SOURCE: “Andrei Platonov,” in Russian Literature Triquarterly, Vol. 8, 1974, pp. 363–72.

In the following excerpt, Jordan discusses Platonov's unusual literary style and sensibility, and paints a picture of an eccentric whose predominant thematic concerns are peasant suffering due to Soviet bureaucracy and the mortal vulnerability of individuals.

In Andrei Platonov's posthumously published Chevengur, there occurs an inscription on an anonymous grave: “I am alive and I weep; she is dead and is silent.”¹ It sums up Platonov's credo: life in its anonymity is to be defined by the existence of grief, and death is distinguishable from life only by virtue of its imposition of silence. Yet, ironically, the epitaph is wholly inappropriate for Platonov himself. For though his life may be viewed as a lament, yet in death his voice is heard. He is one of a group of writers of the 1920s and 30s whose work, often suppressed at...