To stitch

 

 About five years ago, I tried translating Andrey Platonov’s poetry, Blue Depths (Golubaya glubina, 1922). Not because it is his mentionable work — I had been told that it is not — but because of a curiosity in the origins of this noted writer of the 20th century. In my efforts, I was happy to come across the beautiful translations of Robert Chandler (et al) as guide, and yet, I found that many of Platonov’s texts remain untried and much of his language unparsed. 

Recently, Andrew Krizhanovsky, a computer scientist and a fellow Platonovist (platonoved), and I have been captivated, or held captive, by Platonov’s “The Behidden Man (Sokrovennyy chelovek)”, and in particular, this line: 

 

People were raising a ruckus, the rails were groaning under the knock of the forcibly rotated wheels, the hollow of their rounded world was wavering in fetid nightmare, fitting the train with shrieking air, — and Pukhov was shivved into the wind along with everyone else, hauled and hapless, like an inert body (Translation ours, A.K. and A.H.).

 

Lyudi shumeli, rel'sy stonali pod udarami nasil'no vrashchayemykh koles, pustota kruglogo mira kolebalas' v smradnom koshmare, oblegaya poyezd vereshchashchim vozdukhom, — a Pukhov vnizyvalsya v veter vmeste so vsemi, vlekomyy i bespomoshchnyy, kak kosnoye telo (“The Behidden Man” 204)

 

Our point of contention is over the word “vnizyvalsya”, which I translate as “was shivved”, and which, according to one article, is a word from the Pskov region that can mean “causing injury (harm) to another person by violating the rules of conduct” (Nadeina 218). “Shiv”, meaning to stab with a homemade weapon of the same name, certainly is not in keeping with social decorum (See “shiv” and “Category: Shivs”). The Russian word for the weapon,  “zatochka”, means “a small sharping” and is described in Vladimir Retsepter’s An Appeal to Casanova (Obrashcheniye k Kazanove): “In the box also lay knives and daggers wrapped in socks and snot rags…. / Behind them — though horrific in appearance, akin to a shoemaker’s awl, was a thief’s shiv (V korobke tozhe lezhali obernutyye noskami i nosovymi platkami nozhi i kinzhaly.... / Za nimi — strashnaya dazhe na vid, pokhozhaya na sapozhnoye shilo, vorovskaya zatochka)” (98).

The verbs “vnizat'” and “vnizyvat'” seem to have been first used by Platonov, and for the first time in Russian literature, in the early story “The Silent Secret Depths of the Sea (Nemyyetayny morskikh glubin)”:

 

At some point during the night Cheptsov slept. And so sweetly that he dropped his jaw and lowered saliva from there to the floor. As morning arrived in the yard, the heat climbed, and flies stole into the room. When they spied the red meat (that is, Cheptsov’s maw), they shivved into it and commenced to squirm there. Cheptsov drew up his jaw: Scrump! And chewed and dispatched them down his gullet. Having risen and eaten sausages, he went to rouse Georgie (Translation ours).

 

Odnazhdy noch'yu Cheptsov spal. I tak sladko, chto otkryl rot i opustil ottuda slyunu do polu. A na dvore nastalo utro, podnyalas' teplota, i v komnatu probralis' mukhi. Uvidevshi krasnoye myaso (to yest' past' Cheptsova), oni vnizalis' v nego i nachali tam yerzat'. Cheptsov zakryl rot: ap! i szheval ikh i otpravil po pishchevodu vniz. Prosnuvshis' i poyevshi kolbaski, on poshel budit' Zhorzhika (“The Silent Secret Depths” 339).

 

From the context, we can assume that by “vnizalis'” Platonov means the flies moved in a quick pointed fashion into the meat, dug in and began to feed.

Indeed, forms of the verbs “vnizat'” and “vnizyvat'” are perhaps closest in meaning to some of those for 1. “vonzat'” and 2. “vonzat'sya/vonzit'sya”: “1. outdated. to stick on something — to impale something on a tip, 2. to stab/to pierce — to stick a point into something, to dig in (1. ustar. vonzat' na chto-libo — nasazhivat' chto-libo na ostriye, 2. vonzat'sya/vonzit'sya — vtykat'sya ostriyom vo chto-libo, vpivat'sya)” (Dictionary of Modern Russian Literary Language 650). These verbs are in turn rooted in the Old Slavic words “v''n'ziti” and “v''n'znyati”, from which the word “knife (nozh)” also originates and which are related to words with the meaning “point, quill/needle tip (ostriye, konchik igly)” (See “vonzit'”). From this, I took quite a few stabs at “vnizat'” and “vnizyvat'”: “lance”, “skiver”, “ennether”, “thred” and “awl”.

Though not unknown to English dictionaries, “shiv” captures Platonov’s un-conventionalism. Probably from the Romani for knife, “chive/chiv”, “shiv” also shares aural, and perhaps etymological, kinship with the Russian for “awl”, “shilo”, and with the short past adverbial imperfective participle of “shit' (to sew)”: “shiv”, which imitates, with voiced labiodental fricative ”v”, the abrasive movement of air. As such, the next passage, from Happy Moscow (Schastlivaya Moskva) could read as follows:

 

Moscow undid the door of the aeroplane and surrendered her stride to the void; a fierce vortex struck into her from below, as if the earth were the muzzle of a mighty blast engine inside which air is pressed to hardness and stands erect — firmly, like a pillar; Moscow perceived herself a tube, being blown straight through, and she kept her mouth open the whole time so to manage to exhale the wild wind shivving point-blank into her (Our translation, with Chandler 17).

 

Moskva otvorila dver' aeroplana i dala svoy shag v pustotu; snizu v neye udaril zhestkiy vikhr', budto zemlya byla zherlom moguchey vozdukhoduvki, v kotoroy vozdukh pressuyetsya do tverdosti i vstayet vverkh — prochno, kak kolonna; Moskva pochuvstvovala sebya truboy, produvayemoy naskvoz', i derzhala vse vremya rot otkrytym, chtoby uspevat' vydykhat' vnizyvayushchiysya v neye v upor dikiy veter (Happy Moscow 20).

 

“Shivving” better mimics the wind’s sexual penetration of Moscow than does Chandler’s “piercing”, as well as better voices the shovels seven pages later, “there was the sound of spades [shivving] into the earth (slyshno, kak vnizyvalis' lopaty v grunt)”, where Chandler uses “cutting” (Happy Moscow 26, Chandler 24). Then again, perhaps I try too hard, and now, Krizhanovsky and I are deciding to go with “stitch”—so stop here and reread all of Platonov’s passages, replacing “shiv” with “stitch”.

“Stitch” perhaps works better than “shiv” in this from “For Future Use: a Poorman’s Chronicle (Vprok: Bednyatskaya khronika)”:

 

I happened to witness how he shooed the steersman off the tractor, because he was burning the kerosene to a black smoke, and set himself to drive while the steersman followed behind on foot and watched how to do his job. Just as abruptly and demonstratively, Upoyev was stitched into the circle of grain sorters and denigrating their inattentive work by demonstration of his proficiency (Translation ours).

 

Mne prishlos' nablyudat', kak on sognal rulevogo s traktora, potomu chto tot zheg kerosin s chernym dymom, i sam sel pravit', a rulevoy shel szadi peshkom i smotrel, kak nado rabotat'. Tak zhe vnezapno i pokazatel'no Upoyev vnizyvalsya v sredu sortirovshchikov zerna i porochil ikh nevnimatel'nyy trud posredstvom pokaza svoyego umeniya (“For Future Use” 327).

 

Upoyev is “causing injury (harm) to another person by violating the rules of conduct” by cutting into the business of the grain sorters, by shivving annoyingly into their group. But while he needles, or makes a mockery of their work, Upoyev, who “considered the whole collective farm village his hearth room (schital svoyey gornitsey vse kolkhoznoye selo)”, becomes an integral part of their circle, intimately stitched to them with his know-how (327).

In “The Silent Secret Depths of the Sea”, Platonov employs another word near to “vnizat'”, in the sense of “piercing/stringing”: “nanizavshis'”, which means “stuffed one’s self full” in the Ryazan and Rostov regions (See “nanizat’sya”; Dictionary of Russian Folk Dialects 48):

 

Each man had a wifey, a good mistress, a sit-by-the-fire, along with all the lifeless kitchen implements. In the evening, having supped on warm cabbage soup with beef, the master and missus read together without hurry “O Lord and Sovereign of my belly” (it was the Great Fast) and lay down to rest, in a snug marital warmth. In the morning, the missus cooked (while the master was still snoring) a gruel with lard. And the master, having gotten up and stitched himself with this sustenance, went personally to probe the three hens (Translation ours).

 

U kazhdogo cheloveka byla zhenushka, dobrotnaya khozyayka-posidelushka, i ves' mertvyy kukhonnyy inventar'. Vecherom, pouzhinav teplymi shchami s govyadinoy, khozyain i khozyayushka prochityvali sovmestno i ne spesha «Gospodi i vladyko zhivota moyego» (byl post velikiy) i lozhilis' na pokoy, v tesnoye supruzheskoye teplyshko. Utrom khozyayushka varila (a khozyain yeshche vskhrapyval) kulesh s sal'tsem. A khozyain, vstavshi i nanizavshis' etoy pishchey, shel samolichno shchupat' troyechku kurey (“The Silent Secret Depths” 338).

 

The couple, nested in marital warmth, humorously break the Lenten fast with beef and peruse a gustatory parody of “The Prayer of Saint Ephraim”, and after sleep, the man stuffs himself with a pig-fat mush (a sustenance common in Platonov’s homeland, Voronezh) before going out to retrieve fresh eggs (See “kulesh”). The man shivs his gut and throat full, but only “stitch” is restorative, as if the man has closed the wound of his empty belly. This latter nuance perhaps enriches the author’s intent. “Stitching” is both hurtful and healing.

Krizhanovsky’s and my teamwork on “The Behidden Man”, which we plan to publish in bilingual annotated text online as well as in physical print, will establish an early foothold in Platonov and bring together a hidden cache of forgotten culture, history, philosophy and science and technology. It is a tribute to the work of hard-trying translation teams like Chandler’s, and my hope is that it will be an exceptionally handy resource for any up-and-coming Platonovist, for them to stitch into and stitch with.

 

Works Cited

“The Behidden Man  (Sokrovennyy chelovek).” The Ethereal Tract: Novellas of the 1920s to early 30s. Andrey Platonovich Platonov Collection, vol. 2. Compiled by N.V. Kornienko, edited by N.M. Malygina, Vremya, 2011, pp. 161-235, https://imwerden.de/razdel-1000061-str-1.html. Accessed 17 Mar 2022.

“Category: Shivs.” Wikimedia, English, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Shivs. Accessed 17 Mar 2022.

Chander, Robert. Happy Moscow. NYRB, 2012, pp. 7-117.

Dictionary of Modern Russian Literary Language, Publishing House of the USSR Academy of Sciences, 1948-1965, vol. 2 [V]. 1951, https://w.wiki/4xdD. Accessed 17 Mar 2022.

Dictionary of Russian Folk Dialects, vol. 20 [Nakuchkat' - Negorazd]. St. Petersburg, 1985, https://iling.spb.ru/dictionaries/srng/20.pdf#page=48. Accessed 17 Mar 2022.

“For Future Use: a Poorman’s Chronicle (Vprok: Bednyatskaya khronika).” The Ethereal Tract: Novellas of the 1920s to early 30s. Andrey Platonovich Platonov Collection, vol. 2. Compiled by N.V. Kornienko, edited by N.M. Malygina, Vremya, 2011, pp. 284-350, https://imwerden.de/razdel-1000061-str-1.html. Accessed 17 Mar 2022.

Happy Moscow (Schastlivaya Moskva). Happy Moscow: Essays and Short Stories of the 1930s. Andrey Platonovich Platonov Collection, vol. 4. Compiled by N.V. Kornienko, edited by N.M. Malygina, Vremya, 2011, pp. 11-110, https://imwerden.de/razdel-1000061-str-1.html. Accessed 17 Mar 2022.

“kulesh.” Wiktionary, Russian, https://w.wiki/4xZ8. Accessed 17 Mar 2022.

Nadeina, L.V. “The figurative understanding of ‘motion’ in the Russian language.” Tomsk Polytechnic University, 2006, vol. 309, no. 5, pp. 217-222, https://cyberleninka.ru/article/n/obraznoe-osmyslenie-dvizheniya-v-russkom-yazyke-na-materiale-glagolov-dvizheniya-v-russkih-narodnyh-govorah. Accessed 17 Mar 2022.

“nanizat’sya.” Wiktionary, Russian, https://w.wiki/4xZC. Accessed 17 Mar 2022.

Retsepter, Vladimir. An Appeal to Casanova (Obrashcheniye k Kazanove), part 2. Soglasiye, No. 27. Feb 1994, pp. 66-120, https://imwerden.de/razdel-2190-str-1.html. Accessed 17 Mar 2022.

“shiv.” Wiktionary, English, https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/shiv. Accessed 17 Mar 2022.

“The Silent Secret Depths of the Sea  (Nemyyetayny morskikh glubin).” Doubting Makar: Short Stories of the 1920s, Poetry. Andrey Platonovich Platonov Collection, vol. 1. Compiled by N.V. Kornienko, edited by N.M. Malygina, Vremya, 2011, pp. 335-342, https://imwerden.de/razdel-1000061-str-1.html. Accessed 17 Mar 2022.

“vonzit'.” Etymology. Wiktionary, Russian, https://w.wiki/4xZF. Accessed 17 Mar 2022.