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September 1 – 100 years since the birth of Andrei Platonov Andrey Platonov. From recordings from the 20s to the 40s It’s the tradesman, not the hero, who will take the story away from Andrei Platonov. From the records of the 20-40s, two people appeared at the COURT OF GOD: one barely alive, dying, the other blooming and joyful. -What were you doing? - God asked the first. “I have died all my life in Your name,” he answered. - For what? - So as not to die. - And you? - God asked the second. – All my life I was afraid of death and cared only about my body, the source of life. - For what? - So that the life in him does not go out. Then God said to both: “Both of you wanted one thing - life and left it, one - into an inanimate spirit, for he killed the body, the other into a dead body, for he forgot everything except the body.” And you're both dead. But if you understood that the spirit and the flesh are one, both would be forever alive and joyful with My joy. There are not many roads in the world, but one, not many follow it. – What should we do now? - asked the sinners. – Understand yourself and live first. Freedom lives only where a person is free and in front of himself, where there is no shame and self-pity. And therefore, every person can be free, and no one can deprive him of his freedom if he himself wants to. The violence that a person wants to use, as if to satisfy his own freedom, actually destroys this freedom, because where there is strength, there is no freedom, freedom is where there is conscience and the absence of shame in front of oneself for one’s deeds. Knowledge is the gold of faith, exchanged for coppers. Masha, Masha, Mamushka Mama, You go to lunch, otherwise the porridge will get cold. A quiet heart lay on the stove. Bye-bye, Mashenka, Quiet heart, You will live a terrible life and burn out like a candle. Truth, truth, has a great flaw: it feels itself to be good and wants to become common property by any means. People evaluate phenomena not according to their own reason and feelings, but according to the dictates of the day. But “topical” orders often value facts not for themselves, but for their bearers, for past merits and much more. Life is that it disappears. After all, if you live correctly - according to the spirit, according to the heart, by feat, sacrifice, duty - then no questions will arise, the desire for immortality will not appear, etc. - all these things come from a bad conscience. The secret of prostitution: the unity of the body presupposes the unity of souls, but in prostitution there is so much no unity of souls, it is so obvious and scary that there is no love, that from surprise, from death, from fear - the “unity of souls” begins to occur. Thus, everything that is brought to horror overcomes the horror “from the bottom” and love occurs, death is eliminated. Prostitution can be stronger than love and culture. Art must die - in the sense that it must be replaced by something ordinary human; a person can sing well without a voice if he has a special, real enthusiasm for life. People are connected by a deeper feeling than love, hatred, evil, pettiness, etc. They are comrades even when one of them is an obvious scoundrel, then his meanness is part of friendship. The cook went out in the evening to cut through the air (walking). You have to be alive even to feel death, grief - the dead cannot feel anything. Death requires the living. It is impossible to overcome and forgive each other’s shortcomings without having a sense of kinship. And he, a man, entered into the warmth of her flesh and froze. This happened many times, but never happened again. A person deprived of love begins to live by the passions of service - he argues, suffers and loves the provisions on the “district sector”, on “rights and responsibilities” - and this is where the current of his life comes from. Let me spend a few moments with you. Please spend! How many? Yes, 4 moments! In the morning, whenever he woke up, he had bursts of rage, he ground his teeth in his sleep, loved milk - he simply suffered from worms. Humanity can be made happy with a medical remedy: one can be cured of worms, another from... a third from... etc. A person does not stop living because he has no food, clothing, or shelter. Give it to him! - he will stop. The highest tragedy: the mother dies of cancer in bed, and “Liza” the neighbor bites and insults her day and night, the helpless mother cries and dies. You hate and deny a person only from afar, and then, when you see his wrinkles, his changeable expression of life, his concreteness, you can’t do anything, you become ashamed. He was occupied with little things: winding the clock, firing the stoves - so his whole life - in the room, with the cat, from which comes the peace of mind of passivity. About everyone: Why do they scold and beat me so much? I was recently a child and have not stopped being one yet. The great problem of the sparrow. He is family, free, dies in captivity, and flies one arshin at a time. And he needs almost infinity. Well, a small piece of white bread, and even if the caviar is black... Compared to animals and plants, a person’s behavior is indecent. Thinking with the stomach. Thinking with the guts, digesting with the brain. Truth is always in the form of lies; This is self-defense of the truth and everyone goes through it. Time, like space, is not empty, but densely populated: every day of the year has its own character. Previously it was: Elijah's Day, Ivan Kupala, etc. (natural, religious events were combined with nature, with tradition, with everyday life, with the harvest). And now – we also need to populate time as space. A person who does good to everyone, and his good turns into evil, into death, into misfortune. The man did something in a drunken delirium on the way home and didn’t remember anything. He was convicted. Everyone forgot the subject of guilt, and he didn’t even know it. Then he died. That's how life went. The earth smells like parents. All painful questions arise when you fail to fulfill your main duty at that moment. A foreigner in love gave her husband's wife a squirrel coat. Not knowing where to put it, fearing her husband, the wife pawned the coat in a pawnshop, and showed the receipt to her husband, saying that she had found it: it would be interesting to see what kind of coat-coat it was. The husband went to receive a coat-coat according to the receipt. I saw that the coat was good. He took it as a gift to his mistress, and took her icy flat coat from his mistress and brought it to his wife. The wife, seeing that this is not a squirrel coat, but a deception, is hysterical. The husband is at a loss. But the squirrel coat is most precious to the wife, and she has a hard time confessing, just to return the coat - the action develops further. A struggling person, to whom everything seems that he did the wrong thing, but would have done it differently, it would have been better. I went to work in the wrong place, went home down the wrong street, etc. Something hums in the distance constantly, in waves: time, truth (forgotten) or fate. We like in a person what... relates not to himself (a woman, for example), but to nature (a woman). It is the tradesman, not the hero, who will take history away. It makes no difference: people must show their life, enjoy, strive, - under all circumstances at all times, be it slavery, be it the Middle Ages, be it the future. It’s impossible for everyone to bend down and be humble, no – these are just a few. The amount of joy and optimism is approximately the same, and this amount can manifest itself in almost any form, even in the most pitiful form. No one can or wants to put off life until better times, he does it immediately, in any conditions... -Have you not smiled for a long time? - Six months. I work in a very serious institution - very! Her appearance is vulgar, her hair is tossed into a provincial hairstyle, her eyes are feigned tenderness, sweetness... In other respects - she is hostile to everyone, hates everyone - love for one has eaten up everything human, ordinary in her... About inventive, daily, dexterous, “deceiving”, “charming”, inhumanly patient, skillful love - which has conquered and satisfied even an indifferent wife. Once again and again!.. He was consoled that she loved others, that her heart was already touched, developed by nobility - he felt everything more valuable and deeper from this. From too much – even happy – outpouring of life, melancholy then sets in. When all the luxury of the world, all its flowers turn into torment, into despair, into melancholy (with unresolved love). Man is a drop of parental bliss and should be a joy. People do different things - things to avoid doing something important, to be distracted from it, to put it off for the future as the best pleasure - and never to do it. Is there any point in taking great measures of civilization to preserve one’s personality, life, etc. After all, animals are carefree in this regard, they spend all their energy on obtaining instant happiness, and we only prepare for it, without imagining happiness at all. Old women have a masculine approach to women, for example, they say: she is well-fed, she has a good figure, etc. Why are we being kept in stalls? - Because we are stallions. Stop being him and you will be free. Dramas happen because people are not alone, and so do comedies. Women are like air, they surround us, they do what they do, fulfilling the will of those who sent them - they are innocent, and there is nothing to do with them. All my people are poor and dear. Why, the poorer, the kinder. After all, this needs to be ended - to bring it the other way around. What joy is there in a good person if he is poor? Remember! Marriage is not a bed, but a husband and wife sitting next to each other, weaving bast shoes for sale day and night and telling each other fairy tales, memories, stories. Reduce the pressure of need for daily bread as soon as possible. This eats a person, although it makes him somehow fatally calm and meek. The women in one village are completely nulliparous, after they worked hard doing field work without men in 1914–17. “The main evil” is that people always have only part of the knowledge (if the knowledge is true); whereas reality is always more knowledge. The application of a part to the whole creates a tragic situation. Directories, encyclopedias, exact sciences, physics, chemistry, etc., etc. - aren’t they just general diagrams, general outlines, silhouettes of still too distant (and therefore general views, too distant for now) views of nature, which then, later, but forever, will be occupied by the same art?!! According to the well-known rule of people's economic life, bread is the master of all market prices... Life becomes boring in childhood, and a person who has lived six or seven years old finally seems to be living meaninglessly and his heart is yearning, but he does not know all the words and cannot ask others - so that they understand him - why he became bored... Where can you love a person more, if not in war, when he is able to share death with you and save you from death by dying himself. When we are on the eve of saying goodbye forever. - The dead will advise. - Why? - They are not interested. Wasn't it all in vain? Response from the dead. Love is true, i.e. a divine idea of human value, but it occurs in relation to the sexual instinct. Gender is the reason, truth is the consequence. Cause and effect are incommensurable. “My tears will not fall on the ground, but on the head of my villain.” The great misconception: those data of science that are historically transitory are accepted as truth, as if they are a working landscape, an appearance during movement, disappearing when delving deeper into nature. Conquering the world is killing it. The conqueror gets only the corpse of humanity. But the whole secret is that our people are good, they were well “charged” by their ancestors. We live on our stepfather’s inheritance, but we won’t live it out. Very important. You cannot undertake anything without first confirming your intention in another person. The other person, unbeknownst to him, allows us to do a new action or not. While men and women can still love each other, not all is lost in the human heart. As long as I love and can love, it cannot be bad in the world, and it will not be bad. Temporary embodiment of love. Love wanders either unknown, or suddenly and unexpectedly appears, embodied in someone who does not even desire the visit of love. Love means forward. This is the inner movement of humanity. Love owns and love is owned. One love repeats another - the lost one is born again. They will dance and trample on the memory of the war. Death is terrible with the feeling that the main good has disappeared, and when you leave, you are stealing good from the world, and it will rot in your chest. Life is a missed and wasted opportunity. Publication by M.A. PLATONOVA Call Maria Evgeniy ODINTSOV EVEN before I met Platonov’s widow Maria Alexandrovna, I knew that she was the most beautiful of beauties; that did not hold Platonov in his feat; that she did not reproach him for the tragic fate of their only son; that grief and suffering did not dry up their life and love; that Platonov adored her and was proud of his Maria; that, despite the spiritual adversity that haunted her, in her boundless devotion she found the strength to rise again and again, paving the way for Platonov’s word to the simplest people whom he loved very much... Personal meetings only confirmed these impressions. Maria Alexandrovna loved Platonov dearly, she adored him. He continued to live in her soul, she had a constant conversation with him and about him. I remember a lot of what she said, everything is dear to me, and I’m sure it will be interesting to the current reader. Therefore, I present my diary entries without chronological order, but only obeying the spontaneity of Maria Alexandrovna’s memories. “It’s good for you now, you’re lying here, and I’m suffering here,” she suddenly began to scold him, sitting on the grave, “all the writers left dachas for their wives, and you were just busy chatting, all you could do was chat to him!” Why didn’t you ever write about our son, he was a thousand times more talented than you!” And when we leave, she says goodbye: “Well, goodbye, my dears, I’ll come again soon.” And to me - innocently and dreamily: “Oh, how nice it would be for everyone to return home together now, I would bake some pies!”... “When Toshenka (son - Ed.) was arrested, (in 1938 - Ed.) Sholokhov soon came to Andrei: “Andrei, I’ll be with Stalin, do you want me to ask him for Toshka?” “Well, then, ask,” says Andrey. And then Sholokhov told us that when he asked Stalin, he called Beria. “Why do you need this boy, let him go,” Stalin tells him. Beria answered something - and then they began to swear in Georgian. Nothing worked out for Sholokhov then. Later he again asked Stalin, Tosha was released. He returned from the camps completely sick, but he still managed to get married, and he was very handsome. Platonov walks with him along Tverskoy, comes and says: “Maria, it’s impossible to walk - everyone turns around, both women and men.” Grandson Sashka was born a month after his death. Behind the Red Army Theater there was a hospital where Tosha was lying. In the winter of 1943, the doctors called me: “Maria Alexandrovna, take him, he’s going to die.” There was no car, Sobolev gave me gasoline, I brought Toshenka home and called Platonov from the front by telegram.” “Platonov loved Sholokhov, he often visited us when he came to Moscow. He was cheerful, he danced the hopak in our kitchen, squatting. When Andrei was buried, they were already lowering him into the grave, and I was drawn there - he held my hands: “Mary, ask whatever you want, I’ll do everything.” Then he never came in and didn’t help. And Andrei has one brother, a famous scientist, the other is also not in poverty, his sister is a doctor, wealthy people, but not once in all these years have they sent a penny, they didn’t even invite Mashenka, how poor we were!.. They are now all interested in Andrei: they were told that he is a world writer.” Suddenly she began to get angry: “Why did he write that his son died in his arms?! He died on my hands. I was sitting next to him, we were talking - and suddenly he said to me: “Mom, I’ll fall asleep quietly now” - and began to grow cold. I screamed, Andrei quickly came in, I fell on my knees in front of Toshenka and began to kiss him all over...” “They buried Tosha - and the next day Platonov flew to the front.” “Platonov never kept anyone’s letters: he read them, tore them up and flushed them down the toilet, now I don’t have any, he was afraid, what a time it was!..” “Andrei didn’t even read a book until he was sixteen, and now I’m compiling a catalog - just before 1920, he published about two hundred articles and notes in the local and central press.” “At one time we lived on the corner of Khudozhestvenny Proezd and Pushkinskaya, where there is now a sausage shop, on the fifth floor, I used to walk with a bag, and Bagritsky, a neighbor, a kind man, would take my help, but he himself was choking, he had angina pectoris. Andrey stands at the top, leaning on the railing, and looks, saying: “Are you carrying her bag, well, well...” “He was jealous of everyone. I worked as an editor at a publishing house, he comes to the director, sits down, but doesn’t even look at me, he tells him: “Why are you keeping her here, fire her, only men come to look at her.” “In my youth I studied singing from Zbrueva herself. Platonov didn’t let him, he said that all actresses are whores, Zbrueva chased him: “Andrey, go away, don’t bother me!”, but he comes, sits and sits, clinging. But Zbrueva liked him, she approved of my choice, admired us.” “When he was dying, he kept holding my hand and telling me everything, telling me everything... I didn’t sleep at night, begging: “Andrey, I’ll sleep,” and he kept asking: “Maria, don’t go” - I wanted to tell him everything again and again...” And I was touchingly surprised: “Was all this really not true? After all, he held my hand, after all, he told me!..” “Yes, he “loved”!.. He always abandoned me, went somewhere for a long time. True, he sent postcards from each station: he would see some old woman or boy, something interesting, and write. I had whole bags of these postcards, I handed them over to TsGALI recently.” “I called 20 times a day: “Call Maria.” Mom will tell him: “Andrey, I’m tired of you!” “Alexey Kozhevnikov, a writer, recently told me: “Why are you, Maria, inflating Platonov?! “An undeveloped writer.” “And his pretty daughter then whispers to me: “Maria Alexandrovna, he’s the one who’s jealous.” After Andrei’s death he came: “Maria, marry me, I’ll leave my family.” Then some general made a proposal. I refused everyone.” - "Why?" - “No, Andrei will hug you somehow, after him everything will not be the same...” “Shortly before Andrei’s death, Prishvin ran in and invited him to his anniversary, for dinner. And Andrei didn’t get up anymore. Then Prishvin says to me: “Maria, at least you can go.” I felt so flattered, I’ve seen so little attention paid to myself in my life! I tell him, well, where can I go from him like that...” Andrei chuckled at Prishvin, told him: “What, Mikhail Mikhailovich, do you want to get rid of the birds?!”... “Now this Sats introduces himself as “Platonov’s friend,” he always appears everywhere as “Platonov’s friend” - and he came to him every day, approached him from the street, put a bottle on the windowsill: “Andrei, drink,” and Andrei drank. When I later begged: “Yes, drive him away!” “Andrei told me: “Maria, I am very lonely” ... “After the war, Pavlenko brought a lot of rags from Germany, I bought two good expensive suits for Andrei from him, dark blue and brown, Andrei always wore them, they were all worn out, there were no others, I buried him in brown later.” “After the war, Pavlenko brought a lot of rags from Germany, I bought two good expensive suits from him for Andrei, dark blue and brown, Andrei always wore them, they were all worn out, there were no others, I buried him in brown later.” “It was no longer possible to approach Andrei, I made a high threshold into his room, I’m cooking in the kitchen and looking, and Sashka, my grandson, crawls up and cannot climb over... Andrei looks with longing.” All the happy and tragic years of Andrei Platonov’s life, Maria Alexandrovna was next to him - “eternal Maria” - wife, muse, mother of two children and the first listener to the pages of future great works written most often at night. In 1927, the writer dedicated the story “Epifansky Locks” to her, and throughout the Voronezh years (and throughout his life) he would write poems, funny and touching. With her - the first - he shared in letters the plans of “Jean”, “Fro”, “Spiritualized People”. Descendants owe this remarkable woman the preservation of the unique heritage of Andrei Platonov: manuscripts, drawings, sketches, drafts. Below we publish Plato’s notes from different years, as well as statements by Maria Alexandrovna, preserved by art critic Evgeny Odintsov, who was friends with the widow until the end of her life (1983). | |||||
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The tradesman, not the hero, will take history away Andrey Platonov . From recordings from the 20s to the 40s Two people appeared at the COURT OF GOD : one barely alive, dying, the other blooming and joyful. -What were you doing? - God asked the first. “I have died all my life in Your name,” he answered. - For what? - So as not to die. - And you? - God asked the second. – All my life I was afraid of death and cared only about my body, the source of life. - For what? - So that the life in him does not go out. Then God said to both: “Both of you wanted one thing - life and left it, one - into an inanimate spirit, for he killed the body, the other - into a dead body, for he forgot everything except the body. And you're both dead. But if you understood that the spirit and the flesh are one, both would be forever alive and joyful with My joy. There are not many roads in the world, but one, not many follow it. – What should we do now? - asked the sinners. – Understand yourself and live first. Freedom lives only where a person is free and in front of himself, where there is no shame and self-pity. And therefore, every person can be free, and no one can deprive him of his freedom if he himself wants to. The violence that a person wants to use, as if to satisfy his own freedom, actually destroys this freedom, because where there is strength, there is no freedom, freedom is where there is conscience and the absence of shame in front of oneself for one’s deeds. Knowledge is the gold of faith, exchanged for coppers. Masha, Masha, Mommy mommy You go have lunch Otherwise the porridge gets cold. Quiet heart It was lying on the stove. Bye-bye, Mashenka, Quiet heart You'll have a terrible time And you will burn like a candle. Truth, truth, has a great flaw: it feels itself to be good and wants to become common property by any means. People evaluate phenomena not according to their own reason and feelings, but according to the dictates of the day. But “topical” orders often value facts not for themselves, but for their bearers, for past merits and much more. Life is that it disappears. After all, if you live correctly - according to the spirit, according to the heart, by feat, sacrifice, duty - then no questions will arise, the desire for immortality will not appear, etc. - all these things come from a bad conscience. The secret of prostitution: the unity of the body presupposes the unity of souls, but in prostitution there is so much no unity of souls, it is so obvious and scary that there is no love, that from surprise, from death, from fear - the “unity of souls” begins to occur. Thus, everything that is brought to horror overcomes the horror “from the bottom” and love occurs, death is eliminated. Prostitution can be stronger than love and culture. Art must die - in the sense that it must be replaced by something ordinary human; a person can sing well without a voice if he has a special, real enthusiasm for life. People are connected by a deeper feeling than love, hatred, evil, pettiness, etc. They are comrades even when one of them is an obvious scoundrel, then his meanness is part of friendship. The cook went out in the evening to cut through the air (walking). You have to be alive even to feel death, grief - the dead cannot feel anything. Death requires the living. It is impossible to overcome and forgive each other’s shortcomings without having a sense of kinship. And he, a man, entered into the warmth of her flesh and froze. This happened many times, but never happened again. A person deprived of love begins to live by the passions of service - he argues, suffers and loves the provisions on the “district sector”, on “rights and responsibilities” - and this is where the current of his life comes from. Let me spend a few moments with you. Please spend! How many? Yes, 4 moments! In the morning, whenever he woke up, he had bursts of rage, he ground his teeth in his sleep, loved milk - he simply suffered from worms. Humanity can be made happy with a medical remedy: one can be cured of worms, another from... a third from... etc. A person does not stop living because he has no food, clothing, or shelter. Give it to him! - he will stop. The highest tragedy: the mother dies of cancer in bed, and “Liza” the neighbor bites and insults her day and night, the helpless mother cries and dies. You hate and deny a person only from afar, and then, when you see his wrinkles, his changeable expression of life, his concreteness, you can’t do anything, you become ashamed. He was occupied with little things: winding the clock, firing the stoves - so his whole life - in the room, with the cat, from which comes the peace of mind of passivity. About everyone: Why do they scold and beat me so much? I was recently a child and have not yet ceased to be one. The great problem of the sparrow. He is family, free, dies in captivity, and flies one arshin at a time. And he needs almost infinity. Well, a small piece of white bread, and even if the caviar is black... Compared to animals and plants, man is indecent in his behavior. Thinking with the stomach. Thinking with your guts digestion by the brain. Truth is always in the form of lies; This is self-defense of the truth and everyone goes through it. Time, like space, is not empty, but densely populated: every day of the year has its own character. Previously it was: Elijah's Day, Ivan Kupala, etc. (natural, religious events were combined with nature, with tradition, with everyday life, with the harvest). And now – we also need to populate time as space. A person who does good to everyone, and his good turns into evil, into death, into misfortune. The man did something in a drunken delirium on the way home and didn’t remember anything. He was convicted. Everyone forgot the subject of guilt, and he didn’t even know it. Then he died. That's how life went. The earth smells like parents. All painful questions arise when you fail to fulfill your main duty at that moment. A foreigner in love gave her husband's wife a squirrel coat. Not knowing where to put it, fearing her husband, the wife pawned the coat in a pawnshop, and showed the receipt to her husband, saying that she had found it: it would be interesting to see what kind of coat-coat it was. The husband went to receive a coat-coat according to the receipt. I saw that the coat was good. He took it as a gift to his mistress, and took her icy flat coat from his mistress and brought it to his wife. The wife, seeing that this is not a squirrel coat, but a deception, is hysterical. The husband is at a loss. But the squirrel coat is most precious to the wife, and she has a hard time confessing, just to return the coat - the action develops further. A struggling person, to whom everything seems that he did the wrong thing, but would have done it differently, it would have been better. I went to work in the wrong place, went home down the wrong street, etc. Something hums in the distance constantly, in waves: time, truth (forgotten) or fate. We like in a person what... relates not to himself (a woman, for example), but to nature (a woman). It is the tradesman, not the hero, who will take history away. It makes no difference: people must show their life, enjoy, strive, - under all circumstances at all times, be it slavery, be it the Middle Ages, be it the future. It’s impossible for everyone to bend down and be humble, no – these are just a few. The amount of joy and optimism is approximately the same, and this amount can manifest itself in almost any form, even in the most pitiful form. No one can or wants to put off life until better times, he does it immediately, in any conditions... -Have you not smiled for a long time? - Six months. I work in a very serious institution - very! Her appearance is vulgar, her hair is whipped up into a provincial hairstyle, her eyes are feigned tenderness and sweetness... In other respects - she is hostile to everyone, hates everyone - love for one has eaten up everything human, ordinary in her... About inventive, daily, dexterous, “deceiving”, “charming”, inhumanly patient, skillful love, which won and satisfied even an indifferent wife. Once again and again!.. He was consoled that she loved others, that her heart was already touched, developed by nobility - he felt everything more valuable and deeper from this. From too much – even happy – outpouring of life, melancholy then sets in. When all the luxury of the world, all its flowers turn into torment, into despair, into melancholy (with unresolved love). Man is a drop of parental bliss and should be a joy. People do different things - things to avoid doing something important, to be distracted from it, to put it off for the future as the best pleasure - and never to do it. Is there any point in taking great measures of civilization to preserve one’s personality, life, etc. After all, animals are carefree in this regard, they spend all their energy on obtaining instant happiness, and we only prepare for it, without imagining happiness at all. Old women have a masculine approach to women, for example, they say: she is well-fed, she has a good figure, etc. Why are we being kept in stalls? - Because we are stallions. Stop being him and you will be free. Dramas happen because people are not alone, and so do comedies. Women are like air, they surround us, they do what they do, fulfilling the will of those who sent them - they are innocent, and there is nothing to do with them. All my people are poor and dear. Why, the poorer, the kinder. After all, this needs to be ended - to bring it the other way around. What joy is there in a good person if he is poor? Remember! Marriage is not a bed, but a husband and wife sitting next to each other, weaving bast shoes for sale day and night and telling each other fairy tales, memories, stories. Reduce the pressure of need for daily bread as soon as possible. This eats a person, although it makes him somehow fatally calm and meek. Publication by M.A. PLATONA Call Maria Evgeniy Odintsov EVEN before I met Platonov’s widow Maria Alexandrovna, I knew that she was the most beautiful of beauties; that did not hold Platonov in his feat; that she did not reproach him for the tragic fate of their only son; that grief and suffering did not dry up their life and love; that Platonov adored her and was proud of his Maria; that, despite the spiritual adversity that haunted her, in her boundless devotion she found the strength to rise again and again, paving the way for Platonov’s word to the simplest people whom he loved very much... Personal meetings only confirmed these impressions. Maria Alexandrovna loved Platonov dearly, she adored him. He continued to live in her soul, she had a constant conversation with him and about him. I remember a lot of what she said, everything is dear to me, and I’m sure it will be interesting to the current reader. Therefore, I present my diary entries without chronological order, but only obeying the spontaneity of Maria Alexandrovna’s memories. “It’s good for you now, you’re lying here, and I’m suffering here,” she suddenly began to scold him, sitting on the grave, “all the writers left dachas for their wives, and you were just busy chatting, all you could do was chat to him!” Why didn’t you ever write about our son, he was a thousand times more talented than you!” And when we leave, she says goodbye: “Well, goodbye, my dears, I’ll come again soon.” And I, innocently and dreamily: “Oh, how nice it would be for everyone to return home together now, I would bake some pies!”... “When Toshenka (son - Ed.) was arrested, (in 1938 - Ed.) Sholokhov soon came to Andrei: “Andrei, I’ll be with Stalin, do you want me to ask him for Toshka?” “Well, then, ask,” says Andrey. And then Sholokhov told us that when he asked Stalin, he called Beria. “Why do you need this boy, let him go,” Stalin tells him. Beria answered something - and then they began to swear in Georgian. Nothing worked out for Sholokhov then. Later he again asked Stalin, Tosha was released. He returned from the camps completely sick, but he still managed to get married, and he was very handsome. Platonov walks with him along Tverskoy, comes and says: “Maria, it’s impossible to walk - everyone turns around, both women and men.” Grandson Sashka was born a month after his death. Behind the Red Army Theater there was a hospital where Tosha was lying. In the winter of 1943, the doctors called me: “Maria Alexandrovna, take him, he’s going to die.” There was no car, Sobolev gave me gasoline, I brought Toshenka home and called Platonov from the front by telegram.” “Platonov loved Sholokhov, he often visited us when he came to Moscow. He was cheerful, he danced the hopak in our kitchen, squatting. When Andrei was buried, they were already lowering him into the grave, and I was drawn there - he held my hands: “Mary, ask whatever you want, I’ll do everything.” Then he never came in and didn’t help. And Andrei has one brother, a famous scientist, the other is also not in poverty, his sister is a doctor, wealthy people, but not once in all these years have they sent a penny, they didn’t even invite Mashenka, how poor we were!.. They are now all interested in Andrei: they were told that he is a world writer.” Suddenly she began to get angry: “Why did he write that his son died in his arms?! He died on my hands. I was sitting next to him, we were talking - and suddenly he said to me: “Mom, I’ll fall asleep quietly now” - and began to grow cold. I screamed, Andrei quickly came in, I fell on my knees in front of Toshenka and began kissing him all over...” “They buried Tosha - and the next day Platonov flew to the front.” “Platonov never kept anyone’s letters: he read them, tore them up and flushed them down the toilet, now I don’t have any, he was afraid, what a time it was!..” “Andrei didn’t even read a book until he was sixteen, and now I’m compiling a catalog - just before 1920, he published about two hundred articles and notes in the local and central press.” “At one time we lived on the corner of Khudozhestvenny Proezd and Pushkinskaya, where there is now a sausage shop, on the fifth floor, I used to walk with a bag, and Bagritsky, a neighbor, a kind man, would take my help, but he himself was choking, he had angina pectoris. Andrey stands at the top, leaning on the railing, and looks, saying: “Are you carrying her a bag, well, well...” “I was jealous of everyone. I worked as an editor at a publishing house, he comes to the director, sits down, but doesn’t even look at me, he tells him: “Why are you keeping her here, fire her, only men come to look at her.” “In my youth I studied singing from Zbrueva herself. Platonov didn’t let him, he said that all actresses are whores, Zbrueva chased him: “Andrey, go away, don’t bother me!”, but he comes, sits and sits, clinging. But Zbrueva liked him, she approved of my choice, admired us.” “When he was dying, he kept holding my hand and telling me everything, telling me everything... I didn’t sleep at night, begging: “Andrey, I’ll sleep,” and he kept asking: “Maria, don’t go” - I wanted to tell him everything again and again...” And I was touchingly surprised: “Was all this really not true? After all, he held my hand, after all, he told me!..” “Yes, “loved”!.. He always gave up, went somewhere for a long time. True, he sent postcards from each station: he would see some old woman or boy, something interesting, and write. I had whole bags of these postcards, I handed them over to TsGALI recently.” “I called 20 times a day: “Call Maria.” Mom will tell him: “Andrey, I’m tired of you!” “Alexey Kozhevnikov, a writer, recently told me: “Why are you, Maria, inflating Platonov?! “An undeveloped writer.” “And his pretty daughter then whispers to me: “Maria Alexandrovna, he’s the one who’s jealous.” After Andrei’s death he came: “Maria, marry me, I’ll leave my family.” Then some general made a proposal. I refused everyone.” - "Why?" - “No, Andrey will hug you somehow, after him everything will not be the same...” “Not long before Andrei’s death, Prishvin came in and invited me to his anniversary, to dinner. And Andrei didn’t get up anymore. Then Prishvin says to me: “Maria, at least you can go.” I felt so flattered, I’ve seen so little attention paid to myself in my life! I tell him, well, where can I go from him like that...” Andrei laughed at Prishvin, told him: “What, Mikhail Mikhailovich, do you want to get rid of the birds?!”... “Now this Sats introduces himself as “Platonov’s friend”, he always appears everywhere as “Platonov’s friend” - and he came to him every day, approached him from the street, put a bottle on the windowsill: “Andrey, drink,” and Andrey drank. When I later begged: “Yes, drive him away!” – Andrey told me: “Maria, I’m very lonely”... “After the war, Pavlenko brought a lot of rags from Germany, I bought two good expensive suits from him for Andrei, dark blue and brown, Andrei always wore them, they were all worn out, there were no others, I buried him in brown later.” “After the war, Pavlenko brought a lot of rags from Germany, I bought two good expensive suits from him for Andrei, dark blue and brown, Andrei always wore them, they were all worn out, there were no others, I buried him in brown later.” “It was no longer possible to approach Andrei, I made a high threshold into his room, I’m cooking in the kitchen and looking, and Sashka, my grandson, crawls up and cannot climb over... Andrei looks with longing.” | |||||
