A murky sun was shining from the height of the unconscious world, emitting warmth not because of meaning but because of law; petty grassy stuff was hiding with care at the foot of the rye—maybe it was hoping for its own redemption from nature by man, or it was linked through the depth of its roots to the nourishing truth of endurance, or maybe it was existing only in chemical darkness. The midday earth was shriveling round about; in the irritated silence, filled full with the smell of straw and satiety, grasshoppers were sounding aloud, laboring for the continuation of their own life—they would not have been producing sounds to no purpose. Voshchev wanted to catch a grasshopper for memory, in order to examine at close quarters this being that was certain of its own life and to discover why it was certain instead of suffering torment. Having grown unaccustomed to work and agility, Voshchev had to wander about and crawl for a long time, hunting for the grasshopper, until he managed to seclude it by means of his cap. Then Voshchev took the grasshopper into his hand and began looking at it, searching for the eyes and reason of this being; the grasshopper stirred, in concerns of its own, but did not see the man and went on living without fear.
[This is followed by a paragraph that Platonov deleted while still working on his manuscript. After thinking about the relationship between man and other beings, Voshchev concludes: No, I am not better than a grasshopper—I see him! I shall live in equal rank with everyone—otherwise there’ll be no science. Without sympathy you never know anything in precision; and when you learn something with your mind, you remember that you already possessed this knowledge in your feeling of body. The revised manuscript (which is identical to the typescript as Platonov received it from the typist, before making any further revisions) continues:]
Voshchev stroked the grasshopper with a finger and released him from his hand to live, in order not to cause mutilation.
“Go on, preserve yourself,” he said. “Maybe you already know what I live and long for in boredom.”
The liberated grasshopper sat wordlessly in the grass for a while, then went away on foot into a thicket somewhere, and without it Voshchev felt worse. Nevertheless, Voshchev’s constant grief had been forgotten in this distracting contemplation of the grasshopper, and surrounding life comforted him, as it was able to, with its action and existence. Another man entered the rye from the track and bent down over Voshchev.
“Who is it lying here alone?”
“Me,” replied Voshchev, as if he were someone generally known in the world.
“Who is me? What kind of fool have we got lying here?” the man said gaily.
Far in the distance, but audibly, a colt cried out from joy, having found his way to his mother—or something else [sic]. His corporeal, trusting voice sounded protractedly and fell silent only gradually, in accord with the satisfaction of the colt’s happiness over there.
Voshchev listened to the voice of the animal, got to his feet, and scratched his forehead, which was old from his meditations.
“Probably you want to say that I’ve crushed the rye,” he pronounced in the direction of the man who had just come.
“What’s got into you? Think you’re cheaper than rye?”fn2
Never in his life was Voshchev too exhausted to think, especially when there was a man close to him.
“That’s true. Rye is an elemental matter—while man is an organized and dying being.”
“What you say is true too. Do you want me to send you to work? You seem like a good man.”
“Why?”
“I’m a trade-union representative. Our work now is the arrangement of final life, and there’s a shortfall of people. Are you up to bashing away at something?”
“No, I absolutely can’t,” admitted Voshchev. “In the future I can think up the meaning of life for everyone, but some predator has stolen my feeling and my body is weak.”
The opposite man turned his face from straightforward to serious; he did not know whether the meaning of life was a profession or not.
“But can your meaning influence the output of labor?”
“Yes, of course it can . . .”
They talked a little longer amid the rye, and then set off into the town. The trade-union representative already felt he would like to know the meaning and current of universal existence himself; he had decided to say a word in the regional trade-union office about the necessity of truth for laboring people—truth, after all, really does strengthen mind and increase a man’s productivity. Many people live like blades of grass in the wind of directing circumstances—but with truth they would have a precise direction forwards against eternity and the tempo of a direct movement towards light.
Since Voshchev had nothing to eat, the trade-union representative took him to his own flat to feed him cold cabbage soup; Voshchev was surprised by the feeling shown by this unknown man, but the trade-union representative explained his kindness by saying that the directives of life were now other than they had been a year before. It was impossible now to be a member of the Party only on the scale of society as a whole; yes, it was now necessary to be a Party member both face-to-face with a single other person and on your own in obscurity.
Having had some food and distraction, Voshchev followed the advice of the representative and wrote an application to the cultural department of the trade-union office. Voshchev asked to be assigned to labor at the search for truth by means of constant thought; his application included an explanation that truth was a necessary requirement, that it was an organizational principle for man, though it should not be understood merely as one organizational moment but should rather be imagined as labor on the organization of eternity.
“We’ve got lots of everything now,” said the representative. “I think they’ll take you on to think for a salary.”
“I’ll live off my salary and recollect the meaning of the entire world,” pronounced Voshchev with hope.
“Why not?” agreed the representative. “It’s not expensive to feed you and you’ll give an ordered mood to the people.”
“I’ll arrange man in order,” Voshchev promised with consciousness.
The town’s regional trade-union office had managed greatly to increase the prosperity of the proletariat—its concern now was the cultural scantness of the laborers; the cultural workers were struggling over the improvement of the very class essence of the proletarian, and it was at such a time that Voshchev’s application was received. The very fact that a question about the necessity of the meaning of life was being posed by an unemployed laborer was understood as an indication of the now heightened cultural level, and Voshchev’s application could have no refusal.
“We must support every initiative of the masses,” said the head of the cultural section. “Life itself will single out the dead from the flourishing. Pay the man sixth category—for life during his thought.”
The trade-union representative returned in the evening for his rest and told Voshchev that he was being offered a salary of thirty-eight rubles a month.fn3
[The first version of the manuscript continues: Voshchev embraced the representative and kissed him out of embarrassment on the throat. During time when he had occasion to feel agitated, he forgot that he needed the meaning of life, although during calm time he always remembered about the lack of truth. In the final version of the manuscript these two sentences are deleted, and the text continues as follows:]
“Live in my accommodation, comrade Voshchev. I’ll register you for residence.”
“What do I want with your residence? For thoughtfulness I must find myself alone. I must think up truth quickly, in order not to waste my salary.”
Voshchev left the trade-union representative’s room, afraid of living through time without production.
[The final version continues: Only now did he see the center of the town. (See Here)]
C.
[This passage was deleted while Platonov was working on the final version of the typescript. It follows the words: . . . yet something had come about
in the site and was drawing the building towards completion. (See Here)]
“Don’t people diminish in the sense of their own life as constructions rise up?” Voshchev could not resolve to believe. “Man puts up a building—and falls apart himself. Who’ll be left to live then?”
[The final version continues: Voshchev left the middle of the town for its end. (See Here)]
D.
[This passage was deleted while Platonov was working on the final version of the typescript. It follows the words: . . . observing his powerless position. (See Here)]
“To what purpose do you walk about and exist here?” asked one man, whose beard was growing weakly because of exhaustion.
“I don’t exist here,” Voshchev pronounced, ashamed that many people were now sensing him and him alone. “I’m only thinking here.”
“Why think and torment yourself?”
“My body gets weak without truth. I can’t nourish myself by labor alone. I used to get lost in thought during production and then I was dismissed.”
The workers all remained silent against Voshchev. Their faces were indifferent and bored; an occasional thought, exhausted ahead of time, lit their patient eyes.
“Who cares about this truth of yours?” said the man who had spoken before. “You don’t work, you don’t live through the substance of existence—so where are you going to remember thought from?”
“What do you want with truth anyway?” asked someone else, separating lips that had stuck together from long silence. “It’ll be all right there in your mind, but it will be vile outside.”
[The final version continues: Just then the entrance was opened . . . (See Here)]
E.
[This passage was deleted while Platonov was working on the final version of the typescript. It follows the words: The workers earnestly set about eating, taking the food in as their due but not taking pleasure in it. (See Here)]
Although they possessed the meaning of life, which is equivalent to eternal happiness, their faces were sullen and thin, and in place of the peace of life they had exhaustion. With the miserliness of hope and with terror of loss, Voshchev watched these sadly existing people who were able, without triumph, to preserve truth inside them. He was already content that truth was contained in the world in the body of a neighboring man who had just been talking to him; evidently simply being near such a man was enough to make one patient towards life and fit for labor.
“Come and eat with us!” the men called out to Voshchev.
Voshchev got to his feet and, not yet possessing complete faith in the general necessity of the world, went over to eat, constrained and melancholy.
“Why are you so meager on the outside?” he was asked.
“I just am,” said Voshchev. “But now I too want to work on the substance of existence.”
During the time of doubt in the correctness of life, he had seldom eaten calmly, always sensing his pining soul. But now he ate with cool blood, and comrade Safronov, the most activizing among the workers, announced to him after the nourishment that even Voshchev might now be fit for labor, because people had now become precious, on a par with materials; for days and days now the trade-union representative had been walking about the town outskirts and empty places, in order to find homeless poor peasants and turn them into constant laborers, but he seldom brought anyone back—the entire people was occupied with life and labor.
Voshchev had eaten his fill and he stood up amidst men who were sitting.
“Why are you standing?” asked Safronov.
“My thinking develops even worse in me when I sit. I’m better off standing.”
“All right then, stand! You must be intelligentsia. That’s all they want—just to sit and think.”
“While I was unconscious, I lived by manual labor. Then I stopped seeing the meaning of life and I got weak.”
A band came up to the barrack and began to make special lively sounds in which there was no thought but in which there was, on the other hand, an exultant foresensing that brought Voshchev’s body into a state of tingling joy. The alarming sounds of the sudden music imparted a sense of conscience and suggested that people take care of the time of life, that they cross the far distance of hope until they attain it, so as to find there the source of this agitating song and not weep before death because of the melancholy of meaninglessness.
The music finished and life subsided in everyone with its former weight.
The trade-union representative, whom Voshchev knew, entered the workers’ accommodation and invited the entire work team to walk a single time across the old town in order to see the significance of the labor that would begin on the mowed wilderness after this procession.
The work team went outside and stopped with embarrassment in opposition to the musicians. Safronov was clearing his throat, shamed by the social honor addressed to him in the form of music. Digger Chiklin looked with surprise and expectation; he had no sense of his merits but he wanted to listen once again to the triumphant march and silently rejoice without words. The others timidly hung their patient arms.
From cares and activity, the trade-union representative had forgotten to sense his own self, and like that it was easier for him—in the bustle of rallying the masses and organizing supplementary joys for the workers he did not remember about satiety with the satisfactions of personal life, and he grew thinner and slept deeply at night. Had the trade-union representative reduced the excitement of his own work, had he remembered the lack of domestic possessions in his own household or stroked his diminished and aged body at night, then he would have felt the shame of existing at the expense of two percent of anguished labor. But he was unable to stop and possess a contemplative consciousness.
With an alacrity originating from anxious devotion to those who labored, the trade-union representative stepped forward, in order to show the old town, inhabited with private houses and plots of land, to the skilled workers, because, that very day, they were to begin the construction of the single building into which the entire local class of the proletariat would be settled; the communal building would rise above the propertied, yarded town, the little private houses would empty, the vegetable world would cover them impenetrably, and the wasted people of a forgotten time would gradually stop their breathing there.
Some masons walked up to the barrack from two factories that were being newly constructed, the trade-union representative went tense from the rapture of the last minute before the march through the town, the musicians raised their brassy attachments to their lips, but the workers were standing apart, not ready to go. Safronov noticed the false zeal on the musicians’ faces and took offense on behalf of the music that was being humiliated.
“Whose idea was this little joke? We’re not going to walk anywhere! What’s there that we haven’t seen?”
The trade-union representative lost readiness of face and began to feel his own soul—he always felt his soul when he was hurt.
“Comrade Safronov! The local trade-union office was wanting to show your first model work team the pitifulness of the old life, various poor dwellings and boring conditions, as well as the cemetery where proletarians who came to an end before the Revolution without happiness have been buried. Then you would have seen what a perished town this is, standing amid the plain of our country. Then you would have learned at once why we need the common home for the proletariat which you will begin to build immediately after—”
“Don’t be servilical with us!” pronounced Safronov in retort. “Do you think we’ve never seen the petty houses where various officials live? Take your band to some children’s organization. We’ve got consciousness enough of our own to manage the new building!”
“So I’m servilical, am I?” feared the trade-union representative, surmising more and more. “Back in the office we’ve got one alleluia-monger—and now, evidently, I’m servilical?”
And, sick at heart, the trade-union representative walked back to the establishment of the
trade union in silence, with the band following on behind.
[The final version continues: The mowed wilderness smelled of grass . . . (See Here)]
F.
[This passage was deleted while Platonov was working on the final version of the typescript. It follows the words: “Yes,” Kozlov replied in his poor, child’s voice. (See Here)]
“You please yourself a lot,” pronounced Safronov. “From now on we’re going to put you on the table at night, under the lamp, so that you lie there and feel shame.”
Kozlov looked at Safronov through red moist eyes and said nothing from indifferent exhaustion.
“Why’s he on at you?” asked Voshchev.
Kozlov removed some dirt from his own bony nose and looked to one side as if he were longing for freedom, although really he was not longing for anything at all.
“They say that I don’t have a woman,” said Kozlov with the labor of personal hurt, “and that I love myself under the blanket at night, and that emptiness of body makes me unfit for living in the day. They do, as the saying says, know everything!”
Voshchev returned to digging the unchanging clay, and he saw that there still remained a lot of clay and general earth—he would need to possess life for a long time in order to overcome, by means of oblivion and labor, this embedded world that had hidden in its own darkness the truth of all existence. Maybe it would be easier to think up the meaning of life in his head—after all, he might hit on it inadvertently or touch it with some sadly flowing feeling.
“Safronov!” said Voshchev, with weakened patience. “I’d do better to think without work! We’ll never get to the bottom of the whole world through digging.”
“You won’t get to it by thinking,” announced Safronov, not letting himself be distracted. “You’ll have no memory of substance and end up the same as Kozlov, thinking only yourself like an animal!”
“What are you moaning about, you orphan?” Chiklin called out from in front. “Look at people and live—while you’re alive!”
The Foundation Pit Page 23