Viktor Borisovich Shklovsky ( rus, Ви́ктор Бори́сович Шкло́вский, p=ˈʂklofskʲɪj; – 6 December 1984) was a Russian and Soviet literary theorist, critic, writer, and pamphleteer. He is one of the major figures associated with Russian formalism.
Viktor Shklovsky's ''Theory of Prose'' was published in 1925. Shklovsky himself is still praised as "one of the most important literary and cultural theorists of the twentieth century" ( Modern Language Association Prize Committee); "one of the most lively and irreverent minds of the last century" ( David Bellos); "one of the most fascinating figures of Russian cultural life in the twentieth century" (
Tzvetan Todorov
Tzvetan Todorov (; ; bg, Цветан Тодоров; 1 March 1939 – 7 February 2017) was a Bulgarian-French historian, philosopher, structuralist literary critic, sociologist and essayist. He was the author of many books and essays, whi ...
)
Life
Shklovsky was born in St. Petersburg, Russia. His father was a
Lithuanian Jewish
Lithuanian Jews or Litvaks () are Jews with roots in the territory of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania (covering present-day Lithuania, Belarus, Latvia, the northeastern Suwałki and Białystok regions of Poland, as well as adjacent areas ...
First World War
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fig ...
, he volunteered for the Russian Army and eventually became a driving trainer in an armoured car unit in St. Petersburg. There, in 1916, he founded OPOYAZ (Obshchestvo izucheniya POeticheskogo YAZyka—Society for the Study of Poetic Language), one of the two groups (with the
Moscow Linguistic Circle
The Moscow linguistic circle was a group of social scientists in semiotics, literary theory, and linguistics active in Moscow from 1915 to ca. 1924. Its members included Filipp Fortunatov (its founder),Russian Formalism.
Shklovsky participated in the February Revolution of 1917. Subsequently, the
Russian Provisional Government
The Russian Provisional Government ( rus, Временное правительство России, Vremennoye pravitel'stvo Rossii) was a provisional government of the Russian Republic, announced two days before and established immediatel ...
sent him as an assistant Commissar to the Southwestern Front where he was wounded and got an award for bravery. After that he was an assistant Commissar of the Russian Expeditionary Corps in
Persia
Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkme ...
(see Persian Campaign).
Shklovsky returned to St. Petersburg in early 1918, after the
October Revolution
The October Revolution,. officially known as the Great October Socialist Revolution. in the Soviet Union, also known as the Bolshevik Revolution, was a revolution in Russia led by the Bolshevik Party of Vladimir Lenin that was a key mome ...
. During the Civil War he opposed Bolshevism and took part in an anti-Bolshevik plot organised by members of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party. After the conspiracy was discovered by the Cheka, Shklovsky went into hiding, traveling in Russia and the Ukraine, but was eventually pardoned in 1919 due to his connections with
Maxim Gorky
Alexei Maximovich Peshkov (russian: link=no, Алексе́й Макси́мович Пешко́в; – 18 June 1936), popularly known as Maxim Gorky (russian: Макси́м Го́рький, link=no), was a Russian writer and social ...
, and decided to abstain from political activity. His two brothers were executed by the Soviet regime (one in 1918, the other in 1937) and his sister died from hunger in St. Petersburg in 1919.
Shklovsky integrated into Soviet society and even took part in the
Russian Civil War
{{Infobox military conflict
, conflict = Russian Civil War
, partof = the Russian Revolution and the aftermath of World War I
, image =
, caption = Clockwise from top left:
{{flatlist,
*Soldiers ...
, serving in the
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army (Russian language, Russian: Рабо́че-крестья́нская Кра́сная армия),) often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist R ...
. However, in 1922, he had to go into hiding once again, as he was threatened with arrest and possible execution for his former political activities, and he fled via Finland to Germany. In
Berlin
Berlin is Capital of Germany, the capital and largest city of Germany, both by area and List of cities in Germany by population, by population. Its more than 3.85 million inhabitants make it the European Union's List of cities in the European U ...
, in 1923, he published his memoirs about the period 1917–22 under the title ' (', ''A Sentimental Journey''), alluding to '' A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy'' by Laurence Sterne, an author he much admired and whose digressive style had a powerful influence on Shklovsky's writing. In the same year he was allowed to return to the
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...
, not least because of an appeal to Soviet authorities that he included in the last pages of his epistolary novel ''Zoo, or Letters Not About Love''.
The Yugoslav scholar Mihajlo Mihajlov visited Shklovsky in 1963 and wrote: "I was much impressed by Shklovsky's liveliness of spirit, his varied interests and his enormous culture. When we said goodbye to Viktor Borisovich and started for Moscow, I felt that I had met one of the most cultured, most intelligent and best-educated men of our century."
He died in Moscow in 1984.
Writer and theorist
In addition to literary criticism and biographies about such authors as Laurence Sterne,
Maxim Gorky
Alexei Maximovich Peshkov (russian: link=no, Алексе́й Макси́мович Пешко́в; – 18 June 1936), popularly known as Maxim Gorky (russian: Макси́м Го́рький, link=no), was a Russian writer and social ...
,
Leo Tolstoy
Count Lev Nikolayevich TolstoyTolstoy pronounced his first name as , which corresponds to the romanization ''Lyov''. () (; russian: link=no, Лев Николаевич Толстой,In Tolstoy's day, his name was written as in pre-refor ...
, and Vladimir Mayakovsky, he wrote a number of semi-autobiographical works disguised as fiction, which also served as experiments in his developing theories of literature.
Shklovsky is perhaps best known for developing the concept of ''ostranenie'' or defamiliarization (also translated as "estrangement") in literature. He explained the concept in 1917 in the important essay "Art as Technique" (also translated as "Art as Device")Viktor Shklovsky (1917 ''Art as Technique'' which comprised the first chapter of his seminal ''Theory of Prose'', first published in 1925. He argued for the need to turn something that has become over-familiar, like a cliché in the literary canon, into something revitalized:
Among other things, Shklovsky also contributed the plot/story distinction (syuzhet/fabula), which separates out the sequence of events the work relates (the story) from the sequence in which those events are presented in the work (the plot).
Shklovsky's work pushes Russian Formalism towards understanding literary activity as integral parts of social practice, an idea that becomes important in the work of Mikhail Bakhtin and Russian and Prague School scholars of
semiotics
Semiotics (also called semiotic studies) is the systematic study of sign processes (semiosis) and meaning making. Semiosis is any activity, conduct, or process that involves signs, where a sign is defined as anything that communicates something, ...
. Shklovsky's thought also influenced western thinkers, partly due to
Tzvetan Todorov
Tzvetan Todorov (; ; bg, Цветан Тодоров; 1 March 1939 – 7 February 2017) was a Bulgarian-French historian, philosopher, structuralist literary critic, sociologist and essayist. He was the author of many books and essays, whi ...
's translations of the works of Russian formalists in the 1960s and 1970s, including
Tzvetan Todorov
Tzvetan Todorov (; ; bg, Цветан Тодоров; 1 March 1939 – 7 February 2017) was a Bulgarian-French historian, philosopher, structuralist literary critic, sociologist and essayist. He was the author of many books and essays, whi ...
Shklovsky was one of the very early serious writers on film. A collection of his essays and articles on film was published in 1923 (''Literature and Cinematography'', first English edition 2008). He was a close friend of director
Sergei Eisenstein
Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein (russian: Сергей Михайлович Эйзенштейн, p=sʲɪrˈɡʲej mʲɪˈxajləvʲɪtɕ ɪjzʲɪnˈʂtʲejn, 2=Sergey Mikhaylovich Eyzenshteyn; 11 February 1948) was a Soviet film director, scre ...
and published an extensive critical assessment of his life and works (Moscow 1976, no English translation).
Beginning in the 1920s and well into the 1970s Shklovsky worked as a screenwriter on numerous Soviet films (see ''Select Filmography'' below), a part of his life and work that, thus far, has seen very limited attention. In his book ''Third Factory'' Shklovsky reflects on his work in film, writing: "First of all, I have a job at the third factory of Goskino. Second of all, the name isn't hard to explain. The first factory was my family and school. The second was Opoyaz. And the third – is processing me at this very moment."
Bibliography (English)
* ''A Sentimental Journey: Memoirs, 1917–1922'' (1923, translated in 1970 by Richard Sheldon)
* ''Zoo, or Letters Not About Love'' (1923, translated in 1971 by Richard Sheldon) – epistolary novel
* ''Knight's Move'' (1923, translated in 2005) – collection of essays first published in the Soviet theatre journal, ''The Life of Art''
* ''Literature and Cinematography'' (1923, translated in 2008)
* ''Theory of Prose'' (1925, translated in 1990) – essay collection
* ''Third Factory'' (1926, translated in 1979 by Richard Sheldon)
* ''The Hamburg Score'' (1928, translation by Shushan Avagyan published in 2017)
* ''Life of a Bishop's Assistant'' (1931, translation by Valeriya Yermishova published in 2017)
* ''A Hunt for Optimism'' (1931, translated in 2012)
* ''Mayakovsky and his circle'' (1941, translated in 1972) – about the times of poet Vladimir Mayakovsky
* ''Leo Tolstoy'' (1963, translated in 1996)
* ''Bowstring: On the Dissimilarity of the Similar'' (1970, translated in 2011)
* ''Energy of Delusion: A Book on Plot'' (1981, translated in 2007)
Select filmography (as writer)
* ''By the Law'', 1926, director Lev Kuleshov, based on a story by
Jack London
John Griffith Chaney (January 12, 1876 – November 22, 1916), better known as Jack London, was an American novelist, journalist and activist. A pioneer of commercial fiction and American magazines, he was one of the first American authors to ...
Konstantin Eggert
Konstantin Vladimorovich Eggert (russian: Константин Владимирович Эггерт; 9 October 1883 – 24 October 1955) was a Russian actor and film director. He co-directed the 1925 film ''The Marriage of the Bear''.
Selected f ...
The Gadfly
''The Gadfly'' is a novel by Irish-born British writer Ethel Voynich, published in 1897 (United States, June; Great Britain, September of the same year), set in 1840s Italy under the dominance of Austria, a time of tumultuous revolt and uprisi ...
Vasili Pronin
Vasily Prokhorovich Pronin (russian: Васи́лий Про́хорович Про́нин; 25 December 1905 – 12 October 1993) was a Soviet statesman and Chairman of the executive committee of the Moscow City Council of Laborers' Deputies ( ...
Vladimir Nepevny
Vladimir Nepevny (or Nepevnyi, Nepevnji russian: Владимир Григорьевич Непе́вный ; born 16 August 1965) is a Russian filmmaker and screenwriter.
Biography
Documentary filmmaker Vladimir Nepevny (or Nepevnyi, Nepevn ...