The current article is based on a chapter from the author’s book Russian Formalism: A Metapoetics(1984). It deals with the poetics of Roman Jakobson formulated during his stay inPrague from 1920 to 1938 and treats this subject from an epistemological perspective outliningthree incompatible scholarly/artistic trends which informed it: Husserlian Phenomenology,Saussurian linguistics and Russian Futurism. From Husserl, Jakobson borrowed the conceptof “expression” (Ausdruck) – the sign whose self‑samenesswas absolute. But he departedfrom the German philosopher by conceiving of this semiotic identity in terms of a Saussurean“social consciousness.” And he further relativized it through the modernist notion of “de‑familiarization”– an incessant drive of poetic signs for an aesthetic rejuvenation. To mitigatethe tension between Phenomenological stability and Futurist instability, the essay concludes,Jakobson grounded his poetics in phonology: the sound system universal to all languages thatis impervious to any violations.