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Abstract:

The article’s main theme is the author’s personal story of how he first came to know the work of Andrey Platonov, and how he then went on, in the course of 50 years, to translate into English a large part of Platonov’s legacy, beginning with his retellings of traditional folktales (skazki) and ending with the novel “Chevengur.” The author talks about his own first impression of the writer’s unusual style, the people he met through translating Platonov and the perceptions of Platonov’s Anglophone readers. Above all, the author focusses on the centrality, throughout Platonov’s oeuvre, of the aspiration to restore the emotionally and physically crippled to a state of wholeness, to give the lost and alienated a sense of belonging to something greater, to allow them to create families and a sense of community with others. The author illustrates this with examples from a variety of Platonov’s works; among these are the skazka “No-Arms,” the short stories “Takyr” and “The Return,” the short novel “Soul” (Dzhan), and “Chevengur.” The author also draws attention to various moments in Platonov’s work that can be seen as self-portraits.