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Downloaded from Brill.Com10/01/2021 05:33:20AM Via Free Access transcultural studies 13 (2017) 177-196 brill.com/ts The End of The Soviet Baroque: Historical Poetics in Olesha’s Envy and Tynianov’s The Wax Person Anastasiya Osipova New York University [email protected] Abstract The term Soviet Baroque was coined by Viktor Shklovsky in 1929 to describe the aes- thetic and theoretical tendencies of the left art of the 1920s – a generation of revolu- tionary artists to which he himself belongs. Shklovsky understands Baroque not as a specific historical style, but as the aesthetics of “intensive detail” and nonsychronous conception of history. With the onset of the Stalinist ideology and of the Five-Year Plan era’s optimism in the legibility of progress, Shklovsky becomes openly critical of the Soviet Baroque and his former artistic allies who espouse it. In this article I analyze the Soviet Baroque as an extension of a broader tendency that falls in line with the tradi- tion of Historical Poetics and draw on several examples from Yuri Olesha’s Envy and Yuri Tynianov’s The Wax Person that I consider illustrative of this tendency. Keywords Russian Formalism – Historical Poetics – Baroque – Soviet theory – Viktor Shklovsky – Yuri Olesha – Yuri Tynianov The friendship between Viktor Shklovsky and Yuri Tynianov received a near- deadly blow in 1932, when Shklovsky’s essay entitled “About the People Who Walk Along the Same Road, But Do Not Know It: The End of Baroque” appeared in Literaturnaia gazeta, the official mouthpiece of the Federation of Union of Soviet Writers at the time.1 In this brief article Shklovsky attacks Tynianov, 1 Viktor Shklovsky, ‘O liudah, kotorye idut po odnoi doroge i ob etom ne znaiut: konets Barokko.’ Literaturnaia Gazeta, July 17, 1932, 4. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi 10.1163/23751606-01302005Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 05:33:20AM via free access <UN> 178 Osipova together with Yuri Olesha, Sergei Eisenstein,2 Osip Mandelstam, and Isaac Babel, on charges of perpetuating what he calls the Soviet Baroque. This ten- dency, for Shklovsky, is bound with indulging too freely in eccentric detail and sacrificing the unity of outlook and composition to the purely ornamental and the picturesque. In the wreckage of royal porcelain in Eisenstein’s scenes of the storming of the Winter Palace, and in the tangled chaos of cut-off limbs in Ba- bel, Shklovsky recognizes only a distracted fascination with the explosive and fragmenting energy of the revolutionary event. During the 1930s, the period of increasing centralization of literary production and the advent of the doc- trine of socialist realism, the aesthetic approaches that had been born with the revolution and embraced its destabilizing power were pressured to give way to a more conservative and totalizing vision. For Shklovsky, this meant step- ping away from narrative saturated in details, with their splintering force and semantic ambiguity, and embracing the cult of clarity, continuity, and plot.3 He criticizes Tynianov’s novel The Wax Person (1932) and Olesha’s Envy (1927) (much to Tynianov’s displeasure at being mentioned in the same breath with Olesha)4 for their Baroque ornateness, and dismisses both texts as semantic swamps. The fermentation of references and meaning in them may be rich, but it is nevertheless superfluous in comparison with the linear flow of a unified plot: “A novel does not flow out of a swamp as small rivers sometimes do. The [Baroque] novel floats into the swamp. Ending in nothing. The time of Baroque has passed. Now comes the time of a continuous art.”5 Perhaps it is not a coincidence that Shklovsky came to prefer linear plot and non-fragmented vision during the era of the first and second Five-Year Plans, a period marked by developmental optimism. In the “World Without Depth” (Literaturnyi kritik, 1933), a slightly later essay in which Shklovsky focuses on Olesha alone, he states more explicitly the incompatibility between Baroque plotlessness and a plan, understood broadly as an outlook on literature and history alike. For Shklovsky, rather than integrate objects into a coherent vision 2 For a discussion of Eisenstein’s use of Baroque aesthetics in his ¡Que Viva Mexico!, see Ma- sha Salazkina’s book In Excess: Sergei Eisenstein’s Mexico. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2009, 141–180. 3 On the discussion of clarity in socialist realism see: ‘We Need The Art That Is Necessary For The Masses and Is Loved by Them’ (‘Nam nuzhno iskusstvo, poniatnoe massam i liubimoe imi’) in Literaturnaia gazeta, May 29, 1933 and Shklovsky’s own essay ‘Simplicity is Order’ (‘Prostota – zakonomernost’) in the same publication from June 5, 1933. 4 See the entry in Korney Chukovsky’s diary from November 11, 1932 (Dnevnik 1922–1935. Mos- cow: Prozaik. 2011, 495). 5 Viktor, Shklovsky, ‘O liudah, kotorye idut po odnoi doroge i ob etom ne znaiut: konets Barokko.’ transculturalDownloaded studies from 13 Brill.com10/01/2021 (2017) 177-196 05:33:20AM via free access <UN> The End of the Soviet Baroque 179 “with a plan,” Olesha’s metaphors and insights achieve the opposite effect. They wrestle objects away from a totalizing perception and fragment the picture of the world they belong to. They lack either a plan or a master plot. He (Olesha) has an exceptional talent for creating fragments, for seeing isolated details… Olesha lacks a plan, but on principle… Olesha sees things as a child would and knows his own style well. His description of the curls on cabbage leaves is just like a description of a baroque ornament. In their construction, Olesha’s works are conditioned by several factors at once, they contain several different meanings, they simultaneously offer several different answers. And that is why they are incomplete. That is why they never lay out a greater meaningful plan, as if the writer had no need of one. Olesha’s works end with the out-and-out baroque frill of a cabbage head. His is the art of ornament and false domes.6 У нeгo (Oлeши) нeoбыкнoвeннoe умeниe coздaвaть куcки, видeть нeмнoгoe… У Oлeши пpинципиaльнo нeт плaнa… Oлeшa видит вeщи кaк peбeнoк и xopoшo знaeт coбcтвeнный cтиль. Eгo oпиcaниe зaвиткoв кaпуcты—тoчнoe oпиcaниe opнaмeнтa бapoккo. Beщи, кoтopыe пишeт Oлeшa, пo зaкoну пocтpoeния paзнooбуcлoвлeнны, paзнoзнaчны, paзнooтвeтны и пoэтoму oни нe дoпиcaны. Пoэтoму в ниx нe paзpeшeн и кaк будтo пиcaтeлю нe нужeн бoльшoй cмыcлoвoй плaн. Beщь кoнчaeтcя мaxpoвым бapoчным cжимoм кaпуcтнoгo кoчaнa. Иcкуccтвoм opнaмeнтa и фaльшивыx купoлoв. Shklovsky was not alone in commenting on the semantic density and obscu- rantism of Olesha’s and Tynianov’s prose. In fact, the common theme in the critical reception of both novels was a perplexed hesitation as to what, exactly, to make of them. Even Lydia Ginzburg, Tynianov’s grateful disciple, in a di- ary entry from 1931, characterizes her mentor’s novel as slovobludie – a verbal 6 Viktor Shklovsky, ‘Mir bez glubiny (Yuri Olesha).’ Literaturnyi kritik, vol. 5, October 1933, 118–121. transcultural studies 13 (2017) 177-196 Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 05:33:20AM via free access <UN> 180 Osipova bacchanal.7 And Envy to its contemporary readers seemed as an optical puzzle, capable of accommodating diametrically opposed views if approached from slightly different perspectives. Characteristically, Dmitry Gorbov, a literary critic associated with the Pereval group, described the profound ambiguity contained within Envy in visual terms. The novel is as if it has been drawn on glass. When placed on a dark surface – you see one picture, executed in somber, “chemical” tones. But when you hold it up to the light, you begin to recognize something completely different – an image with a meaning that is almost diametrically opposed to what you saw originally. And that initial impression already contains much that would compel one to lift the image and hold it up to the light.8 («Зaвиcть» Oлeши) кaк бы нaпиcaнa нa cтeклe. Пoлoжишь нa тeмную пoвepxнocть – нa нeй oдин pиcунoк, cдeлaнный в глуxиx «xимичecкиx» тoнax. Пocмoтpишь нa cвeт, − пoлучaeтcя нeчтo coвceм инoe и eдвa ли нe oбpaтнoe пo cмыcлу. И cлишкoм мнoгo в пepвoм cлучae ecть тaкoгo, чтo нaтaлкивaeт нa нeoбxoдимocть пoднять кapтинку и paccмoтpeть ee нa cвeт. What is remarkable is not that Shklovsky would denounce the Baroque, but the terms on which he does so. Rather than simply condemning the Baroque for being outdated or bizarre, Shklovsky, although critical of its ornamental- ism, suggests that the Baroque vision is intimately bound with the historical, so much so that it could be disruptive to the ideology of centralized planning. Shklovsky’s criticism, it seems, falls in line with the debates and tensions sur- rounding the notion of the Baroque that arose at the beginning the twentieth century and would be developed in later decades. Derived from Portuguese barroco—an unusually shaped pearl, an organic object, an accident of nature that has been rescued from a filthy-smelling seashell to be set into a precious piece of jewelry—the term “Baroque” etymologically already presupposes the unity of extreme oppositions, as well as the potential for meaningful recupera- tion of the basely material and the monstrous. However, in the twentieth cen- tury a new “fold” was added. The Baroque as a historical style of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (often associated with ostentatious and dubious 7 Lydia Ginzburg, ‘Zapisi 20–30h godov. Iz neopublikovannogo.’ Novyi Mir, no. 6, 1992, 174–175. 8 Dmitry Gorbov, ‘Opravdanie Zavisti (ob Oleshe)’ in Poiski Galatei: statii o literature. Moscow: “Federatsiia,” 1929, 138. transculturalDownloaded studies from 13 Brill.com10/01/2021 (2017) 177-196 05:33:20AM via free access <UN> The End of the Soviet Baroque 181 taste, as for Benedetto Croce) was supplemented by a notion of the Baroque as a mode of historical thinking that disrupts the linear reading of history as a progressive succession of styles.
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