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Shklovsky, Viktor 430 SHKLOVSKY, VIKTOR Shklovsky, Viktor BRIGITTE FLICKINGER Viktor Borisovich Shklovsky (1893-1984), Russian literary theorist, critic, and writer of experimental prose, film scenarios, and memoirs (on Lev Tolstoy, Vladimir Maya- kovsky, and Sergei Eisenstein), was one of the initiators and leading representatives of Russian Formalism. Stimulated by his experience of Russian Futurism, he gave formalism many of its crucial concepts and key words. His theoretical works and analyses of literature and film influenced the SHKLOVSKY, VIKTOR 431 Prague Linguistic Circle, morphology, and istic of his later nonacademic professional structuralism. Shklovsky coined the term career. It occurred after midnight on De- “ostranenie ” (ocTpaHeHne, estrangement), cember 23, 1913, in the St Petersburg avant- one of the most important “devices ” of garde artists’ nightclub and cabaret, the poetic language and an essential concept Stray Dog, where he presented a paper on for the “scientihc method ” of formalist tex- “The place of futurism in the history of tual analysis. Though he was well known in language ” to a mixed audience of bohemian Russia from the late 1910s, it was not until intellectuals. This atmosphere of “scientific the 1950s that Western thinkers began to sociability ” suited Shklovsky ’s own evolving take notice of his provocative ideas about style: astute, witty, trenchant, telegram- literary form. matic, but vivid and full of ideas and Shklovsky was born in St Petersburg into associations. a family of Russian-German-Jewish origin Shklovsky ’s many books and thousands and grew up in the Tsarist capital where his of articles in the following years documen- father worked as a mathematics teacher. He ted his creative and scholarly ambitions studied philology and history at St Peters- (Sheldon 1977). His first, groundbreaking burg University during the economically Stray Dog article was incorporated into meager but culturally rich years of World “The resurrection of the word ” (1914), in War I. During the war, Shklovsky volun- which he asserts a fundamental linguistic teered for the Tsarist army, then later joined difference between poetic and common the Socialist Revolutionary Party and served language. While the word in everyday on the Petrograd Soviet and fought in the speech is “petrified ” (fossilized) through civil war (1918-21) against the Bolsheviks. “habituation ” and restricted to merely cog- In contrast to the revolutionary atmosphere nitive understanding, poetry succeeds in of the period 1905-17, the academic envi- “revitalizing ” the word, making it per- ronment upon his return to the university ceivable. By creating “new forms of art,” was still committed to traditional literary the poet makes us “see, not only recognize ” history: dealing with authors, their biogra- (Shklovsky 1 973b[1914]: 42-6). phies, and most of all with the ideas they Shklovsky developed a fundamental present. Young students, however, in a eu- component of Russian formalist theory - a phoric mood of innovation, wanted to tread methodology for analyzing literary devices - new paths. They gathered in private circles and dehned the task of formalist criticism. to discuss the literary works themselves, He met weekly with Boris Eikhenbaum, especially contemporary futurist poems. Yury Tynyanov, Osip Brik, and the linguist In his seminal study Russian Formalism , Lev Yakubinsky, in what from 1916 was Victor Erlich described the atmosphere of called the “Society for the Study of Poetic creative excitement of this period: “There Language ” (OPOYAZ). This was a forum was an air of intellectual excitement about for debating and for publishing on formal- these unique gatherings, combining the ear- ist subjects: on words, sounds, style, plot, nestness of the linguist ’s laboratory with the and story. Such investigations into poetic buoyant flippancy of a literary cafe” (1980 devices could make sense even of the trans- [1955]: 69). Inspired by Russian Futurism rational, “trans-sense-language ” poetry of and its experimental use of language (by Velimir Khlebnikov, who postulated the Mayakovsky and others), Shklovsky devel- primacy of sound over meaning and saw oped his own original theses on literature. the aesthetic experience in the phonetic His hrst public appearance was character- instrumentation and rhythm of a poem 432 SHKLOVSKY, VIKTOR (Shklovsky 1919[ 1916]). In cooperation and Shklovsky were accused of neglecting with Jakobson ’s Moscow Linguistic Circle the real task of art: to educate the “new (MLK), Shklovsky and the OPOYAZ de- socialist man. ” But Shklovsky was no apo- veloped a full-fledged formalist theory. litical, otherworldly theorist. From early on Shklovsky ’s seminal article “Art as device, ” he engaged actively in the political move- first published in an OPOYAZ anthology ments of the time, and the range and ver- in 1917, was regarded as the “manifesto of satility of his output was inextricably linked formalism, ” in which Shklovsky illustrates to the momentous political and cultural how, in contrast to common language, poetic changes in Russia throughout his lifetime. language achieves its “resurrection. ” Among In 1920 Shklovsky was appointed as a other devices (such as retardation or digres- lecturer at the Institute of Art History in sion), ostranenie (making strange) is the es- Petrograd and lived in the House of Arts, the sential artistic principle. As a neologism, this center of active literary life in the city. He Russian word ostranenie is itself “estranging ” also initiated, together with Maxim Gorky, - and is not easily translatable: the most Evgeny Zamyatin, and others, the young common translations in English are writers’ group the Serapion Brothers, to “alienation, ” “estrangement, ” “enstrange- support the writing projects of 12 gifted ment, ” and “defamiliarization. ” Ostranenie writers. But by the end of 1921, the exper- in literature has a double effect. First, by imental character of the Serapions ’ prose different means it counteracts the usual auto- lost official backing; in the following year, mation of our perception, prevents habit- when the secret police began to arrest mem- uation, and “lead[s] us to a ‘knowledge ’ of bers of the Social Revolutionist Party, a thing through the organ of sight instead Shklovsky fled into exile. Like so many of recognition. ” Second, defamiliarization political refugees he went to Berlin, where makes us conscious of the literary form itself he published A Sentimental Journey (1970 which is the actual obj ect of art and criterion for [ 1923]). The title, in a double sense ironical, aesthetic value. “By ‘enstranging ’ objects and alludes to Laurence Sterne ’s novel of the complicating form, ” Shklovsky writes, “the same name, but Shklovsky ’s journey was far device of art makes perception long and ‘labo- from being “sentimental. ” It was a journey rious. ’ Art is a means of experiencing the pro- through war, famine, illness, and death, an cess of creativity. The artefact itself is quite account of the atrocities of the civil war and unimportant; the object is not important ” of the early Bolshevik regime. Though he (1990a[ 1917]: 5-6). narrates like Sterne in a disjointed, episodic In the 1920s, Shklovsky clarified in way, full of digressions, his style is distant greater detail how “sjuzhet ” (plot) construc- and impartial. The book includes fascinat- tion - the organization of motifs within a ing portraits of artists and writers whom narrative - is decisive for the specific Shklovsky had met during these years - “zhanr ” (genre), be it a fairy tale, parody, including Nikolai Gumilyov, Alexander adventure story, or film. “Sjuzhet devices ” Blok, and Osip Mandelstam. like repetition, retardation, and parallelism Shklovsky ’s second book published in build a “staircase construction ” of increas- Berlin, Zoo, or Letters Not About Love ing effectiveness. As such “the form creates (1971 [1923]), is an autobiographical novel content for itself’ (1973a: 54, 56). This in 30 “letters” from the unhappy emigre, thesis, too rigidly understood by Soviet alien and lonely in Berlin after World politicians, was soon considered untenable. War I. The book reflects on the author ’s Towards the end of the 1920s, formalism unrequited love for a beautiful young SHKLOVSKY, VIKTOR 433 Moscow emigre (Elsa Triolet, later wife of realism” to be the basis of the literary pro- the French writer Louis Aragon) , by creating gram and the obligatory style. Shklovsky, a distant and unfamiliar poetic picture of who was not a party member, spoke at the the crisis-ridden, though culturally lively, sixth session. In a short but original contri- capital of Germany. The startling final letter bution he pleaded for a new humanism and is addressed to the Party Central Commit- the admissibility of sentiments in literature. tee, begging for permission to return to his In 1934 Stalinist purges began. home country. Shklovsky ’s involuntary stay Respecting Shklovsky ’s integrity, Richard in Berlin lasted from April 1922 until June Sheldon remarks in his introduction 1923. With the help of Gorky and Maya- to Sentimental Journey that Shklovsky kovsky he obtained an amnesty that allowed “dutifully recited and nominally heeded him to return to Russia. the official formulas required during the In Moscow Shklovsky joined the Stalinist era, but he never completely sur- arts group Left Front (LEF), an alliance rendered his early positions ” (1970: xxiv). of Marxist-Futurists, Constructivists, and His adaptability, originality, prolific
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