The Problem of the Christian Tradition in the Heritage of A. Platonov in the Light of the Evolution of the Writer’s Creative Consciousness

Abstract

The subject of this article – the problem of the Christian tradition in the works by Platonov. The purpose is to demonstrate the continuity of the author's attitude to Orthodoxy despite his god-fighting frame of mind particularly active in the early period of the author's work. While for the early and 1930-s periods this issue can be analyzed through attraction-repulsion, Platonov’s work of the wartime period reveals his kinship to the fathers’ tradition not only on the genre memory level but also as the author’s active emotional experience. This view is based on the story The Seeker of the Lost studied in the spiritual and autobiographical context. As shown by the analysis of Plato's work from different periods of creativity, his work serves as a vivid illustration of the phenomenon that in modern literary criticism received the definition of neotraditionalism.