The unified principle plays here a triple role: I. as the methodological approach to the perception of a work of art (represented by Jan Mukařovský [1948 (1928), 1982 (1929)]); II. as the method of interpretation and explication of (a) the historical relationship of Russian Formalism and Czech Structuralism,[92] and of (b) basic intellectual concepts of Czech Structuralism that are related to basic questions i. on poetic as well as ii. standard/written language, and finally iii. on the basic concepts of the whole intellectual formation (terms such as function, structure, purpose); last but not least, III. as the model for the interpretation of the historical development of Czech Structuralism which obtained appearance of the two-phase model [Schmid, 2011: 23]. In the base of such two-phase model there is an idea as follows: during the first phase the Czech Structuralism tried to isolate (1) its own relationship to the tradition of Czech Aesthetics that contains various elements (an example might be René Wellek’s different opinion on the role of Russian Formalism in the context of the development of the Czech Structuralism), as well as (2) the basic concepts of its approach to various questions about language, art, and literature respectively. By the process of isolation a certain space of the structuralist formation was allocated and then it was often modulated (concentrated) in a dialogue about basic procedures and concepts that were isolated and described during the first phase.
3.2 Form/Content Analysis
Certainly, we can agree with Zdeněk Mathauser [Mathauser, 2006: 75–77] that the basic model of the relationship of two concepts (form/content) that is central to the initial polemics, is retained well in their extreme positions: on the one hand, it appears a form [A] of the relationship containing a pair of relations: the active form (essentially Aristotelian form[93]) and the passive content (waiting to be filled), on the other hand, we find a form [B] of the relationship as a pair of the active content (imbued with the idea of aesthetics) and the passive form, whose main function is to promote the richness of the content. This model in its various embodiments includes the criterion of ‘permeability’, that means to what extent both mutual poles are/are not complementary to each other. Finally, in different historical realizations each pole is attributed to a certain norm bearing in itself a criterion of evaluation. The axiological structure of art is so firmly rooted in the ‘form/content’ relationship, therefore it cannot be substantially affected by the process of reception. The model can then be as follows:
The model represents, of course, extreme poles of the Form and Content relationship, for which we would find their historical realizations, but the essential feature of this model should be more in the nature of the relationship that would possibly have different variants.
The relationship between Czech Structuralism and the tradition of Russian Formal School became the subject of a greater number of various polemics during the thirties in Czechoslovakia; by its importance the relationship was systematically drawn into the wider context of discussions of the fundamental theses and approaches of the structural thinking. The relationship of both traditions in relation to the general picture of Formalism seems to be a central theme of all debates. The relationship is well understood and it was discussed many times, but the very fact of continuity or inspiration of ideas is not just some common factor of interpretations of the development of Czech Structuralism, but also the basis, often unexpressed explicitly, of all contemporary interpretations and polemics. The category of continuity[94] was often viewed dynamically (Russian formal method versus Czech aesthetic tradition) and was always relational in the sense of a fulfillment/non-fulfillment[95]. The category of continuity in the form of variables allowed individual users to develop their own interpretations of the relations between Russian Formal School and Czech Structuralism generally in two ways: (1) as a common response to the previous tradition of Aesthetics and art theory or (2) as the complex relationship of two important directions in thinking about literature and art in general. Both methods contain in themselves certain classification that is either considered as the status of historical analysis (in the sense of Sus’s concept of acceptance), or as theoretical considerations of the common base fulfilling various forms: most frequently of ideas or consciousness [Pospíšilová, 1933: 410]. The sketched scheme of various debates were not realized as a standard polemic, but rather as a diversity of opinions on the tradition of Russian Formal School and its impact on the Czech Structuralism. Yet we can talk about the set of polemics, often hidden or masked by the specific interest for a deeper analysis of historical influences.
In the context of various polemics or of implicit cues about the origin of the Czech Literary Structuralism, it depends on what context of the Form and Content relationship was selected by participants of those discussions. The polemic between Jan Mukařovský and Karel Svoboda is considered as the most comprehensive discussion about the topic in the retrospect view. Certainly, we should also take into consideration the fact that the mentioned discussion is topically related to more fundamental and still even more famous (also frequently mentioned) controversies during the thirties, especially to the debate about the origin of literary history; that is the debate related to Mukařovský’s attempt to analyze the development of a poetic structure of Milota Zdirad Polák’s poem Sublime of Nature. Svoboda published his texts related to the topic in the magazine of Naše věda; schematically speaking, he oscillated between a positive evaluation of the Formalism as a method, in particular he referred to Mukařovský’s extensive study Máchův Máj (1928) [Svoboda, 1931], and a criticism or negative evaluation of the Formalism as a complex attitude to questions of art. In Svoboda’s extensive overview of the Formal method (On so-called Formal Method in Literary Theory [Svoboda, 1934]), he does not only refer to other, similarly conceived text Russian Formalism published by Anna Pospíšilová in Listy pro umění a kritiku [Pospíšilová, 1933], but he also uses a similar model to describe the Russian Formalism and its intellectual influence on the Czech Structuralism. A schematic structure of discussions between Karel Svoboda and Jan Mukařovský (with a broader context of various reactions) could be as follows:
Svoboda’s studies (I–IV) were written in the period from 1931 to 1937, each of these analyses accented different elements from a complex set of concepts and practices of the Russian Formal School as well as an ideological concept of Czech Structuralism on the implicit level. The originality of Russian Formalism method and its legitimacy in relation to the tradition of Czech Structuralism are interpreted as a certain historical response (with the absence of a sufficient activity) to the absence of the influence of Renaissance humanism on Russian culture. Svoboda implicitly establishes two complaints about the Formal method: on the one hand, he accuses the formal method of an absence of totality, the complexity of view (the form A of Form – Content relationship); therefore the method is considered as a certain accentuation of the naturalistic value in the process of development of the method while on the axiological level the method is considered as an absence of the typicalness; on the other hand, he accuses the formal method of opting artwork from the social context. It is no coincidence that both complaints in general are transformed into the different controversy between the Czech Structuralism and Marxism. The basic parameter of Svoboda’s accounts represents a certain form of absence, which is within the isolation/concentration model assigned to the isolation phase, that is the moment when the Russian Formalism tries to define its relation to the contemporary tradition of thinking about literature, on the one hand, and when the Czech Structuralism tries to create a meaningful description of its relationship to the Russian Formal School, on the other. If the isolation phase consists of a certain form of the absence, therefore an incompleteness of a form, the concentration phase is necessarily tainted as well, that means a certain form of reduction is presented. It is the form of reductionism that will play an essential role in the argument against Mukařovský’s proposal of the model of structural literary history in the context of discussions between Czech Structuralism and Marxism.
Jan Mukařovský responded to Svoboda’s accounts in two different ways: on the one hand, he criticized Svoboda’s concept, within the concentration phase according to the model, of ‘acceptance’ described as the relationship between Russian Formalism and Czech Structuralism without mentioning his name [Mukařovský, 1948 (1935b): 4]; on the other hand, later he put his criticism of Svoboda’s claim of lack of social context in the concept of Structuralism only in the footnote that was not included in a later edition of the study [Mukařovský, 1935a: 29]. After 1935, it seemed that the polemic had been exhausted, yet Karel Svoboda in his study [1937], devoted to Durdík’s aesthetics that was written on the occasion of the centenary of Durdík’s birth, did not forgive an ironic comment addressed essentially to the entire school of the Czech Structuralism, and to Jan Mukařovský especially. Basically, he negated the entire tradition of Czech Structuralism by his stylized declaration of the lack of any Czech aesthetic contemporary movement, which would protect (1) the autonomy of art, (2) the critical importance of an artistic form, as well as (3) the need for artistic stylization or (4) the aesthetic value of the speech. In the view of many studies or considerations published by the Prague Linguistic Circle, Svoboda’s comment might only be seen as an ironic mockery.