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Prace ofiarowane Kazimierzowi Wóycickiemu. Wilno, 1937.
From isolation to concentration:
The Archeology of the Relationship between Russian Formalism and Czech Structuralism in Polemics and Discussions
Scientific work is to search, describe and classify the material that is given to the science; the most abstract goal of the scientific research includes general laws that govern all events in the study area.
The history of Czech Structuralism is full of various polemics that were often significantly contributed to the development of structural thinking. It is not just about mutual polemical clashes, but about the way in which the various debates were held, or about a particular strategy which can often be reconstructed based on different types of texts. What can we meaningfully imagine when the concept of the strategy of thinking is used? In other words, is it possible to detect and analyze, referring to the quoted Mukařovský’s passage, some general patterns, which govern the area of scientific inquiry? If we ask such questions, we can add one more: it is possible to construct a historical analysis of scientific opinion or a current theoretical research rather than as (i) the development of ideas and knowledge related to the specific areas of human activity or (ii) the historical stage in the development of a certain type of Sciences (humanities, literary), but as the description and analysis of a historical space, within which the ideas, knowledge are still in the making? In this sense, it is not a description of the findings in terms of their development to the objectivity, but the history of the terms of their ability to appear and operate within a particular field of thought. It is clear that the results of such historical analysis, defined as archeology, cannot be integrated into a complex interpretation of Czech Literary Structuralism and its development. Taking into account the issue of the relationship between Russian Formalism and Czech Structuralism, that is the way the relationship was interpreted, understood and theoretically grounded in approaches to the tradition of Czech Structuralism, the analysis of archeology may be the appropriate tool to better understand the historical period.
Foucault’s project of the Archeology focused on the description of discursive formations – in conjunction with a partial opposition to the Genealogy of Power – is widely known. There is also a large amount of various discussions[84] and comments related to it. In what may lie practical usefulness of the project in the sense of analyzing something what was part of the discussions in the first place of the origin of Czech Structuralism as well as the originality of its approach to the basic questions of language and art. As a central strategy of the whole project can be seen Foucault’s effort to describe the phenomena as they really are; It sounds rather trivial, but the foundation of this effort includes, we believe, the main attraction that still brings back many researchers to this project. It is because of a specific method, which gives up the idea of “assuming anything else” [Veyne, 2010: 401]. These assumptions can include diverse material causes, objectives, functions or objects that often appear in the context of such considerations. According to Foucault, there is just a practice and its objectification, any effort to explain things as the functions of a purpose is a myth of the traditional history.[85] It is no coincidence that some parallels to such consideration can also be found in the context of Jan Mukařovský’s thinking, especially in relation to his reflections on the poetical, later even anthropologically based, rhythm. Initially, the rhythm was a basic form [Mukařovský, 1986: 118–120], that is the organizing principle of the individual components of a work of art (along with composition), later – under the influence of Phenomenology – one of the fundamental relationships of the human body to the world. The matter, originally given (as the principle revealed in a work of art), thus became a founding relationship, that is something – expressed in Husserl’s style – what is not fully out of the consciousness, but is also not purely psychological content of the consciousness. “Things” (phenomena) exist only in the relation to something that is just as related to a specific historical context[86]. The Archeology, as a specific method of analysis, which aims to uncover and identify primarily a set of conditions under which it is possible to determine certain mental concepts of development of theoretical thought, is not a substitute for the history of selected schools of thought or a theory. The Archeology is not a causal description of the development and its historical context, but it is primarily focused on the levels that can be meaningfully analyze, therefore demonstrate the dependence of specific conceptions to a set of certain assumptions, which have their own characteristic and logical structure. In its basic form it contains two complementary requirements: (i) If an object of the Archeologic description is a system of rules that allows the creation of objects in the space-time frame, then the object is associated with the central question of the legitimacy of rules governing the form of individual objectification in the process of their sharing/non-sharing, therefore the possibility of their existence/non-existence;[87] (ii) The system of sharing is essentially a system of norms operating in the context of specific social groups. The Archeology itself then becomes a historical-comparative method in which the priority is given to descriptions of the individual objectifications. It is not primarily the work of interpretation, which is though hidden in the base of each realized description. The task of the Archeology is to analyze selected structures of thinking and determine their rules.
On the basis of what has been said so far, we can determine three basic meanings of the Archeology as the method: (1) The Archeology is a description and analysis of a historical area within which ideas or knowledge are generated. (2) The Archeology is a method of analysis, which favors the description before the causality on the level of events or knowledge and uncovers the historical preconditions for certain configurations of knowledge than the knowledge itself. (3) The Archeology is specific method of analysis, which aims to uncover and identify a set of conditions under which it is possible to determine certain mental concepts of development of theoretical thinking, thus it is not a substitute for the history of a selected tradition of thoughts or a theory.
A discussion about the relationship between Czech Structuralism and the Russian School of Formalism is impossible to separate from the broader context of other controversies and polemics that took place, often simultaneously, in the thirties not only within the Prague Linguistic Circle, but also between representatives of the Czech Structuralism and their opponents. Some of the topics discussed in the context of polemics about the relationship between Czech Structuralism and Russian Formalism also appear in other contexts of different disputes. Each set of different discussions can be characterized by the relationship between a basic category, which is at the base of the whole set of various polemics, and the form that determines its realization. The summarization simplifies, of course, but each designation of the topic of various polemics, functioning as a kind of label, represents the central question that underlies all debates [Kříž, 2014].
A. A nature of Poetic Language (the category of “dominating factor”/Form: “deformation”);[88]
B. A relation of work of art to subject of “the author” in the process of literary communication (the category of “experience”/Form: “enjoyment”)[89];
C. Basic concepts of Czech Structuralism (function, structure, intention)[90]
D. Structural model of literary development (the category of “Selbstbewegung
The first set (A) of discussions is associated with the context of various considerations of the written/standard language; the set of polemics represents probably the most extensive context of various disputes in the thirties, in which not only theorist in the field of Linguistics and Literary Criticism (Aesthetics) have been involved, but also journalists, writers and wider public as well. The category of
Variability in discussions about the relationship between Czech Structuralism and Russian Formalism is well detectable in the perspective of the two models, each of which describes a set of discussions and its relations to other sets of controversies. As indicated in connection with the characterization of the analysis as Archeology, individual arguments contained in various controversies enter into different relationships that can meaningfully be described as a structure of rules that are implemented in different variations. Both models have themselves been the subject of various discussions, but by its form they allow to analyze various conflicts not only on the basis of chronological order of their succession.
Individual views on the relationship (or on the category of
The unified principle plays here a triple role: I. as the methodological approach to the perception of a work of art (represented by Jan Mukařovský [1948 (1928), 1982 (1929)]); II. as the method of interpretation and explication of (a) the historical relationship of Russian Formalism and Czech Structuralism,[92] and of (b) basic intellectual concepts of Czech Structuralism that are related to basic questions i. on poetic as well as ii. standard/written language, and finally iii. on the basic concepts of the whole intellectual formation (terms such as function, structure, purpose); last but not least, III. as the model for the interpretation of the historical development of Czech Structuralism which obtained appearance of the two-phase model [Schmid, 2011: 23]. In the base of such two-phase model there is an idea as follows: during the first phase the Czech Structuralism tried to isolate (1) its own relationship to the tradition of Czech Aesthetics that contains various elements (an example might be René Wellek’s different opinion on the role of Russian Formalism in the context of the development of the Czech Structuralism), as well as (2) the basic concepts of its approach to various questions about language, art, and literature respectively. By the process of isolation a certain space of the structuralist formation was allocated and then it was often modulated (concentrated) in a dialogue about basic procedures and concepts that were isolated and described during the first phase.
Certainly, we can agree with Zdeněk Mathauser [Mathauser, 2006: 75–77] that the basic model of the relationship of two concepts (form/content) that is central to the initial polemics, is retained well in their extreme positions: on the one hand, it appears a form [A] of the relationship containing a pair of relations: the active form (essentially Aristotelian form[93]) and the passive content (waiting to be filled), on the other hand, we find a form [B] of the relationship as a pair of the active content (imbued with the idea of aesthetics) and the passive form, whose main function is to promote the richness of the content. This model in its various embodiments includes the criterion of ‘permeability’, that means to what extent both mutual poles are/are not complementary to each other. Finally, in different historical realizations each pole is attributed to a certain norm bearing in itself a criterion of evaluation. The axiological structure of art is so firmly rooted in the ‘form/content’ relationship, therefore it cannot be substantially affected by the process of reception. The model can then be as follows:
The model represents, of course, extreme poles of the Form and Content relationship, for which we would find their historical realizations, but the essential feature of this model should be more in the nature of the relationship that would possibly have different variants.
The relationship between Czech Structuralism and the tradition of Russian Formal School became the subject of a greater number of various polemics during the thirties in Czechoslovakia; by its importance the relationship was systematically drawn into the wider context of discussions of the fundamental theses and approaches of the structural thinking. The relationship of both traditions in relation to the general picture of Formalism seems to be a central theme of all debates. The relationship is well understood and it was discussed many times, but the very fact of continuity or inspiration of ideas is not just some common factor of interpretations of the development of Czech Structuralism, but also the basis, often unexpressed explicitly, of all contemporary interpretations and polemics. The category of
In the context of various polemics or of implicit cues about the origin of the Czech Literary Structuralism, it depends on what context of the Form and Content relationship was selected by participants of those discussions. The polemic between Jan Mukařovský and Karel Svoboda is considered as the most comprehensive discussion about the topic in the retrospect view. Certainly, we should also take into consideration the fact that the mentioned discussion is topically related to more fundamental and still even more famous (also frequently mentioned) controversies during the thirties, especially to the debate about the origin of literary history; that is the debate related to Mukařovský’s attempt to analyze the development of a poetic structure of Milota Zdirad Polák’s poem
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
Jan Mukařovský responded to Svoboda’s accounts in two different ways: on the one hand, he criticized Svoboda’s concept, within the
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