Art As Technique: Modern Criticism and Theory: A Reader (London: Longmans
Art As Technique: Modern Criticism and Theory: A Reader (London: Longmans
Art As Technique: Modern Criticism and Theory: A Reader (London: Longmans
by Victor Shkvlovsky
7. Imagistic thought does not, in any case, include all the aspects of
art nor even all the aspects of verbal art. A change in imagery is
not essential to the development of poetry. We know that
frequently an expression is thought to be poetic, to be created for
aesthetic pleasure, although actually it was created without such
intent –– e.g., Annensky's opinion that the Slavic languages are
especially poetic and Andrey Bely’s ecstasy over the technique of
placing adjectives after nouns, a technique used by eighteenth-
century poets [references are to critics in Potebnya’s group]. Bely
joyfully accepts the technique as something artistic, or more
exactly as intended, if we consider intention as art. Actually, this
reversal of the usual adjective-noun order is a peculiarity of the
language (which had been influenced by Church Slavonic). Thus a
work may be (1) intended as prosaic and accepted as poetic, or (2)
intended as poetic and accepted as prosaic. This suggests that the
artistry attributed to a given work results from the way we perceive
it. By ‘works of art,’ in the narrow sense, we mean works created
by special techniques designed to make the works as obviously
artistic as possible.
** *
11. These ideas about the economy of energy, as well as about the
law and aim of creativity, are perhaps true in their application to
‘practical’ language: they were, however, extended to poetic
language. Hence they do not distinguish properly between the laws
of practical language and the laws of poetic language. The fact that
Japanese poetry has sounds not found in conversational Japanese
was hardly the first factual indication of the differences between
poetic and everyday language. Leo Jakubinsky has observed that
the law of the dissimulation of liquid sounds does not apply to
poetic language. This suggested to him that poetic language
tolerated the admission of hard-to-pronounce conglomerations of
similar sounds. In his article, one of the first examples of scientific
criticism, he indicates inductively the contrast (I shall say more
about his point later) between the laws of poetic language and the
laws of practical language. [Jakubinsky, a Russian linguist, wrote
the articles to which Shklovsky refers in 1916 and 1917.]
16. The range of poetic (artistic) work extends from the sensory to
the cognitive, from poetry to prose, from the concrete to the
abstract: from Cervantes’ Con Quixote - scholastic and poor
nobleman, half consciously bearing his humiliation in the court of
the duke - to the broad but empty Don Quixote of Turgenev, from
Charlemagne to the name ‘king’ [in Russian, ‘Charles’ and ‘king’
derive from the same root, korol]. The meaning of a work
broadens to the extent that artfulness and artistry diminish; thus a
fable symbolizes more than a poem, and a proverb more than a
fable. Consequently, the least self-contradictory part of Potebnya’s
theory is his treatment of the fable, which, from his point of view,
he investigated thoroughly. But since his theory did not provide for
‘expressive’ works of art, he could not finish his book. As we
know, Notes on the Theory of Literature was published in 1905,
thirteen years after Potebnya’s death. Potebnya himself completed
only the section on the fable.
18. Tolstoy makes the familiar seem strange by not naming the
familiar object. He describes an object as if he were seeing it for
the first time, an event as if it were happening for the first time. In
describing something he avoids the accepted names of its parts and
instead names corresponding parts of other objects. For example,
in “Shame” Tolstoy ‘defamiliarizes’ the idea of flogging in this
way: “to strip people who have broken the law, to hurl them to the
floor, and to rap on their bottoms with switches,” and, after a few
lines, “to lash about on the naked buttocks.” Then he remarks:
“Just why precisely this stupid, savage means of causing pain and
not any other –– why not prick the shoulders or any part of the
body with needles, squeeze the hands or the feet in a vise, or
anything like that?” I apologize for this harsh example, but it
is typical of Tolstoy's way of pricking the conscience. The familiar
act of flogging is made unfamiliar both by the description and by
the proposal to change its form without changing its nature.
Tolstoy uses this technique of ‘defamiliarization’ constantly. The
narrator of “Kholstomer,” for example, is a horse, and it is the
horse’s point of view (rather than a person’s) that makes the
content of the story seem unfamiliar. Here is how the horse regards
the institution of private property:
In the fourth act, “There was some sort of devil who sang,
waving his hands, until the boards were moved out from under him
and he dropped down.”
21. In Resurrection Tolstoy describes the city and the court in the
same way; he uses a similar technique in “Kreutzer Sonata” when
he describes marriage –– “Why, if people have an affinity of souls,
must they sleep together?” But he did not defamiliarize only those
things he sneered at:
“Ha, ha, ha,” laughed Pierre. And he began to talk to himself. “The
soldier didn't allow me to pass. They caught me, barred me. Me ––
me –– my immortal soul. Ha, ha, ha,” he laughed with tears
starting in his eyes.
22. Anyone who knows Tolstoy can find several hundred such
passages in his work. His method of seeing things out of their
normal context is also apparent in his last works. Tolstoy described
the dogmas and rituals he attacked as if they were unfamiliar,
substituting everyday meanings for the customarily religious
meanings of the words common in church ritual. Many persons
were painfully wounded; they considered it blasphemy to present
as strange and monstrous what they accepted as sacred. Their
reaction was due chiefly to the technique through which Tolstoy
perceived and reported his environment. And after turning to what
he had long avoided, Tolstoy found that his perceptions had
unsettled his faith.
** *
24. Now, having explained the nature of this technique, let us try to
determine the approximate limits of its application. I personally
feel that defamiliarization is found almost everywhere form is
found. In other words, the difference between Potebnya’s point of
view and ours is this: An image is not a permanent referent for
those mutable complexities of life which are revealed through it;
its purpose is not to make us perceive meaning, but to create a
special perception of the object -- it creates a ‘vision’ of the object
instead of serving as a means for knowing it.
25. The purpose of imagery in erotic art can be studied even more
accurately; anerotic object is usually presented as if it were seen
for the first time. Gogol, in “Christmas Eve,” provides the
following example:
“Hmm! On the neck a necklace! He, he, he!” and the secretary
again wandered about the room, rubbing his hands.
But you fell in with it ever and always.” Says Stavyor, son of
Godinovich,
Now must you know, you and I together learned to read and write;
Mine was an ink-well of silver,
The bear saw this and said to the magpie and the fly, "Holy
priests! The peasant wants to piebald someone again.
Her sister was called Tatyana./ For the first time we shall/
Willfully brighten the delicate/ Pages of a novel with such a name.
35. Nevertheless, the position of those who urge the idea of the
economy of artistic energy as something which exists in and even
distinguishes poetic language seems, at first glance, tenable for the
problem of rhythm. Spencer's description of rhythm would seem to
be absolutely incontestable: