Returning the reality: Viktor Shklovsky & Susan Sontag

In the present paper the author researches several existing parallels between two program texts of the 20th-century literary analysis: Viktor Shklovsky's Art as Technique (1917) and Susan Sontag's Against Interpretation (1964). The author examines these essays as isolated manifestos which suggest two particular while similar approaches to the theory and the value of literature and art in general. Both writers discover the phenomenon of "dulling of the senses", which they both describe using metaphors of "domestication", "making things homely". Shklovsky regards this directly as the automation of perception, while Sontag views a habit of interpretation as its syndrome, which she criticizes. The author suggests that interpretation can be considered, on the one hand, as a certain way of automating the meanings and, on the other, as a development of Shklovsky's ideas in the field of reflection of art criticism: the sensations of things are threatened not only by getting used to them, but also by a purposeful work of mind to domesticate the meanings. Suggested programs to return reality are similar as well. Shklovsky writes about art as of a certain discipline of a reader's or a viewer's perception of things by means of a special device, defamiliarization. For Sontag, who takes a more cynical approach, art has the same ontological status as the rest of the objects and, therefore, the right kind of perception of art itself is required, which is for art criticism to provide. Both writers also address the possibility of turning towards low art as a source of new forms of defamiliariza-tion or as a place to flee from interpretation. Additionally, the author notices that both Shklovsky and Sontag admit the possibility of returning the sharpness to our senses by the literal depletion of the world. Finally, the author addresses another common subject of both texts, which is erotics. In the light of C. Ginzburg's notions on genealogy of defamiliarization from Marcus Aurelius and a distinction between its functions this device can serve, which are impressionistic and socially critical, the author proposes an idea of an inner connection between defamiliarization of the fields of Eros and Thanatos. And while Shklovsky's essay already covers both these aspects, Sontag is yet to compensate her omissions in her subsequent writings. The author considers the fact that she indeed addressed these themes to be an indirect argument for his observation on peculiar similarities on topics, metaphorics and exhortations of these texts.

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