The concept of the short novel (‘povest’) genre in Andrey Platonov's creative work in the 1920s

Based on the material of the short novels (povest’) “The Ethereal Tract,” “Epiphany Locks,” “The City of Gradov,” “The Innermost Man,” “Yamskaya Sloboda,” the article presents the concept of the short novel (‘povest’) genre in the 1920s works by A. Platonov. The structural possibilities of this traditional genre of Russian literature allowed the writer to reflect the contemporary reality with all its tragic contradictions. The genre of the short novel (‘povest’) will have reached its peak by the 1930s, when the writer’s principal works were written (“The Pit,” “For the Future,” “Juvenile Sea,” “Bread and Reading,” “Jan”). Many of the techniques that the writer used in the short novels (‘povest’) of the 1920s were embodied in the works of Platonov later on. The article briefly presents the history of the study of the genre of the short novel (‘povest’) in Russian criticism and in modern research. Special attention is paid to the genre-forming factors and genre features of Platonov's short novel (‘povest’), among which one can distinguish: ideological and philosophical content (“volume of content”), type of narrative, plot-compositional structure, the concept of artistic time and space, the genre concept of man, the poetics of the finale. The authors refute the opinion of researchers, which states that Platonov's short novels (‘povest’) can be described in the language of a short story or a novella and that, in general, his short novels (‘povest’) can be called novelistic. The parabolic plot of the “departure-return”, the epic distance, the type of narration, as well as the genre concept of a person (“a person is a plot”) do not allow Platonov's short novel (‘povest’) to be reduced to a novella or grow into a novel. Platonov's short novel (‘povest’) has its own artistic concept, which is rooted in the traditional Russian short novel (‘povest’) genre, which is the “heir” of the Old Russian genre tradition, rather than the European novel. The short novel (‘povest’) of A. Platonov answered the demands of the time, and testified to the writer's understanding of its structural and substantive capabilities.