SERGEI M EISENSTEIN

Ill. 5 – A map drawn by Eisenstein while traveling through Mexico (1931)
graphic reproductions are here replaced by small drawings referring to specific
artworksorspecific formsof representation,theneutralblackvelvet background
of Warburg’s plates is replaced by white paper, and what is at stake is not the
mapping of the historical migrations of certain founding Pathosformeln (even
though a “formula of pathos” in the Eisensteinian sense is clearly visible at the
center of the drawing), but rather the connections between cinema and certain
specificmomentsinthehistoryofthearts.Still,evenifwekeepinmindallthese
important differences, what emerges from this drawing is once more the conviction,
shared by Eisenstein and Warburg, that the history of images and artistic
forms should be approached through montage. Montage here becomes an instrument
of orientation, like a map, within a history of artistic forms that would
otherwiseremainanintricatelabyrinth. 305
AtthecenterofthedrawingwefindtwocrucialimageswhichstandforEisensteinattheorigins
notonlyofcinema butalsoofany formofartisticrepresentation:thefigureofapregnantwomanwithafetusclearlyvisibleinherwomb,and
the figure of a body which bears the signs of the vertical wounds caused by a
piercingknife.
The woman with a fetus in her womb refers to a theme we have already encounteredinEisenstein’swritings.ThethemeofMLB,Mutterleibversenkung,theact
of “sinking into the mother’s womb,” returning to that prenatal condition of the
94 antonio somaini