Mihhail Lotman. Metrical montage: On the theory of polymetrical compositions. The theory of polymetrical compositions was founded as late as in the 1970s by Pyotr Rudnev, a scholar of the University of Tartu. While Rudnev approached the problem from the paradigmatic aspect, in the present paper the priority of syntagmatics over paradigmatics is emphasized: the effect of polymetricity is based on the contrast of segments, which is, in its own way, a montage with means of verse technique. Just like in the case of video montage, here as well we can distinguish between straight cut (closed polymetrics in Rudnev’s terms) anddissolve (open polymetrics in Rudnev’s terms). The given types of montage use different semiotic mechanisms and have different semantic effects. The theoretical standpoints are illustrated with examples from Alexander Pushkin’s poetry.

Ilya Kukulin. Privatization of a riot: “Second life” of the early Soviet montage. This paper deals with montage in the broad sense of the term: it is discussed not as a principle of film editing, but as an aesthetic method based on the contrasting combination of elements; in the case of literary narrative, montage can be defined as a contrasting parataxis. Being understood in that sense, montage became an international “grand style” of the post-WWI epoch. In the Soviet Union this new method had many ideological connotations. It represented history (the historical process as such) as creative and cruel violence. Otherwise, art montage wasa method of designing the utopian vision. The following development of montage in Russian culture could be defined as a change of its semantic. It was expelledfrom the Socialist Realism mainstream (excluding poster graphics), but survived in unofficial art of the 1940s and became postutopian. During the “Thaw” period(the late 1950s to the early 1960s) montage methods could indicate the connection of an author with the Soviet or Western European avant-garde of the 1920s. The reconsideration of those methods followed two different ways: imitation of the “resurrection of revolutionary impulses” or deconstruction of Soviet historical and social imagination – also with the tools of montage. This very intensive dialogue with the aesthetic tradition of the 1920s came to an end at the beginning of the 1970s. The authors of uncensored art and literature in that period polemicized not with the 1920s, but with the 1960s. The “living” translation of the early Soviet montage aesthetics has been settled.

Mikhail Yampolsky. Point – pathos – totality. Two situations are possible when two fragments are confronted in montage. First, we can have a continuitycorresponding to some established narrative codes. For instance, a character crosses the right border of the frame and reappears from behind the left side of the next frame. Such a figure will be read as a representation of continuity, but shown not in its integrity. The gap in spatial continuity is compensated here by the continuity of a story. On the other hand, we can have a junction that has no support by any code and that opens up opportunities for the display of metaphors, metonyms and allegories. There are also possibilities for violent conflicts and shocks as in Godard. We do not really know how all these non-codified figures of montage work. There is no generally accepted theoretical model that could explain how we are able to synthesize two heterogeneous pieces.All his life Sergei Eisenstein was fascinated by montage and tried to understand its way of functioning. He was particularly interested in solving the mystery ofinteraction between elements belonging to two different media such as sound and image and in their way of creating unity. This article focuses on Eisenstein’s late writings in which he used the idea of pathos and Hegelian dialectics for the analysis of montage as a dynamic process. According to Eisenstein, montage fuses different pieces of footage but also triggers the whole mechanism of the evolution of culture. Cinema, from this point of view, is not simply an art of modernity but a highest stage in the development of culture somewhat similar to the stage of the absolute knowledge that the spirit reaches in Hegel.