SERGEI M EISENSTEIN

English under the title “A Dialectic Approach to Film Form.” The adoption of
dialectics is very important for understanding Eisenstein’s transition from short
essays and articles (in the 1920s) to amorphous books without a beginning or
end, endlessly growing and transitioning from one into the other (1930s-1940s).
This transition, in my view, is partially related to the fact that dialectics allows
onetoconceiveeveryphenomenonintheformsofitshistoricaldevelopmentand
formation. Every phenomenon acquires a limitless dynamic genealogy, which is
what leads to a change in the form of the texts and the creation of projects like
the“generalhistoryofcinema,”likeabranchingdialecticalgenealogy.
“TheDramaturgyofFilmForm”(alsoknownas“ADialecticApproachtoFilm
Form”)beginswithadeclaration:
Thus:
The projection of the dialectic system of things
into the brain
into creating abstractly
into the process of thinking
yields: dialectic methods of thinking;
dialectic materialism – PHILOSOPHY
And also:
The projection of the same system of things
while creating concretely
while giving form
yields: ART. 39
Inthisexceptionallyimportanttext Eisensteinformulatesthemainconflict ofart
as a conflict between “natural being and creative tendentiousness.” At the same
time,natureandnaturalbeingareproclaimedthebearersofthepassiveprincipleof
being. Nature is passiveness and indifference. It is opposed by creative rationality
and subjectivity which follow the “active principle of production.” The dynamics
of development and historicism appear as a result of the penetration of the active
subject into the passiveness of the external substance. This position is so important for
EisensteinthathenamesoneofhismainworksNonindifferentNature.Butthisisa
central idea for Hegel as well. Thus, for instance, in the systematic criticism to
which he subjected Spinoza, the German philosopher constantly underlined that
Spinoza was incapable of going beyond the limits of the substance which was
external to consciousness, passive, indifferent, and knew no internal principle of
development besides degradation into attributes and modi. Hegel asserted that
Spinoza was only familiar with the “rigid, unyielding substance.” 40 He wrote:
“As all differences and determinations of things and of consciousness simply go
backintotheOnesubstance,onemaysaythatinthesystemofSpinozaallthings
aremerelycastdownintothisabyssofannihilation.[…][It]comestonovitality,
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