Status
Available
Call number
Genres
Collection
Publication
NYRB Classics (2007), Paperback, 288 pages
Description
TRANSLATED AND WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY ROBERT AND ELIZABETH CHANDLER 'For the mind, everthing is in the future' Platonov once wrote; 'for the heart, everything is in the past'. The protagonist of Soul is a young man torn between these opposing desires, sent as a kind of missionary to bring the values of modern Russia to his childhood home town in Central Asia. In this strange, haunting novella, as well as in the seven stories that accompany it, a rediscovered master of twentieth century Russian literature is shown at his wisest and most humane. WITH AN AFTERWORD BY JOHN BERGER
User reviews
LibraryThing member rdebo13
Platonov's writing is saturated with a pleasing sadness and nostalgia. He is a master at characterizing not only humans but animals, plants and even inanimate objects. In his description of a college courtyard in the short story "Soul," patches of chance grass grow around "a solitary old apple tree
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that lived without any care or encouragement from human beings." Beyond the tree lay a stone, that must have weighed a couple of tons, though no one knows where it is from. And a lone iron wheel from a nineteenth century traction engine has sunk itself into the ground. Upon his graduation with honors, Nazar Chagateav, a friendless orphan, secretly says his goodbyes to these "dead objects." This scene is emblematic of Platonov's lonesome, highly intellectual characters who commune more with the natural world, the inanimate world and their own thoughts than with other humans. Platonov's highly realistic prose has an uncanny quality thanks to his ability to amplify and magnify the quiet, still moments of everyday life as well as the absurdity of the early Soviet era. He is an odd amalgam of Proust and Kafka. These are some of the best stories I've ever read, but they are for patient readers who are interested in more than just plot. Show Less
LibraryThing member michaelbartley
a very dark short novel, until the end when the author had to make it pc for stalin. platonov catches the despair and lonliness of life very well
LibraryThing member byebyelibrary
One cannot go overboard in praise of this book. What short story collection can match its melding of time, place and the human heart? Dubliners. Maybe. What makes this book even more of a miracle is that it was written in Stalinist Russia. Platonov was no more political than was Joyce, but after
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reading his work Stalin sent the writer's son to a gulag where he contracted tuberculosis and died. This is perhaps the ultimate testament of the power of a true artist. Show Less
Awards
AATSEEL Book Prize (2004)
Language
Original language
Russian
Original publication date
2008 (collection)
Physical description
288 p.; 8.02 inches
ISBN
159017254X / 9781590172544