HAPPY MOSCOW

[Robert Chandler]

Dear all,

I want to say that Andrey Platonov¹s HAPPY MOSCOW will be available in English from August 6 (translated by Robert and Elizabeth Chandler with Nadya Bourova, Angela Livingstone and Eric Naiman, and published by the Harvill Press, ISBN 1-86046-646-X).

It would be a very great help if you could all encourage any local libraries to buy this book.  Harvill are remaining nobly committed to Platonov, but sales until now have been disappointing as Platonov remains little known to non-Slavists.  They have already published our translations of THE FOUNDATION PIT and THE RETURN, while DZHAN should be out within a year or two -- to be followed, I very much hope, by CHEVENGUR.

If any of you are in a position to write a review of the book, or to arrange for it to be reviewed, please let me know.  I will make sure a copy is sent to you!

Also, if any of you would like to read through our draft translation of DZHAN, I¹ll gladly email it to you.  I¹m always glad of comments and suggestions.

I shall finish by quoting a brief note I have recently published about Platonov in the English magazine, ³Punch²:

                        *       *       *

The son of a railway mechanic who also gilded the cupolas of churches, Andrey Platonov (1899-1951) was born in the central Russian city of Voronezh.  A young man in 1917, and a passionate believer in the new world to be constructed by Science and Socialism, Platonov gives us a deeper insight than any other writer not only into the horrors perpetrated by the regime but also into the dreams that motivated its builders.

Platonov has been called a satirist; he once wrote that Œsatire must possess teeth and claws, its plough must dig deep into the soil so that the bread of our life can then grow.¹  His own satire does indeed Œpossess teeth and claws¹; yet it is so fused with tenderness that the word Œsatire¹ seems hardly appropriate.  He has also been called a surrealist; yet the more I learn of Soviet history, the more realistic his surrealism comes to seem.

A theme to which Platonov returns is the search for utopia.  Chevengur, set in 1921-22, is about an attempt to establish communism in a small, remote town: a memorable image is that of the quixotic Kopyonkin, knight-errant of the martyred Rosa Luxemburg, patrolling the steppe on a cart-horse called ŒStrength of the Proletariat¹.  A later story, ŒAmong Animals and Plants¹, is about the family of a railway worker in the far North: radio propaganda, and the splendour of the passing trains, lead them to believe that utopia has already been established in the Soviet Union - everywhere except where they themselves live.

The most often repeated slogan of the 1930s was Stalin¹s claim that ³Life has become better, life has become merrier².  In Happy Moscow, first published in Russia only in 1991, Platonov examines Stalin¹s cultured, prosperous and merry new capital.  ³Every day², writes one of the novel¹s heroes, ³new housing is being occupied and newly invented machines are working away at speed.  Different, splendid people are appearing too -- only I remain as I have been, because I was born long ago and have not been able to lose the habit of being myself.²


                Robert Chandler

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