Substantial links between Lukács and Platonov have long been suspected, but have never been examined in depth. In general terms Natal’ia Poltavtseva has proposed that “Platonov’s art was a metacommentary not only on socialist realism … but also on ‘the movement’ (of Lukács, Lifshits et al.)”; “Platonov i Lukach (iz istorii sovetskogo iskusstva 1930-x godov),” Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie 107 (2011): 253–70. While acknowledging that Lukács was “Platonov’s supporter in the 1930s,” Nariman Skakov has recently proposed to read Platonov’s novel Dzhan (translated as Soul) through Lukács’s early books Soul and Form (1912) and Theory of the Novel (1916); Nariman Skakov, “Introduction: Andrei Platonov, an Engineer of the Human Soul,” Slavic Review 73, no. 4 (Winter 2014): 722–24. Keen to preserve the notion of Platonov as an outcast, A. Mazaev has dismissed “Immortality” as an “opportunistic” story and diagnosed Lukács’s interest in it as a symptom of his “inability to distinguish genuine art from its counterfeit”; A. Mazaev, “O ‘Literaturnom kritike’ i ego estesticheskoi programme,” Stranitsy otechestvennoi kul’tury. 30-e gody (Gosudarstvennyi institut iskusstvoznaniia, 1995), 179, 181.
M. Platonova, “…Zhivia glavnoi zhizn’iu (A. Platonov v pis’makh k zhene, dokumentakh i ocherkakh),” Volga 9 (1975): 161. As far as I have been able to ascertain, the original for this text has never been identified or dated.
“Priem rabotnikov zheleznodorozhnogo transporta v Kremle,” Pravda, August 2, 1935, 1.
In issues 4 and 12 for 1936. A second version of “Among Animals and Plants” was printed under the title “Life in a Family” in the journal Industriia sotsializma (The Industry of Socialism) (no. 4, 1940). The story has been published in English in: Andrei Platonov, Soul, trans. Robert Chandler et al. (New York Review Books, 2008), 155–83.
Literaturnyi kritik 8 (1936): 113.
Literaturnyi kritik 8 (1936): 113.
RGALI 631.15.78 l. 74.
RGALI 631.15.78 l. 6.
RGALI 631.15.78 l. 6.
RGALI 631.2.140 l. 10. An overview of films planned for 1937 includes screenplays by both Andrei Platonov (“Transport” at Mosfilm) and Viktor Shklovsky (“Mashinist,” at Lenfilm, based on the biography of locomotive driver Petr Krivonos); see V. Usievich, “Plan iubileinogo goda,” Iskusstvo kino 7 (1936): 12–13. Platonov also adapted “Immortality” for the radio, published in: N. Duzhina, “Stantsiia Krasnyi Peregon,” Strana filosofov Andreia Platonova: Problemy tvorchestva (IMLI RAN, 2011) 521–38. There is no record of any of these adaptations being produced.
Letter to M. A. Platonova from February 12, 1936; Andrei Platonov, “…Ia prozhil zhizn’”: Pis’ma (1920–1950 gg.), 410.
A. Platonov, “Bessmertie,” Literaturnyi kritik 8 (1936): 114.
Georg Lukács, “Narrate or Describe?,” Writer and Critic and Other Essays, ed. and trans. Arthur D. Kahn (Grosset and Dunlap, 1971) 111; Georg Lukács, “Erzählen oder Beschreiben? (Zur Diskussion über Naturalismus und Formalismus),” Internationale Literatur 11 (1936): 102. Further references to the English translation and first installment of the German original will be given parenthetically in the text.
On the ways in which socialist realism was originally an open-ended, dialectical aesthetic method (instead of a prescribed style) see: Harold Swayze, Political Control of Literature in the USSR, 1946–1959 (Harvard University Press, 1962), 13–14; Christina Kiaer, “Lyrical Socialist Realism,” October 147 (2014): 56–77; Robert Bird, “Sotsrealism kak teoriia” (Socialist Realism as Theory), Russkaia intellektual’naia revoliutsiia 1910–1930-kh gg., eds. Sergei Zenkin and E. Shumilova (NLO, 2016), 205–21.
G. W. F. Hegel, Werke in zwanzig Bänden (Suhrkamp Verlag, 1969–79) Bd. 9/II. S. 371, 429; cf. G. W. F. Hegel, Philosophy of Nature, trans. A. V. Miller, with Foreword by J. N. Finlay (Clarendon Press, 1970), 303, 350. All translations are my own, unless otherwise noted.
Karl Marx, Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy (Rough Draft), trans. with a Foreword by Martin Nicolaus (Penguin Books, 1973), 105. On “articulation” in Marx, Althusser, and Balibar see Aidan Foster-Carter, “The Modes of Production Controversy,” New Left Review 107 (1978): 53–54.
Lukács, “Narrate or Describe?” 143; “Erzählen oder Beschreiben?” Internationale Literatur 12 (1936): 114. In subsequent notes this source will be given as Lukács, “Erzählen oder Beschreiben?” pt. 2.
Georg Lukács, “‘Tendency’ or Partisanship?” Essays on Realism, ed. Rodney Livingstone, trans. David Fernbach (MIT Press, 1981), 43.
Lukács, “Erzählen oder Beschreiben?” pt. 2, 122.
Lukács, “Erzählen oder Beschreiben?” pt. 2, 120.
Lukács, “Erzählen oder Beschreiben?” pt. 2, 118.
Lukács, “Erzählen oder Beschreiben?” pt. 2, 120.
Georg Lukács, “Emmanuil Levin,” Literaturnoe obozrenie 19–20 (1937): 56. My full translation of this essay appears in the present issue of e-flux journal. As far as I know the German text has been published only once: Georg Lukács, “Die Unsterblichen,” Werke 5: 472–83. The lack of editorial comment and the incorrect title (Olga Halpern’s translation of Platonov’s story was published as “Unsterblichkeit” in Internationale Literatur 3, 1938: 15–29) raise questions about the provenance of the German text.
Lukács, “Emmanuil Levin,” 59.
Lukács, “Emmanuil Levin,” 60.
Lukács, “Emmanuil Levin,” 58.
Platonov, “Bessmertie,” 131. An English translation by Lisa Hayden and Robert Chandler of this story also appears in the present issue of e-flux journal, under the title “Immortality.” On “negativity” in Lukács's reading of Platonov see also: Artemy Magun, "Otritsatel'naia revoliutsiia Andreia Platonova," Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie 106 (2010).
Lukács, “Emmanuil Levin,” 56.
Platonov, “Bessmertie,” 125.
Lukács, “Emmanuil Levin,” 57–58.
Lukács, “Emmanuil Levin,” 56.
Lukács, “Emmanuil Levin,” 58.
Platonov, “Bessmertie,” 125.
Platonov, “Bessmertie,” 118.
Platonov, “Bessmertie,” 118.
Platonov, “Bessmertie,” 116.
RGALI 631.15.78 l. 45.
RGALI 631.15.78 ll. 70–71.
V. Shklovskii, “Vzrykhliaia tselinu,” Literaturnaia gazeta, March 15, 1936, 3.
RGALI 631.15.78 l. 45.
Lukács, “Erzählen oder Beschreiben?” pt. 2, 119.
Lukács, “Erzählen oder Beschreiben?” pt. 2, 119.
RGALI 631.15.78 l. 45.
V. Shklovskii, “Petr Krivonos: Ocherk,” Znamia 12 (1937): 56.
Shklovskii, “Petr Krivonos: Ocherk,” 57.
Shklovskii, “Petr Krivonos: Ocherk,” 60.
Shklovskii, “Petr Krivonos: Ocherk,” 63.
Shklovskii, “Petr Krivonos: Ocherk,” 66.
RGALI 2863.1.699; this is the personal collection of documentary writer Aleksandr Bek.
Andrei Platonov, Fabrika literatury (Vremia, 2011), 463–64.
Platonov, Fabrika literatury, 467.
Platonov, Fabrika literatury, 467.
Shklovskii, “Vzrykhliaia tselinu.”
See Viktor Shklovsky, Third Factory, trans. Richard Sheldon (Dalkey Archive Press, 2002). Cf.: A. Galushkin, “K istorii lichnykh i tvorcheskikh vzaimootnoshenii A. Platonova i V. B. Shklovskogo,” Andrei Platonov: Vospominaniia sovremennikov. Materialy k biografii (Sovremennyi pisatel’, 1994): 172–83; Michael Finke, “The Agit-Flights of Viktor Shklovskii and Boris Pil’niak,” The Other Shore 1 (2010): 19–32.
N. Kornienko, “Soveshchanie v Soiuze pisatelei,” Andrei Platonov, vol. 1 (Sovremennyi pisatel’, 1994), 333.
N. Kornienko, “Soveshchanie v Soiuze pisatelei,” 343.
N. Kornienko, “Soveshchanie v Soiuze pisatelei,” 343.
The homonymy between articulation and dismemberment was earlier recognized by the formalists; see Il’ia Kalinin, “Istoriia kak iskusstvo chlenorazdel’nosti (istoricheskii opyt I meta/literaturnaia praktika russkikh formalistov), Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie 71 (2005): 103–31.
Lukács, “Narrate or Describe?” 112; “Erzählen oder Beschreiben?” Internationale Literatur 11 (1936): 102.
L. N. Tolstoi, Sobranie sochinenii v 22 tomakh (Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1978–85), vol. 18, 784.
The author thanks Christina Kiaer for her critique, and audiences at Columbia University and the Literature and Philosophy Workshop at the University of Chicago for their responses to earlier versions of this article.