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Introduction to Shpet's "O granitsakh nauchnogo literaturovedeniia" ("On the Limits of Scientific Literary Scholarship")
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246 Introduction to Shpet's "O granitsakh nauchnogo literaturovedeniia" ("On the Limits of Scientific Literary Scholarship") Dušan Radunović and Galin Tihanov Gustav Shpet delivered this paper on 24 November and 1 December 1924 in Moscow , at the joint session of the Literary Section and the Department of Philosophy of the State Academy of Artistic Sciences (GAKhN). Here we publish a translation of the synopsis prepared by Shpet (Shpet 441-42). Readers should be aware of the covert addressee of Shpet's paper, the primary intention of which was to contest the arguments that had been advanced a month earlier by another researcher in the Department of Philosophy, the renowned classical scholar Boris Isaakovich Iarkho (1889-1942). Iarkho's paper, presented in two parts—on 24 and 31 October 1924 (cf. Akimova and Shapir xi-xii)—was originally entitled "On the Limits of Scientific Literary Scholarship," and Shpet's decision to maintain Iarkho's title in his critical response only testifies to the strong polemical charge of his arguments. Iarkho, in his first address of 24 October, had made a radical plea (not necessarily typical for GAKhN's academic environment, which was not intolerant toward the sociological current in the study of literature represented by Kogan, Friche, and GAKhN's very active philosopher Liubov' Akselrod) for a scientific approach to literature, combining arguments drawn from a Herbartian proto-formalist aesthetics (that the work of art comprises various elements aesthetically relevant to the viewer's perception) and from positivism (that the ideal of exactness is to be found in the natural sciences, e. g., biology). As Shpet's hand-written marginalia on his copy of Iarkho's theses suggest, it was Iarkho's simplified positivism that triggered Shpet's response. Hence Shpet's first thesis directly challenges Iarkho's argument that "the litarary work of art is perceived and understood in the same way as any other phenomenon of the outer world" (Iarkho 684), and that it is therefore best approached with the analytic apparatus of the exact sciences. The literary work of art, Shpet replies, belongs to a semiotic ("significative," in his own parlance) field and thus cannot be studied in the same way in which the objective, materially given Introduction to Shpet's "O granitsakh nauchnogo literaturovedeniia" 247 phenomena are. Given that the literary discourse is tropological rather than terminological (Shpet's statement was contributing here to the ongoing Russian debate on the distinctive features of the "poetic language" and the "literariness" of literature), the methodological tools for its appropriation should be found in "criticism and interpretation ," rather than in the procedures of quantitative analysis. However, it is essential to note that Shpet does not oppose the need for a scientific approach to literature . On the contrary, he ardently supports the idea of a science of literature allied with linguistics (cf. theses 4 and 9), and by so doing comes close to the platform of the Russian Formalists, although, it has to be stressed, Shpet, unlike the Formalists, believes that the science of literature should also study the specific social functions of literature in the evolution of national cultures, especially its role as collective consciousness of the nation and a guardian of its traditions (theses 6 and 7). Thus his critique of Iarkho needs to be understood as a plea for an approach that would theoretically account not just for the material (immanent-formal) aspects of literature, but for the full complexity of its ontological status within culture. Works Cited Akimova, M.V., and M.I. Shapir. "Boris Isaakovich Iarkho i strategiia 'tochnogo literaturovedeniia.'" Metodologiia tochnogo literaturovedeniia. Izbrannye trudy po teorii literatury. By Boris Iarkho. Ed. Maksim Shapir. Moscow: Iazyki slavianskikh kul'tur, 2006. vii-xxxii. Iarkho, Boris. "O granitsakh nauchnogo literaturovedeniia. Doklad A: Granitsy nauchnosti. Doklad B: Granitsy literaturovedeniia." Iskusstvo kak vid znaniia. Izbrannye trudy po filosofii kul'tury. By Gustav Shpet. Ed. T.G. Shchedrina. Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2007. 684-85. Shpet, Gustav. "O granitsakh nauchnogo literaturovedeniia." Slovar' khudozhestvennykh terminov. GAKhN. 1923-1929 gg. Ed. I.M. Chubarov. Moscow: LogosAl 'tera and Ecce Homo, 2005. 441-42. ...