Why are they essential, the “truths” that we discover in books, contemplate in a painting or sculpture, discover in music, and see onscreen? Because they help us to live; they make our lives easier. Or else because they are “holy truths,” as Otto the postman says in The Sacrifice. I would say that they save our lives: our lives, not the artists’, writers’, composers’ or directors’ lives. The lives of those of us who experience art almost religiously. Herein resides the whole essence and beauty of nature and authentic human experience: living in the realm of Spirituality and the Idea. This is why art will never die—it is an immanent component of human nature. It was and will be necessary to man, all the more so in these postmodern times, when we are witnesses to the “death of God” (and unconsciously tolerate the idea).
Bewildered,
despairing, perplexed by the stupidities of society in Ceaușescu’s Romania,
that chaotic prison camp, an artificial, brutal world, agonisingly situated
beyond any means of understanding. I could find no way to get to grips with
that world. I could not mould myself to it, because that would have meant
making too many compromises. Rather than banal happiness in semi-complicity
with an aggressive and stultifying regime, I preferred to attempt to construct
a world of my own, as far away as possible from the exterior world. Little by
little, I began to take refuge in my own thoughts, in my own imagination, and
ultimately in my own memory. For, memory was, I believed, what ultimately
remained, the fundament, the firm ground in which I rooted myself when buffeted
by disquietudes and desperate lack, by the paradoxes and antinomies that
continually assailed me.
But what kind of
memory can you construct for yourself in times constrained by fate and by
forces beyond your will? Life itself was changed, it had to follow a particular
path, flanked on either side by unscalable walls. I had to try to slip sideways
through life, eluding life, because I was always aware that I did not have
access to life’s most elementary, fundamental aspect: freedom. Only when you
live in such wretched, even surreal, conditions, which verge on the ridiculous
and the terrifying at the same time, do you begin to appreciate, in your unhappy
lucidity, that the right to freedom is perhaps the most important
characteristic and necessity of the human spirit. It was then that I discovered
what freedom meant: the elementary right to live in an authentic way, to choose
the experiences that can lead to the fulfilment of that absolutely necessary
sentiment of what it is to be human—the negation of one’s own nothingness. It
is probably the authentic and preeminent right to enter the sacred space of
spirituality, in other words, the sole chance to live in the presence of a
“presence”,
regardless of what kind of spirituality it might be: God or the Absolute, the
Platonic ideas or Aristotelian essence, Cartesian self-awareness or Kantian
transcendental logic, the Hegelian Idea or Heidegger’s Being. It is whatever
might be beyond the unbearable constraints of the immanence of my being, of my
banal everyday life. But I understood once again that in the
communist world even the right to negate one’s other nothingness was utterly
forbidden.
Every time I saw Tarkovsky’s Stalker the same thing
happened: I remembered my entire life (as the Stalker asks his two companions
to do). I sat in the cramped cinema and remembered my life. Snatches of images,
thoughts, unfulfilled desires. Because I was constantly tortured by the same
devastating thought, by the same striving to find a meaning to life. I knew
that the only solution was to follow the Stalker’s imperative: “You must
believe!” Which means: “You must change your life!” The same meaning. To
believe in what? In freedom, first of all, that is, in the lived and shared
experience, in the encounter with the other, in the encounter with other
freedoms and above all the Idea within the framework of spirituality. To
experience what others have experienced, to tread the same beaten paths, to
feel what others have felt, the great ideas and the great desires. To walk the
grand boulevard of great ideas. This is why I wanted to see and experience the
films of Tarkovsky.
She was standing by the wall, close to the window, she had laid her arm
against the wall, and her head was pressed on her arm, she was standing like
that thinking. And she was standing so deep in thought that she did not hear me
come and look at her from the other room. She seemed to be smiling—standing,
thinking and smiling (Dostoevsky, A Gentle Spirit).
The reason why the meek one smiles before committing
the fatal act is absolutely impenetrable to the hero and also to us. What
understanding can the poor girl have reached? “Standing, thinking and smiling”—what
could be more paradoxical, more surreal, more real to the highest degree than
this scene fashioned in the mind of the great writer? It seems that the
solution to this gesture (for gesture it is!), to this mystery, would
automatically lead to an understanding of life, of the world itself. Probably
Dostoevsky confronts us with this gesture, this mystery, in order to make us
marvel at female nature, which in essence expresses the whole of human nature.
And perhaps by her very nature, woman is closer to the transcendent and
therefore capable of achieving that higher understanding, which leads to
self-reconciliation. No other explanation relating to the immanence of this
world would have been conceivable. You cannot in any wise penetrate to the
meaning of the thought that expresses perhaps the very essence of the feminine
whole, even the very essence of life itself and therefore the supreme
understanding of life. Or perhaps this was in the natural way of things, that
what happened should happen, because there was no “other solution.” The meek
one, as a woman, is perhaps capable of seeing what men cannot and will never be
able to see. Or perhaps in this world, this is the natural order:
an organic incompatibility between the two principles, male and female. Perhaps
this is why the main character, the moneylender, is not so guilty for his
wife’s death, since, as one of the novella’s critics so aptly puts it: “the
guilt far outstrips the guilty party, it no longer belongs to him, but to the
entire universe, which is structured crookedly, built on suffering, and which
nobody anywhere will ever be able to redeem.” A conclusion that is
like the passing of a sentence!
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.
My meeting with Pina Bausch - excerpts from "In love with Tarkovsky" translated by Alistair Ian Blyth:
I was convinced that there was no hope, that I
would never again be capable of experiencing art as I had once experienced it,
when I saw Tarkovsky’s film Stalker for the first time during the
Ceaușescu regime. I was convinced that I would
not be able to, but in a wholly unexpected way it happened once again. I had
the same feeling once again. It was a miracle. It is true that I entered the
cinema with a certain hope, with faith even, but I would not have been able to
imagine that it could happen once more . . . I saw a film about one of the
greatest artists of the last century: German choreographer Pina Bausch, who
invented what we now call Tanztheater. The film was directed by Wim Wenders and
titled simply Pina 3D. It was the first 3D
film I had seen and I understood once again how the art could evolve, how it
could reinvent itself to capture sublime moments. The art of dance cannot be
described in words. And nor can you describe the feelings you have when you
view such a performance. By the end of the film I was absolutely fascinated. I
experienced the same feelings as when I saw Stalker in the communist
period: pure plenitude and self-fulfilment. I felt that without any shadow of a
doubt if the world ended in that instant I would remain eternally happy! Oh,
what happiness!
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!
Conquering the world implies, inevitably, facing death, in one way or another. This would be trivial and pathetic if it were not real. Up there, on the crest, hooked on the ice and snow, you look down at the immensity of the abyss and you make your life statement. And the only thing you can cling to is that you had a joyful, fulfilled life. And you have always thought like that. But suddenly, you realise up there that that is not enough. You understand that much more important is that those who will survive you must share the same thought about you. They should be happy that you had a fullfiled life and not to lament you. The essence of life!
