On Being Fair to Viktor Shklovsky or the Act of Hedged Surrender

On Being Fair to Viktor Shklovsky or the Act of Hedged SurrenderAuthor(s): Victor ErlichSource: Slavic Review, Vol. 35, No. 1 (Mar., 1976), pp. 111-118Published by:Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2494823 .

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NOTES AND COMMENT

VICTOR ERLICH

On Being Fair to Viktor Shklovsky or the Act of Hedged Surrender

Few will delny that Viktor Shklovsky is an interesting and important enougl figture to warranit a close and sympathetic reconsideration. It is equally ob- vious thlat no one amonl)g us is better eqcuippecl, or more strongly motivated, to l)rovide it than is Riclhard Sheldon. Yet to say that the strenuously clhari- table interpretation of Slhklovsky's career whiclh he offers in the March 1975 issue of Slavic Review' is both legitimate and welcome is not necessarily to imiiply tiat it is enitirely persuasive. Having plondered Professor Slheldon's amply documenited brief, I am inlclined to qualify or amend some of the judg- menlts miiade over twenty years ago but not to revise substantially nly original view of Shklovsky's vicissitudes, a view, I submit, which is considerably more modulated thani Slheldon is prepared to allow.

Let me start with the least importanlt nmatter. Professor Sheldon main- tains that miiy Ruissian Forinmalismt "downgrades Shklovsky's role as a founder of the nmovement and leaves the imiipressioln that the Moscow Lingtuistic Circle acttually precedes Opoiaz." Allegedly this mlisconceptioln "results mainly from the fact that Professor Erliclh nlever menltions in his text even the title of Shklovsky's booklet Reslurrectioni of the Word (1914)" wlhose ptublication at- tracted the attention of stuch inlnovative young linguists as L. Iakubinskii and E. Polivanov anid thuts spurred the formation of Opoiaz. We are told furtlher that "nearly every treatment of Formalisnm has recognized that booklet as a cornerstone of the movement.''2

As Professor Sheldonl notes himself, I did mention the Resurrection of the Word in miiy dissertation, witlhout, however, attaching to this brochure as crucial an importanlce as he does. In revising my thesis for publication, I deleted a number of passages which at the time I did not consider absoltutely germane to its subject. In retrospect, I would have been well advised to spare

1. Richard Sheldon, "Viktor Shklovsky anid The Device of Ostensible Surrenlder," Slavic Review, 34, Ino. 1 (March 1975): 86-108.

2. Ibid., p. 89, n. 11.



112 Slavic Review

some of these sections, including the reference to Shklovsky's critical debut: the essay was a seminial if a somuewlhat nmucllled performalnce and it did antici- pate some of the essential Formlalist concepts. Whetlher it can properly be described as "the cornlerstone of the movenment" is sometlling else again. Nor are the autlhorities arrayed by Professor Sheldon as unlanimous on this point as he suggests: if P. Medvedev calls The Resitrrection of thte Word "the first maanifesto of Russianl Formalisml,," B. Eikhenlbaumii assigns that status Uli- equivocally to Slhklovsky's 1919 essay Art as a Device; and V. Markov, whose maini concernl is with the impact of Slhklovsky's lecture-essay on his fellow Futurists, sees in it a harbinger of Russiani Futurismll's alliance with the "Formnalist Sclhool of criticism and philology, one of wlhose leaders Shklovsky was later to become."3

As for the relative chronlology of the two Formlalist centers, assigning

precise dates of birtlh to movemenlts spawned by intellectual bull sessions is clhancy business. Presumably Mr. Slheldon knows onl good authority tllat the Opoiaz mleetings actually began in 1914. Printed sources that were available to me, including three retrospective accounts by Slhklovsky hiinmself, are far from conclusive on that score. No date is assigned to the homiiely beginnlinigs of Opoiaz in Thlird Factory (1926), where they are fondly recalled as "evenings at the Briks." In hiis most recent autobiography, Zhili-byli, Shklov- sky is rather vague: "Opoiaz enmerged still during the War, before the Revolu- tion.."4 Tlhus, all I am willing to grant is that I would have been on safer ground had I stated, as Krystyna Ponmorska did somie years later, that "the Opoiaz group . . . began its official activity [italics mine] in 1916."5 (Refer- ence here is to the first joilnt Formalist publication, Sborniiki po teorii poeti- cheskogo ia2.yka.) Moreover, in dealing witlh convergent, and nearly simnul- taneous intellecttual developmelnts, chronological priority is essentially a pseudoissue. WAhat does mlatter is that neither the preemiinence of Opoiaz- by the timle the Formalist mlovemienlt actually got off the ground-nor the centrality of Shklovsky's role in "organizing and making articulate the metlhodological fermlelnt in the Russian literary studies" are ever called into question in my book. "In the first years of Opoiaz," I wrote, "he [Slhklov- sky] mlade by his articles and speeches a stron-ger inmpact on the position and strategy of the mlovemenlt than any of its spokesmeln, with the possible ex-

3. See Pavel Nikolaevich Medvedev, For'uial'nyi mnetod v literaturovedenii (Lenin- grad, 1928); "Teoriia 'formal'inogo metoda,'" in Boris Eikhelnbauni, Literatura: Teoriia, kritika, poleiiilea (Leniingrad, 1927), pp. 116-48; and Vladimir Markov, Ruissian Futir- ism.: A History (Berkeley, 1968).

4. Zncania, 1961, ilo. 10, p. 188. 5. Krystyna Pomorska, Russian Formiialist Thleory and Its Poetic Anibiantce (The

Hague, 1968), p. 18.



On Being Fair to Viktor Shklovsky 113

ceptionl of Ronmanl Jakobson."'; Tlhis, I suggest, is lhardly "downgrading Slhklovsky's role.

Yet, the core of Mr. Sheldoln's message lies elsewhere. His cenltral tllesis is that for somiie unaccountable reason the career of "onle of the earliest and miiost outspoken defenlders of creative freedlom in the Soviet Unioll' was widely imiisconstrtued in the West as "a series of surrenders whiclh lhastenled or even precipitatecl the collapse of the Formlialist movement." This view- which, iincidelntally, I fail to recognize as miiy own 7-is both inaccturate and ulnfair: it ignores a nmtniber of heteroclox prolnounlcemiielnts wlhich Shklovsky persisted in miaking during the period of his alleged retreats and accollillioda- tionls. More imiiportant, it is inselnsitive to Shklovsky's "poetics of colntradic- tion." Apparently, the "Western critics" failed to note tllat in nearly every ilnstance a conciliatory statemiient on Shklovsky's part is accomnpallied by a gestture or a dicttum whiclh uindercuts and effectively subverts it; in Mr. Sheldon's plhrase, they have overlooked the characteristic Shklovskian ploy -"the device of ostensible surrender."

The first case-in-poinlt is the Western treatment of Zoo or Letters Not Aboitt Love (1923), a bizarre epistolary novel writteln during Shklovsky's brief alnd trotibled Berlin exile. Again I appear to be the prinie offender here since in Ritssian Formialismi, I wrote that in Zoo "Shklovsky had symllbolically 'sturrendered' to tlhe powers that be." (It mlay be worth notinig tllat the word "surrenidered" is placed in quotes.) I was referring to the declarationi in the book's conicluidilng letter, addressed to the "All-Russian Central Executive Commiiittee": "'MIy yotuth is gone and so is nmy self-assuralnce. I raise my hand and surrender."'8

MlVr. Slheldonl iimaintains that the "subservience of this appeal" is coun- tered by the last half of the letter "in whiclh Shklovsky tells that tlhe Turkish soldiers that surrenldered to the Russians were mnassacred onl the spot." He also reports that this portionl of the letter was deleted from the 1964 edition of Zoo. He performis a useful service in calling our attention to the char- acteristically Shklovskian incongruity and to the recent Soviet censor's eager- ness to remiiove it. Yet, can it be properly argued that this plea is effectively canceled by the Erzertm story? I am not perstiaded that either the explicit repuliation of the speaker's past ("all that was has passed") or the gesture

6. Victor Erlich, Russian Forminalismi: History-Doctrine, 3rd ed. (The Hague and Par-is, 1969), p. 70.

7. At least one Western student of Formalisnm never spoke of a "series of surrenders" nor imIplied that anythiing Shklovsky felt impelled to do "hastened or precipitated the collapse of the Formiialist movemenit." By 1930 the demise of Formaalisnm was a foregone conclusion; Shklovsky's distinctive contributioni was being the only Form-nalist spokesman to proclaim it publicly.

8. Erlich, Russia,n Foriiialismt, p. 136.



114 Slavic Review

toward political loyalty ("Tlhe revolution transformed me; I cannot breathe witlhotut it.") is anntulled b) the censored passage, even if it is significantly modified by it. Also, in view of the linking sentence-"don't let the hlistory of Erzeruml repeat itself"-it mliglht be fair to read the mlessage of tlhe uncen- sored version as: "I am not going to do it again. From now oln I will bellave, btut please don't be mleani or vindictive." In other words, olne cotuld describe the entire letter as an apology strongly tinged with apprehension. (It is a tribute to the nature of Shklovsky's poetics that this latter note was injectecl throtugh the mlediunm of a grisly anecdote.)

Having reinterpreted to hiis satisfaction the finale of Zoo, Professor Sheldon proceeds to demonstrate at length tlhe essentially heterodox tenor of Shkclovsky's 1926 volumiie Third Factory. I: have no quiarrel witlh him wlhen lhe r ejects Professor Piper's simplistic notion that Third Factory was "a repuidiation of Formalismi'" or, more broadly, when he insists that Sklilovsky did not tlhrow in the sponge in 1923. (If after lhis retturn to Russia lhe seems to have steered clear of political opposition, he certainly did not esclhew intellectual lheresy.) But then I lhave never stuggested that Zoo was, in fact, a tturning poinlt in Slhklovsky's career; I lhad called its finale a "symbolic" stir- render, which antedated by seven years the substantive recantationi, "A Monu- ment to Scientific Error" (1930).

It is in reconstruicting this ambigtuous doctunment that Professor Sheldon mlakes his mllost useftul conitribtution. He is quite perstuasive in arguing that Shklovsky's reptudiationi of "putre" Formlalismii was not necessarily insinicere- a point, incidentally, whlich I have come very close to nmaking in mly book9- and that a significant portion of the article was an attemiipt to salvage somiie of the late Formalist insights sulch as I. Tynianov's ftunctional concept of literary evoltution. He quiite properly remiiinds uis that Shldovsky miianaged to iailltain a measture of initellectuial self-esteeml: ratlher tlhan breathlessly cle- claring himself a -Marxist, he pleclged a thorough "sttudy of tlhe Marxist metlhod in its entirety."

All this is trtue as far as it goes: Sh-klovsky did not capittulate totally; he did nlot sturrender abjectly. No wonder the Marxist-Leninist zealots fotund his recantationi wantinig: the Gelfancls and the Gorbaclhevs, determlined to humLiliate as well as to disarm-i their opponents, wotuld not have settled for anytlhing less tlhani total self-abasement.)0 Btut to clescribe tlle acttual thrust of the "Monuml-ent" simiiply as a "defense of tlhe Fornmalist positionl as it lhad evolved dtiring the twenties' is, to my lillnd, soimewlhat miiisleading.

Stuclh a defense, reaclhing beyond the plhilosoplhical immlilatturity of Opoiaz,

9. "Some of it was sound and probably genuilne self-criticism" (ibid., p. 136). 10. Parentbetically, I never said that Shklovsky's recanltationl was "abject," nor did

I fail to record the witch-buniters' vociferous dissatisfaction with the "Monumenit."




was offered two years earlier by Romlanl Jaakobson and Iurii Tynianiov. In a

terse mletlhoclological statemlenit published in Novyi lef,j tlley repudiated the

aestlhetic separatismii of the early Formalist writings and affirmed the inter-

relatedness of literature and otlher ctulttural domlailns in terms wlhich we now

clearly reoognize as near-Structuralist. Of coturse, it would be uinrealistic to

expect of any tlheoretical pronounicemiienlt mlade by Shklovsky the rigor and

precision that mlark the Jakobson-Tynianov "theses." More relevantly, it

wotuld be tinfair to delmand of an article publishled in Literatiirnaia ga,2ta in 1930 the degree of intellecttual indepenidelnce that cotuld still be acllieved in a

1928 isstue of Novyi lef. Wlhat I anm stuggesting is that the crtucial difference

between the two statemlenlts be clearly recognized. One was a sopllisticated

and, if I mlay uise David Riesmlan's terml, an "innier-directed" revision of the

initial Formlalist tenets. The otlher-even wlhile managing to smutggle in indi-

vidtial late-Formiialist enmlphases-was predicated onl the bankruptcy of Formal-

isml as a colherenit body of critical thjoucgh1t.42 By 1930, the only perm-iissible

"isn" was AMarxism.

In this connlectionl, wlhile Shklovsky deserves credit for reftusing to accept MAarx, as one wotuld accept Clhrist at a revivalist meetinig, I wotuld hesitate to

label hiis attittude toward Marxisnm "equivocal." The plhrase "in its entirety"

(see above, p. 114) strikes nme not as a "puzzling qualification," but rather as

a bit of not altogetlher uinjutstified self-criticisml, a dig at tlhe "sociological

clilettantism" (Slhklovsky's own1 plhrase), or the do-it-yoturself Marxism, of

hiis 1928 sttudy of War and Peace. Fturthermlore, the statemlent "I am inot de-

claring mlyself a Marxist, because one cloes not adhere to scientific mletlhods.

One mlasters tlheml and one creates tlhem" was more clignified than heteroclox.

It is trtue that in the Soviet Uliion official doctrine was, in fact, often treated

as clogmiia. It is equally trtie that Marxisnm ptirports to be a scientific nmethod,

that is, somletlhing to be mlastered rather than merely espoused. Shklovsky's

stance failed to satisfy the bloody-minded hacks wlho were clailoring for the

pound of Formlalist fleslh, but it was perfectly compatible with Marxist-Lenin- ist etiqutette. Thuts, as I lhad previously indicated,'3 in reply to Ilis detractors

Slhklovsky fotund hiinmself intoning that "in the last analysis it is the economlic

process whiclh determinies alnd reorganizes the literary series and the literary system."'I Only three years earlier lhe criticized this position as "meta-

11. Romlain Iakobsoni and Iurii Tynianiov, "Problenmy izucheniiia literatury i iazyka,"

Novyi lef, 1928, no. 12, pp 36-37. 12. "As far as I am concernied, Formiialism is a thinig of the past. All that has remainied

froml the Fornmal miietlhod is termiiniology . . . anid a numiiber of teclhniological observa- tions. . . ."

13. Erliclh, Rinssiacl For)-,malism1n, p. 139. 14. Viktor B. Shklovskii, "Suklhoplavtsy, ili uravnienie s odnimil neizvestniymii," Litera-

turiiaia gazeta, Marclh 31, 1930, p. 2.



116 Slavic Review

physics." I cannot tlhink offlhand of any breakthrough in Soviet Marxist criticism of 1927-30 that would lhave persuaded Shklovsky of the validity or the ieainingfulness of the above ritualistic formtula.

To stum up, previous accotunts, incltuding mly own, lhave underemnplhasized the hedged and ambiguous quality of Shklovsky's retreat, the extent to whiclh it falls short of capitulation. Too nmuclh was being salvaged to justify such a label witlhout major qualifications. By the same token, too muclh was being conceded tinder pressitre for the act of surrender to be dismissed as an optical illusion, to be termed "ostensible."

Sheldon's challenge to the "prevailing view" that "Shklovsky adlhered to the party line after 1930" '15 rests in part on the memorable passage in Nadezlhda Mandelstaim's Hope Against Hope. Durilng the dread 1930s tlle

"only lhouse [in Moscow] to wlhiclh an outcast could always go" was tlle lhouse of Viktor and Vasilisa Shklovsky.'16 I take this testimonial very seri- ously indeed. Under the delhumlianizing conditionls of the Great Terror, hos-

pitality to a proscribed friend was an act of mloral fortitude and, it can be argued, also an act of loyalty to the values of an earlier, more humllanie age. And yet, personal decency, however admirable, lhowever severely taxed, slhould not be confused with intellectual defiance.

It so happens that this distinction clearly emerges from tlle very memoir wlhiclh contains the triblute to Slhklovsky's unflagginlg kinldlnless. Nadezllda Mandelstaimi, 180 pages earlier, refers to Zoo as "ctlhat sorry book in wlhich lie tearfully implores the victors to take him under their wing."17 This lharsl judgnment occurs, significalntly, in one of the key sections of tlle book, tlle section decrying the moral "enmptiness" of nmany early Soviet intellectuals, an emiiptiness whiclh contributed to their premature capitulation to the reginle. In Hope Abandoned, the mlatter is stated witlh characteristic starkness: "Un- certain of wlhat we lhacl to defend, we were only too quick to surrender."'8

The Western critic slhould not be too quick to echo this accusation- or self-accusation-born fromll years of imiisery and travail. But he will do

15. Oince againi the nature of the alleged Western conisenisus is partly misrepresented -I for onie niever put it that vay, tlhough I may have implied that sinice 1930 Shklovsky was careful nIot to deviate too openly fr-omii the party linie in ideologically charged areas. This, I submit, is still a teniable proposition: the painifully accquired hlabit of intellectual tiinidity, writ large in the 1953 collection of essays which Sheldoni himilself filnds "disnmal," has lingerecl onl. The remiiniscenices about Mayakovsky in Zliil-byii (1961) hew miore closely to the canioniic view tlhani the selectively candid memoirs of Ilya Elhreniburg's People, Years, Life.

16. Nadezhda Manidelstam, Hope Againtst Hope: A Mei,ioir, trans. Max HayNvard (New York, 1970), p. 346.

17. Ibid., p. 166. 18. Nadezhda Mandelstam, Hope Abandoiied, tratns. Max Hayward (New York,

1974), p. 164.




well to lheed the pointed renminider that througlh the 1920s the Soviet intellectual's resistance to the rising tide of authoritarianism was eroded not only by outside pressures but also by inward confusion, by mounting uncertainty as to the "timeliness" and historical viability of political aild cultural freedom.

Suclh disarray-a corollary, one suspects, of the sudden collapse of un- exalmiined ideological assumptions-is already apparent in Shklovsky's first andl most appealing memiioir, A Sentimtental Jolurney (1923). It seems that during olne of his milost dangerous Civil War assignments Shklovsky found solace in teaching the wounded soldiers fractions. "In tlhe midst of all this nmisery . . . which I did not understand . . . it is very reassuring to say calmlly: the larger the numerator, the larger the fraction; the larger the denomiinator, the snmaller the fraction. ... That is a stire thing. It is the only sutre thing I know" [italics mine].19 In Third Factory, this honest confusion assuml-es the form of a full-blowni metlhodological and spiritual crisis. Profes- sor Slheldon is unhappy about my reference to a "malaise" whiclh pervades the volumne. He prefers to speak of "anguish"-a perfectly understandable reaction, lhe insists, botlh to Sklilovsky's personal predicament and the imnmli- nenit tlhreat to creative freedoml heralded by the Party Resolution of 1925.

That, in the mid-1920s, Shklovsky and hiis associates lhad a great deal to worry about is scarcely news to me. But the "pressures generated by these dlevelopmlents" do not fully account for the tone of Third Factory, for the bewildering patternl of slhuttlilng between spirited defense of creative freedom and mealnderilngs about the advantages or the hiistoric necessity of "'uilfree- dom," and for gnawinlg doubts about the role played by Opoiaz ("Were we mleant to be the seed or the stalk?"). What is at issue lhere, I would suggest, is imore tlhan a stratageml, or nmore than another instalnce of Shklovsky's

"poetics of contradiction." It is genuinie anmbivalence enacted, now candidly, now cagily, in full view of the Russian reading public. I agree that at its lheretical best Third Factory is vintage Shklovsky. Yet considered in toto this miscellany is neitlher the "second of Shklovsky's surrenders," nor simply "a passionate defense of Formalism." Its uneasy ambiance is a long way away fromii the cocky self-assuranice of Shklovsky's Khod konia (1923) or tlle fiery intransigence of one of hiis most brilliant disciples, Lev Lunts.20

It would be presumptuous on the part of those who lhave not experienced the cataclysmic upheavals or the soul-destroying pressures that have shaped Soviet culture to adopt a superior or a scornful stance toward tlhe modes of

19. Viktor Shklovsky, A Scentimiienital Journey: Mcemioirs, 1917-1922, trans. Richard Sheldon (Ithaca and London, 1970), p. 211.

20. I am referring of course to Lunts's often quoted credo "Why we are Serapion Brothers" (Literaturnye zapiski, no. 3 [1922], pp. 30-31) which became the manifesto of that remarkable grouping.



118 Slavic Revietv

accommodation and survival elected by some of "tlhe clhildren of Rtussia's ter- rible years" (A. Blok). But there is no need to play down the cost of stuclh survival. There is no need to construe what lhas been, to eclho a Soviet euphemism, a "complex path" (sIo2shnyi putt') as a consistent, if at times cunn-ing, defense of creative freedom. Finally a word about 1930. I mliay lhave been tunfair to Viktor Borisovich by not acknowledging explicitly how diffi- cult it was to attemiipt to talk sense about literatture in the atmiosplhere of intellectual lynclhing parties. Yet I nmtust confess to a certaill rigidlity of taste: in a ?ituation where it becomes necessary to adopt the enemy's terms of reference in order to keep talkilng, the silence of a Boris Eiklhenbatlul still appears to me a preferable optioln to the double-edged loquacity of a Viktor Slhklovsky.



Documents

On Being Fair to Viktor Shklovsky or the Act of Hedged Surrender