Because of the outward openness of Platonov's world, and the existence in it of recognizable, seemingly deliberately enhanced motifs, one can easily be misled or in any event confused, never getting to the source of this diversity of meanings which, however, by being repeated over and over again, becomes a kind of monotone calling upon us to make sense of it as well. Something similar may also be identified in Dostoevsky: one and the same element, repeated incessantly, creates an "emblematic (...) theme" or an "ontological schema" the contours of which are discernible in almost all his major writings. (shrink)