R u s s i a n

A v a n t – g a r d e

l i t e r a t u r e

Lecture 5

Montage - Related Literature

• S. Eisenstein: Film Form / Film Sense.• L. Kuleshov: Fifty years in Film / Kuleshov on Film• D. Vertov: Kino-eye: The Writings of Dziga Vertov• V. Pudovkin: Film Technique and Film Acting• M. Tupitsyn: Gustav Klutsis and Valentina Kulagina:

Photography and montage after Constructivism. 2004.• D. Ades: Photomontage. 1996• B. Buchloch: ”From Faktura to Factography” // October,

30/1984.• M. Teitelbaum (toim.): Montage and Modern life 1919-1942.

1992.• P.A. Sitney: Modernist montage: Obscurity of Vision in Cinema

and Literature. 1996.• J. Dunne & P. Quigley (toim.): The Montage Principle:

Eisenstein in new cultural and critical contexts. 2004.

Montage in Russian Semiotics of Culture

• Not an explicit concept, requires reconstructing• Eisenstein source for many• Phenomenon of early Soviet culture, becomes a part of a

universal cultural theory (Iurii Lotman’s school of semiotics)

• Viachesliav Ivanov: History of Soviet Semiotics (Eisenstein and Bakhtin intellectual montage and polyphony)

• Lotman: Structure of the Artistic Text• Lotman: Semiotics of Cinema• Lotman & Tsivian: Dialogue with the Screen• Tsivian: Historical Response of Cinema• R. Timenchik: Montage Processes in Poetic Texts• Iurii Levin: Montage in Poetry• B. Uspenskii: Montage and Perspective in Literature• Lotman: Montage and Rhetorics; Intertextuality• A. Zholkovskii: post-Eisensteinian theory Poetics of

Expressiveness

description1 description2

Image

From a juxtaposition of two descriptions emerges a new quality (=an image) in reader’s (recipient’s) mind, a synthetic meaning, which cannot be returned back to any of the juxtaposed descriptions as such.

≠ sum, but a product(ion) (произведение)

Is Catalogue of Images a montage poem?

”emergence” / predication

Montage Metaphor”third”

Author

Image, idea

description1

description2

description3

Text

Reader

fragmentatio

n integration

Image, idea

Sergei Eisenstein: Communication of a processual artistic text

Montage in Cinema

• Lev Kuleshov: experiments – ”Kuleshov effect”– Juxtaposition in film– Created man Montage man (1921)– Syntactic montage

• Vsevolod Pudovkin– Narrative montage – metonymy and close-up– ”Mother” (1926)

• Sergei Eisenstein – Montage of attractions 1923; reader as material, agitation

and propaganda– Intellectual – emotional – psychological stimulus– Conflictuous montage (”Strike”, 1925; Octobre, 1927,

Potëmkin)

• Dziga Vertov: ”Man With the Movie Camera” (1929): – Rhetorical montage– Kino-eye, kino-reality, kino-man

You tube links for Montage lecture

Lev Kuleshov effect:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmNzE_J-rpY&feature=related

Vsevolod Pudovkin: Mother (1926) (7:10 – 9:25)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOy7lo3DnSU&feature=related

Sergei Eisenstein: October (1927)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkrdS0wwOmk&feature=PlayList&p=CC154AE0B8A8453B&index=3

(1:10 – 2:10)

Dziga Vertov: Man With The Movie Camera (1929) (3:00 – 7:00)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Czju8y4XEg&feature=PlayList&p=55DB50633465E711&index=2

Montage and a-g literature

• Prose and poetry in the mid-1920s– Tynianov– Utilitarism and factography

• Maiakovskii: Pro Eto (1923) • Acmeists and verbless poetry• Imaginist Montage

– Shershenevich: montage of nouns (catalogue of images)– Esenin: technical montage (image machine)– Mariengof: conflictious montage (image chain)

• Montage prose (new genre collection of materials [factography])– Homogeneous and heterogeneous montage– Biographies of the late 1920s – early 1930s– Mariengof: Cynics (1928, Zyniker in Germ.)– Döblin: Berlin Alexanderplatz– Dos Passos: U.S.A. Trilogy; Manhattan Transfer

Hannah Höch:

Da Dandy (1919)

Kurt Schwitters:

Untitled (Assemblage on hand mirror, 1920-22)

John Heartfield: Adolf Superman swallows gold and spouts rubbish (1932)

Gustav Klutsis:Dynamic City (1919)

Gustav Klutsis:

Electrification of the Entire Country (1920)

V. Maiakovskii’s long poem Pro Eto (On This, 1923), illustrated by A. Rodchenko

The poem was dedicated to Lili Brik, whose portrait was ”monumentalised” for the cover

Simple photomontage of elements with explicit contrasts

Aleksandr Rodchenko

El Lissitzky