Эпоха «остранения». Русский формализм и современное гуманитарное знание

The model represents, of course, extreme poles of the Form and Content relationship, for which we would find their historical realizations, but the essential feature of this model should be more in the nature of the relationship that would possibly have different variants.

4. The Relationship between Russian Formalism and Czech Structuralism

The relationship between Czech Structuralism and the tradition of Russian Formal School became the subject of a greater number of various polemics during the thirties in Czechoslovakia; by its importance the relationship was systematically drawn into the wider context of discussions of the fundamental theses and approaches of the structural thinking. The relationship of both traditions in relation to the general picture of Formalism seems to be a central theme of all debates. The relationship is well understood and it was discussed many times, but the very fact of continuity or inspiration of ideas is not just some common factor of interpretations of the development of Czech Structuralism, but also the basis, often unexpressed explicitly, of all contemporary interpretations and polemics. The category of continuity[94] was often viewed dynamically (Russian formal method versus Czech aesthetic tradition) and was always relational in the sense of a fulfillment/non-fulfillment[95]. The category of continuity in the form of variables allowed individual users to develop their own interpretations of the relations between Russian Formal School and Czech Structuralism generally in two ways: (1) as a common response to the previous tradition of Aesthetics and art theory or (2) as the complex relationship of two important directions in thinking about literature and art in general. Both methods contain in themselves certain classification that is either considered as the status of historical analysis (in the sense of Sus’s concept of acceptance), or as theoretical considerations of the common base fulfilling various forms: most frequently of ideas or consciousness [Pospíšilová, 1933: 410]. The sketched scheme of various debates were not realized as a standard polemic, but rather as a diversity of opinions on the tradition of Russian Formal School and its impact on the Czech Structuralism. Yet we can talk about the set of polemics, often hidden or masked by the specific interest for a deeper analysis of historical influences.

In the context of various polemics or of implicit cues about the origin of the Czech Literary Structuralism, it depends on what context of the Form and Content relationship was selected by participants of those discussions. The polemic between Jan Mukařovský and Karel Svoboda is considered as the most comprehensive discussion about the topic in the retrospect view. Certainly, we should also take into consideration the fact that the mentioned discussion is topically related to more fundamental and still even more famous (also frequently mentioned) controversies during the thirties, especially to the debate about the origin of literary history; that is the debate related to Mukařovský’s attempt to analyze the development of a poetic structure of Milota Zdirad Polák’s poem Sublime of Nature. Svoboda published his texts related to the topic in the magazine of Naše věda; schematically speaking, he oscillated between a positive evaluation of the Formalism as a method, in particular he referred to Mukařovský’s extensive study Máchův Máj (1928) [Svoboda, 1931], and a criticism or negative evaluation of the Formalism as a complex attitude to questions of art. In Svoboda’s extensive overview of the Formal method (On so-called Formal Method in Literary Theory [Svoboda, 1934]), he does not only refer to other, similarly conceived text Russian Formalism published by Anna Pospíšilová in Listy pro umění a kritiku [Pospíšilová, 1933], but he also uses a similar model to describe the Russian Formalism and its intellectual influence on the Czech Structuralism. A schematic structure of discussions between Karel Svoboda and Jan Mukařovský (with a broader context of various reactions) could be as follows: