ICON AND APOCALYPSE

REFLECTIONS ON THE PHILOSOPHICAL AND THEOLOGICAL UNDERSTANDING OF ANDREI TARKOVSKYS WORK

TORSTEN KLVEMARK In May 1985 Andrei Tarkovsky is shooting the scenes of his last film, The Sacrifice, on the

Swedish island of Gotland in the Baltic Sea. Erland Josephson, one of his favourite actors, plays a leading role (as he did already in Nostalgia).

In the Swedish edition of Tarkovskys philosophical work Sculpting in Time, Erland Josephson has written a preface. Being himself a very philosophic mind he meditates on his experiences of filming with Tarkovsky:

During a couple of minutes he reenacts the days of creation. First all is chaos, anarchy, darkness. Of course, there is a manuscript, a plan, a number of actors, a landscape. But in reality nothing exists before there is an image. When the scene is shot Tarkovsky sighs and looks like the incarnation of the seventh day. Lord God, at last a moment of rest. At a press conference before the shooting of Nostalgia he is asked the usual question about the abundance of water in his films. What does all this water really signify? It means nothing, he says with barely repressed irritation. I like water. Next question. How will he ever be able to explain to those Western materialists that the meaning of mysteries is mystery? That the smoke and the mist and the damp do not hide anything but signify the presence of God.1

Josephson goes on to describe Tarkovskys attempts to film the mist rolling in off the sea:

Its an early morning on the island of Gotland. For a week we have been waiting for the early morning mist to roll in from the sea in order to capture the image of mist rolling in from the sea. Now we see the cloud of mist blowing over the water. We call on Tarkovsky. He rushes to the camera, he puts his eye to its eye, we all get ready. Then he suddenly turns the camera in quite the opposite direction, facing the empty plains. Its too beautiful, he sighs in resignation. If you compete with creation you sometimes have to give up and surrender. Tarkovsky makes the sign of the cross and leaves God alone.2

A few months later, when Andrei Tarkovsky is working in Stockholm with the editing of his film,

he starts feeling ill. He is subsequently diagnosed with cancer and in April 1986 he is hospitalised in a cancer clinic in Sarcelles, north of Paris. He has still some eight months to live. The chemotherapy makes him feel increasingly ill and he starts vomiting but he has yet the spiritual force to reflect on future projects. One of them is a film about Saint Anthony, the 4th century father of monasticism. He lists a number of themes to be dealt with in such a film: art, love and the problem of sin.

On the third day in hospital his mind is preoccupied with a lot of practical matters, among them things he want to be brought to Paris from Moscow: the icons, Gogol, the statue by Neizvestny, crosses, oriental stones, Armenian brandy.

On the 11 of April he is on his fifth day of treatment and he makes the following note in his diary:

I have slept from taking sleeping pills twice. I read Florensky with delight.

1 Andrej Tarkovskij, Den frseglade tiden, Stockholm 1993, p 7 2 Ibid.

And he that overcometh and keepeth my works unto the end, to him will I give power over the nations And I will give him the morning star. He that hath an ear, let him hear what the spirit saith unto the churches. (Revelations 2: 26, 28-29). An immense hope has entered my heart today. I dont know how to define it quite simply like happiness. A hope that happiness is possible. The sun is shining through the window of my hospital room but this feeling of happiness does not come from that. The presence of the Lord: thats what I feel.3

I will take the lines of this diary entry as a point of departure for some short reflections on the art of

Tarkovsky in a spiritual and philosophical perspective. I have no pretensions to present original thoughts or a new understanding of the filmmaker and his films. I would just like to point to a number of studies that may be overlooked in the English-speaking world because of their origins in other linguistic areas. A second aim is to underline the importance of understanding Tarkovsky as a link in a long chain of Russian intellectuals and artists working at the crossroads between East and West in the European history of ideas.

The main emphasis will be on Russian religious philosophy in general and the influence from Florensky in particular. I will also present some reflections on the apocalyptic perspective in Tarkovsky and conclude with a few words on references to the Orthodox tradition in his diaries.

Florensky and Russian religious philosophy

Its no coincidence that Tarkovsky is reading something by Florensky during the last months of his life. In fact, from the final edition of his diary, first published in a French translation in 2004 under the title Journal 1970-1986 dition dfinitive (Cahiers du cinma, 599 p.), it is obvious that he is very familiar with the Russian religious philosophy of the late 19th and early 20th century. In general his ideas are formed in dialogue with thinkers and artists of the Russian silver age, the three decades preceding the Bolshevik revolution and its subsequent cultural disaster.

The term "The Silver Age", spanning the years 1890-1917, is a rather well known concept today. The philosopher Nikolai Berdiaev, who himself belonged to this epoch, is one of those who launched the term and he has described the actual content behind the label:

In Russia this was the period of the emergence of independent philosophical thought, the flowering of poetry, the intensification of aesthetic sensibilities, religious anxiety and searching, and interest in mysticism and the occult. New souls appeared, new sources were found. We saw the new dawns and we joined the feeling of decline and ruin with hope of life transformation.4

It has, however, been noted that Berdiaev never was inclined to idealize this epoch. He wrote rather critically about the seclusion of the artistic elite and its sharp isolation from the broad social currents of the time.

Parallel to this artistic era, in which mysticism, aestheticism, Neo-Kantianism, eroticism, Marxism, apocalypticism, Nietzscheanism, and other streams of ideas made Russia an intellectual melting-pot, a renewal of theology and religious philosophy took place. This movement had stronger Russian roots, based on the slavophile philosophy in the middle of the 19th century and further developed by authors like Dostoyevsky and philosophers like Solovyov.

Pavel Aleksandrovich Florensky (1882-1937) was part of this legendary era. He was a real polymath with few parallels, a scientist, mathematician, philosopher and theologian. He was also deeply interested in the history of art, in particular the difference between art in the Western European tradition as compared to the notions of artistic expression developed in Byzantium and Russia. In particular, the primacy of the aesthetic in his thinking puts him aside a Western philosopher like C.S.Peirce. His main ideas in philosophy were presented in 1912 in his magnum opus The Pillar and Ground of Truth, a book constructed as an exchange of twelve letters between friends. Here ontology and epistemology are dependent on aesthetics.5

3 Andre Tarkovski, Journal 1970-1986, dition definitive, Cahiers du cinma, Paris 2004, p. 546 4 Quoted from Konstantin Azadovski, Russias silver age in todays Russia in Surfaces, vol IX, 2001. 5 Pavel Florensky, The Pillar and the Ground of Truth: An Essay in Orthodox Theodicy in Twelve Letters, Princeton 2004.

In one passage Florensky writes: "Knowing... is a real act of going out of himself by the knower, or, which is the same, a real going out of that which is being known into the one who knows -- a real unity of the knower and the known."

This quotation is taken from a book by a leading Russian specialist on Byzantium and religious philosophy, Victor Bychkov.6 The title of his investigation - The Aesthetic Face of Being: Art in the Theology of Pavel Florensky - indicates the general outlook of Florensky. In another context Bychkov is explaining the meaning of symbols in Florenskys work:

Florensky understands the symbol not only as a semiotic unit but also as an ontological entity. Not only it signifies something else, but also manifests it in reality, possesses its energy, and appears as a "living mutual interpenetration of two entities." Florensky extends the ancient Jewish understanding of the symbol (or name) as a bearer of the essence, together with the Byzantine notion of liturgical symbol, to the general concept of the symbol. Among such symbols he includes, first of all, the icon, which he considers to be the highest achievement of the art of painting of all times and nations. When he considers in detail the peculiarities of artistic language of the icon -- including its canonicity, "reversed perspective," particular ways of organization of space, symbolism of colour and conventional character of forms -- and compares all this with the language of modern European painting ("renaissance-type," according to his terminology), he comes to the conclusion that it is starting from the "great" masters of Renaissance who had rejected the medieval Weltanschauung and artistic language that the decline of representational arts begins. Florensky is convinced that the essence of art is not the conveyance of visible forms of the material world, or of psychological states of man, but symbolical expression and the ascent, with the help of conventional images of art, to the everlasting spiritual world, and ultimately to God. Florensky pays much attention to the question of synthesis of arts in liturgy, as well as to the philosophy and aesthetics of the ritual, the problems of the canon and the organization of space-time continuum in art.7

The reader of the lines above, who is also familiar with the thoughts of Andrei Tarkovsky in his

book Sculpting in Time, will se obvious parallels. Although Florensky was himself an outstanding mathematician and natural scientist he drew a clear line between the scientific and the artistic/spiritual understanding of the world. His strong criticism of the lack of spiritual values in Western art after the Renaissance is echoed in Tarkovskys equally strong rejection of Western modernism and the idea of progress in art.8

In his little book Bychkov notes that Florenskys main methodological principle in aesthetics, as in all his scientific work, is to examine the world as a whole and consider every phenomenon investigated from various points of view. In this context Florensky looks at various forms of art and compares them for example painting and theatre. Theatre aims at creating a maximal imitation of reality but painting has quite different aims. Whereas the theatre set, according to Florensky, is a beautiful deception, the pure painting aims at being first of all the truth of life, which does not supplant life but only designates it symbolically in its deepest reality. The set is a screen that hides the light of being, but the pure painting is a window thrown open on reality.9

To a certain extent Tarkovsky is echoing this statement in a passage in Sculpting in Time when he writes:

I think that the whole transfer of stage genres to the cinema is anyhow a questionable practice. The conventions of theatre are of a different scale. Any talk of genre in cinema refers as a rule to commercial films situation comedy, Western, psychological drama, melodrama, musical, detective, horror or suspense movie. And what have any of these to do with art? They belong to mass media and are for the mass consumer. Alas, they are also the form in which cinema exists now pretty well universally, a form imposed upon it from outside and for commercial reasons. There is only one way of thinking in cinema: poetically. Only with this approach can the irreconcilable and the

6 Victor Bychkov, The Aesthetic Face of Being: Art in the Theology of Pavel Florensky (1993), p. 26. 7 V.V. Bychkov, Byzantine Aesthetics in Encyclopedia of Aesthetics, ed. M.Kelly. Vol.1. N.Y.-Oxford, 1998. Pp. 321-323. 8 Andrey Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time, Austin Texas, 2003, pp. 95-99 9 Bychkov, The Aesthetic Face of Being, pp.55-56

paradoxical be resolved, and the cinema be an adequate means of expression of the authors thoughts and feelings.10

The reader who is interested in Florensky and his aesthetic theories will also find additional

interesting material in the book Pavel Florensky: Beyond vision. Essays on the Perception of Art (ed. Nicoletta Misler), 2003. It reveals Florenskys fundamental attitudes to the vital questions of construction, composition, chronology, function and destination in the fields of painting, sculpture and design. Many of these themes, in particular the philosophy of time, are recurring in Tarkovskys commentaries, either in Sculpting in Time or in the recently published extended Journal.

Florensky and the iconic character of art

The link to Florensky is obvious also in the iconic character of Tarkovskys art. One of the first analysis of this was made in the doctoral dissertation from 1992 by Astrid Sderbergh Widding (now professor at Stockholm University). In her book Grnsbilder- Det dolda rummet hos Tarkovskij (Borderline Images The Hidden Room in Tarkovskys work) she states as her objective to explore off screen space categories in Tarkovsky and to apply them in a concrete context. For this purpose her study is concentrated on the directors three last films: Stalker, Nostalgia and The Sacrifice. One of her conclusions is that in these films he is oscillating between the aspirations towards a religious transcendence and its opposite, thus creating a kind of borderline image between the two.

Astrid Sderbergh Widding is a contributor to this volume and she has thus an opportunity to display her analysis to the reader. Suffice it to note in this context that in her thorough analysis of the films she points to Tarkovskys attempts to create an inverted space similar to that of the icons. She underlines that it is absolutely essential to go beyond categories of Western art when analysing Tarkovsky and focus also on the Russian cultural and religious tradition as expressed in the art of icons.11

It is well known that the reverse perspective in Orthodox icons is at odds with the laws of art developed in Western European art during the Renaissance. Its not that the icon painters were unaware of these laws. The point for them was rather to express the spiritual dimension of art, of images as manifestations of a time beyond time and not pictures just illustrating holy history or revered saints.

Tarkovsky himself underlined this in a passage in his book Sculpting in Time:

So the inverted perspective in ancient Russian painting, the denial of Renaissance perspective, expresses the need to throw light on certain spiritual problems which Russian painters, unlike their counterparts of the Quattrocento, had taken upon themselves.12

In this context Tarkovsky makes a direct reference to Pavel Florensky. In his book Iconostasis from

1922 (now translated in English, French and German) Florensky explores in highly original terms the significance of the icon: its philosophic depth, its spiritual history, its empirical technique. In doing so, he also sketched a new history of both Western religious art and the Orthodox icon. He regards Western art as limited and limiting: in order to make the perspective function the viewer is supposed to be static. The icon, on the other hand, is supposed to be viewed by a person who changes his place in the church (or the room) in a dynamic movement.

Astrid Sderbergh Widding notes that Tarkovsky held a life-long interest in icons. He not only devoted one of his major works to an icon painter: he also uses some of the artistic norms of the icons in his own art. The reversed perspective is to be found in some of the scenes in his films, most notably in Stalker.

Simultaneous succession is another feature typical for Eastern Orthodox art. A sequence of biblical scenes can be depicted in one and the same icon without any frames or lines marking the difference in time between the scenes. Tarkovsky makes use of this technique from time to time and he also points to this in a passage in Sculpting in Time:

10 There is a recurring discussion of the relation between cinema and theatre in the first chapters of Sculpting in Time. 11 Astrid Sderbergh Widding, Grnsbilder, passim. 12 Andrei Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time, p. 82

so too a real picture, faithfully recording on film the time which flows on beyond the edges of the frame, lives within time if time lives within it; this two-way process is a determining factor of cinema.

As Astrid Sderbergh Widding concludes: Its time, in the icon or in the art of Tarkovsky, which

is outside the frame. In his book on the film Andrei Rublev (a book which despite its modest format is an outstanding

introduction to this ground-breaking work of art) Robert Bird also underlines the iconic character of this particular film. Like the icon, Tarkovskys world has no privileged centre but is unified by an invisible, off-screen destination, which becomes the real focus of the viewers attention. Just as Rublevs artistic gaze is shaped by the stares of the others, so the film elevates the viewers gaze into a form of bearing witness.

Bird strongly underlines and gives convincing evidence with regard to the background of Tarkovskys views on image and reality in the thoughts of Pavel Florensky. He notes that Tarkovskys cinematic image becomes quite similar to Florenskys conception of the icon in several respects:

Viewing physical reality as rooted in a forcefield of spiritual energies, Florensky held the icon to be a direct expression of divinity, either in the person of Christ or via the meditation of a saint whose person was imbued with Christs grace. The surface of the icon is thus the locus of exchange between transcendent reality and the world, both a worldly window onto heaven and a heavenly mirror image of the world. This may sound alien to a modern ear, but what Florensky valued most in religion was precisely its adherence to the truths beyond the laws of reason, which fail to account for human reality. He played with the dualism of science and belief, claiming that the idea of the triune God was a kind of square root of 2, that is an irrational number. The icon was for him the pre-eminent means by which irrational truths can be expressed; he boldly declared, for instance, that the most persuasive philosophical proof of Gods existence is the one the textbooks never mention There exists the icon of the Holy Trinity by Andrei Rublev; therefore, God exists.13

Bird rigthly underlines the spatial and temporal discontinuities of the icon. These phenomena can

be seen as a kind of compression of spiritual reality into two dimensions. They decentre and destabilise the viewers sovereign point of view. The icon is a space in which time can flow backwards and forwards with the eye of the beholder.

Tarkovsky himself hinted at this when in an early stage of his career he reflected on his film about Rublev and the specific nature of cinematic creation, a form of art detached from the narrative imperatives of literature or theatre:

The plot structure in our film is dictated by its task: to reveal the dialectic of the personality, to study the life of the human spirit. I think that the literary and theatrical principle of organizing the material as a plot has nothing in common with the particular nature of the cinema. Any director knows how many sections of a film are emotionally empty. They exist only to explain the circumstances of the action to the viewer. We underestimate the power of the screen image's emotional charge. In cinema it is necessary not to explain, but to act upon the viewer's feelings, and the emotion that is awoken is what provokes thought.14

Of course, Tarkovsky received many philosophical influences in his life, not only from Florensky

or other thinkers of the Silver Age. For example, he was apparently fascinated by a Western European thinker such as Rudolf Steiner. Still, he was basically a Russian philosopher in his own right, one in a great tradition from Dostoyevsky, Solovyov and Berdiayev. In Sculpting in Time he emphasises the importance of belonging to a tradition:

In all my pictures the theme of roots was always of great importance: links with family house, childhood, country, Earth. I always felt it important to establish that I myself belong to a particular tradition, culture, circle of people or ideas.

13 Robert Bird, Andrey Rublev, London 2004, p. 76. 14 Iskat' i dobivat'sia, Sovetskii ekran 17 (1962) 9, 20. (quoted from Robert Birds translation at the web-site Nostalghia.com).

Of great significance to me are those traditions in Russian culture which have their beginnings in the work of Dostoievsky. Their development in modern Russia is patently incomplete; in fact they tend to be looked down upon or even ignored altogether. There are several reasons for this: first their total incompatibility with materialism, and then the fact that the spiritual crisis experienced by all of Dostoievskys characters (which was the inspiration of his works and that of his followers) is also viewed with misgiving. Why is this state of spiritual crisis so feared in contemporary Russia?15

Tarkovsky was bold enough to challenge this spiritual crisis and to go in the footsteps of Russian

philosophy along the tradition of Dostoievsky. This, at least is what is argued by one of the Russian contemporary scholars who has made en extensive study of his films.

Tarkovskys philosophy of art

Igor Evlampievs book Chudozhestvennaya Filosofiya Andreya Tarkovskogo in English: Andrei Tarkovskys philosophy of art - probably provides the most well-founded analysis of all books published on the philosophical ideas of the filmmaker.16 The strength of Evlampievs work is that it is based on an intimate knowledge of the Russian tradition of a religiously oriented philosophy. He has previously written books about the anthropology of Dostoievsky and Ivan Ilyin as well as a major History of Russian Metaphysics in the 19th and 20th Centuries: Russian Philosophy in Search of the Absolute.

Evlampiev starts by reminding his readers of the perspective of the artist as philosopher. The best example of this in the history of Russia is of course Fyodor Dostoyevsky who many regard as the foremost philosopher ever brought forward by the Russian culture, although his philosophy of the destiny of man is embedded in his literary works. Dostoyevsky was however influenced by a long tradition of thinkers preceding him, of whom Vladimir Solovyov probably was the most important. He was himself later succeeded by writers already mentioned such as Nikolai Berdyayev, Lev Karsavin and Pavel Florensky.

According to Evlampiev, Andrei Tarkovsky is the foremost modern example of the artist as philosopher, who cannot be distinguished from this Russian tradition. Although he was well aware of the general traits of Western art and philosophy (as most intellectual Russians have always been) he nevertheless relates all his work to the fundamental questions posed and discussed in Russia over the last centuries.

Interestingly, Evlampiev points to the links between Tarkovsky and Soviet film art from the 1930s and onwards. Although filmmakers were forced by political pressure and economic necessity to concentrate on themes such as the glorious revolution or the Great Patriotic War they still had at the back of their heads a specific Russian philosophy of art. Evlampiev talks about the tradition of films of ideas, represented by directors such as Tarkovskys teacher Mikhail Romm or those belonging to a somewhat younger generation like Mikhail Kalatozov or Grigori Chukhrai.

A great and inscrutable artistic work can never be reduced to a single concept but in order to summarise a theme, which is recurring in all of Tarkovskys films, Evlampiev uses the Russian word zhertvennost. It is a word related to the noun zhertvo, (sacrifice) describing the willingness to make a sacrifice as the expression of true humanity. 17

When looking at the collected works of Tarkovsky, Evlampiev describes the major films as a consecutive inner development of the philosophy of the director. He divides them under four headlines in a chronological order starting with Andrei Rublev (a film which he incidentally prefers to mention under the name given to the complete Russian version):

- The Passion According to Andrei: The philosophy of sacrifice. - The Mirror: The notion of Person in time and eternity. - Solaris and Stalker: Man in a world where God is dead. - Nostalgia and The Sacrifice: On the doorsteps of the Apocalypse. At the end of the book Evlampiev summarises the message of Tarkovsky:

15 Sculpting in Time, p. 193. 16 Igor Evlampiev, Chudozhestvennaya Filosofiya Andreya Tarkovskogo, Sankt Peterburg 2001. 17 Evlampiev, op. cit., p. 15.

The problem of man and all human civilization consists of this: we have walked too far away from the sources of our existence, to the extent that we have completely lost the feeling for our unity with it. Faith, according to Tarkovsky, is far from waiting for help from some type of external power or simply a hope for a better future it is the feeling within oneself and within creation itself, the centre of which is man of divine powers. Faith is the capacity for making these powers real and present in the world.18

Evlampiev believes that Tarkovsky in his spiritual outlook is close to the worldview expressed by

his hero Andrei Rublev. The painter/monk was a classical exponent of hesychasm, the spirituality developed within the monastic tradition of the Eastern Orthodox church and most clearly expressed in the 14th century by the Greek theologian Gregorios Palamas. This theology has sometimes been described as a Christian existentialism opposed to the essentialism of the scholastic thought of the Latin West in the Middle Ages. One of the main aspects of hesychasm is the insistence on a holistic view of man, refusing to accept a dualistic separation between body and soul. The underlying idea is that it is only the misuse of the elements of created nature, whether mind or matter, soul or body, that cause them to become evil and far from God. In their natural state, all elements of creation have the ability to bring about knowledge of and union with the Creator.

To what extent Tarkovsky was influenced by this line of thoughts is debatable. However, it is obvious, judging from various entries in Tarkovskys journal that he was well acquainted with the writings of the monastic church fathers in the volumes called Philokalia. Authors like Saint John Climacus and Evagrios of Pontos are quoted a number of passages. Also his ideas about making films depicting Saint Anthony, the father of monasticism, or his wish to discuss the notion of sin points to his preoccupation with many of the ideas of classical Orthodox theology.

In an entry in his diary on 1 October 1986, less than three months before his death, he writes:

Is it possible for man, by his own efforts, to change the situation, the balance that exists between good and evil? In which case can he do that? Can the spiritual essence of man triumph within him? Its not about sin but faithfulness with regard to the spiritual (or is the infidelity towards the spiritual anything else but sin)?19

On the other hand, it would be wrong to over-emphasize Tarkovskys attachment to the Orthodox

tradition. If the specific character of Russian art in various forms has strong roots in the Orthodox foundations of negative or apophatic theology, then Tarkovsky belongs to this mainstream. However, like so many Russian authors, philosophers, painters and directors he was always in dialogue with Western ideas. He obviously had a deep interest in anthroposophy and the philosophy of Rudolf Steiner. The Gospel according to Steiner was one of the future film projects that he mentions from his hospital bed during the last year of his life.

While acknowledging this complex background of his artistic philosophy it would be wrong to bypass the transformation of philosophical archetypes made by the continuous Byzantine/Russian tradition. Such a historical leap seems to be the problem with a discussion of the philosophical context of Tarkovsky made by the German scholar Marius Schmatloch in his big, and in many ways impressive, volume Andrej Tarkowskijs Filme in philosophischer Betrachtung.

Schmatloch leaves no stone untouched in analysing the films with all the rigour of the German academic tradition. He puts Tarkovsky into the context of antique as well as modern philosophy. The point of departure for his study is the book Sculpting in Time rather than the films, although, of course, he uses the films as illustrations of the philosophical themes at the centre of the book.

The author lists four main purposes of his extensive study: The first one is a systematic analysis of the main thoughts of Tarkovskys book through the classic

concepts of philosophy such as metaphysics, epistemology, ethics etc. In other words: a reconstruction of the ideological basis to which Tarkovsky continuously returns.

The second aim is to highlight the connections between the Russian director and early Greek antique philosophy.

Thirdly Schmatloch wants to reveal parallels between Tarkovsky and the various phases of Russian symbolism.

Finally, the author states that the main aim of the work is to respond to the question: By what means and strategies has the written message of Sculpting in Time been transformed into film? Also: Are there

18 Evlampiev, op.cit., p. 240. 19 Tarkovsk, Journal 1970-1986, p 554

cinematographic expressions with regard to content or esthetics, which expand or contradict what has been written in the book?20

In my personal view the weakness of Schmatloch seems to be a certain neglect of the theological context in which Tarkovskys films can be put. Whereas a Russian scholar like Evlampiev manages to keep together (in the specific Russian tradition) theology and philosophy, his German colleague writes from a Western standpoint in which the old (Lutheran?) distinction between faith and reason or (in more scholastic terms) natura and gratia seems to be hard to overcome.

As mentioned earlier it also seems that he takes too big a leap from the ancient and classical philosophers to Tarkovsky. Neoplatonic archetypes may certainly provide some clues to the understanding of the films but it is probably more constructive to look at neoplatonic elements in traditional Orthodox theology. Also, the influence of symbolism on Tarkovsky is a bit problematic since the concept of symbol itself is something that he tries to avoid with regard to his own understanding of film as an art form more related to music than to theatre and literature (poetry apart).

By the same token German idealism has indeed had a strong influence on Russian philosophy and theology since the end of the 19th century but it is a matter of discussion if the influence on Tarkovsky is direct or indirect.

Schmatloch tries to lift a veil of non-comprehension from the films of Tarkovsky. He rightly observes the theological foundations of the director but it sometimes seems that he succumbs to the temptation to find philosophical or biblical references to basic human archetypes. He can see the alliance between the prince and the Tartars in the film Andrei Rublev as an image of Satan and Adam in the Garden of Eden. The prince is a traitor to his people, an embodiment of original sin. In this context salvation comes from the artist, Andrei himself or the young bell founder Boriska:

The artist takes the role of the Christ the Saviour whose promise of salvation is manifested in unifying art. The relation between the individual and society is given a preeminent role in the two last films of Tarkovsky; the modern materialistic civilisation has distanced itself from God and moves towards an apocalyptic catastrophe collective guilt. The ritual acts of Gorchakov, Domenico and Alexander emerge in this perspective as autistic, psychotic acts of the individual, which have no relation to the reality of society and thus without any social effects. In the context of Pauline theology, on which Tarkovsky seems to have positioned himself, they however manage to save the seduced community: (Rom 5:19).21

In this passage Schmatloch is close to the analysis made by Evlampiev. Their conclusions with

regard to the perspectives of the two last films bring us to the presence of an apocalyptic perspective in Tarkovskys work. I would like to conclude this short study by briefly touching on this theme.

Apocalypse and Creation

The seventh seal of the Apocalypse is a strong symbol. It has been used time and again by artists and writers. My first acquaintance with the theme in an artistic context dates back to the late 1950s when I saw the famous film by Ingmar Bergman where the motive of the broken seal was used in a strong sequence. A travelling knight is visited by Death, a pale man in black robes with whom he plays a game of chess.

Recently, The Seventh Seal was yet again screened on Swedish television in a Bergman retrospective, and one could also hear an interview with him on Swedish radio. At the age of 87 he is still active as a writer and director and he is still preoccupied with everything related to religion, revelation and death. He has never hidden his deep admiration for Andrei Tarkovsky:

Tarkovsky for me is the greatest, the one who invented a new language, true to the nature of film, as it captures life as a reflection, life as a dream.22

The affinity between the two directors is no surprise. In an entry in his diary from 12 February 1986

(only to be found in the French dition dfinitive of his journal) Tarkovsky expresses his admiration for his Swedish colleague:

20 Marius Schmatloch, Andrej Tarkowskijs Filme in philosophischer Betrachtung, Sankt Augustin, 2003, pp. 16-17. 21 Schmatloch, op. cit., p. 316 22 Ingmar Bergman, Laterna Magica, Stockholm 1987 and subsequent translations into several languages (English translation: The Magic Lantern, 1988).

After all, Bergman is much more important that people habitually think. I have read a lot of books about him, in English. The authors dont understand that they are dealing with a very great artist. The believe that they are dealing with the first, second, third or fifth director in the world, they dissect him and put labels on him without understanding that for him filmmaking is a way of expressing ones spiritual view of the world and not exercising ones profession as director. That is stupidity. They have written a lot of rubbish on him and Fellini. They are not what they seem to be; they are far more serious and more penetrating.23

One of the common denominators between the two directors is their preoccupation with biblical

themes. Apart from expressing this in his films, Andrei Tarkovsky has also given proof of this on other occasions. In 1984, at a conference in London, he gave a talk entitled The Apocalypse. He commented on the text in Revelations 8:1: When he [the Lamb] opened the seventh seal there was silence in heaven for about half an hour:

What can any artist say about the way this is expressed? How can one express both the tension and the threshold? How improbable! The absence of an image is in this case the most powerful image one can imagine. Its a miracle!

This episode is mentioned by Robert Bird in his book on the film Andrei Rublev.24 He suggests that Tarkovskys citation of this unimaginable image of angelic silence can be a paradigm for understanding his films. It is not that Rublevs uneasy calm expresses heavenly silence on the threshold of suffering; the desolation of the film is too unforgiving. However, Bird continues, the closing words in his speech suggests another framework for his religious and apocalyptic film-making. In Tarkovskys own words:

I havent meant to reveal anything new. Thinking about this in your presence in this way, I simply wanted to feel the importance of this moment and this process, and I received what I desired.

Andrei Tarkovskys recurrence to this biblical theme is no coincidence. For him the Apocalypse is a

threat but he is not resigned to hopelessness when confronted by the signs of the time. A passage from Sculpting in Time is revealing:

Has man any hope of survival in the face of all the patent signs of impending apocalyptic silence? Perhaps an answer to that question is to be found in the legend of the parched tree, deprived of the water of life, on which I based this film which has such a crucial place in my artistic biography. The Monk, step by step and bucket by bucket carried water up the hill to water the dry tree, believing implicitly that his act was necessary and never for an instant wavering in his belief in the miraculous power of his own faith in God. He lived to see the Miracle: one morning the tree bursts into life, its branches covered with young leaves. And that miracle is surely no more than the truth.25

In another passage he uses a quotation from Dostoyevskys The Possessed to highlight the

apocalyptic dimension of time (and indeed imprinted time time under a seal). Its a dialogue where Stavrogin mentions that the angel of the Apocalypse swears that there will be no more time. Kirillov replies by saying that there wont be any time when man has achieved happiness because it wont be needed. And he adds: Time isnt a thing, its an idea. Itll die out in the mind.

The transfiguration of time, the disappearance of natural time in the new eon inaugurated by the resurrection of Christ on the eighth day of the week is a strong and recurring theme in Orthodox theology.26 Time outside time as the very matter of cinematic art is at the heart of Andrei Tarkovskys creative work.

He was a deeply religious man, a defender of the spiritual nature of man. In an interview less than a year before his death he was asked a question about the relation between divine creation and the creativity of an artist. Were his films to be seen as a kind of gift to the Creator? He answered: I would love that this would be true, After all, I try to work in this direction. It would be my ideal always to produce this gift. However, Bach was probably the only one who could really make this gift to God. 23 Tarkovsk, Journal, pp. 535-538. 24 Robert Bird, Andrei Rublev, p. 80 25 Sculpting in Time, p 229. 26 An important contribution to the understanding of this side of Orthodox theology is the book by Olivier Clment, Transfigurer le temps. Notes sur le temps la lumire de la tradition orthodoxe, Neuchtel/Paris, 1959

In any case the artist has a great vocation as an upholder of the spiritual dimensions of life in a society full of contradictions and temptations:

It seems to me that art is called to express the absolute freedom of mans spiritual potential. I think that art was always mans weapon against the material things which threatened to devour his spirit. It is no accident that in the course of nearly two thousand years of Christianity, art developed for a very long time in the context of religious ideas and goals. Its very existence kept alive in discordant humanity the idea of harmony.27

Andrei Tarkovsky is an embodiment of the artist as prophet, preacher and philosopher. His films

signify a new way of artistic expression. He has given new dimensions to the words icon and apocalypse. He is creator and interpreter. His greatness lies in his ability to listen to the cosmic silence when the seventh seal has been broken.

Bibliography

Konstantin Azadovski, Russias silver age in todays Russia, in Surfaces, vol IX, 2001. Ingmar Bergman, Laterna Magica, Stockholm 1999. Robert Bird, Andrei Rublev, BFI film Classics, London 2004. Victor Bychkov. The Aesthetic Face of Being: Art in the Theology of Pavel Florensky, Crestwood NY,

1993. V.V. Bychkov, Byzantine Aesthetics in Encyclopedia of Aesthetics, ed. M.Kelly. Vol.1. N.Y.- Oxford,

1998. Olivier Clment, Transfigurer le temps. Notes sur le temps la lumire de la tradition orthodoxe.

Neuchtel/Paris, 1959. Igor Evlampiev, Chudozhestvennaya Filosofiya Andreya Tarkovskogo, Sankt Peterburg 2001. Florensky, Pavel, Iconostasis (transl. by Donald Sheehan), Crestwood, NY, 1996. Florensky, Pavel, The Pillar and the Ground of Truth: An Essay in Orthodox Theodicy in Twelve

Letters (transl. By Boris Jakim), Princeton, 2004. Nicoletta Misler (ed.), Pavel Florensky: Beyond vision. Essays on the Perception of Art, London 2003. Andrej Tarkovskij, Den frseglade tiden, Stockholm 1993. Andrey Tarkovsky, Iskat' i dobivat'sia, in Sovetskii ekran 17 (1962) 9, 20. Andre Tarkovski, Journal 1970-1986, dition definitive, Cahiers du cinma, Paris 2004. Andrey Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time, Austin Texas, 2003. Marius Schmatloch, Andrej Tarkowskijs Filme in philosophischer Betrachtung, Sankt Augustin, 2003. Astrid Sderbergh Widding, Grnsbilder- Det dolda rummet hos Tarkovskij, Stockholm 1992.

27 Sculpting in Time, p 237-38