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Russian Formalism: a Metapoetics

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Russian Formalism: a Metapoetics Russian Formalism Russian For1nalis1n A Metapoetics by PETER STEINER Cornell University Press I Ithaca I London Copyright © 1984 by Peter Steiner All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850, or visit our website at www.cornellpress.cornell.edu. First published 1984 by Cornell University Press. “Too Much Monkey Business,” by Chuck Berry, copyright © 1956, Arc Music Corp., 110 East 59th Street, New York, N.Y. 10022. International copyright secured. Used by permission. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Steiner, P. (Peter), 1946– Russian formalism. Based on the author’s thesis. Includes index. 1. Formalism (Literary analysis)—Soviet Union. I. Title. PN98.F6S73 1984 801'.95 84-7708 ISBN 978-0-8014-1710-8 (pbk. : alk. paper) The text of this book is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ Blond hair, good look'n', wants me to marry, get a home, settle down, write a book- ahhhhhhhhhhhh! Too much monkey business, too much monkey business. -CHUCK BERRY Contents Preface 9 1 Who Is Formalism, What Is She? 15 � The Three Metaphors 44 The Machine 44 The Organism 68 The System 99 3 A Synecdoche 1]8 Zaum' 140 Verse 172 Expression 199 4 The Developmental Significance of Russian Formalism 24 2 Index 2 71 7 Preface This book grew out of my earlier comparative study of Rus­ sian Formalism and Prague Structuralism. The juxtaposition of these schools, I was surprised to find, pointed up their funda­ mental difference much more than their similarity. The Prague School, with its single organizational center, shared frame of reference, and unified epistemological stance, could easily be conceived as a coherent movement. But its Russian counterpart was farmore resistant to synthesis. I began to see Formalism, in fact, not as a school in the ordinary sense of the word, but as a peculiar developmental stage in the history of Slavic literary theory. This fact is reflectedin the relative agreement among students of Prague Structuralism about the coherence of their subject matter and the corresponding lack of a consensus among schol­ ars of Formalism. It is this feeling of discord that I wish to convey in my firstchapter. Because of the great variety of mean­ ings that the label "Formalism" has attracted in the course of time, it seems legitimate to question its utility and to offer my own understanding of the term as a historical concept. The middle two chapters treat the Formalists from what I 9 Preface term a metapoetic stance. That is, their discourse about poetics is analyzed in terms of poetics itself, or more precisely, in terms of the poetic tropes that structure their theorizing. Chapter 2 focuseson the major metaphors of Formalist thought: the three tropological models that describe the literary work as a mecha­ nism, an organism, and a system. The third chapter addresses the synecdochic reduction of the work to its material stratum­ language-and the consequent substitution of linguistics forpo­ etics. In particular, I deal here with the two mutu'ally incompati­ ble concepts of poetic language advanced by the Formalists and the basic tenets of their metrics. I return to the question "what is Formalism?" in the last chap­ ter, where I take up the issue of the movement's unity. As I see it, the intellectual coherence of Formalism lies in its develop­ mental significance within the overall history of Slavic literary theory. This significance consists in the conjunction of two fac­ tors: the movement's effectively dividing pre-Formalistic from post-Formalistic scholarship, and its positing of a uniquely liter­ ary subject matter to be approached "scientifically," without pre­ suppositions. From this perspective, the baffling heterogeneity of Formalist theorizing can be seen as an "interparadigmatic" stage in the history of literary scholarship. In writing this book I have relied on the advice and help of a great many people. These were, firstof all, Rene Wellek, Victor Erlich, and Vadim Liapunov at Yale. At later stages, Miroslav Cervenka, Sergej Davydov, J. Michael Holquist, Joseph Mar­ golis, and Stephen Rudy provided valuable criticism, insightful suggestions, and much-needed encouragement. My special thanks go to Bernhard Kendler of Cornell University Press for the manner in which he guided my book through its numerous rites of passage. I am grateful forthe support of the American Council of Learned Societies, whose grant-in-aid in the summer of 1977 presented a palpable incentive forcontinuing my work, and to the Research Foundation of the University of Pennsylva­ nia, which furnished funds for the final typing of the manu­ script. But most of all, I am indebted to that "good look'n' girl" IO Preface who wanted me to write a book, and consequently had to put up with all the unpleasantness and deprivation that this process entailed. PETER STEINER Phi/,adelphia, Pennsylvania II Russian Formalism 1 Who Is Formalism, What Is She? History as a scholarly discipline recognizes only a single source of its knowledge-the word. -GUSTAV SPET, "History as an Object of Logic" These words of Spet's encapsulate the historian's dilemma. Writing about a school of literary theory fromthe past, I indeed have nothing but words at my disposal and no Polonius as a whipping boy. "Words are chameleons," declared the Formalist Jurij Tynjanov, whose own words I shall soon have occasion to reclothe in my own language; his phrase in turn is borrowed from a famous Symbolist poet, with whose generation the For­ malists had locked horns in an animated dialogue. Words change meaning as they pass from one context to another, and yet they preserve the semantic accretions acquired in the process. "Russian Formalism" is just such a locus communisout of which the history of ideas is made. Such terms are used over and over again until their repetition lends them the air of solid, univer­ sally accepted concepts whose referential identity is beyond doubt. A closer scrutiny, however, reveals a different picture. On sifting through the myriad texts in which "Russian For- I5 Russian Formalism malism" occurs, I discovered a wide diversity of functions the term was meant to serve: forex ample, as a stigma with unpleas­ ant consequences for anybody branded with it, a straw man erected only to be immediately knocked over, and a historical concept that on different occasions refersto very different liter­ ary scholars. Given the wide divergence of these speech acts (the preceding list can be easily augmented), "Russian Formalism," farfrom serving as a stable basis forscholar ly discussion, resem­ bles more an empty sign that might be filled with any content. Let me illustrate this contention with some concrete examples. Those we customarily call Formalists always rejected the label as a grossly misleading characterization of their enterprises. In his tongue-in-cheek essay, "The Formal Method: In Lieu of a Nec­ rologue," Boris Tomasevskij described the baptism of this movement: Formalism screamed, seethed, and made a noise. It also foundits own name-"OPOJAZ." In Moscow it was called the Linguistic Circle (by the way, the Moscow linguists never called themselves Formalists; this is a Petersburg phenomenon). It is worthwhile to say a few words about the name. Only its futurebiogr apher will have to decide who christened it the "For­ mal method." Perhaps in those noisy days it itself courted this ill­ suited designation. [But] Formalists who rejected the very notion of form as something opposed to content do not seem to square too well with this formula.' Boris Ejchenbaum voiced similar objections to the label "For­ mal method" in his gloves-offpolemics with contemporary anti­ Formalists: First of all, there is obviously no "Formal method." It is difficult to recall who coined this name, but it was not a very felicitous coin­ age. It might have been convenient as a simplifiedbattle cry but it failed as an objective term that delimits the activities of the "Soci- 1. "Formal'nyj metod: Vmesto nekrologa," Sovremennaja literatura: Sbornik statej (Leningrad, 1925), pp. 146-47. Unless indicated otherwise, all translations are my own. Who Is Formalism, What Is She? ety for the Study of Poetic Language" ("OPOJAZ") and the Sec­ tion for Verbal Arts at the Institute for the History of the Arts .... What is at stake are not the methods of literary study but the principles upon which literaryscience should be constructed-its content, the basic object of study, and the problems that organize it as a specific science .... The word "form" has many meanings which, as always, cause a lot of confusion. It should be clear that we use this word in a particular sense-not as some correlative to the notion of "con­ tent" (such a correlation is, by the way, false, for the notion of "content" is, in fact, the correlative of the notion "volume" and not at all of "form") but as something essential for the artistic phenomenon, as its organizing principle. We do not care about the word "form" but only about its one particular nuance. We are not "Formalists" but, if you will, specifiers. 2 Ejchenbaum was not the only member of the Formal school to suggest a more fitting name. "Morphological school," "ex­ pressionist" approach, and "systemo-functional" approach are only some of the labels concocted. This wealth of designations, however, indicates not merely dissatisfaction with the existing nomenclature, but a fundamental disunity in the movement it­ self. In part this disunity was a function of geography.
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