Journal of Studies in Russian Formalism with Translation Notebooks

Semiosphere, “Thinking Worlds” and Scientific knowledge (About an idea of Jurij Lotman)

Sergey Zenkin — Fri, 19 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The paper aims to analyze Jurij Lotman’s notion of semiosphere, focusing on its interdisciplinary background, the logic of its constitution and the inner tensions resulting from that logic. Two ideas of semiosphere coexist in Lotman’s texts: infinite and finite, global and limited. For explaining this ambiguity, several interpretations may be put forward, corresponding to different disciplines (semiotics, biology and philosophy) and engaging different types of dynamics or negativity (systemic, organic and reflective). The last, philosophic explanation leads to the problem of subjectivity: Lotman seems to avoid it (as a scholar committed to the empirical, and not speculative mode of thinking), but it reappears in the epistemology of his research, upon which the notion of semiosphere is grounded.

The Word is Not Enough: Thinking Russian Formalism Beyond Literary Theory

Patrick Flack — Fri, 19 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Building on a review of Galin Tihanov’s The Birth and Death of Literary Theory (2019) and Jessica Merrill’s The Origins of Russian Literary Theory (2022), the paper examines how the widespread characterisation of Russian Formalism as the originator of modern literary theory has constrained our assessment of its role in 20th Century intellectual history, both by marginalising literary theory itself and by distorting the crucial notion of the autonomy of form. In response, a double shift in perspective is explored. Firstly, the Formalists’ focus on literary autonomy is framed as a specific but nonetheless integrally co-dependant facet of the multilateral, dialogical intellectual context usefully designated as “Russian Theory” by Zenkin (2004). Secondly, the function of Russian emigration as a transversal vector of the historical transmission of the entire, entangled context of Russian Theory to interwar Central and post-war Western Europe is highlighted. As a result, Russian Formalism and its defence of the autonomy of form appear not as an ultimately failed attempt to ground a specific type of discourse on literature, but as an essential contribution to a broad process of intellectual transfer—from 19th Century Germany through Russian Theory to French Theory—that conditioned the development of the whole breadth of the European human sciences and was predicated on the in- and outflows of Russian emigration.

Resistance to Theory: Notes From the Underground

Galin Tihanov — Fri, 19 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

While in the West theory was celebrating its triumph throughout the late 1960s and in 1970s, in Soviet Russia the 1970s were already seeing theory fatigue, or even, as I will try to demonstrate, an active resistance to theory. The political context should not be missed here. Literary theory, not just as a field, but as a university discipline based on textbooks and requiring the rituals of examinations, was first institutionalised precisely in Soviet Russia, beginning in the decade between the mid-1930s and the mid-1940s. Later, however, in the mid-1970s, Russian Formalism was canonised by and amongst those seeking to eschew Marxism. It is against this background that I here discuss some examples of resistance by Soviet non-Marxist thinkers to Russian Formalism and Soviet Structuralism, despite their significance for those dissenting from official dogma. Ultimately, the question is why and how is non-Marxist theory resisted by non-Marxists in a totalitarian society, and what larger lessons for the status of theory today are bound to emerge from this.

«The Enigma of Similarities: Discussing the Form/Content Relationship in Soviet Intellectual Circles in the 1920-30s»

Patrick Sériot — Fri, 19 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This paper explores the semiotic quarrel which occupied an important space in the Soviet intellectual culture of the 1920-30s: is the relationship necessary or arbitrary between form and content, sign and referent, words and things? This parallel set of oppositions is in no way specific to Russian thought, as it has been at the heart of philosophical discussions in Europe since Plato’s Cratylus and the Stoics in Greece. But what is peculiar for Soviet Russia of the time is that German Romanticism, Humboldt, Hegel, Marx are perceived through an underground Byzantine tradition, silent but over-present, of denying the autonomy of the sign.

文学の実在（ブィト）

Takayuki Satoh — Fri, 19 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

文学の実在（ブィト）

La cotidianeidad literaria

Danila Andreev — Fri, 19 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

La cotidianeidad literaria

Б. М. Ейхенбаум Літературний побут

Olga Trukhanova — Fri, 19 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Б. М. Ейхенбаум Літературний побут

The State Academy of Artistic Sciences vs. Petrograd Formalism: Verse studies. 1. On Boris Ėjchenbaum’s «Melodika stixa»

Marina Akimova — Fri, 19 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

At the State Academy of Artistic Sciences in Moscow, there was a systematic critique of the Petrograd «formal school». It was conducted from various perspectives by representatives of traditional literary history (N. K. Piksanov, P. N. Sakulin), exact literary studies (B. I. Yarkho), and philosophers and philologists within the circle of G. G. Špet (M. M. Königsberg, B. V. Gornung, N. I. Zhinkin, N. N. Volkov). The latter formed the Commission for the Study of Artistic Form. At one of the early meetings of the Commission, linguist Sadi Yakovlevich Masé exposed his views upon «The Melodics of the Russian Lyric Verse» by B. M. Ėjchenbaum. The article analyzes the discussion following Masé’s speach, traces the logic in the responses of Špet, Volkov, Zhinkin, and the presenter himself. It reconstructs Masé’s opinions on the melodics of verse and the logic of the analysis of poetic form proposed by Špet. In the appendix, the minutes of the discussion of S. Y. Masé’s report are published for the first time, accompanied by a commentary.

The Committee for Contemporary Literature and Unpublished Formalist Books

Valerii Otiakovskii — Fri, 19 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The article examines the corpus of archival documents related to the creation and functioning of the Committee for Contemporary Literature at the Institute of Art History. This academic unit was important for the Formalists because they considered this Committee a platform for uniting scholars with poets and writers. The Institute’s documents contain vital information on the unrealized book projects of the Committee. Among these proposed plans were a collection of reviews by Tynjanov, several volumes of the well-known series Masters of Contemporary Literature, and a collection of papers on contemporary literature by the Junior Formalists.

Lev Trockij and Boris Arvatov: a Marxist Formalism?

Virginia Pili — Fri, 19 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

In July 1923, Lev Davidovich Trotsky published an essay in the pages of “Pravda” titled “The Formalist School of Poetry and Marxism” in which he stated that “leaving out of account the weak echoes of prerevolutionary ideological systems, the only theory which has opposed Marxism in Soviet Russia these years is the Formalist theory of Art”.
Trotsky’s text analyzed formalism in a meticulous and detailed manner, highlighting its strengths and weaknesses. While acknowledging the undeniable merits of the formalists in developing a scientific approach to literature, Trotsky identified certain aspects of their theoretical proposal that severely limited its development, including the very idea of art as a phenomenon separate and independent from socioeconomic factors. The formalist method thus appeared in Trotsky’s view as a fundamentally provisional phenomenon.
Trotsky’s critique of formalism thus reveals a common ground with the positions expressed by one of the leading critics of the Levyj Front Iskusstv, Boris Arvatov, in his article “About the Socio-Formal Method”. The constructivist critic presents his proposal for an original method of literary analysis, in which formalist analytical tools are combined with a socio-economic reflection that is firmly grounded in Marxism.
Trotsky and Arvatov’s approach to formalism is strongly influenced by their different conceptual worlds. For this reason, a comparative analysis of their positions cannot ignore an examination of their worldviews. Our first task in this article is to provide a brief overview of Trotsky and Arvatov’s respective Weltanschauung, emphasizing the crucial issue of proletarian culture. Subsequently, we will proceed with the analysis and commentary on their critique of the formalist method, with the aim of observing the clash between Marxism and formalism from a new perspective.