The main works of A. Platonov, written at the turn of the 20-30s ("The Hidden Man", "Doubting Makar", "Chevengur", "Pit"), are united by a special worldview, conveyed through the eyes of half-wits, cranks, wanderers contemplating a new reality. The central idea in the writer's work is the idea of foolishness, but not religious - "for Christ's sake", but foolishness "for the sake of a new life". In Russian literature, the image of the holy fool and his behavior is always, as A. M. Panchenko notes, based on the exposure of anti-Christian norms in the understanding of this holy fool (Likhachev D. S., Panchenko A.M. Laughter in ancient Russia. L., 1984. p.4).

The question of Platonov's "foolishness" has been repeatedly raised by critics and researchers. Thus, the American scholar Thomas Seifrid considers the tongue-tied characters of Platonov as "one of the forms of speech that is likened to the words of fools" (For our translation, see: Seifrid T. Andrey Platonov / Incertains of spirit. P. 69). Our approach to the writer's" foolishness " is based on three criteria. Foolishness is studied by us as the image of characters, as the speech of characters, and as the author's position. Considering foolishness as the speech of characters, it is important to note that such words as foolishness, eccentricity, mask, antics, according to M. M. Bakhtin, have received a specific and narrow everyday meaning. They are often used to describe Platonov's language.

The writer's defense of the grotesque nature of language leads him to the path of purely social or political satire.

As for the author's position, it should be noted that the accusations of critics of the 30s, for example, E. Ermilov and A. Gurvich, were reduced to the fact that Platonov deserves the name of the singer of the holy fools. The result of such criticism was the writer's enforced silence in the following years.

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Criticism and accusations of literary officials were directed at the way the characters were portrayed in Platonic prose. The designation of his characters as Christian in the 30s automatically meant the exclusion of the writer from the sphere of modern literary life. So, in the article by A. Gurvich entitled "Andrey Platonov" it was noted that the main features of the person depicted by Platonov are "Christian foolishness", "great martyrdom", etc. But A. Gurvich told only half-truths. His main task was to separate the" impassable abyss "of" Platonic heroes from real heroes", in order to then come to the conclusion: "Platonov is not popular precisely because his works did not reflect the true aspirations and enormous creative forces of the Russian people. Platonov is anti-people, because the true qualities of the Russian people are perverted in his works" (Shubin L. A. Andrey Platonov / / Andrey Platonov. Chevengur, Moscow, 1991, p. 414).

Foolishness was considered by the writer as a way out of reality, and for critics of the 20-30s it became a cursed stamp, which involuntarily forced the writer to fight the official position.

Since there is no significant distance between the writer and his characters, Platonov often brings the author's speech closer to the speech of his characters. It should be noted here that foolishness as the image of characters, as the language of characters, and as the image of the author or the author's judgment serves as a way to comprehend the world even if you are internally rejected from it.

Taking into account this transformation, it is possible to consider the idea of foolishness in Platonov's work as a phenomenon of the Russian spiritual tradition, as a way of social exposure and self-exposure of heroes in the laughter culture of Russia, as a feature of Platonov's style, metaphorizing and absurdizing reality, as a way of reflecting the author's worldview and worldview.

Of all Platonov's works, the story "The Hidden Man" is most characteristic of the tradition of laughter culture. The hero of this story, Foma Pukhov, combines at the same time the features of an orphan, a wanderer, a master, a fool, a rogue, as well as Makar Ganushkin, the hero of the story "Makar who Doubted", who doubted the bureaucratic system, which superficially represents the masses, the people and, in fact, is divorced from them. He acts as a fool, denouncing a scientific person who personifies arbitrariness, vices. Both stories, in addition to the traditions of laughter culture, combine the thoughts of the characters (sometimes the author himself) about their relationship with nature, society, history, and revolution. Stable life is destroyed, and the characters can not accept the existing state of affairs and are immersed in contemplation and denunciation of public life.

In the story" The Innermost Man", the fierce skeptic and artisanal ironist Foma Pukhov is convinced that "he is a natural fool", he does not need to-

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on political studies, "he wants to live fresh", "every day for him is the creation of the world". In the novel Chevengur, the proletarian knight Don Quixote Stepan Kopenkin admits that "he is a fool, but he lives quite freely." The quoted words also show elements of ridiculing the world. In this, foolishness is closely related to buffoonery, because the main postulate of the fool's philosophy is the thesis that everyone is fools, and the biggest fool is the one who does not know that he is a fool (Likhachev D. S., Panchenko A.M. Edict. op.p. 128). Foolishness contains the paradoxical idea that "a fool who has recognized himself as a fool ceases to be such" (Ibid., p. 128). Kopenkin, like Foma Pukhov, are clever fools!

"Pit" has a certain similarity with "Chevengur", which consists in the fact that the characters are at the mercy of their dreams, they build a utopia in the desert in the shortest possible time. But all these dreams end in failure. The fundamental difference between "Chevengur" and " Pit " is that the chevengurers loaf in their imaginary paradise, because they seem to have everything-freedom, equality and fraternity. And as for the workers who build the houses of universal happiness in the story "The Pit", they are infected with a superficial Marxist-Leninist idea," for the sake of enthusiasm " they are constantly digging the ground, the pit expands four times, then six times, even more thanks to the order of the bureaucrat.

If "Chevengur" is a land of wanderers, a land of infinite freedom and spiritual distances, then " Pit " is a grave of dreamers, a land of terrible submission and enslavement of religious life by the state, in the words of N. A. Berdyaev. In this sense, "Pit" is the antithesis of "Chevenguru".

On the other hand, if his hero Voshchev appears in The Pit as an ascetic contemplative of reality, who is committed to the spiritual categories of poverty and suffering, then Zhachev-as a fool - knave. He belongs to the "negative hero" type that intimidates everyone else. Just like Stepan Kopenkin in the novel "Chevengur", he now furiously denounces everyone who does not know how to live bravely, then cries "huge tears" out of pity for the girl who did not have time to live in the house of universal happiness. Zhachev from time to time "dekulakizes" the bureaucrat Pashkin, taking food from his house. Judging by Zhachev's actions and dislikes, it can be argued that the legless freak Zhachev is a fool, who, according to the tradition of Russian folk culture, causes both fear and respect among the peasants.

Theatrical speech and actions of Zhachev sometimes express the author's position. After the elimination of the kulaks and the death of the girl Nastya Zhachev says: "I don't believe in anything anymore." Hence, it is clear that the author wants to show how untenable is the construction of a harmonious society, which they want to create on the basis of violence, social violence, etc.-

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equalities. Zhachev's voice matches the author's. It does not sound so weighty compared to the revised version edited by N. Kornienko. In this version, Zhachev pronounces the final verdict on the communist idea:" - (...) I don't believe in Communism anymore! ("Here and now", "Pit"), Here Zhachev acts as a fool-whistleblower.

An analysis of Platonov's works shows that the images of cranks and half-wits have a connection with the laughing tradition of ancient Russia - ridiculing themselves and their environment, but with the difference that Platonov's characters are immersed in modern socialist or philosophical ideas. Such fools, who are outside the framework of Christian thinking, are close to fools, buffoons, knaves in the interpretation of M. Bakhtin. It should be added that their main function is chastisement, warning, internal protest, and even prophecy. Often they become carriers of author's points of view.

During the creation of the works under consideration, Platonov went from a participant-enthusiast in the construction of communism to a mature satirist, an outside observer of the surrounding reality, so the idea of foolishness underwent its individual transformation and acquired the character of "political" or, more precisely, "intellectual" foolishness, affecting the concepts of anarchism, sectarianism, overcoming death, and the apocalypse.

The removal of the holy fool from culture, from social norms finds its expression in specific gestures and tongue-tied speech. Quite rightly, A. M. Panchenko noted the existing relationship between the holy fool and his speech, in which, alienating himself from society, the holy fool also alienates his language from the commonly used language.

Analysis of Platonov's texts reveals not only parody or irony of a purely official or party language, but also the existence of a special "holy fool" style of language. This style demonstrates a clear shift in the use of language forms. Traditional concepts of stylistic techniques and tropes are not able to interpret the Platonic style, which tends to go beyond the synthetic essence of the Russian language. In Platonov's language, two opposite tendencies are simultaneously manifested: the increment of meaning and the contraction of meaning, which leads to the absurdity, grotesqueness, and comicality necessary for depicting the wrong world. Techniques related to the increment of meaning are a kind of pleonasm, an ideologeme. And with the contraction of meaning , we observe such techniques as concretization of the abstract, animation of the inanimate, mechanization of the animate, dynamization of the action verb, and the use of oxymorons.

Let's illustrate how in Platonov's prose there is a shift in language forms when using the method of dynamization of the action verb. By the term dynamization, we mean an action verb that

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performs the function of a verb of movement. Dynamization of the verb of action as a kind of sense acquisition reflects a peculiar Platonic vision of reality: "Having eliminated kulaks in the distance, Zhachev did not calm down, it became even more difficult for him, although it is not known why"; "- There is nowhere to live, so you think in your head" ("Pit"); "People rustled on the ground in the street" ("Chevengur").

Here are some examples of another stylistic device - an oxymoron:

"We squeeze out our whole body for a common building, and he gives the slogan that our state is nonsense, and there is no sense of mind anywhere"'," (...) why do I always feel the mind and never forget it?"; "Prushevsky did not object to anything with his feelings" ("Pit").

In these examples, the mind-feeling opposition is expressed, which is the embodiment of the phenomenology of Russian foolishness. The peculiarity of Plato's foolishness is that it has no correlation with the deep Christian truth. Plato's fool heroes live by intuition, listen to their feelings, and when they try to give up the feeling of the mind, they always feel it. In these phrases, it is easy to see the synthesis of mind and foolishness, resulting in a paradoxical picture of the world perceived by the fool's consciousness.

Time itself forced Platonov to turn to the idea of foolishness. Wanderers, free-spirited, not attached to anything, eternal travelers of Platonov, looking for their promised land, have a deep Russianness. At the same time, spiritual search, truth-seeking, is characteristic primarily for the spiritual poor-fools in the writer's image.

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