Russkii Formalizm: Metodologicheskaia rekonstruktsiia razvitiia na osnove printsipa ostraneniia by Aage A. s> Hansen-Löve (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 325 Numerous lines and passages are needlessly repeated see, for instance, pp. 7-8/15/64/25I/256/59I (dostoinstva bol'shoi narodnosti),I3/I39, 7 1/217, 83/462, 127/140, I41/247, I43/I65, I76/I87,23I/331/429,278/289,413/ 44, 450/45I, 484/495, 495/569, 496/570, 498/539, 525/572, 525-26/532, 532/538-39, 534/581, 547-48/585, 555/584. There is,perhaps,one fundamentalshortcoming.In presentingherreal(or, sometimes, questionable)discoveries,Shubnikova-Gusevaisreluctantto voice any negative criticism of Esenin's artistic achievement, or to suggest any assessment of the works' relative merits. She seems thereby to imply that all sixpoemy are equally profound, complex, and successful.Albeit 'subjectively', such a view could be challenged if each text were submittedto a close stylistic analysis.Aftercarefullyre-readingEsenin'sworks,thisreviewerstillfeelsthat, while 'Pugachev' and 'Chernyi chelovek' remain memorable creations, and 'AnnaSnegina' and possibly 'Pesn'o velikom pokhode' have their redeeming features,both 'StranaNegodiaev' and 'Poemao 36' arepoetically mediocre. In this respect, a slight suspicion lingers that Shubnikova-Guseva'sinsistence on ubiquitous hidden depths, 'polemical' or 'polyphonic' 'dialogue' (pp. 23, 26, 29, 570, 587, 592), and theprimacyofa 'Biblical','Shakespearean' or 'Pushkinian''subtext'(see, for instance, pp. 8o, 82, I69-8 I, I87, I89, 256, 273-78, 372, 97, 413, 464, 593) is at times something of a bluff or, to use Esenin'sidiosyncraticspelling,blef(pp. 7I, 2 I7). That is, the mere presence of allusions to Hamlet,or Pushkin,or the Bible, does not automaticallyraise the artistic and philosophical value of Esenin's poemy.Despite the efforts of a talented scholar, Esenin was, in essence, a lyric poet by the grace of God, ratherthan a masterof the philosophical epic. Bristol GORDON MCVAY Hansen-Love, Aage A. RusskiiFormalizm:Metodologicheskaia rekonstruktsiia razvitiia na osnoveprintsipa ostraneniia.StudiaPhilologica. lazyki russkoikul'tury, Moscow, 2001. 669 pp. Notes. Bibliography.Indexes. DM 78.oo. IN his book Structuralismin Literature.An Introduction(New Haven, NJ and London, 1974) Robert Scholes suggestedthat the achievement of the Russian formalistswas only now beginning to be appreciatedin the English-speaking world. The revival of interest in Russian formalism in the 1970S was partly due to the popularity of structuralismin that period, since many aspects and ideas of structuralism stemmed from historical developments of formalist methods. Most writingsof the Russian formalistsand of Mikhail Bakhtin,an importanttransitionalfigurebetween the formalistsand structuralists,became available in English in the I96os to '7os. The elaborate study under consideration here, produced by the well-known Austrian Slavist Professor Aage Hansen-Love, was also inspired by the revival of Russian formalismin that period. It was published in German in Vienna in 1978. The present translation into Russian was made possible by the financial support of the Central European Institute in Budapest and of the Austrian government. It discussesRussian formalismas part of culturaldevelopments of the i 9 IOSto I930s, its legacy and its linkswith Russian modernism. It will be of interestto 326 SEER, 8i, 2, 2003 students of Russian and comparative literatures,in spite of the fact that the Bibliographyincludes only a few bookspublishedafter I980. Hansen-Love challenges pre-existing views on Russian Formalism (as expressed in Victor Erlich's seminal study RussianFormalism. Histoy-Doctrine, The Hague, I955) in severalways. While Erlichassertsthat Bakhtincould not be labelled a formalist, Hansen-Love devotes considerable attention to Mikhail Bakhtin and Lev Vygotskii (pp. 411-47), who are traditionallynot seen as formalists.The scholarhighlightsa numberof similaritiesbetween the formalistsand the psychologistVygotskii,with thefocuson Vygotskii'sanalysis of fable, his theories about the comic and of catharsis.Hansen-Love discusses the impact of Vygotskii's ideas of the psychology of creativity on the development of Bakhtin's theories. The scholar maintains that Vygotskii adapted the concept of defamiliarizationto the sphere of the psychology of reception in an original manner, but that his ideas had little impact on the Russian formalists(pp. 41 I- 1 2). It is odd, however, that in his studyHansenLove overlooks the fact that Vygotskii'sbrother David, an active member of the PetrogradFormalistschool, acquainted Lev Vygotskii with the works of Roman Jakobson, Lev Iakubinskiiand Viktor Shklovskii.It might have been fruitfulto investigate how Vygotskii'sviews on psycholinguisticsand Russian poetry develop various approaches advocated in the works of the abovementioned...