THE CONCEPT OF "SOUL" IN ANDREI PLATONOV'S SHORT NOVEL DZHAN

The subject of the research is the concept of “soul” — one of the most important semantic components of Andrei Platonov’s artistic world. The concept of “soul” is one of the core ones in the history of culture and it includes the complex religious, philosophical, ethical, spiritual and mental content. The concept of “soul” is consistently present in Platonov's works — from the first to the last ones — where it represents individual and personal, collective and national and world (cosmic) existence. The lexeme “soul” marks a zone of confl ict between the writer and philosopher and militant atheism and historical materialism of revolutionary ideology. Th e author and his heroes search for a “sincere socialism” (The intimate person, Doubting Makar). The Soviet critics saw “foolishness for Christ” in these searches (A. Gurvich). Platonov starts actualizing the “soul” concept in his short novel Dzhan (1932–1935) with the title, since a Turkic word “dzhan” means “soul” in Russian. Th is concept plays an important role in the artistic representation of an intimate life of the dzhan people and the main character Nazar Chagatayev. Conceptual analysis of the short novel Dzhan includes the following components: – defining semantic space of the “soul” concept in the novel, as well as its structure and functions; – describing reference situations the “soul” concept points at in a work of art; – studying the novel’s sphere of concepts (connections between the “soul” concept and the concepts of “mind”, “heart”, “happiness” and “life”); – detecting mythological and Evangelical implications in the contexts which are directly connected with the concept of “soul”; – defining convergences and divergences of the concept of “soul” in Platonov’s short novel Dzhan and its cultural semantics, which can be traced back to the Evangelical text