Beginnings, endings, and eternal returns: Vladimir Sharov, Andrei Platonov and the legacy of the Soviet avant-garde

Journal article

A notable figure in the Russian literary landscape since the scandalous publication of his second novel, Do i vo vremya (Before & During) in Novyi mir in 1993, Vladimir Sharov has recently become the focus of renewed critical attention. Here, a growing body of scholarship has tended to revolve around two interconnected themes: his contribution to the evolution of the post-Soviet literary field; and relationship between his fictional works and the writing (and re-writing) of Russian history. Yet a recurrent emphasis on Sharov’s historicism has meant that other elements of his approach to the novel have gone unobserved. This is particularly the case when it comes to his relationship to and treatment of the specifically literary legacy of the past, as opposed to Russian history itself. In keeping with many Russian-language writers of the last few decades, Sharov proves to be particularly fascinated with both the literary process itself, and the complex ways in which the Russian literary tradition has been received, and his intertextual dialogue with the literature of past proves to be a crucial facet of his strategy for dealing with Soviet history. This article explores Sharov’s sympathy for, debt to, interest in, and intertextual borrowings from the works of Andrei Platonov (1899-1951), arguing in particular that Sharov’s novel, The Rehearsals (Repetitsii), is motivated by a profound engagement with the legacy of the early Soviet avant-garde. Moreover, Sharov’s dialogue with Platonov does not simply reach back directly to the 1920s and early 1930s, the period of Platonov’s most celebrated and significant activity as a writer, but is instead mediated by the slow rediscovery—both official and unofficial—of Platonov’s oeuvre in the late- and post-Soviet periods.

Authors: Bullock, P

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages
• Journal: Slavic and East European Journal
• Volume: 64
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 62–74
• Publication date: 2020-04-01
• Acceptance date: 2019-07-23
• ISSN: 0037-6752
• Language: English
• Keywords: FFR