Platonov on Fire (and a Back Story)

When Andrei Platonov gives you a location, he gives you the sight and feel and smell:

Ivanov put out his pipe with a thumb that was inured to the smoldering heat. … He smelt strongly of tobacco and dry toast, with a hint of wine—pure substances that come from fire or else can give birth to fire. It was as if Ivanov fed solely on tobacco, rusks, beer and wine.

—Andrei Platonov, “The Return,” in Soul 281-308, 283 (NYRB 2007)

There seems to be a quaint backstory to this new selection from Platonov’s work. NYRB published an earlier collection, The Fierce and Beautiful World, just a few years back (or “republished;” it appears to be a reissue of a set first issued in 1970). This new collection does not expand upon the earlier offering; the new supplants the old, and the old, says the publisher, will be withdrawn.

The new comes with a helpful introduction by Robert Chandler, who also translates some of the material (and a pompous, overblown afterword by John Berger). I do remember reading some complaints on the earlier version at the time. For example, here is an Amazon review of the earlier version (link):

Platonov is the finest Russian prose-writer of the last century, but this republication of a volume first published around 1970 is a disappointment. Firstly, the translation is mediocre; secondly, the short novel "Dzhan", the longest and greatest work in this volume, was translated from a heavily censored Soviet text. Many of the most striking, most unusual or most subversive passages of the original have been cut out.

Author of the review: one Robert Chandler.