SERGEI M EISENSTEIN

315. Onthewayinwhichdifferentdefinitionsofamediummayproducedifferent“fore-”
and “after-histories,” see Peter Geimer, Bilder aus Versehen. Eine Geschichte fotografischer
Erscheinungen (Hamburg: Philo Fine Arts, 2010), especially chapter 1 (“Geschichte
und ‘Vorgeschichte’ der Fotografie”), pp. 21-55.
316. “Dynamic Mummification,” p. 123. Here Eisenstein misquotes Goethe by writing
“Verbleibe” instead of “Verweile.”
317. “In Praise of the Cine-chronicle,” p. 225.
318. Ibid., p. 237.
319. Sergei M. Eisenstein, “Colour Film,” in Notes of a Film Director (Moscow: Foreign
Languages Publishing House, [c. 1946]), p. 124.
320. Sergei M. Eisenstein, “Foreword” [1946], in ibid., p. 6.
321. Sergei M. Eisenstein, “Ever Onwards!,” in SW 3, pp. 352-353.
Part One – Sergei M. Eisenstein, Notes for a General History of
Cinema
1. The Heir
1. This text is one of the earliest in the series of notes from 1946-48 for the General
History of Cinema. At the same time, it is a result of many years of reflections on the
genealogyofallcinematicformsandtheirprecursorsinthehistoryofthearts.Inhis
theoretical writings and in his lectures at VGIK Eisenstein analyzed the cinematic
potentialof traditional formsofart,treating cinema astheir “rightfulheir”. The text
was first published in 1995 in the journal Kinovedcheskie zapiski, 28, pp. 115-119.
2. The “second baroque” (or neo-baroque) refers to one of the stylistic tendencies of
eclecticism, manifested from the middle of the 19th century to the beginning of the
20th century mainly in architecture, but also in sculpture, the applied arts, and
industrial design. In Russia certain features of the “second baroque” were used in
the style of art nouveau, which emerged at the turn of the century in the period of
cinema’s birth.
3. The term “-isms” refers to the various avant-gardes that in the 1910s and 1920s
designated themselves with terms ending invariably with “-ism”: Futurism, Cubism,
Expressionism, Constructivism, Surrealism, etc. In 1925, El Lissitzky published
together with Hans Arp a book entitled Die Kunstismen (Zürich-München-Leipzig:
Rentsch, 1925), which presented, through a montage of definitions given by the
artiststhemselvesandimagesoftheirmostemblematicworks,themainavant-garde
tendenciesinthevisualartsbetween1914and1924underthefollowingheadings(in
German): Abstraktivismus, Dadaismus, Expressionismus, Futurismus, Kompressionismus,
Konstruktivismus, Kubismus, Neoplastizismus, Purismus, Simultanismus, Suprematismus,
Verismus.
4. Denis Diderot in his Encyclopedia introduces the notion of nuance as an almost
imperceptibledifferenceofonekindofobject(being)fromanother:“L’universnenous
offre que des êtres particuliers, infinis en nombre, & sans presqu’aucune division fixe &
déterminée;iln’yenaaucunqu’onpuisseappeleroulepremierouledernier;touts’yenchaîne&
s’y succède par des nuances insensibles; & à travers cette uniforme immensité d'objets, s'il en
450 notes