Memory and Wholeness in the Work of Andrei Platonov, Valentin Rasputin and Andrei Tarkovskii
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Memory and wholeness in the work of Andrei Platonov, Valentin Rasputin and Andrei Tarkovskii Chiara Mayer-Rieckh School of Slavonic and East European Studies University College London Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2011 Declaration I, Chiara Mayer-Rieckh, confirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that this has been indicated in the thesis. 2 Abstract This thesis explores how wholeness (tselostnost‟ or tsel‟nost‟), a central theme and impulse of Russian nineteenth-century philosophy, is expressed in the work of three different twentieth-century Russian artists. Tselostnost‟ is understood here as Russian philosophy‘s enduring preoccupation with the essential, original wholeness of the universe, an ideal state from which the human world has fallen and which man seeks to regain. Particular attention is paid to the way in which this idea was taken up and developed by a range of nineteenth-century Russian thinkers: Petr Chaadaev, Aleksei Khomiakov, Ivan Kireevskii, Nikolai Fedorov, Vladimir Solov‘ev and Fedor Dostoevskii. In their works, the vision of the universe as an ideal tselostnost‟ is connected with a number of key concepts from Russian philosophy, among which are: tsel‟noe znanie, sobornost‟, and vseedinstvo. The main body of the thesis bases its analysis on selected writings by Andrei Platonov (1899-1951) and Valentin Rasputin (1937- ), and on the cinematic oeuvre of Andrei Tarkovskii (1932-1986). It explores how in the work of all three artists, tselostnost‟ is repeatedly linked with the theme of memory, framing the worldviews they express and influencing their aesthetic. The work of these three men, crossing two artistic media and realised with different levels of complexity, also spans a historical period which stretches from the 1920s to the present. The choice of these three very different artists to explore these ideas is integral to the wider aim of this study, which is to investigate the pervasiveness and longevity of the ideal of the whole in Russian culture, as well as the consistency with which it has been expressed. In addition, the examination of the three artists‘ work is a contribution to the wider critical discussion about the close links between the Russian philosophical and literary traditions. 3 Contents Abstract 3 List of illustrations 6 Introduction 7 1. Tselostnost’ in the Russian philosophical tradition 23 Petr Chaadaev (1794-1856) 25 Aleksei Khomiakov (1804-1860) and Ivan Kireevskii (1806-1856) 27 Nikolai Fedorov (1828-1903) 33 Vladimir Solov‘ev (1853-1900) 36 Fedor Dostoevskii (1821-1881) 41 The transmission of the concept of tselostnost‟ from nineteenth- century Russian philosophy to twentieth-century Soviet culture 46 2. The struggle to restore tselostnost’ in a disintegrating world: Andrei Platonov 55 Introduction 55 Part One: Andrei Platonov and Nikolai Fedorov 59 I. The sources of Fedorov‘s influence on Platonov 61 II. The expression of philosophical ideas in Platonov‘s prose 67 Part Two: Platonov‘s vision of the human condition 71 I. Blind nature and the erosion of man: ‗Rodina elektrichestva‘ 73 II. The attempt to conquer nature and death: Kotlovan 76 III. The bezottsovshchina of man: Chevengur and Dzhan 78 Part Three: Platonov‘s preservation and remembrance of a tselyi trudnyi mir 94 I. The gathering motif: Kotlovan and Chevengur 97 II. Mutual remembrance: Chevengur, Kotlovan and ‗Reka Potudan‘‘ 106 III. The recovery of memory and life: Dzhan 110 Conclusion 125 3. Memory and the tselostnost’ of Russia: Valentin Rasputin 128 Introduction 128 I. The vanishing of a whole world: Rasputin‘s povesti (1966-1976) 135 II. The fallen world: Rasputin‘s publitsistika (1977-1986) and Pozhar 145 III. The return to a whole Russia through cultural memory: Rasputin‘s writing (1986-2004) 158 4 Conclusion 168 4. In search of an artistic expression of tselostnost’: Andrei Tarkovskii 170 Introduction 170 Part One: Tarkovskii and the art of truthful filmmaking 174 I. Man and the universe: Tarkovskii‘s worldview 174 II. Tarkovskii on art and truth 176 III. Tarkovskii‘s cinematic method: ways of expressing the whole 181 IV. Tarkovskii‘s artistic credo: the essential unity of human existence 195 Part Two: The quest for the whole. Life‘s journey in Tarkovskii‘s films 201 I. The false path: from tupik to apocalypse 204 II. Journeys through space and memory 227 III. The return to the beginning: the redemptive act in Nostalghia and Offret 252 Conclusion 259 Conclusion 261 Appendix: Arsenii Tarkovskii, ‘Zhizn’, zhizn’’ (1965) 280 Bibliography 281 Filmography 297 5 List of illustrations The whole world in Tarkovskii‘s ‗dark glass‘: Offret (1986) 170 The way of the cross: Andrei Rublev (1966) 202 The path through the Dantean ‗dark wood‘: Zerkalo (1974) 202 Crossing the field of life: Zerkalo (1974) 202 Man as a ‗detail‘ in Tarkovskii‘s ‗boundless world of nature‘: Stalker (1979) 227 Man ‗needs a mirror‘: Nostalghia (1981-1982) 228 A final image of wholeness: Soliaris (1969-1972) 232 A final image of wholeness: Nostalghia (1981-1982) 241 A divine view of the ‗whole world‘: Andrei Rublev (1966) 245 Reflections of a whole life: Zerkalo (1974) 247 Isaak Levitan, Vladimirka (1892) 266 Sokurov‘s ‗Tarkovskian‘ vision of Platonov in Odinokii golos cheloveka (1978-1987) 267 Kazimir Malevich, Slozhnoe predchuvstvie (1932) 268 Platonov‘s ‗blind nature‘ in Shepit‘ko‘s Rodina elektrichestva (1967) 268 6 Introduction ‗Russkaia literatura filosofichna,‘ wrote the émigré philosopher Boris Vysheslavtsev, ‗v russkom romane, v russkoi poezii postavleny vse osnovnye problemy russkoi dushi.‘1 The peculiarly philosophical nature of Russian literature has, since the nineteenth century, been widely asserted both in literary criticism and in histories of Russian thought. In his recent study, Slovo i molchanie: Metafizika russkoi literatury, Mikhail Epshtein posits this preoccupation with philosophical ideas as the great ‗dolgaia mysl‘‘ of the Russian literary tradition, one which has been passed down through generations of writers from Pushkin to the present day. Epshtein also draws attention to the view of the pre-revolutionary critic A.S. Volzhskii in 1906: ‗―Russkaia khudozhestvennaia literatura - vot istinnaia russkaia filosofiia, samobytnaia, blestiashchaia filosofiia v kraskakh slova‖‘.2 This conception of Russian literature as actually constituting a particularly Russian mode of philosophising informs most of the major histories of Russian thought. Vysheslavtsev begins his Vechnoe v russkoi filosofii (1955) with two chapters on the conceptions of freedom to be found in Pushkin‘s poetry. Both Vasilii Zen‘kovskii and Andrzej Walicki devote chapters of their histories of Russian philosophy to Fedor Dostoevskii and Lev Tolstoi.3 In Zen‘kovskii‘s assessment ‗V istorii russkoi filosofii L.N. Tolstoi zanimaet (kak i Dostoevskii) osoboe mesto.‘ If Tolstoi was both a great writer and a profound, though one-sided, thinker, Dostoevskii ‗prinadlezhit stol‘ko zhe literature, skol‘ko i filosofii‘.4 Nikolai Losskii‘s Istoriia russkoi filosofii makes extensive references to Dostoevskii and Tolstoi and also includes a chapter on the symbolist poets as philosophers: Andrei 1 B.P. Vysheslavtsev, Vechnoe v russkoi filosofii, New York, 1955. 2 M.N. Epshtein, Slovo i molchanie: Metafizika russkoi literaturoi, Moscow, 2006, pp. 9-10. 3 V.V. Zen‘kovskii, Istoriia russkoi filosofii, 2 vols, Moscow, 1991. Each volume of this edition consists of two books, which will be referred to as follows: I-1 and I-2; II-1 and II-2. Zen‘kovskii‘s discussion of Tolstoi and Dostoevskii is to be found in I-2, pp.184-244. Andrzej Walicki, A History of Russian Thought from the Enlightenment to Marxism, trans. Hilda Andrews-Rusiecka, Oxford, 1980, pp. 309-48. 4 Zen‘kovskii, Istoriia russkoi filosofii, I-2, p. 194 and p. 220. 7 Belyi, Viacheslav Ivanov, N.M. Minskii, D.S. Merezhkovskii and V.V. Rozanov.5 In Fiction‟s Overcoat: Russian Literary Culture and the Question of Philosophy, Edith Clowes offers a persuasive and insightful account of the origins of the historical overlap between literary and philosophical traditions in Russia.6 She sees as central the fact that the development of Russian philosophy was taking place in parallel with the explosion in Russian literary culture from the 1820s. As Clowes argues, a resistance to the European tradition of systematic, abstract philosophy led Russian thinkers to seek a mode of philosophizing which would be both uniquely Russian and capable of coming close to some eternal truth in a way which they felt that Western abstract philosophy could not.7 In Clowes‘ interpretation, this search was part of a wider discussion in Russian culture on what she terms the relative ‗truth value‘ of different and competing discourses: philosophy, religion, literature and the natural sciences.8 Philosophy in Russia at this time was a ‗discourse among discourses‘, an ‗integral, creative part of Russian writing culture in general‘.9 This interpretation provides a particularly interesting and fruitful way of thinking about the porous boundaries between literary and philosophical traditions in Russia. In the debate about how to find a new, Russian and better way of investigating ‗truth‘, philosophising in nineteenth-century Russia took place across a range of discourses and employed a variety of linguistic styles. From the later works of Petr Chaadaev and the writings of Aleksei Khomiakov and Ivan Kireevskii, Russian religious thinking became an enduring source of inspiration for a Russian speculative philosophy. This stream of philosophical thought, which is frequently referred to as ‗Russian religious philosophy‘, 5 N.O. Losskii, Istoriia russkoi filosofii, Moscow, 1991, pp. 427-38. 6 Edith W. Clowes, Fiction‟s Overcoat: Russian Literary Culture and the Question of Philosophy, London, 2004. 7 This is the spirit behind Ivan Kireevskii‘s article ‗O neobkhodimosti i vozmozhnosti novykh nachal dlia russkoi filosofii‘ (1856), discussed below in Chapter One. I.V. Kireevskii, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 2 vols, Farnborough, 1970, i, pp.