The interweaving of motives and their motivation is the organizing beginning of a primitive short story . This is also true in relation to the comic novel - the basis is an anecdote , replete in itself, without a tale, with comic provisions .
The composition becomes completely different if the plot itself, <...> ceases to play an organizing role, that is, if the narrator somehow or other highlights himself, as if using the plot to interweave individual stylistic devices. The center of gravity from the plot (which is reduced to a minimum here) is transferred to tale techniques, the main comic role is given to puns , which are either limited to a simple pun, or develop into small jokes. Comic effects are achieved by the manner of tale. Therefore, to study such compositions, it is these “trifles” that are used to sprinkle the exposition — so it’s worth removing them, the structure of the novel breaks up.
“How Gogol's Overcoat Is Made” is an article by literary critic Boris Eichenbaum published in 1919 in the collection Poetics [1] . In it, Eichenbaum analyzes the novel "The Overcoat " by N. V. Gogol . This article largely determined the ideology of Russian formalism [2] ; it had an impact on literary scholars (if more broadly, on representatives of the humanities as a whole) and not related to this area, including opponents of this approach.
Content
Content of Eichenbaum's work
If, starting with Belinsky , in Russian criticism and literary criticism “The Overcoat ” of Gogol is usually interpreted as a humanistic work about the fate of a small man , Eichenbaum proposed to consider, in fact, the literary text of the story itself.
Analyzing it, he shows that the main narrative is sustained in a comic way, and the humanistic line is transmitted only through a secondary anonymous character, a young official who, when he heard Akaki Akakievich say, “Leave me alone, why do you offend me?”, He understood “how much in a man is inhumane ” [3] (and in the early drafts the story of this episode was not). Eichenbaum draws attention to the deliberate melodramatic nature of this episode, which is poorly consistent with the overall style of the work.
Considering this general style of “The Overcoat”, Eichenbaum showed how Gogol uses the techniques of literary grotesque : the story is distinguished by numerous puns and disproportionate details [3] , which, in particular, include the protagonist’s full name and speech, and fits perfectly into this grotesque which is the subject of controversy among Gogol’s scholars, the fantastic finale of “The Overcoat” [3] .
Some ratings and interpretations of an article
Two recognized classics of Russian philology - V. V. Vinogradov in the article “The Problem of Tale in Style” [4] and, after him, M. M. Bakhtin in the monograph on Dostoevsky [5] - were the first to enter into a dispute with Eichenbaum the use of the term “ tale ” by which he denoted the author's features of how the work is written. Without contesting the method used by Boris Mikhailovich to distinguish between the principles of storytelling and the principles of what is being told, they dispute what the “tale” described by Eichenbaum actually is at the linguistic or metalinguistic level, respectively [com 1] , reproaching its predecessor for the lack of semantic understanding of the tale [6 ] .
Alexander Dmitriev and Yan Levchenko, co-authors of an article in the New Literary Review , the subject of which is the methodological legacy of Russian formalism , distinguish (at least) two key texts from this legacy. These two texts are characterized as “ manifestos with which the formalists begin the transformation of the academic field ” (that is, the humanitarian and scientific tradition and the corresponding community); according to Dmitriev – Levchenko, both texts “ are often executed precisely as indicative aids ”. The first of these texts is the Eichenbaumian analysis of The Overcoat, the second is Art as a Reception by Viktor Shklovsky [7] .
Evaluation of the article as important for the history of Russian and world humanitarian science , of course, is not a "novelty" by Dmitriev-Levchenko. So - despite the “cold” attitude to Russian formalism that existed in the Russian Soviet literary tradition (at least in its radical interpretation) - an article that refers to the early period of Eichenbaum’s scientific work and in which the “formalistic” attitudes are so pronounced in the posthumous collection of B. M. Eichenbaum “On Prose” ( L .: “Fiction”, 1969).
As noted by an unidentified author of the text sent to the article “How is it made ...” in its publication on the website OPOYAZ.Ru , violent opponents of the formalistic approach to the humanities succumbed to the “charm” of this text. The reason for this, according to the author of this introduction, is the “brilliance of presentation and the harmony of argumentation” of the text [8] .
- about the name
The contemporary Russian humanitarian thinker Vadim Rudnev observes and parses the successful choice of the name by Boris Mikhailovich for the article (and the similar title of the article by V. B. Shklovsky, where the great novel by Cervantes is examined; the text of Shklovsky was first published in 1921). The goal setting of this name, according to Rudnev, is approximately the following. For a successful analysis of the text, as Rudnev writes, a philologist should temporarily forget that he is dealing with literary text, in other words, get rid of “ aesthetic charms” as part of the opoyazsky discourse . “Feeling” [com 2] as a literary device (continues its analysis by Rudnev) is rejected within the framework of the formalistic approach ( “No exaltation . No“ feeling ”. No“ Tatyans, Russian souls ”” ) [9] .
Vadim Rudnev notes the “ shocking ” nature of the name: within the framework of the radical formalist approach
“ There is only a bare structure that needs to be disassembled“ in the cogs ”; only then can you hope to understand from what or how it is made . ” [com 3] [com 4]
Rudnev compares this approach with the psychoanalytic one (which appeared around the same era in another European cultural tradition). The patient of a psychoanalyst, according to Rudnev, appears before him “ like a bare bundle of functions ”, and the process of psychoanalysis is “ overcoming the maze, those traps that the resistance set <...> ”.
- criticism of limited approach
In his essay on the work of Eichenbaum, the Russian poet Ilya Tyurin emphasizes, as its drawback, Boris Mikhailovich’s tendency to one-sided analysis (" noting only one side of a phenomenon, he elevates it to absolute, completely negating the existence of other sides "). According to Tyurin, " recognition of the primacy of form over content " leads Eichenbaum to a negative result - " he runs away from the meaning of the story ." (Here you can notice that such criticism - accusations by contemporaries of the formality / formalism of scholars of the Opoyaz circle, and the following, supposedly, of unilateral or even negative results - is not new for the end of the 20th century. [Com 4] ) Tyurin also considers the text Eichenbaum "strange, but curious fellow" Gogolevsky [10] .
- conclusion
With the article “How the Gogol's Overcoat Is Made,” despite the limited approach of the Russian formalists, the process of developing scientific methods for analyzing a literary text began. The scientific method in literature was later developed by Yu. M. Lotman with like-minded people [room 5] , who, within the framework of semiotics, presented a method of scientific analysis of literary works, devoid of one-sidedness. Lotman’s methods of theoretical poetics also presuppose a consideration of literature as a secondary sign system, a second cultural reality, not reducing it to a simple reflection of reality. From the didactic point of view [com 6], the study of this article by Eichenbaum can serve as a good starting point for acquaintance with a similar approach to literature [11] since it was performed in the form of an indicative work demonstrating a method for introducing a scientific approach into literary criticism [7] .
Notes
- Comments
- ↑ Vinogradov interpreted the tale from a linguistic point of view from the point of view of a variety of speech stylistics , the author uses social and professional dialects . Bakhtin developed and ideologized this approach, in them he primarily saw a tool that allows the author to distance himself from the position of the narrator.
- ↑ The concept of “empathy” as a method in the humanities is associated, in particular, with the name of the influential German thinker Wilhelm Dilthey and his hermeneutic concept.
- ↑ To the reader: for further development of such an approach in philosophy, see, among other things, the article Deconstruction . By the time of publication of the J. Derrida , fundamental for this philosophical concept, Russian formalism as a whole had left the active historical scene (for example, the death of B. M. Eichenbaum and the first publication of Derrida’s book were separated by about eight years).
- ↑ 1 2 Wed a characteristic of the radical formalist approach as a whole in a late Soviet source ( review article “OPOYAZ”; publ. 1968 ): they say, “The work / ... / is considered as the“ sum ”of the formal techniques that comprise it; the content is given the place and purpose of their “motivation” . ” Subsequently, according to [Ivlev 1968] , researchers of the opoyazovo circle realized "the one-sidedness and insufficiency of the initial concept," taking this into account in scientific work. Source: D. D. Ivlev . OPOYAZ // Brief literary encyclopedia . - [1968; v.5]
- ↑ see " Transactions on Sign Systems "
- ↑ Candidate of Philological Sciences Margarita Fedorovna Klimentyeva talks about her experience with the method of formalists in students of grades 9-11 of the Tomsk Humanitarian Lyceum attending her seminars.
- Sources
- ↑ Eichenbaum B. M. How Gogol's “Overcoat” Is Made // Poetics: Collections on the theory of poetic language. - Pg. : 18th State. typ., 1919. - Issue. [3] . - S. 151-165 .
- ↑ Leonid Krupchanov. Theory of literature . - Flint, Science, 2012 .-- 360 p. - ISBN 978-5-9765-1315-0 .
- ↑ 1 2 3 Paducheva, 1997 , p. one.
- ↑ V.V. Vinogradov. The problem of tale in stylistics // Poetics. Temporary Department of verbal arts. - L. , 1926 .-- T. 1 . - S. 24-40 .
- ↑ M. M. Bakhtin. Problems of poetics of Dostoevsky. - M .: Soviet writer, 1963. - 255-258 p.
- ↑ Kovács, 1985 , p. 125-126.
- ↑ 1 2 Dmitriev and Levchenko, 2001 .
- ↑ [NN]. Preface to the publication of the article “How Gogol's Overcoat Is Made” on the website of OPOYAZ.Ru
- ↑ Vadim Rudnev. Philosophy of language and semiotics of madness. Selected works . - Territory of the Future, 2007 .-- S. 118-119. - 528 s. - (Alexander Pogorelsky University Library). - ISBN 5-91129-035-9 .
- ↑ Ilya Tyurin . How the "Overcoat" of Eichenbaum Is made (inaccessible link) . ilyadom.russ.ru. Date of treatment May 11, 2016. Archived November 10, 2012.
- ↑ M.F. Klimentyev. Literature at school, or Why does a gifted child need a narrative? // "The gifted child." - 2014. - No. 6 . - S. 122-129 .
Literature
- Paducheva E. V. Who left Gogol’s “Overcoat”? // Proceedings of the RAS. Series: Literature and Language. - 1997. - No. 2 . - S. 20-27 .
- Árpád Kovács. The category of narrative in the poetics of B. M. Eichenbaum // Revue des Études Slaves. - 1985. - T. 57 , No. 1 . - S. 125-135 .
- Dmitriev A., Levchenko Y. Science as a technique: once again about the methodological heritage of Russian formalism // New Literary Review . - 2001. - No. 50 . - ISSN 0869-6365 .
Links
- B. M. Eichenbaum. How Gogol's “Overcoat” (1918) was made . OPOYAZ.ru. Date of treatment May 11, 2016.
- Yan Levchenko. Russian formalism . PostScience (November 29, 2015). Date of appeal May 14, 2016.