The female body as vessel of memory/hope in Platonov’s Dzhan
Descriptions of female characters in Soviet texts can greatly inform our understanding of how women were perceived (or, indeed, perceived themselves) in contexts of considerable turmoil or conflict. In Platonov’s Dzhan[1]- “Soul”, a text that is instilled with anxiety around memory and the loss thereof, I will explore the role played by the female physical form; how it becomes the sole possession either of the woman herself or the man who clings to her as an external representation of hope. Platonov had hopes for his text as an exemplary Socialist Realist novella, but it was not approved for publication at the time of writing and was edited by censors in later publications.[2] Despite its arguably positive portrayals of socialism being built in the more desolate reaches of Soviet land, and its vaguely optimistic ending, it was likely deemed unsuitable due to harrowing depictions of hard labour, exhaustion, and starvation which did not fit with more acceptable Socialist techniques: glorification of hard work and sacrificing one’s body to the revolutionary cause. With regards to this, I will explore how the text uses descriptions of female physicality (especially mothers and daughters, with notable differences between young and old) to express the trauma of memory, and to what extent a sense of tenuous hope is constructed through these images.
In Dzhan, characters’ conception of meaning and memory seems to be heavily tied to the presence and physicality of those close to them, particularly in marital relationships. Nazar says of the name for his nomadic people: “This signifies soul, or dear life. The Dzhan had nothing but their soul, their dear life, a gift from their women-mothers, because they had brought them into the world”[3]- their state of being, their very title and its origin is based around the power of motherhood and the significance of the gift of life. There is irony, then, in the resignation and passivity of the Dzhan. Even when they are at their most indifferent, seeming not to care whether they continue to exist or not, men continue to seek out female company and couples continue to form almost despite themselves. Indeed, the concept of living with women is clearly associated with a ‘life worth living’ as it encourages the Dzhan in their reconstruction (“Once they were convinced of the reality of the world and its wonders, having lived with women, and eaten many varying dishes…”[4]). This may be an indication of unavoidable human nature- the presence or even just the memory of women preserves a reminder of what it is to be human.
However, at other moments, this presence or memory does not seem to be enough. The young Nazar, in a flashback passage, expresses an existential anxiety after being abandoned by his mother: “Nazar, bewildered, tested his limbs and body: did he still exist, now that no one remembered or loved him…?”[5]. This question of ceasing to exist in the absence of other humans is eerily echoed in a later passage wherein a couple loses their three-year-old in the desert, but no one can remember how, and everyone quickly moves on and seems to forget the incident: “No one remembered exactly when she was blown away by the wind and sand into the desert, and let go of her [mother’s] hands…”[6]. This is perhaps the most unexplainable instance of passivity: surely if women were valued for their power to create the nation’s new generation, this loss would be worth some grieving or recognition? Even if death is an everyday, almost commonplace risk for the Dzhan, this is a moment where their sense of logical human reactions seems devoid, and they are the closest to becoming more beast than human.
Cynically, we could argue that the nonchalance is simply because this (female) child is still so young: without the actual presence of a young but mature and therefore fertile female body, there is a failure to grasp the value of womanhood. Supporting this are the scenes in which Nur-Mohammed and Chagataev search for visual or tangible signs of maturity in Ksenia and Aidym respectively. In a meeting in which her mother seems to pass Ksenia on to Chagataev as a younger, healthier version of herself, he notices her “strange hand, both childish and womanly”; likewise, while undressing Aidym, Nur-Mohammed picks out from her childish appearances the first signs of puberty: “However…womanly breasts were already budding, and a swelling was beginning in her future maternal areas, if one disregarded the lack of such substance in other parts of her body” [7]. Aside from an attempt to justify attraction to what is essentially still a child, we can see that these men rely on physicality to grasp an image of what may be in the future.
Indeed, it is almost always young women that are represented as vessels of salvation and hope; especially in the case of Molla Cherkezov. Cherkezov’s blindness is so synonymous with him that it is mentioned practically every single time he is mentioned: he is one of the characters most associated with the apparent apathy of the Dzhan, which is often represented through sleep, blindness (the “prevailing sense that symbolizes Central Asia [in Dzhan]”[8]), or unwillingness to see. He has had two wives already, both of whom die (Cherkezov says of his first wife simply: “she did not go on living” [9], and this is also apparently the case for Gyulchatay), but after coupling with a third, younger woman, he seems to recover his sight miraculously – “I have long been used to looking, but after all, before there was no food, my soul ached, what use were those looks? But now she wipes my eyes, kisses them, and they see light in the mist again” [10]. Nazar explains that Cherkezov’s new wife’s name- Khanom- simply means ‘young woman, young lady’: this suggests her identity is not important, only the fact that she is young and female. Cherkezov’s words also imply his belief that her physical touch is what has healed his sight, feeding into the perceived miraculous power she must have to heal both physical and existential ‘blindness’. Khanom is thus likely intended as an optimistic representation of the replenishing power of youth. Aside from the Soviet government’s aim at that time to propagandize the Kara-Kum desert as a wilderness full of hopeless, aimless people who needed Socialism[11], the Dzhan could also be read as a microcosm of Russia, and these unseeing, un-waking bodies represent the old Russia, weak under the imperialist yoke, but susceptible to rebirth and the creation of new generations through Socialism- two different readings with essentially the same outcome. If either is the case, it makes sense that women in this text, particularly young women, represent a salvation reminiscent of religion.
In sum, the role of female characters in this text is hard to interpret, even sometimes contradictory. The contrast between old and young at first seems stark, with old as hopeless and barren and young as powerful and full of potential. Nonetheless, there are strange similarities between young and old in some descriptions, such as the eyes or gaze. By men, female bodies are simultaneously revered as quasi-religious figures of salvation and categorized as property or a source of amusement from their first signs of maturity. Additionally, while sometimes just the idea of life ‘with women’ seems enough to encourage the Dzhan to live, at other times its people happen to die without much thought to where they went. The role of women in Soviet literature has never been a straightforward one- least of all in this novella’s context, when women were already beginning to take on the ‘double burden’ of acting as wife, mother, and worker all at once[12]. Thanks to Platonov’s highly symbolic prose style and the text’s ambiguous resolution, it is unsurprising that Dzhan was not considered an exemplary work of Socialist realism[13].
Works Cited
Bullock, Philip Ross. (2014). “The Mountain of the Mind”: The Politics of the Gaze in Andrei Platonov’s Dzhan. Slavic Review, 73(4), pp. 751–771. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Clark, Katerina. (2000). The Soviet Novel: History as Ritual. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Erley, Mieka. (2014). “The Dialectics of Nature in Kara-Kum”: Andrei Platonov’s Dzhan as the Environmental History of a Future Utopia. Slavic Review, 73(4), pp. 727-750. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Platonov, Andrei. (2011). Dzhan, in Sobranie Sochinenii: Tom 4, Schastlivaya Moskva. Moscow: Vremia. Available online at: https://ruslit.traumlibrary.net/book/platonov-ss08-04/platonov-ss08-04.html#s002 (accessed 09/09/2021).
Platonov, Andrei. (1999). Proza. Moscow: Slovo.
Roudakova, Natalia & Ballard-Reisch, Deborah. (1999). Femininity and the double burden: Dialogues on the socialization of Russian daughters into womanhood. Anthropology of East Europe Review. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press.
[1] Platonov, Andrei. (2011). Dzhan, in Sobranie Sochinenii: Tom 4, Schastlivaya Moskva. Moscow: Vremia. Available online at: https://ruslit.traumlibrary.net/book/platonov-ss08-04/platonov-ss08-04.html#s002 (accessed 09/09/2021).
[2] Platonov, A. (1999). Proza. Moscow: Slovo, pp. 15-16.
[3] All translations my own.
[4] Platonov, Dzhan.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Bullock, Philip Ross. (2014). “The Mountain of the Mind”: The Politics of the Gaze in Andrei Platonov’s Dzhan. Slavic Review, 73(4), pp. 751–771., p. 768.
[9] Platonov, Dzhan.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Erley, Mieka. (2014). “The Dialectics of Nature in Kara-Kum”: Andrei Platonov’s Dzhan as the Environmental History of a Future Utopia. Slavic Review, 73(4), pp. 727-750. New York: Cambridge University Press, p. 730.
[12] Roudakova, Natalia & Ballard-Reisch, Deborah. (1999). Femininity and the double burden: Dialogues on the socialization of Russian daughters into womanhood. Anthropology of East Europe Review. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, p. 2.
[13] Clark, Katerina. (2000). The Soviet Novel: History as Ritual. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, p. xi.