Эпоха «остранения». Русский формализм и современное гуманитарное знание

Modern literary studies in Poland from 1937 onwards had two poles, on the one side Phenomenology with Ingarden and, with a certain respect Zygmunt Łempicki, Stefania Skwarczyńska and Konstanty Troczyński; on the other side, the Warsaw Circle consisting of strict anti-phenomenologists, Żółkiewski, Siedlecki, Hopensztand. They were accompanied from afar by Leon Chwistek, a painter who held the Chair of logic at Lwów/Lviv University (in the competition, he defeated the candidature of Alfred Tarski [Feferman, Feferman, 2004: 67]) and wrote abundantly about art [Chwistek, 2004]. Their programme aimed to wed the Opojaz poetics of sensations (whose methodologically mature extension they saw in the Prague Circle, above all in phonology) with Marxist sociology and neo-positivist logic of scientific discovery in an attempt, explicitly competitive with Phenomenology, to found the sciences of literature [Siedlecki, 1934; 1935; Żółkiewski, 1937; 1938]. Their notion of methodology started to resemble mathematical Formalism as formulated by David Hilbert and championed by Leon Chwistek. One has to keep in mind, though, that they (especially Żółkiewski) advanced the strict division between methodology (understood as purely formal research into the logical structure of notions of a given discipline) and theory that always contains an explanatory interpretation of the notions (the notion of explanation as in [Meyerson, 1921]). The theory of the Warsaw Circle tried to combine the physiological and the sociological explanation of literary phenomena, like when Siedlecki claimed that the roots but only roots of rhythmus stick in physiology whereas its rich development is a matter of the social [Siedlecki, 1935: 176–177]. In the spirit of a certain monism, which was implemented in Poland by Stanisław Brzozowski in the first years of the 20th century, the Warsaw young scholars actually sought ways to combine Marxism with empirio-criticism [Brzozowski, 1906: 15 ff.]. In Russia, the very same idea of monist synthesis, fiercely criticized by Lenin [Ильин, 1909], engendered, among others, Alexander A. Bogdanov’s ideas of Proletkult [Богданов, 1904–1906; 1918]. This is important in the context of the dispute with Phenomenology, lead by the Polish formalists, because the reference to empirio-criticism brings to mind that Formalism, as an aesthetic of reception, needs a philosophy of phenomenalism but it definitely does not need Phenomenology. The phenomenological Wesensschau is alien to Formalism that, in its receptive, historical and social dimension, should think of general notions as of an outcome of the grouping together of sensations in time – and not as of cognizing the essences. The grouping of sensations in relatively stable structures was the main focus of the interest of empirio-criticism. Phenomenalism goes hand in hand with conventionalism that is required not only by structuralist phonology but also by the device of estrangement (this is one of the main reasons why phonology may have been regarded by the Warsaw scholars as an extension of the Opojaz [Siedlecki, 1934; Hopensztand, 1938]). Only when the aesthetic object, with which the recipient commutes, is not one of a limited number of truthful views of an essence, but an abbreviation of previously experienced sensations, can the objects be brought back from the dead, rearranged, and made palpable. As already proven by Chwistek in 1932 [Chwistek, 2004: 197 ff.], such nominalist and empiricist phenomenalism was already postulated by David Hume’s philosophy of mind and language, according to which all notions and all meaning subscribed to words are but products of habit. If so, new constellations of signs can at least hope to blow up old perceptive and receptive habits, and this is what Formalism is very much about.

In his last letter to Roman Jakobson, sent from his deathbed in German occupied Warsaw in 1941, Siedlecki entreats Jakobson to keep Phenomenology aside from the structuralist project. Instead, a conventionalism which joins proverbial empirio-critictism and Marxism should be reinforced in order to ground the edifice of structural humanities and to safeguard the legacy of Opojaz [Jakobson, Siedlecki, 1968]. Needless to say, Jakobson disregarded Siedlecki’s premonitions. Twenty-some years later, it was this strange alliance of Phenomenology and structuralism that gave rise to deconstruction and poststructuralism and put an end to the structuralist dream.