Soul

Reading Platonov makes the soul particularize, like a clump of wet sand sifting out in the palm. In his short works one finds a disjunction between the individual and the universal so vertiginous, the grade of disparity is almost comic. But in the space where humor might be is instead desolation -- the desolation of a failed identification with history. The universal is in sight and graspable only as a set of dead instruments, chitinous phrases left to stand in lifelike poses. A character notes the impossibility of wholeness with the homely bafflement of a figure on a platform, the last train of the evening lumbering out of view. What's left is soul: not a ruin, but an absolute belief enduring absolute absence.