Lotman/Tsivian - Dialogue with the Screen

[Simon Krysl]

Dear colleagues and friends,
my apologies for yet another query: I hope that. perhaps, the answer is
obvious (just not to me)...I have been reading and using Yuri Lotman's
and Yuri Tsivian's Dialog s ekranom (Tallinn: Alexandra, 1994), with
regard to early cinema and the history of  "cinematic perception" above
all, the intersection of the everyday, the literary and the theatrical
with the novum brought in and reflected in the cinema "and its
predecessors."  In this respect, Dialog s ekranom (a book published for
non- professional or non-technical readership) brings in themes and
considerations I have not found elsewhere - whether because they have
not been taken up or because I simply haven't found them.
The problem, sometimes, is lack of reference material: on encountering
some thoughts (and stories) one wishes to be able to look at Prof.
Lotman's and Tsivian's sources, but cannot. This is particularly the
case in the chapters describing the birth of cinema: on p. 48, the
authors quote a remembrance of D. Kirsanov (the emigre film director of
Menilmontant), concerning the influence of "slow motion" cinema in then
provincial Tartu (Iur'ev) on his own directing style. Yet nowhere have
I been able to find any published (or other) remembrance-like texts by
Kirsanov, and I was wondering if anyone might know of any such.
There are more such places in the text - unfortunately unassigned
quotations from A. Remizov, V. F. Khodasevich, and most interestingly,
V. Meierkhold (on the hum of the projection machine as the image of
Time in the cinema) - but these I hope to be able to locate more
easily. Yet, if anyone knows the text or has any suggestions to make
here, I would be most thankful, of course.
Thank you so much- in any case.
Sincerely yours,
Simon Krysl


Graduate Program in Literature
Duke University

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