SERGEI M EISENSTEIN

20. Naum Kleiman provides us with a passage of Eisenstein in his notes to the
“Psychology of Composition” that goes even further and links the organic world to
the inorganic one: “In Metod, Eisenstein analyzes the embodiment in art of the
‘kingdoms of nature’ which separate from each other at a certain stage of evolution:
‘In order for a representative of each “kingdom” to take shape in a work of art, it
must take on the form of a representative of the “preceding” kingdom! In order to
enter art, i.e. in order to find an image, in order to join in form and style: a plant
borrowsthestructureofamineral;ananimal–ofaplant;ahuman–ofananimal;a
divinity – the form of a human!’” (The Psychology of Composition (Calcutta: Seagull,
1987), p. 107, n. 28.
21. Sergei Eisenstein, “On Disney,” in The Eisenstein Collection, ed. Richard Taylor
(Calcutta: Seagull, 2006), p. 117.
22. Ibid., p. 119
23. Perhaps we can look at the success of the Lord of the Rings films in the same light.
And the Harry Potter books and films, too.
24. Eisenstein, “On Disney,” p. 119.
25. Ibid., p. 119.
26. “Jediraiparreconnaissancequej’endoislaplusgrandepartieàPilpay,sageindien”
(Jean de la Fontaine, Œuvres complètes [Paris : Hachette, 1883-1892], vol. 7, p. 59).
27. Originating in the fourth century or even earlier, the Panchatantra is a collection of
fables illustrating the Indian doctrine of the statecraft. These fables have been
translated into Pahlavi, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, and practically all major languages.
It is also the origin of several stories in Arabian Nights, Sindbad, and many Western
nursery rhymes and ballads.
28. The lowest time limit that can be ascribed to this collection is first century BC.
29. Even the first avatars, or incarnations of God, are not human in form. They are
matsya (fish), kurma (tortoise), varaha (boar), narasimha (half-lion and half-man) and
waman(adwarf).Inpassing,itisinterestingtonotethataccordingtothissequence,
life begins in water and then assumes the form of an amphibian, then an animal,
then a half-lion, half-man, and finally a dwarf, resembling a sketchy outline of
evolution!
30. Ajantrik(Ritwik Ghatak,1958). The originallanguage of thefilmis Bengali.It isalso
known in English as The Mechanical Man, The Pathetic Fallacy, and The Unmechanical.
31. I am referring to the famous “Statement on Sound,” published in Žizn’ Iskusstva
(August 5, 1928) signed by Eisenstein, Pudovkin, and Alexandrov and reproduced in
SergeiEisenstein,FilmForm:EssaysinFilmTheory,ed.andtrans.JayLeyda(NewYork:
Harcourt Brace and World, 1949). Eisenstein’s later detailed analysis of the music in
Alexander Nevsky relies on the specifics of the notation for the Western classical
music, as pointed out by Michel Chion and others.
32. See Sergei Eisenstein, The Film Sense, ed. and trans. Jay Leyda (New York: Harcourt
Brace and World, 1942), especially the chapters “Synchronization of Senses” (pp.
69-112) and “Colour and Meaning” (pp. 113-156).
33. The earliest form of Indian music that can still be heard through an unbroken oral
tradition is that of the Rig-Veda. It is a collection of hymns, in praise of various
notes 517