Some classic Soviet-era stories for the #1937Club #platonov

After my wonderful start to the #1937club with some lovely reads, I have to confess that I hit a bit of a wall… I had a great pile of possible reads, a mixture of old favourites and books which had been lurking on the TBR for a while. However, I picked up and put down several titles, and none were really gelling with my reading mood. So I had a bit of a search around online, checking out favourite authors to see if they had anything published in 1937 and *did* find a few extra books I had which would fit in (these ended up being the last image on my March round-up post). I was particularly pleased to find that there was a Russian author I could choose for the year, and that’s the great Andrei Platonov. His “Chevengur” was a standout read at the turn of the year, and according to Wikipedia he was publishing short stories in the 1930s, including two I can be fairly sure came from 1937. And fortunately, I had access to them…

The River Potudan

Apparently there was a whole collection which appeared in 1937 under this title, but I haven’t been able to find out which stories it contained. However, I do have this story, translated by Robert Chandler, Elizabeth Chandler and Angela Livingstone, in a Platonov collection called “The Return” and it was the perfect choice, as I adore Platonov’s writing.

“Potudan…” concerns a young man called Nikita Firsov who is returning home from fighting in the Civil War. He makes his way back to his home, near the titular river, and finds his father is the only surviving member of his family. It’s hard for him to adjust to a non-combative role, but he gradually does, reconnecting with Lyuba, a women he remembers from when they were both children. They eventually marry, but the War has left psychological scars on Nikita and he cannot consummate the marriage for fear of hurting Lyuba. Both he and his wife consider death, and there will be a period of separation while Nikita runs away and struggles both physically and mentally. The ending is perhaps a little ambiguous, but I’ll let you make up your own mind if you read this one!

“The River Potudan” is a moving, muted story which focuses on those who survive a major conflict and have to try to put life back together. Both Nikita and Lyuba have suffered and lost much, looking to each other for comfort. Yet it’s not easy to reconstruct a normal setting after such major upheaval. It’s a beautifully written story which really lingers in the mind.

The Fierce and Beautiful World

In contrast, “The Fierce and Beautiful World”, translated by Joseph Barnes (and from an older collection released in 1970), tells the story of an apprentice train driver, and his mentor Maltsev; the latter is an experienced and competent worker who has an almost symbiotic relationship with his engine and won’t let his apprentice touch it. However, events and nature conspire against Maltsev, and the narrator tries to help him when there is a near disaster and he’s investigated. Things do not go as planned, though, and the science he tries to employ just makes things worse.

Maltsev drove the locomotive on, throttle wide open. We were now headed straight for a big stormcloud which had appeared above the horizon. From our side the cloud was lighted up by the sun, but its interior was being ripped by severe, angry bolts of lightning, and we could see how the shafts of lightning plunged vertically down onto the quiet distant earth and we were racing madly toward that distant ground as if hurrying to its defense. It was clear that the sight appealed to Alexander Vassilievich; he leaned far out of his window as he stared ahead, and his eyes which were used to smoke and flame and distance were glittering now with excitement. He realized that the work and the power of our locomotive were comparable with the might of the storm, and perhaps this idea made him feel proud.

However, despite tragedy, the story has a beautiful and emotional ending; and its exploration of natures versus science is very thought-provoking.

*****

Interestingly, I felt resonances between both of these stories and “Chevengur”, in that both contain elements which feature in the larger work. The love of machines, the clash between old and new, science and nature is a strong theme at the start of that novel. And the need to reconstruct things after conflict also appears in “Chevengur”, so I did end up feeling that Platonov wove most of his recurring obsessions into his great novel.

But that’s by the by. These two stories were powerful and memorable, and I’m so glad that I had the chance to read them for for 1937. It’s sometimes the easy option for our clubs to focus on English-language originals, but so far this week I’ve managed to get some translated works in – and hopefully that will continue as the club progresses!!

A Quixote of the Steppe #Chevengur

Back at the end of November 2023, there was high excitement here on the Ramblings at the arrival of a newly-published book: “Chevengur” by Andrey Platonov, translated by Robert and Elizabeth Chandler. Platonov was one of those Soviet authors who, despite his best efforts, was barely able to publish during his lifetime, and Stalin regarded him with hostility. However, his works were finally published in Russia after the fall of the Communist regime, and Robert Chandler has pioneered the translation of his work into English since 1996, after some earlier versions which I believe are not considered entirely successful. But the book which is regarded as his main work, “Chevengur”, was only available in one early version and as excerpts rendered by the Chandlers in 1999. So the release of a full translation in English by Robert and Elizabeth is a major event – hence my great excitement!

I read most of the Platonov available pre-blog, apart from “Happy Moscow“, which I wrote about in the early days of the Ramblings. He’s an author like no other, with a distinctive and individual style of writing, and his stories stay with you. So I was, as you might imagine, keen to read what is is his longest, and considered most significant, work. Written during the period from Summer 1927-May 1929, it was prepared for publication, typset and a single copy printed; at that point, it was decided that the book could not be published, and most of his other works seem to have met the same fate. So we are extremely lucky that the manuscripts survived and we can now read his writings.

Distant dogs let out scary and resonant barks, and tired stars fell now and again from the sky. Maybe, in the very deepest part of the night, amid cool, flat steppe, wanderers were now walking somewhere, and within them, as within Sasha, silence and dying stars were being transformed into the moods of personal life.

Described as the Soviet ‘Don Quixote’, “Chevengur” follows in the main the life of Sasha Dvanov, the adopted son of Zakhar Pavlovich; the latter comes from the old world of traditional crafts but is seduced by the world of modern mechanics and the power of industry. He takes up work as a train mechanic, hypnotised by the machines; however, Sasha is a child of the revolution, and embraces the changes it brings to Russia. Pairing up with Stepan Kopionkin, a fighter for the new cause, the two set off to search for Communism, criss-crossing the steppe to find it. Here they encounter all kinds: those for the revolution, those fighting against it, those following their own agenda and just trying to get what they can out of the turmoil consuming the country.

Eventually, they are led to Chevengur, a small and isolated town where it is believed Communism has been achieved; the bourgeoisie have been eliminated, nobody works for anybody else and everything which is not Communism has been wiped out. However, despite this, it’s not quite clear what Communism actually *is* and whether the Chevengurians are doing things correctly. As the populace drift from day to day, even strong believers in the cause like Sasha and Kopionkin seem unsure; is this really what the revolution was meant to achieve?

Deep in his soul he loved ignorance more than culture: ignorance was an open steppe where the plant of any kind of knowledge might yet grow, whereas culture was a field long overgrown, where the soil’s salts had all been taken up by plants and nothing more could grow. For this reason Dvanov was content that in Russia the Revolution had clean rooted out the few thickets of culture, while the people for their part remained the same as ever—empty and fertile, not a cornfield but wide-open steppe. And Dvanov was in no hurry to sow anything; he considered that good soil could not endure long without spontaneously bearing something precious and unprecedented, as long as the wind of war did not bring with it the seeds of capitalist weeds from Western Europe.

The novel in my version is 477 pages long, so this is obviously a very brief summary of what is a complex, nuanced and often beautifully written novel; and I can’t possibly do it justice in one blog post, so I will just do my best to convey some of its brilliance to you! Platonov is, as I have mentioned, a very singular author whose prose reads like no-one else I can think of (the closes parallel I can come across is Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky, a fellow Soviet drawer-writer, but his work is strikingly individual in its own way). From the very start, any reader of Platonov is on familiar ground, with his trope of imbuing nature and objects with emotions and feelings on show in the early pages. There is often an almost hypnotic force to his writing which sweeps you along from place to place and through time; and as Sasha and his comrades live through Revolution, Civil War and the aftermath, it becomes harder and harder for them (and the reader!) to pin down just exactly what the correct form of Communism is.

The blacksmith stopped talking, realizing that the man before him was as strange as every other Communist. On the face of it—a man like any other man, but he acted against the common people.

As a story, then, “Chevengur” is compelling, and gives quite an insight into what it must have been like to live through those troubled years. However, there is much, much more going on in the book and as well as capturing the volatile changes which took place during the Revolution and in the years after it, Platonov also explores, perhaps obliquely, the Russian character and soul. Bringing change to a nation as huge as the Russian one was a mammoth task, and Sasha perhaps represents all of those committed people who travelled from place to place trying to drag a reluctant populace (often peasants) into the new world. Platonov himself was committed to the Revolution and supportive of it, yet was able to stand back and be critical of its failures. This comes through in his writing and is no doubt why he was considered unpublishable at the time.

Chevengur itself is almost a dream-like setting; a little town which physically rearranges itself on a regular basis, it’s purged of all its non-revolutionary entities yet efforts to construct communism seem all over the place, changing from moment to moment according to who is interpreting what the correct form should take; no-one really seems to know what it is or how to achieve it. The town almost becomes a negative force, causing the normal Soviet structures to distintegrate, as if the Russian Steppe and character is too much for these new ways of living. Perhaps, therefore, the end of the book is inevitable; that made it no less moving…

Something was already being established on the dreary fields of a Russia that was being forgotten: people unwilling to plow the land to grow rye for their family were now, with patient suffering, establishing a garden of history for eternity and for their own future inseparability. But gardeners, like painters and singers, do not have sturdy, practical minds. All of a sudden, something agitates their weak hearts—and doubt then leads them to uproot plants that had barely begun to blossom and to sow instead the petty grasses of bureaucracy. A garden requires care and a long wait for the first fruits, but grasses ripen quickly and their cultivation requires neither labor nor the expenditure of the soul in patience. And after the garden of the Revolution was chopped down, its meadows had been given over to self-seeding grasses so that everyone could be fed without the torment of labor. Serbinov had indeed seen how little most people worked, since these seed-bearing grasses fed everyone for free. And so it would continue for a long time, until the grasses had eaten up all the soil and people were left with only clay and stone, or until the now-rested gardeners once again planted a cool garden on impoverished land that had been dried by a bleak wind.

Platonov’s characters are a wonderfully rich collection, from Sasha himself, who most likely represents young Platonov with his ideals, to the wonderful Kopionkin with his splendidly named horse, ‘Strength of the Proletariat’. The latter, indeed, has a character all of his own and is just as intelligent as any of the humans surrounding him. Kopionkin has his very own Dulcinea in the form of the (murdered) revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg, his touchstone and reason for carrying on. There is Chepurny, a fanatic trying to impose Communism on the town; Sasha’s half-brother, Prokofy, who is a much harsher character; and many, many others, all part of this book’s rich tapestry. A good number of these are what you might call ‘party functionaries’ of the type you might have run across at that time; yet they seem to find it impossible to control the rather odd ‘natural’ Communism of Chevengur. Labouring for the good of all is taken to the extreme here, where nobody will work for anything for themselves, but they’re happy and willing to make things for their neighbours. Is that a better Communism than toeing the party line? Who can tell!

My Platonov collection (some of his works I read from the library, back in the day…)

As you can probably guess, I was gripped by “Chevengur” from the first page, and actually quite devastated when I had to stop reading it during Covid when the brain fog took over. It’s a powerful and unforgettable book, full of humour, irony, dark deeds and much melancholy; the latter perhaps reflects Platonov’s disillusioned state of mind after the setbacks he had seen to the progress in Soviet Russia. The author was a great believer in progress; as well as writing, he also worked on electrification and land reclamation projects, as an engineer and administrator, organizing the digging of ponds and wells, draining of swampland, and building a hydroelectric plant. Perhaps he felt that by doing this he could help the cause, which was something his writing could not seem to do; but he died young, at the age of 51, from TB caught from his son Platon. The latter had been sent to a labour camp, where he contracted the disease, and he pre-deceased his father, as well as infecting him.

But his writing survives, and as I mentioned earlier, his prose is so incredibly descriptive and individual. His portrayal of the landscape of the steppe, nature itself, the sun, skies and stars are vivid; and yet he gives them almost a life of their own, ascribing a sensibility to them, and giving them a melancholy which matches thar of the characters. Platonov’s prose is often poetic, even when describing the darkest of deeds (and there is plenty of ‘cleansing’ of the bourgeois elements which takes place.) He’s so distinctive that I think you would recognise his writing even if you didn’t know it was his.

This wonderful edition of “Chevengur” has a slew of supporting material, which considerably enhanced my reading experience. There is an introduction and superb notes by Robert Chandler, and the latter are vital I think in providing context and background information in a number of places. Vladimir Sharov provides an essay “Platonov’s People” (translated by Oliver Ready) which gives excellent analysis of the Russian people and helps with understanding of why the characters in “Chevengur” behave as they do. And there are a few images too, including one of the cover of the only edition ever prepared of the book during Soviet times, one of the wells constructed under Platonov’s direction, and a sheet of his manuscript. As Chandler reveals, there is a group of scholars in Moscow who have been working for thirty years on transcribing Platonov’s manuscrupts, as there are a number of sources to draw on for his work: heavily-censored published versions, typescripts or sometimes only penciled versions which can be extremely hard to decipher. I salute them all!

Andrey Platonov

Had I finished “Chevengur” by the end of December 2023 it would have featured strongly in my round up of the year’s reading as it’s a magnificent book from start to finish; as a story, as a marvellous piece of writing, as a picture of place and time, and indeed as an example of exactly how you should publish a work like this. A brilliant translation, with all the supporting material you could need, I’m sure Platonov would be very proud to see this edition of his magnum opus. It’s wonderful to see a book like this coming out with the fanfare it has, and as translator Bryan Karetnyk reminds us in his own review of “Chevengur”, we need to be thankful that publishers are still willing to support new Russian literature releases, despite the ongoing conflict in Ukraine.

And I have to give thanks to Robert Chandler who, together with his wife Elizabeth and a whole cohort of fellow translators, has devoted huge chunks of his life to bringing Platonov to an English-speaking audience; I can’t express enough gratitude for his work and his commitment to Andrey Platonov and his legacy. Despite it only being January, “Chevengur” will most definitely feature in amongst my books of the year; and now I have to deal with a massing book hangover!!!

A bumper pile of reading for November!

I know it’s a bit of a cliche that, as you get older, time passes more quickly – but really, where on earth did November go?? It was a really busy month for me, with a lot of Stuff going on, hence the huge pile of books – reading is always my coping mechanism when life is a bit meh, and so as you can see there were a lot of books which got read during November!

I’m always happy when I can say that there were no duds in a month but alas, November did have two books I really didn’t get on with – the Manguel Stevenson and the Kate Zambreno were not for me and so I passed on to other books I enjoyed more. I was able to read several titles for German Literature Month, Novellas in November and Non Fiction November, as well as some titles guaranteed to get me in the Christmas mood. It was evenly balanced between fiction and non fiction, with several books being anthologies of short stories – I do find them particularly enjoyable and dippable when life is busy! As you might be able to tell from the pile, I have a little catching up to do with reviews…

Interestingly, there were some reading strands which ran through the month: Alberto Manguel and Robert Louis Stevenson made repeat visits, and Scotland was of course a theme. But I’m (mostly) happy with what I read and it was a satisfying month of books.

As for December, well that’s going to be interesting… I will once more be taking part in the Reprint of the Year award run by Kate at Crossexaminingcrime, and will be nominating two classic crime reprints that I think are great. As well as that, I will be playing catch up with reviews on the blog, as the downside of reading lots, and quickly, is running out of slots on the blog to cover them!

Going forward, however, I’d like to pick up some of the reading projects which have slipped into the cracks and catch up with them. Apart from that, it will be very much what takes my mood. December will be busy again and so I expect some kind of comfort reading could come to the fore! However, as I was preparing this post, the postie came knocking at the door and brought a book which I had pre-ordered back in August, as soon as I heard it was coming out. The title is “Chevengur” and it’s by Andrey Platonov, a Soviet author I read a lot of in the pre-blog days, and here it is!

This chunky novel, a nearly 600 page monster hardback, is considered his masterpiece, I believe, and it’s been finally rendered into English by the illustrious translators, Robert and Elizabeth Chandler. I’m very excited, to put it mildly, and as the blog slots are so full in December, I may just settle down with this doorstep and wallow in it over the month!

What about you? Do you have lots of reading plans for the final month of the year, and will any of them involve Christmas??? 🤣

 

#1930Club – some previous reads!

During our Club reading weeks, I always like to take a look back at books I’ve read previously from the year in question. 1930 turns out to be a bit of a bumper year; not only do I own a good number of books from that year, but I’ve read a lot too! So here’s just a few of them…

Just a few of my previous 1930 reads…

Some of these, of course are pre-blog: there’s two of my favourite crime writers lurking in the pile, Dorothy L. Sayers and Agatha Christie. The Sayers is “Strong Poison”, a book that introduced Lord Peter Wimsey’s love interest Harriet Vane. I adore all Sayers and I would have liked to revisit this during our weekly read. Christie’s “The Murder at the Vicarage” also saw a debut, that of Miss Marple (in novel form anyway – she’d already appeared in short stories). Again, I was so tempted to pick this one up, but I went for “Mr. Quin” instead as I know “Vicarage” so well. Dashiell Hammett’s “The Maltese Falcon” is detecting of a different kind, hard-boiled American. I love Hammett’s writing (although not everyone has enjoyed him recently…) and again was very tempted.

Katherine Manfield’s “The Aloe” is also a pre-blog read; it’s a slim and lovely Virago I’ve owned for decades and the story is a longer version of her short work “The Prelude”. A revisit to this one would have been lovely too, as her prose is gorgeous. “The Foundation Pit” by Platonov is most likely the first of his books which I read; it’s an unusual, allusive book and his writing is very distinctive. Yet another writer I’d love to go back to.

As for titles I’ve reviewed on the blog, there’s the very wonderful Jean Rhys. I wrote about “After Leaving Mr. McKenzie” relatively recently (well – 2016 actually…), and so I didn’t re-read. Yet another excellent woman prose stylist, with a haunting main character, compelling prose and a bleak outlook for women of her time and kind.

Nabokov’s “The Eye” was also a 2016 read; it’s a fascinating, tricksy and clever novella, with wonderful writing and a marvellously unreliable narrator. I love Nabokov’s prose and since I have many, many of his books unread on the shelves I should get back to reading him soon! 😀

Gaito Gazdanov is a relatively recent discovery; a marvellous emigre Russian author, many of his works have been brought out in beautiful Pushkin Press editions. “An Evening with Claire”, however, is his first novel which was brought out in the USA by Overlook Press/Ardis, and it features his beautiful, often elegiac prose in a work often described as Proustian. I believe more Gazdanov is on the horizon from Pushkin – hurrah! 😀

Not pictured in the pile above is “Le Bal” by Irene Nemirovsky. I came a little late to the party with her books; I failed in my first attempt to read “Suite Francaise” but after reading a collection of her shorter early works I came to love her writing, and “Le Bal” was one of those titles. It’s a powerful little story, portraying the dynamics of a mother-daughter relationship in all its horror and proves she was such a good writer.

So those are just a few of my previous reads, on and off the blog, from 1930. Really, it was *such* a bumper year for books, wasn’t it? So glad we chose it! Have you read any of the above? 😀

Looking ahead – to the past? ;D #1930Club

Those of you paying attention will have noticed that we’re edging ever closer to October; and during that month Simon at Stuck in a Book and I will be co-hosting one of our regular six-monthly reading Club weeks! If you’re new to these, basically we pick a year and encourage everyone to discover, read and discuss books from that year. You can review on your blog, post on other social media or just comment on our blogs. We love to hear what gems you’ve discovered or want to share, and the whole thing is great fun. Simon came up with the idea and as you can see from the different Club pages on my blog, we’ve done quite a few…:D

The next year we’re going to be focusing on is 1930, and as I usually try to read from my stacks I thought I’d have a nose around and see what I have that would be suitable. I was surprised (and not displeased!) to find that I own quite a substantial amount of books from that year and more than ever I think I’m going to find it very hard to choose what to read! Normally, I don’t share much ahead of the Club weeks as it’s fun to be surprised by what people read. However, there are so many books on the pile that I feel impelled to have a look now in the hope that some commenters might be able to recommend ones they think are particularly good. The mystery this time is going to be what books I actually choose!

A large stack of possible reads from 1930

So as  you can see, the pile of possibles from books I already own is quite large… Let’s look a little more closely!

1930 Viragos

It should be no surprise, really, that there are several Virago titles from 1930 and these are all from my collection of green spined lovelies. I’ve definitely read the Mansfield; probably the Delafield and Coleman; and possibly not the Sackville-West or Smith. All are tempting for either a new read or a re-read.

Classic Crime from 1930

Again, no surprise that there should be classic crime from 1930. Sayers is a favourite of course (yes, I have two copies of “Strong Poison” – don’t ask…) and this would be a welcome re-read. The Christies are again books I’ve already read, and I know “Vicarage” very well, so the “Mr. Quin” book would be a fun choice. Hammett too would be a re-read. Not sure here what to choose, if I end up re-reading.

1930 Russians

There are indeed Russians from 1930, which might be unexpected bearing in mind the events that were taking place amongst the Soviets in that troubled era. Certainly, Platonov was probably written for the drawer; and Nabokov and Gazdanov were in exile, as was Trotsky. Mayakovsky’s last play was published in 1930, the year he died. Well. I think I’ve read the Platonov, the Nabakov, the Gazdanov and the Mayakovsky definitely. Not so sure about the Trotsky. All are very appealing.

A selection of other titles from 1930

And here’s a pile of general titles from the year in question. The Rhys is again a book I’ve read (fairly recently); “Last and First Men” was purloined from Eldest Child who I think might have studied it at Uni; “War in Heaven” I’ve had for decades and have probably read – I do love Charles Williams’ oddness so that’s a possible. I confess that the Huxley at the top of the pile is a recent purchase, as I saw it was published in 1930. It’s short stories, in a very pretty old Penguin edition, and I’d like to read more of him.

As for the two chunksters at the bottom, well thereby hangs a tale… I’ve owned these books by John Dos Passos for decades and never read them (oops); “U.S.A.” is a trilogy of three novels, and the first of these was published in 1930. Dos Passos was known for his experimental writing and why I’ve never picked them up is a mystery to me. I’m thinking that if I can motivate myself to read the 1930 novel it might set me on the road to reading the rest – we shall see…

Oh – in case you were wondering what the paper on top of the pile of books was, it’s this:

Woolf On Being Ill…

I hoped to find some Virginia Woolf to read for 1930, but the only thing could see was her long essay “On Being Ill”. I couldn’t easily find it in the essay collections I own, but I managed to track down a scan of the original magazine publication online. I love Woolf in all her forms, so this one may well get some attention.

So what can we be sure will be on the Ramblings during the #1930Club? Well, for a start there’s likely to be a guest post from Mr. Kaggsy (which is becoming a regular occurrence!). I hope to read at least one Agatha, and also something of substance. I’d like to try to really work out which of these books I’ve actually read and which I haven’t, going for new reads instead of re-reads. Apart from that – well, watch this space to find out what I finally pick for the #1930Club! 😀

Recent Reads: Happy Moscow by Andrey Platonov

Although it’s now February, I’m going to count this book as one of my January re-reads, as I did finish the main story before the end of the month. But this is another book that could be considered a new read and a re-read since the last time I came across this volume was in the original translation, and this is a brand-spanking-new NYRB version by Robert and Elizabeth Chandler – so there’s something to look forward to!

I should say up-front that this is the first book, since I began blogging, that I’ve felt a kind of trepidation about reviewing – I’m really concerned that I’m not going to be able to do it justice. However, as it’s such a remarkable book I will have a go – but would recommend any interested readers to look no further than Robert Chandler’s excellent notes and commentary within the book itself. These are exceptionally informative and illuminating.

A few words about Platonov first.

 “Andrei Platonov (1899–1951) was the pen name of Andrei Platonovich Klimentov, a Soviet author whose works anticipate existentialism. Although Platonov was a Communist, his works were banned in his own lifetime for their sceptical attitude toward collectivization and other Stalinist policies. His famous works include the novels The Foundation Pit and Chevengur .” (Wikipedia)

A key here is the use of the word existentialism, as Platonov’s works are certainly concerned with existence and the best way to live. “Happy Moscow” was unfinished and unpublished during his lifetime, and it begins with the eponymous heroine, Moscow Chestnova, coming into consciousness with her first childhood memory: that of a dark man with a flaming torch running through the streets of the city, and the noise and clamour of the start of revolution. Immediately the girl is linked to the city, and the image from her childhood returns at intervals throughout the book to haunt her.

Chestnova grows up an orphan and becomes a good, hardworking Communist, believing in the socialist future. She is a large-hearted, large-bodied girl, full of life, initially becoming a parachutist. She encounters many fellow citizens who come to love her, the main ones being:

Sambikin the surgeon

Sartorius the engineer

Bozhko the Esperantist

Komyagin the reservist

All of these men are struggling to find a way of life under the new order, and Chestnova in many ways seems to symbolise the city and the future for them.

But the book does not progress in a predictable way. As Christiane Craig puts it in her excellent review:

“Happy Moscow is an experimental novel. It has no calculated plot and develops rather like a dream wherein ideas, as characters, are repurposed and their functions regenerated as they are made to relate to other figurative elements. Three quarters of the way through the book, its heroine Moscow Chestnova disappears completely, and Sartorius the engineer, her one-time lover, emerges as a central character. Inexplicably, he then changes his identity, becoming “Grunyakin,” and goes to work in the kitchen of a small factory in Sokolniki”

She also points out:

“From its first image, Happy Moscow reads like an allegory, the meaning of which remains, as in a dream, uncertain, changeable.”

Here, dream is the pivotal word, and the book does have this quality. The characters are constantly moving, physically and emotionally, reflecting the constant change of the world around them. The story starts positively, with Moscow embracing life and the developing Soviet world around her. However, after a parachuting accident where she plunges to the ground in flames, her existence changes and loses focus.

Obviously, we are meant to conflate the characters and the city – Chestnova represents Moscow the city which was being dramatically reconstructed at the time of this book – so much so that, as Chandler points out in his introduction, Moscow was undergoing such change that there was no accurate map of the city at the time, only old maps of how it used to be, and plans of the metropolis of the future.

I was struck on this reading of Platonov by his extraordinarily unique use of language. In the same way as he has given Moscow the city an existence and a personality through the eponymous heroine, he is constantly imbuing inanimate objects with feelings and sensations:

“It seemed to him that the office had the same smell as places of prolonged confinement – the lifeless smell of a pining human body that consciously acts modestly and thriftily, so as not to awaken within it the facing attraction toward a now distant life and then vainly torture itself with the ache of despair.”

 and

“Sambikin set off through Moscow. It was strange and even sad to see the empty tram stops and the deserted black route numbers on their white signs – along with the pavements, the tramway poles, and the electric clock on the square, they were yearning for crowds of people.”

and again

“The large table had been laid for fifty people. Every half meter there were flowers, looking pensive because of their delayed death and giving off a posthumous fragrance.”

However, he also pinpoints the rejuvenating properties of the city, reflecting its current growth and regeneration, so that the city becomes almost organic:

“Outside the open door, on the balcony, a small Komsomol orchestra was playing short pieces. The night’s spacious air was coming through the balcony door and into the hall, and the flowers on the long table breathed and gave off a stronger smell, feeling they were alive in the earth they had lost. The ancient city was full of clamor and light, like a construction site; now and again the voice and laughter of a transient passer by would be carried up from the street, and Moscow Chestnova would feel like going outside and inviting everybody to join them for supper: after all, socialism was setting in.”

Often, however, I just marvelled at the beauty of the language:

“The capital was going to sleep. There was only the far-off tapping of a typewriter in some late office and the sound of steam being let off from the chimneys of the Central Power Station. Most people were now lying down, in rest or in someone’s arms; or else, in the darkness of their rooms, they were feeding on the secrets and secretions of their hidden souls, on the dark ideas of egotism and false bliss.”

 and

 “Muldbauer saw in the music a representation of the distant and weightless countries of the air, where the black sky is located and amid it hangs an unflickering sun with a dead incandescence of light, and where, far from the warm and dimly green earth, the real, serious cosmos starts: mute space, lit up now and again by stars signaling that the path to them has long been open and free. Yes, better to put an end straightaway to the bothersome conflicts of the earth….”

 One of the recurring motifs of the book is height – Chestnova is up in the heavens parachuting; the city is thrusting skywards with its new buildings; we see the city and the stars and the skies from above. Conversely things begin to go wrong with downward motion – it is in the construction of the Moscow underground that Chestnova suffers the accident that changes her forever. Her complex series of relationships with the men in her life is altered after this, and the focus of the story slips away from her to Sartorius. While Bozhko converses around the world with other Esperantists in an attempt to spread the socialist word, Sambikin operates and tries to find the essence of life in dying and dead patients and Komyagin the reservist struggles to complete – well, anything at all that he has started.

Andrey Platonov

So we are left with Sartorius during the closing chapters, and his constant movement and state of change. He has abandoned his scientific work in the field of weighing and moves on, almost Buddha like, to take on the personality and responsibilities of whoever or whatever comes his way.

“His heart seemed to turn dark but he comforted it with an ordinary understanding that came to his mind: that it was necessary to research the entire extent of current life through transformation of himself into others.”

This complete abnegation of his own personality could be seen as an extreme parody of service to the state, or maybe simply a reflection of the transformation of Russia which was going on around him.

Initially when reading “Happy Moscow” it’s hard to see why Platonov couldn’t publish it in his lifetime, as on the surface level it ticks all the boxes for Soviet Realism – rebuilding of Moscow, construction of the underground, scientific process, the great and glorious Stalin. However, the careful and detailed notes by Chandler remind us of how subversive this book actually is, and when things begin to go askew for the protagonists it is quite clear that we are dealing with no ordinary author here.

This is a remarkably complex book and I think I would need several reads of it to really come to grips with it. Platonov reflects many elements of Soviet society of the 1930s – the scientific attempts to solve the problem of the human soul, the search for immortality, the thrusting towards the future and the trampling of humanity beneath the instrument of state. The language is beautiful and dream-like, and this is one of those books that gets inside you, so you’re still thinking about it for ages afterwards. Very much recommended for anyone who loves Russian fiction and also wants to read something that is different, thought-provoking and memorable.

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As a footnote, this volume not only comes with the novel itself plus notes and commentary from Robert Chandler. There is also the inclusion of other pieces peripheral to and related to “Happy Moscow” including the short story “Moscow Violin” which repeats sections of HM and gives a fascinating insight into Platonov’s construction of his work. Really, there could be no better presentation and Robert and Elizabeth Chandler plus NYRB should be commented on this exemplary work!