#17 - JRL 7273
The Literary Review
August 2003
Angela Livingstone, LOST NATION
Soul by Andrei Platonov (translated by Robert and Elizabeth Chandler and Olga
Meerson) (Harvill Press 192pp £11.99)
Why Platonov has been relatively unknown in the West for so long is puzzling. In Russia, after years of suppression, he is at last accorded his rightful place as one of the great twentieth-century writers.
Born in 1899, Andrei Platonov grew up in a poor family and worked on the railway before studying electrical engineering and becoming a journalist and agricultural engineer. He worked mainly in land reclamation, which brought him into close contact with the peasants and with the cruel changes introduced by collectivization of agriculture. From 1926 he dedicated himself to writing. He was persecuted by the reigning critics despite his communist faith, and he experienced poverty and suffering. His greatest works stayed unpublished in his desk, his young son was arrested and consequently died of tuberculosis; he himself died all too young, in 1951, of the same illness.
The short novel Dzhan, here translated as Soul, is the product of journeys Platonov made to Soviet Turkmenistan in 1934/1935. Reading the book through in a single sitting, I was overwhelmed by its beauty. Dzhan is one of the finest pieces of narrative prose of the twentieth century, and this translation by Robert and Elizabeth Chandler and Olga Meerson is surely one of the finest fiction translations. It has a sustained, almost magical, musicality, and succeeds in conveying a continuous sadness without sentimentality.
It is the story of an attempt by a rather humble young man from Soviet Central Asia, Nazar Chagataev, to rescue his tiny Œnation¹ from starvation and extinction. Assigned to this astonishing task on his graduation as an economist in Moscow, Nazar renounces personal happiness and makes the long journey back to his homeland. There the lost Œnation¹ -- a gathering of runaways, orphans and cast-out slaves which has adopted the name ŒDzhan¹ (Persian for Œsoul¹) -- has left its settlement in Œthe hell of the whole world¹ and is roaming the desert trying, and not trying, to survive.
As in his other major works (especially the novel Chevengur and the novella The Foundation Pit) Platonov is concerned with the lowest levels of destitution at which human beings can exist. Repeatedly he draws attention to the borderline between being alive and being dead, conscious and unconscious, articulate and silent; between Œremembering¹ to live and Œforgetting¹ to do so. Sufyan, whom Nazar meets at the beginning of his search for the ŒDzhan¹ people, is so starved that Œhis face looked like the empty skin of a dead, dried-up snake¹; Nazar¹s mother is bent to the ground and almost insane; one man is so tired he pretends to have died. ŒWe just can¹t get the hang of living¹, he said out loud. ŒWe¹ve been trying every day ..¹
Closeness to death is used to especially powerful effect in the chapter where Nazar allows his body to be attacked by huge vulture-like birds (Œeagles¹) which tear out pieces of his flesh: he Š tried to lift himself up so he could aim better, and all the exhausted bones of his skeleton began to creak, just like the bones of the Dzhan nation. He heard this, and he began to pity his body and his bones; his mother had once gathered them together for him from the poverty of her flesh Š He felt as if he belonged to others, as if he were the last possession of those who have no possessions, about to be squandered to no purpose, and he was seized by the greatest, most vital fury of his life Š He had invited the vultures¹ attack so that his people could eat them and drink their blood; drinking blood straight from the body of a just-slaughtered animal is a motif of the story, a shocking sign of that desire to stay alive which Platonov is always exploring.
ŒMerciless and tender¹ is how, in another work (Juvenile Sea), Platonov describes Œthe essence of life¹, and these words could be used of much in the present work. The last five chapters, though, are less paradoxical; these describe the vicissitudes of the Dzhan¹s slow and difficult return to settled living; then Nazar¹s own return to the city and to the personal life he left behind.
The translation is mainly by three people: Robert Chandler, professional translator from Russian; Elizabeth Chandler, an experienced commentator on Platonov; and the Russian Platonov-expert Olga Meerson, author of a brilliant book analysing Platonov¹s style. It is a pure and faithful translation, not shying away from rendering the original¹s haunting tautologies (Œspace was spacious and tedious¹ Œthe empty places of emptiness¹ its strange sequences (Œthe mother was surprised that Nazar was still alive, but not surprised that he had come back¹) its unexpected laconicisms (the camel which becomes raw food for humans had Œseemed a member of humanity¹).
Descriptions are precise and moving, as in the original; the sorrowful-hopeful rhythms of Platonov¹s sentences are well preserved; and the translators make interesting decisions about gender (Œhe¹ for the camel, Œshe¹ for the tortoise and for the soul). I would have translated parts of the dialogue differently (in the first quotation above, Œnam ne zhivetsia¹ is not as relaxed or slangy as Œwe just can¹t get the hang of living¹), but the speech is generally rendered with immense tact.
The Introduction gives helpful information about the geography and culture, especially the music, of the Soviet Asian lands, and places Dzhan/Soul in its time. It was written in mid-Stalinism, and Stalin -- the moving force behind Nazar¹s assigned project -- is often mentioned, typically as Œthe kind father of all orphaned people on earth¹). The first editions in Russia -- published in the 1960s and 1970s, when Russians had become critical of Stalin -- had all references to Stalin removed. These are restored in the authoritative edition from which this translation was made, so we have a complex image of the mood of the 1930s: on the one hand the hope, which Platonov himself never abandoned, that communism would lift humanity out of every kind of deathliness; on the other, what the introduction calls the Œanti-Stalinist thrust¹ of the story: Nazar learns, for instance, that he cannot force people to set up an ideal community.
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