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Sergei Eisenstein On Joyce. Excerpt.

1) The document discusses the limits of literature compared to other art forms like film. It argues that Joyce pushed literature to its limits but certain things are now easier to do in film. 2) It describes a scene from Joyce where a man is walking down the street with complex inner thoughts, but argues film could depict this in a more direct way through non-sequential editing. 3) It critiques Joyce for only depicting the surface level of phenomena and inner psychological complexes without exploring their social preconditions, saying he was limited by only having words to work with.

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Marta Mendes
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221 views2 pages

Sergei Eisenstein On Joyce. Excerpt.

1) The document discusses the limits of literature compared to other art forms like film. It argues that Joyce pushed literature to its limits but certain things are now easier to do in film. 2) It describes a scene from Joyce where a man is walking down the street with complex inner thoughts, but argues film could depict this in a more direct way through non-sequential editing. 3) It critiques Joyce for only depicting the surface level of phenomena and inner psychological complexes without exploring their social preconditions, saying he was limited by only having words to work with.

Uploaded by

Marta Mendes
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© © All Rights Reserved
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() Formally Joyce went as far as Literature could go.

And many things he did are


now impossible; here he goes beyond the limits of literature, and a whole new series
of thngs which are very difficult to do in a work of literature can now be done much
more easily in another art form. From Joyce the next leap is to film, where it's much
easier (i.e. about a person's inner struggle ) ... this Joyce couldn't show.
In this respect film has many more possibilities than literature. Joyce and I talked
about this in Paris, and I explained to him the arsenal that we have. Take for example
non-sequential action. Joyce has the following scene; a man is walking along the
street thinking about something. Joyce has it written down almost stenographically.
At the same time it's on three levels. One, the man is thinking about something else he
has to do; two, the accumulation of what in psychology is called trauma....your
conscience is bothering you because you haven't finished your work. And the third
thing is that you meet a streetcar, you meet some girl; and that is all mixed in with
what you are thinking about....and Joyce manages in some parts of the novel to write
this way.But here it is typical that Joyce, as a bourgeois artist, doesn't see byond the
surface of phenomena. You know how the saying "being determines consciousness"
has been vulgarized: Being is understood like this - someone's shoe is torn, therefore
he has a vagabond mentality. Joyce understands things the same way. He sees how
external circustances affect and change a train of thought, but he doesn't see the
understanding of social phenomena which outgrow consciousness. Consciousness is
completely limited. He gives a lot of attention to inner states of experience without
contact with their preconditions, that is those inner traumas where Freud's influence
on Joyce can be felt. For example in Ulysses Bloom has a trauma that his child has
died and he doesn't have any heirs....Another character has a mother complex. And
that's as far as Joyce goes. In his work you have the presence of phsycological
complexes and that's all. The means by which a mperson can write - words, words
and words...he has to take the road of description. You can find the purely descriptive
path in dostoevsky: Raskolnikov. In one way Joyce continues
Dostoevsky....Dostoevsky takes the path of description, the outer logic of speech.
Joyce, in terms of a method of description, went further. He uses the syntax and
grammar not of emotional thought but of, so to speak, sensual thought.When you thnk
of yourself you don't use words, you have another system. some words you name,
some you think in images, and from that is formed the arrangement of speech, which,
if you were to say it out loud, would be incoherent.....if you write it down you'll have
the model of the alogical system of speech. On marvellous pages Joyce achieves this
brilliantly; in the arrangement of words, in the way phrases break off, and so on. But
he is limited to a purely verbal fabric.
Eisenstein's lecture was given to fourth-year students at the State Institute of
Cinematography. Nov.1st 1934

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