Fatherless (Platonov)

Purple Acacia

The Rest Will Be Familiar to You from Cinema

The more miserable Platonov’s situation and condition become, the more boldly Chekhov employs comedic elements.

We can see many examples of how much of the later Chekhovian dramaturgy can be found in Bezatcovscsina – the figure of the disintegrated (life) protagonist, the seemingly meaningless words not closely tied to the previous lines, but above all, the infallible sense for tragicomedy, the grotesque, the insight and depiction of the absurd, and the almost unparalleled ability to balance the horrific and the amusing. Moreover, it’s not just about the balance and proportions: Chekhov also knows, perhaps more instinctively than consciously at the time of creation, how these grotesque counterpoints should develop.

The more miserable Platonov’s situation and condition become, the more boldly Chekhov employs comedic elements. The finale, the fourth act, is already abundant with these, even though – or rather precisely because – the story is progressing towards the death of the central figure, the hero.

Tibor Déry

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For beauty itself is agitational and ultimately identical to the eternal human good.

The book is filled with images – organic images that belong to the organism of the novel – and these images strike the chord of pain, resonating in the reader’s heart. There is humor too, this charmingly smiling and smile-inducing humor, as if it had first bathed in the waters of pain.
The local values of the novel are perfect. The milieu is perfect and almost shockingly lifelike, the external lives of the characters, who have walked from the street onto the pages of the book, are perfect, the thinking and dialectical fusion of Budapest are perfect, and not a single false or deceitful note hurts our ears. Like a lens focusing sunlight, the local subject and form gather and concentrate universal human desires into a stronger light.

The fundamental motif: the pain of unfulfilled, because unfulfillable, desire. This has been the eternal motif of poetry since time immemorial and will remain so until the end of time, as the purest source of tragedy. The desire of youth, the orchestra of unfulfillable desires, resonates through the book, and at the end of the symphony, the reader clutches their heart in terror – Why do I live?
The suggestion of the beauty of art is enough to make a person – consciously or unconsciously – bow their head in ethical contemplation. For beauty itself is agitational and ultimately identical to the eternal human good. And it depends only on the stage of cultural development in what artistic form the humanly understood law of truth and beauty manifests itself.

Tibor Déry

If it is history we want, then it is a history of conflict.

But how did it all begin? If it is history we want, then it is a history of conflict. And the conflict begins with the abduction of a girl, or with the sacrifice of a girl. And the one is continually becoming the other. It was the “merchant wolves,” arriving by ship from Phoenicia, who carried off the tauropárthenos from Argos. Tauropárthenos means “the virgin dedicated to the bull.” Her name was Io. Like a beacon signaling from mountain to mountain, this rape lit the bonfire of hatred between the two continents.

From that moment on, Europe and Asia never stopped fighting each other, blow answering blow. Thus the Cretans, “the boars of Ida,” carried off Europa from Asia.

But how did it all begin?

Roberto Calasso