The Skull of the Syntax: On Translating Eisenstein's Capital Diaries

Abstract The author discusses his translation of Sergei Eisenstein's Capital Diaries, focusing on such topics as Eisenstein's reflections on his own writing, the context of literary modernism in which he wrote, and the strains on psyche and syntax that the diaries reveal. It discusses the range of literary sources that Eisenstein made use of in the diaries, in particular the works of James Joyce and Velimir Khlebnikov. Also discussed are the challenges of translating the diaries, which constitute, all at once, a record of daily life, a series of cultural and political critiques, and a compendium of material the Soviet filmmaker planned to use in his (ultimately unrealized) film based on Karl Marx's Das Kapital. The diaries served as a workshop for refining various concepts and methods such as montage and dialectical thinking, and this too is addressed.