On “Violent Expressionism” and Prose with Prostheses

Authors

  • Leonid Heller

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.15826/qr.2019.1.370

Keywords:

Andrei Platonov; Russian prose of the 1920s–1930s; expressionism; prosthetic corporality; prosthetic culture; teratology; deformity in art; representation of disability

Abstract

Referring to Andrei Platonov’s The Foundation Pit and Happy Moscow, the author considers these two works through the prism of 1920s and 1930s literature and maintains that they display features of expressionism in the way they represent corporality. The writer’s words about the “wonderful and violent” world are a motivating factor in the aspects of his poetics connected with the term “violent expressionism”. First, this applies to the theme of prosthetics considered both by Platonov’s contemporaries (K. Fedin, L. Leonov) and writers of later periods (B. Polevoy, V. Shalamov, A. Zinovyev). Comparative analysis helps the article’s author to prove that representations of bodies with prostheses form a powerful literary topos that transforms social, political, and ideological material and is capable of symbolising the uniqueness or/and fragility of the human body and the vagueness of its borders. Analysing the correlation between prostheses and teratology, representations of disability and the tradition of deformity, realist (social realist) and expressionist concepts, the author concludes that “prose with prostheses” helps us to perceive Russian literature in a new way.

Author Biography

Leonid Heller

Dr. Hab. (Philology), Professor, University of Lausanne.

CH-1015, Lausanne, Switzerland.

hellerleonid5@gmail.com

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Published

2019-04-06

How to Cite

Heller, L. (2019). On “Violent Expressionism” and Prose with Prostheses. Quaestio Rossica, 7(1), 171–186. https://doi.org/10.15826/qr.2019.1.370

Issue

Section

Problema voluminis