From the time of its appearance, formalism was a subject of discussion and polemics, leading its representatives in turn to speak out in defense of the movement. Here we translate a text by Boris Tomaševskij, hitherto unpublished in French, “The formal method (by way of an obituary),” written in 1922 and published in 1925, whose interest is far from anecdotal. It situates the genesis of formalism in a broad historical and cultural context and spells out the nature of the movement, which is not a well-formed doctrine but is based on a fundamental principle: study in literature what is given (including the ideological component that no formalist ignores) and do it in a specifically literary way.