Shklovsky: Witness to an Era. Serena Vitale

we would keep talking, with the tape recorder off—about everything, everyday problems, the situation in Italy, Russia, about family, old and faraway friends, film, literature, the new Pope . . . In fact, in those moments it was the interviewee asking the questions: What’s happening with . . . ? What are people saying about . . . ? His curiosity was voracious. Shklovsky was like an eighty-six-year-old boy.

      Once in a while, when he was the one talking, old wounds would be reopened, tapping into a well of private memories, difficult experiences, regrets, and bitterness that I, by that time welcomed in their home as a friend, now keep just for myself.

      We became friends.

      I treasure the memory of these “off the record” chats we shared during our ritual coffee (Shklovsky delighted like a child at the opportunity—offered by my presence—to take a break from his no-coffee diet) in the “second” room; while in his work room, amid the sundry wall decorations, hung a wonderful photo of Shklovsky and Mayakovsky in neck-high bathing suits, and a portrait of Osip Mandelstam.

      Why an interview with Viktor Shklovsky? The idea, when it was suggested to me, appealed immediately. It would be a chance to fill in some of the gaps in the (albeit plentiful) autobiographical writing left by Shklovsky, witness to an era that never ceases to fascinate me and that always offers new ideas for reflection and research.

      I also wanted to research the significance and the effect of the division of Shklovsky into two images, which are radically distant in time and seemingly irreconcilable. First of the image of the “father” of formalism—as he is often, perhaps too hastily, described—yet also its “enfant terrible,” the enthusiastic comrade who was a part of so many of the projects of the Russian avant-garde, the unconventional witness, the witty essayist, the irresistible polemicist; and second, of formalism’s apostate, its “turncoat”—or, according to another point of view, of the nice old man who’d finally gotten his head on straight by returning to a non-heretical reading of the classics.

      I hope the interviews demonstrate a continuity between these two images. Regardless, I believe they show that the Shklovsky of today still possesses the same felicity of reading, an extraordinary ability to physically traverse a literary text, to get inside it, to live with it. And he possesses the same “energy of delusion” that, in his time, made him an extraordinarily versatile writer (yet perhaps also kept him from developing some of his brilliant insights, or following through to all their possible conclusions), and that today, combined with the wisdom of age and a wealth of experience, translates into a new literary genre: incessant critical commentary—almost automatic critical writing—somewhere between pure chatter and a series of aphorisms.

      Today more than ever, the dominant feature of Shklovsky’s style—no matter the form or genre—is digression, where his old love for Sterne intertwines with the unpredictable fitfulness of a feverishly exhaustive memory. And so, after vain attempts to make him “respect” my questions, I let Shklovsky give in to the almost material flow of his thoughts and memories. Some of what he says in these interviews has already been written in his books; for those already familiar with them, for devotees, it will be interesting to follow the rhythm of these new associations and combinations, to notice the additions, revisions, omissions. As for me, I did everything possible to fit all of it into the book, restricting myself to removing overly obvious repetitions and moving certain blocks of the conversation to follow a thematic and chronological order, albeit a loose one. As the reader will notice, my questions often go unanswered or meet with unexpected, out-of-place responses. Eventually, I resigned myself to using the questions not as a means of finding something out, but as a technique of provocation or a springboard.

      I regret that it wasn’t possible to completely reproduce the skaz, the “gesturality” of Shklovsky’s speech: the interjections, the meaningful pauses, the muttering, the exclamations, the reconsiderations, the emptiness and the fullness of certain words. And the hearty, innocent laughter, or the sudden tears when he recalled episodes from the life (or death) of “Volodya” Mayakovsky, of “Sereza” Esenin, his formalist friends, by now almost all deceased. About that, a “technical” detail: the cold, which made the voltage vacillate wildly all over Moscow, destroyed perhaps the most precious part of the recording, containing Shklovsky’s memories of his fellow Opoyazites, of the not-so-easy lot of those longstanding, courageous companions in struggle and inquiry.

      It was a random accident. A stroke of bad luck. A consequence of the cold.

      s.v.

      MILAN, MAY 16, 1979

       New Preface or A Preface Not about the KGB

      Winter 1978–79: the coldest of the century, they said, except maybe the one in ’39. In Moscow, in late December, in the middle of the day, the temperature was as low as -20°C. Everyone in the streets was enveloped in little white clouds of vapor, the heating pipes had burst in many buildings, local authorities advised children and the elderly to stay in their homes. And on the morning of December 22, I went to the home of the eighty-six-year-old Viktor Shklovsky to finish making arrangements for the interviews he had agreed to do with me, out of which I planned to make a short book.

      “You’re going to see Shklovsky?” many Russian friends asked me in amazement, with a touch of disdain, as if I were going to bring carnations to Lenin’s mummy. They hadn’t forgiven him for publicly renouncing his ingenious, tumultuous origins, for giving in; they looked down on his later work—the literary theory, memoirs, critical essays: “He’s repeating himself.” “But,” I protested (unsuccessfully), “he wrote Zoo, or Letters Not about Love . . . But he was the one who helped Mandelstam when everyone else had shunned him like he was a leper . . . Growing old isn’t a crime.”

      “Where are you going?” asked the old woman in charge of the elevator (and surveillance), popping out of her little basement room and blocking my way. “To see Shklovsky.” “He’s busy right now.” “But I have an appointment.” She checked my identification and let me go.

      “You’ve come at a delicate moment, the TV people are here. They were late and my husband is going out of his mind,” said Serafima Gustavovna Shklovskaya, helping me with my fur coat, hat, scarf, and various layers of jackets and sweaters. I could hear shouting inside. “How old are you, sonny? . . . I worked with Pudovkin, with Eisenstein, and you want to show me how to pose in front of the camera?” I peeked in from the foyer: almost concealed by the tall stacks of books on the table (other piles on the floor obliged the crew to move carefully through the small room), his shiny bald head shielded by a beret, checkered flannel slippers on his feet, Shklovsky was shaking his cane at the hapless crew members. “You’re giving me orders like a corporal does with new recruits. Profil! En-face . . . ! I look better in three-quarter profile. ‘With a quarter-turn, oh sorrow, you look back at the indifferent.’ . . . Who wrote those lines? Mandelstam. Do you know who he was, at least?” At that, the crew excused themselves from the interrogation: “All right, Viktor Borisovich, we’re done!” They said good-bye; the cameraman went out into the hall and whispered to another member of the crew: “He’s gone completely senile!” and to me: “Watch out! He’s in a mood today.”

      We moved to the bedroom, which also served as a living room and dining room. Shklovsky sank into an armchair and slowly read through the Russian copy of the contract. “Worthy of Stellovsky!” he exclaimed. “You know who he is?” Fortunately, I did: Dostoyevsky’s money-grubbing editor . . . And it was Anna Akhmatova looking back at the indifferent in Mandelstam’s poem. He looked at me with astonishment. “Well . . . I’m impressed!” But then: “A book in less than two weeks? Impossible. I’ll never do it.” Hoping to appease him, I said: “But you dictated Zoo in nine days . . .” “True, but you’re no Anna Snitkina, let alone an Elsa Triolet!” He had a point. “Grant rights for fifty years? You know how old I am?” “Those are standard provisions, Viktor Borisovich.” “Learn to renew your conventions, you automatons! Fine, I’ll give you a day, and then we’ll see.” I returned to my hotel, my body frozen and my spirits dampened—dealing with Shklovsky wasn’t going to be easy. He’d been the enfant terrible, the loose cannon of formalism, he