“Eunuch of the human soul...” in A. Platonov's novel “Tchevengur”: a dialogue of the Russian and Swedish literary criticism

The Swedish translation of A. Platonov's novel “Don Quixote in the Revolution” (1973, translated by S. Valmark) is introduced into the scientific circulation for the first time. Scientific articles of Swedish researchers dealing with the study of the novel in focus are also presented. Using a method of receptive analysis we studied one of the central fragments of the novel pertaining the issue of “the eunuch of the human soul” in its modern Swedish and the Russian reading. Philosophical, philosophical-anthropological, and psychological approaches were employed in the course of our research. It was demonstrated that some Swedish researches (P.-A. Bodin, L. Sjökvist, T. Lane) use an integrated approach in the study of the novel. They research the phenomenon of Platonov's language, the genre model, the motive of duplicity, the image of “Another” and discover new areas of the novel to be studied further. The Swedish translation of “Don Quixote in Revolution”, as well as the original text of “Tchevengur”, create a new concept of the literary genre by combining lines of utopia and dystopia. However, if in “Tchevengur” the anti-utopian social imagination of undesirable future dominates, in “Don Quixote in Revolution” the utopian line is expressed much stronger. The lack of unity in the definition of the role of “the eunuch of the human soul” in the art space of the novel and the choice of approaches employed in its study are conditioned by its threefold status of the art text (a metaphor, an image, a motive). The research pays special attention to the topoi used by the Swedish researches in focus and to the lingua cultural reasons conditioning the rapprochement of “the eunuch of the human soul” and “angel” images in Swedish perception.