Context N°19
by Viktor Shklovsky
In 2007, Dalkey Archive Press will be publishing the first English translation of one of Viktor Shklovsky’s major works. Energy of Delusion is a humorous and digressive hybrid: at once a biographical sketch of Lev Tolstoy, as well as a brilliant analysis of the uses of plot (which Shklovsky here distinguishes from “story”) in fiction.
Storyline and plot are closely related to the beginning and ending of works.
Today literature is experiencing a deterioration of its beginnings and endings, which seem to be in a decline.
Quite often in great writers, such as Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, we observe how the ending is a search for the hero’s final fate.
This is true of Crime and Punishment.
This is true of Resurrection.
But their endings seem unclear—sort of distorted.
The Song of Igor’s Campaign has a distinct ending. It’s well known.
The Song of Roland also has a distinct finale, familiar to everyone.
Still, we know there have been attempts in the past to defamiliarize endings—to oppose them.
This different perception of endings occurs along with the end of a civilization, with the end of a specific era.
Under such circumstances, folklore becomes parody.
Take for instance the parodies of Rabelais, who often, with a precision unusual for his era, imitates the Bible—things like the birth of Jesus or the story of Cain.
For now, however, we’ll content ourselves with a few remarks, without going into too much detail.
The strangeness, as well as the magnitude of the writer’s task, has increased today.
But it turns out that the writer is often planning something and executing it at the same time. We have shown with individual examples that a work is born through the consecutive replacement of one so-called draft, or version, by another.
At this point, however, we must remember that in the past a great many works went into print and got published before they were finished.
So the creative process can go on for years, maybe even decades, in spite of publication.
It was like that with the epigraph to Anna Karenina.
This was a mysterious beginning when it was published, and it remains a mystery to this day.
We always see labyrinths of linkages reemerge in the same places, after the disintegration of old ways of life.
Therefore it’s hopeless to try to explain the peculiarities of a literary work through grammar.
Art has a life of its own; it exists through its own internal conflicts.
It somehow reconstructs life, crystallizing it.
There are traces of storyline in Anna Karenina—in the beginning.
The train, the journey—this is a “storied” beginning.
Especially before the invention of the railroad system. And even after the spread of the railroads, it was left as it was.
This novelty only highlights the tradition of the “storied” beginning.
Anna’s death also seems to be part of the storyline; however, the plot of Anna Karenina does not coincide with its storyline.
Here is the storyline in a nutshell:
A woman makes a mistake.
And she dies.
The scenario: a woman tries to enjoy love in an unusual situation, which society allows but doesn’t approve of.
This alienates her from her surroundings.
She knows that “society does not punish delusions, but it demands secrecy.”
The plot of Anna Karenina is the exposure of this secret.
In the Decameron, nearly everything is story-based, and most of the stories develop through narrative progression.
But there’s also the rare instance where the storyline is disrupted—I mention for the fifth time the tale of the Babylonian Sultan’s daughter.
The linear progression is seemingly preserved, i.e., the multiple attempts to possess the woman; the plot, however, is that she is actually well satisfied with all her lovers.
The plot’s motivation is based on the fact that she is beyond moral codes, religion, and language: outside the realms of her suitors, always different, always changing.
The storyline requires a clear-cut presentation of the hero when he appears.
A clock is shown in the town square—and everything begins.
Next scene—who is doing what, and where.
Aristotle wrote a great deal about the process of “familiarization.”
This is inherent in the storyline.
In a way, Tolstoy also resorts to story: two parallel fates—two marriages—an orthodox marriage and a marriage by chance.
The plot, however, lies in the fact that both of these threads are disrupted and reexamined.
At what point does plot become storyline?
The storyline, according to Tolstoy and Chekhov, consists of the hero’s death or his marriage.
In reality, “the death of the hero deflects our interest onto others.”
Hence, Chekhov expurgates his storylines—takes out their beginnings and endings.
This is the exact content of his letter to his brother.
The storyline is a matrix, the determination of type; a shipwreck in the Greek epic is a “storied” shipwreck.
The shipwreck in Robinson Crusoe is also a “storied” shipwreck.
But Robinson’s life on the island is plot.
And so, here we cite the words of Chekhov:
“The plot must be new, while the storyline can be omitted.”
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Translation by Shushan Avagyan
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