Eastern & Central Europe in Film & Print

Eastern & Central Europe in Film & Print Andrei Tarkovsky

Andrei Tarkovsky

Andrei Tarkovsky “Sculpting in time.” “The image incarnate.” “Cinema as a religious experience.”

Andrei Tarkovsky “ I find…the logic of poetry in cinema extraordinarily pleasing. “ “ Poetic reasoning is closer to the laws by which thought develops, and thus to life itself, than is the logic of traditional drama.” Sculpting in Time. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987 ( Pages 18, 20).

Andrei Tarkovsky “ Thought is brief. The image is absolute.” “Art acts above all on the soul, shaping its spiritual structure.” Sculpting in Time. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987 ( Page 41).

Andrei Tarkovsky “ You can play a scene with documentary precision, dress the characters correctly to the point of naturalism, have all the details exactly like real life, and the picture that emerges…will seem utterly artificial.” Sculpting in Time. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987 ( Page 21).

Andrei Tarkovsky “ The artist expresses these things by creating the image…Through the image is sustained and awareness of the infinite: the eternal within the finite, the spiritual within matter, the limitless given form.” Sculpting in Time. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987 ( Page 37).

Andrei Tarkovsky “ It is crucial that mise en scene …follow life—the personalities of the characters and their psychological state.” “ The texture of the scenery and landscapes must fill me with definite memories and poetic associations.” Sculpting in Time. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987 ( Pages 25, 28).

Andrei Tarkovsky “ Modern art has taken a wrong turn in abandoning the search for the meaning of existence in order to affirm the value of the individual for its own sake. But in artistic creation the personality does not assert itself, it serves another, higher and communal idea. The artist is always a servant.” Sculpting in Time. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987 ( Page 38).

Andrei Tarkovsky “ Modern mass culture, aimed at the ‘consumer’…is crippling people’s souls, setting up barriers between man and the crucial questions of his existence.” Sculpting in Time. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987 ( Page 42).

Andrei Tarkovsky “ …’artists’ cynically avail themselves of the spare time of honest people, of toilers, taking advantage of their gullibility and ignorance, of their lack of aesthetic education, in order to destroy their spiritual defenses and make money out of doing so.” Sculpting in Time. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987 ( Page 42).

Andrei Tarkovsky “ The aim of art is to prepare a person for death, to plow and harrow his soul, rendering it capable of turning to good.” Sculpting in Time. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987 ( Page 43).

Andrei Tarkovsky “Art only has the capacity, through shock and catharsis, to make the human soul receptive to good.” Sculpting in Time. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987 ( Page 50).

Andrei Tarkovsky “ Time cannot vanish without trace, for it is a subjective, spiritual category; and the time we have lived settles in our soul as an experience placed within time.” Sculpting in Time. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987 ( Page 58).

Andrei Tarkovsky “ [In Japanese art] time helps to make known the essence of things.” “ What attracts me in haiku is its observation of life.” Sculpting in Time. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987 ( Page 66).

Andrei Tarkovsky “ I reject…montage cinema because [it does]…not allow the audience to bring personal experience to bear on what is in front of them on film. Montage cinema presents the audience with puzzles and riddles, makes them decipher symbols …appealing all the time to the intellectual experience. [Montage cinema] proceeds to make a total onslaught on the audience, imposing upon them his own attitude to what is happening.” Sculpting in Time. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987 ( Page 118).

Andrei Tarkovsky “ But the conditions of these [European] democracies underline the problem of man’s spiritual vacuum and loneliness.” Sculpting in Time. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987 ( Page 181).

Andrei Tarkovsky “ [Andrei Rublev] was to show how the national yearning for brotherhood at a time of vicious fighting between brothers, gave birth to Rublev’s inspired ‘Trinity’—epitomizing the ideal of brotherhood, love and quiet sanctity.” “ The separate episodes …develop through the inner conflict inherent in the poetic logic.” Sculpting in Time. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987 ( Pages 34-35).

Andrei Tarkovsky “ Rublev looked at the world with unprotected, childlike eyes, and preached love, goodness and non-resistance to evil. And though he found himself witnessing the most brutal and devastating forms of violence, which…led him to bitter disillusionment, he came back in the end to that same truth, rediscovered for himself, about the value of human goodness, of openhearted love which does not count the costs, the one real gift which people can give each other.” Sculpting in Time. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987 ( Pages 208).

Andrei Tarkovsky “ I am interested above all in the character who is capable of sacrificing himself…[who is able to rise above] all of those selfish interests that make up a normal rationale for action.” Sculpting in Time. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987 ( Page 217).

Andrei Tarkovsky “ And the more clearly I discerned the stamp of materialism on the face of our planet…[I] came up against unhappy people, saw the victims of psychoses symptomatic of an inability or unwillingness to see why life has lost all delight and all value…” Sculpting in Time. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987 ( Page 218).

Andrei Tarkovsky “ …the individual today stands at a crossroads, faced with the choice of whether to pursue the existence of a blind consumer, subject to the implacable march of new technology and the endless multiplication of material goods, or to seek out a way that will lead to spiritual responsibility.” Sculpting in Time. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987 ( Page 218).

Andrei Tarkovsky “ I posit that modern man… is not prepared to deny himself and his interests for the sake of other people…But the results of our way of life…are plain enough: the erosion of individuality by overt egotism; the degeneration of human bonds into meaningless relationships between groups…When we feel…anxiety…we promptly turn to…the psychiatrist…or sexologist.” Sculpting in Time. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987 ( Page 219).

Andrei Tarkovsky “ [Governments] sought to possess the consciousness of the masses…bidding them [to] reform the organisational structure of life for the sake and happiness of the majority…this process comes to be mistaken for the basic, subjective reality of people’s lives.” Sculpting in Time. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987 ( Page 231, 232).

Andrei Tarkovsky “ The West is forever shouting, “This is me! Look at me! Listen to me suffering, loving! How unhappy I am! How happy. Mine! Me!In the Eastern tradition they never utter a word about themselves. The person is totally absorbed into God, Nature, Time: finding himself in everything; discovering everything in himself.” Sculpting in Time. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987 ( Page 200).

Andrei Tarkovsky “ My own future is a cup that will not pass by me—consequently it must be drunk.” Sculpting in Time. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987 ( Page 192).

The Sacred Image

Eastern & Central Europe in Film & Print