Information about the author:
Elena V. Antonova
Elena V. Antonova, PhD in Philology, Senior Researcher, А.M. Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Povarskaya 25 a, 121069 Moscow, Russia.
ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3659-8994
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Abstract:
This publication aims to demonstrate and compare various versions of the editorial corrections to the first half of Platonov’s story “In the Midnight Sky,” which appeared during the writer’s attempts to publish the story in 1939 and early 1941. The study includes surviving manuscripts and the text published in 1939 in the magazine “Industry of Socialism.” In the introductory part of the work, assumptions are made about the time of the story’s writing, as well as the time spent on various revisions (primarily in connection with the 1939 Non-Aggression Pact). The possible literary context of the story is analyzed, and its connection to S. Fowler Wright’s novel “The War of 1938” is identified. It is discovered that the writer’s wife, M.A. Platonova, attempted to adapt this novel into a dramatic form, and one of the novel’s characters, a German pilot, was given the same role as the defector in “In the Midnight Sky.”
