8. Literary agent The first reader of Alyosha’s fairy tale was his friend Elan Graf, he read the fairy tale aloud, laughed and repeated many phrases. “Alyosha, I want to translate your fairy tale into English, and then I will show it to my friends. One of them, the rich lawyer Seymour Praiser ,

LITERARY CIRCLE

Literary debut In December 1828, Gogol, together with his school friend Alexander Danilevsky, arrived in St. Petersburg. He brought with him the poem "Hanz Küchelgarten", written, as stated on the title page, in 1827. Gogol hid his early work under

B. M. EIKHENBAUM - LITERATURE HISTORIAN

Boris Mikhailovich Eikhenbaum (1886-1959) left a bright mark on our science. His work has always caused controversy and was often designed to do so. All his life he fought against patterns of thought and speech, against accepted views and all kinds of epigonism. He happily combined the brilliant talent of a researcher, the art of an artist of words and the fighting temperament of a polemicist. The heroes of his research were people of great quest, painful contradictions, and difficult development.

In his thoughts and conversations about literature, B. M. Eikhenbaum, on various occasions, often recalled one judgment of N. S. Leskov, one episode from his biography. Shortly before the death of the writer, M. A. Protopopov wrote an article about him, entitled “Sick Talent.” Leskov was not spoiled by attention and sympathy, Protopopov’s article was written in a benevolent tone, and the writer thanked the critic, but did not agree with the assessment of his literary path: “Writing about myself, I would call the article not sick talent, A difficult growth" If B. M. Eikhenbaum had to write an article about himself in his declining years, he, too, might have wanted to call it in Leskov’s style: “Difficult growth.”

Life's difficulties began with the choice of profession. B. M. Eikhenbaum did not immediately discover his literary vocation: in his youth he studied at the Military Medical Academy, was seriously interested in music and even dreamed of becoming a professional musician. He came to literature after thought and hesitation. Although Eikhenbaum's first printed work appeared back in 1907, literature became the main work of his life only in the pre-revolutionary years.

The revolutionary era posed difficult questions to the Russian intelligentsia. It was necessary to determine one’s place in life and respond to its new demands. In 1922, B. M. Eikhenbaum wrote: “Yes, we are still continuing our work, but we are already face to face with a new tribe. Will we understand each other? History has drawn the fiery line of revolution between us. But, perhaps, it is she who welds us together in impulses for new creativity - in art and science? .

“Impulses to creativity” emerged even before the revolution. During his years of study at St. Petersburg University, Eikhenbaum studied at the Pushkin Seminary of S. A. Vengerov, whose young participants sharply criticized university science for methodological helplessness, for replacing the historical study of literature with psychological characteristics, for complete indifference to the artistic specifics of literature, to issues of poetics. In his 1916 article “Karamzin,” B. M. Eikhenbaum speaks of the falsity of the “usual historical and literary method,” which brings the artist “under the general mentality of a particular era.” He strives to find the key to understanding the writer’s artistic principles and establishes an inextricable connection between Karamzin’s poetics and his general philosophical judgments. At the same time, the writer, according to Eikhenbaum, does his literary work consciously, in full accordance with his general worldview, with his views on the world and man. On these foundations he builds his poetics. In the art of the writer, Eikhenbaum emphasizes the moment of creative energy, “active doing.”

The idea of ​​the active role of art and its creators in life and history remained with Eikhenbaum forever, but the thesis about the inseparability of poetics and philosophy subsequently underwent significant changes. This was associated with the activities of OPOYAZ (Society for the Study of Poetic Language), which B. M. Eikhenbaum joined in 1919, becoming one of its main participants who put forward the so-called formal method in literary criticism. In an effort to establish an understanding of literature as verbal art, scientists of this school, and B. M. Eikhenbaum among them, began to consider a literary work as a self-contained whole, as a sum (or system) of artistic techniques. The development of literature was understood as the replacement of outdated techniques of the dominant school that had lost their effectiveness and perceptibility with other techniques that are cultivated in each era by “younger”, peripheral movements of literature. The connection between literary development and the movement of general history, with the cultural-historical process was completely ignored.

In the poetics of the writer and each literary work, B. M. Eikhenbaum, even during the OPOYAZ period, still saw a natural phenomenon, but now no longer welded to one or another ideological and philosophical system, but completely autonomous, having its own pattern, its own semantic significance

both in general and in individual elements, even phonetic ones. Moreover: since the task was to separate the artistic word as sharply as possible from business speech (scientific, philosophical, etc.), then precisely the issues related to the sound form were brought to the fore - issues of rhythm and meter, vocal instrumentation and melody. In line with these interests lies the study of B. M. Eikhenbaum “Melody of Russian lyric verse” (1922), as well as his works devoted to “auditory” analysis and in the field of artistic prose. Not only in verse, which “by its very nature is a special kind of sound,” but also in prose works, B. M. Eikhenbaum emphasizes the “auditory” element, “the beginning of an oral tale, the influence of which is often detected in syntactic turns, in the choice of words and their staging, even on the composition itself” (“Illusion of a Skaz”, 1918). The desire to tell and force one to listen, thus creating the illusion of oral storytelling, is seen by B. M. Eikhenbaum in Pushkin the prose writer, in Turgenev, in Gogol, and especially in Leskov, whom he considers a “born storyteller.”

Eikhenbaum’s well-known work “How the Overcoat is Made” (1919) is also connected with the problems of “skaz”, which examines the narrator’s speech techniques, his “personal tone” and characterizes the principles of composition generated by this special tale manner. At the same time, the author emphasizes the content and significance of the form of the work, which is manifested even in the sound shell of the word, in its acoustic characteristics. But, on the other hand, the famous “humane place” in “The Overcoat”, that is, an episode about a young man who heard, as in the “penetrating words” of Akaki Akakievich, “Leave me alone, why are you offending me?” other words rang: “I am your brother,” - B. M. Eikhenbaum considers only as an artistic device within the framework of the contrasting, pathetic-humorous construction of the story, leaving aside Gogol’s social sympathies, his moral aspirations and ideals. Several years after B. M. Eikhenbaum’s article, A. L. Slonimsky, in a polemic with this article, rightly noted that in the reflections of a young man, “that high point of contemplation from which the author laughs at the world” is revealed, and following A. Slonimsky, the famous Gogol researcher V.V. Gippius wrote about the same “pathetic place”: “Of course, like everything in art, this place is subordinate to the general artistic

plan, and in it, as in the conclusion of “The Tale of Ivan Ivanovich and Ivan Nikiforovich,” there is a contrast effect, but such an effect could appear in Gogol’s work only when he was psychologically prepared ... » .

The point, however, was that the supporters of the formal movement sought to bypass precisely the “point of contemplation” of the writer, his life experience, his social position, because to put the work in connection with such facts meant for them to replace the literary approach to this work with a biographical approach , psychological or otherwise. The article about “The Overcoat” was also reflected in that deliberate pointedness, that polemical bravado that the formalists loved so much, especially in their early period, when in disputes with opponents they, in the words of Eikhenbaum, “directed all their efforts to show the meaning of constructive techniques, and put everything else aside ... " “Many of the principles put forward by the formalists during the years of intense struggle with opponents,” wrote Eikhenbaum, “had the meaning not only of scientific principles, but also of slogans, paradoxically sharpened for the purposes of propaganda and opposition.”

When Eikhenbaum moves from the analysis of an individual work to a monographic study of a writer, then in this case he considers his work as a kind of unified work, and the author himself as a manifestation or embodiment of the literary tasks of the era. This method was reflected in the works of B. M. Eikhenbaum of the 20s “Anna Akhmatova”, “Young Tolstoy”, and, perhaps most clearly, in the article “Nekrasov” and in the book “Lermontov. Experience in historical and literary evaluation."

These works are clearly experimental in nature: the author, with emphasized demonstrativeness, eliminates the personality of the writer, the peculiarities and accidents of his individual fate, in order to more accurately see the course of history, its laws and “requirements.” “He played his role in the play that history composed,” Eikhenbaum wrote about Nekrasov. To understand this role, it was necessary first of all to part with popular opinions that

Nekrasov has a “weak form”. “These opinions,” Eikhenbaum believed, “testify only to the bad aestheticism of those who express them, the primitiveness of their taste and the limitations of their idea of ​​art.” And further - the analysis of that “living historical fact” that Nekrasov’s poetry was, led to the conclusion that Nekrasov was endowed with an exceptionally subtle aesthetic sense and that this is precisely why his muse, unlike her classical sisters, had her own artistic task, prompted by time - to bring poetry closer to prose, thus creating a new poetic language, a new form.

The book about Lermontov ends with these words: “Lermontov died early, but this fact has nothing to do with the historical work that he did, and does not change anything in the resolution of the historical and literary problem that interests us. It was necessary to sum up the classical period of Russian poetry and prepare the transition to the creation of new prose. History demanded this - and Lermontov did it.” The words “it was necessary” and “history demanded this” are typical here. There are many similar formulations in the book. “Poetry had to win over a new reader who demanded “content.” Belinsky, who was the head of these new readers, unlike other critics (Vyazemsky, Polevoy, Shevyrev), who were representatives of literature, welcomed Lermontov as a poet who was able to give what was required,” this is one of the characteristic provisions of this book. Its main character is history, she puts forward her inexorable demands (in this case through the mouth of Belinsky). Lermontov submits to them with such completeness and completeness, as if his personal will is not involved in this.

Of course, there was a lot of vulnerability in this position of Eikhenbaum (now this is clear without explanation), but there was also something in it that made it possible to see in Lermontov’s work the preparation of Nekrasov’s poetry, to hear the oratorical intonations in his voice, to notice the fundamentally important features of his poetry, his a new attitude to the poetic word, his predilection for speech formulas - “alloys of words” and much more, to which we are now so accustomed that we do not even associate these observations with the name of the discoverer - the best proof of the strength of the facts he found and approved. A modern researcher of Lermontov writes about Eikhenbaum’s book: “This is extremely talented,

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the skeptical and cold book ultimately turned out to be more useful than many other works that were free of its methodological shortcomings. The knowledge about Lermontov obtained by B. M. Eikhenbaum was taken into account by all contemporary Lermontov scholars.”

The principle of studying literary facts that was applied in the book about Lermontov and related works concealed a new question that inevitably arose before the scientist and was only pushed aside for a while. Why did this particular writer - Lermontov, Nekrasov - fulfill this or that “requirement” of history, and not another of his contemporary? Why did history make him its chosen one and place the heavy burden of its tasks on his shoulders? Why exactly did he hear her voice? Already in an article about Nekrasov, Eikhenbaum wrote that individual freedom is manifested in the ability to implement historical laws, that individual creativity “is an act of awareness of oneself in the flow of history.” Thus, the need arose to carefully consider what conditions of personal life, that is, the same general laws, only refracted in private fate, prepare a person for the fulfillment of historical tasks. B. M. Eikhenbaum posed all these questions in the most detailed form on the material of the work of Leo Tolstoy, who, along with Lermontov, became a constant companion of his scientific life.

Eikhenbaum, as we will see later, did not immediately come to an understanding of the historical relevance of Lermontov. The relevance of Tolstoy was always clear to him. In 1920, in the article “On Tolstoy’s Crises,” Eikhenbaum builds the following scheme: in pedagogical articles and then in a treatise on art, Tolstoy substantiates folk, simple, “children’s” art and sharply opposes the traditionally “poetic” images that he listed with comic seriousness. In the poetry of the Symbolists, all these thunderstorms, nightingales, moonlight, maidens, etc., ridiculed by Tolstoy, “were subjected to a new poeticization.” Isn’t it to Tolstoy, asks Eikhenbaum, “that we will return in search of a new ‘non-poetic’ art?” It is characteristic that, while studying the style of V. I. Lenin, B. M. Eikhenbaum saw in him features close to the style of L. Tolstoy. “Everything that bears the imprint of “poetry” or philosophical sublimity,

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arouses anger and ridicule in Lenin. In this sense, he is as ascetic and stern as Tolstoy." B. M. Eikhenbaum saw here not a simple similarity, but a historical contact, which in a special way confirmed the relevance of studying Tolstoy in our days.

In Tolstoy’s life, “the act of realizing oneself in the flow of history” was so stormy and tragically complex that limiting oneself to one statement of fact was completely unthinkable: biography was inextricably intertwined with history. In his work on Tolstoy (and then again on Lermontov and other writers), B. M. Eikhenbaum came to study facts of a biographical nature, and this was a new stage of his literary work, arising from the previous one, as if embedded in it and at the same time he, in essence, rejected and overcame him. This was already a departure from formalism. In fact, literary facts were now raised to the social experience of the writer, to his social position, to the struggle of social and literary forces, to the broad ideological movement of the era. In a word, it was an exit to the historical and literary space, while the horizons of supporters of the formal school were inevitably limited only to the “literary series.”

Thus, the negative that was contained in the formal method was overcome - the exclusion of literature from active social struggle, the assertion of the autonomy of the artistic form. But the strong side of this method - close attention to artistic structure, to issues of poetics and stylistics - was retained by Eikhenbaum in the future.

Eikhenbaum himself perceived the transition to studying a work in connection with the personal and social experience of the writer, with his biography, and biography in connection with the socio-historical process as a new stage in his path. Having spent a lot of effort in his time on justifying the formal method, Eikhenbaum in 1928, in the preface to the first volume of his monograph on Tolstoy, dedicated several very poisonous lines to critics who would regret that he moved away from this method. “These are the ones,” he wrote, “who previously regretted that I “came” to him. ... The surprise of these reviewers at the evolution of literary criticism causes on my part only bewilderment at their naivety.”

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Along this path, the researcher faced various and difficult questions. Only within the framework of the study of Tolstoy can one see how the scale of research grows, how new topics and new approaches appear, how Tolstoy’s problem turns in different directions: either Tolstoy’s “archaism” and “patriarchal aristocracy” are brought to the fore, then his landowner-economic interests, either the Decembrist traditions in his mind, or his peasant essence. It is characteristic that B. M. Eikhenbaum undertook the study of the young Tolstoy three times and in different ways. In the early book “Young Tolstoy,” the center was questions “about Tolstoy’s artistic traditions and about the system of his stylistic and compositional techniques.” In the first volume of the monograph, the question of Tolstoy’s self-determination in the conditions of “the era of the fifties with its social shifts, stratifications, crises, etc.”, while biographical issues were considered “under the sign of not “life” in general (“life and creativity”) , but historical fate, historical behavior." In his last works, which the author was not able to compile into a coherent book, he was most occupied with Tolstoy’s connections with the progressive movements of the era.

In short, a lot has changed, but one thing has remained unchanged. The historical behavior of a writer in the studies of B. M. Eikhenbaum is always a complex and painful process, full of dramatic tension, the struggle of the writer with himself, with contemporaries, with like-minded people, and sometimes with loved ones. L. Tolstoy, in Eikhenbaum’s works of different years, is in an unusually difficult relationship with history: sometimes he “grumbles” at it, he resists it, he does not want to “recognize the power of history over himself”; sometimes, on the contrary, he suffers, feeling “not only the approach of death, but also dissociation from history, which for Tolstoy was tantamount to death,” etc. In the end, as a result of all these difficulties and this struggle, he accomplishes that great a task that only he could accomplish: “Peasant Rus', which over the centuries had accumulated its strength and its powerlessness, its faith and its despair, its wisdom and its grief, its love and its hatred, should have received the right from history to the voice. Tolstoy was prepared with his entire past

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to ensure that history entrusts this right to him” (“On the Contradictions of Leo Tolstoy”).

Relations with history, according to B. M. Eikhenbaum, became especially difficult for those writers who, due to a number of personal and social reasons, were not prepared for the turbulent political life of the 60s, were not “ideologists” and “intellectuals”, but they entered literature as people of a different education, different skills and traditions compared to those democrats of the sixties who traced their origins to Belinsky. B. M. Eikhenbaum included L. Tolstoy and Leskov, and for a later period, Chekhov, among such writers, explaining much of their literary and social position and fate precisely by this feature of their life experience.

As for Tolstoy, while searching for his genealogy, determining his “origin,” B. Eikhenbaum over the years became more and more strengthened in the idea of ​​​​L. Tolstoy’s deep connections with the noble liberation movement. In the report “Recent problems in the study of L. Tolstoy” (1944), Eikhenbaum developed the idea of ​​“the historical kinship of Tolstoy’s life and literary positions with Decembrism.” " In the person of Tolstoy, he wrote, the historical process of evolution of the Decembrist ideology ended, reaching a majestic, albeit tragic apotheosis - the landowner’s admiration for the patriarchal peasantry.” The report ended with these words: “I must note that the hypothesis I presented grew out of Lenin’s articles on Tolstoy and is an attempt at historical and literary concretization of his main theses. These articles give rise to a natural and necessary question: what historical and literary traditions made Tolstoy “the exponent of those ideas and those sentiments that had developed among millions of the Russian peasantry at the time of the onset of the bourgeois revolution in Russia?” My entire report is an attempt to answer this question.” This attempt was continued and expanded in subsequent works, and not only those devoted to Tolstoy. The question was posed broadly - about the role of the historical and literary traditions of the liberation movement in the development of Russian literature. Ideas and aspirations generated by Decembrism and which turned out to be significant, although, of course, in different ways, both for Lermontov and L. Tolstoy, the socio-economic ideas of the Petrashevites, Fourier’s theory of passions and in general a wide range of socio-utopian

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ideas - all this was attracted by B. M. Eikhenbaum to clarify the historical significance of the writers he studied. At the same time, we were talking about both the ideological basis of their creativity and the very essence of their artistic method. Thus, in the socio-utopian ideas of the 19th century, B. M. Eikhenbaum saw the pan-European basis of the “psychologism” that developed in literature, to which the peculiarities of Russian life gave a particularly intense moral character. This was reflected with particular force in Tolstoy’s method of “dialectics of the soul,” which began with “A Hero of Our Time.” Chernyshevsky noticed and welcomed Tolstoy’s “dialectics of the soul,” and he also saw the preparation of this method in Lermontov’s novel. This is how Eikhenbaum establishes the internal similarity of the ideological and creative stimuli of such seemingly different artists and thinkers as Lermontov, Chernyshevsky and L. Tolstoy. Another example. At the heart of the image of Pechorin’s appearance, in his portrait, Eikhenbaum sees a whole natural science and philosophical theory that served as a support for early materialism, and behind the “Fatalist,” as he shows, there is a philosophical and historical movement associated with the Decembrist idea of ​​“fate” and “providence” and based on the work of French historians.

All these observations were fresh and fascinating; they enriched our science with new facts, original historical and literary constructions, and fruitful hypotheses. In a review of Eikhenbaum’s book “Leo Tolstoy. The Seventies,” completed by him in 1940, J. Bilinkis well defined the weight of the author’s scientific achievements, the measure of what he accomplished: “ ... The researcher sought to see the features of Tolstoy’s imaginative thinking and artistic ideas in their inextricable connection with everything that lived the era - with its people and the state of the economy, with the role in the seventies of various philosophical systems, pedagogy, women's issues, interest in the past ... Tolstoy's time itself reveals itself in its complexity and multicoloredness. ... The book was published almost entirely as it had been written two decades earlier. But it does not look outdated precisely because by the end of the thirties, Eikhenbaum, having traveled a long and difficult path, was able to take a new approach to literary phenomena.”

This new approach involved a comparative study of heterogeneous material, Russian and foreign, literary and extra-literary; it required broad parallels and bold convergences.

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Sometimes it seems that these comparisons take the author far from the main subject, that they turn into an end in themselves. But in the end, the reader, with a feeling of aesthetic pleasure, sees how all the threads are knitted into one knot, the beginnings meet the ends, and from heterogeneous and scattered blocks emerges, as B. M. Eikhenbaum liked to say, “the masonry of history.” About this side of his method in relation to the study of L. Tolstoy, B. I. Bursov writes: “In terms of the richness and breadth of the material involved, the accuracy and wit of the comparisons ... the accuracy of a number of characteristics and the general elegance of the style of B. M. Eikhenbaum’s book stand out clearly in the vast literature about Tolstoy. They contain many digressions directly from the topic; a large place is occupied by the demonstration of material, sometimes unexpected, usually done in an unusual and exciting way.”

Establishing a connection between literary works and schools with the ideological trends of time, Eikhenbaum proceeded from the fact that “these ideas themselves are born of the era and form part of its historical reality.”

He also needed a comparative historical study of literary material in order to reveal the national-historical roots of the deep interest of Russian writers in certain European theories and trends. “Speaking of “influences,” he wrote, “we forget that a foreign author by himself cannot form a new “trend,” because each literature develops in its own way, based on its own traditions.” Moreover, he believed that there is no influence at all in the exact meaning of the word, because only what has been prepared by the “local literary movement” can be learned from a foreign author. This was the constant thought of B. M. Eikhenbaum, and he persistently affirmed it at different times and on different occasions. Thus, many years after the above lines were written, B. M. Eikhenbaum, exploring the spread of social-utopian ideas in Russian literature of the 30s, again emphasized that this fact is explained not by outside influences, but by the fact that “Russia in the 30s, with its enslaved people and intelligentsia driven into exile,

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was no less than France a fertile ground for the development of social-utopian ideas and for their dissemination in fiction, since other paths were closed to them.”

In the early 20s, when he belonged to a formal school, B. M. Eikhenbaum considered it fundamentally impossible to go beyond the “literary series.” Then, from the end of the 20s and especially in the last period, entering into related areas of ideology and directly into public life became for B. M. Eikhenbaum one of the most reliable ways of clarifying the meaning of literary facts that reveal their historical significance in the movement of ideological forces and the elements of the era. That is why in this collection the works of this most fruitful period occupy the main place.

The most important quality of B. Eikhenbaum as a scientist was a clear consciousness that the ultimate truth was unknown to him and that this stage of his scientific development was a transition to the next. Passionately defending his beliefs, he, however, never absolutized his theories and liked to say that solving a scientific question completely is the same as closing America. Science, he believed, “is not a trip with a pre-booked ticket to such and such a station, to a destination.” He was deeply convinced that literary constructions cannot remain unchanged, otherwise it would be necessary to “declare the history of literature a science that has ceased, having clarified everything.” B. M. Eikhenbaum ended his famous book “The Melody of Russian Lyric Verse” with the words: “theories perish or change, but the facts, found and approved with their help, remain.” Of course, the word “facts” should not be understood here in a primitive empirical sense. We are talking about phenomena that are not easy to see, which are revealed only to the close gaze of the researcher. B. M. Eikhenbaum always considered the ability to see facts to be much more important in scientific work than the establishment of schemes, and he saw the ability to put forward hypotheses that are subject to verification and clarification as a precious property of discoverers. It must be said that he himself was excellent at this art, and especially brilliantly

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it appeared in him when he moved from the immanent analysis of literary facts to their socio-historical explanation. With such an attitude towards science, could B. M. Eikhenbaum dogmatically defend what he was leaving behind as a result of internal evolution? Of course no. In the passed stages of his path, he saw precisely the stages that change in connection with the natural, life-conditioned movement of science and are themselves subject to historical explanation.

B. M. Eikhenbaum always unswervingly followed one principle: to work with a living reference to modernity. To begin a research study of Lermontov, he had to feel the connection of his poetry with modernity. He did not succeed in this at first, and he wrote about Lermontov in a language that was later uncharacteristic for him: “His efforts to heat up the blood of Russian poetry, to bring it out of the state of Pushkin’s balance are tragic—nature resists him and his body turns into marble.” The author made a note to this place in “The Melody of Russian Lyric Verse”: “In the chapter on Lermontov, I allow myself the luxury of critical impressionism precisely because I do not feel support for the perception of his poetry in modern times, and without this living support, without a common Feel style I can study” (p. 409). In the literary past, it was important to discover what is alive for the present, in every phenomenon of this past what is alive now. With this began the harsh work of science for him, before that - “the luxury of critical impressionism.” History and modernity were thus inextricably intertwined for him; He saw the task of historical science (including the history of literature) not in recreating self-contained eras of the past, but in studying the constantly operating laws of historical dynamics.

Throughout B. M. Eikhenbaum’s career, the main subject of his literary studies always remained history, and the main character of his works was a writer who knew how to hear its voice and feel its needs. It is no coincidence that Eikhenbaum sought to discover historical meaning even in the seemingly purely personal, individual characteristics of the writer. Thus, in Eikhenbaum’s interpretation, Leskov’s “old faith”, his dislike for “theorists”, as well as the “excessiveness” of his style, his passion for word games, for folk etymology received a historical explanation. The features and patterns of the writer’s artistic system were always the focus of Eikhenbaum’s attention, which is why he did not like those traditional works about “mastery”, in which it was viewed simply as

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the author's personal talent, such as the ability to write well. He certainly needed to uncover the historical basis and ideological basis of this “mastery.” In the article “On Lenin’s views on the historical significance of Tolstoy,” Eikhenbaum especially emphasized that in Lenin’s articles “the entire problem of studying Tolstoy was shifted from an individual psychological basis to a historical one” and “thus not only the inconsistency of Tolstoy, but also the “naivety” of his teachings, which seemed simply a personal property of his mind, received historical justification.” Eikhenbaum also found a historical basis in Turgenev’s peculiar “artistry”; he understood this trait not as a personal pose, but as a writer’s position that developed back in the 30s and 40s and was characteristic of that era. Eikhenbaum sought to show that history, with its tasks, laws and requirements, permeates not only the writer’s work, but also his life, his personal behavior, the little things and particulars of his life. “The sense of history,” wrote B. M. Eikhenbaum, “introduces into every biography the element of fate, not in a crudely fatalistic understanding, but in the sense of the extension of historical laws to the private and even intimate life of a person” (“Creativity of Yu. Tynyanov”).

One might think that there was something personal in B. M. Eikhenbaum’s persistent attachment to this topic. He himself was endowed with a sense of special, literary responsibility before history, before the era, before modernity. He admired the writerly confidence of Tolstoy, who once said: “The whole world will perish if I stop.” For scientific creativity he needed a historical stage. B. M. Eikhenbaum’s views changed, he considered this completely natural, but at every stage of his path he defended his modern thought and in this, again, he saw his literary duty to modernity. This sense of duty was reflected in the fact that B. M. Eikhenbaum strove for work designed not only for experts, but for the widest circle of readers. He loved practical, applied, “craft” work and attached high importance to the very concept of “craft”. He entitled one of his articles, devoted to modern problems of literary criticism: “Let’s talk about our

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In one of his autobiographical sketches, B. M. Eikhenbaum wrote: “A person is young as long as he lives with a sense of historical elements ... " This feeling never left him, it became a feature of his personality and was reflected in everything - even in the features of his literary style, which combines the features of pathos and irony. The pathos is understandable; it is generated by a sense of history, a consciousness of responsibility to the era. But why did the irony arise? But it permeates many pages of Eikhenbaum’s scientific works. Sometimes this seems strange, especially when it comes to such literary giants as Tolstoy. In the article “On the Contradictions of Leo Tolstoy,” B. M. Eikhenbaum, analyzing one Tolstoy page from his diary, writes about it in the following language: “At the beginning of this same year (1896 - G.B.) year Tolstoy, complaining of loss of spirit, turned to God with a wonderful speech, demanding special attention to himself and dictating his terms to him.” And further, after a diary entry containing this appeal to “the father of my and all life,” Eikhenbaum continues in the same spirit: “God, as usual, did not answer anything to this touching old man's message." The underlined word explains where the irony comes from here. The author is touched and admired by the tragic heroism of a brilliant man who, even in old age, feels the fullness of historical responsibility for his personal behavior. But, like Turgenev’s Bazarov, who was afraid to “fall apart,” Eikhenbaum feared sensitivity and “delights” like fire and did not allow himself to fall into lyricism. The feeling of a “historical element” gave rise to internal pathos; irony chastely hid it. The organic combination of these contradictory elements was an important and characteristic feature of the literary manner and the very life position of Boris Mikhailovich Eikhenbaum.

Aesthetics and theory of art of the 20th century [Anthology] Migunov A. S.

Eikhenbaum B.M. The theory of "formal method"

Eikhenbaum B.M.

The theory of "formal method"

Eikhenbaum Boris Mikhailovich(1886–1959) – literary scholar, literary critic, theorist and cultural historian, one of the leading representatives of the Russian “formal school”. Graduated from the Faculty of History and Philology of St. Petersburg University (1912); in 1914 he was left at the university in the department of Russian language and literature. After graduating from the university, he taught literature at the gymnasium and appeared in periodicals in St. Petersburg as a literary critic of the aesthetic and philosophical direction. In 1918, he joined OPOYAZ (Society for the Study of Poetic Language), which predetermined his turn to “concrete philology,” primarily to poetics. Since 1918 he has been a professor at Petrograd (since 1924 Leningrad) University; at the same time (since 1920) - one of the leaders of the State Institute of Art History (1920–1931).

In 1919 B.M. Eikhenbaum wrote his most famous article, “How Gogol’s “Overcoat” was Made,” in which he practically demonstrated the methods and techniques of formal analysis of a specific literary text and made an important theoretical discovery - the phenomenon of skaz - the subjective organization of a literary work, which has its own speech, style, compositional and intonation features. At the same time, Eikhenbaum was studying other aspects of poetics - the analysis of verse, the typology of literary genres, and the tasks of literary criticism. His monographs were published on the melody of Russian verse, the works of the early L. Tolstoy, M. Lermontov, A. Akhmatova. Eikhenbaum polemically contrasted the emphasized objectivism of the analysis of artistic form with the subjectivism of the aesthetic essayism of the Symbolists and the political-ideological predetermination of Marxist-oriented scientists.

On July 16, 1923, the main newspaper of the USSR, Pravda, published an article by L.D., a member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the RCP(b). Trotsky’s “The Formal School of Poetry and Marxism,” which was later included in his book “Literature and Revolution” (M., 1923; 1924). In it, the “formal school” was qualified not only as “superficial” and “reactionary”, but also as “the only theory that, on Soviet soil over the years,” “opposes itself theoretically to Marxism” ( Trotsky L. Literature and revolution. M., 1991. P. 130). The opposition to Marxism as a Soviet ideology and the only correct methodology for scientific analysis of social phenomena (including culture), attributed to the “formal school,” made the “formal school” the main philosophical opponent and class opponent of Soviet power within the country. The “formal school” was accused of philistine lack of ideas, idealism, disguised “clergymanship”, “aesthetic megalomania” (Ibid. p. 144), etc. Trotsky considered the use of formal methods and techniques permissible only as applied tools of analysis (statistical calculations, analysis of etymology, syntax, etc.). Eikhenbaum immediately realized that the leader’s main reproach was that the formalists “do not want to put up with the auxiliary, service-technical significance of their methods,” claiming a worldview role.

Trotsky’s article sounded like a command calling for ideological elaboration and political persecution of the “formal school.” The magazine “Print and Revolution” organized on its pages a discussion about “formalism” (1924. Book 5). The speakers in it were: on behalf of the “formal school” - B.M. Eikhenbaum; on behalf of Soviet humanities - A.V. Lunacharsky, P.N. Sakulin, P.S. Kogan, Val. Polyansky [P.I. Lebedev]. From discussing questions of the methodology of the science of literature and art (which Eikhenbaum emphasized), the discussion flowed into a purely political direction, and then turned to personalities. The discussion was concluded by “party theorist” N.I. Bukharin (Red Nov. 1925. Book 3). All opponents condemned the “formalists”, calling them “the Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik intelligentsia”, “enemies of Marxism”, and the “formal method” - “reactionary”, “a special disease of Spetsovsky gourmandism”, “self-defense from Marxism”, “cadetism”. Eikhenbaum cautiously explained that, unlike Marxists, “formalists” study not the “social content” of literature, but the art of words itself, not the political “genesis” of literary phenomena, but their evolution in the history of culture. As a result of the sociological approach to the study of literature, the scientist wrote, a substitution occurs: instead of a work of art, its tendentious interpretation, largely introduced by the interpreter himself, is comprehended; literature becomes an “illustration” or “aesthetic appendage” of politics and ideology; only the content of art is considered, and not the art itself; various cultural phenomena are unified as social phenomena, without analyzing their form. Marxism, he noted, extrapolates general socio-economic problems into the field of art, thereby ignoring its specificity, and commits violence against it, scholastically transferring “general schemes” from one scientific field to another. But, according to Eikhenbaum, it is incorrect to contrast Marxism and “formalism”: Marxism is a “philosophical and historical doctrine”, and “formalism” is a “system of private science” (like the theory of relativity). No less indicative is the identification by Marxists of poetics as the science of poetic language and poetry itself, characteristic of the articles of Trotsky and Bukharin. “The historical parallelism of different series of culture,” the scientist wrote, cannot be turned into a “functional (cause-and-effect) relationship,” otherwise than schematically and tendentiously.

The philosopher responded to Marxist criticism with new works. In the book “On Literary Life” (L., 1927), the scientist, relying on the biographical facts of the works of Tolstoy, Lermontov, Nekrasov and other Russian classics, built a kind of “sociology of literature” that answers the question “how to be a writer” in each particular -historical era. This understanding of the sociology of literature was at odds with the generally accepted Soviet view of it, which consisted in the application of the dogmas of historical materialism to the history of literature. Another experience in achieving a holistic style of cultural activity was the book by B.M. Eikhenbaum’s “My Time Worker” (L., 1929), representing the scientific fiction genre. The scientist’s last chance to present his original scientific concept was the collection of his articles “Literature: Theory. Criticism. Controversy" (L., 1929).

In the article “The Theory of the Formal Method” (1925), Boris Mikhailovich cast a “farewell glance” at the theoretical achievements of the formalists as representatives of literary science. Essentially, a review of the works he wrote - his own and those of his comrades in the “formal school” (R. Yakobson, L. Yakubinsky, V. Shklovsky, O. Brik, B. Tomashevsky, Yu. Tynyanov, partly V. Zhirmunsky, etc.) - was a kind of school report on the scientific work done. The scientist emphasized the novelty of these studies - in comparison with their predecessors: A.A. Potebney, A.N. Veselovsky, A. Bely, V. Bryusov, K. Chukovsky and not mentioned for censorship reasons by D. Merezhkovsky and Yu. Aikhenvald. Consciously ignoring the political slander of opponents, refusing claims to create a special aesthetic theory and scientific methodology, B.M. Eikhenbaum listed the real merits of representatives of the formal method: in the study of poetic language as opposed to practical (“prose”), including the specifics of poetic language, the role of sound repetitions, rhythm and metric in verse and prose; in the analysis of plot and plot, tale, poetics of genres, the relationship of material and form; in understanding the paths of literary evolution caused by the fluidity and changeability of the form itself and the various functions of this or that device, the struggle between old and new, often taking the form of parody, the polemics of senior and junior literary schools, the interaction of genres - including “minor” and “mass” literature; in the study of “literary fact” and “literary life”, which make it possible to understand literature as a “peculiar social phenomenon” - precisely in its originality.

However, no caution and correctness of self-presentation of B.M. Eikhenbaum’s “formal method” could not compensate for its “foreignness” to Marxism. After the beginning of the 1930s, the mention of a “formal school”, as well as work in line with “formalism”, became dangerous and were associated with “left” or “right” deviations in Soviet culture. The scientist deliberately went into traditional philology, devoting himself to the history of Russian literature of the 19th century and textual criticism. He acted as an editor and commentator on the collected works of Lermontov, Turgenev, Nekrasov, L. Tolstoy, Saltykov-Shchedrin. But the “formalistic” past continued to haunt the scientist, like the shameful stigma of an “anti-Marxist.” In 1936, at the height of the campaign against formalism, he had to “repent” and admit his mistakes. In 1949, in connection with the launched campaign against cosmopolitanism, B.M. Eikhenbaum was fired from the Pushkin House (due to illness) and Leningrad University (for mistakes in work), and they practically stopped publishing. True, in 1956 he was allowed to return to the Pushkin House. Latest books by B.M. Eikhenbaum - the third in a series of studies on the work of L. Tolstoy, dedicated to the writer’s activities in the 1870s, and a collection of “Articles about Lermontov” - were published posthumously (1960 and 1961), in a greatly abbreviated form.

I.V. Kondakov

The so-called “formal method” was formed not as a result of the creation of a special “methodological” system, but in the process of struggle for the independence and specificity of literary science. The concept of “method”, in general, has expanded inappropriately and has come to mean too many things. The fundamental question for the “formalists” 1 is not about the methods of studying literature, but about literature as a subject of study. In essence, we are not talking or arguing about any methodology. We are talking and can only talk about some theoretical principles, suggested to us not by one or another ready-made methodological or aesthetic system, but by the study of specific material in its specific features. The theoretical and historical-literary works of the formalists express these principles with sufficient certainty, but over these 10 years so many new questions and old misunderstandings have accumulated around them that it does not hurt to attempt some summary of them - not in the form of a dogmatic system, but in the form of a historical result . It is important to show how the work of the formalists began and how and in what ways it evolves.

The moment of evolution is very important in the history of the formal method. Our opponents and many of our followers miss this point. We are surrounded by eclectics and epigones who transform the formal method into a kind of fixed system of “formalism”, which serves them to develop terms, schemes and classifications. This system is very convenient for criticism, but is completely uncharacteristic of the formal method. We did not have and do not have any such ready-made system or doctrine. In our scientific work, we value theory only as a working hypothesis, with the help of which facts are discovered and comprehended, that is, they are recognized as natural and become material for research. Therefore, we do not engage in definitions, which the epigones so crave, and we do not build general theories, which are so kind to eclectics. We establish specific principles and adhere to them to the extent that they are justified by the material. If the material requires complexity or change, we complicate or change it. In this sense, we are quite free from our own theories, as science should be free, since there is a difference between a theory and a belief. There are no ready-made sciences - science lives not by establishing truths, but by overcoming errors.

The purpose of this article is not polemical. The initial period of scientific struggle and journal controversy is over. This kind of “polemic”, which “Print and Revolution” (1924, No. 5) honored me with, can only be answered with new scientific works. My main task is to show how the formal method, gradually evolving and expanding the field of study, completely goes beyond the boundaries of what is usually called methodology and turns into a special science about literature as a specific series of facts. Within this science, the development of a wide variety of methods is possible, provided that the specificity of the material being studied remains the focus. This was, in essence, the desire of the formalists from the very beginning, and this was precisely the meaning of their struggle with old traditions. The name “formal method” assigned to this movement and firmly established behind it should be understood conditionally - as a historical term and not based on it as a real definition. What characterizes us is neither “formalism” as an aesthetic theory, nor “methodology” as a complete scientific system, but only the desire to create an independent literary science based on the specific properties of literary material. We only need a theoretical and historical awareness of the facts of verbal art as such.

Representatives of the formal method have been repeatedly and from different sides reproached for the ambiguity or insufficiency of their fundamental provisions - for indifference to general issues of aesthetics, psychology, philosophy, sociology, etc. These reproaches, despite their qualitative differences, are equally fair in the sense that that they correctly grasp the characteristic and, of course, not accidental separation from both “aesthetics from above” and from all ready-made or considering themselves such general theories. This separation (especially from aesthetics) is a more or less typical phenomenon for the entire modern science of art. Leaving aside a number of general problems (such as the problem of beauty, the purpose of art, etc.), she focused on specific problems of art criticism (Kunstwissenschaft). Once again, without connection with general aesthetic prerequisites, the question of understanding the artistic “form” and its evolution was raised, and hence a whole series of specific theoretical and historical questions. Characteristic slogans appeared - like Wölfflin's "history of art without names" (Kunstgeschichte ohne Namen), characteristic experiments in concrete analysis of styles and techniques - like K. Voll's "experience in the comparative study of paintings". In Germany, it was the theory and history of the fine arts, the richest in experience and traditions, that took a central position in art history and began to influence both the general theory of art and individual sciences - in particular, for example, the study of literature 2.

In Russia, obviously due to local historical reasons, literary science occupied a similar position.

The formal method attracted general attention and became one of the topical issues, of course, not because of its particular methodological features, but because of its fundamental relation to the question of understanding and studying art. In the works of the formalists, such principles sharply appeared that violated the seemingly stable traditions and “axioms” of not only the science of literature, but also the science of art in general. Thanks to this sharpness of principles, the distance between the particular problems of literary science and the general problems of art criticism has been reduced. The concepts and principles put forward by the formalists and placed at the basis of their works, with all their concreteness, naturally directed their edge towards the theory of art in general. The revival of poetics, which had completely fallen into disuse, therefore had the appearance not of a simple restoration of particular problems, but of an attack on the entire field of art history. This situation was created as a result of a number of historical events, the most important of which were the crisis of philosophical aesthetics and a sharp change in art (in Russia, most sharply and definitely in poetry). Aesthetics turned out to be naked, and art deliberately appeared naked - in all the conventions of the primitive. The formal method and futurism turned out to be historically connected.

But this general historical meaning of the speech of the formalists constitutes a special topic - here it is important for me to talk about something else, since I mean to give an idea of ​​​​the evolution of the principles and problems of the formal method and its position at the moment.

By the time the formalists spoke, “academic” science, which completely ignored theoretical problems and sluggishly used outdated aesthetic, psychological and historical “axioms,” had so lost the sense of its own subject of research that its very existence became illusory. There was almost no need to fight it: there was no need to break in the doors, because there were no doors - instead of a fortress, we saw a passage yard. The theoretical legacy of Potebnya and Veselovsky, having passed on to the students, remained as dead capital - a treasure that they were afraid to touch and thereby devalued its significance. Authority and influence gradually moved from academic science to, so to speak, journal science - to the works of critics and theorists of symbolism. Indeed, in the years 1907-12, Vyach’s books and articles had a much greater influence. Ivanov, Bryusov, A. Bely, Merezhkovsky, Chukovsky, etc., than scientific research and dissertations of university professors. Behind this “magazine” science, with all its subjectivity and tendentiousness, there were certain theoretical principles and slogans, reinforced by reliance on new artistic movements and their propaganda. Naturally, for the younger generation, books such as “Symbolism” by A. Bely (1910) meant immeasurably more than unprincipled monographs of literary historians, devoid of any scientific temperament, any point of view.

That is why - when the historical meeting of two generations was ripe, this time extremely intense and principled, it was determined not along the line of academic science, but along the line of this journal science - along the line of the theories of the symbolists and the methods of impressionistic criticism. We entered into a struggle with the symbolists in order to wrest poetics from their hands and, freeing it from connection with their subjective aesthetic and philosophical theories, return it to the path of scientific research of facts. Brought up on their work, we saw their mistakes all the more clearly. The uprising of the futurists (Khlebnikov, Kruchenykh, Mayakovsky) against the poetic system of symbolism, which had taken shape by this time, was a support for the formalists, because it gave their struggle an even more urgent character.

The main slogan that united the original group of formalists was the slogan of emancipation of the poetic word from the shackles of philosophical and religious tendencies that were increasingly taking possession of the symbolists. The split among the theorists of symbolism (1910-11) and the emergence of the Acmeists prepared the way for a decisive uprising. All compromises had to be eliminated. History demanded from us real revolutionary pathos - categorical theses, merciless irony, daring refusal of any compromise. At the same time, it was important to contrast the subjective aesthetic principles that inspired the symbolists in their theoretical works with the propaganda of an objective scientific attitude towards facts. Hence the new pathos of scientific positivism, characteristic of the formalists: the rejection of philosophical premises, psychological and aesthetic interpretations, etc. The break with philosophical aesthetics and ideological theories of art was dictated by the very state of things. It was necessary to turn to the facts and, moving away from general systems and problems, start from the middle - from the point where the fact of art finds us. Art demanded that it be approached closely, and science demanded that it be made concrete.

The principle of specification and concretization of literary science was fundamental for the organization of the formal method. All efforts were aimed at ending the previous situation, in which, according to A. Veselovsky, literature was “res nullius”. This is precisely what made the position of the formalists so irreconcilable in relation to other “methods” and so unacceptable for eclectics. By denying these “other” methods, the formalists actually denied and are denying not the methods, but the unprincipled confusion of different sciences and different scientific problems. Their main assertion was and is that the subject of literary science, as such, should be the study of the specific features of literary material that distinguish it from any other, even if this material, with its secondary, indirect features, gives the reason and the right to use it as an auxiliary, and in other sciences. This was formulated with complete certainty by R. Jacobson (“Newest Russian Poetry.” First draft. Prague, 1921. p. 11): “the subject of the science of literature is not literature, but literariness, i.e., what makes a given work literary work. Meanwhile, until now, literary historians have predominantly been likened to the police, who, with the goal of arresting a certain person, would seize, just in case, everyone and everything that was in the apartment, as well as those who happened to pass by on the street. So literary historians found everything useful - everyday life, psychology, politics, philosophy. Instead of the science of literature, a conglomerate of home-grown disciplines was created. It’s as if they forgot that these articles belong to the corresponding sciences - the history of philosophy, the history of culture, psychology, etc., and that the latter can naturally use literary monuments as defective, secondary documents.”

In order to put into practice and strengthen this principle of specification, without resorting to speculative aesthetics, it was necessary to compare the literary series with another series of facts, choosing from the infinite variety of existing series the one that, while in contact with the literary, would at the same time differ in function . This methodological technique was the comparison of “poetic” language with “practical” language, developed in the first collections of “Opoyaz” (articles by L. Yakubinsky) and which served as the starting principle for the formalists’ work on the main problems of poetics. Thus, instead of the usual orientation of literary scholars towards the history of culture or society, towards psychology or aesthetics, etc., the formalists had a characteristic orientation towards linguistics as a science, based on the material of its research, in contact with poetics, but approaching it with a different installation and other tasks. On the other hand, linguists also became interested in the formal method, since the facts of poetic language, revealed when comparing it with practical language, could be considered in the sphere of purely linguistic problems, as linguistic facts in general. The result was something analogous to those relations of mutual use and differentiation that exist, for example, between physics and chemistry. Against this background, the problems once posed by Potebnya and accepted by his students on faith came to life again and received a new meaning.

A comparison of poetic language with practical language in a general form was made by L. Yakubinsky in his first article - “On the sounds of poetic language” (“Collection on the theory of poetic language”. First issue. Ptgr. 1916) - and the difference is formulated as follows: “Phenomena of language must be classified from the point of view of the purpose for which the speaker uses his linguistic representations in each given case. If the speaker uses them for the purely practical purpose of communication, then we are dealing with a system of practical language (linguistic thinking), in which linguistic representations (sounds, morphological parts, etc.) do not have independent value and are only a means of communication. But other language systems are conceivable (and exist) in which the practical goal recedes into the background (although it may not disappear altogether) and linguistic ideas acquire intrinsic value.”

Establishing this difference was important not only for the construction of poetics, but also for understanding the futurists’ tendencies towards “abstruse language”, as well as the extreme exposure of “self-worth”, partially observed in children's language, in the glossolalia of sectarians, etc. The “abstruse” experiments of the futurists received great attention fundamental significance as a demonstration against symbolism, which did not dare to go beyond the “instrumentation” that accompanies the meaning, and thus trivialized the role of sounds in poetic speech. The question of sounds in verse acquired particular urgency - it was at this point that the formalists, uniting with the futurists, came face to face with the theorists of symbolism. Naturally, the first battle was given by the formalists precisely on these positions: the question of sounds needed to be reconsidered, first of all, in order to contrast the philosophical and aesthetic tendencies of the symbolists with a system of accurate observations and draw appropriate scientific conclusions. Hence the very composition of the first collection, entirely devoted to the problem of sounds and “sound language”.

Next to Yakubinsky, Viktor Shklovsky, in the article “On poetry and abstruse language,” showed using a number of different examples that “people need words even without meaning.” Abstruseness was revealed as a widespread linguistic fact and as a phenomenon characteristic of poetry: “The poet does not dare to say “abstruse word,” usually abstruseness is hidden under the guise of some kind of content, often deceptive, imaginary, forcing the poets themselves to admit that they themselves do not understand the content his poems." In Shklovsky’s article, by the way, the center of the question is transferred from the purely sound, acoustic plane, which gave rise to impressionistic interpretations of the connection between sound and the described object or depicted emotion, to the pronunciation, articulatory plane: “In the enjoyment of a meaningless “abstruse word”, Undoubtedly, the pronunciation aspect of speech is important. It may be that even in general, in the pronunciation side, in the peculiar dance of the organs of speech, lies most of the pleasure brought by poetry.” The question of the attitude towards abstruse language has thus acquired the significance of a serious scientific problem, the illumination of which helps to clarify many facts of poetic speech in general. Shklovsky formulated the general question in this way: “If we write down, as a requirement for a word as such, that it must serve, to designate a concept, to be significant in general, then, of course, “absenten language” disappears, as something external relative to language. But he is not the only one who falls away; The facts presented make us think whether in not obviously abstruse, but in simply poetic speech, words always have meaning, or whether this opinion is just a fiction and the result of our inattention.”

The natural conclusion from all these observations and principles was that poetic language is not only the language of “images” and that sounds in verse are not at all only elements of external euphony and do not only play the role of “accompaniment” to the meaning, but have independent meaning. A revision of the general theory of Potebnya, built on the assertion that poetry is “thinking in images,” was planned. This understanding of poetry, adopted by the theorists of symbolism, obliged us to treat the sounds of a verse as an “expression” of something behind it, and to interpret them either as onomatopoeia or as “sound writing.” Particularly typical in this regard were the works of A. Bely, who found in two lines of Pushkin a complete “depiction with sounds” of how champagne is poured from a bottle into a glass, and in the repetition of the RDT group in Blok - the “tragedy of sobering up” 3. Such attempts to “explain” alliteration, which stood on the border of parody, should have caused a fundamental rebuff on our part and an attempt to show with material that sounds in verse exist without any connection with the image and have an independent speech function.

L. Yakubinsky's articles served as a linguistic justification for the “inherent value” of sounds in poetry. O. Brik’s article “Sound repetitions” (“Collection on the theory of poetic language.” Issue II. Ptgr., 1917) showed the material itself (using quotes from Pushkin and Lermontov) and arranged it in different typical groups. Having expressed doubts about the correctness of the current view of poetic language as a language of “images,” Brik comes to the following conclusion: “No matter how you look at the relationship between image and sound, one thing is certain: sounds and consonances are not only a euphonic appendage, but the result of an independent poetic aspiration.

The instrumentation of poetic speech is not limited to external techniques of euphony, but is generally a complex product of the interaction of the general laws of euphony. Rhyme, alliteration, etc. are only visible manifestations, a special case of the basic euphonic laws.” In contrast to the works of A. Bely, in Brik’s article there are no interpretations of the meaning of certain alliterations, but only the assumption is made that the phenomenon of repetitions in verse is similar to the technique of tautology in folklore, i.e. that repetition itself plays a role in these cases. then an aesthetic role: “Apparently, we have here various forms of manifestation of one general poetic principle, the principle of simple combination, and the material of combination is either the sounds of words, or their meaning, or both.” This spread of one technique to a variety of material is very characteristic of the initial period of the work of the formalists. After Brik's article, the question of the sounds of poetry lost its special special urgency and moved into the general system of problems of poetics.

The formalists began their work with the question of the sounds of verse, as the most militant and fundamental for that time. Behind this particular question of poetics there were, of course, more general theses that should have been revealed. The distinction between the systems of poetic and prosaic languages, which from the very beginning determined the work of the formalists, should have affected the formulation of a number of basic questions. The understanding of poetry as “thinking in images” and the resulting formula “poetry = imagery” clearly did not correspond to the observed facts and contradicted the intended general principles. Rhythm, sounds, syntax - all this, from such a point of view, turned out to be secondary, not characteristic of poetry and should have fallen out of the system. The symbolists, who accepted the general theory of Potebnya because it justified the dominance of images-symbols, could not overcome the notorious theory of “harmony of form and content,” although it clearly contradicted their penchant for formal experiments and discredited it, giving it the character of “aestheticism.” Along with the departure from the Potebnian point of view, the formalists freed themselves from the traditional “form-content” correlation and from the understanding of form as a shell - as a vessel into which liquid (content) is poured. The facts of art testified that its specificity is expressed not in the very elements included in the work, but in the unique use of them. Thus, the concept of “form” acquired a different meaning and did not require next to it any other concept, any correlation.

Even before the unification in “Opoyaz”, in 1914, during the era of demonstrative performances of futurists before the public, V. Shklovsky published a brochure “The Resurrection of the Word”, in which, partially referring to Potebnya and Veselovsky (the question of imagery was not yet of fundamental importance ), put forward the principle of perceptibility of form as a specific sign of artistic perception. “We do not experience the familiar, we do not see it, but we recognize it. We do not see the walls of our rooms, it is so difficult for us to see a typo in the proof, especially if it is written in a well-known language, because we cannot bring ourselves to see, read, and not “recognize” the familiar word. If we want to create a definition of “poetic” and “artistic” perception in general, we will undoubtedly come across a definition: “artistic” perception is a perception in which form is experienced (maybe not only form, but form certainly).” It is clear that perception appears here not as a simple psychological concept (perception characteristic of this or that person), but as an element of art itself, which does not exist outside of perception. The concept of “form” appeared in a new meaning - not as a shell, but as completeness, as something concretely dynamic, meaningful in itself, without any correlation. This expressed a decisive departure from the principles of symbolism, for which something “meaningful” was supposed to shine through “through the form.” In this way, “aestheticism” was also overcome, as admiration for certain elements of form, deliberately divorced from “content.”

But this was not enough for this specific job. Along with the recognition of the difference between poetic and practical language and the recognition that the specificity of art is expressed in the special use of material, it was necessary to concretize the principle of the perceptibility of form so that it makes it possible to enter into the analysis of the form itself, understood as content. It was necessary to show that the perceptibility of form arises as a result of special artistic techniques that force one to experience the form. V. Shklovsky’s article “Art as a Technique” (“Collections on the theory of poetic language”, issue II. 1917), which was a kind of manifesto of the formal method, opened up the prospect for a specific analysis of form. Here the departure from Potebnya and Potebnianism, and thereby from the theoretical principles of symbolism, is already completely clear. The article begins with objections to the main provisions of Potebnya about imagery and the relationship of the image to the explained. Shklovsky points out, among other things, that the images are almost motionless: “The more you understand the era, the more you are convinced that the images that you considered created by a given poet are used by him taken from others and almost unchanged. All the work of poetic schools comes down to the accumulation and identification of new techniques for arranging and processing verbal materials and, in particular, much more to the arrangement of images than to their creation. Images are given, and in poetry there is much more recollection of images than thinking with them. Figurative thinking is not, in any case, something that unites all types of art or even all types of verbal art, it is not something whose change constitutes the essence of the movement of poetry.” Next, the difference between poetic and prosaic imagery is pointed out. The poetic image is defined as one of the means of poetic language: parallelism, simple and negative comparison, repetition, symmetry, hyperbole, etc. The concept of image moved into the general system of poetic techniques and lost its dominant role in theory. At the same time, the principle of artistic economy, firmly established in the theory of art, was rejected. In contrast to it, the technique of “defamiliarization” and the technique of difficult form have been put forward, “increasing the difficulty and length of perception, since the perceptual process in art is self-directed and must be prolonged.” Art is understood as a way of destroying automatism in perception; the purpose of the image is not to bring its meaning closer to our understanding, but to create a special perception of an object, to create a “vision” of it, and not “recognition”. Hence the usual connection between the image and defamiliarization.

The break with Potebnianism was finally formulated by V. Shklovsky in the article “Potebnya” (Poetics. “Collections on the theory of poetic language.” Ptgr., 1919). It is repeated once again that imagery and symbolism do not constitute a specific difference between poetic language and prosaic (practical) language: “Poetic language differs from prosaic language in the perceptibility of its construction. Either the acoustic, or the pronunciation, or the semasiological side can be felt. Sometimes what is noticeable is not the structure, but the construction of words, their arrangement. One of the means to create a tangible structure, experienced in its very fabric, is a poetic image, but only one of the means... The creation of scientific poetics must begin with the factual, built on mass facts, recognition that there are “poetic” and “prosaic” languages, laws which are different, and from the analysis of these differences."

These articles should be considered the result of the initial period of work of the formalists. The main achievement of this period was the establishment of a number of theoretical principles that served as working hypotheses for further concrete research of facts, and in overcoming current theories built on Potebnianism. As can be seen from the above articles, the main efforts of the formalists were aimed not at studying the so-called “form” and not at constructing a special “method”, but at justifying the fact that verbal art should be studied in its specific features and that for this it is necessary to proceed from various functions of poetic and practical language. As for “form,” it was only important for the formalists to turn the meaning of this confusing term so that it would not interfere with its constant association with the concept of “content,” which is even more confusing and completely unscientific. It was important to destroy traditional correlation and thereby enrich the concept of form with new meanings. In further evolution, the concept of “technique” was much more important, because it directly followed from the recognition of the difference between poetic and practical languages.

The preliminary stage of theoretical work has been completed. General theoretical principles were outlined with the help of which it was possible to navigate the facts. Now it was necessary to get closer to the material and specify the problems themselves. At the center were questions of theoretical poetics, only outlined in general terms in the first works. From the question of the sounds of verse, which, in essence, had the meaning of illustration to the general position about the difference between poetic and practical languages, it was necessary to move on to the general theory of verse; from the question of technique in general - to the study of composition techniques, to the question of plot, etc. Next to the question of Potebnya, the question arose about the attitude to the views of A. Veselovsky and his theory of plot.

Naturally, at this moment, literary works were taken by the formalists only as material for testing and confirming theoretical theses - outside the question of traditions, evolution, etc. It was important to achieve, perhaps, a wider coverage of the material, establish a kind of “laws” and make a preliminary review of facts. In this way, the formalists freed themselves from the need to resort to abstract premises and, on the other hand, mastered the material without getting lost in the details.

The works of V. Shklovsky on the theory of plot and novel were of particular importance during this period. Using the most diverse material - fairy tales, oriental stories, “Don Quixote” by Cervantes, Tolstoy, “Tristram Shandy” by Sterne, etc. - Shklovsky demonstrates the presence of special techniques of “plot composition” and their connection with general techniques of style. Without touching on the details, which should be discussed not in a general article on the formal method, but in special works, I will dwell only on those points that have theoretical significance outside of connection with the question of the plot as such, and from which there are traces in further evolution formal method.

In the first of these works by Shklovsky, “The Connection of Plot Composition Techniques with General Techniques of Style” (Poetics, 1919), there were a number of such points. Firstly, the very assertion of the existence of special plotting techniques, illustrated by a huge number of examples, changed the traditional idea of ​​the plot as a combination of a number of motives, and transferred it from the field of thematic concepts to the field of constructive concepts. Thus, the concept of plot acquired a new meaning that did not coincide with the concept of plot, and plot formation itself naturally entered the sphere of formal study, as a specific feature of literary works. The concept of form was enriched with new features and, gradually losing its former abstractness, at the same time lost its fundamental polemical meaning. It became clear that the concept of form gradually began to coincide for us with the concept of literature as such - with the concept of literary fact. Further, the establishment of an analogy between plotting techniques and style techniques was of great theoretical importance. The stepwise construction usual for epics found itself on a par with sound repetitions, with tautology, tautological parallelism, repetitions, etc. - as a general principle of verbal art, built on fragmentation and inhibition.

Thus, Roland’s three blows on the stone (“The Song of Roland”) and similar triple repetitions, usual for fairy-tale plots, are compared, as homogeneous phenomena, with the use of synonyms in Gogol, with such linguistic constructions as “kudy-mudy”, “ buns and buns”, etc. “All these cases of slow stepwise construction are usually not brought together, and they try to give each of these cases a separate explanation.” Here the desire to establish the unity of reception on diverse material is clearly revealed. Here a characteristic clash occurred with the theory of Veselovsky, who in such cases resorted not to a theoretical, but to a historical-genetic hypothesis, and explained epic repetitions by the mechanism of initial performance (amoebaic singing). This kind of explanation, even if it is correct as a genetic one, does not explain this phenomenon as a literary fact. The general connection between literature and everyday life, which served for Veselovsky and other representatives of the ethnographic school as a way to explain the features of fairy tale motifs and plots, is not rejected by Shklovsky, but is only given as an explanation of these features as a literary fact. Genesis can only clarify the origin - nothing more, and for poetics it is important to understand the literary function. From the genetic point of view, it is precisely the technique, as a unique use of material, that is not taken into account - the selection of everyday material is not taken into account, its transformation, its constructive role is not taken into account, and finally, the fact that everyday life disappears, and its literary function remains not as a simple relic, is not taken into account , but as a literary device that retains its meaning even outside of connection with everyday life. It is characteristic that Veselovsky contradicts himself, considering the adventures of the Greek novel to be a purely stylistic device.

Veselovsky’s “ethnography” met with natural resistance from the formalists, as ignoring the specificity of the literary device, as replacing the theoretical and evolutionary point of view with a genetic point of view. His view of “syncretism”, as a phenomenon of only primitive poetry, generated by everyday life, was later criticized in the work of B. Kazansky “The Idea of ​​Historical Poetics” (Poetics. Vremennik Slov. Ot. Gos. Inst. Ist. I LNGR. “Academy” , 1926); Kazansky asserts the presence of syncretic tendencies in the very nature of every art, which manifest themselves especially sharply in some periods, and thereby rejects the “ethnographic” point of view. Naturally, the formalists could not agree with Veselovsky in those cases when he touched upon general issues of literary evolution. From the collision with Potebnianism, the basic principles of theoretical poetics became clear; From the collision with the general views of Veselovsky and his followers, the views of the formalists on literary evolution and thereby on the construction of literary history should naturally have been determined.

This began in the same article by Shklovsky. Having encountered Veselovsky’s formula, built on the same ethnographic principle in a broad sense - “A new form appears in order to express new content,” Shklovsky puts forward a different point of view: “a work of art is perceived against the background and by association with other works of art. The form of a work of art is determined by its relationship to other forms that existed before it... Not only a parody, but any work of art in general is created as a parallel and opposition to some model. The new form appears not to express new content, but to replace the old form, which has already lost its artistry.” To strengthen this thesis, Shklovsky uses B. Christiansen’s indication of special “differential sensations” or “sensations of differences” - this justifies the characteristic dynamism of art, expressed in constant violations of the created canon. At the end of the article, Shklovsky quotes from F. Brunetiere, which states that “of all the influences operating in the history of literature, the main one is the influence of a work on a work,” and that “one should not uselessly multiply reasons or, under the pretext that literature is an expression society, to mix the history of literature with the history of morals. These are two completely different things."

This article thus outlined an exit from the field of theoretical poetics into the history of literature. The initial idea of ​​form was complicated by new features of evolutionary dynamics and continuous change. The transition to literary history was not the result of a simple expansion of research topics, but the result of the evolution of the concept of form. It turned out that a literary work is not perceived as isolated - its form is felt against the background of other works, and not on its own. Thus, the formalists finally went beyond the limits of that “formalism”, which is understood as the production of schemes and classifications (the usual idea of ​​​​the formal method among little-informed critics) and which is applied with such zeal by some scholastics, who always welcome any dogma with joy. This scholastic “formalism” is neither historically nor essentially connected with the work of “Opoyaz” - and we are not responsible for it, but on the contrary, we are its most implacable and principled enemies.

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author Perevezentsev Sergey Vyacheslavovich

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I. The theory of intuitionism (the theory of direct perception of the connection between reason and consequence) Judgment is the act of differentiating an object through comparison. As a result of this act, if it is successfully completed, we have the predicate P, i.e. the differentiated side

From the book The Far Future of the Universe [Eschatology in Cosmic Perspective] by Ellis George

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A. Fundamentals of the method 1. Scheme of psychoenergetics I The task we have set is to show in which direction psychic research should develop if it is consciously based on the idea of ​​the fundamental unity of experience. This entire task

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Literary life is a form of everyday life formed under the influence of the literary process.

Origin

The emergence of a new way of life at the beginning of the twentieth century in Russia, due to political changes, significantly influenced literature. Poets wrote about how “a love boat crashed into everyday life” (V.V. Mayakovsky), about “everyday torn apart by a storm” (S.A. Yesenin).

The concept of literary life was explored in the 1920s by the leaders of Russian formalism: V. B. Shklovsky, B. M. Eikhenbaum, Yu. N. Tynyanov. The Russian writer and literary critic V. B. Shklovsky believed that art is free and isolated from everyday life, and everyday life itself is the material, the source for art. V. B. Shklovsky’s comrades imagined life differently. B. M. Eikhenbaum and Yu. N. Tynyanov believed that everyday life, or social life, interacts with literature, that is, everyday life is assimilated with literature, and vice versa. They called this combination “literary life,” which is where the term came from.

“Literary Life” by B. M. Eikhenbaum

Despite the general view of the connection between literature and everyday life, the justifications for the literary everyday life of the formalists B. M. Eikhenbaum and Yu. N. Tynyanov differ. B. M. Eikhenbaum in his articles (“Literature and literary life”, 1927; “Literature and the writer”, 1927) argued that the history of literature is based on the relationship between literary life and literature, i.e. literature does not study only the writer’s creativity, but also his life, implementation in the social structure of society. The literary scholar began to study the institutional forms of the literary environment in which works were created and functioned, as a result of which he identified two forms of literary life:

• circle, salon, society;
• magazine, publishing house;

These forms differ in that in a circle or salon, writers read their works independently, presenting them to the group members for review. Such creativity was not of a commercial nature. In another form of institutionalization of literature - “a magazine with an editorial office and an accounting department,” as B. M. Eikhenbaum called it – the writer is distant from the reader, he collaborated with the editors of the magazine, and received a fee from the reader’s subscription (accounting). Thus, the formalist B. M. Eikhenbaum established two institutionalizations of literary life - a literary circle and a magazine - by studying social and literary life.

“Literary Life” by Yu. N. Tynyanov

The representative of Russian formalism, Yu. N. Tynyanov, believed that literary life consists of texts that acquire or lose the meaning of a literary fact, as indicated in the researcher’s article “Literary Fact” (1924). Everyday texts containing events of literary life, when classified as literature, become literary. For example, the text of elements of the writers' everyday life - letters, diaries, memoirs - often serves as additional material to literary works and is included in the structure of the literature of the era.

Subjects of literary life

The subjects of literary life in its two understandings – Eikhenbaum’s and Tynianov’s – also differ. The subject of literary life, according to B. M. Eikhenbaum, is the literary generation, that is, an association of people working in the same social environment (the environment of circles or the environment of magazines, publishing houses). The subject of Yu. N. Tynyanov's literary life is a literary personality - a person from a literary environment who attracts the interest of writers with his behavior and acts as the subject of their works. For example, Count Khvostov’s poetic talent was often ridiculed in the works of romantic poets: “A poet beloved by heaven...” (A.S. Pushkin).