Andrei Platonov

"The study of Andrei Platonov (1899-1951) focuses on the interrelation of philosophical themes, imagery, and verbal devices in his prose. Platonov's intellectual roots lie in Russian utopian thought of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He was particularly influenced by the writings of Fedorov and Bogdanov, but may also be seen as belonging to a broader tradition of efforts to overcome epistemological dualism that includes such figures as Solov'ev, Bakhtin, and Pasternak."--BOOK JACKET. "The world view expressed in Platonov's literary works is a peculiar blend of idealist longings and materialist convictions. At its center stands his dominant image of being's vulnerable residence in the physical body. At the same time, Platonov's world view was significantly shaped by his implicit dialogue with Soviet Marxism-Leninism, and later Stalinism, both of which claimed to be building utopia."--BOOK JACKET. "Platonov's unique literary style embeds the high-flown rhetoric of Soviet propaganda, Marxism-Leninism, and the technical jargon associated with 'socialist construction' in the deforming medium of the speech of Russia's unlettered masses. In its use of deformation as a trope, this style represents a development of the Russian tradition of skaz narration in the direction of Modernism; its inner workings are closely related to those of the pun."--BOOK JACKET. "In Platonov's masterpieces of the late 192Os and early 193Os, linguistic parody comes together with existential angst and dystopian doubts about the course of Soviet history, and in them he reveals the extent to which the Soviet mindset is itself a linguistic phenomenon. Thomas Seifrid concludes his study by considering the works Platonov wrote between 1934 and 1951. In these he maneuvered to preserve some of the essentials of his earlier poetic while fusing them with the expected formulae of socialist realism."--BOOK JACKET.