname. Dvanov, two, duality. Platonov's man is already split into several personalities at once. Whereas in culture it is customary to consider a person as a single person.

Also, the problem of birth in Platonov has a psychoanalytic meaning. This refers to Otto Rank's theory that the main experience in a person's life is the pain experienced at birth. Platonov's people are autochthonous, they were born from the earth. This is exactly what was believed in ancient mythological cultures. The theme of death is directly related to the theme of birth. So, for example, the father of Sasha Dvanov drowned himself in the lake to find out what happens there after his death. Finding out what will happen after is what Plato's heroes want. However, the price to be paid for this knowledge is very high.