Abstract
Almost fifty years after the first publication of Sergei Eisenstein's “Notes for a Film of Capital” in the pages of October, “The Capital Diaries: A New Selection” presents extensive new extracts from the Soviet filmmaker's notebooks from 1927 and 1928, drawing from over five hundred pages of notes, images, press clippings, drawings, and diagrams in which Eisenstein puzzles over his (unrealized) film based on Karl Marx's Das Kapital. This new selection emphasizes the experimental, diaristic, and proto-cinematic character of the material to present both a fuller sense of Eisenstein's work on the film and the central use of images to the process. What emerges is an autotheoretical experiment involving psychoanalysis (including the filmmaker's own), “intellectual attractions,” typage (non-professional actors), the film October, and the many ways in which James Joyce's Ulysses, especially the “inner monologue,” served as creative resources and experimental instruments for the Capital project.
Author notes
*The present selection was made from over five hundred pages from three notebooks kept between October 1927 and September 1928, which today are held at the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art (RGALI) in Moscow (collection 1923, inventory 2, and folders 1105, 1107, and 1108). It was translated from the Russian and annotated by Michael Kunichika. Additionally, several passages have been translated from the German, by Matthew Vollgraff, and the French, by Kunichika and Vogman. The transcriptions from Eisenstein's manuscripts were made by Maru Mushtrieva, Julia Portnowa, and Elena Vogman, and revised by Ekaterina Tewes.
The diaries unite Eisenstein's handwritten notes, newspaper clippings and commentary, and a range of drawings and graphs. The entries are typically dated, occasionally with time of composition. RGALI's pagination has been retained, numbering not only notebook pages but also every individual sheet pasted on them, also called “pages.” Entries do not always appear chronologically. Press clippings (from German and French) are indicated by double chevrons. Eisenstein's commentaries on clippings are given in a clockwise orientation, and the brackets he used have been replaced with brace brackets.