Қазақ мемлекеттік қыздар
педагогикалық университеті Хабаршы №3 (51), 2014 ж.
33
Keywords: mythopoetics, a myth, house, apartment, language, world.
Essential modeling role in the novel «Happy Moscow» plays the opposition of closed,
internal and open, external space realized in spatial images of a house, city, road, distance,
horizon, as well as in designating borders between these spaces the images of windows, doors,
walls, gates and a threshold.
It is known that images of the closed space–house, city, the motherland – are traditionally
endowed with signs of positive property: «native», «warm», «safe», – and are opposed to the
opened external space with its signs of «strange», «hostile» and «cold»; «if the inner world
reproduces space, so on the other part of its border there is chaos, antiworld, out of structural
iconic space inhabited by monsters, infernal forces or people who are connected with them». In
folklore and literary texts two various types of a hero correspond to internal and external spaces:
on the one hand, they are heroes of «open space», heroes of «way» and heroes of «steppe»,
whose function is transition of the border existing between two spaces, from the other hand –
heroes of motionless, «closed» space attached in the subject relation to a place and deprived of
the right of movement. In modeling of opposition of internal and external space Platonov sticks
to these mythic and poetic representations, however, as we try to show, interprets them from the
position of utopian consciousness of the XX century.
The main image of closed/internal space in the novel «Happy Moscow» is a house,
apartment. In early works the image of a house had always ceded to an image of a way or
aimless wandering in the steppe: Platonov wanderers, truth- searchers had always left the house
in search of meaning of life which was supposed to be found somewhere in boundless open
spaces of Russia, behind the horizon. That’s why Platonov houses are deprived of intimacy and
comfort, they are open for passers-by and as a result of such relation they aren't attached even to
one place. The house finds the justification only in the form of utopian collective dwelling of the
future which is perceived as a shelter from entropy forces of the outside world simulated as
chaos: people live in it as one large family, having embodied paradise on the earth. Rejection of
domestic closed intimate world follows from utopian aspirations of Platonov heroes:
achievement of the tasks set for mankind on reorganization of existence for them is connected
with overcoming of spatial and existential isolation, merge of the whole world and all people
into one whole collective without any borders. In the novel «Happy Moscow» it finds reflection
in principled openness and lack of intimacy of apartments where young builders of the new
world, Moscow Chestnova and men-utopianists live there; like Bozhko, they don't care of home
comfort, inviolability of personal space; the episode of lodging a casual passer-by at Moscow
Chestnova’s is remarkable in this regard: «Moscow Chestnova often forgot to close the door of
the apartment. Once she found a stranger sleeping on the floor on his outer clothing. Moscow
waited until her tired guest woke up. He woke up and told that he would live there in the corner
as he had no place to live [1;15].
About deprivation of the house status of a closed and intimal space says the fact that
Moscow Chestnova herself constantly aspires away from her dwelling that finds expression in
motive of leaving and invasion into other people’s closed home space: such invasion is carried
out, in particular, by peering into other people's windows which meant spatial border of external
world and inner life: «Chestnova went to the center, looking into all passing brightly shined
windows of dwellings and stopping at some of them. <...>Moscow was so interested in the
events that stood on toe shoes on prominences of foundation and was lost in contemplation of
apartments until she was mocked by passers-by»[1; 36]. Windows and the door designating
spatial border between internal, house, and external worlds, are essentially open in the utopian
world of new Moscow. For Moscow Chestnova as a representative of utopian outlook exactly
closed, internal, limited space of the house, but not open space lying outdoors is a source of
danger. She perceives the house as a locus of a false allowance and egoism, attracting a person to
Казахский государственный женский
педагогический университет Вестник №3(51), 2014 г.
34
household trifles, daily problems tearing away from supreme values and solution of global tasks:
«Moscow Chestnova was interested to know it; she couldn't understand why people clung to a
rented flat, office, references, local needs of small happiness, self-exhaustion in trifles while
there were world theaters in the city, and eternal mystery in life hadn’t been solved yet and even
the violinist at an outside door who wasn’t listened by anybody
played fine music» [1; 17]. «She
spent some hours in such observation and almost everywhere noticed joy or pleasure, but it
became more and more sad to her. All people were busy with their mutual egoism with friends,
favorite ideas, heat of new apartments, convenient feeling of their satisfaction. Moscow didn't
know what to become attached to, whom enter to in order to live happily and habitually. There
was no pleasure in houses, in heat of furnaces and in the light of desktop lamp shades she didn't
see any rest» [1; 36-37]. The house lost habitual connotations of protection against the outside
world, cosiness and intimacy for men's characters of the novel as well. Their life passes in state
premises of offices, factories, design offices and institutes, they only sleep at home, and even in
these night hours they manage to feel lonely, necessary to nobody, they are overcome by
melancholy and despair. Communal flats of the novel are essentially deprived of home comfort
and intimacy: reflecting a real life of Soviet cities of the 30s, at the same time they model the
lowered, anti-utopian option of the «common proletarian» collective dwelling, which was dreamt
by Platonov utopianists.
Like young heroes of the novel, residents of communal flats and old
houses also try to overcome spatial isolation of their dwellings: their life passes not behind the
closed door of their rooms, but in common space of a corridor («Many people came here, to a
wooden corridor of a house management, since five o’clock in the evening, just after work, and
stood idle standing, thinking aloud and talking, up to midnight» [1; 17] or even on roofs of
houses which are perceived as peculiar boundary marginal spaces between the closed world of
the house and open world of «out of house», where more free behavior than strictly regulated
space of the house is allowed: «Later Moscow saw from above as neighboring roofs of old
houses started being settled: families went out through attics to iron roofs laid blankets and went
to bed in the open air, placing children between mother and father: in gorges of roofs,
somewhere between a fire manhole and a pipe grooms with brides kept private and didn't close
their eyes till morning, being below stars and over many people» [1; 14-15].
Due to the image of a communal flat in the novel, there is a subject of «a false house»,
which is met at M. Bulgakov, contemporary of Platonov, however at Platonov’s novel the
communal flat means not anti-house with infernal and anti-spiritual signs, as at Bulgakov’s
novel, but a «false» locus of an old, closed, limited life resisting to utopian aspirations of
Platonov heroes. In the system of utopian values of Platonov prose any house can be a space
with negative semantics of limited, false life, however, as we have already noted, in connection
with the image of «common-proletarian house» an opposite assessment of the house as a shelter,
protection against hostile outside world can be met as well: so, the dwelling of Komyagin who
feels quiet and happy only in his room is represented in this way.
The similar ambivalent perception of the closed space extends on ideas of a human body
which is often modelled at Platonov’s novel in spatial terms; compare «suddenly in a distance,
in the depth of a body sad cry was heard»; «where is that sluice in the dark, in corporal gorges of
a person» (25); on the one hand, the body is perceived by Platonov's heroes as «the trunk closed
from all directions» which squeezes the person in its bounds and prevents him to gain
completeness of existence, merge with the world around, but on the other hand the human body
and the related feeling of narrowness are perceived by Platonov people as protection against the
world around, as the means of achieving happy condition of collective existence of «friendly
bodies». The feeling of rigidly closed existence in their bounds arises at Platonov heroes owing
to the birth of a human self-consciousness, human «I». From this intolerable state Platonov’s
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