De l'art autonome du texte à la parole d'autri : Boris Èjxenbaum et la rhétorique

This contribution aims at proposing a reflection on the encounter between the theoretical and methodological development of the Opoyaz with rhetoric as a doctrine and a practice of persuasive speech, oriented on to the audience and on its possible answers. We will focus in particular on Boris Eikhenbaum’s article devoted to the style of Lenin's speeches (Osnovnye stilevye tendentsi v rechi Lenina, published in “Lef” 1, 1924, revised and republished in 1927 with the title of Oratorsky stil’ Lenina), written when the formalist experience starts to be forcibly stopped by historical circumstances. In this essay, Eikhenbaum’s analysis withdraws from the territory canonically pertaining to the domain of poetic language, to explore its suburbs: at the edge between literary and extra-literary sphere, between poetry and byt, there exists a hybrid zone of expressive strategies and practical needs, of historical impulses and creative urgencies. Through the stylistic analysis of Lenin’s discourse, Eikhenbaum more and more precisely circumscribes the sphere of persuasive words, the field of rhetoric, where multiple purposes, rooted in the hic et nunc and a profusion of proceedings, intonations, syntactic architectures, rhythmic patterns intersect each other and coexist. The problem of present and past relationships between literature and society, of that border area that the essay on Lenin has shown as dense of theoretical and methodological stimuli, will therefore occupy more and more the time and the interests of Eikhenbaum and of the other formalists, and will often touch issues concerning the persuasive public speech, problems that constitutionally go beyond the imperative of the textual immanence.