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“I Know What Motivation is”: The Politics of Emotion and Viktor Shklovskii's Sentimental Rhetoric
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 January 2017
Abstract
This article discusses Viktor Shklovskii's exilic narratives of the early 1920s, Sentimental Journey: Memoirs, 1917-1922, and Zoo, or Letters Not about Love. I suggest that in these texts, published in Berlin shortly after the show trial against the right Socialist Revolutionariès, Shklovskii casts himself as a "sentimental hero," evoking sympathy for the narrator's plight by mobilizing some of the devices of the sentimental novel but also struggling with the implications of this sentimentalism. The article outlines Shklovskii's attempts to prove his political reliability during his exile, juxtaposing his private correspondence with his memoirs, and argues for a more nuanced interpretation of Shklovskii's political biography through the prism of the history of emotions.
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References
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7 Other options for narrating the civil war were also available. Viktor Chernov, for example, invoked the preface of Aleksandr Pushkin's Evgenii Onegin and the cold reason of historical analysis as his guiding principle against the “waves” of joy and sadness brought about by political events, which represented in their totality the “living life” (zhivaia zhizri). See Chernov, Viktor M., Zapiski sotsialista-revoliutsionera (Berlin, 1922), 10 Google Scholar. Another account of these events can be found in Sukhanov, Nikolai N., Zapiskio revoliutsii (Berlin, 1922)Google Scholar. These two memoirs, just like Shklovskii's, were published as part of Zinovii Grzhebin's series Letopis’ revoliutsii. For more on Sukhanov, see Getzler, Israel, Nikolai Sukhanov: Chronicler of the Russian Revolution (London, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Stepun, Fedor, Byvshee i nesbyvsheesia, vols. 1 and 2 (New York, 1956)Google Scholar, for his foregrounding of the word hatred (nenavisf). It is also worth noting in this context that Shklovskii wrote a screenplay for a sound film based on Aleksandr Afinogenov's play Fear which was excerpted in the journal Kino. See Shklovskii, Viktor, “Strakh (otryvki iz zvukovogo stsenariia),” Kino 20 (1932): 7 Google Scholar.
8 See Chandler, James, “On the Face of the Case: Conrad, Lord Jim, and the Sentimental Novel,” Critical Inquiry 33, no. 4 (Summer 2007): 837–64Google Scholar.
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11 For an early exploration of this nexus, see Kermode, Frank, Romantic Image (New York, 1957)Google Scholar. For Friedrich Schiller's interpretation of the “sentimental” as related to reflection rather than feeling, see his On the Naive and Sentimental in Literature, trans. Helen Watanabe O'Kelly (Manchester, 1981 [1795]).
12 See Eikhenbaum, Boris, “Razmyshleniia ob iskusstve. 1. Iskusstvo i emotsiia,“ Zhizn iskusstva, no. 11 (March 11,1924): 8–9 Google Scholar; and Any, Carol, “Teoriia iskusstva i emotsii v formalisticheskoi rabote Borisa Eikhenbauma,” Revue des etudes slaves 57, no. 1 (1985): 137–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Eikhenbaum differentiated between “everyday” ﹛dushevnye) emotions, the province of psychology, and sublimated (dukhovnye) emotions, with which art should be concerned.
13 Eikhenbaum, “Razmyshleniia ob iskusstve,” 8.
14 See Khodasevich, Valentina, Portrety slovami: Ocherki (Moscow, 1987), 125–30Google Scholar. Shklovskii delivered two lectures on Laurence Sterne in Petrograd in the spring of 1920 and 1921. See Kukushkina, T. A. and Obatnina, E. R., eds., Serapionovybrat'iavsobraniiakh Pushkinskogo doma: Materialy, issledovaniia, publikatsii (St. Petersburg, 1998), 30 Google Scholar. Later in the 1920s, Shklovskii evinced an intense interest in eighteenth-century prose from a sociological perspective. See, for example, his work on the eighteenth-century civil servant Bolotov, Andrei, “Kratkaia i dostovernaia povest’ o dvorianine Bolotove (po ego zapiskam sostavlennaia),” Krasnaia nov’ 12 (1928): 97–186 Google Scholar, as well as his study Matvei Komarov— zhitel’ goroda Moskvy (Leningrad, 1929) and Chulkov i Levshin (Leningrad, 1933).
15 Shklovskii, V., “Parodiinyi roman,” in 0 teorii prozy (Moscow, 1925), 151 Google Scholar. For the original publication, see Shklovskii, V., “Tristram Shendi” Sterna i teoriia romana: Sborniki po teorii poeticheskogo iazyka (Petrograd, 1921)Google Scholar.
16 Shklovskii, Viktor, “Evgenii Onegin (Pushkin i Stern),” in Tomashevskii, Boris V., Shklovskii, Viktor, and Bogatyrev, Petr, eds., Ocherki po poetike Pushkina (Berlin, 1923), 218 Google Scholar. This essay was initially published in the Prague journal Volia Rossii 6 (1922): 59-72, a few months before Sentimental Journey and then Zoo first appeared, again in Berlin.
17 See Golikov, G. N. et al., eds., Vladimir Il'ich Lenin: Biograficheskaia khronika, 1870-1924, vol. 12 (Moscow, 1982), 293 Google Scholar, 572. On Lenin's apocryphal comment about the quality of Shklovskii's memoirs and his political unreliability, see Galushkin, Aleksandr, “Prigovorennyi smotret',” in Galushkin, A., ed., Eshche nichego ne konchilos’ (Moscow, 2002), 8 Google Scholar. On Shklovskii's limited readership, see Osorgin, Mikhail, “Zoo,” Sovremennye zapiski, no. 17 (1923): 486–88Google Scholar. The print run for the first Soviet edition of Sentimental Journey was a meager 500 copies. For a list of Shklovskii's books banned in the Soviet Union, see Blium, A. V., ed., Tsenzura v Sovetskom soiuze, 1917-1991: Dokumenty (Moscow, 2004), 67–68 Google Scholar.
18 Shklovskii, Viktor, Revoliutsiia i front (Petrograd, 1921)Google Scholar. Another excerpt from Revolution and the Front was published in the Petrograd journal Chasy with the title “V pustote.” See Shklovskii, Viktor, “V pustote,” Chasy: Chaspervyi (Petrograd, 1922)Google Scholar.
19 Shklovskii's personal archive in the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art contains a letter from Zervandov addressed to Shklovskii. See Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv literatury i iskusstva (RGALI), f. 562, op. 1, d. 575,1.1. For Shklovskii, the renewed accusations against the SRs must have come as a shock, as becomes obvious from his open letter to Roman Jakobson, published in January 1922, asking Jakobson to return from exile. See Shklovskii, Viktor, “Pis'mo k Romanu Iakobsonu,” Knizhnyi ugol 8 (1922): 7–8 Google Scholar.
20 See Galushkin, ed., Eshche nichego ne konchilos', 397. Grzhebin immigrated to Germany in 1919 but, according to Galushkin, had an agreement with the Soviets stipulating that his books could be distributed in Soviet Russia. See ibid., 444. Shklovskii had been working on a number of books to be published by Grzhebin, but their relationship soured. See, for example, Shklovskii's contract with Grzhebin for a book titled Biografiia A. N. Veselovskogo. RGALI, f. 562, op. 1, d. 813,1.1.
21 Shklovsky, Sentimental Journey, 102.
22 See Kalinin, Il'ia, “Priem ostraneniia kak opyt vozvyshennogo: Ot poetiki pamiati k poetike literatury,” Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, no. 95 (2009): 57 Google Scholar; and Kalinin, Il'ia, “Istorichnosf travmaticheskogo opyta: Rutina, revoliutsiia, reprezentatsiia,” Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, no. 124 (2013): 34 Google Scholar. Here and in other excellent articles on Shklovskii's exilic prose, Kalinin does not address the rhetorical aspect of these texts. As a result, Shklovskii appears to be caught in a solipsistic world of his own representations. For valuable comments on Shklovskii's prose as an example of prosthesis, with its dual meaning of enhancement and loss, see Murav, Harriet, “Real Men and Phantom Stories: Violence and Prosthesis in Soviet War Literature,” Ab Imperio 9, no. 4 (2008): 521–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
23 Reddy, William M., The Navigation of Feeling: A Framework for the History of Emotions (Cambridge, Eng., 2001), 145 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
24 Ibid., 89. For Ian Levchenko, the pre- and post-exile periods in Shklovskii's life are marked by two different genres—the adventure and epistolary novels, respectively. See Levchenko, Ian, Istoriia i fiktsiia v tekstakh V. Shklovskogo i B. Eikhenbauma 1920-e gg. (St. Petersburg, 2010), 106 Google Scholar. As I speculate, Shklovskii gradually became increasingly aware of his wide use of sentimental devices in his work in Berlin, and Zoo is the most sentimental and, simultaneously, most ironic work from that period.
25 See Levchenko, Ian, Drugaia nauka: Russkie formalisty v poiskakh biografii (Moscow, 2012), 100 Google Scholar. For a succinct list of Shklovskii's political failures, see Zenkin, Sergei, “Prikliucheniia teoretika: Avtobiograficheskaia proza Viktora Shklovskogo,” Druzhba narodov, no. 12 (2003): 173 Google Scholar.
26 Shklovsky, Sentimental Journey, 23.
27 Ibid., 101. Emphasis added.
28 Ibid., 27.
29 Ibid., 60.
30 Ibid., 66-67.
31 See Galushkin, Aleksandr, “V. B. Shklovskii—pis'ma, stat'i,” in Chudakova, M. O., Toddes, E. A., and Tsiv'ian, Iu. G., eds., Tynianovskii sbornik: Piatye tynianovskie chteniia (Riga, 1994), 283 Google Scholar. The letter is dated March 22, 1922. In another letter, Shklovskii asks Dioneo for advice on where in Europe he could publish without compromising himself politically.
32 Grigorii Semenov, “Vospominaniia byvshego esera,” Prozhektor, nos. 6-9 (1923).
33 Lunacharskii, Anatolii, Byvshie liudi: Ocherk istorii partii eserov (Moscow, 1922), 38 Google Scholar. On this and the circumstances surrounding the trial of the SRs, see Jansen, Marc, A Show Trial under Lenin: The Trial of the Socialist RevolutionAriès, Moscow, 1922, trans. Sanders, Jean (The Hague, 1982)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. As Jansen writes, Shklovskii's name was not in the indictment published in February 1922 because he had managed to escape.
34 Galushkin, Aleksandr, “V. B. Shklovskii: Pis'ma Gor'komu, 1917-1923 gg.,” De visu, no. 1 (1993): 33 Google Scholar.
35 See Doronchenko, I. A., “Petrograd—Kuokkala: Cherez granitsu, 1920-e,” Minuvshee: Istoricheskii almanakh, no. 19 (1996): 210–33Google Scholar.
36 On early Soviet trials and melodrama, see Wood, Elizabeth A., Performing Justice: Agitation Trials in Early Soviet Russia (Ithaca, 2005)Google Scholar; and Cassiday, Julie A., The Enemy on Trial: Early Soviet Courts on Stage and Screen (DeKalb, 2000), 29–50 Google Scholar.
37 Shklovsky, Sentimental Journey, 133.
38 See Spinoza, Benedict, The Letters, trans. Shirley, Samuel (Indianapolis, 1995), 284 Google Scholar. In this letter, Spinoza polemicizes with René Descartes's understanding of a selfpresent, rational subject.
39 Shklovsky, Sentimental Journey, 245. Emphasis added and translation modified. On trial depositions in the early 1920s, see Vatulescu, Cristina, “The Politics of Estrangement: Tracking Shklovsky's Device through Literary and Policing Practices,” Poetics Today 27, no. 1 (Spring 2006): 35–66 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On ritualistic admissions of guilt in the 1930s, see Getty, J. Arch, “Samokritika Rituals in the Stalinist Central Committee, 1933-1938,” Russian Review 58, no. 1 (January 1999)Google Scholar; and Kharkhordin, Oleg, Oblichat’ i litsemerit': Genealogiia rossiiskoi lichnosti (St. Petersburg, 2002), 141–200 Google Scholar; and, on the variety of narrative strategies in petitions for the reinstatement of rights, Alexopoulos, Golfo, Stalin's Outcasts: Aliens, Citizens, and the Soviet State, 1926-1936 (Ithaca, 2003), 101–3Google Scholar.
40 Shklovsky, Sentimental Journey, 137.
41 Ibid., 139.
42 Ibid., 62.
43 Ibid., 144.
44 Ibid., 148. On the murder of Volodarskii, see Rabinowitch, Alexander, The Bolsheviks in Power: The First Year of Soviet Rule in Petrograd (Bloomington, 2007), 313–55Google Scholar.
45 See “Protsess pravykh eserov—vosemnadtsatyi den': Utrennee zasedanie,” Izvestiia VTsIK, June 29,1922.
46 Shklovsky, Sentimental Journey, 165.
47 Ibid.
48 Ibid., 136. Translation modified.
49 Ibid., 203.
50 Ibid., 179. Translation modified. On motivation in the formalists’ literary studies, see Aage Hansen-Loeve, “Motivirovka, motivatsiia,” Russian Literature 18 (1985): 91-103.
51 Shklovsky, Sentimental Journey, 142.
52 Ibid.
53 Ibid., 165.
54 See Eikhenbaum, Boris, “V poiskakh zhanra,” Russkii sovremennik, no. 3 (1924): 229–31Google Scholar; and Tynianov, Iurii, “Literaturnoe segodnia,” Russkii sovremennik, no. 1 (1924): 291–306 Google Scholar. For an analysis of Shklovskii's civil war writings, drawing inspiration from Tynianov's description of Shklovskii's Berlin memoirs as being “on the margins of literature,“ see Dwyer, Anne, “Revivifying Russia: Literature, Theory, and Empire in Viktor Shklovskii's Civil War Writings,” Slavonica 15, no. 1 (April 2009): 11–31 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
55 For a highly critical contemporary review of Shklovskii's book, see Stepun, Fedor, “Viktor Shklovskii, ‘Sentimental ‘noe puteshestvie,'” Sovremennye zapiski 16 (1923): 411–14Google Scholar. In the 1950s, sharply, Erlich criticized Shklovskii's political “opportunism.” See his Russian Formalism: History-Doctrine (The Hague, 1955), 118–53Google Scholar. In his dissertation, Sheldon acknowledged Erlich's influence on his own work but “disagreed with the picture [of Shklovskii] that emerges from [Erlich's] book—the picture of a brilliant but shallow opportunist who tailored his theories and convictions to prevailing governmental policies.“ Richard Sheldon, “Viktor Borisovich Shklovsky: Literary Theory and Practice, 1914-1930“ (PhD diss., University of Michigan, 1966), 11. On Eikhenbaum's strategies of adaptation and interiorization, see Evgenii Toddes, “B. M. Eikhenbaum v 30-50-e gody (k istorii sovetskogo literaturovedeniia i sovetskoi gumanitarnoi intelligentsii,” in Chudakova, Toddes, and Tsiv'ian, eds., Tynianovskii sbornik: Deviatye Tynianovskie chteniia, 563-95. On Shklovskii's deployment of defamiliarization to reveal the horrors of war, see Boym, Svetlana, “Poetics and Politics of Estrangement: Victor Shklovsky and Hannah Arendt,” Poetics Today 26, no. 4 (Winter 2005): 590–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
56 Shklovskii, Viktor, “Predislovie,” Sentimentalnoe puteshestvie: Vospominaniia, 1918-1923 (Moscow, 1924), 2 Google Scholar. The title was slightly revised to include Shklovskii's years in exile. For the most radical projected revisions, dated 1956 (the text was never published in this form), see RGALI, f. 562, op. 2, d. 132,11.17-62.
57 Shklovskii, “Predislovie,” Sentimental noe puteshestvie, 7.
58 Ibid.
59 Shklovskii, Viktor, “Predislovie,” Santimentalnoe [sic] puteshestvie (Leningrad, 1929), 5 Google Scholar.
60 RGALI, f. 562, op. 1, d. 450,1.28. The letter is dated May 19,1923.
61 After the October revolution, Triolet, born Ella Kagan (18961970), married a French officer and immigrated to France. Shklovskii again included actual letters in Third Factory and Podenshchina (Leningrad, 1930). For a recent discussion of Triolet's romantic involvements in the early 1920s, see Iangfel'dt, Bengt, Stavka—zhizri: Vladimir Maiakovskii i ego krug, trans. Lavrushina, Asia and Iangfel'dt, Bengt (Moscow, 2009)Google Scholar.
62 For more on Rousseau's intellectual influence on revolutionary politics, see Chartier, Roger, “Do Books Make Revolutions?,” in Kennedy, Emmet, ed., A Cultural History of the French Revolution (New Haven, 1989), 67–91 Google Scholar; Manin, Bernard, “Rousseau,” in Furet, Francois and Ozouf, Mona, eds., A Critical Dictionary of the French Revolution (Cambridge, Mass., 1989), 829–42Google Scholar; and Swenson, James, On Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Considered as One of the First Authors of the Revolution (Stanford, 2000), 133–58Google Scholar. See Kaufmann, Linda S., “From Russia with Love: Zoo, or Letters Not about Love,” chap. 1 in Special Delivery: Epistolary Modes of Modern Fiction (Chicago, 1992)Google Scholar, for a number of incisive observations about Shklovskii's appropriation of the sentimental novel.
63 Shklovsky, Viktor, Zoo, or Letters Not about Love, trans. Sheldon, Richard (Ithaca, 1971), 87 Google Scholar.
64 Levchenko, Drugaia nauka, 106.
65 Steiner, Peter, “The Praxis of Irony: Viktor Shklovsky's Zoo,” in Jackson, Robert Louis and Rudy, Stephen, eds., Russian Formalism: A Retrospective Glance. A Festschrift in Honor of Victor Erlich (New Haven, 1985), 41–42 Google Scholar. From similar assumptions, Steiner arrives at the opposite conclusion—the ubiquity of ironic statements in Zoo suggests that Shklovskii did not capitulate to the Bolsheviks’ demands, since his intentions cannot be read unambiguously.
66 Ibid., 37-38, 41.
67 Shklovsky, Zoo, 13.
68 Ibid., 18.
69 Ibid., 41.
70 Ibid., 43.
71 Ibid., 54.
72 Ibid., 41.
73 Ibid., 65.
74 Maiakovskii, Vladimir, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii v trinadtsati tomakh, vol. 12 (Moscow, 1959), 463 Google Scholar. Emphasis added.
75 RGALI, f. 562, op. 1, d. 499, 1. 21. Shklovskii referred to Mostovenko as an acquaintance of Roman—i.e., of Roman Jakobson. Avel’ Enukidze was secretary of VTsIK at the time.
76 Ibid. In his letters to his wife, Shklovskii repeatedly referred to humiliating himself in front of the Bolsheviks as “converting to Islam.“
77 Brik encouraged Shklovskii to return, although Shklovskii was not certain whether this advice had been given in good faith. Shklovskii's petition addressed to VTsIK has been preserved in Brik's personal archive at RGALI.
78 Jakobson, Roman, My Futurist Years, comp. and ed. langfeldt, Bengt and Rudy, Stephen, trans. Rudy, Stephen (New York, 1997), 45 Google Scholar.
79 Ibid. For Shklovskii's reference to “sentimental killers” and “mystical Cheka members,” see Shklovskii, Viktor, “Pis'mo o Rossii i v Rossiiu” Novosti literatury 2 (1922): 97–99 Google Scholar.
80 RGALI, f. 562, op. 1, d. 450,1. 52.
81 RGALI, f. 2852, op. 1, d. 565,1.1. The petition has been preserved in Brik's personal file at RGALI without any markings.
82 Shklovsky, Zoo, 103. Yet another disavowal was printed in the pages of the journal Pechat’ i revoliutsiia, two years after a review of Revolution and the Front and Epilogue in the same journal suggested that Shklovskii had taken an “imperialist” position during the civil war and that his ambivalent references to the Bolsheviks were the result of now knowing whether the Iudenich offensive against Petrograd would fail. Shklovskii reprinted the text of the petition to VTsIK almost verbatim. See Shklovskii, Viktor, “Pis'mo v redaktsiiu,” Pechat’ i revoliutsiia, no. 3 (1924): 284 Google Scholar; and, for the original review, I. A. Aksenov, “Viktor Shklovskii, Revoliutsiia i front i Epilog,” Pechat’ i revoliutsiia, no. 7 (1922): 250-51.
83 See, for example, Richard Sheldon, introduction to Third Factory, xiii; Boym, “Poetics and Politics of Estrangement,” 596-609; Steiner, “The Praxis of Irony,” 33-38; and Levchenko, Drugaia nauka, 107-8.
84 See Ginzburg, Lidiia, Zapisnye knizhki, vospominaniia, esse (St. Petersburg, 2002), 32, 43 Google Scholar. Both Rousseau and Shklovskii courted ambiguity regarding the facts being narrated. See Darnton, Robert, “Readers Respond to Rousseau: The Fabrication of Romantic Sensitivity,” chap. 6 in The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History (New York, 1984)Google Scholar.
85 There were four editions altogether-1923,1924,1929, and 1964. For the 1964 edition, Shklovskii wrote two separate prefaces. As Sheldon has observed, a number of letters were added and some removed from the 1924 Soviet edition and new ones written, though he does not speculate as to why this might have been the case. See Richard Sheldon, “Translator's Preface,” in Shklovsky, Zoo, v-xii.
86 See Shklovskii, Viktor, “Chetyre pis'ma iz knigi Zoo, iliPis'ma ne o liubvi,” Beseda 1 (1923): 138–53Google Scholar. The preface for this publication says that the book “ends in an argument” (konchaetsia ssoroi) (138). On Beseda, see Williams, Robert Chadwell, Culture in Exile: Russian Emigres in Germany, 1881-1941 (Ithaca, 1972), 125–40Google Scholar.
87 See Kukushkina and Obatnina, eds., Serapionovy brat'ia, 167. In a discussion on contemporary literature hosted by the Russian Institute for the History of the Arts (Rossiiskii institut istorii iskusstv), Shklovskii described Zoo as a “pathetic” (pateticheskaia) work. See Krasnaia nov', no. 1 (1924): 277.
88 See Steiner, “The Praxis of Irony,” 32, for an analysis of this passage from the Berlin edition of Zoo and for his attribution of Shklovskii's quote to Gogol “s “Terrible Vengeance.“ Although the passage clearly reveals concerns with literary-historical questions and a writer's inability to step outside a literary tradition, its foregrounding here is also the result of what Shklovskii presents as the automatization of the ironic mode, not only in the literary sense, but also in the political and rhetorical one for which I argue.
89 Shklovskii, Viktor, Zoo, Hi Pis'ma ne o liubvi (Leningrad, 1924), 13 Google Scholar.
90 Ibid., 14.
91 Chandler, “On the Face of the Case,” 841. Emphasis in the original.
92 See Shklovsky, Third Factory, 50. On Reddy's maritime metaphor of “navigating feeling,” see Reddy, Navigation of Feeling, esp. 122 and 321-32.
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