"I Know What Motivation Is": The Politics of Emotion and Viktor Shklovskii's Sentimental Rhetoric

This article discusses Viktor Shklovskii's exilic narratives of the early 1920s, Sentimental Journey: Memoirs, 1917–1922, and Zoo, or Letters Not about Love. I suggest that in these texts, published in Berlin shortly after the show trial against the right Socialist Revolutionaries, Shklovskii c...

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Bibliographische Detailangaben
Veröffentlicht in:Slavic Review. - Association for Slavic East European and Eurasian Studies. - 74(2015), 4, Seite 785-807
1. Verfasser: Borislavov, Rad (VerfasserIn)
Format: Online-Aufsatz
Veröffentlicht: 2015
Zugriff auf das übergeordnete Werk:Slavic Review
Schlagworte:Behavioral sciences Political science Social sciences Arts History Law
Beschreibung
Zusammenfassung:This article discusses Viktor Shklovskii's exilic narratives of the early 1920s, Sentimental Journey: Memoirs, 1917–1922, and Zoo, or Letters Not about Love. I suggest that in these texts, published in Berlin shortly after the show trial against the right Socialist Revolutionaries, Shklovskii casts himself as a "sentimental hero," evoking sympathy for the narrator's plight by mobilizing some of the devices of the sentimental novel but also struggling with the implications of this sentimentalism. The article outlines Shklovskii's attempts to prove his political reliability during his exile, juxtaposing his private correspondence with his memoirs, and argues for a more nuanced interpretation of Shklovskii's political biography through the prism of the history of emotions.
ISSN:00376779
DOI:10.5612/slavicreview.74.4.785