In Love with Tarkovsky

Alistair Ian Blyth has started translating my book Indragostit de Tarkovski in English. Here are some paragraphs:

In that small cinema auditorium, the miracle took place: in understanding the film, I had the feeling that I became immortal. In a fundamental way, this is also what the ultimate meaning of art should be. Finding those hidden meanings of art, experiencing art, the individual can be saved, can become immortal. Watching a Tarkovsky film, feeling it and experiencing it with all the intensity of which I was capable, I had a complete sense of immortality. It was not only Tarkovsky who could save himself, but also I, the humble viewer, who, by participating in the artistic act, by understanding and experiencing artistic expression, became immortal. I the unknown, I the talentless, but in possession of that boundless, almost Dostoevskian, desire to be saved at all costs, to find redemption.

I realised that this was a path as certain as that of the creative artist. And that I too could tread that path. Like the anonymous monk in his cell, silent and unknown to all, who ultimately finds the supreme salvation. I left the cinema transfigured. I felt that a genuine ontological transformation had taken place. Beyond the dark and troubling existential problems, I felt that I had become invincible. I had become truly immortal. The supreme self-salvation, individual salvation, there, in isolation, far from the world, without any parade, without any artificialities, without any irony: salvation through the experience of art. This was the authentic experience. It had become the purpose of life, its essence.

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I experienced there art in solitude, but I knew very well that what I understood, what I experienced, was a shared experience, a shared meaning. I knew very well and I was aware that there were others like me, who experienced the film or artwork in the same way or that they had previously experienced it in the same way. Connexions established and unknown, but essential, between those that share the same experience. Art was and is my freedom: the freedom of lived and shared experiences.

I understand that the art of Pina Bausch, like the art of Tarkovsky, provides me with that feeling that would be sufficient to ground my entire existence: joy. It gives me hope and faith and I think that it is no blasphemy to paraphrase the words of Florensky in this context: “There exists the art of Tarkovsky and the art of Pina Bausch: therefore the Spirit exists.” The “Other” exists, “presence” exists, which gives birth to joy. Like the joy that I felt at the end of The Sacrifice, when the child carries the two buckets of water, one by one, to water the withered tree, the tree of lost faith, but which, with faith, can be brought back to life. It is the joy of hope. Because in the end, it is not suffering, but joy that is the mystery of life, its essence. The words of Prince Myshkin cannot be true, when he puts forward that suffering is a spiritual thirst! I cannot accept them; I cannot accept them any longer! Suffering is vulgar, as someone once said. Joy is life’s miracle! Above all shared joy! This is the purpose and the essence of life and of art in its entirety: the sharing of joy. The joy of experiencing art and sharing that joy with others! To share their joy! Let us therefore take joy in Tarkovsky!