Translator’s Introduction

Abstract

Boris Tomashevskii (1890-1957) was one of the major figures in the short-lived Russian Formalist movement. As this survey article explains, the Formalist school was indeed a new one at the time he was writing it (1927)--just a little more than a decade old. By the time it was published (1928), the Formalist school or movement was a year or two away from its abrupt, complete termination, decreed by Soviet authorities. During the period of his involvement with the Formalism period, Tomashevskii published a book on Russian Versification (1923) and a collection of articles On Verse (1929), as well as a study of Pushkin (1925); his most important contribution during this period, however, was no doubt the textbook Literary Theory: Poetics (1925), which went through six editions in the next six years. (1) The article translated here was written and published in French, and was clearly aimed at providing an overview of Formalist thought that would be available to a wider audience. Otherwise it closely resembles the well-known essay on "The Theory of the Formal Method" by Boris Eikhenbaum, which is almost contemporary with it. It would be interesting to compare the two essays in detail. Both tell much the same story about the emergence of the school, its major themes and key technical terms, and the most significant publications reflecting its orientation. Both surveys are implicitly optimistic about the prospects of the Formal method, ironic as this seems to us now. A key difference lies in the relation of these two critics to the school. Eikhenbaum, whom Tomashevskii describes as a kind of associate director of the movement (see n. 2), writes very much as an insider in "Theory"; by contrast, and although he alludes to "the group to which I belong" at the outset of his essay (see n. 1), Tomashevkii otherwise gives an objective-seeming account, conveying the sense that while he began in the Formalist movement, and still sympathizes with it, he now stands at some distance from it. In his conclusion, describing the critical scene in Russia, Tomashevskii distinguishes between "orthodox" Formalists, mentioning Eikhenbaum along with Viktor Shklovskii and Iurii Tynianov, and "independent" scholars, who "took part in the creation of the school, and contributed to its work; but [who] do not conform to the school's program, and have chosen to follow a separate course." It is not at all clear which category he places himself in. Methodology aside, Tomashevskii was primarily a historian, and it is no accident that he presents Formalism as a "new school of literary history. …