Les modèles intellectuels et culturels des philologues russes exilés à Prague dans l’entre-deux-guerres : R. Jakobson versus E. Liatckij

Abstract

Grounded in hitherto unpublished archive material, the paper explores the phenomenon of Russian literary scholars in inter-war Czechoslovakia, with special regard to the clash between this research community and the local context in the early 1920s. Thus Lyatskyi and Jakobson can be seen as models who represent two different types of scholarly exiles, manifesting the inner structuralisation and value differentiation of exile activities. Whereas Lyatskyi belongs to the earlier, larger group of researchers who espoused positivism, psychologism and cultural history, who emigrated immediately after the October Revolution and tried to commune with the new surroundings, younger and more radical Jakobson, by contrast, symbolises the other grouping which, though a political embodiment of Soviet Russia, methodologically remained more open to modern impulses. As a result, Russian formalist school became instrumental in developing structural aesthetics that was institutionally rooted in the Prague Linguistic Circle. While the latter has always been a focus of attention in professional circles, namely the thought-provoking works of R. Jakobson, the former, i.e. the positivist, psychologist and culturally historical orientation of Russian exile still awaits critical consideration. It can offer worthy ideas as evidenced by the newly discovered manuscript of Lyatskyi’s monumental Historical Outline of Russian Literature, subtitled « Russian Literature in the Eighteenth Century ».