SERGEI M EISENSTEIN

paroît quelques-uns qui, comme des pointes de rochers, semblent percer la surface & la dominer,
ils ne doivent cette prérogative qu’à des systèmes particuliers, qu’à des conventions vagues, qu’à
certains évenemens étrangers, & non à l’arrangement physique des êtres & à l’intention de la
nature” [“The universe only presents to us particular beings,infinite in number, with
hardly any fixed or determinate division. None can be termed the first or the last;
everything is linked therein, and follows what came before by imperceptible nuances.
In this immense uniformity of objects, if some appear which, like the tips of rocks,
seemtopiercethroughthesurfaceanddominateit,theyonlyowethisprerogativeto
particular systems, vague conventions, vague and foreign events – and not to the
physical arrangement of beings and to the intention of Nature”] (Diderot, art.
“Encyclopédie”, Encyclopédie V, 640A). The notion of a natural equality of objects,
which follows from this, influenced the idea of the social equality that became, along
with freedom and fraternity, one of the demands of the French Revolution. Diderot
considered nature to be the “primary model” of art and of theater uppermost, which
for him embodied the synthesis not only of thoughts and feelings, of spectacle and
the spectator, but of various means of expression as well.
5. Eisenstein comparesheretheChristian church’snotionof“universalunity” withthe
slogan of the Communist Manifesto: “Workers of the world, unite!” and invokes the
propagandistic statement made at the 17th Communist Party Congress (January 26-
February10,1934)aboutthe“liquidationofexploitativeclasses inUSSR”.Thetragic
paradox lies in the fact that during the Great Purges (1934-1938) most of this
Congress’s delegates were “liquidated,” because many of them criticized the results
of the first Five-Year plan, privately opposed Stalin and discussed the possibility of
his removal. Officially the 17th Congress was called the “Congress of Victors”, but
has become known as the “Congress of the Condemned”.
6. Eisenstein wrote about the polemics between the German philosopher Max Nordau
(1849-1923, author of the book Entartung [Degeneration] in 1892) and the composer
Richard Wagner and his idea of a “synthesis of arts” in his book Metod [Method] (see
vol. 1, pp. 131-134, the chapter entitled “Grundproblem” [The fundamental
problem]).
7. InthesecondpartofthebookMontazh[Montage]Eisensteindevotedseveralchapters
to the “basic phenomenon of cinema” [in Russian: “osnovnoi fenomen kino”, or
“prafenomen kino”], that is, the eidetic confluence (“superimposition”) of still images
(frames) into the movement of one uninterrupted shot in the viewer’s perception.
On a higher level this process is repeated in the method of the confluence of shots
through montage into a unified action or narrative (and, in the end, into a unified
composition of the film) (see Montazh, pp. 157-175; Engl. transl. Towards a Theory of
Montage, SW2, pp. 109-123). He initially presented this concept in the article
“Oshibka Georga Mel’e” (Sovetskoe kino 3-4, 1933, pp. 63-64; Engl. transl. “Georges
Méliès’s Mistake”, in SW1, pp. 258-260).
8. Eisenstein wrote about the combination of different phases of movement in one
painting, using as his examples Honoré Daumier and Tintoretto, in his book
Montazh (pp. 158-161; Engl. transl. Toward a Theory of Montage, SW2, pp. 109-114).
The title El Maragato (in the manuscript Eisenstein mistakenly writes “Margorotto”)
refers to the cycle of six panels by Francisco de Goya depicting the capture of the
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