The history of insisting on the methodology could take us far a way, from one hand, and the idea of autonomy of literature, on the other hand, straight a way to select the main defendants of the rise and the ruin of the research of the literature in this century. Once when it is completely separated from the social life and entirety of human expression, when it become a subject for itself, literature has its study entrusted to the discipline that have no more real and whole touch with the knowledge about the whole, who’s style of thinking neglect the basic teaching of the Greek way of thinking, which ideal of entirety is more important than the hair – splitting precision. The process of forgetting of thinking of the whole, in order to think of the particularity, is in the twentieth century, of course, connected with the history of methodological schools, on which beginning stands the one, which definitely breaks the connection between the man – creator and its work, between the work and the society in which it was created and in which it is read.
We are talking, it is not hard to guess, about so called Russian formalism, and here we are going to come closer to the romantic irony and sad queen, promised at the beginning of this text.
One of the basic thoughts of the Russian formalists were also that, that the literature is an art, that is used with the rather heavier form and revive the readers attention, regenerate the perception and makes espied that, that has stopped to be noticed, because habits and automatism has developed, or the “blisters on the soul” as descriptively said Schklowski. To deflect the automatism of the perception, however, says very little about what should be percept. The texture, the subject, all that what is talking about, is material that should be transfigured, and it serves only to motivate the introduction of the literary acts, that are, now, main characters of the literature science.
How valuable, and also considerably naïve seeing of the meaning of the art work, today is less important due to exceptional echo in thinking about the literature of the twentieth century, but it is important for discovering a state of relations between literature and social world, actually the need to remove the literature and to make itself independent, to except from other forms of symbolic expression. Methodologically the connections with the world, in which, not to forget, just now a revolution is intruding its authority, are revoked. However, the reasons to escape the totalitarian society depends very little on the form of the ideology, and much more from its kind, so that can not be taken as a decisive reason; why would in the theory of literature be tried to especially escape as far as possible from this totalitarian ideology, and in previous centuries not. Therefore, the wish to separate the literature from the whole is not essential, or assessed, but wanted, it represent an expression of one understanding and position of the literature in the world in general, it is expression of the spirit of the time, that is looking for such a cleave.
That kind of cleave, however, is seen at the end of this century, has a lot of ominous consequences, of which the most important is that, that the society has finally recognized that cleave, as well as to the Russian formalists, just as to the American deconstructionists, wherewith the methodological ring of separating the literature from society and the world of life, has ended.
It is not an occasion to contemplate in detail, nor to especially to deal with the idea to read for the sake of reading, which is echoing at the end of this century as a far consequence of the poetical program, by which one write for the sake of writing. If we are interested in the destiny of love and its relation toward literature, from the perspective of the theory of literature, than it has to be determined what kind of connection has the methodology of literary research with love, and whether the question of love could be introduced as solution for the problem of methodology.
The love novel, after the antique, has great rise in the baroque, when the roman prose was still a literature in which the happenings of the enamoured are being followed. The new century prose begins with break down with the baroque novel, and particularly that poetic eminence has attracted Victor Schklowsky, to whom the subject of love, as we know, has been to a very special creative way close, for Don-Quixote and Tristram Shandy to write his famous essay about developing a plot and how the novel is made. What, then, has about love and poetic say the Russian formalism with the words of Viktor Schlowsky?
”Description of happy, mutual love does not create a novel,” says Schklowsky, interpreting the building of the story and novel, at the beginning of the twenties. And if it does create a novel, then it is “only on the background of describing love with obstacles”, says he, thinking that the omission of obstacles is seen as so called minus action, so it is refusal from the accustomed norm, absence of what is expected. For novel to be says Schklowsky in “The Resurrection of the words” love with obstacles is needed. By this point it could be possible to agree with him, because really, all love novels were stories about love, that has to conquer many challenges. The example is, says Schklowsky, “A loves B, B does not love A: when B has fall in love in A, A does no longer loves B”, like in Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin. This place is often quoted, but it does not point out to love with obstacles, but on one hand on unusual psychology of falling in love, and on the other hand on unsuccessful love.
It is not a model of baffled love, where the verve, that the ominous destiny has brought up on the battlefield of mans suffering, with all kind of, even with romantic tragedy. It is love that absurdly evades some cynicism of misunderstanding. If it is necessary for the novel, love to meet obstacles, does that mean that it is now necessary also remain unrealized?
An empty model and a sad queen
AuthorAleksandar Jerkov