“Myths do not flow through the pipes of history, ” writes Viktor Shklovsky, “they change and splinter, they contrast and refute one another. The similar turns out to be dissimilar. ” Published in Moscow in 1970 and appearing in English translation for the first time, Bowstring is a seminal work, in which Shklovsky redefines estrangement (ostranenie) as a device of the literary comparatist—the “person out of place, ” who has turned up in a period where he does not belong and who must search for meaning with a strained sensibility.

As Shklovsky experiments with different genres, employing a technique of textual montage, he mixes autobiography, biography, memoir, history, and literary criticism in a book that boldly refutes mechanical repetition, mediocrity, and cultural parochialism in the name of art that dares to be different and innovative. Bowstring is a brilliant and provocative book that spares no one in its unapologetic project to free art from conventionality.

© 2011 Dalkey Archive Press (E-bok): 9781564787095

Översättare: Shushan Avagyan

Utgivningsdatum

E-bok: 7 juli 2011