L u c i e n L v y- B r u h l

The Primitive Mentality

rom the window of

a book shop on the BoulMich I am

tempted by a tiny little book, its binding the colour just a
touch deeper than tangerine. The title on the cover is La
Mentalit primitive. . . . One way or another, this orange brochure
soon plumps out into a light blue three-volume complete LvyBruhl in the Alcan edition. So writes Eisenstein in his memoirs,
adding that the dizzying excursions into the mysteries of pre-logic
afforded by Lvy-Bruhls writings are presently complemented by
living impressions in the tropics of Mexico, where the printed facts
of all these doctors and missionaries, adventurers and customs inspectors, enthusiasts and colonisers are put to the test of personal
experience (1997, p. 480).
Eisensteins fascination with anthropology and archaic cultures
coincided with the beginning of his work on the Mexican film. This
project brought the filmmaker into intimate contact with ethnography, while the ethnographic pursuits of his friends who assisted
him in his work, the Mexican artists Diego Rivera, Miguel Covarrubias and Jean Charlot, had doubtless influenced his research.
For them ethnography was a passion as much as Freemasonry and
Marxism. Although in his memoirs Eisenstein refers to the complete French edition of Lvy-Bruhl, his library in its present state
contains only two books, Russian translations acquired in 1932 (La
Mentalit primitive) and 1937, by this Jewish French philosopher
who had effectively revolutionised the field of ethnology.
Lvy-Bruhl had used the information collected by Albert Samuel Gatscher in his book The Klamath Indians of Southwestern Oregon
to analyse the languages and mental patterns of the Klamath, Bororo
and other tribes, introducing the term pre-logical to describe their
thinking processes. In contrast to ethnologists such as Bronislaw
Malinowski, whose theories depended on the principle of the plurality of cultures, Lvy-Bruhl approached the structural and cognitive
differences between the illiterate mind and the contemporary mind
from a philosophical perspective.
For Lvy-Bruhl, the basic principles of the primitive mentality
are also the basis of Indian and Chinese cultures; it rejects the laws of

La Mentalit primitive. Paris: Alcan, 1922.

aaa

Reading with Eisenstein

formal logic and is unfamiliar with differentiation (between reality

and dreams; present, past and future; cause and effect). In place of
the laws of logic (identity, contradictions), the pre-logical mentality operates through the law of participation or mystic association.
Identity is plural: one can perceive oneself to be in two placesor as
two separate beingsat once. Time and space are subjective categories; moreover, spatial categories seem to have greater significance
than temporal and causal ones, and often stand in for them.
Lvy-Bruhls theories had a tremendous impact on Eisenstein.
His book, alongside the writings of Kretschmer and Werner, contri
buted to the formation of Eisensteins hypothesis, at the basis of his
sprawling study Metod (1932-48), that artistic devices are vestiges
of the pre-logical and that cinema is the ideal technological means
for the mediation of pre-logical thinking: superimposition, multiple
exposure, manipulation of the direction and speed of movement,
capturing the viewers attention by means of associative montageall
these embody various forms of pre-logical thought, in which associa
tional links follow according to the principle of the resemblance or
contrast of forms, juxtaposition, repetition, rhythm, etc. Eisenstein
saw formalised aspects of affective thinking, such as pars pro toto, or
the part representing the whole (taking the form of synecdoche in
literature and the close-up in cinema), as a reservoir of artistic tropes.
Initially Eisenstein used Lvy-Bruhls term pre-logical, but after the philosophers theories came under attack he replaced it with
the more neutral designation affective thinking, which he had encountered in Marxs Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. As
Otto Rank noted as early as 1932, however, in his volume Art and
Artist, Lvy-Bruhls pre-logical, Cassirers mythical, Freuds unconscious, Jungs symbolic and Bleulers autistic thought all refer
fundamentally to one and the same thing (p. 120).
In Eisensteins copy of the Russian translation of La Mentalit
primitive his notes are limited largely to Nikolai Marrs introduction and chapter 10. Additionally, a few handwritten sheets are interspersed throughout the book, beginning with the following text,
For some reason theatre is called representation, Vorstellung. Indeed,
theatre operates with images. Not ideas (not yet cinema)! In subsequent notes, Eisenstein attempts to interpret one of Lvy-Bruhls
fundamental ideas, the principle of participation, and to distinguish
it from the principle of animism or animate nature.

aaa

L u c i e n L v y- B ru h l

Lvy-Bruhls theory of the two types of mentality and their distinct functionality are interpreted by Eisenstein along the lines of
Freuds controversial model of the conscious and unconscious minds,
as well as Werners model that posits in the consciousness of an adult
Kulturmensch (civilised man) deep layers of another type of mentality, called physiognomic, holistic or concrete, which is characteristic
of children, schizophrenics, primitive barbarians and artists.
Lvy-Bruhls ideas were attacked in the 1930s by anthropologists
such as Franz Boas for their arbitrary interpretation of ethnographic
findings and by psychologists such as Frederick Bartlett for their
baseless psychological interpretation of the pre-logical. In the Soviet Union, his theory was denounced for its mysticism and psychoanalytical premises (Jung had appropriated the idea of participation
into his theory of the collective unconscious), but overt criticism did
not appear in print until the 1950s, following the downfall of Marrs
theories. Maxim Gorky, without mentioning Lvy-Bruhl by name,
began his address to the First Writers Congress in 1934 with the following critique: Primitive man has been depicted by the historians
of culture as a philosophising idealist and mystic, a creator of gods, a
seeker after the meaning of life (p. 27).
Eisenstein responded to the attacks against Lvy-Bruhl in his
address to the Conference of the Soviet Film Workers in January of
1935 with a reference to Western sources such as Olivier Leroy. Yet in
the second of Levy-Bruhls books, which came into his possession in
1937, Eisenstein marked only those passages and footnotes in Nikolskys introduction which referred to criticism of Lvy-Bruhls ideas.
At the time Eisenstein was preparing a public apology and response
to the attacks not only on Levy-Bruhls theories, but also on his own
working methods in relation to the demise of Bezhin Meadow (1935).
Critics saw the roots of the films disgrace in Eisensteins theoretical
pursuits, first and foremost in his studies of mythology inspired by
Nietzsche, archaic structures of thought inspired by Lvy-Bruhl and
inner monologue inspired by Joyce.
Oksana Bulgakowa
Lucien Lvy-Bruhl. The Primitive Mentality, 1923.
Sergei Eisenstein. Wie sag Ichs meinem Kinde?! (1946), 1997.
Maxim Gorky. Soviet Literature (1935), 1980.
Otto Rank. Art and Artists, 1932.