Эпоха «остранения». Русский формализм и современное гуманитарное знание

Svoboda’s studies (I–IV) were written in the period from 1931 to 1937, each of these analyses accented different elements from a complex set of concepts and practices of the Russian Formal School as well as an ideological concept of Czech Structuralism on the implicit level. The originality of Russian Formalism method and its legitimacy in relation to the tradition of Czech Structuralism are interpreted as a certain historical response (with the absence of a sufficient activity) to the absence of the influence of Renaissance humanism on Russian culture. Svoboda implicitly establishes two complaints about the Formal method: on the one hand, he accuses the formal method of an absence of totality, the complexity of view (the form A of Form – Content relationship); therefore the method is considered as a certain accentuation of the naturalistic value in the process of development of the method while on the axiological level the method is considered as an absence of the typicalness; on the other hand, he accuses the formal method of opting artwork from the social context. It is no coincidence that both complaints in general are transformed into the different controversy between the Czech Structuralism and Marxism. The basic parameter of Svoboda’s accounts represents a certain form of absence, which is within the isolation/concentration model assigned to the isolation phase, that is the moment when the Russian Formalism tries to define its relation to the contemporary tradition of thinking about literature, on the one hand, and when the Czech Structuralism tries to create a meaningful description of its relationship to the Russian Formal School, on the other. If the isolation phase consists of a certain form of the absence, therefore an incompleteness of a form, the concentration phase is necessarily tainted as well, that means a certain form of reduction is presented. It is the form of reductionism that will play an essential role in the argument against Mukařovský’s proposal of the model of structural literary history in the context of discussions between Czech Structuralism and Marxism.

Jan Mukařovský responded to Svoboda’s accounts in two different ways: on the one hand, he criticized Svoboda’s concept, within the concentration phase according to the model, of ‘acceptance’ described as the relationship between Russian Formalism and Czech Structuralism without mentioning his name [Mukařovský, 1948 (1935b): 4]; on the other hand, later he put his criticism of Svoboda’s claim of lack of social context in the concept of Structuralism only in the footnote that was not included in a later edition of the study [Mukařovský, 1935a: 29]. After 1935, it seemed that the polemic had been exhausted, yet Karel Svoboda in his study [1937], devoted to Durdík’s aesthetics that was written on the occasion of the centenary of Durdík’s birth, did not forgive an ironic comment addressed essentially to the entire school of the Czech Structuralism, and to Jan Mukařovský especially. Basically, he negated the entire tradition of Czech Structuralism by his stylized declaration of the lack of any Czech aesthetic contemporary movement, which would protect (1) the autonomy of art, (2) the critical importance of an artistic form, as well as (3) the need for artistic stylization or (4) the aesthetic value of the speech. In the view of many studies or considerations published by the Prague Linguistic Circle, Svoboda’s comment might only be seen as an ironic mockery.

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