LEF (journal)

Last updated • 9 min readFrom Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia
LEF
LEF journal covers.gif
The first two issues of the journal.
First issue1923;99 years ago (1923)
Final issue1929;93 years ago (1929)
CountrySoviet Union
LanguageRussian

LEF ("ЛЕФ") was the journal of the Left Front of the Arts ("Левый фронт искусств" –"Levy Front Iskusstv"), a widely ranging association of avant-garde writers, photographers, critics and designers in the Soviet Union. It had two runs, one from 1923 to 1925 as LEF, and later from 1927 to 1929 as Novy LEF ('New LEF'). [1] The journal's objective, as set out in one of its first issues, was to "re-examine the ideology and practices of so-called leftist art, and to abandon individualism to increase art's value for developing communism."

Contents

Productivism

Although LEF was catholic in its choices of writers, it broadly reflected the concerns of the Productivist left-wing of Constructivism. The editors were Osip Brik and Vladimir Mayakovsky: fittingly, one a Russian Formalist critic and one a poet and designer who helped compose the 1912 manifesto of Russian Futurists entitled, "A Slap in the Face of Public Taste". The covers were designed by Alexander Rodchenko, and featured photomontages early on, being followed by photographs in New LEF. Varvara Stepanova also designed covers. [2]

Among the writings published in LEF for the first time were Mayakovsky's long poem About This, and Sergei Eisenstein's The Montage of Attractions, as well as more political and journalistic works like Isaac Babel's Red Cavalry . The journal had funding from the state, and was discussed critically, but not unsympathetically by Leon Trotsky in Literature and Revolution (1924).

Factography

The later New LEF ("Новый ЛЕФ" –"Novy Lef"), which was edited by Mayakovsky along with the playwright, screenplay writer and photographer Sergei Tretyakov, tried to popularise the idea of 'factography': the idea that new technologies such as photography and film should be utilised by the working class for the production of 'factographic' works. In this it had a great deal of influence on theorists in the West, especially Walter Benjamin and Bertolt Brecht. Linked journals also appeared such as the Constructivist architectural journal SA (edited by Moisei Ginzburg and Alexander Vesnin) and Proletarskoe Foto, on photography. The New LEF closed in 1929 over a dispute over its direction between Mayakovsky and Tretyakov, and under pressure for its 'Formalism', which jarred with the incipient Socialist Realism.

Some Contributors to LEF and Novy LEF

The "Lenin issue"

After Vladimir Lenin’s death on January 21, 1924, LEF’s first issue of the year dedicated its critical section to the Soviet leader (though the publication’s artistic prose and poetry were not Lenin-themed). These critical articles mainly focused on an analysis of Lenin’s writing and his oratory: this is because the Formalist critic Viktor Shklovsky independently organized the project [3] and presented it to LEF. Vladimir Mayakovsky did, however, contribute an unsigned editorial to the issue, in which he criticized the newly-forming habit of Soviet authorities to “canonize” Lenin by mass-producing commercial objects with his portrait or likeness on them. The editorial argued that this practice would undermine Lenin’s significance for future generations. In Mayakovsky’s words, “Don’t take away his living gait and human traits, which he was able to preserve as he guided history. Lenin is still our contemporary. He is among the living. We need him alive, not dead.” [CVS 148] [4] The other articles do not explicitly develop this point, although they do focus on certain unusual, “human” particularities of Lenin’s style.

In total, six writers contributed articles to the critical section of the issue. Their names and the titles of their works follow:

All of these men either belonged to one of two Formalist collectives, OPOJAZ (The Society For the Study of Poetic Language) and the Moscow Linguistic Circle, or were associated with them. Accordingly, their contributions to this issue of LEF focus on Lenin’s specific rhetorical techniques, and not on his broader historical or social importance, which is only alluded to in passing in the articles. [11] Since these authors share certain theoretical assumptions about language and rhetoric, moreover, the articles often overlap in the specific topics of their investigations, and produce a stable group of core conclusions about Lenin’s style.

Defamiliarization: Defamiliarization, which can broadly be defined as the idea that the power of a work of art depends on how effectively it defies norms and subverts audiences’ expectations, is one of the most important and long-standing ideas in Formalist theory. It emerges as early as 1916, in Viktor Shklovsky’s manifesto “Art as Device.” [12] It is therefore unsurprising that several of the articles explain Lenin’s ability to communicate ideas effectively, an end he achieved through successfully “defamiliarizing,” or disrupting, stale, established revolutionary language. As Shklovsky writes, “His style consists in downplaying the revolutionary phrase, in replacing its traditional words with workaday synonyms.” [13] Tynyanov also pays attention to this aspect of Lenin’s style, arguing that Lenin was always intently focused on whether or not the words that he was using at a given moment were “in sync” with the material realities that they were meant to describe, and that this attention to specificity was more important for Lenin than pretty-sounding turns of phrase. [14]

Lowering language: As a result of Lenin’s defamiliarization, his speeches and writing begin to seem “artless” in their straightforwardness. Kazansky, along with others, acknowledges this explicitly: “Lenin’s discourse always comes across as direct, artless, even colorless and indifferent… but this is not so.” [15] The Formalists do not intend this to be a criticism of Lenin’s rhetoric: they instead argue that his atypical style was a pragmatic and effective rhetorical device itself, one that both set Lenin apart from his contemporaries and rivals (e.g., Leon Trotsky) and convinced his audience of his sincerity: “Nobody suspects Lenin’s discourse of artificiality and pretentiousness: it is utterly pragmatic.” [16] Eikhenbaum and Shklovsky suggest that Lenin shares this quality with established writers, such as Tolstoy and Mayakovsky. [17] In his article, Yakubinsky uses the word “deflation” to describe Lenin’s antipathy to the traditional high style of Russian oratory.

Polemics and parody: Another essential element of Lenin’s success was his willingness to openly mock his enemies, both in print and in his speeches. Eikhenbaum and Tynyanov suggest that Lenin’s constant criticism of writings from tsarists and those socialist parties that were opposed to the Bolsheviks helped him develop a unique, striking rhetorical voice, since he was careful to oppose his opponents both ideologically and stylistically: “Lenin’s polemic itself was a significant shift in the tradition and realm of Russian oratory and Russian journalism. In his analysis of his opponent’s lexicon, Lenin supplies all the typical traits of his own lexicon.” [18] Lenin not only avoided “flowery,” cliché phrases in his work, but also actively strove to introduce “rude,” everyday words and ideas into his writing. This was extremely uncommon at the time, and therefore made him more memorable as a rhetorician: “They appeal to everyday life, and link up with everyone’s daily, ubiquitous speech. Consequently, they extend the most solid, quantitatively and qualitatively mundane associative ties between speaker and listener.” [19] Tynyanov is especially interested in this aspect of Lenin’s style: it is connected with his own interest in parody, which he believed to be the artistic device that spurred literary evolution and the development of new forms of art. [20]

Poetic devices in “prosaic” speech: Although the Formalists were sometimes accused by their opponents of being pure aesthetes, who were attempting entirely to separate art from reality, [21] their work on Lenin reveals that this charge was not entirely accurate. After all, Lenin’s journalism and speeches were not art, as Eikhenbaum readily admits: “the realm of so-called practical language is extremely broad and varied… As for such forms as oration, despite its seemingly practical character, it is quite like poetic speech. Poetic speech is typified only by a particular attitude to discrete discursive elements and their specific use, especially in poetry.” [22] In this sense, the Lenin issue represents a turning point in Formalist thought. They are applying concepts originally devised for poetic analysis to “prosaic” work, which furthers their project by demonstrating that Formalism’s theoretical concepts, like defamiliarization and parodic evolution, need not be restricted to the study of art.

Shklovsky’s original interest in analyzing Lenin may have been prompted by the ongoing polemic between the Formalists and more orthodox Marxist critics, like Leon Trotsky. [23] The overall effect of LEF’s Lenin issue is that Lenin is presented as deeply pragmatic, more interested in the day-to-day questions of maintaining Bolshevik power than in any larger ideal. Moreover, by presenting Lenin as an ironic, flexible thinker, the Formalists subtly appropriated the Soviet leader for themselves. For as Ilya Kalinin writes, “their engagement with the figure of Lenin, which was only beginning to be canonized but already possessed an exceedingly powerful symbolic significance and social charge, for the sake of providing themselves with additional, political legitimation for their conceptions about the nature of poetic language, led to far-reaching theoretical consequences.” [24]

Reactions to LEF’s interpretation of Lenin have varied. Within the Soviet Union, it was received positively by the Futurist poet Aleksei Kruchenykh, who went on to write and publish his own analysis of Lenin’s language in the following year, heavily citing the LEF critics in his work. The emigre poet Vladislav Khodasevich, conversely, stridently criticized the issue, claiming that it proved Shklovsky and his compatriots to be sycophants for the Communist government. However, although he found the critics’ language to be evasive, he admitted that their theoretical observations were justified. [25] The issue has received relatively little mention in the West: Victor Erlich refers to Lenin’s rhetoric as an “essentially bleak” topic that did not merit the attention lavished upon it. [26] More recently, Boris Groys mentioned the issue in his book The Total Art of Stalinism, claiming that it served as an example of how the Soviet avant-garde inadvertently helped canonize Lenin after his death. [27] He does not, however, discuss the actual content of the articles.

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Plot (narrative)</span> Cause-and-effect sequence of events in a narrative

In a literary work, film, or other narrative, the plot is the sequence of events in which each event affects the next one through the principle of cause-and-effect. The causal events of a plot can be thought of as a series of events linked by the connector "and so". Plots can vary from the simple—such as in a traditional ballad—to forming complex interwoven structures, with each part sometimes referred to as a subplot or imbroglio.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Russian literature</span> Literature from Russia

Russian literature refers to the literature of Russia and its émigrés and to Russian-language literature. The roots of Russian literature can be traced to the Middle Ages, when epics and chronicles in Old East Slavic were composed. By the Age of Enlightenment, literature had grown in importance, and from the early 1830s, Russian literature underwent an astounding golden age in poetry, prose and drama. Romanticism permitted a flowering of poetic talent: Vasily Zhukovsky and later his protégé Alexander Pushkin came to the fore. Prose was flourishing as well. Mikhail Lermontov was one of the most important poets and novelists. The first great Russian novelist was Nikolai Gogol. Then came Ivan Turgenev, who mastered both short stories and novels. Fyodor Dostoevsky and Leo Tolstoy soon became internationally renowned. Other important figures of Russian realism were Ivan Goncharov, Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin and Nikolai Leskov. In the second half of the century Anton Chekhov excelled in short stories and became a leading dramatist. The beginning of the 20th century ranks as the Silver Age of Russian poetry. The poets most often associated with the "Silver Age" are Konstantin Balmont, Valery Bryusov, Alexander Blok, Anna Akhmatova, Nikolay Gumilyov, Sergei Yesenin, Vladimir Mayakovsky, and Marina Tsvetaeva. This era produced some first-rate novelists and short-story writers, such as Aleksandr Kuprin, Nobel Prize winner Ivan Bunin, Leonid Andreyev, Fyodor Sologub, Yevgeny Zamyatin, Alexander Belyaev, Andrei Bely and Maxim Gorky.

Defamiliarization or ostranenie is the artistic technique of presenting to audiences common things in an unfamiliar or strange way so they could gain new perspectives and see the world differently. According to the Russian formalists who coined the term, it is the central concept of art and poetry. The concept has influenced 20th-century art and theory, ranging over movements including Dada, postmodernism, epic theatre, science fiction, and philosophy; additionally, it is used as a tactic by recent movements such as culture jamming.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vladimir Mayakovsky</span> Russian and Soviet poet (1893–1930)

Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky was a Russian and Soviet poet, playwright, artist, and actor.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Osip Brik</span> Russian lawyer, literary critic and chekist

Osip Maksimovich Brik, was a Russian avant garde writer and literary critic, who was one of the most important members of the Russian formalist school, though he also identified himself as one of the Futurists.

Russian formalism was a school of literary criticism in Russia from the 1910s to the 1930s. It includes the work of a number of highly influential Russian and Soviet scholars such as Viktor Shklovsky, Yuri Tynianov, Vladimir Propp, Boris Eichenbaum, Roman Jakobson, Boris Tomashevsky, Grigory Gukovsky who revolutionised literary criticism between 1914 and the 1930s by establishing the specificity and autonomy of poetic language and literature. Russian formalism exerted a major influence on thinkers like Mikhail Bakhtin and Juri Lotman, and on structuralism as a whole. The movement's members had a relevant influence on modern literary criticism, as it developed in the structuralist and post-structuralist periods. Under Stalin it became a pejorative term for elitist art.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Viktor Shklovsky</span> Russian writer (1893–1984)

Viktor Borisovich Shklovsky was a Russian and Soviet literary theorist, critic, writer, and pamphleteer. He is one of the major figures associated with Russian formalism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lenfilm</span> Russian production company and film studio

Lenfilm is a Russian production company with its own film studio located in Saint Petersburg. It is a corporation with its stakes shared between private owners and several private film studios which operate on the premises. Since October 2012, the Chairman of the board of directors is Fyodor Bondarchuk.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yury Tynyanov</span> Russian writer

Yury Nikolaevich Tynyanov was a Soviet writer, literary critic, translator, scholar and screenwriter. He was an authority on Pushkin and an important member of the Russian Formalist school.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Distancing effect</span> Theatrical technique

The distancing effect, also translated as alienation effect, is a concept in performing arts credited to German playwright Bertolt Brecht.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Russian avant-garde</span> Russian and Soviet art movement, approx. 1890-1930

The Russian avant-garde was a large, influential wave of avant-garde modern art that flourished in the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union, approximately from 1890 to 1930—although some have placed its beginning as early as 1850 and its end as late as 1960. The term covers many separate, but inextricably related, art movements that flourished at the time; including Suprematism, Constructivism, Russian Futurism, Cubo-Futurism, Zaum and Neo-primitivism. Many of the artists who were born, grew up or were active in what is now Belarus and Ukraine, are also classified in the Ukrainian avant-garde.

Formalism is a school of literary criticism and literary theory having mainly to do with structural purposes of a particular text. It is the study of a text without taking into account any outside influence. Formalism rejects or sometimes simply "brackets" notions of culture or societal influence, authorship, and content, and instead focuses on modes, genres, discourse, and forms.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Constructivism (art)</span> Artistic and architectural philosophy originating in Russia

Constructivism is an early twentieth-century art movement founded in 1915 by Vladimir Tatlin and Alexander Rodchenko. Abstract and austere, constructivist art aimed to reflect modern industrial society and urban space. The movement rejected decorative stylization in favor of the industrial assemblage of materials. Constructivists were in favour of art for propaganda and social purposes, and were associated with Soviet socialism, the Bolsheviks and the Russian avant-garde.

Boris Mikhailovich Eikhenbaum was a Russian Empire and Soviet literary scholar and historian of Russian literature. He is a representative of Russian formalism.

Skaz is a Russian oral form of narrative. The word comes from skazátʹ, "to tell", and is also related to such words as rasskaz, "short story" and skazka, "fairy tale". The speech makes use of dialect and slang in order to take on the persona of a particular character. The peculiar speech, however, is integrated into the surrounding narrative, and not presented in quotation marks. Skaz is not only a literary device, but is also used as an element in Russian monologue comedy.

Foregrounding is a concept in literary studies concerning making a linguistic utterance stand out from the surrounding linguistic context, from given literary traditions or from more general world knowledge. It is "the 'throwing into relief' of the linguistic sign against the background of the norms of ordinary language." There are two main types of foregrounding: parallelism and deviation. Parallelism can be described as unexpected regularity, while deviation can be seen as unexpected irregularity. As the definition of foregrounding indicates, these are relative concepts. Something can only be unexpectedly regular or irregular within a particular context. This context can be relatively narrow, such as the immediate textual surroundings or wider such as an entire genre. Foregrounding can occur on all levels of language. It is generally used to highlight important parts of a text, to aid memorability and/or to invite interpretation.

Literariness is the organisation of language which through special linguistic and formal properties distinguishes literary texts from non-literary texts. The defining features of a literary work do not reside in extraliterary conditions such as history or sociocultural phenomena under which a literary text might have been created but in the form of the language that is used. Thus, literariness is defined as being the feature that makes a given work a literary work. It distinguishes a literary work from ordinary texts by using certain artistic devices such as metre, rhyme, and other patterns of sound and repetition.

Eccentrism was an avant-garde artistic movement in the Soviet Union active during the 1920s. In the early 1920s it was a movement in theatre associated with the factory of the eccentric actor (FEKS), which rejected traditional theatrical acting in favor of a modern and physical performance incorporating shocking stunts, derived from the circus and other popular entertainment. A school of eccentrist cinema emerged from the theatre group in the later 20s. Sergei Eisenstein was briefly associated with the movement.

Boris Anisimovich Kušner was a Russian poet, critic and political activist. He was a publicist for the Cubo-Futurists: In 1917 he wrote a manifesto, "Democratic Art", which called for a guarantee for all art movements to have a right to exist and the creation of an environment whereby fresh forces and views would be encouraged so that all works of art would be available to all people.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Novyi LEF</span> Soviet-era literary-critical periodical

The Novyi LEF or New LEF journal was a literary-critical periodical published by the State Publishing House “Gosizdat” in 1927-28 in Moscow, RFSFR. Futurist poet Vladimir Mayakovsky served as editor-in-chief, with Sergei Tretyakov replacing him in August 1928. Under both editors, a single issue totaled between 40-50 pages. Novyi LEF was a 22-issue revival of the original LEF journal, which was published in seven issues in 1923-25. Both LEF and Novyi LEF emerged from the LEF literary group, composed of Futurist and Formalist writers, theorists, and artists committed to a revolutionary transformation of Soviet culture. Novyi LEF consistently showcased photography, literary theory and criticism, poetry, editorials, and occasionally creative prose.

References

  1. ↑ "Soviet Film 1920s: Translations from LEF, Novy LEF, Brik, Kuleshov, Shklovsky, Vertov. Mayakovsky Film Scenarios. Politics and Production: The work of Godard. Marinetti and Mayakovsky". Screen Volume. Vol. 12, no. 4.
  2. ↑ Yablonskaya, M. N. (1971). Parton, Anthony (ed.). Women Artists of Russias New Age: 1900-1935. New York: Rizzoli. p. 153.
  3. ↑ Eisen, Samuel (1996). "Whose Lenin Is It Anyway? Viktor Shklovsky, Boris Eikhenbaum and the Formalist-Marxist Debate in Soviet Cultural Politics (A View from the Twenties)". The Russian Review. 55 (1): 68.
  4. ↑ Mayakovsky, Vladimir (2018). Boynik, Sezgin (ed.). Coiled Verbal Spring: Devices of Lenin's Language. Rab-Rab Press. p. 148.
  5. ↑ Shklovsky, Viktor. "Ленин, как деканонизатор".
  6. ↑ Eikhenbaum, Boris. "Основные стилевые тенденции в речи Ленина".
  7. ↑ Yakubinsky, Lev. "О снижении высокого стиля у Ленина".
  8. ↑ Tynyanov, Yuri. "Словарь Ленина-полемиста".
  9. ↑ Kazansky, Boris. "Речь Ленина: Опыт риторического анализа".
  10. ↑ Tomashevsky, Boris. "Конструкция тезисов".
  11. ↑ Tomashevsky, Boris (2018). Boynik, Sezgin (ed.). Coiled Verbal Spring: Devices of Lenin's Language. Rab-Rab Press. p. 264.
  12. ↑ Shklovsky, Viktor (1990). Theory of Prose. Dalkey Archive Press. pp. 1–15.
  13. ↑ Shklovsky, Viktor (2018). Boynik, Sezgin (ed.). Coiled Verbal Spring: Devices of Lenin's Language. Rab-Rab Press. p. 152.
  14. ↑ Tynyanov, Yuri (2018). Boynik, Sezgin (ed.). Coiled Verbal Spring: Devices of Lenin's Language. Rab-Rab Press. p. 212.
  15. ↑ Kazansky, Boris (2018). Boynik, Sezgin (ed.). Coiled Verbal Spring: Devices of Lenin's Language. Rab-Rab Press. p. 226.
  16. ↑ Coiled Verbal Spring: Devices of Lenin's Language. Rab-Rab Press. 2018. p. 156, 227.
  17. ↑ Eikhenbaum, Boris (2018). Boynik, Sezgin (ed.). Coiled Verbal Spring: Devices of Lenin's Language. Rab-Rab Press. p. 170-1.
  18. ↑ Boynik, Sezgin, ed. (2018). Coiled Verbal Spring: Devices of Lenin's Language. Rab-Rab Press. p. 157, 215.
  19. ↑ Tynyanov, Yuri (2018). Boynik, Sezgin (ed.). Coiled Verbal Spring: Devices of Lenin's Language. Rab-Rab Press. p. 216.
  20. ↑ Tynyanov, Yuri (2019). Permanent Evolution: Selected Essays on Literature, Theory and Film. Academic Studies Press. pp. 294–328.
  21. ↑ Trotsky, Leon (2005). Literature and Revolution. Haymarket Books.
  22. ↑ Eikhenbaum, Boris (2018). Boynik, Sezgin (ed.). Coiled Verbal Spring: Devices of Lenin's Language. Rab-Rab Press. p. 155.
  23. ↑ Eisen, Samuel (1996). "Whose Lenin Is It Anyway? Viktor Shklovsky, Boris Eikhenbaum and the Formalist-Marxist Debate in Soviet Cultural Politics (A View from the Twenties)". The Russian Review. 55 (1): 68.
  24. ↑ Kalinin, Ilya (2018). "Kak sdelan yazyk Lenina: material istorii i priem ideologii". Vestnik Sankt-Peterburgskogo universiteta. Yazyk i literatura. 15 (4): 607–8.
  25. ↑ Khodasevich, Vladislav (2010). Polnoe sobranie sochinenii v 8 tomakh, vol. 2. Moscow: Russkii put. p. 306-9.
  26. ↑ Erlich, Victor (1994). Modernism and Revolution : Russian Literature in Transition. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. p. 220.
  27. ↑ Groys, Boris (1992). The Total Art of Stalinism. Princeton: Princeton University Press. p. 68.

Sources

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.