Monday, April 4, 2016

In love with Tarkovsky - The Metaphysical Hypothesis

Another paragraph from my book "In love with Tarkovsky" translated by Alistair Ian Blyth:

“Absolute”, “Transcendent”, “Spirituality”, the “Thing-in-itself”, “Salvation” are concepts that might appear strange or at best unnatural in a “modern”, “civilised” society. But let us turn back time a little: let us picture for ourselves the atmosphere during the communist regime, the limited access to information, the psychological pressure and the continual ideological bombardment, the queues for the most basic foodstuffs, the total lack of freedom, and all the rest. To live in that gulag day after day and to end up asking yourself over and over again the fundamental question that the “Writer” asks himself in 
Stalker: “But what is it that I want in fact?” What do I want and what do I have to do in order to live authentically? What do I have to do in order to find my salvation as an individual living in this hostile world? It is a universal question, which perhaps requires a universal answer, that is, an answer valid in any time and in any place. But the answer to this question appears to differ at first sight. Because in those times dominated by fear, there were not very many choices (and nor are there today, perhaps). It seemed that you have only one choice: the experience of art. The desperate attempt to attain the “Absolute” somehow, using your limited powers. I was convinced that this was possible and that it was only a matter of searching, as Tarkovsky convincingly suggested.