International Journal of Law And Criminology
30
https://theusajournals.com/index.php/ijlc
VOLUME
Vol.05 Issue03 2025
PAGE NO.
30-33
10.37547/ijlc/Volume05Issue03-07
Mythology of destruction: space, time, and utopia in a.
Platonov’s the foundation pit
Kobilov Abdumumin Karshievich
Academic Lyceum of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Samarkand, Samarkand, Uzbekistan
Received:
24 January 2025;
Accepted:
25 February 2025;
Published:
23 March 2025
Abstract:
The article examines the specifics of the model of the world in A. Platonov's novel through the prism of
the cosmological idea of all-unity. It analyzes the key motifs, symbolic images and plot situations of the story "The
Pit". Interest in the work of A. Platonov in literary criticism has increased significantly in the late 20th and early
21st centuries. "this century (XX century
–
N.A.) to the end ... is not understood." This opens up opportunities for
diverse interpretations of his works.
Keywords:
Model of the world, motif, archetype, mythologeme.
Introduction:
The exact author's dating of the novel
"The Pit" (December 1929
–
April 1930) testifies to the
chronological coincidence of the events of the work
with the real social transformations of the late 1920s
–
early 1930s. This historical context forms the temporal
axis and sets the spatial characteristics of the narrative.
The story, structured around the archetypal motif of
wandering/wandering/wandering,
reveals
a
mythopoetic model of the world based on the unity of
nature (the world) and man. This allows you to
artistically comprehend the reality surrounding the
characters through its spatio-temporal parameters.
The architectonics of the story is built on the key
opposition: "city/village", where the "city" symbolizes
light, creation and the future, and the "village"
symbolizes darkness and uncertainty.
From the very beginning, important telluric symbols are
indicated in the work: "tree", "mountain" ("clay
hillock", clay as infertile soil), "stone" as a sign of
otherness, which gives them polysemy. These images,
along with the river flowing into the hypothetical sea,
form the integrity of the model of the world in the
story.
The absurdity of the world in the story "The Pit" is
manifested through the destruction of traditional
symbols, such as the World Tree, which is turned into
rafts for the dispossessed, coffins "for future use" and
fuel for bonfires. In contrast to the destroyed wood,
there are elements of the industrial world - tire iron and
harrow teeth, which are forged by Misha Medvedev in
a collective farm smithy. Thus, the "golden age" is
replaced by the "iron age", and the eradication of the
world tree becomes a symbol of the beginning of a new
era.
A myth is created about the "new man"
–
the human
function. In this vein, Misha Medvedev, who has bestial
features and is called "the devil", "a woolen idol" (p.
173), embodies the main properties of a "recreated"
person: impersonality, spontaneity.
The motif of emptiness permeates the space of the
story: a deserted manor with "familyless children", the
house of a road inspector accustomed to emptiness,
heat and immobility enhance the feeling of loneliness
and homelessness of the protagonist, turning him into
a "wanderer in the desert".
Emptiness becomes an important symbol that forms
the picture of the world. The ancient image of the
desert
—
the abode of chaotic, destructive forces
—
is
reinterpreted into a large-scale "Babylonian" project
that embraced both people and nature. The world is
presented as an "empty place" (p. 137), "empty and
anxious" (pp. 150-151), and people feel themselves
"free and empty in heart" (p. 157). The ambivalent
image of the desert in "The Pit" simultaneously
embodies the emptiness of the characters' suffering
and the meaninglessness of the world around them.
The space of the desert becomes a place of deprivation
and trial, and the characters find themselves in a state
International Journal of Law And Criminology
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International Journal of Law And Criminology (ISSN: 2771-2214)
of "limba"
—
an intermediate zone between the world
and paradise, which in Platonov's story loses its sacred
meaning and turns into a symbol of the loss of meaning.
The absurdity of the desert space is manifested in its
horizontal
organization,
filled
with
negative
connotations. It is dynamically expanding, including
new topoi: "city
–
wasteland
–
cemetery
–
tile factory
–
village". The desert becomes an upside-down world, in
which the "common proletarian house" turns into a
grave, and winter acquires infernal features:
"Midnight must have been near; the moon was high
above the wattles and over the docile old village, and
the dead burdocks glittered, covered with fine frozen
snow..." (p. 167). The architectonics of the desert
space is organized through archetypal images. For
example, Voshchev chooses a "ravine in a wasteland"
for a dream, which has negative semantics and is
associated with the symbolism of the "grave" (p. 80).
The territory of the ravine turns out to be a place of
"interworld", a border between life and death. This
motif is intensified in the scene with the "night mower",
who symbolically personifies "death with a scythe" and
the act of "re-creation of the world"
–
on the one hand,
he mows the grass, clearing space for a pit, on the other
hand, acts as a shaker of the foundations of life.
The space of the story is conflicting: the pit is
deepening, and its size is planned to be increased six
times. This expansion changes the narrative discourse,
introducing the existential concept of eternity into the
everyday plan. Traditionally, the desert is contrasted
with the "garden" as a symbol of paradise. At the
beginning of the 20th century, the image of the garden
is associated with social utopia and the reorganization
of the world. The story presents two gardens:
- The orchard of the engineer Prushevsky, designed to
"conquer the desert".
- The "Cultural Garden" of the functionary Pashkin,
symbolizing the image of the future. Thus, the garden
and the desert in Platonov's story become symbolic
spaces, reflecting the struggle between destruction and
creation, chaos and attempts to overcome it.
The image of the stone, significant in various cultural
and religious traditions, is also reflected in the story. It
is related to biblical symbols: the tablets of the
covenant given to Moses, the stable house built on
rock, as in the Sermon on the Mount, and the stone of
Jacob, which became the foundation of the world.
In "The Pit", the stone as the main building material
acquires polysemy and is transformed into a symbol of
deformation and loss of the living principle ("from
wood to stone"). Most of the heroes of the story are
deprived of their own home and live in a space of
emptiness: "... we all live from nothing" (p. 108).
The house in the story is presented in a dual sense: on
the one hand, "the only common proletarian house"
symbolizes the coming universal happiness, on the
other hand, it becomes the embodiment of death. This
house remains only a dream, an unattainable ideal. Its
construction freezes at the stage of digging a pit,
turning into a metaphor for stopped time, lost meaning
and a person's break with the traditional concept of
home as rooted in the past, culture and society.
After a long wandering, Voshchev finds temporary
refuge in a barrack where the builders of the
proletarian house live. The barrack is "a plank shed in a
former vegetable garden" (p. 86), devoid of comfort
and habitability. Its space is closed and static: a clock
and a map of the USSR hang on the walls, dim lighting
and the rare warmth of the stove create an atmosphere
of abandonment, and a voice on the radio spreads
empty slogans.
It is symbolic that it is here that the girl Nastya, the
personification of the future generation, dies, which
echoes the image of the Bethlehem baby. Her death
emphasizes the doom of the people living in the
barracks, and her "fallen, withered eyes" (p. 181) link
her fate with the dying world tree. a space devoid of a
future, where human life loses its value.
The motif of non-meeting brings Chiklin back to the
ruined tile factory, where he was once kissed by a
young girl. Now it is a place of dead silence: "Not a
single creature, apparently, lived in this room
–
neither
a rat, nor a worm, nothing
–
no noise was heard" (p.
495). Desolation, lack of life and sounds emphasize the
transformation of the plant into a dead space, and the
mention of rats and worms foreshadows its cemetery
nature.
In a dilapidated building, Chiklin finds a dying woman.
A windowless room, the neighborhood with the
cemetery and the hero's subsequent action
–
"he
blocked the door leading to the dead one with broken
bricks, old stone blocks and other heavy substances" (p.
499)
–
turn the factory into a kind of crypt.
This motif is expanded further in the text: the pit-grave
absorbs the village. The eviction of the kulaks, the
death of the activist at the hands of Chiklin, the death
of Nastya, the departure of Zhachev - all these are
successive steps in the onset of death. Zhachev, the
personification of chaos and disharmony, like a
harbinger of destruction, recedes into the background,
leaving behind only devastation.
Chiklin brings little Nastya, the daughter of a deceased
woman, to the barracks. For the inhabitants of the
barracks, the child becomes a symbol of the future,
International Journal of Law And Criminology
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International Journal of Law And Criminology (ISSN: 2771-2214)
justifying the construction of a common proletarian
house. However, this future is already marked by the
seal of death: Nastya sleeps in a coffin dug in a pit, and
next to it are her "dead" toys that look like garbage
–
"bast shoes", "a tin earring from a shepherd's ear, a
trouser leg made of a row" (p. 169). who "did not exist
before the victorious end." In the unconsciousness of
the disease, the girl demands the bone of her mother,
finally blurring the line between life and death.
The ambivalence of existence is also emphasized by the
remark of one of the owners of the coffins: "Everyone
here lives because he has his own coffin" (p. 129). This
absurd logic of life, which is possible only with a coffin,
is confirmed by further events: the death of Kozlov and
Safronov leads to the fact that Nastya's coffin is used
for their burial. then three, then four, and the
boundary between the living and the dead is finally
erased.
In general, the pit, ravine, factory and inactive church
become the boundaries of space, a kind of delimiters:
the island is either connected to the "mainland" or cut
off from it by a water barrier.
Although water plays a secondary role in the story, it
closes the mythopoetic model of Plato's world, giving it
an eschatological sound. Water is manifested through
the image of a river ("River Valley", p. 165) and rare
mentions of the sea. However, Platonov's river is not
just a geographical object, but something more:
"snowy, flowing" with "dark, dead water pouring
among the cooled lands into its distant abyss" (p. 165).
Its flow emphasizes the destruction of spatial certainty,
creating a sense of timelessness and isolation: "He
watched for a long time how the raft systematically
floated away..." (p. 165). At the moment of the
expulsion of the kulaks, the river acquires an ominous
meaning, turning into an analogue of the Cocytus, the
icy river of weeping from the underworld of mythology.
The end of the liquidation of the kulaks is associated
with the sending of people to the sea, which opens up
space, endowing it with "a sign of infinity and
limitlessness in all directions" [Farino, 2004, p. 365],
and at the same time a sense of timelessness and
oblivion. Zhachev feels the sacredness of what is
happening, realizing that sooner or later he himself will
suffer the same fate: «… I felt dul
l and sad in my chest.
After all, socialism does not need a layer of sad freaks,
and it will soon also be eliminated into distant silence".
CONCLUSION
Soon the entire collective farm gathers in the smithy,
where the bear works. This place and the episode itself
acquire a sacred character: in ancient mythology, the
cult of Hephaestus, the god of blacksmithing, was
accompanied by human sacrifices. In this context, the
bear becomes a reflection of Hephaestus or Vulcan, a
shaggy and lame god, and in the Christian tradition it
can be associated with the image of Satan. Thus, the
scene in the forge symbolizes mass sacrifices in the
name of the future. Nastya becomes the last victim in
the story. She is a symbol of the "element of the
future", around which the utopian idea of a new world
is built, but her death confirms its impracticability. A
world based on the destruction of the past and the
present turns out to be unable to accept even the one
for whom it seemed to have been created.
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