"The human soul is an indecent animal" (Andrei Platonov): Zoomorphism in Hard to Be a God by the Strugatsky brothers and by Aleksei German as a basis for comparison with the artistic system of Andrei Platonov

In the Strugatsky brothers' science fiction story Hard to Be a God (1963), various forms of zoomorphism and regressive metamorphoses play a significant role. These accompany the "deficient existential state of society," which "leads to a mutation of humankind," yet do not preclude the existence of personified, ambivalent metamorphic forms (such as the image of Baron Pampa). This vanishingly thin line between human and animal, with its axiological polysemy, results in a reality where, both in the literary work and in Aleksei German's eponymous film (2013), we find - in a manner reminiscent of Platonov - "not an evolutionary ladder, but a mixture of living beings, a general conglomerate." This reveals the eventuality of discerning in the Strugatskys' and German's Hard to Be a God a dialogue with the artistic system of Andrei Platonov. Specifically, the Strugatskys reflect Platonov's depiction of grotesque, phantasmagoric models of life, palpably in need of transformation, and the image of the bearer of ideological consciousness who strives to leap into the future and meets with crushing defeat. The work raises universal problems concerning the connection of human life to the eternal foundations of existence and the fusion of human being with ontological Being. The Strugatskys' novella begins with a childhood scene; German's film, however, concludes, according to Mark Lipovetsky, with the death of the hero, and in this sense, the film seems to bring the narrative to its final conclusion. At the same time, it is essential to consider that the primordial basis of human existence includes the eternal cycle of birth, death, and rebirth, which is constitutive for Platonov. Therefore, in both cases - in the story and its screen adaptation - life does not cease absolutely, but the dilemma, also crucial for Platonov, of the rupture between real life and the ideological consciousness that seeks to subjugate it and force it to follow a priori schemes is once again proclaimed, a process fraught with truly catastrophic consequences. Thus, the Strugatskys expose an epistemological and philosophical impasse as a cornerstone characteristic of the era. Consequently, correlating Hard to Be a God with the imagery and motifs inherent in Platonov's prose reveals that the Strugatskys' novella contains the code of a philosophical parable. This does not mean that the Strugatskys completely abandon social critique for conditional genres, but rather implies a transcendence of the geographical boundaries of a national cultural space, moving from the local to the global, and constructing a narrative about the fundamental order of the world, which also clearly lies at the foundation of German's film. Thus, the beastly (bestial) poetics concentrates the philosophical potential of the Strugatskys' work, whose ontological foundation fatally opposes the moral philosophy of the hero, determined by an orientation toward social construction. This tragic fragmentation, which makes the tangibly material reality of the story, and even more so of the film, symbolic, conditions the polemical and dialectical nature of both the literary source and the film. It also reveals seemingly strange, yet in fact highly logical, convergences of both texts with the artistic system of Platonov. The author declares no conflicts of interests.

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