Апология действия. "Маршрут в бессмертие" Бориса Эйхенбаума как киноповесть

Новое литературное обозрение. 2017. Т. 147. № 5. С. 46–55.

Levchenko J.

Boris Eikhenbaum wrote the novel The Route to Immortality between 1932—1933, both marking and concluding the crisis of his Formalist biography, which had begun in the latter half of the 1920s. Were it not for the complete and utter failure of this book, Eikhenbaum’s rebranding of himself as a post-Formalist might have sent him down other paths besides those of editorial work and further absorption in his “Tolstoy project”. Tynianov managed to become an author of popular historical fiction and a screenwriter; Eikhenbaum did not. Nevertheless, an unsuccessful attempt is still an attempt, although most of what is written about Eikhenbaum avoids discussing this novel or focuses on its mechanically philological nature. Levchenko suggests that the book is also interesting in its reflection of Eikhenbaum’s unrealized ambitions as a screenwriter. His peculiar ideas about film are curious to no small degree because of their dilettantism, and can be traced back to his 1920s work in film theory; in the novel, they change in accordance with his ideas about how a screenplay should look, or visualizations of literature.

Keywords: теория кино, беллетристика, screenplay, киносценарий, Russian Formalism, Русский формализм, popular history, Film theory