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Literature and CinematographyAuthor: Viktor Shklovsky Translator: Irina Masinovsky Scholarly Series 75 pages, Dimensions: 5 x 7 Paperback, 978-1-56478-482-7 Retail Paperback Price: Our Paperback Price: $11.96—20% OFF! 
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Book Description
In this short, brilliant book, Viktor Shklovsky enunciates the function of the arts: what they are and, just as importantly, what they are not. In the course of defining what art is, by implication he also quietly lays to waste the theories and people who view art as a means of representing “the real world” and a method of communication. His views of the other arts then lead him into his speculations about the art of cinema photography, new at the time that Shklovsky composed his polemic in 1923.
About the Author
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Viktor Shklovsky (1893-1984) was a leading figure in the Russian Formalist movement of the 1920s and had a profound effect on twentieth century Russian literature. Several of his books have been translated into English, including Zoo, or Letters Not about Love, Third Factory, Theory of Prose, Energy of Delusion, and Literature and Cinematography, all published by Dalkey Archive Press. |
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About the Translator
| Irina Masinovsky is a translator, editor, and interpreter of Russian literature and language. |
Praise
“Shklovsky is a disciple worthy of Sterne. He has appropriated the device of infinitely delayed event, of the digression helplessly promising to return to the point, and of disguising his superbly controlled art with a breezy nonchalance. But it is not really Sterne that Shklovsky sounds like: it is an intellectual and witty Hemingway.”—Guy Davenport, National Review“The works of Viktor Shklovsky are so appropriate to our contemporary situation as to seem to have been written for us. His writings do precisely what he has said it is art’s goal to do: they ‘restore . . . sensation of the world,’ they ‘resurrect things and kill pessimism.’”—Lyn Hejinian
“A rambling, digressive stylist, Shklovsky throws off brilliant aperçus on every page . . . Like an architect’s blueprint, [he] lays bare the joists and studs that hold up the house of fiction.”—Michael Dirda, Washington Post
More Information
Also by Viktor Shklovsky:A Sentimental Journey: Memoirs, 1917-1922
Energy of Delusion: A Book on Plot
Knight's Move
Theory of Prose
Third Factory
Zoo, or Letters Not about Love
FORM AND MATERIAL IN ART
It is usually considered obvious that every artist want to express something, to relate something. That “something” is called the content of a work. And the method by which that “something” is expressed — words, images, verse rhythm in literature, colors and lines in a painting — is called the form of work.
These two aspects of every work of art are recognized by almost every one. Some people who wish art to be of direct use to mankind usually say: the most important thing about art is its content (i.e., what it says).
The so-called aesthetes, the lovers of the beautiful, say that what matters to them is “not the what but the how” (i.e., what matters is form).
Now let’s try to be sensible; let’s try not to get involved in this dispute; let’s not bicker. Let’s just look at the nature of the dispute objectively.
We’re talking about works of art.
Let’s begin with an analysis of music.
MUSIC
A musical composition consists of numerous sounds which vary in pitch and timbre (i.e., of high sounds and low sounds succeeding one another). These sounds are combined into groups which have certain relation to one another. There is nothing else in a musical composition. So, what have we found in it? We have found neither form, nor content, but material and form — that is, sounds and deployment of sounds. Now there may well be some who would say that music also has content, and that this content is its mood, whether happy or sad. But there are facts which prove a musical composition in and of itself contains neither sadness nor joy; those feelings are not the essence of music and they are not essential to its creators. A famous scholar of musical theory, Gonslik, gives an example of how Bach wrote ribald verses for his psalm music, and the music worked just as well for the ribald verses as it had for the psalms. Actually, it is not unusual for religious sects to perform their incantations to dance tunes. Meanwhile, for such an adaptation it is necessary to overcome the traditional association of those tunes with a certain context.
This is why the philosopher Kant defined music as pure form — that is, he rejected its so-called content.