Transparency, Opacity, and the Artistic Response to the Revolution
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document in english
arts and art history
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published 03/06/2008
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SummaryMuch of the art produced in Russia during and after the Revolution served as a response to the sudden and widespread changes in society. Andrei Platonov’s short story The River Potudan is no exception. Largely allegorical and interpretive, this tale of a soldier’s re-entry into the world of his youth employs subtle motifs to give the reader a more complete sense of how exactly a civil war transformed Russia. One of the salient motifs in the work is the distinction between transparency and opacity—and the symbolic extensions of this concept from the visual world to the spiritual and ideological realm. Platonov uses transparency in his story to represent the disillusionment of the Russian people with their post-war situation, and in contrast to the potential, portent, and potency of opacity. His vision stands in opposition to that of the Vasiliev “brothers,” in which opacity operates in a Marxist sense as a bourgeois means of oppression.
Table of Contents
- Transparency in The River Potudan takes the form of emptiness, translucency, and clarity.
- But Nikita's trouble extends further than a trouble getting to know Lyuba more intimately.
- When he returns to Lyuba, his surroundings are predictably more opaque.
- In Chapaev, the role of transparency is bit different.
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