Ekphrastic Metaphysics of Dzhan Nariman Skakov Stanford University Translated from the Russian by Jason Cieply Ulbandus 14 (2011/2012) At first glance, Andrei Platonov’s novella Dzhan may seem a typical and even model colonial text. 1 Written in the middle of the 1930’s after two research trips to Turkmenistan, the first as part of a writers’ brigade, it unequivocally places the toponym “Moscow” at the head of each of the settlements and spaces encountered in the narrative. And to a certain extent, the main hero acts as an ideological mercenary and colonizer of his own people, imbued with a duel essence that is anticipated already in the first sentence: “Into the courtyard of the Moscow Institute of Economics walked a young non-Russian man, Nazar Chagataev” («ÇÓ ‰‚Ó åÓÒÍÓ‚ÒÍÓ„Ó ˝ÍÓÌÓÏ˘ÂÒÍÓ„Ó ËÌÒÚËÚÛÚ‡ ‚˚¯ÂÎ ÏÓÎÓ‰ÓÈ, ÌÂÛÒÒÍËÈ ˜ÂÎÓ‚ÂÍ ç‡Á‡ 󇄇ڇ‚»). 2 For Platonov, the adjective nerusskii, or “non-Russian,” is of great importance: the manuscript originally reads “young, happy person,” but the word “happy” is crossed out, and “non-Russian” is written above and retraced in bold. 3 The opposition between “non-Russian” and “happy” is interesting to say the least. What connection could there be between these words for Platonov? Is their relationship characterized by antinomy or interchangeability? In either case, non-Russian and, perhaps, happy, Chagataev leaves the Moscow courtyard and moves toward his native people “in the middle of the Asian desert” (11; «‚ ÒÂ‰ËÌÛ ‡ÁˇÚÒÍÓÈ ÔÛÒÚ˚ÌË», 444) with a certain mission of salvation. At the end of the novella he returns to the metropolis together with a trophy girlfriend, Aidym, who in a certain sense embodies the future of the “dzhan people.” The successive and cyclical changes of spaces (Moscow—Sarıkamış— the open desert—Üst-Yurt—Moscow) function as a key element in the novella. At the same time, the antithesis of the two spatial types—urban, contemporary Moscow and the open, primordial Sarıkamış, Üst-Yurt, and 1 The present essay is a translation of an extract from a previously published article. See Nariman Skakov, “Prostranstva “Dzhana” Andreia Platonova,” Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie 107 (2011): 211-230. It is reprinted in translation here with permission of Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie. 2 Andrei Platonov, Soul, trans. Robert and Elizabeth Chandler, with Katia Grigoruk, Angela Livingstone, Olga Meerson, and Eric Naiman (New York: New York Review Books, 2008), 3; Andrei Platonov, Dzhan, in Proza (M.: Slovo, 1999), 439. All further citations of the work will come from these editions and appear parenthetically within the body of the text. 3 N. V. Kornienko, “‘Mne prisnilsia golos…,” in Andrei Platonov, Proza, 15.