Эпоха «остранения». Русский формализм и современное гуманитарное знание

In the first footnote on the second page of the book, as well as on other pages, we find the name of Boris Tomashevsky, one of the main new theoreticians regarding verse, and a quote from his book On Verse [Томашевский, 1929], which probably serves as the main subtext of Taranovsky’s study. Taranovsky also included in his bibliography earlier works by Tomashevsky [Томашевский, 1923], as well as works by O. Brik, V. Zhirmunsky, N. Trubetzkoy the well-known works on verse by Roman Jakobson (dating from the period 1922–1952). Nonetheless, there is no mention of Russian Formalism in Taranovsky’s book, while Opojaz appears only as the publisher of Jakobson’s study [Якобсон, 1923].

Taranovsky’s new views on scholarly research were certainly also influenced by his personal encounters with the representatives of the Prague Linguistic Circle during his studies in Prague in the late thirties. Taranovsky’s encounters with Roman Jakobson in this context were very important.

Another encounter between Taranovsky and Jakobson took place during the Belgrade International Slavic Conference/Congress held in Belgrade on 15–21 September 1955. The papers delivered at the Conference dealt with the development of Slavic studies in the world from 1945 till 1955. All the papers as well as the speeches given at the opening of the conference, and as well as all the conclusions, were published in the book Belgrade International Slavic Conference [Београдски…, 1957]. The chief editor of the proceedings was Kiril Taranovsky. The papers that attracted most attention were those by V. V. Vinogradov on the study of literature and language in the Soviet Union and R. O. Jakobson on Slavic studies in America (both in Russian). Russian Formalism was not even mentioned during the conference.

However, even the presence of Roman Jakobson in Belgrade and his paper on the study of Russian literature in America, and especially everything he said about his latest works was of great significance for those who were interested to know more about the state of modern literary scholarship in the West. Especially in the early fifties, after the distancing from the socialist realism dogma had begun in Serbia and Yugoslavia and the new generation of Serbian modernist writers had begun, despite resistance, publishing their extraordinary literary works. This revival of modern literature in Serbia was followed by a growing interest not only for contemporary Western literature, but also for Russian modern and avant-garde literature of the early decades of the 20th century. At the conference Jakobson also spoke about the study of the Russian avant-garde in the first post-war decade in America.

Jakobson’s visit to Belgrade in the mid-fifties certainly influenced the publication of a book of his studies [Јакобсон, 1966]. The acquaintance with Jakobson’s works from his latest writings had to stimulate, sooner or later, the interest for his participation in Opojaz, for his significant contribution to the Russian formalist school and his relationship with its most outstanding representatives.

After World War Two, but before the appearance of Jakobson’s book, those who wrote about Russian Formalism did so in order to provide basic information. Among them were the Croatian professor from Zagreb A. Flaker [Flaker, 1954] and the Croatian critic B. Donat in Belgrade [Donat, 1964]. Stojan Subotin, professor of Polish literature, was the first who translated Shklovsky’s books Zoo or Letters Not About Love and The Third Factory with a short introduction devoted to Shklovsky both as a prose writer and the leading theoretician of the Russian formalist school [Суботин, 1966]. Some years later professor Nana Bogdanović, from Department of World Literature of Belgrade University, translated Boris Tomashevsky’s Theory of Literature with an introduction dealing with some principles of Russian Formalism [Богдановић, 1972].

The head of the above-mentioned Department of World Literature in Belgrade, Dr. Vojislav Đurić, knew about my interest for Russian Formalism and he invited me to teach a course on this school during the whole autumn semester in 1964. Students of all years as well as their professors attended the lectures. In 1966 I published a fragment from my Master’s thesis, “On the Nature of the Poetic” [Петров, 1966]. This fragment provided a review of the definitions of the poem in verse and prose as well as the term ‘poetic’, from Coleridge and Wordsworth to the representatives of New Criticism A. Tate and I. A. Richards to the views of Russian formalists Yu. Tynyanov, B. Tomashevsky, R. Jakobson and V. Shklovsky.