ALI~KSANDAR.

F L A K E R

STYLISTIC FORMATION

ORIGIN OF THE TERM

The first time I consciously used the concept, stylistic for-

mation, was in an article, "On Realism", which was published
in the periodical, (Umjetnost rije~i, [The Art of the Word],
Zagreb, 1958, No. 2). I wanted to break away from the concepts
of "movement" and "method" behind which there stood two
different conceptions of the history of literature: the first - pri-
marily positivistic which linked together in a linear fashion
similar and dissimilar historical phenomena, registered above
all the literary contacts within one or between two different
literatures and, on the basis of such predominantly conscious
contacts, established "movements" by which this or that
national literature developed. The second conception, on the
other hand, was ahistorical and normative in its starting-
points and, inspired by a Soviet literary discussion, I discussed
this conception most of all in the above-mentioned article.
The concept of stylistic formation seemed to me at that time
to be more suitable for the denoting of large stylistic unities
such as realism which are historical in origin and historically
limited in their duration. This concept corresponded to the
concept which Marxist historiography successfully used, that is,
the term "social formation", and it quite accurately denoted
the development of large stylistic unities which the traditional
term, "style", no longer suited. In our time of the profuse
development of linguo-stylistics the concept of style has been
either restricted to the language levels of the literary work or
generalized to such an extent that it has become necessary
to define every time in what sense the concept is used. Thus we
184 ALEKSANDARFLAKER

use various subsidiary definitions and talk of the "individual

writer's style", "historical style", the "style of the epoch",
and so on.
Only later, while leafing through the works of the Russian
theorist and literary historian, V. M. Friche 1 (one of the promi-
nent Marxists in sociological literary criticism in the 1920's)
did I notice that the concept of stylistic formation, although
in a narrower and less defined sense, was already being used in
the very stimulating twenties of the Soviet Union.
In our time G. D. Gachev started to use related concepts.
In his book, The Accelerated Development of Literature, he
introduced the concepts of "ideological" and "literary forma-
tion" as "working terms in order to stress the completeness
and structure of the processes", 2 starting from what are in
essence the same terminological requirements which I was
faced with when I, at first spontaneously, introduced the term
"stylistic formation". As Gachev's book deals with the initial
period of the new Bulgarian literature in which the disintegra-
tion of the "syncretic consciousness" appears only in the 19th
century, it is understandable that the Soviet author uses the
more general terms of "ideological" and "literary formation",
although the latter of these two terms already partially covers
the range of the term, "stylistic formation", in the sense in
which we have started to use it. (The titles of the relevant chap-
ters in this stimulating book are: Literary formation at the
rationalistic stage - "Classicism"; Literary formation at the
stage of sensibility - "Sentimentalism".)
As there had been an obvious need for the term it gradually
began to spread. There is no doubt that the Croatian literary
historians were the first to apply it; Dragi~a Zivkovi6 drew
attention to it in his paper at the Vth Congress of Yugoslav

1V. M. Friche, Problemy iskustvovedeniya (Moscow--Leningrad,

1940), pp. 103, 112--114.
G. D. Gachev, Uskorennoe razvitie literatury (Moscow, 1964),
p. 105.
STYLISTIC FORMATION 185

Slavists in Sarajevo in 19653 and then it was accepted in Slo-

vakia. The well-known Slovak theorist, Mikula~ Bako~, calling
upon my works for reference, dealt with the term, "stilevaja
formacija" or "slohov~t form~cia" in his paper on Historical
Poetics and the History of Literature at the VIth International
Congress of Slavists in Prague in 1968,4 and at the same time
the editors of the periodical, "Slavica slovaca" asked me to
expound the term for the sake of their needs. 5 As far as I know,
however, Miodrag Popovi6 most fruitfully used the term
"stylistic formation", writing about Serbian romanticism and
finding support in the studies of Skreb and myself from the
book, Styles and Periods. The concept here is not applied for-
mally merely as a substitution for the concept "movement" or
"trend" but rather the whole study is devoted to the construc-
tion of Serbian romanticism as the first "consolidated formation
which dominates a particular period and combines a large
number of writers into a linguo-stylistic whole" and on the
basis of particular stylistic complexes. 8 The spread of the con-
cept bears witness to the fact that scholarship needs it. The
"ergocentric attitude" towards the processes of literary evolu-
tion as Bako~ formulated them in his above-mentioned paper 7
and the conception of literary history as a dynamic succession
of "macrosystems" (Zhirmunsky's term) s or as the "structure of
structures" penetrate more and more into the discipline which
we call the history of literature a n d s o it is quite natural that

3 See also the book, Evropski okviri srpske knji[evnosti by D. ~.iv-

kovi6 (Beograd, 1970), pp. 368, 376.
4 "Istorija literatury i istori~eskaja poetika", Slaviea slovaea III
(1968), pp. 365--371 and the book by M. Bako~ in Slovak, Literarna
historia a historicka poetika (Bratislava, 1969), p. 5--15.
A. Flaker, "Stil6vaja formacija", Slaviea slovaea, IV (1969), No. 2,
pp. 117--122.
Miodrag Popovi6, "Sti16ski kompleksi i knji~evni ~anrovi u srpskom
romantizmu", Knji~evna istorija, II (1970), i'qo. 7, pp. 511--551.
7 Slaviea slovaea, II,I 1968, p. 372.
s V. M. Zhirmunsky, Literaturnye techeniya kak yavlenie mezhduna-
rodnoe (Leningrad, 1967), p. 10.
186 A L E K S A N D A R FLAKER

the old literary historical concepts, encumbered with a different

methodology, are no longer adequate. It is necessary, therefore,
to try to find new ones. One of them is - stylistic formation.

THE CONCEPT "MOVEMENT"

The terminology of modern literary history very often uses

the concepts of "movement" or "trend", sometimes as syno-
nyms and sometimes giving different meanings to these con-
cepts. 9 In recent times when all the various brands of stylistics
started to use more and more the concept of "style" and the
concept itself consequently was used less frequently by histo-
rians, the concepts "movement" and "trend" were rehabili-
tated so that, for example, they came to the fore at the Vth
Congress of the International Association for Comparative
Literature in Belgrade in 1967 when one of the basic themes of
the Congress read, Literary M o v e m e n t s Considered as Inter-
national Phenomena. Nor can we be satisfied by the concept
"trend" (very widely used yet rarely precisely enough) except,
of course, in cases when the definitions of that concept come
nearer to modern methodological orientations as is undoubt-
edly the case in the works o f the Polish theorist, Henryk
Markiewicz, with whose interpretation of the concept "literary
trend" we could very easily agree. Markiewicz attempts to give
the concept the meaning of superindividual and supernational
literary unity which the literary historian constructs. 1~
The term "movement" should certainly be retained in the
meaning which it has in fact already acquired. " M o v e m e n t "

For the various meanings of the concepts, "movement" and "trend"

in Russian literature see the study by A. N. Sokolov, "Literaturnoe
napravlenie (opyt stati dlya terminologicheskogo slovarya, lzvestiya
A N SSSR, OLJA, 1962, XXI, 5, pp. 401--410.
xoH. Markiewicz, Glrwne problemy wiedzy o literaturze (Krak6w,
1965), pp. 174--205 and "The concept of literary trend in the history
of literature", in: Proceedings of the Vth Congress o f the ICLA, Belgrade
1967, Amsterdam 1969, pp. 29--36.
STYLISTIC F O R M A T I O N 187

should be applied to those tendencies within the processes of

literary history which are manifested at a particular time in
literary criticism and other forms of literary consciousness (for
example, programmatic statements in individual literary works)
and which have, therefore, been given names and theoretical
expositions by the bearers of this consciousness. Movements,
therefore, arise in the consciousness of particular periods through
the activity of certain literary groups or result from affinities
in the literary criticism of a certain time, and we define them on
the basis of the principles which that criticism professed.
We infer, therefore, the theory of the literary movement from
its critical system, which sometimes has the character of a
manifesto or programme or is sometimes raised to a philoso-
phical plane, and occasionally from the current criticism which
contains implicit or explicit (often normative) demands which
it puts before literature. Nor need we here adhere to the titles
which individual movements give themselves. Thus, for example,
the "natural school" in Russian literature of the 1840's became
a movement which was to be affirmed by the activity of Russian
criticism in the 1860's and was ~to acquire in Chernishevsky's
work the name "Gogol's movement" (gogolevskoe napravlenie)
to be later, under the influence of the French critical pro-
grammes, finally given the name "realism". Thus we can talk of
realism which as a movement existed between the 1840's and
the 1860's. We shall also apply the name, "movements" to
those conscious tendencies in literature in this century which
appeared in one country and then, under the same name, spread
into other countries and literatures, undergoing, of course,
certain modifications. Thus we shall talk of expressionism in
German literature, of the appearance of expressionist groups in
Poland, of the echoes of expressionism in Croatian literature,
of the expressionist group in Serbia and so on, and we shall
call all these phenomena the expressionist movement. This also
holds true, of course, for French and Serbian surrealism but
in the defining of "Croatian surrealism" we must be very
cautious and aware that when we use the concept of "sponta-
188 ALEKSANDAR FLAKER

neous surrealism ''11 we are, in fact, abandoning the theory o f

movements as explained above and moving towards the drawing
of typological analogies and the constructing of stylistic groups.
In connection with this, it is necessary to bear in mind that
national modifications of individual movements do not always
mean that the movements are identical in different national
literatures or that they lead to stylistic unity. Thus, for ex-
ample, we talk of futurism in Italy and futurism in Russia,
but we must be aware that these are two different phenomena
which follow, it is true, one line of development in European
literature but which are not characterized by stylistic uniform-
ity. On the other hand, Soviet literary historians have turned
our attention towards the stylistic identity between many of
Vladimir Mayakovsky's structures and phenomena which
appeared in the movement of German expressionism, xz
When we talk of a "movement" we are always inclined to
emphasise its national attribute exactly because of this aware-
ness of the differences between the manifestations which,
at least according to the statements of the writers and critics,
appear in one line of development. Thus we usually talk of
Russian realism, French naturalism, German expressionism,
the Croatian "moderne", Russian imaginism, Serbian surrealism,
social literature in Yugoslavia, Czech poetism and others as
movements which affected the development of related phenom-
ena in other literatures or which are genetically connected
with movements in other literatures, although we do not neces-
sarily mean that they create supernational stylistic unities.
Research into movements as defined in this way undoubtedly
can and must help us in understanding the historical develop-
ment of one or more national literatures in their "reciprocal con-

n This concept was used by Miroslav Vaupoti6 in his paper at the

symposium about the avant-garde in Smolenice 1965. See "Spontanny
nadrealistick~ v~raz v chorv/ttskej lyrike" in the collection Probldmy
literdrne] avantgardy (Bratislava, 1968), pp. 268--276.
1, B. V. Mikhailovsky, Russkaya literatura XX veka (Moscow, 1939),
pp. 389, 403--404.
STYLISTIC FORMATION 189

nections" or "influences" on one another, but we must still be

aware, however, that this is only a prerequisite for researching
into literary historical phenomena as "macrosystems" or super-
individual and supernational structures historical in origin.
B. V. Mikhailovsky clearly recognised this when in his inter-
pretations and classifications of superindividual stylistic mani-
festations in Russian literature after the disintegration of realism
he tried to turn away from the study of movements in Russian
literature of the 1890's and the beginning of the 20th century
(until 1927) and their "self-designations" (symbolism, acmeism,
futurism), and in several cases approached the construction of
other stylistic uniformities based on the use of terminologywhich
was not developed in Russian literature but in European (pri-
marily German) criticism and scholarship. Thus, for example,
Mikhailovsky separated impressionism as a stylistic unity in
Russian literature at the turn of the century and included Leonid
Andreev among the expressionists even without the qualification
that it was a question of expressionism avant la lettre. ~ It goes
without saying that in this case too it was a matter of leaving
the positivist exploration of a movement (concretely here:
Russian symbolism) and constructing a literary category inde-
pendent of the movement - a category which Mikhailovsky
still calles "style".

HISTORY OF LITERARY IDEAS OR THE HISTORY OF

LITERATURE ?

This was the title of my review of the Vth Congress for Com-
parative Literature la and its main theme, as we have already
stressed, concerned "literary trends as international phenom-
ena". What was said at that international assembly about the
questions we are posing here ?
The late V. M. Zhirmunsky, Soviet theorist, delivered the
outlining paper under the title, Literary trends (techeniya) as
18Ibid., pp. 78--101, 328-33l.
14 Umjetnost rije~i, 1967, No. 4, pp. 343--349.
190 ALEKSANDAR.FLAKER

international phenomena. In this paper, a very stimulating one

for several reasons, Zhirmunsky emphasised his critical stand-
point towards comparative literature, which should not be
restricted by empirical comparison and which should go further
- "from simple comparison which states the similarities and
differences according to their historical interpretation", and
thus study not only the "influences" of one literature on another
but consider typological analogies or convergences in the
literary process of different literatures which eloquently points
towards the existence of general laws in literary evolution. These
general laws, continues Zhirmunsky, are manifested in the
phenomenon itself of literary trends as "systems of character-
istics" (sistema priznakov) which are mutually conditioned
and change dynamically "together with the changing of the
socio-historical actuality and with the national, social and indi-
vidual differences". Considering the problems of terms with
which we denote the literary trends in the 19th and 20th cen-
tury, Zhirmunsky drew attention to the dangers "of the authority
of self-designation" in an effort to discourage literary critics
from depending on the declarations of the participants in the
literary processes and movements. Rather, he thought that they
should go further than that, explaining by the example of the
baroque how it is sometimes necessary to prevail over the
notions of a particular time and construct larger, supernational
entities. What we tend to call baroque today was called in its
own time, in various national literatures, "gongorism", "Mari-
nism,', "the Silesian school", "the metaphysical school", "pre-
ciosity", "concettism" and so on. Baroque is for this group
a new conception "to which we reduce the individual, national
ones". They are "microsystems" which exist within the frame-
work of a "macrosystem" and differ in varying degrees accord-
ing to their national or individual traits". 15 Although he was
is I am quoting the paper according to the already cited Russian
original, pp. 3, 7, 10. The paper has also been published in French in
the previously cited Proceedings of the Vllth Congress of the ICLA,
pp. 3-- 22.
STYLISTICFORMATION 191

not sufficiently clear about the defining of criteria on the basis

of which we would formulate the "systems of characteristics"
and "macrosystems" within the history of literature (Zhir-
munsky in his paper opposed the "immanent" and "formalistic"
studying of literary evolution), this paper undoubtedly gave
a convincing platform on which a history of world literature
can be built.
However, most of the papers which were devoted to indi-
vidual literary "trends" disagreed with the fundamental theses
of Zhirmunsky. Thus, for instance, the paper given by Cornelius
de Deugd under the title, The Unity of Romanticism as an Inter-
national Movement. A Phenomenological Approach, talked in
fact of the theoretical and philosophical postulates of roman-
ticism as a literary movement and at that it was restricted only
to a limited circle of national literatures, 18 as Markiewiez later
pointed out at the Congress itself.
The essayistically conceived paper of Harry Levin on the
Dissemination of Realism did not even attempt a new definition
of realism. He emphasized the realists' interest in the world of
objects, their reification of the world and, accordingly, their
shedding of illusions but he especially pointed out the "iconoclas-
tic" in realism and on those grounds questioned the right of
socialist realism to the inheritance of the realists' name. 17
The paper lacked analytical elements and realism itself was
understood in part as an ahistorical phenomenon and even, as
Markiewicz also pointed out, acquired a value-judgement
significance. The discussion which this paper evoked was not
of a literary scientific nature.
Rend Wellek in his paper complemented the chapters on
baroque, classicism, romanticism and realism found in his
book, Concepts of Criticism. This distinguished Yale professor

1~De Deugd's paper is also contained in the Proceedings of the Con-

gress, pp. 172--189.
1~Cf. Proceedings, pp. 238--241.
I92 ALEKSANDA R FLAKER

once again very conscientiously treated the concept of symbol-

ism "first as a school, then as a movement, and finally as a
period" in his paper, The Form and Concept of Symbolism in
Literary History. However, although he established the upper
and lower limits of the period which he called symbolism
(1885-1914) and drew the boundaries with realism and roman-
ticism on the one hand and avant-garde movements on the
other, Professor Wellek did not make explicit the criteria on
which he based that period. "Symbolism", Wellek wrote in the
same paper, "seems the obvious term for the dominant style
which followed 19th century realism". 18 But of the stylistic
characteristics and determinants of symbolism we heard least
of all in the paper. With all due respect to the precisely assembled
information about literary movements in Europe at that time
from as far afield as France to Czechoslovakia, Russia to Spain,
and despite all the material which we can certainly make use
of and which was lucidly and concisely delivered, we could not
escape the impression that the paper was lacking in many re-
spects - of course, primarily in analyses of literary works
themselves !
Mikl6s Szabolcsi's contributions, Literary and Artistic Avant-
garde as an International Phenomenon, followed on quite natu-
rally from Wellek's paper. Szabolcsi showed the spiritual
affinity and international character of literary and artistic
movements during the period 1905-38 in a wide span from
France and Germany to Spain and the literatures of Latin
America to Russia and Central and Eastern Europe. He con-
vincingly showed the need for the introduction of a term which
could unite maiay apparently diverse phenomena (expression-
ism, cubism, futurism, dada, surrealism and others) but
although he strove to emphasize the general characteristics he

18Proceedings .... pp. 277. Wellek's supplement on symbolism has

also been published in his book, Discriminations: Further Concepts of
Criticism (New Haven and London, 1970, 1971).
STYLISTICFORMATION 193

did not, however, succeed in substantiating his theses to a

sufficient degree with relevant examples from literary works or
in relating them to the shared stylistic characteristics of that
period. Thus the concept itself remained on a hypothetical
level.
So much for the Congress's most important papers which
were read at its plenary sessions. Our observations have already
emphasized the way in which we regard prevailing methodolog-
ical tendencies - at least in the field of comparative literature.
The Congress clearly showed the need for the historical classi-
fication and systematisation of literary phenomena, especially
when the many controversial problems of modern literature are
in question. It suggested some solutions. However, the array of
literary historical unities as put forward at the Congress were
either constructed on generalisations detached from the anal-
ysis of individual literary works or based on information from
the world of literary ideas or material taken from literary cri-
ticism, programmes and manifestoes.
In my opinion it is necessary to be sceptical in all those cases
when the theory of one literary historical whole is not based
on the systematic analyses of literary works as artistic phenom-
ena from which the general historical patterns may be inferred.
Theoretical programmes can help us to orientate ourselves and
find a way out of the dense wood of problems but they very
often obscure our view of the literary process itself. Or to
paraphrase a metaphorical remark made by Shklovsky: the
colours of the flags which literary groups, movements and
schools fly on literary fortresses do not always give us tke most
reliable information about the real content of the fortresses
themselves. To conclude, therefore: this Congress presented us
with yet another question: should we - when studying the
question of "literary movements" and of the periodisation
which we customarily base on these "movements"-, write a
history of Bterary ideas or are we going to try and approach the
history of literature as the history of literary works ?

13
194 ALEKSANDAR FLAKER

TOWARDS STYLISTIC FORMATION

According to what we have said above, the term "stylistic

formation" cannot be equated with the concept "movement" or
"trend" (in the sense in which it was most used at the Congress
for Comparative Literature), although one can never stress
sufficiently that conscientious research of literary ideas or doc-
trines can yield much valuable information which we can use
in constructing a model of stylistic formation and in its con-
ceptual framework. The term itself, "stylistic formation", we
shall only use in cases when, having confirmed the affinity or
identity of structural elements in a whole series of literary
works, we reach the conclusion that we are dealing with a
historically significant stylistic unity or with a particular "struc-
ture of structures" which appeared in a particular period of the
literary historical process of one or, as a rule, more national
literatures.
Stylistic formations are for us, therefore, large literary histor-
ical unities which, thanks to the fact that we may interpret
their model historically, stipulate the characteristics and desig-
nation of individual literary periods. These are unities which
at the same time we construct on the basis of the analysis of
individual literary works and which help us not only in the
systematisation and classification of works but also in their
literary historical interpretation and even, we are so bold to
say, in their evaluation. Starting with the analysis of concrete
literary phenomena and modelling a particular stylistic forma-
tion, we are again throwing light on the concrete phenomena
due to the fact that we have determined a general, superindi-
vidual concept and its content, and found the individual
literary work's historical place in the general system of literary-
works. It goes without saying that we do not forget we are
dealing with a live and dynamic literary historical process and
our literary historical constructions are only a means of helping
us to recognise that process in terms of a model which, in spite
of our intention, by necessity freezes it and renders it static.
STYLISTIC FORMATION 195

The construction of a model of a particular stylistic formation

most often implies the construction of a separate model for
every literary genre, the exploration of mutual links between
individual literary genres and also the inner dialectic of the
literary historical process, the origin, development and disin-
tegration of the stylistic formation or perhaps its transfer into
a new stylistic formation still in the nascent stage. Because of
this, in the construction of a stylistic formation it is most impor-
tant to find the essential characteristics of the stylistic unity
which determine the interpretation and definition of the sty-
listic formation because it is exactly these and only these char-
acteristics which represent the basis on which the stylistic
unity grows, and it is to these characteristics that all other struc-
tural qualities are subordinated. Thus we shall see, for instance,
how essential in the stylistic formation of realism is the existence
of the socio-psychologically motivated, active character estab-
lishing relationships with other characters as the centre
around which are grouped the other elements of the realistic
work. These other elements may be grouped into various inter-
relationships but always within the system of subordination to
the thus conceived character as to a model of human behaviour
in quite distinct socio-historical conditions.
Until we have found the essential characteristics with 'which
we can not only define but also historically interpret a partic-
ular stylistic unity it is better not to even talk about a struc-
tured stylistic formation. If we are dealing with smaller stylistic
unities or perhaps with unities which are still not suitable for
historical interpretation, we content ourselves with the less
committed concept of stylistic group as a stylistic division which
is in spite of certain affinities not suitable for the constructing
of a period because it developed on the margins of the process
or because its nature is specifically national or because it still
defies complete historical interpretation. Such a stylistic group
could be a literary genre which developed in one or more
national literatures, an agglomeration of various literary works
which show a particular affinity but for which we can find no

13"
196 ALEKSAlqDAR FLAKER

common interpretative denomination, or those "microsystems"

about which Zhirmunsky spoke and which, especially in modern
literature, so often defy classification into a predominating
"macrosystem". The processes which are developing in litera-
ture of the 20th century are undoubtedly notable for their poly-
morphism. It is exactly in this area that we still stand before
the problem of constructing large stylistic formations and in
everyday practice very heterogeneous literary historical material
awaits us - material which we must, at least temporarily, system-
atise by constructing smaller models of stylistic unities, that is,
stylistic groups.
It goes without saying that stylistic formations conceived in
this way as coherent, more or less firm but at the same time
heterogeneous in details, stylistic unities, cannot embrace all
the works of a particular time segment not only because of the
dynamic and dialectic aspect of the literary historical process
which leads to the coexistence or opposition of two or more
stylistic formations in one literary historical period, but also
because the dialectic of the literary historical process some-
times manifests itself in one work which contains the charac-
teristics of two or more stylistic formations. Thus, only our
interpretation of these characteristics determines whether such
a work belongs to one or the other stylistic formation. There are
works which have markedly heterogeneous stylistic character-
istics, very often with conspicuous archaisms in their style like
remains of groups and formations which have already disap-
peared or with markedly anticipatory structural elements (such
works are often archaic and innovatory at the same time such as,
for example, Kovafiid's novel, In the Registry Office, which
appeared on the margins of European realism). Such works
must upset the main pattern of our constructions or we must
separate them from our constructions, interpreting them out-
side the characteristic stylistic formations.
Here it should be especially emphasized that in the develop-
ment of our literatures (here I mean Croatian and other Yugo-
slav literatures and this also holds good for other literatures of
STYLISTIC F O R M A T I O N 197

Central and Eastern Europe) as literatures of a discontinued

or delayed development (here I have in mind our 19th century)
there will be many more such works or small groups than in
the developed European literatures in which the literary histor-
ical process, as a result of very strong traditions, unfolds in
far "purer" forms, or at least, we see them as such for they
have set the stylistic patterns of certain literary periods for the
whole European cultural area and it is from these patterns that
we infer our models and measure the development of other
literatures according to these models. We could hardly either
completely include Ma~uranid's The Death o f Smail-aga Cengid
in the stylistic formation of classicism or define it as a romantic
work but rather, having emphasized its debt to the Croatian
baroque tradition of Gundulid, we shall agree when Frange~
finds its greatest value "in its romantic vittory over the tyranny
of rules and in its classical correctness". 19
After all, it is exactly the "great" works which are custom-
arily atypical in the history of literature because they lead to
a revolution in style and thus lay down the stylistic laws or,
more exactly, they synthetize most completely the experiences
of the past and presage the future. Thus they often appear at
the boundary of two or more stylistic formations and yet do not
belong completely to any one of them. This is certainly true of
Goethe, for instance, because of whom it almost seems the
concept "Klassik" was invented in German literature (this
concept cannot be equated with the concept of "classicism" in
other literatures) and whose opus it would be difficult to cate-
gorise in its entirety into any one all-European stylistic forma-
tion. This also applies to Pushkin whose belonging to a partic-
ular " m e t h o d " or "movement" is still the cause of contro-
versies in literary scholarship because this heir to classicist
ideals became a prominent romantic, at the same time antici-
pating many facets of realism. Such examples are infinite in
19I. Frangeg, "Klasi~no i romanti~no u Smrti" (The Classical and
the Romantic in 'The Death of Smaila-aga (2engida'), in: VII Meduna-
rodni Kongres slavista, Warszawa--Prilozi (Zagreb, 1973), pp. 80.
198 ALEKSANDAR FLAKER

number: Stendhal and the question of romanticism and realism,

the romantic qualities of Turgenev's works, Baudelaire and
romanticism on the one hand and modern poetry on the other,
Dostoevsky as an heir to sentimentalism and romanticism and
a supreme realist who anticipates new styles in European litera-
ture, and so on, and so on. And eventually we shall come to
the crushing conclusion that we can expound the models of
stylistic formation best of all according to - the literary
epigones.
However, these examples show us that we need such fairly
abstract concepts of literary history. These abstractions do
help us to comprehend concrete works including the "greatest"
ones and even to answer the question: why have these, and not
other works, become "great" or the "greatest"?

STYLISTIC FORMATION AND PERIODISATION

The constructing of stylistic formations or groups can undoubt-

edly help us not only in the interpretation and historical assess-
ment of individt~al literary phenomena (works) but also in the
construction of the history of literature as a history of literary
works. In the first place, the forming of stylistic formations
considerably helps or even determines the periodisation of the
literary historical process, that is, the determining and defining
of particular periods and epochs. Here we should immediately
come to an agreement on terminology. We could use the term
"period" where it covers a small time segment for which a partic-
ular I stylistic group is characteristic and the term "epoch"
where it signifies a larger period which is dominated by a partic-
ular stylistic formation. However, we should not forget that
for us the concepts of stylistic group and period and stylistic
formation and epoch respectively cannot be identical. If we
were to construct periods or epochs on one stylistic group or
stylistic formation alone, then we would negate the dialectic
of literary evolution. A stylistic formation must be constructed
on the stylistic unity of a whole series of related works, while
STYLISTIC F O R M A T I O N 199

a literary epoch only may be constructed on such a unity but

always on the condition that manifestations of previous stylistic
formations and anticipations of new formations as well as
oppositions to the dominant stylistic formation be taken into
account. Thus, for instance, the epoch of realism usually implies
the domination of the stylistic formation of realism which in-
cludes the prose (the novel and short story) of that time and the
poetic structures which in many cases were subordinated to
realistic prose, but at the same time the hub of poetry stands in
opposition to the formation of realism (post-romantic phenom-
ena, Parnassism and so on) and this is the essential characteristic,
therefore, of the structure of a time in which poetry points
forward to the imminent arrival of both a new period and a
new epoch. Besides this, there exist many periods which we
cannot say are dominated by any one stylistic formation or
group. Thus, for example, in the Croatian literature of the
time we call the "national revival", segments which gene-
tically come from various European stylistic formations (classi-
cism, sentimentalism, romanticism and even Croatian baroque,
renaissance and oral poetry) are subordinated to the specific
social function of literature so that we do not refer to this
period with one of the European formations but rather define
it by the specific social function of literature and according
to this give the term to the epoch. In this case the concept of
"epoch" predominates over the concept of stylistic formation
and conditions the interpretation of individual works.
The periods which we include in the epoch of modern litera-
ture are separately and emphatically stylistically polymorphic.
But exactly because of that the concept of "period" can help
here in the interpretation of literary history. The processes
which are taking place in the literature of this century from the
time when the disintegration of the stylistic formation of realism
began are distinct in their definite polymorphism so that we are
faced with the very great task of systematising very diverse liter-
ary material and forming stylistic groups. The simple opposi-
tion of modernism v. (critical)realism or modernism v. (socialist)
200 ALEKSANDAR FLAKER

realism is not at all satisfactory for our epoch, especially if these

concepts conceal value judgements, but we shall gladly agree
with Zhirmunsky when he forwards the thesis that present-day
literature ("contemporary modernism") is characterised by a
"multiplicity of poetic microsystems". However, at the same
time he is convinced that these "microsystems" even now
(we saw this principle of Zhirmunsky's explicitly in the example
of baroque) "appear as a part of the universal macrosystem
characteristic of the general tendencies in art". 2~ The question
is, however, whether that macrosystem is singular and universal
or whether we are dealing here with the existence and succession
of several macrosystems which we could denote by the term
stylistic formation ? And until we manage to form such a macro-
system or such macrosystems and find what constitutes their
unity, the concept of "period" can serve us quite well i n
the designation of the basic contrasts in these polymorphous
times from the end of the 19th century and the beginning of
the 20th.

STYLISTIC FORMATION AND THE SOCIAL FUNCTION OF

LITERATURE

We have already emphasized that in some cases the concept

of stylistic formation, as we have constructed it starting with
the works of one literature or a group of literatures (and we
usually construct these concepts starting with the more devel-
oped literatures which were or are at a certain time styloge-
neous for our cultural sphere), may be useful in the analysis of
individual stylistic segments in the work or works (the concepts
of baroque, classicism and romanticism in the interpretation o f
Ma~urani6's poetry, for example) but it can neither be com-
pletely satisfactory for the construction of a period in another
literature nor for its designation. The mechanical transfer of
concepts from one literature to another can lead to many mis-

~oCf. the previously quoted paper, pp. 11.

STYLISTIC F O R M A T I O N 201

conceptions. We have already implicitly drawn attention to the

fact that stylistic formations change, if the individual charac-
teristics of their structures are in question, in their dependence
on traditions which play an active role in the individual national
literatures but even more so in the specific features of the liter-
ary historical process in those literatures, which is normally
reflected in the specific features of the literatures in various
national and social milieus. If, for example, we compare Croa-
tian, Slovak, Czech or even Polish realism with the most
developed stylistic formation of realism in French or Russian
literature, we shall quickly reach the conclusion that many
structural characteristics have changed in those milieus (when
we say "milieu" we are making a deliberate mistake, leaving
the sphere of literature and entering that of society), and we
can relate these changes to the function of literature in societies
in which literature for a long time had a national and didactic
function which, in its turn, decelerated the development of a
markedly socio-analytical functionality found in the stylistic
formation of realism in the literature of nations which had
already solved their national questions and developed a more
open class struggle.
The Czech structuralist Jan Muka~ovsk3~, introduced the
concept of function into his aesthetic system when, in contact
with Marxism, he realised that it was necessary to break out of
the closed circle of the immanent study of literature. In his
book, Aesthetic Function, Norm and Value (1936), Muka~ovsk3~
defined his conception of the aesthetic function by which artistic
works differ from non-artistic works, but he immediately
stressed that there are no form boundaries between objects
and incidents which are bearers of the aesthetic function and
those which are not. Art, therefore, has function other than
merely the aesthetic, and the contrast "between the subordina-
tion and predominance of the aesthetic function in the hierarchy
of functions" is characteristic of art. These opposed forces
"at the same time organise it and disorganise, that is, maintain
in it a continual, developmental movement". In literature, for
202 ALEKSANDAR FLAKER

example, the aesthetic function competes with the informative

function, especially as expressed in rhetoric, the essay, didactic
poetry, the novelised biography, or artistic prose. Significant
here is the randomly made observation about drama, character-
istic of a thinker who belonged to a natioh with the clearly defined
tradition of a national movement in the 19th century: "Drama
oscillated between art and propaganda; the history of the devel-
opment of the Czech National Theatre clearly shows how
important non-aesthetic motives were, especially the need for
national propaganda."
In this book Muka~ovsk~ linked the question of the (aesthet-
ic) function with the "collective" (a group or society), stressing
that "the tendencies towards widening or narrowing the aesthet-
ic area" are social facts and he therefore took his examples
from modern literature and art, emphasizing on the one hand
the "panaestheticism" of symbolism and decadence and on the
other, the polemic against aestheticism ("um~leekost") within
contemporary art: constructivism, surrealism and ultimately
socialist realism. Functions, therefore, are created through
superindividual units, zl
Muka~ovsk~ succinctly formulated the relationship between
the aesthetic function and other ("practical") functions in art
in his synthetic and lucid article on Czech structuralism written
for the Polish public in the following way:
"The aim is the 'content' of every function; it determines
the functions' quality and as a rule gives it its name: economic,
political, cognitive and so on. The aesthetic function has no
such content and in that sense is contentless, formal. It is the
dialectic negation of functionality in general. That does not
prevent it, however, from entering dialectic relationship with
other functions, creating with them syntheses; exactly because
it has no quality of its own, it takes on very easily the quality
of the other functions which it accompanies. This is the case
in art and outside of it. In art, however, the aesthetic function

~ J. Muka~ovsk~, Studie z estetiky (Prague, 1966), pp. 19--22.

STYLISTIC FORMATION 203

is the fundamental 'asymptomatic' pole of the antinomy, the

natural and basic function. Outside art this pole is one of the
extra-aesthetic functions."
Emphasizing that research into the functions of art is only
in its nascent stages, Muka~ovsk~ concludes the section devoted
to this problem in the following manner:
"Because art, allegedly against its own nature, is constantly
forced to have practical recourse to the life process, it renews
its aesthetic structure. The relationship of art to material and
social reality is manifested, therefore, in all its diversity and
intimacy in the light of the functions. The study of functions,
along with the study of semantics in art, is capable of creating
an organic link between the sociology of art and the studies of
the aesthetic structure, areas which have so far manifested
- to the detriment of things - rather an aspiration towards
mutual isolation", zz
Muka[ovsk3~ did not go into a detailed analysis of the problem
of extraaesthetic functions of the literary work. He merely
named some of the possible functions as, for example, the
cognitive, political, educative, moral and social in various
n u a n c e s . . . His followers have, however, obviously worked
out some sort of typology of the functions of literature in more
recent time. Thus in the text-book, The World of Literature,
written by a group of authors under the editorship of Felix
Vodi6ka, we find a whole chapter on the Functions of Literature
which draws its conclusions from the aesthetic system of struc-
turalism. According to the author of the chapter there are three
basic functions of literature: cognitive, expressive and evaluative,
(pozndvad, vyjad~ovac[, hodnotici). In its function of cogniz-
ance, literature attempts to reproduce the individual phenom-
ena of reality in order to comprehend it; in its function of
expressing, literature apprehends the world by subjectivisation,
emphasizing the individual's experience; in its function of

~2 j. Muka~ovsk3~, " K pojmoslovi ~eskoslovensk6 teorie um~ni",

in: Studie z estetiky, p. 123.
204 ALEKSANDAR FLAKER.

evaluating (the author also emphasizes the concept of the

educative function) literature takes real-life phenomena to
compare them with a particular ideal and to demonstrate a
certain conception of the basic problems of the individual,
society and man, using the idealization of certain human values
or fantastically constructed (allegorical, utopian) images. In all
these cases these functions link up with the aesthetic character
of literature and they are atl present in the literary work. In a
certain situation in the literary development, however, some of
them are reduced at the expense of one. (See Muka~ovsk~'s
observations on the multifunctionality of art!) zz
Returning to the question of stylistic formations and the
social function of literature, we wish to point out that we arrived
at this concept in the paper On Realism in i958 z4 spontaneously,
without any knowledge of the theories of Muka~ovsk~ and his
followers2~ and that we are developing it further in our literary
historical reflections without the intention of working out the
aesthetic system of structuralism. We accept, however, some of
its initiatives which we consider can be fruitful for the history
of literature.
Stylistic formations, therefore, as national or supernational
literary unities can be described in their basic stylistic character-
istics and their historical ripening, development and disinte-
gration may be explained by the internal laws of literary evolu-
tion, but we can only give a full interpretation of these unities
and the separate parts within the unities, as well as the dialectic

23 Sv~t literatury, sv. I, napsal autorsk~ kolektiv za vgdeni Felixe

Vodi~ky (Prague, 1967), pp. 23--25.
~4 Stilovi i razdoblja (Zagreb, 1964), p. 230.
~5 The concept itself, 'the social function of literature', obviously
crystalized in Czech criticism much earlier. This was the title, for example,
of Van~ura's article " O spole~ensk6 funkci um~ni" in the periodical
Material, 1931. Felix Vodi~ka also obviously used it spontaneously,
not defining it as a term, in just the same waY (spole~enska funkce),
t h o u g h otherwise linked with Muka~ovsk3L Cf. Struktura vfvoje (Prague,
1969), pp. 73, 165 and elswehere.
STYLISTIC FORMATION 205

processes of their appearance, structuring, destruction and re-

placement, when we come to see these literary structures in their
social function.
Here we must immediately make something clear: we do not
define the social function of a literary work or a whole stylistic
formation on the basis of our knowledge of non-literary, social
and economic processes, but primarily starting with the struc-
tural interrelationships within the work itself or within the
stylistic formation as a whole. More exactly, we should not,
therefore, replace the question of the functionality of literary
structures with the question of the social origin of literary works,
that is, we should not confuse research into functionality with
socio-genetic research as taken to extremes by those Marxist
literary historians who, looking for "the sociological equiva-
lent" (according to Plekhanov's line of approach), tried to
classify literature according to class designations (bourgeois,
petty-bourgeois, peasant and proletarian literature).
The question of whether we shall interpret a realistic work
according to the social ideas which it expresses (very often by
the statements of the characters) or whether we shall connect
it with the socio-historical processes of the country in which it
appeared is not so important for the examination of a realistic
work. Far more important is whether or not we shall look for
the realisation of a social function which constitutes the essence
of the stylistic formation of realism. A realistic work is created
at that moment when the structure of the work begins to fulfil
the socio-analytical function within society. It is exactly the
determining of the time and manner in which such a function
begins to be fulfilled in the work which is the task of the liter-
ary historian. Starting from his own subject for which he must
have the necessary scholarly requirements, the literary historian
actually helps to construct the cultural history of his nation
and mankind.
We cannot talk about stylistic formation, and consequently,
about the stylistic formation of realism, before we have series
of works which are analogous in structure (and therefore in
206 ALEKSANDAR FLAKER

function) in the diachrony and synchrony of the literary histor-

ical process. The disintegration of the stylistic formation will
set in then new literary structures have already started to negate
the possibility of the socio-analytieal examination of the man-
society interrelationships, when the activity in the world pre-
sented by the work becomes fragmented, dissociated, and incom-
prehensible, and man, or at least the literary character, ceases
to be the centre of activity. In the period which begins with the
disintegration of realism a permanent separation, and polarisa-
tion of the social functions of literature obviously sets in. Thus
some groups stress the exclusiveness of the aesthetic or expressive
function in their works, others give priority to the compre-
hension of the individual's psychic processes (how much did
Freud or Adler learn from Dostoevsky's work, which, although
true to the socio-analytical function, already develops other
functions !) while others, convinced that the laws of history are
already known, assess social phenomena from definite philo-
sophical and even political standpoints. A characteristic liter-
ary historical phenomenon developed before our eyes, for
example, when a whole stylistic formation appeared which
stressed its socio-pedagogical function, taking its structural
elements from the stylistic formation of realism but changing
their function in the new structures - we are talking, of course,
about socialist realism whose works cannot be studied outside
their functionality, or outside the interrelationship between the
socio-pedagogical function and other functions. The examina-
tion of the structures of these groups and formations in modern
literature from the point of view of their functionality still lies
before us. As regards the conceptual apparatus, that merely
exists in sketch-form, so that we very often prefer to describe
the function rather than to name it with a strictly defined
concept.
It should be stressed once again that we do not construct
a stylistic formation by the simple comparison of literary works
in diachrony and synchrony but by their selection and by exam-
ining their interrelationships within the structure of structures
STYLISTIC FORMATION 207

which we have called "stylistic formation". In that structure

we examine, amongst other things, the relationships between
individual literary forms. In many cases we may infer these
relationships almost directly from the social function of the
individual stylistic formation. Thus, for instance, in classicism
we have a whole hierarchy of literary forms and each of them
has its own purpose; individual literary forms are placed
in clear opposition to each other; the ode glorifies vice and
satire censures shortcomings, the tragedy extols ethical prin-
ciples and the comedy attacks social vices and so on. Each
literary form has a special place in the function of assessing a
human act within the stable system of ethical values. Romanti-
cism breaks up that system, develops the lyrical principle,
bringing "lyrical disorder" into the structure of structures and
in fact subordinates the whole stylistic formation in its nascent
stage to the function of expressing human emotions. Realism,
on the other hand, primarily develops the novel as the most
suitable literary form for the analysis of social and psychological
relations. Avant-garde groups break down the hierarchy of
literary forms and thus place most importance on those which
can be directly applied in the everyday life of man - they did
after all formulate the theories of contemporary functionalism
and not only in architecture but in other branches of art.
Our path will lead us, then, from stylistics towards the exam-
ination of macrostructures, from the examination of macro-
structures in their function towards the single word in context
- it is always necessary to go round this circle in literary histor-
ical research over and over again.