Viktor Borisovich Shklovsky ( rus, Ви́ктор Бори́сович Шкло́вский, p=ˈʂklofskʲɪj; – 6 December 1984) was a Russian and Soviet

literary theorist Literary theory is the systematic study of the nature of literature and of the methods for literary analysis. Culler 1997, p.1 Since the 19th century, literary scholarship includes literary theory and considerations of intellectual history, mo ...

, critic, writer, and

pamphleteer Pamphleteer is a historical term for someone who creates or distributes pamphlets, unbound (and therefore inexpensive) booklets intended for wide circulation. Context Pamphlets were used to broadcast the writer's opinions: to articulate a polit ...

. 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 The Modern Language Association of America, often referred to as the Modern Language Association (MLA), is widely considered the principal professional association in the United States for scholars of language and literature. The MLA aims to "st ...

Prize Committee); "one of the most lively and irreverent minds of the last century" (

David Bellos David Bellos (born 1945) is an English-born translator and biographer. Bellos is Meredith Howland Pyne Professor of French Literature and Professor of Comparative Literature at Princeton University in the United States. He was director of Princeton ...

); "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, which ...

)

Life

Shklovsky was born in

St. Petersburg Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...

, 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 o ...

mathematician (with ancestors from Shklov) who converted to

Russian Orthodoxy Russian Orthodoxy (russian: Русское православие) is the body of several churches within the larger communion of Eastern Orthodox Christianity, whose liturgy is or was traditionally conducted in Church Slavonic language. Most ...

and his mother was of German-Russian origin. He attended St. Petersburg University. During the

First World War World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...

, 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 The February Revolution ( rus, Февра́льская револю́ция, r=Fevral'skaya revolyutsiya, p=fʲɪvˈralʲskəjə rʲɪvɐˈlʲutsɨjə), known in Soviet historiography as the February Bourgeois Democratic Revolution and some ...

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 Turkmen ...

(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 Bolshevism (from Bolshevik) is a revolutionary socialist current of Soviet Marxist–Leninist political thought and political regime associated with the formation of a rigidly centralized, cohesive and disciplined party of social revolution, ...

and took part in an anti-Bolshevik plot organised by members of the

Socialist-Revolutionary Party The Socialist Revolutionary Party, or the Party of Socialist-Revolutionaries (the SRs, , or Esers, russian: эсеры, translit=esery, label=none; russian: Партия социалистов-революционеров, ), was a major politi ...

. After the conspiracy was discovered by the

Cheka The All-Russian Extraordinary Commission ( rus, Всероссийская чрезвычайная комиссия, r=Vserossiyskaya chrezvychaynaya komissiya, p=fsʲɪrɐˈsʲijskəjə tɕrʲɪzvɨˈtɕæjnəjə kɐˈmʲisʲɪjə), abbreviated ...

, 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 the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constit ...

, 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 ''A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy'' is a novel by Laurence Sterne, written and first published in 1768, as Sterne was facing death. In 1765, Sterne travelled through France and Italy as far south as Naples, and after returning de ...

'' by

Laurence Sterne Laurence Sterne (24 November 1713 – 18 March 1768), was an Anglo-Irish novelist and Anglican cleric who wrote the novels ''The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman'' and ''A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy'', published ...

, 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 An epistolary novel is a novel written as a series of letters. The term is often extended to cover novels that intersperse documents of other kinds with the letters, most commonly diary entries and newspaper clippings, and sometimes considered ...

''Zoo, or Letters Not About Love''. The Yugoslav scholar

Mihajlo Mihajlov Mihajlo Mihajlov ( sr-Cyrl, Михајло Михајлов, ; 26 September 1934 – 7 March 2010) was a Serbian author, academic and publicist. Mihajlov became one of the most prominent dissidents in Yugoslavia and Eastern Europe after his arres ...

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

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 Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky (, ; rus, Влади́мир Влади́мирович Маяко́вский, , vlɐˈdʲimʲɪr vlɐˈdʲimʲɪrəvʲɪtɕ məjɪˈkofskʲɪj, Ru-Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky.ogg, links=y; – 14 Apr ...

, 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 Defamiliarization or ''ostranenie'' ( rus, остранение, p=ɐstrɐˈnʲenʲɪjə) is the artistic technique of presenting to audiences common things in an unfamiliar or strange way so they could gain new perspectives and see the world diffe ...

(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 A cliché ( or ) is an element of an artistic work, saying, or idea that has become overused to the point of losing its original meaning or effect, even to the point of being weird or irritating, especially when at some earlier time it was consi ...

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 Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin ( ; rus, Михаи́л Миха́йлович Бахти́н, , mʲɪxɐˈil mʲɪˈxajləvʲɪdʑ bɐxˈtʲin; – 7 March 1975) was a Russian philosopher, literary critic and scholar who worked on literary theor ...

and Russian and

Prague School The Prague school or Prague linguistic circle is a language and literature society. It started in 1926 as a group of linguists, philologists and literary critics in Prague. Its proponents developed methods of structuralist literary analysis and ...

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

's translations of the works of Russian formalists in the 1960s and 1970s, including

himself,

Gerard Genette Gerard is a masculine forename of Proto-Germanic origin, variations of which exist in many Germanic and Romance languages. Like many other early Germanic names, it is dithematic, consisting of two meaningful constituents put together. In this ...

and

Hans Robert Jauss Hans Robert Jauss (german: Jauß; 12 December 1921 – 1 March 1997) was a German academic, notable for his work in reception theory (especially his concept of horizon of expectation) and medieval and modern French literature. His approach was d ...

Film

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, screen ...

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

* ''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 Lev Vladimirovich Kuleshov (russian: Лев Владимирович Кулешов; – 29 March 1970) was a Russian and Soviet filmmaker and film theorist, one of the founders of the world's first film school, the Moscow Film School. He ...

, 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 ...

* '' Jews on Land'', 1927, director Abram Room * ''

Bed and Sofa ''Bed and Sofa'' (russian: Третья Мещанская) is the English name of a 1927 Soviet Union, Soviet silent film originally released in the Soviet Union as ''Tretya meshchanskaya'', and is sometimes referred to as ''The Third Meschansk ...

'', 1927, director Abram Room * '' The House on Trubnaya'', 1928, director

Boris Barnet Boris Vasilyevich Barnet (russian: Бори́с Васи́льевич Ба́рнет; 18 June 1902 – 8 January 1965) was a Soviet film director, actor and screenwriter of British heritage. He directed 27 films between 1927 and 1963. Barnet ...

* '' The House of Ice'', 1928, director Konstantin Eggert, based on the eponymous novel by

Ivan Lazhechnikov Ivan Ivanovich Lazhechnikov (russian: Ива́н Ива́нович Лаже́чников; September 25, 1792 – July 8, 1869) was a Russian writer. Biography Lazhechnikov was born into the family of a rich merchant in Kolomna in 1792. He r ...

* '' Krazana'', 1928, director Kote Mardjanishvili, based on the novel ''

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 upris ...

'' by

Ethel Lilian Voynich Ethel Lilian Voynich, ''née'' Boole (11 May 1864 – 27 July 1960) was an Irish-born British novelist and musician, and a supporter of several revolutionary causes. She was born in Cork, but grew up in Lancashire, England. Voynich was a signifi ...

* '' Turksib'', documentary, 1929, director Viktor Alexandrovitsh Turin * '' Amerikanka (film)'', 1930, director Leo Esakya * ''The Horizon'', 1932, director Lev Kuleshov * '' Minin and Pozharsky'', 1939, director

Vsevolod Pudovkin Vsevolod Illarionovich Pudovkin ( rus, Всеволод Илларионович Пудовкин, p=ˈfsʲevələt ɪlərʲɪˈonəvʲɪtɕ pʊˈdofkʲɪn; 16 February 1893 – 30 June 1953) was a Russian and Soviet film director, screenwriter ...

* ''The Gadfly'', 1956, director Aleksandr Faintsimmer, based on the eponymous novel by Ethel Lilian Voynich * ''Kazaki'', 1961, director Vasili Pronin

Interviews

* Serena Vitale: ''Shklovsky: Witness to an Era'', translated by Jamie Richards, Dalkey Archive Press, Champaign, London, Dublin, 2012 (Italian edition first pub. in 1979). The interview by Vitale is arguably the most important historical document covering the later years of Shklovsy’s life and work.The Motherland will Notice her Terrible Mistake: Paradox of Futurism in Jasienski, Mayakovsky and Shklovsky

References

External links

An excerpt from ''Bowstring'' in ''Asymptote''

The Formalist’s Formalist: On Viktor Shklovsky by Joshua Cohen

Reading Viktor Shklovsky with a little bit about Jonathan Franzen by Martin Riker, ''Context'' #13

* ttp://www.krugosvet.ru/enc/kultura_i_obrazovanie/literatura/SHKLOVSKI_VIKTOR_BORISOVICH.html Biography in "Энциклопедия Кругосвет" (in Russian)
Shklovsky's "Monument to a Scientific Error"
translation available online at

David Bordwell David Jay Bordwell (; born July 23, 1947) is an American film theorist and film historian. Since receiving his PhD from the University of Iowa in 1974, he has written more than fifteen volumes on the subject of cinema including ''Narration in ...

's site. *
The Trotsky-Shklovsky Debate: Formalism versus Marxism
''International Journal of Russian Studies'' 6 (January 2017): 15–27.
Victor Shklovsky and Roman Jacobson. Life as a Novel
documentary film by Vladimir Nepevny {{DEFAULTSORT:Shklovsky, Viktor 1893 births 1984 deaths Socialist Revolutionary Party politicians Writers from Saint Petersburg Russian formalism Russian Jews Russian literary critics Russian people of German descent Soviet screenwriters Male screenwriters Soviet literary historians Soviet male writers 20th-century Russian male writers Russian military personnel of World War I People of the Russian Civil War Film theorists