Text and Reality in Soviet “Sociological Poetics” of the 1920s

Abstract

The article considers several scientific metaphors describing the regularities of relations between literature and reality in the Soviet “sociological” literary theory of the 1920s. The most productive of these conceptual metaphors — reflection and refraction — reveal the features of key Marxist theories — Plekhanov, Lenin, Friche, Pereverzev, Medvedev, Bakhtin, Voloshinov, etc. The tendency towards the development of universal scientific laws as applied to cultural phenomena, which is characteristic of the epoch, is noted, in particular, the leveling of the author's role in the historical and literary process and the critical potential of art associated with it. There are analyzed the different strategies of interpretation of basic theoretical metaphors interpreted, first of all, as reflection/ refraction of social reality in literature. Two aspects of the problem of reflection/refraction are discussed — ontological, implying a “true image” of reality, and epistemological, which assumes that literature reproduces not the reality itself, but the social optics of its understanding. The author of the article shows that optical metaphors make it possible to understand which theories imply greater dependence of the literature on prevailing social notions, and which ones — greater independence, flexibility and variability of the law of reflection/refraction. In this light, the poles of “sociological poetics” — the theory of Friche and Pereverzev — are considered as sequential versions of ideological determinism, Lenin's approach as a kind of deconstruction of literary ideology, and the method of “Bakhtin's circle” as the most soft version of “sociologism”, which combines it with some provisions of the formal school.