DAS UNHEIMLICHE AUGE DER SCHRIFT: Zur Mediologie des literarischen Erzählens in der russischen Kultur des 19. Jahrhunderts (Gogol', Tolstoj, Šklovskij)

The disintegration of synesthesia of the ear and eye and the dominance of visuality are primary effects of writing and typography, to which language cultures seem to react differently. Because of the Orthodox religious traditions and the comparatively late beginning of an expended book market, for the Russian writers of the 19th century these effects turned out to be ethically unacceptable and they led to various poetic strategies to compensate the dominance of visuality produced by written narration. The article tests this hypothesis by two examples: The first part analyzes Nikolaj Gogol's Portrait (Portret, 1842) connecting it with his early essay on painting „The Last Day of Pompeii“ („Poslednyj den ‘ Pompei“, 1835). The second one shows how Lev Tolstoj ethically devaluates visuality in his early text The Raid (Nabeg, 1853) in a way that will later bring him to question his whole aesthetic oeuvre and to change into pedagogical, religious and philosophical genres. A closing look on Viktor Šklovskij‘s concepts shows how the rejection of visual aesthetic autonomy that arose during the 19th century is theoretically confirmed in the 1910's and 1920's by Formalist literary theory.