Possible impact of the labor theory of Karl B"ucher on Russian formalism

Intellectual History of Russian formalism bypasses party provocative forhis time theory of Karl Wilhelm Bücher. Justifying work as the artistic form of torture,Bücher unwittingly paved the way for formalists to talk about automation and de-au-tomatization. But in Bücher’s system labor was not an enterprise, but only a prerequisitefor the enterprise, while the Russian translation of the bookWork and Rhythm(1899)turned the labor to initiative to enterprise. The border between symbolism and formal-ism is not in relation to the transcendental, but in how art belongs to the enterprise:the formalist aesthetics afraid of automatization, which occurred in Symbolists work.Therefore, “device” (rus: priem) as pathetic gesture necessarily required to combatthis false pragmatism, as tool of struggle served an anesthetization of Bücher’s theses.Rhythmic work became a model for aesthetic perception.