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 TURNING INTO STERNE
VIKTOR SHKLOVSKII AND LITERARY RECEPTION
 Legenda
LEGENDA, founded in 1995 by the European Humanities Research Centre of
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 Editorial Board
Chairman
Professor Colin Davis, Royal Holloway, University of London

Professor Malcolm Cook, University of Exeter (French)

Professor Robin Fiddian, Wadham College, Oxford (Spanish)
Professor Paul Garner, University of Leeds (Spanish)
Professor Andrew Hadfield, University of Sussex (English)
Professor Marian Hobson Jeanneret,
Queen Mary University of London (French)
Professor Catriona Kelly, New College, Oxford (Russian)
Professor Martin McLaughlin, Magdalen College, Oxford (Italian)
Professor Martin Maiden, Trinity College, Oxford (Linguistics)
Professor Peter Matthews, St John’s College, Cambridge (Linguistics)
Dr Stephen Parkinson, Linacre College, Oxford (Portuguese)
Professor Suzanne Raitt, William and Mary College, Virginia (English)
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 STUDIES IN COMPARATIVE
LITERATURE
Editorial Committee
Professor Stephen Bann, University of Bristol (Chairman)
Professor Duncan Large, University of Swansea
Dr Elinor Shaffer, School of Advanced Study, London

Studies in Comparative Literatureare produced in close collaboration with

the British Comparative Literature Association, and range widely across
comparative and theoretical topics in literary and translation studies,
accommodating research at the interface between different artistic media
and between the humanities and the sciences.

Published in This Series

1. Breeches and Metaphysics: Thackeray’s German Discourse, by S. S.
Prawer
2. Hölderlin and the Dynamics of Translation, by Charlie Louth
3. Aeneas Takes the Metro: The Presence of Virgil in Twentieth-
Century French Literature, by Fiona Cox
4. Metaphor and Materiality: German Literature and the World-View
of Science 1780–1955, by Peter D. Smith
5. Marguerite Yourcenar: Reading the Visual, by Nigel Saint
6. Treny: The Laments of Kochanowski, translated by Adam
Czerniawski and with an introduction by Donald Davie
7. Neither a Borrower: Forging Traditions in French, Chinese and
Arabic Poetry, by Richard Serrano
 8. The Anatomy of Laughter, edited by Toby Garfitt, Edith McMorran
and Jane Taylor
9. Dilettantism and its Values: From Weimar Classicism to the fin de
siècle, by Richard Hibbitt
10. The Fantastic in France and Russia in the Nineteenth Century: In
Pursuit of Hesitation, by Claire Whitehead
11. Singing Poets: Literature and Popular Music in France and Greece,
by Dimitris Papanikolaou
12. Wanderers Across Language: Exile in Irish and Polish Literature of
the Twentieth Century, by Kinga Olszewska
13. Moving Scenes: The Aesthetics of German Travel Writing on
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14. Henry James and the Second Empire, by Angus Wrenn
15. Platonic Coleridge, by James Vigus
16. Imagining Jewish Art, by Aaron Rosen
17. Alienation and Theatricality: Diderot after Brecht, by Phoebe von
Held
18. Turning into Sterne: Viktor Shklovskii and Literary Reception, by
Emily Finer
19. Yeats and Pessoa: Parallel Poetic Styles, by Patricia McNeill
20. Aestheticism and the Philosophy of Death: Walter Pater and Post-
Hegelianism, by Giles Whiteley
21. Blake, Lavater, and Physiognomy, by Sibylle Erle
22. Rethinking the Concept of the Grotesque: Crashaw, Baudelaire,
Magritte, by Shun-Liang Chao
Turning into Sterne

Viktor Shklovskii and Literary Reception

EMILY FINER

Studies in Comparative Literature 18

Modern Humanities Research Association and Routledge
2010
 First published 2010
Published by the
Modern Humanities Research Association and Routledge
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 Contents
Acknowledgements
Note on Transliteration
Introduction
1 The Background to Shklovskii’s Reception of Foreign Literature
2 Shklovskii’s Reception of the Eighteenth-Century English Novel:
Theory
3 Shklovskii Reads Tristram Shandy
4 Literary Reception in Practice
5 Literary History
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index
 THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO
RUTH DENT AND EDITH FINER
 Acknowledgements
This research would not have been accomplished without the financial
support of the Arts and Humanities Research Board, Clare College, the
University of Cambridge, Harvard University, and the Frank Knox Memorial
Trust. My heartfelt thanks go to my Ph.D. examiners, Professor Andrei Zorin
and Dr Emma Widdis. I am grateful to Elinor Shaffer, Greta Slobin, and Alex
Spektor for reading and commenting on drafts of this book. Jana Howlett,
Chris Ward, Simon Franklin, Anthony Cross, Fred Parker, Tamara Follini,
Alessandra Tosi, and Siobhan Carew from Cambridge, UK were all
instrumental in their own ways. Nikita Shklovskii-Kordi, Ksenia Atarova,
Olga Vinogradova, Rachel Polonsky, and their families were generous with
their interest and hospitality in Moscow, Russia. William Mills Todd III,
Svetlana Boym, Sally Connolly, Julie Buckler, Edythe Haber, Sonia Ketchian,
Natasha & Il’ia Kun, Anna Mason, Seamas O’Driscoll, Stephanie Sandler,
Rory Stewart, Denis Tenenboym, Richard Sheldon, and Fran Davis were
enormously helpful in Cambridge, MA. Karen Underhill, Eli Underhill, and
everyone at MASSOLIT Books provided friendship and a place to work in
Krakow, Poland. Claire Whitehead, Oliver Smith, the Department of Russian
and the School of Modern Languages at the University of St Andrews have
created a supportive and cheerful environment in which to bring this book
to completion. Graham Nelson at Legenda has provided endless
encouragement and kindness. From the early days of my research, my
enthusiasm for Russian sternianstvo and life in general has been nurtured by
Polly McMichael, Sarah Joseph, Monica White, and David MacPhail. Finally,
Sue, Nick, Louise, Sarah, Stephen, Jackie and Leslie, and Michael Alpert have
been unwavering in their support, despite much transverse zigzaggery.

E.F., February 2010

 Note on Transliteration
The Library of Congress system of transliteration is used throughout, even
when the resulting spellings of writers’ names diverge from their usual
English forms, e.g. ‘Tolstoi’ rather than ‘Tolstoy’. Transliterations in the
names of works by other authors have been preserved. Diacritics are omitted
in names, eg. ‘Gorkii’ rather than ‘Gor’kii’. Hypercritics are intractable.
 Introduction
In 1926, Viktor Shklovskii wrote: ‘Стерн, которого я оживил, путает меня.
Не только делаю писателей, а сам сделался им’ [Sterne, who I brought to
life, is entangling me. I do not just make writers, I make myself into them].1
This statement invites many questions: is Shklovskii asserting his power over
the eighteenth-century English novelist and crowing over his ability to
resurrect him for the Soviet reader? Is he describing his apprenticeship to
Laurence Sterne in terms of being tangled in a spider’s web of influence?
Can we read this as a Formalist statement in which the author is entirely
disempowered by the recurrence of lively devices from a different era and
culture in his work? Is he suggesting that the new Soviet writer should
follow his example by looking for literary models beyond Russian ones? The
present study addresses the questions raised by Shklovskii’s paradoxical and
allusive statement through an exploration of the circumstances and
consequences of his interaction with Sterne and his novels.
Both Sterne and Shklovskii were men of varied talents and professions.
Before the October Revolution, Shklovskii performed at a Futurist cabaret,
studied sculpture and philology, wrote artistic manifestos and literary
criticism, taught tank maintenance and received the George Cross from
General Kornilov. Richard Sheldon, Shklovskii’s most prolific English
translator and critic, summed up his subject’s different lives as follows: ‘after
showing members of Opoiaz how novels are assembled, Shklovskii would
return to his unit and show his students there how to assemble armoured
cars’.2
By the end of his life, Laurence Sterne had two professions: clergyman
and bestselling author. His literary successes occurred in the last decade of
his life: Tristram Shandy was published in instalments between 1759 and
1767; A Sentimental Journey appeared days before Sterne’s death from
tuberculosis in 1768.3 Sterne claimed that he ‘wrote not to be fed but to be
famous’, and from the publication of the first two volumes of Tristram
Shandy he began to be infamous.4 His many detractors in England ranged
from contemporaries who felt that he was a disgrace to his spiritual
vocation, to later critics such as Thackeray (who complained that ‘the foul
satyrs’ eyes leer out of the leaves’), and F. R. Leavis (who dismissed the
novel as ‘irresponsible (and nasty) trifling’).5 Sterne’s admirers were
numerous. Prior to Viktor Shklovskii, they included Thomas Jefferson,
Diderot, Catherine the Great, Karamzin, Gogol, Tolstoi, and Pushkin (who
wrote that ‘вся “Лалла-рук” не стоит десяти строчек “Тристрама Шанди”’
[Ten lines of Tristram Shandy are worth more than all Lalla-Rookh put
together]).6
It is notable that none of Sterne’s advocates listed above are English.
Indeed, the editors of The Reception of Laurence Sterne in Europe introduce
the volume with the statement that ‘Sterne has always fared much better
outside England’.7 Sterne’s reception on the continent was swift; early
volumes of Tristram Shandy were translated into German and reviewed in
France before Sterne had written the final volumes of the novel. The
eighteenth- and nineteenth-century reception of Sterne in Russia has been
studied in detail; Russians read Sterne in French and German and episodes
from A Sentimental Journey were translated into Russian via these
languages as early as 1779.8 The first Russian translation of A Sentimental
Journey was published in 1793 and the first complete Tristram Shandy in

1804.9
Scholarship has frequently limited Sterne’s influence on Russian literature
to his introduction of Sentimentalism. A smaller proportion of critics and
translators have, however, noted a contribution to Russian literature by a
different Sterne, a playful, innovative, and bawdy author.10 Yet, Shklovskii’s
odd claims for this English clergyman set him apart from everyone else
involved in Sterne’s Russian reception. Who would have thought that
Tristram Shandy would be declared ‘самый типичный роман всемирной
литературы’ [the most typical novel in world literature] two years after the
Russian Revolution; or that this unusual specimen of English literature could
be envisaged as a prototype for the Soviet novel?11
 Shklovskii’s interaction with Sterne has not been studied in detail.12 It is
as if the classic Formalist prescription to investigate the history of devices
rather than that of authors has been taken to heart in existing studies.
However, such a ‘classic Formalist’ position is remarkably elusive in original
publications by members of Opoiaz.13 For example, we have already seen
that Shklovskii characterizes his interaction with Sterne — rather than with
his novels or formal devices — as a resurrection (Stern, kotorogo ia ozhivil)
and an entanglement or trick (putaet menia). It could hardly have been the
intention of Boris Eikhenbaum or Vladimir Zhirmunskii to omit the author
in works titled Lermontov or Pushkin i Bairon.14 The more we read Opoiaz
publications by Shklovskii and others, the more we recognize the lone voice
of a Formalist-extremist in Osip Brik’s statement that ‘Опояз полагает, что
нет поэтов и литераторов, — есть поэзия и литература’ [Opoiaz
proposes that there are no poets or writers — there is poetry and
literature].15 Consequently, we should turn to a rare characterization of the
interaction between Shklovskii and Sterne as a ‘relationship’: ‘the
involvement of Shklovskii with Sterne and his chef d’oeuvre’, write John
Neubauer and Neil Stewart, ‘seems to go beyond that of a fond critic with
his favourite object of study: it is a complex and multi-faceted relationship,
resembling a lifelong and sometimes troubled love affair’.16
Neubauer and Stewart find ‘Tristram Shendi Sterna i teoriia romana’
(1921) to be Shklovskii’s most convincing interpretation of a single text; they
also point to Shklovskii’s creative responses to Sterne and to the former’s
critical essays and autobiographical novels. However, they express doubt as
to ‘whether Shklovsky deduced his theory of the novel and the concept of
‘defamiliarization’ from a reading of Sterne, or whether Sterne’s book came
as a godsend to illustrate the critic’s preconceived theoretical schemes’.17
Given the centrality of Tristram Shandy to Shklovskii’s oeuvre, an answer to
this question needs to be attempted. Otherwise, we run the risk of merely
recycling Shklovskii’s observations in an endless loop, concluding, for
example, that Sterne was either a proto-formalist or a kind of formal
contemporary of Cervantes, Pushkin, Tolstoi, and Shklovskii himself.18
Studying Reception, Influence, and
Canonization
In 1923, Brik made another brash assertion for which there is little
supporting evidence from Opoiaz: ‘У нас нет истории литературы’ [We
have no history of literature].19 In the present study we shall see that Opoiaz
publications in general, and those by Shklovskii in particular, abound with
competing terms used to describe the processes and development of literary
history.
One way to negotiate Shklovskii’s complex relationship with literary
history, in which he experimented with the roles of theoretician and
practitioner, is to establish some of the facts of his reading practice and
institutional affiliations. In the first three chapters of this study, I attempt to
answer George Steiner’s question, ‘who read, who could read what and
when?’ from his work What is Comparative Literature?:

The hoary topic of ‘influence’ is necessarily vague. Writers have heard of, have ‘taken
from the air’ and surrounding climate, books they have not read. But the careful
investigation of the history of publication of the sale and transport of books and
periodicals, of library facilities or the absence thereof in any given period and locale, are
vitally illuminating. Who read, who could read what and when? What excerpts, reviews,
citations, and translations of the German idealists were actually available to Coleridge?
How much did Dostoevsky actually know of Dickens or Balzac? How long did it take for
French translation-imitations of Byron to reach the Caucasus?20

Such questions form the basis for my discussion in later chapters of

Shklovskii’s reception of Sterne, or, in other words, the influence of Sterne
on Shklovskii’s theory and practice.
The importance of studying actual influence — rather than noting
serendipitous coincidences of devices, forms, and themes in the work of the
two authors — will become clear when I establish what Shklovskii could not
have read by the time he wrote ‘Tristram Shendi Sterna i teoriia romana’ in
1919. The list includes the annotated Florida edition of Tristram Shandy in
English; Kseniia Atarova’s edition of Tristram Shandy in English with
Russian annotations; and the superb Russian translations of Sterne’s novels
by Adrian Frankovskii.21 All of these were published after 1919. Another fact
of Shklovskii’s reading practice is still less obvious and yet of vital
importance. Eikhenbaum stated unequivocally that Shklovskii could not
read English: ‘Он обидел очень многих: одних — тем, что, не зная
английского языка и немецкой науки, сумел возродить Стерна’ [He
offended many people, some of them due to his being able to bring Sterne
back to life without knowing either the English language or German
scholarship].22 However, this aspect has rarely received more than cursory
attention by scholars. Above all, it confirms the necessity of incorporating
Steiner’s focus on translation within a study on Shklovskii and Sterne.23
George Steiner describes canon-formation and reception as parallel
processes that must be located in their institutional and social context:

One cannot simply speak about a history of reception, of canon-formation. Like any
other social practices, reading and writing are subject to various forms of control or
regulation, to institutional forms of organisation.24

Shklovskii’s involvement in early Soviet institutions, which will be discussed

in Chapter One, meant he was actively involved in creating a canon of
world literature for the Soviet reader. However, Shklovskii’s interest in
conveying his practical involvement in the formation of a Soviet canon is
intermittent. Indeed, his writing shows a reluctance to decide between the
competing terms he uses to describe literary history; he resists providing
conclusive theoretical frameworks, statements, or consistent terminology.
Initially we might identify two clusters of terms relating to literary history
in his work: firstly, those describing literary reception and influence in terms
of writers and their reading: vliianie (influence), zavisimost’ (dependency),
sootnoshenie (interrelationship), vzaimodeistvie (interaction), and vospriatiia

(reception);25 secondly, terms which do not necessarily acknowledge human

activity, such as evoliutsiia (evolution) and smena literaturnykh skol (the
alternation of literary schools).
 This poses a problem for Shklovskii’s translators and critics for whom it is
important to differentiate between canon-formation, kanonizatsia
(canonization), and reception. Canonization appears in Shklovskii’s work as
a process both linked to publication and readership, and driven by writers
and institutions (Steiner’s canon-formation); it is also used to describe a
process independent of authorial or official agency regarding the appearance
and disappearance of literary conventions at different points in literary
history. Consequently, canonization is a problematic term in that it applies
to a vast range of situations (from the appearance of certain devices in prose
to the dissemination of certain prose works in society), and — unlike
reception — it can involve a human agent or not.
Shklovskii described the literary canon in his first published essay,
‘Voskreshenie slova’ (1913):
Судьба произведений старых художников слова такова же, как и судьба самого
слова. Они совершают путь от поэзии к прозе. Их перестают видеть и начинают
узнавать. Стеклянной броней привычности покрылись для нас произведения
классиков, — мы слишком хорошо помним их, мы слышали их с детства, читали
их в книгах, бросали отрывки из них в беглом разговоре, и теперь у нас мозоли
на душе — мы их уже не переживаем.26

[The fate of the word in works by old artists is exactly the same as the fate of the word
itself. They cease to be ‘seen’ and begin to be ‘recognized’. The classics are shielded by a
protective glass cover of familiarity: we understand them too well, we have been
listening to them since childhood; we have read them in books, dropped quotations from
them in our passing conversation, and by now, we are unable to re-live them, they have
rubbed against our souls so much that they have created blisters.]

The paradox of canonization is that it eliminates old classics only to create

new ones. When Shklovskii derived universal laws of canonization within
art — from words and devices to novels and genres — the term described
negative trends in addition to positive ones. For Shklovskii, the processes of
overturning an old canon and building a new one are of interest, rather than
the observation of the canon in its fixed state.27
This raises the question of decanonizing Shklovskii. In the West, elements
of his oeuvre have become classics in several academic fields. His theory and
novels appear in Slavic Studies Departments’ courses on Russian avant-
garde culture of the 1920s. Simultaneous with this acknowledgment of
formal and cultural experimentation, Shklovskii’s autobiographical writing
on the Revolution and Civil War appears as factual source material in
historical textbooks.28
An English language literary-theoretical canon has Shklovskii
representing Russian Formalism, a term rejected by Opoiaz members.
Eikhenbaum, for example, states that:
Мы окружены эклектиками и эпигонами, превращающими формальный метод в
некую неподвижную систему ‘формализма’, которая служит им для выработки
терминов, схем и классификаций. Эта система очень удобна для критики, но
совершенно не характерна для формального метода.29

[We are surrounded by eclecticists and imitators who are transforming the formal
method into a particular stationary system called ‘formalism’, which is of service in the
drawing up of terms, schema and classifications. This system is very convenient for
critics, but absolutely out of character for the formal method.]

Furthermore, Shklovskii’s theory is frequently reduced to what Carlo

Ginzburg has called ‘the reliable concept of ostranenie’.30 Such an assessment
testifies both to the currency of Shklovskii’s coinage in Western scholarship,
and to the inexorable process of canonization, whereby critics like to flaunt
their familiarity with defamiliarization. Ginzburg’s lack of interest in the
‘obvious’ and ‘practical’ reasons that had an impact on Shklovskii’s reception
of non-Russian texts is symptomatic of a double negligence in Western
scholarship — a lack of awareness that it is reading Shklovskii in translation
and a consistent assumption that Shklovskii worked with Sterne’s original
English text.31 Eighteenth-century English Studies often treats Shklovskii as
an eighteenth-century specialist and deciding what Shklovskii meant by
naming Tristram Shandy ‘the most typical novel’ has become a rite of
passage in essays on Sterne.32
It is no longer true that ‘Shklovsky’s article [TSSTR], translated only in
1965, has not benefited American and English studies of Sterne’s novels’.33
As Shklovskii pointed out in 1923: ‘Метод ушел из дома и начал жить
сам’ [The method left home and started to live a life of its own].34

Notes to the Introduction

1. Shklovskii, Tret’ia fabrika, p. 93.

2. Sheldon, in Shklovskii, A Sentimental Journey: Memoirs, 1917–1922, pp. xii-xiii.

3. Ross, p. 414.

4. Sterne, ‘Letter of 30th January, 1760’, in Howes, p. 51.

5. Camden Hotten, Dickens, and Trollope, p. 195; Leavis, p. 2.

6. Pushkin, ‘Letter to Viazemskii of 2nd January, 1822’, in Pushkin, Polnoe sobranie

sochinenii, XIII, pp. 34–35. The poem Lalla-Rookh, by Thomas Moore, was published
in English in 1817; Pushkin refers to a translation of the second part of the poem by
Zhukovskii which appeared in issue 20 of the journal Syn otechestva [Son of the
Fatherland] (1821).

7. de Voogd and Neubauer, p. 6.

8. Craven; Cross, ‘“S anglinskago”’, and ‘Translating a Title’; Lobytsyna; Rudy, ‘Lev
Tolstoj’s Apprenticeship’; Vol’pert.

9. An unusual feature of Sterne’s Russian reception is that he was thought to have

written more than he actually did. Works attributed to him included parodies,
imitations, abridgements, and selections. The Beauties of Sterne, a collection of
fragments from the novels and sermons pruned with the reader of feeling in mind,
came out in Russian in 1801. The Koran; or, Posthumous Works of a Late Celebrated
Genius was translated in 1809 and it remained on Sterne’s Russian bibliography
throughout the twentieth century. See Frankovskii, ‘Sochineniia L. Sterna v russkikh
perevodakh’, in the 2000 St Petersburg edition of Zhizn’ i mneniia Tristrama Shendi,
p. 523.

10. Zorin; Tosi.

11. Shklovskii, Tristram Shendi’ Sterna i teoriia romana, p. 37. This essay is cited
throughout as TSSTR.

12. The major studies on influence investigate earlier periods: Barran’s Russia Reads

Rousseau, 1762–1825 (2002); Fanger’s Dostoevsky and Romantic Realism (1965);

Polonsky’s English Literature and the Russian Aesthetic Renaissance (1998).

13. This phrase is widely used. For example: ‘the classic formalist analysis of Viktor
Shklovsky’, in Keymer, p. 4. The composition and programme of Opoiaz or the
Obshchestvo izucheniia poeticheskogo iazyka will be discussed in Chapter One.
Resistance to the term ‘Formalism’ appeared within the movement from its early
days and Opoiaz was consistently suggested as an alternative term as in this note by
Boris Eikhenbaum: ‘Под “формалистами” я разумею только ту группу
теоретиков, которая объединилась в “Обществе изучения поэтического языка”
(ОПОЯЗ) и с 1916 г. начала издавать свои сборники’ [I only take ‘formalists’ to
mean the group of theorists who came together as Opoiaz and who started to
publish collections from 1916 onwards] (Eikhenbaum, ‘Teoriia “formal’nogo metoda”
’, p. 116.

14. The titles of book-length works by members of Opoiaz make it clear that these are
author-based, even biographical, accounts: see Zhirmunskii’s Bairon i Pushkin

(1924) and Eikhenbaum’s Lermontov: Opyt istoriko-literatrurnoi otsenki (1924).

15. Brik, p. 213.

16. Neubauer and Stewart, p. 271.

17. Ibid., p. 271.

18. For an example of a comparative approach which relies on coincidences of form or

content rather than substantiated instances of influence (evidence for one writer
reading another), see New.

19. Brik, p. 213.

20. G. Steiner, pp. 11–12. See Polonsky, pp. 3–4 for discussion.

21. Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, edited by New and
New (The Florida Edition of the Works of Laurence Sterne, 1978); Sterne, Izbrannoe:
Selected Prose and Letters, edited by Atarova (1982); and Sterne, Zhizn’ i mneniia
 Tristrama Shendi, dzhentel’mena, translated by Frankovskii (1949). Despite
chronological ‘truth’, one recent Russian edition of Tristram Shandy appends the text
of Shklovskii’s TSSTR to Frankovskii’s 1949 translation of Tristram Shandy: in this
patchwork the original quotations from the 1892 Russian translation quoted in
TSSTR do not match the translation of the whole novel: see the 2000 Inapress edition
of Sterne, Zhizn’ i mneniia Tristrama Shandi, dzhentel’mena.

22. Eikhenbaum, Moi vremennik, p. 136.

23. A further limitation on Shklovskii’s reading practice might be considered, even though
it is not supported by affirmative evidence: there is no material suggesting that
Shklovskii read or saw any of the eighteenth-century English, French, German, or
Russian editions of Sterne’s novels before 1919. He describes reading Krasoty Sterna
for the first time in 1983 in Shklovskii, O teorii prozy, p. 198.

24. G. Steiner, p. 12.

25. I avoid using ‘perception’ as a synonym for ‘reception’ as in Phillips’ 1994 translation
of Levin’s Vospriiatie angliiskoi literatury v Rossii, entitled The Perception of

English Literature in Russia. Shklovskii is fairly consistent in using vospriiatie to

describe the process of gaining awareness of physical objects, phenomena, etc.,
through the senses.

26. Shklovskii, ‘Voskreshenie slova’, p. 38.

27. Shklovskii argues that Lenin’s constant invention of new terminology and
undermining of his own tropes had a disjunctive, energizing and positive effect. See
Shklovskii, ‘Lenin kak dekanonizator’, pp. 55–56; also Eisen, pp. 82–83.

28. Jansen, A Show Trial, p. xxviii. ‘The absolute favourites of both audiences and
reviewers were stories inspired by the Revolution and the Civil War. Reviews,
particularly French, were full of praise for these books and films. Victor Shklovsky’s
Sentimental Journey was said to be ‘a moving and impartial history of the Russian
Revolution’, and the string of epithets that unfailingly followed the all-time
favourite Chapayev said more about what the audience looked for in a film than it
said about the film itself’ (Stern, pp. 14–15).

29. Eikhenbaum, ‘Teoriia “formal’nogo metoda” ’, p. 116.

30. C. Ginzburg, p. 10.

31. The fact that Sterne was published in translation is not ignored in Russia: ‘Когда я
училась в университете, трудно было достать давно не переиздававшиеся
русские переводы Стерна, но я знала, что писал о нем В. Шкловский, и
захотела прочитать его и по-английски, и по-русски’ [When I studied at the
university it was difficult to get hold of the Russian translations of Sterne which had
not been reprinted for a long time. I knew that V. Shklovskii had written on Sterne
and I wanted to read him both in English and in Russian] (interview with T.
Kazavchinskaiia (2002), ‘Iskusstvo portretirovaniia’ (accessed at
<http://www.russ.ru/krug/20021111_kalash.html> on Friday 2 November 2007)).

32. Thomas Keymer, p. 4, is unique in acknowledging that Shklovskii’s access to novels by

Sterne’s predecessors would have been limited. In the 1996 collection Laurence

Sterne in Modernism and Postmodernism, edited by David Pierce and Peter de

Voogd, seven out of fourteen articles quote Shklovskii’s statement about the ‘most
typical novel’. In one of these essays, it only takes the word ‘typical’ to send the co-
authors flying to Shklovskii: ‘We should distinguish between the different levels of
interaction between these two (following Shklovsky) typical fictions’ (Göbel and
Grant, p. 91).

33. Sheldon, ‘Viktor Borisovic Shklovsky: Literary Theory and Practice, 1914–1930’, p. 135.

34. Shklovskii, Zoo, p. 40.

 CHAPTER 1
The Background to Shklovskii's
Reception of Foreign Literature
Из русских писателей больше всего люблю Гофмана и Стивенсона.1

[Hoffman and Stevenson are the Russian writers I love most of all.]

Джек Лондон, О Генри, Пьер Бенуа, сейчас самые читаемые русские писатели.2

[The most read Russian writers are now Jack London, O’Henry, and Pierre Benois.]

Shklovskii played a part — often a leading role — in numerous institutions:

literary movements, clubs, publishing endeavours, journals, and factions in
Petrograd, Berlin and Moscow. This chapter describes Shklovskii’s
participation in cultural institutions prior to 1930 in order to build a detailed
picture of his exposure to world literature. This broadly chronological
account of Shklovskii’s overlapping affiliations will provide background for
my discussion of his reception of eighteenth-century English novels in
Chapters Two and Three. In assembling Shklovskii’s personal canon — that
is to say, what he read and when — his participation in the formation of two
more canons will become apparent: the canon of theoretical essays by
Shklovskii and Opoiaz members that would come to be called Russian
Formalism; and that of Gorkii’s Vsemirnaia Literatura [World Literature].
Against this background we will see the influence of his reception of world
literature on attempts to create literary and theoretical canons for the Soviet
reading public.
Shklovskii’s memoirs and novels are the main sources from which we can
form a picture of what Shklovskii read and when. There is no evidence — in
Shklovskii’s archive or in the public domain — that he wrote a diary; nor is
there a book-length biography of Shklovskii. However, it has frequently
been possible to compare different accounts of events and to refer to recent
annotated scholarly editions of Shklovskii’s writing.

Shklovskii's Education
Shklovskii wrote about his education throughout his life, particularly in his
autobio graphical novel, Tret’ia fabrika (1926) [Third Factory], and in his
memoir ‘Zhilibyli’. These sources present difficulties for the scholar. In
Tret’ia fabrika, Shklovskii organises his life into three apparently
chronological sections, yet he also impedes the reader’s attempts to extract
factual material.3 ‘Zhili-byli’ was written half a century after the events it
describes and in some cases it replicates anecdotes from Tret’ia fabrika,
greatly exaggerated. While Shklovskii frequently gives detailed addresses
and locations in his memoirs, dates are extremely scarce.4
Shklovskii was born in St Petersburg in 1893 to educated parents.
However, with the exception of his nurse, who liked to read Jules Verne
aloud, Shklovskii argues that he alone in his family was interested in
literature.5 They did, however, subscribe to the ‘thick’ illustrated journal
6
Niva.
The two autobiographical sources suggest that Shklovskii attended three
schools in all and was expelled from at least two of them. The specifics of his
school career are difficult to verify, not least because the later source offers
more detail than the earlier. Shklovskii’s evaluation of his education is also
contradictory. In Tret’ia fabrika he rejects the possibility that school played
any role in his literary education and emphasizes that he was self-taught as
far as literature was concerned: ‘Мы почти ничего не читали. Я же писал
уже прозу и о теории прозы’ [We hardly read anything. I was already
writing my own prose and about the theory of prose].7 Two sections in
‘Zhili-byli’ — ‘Malchik nad knigoi’ [The boy at his books] and ‘Chitaet
podrostok’ [A teenager reading] — tell a different story:
 В гимназиях (я видел много гимназий, потому что меня много раз исключали)
русскую литературу преподавали заинтересованно, красноречиво и либерально.
Это был любимый предмет; преподаватель литературы традиционно становился
любимцем класса.8

[Russian literature was taught in an interested, eloquent, and liberal manner in the
gymnasia (I saw lots of them because I was expelled so many times). It was the
favourite subject; the literature teacher was traditionally the class favourite.]

Shklovskii does not specify any one school in this description, but gives a
generally appreciative account of Russian literature as a school subject. In
‘Malchik nad knigoi’, he describes his first textbooks — khrestomatii or
compendiums of set texts — which contained poetry by Pleshcheev to be
learned by heart and extracts from Aksakov and Turgenev. Meanwhile he
continued to read Jules Verne, Hans Christian Anderson, and Mark Twain at
home. In ‘Chitaet podrostok’, he contrasts the literary curriculum with his
own programme of reading:
Поразил меня ни во что не верящий Писарев, ни с чем не соглашающийся, как
будто специально предназначенный для подростков. Вот после Писарева я начал
читать Пушкина. [...] Издавались тогда маленькие желтые книжки самого
маленького формата, как книжка современного журнала, сложенная в четыре
раза: это ‘Универсальная библиотека’. Печатались эти книжки на газетном срыве
— рыхлой, плохой бумаге. Все переводы. Тут я прочел скандинавов, не понял
Ибсена, поразился Кнутом Гамсуном и через ‘Пана’ Гамсуна понял ‘Герой нашего
времени’ Лермонтова. [...] Там же я прочитал Оскара Уайльда, Метерлинка.
Читали мы зеленые книжки ‘Знания’, читали Горького, увлекались Леонидом
Андреевым. Поэтов-символистов я тогда знал мало: это были книги
малотиражные — их книги не доходили.9

[I was stricken by Pisarev, who did not believe in anything, did not agree with anything,
almost as if he had been thought up specially for adolescents. So after Pisarev, I started
to read Pushkin. [...] They used to publish little yellow books in the smallest format, like
modern journals, they came in booklets made from paper folded into into four: this was
the ‘Universal Library’. These booklets were printed on waste paper: absorbent, terrible
paper. All translations. That’s where I read the Scandinavians: I didn’t understand Ibsen
but was impressed with Knut Hamsun and came to understand Lermontov’s Hero of our
Time through Hamsun’s Pan. [...] I also read Oscar Wilde and Maeterlinck in these
 editions. We also read the series, the green booklets published by Znania, we read Gorky
and appreciated Leonid Andreev. I knew little of the Symbolist poets then, their books
had small print runs and never reached us.]

Shklovskii makes several important points: his early exposure to literature

gave him no sense of chronology; Russian works did not have precedence
over translated ones; he had access only to mass-produced books and was
ignorant of elite literary movements such as Symbolism. In this retrospective
account, his picture of literary history as a school-leaver had Pisarev coming
before Pushkin and Lermontov explained by Knut Hamsun.
Shklovskii emphasizes that foreign classics made up a significant
proportion of his formative canon and that these were ‘all translations’. He
does not touch upon his ignorance of foreign languages in the
autobiographical works; we might assume that his disrupted school career
gave little opportunity for the sustained study of English, or any other
foreign language.10 The Shklovskii family are adamant that he did not
master a single foreign language at any point in his life.11 This is supported
by the recent publication of Shklovskii’s correspondence with his grandson,
as in this postcard sent from Italy in 1964:
Учи языки. Я здесь как священная корова. Мычу через переводчика.
Дорогой мальчик, учи языки. Твой дед чувствует себя идиотом. Можно (после
школы) писать с ошибками, но нельзя не знать языков. Мне-то особенно. Сегодня
из-за незнания языка мне заварили чай холодной водой.12

[Learn languages. I’m like a sacred cow here. I can only moo through a translator.
My dear boy, learn languages. Your granddad feels like an idiot. You may write with
mistakes (after school), but you have to know languages. Me especially. Today I was
given tea brewed with cold water due to not knowing the language.]

Somehow, Shklovskii was sufficiently qualified to enter the competitive

Philological Faculty of the Petersburg University in 1913. He writes little
about his studies and it is unclear when he left the university: footnotes to
Chukovskii’s commonplace book, Chukokkala, state that Shklovskii left in
1914 without finishing his first year; Galushkin suggests that he studied in
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
Te spitten, diep in z’n hei, stond Dirk weer, en Bolk, de
kromme dwerg-kerel, ’n endje verder schoot òver.—
Z’n verwrongen korpusje, verwaaid in den gierenden
hagelslag, stond stram tegen den loeiwind in, als had
ie moeite zich op z’n korte beentjes staande te
houden. Z’n gebarsten huid, over den kop, glansde
van nattigheid, en telkens spoog ie, in zware zucht
zand-scheppend en rondstrooiend over de bedden, bij
elken nieuwen steek, bruin speekselsap van z’n pruim
in de geteisterde handen.—

Piet rooide achter ’m, geknield, den scheef-grimmigen

kop, overhageld van neerstroomende buien.—

Dirk zakte al dieper in z’n heikuil, de oogen èven

boven den [439]zand-rand. Telkens uithijgend, keek ie
koeiig-loom de vaal-grauwe akkers òver, die eindloos
droefden onder de lage lucht, scheemrig grauwden
onder onrustige wolkenjacht.

Tegen donker werd er gestopt; stapte Piet naar Dirk,

liepen ze, stom naast elkaar ’n havenkroeg in.

Bij Pijler, waar de blonde meid van Rink uit den polder,
woonde, zopen ze zich zat, doorhuiverd van
landguurte.

’n Week na den dood van Wimpie hadden ze daar

plòts Kees ontmoet, met, van magerte verminkte
tronie, slapwangig, fletse, moedelooze oogen,
verbleekt, en beenig-verzwakt z’n scherpe kop.—Z’n
reuzig lijf ging krommig als van ouën Gerrit, en hij
zóóp, zóóp op den reutel, achter een, zonder ooit ’n
woord te spreken.—
 Wat óm en in hem gebeurd was, begreep ie zelf niet
goed. Hij wist alleen dat hij, op ’n avond
thuisstrompelend van ’n dag werk, in z’n donker krot,
biddende wijven had zien staan, toen hij instapte. En
daarna Ant, in snikkende huilkramp voor ’t lijkje van
Wimpie; om ’r heen, de doodstille staar en angstige
ontdaanheid van den kinderkring.—

In dollen schrik, die ’m deed waggelen, was ie dwars

door de opschrikkende huilende wijven en wat kerels,
naar de plek gesprongen, midden in de kamer op de
tafel, waar Wimpie te kijk strekte, omschemerd van
kaarslicht, naast ’t krucifix.—Op z’n doodsbed lag ie
daar, ’t paarse kopje in den wasschemer, op wat
kussens, strak, onkenbaar ingezonken, met
smartelijntjes om mond en neus.—

De buurvrouwen en biddende kerels lagen om ’m

geknield; stapten telkens naar ’t doodsbed, lichtten ’t
laken van ’m af, en bestaarden ’t doode manneke.—
Rozekransgemurmel en litanieën verklonken luid, en
stemmen dreunden òm hem. Maar hij in schrik lam en
wezenloos. En telkens, bij ’t weggaan van wat
biddende wijven, zag ie hun, met ’n palmtakje uit ’n
glas, wat wijwater plengen op ’t lijkje. In ’t eerste uur
had ie niet meer kunnen kijken, hoorde ie de vlijmende
snikken van Ant, die in ’t achterend zat weggedoken,
stom; zag ie, in opdringerige felheid, z’n halfblinde
schoonmoeder schuifelen tusschen de [440]biddende
buurvrouwen.—Laat in den avond was ie wat
bijgeleefd uit z’n schrik-verstomming, durfde ie ook
weer even kijken naar ’t doodenkopje.—
 Maar inééns was er ’n angst, ’n stilte in z’n ziel
neergeduizeld, die ’m deed huiveren. Hij voelde vrèès,
vrees voor alles. Hij had wèl gevoeld, dat komen ging,
wat nu gebeurde.—Drie nachten vóór z’n dood was
Wimpie al hèèl benauwd geweest. Voor niets ter
wereld was Kees van z’n bedje geweken. Op den dag
niet en ’s nachts niet, juist nou ie toch werkeloos bleef.
—Toen, op ’n Dinsdagochtend, na ’n onrustigen nacht,
was Wimpie tegen den morgen ingeslapen en
fluisterde Kees, roerloos aan ’t bedje, tegen Ant, dat
zij de kinderen koest had te houden.—Zachtvredig
sliep ’t vrome kindeke. Tegen elf uur was ’r ’n
boodschap van Breugel dat Kees kòn spitten vandaag
als ie wou.—Bang keek ie z’n vrouw áán. Dat was ’n
dagloon. Zou ie? ze knikte stom, nijdig, en hij ging,
wetend met donker toch weer thuis te zijn van ’t
avondland.

Dien middag ’t huis weer instappend, z’n hoofd vol van

de praatjes, die ie had moeten aanhooren over Ouën
Gerrit,—toèn nèt gesnapt,—zag ie de wijvengestalten,
donkerig in zijn duister krot, kreeg ie ’n ontzettenden
angstschok … kaarslicht aan ’t hoofd van Wimpie …
Z’n ventje doòd!.. zonder dat ie ’t nog ééns wakker
gezien, gesproken had.

Hij had ’t besef niet te vragen, waarom ze ’m niet even

had laten roepen, want er was plots huiverende angst
in ’m voor alles. Wàt zouen ze ’t kind van zijn vader
gezegd hebben vóór ie gestorven was? Dat bangde
nog in ’m. Hij voelde ’n sombere inzinking van al z’n
energie, ’n val van al z’n driften, ’n tuimel van z’n haat
tegen priesters, z’n wijf, z’n schoonmoêr.—
Hij was geslagen, gebroken, en z’n getrapt leven leek
’m ’n walg, ’n ontzettende ellende.—Z’n vrouw keek ie
niet áán, hòòrde ie niet meer.—Z’n schoonmoeder
knoeide en klieterde om ’m heen, met ’r blinden
schuifel van voeten en omtasting van d’r
vooruitgestoken armen, maar Kees zag en hòòrde
niet. De Ouë Rams bleef rochelen en vlijmig hoesten;
hij hòòrde niet.…..

Wimpie was begraven, van hèm weg. Hij zag z’n bleek
kopje [441]niet, en z’n oogen uit ’t donker hoekje
hielden ’m niet meer in bedwang. Wimpies neuriënd
stemmetje klonk niet meer, nòu zèlfs niet z’n
gebedjes, zacht en vroom.—

Er was ’n grimmige knagende stilte in ’t armoekrot, ’n

benauwende leegte die ’m deed weghollen naar de
kroeg.—

Hij slenterde weer werkeloos rond, en niks kon ’m

meer schelen, niks. Hij zòcht niet naar nieuwen
arbeid. Hij zou zuipen, zuipen, telkens zich verhittend
en verstillend dan ’n beetje ’t geknaag in ’m, van iets
dat op smart leek. Hij zou soms hebben willen
uitsnikken, alleen als ie dronk, in stilte, bij ’t naar huis
gaan, langs ’t leeggrauwende duinpad.—

Dan snikte z’n reuzige borst, en z’n vuisten krampten

van stom ellendegevoel. Drift kende ie niet meer. Z’n
woeste ransellust was wèg. Al de makkers nou in de
kroeg, beschouer-bonkten den gevaarlijken strooper.
Ze omdrongen ’m met vragen, waarom ie niet meer
stroopte, of ie z’n „skot” kwijt was, maar hij stotterde
 wat, hield traag z’n schouders òp, en bestelde met
doffe loeiende stem, nieuwen borrel.—

Hij voelde zich geschonden, geslagen, als ’n kerel die

met spithouweel, ’n slag op z’n hersenpan had
neergemokerd gekregen. Hij voelde zich kindsch,
benauwd, zonder drift, zonder verzet, bang, lusteloos,
in hevigen hartstocht alleen voor den zuip.

Dàn had ie Wimpie náást, bij zich, bromde ie in zich

zelf, kwam er ’n lach op z’n mond, en scherpte z’n kop
weer, guitigden z’n oogen.

Ze begrepen er niets van, de tuinders en werkers.

Eerst hadden ze barren angst voor ’m gehad, nou
begonnen ze al met ’m te dollen.. of hij d’r ook mit z’n
vader ’n „soamespulletje” had gemaakt, en nou
berouw had dat den Ouë alleen bromde in den
krentetuin? Ze dolden en lolden met ’m, zonder dat ie
’n vin verroerde.

En brutaler werden de kerels. Want ze voelden z’n

verslapping, z’n in-zich-zelf zot gegrinnik als
verzwakking. Ze begrepen niet waarom ze ooit bang
voor dien mallen vent konden geweest zijn, al was ie
sterk. Voor dien kerel, nou elken avond en elken dag
zich volzuipend en dan opstappend, [442]in
stomdronken waggel, nòg stiller dan ie ingezwaaid
was.

Zoo, beschonken, strompelde ie op ’n laten

Novemberavond z’n krot op ’t pad in, loom en sullig-
zwaar zich neerschooierend op ’n beplankt oud
waschstel.
Ant braakte woede uit, dat ie zóó schaamteloos zoop.
—

En opgestookt in hellehaat door d’r moeder, schold ze

Kees de huid vol.—

Tergend vroeg vrouw Rams of zij nòu niet altijd de

waarheid had gesproken. Haar man was ’n zuipert, ’n
vuilik, ’n dief, „zoo goed aa’s hullie foàr!”—

Dat maakte Ant kokend, kokend van woede, afschuw

en haat.—

In ’t lage krot knaagde weer naderende winter-ellende;

kniesde de gore rommel op den steenen bevuilden
vloer; en de kinders hoopten bijéén, als voddige
morsstapeltjes. Ant had van de fabriek snijboonen
kunnen krijgen om àf te halen, maar de chef had
geweigerd, omdat ’r man zoo zoop, en er nijdig
bijgesnauwd.… of d’r nie g’nog schande was in de
diefefemilje van Hassel. Dat giftte nou in ’r, en ze zou
’t den smeerlap toeschreeuwen pal in z’n snuit.—

—Suiplap, fuilik! aa’s wai d’r f’rhongere.. is vast jou

skuld! ketter!.. feullak.… nou mis ’k main boone
afhoale.. deur jou loremstraike. En Dientje skraiwe
hullie weg.. deur jou.… Nou breng jai d’r onster
aldegoàr in ’t ongeluk! Skooiert! skurk!.. jai bint
krankjorum!

Ant gilde, sloeg met ’r armen door ’t krot,

helleveegachtig dat de kinders ontsteld wegkropen, en
Dientje begon te huilen. Ant’s mager, van zorg
vervreten gezicht stond vaal-grauw en ’r mond
 schokte en hortte de woorden uit, in stuipige zieding
van woedegebaren.—

Maar Kees hoorde half, begreep er niks van,

dommelde voort in ronkerige pafheid. Dat maakte ’r
nog woedender. Ze wond zich òp, vloekte, raasde, en
bonkte ’r twee vuisten op de tafel, dat de losse
planken er van de hoogte inwipten! Ze sputterde,
spoog in ’n wolk van gift, haar woedewoorden uit. Nou
had ze d’r Wimpie niet meer te ontzien.—Ze kòn niet
begrijpen dat [443]Kees pas zoo ingezonken was nà
Wimpies dood. Want Wimpie was nou tòch in zijn
geluksstaat. Ze had er eerst zelf ook martelende
stomme smart van gehad, maar de Heer had ’m tot
zich genomen, en daarin most zij berusten. En nou
was ’t wurm tenminste uit den duivelsban van z’n
vader. Nou, dacht ze, zou Wimpie z’n vader pas zien,
hòe hij den boel verzoop. Nou zou ’t kind ’m toch
verafschuwen, haten en vervloeken, zooals het toch
op aarde óók had gewild, wanneer hij maar niet in den
ban van den duivel was gezeten.

Zoo vatte ze van Kees’ inzinking en verdroefde

baloorigheid niets; niets van z’n verstomde
verbijstering en geschondenheid, omdat ze dacht, dat
hij òòk ’t voortbestaan in den hemel, hoe ook
verketterd, van Wimpie vóór zich zag.—

En ze haatte Kees erger dan ooit, haatte ’m in furie

van geloof; geloof dat met Wimpies dood, nog heviger
’r doorgloeide, als ’t eenig ware.—

Haar moeder drentelde rond op ’t achterend, hoorde

Ant hellevegend krijschen en vloeken in toornenden
woordenhuil.—Ze zegende ’r kind, dat ze zóó heftig in
verzet kwam tegen dien dief en moordenaar, dien
kètter, dien schobbejak. En ze schoof dichter bij ’t
voorkrot, om nog beter te hooren. Want meeschelden,
durfde ze niet, altijd uit ontzettenden angst nog voor
z’n moordend groot reuzelijf en knuisten. Maar ze had
’n blaadje van ’m gelicht, bij ieder in de buurt, door
heel Wiereland. Ze had rondgebazuind, al de streken
van dien dronken „moordenaar” zooals ze ’m bij
vreemden altijd noemde.

Ant hurriede door, schimde òp in ’t goudgeel

lampjesschijnsel, donkerde weer weg achter ouë
Rams, die krom-verkort, voor de schouw blokte.—
Onder ’t opruimen schreeuwde ze, bukkend en
voortscharrelend:

—Skorumsooi! wou jai, dâ wai ook de krentetuin

ingonge.. aa’s je kettersche fòar! godskimpers! gaif
hier … de sinte! daa’s d’r veur twoalif koppe, twoalef
monde.. jai f’rsuipt ons fraite! hier, gedrocht: de sinte!
De sinte! màin sinte!

Kees bleef ingezakt zitten, in tragen dommel, hoorde

den krijsch van Ant, zonder ’n woord tegen te zeggen.
Soms grinnikte [444]ie even zòt, keek dan weer
lummelig, liet ie z’n kop op de borst hangen.—

Ant wier doller nou ie niks tegen zei.

Dat kòn ze niet dulden. Nou moèst z’m raken, ze

moest ’m zien opduivelen van gift, dien vuilik! En
voortratelde ze in vloekhoos.
—F’rdomme! wou jai d’r ònster f’rmoorde.… soo aa’s
je màin Wimpie f’rmoord hep! hee?

Kees, plots beefde op z’n stoel. Grauw in

lampschuwen schijn, zonk er sidder in z’n wangen. In
heel zijn ronkigen romp kwam beroering. Een suizel
zwirrelde door z’n kop. In ’n nevel van roode,
moordende woestheid en drift, tastte ie rond.—Z’n lijf
rees van de waskruk reuzig òp, onder de lage
bebalking. Z’n oogen stonden gespalkt. Hij sidderde.
Vrouw Rams was Ant opzijgetast en de kinders kropen
voor ’t leege bedje waar Wimpie had geslapen bijeen,
in instinkt om bescherming. Alleen Dientje stond
achter ’r moeder in kindergekerm te trekken aan ’r
plunje, voelend wat ’r opstormen ging. Maar Ant zag
niets, stemkraste dóór, in wild venijn en woedetoorn,
nog eens en nòg eens.

—Ketter.… Moordenoar van Wimpie! hep jai Wimpie

d’r nie loate f’rhongere.… en.…

Maar ze kon niet uitspreken. In hevigen schrik was

Kees ontnuchterd.… hoorde ie daar wat z’n waif zei?..
hoorde ie niet den naam van Wimpie?.. sain jonge..
sain jonge! Wat? Wat? hai hài.. Wimpie f’rmoord..
hai?.. sei ze ’t doar nie weer?.. Nou suisde z’n kop vol
bloed. Z’n oogen liepen rood, hij keek weer door ’n
bloednevel en in ouë kracht sprong ie met z’n vuist
mokerend vooruit, tastend in zwaai, de plek waar Ant
stond te krijschen.—

’n Geweldige uitstorting van haat, woede en wrok

barstte los. Hij voelde zich omklemd door ’t oude wijf,
door Dientje. Maar met éen duw morzelde hij ze opzij,
 dat ze waggelden naar achter. Stemmengegil van
kinders, bijeengehoopt voor ’t leege donkerende
ledikantje rauwde òp, maar hij alléén zag z’n wijf,
hoorde haàr stem, en in ontzettende wraakpassie, in
vernielende [445]krachthengst mokerde ie z’n vuist op
d’r vale schuw-begeelde tronie, twee, drie maal, dat
z’n handen in haar gebit vastscheurden en ’t bloed uit
Ant’s mond stroomde.—

Met den derden slag lag ze op de steenen, Kees in

drift struikelde dwars over haar kermende borst heen.

Ouë vrouw Rams gilde op ’t erf, aan de deur!

—Moord.… moord! de Strooper f’rmoordt sain waif!

moord moo-oord!

De kinders gilden en schreiden bang achter ’r áán.

Plots was ouë Rams van z’n stoel gestrompeld, en

smakte z’n wijf de kamer in. Hij mummelde z’n
„swaineboel” uit, en keek in den wiegel-schijn van de
lamp,—die Kees met z’n lijf voorbijscheerend ’n knauw
gegeven had,—naar z’n dochter.

—Hou jai je bèk krèng! snauwde ie vrouw Rams toe,

die sidderend naar de deur zocht, kromarmig
vooruittastend, in angst, als ’n rat naar gat in ’n
straatgoot.—

Kees was over z’n vrouw heen weer op de been

gewaggeld, z’n krampig bebloede vuist in den mond.
Ant lag stom, voor dood.—
 Er stolde schrik in ’t krot en de lamp schommelde
goren schijn àf. Schaduwvaalte spookte over de
vervreten kniezende armoezooi van wat gehavende
stoelen en de morsige tafel. Silhouetjes van
kinderkopjes schimden heen en weer in lampenwiegel
op den vuilsteenen muur. En de kleintjes groepten
weer samen in ’t hoekje bij ’t ledekant waar Wimpie
altijd gelegen had en waar boven nù ontzette stilte
aangroeide.

Kees, ontnuchterd in schrikkelijke bleekheid, niet

omkijkend naar z’n wijf, was rugkrommig ’t pad
opgestápt, met woesten klank van z’n vrouw’s stem
nog in de ooren.… jai … jai … moordenoar van
Wimpie. Daar, ver op ’t duistere pad, snikte ie uit, een
razende bui van droefenis, in ’t donkere duin, zich
voelend, vernield, gebroken, ’t leven in hem
weggetrapt, voor eeuwig.—

[Inhoud]

III.

Ant schaamde zich voor Kees, na haar wraak die ze

op hem [446]in ’r drift genomen had. De neermokering
had ze van hèm verwacht, deed ’r beter dan z’n akelig
stommetje spelen. Ze was flauw gevallen. De halve
kinnebak was ’r platgeslagen. Ze had dagen van
braak-weeê pijn en ellende. Maar ze klaagde en
schold niet meer. Al kwam ie ook iederen avond
dronken thuis, ze zei geen enkel verwijt. Flauw begon
ze iets te beseffen van zijn martelingen. Kees was nog
stiller dan ooit. Soms sprak ze ’t hoog-noodige tegen
hem, met onderdanige stem. Maar ook dàt hoorde
Kees niet meèr.

Hij voelde zich schuchter, verbangd voor alles. Als ie

dacht aan nachtstroopen begon ie te rillen. Geen
geweer nam ie meer in z’n handen. Dag op dag
zwaaide ie in de kroeg, na soms ’n paar uur spitwerk.
Gretig nam ie alle traktementjes, borrels van de
dollende kameraden aan, die ’m wouên laten konkelen
van al z’n stroopavontuurtjes. Maar hij zoop, zoop,
zwijgend, verbraste geen stom woord.

Ouë vrouw Rams strooide overal rond dat ie z’n wijf

wilde vermoorden, en heel Wiereland wist dat ie Ant
de kaak had ingeslagen, ze doodgebloed zou hebben
als ouë Rams, die anders nooit van z’n schouw kwam,
’r niet met water gewasschen en verbonden had.

Dat was ’n nieuwtje in de kroeg. Nou kenden ze hem

wéér.. de kaak ingescheurd, z’n wijf bijna verbrijzeld.
Ze voelden wel dat ie ’n halve moordenaar was, dat hij
eigenlijk in de kast moest inplaats van den ouën
Gerrit, want die had alléén uit dolle zorgen gestolen.—

Ze dachten dat Kees nog wel eens ’n griezeligen uitval

zou doen, nou ie zoop als de ergste onder hen; Kees
de Strooper, iederen dag zwaaiend door de straatjes,
gesteenigd door straattuig, beschald en verschooierd;
Kees, dien ze nooit nog dronken hadden gezien. Ze
dolden den Strooper over z’n wijf, maar hij blééf stom,
smoordronken in wrokkigen zwijg.—
Einde November, op ’n grauwen ochtend dat ’r jammer
van vale droefheid over de akkers triestte, en de regen
neerstriemde in kletter, liep Kees voorbij de verstorven
herfstvelden, [447]eindloos-droef onder den laag-
doorgrauwden hemeldruil.

Als ’n verschoppeling liep ie ’n pad af, z’n huis voorbij

met ’n smart-knagend wee, eindeloos van angstige
gejaagdheid, in ontzette vereenzaming van leven, niet
wetend waarheen.—Z’n rotte natte plunje verzweette
regenstank om z’n lijf. Hij voelde zich bang voor de
nachten, die komen gingen, in diepe aanstarende
donkering. Hij voelde zich bang; verlangde in
schreiend heimwee naar den dood, of naar den
heeten zuip die z’n brein verbrandde, z’n hartzeer
verdoofde, z’n denken aan z’n jongen gloeiend
verwarmde. Twee kerels slungelend langs den weg,
wouên ’m vroeg al in den morgen meetronen naar de
kroeg. Wat deed ie daar suf te mummelen, alsof ie ’n
tik op z’n hersens had gekregen.. luilakken in den
regen. Hij weigerde; straks zou ie ’r zijn. En de kerels
begrepen maar niet waarom ie eerst nooit gezopen
had, en nou z’n neus verfde, erger dan een van hen
allen.—

Om Wiereland droefden de akkers weer grauw en stil

in de late herfstsombering. Op ’t grondbrok van ouë
Gerrit stond Bolk bij ’n nieuwen baas te spitten, twee
steek, en heel tegen den verren horizon, in mistige
bronzing van ’t bollenland, de stomme silhouetten van
Dirk en Piet.—
 In grauwige somb’ring druilden de bosschages, en
windruisch huiverbleekte achter boomen en laantjes.
Leeggedroefd in de wintering kniesden kaal-wijd weer
de velden; stille werkers zwoegden op ’t aardeland.
Schemer regende, vertriestte over hun bukkende en
verdonkerende gestalten.

En wijd-rondomme, eindelooze herfstweedom van ’t

land zonk uit, verdempend geruchten, in donkerende
verstilling van leven.—

EINDE.

[448]
[Inhoud]
 ERRATA.

DEEL I.

Pag. 15, regel 12 van boven staat: neerbonkten, lees:

neerbrokkelden ze.

Pag. 34, regel 3 van onder staat: huilgento, lees: huilgenot.

Pag. 67, regel 12 van onder staat: stonden, lees: stomden.

 Inhoudsopgave

MENSCHENWEE, EERSTE DEEL

WINTER.
EERSTE HOOFDSTUK. 1
TWEEDE HOOFDSTUK. 20
DERDE HOOFDSTUK. 45
VIERDE HOOFDSTUK. 102
VIJFDE HOOFDSTUK. 143
ZESDE HOOFDSTUK. 160
ZEVENDE HOOFDSTUK. 180
ACHTSTE HOOFDSTUK. 202
LENTE. 257
NEGENDE HOOFDSTUK. 259
TIENDE HOOFDSTUK. 284
ELFDE HOOFDSTUK. 330

MENSCHENWEE, TWEEDE DEEL

ZOMER.
 EERSTE HOOFDSTUK. 1
TWEEDE HOOFDSTUK. 36
DERDE HOOFDSTUK. 61
VIERDE HOOFDSTUK. 75
VIJFDE HOOFDSTUK. 196
ZESDE HOOFDSTUK. 233
ZEVENDE HOOFDSTUK. 271
ACHTSTE HOOFDSTUK. 357
NEGENDE HOOFDSTUK. 369
HERFST. 391
TIENDE HOOFDSTUK. 393
ELFDE HOOFDSTUK. 401
TWAALFDE HOOFDSTUK. 428
DERTIENDE HOOFDSTUK. 433
ERRATA. 448
 Colofon
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Metadata

Titel: Menschenwee
Israël Querido Info
Auteur:
(1872–1932) https://viaf.org/viaf/58168930/
Aanmaakdatum 2023-09-30
bestand: 18:24:08 UTC
Nederlands
Taal: (Spelling De
Vries-Te Winkel)
Oorspronkelijke
[1903]
uitgiftedatum:

Codering

Dit boek is weergegeven in oorspronkelijke schrijfwijze. Afgebroken

woorden aan het einde van de regel zijn stilzwijgend hersteld.
Kennelijke zetfouten in het origineel zijn verbeterd. Deze
verbeteringen zijn aangegeven in de colofon aan het einde van dit
boek.
Dit boek bevat zeer veel ongebruikelijke samengestelde woorden.
Deze worden vaak inconsistent met of zonder een streepje
geschreven. Waar dergelijke woorden aan het einde van een regel
waren afgebroken, is dat ongedaan gemaakt door de meest
voorkomende vorm te gebruiken, of, als een samengesteld woord
verder niet voorkomt in de tekst, deze zo veel mogelijk naar analogie
met vergelijkbare samengestelde woorden te schrijven. (Dit boek
bevat ongever veertigduizend unieke woordvormen, waar
normaalgesproken in een roman van deze omvang tussen de
zestien- en zeventienduizend gebruikelijk is.)

Documentgeschiedenis

2023-07-27 Begonnen.

Verbeteringen

De volgende verbeteringen zijn aangebracht in de tekst:

Bladzijde Bron Verbetering Bewerkingsafstand

5, 220,
polzen polsen 1
94
5, 6, 56,
203, 221,
Oue Ouë 1/0
3, 72,
446
7, 125,
, . 1
207
Passim. oue ouë 1/0
11, 40,
. , 1
120, 217
neerbrokkelden
15 neerbonkten 8
ze
18 . [Verwijderd] 1
22, 24,
228, 319, [Niet in bron] . 1
200, 414
23 .. … 1