Context N°13
by Viktor Shklovsky
Although this is very much a book that works through the interaction of its parts, and therefore a book for which excerpts do not really do justice, we’re including a few here to coincide with this issue’s Reading of Shklovsky’s work. Our hope in this multi-pronged assault is that CONTEXT readers will be led to discover Shklovsky’s greatness for themselves.
MORE ABOUT THE FIRST FACTORY
What I remember best of all about the university is the corridor. Standing in that vast hall, a man seemed small. The corridor was warm and bright. Unfortunately, the end of it did not overlook the Neva. A piece had been cut off to make an office for the vice-rector.
In the corridor were notes, hanging on plywood boards. Going off the corridor were dark passageways, leading to lecture rooms.
The university offices and museums—I’m speaking about the Department of Philology—were small. To find the university in the university was very hard. It was hard to figure out where the learning was going on: in the lecture room with the bad portraits of scholars on the walls, in the warm corridor or in the professors’ apartments?
The university did teach us a thing or two about community spirit: the lines we stood in to register were the most organized in the world. I believe standing in line originated at the university and spread from there throughout Mother Russia. Decked out in a special costume—heavy, diagonal, green pants and a green frock coat with gold buttons—I entered the university.
That frock coat had already graduated from the university once; it had danced a lot on my older brother. My brother danced in such a way that the watch in his pocket rusted, but the frock coat underwent no change.
I eventually sold it in 1919 at the Maltsevoi Market, across from the red building of the Evangelical Hospital.
I hope it is now graduating from a workers’ school.
I attended and listened.
But the university wasn’t working in my specialty. Nothing was being done about prose theory, though I was already working on it.
If before my death I manage to tear myself away for a minute to do what I do best, if I write the history of the Russian journal as a literary form, if I manage to analyze how The Arabian Nights is made, and can once again ply my trade, then perhaps there will be talk of putting my portrait in the university building.
Hang my portrait in the university corridor, friends. Tear down the vice-rector’s study, establish a window on the Neva and sail past me on your bicycles.
* *
LETTER TO TYNYANOV
Dear Yury, I am writing you this letter not now, but last winter: these letters, then, commemorate the local winter.
I’ll begin not with the business at hand, but with some information about who has gained weight and who is playing the violin.
I am the one who has gained weight. It is late at night. I have already crossed the threshold of fatigue and am in the grit of something resembling inspiration. True, etched on my brain, like the address on the yard light, are two numbers. The first, consisting of one digit, is the amount of money I need. The other, consisting of two digits, is the amount of money I owe for my apartment.
The situation is very serious. Even though we have to think on the run, we mustn’t stop thinking. I like very much your study on the literary fact. Your idea that literature is dynamic is well taken. The study is very important—it may be a turning point. I’m no good at paraphrasing other people’s thoughts. You’ll write me yourself about the implications of your study, while I write you about my skill at not making ends meet.
We contend, it seems, that a work of literature can be analyzed and evaluated without departing from the literary set. In our earlier works, we gave many examples of how something regarded as a “reflection” is actually a stylistic device. We demonstrated that a work of literature is a unified edifice. Everything in it is subjected to the organization of the material. But the concept of literature changes all the time. Literature extends its boundaries, annexing non-esthetic material. This material, and the changes which it undergoes through contact with material already esthetically processed, must be taken into account.
Literature stays alive by expanding into non-literature. But artistic form carries out its own unique rape of the Sabine women. The material ceases to recognize its former lord and master. Once processed by the law of art, it can be perceived apart from its place of origin. If that makes no sense, try this explanation. With regard to real life, art possesses several freedoms: 1) the freedom of non-recognition, 2) the freedom of choice, 3) the freedom of salvage (a fact long gone in life may be preserved in art). Art converts the particularity of things into perceptible form.
Unfortunately, the Proletarian writers are laboring under the delusion that you can put things into a film without changing their dimensions.
As for me, I’ve put on weight. Boris is still playing the violin. He makes a lot of mistakes. One that he and I have in common is the failure to take into account the significance of the non-esthetic set.
It is also a serious mistake to use diaries to explain the way a work of literature comes into being. There is a hidden lie here—as though a writer creates and writes all by himself and not in conjunction with his genre and all of literature, with all its conflicting tendencies. Writing a monograph on a writer is an impossible task. Moreover, diaries lead us into the psychology of the creative process and the question of the laboratory of the genius, when what we need is the thing. The relation between the thing and its creator is also nonfunctional. With regard to the writer, art has three freedoms: 1) the freedom to ignore his personality, 2) the freedom to choose from his personality, 3) the freedom to choose from any other material whatsoever. One must study not the problematical connection, but the facts. One must write not about Tolstoy, but about War and Peace. Show Boris the letter, Yury; I’ve been discussing all this with him. Answer my letter, just don’t lure me into the history of literature. Let’s stick to art. Keeping in mind that all its magnitudes are magnitudes of a historical nature.
P.S. The intensity of private life these days would almost melt a dish of ice cream.
* *
LETTER TO BORIS EIKHENBAUM
I’m going to write you about the skaz. You define skaz as an emphasis in the narrative on the spoken word.
But even if that is true, how in the world can skaz be viewed outside the realm of plot? Conan Doyle’s Brigadier Gerard is built on two levels: 1) an account of some exploits, 2) a parody of those exploits, motivated by skaz. All the exploits prove to be a mistake. The narrator is there to supply irony. We see the same thing in Leskov’s “Flea.” That story is bolted to the fact that the flea, once shod, stopped dancing. Skaz makes it possible to implement a second, ironic perception of a seemingly patriotic story. So skaz is (at least much of the time) a plot device and cannot be viewed outside the realm of plot. Skaz is also used (much of the time) to ground a system of images. Skaz reshapes a plot, converting the groundwork of the narrative into one aspect of the plot. Skaz is not the issue. Lines of demarcation are not the issue. Forget about metrics, rhyme, imagery. What matters is the process. I am not being precise. But all our work has to do with the marshaling of devices, with the avoidance of categories like matter and energy, though we might concede that there is a thermal equivalent for each unit of work. Vinogradov fails to understand this.
An Explanatory Note
What is this letter doing here?
In Denmark there is a city called Copenhagen. That is where Andersen lived. The country is so small that passengers riding its trains probably get only half a ticket.
At that time, the streetlamps of Denmark were being converted from oil to gas.
“Get away, get away from the streetlamp, for God’s sake,” said Gogol in his classic tale “Nevsky Prospekt” . . . “and walk by quickly, as quickly as possible. And consider yourself lucky if it only takes a notion to spill its stinking oil on your elegant frock coat.”
But, in addition to its other qualities, the streetlamp was obviously a romantic. Particularly after it was replaced by a gas light. The retired streetlamp was given a present by the stars. If you lit a wax taper in it, it turned into a magic lantern (sort of like the cinema).
But the rain gave it another present . . . “If you get fed up with everything” it said, “make a wish and you will crumble into dust.”
The streetlamp fell into the hands of a night watchman—a hero of labor on pension. The streetlamp loved the night watchman and wanted to serve him as a cinema. The night watchman loved the streetlamp and sometimes fed it some oil. But why light a candle in a streetlamp?
The streetlamp made the rounds of the editorial offices. . . .
It said: “No, I am no cinema—I’m a projector.” I know nothing about illuminating rooms—I’m a critic. . . .
I’m fed up with my wit. Wit is a juxtaposition of the incongruous. I am an innovator in art. . . .
With nowhere to glow. So I have lit a candle for myself here in the middle of this book.
As far as objective reality is concerned, it certainly does determine consciousness.
But in art it often runs counter to the consciousness. My brain is busy with the daily grind. The high point of the day is morning tea.
And that is too bad: some artists shed their blood and semen. Others urinate.
Net weight is all that matters to the buyer.
Translated from the Russian by Richard Sheldon.
