We're switching sides back to the Soviet Union for the next class, and splitting historical time down the middle again--as we did with Mayakovsky and Yevtushenko, now with Victor Shklovsky (1917/1925) and Andrei Siniavsky (ca. 1957). As you may have surmised, the revolutionary avant-garde during Lenin's leadership found "comrades in posterity" during the cultural Thaw of the post-Stalin period. The critical continuities between "Art as Device" and "Pkhentz" will be immediately obvious to you, I'm sure. So please read the works on their own terms and in conversation with one another and the surrounding culture of the Cold War. Consider the following questions:
- What does Shklovsky define as the purpose of art and the task of the artist? Against what extant definitions is he working?
- How is art a device? What does it do and how?
- Is “Pkhentz” an allegory? Of what?
- What is the role of reading, writing and words in “Pkhentz”? Mark all the places texts appear in the story.
- How might we compare the description and function of the sexual grotesque in Sinyavsky’s and Baldwin’s stories?
-Finally, what are the stakes of "Pkhentz"'s taking an estranged or "defamiliarized" approach to art at that time? I suggest you think not only of Shklovsky's Russian notion of defamiliarization, but of the English etymology of this word. How have our texts made the family strange so far, and how does Cold War culture East and West try to make it automatic or familiar to the point of critical impenetrability?
- What does Shklovsky define as the purpose of art and the task of the artist? Against what extant definitions is he working?
- How is art a device? What does it do and how?
- Is “Pkhentz” an allegory? Of what?
- What is the role of reading, writing and words in “Pkhentz”? Mark all the places texts appear in the story.
- How might we compare the description and function of the sexual grotesque in Sinyavsky’s and Baldwin’s stories?
-Finally, what are the stakes of "Pkhentz"'s taking an estranged or "defamiliarized" approach to art at that time? I suggest you think not only of Shklovsky's Russian notion of defamiliarization, but of the English etymology of this word. How have our texts made the family strange so far, and how does Cold War culture East and West try to make it automatic or familiar to the point of critical impenetrability?
 |
| Andrei Sinyavsky AKA Abram Tertz, post-GULAG. |
According to Shklovsky, "art exists that one ay recover the sensation of life," and it is therefore the artist's job to make art as effective (and by his persuasion, "economical" as well) as possible in order to achieve its desired effect. Art, often used to communicate things that would be difficult or unacceptable to discuss outright, therefore (to paraphrase) impedes perception so that the "greatest possible effect is produced through the slowness of the perception." Sinyavksy's "Pkhentz" makes great use of artful impediment, revealing first Andrei's feelings of otherness--the 'difficult' topic up for examination in the piece--before wrapping it in context that gives the piece its artistry. Before Sinyavsky reveals that Andrei is an alien, I had formed the impression that he was some errant American soldier (or better yet, American spy). Do you think this impression was intentional, and if so, how does it relate to the difficulty of the discussion, thereby demanding its impediment by art?
ReplyDeleteIn Shklovsky's "Art as Device," he states that, "Quite often in literature the sexual act itself is defamiliarized ... defamiliarization is often used in describing the sexual organs." How do you think this was emphasized for artists writing in the already sexually oppressive Soviet Union? Would artists feel more inclined to rebel against sexual ambiguity with more blatant statements, or would they be more likely to hide from the possible punishments of sexual innuendos and suggestions in their art?
ReplyDeleteThinking back to the first day of class, I pulled out a quote from Nabokov's Good Readers and Good Writers:
ReplyDeleteLiterature is invention. Fiction is fiction. To call a story a true story is an insult to both art and
truth. Every great writer is a great deceiver, but so is that arch-cheat Nature. Nature always
deceives. From the simple deception of propagation to the prodigiously sophisticated illusion of
protective colors in butterflies or birds, there is in Nature a marvelous system of spells and
wiles. The writer of fiction only follows Nature’s lead (p. 4).
How does Nobokov's conception of "good writing" relate to Shklovsky's discussion of "art as a device"? These techniques are delineated in the context of writing literature/poetry- how might we extend the theories of Nobokov and Shklovsky to encompass other forms of knowledge production and/or revolution? How might we understand defamiliarization as providing a foreground for the cultivation/mobilization of dissent?
One of the concepts that I have been thinking about a lot recently is something that Shklovsky discussed very briefly in his piece, "Art as Device". The concept of habitualization, or standardizing many aspects of society that shouldn't necessarily have a universally applicable routines, has come up in many different readings that we've done. It reminded me a lot of Max Weber's discussion of rationalization in his sociological work The Protestant Ethic and The Spirit of Capitalism, in which he talks about the dangers of rationalizing/routinizing the work force. He says that this process is dangerous because it disconnects individuals from their jobs and makes them disconnected and uninterested. I think this is very applicable to what Shklovsky is saying in the habilitualization of poetry and symbolism. This also came up in the magazine we read for last class- when we saw comic with the caption about how even sexual acts are standardized.
ReplyDeleteMy question is what is the problem with standardization/habilitualization in modern or past societies? How does this process contradict with the morals of the Communist Party during the Cold War?
The Shklovsky reading distinguishes between the purposes of prose and poetry. Prose aims to deliver a message using the least amount of energy possible by relying on "the process of 'algebrization,' whereas poetry (or art) "removes objects from the automatism of perception." It seems to me that a corresponding distinction is the ability to turn back from an argument. With prose, one cannot help but understand meaning if one has read the words. With poetry/art, one can read the words but can choose to ignore their meaning and/or interpret them literally. If I read a poem through once, I can walk away from it without having any impression of the author’s meaning. As Shklovsky points out, the difficulty in understanding enhances the meaning in the end, but I still wonder to what extent the lack of clarity is counterproductive and/or elitist? Are the effects of art absorbed subconsciously, therefore not requiring extensive analysis?
ReplyDeleteIn Art as Device, Shklovsky writes, "In life people are guided by words, not by deeds...Such are the words "my" and "mine."...And people strive not for the good in life, but for goods they can call their own." Despite Shklovsky's complicated political stance, these words in many ways reflect Russia's rocky transition to a communist state at the time the piece was written. I think it is interesting to think about this idea in contrast to the main character in Sinyavsky's Pkhentz in his communal living situation. For the alien (perhaps an allegory to any slightly different individual in the Soviet Union), freedom to be himself only comes in the rare moment of privacy when he takes his bath. The idea of posession here does not pertain so much to material objects, but rather to his identity--an identity that he is not allowed to enjoy in the Soviet community. In what ways do these pieces challenge Soviet ideals of posession and belonging? In what ways might these ideals be supported?
ReplyDeleteWhat is Sinyavsky saying or representing with Andrei's body - in both it's "presented" form and it's actual form? What effect does keeping Andrei's secret a secret until almost the end of the story have? What does this story reflect about it's historical/cultural context? Andrei fears that he is becoming human(-like) towards the end - what role is this playing in the story?
ReplyDeleteOops - I forgot one - what role is language playing in the story? What effect do these "nonsense" words have?
DeletePosted on behalf of Eden Teller: I'll start off by saying that I absolutely loved this week's readings. In high school, I took a philosophy course that dealt a lot with definitions and perceptions, particularly of art, and it was great to revisit that. I thought Shklovsky made a great argument for poetry being language that shocks us out of our everyday complacency and makes us see the world in a fresh light, almost like being a child again, when every time you see a dog you HAVE to shout "Puppy! Puppy!" and dance around like you've never seen one before.
ReplyDeleteI read the Shklovsky before the Sinyavsky, so when the narrator started describing food and human bodies as an alien would, I thought it was simply a use of the artistic, poetic device, like the example of Tolstoy's writing given in the "Art as Device" piece. When it was finally revealed that the narrator was, in fact, an alien, that revelation entirely shifted my frame of reference in reading the story. Was Sinyavsky simply creating a narrator that didn't recognize human norms and writing from that POV, or was he actively trying to harness the poetic language spoken of in Shklovsky's essay? Who is the alien, and what does he stand for – the Other? A foreigner? Something else?
Shklovsky talks about defamilarization is the idea of making something common seem as though it were being encountered for the first time. Art is a means of making objects unfamiliar, more complicated to understand. He uses the example of erotic art being presented for the first time through several examples in which body parts and even the act of sex itself is "defamiliarized" (pg 6-7). Can this be translated to Pkhentz in that Andrei is seeing a woman's body for the first time "in the flesh and at such close quarters." He describes breasts in a way that makes them seem unfamiliar "I took them for secondary arms, amputated above the elbow" (Pg 489). Is this a means of "defamiliarization?" Is this somehow connected to the fact he's an alien?
ReplyDeleteIn the article "Art as Device" Shklovdky states that "Potebnya and his numerous disciple consider poetry a special kind of thinking- thinking by means of images; they feel that the purpose of imagery is to help channel various objects and activities into groups and to clarify the unknown by means of the known". As others have mentioned in Pkhentz the use of this almost poetic language is used as far as using defamiliarization, etc. My main question is what is the use of an alien trying to represent, as it is going against the "using known to clarify unknown"? How successful was the alien object as a representation? Given censorship at the time, was it possible to use any other symbol to represent this "other"?
ReplyDeleteTo expand your your question, what are the differences between using the known to clarify the unknown and using the unknown to clarify the known? Do they achieve the same end?
DeleteBoth readings were equally interesting, but I was particularly interested in the background of Sinyavsky (the one before the actual Pkhentz). In it, it speaks of Sinyavsky’s three books that were written while he was in prison. They are described as having “a solo Voice, which stands out vividly agiant a background of babble of many voices” and within the rabble are “squibs of truncated conversation, single phrases, a resume of tattoos…” and so on. Although this is described to be “the chorus of other prisoners”, is it possible that Sinyavsky used this style to represent the entirety of the USSR, with all its diversity? He was, after all, “wholly a product of the Soviet State.” If this is true, then what is the Voice? A leader? God?
ReplyDeleteShklovsky spends a lot of time talking talking about defamiliarization as concept to explain what something as though the narrator has never seen it before. In a way, Pkhentz, in its entirety, defamiliarizes the world as we know it or rather the Soviet Union as the people living there knew it? What does Sinyavsky's use of this tool tell us about the Soviet Union? How can it help us understand alienation in an alien world and alienation in our own world?
ReplyDelete