If
we could fly out of that window hand in hand, hover over this great city,
gently remove the roofs, and and peep in at the queer things which are going
on, the strange coincidences, the plannings, the cross-purposes, the wonderful
chains of events, working through generations, and leading to the most outre
results, it would make all fiction with its conventionalities and foreseen
conclusions most stale and unprofitable.”
The other day I went to a lecture on
Formalism, and the lecturer explained to us how, according to Formalism,
literature uses literary devices to “roughen” or alter normal language and to
defamiliarize ordinary situations.
Formalists
like Victor Shklovsky contend that in our everyday lives we become so used to
certain ideas or situations that we never stop to question them, or even notice
them. We stop truly seeing.
Later
on, I nearly walked past my maths teacher. I just didn’t see her, because I
wasn’t expecting to see her, and I wasn’t even paying attention to the people
passing me on the street. I just assumed
that they were all complete strangers.
Question of the day: Is there an unpretentious way of talking
about how life imitates art?