286 Chronik
der BRD und der Volksrepublik Polen möglich geworden.5 Neben editorischen
Projekten wurden „Stipendien für polnische Intellektuelle vergeben und organi-
sierte Studienreisen für Journalisten, Übersetzer und Verleger“6 veranstaltet. In
den darauf folgenden Jahren brachte Dedecius mit Unterstützung der Robert Bosch
Stiftung 50 Bände der Polnischen Bibliothek im Suhrkamp-Verlag heraus, die eine
Übersicht über das polnische Schrifttum aller Epochen darstellt. Das zweite mo-
numentale Projekt der Darmstädter Einrichtung war das siebenbändige Panorama
der polnischen Literatur des 20. Jahrhunderts (Zürich, Ammann-Verlag), das kom-
plett – genauso wie die Polnische Bibliothek – bei der Frankfurter Buchmesse im Jahre
2000, als Polen Schwerpunktland war, präsentiert werden konnte. Unter Dedecius’
Veröffentlichungen befinden sich auch zahlreiche Essays, die der Literatur- und
Kulturgeschichte Polens, translatorischen Fragen und seiner eigenen Biographie
gewidmet sind, etwa Deutsche und Polen. Botschaft der Bücher (München 1971),
Vom Übersetzen. Theorie und Praxis (Frankfurt/Main 1986), Ein Europäer aus Lodz:
Erinnerungen (Frankfurt/Main 2006). In diesem letztgenannten Buch enthüllte er
weniger bekannte Etappen seines Lebens, von denen er jahrelang nicht gerne sprach:
die Schlacht bei Stalingrad und seine Zeit in der sowjetischen Gefangenschaft.
Für seine Leistungen als Übersetzer, Essayist und Kulturvermittler wurde
Dedecius in Deutschland und Polen mehrfach mit Preisen und Orden ausgezeich-
net; so erhielt er die Ehrendoktorate der Universität zu Köln (1976), der Katholischen
Universität Lublin (1987), der Universität Łódź (1990) und der Jagiellonen-Universität
Krakau (2000). 2011 folgte die Ehrendoktorwürde der Europa-Universität Viadrina in
Frankfurt (Oder). Seit 2003 vergibt die Robert Bosch Stiftung in Zusammenarbeit
mit dem DPI den „Karl-Dedecius-Preis für polnische Übersetzer deutscher Literatur
und deutsche Übersetzer polnischer Literatur“.
In den letzten Jahren arbeitete Dedecius an einem umfangreichen Buch, einer Art
dokumentarischem Bildband über seine Aktivitäten als Übersetzer, Literaturkritiker
und deutsch-polnischer Vermittler. Dieser sollte „ein Resümee seines bewegten
Lebens und Kulturschaffens ziehen“ (Dieter Bingen, Andrzej Kaluza, loc. cit.). In ei-
nem Gespräch im November 2013 sagte er, es wäre sein Wunsch, dass seine unveröf-
fentlichten Gedichte nach seinem Tod der breiten Leserschaft zugänglich gemacht
werden. Er scherzte, es wäre posthum seine Auferstehung als Dichter. Intuitiv hat
das der mit ihm eng befreunde Zbigniew Herbert vorausgesehen. Er betrachtete sei-
nen Übersetzer in erster Linie als Lyriker, der seine Texte im Deutschen nachdichtet
und auf das eigene Schaffen verzichtet, um die Werke anderer zu übersetzen.7
5 Über das Thema schreibt ausführlich: Błażej Kaźmierczak, „Weder Exil-Solidarność noch
Filiale Warschaus”? czyli Wokół atmosfery w Polsce i w kołach emigracyjnych wobec powstania
Deutsches Polen-Institut (1979–1985). Próba rekonesansu na podstawie Archiwum Osobistego
Karla Dedeciusa, Rocznik Karla Dedeciusa. Dedeciana – tłumaczenie – recepcja / Karl Dedecius-
Jahrbuch. Dedeciana – Übersetzung – Rezeption 8, 2015, 127–144.
6 Dieter Bingen, Andrzej Kaluza, Karl Dedecius verstorben. Das Deutsche Polen-Institut trauert um
seinen Gründer Karl Dedecius (www.deutsches-polen-institut.de/presse/pressemitteilungen/
karl-dedecius-verstorben/).
7 Przemysław Chojnowski, Herbert i jego tłumacz, Postscriptum Polonistyczne 2012, Nr. 1 (9),
235–241.
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Chronik 287
Als ich im Sommer 2014 mit Karl Dedecius bei ihm zu Hause in Frankfurt am
Main sprach, versuchte der Übersetzer eine Bilanz seines Lebens zu ziehen. Er er-
zählte über seinen Vater, der genauso wie er selbst von der Kriegserfahrung geprägt
war und von Sprachenkenntnissen lebte. Rückblickend stellte er sich selbst die Frage,
ob es sich gelohnt habe, Jahrzehnte seines Lebens der literarischen Vermittlung
zu widmen. Der Lohn für die Mühe und die intensive Arbeit waren für ihn jene
„Freundschaften über die Grenzen“ hinaus, die er mit seinen Autoren pflegen konnte
und die ihm in Erinnerung blieben.
Wien Przemysław Chojnowski
The Legacy of Russian Formalism
and the Rise of the Digital Humanities
The international symposium Russian Formalism and the Digital Humanities took
place in April, 2015 at the Stanford Humanities Center (Stanford, California).
Thoughtfully planned and organized by Jessica Merrill, and expertly coordinated by
Andrei Ustinov, the symposium brought together scholars from different countries,
organizations and disciplines with the purpose of discussing the contemporary state
of the humanities. It focused on two topics of paramount importance in the field
of literary scholarship: whether the science of literature is a viable alternative to the
current state of literary theory (and literary criticism,) a state that can be described
as rigor mortis; and whether the recent rise of the Digital Humanities could be
perceived as a continuation of, rather than a return to the theoretical legacy of the
Formalists: Viktor Shklovsky, Yury Tynianov, Boris Eikhenbaum, Roman Jakobson,
Boris Tomashevsky.
Russian Formalism, which originated in St. Petersburg in 1913, created the field of
literary theory, as an alternative to impressionistic and gullible literary criticism. Its
main goal was to shape a completely new and revolutionary approach to any work
of literature from within, shifting the focus from external circumstances that often
muddled the reception and interpretation of a literary oeuvre to its internal factors, to
its literary specificity. The toolkit put together by Shklovsky, Tynianov and Jakobson
included such concepts, as defamiliarization, automatization, morphology, evolution,
familiar in sciences, yet never previously applied in literary studies, thus describing
it as the science of literature. This is precisely the term used by Eikhenbaum to define
that methodology in his treatise “The Theory of the ‘Formal Method’.”
Disliking the “formalist” moniker, he insisted that they should be called specifi-
cists, as their purpose and their resolve were to specifically investigate literature, not
as a collection of creative occurrences, but as an ecological system. This methodolo-
gy appeared all-embracing, as none of the tendencies in literary criticism, or the fal-
lacies of theoretical trends in the past 100 years could neglect the foundations laid by
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288 Chronik Chronik 289

the Formalists, and ignore the concepts introduced by them, whether it was literary and rhyme in Russian verse”.) Igor Pil’shchikov discussed the formal statistical ap-
fact, device/technique, literary evolution, or close reading. However, one aspect of their proach to the study of literary language developed within the Moscow Linguistic
work remained overlooked outside Russia (and outside the theory of versification, Circle in the 1910–20s, and its relevance to the DHs (“The Legacy of the Moscow
advanced by Tomashevsky) – the quantifying approach to a literary work. The ex- Linguistic Circle and the Digital Humanities Today”.)
planation here is straightforward: Western literary theory is philosophy-based, and Gabriella Safran explored the use of quantitative methods on a corpus of S-R
those who use epistemology for interpreting works of literature are not able to handle rhetoric to test some assertions about political speech and listeners’ attention
numbers and calculations. (“Victor Shklovsky and Victor Chernov on Effective Words: Toward a Formalist and
This is where the Digital Humanities has taken the Formalist original, and moder- Quantitative Analysis of Socialist-Revolutionary Rhetoric”.) Jessica Merrill indicated
nized it for the 21st Century. Hence, the title of the first in the series of the Stanford that the return to the Formalists’ approach was prompted by the emergence of large
Literary Lab pamphlets, “Quantitative Formalism” that posed a set of similar ques- corpora of digitalized literary texts, and suggested a research model to help bridge
tions, regarding systemic patterns in literary evolution, in the properties of litera- the gap between this “verbal mass” and the individual author/text (“The Verbal Mass
ry language, and in quantitative approaches to verse. Taking advantage of scientific and the Database: Defining the Text in Formalist Literary Analysis”.)
progress, these scholars developed a more radical toolkit than their predecessors, The discussions left an impression of scholarly passion and the collegiate in-
demonstrating the relevance of their methodology to the humanities in general. volvement of both speakers and the audience, indicating that projects in the Digital
The symposium offered a great opportunity to get a wider perspective on this me- Humanities take a team-based, collaborative approach, which in its time inspired the
thodology first hand, as two pioneers of the Digital Humanities, Franco Moretti and efforts of the Russian Formalists, culminating in Tynianov-Jakobson’s famous colla-
Matthew Jockers, were present and elucidated the state of play and future develop- boration, “Problems in the Study of Language and Literature” (1928). The symposi-
ments in the science of literature. Moretti discussed the importance for his approach um undoubtedly forged connections between scholars working in similar areas, and
of the heritage of Alexander Veselovsky, who aimed to trace the morphological diver- unveiled new challenges in adapting some of the important aspects of “traditional”
gences of texts across time and space, as explicated in his 2013 monograph “Distant literary theory to the methods encouraged by the Digital Humanities.
Reading.” Jockers presented his research charting plot structures in a corpus of
50,000 literary works, describing how he leveraged natural language processing and San Francisco Andrei Ustinov
sentiment analysis in order to develop a program that extracts latent plot arcs from
narrative fiction. The Formalists separated fabula (idea/impulse of a story) and siuz-
het (unveiling of the plot,) while their students tried to quantify narrative structures,
as Mikhail Petrovsky did in his morphological analysis of Alexander Pushkin’s “The
Shot” (1925).
The papers presented at the symposium created a scholarly dialog and lively deba-
te between those who study Russian Formalism (RF), and those introducing new me-
thods for the study of literature within the Digital Humanities (DHs). Galin Tihanov
examined the claims of scientific rigor that both RF and the DHs have made (“Shades
of Objectivity: Russian Formalism before and after the Digital Humanities”.) Ilya
Kliger discussed affinities and distinctions between RF and the DHs in seeing literary
history as a system rather than a succession of individual authors or works (“Dynamic
Archeology or Distant Reading: Literary Science between Two Formalisms”.)
Peter Steiner argued that the Moretti’s model of literary evolution contradicts the
ideas of linguistic/literary change expressed by Tynianov and Jakobson (“Divergence
vs. Convergence: Moretti, Tynianov, Jakobson”.) Glen Worthey gave a vivid compa-
rative analysis of RF and DHs as intellectual movements and schools of scholarship
(“How Digital Humanities is Made”.) Mark Algee-Hewitt reanimated Jakobson’s
essay “Linguistics and Communication Theory,” and investigated the work of poe-
tic language through the application of information theory (“The Order of Poetry:
Information, Aesthetics and Jakobson’s Theory of Literary Communication”.)
David Birnbaum and Elise Thorsen revealed new computational tools in the quan-
titative study of verse (“Enabling the automated identification and analysis of meter

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