JOURNAL OF COMPARATIVE LITERATURE AND AESTHETICS Volume: XIV : Nos. 1-2: 1991 A VISHVANATHA KAVIRAJA INSTITUTE PUBLICATION The Present Volume is dedicated to Late Professor F.W. Galan who guest-edited the volume CONTENTS 0. Michael Holquist In Memoriam 1 Introduction: 1. Peter Steiner Go Not Thou about to Square the Circle: The Prague 3 School in a Nutshell. History: 2. Jindrich Toman Linguistics in Society: Notes on the Emergence of the 15 Prague Circle. 3. Milan Palec Prague Structuralism and the Czech Theatre of the 27 1930’s. 4. Peter Steiner Gustav Shpet and the Prague School: Conceptual 35 Frames for the Study of Language. 5. Kei. I. Yamanaka Jakobson on Peirce 45 6. Miroslav Cervenka Poetics and Phonology: Points of Disharmony. 59 Theory: 7. Hana Arie Gaifman The Dynamic Aspect of the Dominant. 65 8. Michael Sprinker From Prague to Paris: Formalism as a Method in 73 Literary Studies 9. Wendy Holmes Belated Meetings: Art History and Prague 87 Structuralism 10. David Herman Pragmatics, Prague-matics, Metapragmatics: 111 Contextualizing Pragmatic Contexts. Appendix: 11. Roman Jakobson On Modern Czech Poetry (1925) 141 12. Michael Holquist The Velvet Revolution (in Literary Studies). 149 Book Review Miroslav Cervenka Roman Jakobson: Echoes of His Scholarship. 159 Ffantisek Galan (1946-1991): 1d Memoriam MICHAEL HOLQUIST Make hue amon& tbe dart comedilllS. HaDoo tbem ia Ibo kIpIOOSt<1itIW..t'G IU aaswtZ from their icy Ely!ee. WaBacc SItYeDS On MondaY. 0cI0be.r 21. 1991. Fnmtiset GaI8. Professor of Comparative and Slavic LiIeJ11ure.at VandeIbi1t UnPersity, died after Ii six monlb eucounler with Leukemia. ProCessor Galan was horn in SJovatia in the dart years following tho German occupation. Bxcepc f« brief meetings. his father (a distinguished lawyer) and mother were sep&raSed by tbc war. aod men by events Jeading up to, and foUowingthe Communist accessioIi to power. Professor Galan was I3ised largely by aD oncIe.. a Supreme court judge. in BraIisIava. His fatber was arresIed and imprisoned. during the SJaasky tria1$, and aithough IaIer released. died a broken man. ProCessor Galan nevertheJes remembered his yootk with f~ and he never forgot the friends he made in those years.. many of Ibem now occupying rugh posts in the new Czechoslovakia. A great lover of aD the arts. Professor Galan early feU in love with classical American Jazz. and served as' the impresario for several local groups of musicians. It was only natural, then, OQentering the Comenius Uni~ty ofBratis!ava 'n 1966,.1ba1be sboaId devofe himself to a Major in English and AmericaD Studies, with a minot in Stavic Philology. After the Soviet invasion of 1968, ProCessor Galan left Czechoslovakia for Canada. where be received his B.A. (with a Major in Slavic Studies. and a Minor iB English) from the university ~ Torooao ill 1970. He began graduate wort ill Comparative Literature at PrincetcB the same year, receiviog his M.A. in 1974. He returned to Canada for his doctoral work at the University of Montreal He completed his dissertation, "Toward a Structural and Semiotic theory of Literary History : the Prague School Project. 192&-1944: and received his docIorate from Toronto in 1980, In 1971 Professor Galan begaR what was to be a distinguished (if all 100 shon) teaching career as an Assistant Professor at the Uni~ty of Pittsburgh; from 1978 to 19M he taught in the Slavic and Comparative Litetature departmencs at the University of Teus, Austin (wilh a stint as Adjunct Assisumt Professor of Semiotics at Brown University's Center for Semiotic Studies). JOfIntIIlofCtJmporG!i." liu1'tU1lTIarwlAu*tia. Vol. XlV: N-. ].2 : 1991 ,I Having done pioneering work in eaablisbiDg Ibc imponaooe of Russian Formalist film theory fora generation of Western experts, Professor Galan was appointed Associa1e Professor of English and Film at Georgia Institute of TedmoIogy."WbcIe he served from 1985 to 1988 (wben be spent. ()DCsemester appoinunent in the English Department of Emory University). In 1988 lie Iqok up his final appoinImeat as ProCessor of Compardtive and Slavic Literatures. Vanded>i1tUniversity. During his short life Professor Galan won several disU~ist\ed Fellowships r including those from the National Humanities Cenlet in TriIPJIe Part.. N. C. , the John Simon Guggenheim Foundatioo, the Ammcan Council of Learned SocieIies. L _the Woodrow Wilsoo International Center in Washington. D.C. His 1981 mooograph, Prague School Pragmatics and. above all. his magisttrial Historic StTIIClares : TM PragMe School Project, 1928-1946 (Austin : University of Texas Press. 1984), established Professor Galan as ODeof Ibc leading authorities in the area of East European literary theory. Historic StnlCtIITUwas immediately recognized as a work wboserigor was matched only by Us lucidity; it bas DOwappeared iD aew editions, as well as in Spanish and JapanetIe traosIatioD. At his death be bid completed editing a special issue of the Iodi8n JOII11IIIlof ComparalNe LlleralUre tmd Aestltetks devoted to the work of the Prague Scbool, and had all but finisbed Poetics of Cinema, an anthology of Formalist wriUDgson fdm theory (which will be completed by his friends). ProCessor Galan's caural project of his last years, a Wge volume on '1>rague Between the Wars: an auempt at a Semiotic Study of Culture, · will now not see the light of day. 'The world of learning will not soon fcqd ~se¥ GaJanas an emdite and hmo¥Mive scholar. But there is alwa:,'S a portioo of even the ~1eSt scholar's life &bat-is not writ many book.· or Ibis portioDof ~ Galan's existcD:e it may InIeIy be said &bathis inteIligalOe did DOtn.g in the Red. of <:enain death. Tbo9c who eajoycd the gift of his frieadsbip will dIcrisb an Ibeir lives Ibc memory of his preciIe wit. che degence of his petSOO&IStyle, and his c:oo.summaIeJove of aU things 0 beaudfuJ and well made. r \. 2 Go Not Thou about to Square the Circle: The Prague School in a Nutshell In memoriam Framisek W. Galan PETER STEINER The Prague School (henceforth PS) is the established name for the international group of scholars in linguistics, literature, theatre, folldore, and general aesthetics organized as the Prague Linguistic Circle (1926 - 1948).In its origins. the PS was in part indebted to Russian fonnalism. especially the Moscow branch (the Moscow Linguistic Circle whose institutional name it echoed), and some of its members (pete Bogatyrev. Roman Jakobson). At the same time. the PS had roots in both the Czech tradition of 19th-century Herbartian Formalism (Josef Durdik, Otakar Hostinsky) which conceived of Ihe artistic work as a set of formal relations. and in some post-Herbartian developments in poetics and Iheatre (Otakar Zich). Among other schools of thought Ihe PS was influenced by S~ussurian linguistics. Hussed's Phenomenology, and Gestalt ps)'chology. Such intellectual affinities were welcomed by Ihe members of the PS, since they perceived Iheir enterprise as the crystallization of tIie new scholarly paradigm for the humanities and social sciences which lakobson christened Structuralism (Jakobson, 1929 : 11). The history of the PS can be conveniently divided into three periods. The flCst begins with Ihe establishment of the Circle in 1926 and continues until 1934. During this time, the research of the StrUcturalists was oriented toward the internal organization of poetic works, especially their sound stratum. Roman Jakobsen's and Jan Mukarovsky's histories of old and modem Czech metrics are the most representative works of Ihis phase. The subsequent period (1934 to 1938) opens with Mukarovsky's study of a "little-known Czech poet of the early 191h century, Milota Zdirad Polak, and ends with Ihe Circle's collective volume devoted to the leading Czech Romantic, Karel Hynek Macha. In this period, the PS transcended its immanent orientation toward literary history : the semiotic concept of a literary work rendered it a social fact (i.e.. a sign understood by the members of a given col~ectivity) and enabled the Structralists to relate the developmental changes in literary history to all other aspects of human culture. Simultaneously, PS schoars exten<kd poetics into aesthetics, shifting from a concern wilh verbal art alone to a concern wilh all the arts and with extra-artistic aesthetics as well. JOfInIIJIofcomptUaJi'le LileraJlITund Autlwia Vo/.XN: Noz.1-2 : 1991 3 The last period. roughly from 1938 to 1948. is delimited by exteI1lalinterventions. The German invasion forced some members of the PS to leave Czechoslovakia (Bogatyrev. Jakobson, Rene Wenek) and severed the inemational contacts of the Circle; the Communist takeover ten years later effectively banned the Structuralist study of art and eventually led to the disbanding of the Circle. However, the first blow was mitigated by an influx of junior members into the Circle : the literary historian Felix Vodicka, the student of dramatic art Jiri Veltrusky, and the musicologist Antonin Sychra, among others. During this final stage the research of the PS shifted toward the subjects involved in artistic process (the author and the perceiver). Vodicka's systematic attempt to elaborate the history of lite.rary reception is among the most promising developments of this period. In the post-War years, the intellectual heritage of the PS was disseminated throughout the world by those members who left Prague. The Structuralist revolution of the 1960s in France and the United States was to a considerable degree stimulated by Roman Jakobson. who in the 1940s helped to establish the Linguistic Circle of New York, of which the French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss was a member. Petr Bogatyrev, who returned to the Soviet Union after the outbreak of the war, performed a simllar role there. A group of young lit.eraryscholars (Miroslav Cervenka. Lubomir Dolczel, Mojmir Grygar, Milan Jankovic) attempted a resurrection of the PS in Czechoslovakia in the 1960s, but the Soviet invasion of 1968 dealt it a final blow.