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Boris Eikhenbaum in OPOIAZ: Testing the Limits of the Work-Centered Poetics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Carol Any
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Boris Eikhenbaum spent nearly a decade working within Opoiaz, the Petersburg branch of Russian formalism, to develop a work-centered poetics. Faced with the inadequacy of traditional mimetic, expressive, and pragmatic views of literature, he and his colleagues tried to address literary works without recourse to extraliterary facts. Any intrinsic poetics, however, encounters difficulties, for it must avoid even the most obvious cultural and historical explanations of any work taken as literary. In its struggle against crudely reductive interpretations of literature, Opoiaz had constantly to guard against sliding back into an external approach. This article will suggest that it was largely Eikhenbaum who played the role of guard dog, nudging the evolving Opoiaz view of literature back toward the literary work itself. How successful he was in this effort (and by extension, perhaps, the successes and shortcomings of workcentered literary theories in general) is the question to be examined here. Eikhenbaum's own shift, beginning in 1927, toward a study of literature that privileges the author, may tell us as much about the limitations of objective theories of literature as about the political inadmissibility of Russian formalism under Stalin.

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Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 49 , Issue 3 , Fall 1990 , pp. 409 - 426
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Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1990

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References

1. Ol'ga Eikhenbaum, “Pis'ma Eikhenbauma, B. M. k roditeliam (1905-1911),” Revue des etudes slaves 57, no. 1 (1985)Google Scholar: 19.1 am grateful to Gary Saul Morson for his comments on an earlier version of this article.

2. Boris, Eikhenbaum, “Pushkin-poet i bunt 1825 goda,” Vestnik znaniia, no. 1 (1907), 8–18Google Scholar; no. 2: 58-66; idem, “Pis'ma F. I. Tiutcheva k zhene,” Skvoz’ literatwu (1924; rep. ed., The Hague: Mouton, 1962), 50-61; idem, “Poetika Derzhavina,” ibid., 5-36; idem, “N. M. Karamzin,” ibid., 37-49. The article on Karamzin exhibits the influence of certain ideas of Opoiaz.

3. Brik's influence on Eikhenbaum in 1917-1918 is evident from Eikhenbaum's diary of those years. Portions of the diary from 1918 appear in Boris Eikhenbaum, “Muchitel'no rabotaiu nad stat'ei o Tolstom,” Voprosy literatury, no. 3 (1978): 308-314.

4. O. Eikhenbaum, “Pis'ma,” 24-25.

5. Boris Eikhenbaum, “O printsipakh izucheniia literatury v srednei shkole,” Russkaia shkola, no. 12 (1915): 110-128; reprinted in Prepodavanie literaturnogo chteniia v estonskoi shkole. Metodicheskie razrabotki (Tallin: Tallinskii pedagogicheskii institut imeni E. Vil'de, 1983), 138-173.

6. Sbornikipo teoriipoeticheskogo iazyka (Petrograd: Tip. Z. Sokolinskogo, 1916), vol. 1. Reviewed by Boris Eikhenbaum, “K voprosu o zvukakh stikha,” Birzhevye vedomosti, utrennii vypusk, 7 October 1916, 5; reprinted in idem, 0 literature: raboty raznykh let (Moscow: Sovetskii pisatel', 1987), 325-328.

7. Sborniki 3: 19-25.

8. B. Eikhenbaum, “K voprosu,” 5.

9. For this reason Eikhenbaum refused to recognize much futurist verse as poetry, although he greatly admired Vladimir Maiakovskii.

10. Roman, Jakobson, Selected Writings, vol. 5, On Verse, Its Masters and Explorers (The Hague: Mouton, 1979), 305 Google Scholar.

11. Lev, Vygotskii, Psikhologiia iskusstva (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1965), 69–92 Google Scholar.

12. Boris Eikhenbaum, “Razmyshleniia ob iskusstve. 1. Iskusstvo i emotsiia,” Zhizn’ iskusstva, 11 March 1924, 8.

13. Ibid., 9.

14. Eikhenbaum's distinction between personal and spiritual emotions is discussed in Carol Any, “Teoriia iskusstva i emotsii v formalisticheskoi rabote Borisa Eikhenbauma,” Revue des études slaves, 57, no. 1 (1985): 137-144.

15. B. Eikhenbaum, “Razmyshleniia,” 8.

16. Ibid.

17. Henri, Bergson, “Laughter,” in Comedy, ed. Sypher, Wylie (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1956), 63-64, 150–151 Google Scholar. See also Eikhenbaum's three reviews of Bergson: “Anri Bergson. Vospriiatie izmenchivosti,” Zaprosy zhizni, no. 52 (1912): 3014-3015; “Bergson, Anri. Vospriiatie izmenchivosti,” Biulleteni literatury i zhizni, no. 11 (February 1913): 265-266; “Literature o Bergsone,” Russkaia molva, no. 40, 20 January 1913, 6.

18. Bergson, “Laughter,” 170.

19. See Victor, Erlich, RussianFormalism: History—Doctrine, 3rd ed. (The Hague: Mouton, 1969), 210 Google Scholar.

20. See for example Hansen-Love, Aage, “‘Motivirovka, ’ ‘motivatsiia,” Russian Literature 18 (15 August 1985): 97–98Google Scholar; also, Peter, Steiner, Russian Formalism: A Metapoetics (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1984), 99–137 Google Scholar, in his discussion of what he terms systemic formalism, concentrates almost exclusively on Tynianov and occasionally quotes supporting material from Eikhenbaum.

21. Boris Eikhenbaum, Literature Teoriia. Kritika. Polemika (1927; rep. ed., Chicago: Russian Language Specialties, 1969), 156-157.

22. Shklovskii had made use of examples from Tolstoi in “Iskusstvo kak priem,” Sborniki po teorii poeticheskogo iazyka (Petrograd, 1917) 2: 3-14; but these examples, while important to formalist theory, did not have the effect of overturning canonized interpretations of Tolstoi's work.

23. Viktor Shklovskii, A Sentimental Journey. Memoirs, 1917-1922, ed. and trans. R. Sheldon (Ithaca, N. Y.: Cornell University Press, 1970), 233. The same reason for the effect of Eikhenbaum's article is given in Jurij, Striedter, Literary Structure, Evolution, and Value: Russian Formalism and Czech Structuralism Reconsidered (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989), 45 Google Scholar.

24. Cited in Steiner, , Metapoetics, 157 Google Scholar. Italics in original.

25. B., Eikhenbaum, Skvoz’ literaturu, 204 Google Scholar.

26. Osip Brik seems to have first suggested to Eikhenbaum the importance of articulation, which then Eikhenbaum addressed in his 1923 study of Anna Akhmatova.

27. See, for example, Boris Eikhenbaum, “Ivan Novikov. Rasskazy,” Zaprosy zhizni, no. 52 (30 December 1912): 3013-3014.

28. Bakhtin, M. [sic], Formal'nyi metod v literaturovedenii (New York: Serebrianyi vek, 1982), 124 Google Scholar.

29. The point is made in Fredric, Jameson, The Prison-House of Language: A Critical Account of Structuralism and Russian Formalism (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1972), 84Google Scholar.

30. Boris Eikhenbaum, “Boldinskie pobasenki Pushkina,” Zhizn’ iskusstva, 13-14 December 1919, 2; 16 December 1919, 1; idem, “Problemy poetiki Pushkina,” Skvoz’ literaturu, 157-170; idem, “O tragedii i tragicheskom,” ibid, 73-83; idem, “Tragedii Shillera v svete ego teorii tragicheskogo,” ibid., 84-151.

31. Bergson, “Laughter,” 159.

32. Henri, Bergson, Duration and Simultaneity, trans. Jacobson, Leon (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1965), 60–61 Google Scholar.

33. B., Eikhenbaum, Skvoz’ literaturu, 81 Google Scholar.

34. Further discussion of narrative, dramatic, and rhythmic movement can be found in Any, “Teoriia,” 140-142.

35. Steiner, , Metapoetics, 105 Google Scholar.

36. Boris, Eikhenbaum, 0 poezii (Leningrad: Sovetskii pisatel', 1969), 339 Google Scholar.

37. Boris, Eikhenbaum, Anna Akhmatova. Opyt analiza (Petrograd: Petropechat', 1923), 88–89 Google Scholar.

38. Iurii Tynianov, Problema stikhotvornogo iazyka (1924; rep. ed., Letchworth, U.K.: Prideaux, 1979), 42-45.

39. B., Eikhenbaum, 0 poezii, 328 Google Scholar.

40. Ibid., 340.

41. See Viktor Shklovskii, “Sviaz’ priemov siuzhetoslozheniia s obshchimi priemami stilia,” O teorii prozy (1929; reprint, Ann Arbor, Mich.: Ardis, 1985), 24-67; idem, “Parodiinyi roman,” ibid., 177-204. Shklovskii does not qualify retardation as characteristic only of certain genres until 1924, in “Roman tain,” ibid., 143-176.

42. Steiner, Metapoetics, 114, observes that to Shklovskii “all literary works [were] essentially the same, differing only in the way they were made. “

43. Shklovskii, , 0 teorii prozy, 204 Google Scholar.

44. Ibid., 81-82.

45. This is not to deny that Eikhenbaum frequently referred to “literary laws” when he wished to highlight the discrete nature of literary scholarship as a discipline.

46. Vladimir, Propp, Morfologiia skazki (Leningrad: Akademia, 1928 Google Scholar; Shklovskii, , 0 teorii prozy, 125–152 Google Scholar.

47. Boris Eikhenbaum, Lermontov. Opyt istoriko-lileraturnoi otsenki (1924; rep. ed., Letchworth, U.K.: Prideaux, 1977), 151-152.

48. B., Eikhenbaum, O poezii, 422, 439Google Scholar.

49. B., Eikhenbaum, Literatura, 259–262 Google Scholar.

50. On the formalist treatment of motivation, see Hansen-Love, “ ‘Motivirovka, '” 91-101.

51. B., Eikhenbaum, Skvoz’ literaturu, 78 Google Scholar.

52. This reference probably explains why Dmitrii S. Mirskii in his review of Skvoz’ literaturu in Slavonic and East European Review, June 1924: 227-228 classified these two articles as predating Eikhenbaum's formalist period.

53. Boris, Eikhenbaum, “O chtenii stikhov,” Zhizn’ iskusstva, 12 November 1919, 1 Google Scholar.

54. Iurii, Tynianov, Arkhaisty i novatory (1929: rep. ed., Ann Arbor, Mich.: Ardis, 1985), 12 Google Scholar.

55. Cited in Steiner, , Metapoetics, 136–137 Google Scholar.

56. This argument has been made by Morson, Gary Saul, The Boundaries of Genre: Dostoevsky's “Diary of a Writer” and the Traditions of Literary Utopia (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981), 51–52 Google Scholar.

57. Viktor, Shklovskii, “Evgenii Onegin (Pushkin i Stern),” in Ocherki po poetike Pushkina (1923; rep. ed., The Hague: Mouton, 1969), 205 Google Scholar.

58. B., Eikhenbaum, Literatura, 166–168 Google Scholar.

59. Ibid., 169.

60. Ibid.

61. Ibid., 170.

62. Shklovskii, , “Evgenii Onegin,” 211 Google Scholar.

63. Ibid., 208.

64. Tynianov, , Arkhaisty, 11 Google Scholar.

65. Nor did they explore the interesting question of whether a work that is approached as fictional by some readers might not be approached as factual by others. The question is explored in Morson, The Boundaries of Genre, esp. 48-51.

66. B. Eikhenbaum, “Razmyshleniia,” 8. He deals with this question also in an article written before his formalist days, “Krov’ vsegda vopiet,” Biulleteni literatury i zhizni, no. 11 (February 1913): 531-535.

67. Boris Eikhenbaum, “Posle teatra. Golos ne iz publiki,” Zhizri iskusstva, 8 April 1924, 8-9. In a follow-up, Eikhenbaum “lays bare” his own device, stating that the earlier article had been a pose calculated to needle theater directors. See Boris Eikhenbaum, “Vse-taki o teatre,” ibid., 3 June 1924, 7.

68. Boris Tomashevskii and Boris Kushner were exceptions; see Steiner, , Metapoetics, 153, 177Google Scholar.

69. This similarity between Saussure and the formalists stands despite the fact that Saussure's approach was essentially synchronic and the formalists’ diachronic.

70. Bakhtin, [sic], Formal'nyi metod, 118–119 Google Scholar.

71. See for example Valerian Pereverzev's review of Skvoz’ literaturu and Lermontov in Pechat’ i revoliutsiia, no. 1 (1925): 269-270.

72. Bakhtin, [sic], Formal'nyi metod, 121 Google Scholar.

73. Gary Saul Morson, “Return to Genesis: Russian Formalist Theories of Creativity” in Russian Formalism: A Retrospective Glance. A Festschrift in Honor of Victor Erlich, ed. Robert Jackson and Stephen Rudy (New Haven, Conn.: Yale Center for International and Area Studies, 1985), 177, writes: “There is no Lermontov in Lermontov. “

74. I am excepting Skvoz’ literaturu (1924) and Literatura (1927), both of which were collections of articles written earlier, and Moi vremennik (1929), which marks Eikhenbaum's departure from formalism.

75. B., Eikhenbaum, Literatura, 250 Google Scholar.

76. Compare B. Eikhenbaum, “Problemy poetiki Pushkina,” 168-170.

77. Boris, Eikhenbaum, Moi vremennik. Slovesnost'. Nauka. Kritika. Smes’ (Leningrad: Izd. pisatelei v Leningrade, 1929), 49 Google Scholar.

78. In his diary entry of 15 December 1925, Eikhenbaum mulled over the idea of writing a book on the major writers of nineteenth century Russia, and “weav[ing] the way a person builds his life (the creative work as an act) with the epoch, with history… . I feel that a book like this, oriented towards people, is needed historically and is necessary to me personally—it is simultaneously both a [scholarly] work and an act “; quoted in M. Chudakova, “Sotsial'naia praktika i nauchnaia reflektsiia v tvorcheskoi biografii B. Eikhenbauma,” Revue des itudes slaves 57, no. 1 (1985): 33. Veniamin Kaverin, “Literator: Iz knigi vospominanii,” Znamia, no. 8 (1987): 103, writes that Eikhenbaum “was always seeking a way to ‘live correctly, ’ learning this difficult art from those about whom he wrote his books. “

79. B., Eikhenbaum, Vremennik, 89–120 Google Scholar. The sixth writer, Nekrasov, was able to produce literary works in tune with the ideas of the intelligentsia.

80. Boris Eikhenbaum, “Obshchestvenno-politicheskie deklaratsii Lermontova,” Uchenye zapiski LGU, no. 87 (Saratov: LGU, 1943), 156; idem, “Literaturnaia pozitsiia Lermontova,” in Stat'i o Lermontove (Moscow: Akademiia nauk SSSR, 1961), 92.

81. B., Eikhenbaum, Lermontov, 69–70 Google Scholar.

82. In “Duma” the metaphor of dried-out fruit also reflects other images of emaciation in the poem: “My issushili um naukoiu besplodnoi;” “V nachale poprishcha my vianem bez bor'by;” “Iz kazhdoi radosti, boiasia presyshcheniia/ My luchshii sok naveki izvlekli,” “Ne brosivshii vekam ni mysli plodovitoi. “

83. See Boris Eikhenbaum, “Zhizn’ ushla v storonu ot formalizma,” Literaturnyi Leningrad, 1 April 1936, 2; idem, “Tvorchestvo lu. Tynianova,” Zvezda, no. 1 (1941): 130-143. A sociological treatment of the balance between intrinsic and extrinsic factors in late formalist writings (1927-1929) of Eikhenbaum and others is discussed in Leah Greenfeld, “Russian Formalist Sociology of Literature: A Sociologist's Perspective,” Slavic Review 46 (Spring, 1987): 38-54.