74 From Shklovsky to Brecht: Some preliminary remarks towards ahistory of the politicisation of Russian Formalism

Stanley Mitchell

The aim of this article is to specify the relationship betweenShklovsky's notion of ostranenie (making-strange) and Brecht'sVerfretndung, which has immediately the same meaning. What isthe point of such an enquiry? Shklovsky was a Formalist who latercommitted himself to Marxism, although never in a way whichfundamentally reconstructed his thinking.1 He proposed the notionsof making-strange and art-as-a-device before the Revolution andbefore the Soviet nineteen-twenties forced upon him a politicaland philosophical re-orientation. Brecht was already a Marxistwhen he developed his idea of Verfretndung. a technique aimed atjolting the consciousness of his auditors and making them criticallyaware of contradiction in society. What have the two concepts incommon?

That the same word was chosen cannot be pure accident, for theterm has similarities of implication. In both theories the (proper)role of art is seen as one of de-routinisation, de-automatisation:art is the enemy of habit; it renews, refreshes our perceptions; by' making-strange ', it defamiliarises. But while Shklovsky's ostra-nenie was a purely aesthetic concept, concerned with renewal ofperception, Brecht's Verfretndung had a social aim: if the worldcould be shown differently, ie, as having different possibilities,could it not be differently made? Brecht wished to strike notmerely at the perceptions, but at the consciousness of his spec-tators. Shklovsky expressly denied the cognitive function of art:' the aim of art,' he wrote, ' is to give the sensation of a thing assomething known.' Does the comparison end there?

European capitalism, entering its imperialist phase, posed anew the .problem of boredom, captured in Baudelaire's images of ennui. 'Technological production and reproduction were mechanising andstereotyping the everyday. As an antidote the new capitalisminvested in novelty on a hitherto unprecedented scale. The invest-ment proved profitable because novelty is quickly exhausted. Withthe arrival of finance capitalism the pace of renewal galloped.Society became more ' subjective': the class which had distin-guished itself historically by its constant need to revolutionise itsinstruments of production now, in its parasitic phase, turned moreand more neurotically to ' revolutionising' its means of consump-tion. ' Serious ' art reflected this development, passing through themost rapid succession of schools and styles ever known. Philo-sopher and novelist discovered an ' anti-mechanical' time (Berg-son's duree, Proust's memory). Futurists fetishised dynamics and

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speed. Painters and poets plundered the colonies for ' direct * 75emotions or timeless conditions (Gauguin, Picasso, Baudelaire,Rimbaud). Each innovation was assimilated and mass-reproduced.

Marx analysed this socio-cultural process in terms of' alienation 'and ' fetishism of commodities '. The producer is denied enjoymentof his labour which he sells to be marketed as commodities enter-ing into a seemingly autonomous economic system. The marketeconomy is experienced as something naturally-unnatural, familiarly-alien until class struggle can lay bare the social relations of capitaland labour which underly its mystifying ' objectivity '.

* •• *The Formalist making-strange is one of the many devices used byartists and theorists to take a ' crack' at the ' objectivity' ofcapitalist society and consciousness. Where the Russian Symbolistshad sought refuge in transcendentalism, the Formalists by contrast(and in counter-attack) appropriated technology to literary critic-ism, arguing that literature was one of a complex of interrelating' systems' or ' series' making up the totality of society. Each ofthese systems had its specific autonomy. The science of literaryanalysis lay in the establishment of literaturnost', ie what wasliterary about literature. The Formalists understood the history ofliterature in terms of formal self-parody. Against the .' autonomy'and ' objectivity' of society as a whole they posed the specificautonomy of literature and art and the ' objectivity' of theirattendant ' sciences'. Yet however ' objectively * the Formaliststreated their subject-matter, excluding the author from considera-tion, their deliberations were resonant with subjectivity:

' The device which art uses is the device of" making things strange "and of complicating the form, thereby increasing the difficulty andlength of perception so that the perceiving process becomes anend-in-itself and has to be prolonged. Art is a means of experiencingthe making of a thing: what is made in art is unimportant.'(Shklovsky)

Formalist aesthetics is Kantian, topped with modern phenomeno-logy (Husserl was an influence: one sees in Shklovsky's formulationhow the ' what ' of a work of art can be ' bracketed', leaving theprolonged perceptual experience). Formalism is a perceptual aesthe-tics, at once mathematically analytical and hedonistic, ie concernedwith the maximum prolongation of the aesthetic experience.

The shift from object to subject, from representation to percep-tion, the turning of perception into a new form of object - all thisis characteristic of modern European art and art theory. It providesthe artist and theorist with a new ' freedom': perception frombeing a way of seeing the world becomes the object of representa-tion. Or to put it another way: the ' what' of representations turnsinto the * how' . ' Reality', the meaningfulness of the external world,is questioned as never before. The very term ' reality' undergoes

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j6 a relativisation and subjectivisation (eg ' my reality \ ' yourreality'). The ontological status of reality is relegated to meta-physics and replaced by the tangible and ' authentic ' ' raw materialof the perceptions' (eg Machism) which can be constructed intonew forms of meaning seemingly at will. In fact, the new ' freedom 'belongs with the reification of consciousness, diagnosed by Lukacsin History and Class Consciousness, which turns perceptions fromprocesses into things,' ends-in-themselves ' as Shklovsky calls them.The battle ' against' capitalist alienation is waged on many fronts(' against' in quotation marks because the product of the battleoften turns out to be another form of alienation, a sub-systemwithin the main system). So it was with Formalism, caught between(perceptual) objectivism and hedonism.

It is only within this broad context that one can begin to make use /of the coincidence between Shklovsky's and Brecht's terms, ostra-nenie and Verfremdung? These terms capture the theoreticalimagination because they strike at their objective homonym, ie thealienation of consciousness which is the reflex of capitalism. Capi-talist dialectics ' domesticate ' this alienation. The resisting theore-tical and artistic consciousness seeks to unmaskv make alien thealienation. But the intellectual and artistic consciousness does notrevolt merely out of wounded dignity. Russian Formalism came intobeing during the first world war and on the eve of the BolshevikRevolution; some of its personalties, though not the main ones,were Bolsheviks. Brecht developed his theory of alienation on theeve of the fascist counter-revolution as a means to shock peopleout of a passive-fatalistic acceptance of authoritarian and manipula- Jtive politics. If, in the general European context, we draw a lineback from Brecht and forward from Shklovsky, we shall find ameeting-point. In the 1920s the Russian Formalists joined forceswith the left Futurists to produce the magazine and forum ofLEF and Nory Lef, edited by Mayakovsky. Brecht's ' epic theatre'drew inspiration from Piscator, Meyerhold and Eisenstein. Thevarious theories and. practices of montage, functional theatre,documentary may all be brought under the head of making-strange. Russian Formalism was politicised. The theorems of' making strange ', ' exposing the device ' were applied sociologic-ally and politically to the writer's craft (or rather production) andhis place in society. The formalist-sociologists (known as forsotst).argued that the writer should engage with his ' material' nodifferently from a worker in a factory, for he was no more than aliterary producer. So down with inspiration, creativity, illusion:these were the manifestations of bourgeois and class culture whichused artists as a special 61ite to satisfy the needs of a ruling classwhich had no wish to see itself in reality, ie as an exploiting class.-To this end, went the argument, art mystified reality into estab-

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lished reality, reality as seen and desired by the ruling class. 77Positivism and realism were the intellectual and artistic props ofthe bourgeois order.

But the left ' Formalists ' confused two things here: on the onehand the use of illusion or representation as such, on the othertheir use in the service of an ideology. Aristotle's theory of. mimesis,foe example, is not a class concept, although obviously it had asocial origin and was put to class use (eg only characters of suchand such social standing could do the representing). But moreimportant than this confusion was the carry-over of the old neo-Kantianism into artistic-political thinking, according to which* reality ' could never be seen ' as it was ', but only as it was seen.Ontology, we remarked earlier, was dismissed as a problem. Butthis left open the question: who demystifies the demystifiers?which is the more correct or better or more preferable ' way ofseeing' and according to what criterion? Formalists and Prolet-kultists alike stood by this way of thinking, whatever their enmityto each other. Both, in their different ways, reversed Marx's formulathat consciousness depended on social existence.

Left avant-garde art everywhere in the nineteen-twenties con-centrated on an aesthetics of shock. It was only as an aesthetics ofrealism came to predominate in the Soviet Union that Communistor would-be Marxist writers like Brecht were forced to revise theirthinking and practice. I have in mind here not the external politicalpressure, but a meaningful Marxist concept of realism. In the Stalinperiod Marxist notions went hand in hand with completely distort-ing malpractices. It is certain, for example, that the notion ofSocialist Realism was truer in principle to Marx's relationship ofconsciousness to existence than the theories of the avant-garde.But Stalin's manipulative politics turned it into an ' objectivist'theory serving to confirm every Party dictate and change of courseand using an equally ' subjectivist * rhetoric of exhortation. TheDiktat from above, though pretending to respond to democraticpressures from below, once again reversed Marx's formula.

Brecht, living outside the Soviet Union (unlike many other Com-munist emigres), never .formally a member of the German Com-munist Party, was able to tackle the problem of realism freely andin principle. In his early ' epic' theatre' he sought to produce adirect effect upon his audience by means of the Verfremdungs-technik. I cannot correlate here the changes in his theory andpractice, but his essays and theoretical fragments of the thirtiesincreasingly designate the task of art as that of laying bare a' causal network ' in a specifiable and cognisable reality ' out there '.No longer is it the ' laying bare ' of the devices of art that matters:that becomes a side-issue, product of a petit-bourgeois revoltagainst haut-bourgeois aesthetic consumption. More importantthan puncturing the ' illusions * of the theatre and the other artswas to use every formal means discovered by the avant-garde to

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78 reveal the workings of capitalist society, to demonstrate themechanisms of social conditioning so that these appeared no longerfixed, but changeable in a rational way. Arguing against the laterLukacs's version of realism, with its bases in the nineteenth-centurynovel (Balzac, Tolstoy), Brecht called for a sovereignty of models.The demand applied equally to the narrow anti-illusionism of theavant-garde. For what did realism mean, asked Brecht, if not the

° uncovering of reality, that is the causal nexus of the socio-economicworld, and to that end all devices were legitimate, from within thetraditional forms of art and outside. Capitalist theatre and filmhave been able to debase Brechtian theatre into the stereotype ofthe alienation-effect simply because avant-garde theory and prac-tice have deployed so much of their ' artistic politics ' against bour-geois forms. Yet ' sending up ' a means of representation is one ofthe oldest and most easily assimilable ' devices' of the capitalistentertainment industry. Parody, as the Formalists showed, is theform par excellence of novelty.

Of all the ' modernist' theories Brecht's Verfremdung constitutedthe most appropriate response to capitalist alienation. It was anattempt to ' negate the negation' in terms of the spectator's con-sciousness. But like all avant-garde theories the programme was(initially) too prescriptive and exclusive, and too'rationalistic. Itwas one thing, for example, to ' demonstrate' the mechanism ofsocial conditioning, and another to produce socially-rooted andcredible characters. Brecht's later practice and theory depart fromthe earlier didacticism and, in his last years, we find him toyingwith the notion of a ' dialectical theatre' to replace the older' epic'. ' Dialectical' is a broader term, embracing more than theshock tactics of Verfremdung, uniting demonstration with a newunderstanding of representation. The term ' dialectical' needselaboration, which is difficult because Brecht only hints at what hehas in mind. He is combining, and transcending, the two mainstreams of revolutionary art: on the one hand the Russian avant-gardism of the nineteen-twenties, which put its emphasis on pro-duction; on the other the realist tradition,' critical' and' socialist *,which emphasised reflection. Brecht seeks a productive realism:

' Objectivist representations disregard the subjective moment, thewill of the representer who aims at the constant productivealteration of the conditions and circumstances given to him.Objectivist representations offer no impulse for change anddevelopment.'

* * *Mayakovsky described the Formalist contribution to literary theoryas a ' higher mathematics '. In a similar vein he wrote of Khleb-nikov's work as' a poetry for producers (poets) rather than con-sumers. Brecht underlined the need to utilise the techniques in-vented by the (bourgeois) avant-garde, arguing (against the

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' official' Marxists) that a technique could not be regarded as the 79direct expression of an ideology. On the contrary, a technique likea physical tool was an instrument of production. Brecht takes uphere the Formalist inheritance. At the same time literature couldnot be defined as ' pure' production; it was also ideological.Brecht's application of Verfretndung to the social mechanism sumsup an entire history of the (socialist) politidsation of Shklovsky'soriginal notion of ostranenie, a history which remains to be writtenand should put together in the most profitable way the relation-ship between Marxism and the artistic avant-garde of the twentiethcentury. Shklovsky's initial essay Art as a Device (1916) may beread, if we ' bracket' its ideology a la Husserl, as a ' paradigm 'for Brecht's mature writings on literature, in particular for theLittle Organon for the Theatre. Here, as in Shklovsky's piece, artis shown to renew our contact with the material world. Taking athing out of one context and putting it in another, so to examineit afresh, gives us tangibility (Shklovsky) and knowledge (Brecht).Insight into a how a thing works, whether this is literature orsociety, lends a sense of mastery and pleasure: no materialismwithout sensuality, insists Brecht. What was perceptual aestheticsfor Shklovsky becomes materialist with Brecht.

* • *

To resume: Brecht's use of the idea of Verfremdung is a splendidexample of his own advice to sodalist writers. Referring to Joyce,Doblin, Kafka, he wrote:

' It is predsely Socialist writers who are able to learn highly-developed technical elements from these documents of despair.They see the way out. Many models are necessary; the mostinstructive is comparison.'

The technical elements which Brecht lists are: interior monologue "\(Joyce), stylistic alternation (Joyce), dissociation of elements j(Doblin, Dos Passos), assodative writing (Joyce, Doblin), news-montage (Dos Passos), alienation (Kafka).

Notes1. The Formalist ' patterning', the theoretical ' tropes ' remain, even in

his most recent work, if anything coming out there more clearly:older men tend to return to the ' innovations' of their youth, andthe present is more propitious for revindicating (albeit critically) theachievements of Formalism. Shklovsky's self-criticism is undoubtedlygenuine. What he does, however, is superimpose the antitheticalcategories of Formalism upon the dialectical ones of Marxism. He' aligns' himself with Marxism rather than becoming Marxist.Nevertheless - and this matters for the present article - Shklovsky'sself-criticism leads him to support Brecht's version of the theory of' estrangement'.

In Art as a Device (1916) (see above) Shklovsky had denned thepurpose of ' making-strange ' as ' the renewal of perception/sensa-tion' (the Russian word oshchushchenie means both). What was

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go perceived did not matter. Recently (1970) he commented: ' I shouldhave asked myself: what were you proposing to make strange if artdid not express reality? The sensation of what did Sterne or Tolstoywish to restore?

' The theory of estrangement which has been accepted by many,including Brecht, speaks of art as knowledge, as a means ofinvestigation.'

This later emendation is bland insofar as Formalism grew philo-sophically out of neo-Kantianism, that is out of a reaction againstnineteenth-century positivism. Like the Machians and the pheno-menologists (Husserl and his Russian interpreter, Shpet) whoinfluenced them, the last thing the Formalists were prepared to dowas take ' reality' on trust.

Despite Shklovsky's self-corrections, or perhaps because of theirunproblematical character, because of his ' accommodation' toMarxism, it is not surprising that it was not he who politicisedFormalism. The yeast of his work lies in his Formalist period proper,the later adjustments are only ' Marxist' leaven.

Formalism could only be politicised by those who responded tothe original Formalist challenge. Marxists in the twenties and thirtiesdivided themselves into heirs of the Second International, who tooka determinist, evolutionary view of history, and Leninists, or if notLeninists, then those who stressed the subjective factor, that is theneed to uncover and specify the main contradictions of socialdevelopment and to try as hard as possible to1 make them go yourway (without, like Stalin, doing violence to their objectivity andnecessity). The Formalists had formalised contradiction. The pointwas to give life to their formalisations. This Mayakovsky did in hispoetry and Brecht in his plays. The techniques of neologistic rhyme,montage, Verfremdung were means of ' bombarding' reality to dis-cover its possibilities, to specify its contradictions, to make it go' your way'.

2. The question of a direct link between the two terms has been a-matter of much dispute. Shklovsky took a mild rapping from theliterary bureaucrats in the Soviet Union for suggesting a connectionbetween them. Likewise, East German studies on Brecht steadfastlydeny any relationship. On the other hand, Western critics of allbrands have been quick to point out the link: for the right it is a'way of deMarxising Brecht; for the left largely a means of distancinghim from a ' realistic' aesthetic (see above). In the present article Ihave sought to show that the left has another and more profitablechoice, Brecht's 'own: that of ' refunctioning ', to use his word, theinsights and discoveries of the ' avant-garde'.

A recent book of memoirs from East Germany, by the lateBemhard Reich, a theatre director who spent many years in Russia,confirms the suggestion put forward by many people, including BenBrewster in Screen, v 12, n 4, that it was Tretyakov (one of theeditors of LEF) who reshaped Shklovsky's original idea and, as itwere, handed over the term to Brecht. Fortunately, we do not haveto rely on biographical evidence, however inviting, to establish theconnection between Brecht's and Shklovsky's term: as we haveargued above, it is the general context that counts. But the memoiris worthquoting because it both supports and illuminates the con-tentions "of this article. Reich recalls sitting with Tretyakov andBrecht in the former's Moscow flat and discussing a theatre per-formance; it was 1935:

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' I was referring to a production detail when Tretyakov corrected me,remarking: " Yes, that is an estrangement (yerfremdung) ' andlooked conspiratorially at Brccht. Brecht nodded. That was the firsttime I had met the expression Verfremdung. I must assume thereforethat Tretyakov provided Brecht with the term. I think that Tretyakovhad reshaped the term originally formulated by Shklovsky,otchuzdenie, " distancing ", " alienation " [Reich confuses ostraneniewith the similar-meaning otchuzhdenie].

' Brecht's Verfremdung aims at " making-aware ". Shklovsky andhis followers were recommending this " making aware " mainly forthe cinema, seeing it as a way of arousing a strong impression in thespectators by means of an extremely formal juxtaposition. Despitethe semantic similarity Brecht's conception differs from this quitefundamentally both with regard to its point of departure (" making-aware " in Brecht is a logical necessity since habit and familiarityhinder the recognition of phenomena) and its result (Brecht'sestrangement helps one to see better the content of things).'(Im Wettlauf mit der Zeit, Berlin 1970, pp 371-2).

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