When I first saw Andrei Tarkovsky's film Solaris at the age of fourteen, I was shocked and walked for three days under an impression that I still cannot forget. After this movie, I believed in love!
I have watched Solaris countless times. And now, I am writing and watching, being in the aura of this film.
For me, Solaris is a film about immortality, about the immortality of love, about love reigning in space. This is a film about eternal questions and eternal answers.
When I crave inspiration, I watch Solaris - and inspiration comes!

Like Andrei Tarkovsky, I was looking for my Hari - a woman capable of anything for her beloved!

Andrei Tarkovsky and Natalya Bondarchuk on the set of the film "Solaris"

The idea of ​​a "thinking planet" does not belong to Stanislav Lem. Another science fiction writer wrote about such a planet of the creative mind in his fantasy story. When, after watching Andrei Tarkovsky's film, I read Lem's story, I was surprised to find that it was just a detective story, even if it was a cosmic one.

Stanislav Lem was categorically against the fact that the action of Tarkovsky's film begins on Earth, and demanded compliance with his plan, where the action begins on a space station.
But Tarkovsky insisted on his plan. In general, he didn’t so much film someone’s work, but filmed it based on it, turning it into his own creation.

Tarkovsky said that art exists only because the world is unfavorable, because overcoming is needed.
The protagonist of the film "Solaris" Chris Kelvin, after all the trials of his soul, finally understands: "Maybe we are even here in order to experience people as a reason for love for the first time ?!"

Solaris is a test of love.
Love is a test of humanity.
Through love we become human.
Without sympathy and without love, we are not human.
Only love makes a man a man!
Love is a feeling that can be experienced, but cannot be explained. The concept can be explained. And you love what you can lose: yourself, a woman, your homeland.

At first, Chris rejects love, is afraid of love. Because love is our conscience.
Hari is an unsleeping conscience.
Thanks to Hari, Chris understands that love is more important than science, love is more important than anything!
“You are dearer to me than all the scientific truths that have existed in the world,” Chris says to the revived Hari.

The universe is a "woman", it is "Hari"!

Hari is eternal femininity!
Almost every man dreams of such a woman.
This is the embodiment of a man's dream of an ideal woman.

I also romanticize a woman by giving her angel wings.

When I saw Hari tear open doors to connect with her lover, I realized what a woman is capable of. A man can't do that!

BREAKTHROUGH SCENE THROUGH THE DOOR

The performer of the role of Khari, Natalya Bondarchuk, writes in her memoirs: “For me, as well as for many of his favorite actors, Tarkovsky was the center of the universe. If he had ordered him to throw himself into the fire, he would have thrown himself without hesitation. But I fit into the world of Tarkovsky as something ideal, unearthly, so for a long time there was no question of any physical connection between us ...
After we got close, Andrei admitted that he was afraid of women.

Andrei Tarkovsky was 39 years old, Natalya Bondarchuk - 21 years old.

"Look how beautiful she is, she's an angel!" – said Tarkovsky about Bondarchuk.

“Andrey generally loved to look at me, I was like a picture for him, he constantly decided where else to put a smear in order to bring the image to perfection. He studied me to understand what the heroine of Solaris should be like.
During the filming of the film, Tarkovsky said to his heroine: “you just sit ... and don’t say anything ...”

“For some reason, he let me in on him. And I felt that this is a person infinitely close to me in spirit. Subsequently, Andrei confessed to the same feelings: “It even began to seem to me that I gave birth to you.”

This sometimes happens between an actress and a director: working together, they begin to recognize each other and feelings arise. “The same sea of ​​fish,” Marina Tsvetaeva wrote about such a state.

If the director does not love his main character, then he will not be able to make a film about love, and not about love will also fail.

“This is my woman,” Tarkovsky once said about Natalya Bondarchuk.
- Natasha, I love you. Don't think that I don't see anything; I don't understand how you feel about me. True love is never unrequited.

“I decided: if I can give Andrei a piece of happiness, I will do it. We lived one day, did not guess what would happen to us next ... With bitterness and shame I remember how I once wanted to die ... It was pounding in my temples: I don’t need life without Tarkovsky. But how to be? I am married and he is not free. Head clouded, thoughts confused. I entered the bathroom. Barely aware of what I was doing, I grabbed a dangerous razor and slashed it through my veins ... "

"Ah, this world is not made for me, it is much worse than me." No, it's not true, it's better! Everything here is arranged beautifully and wisely, it is we who are not good, sometimes very, very bad. But we have been given the opportunity to improve ourselves and the world, but we must always begin with ourselves.”

“I could not imagine Tarkovsky as my husband. Whether he introduced me as his wife, I do not know. When we talked to him, it was always about something very important, divine.”

With her second husband, Nikolai Burlyaev, Natalya Bondarchuk lived for seventeen years without signing. "We were united by love for Tarkovsky."
Or maybe she separated Andrei Tarkovsky from Nikolai Burlyaev?

Better than in Solaris, no one has ever shot Natalya Bondarchuk in a movie; even Sergei Gerasimov in the film "Red and Black", where she played Madame de Renal.

When Hari breaks through the metal door to his lover, it is unlikely that someone will be shocked!

It's hard to imagine how you can watch this movie with a bucket of popcorn and a bottle of cola, especially the scene of Hari's resurrection.

Tarkovsky fell in love with almost all the actresses who played the main roles in his films. In the film "Ivan's Childhood" he fell in love with actress Valentina Malyavina (although she was married to actor Alexander Zbruev). And he married the performer of the role of mother Irma Rausch.

Malyavina recalled: “I took a genius into my heart - not a man. I loved him with my special love."

It was because of Malyavin that Andrei Tarkovsky's relationship with his friend Andrei Konchalovsky was upset.

Once Andrei Tarkovsky shared with Nikolai Burlyaev his “theory” about the origin of a woman. The crown of the “theory” was the phrase of a man addressed to a woman: “Who untied you? Go, lie down!"
In 1974, Tarkovsky writes in his diary: “What is the organic nature of a woman: in submission, in humiliation in the name of love!”

In an interview with journalist Irena Bresna, Tarkovsky spoke as follows: “A woman does not have her own inner world and should not have it. Her inner world must completely dissolve in the inner world of a man.
Irena Bresna writes: “Tarkovsky demanded from a woman what he himself was incapable of. Somewhere I understood him, he was unable to love, and I told him this. Why don't you love yourself? And give a woman freedom of action? And then he admitted that it was very difficult for him to love and that it was very difficult for him to sacrifice himself, but a woman ... After all, a woman is a symbol of life, a symbol ... A woman is just a myth for him, everything good and beautiful, and she should be just like that.

“My roots are that I don’t love myself, that I don’t like myself very much,” Tarkovsky admitted.

He was an opponent of emancipation, and believed that a woman's contact with society should occur only in order to arrange personal (love) happiness and family life.

“I consider a woman not only equal to a man, but also better than him, but only if she remains a woman in everything. Then she causes in me great respect and love. However, in love, I feel more shocked than happy.

Andrei Tarkovsky was an amorous man, to say the least...
As a child, Andrei had many loves, but the first "adult" love happened to Olga Ganchina when they worked together on a geological expedition in the summer of 1953.

The Don Juan list of Andrei Tarkovsky is hardly less than that of the “sun of Russian poetry”.
The most serious love interests of Tarkovsky are known.
These are Donatella Balivo, an Italian documentary filmmaker who created the film Poet in Cinema - Andrei Tarkovsky;
a certain young woman who flew to him in Chisinau when Tarkovsky was filming the film "Sergey Lazo". (Andrey already lived with Larisa Kizilova, but has not yet divorced Irma Raush);
a certain Daria - a teacher from Leningrad, whom he almost married ...

On the set of The Sacrifice, Tarkovsky had an affair with Norwegian costume designer Inger Person, a member of the film crew. As a result of the affair, Andrei Tarkovsky, shortly before his death, had a son, Alexander, whom Andrei had never seen. Now Alexander lives with his mother in Norway.

Olga Surkova (author of the book “Me and Tarkovsky”), who followed Tarkovsky everywhere on the set of his films, claims that Margarita Terekhova was also close to Tarkovsky (acting in the film “Mirror”). But then I preferred the operator Georgy Rerberg.
Was this not the reason for the quarrel and parting of Rerberg with Tarkovsky?

It is known that in the films of Tarkovsky there is a lot of personal. The model for the sexy translator in Nostalgia was Layla Alexander-Garrett, who wrote the book Andrei Tarkovsky: Collector of Dreams. She was the translator of Andrei Tarkovsky during the filming of the film "Sacrifice". Andrei has known her since 1981, and even offered her the role of Mary in the film "Sacrifice".
In her book, Leila writes: "Andrey was a very nervous person, he was vibrating all over." “He could talk about the higher worlds, but at the same time suck all the details out of life. He "copied" from the environment everything that he liked.

It is hard to imagine, but the scene of Hari's coming to life was copied by Tarkovsky from the hysterical fits of his wife Larisa. And in the film "Sacrifice" the wife of the protagonist is a psychological copy of Larisa.

RESURRECTION SCENE

Andrei Tarkovsky was afraid of his second wife Larisa Pavlovna Kizilova and considered her a witch. Her scandals unsettled Tarkovsky for a long time. He even wrote the script for The Witch, which later turned into the film The Sacrifice.

Larisa Pavlovna Kizilova met Tarkovsky when she worked as an assistant director on the film Andrei Rublev. For five years she lived with Tarkovsky "without signing", and achieved her goal only after she did not have another abortion and thereby forced Tarkovsky to divorce his first wife, Irma Raush.

Everyone knew that Andrei was walking right and left, including Larisa Pavlovna herself.
Once Larisa even paid for the abortion of one of her friends, who became pregnant from Tarkovsky.

They say that Tarkovsky was in love with his stepdaughter Olga (daughter of Larisa Pavlovna from her first marriage). He even shot a red-haired beauty in two episodes: in the film Solaris and in the film Mirror.
Feeling something was wrong, Larisa Pavlovna did everything to remove her daughter from Tarkovsky.

Stepdaughter Olga speaks of her stepfather Andrei Tarkovsky in this way: “He had a lot of these women. He constantly cheated on his mother. I changed my panties for clean ones and left the house. Mom made scandals, but it was all useless. He said: "If the director wants the actress to understand what needs to be done in the film, you need to sleep with her."

Olga Surkova recalls: “Being a womanizer, it seems to me that he essentially did not understand women, did not love them, or was afraid, perhaps because of self-doubt ...”

According to Olga Surkova, Tarkovsky's infatuation with Natalia Bondarchuk was so serious that only the threat of Larisa Pavlovna never to show him her son in the event of a divorce forced him to slow down the then-planned new marriage.

“Andrey is not what you think,” Larisa told Natalia Bondarchuk. - He is a very difficult person. He is fond of women, can drink, go on a spree for a week. But I forgive him for everything, this is my cross.
Girl, he's not for you! You can't take this."

Andrei Tarkovsky's pain point was his son. Larisa knew about this, and blackmailed Andrei.
At the same time, Larisa was like a guardian angel for Tarkovsky!

Andrei Tarkovsky with his wife Larisa Kizilova

“Larisa Pavlovna arranged a holiday for Tarkovsky every day, set tables, gathered companies where toasts were made for Andrei's directorial talent. Fulfilled his slightest whim. This is a pleasure for any man, even a great artist. And Tarkovsky could not resist, he probably thought: how will this woman love and protect me! So I got married."

Andrei Tarkovsky was a complex, controversial person. Apparently, the concepts of family and love did not coincide with him. “Having a reliable wife, a life partner, Andrei Tarkovsky reserved the right to be above the family - in the name of some ideas or just out of a whim, but above ...”

“Many still accuse Larisa Pavlovna of all sins. Their marriage also seemed strange to me at that time, Natalia Bondarchuk writes. – Especially since Tarkovsky told me many times how much he loved his first wife, Irma Raush. That marriage was destroyed by Larisa Pavlovna. Yes, and our relationship with Andrey was interrupted thanks to her vigilant control. …

Maybe Larisa Pavlovna did not correspond to his intellectual and spiritual level, but she protected Andrei from everything that could interfere with his work, she was his faithful assistant.
Larisa took care of Andrey like a mother, a guardian. Tarkovsky absolutely needed this. He is one of those people who can starve to death in front of a full refrigerator. Next to such a person should be a woman who can solve any domestic issues. This is what Larisa Pavlovna did.

Tarkovsky lived on Larisin's salary as an assistant director and in debt. Andrey had accumulated twelve thousand rubles in debt, which was a colossal amount by Soviet standards.

Andrei Tarkovsky himself wrote about himself in his diary: “I am not a saint and not an angel. I am an egoist who fears more than anything else the suffering of those he loves!

Andrei was in many ways like his father, the poet Arseny Tarkovsky, including in his love for women. My father also had several wives and numerous loves.

An artist needs love for creativity like food, like air...
Thanks to love, the artist catches a revelation coming from another world.
It is love that inspires the greatest works of art. And that's her excuse!

It is known how many creators used sexual arousal for inspiration. Balzac generally ran out of bed at the best possible moment to write down his impressions.

Can we blame an artist for his love interests if they produce such masterpieces as the movie "Solaris"?
If love is the greatest value of all, then it justifies everything done for the sake of love!

Tarkovsky, without exaggeration, burned out in love.

Why does a person want some kind of refined unearthly love?

No, love is not an instinctive mating, but a way to comprehend the secret of the universe.

... If it were not for the dream of an ideal lover, nothing would have restrained the bestial instinct. So, you need to strive for the ideal, even if it is unrealizable. Unrealizable, but it balances the animal egoistic nature. It is necessary, you need to dream and strive for the ideal in order to remain human.

I don’t need pleasure, but release, creativity, creation, I need a woman to whom I could give myself, and she would take me into herself, absorb my spirit, become a part of me, accept and share my spiritual aspirations, give my life purpose and meaning...
I don't need a woman, I need the universe! The universe with which we would create a new world, create a man, flesh of my flesh, make him happy, pass on the spiritual experience that he would develop, and thus continue me in eternity ... I want immortality from a woman!

Men invented women! They invented foolish purity and stubborn fidelity. Hermina, Hari, Margarita - all the embodiment of a dream. When the soul is forgotten in anguish, you enter dreams with love. After all, in life you do not exist, you are all alien to reality. But if you want, you will wake up from the bustle of oblivion. You are all my creation dreams, autumn sadness and melancholy. I hear your command to believe in the eternity of Love. Let there be no Margarita in the world, that she found the Master in Moscow. When all hopes are dashed, death may be better than longing. After all, the image of dear Margarita is only the fruit of Bulgakov's dream. In reality, we are killed by the betrayal of our own wife.” (from my novel "Alien Strange Incomprehensible Extraordinary Stranger" on the site New Russian Literature http://www.newruslit.nm.ru

One of my acquaintances, a student of the directing department of the All-Union Institute of Cinematography in the workshop of Marlen Khutsiev, wrote to me that they were watching my videos at VGIK and even exchanging impressions. I hope this post gets your attention.

Read and watch my other posts: "The Zone of Andrei Tarkovsky", "What is allowed to a genius", "Two Stalkers - Tarkovsky and Rerberg", "Testament of Andrei Tarkovsky".

© Nikolai Kofirin – New Russian Literature

Until now, I was unaware -
Why do I need a star catalog?
There are ten million in the catalog
Heavenly phone numbers
ten million numbers
Phones haze and worlds,
A complete set of glow and flicker,
List of subscribers of the universe.
I know the name of the star
I'll find her phone
I will wait out the earthly turn,
I will turn the steel alphabet:

- A-13-40-25.
I don't know where to look for you.

Phone membrane will sing:
- Alpha Orion answers.
I'm on the road, I'm a star now
I have forgotten you forever.
I am a star - Dennitsa's sister,
I don't want to dream of you
I don't care about you anymore.
Call me in three hundred years.

Snowy night in Vienna

You are crazy, Isora, crazy and evil,
Who did you give your poison ring to?
And behind the door of the tavern quietly waited:
Mozart, drink, do not grieve, death is in union with glory.

Oh Isora, your eyes are good
And blacker than your black and bitter soul.
Death is as shameful as passion. Wait, it's coming soon
Nothing, he's going to suffocate, Isora.

So fly, without touching the snow with your foot:
Is there anyone else to fill their ears with deafness
And the eyes of blindness, there is still hunger,
A hospital lamp and an old woman nurse.

green groves

Green groves, green groves,
You are the bitter great-grandchildren of the ancient forests,
I am your brother, devoid of hereditary power,
I'm leaving you, I'm moving the bolt.

And if I left the house, that's for sure
I'll take an ax with me, because
What was cold to me in the cave pit,
And in the city I get cold in the house.

The day barely appears in the east,
Dressed in the mourning fumes of the squares
In vain the prophets scream into megaphones
About the last groves, judges of people.

And vaguely and fearfully in the silent grove
Do your hateful deed:
Trees - under the root, and branches - by the piece ...
Every branch is like a spear in my throat.

Hunting

The hunt is over.
I was hounded.
The greyhound hangs on my hip.
I threw my head so that the horns rested on the shoulder blades.
I trumpet.
They cut my tendons.
A gun barrel is poked in the ear.
It falls on its side, clinging to the wet bars with its horns.
I see a dim eye with some sticky blade of grass.
A black, ossified apple with no reflections.

The legs will be tied and the pole will be threaded, thrown over the shoulders ...

The table is set for six

The table is laid for six -
Roses and crystal...
And among my guests -
Woe and sadness.

And my father is with me
And my brother is with me.
The hour passes. Finally
There is a knock at the door.

Like twelve years ago
Cold hand
And the unfashionable make noise
Blue silks.

And the wine sings from the darkness
And the glass chimes
"How we loved you,
How many years have passed.

Father smiles at me
Brother pour wine
Give me a hand without rings
She will tell me:

"My heels are in the dust,
braid faded,
And they sound from under the ground
Our voices."

I wrote down a long address on a piece of paper

I wrote down a long address on a piece of paper,
He couldn't say goodbye, and he held the paper in his hand.
The light spread across the pavement. On eyelashes and on fur,
And wet snow began to fall on gray gloves.
There was a lamplighter, turned around, lit a lantern near us,
The lantern whistled, faltered like a shepherd's horn.
And an awkward, stupid conversation crumbled,
Lighter than fluff, finer than shot... Ten years have passed since then.
I even lost the address, even forgot the name
And then he loved another, the one that he loved most bitterly.
And you go - and it drips from the roof: a house and a niche at the gate,
A white ball over a round niche, and you read: who lives?
There are special gates and special houses
There is a special sign, like youth itself.

Muse

I don't have enough air, I don't have enough bread,
Ice, like a shirt, would be torn off my shoulders,
The radiant sky would be absorbed into the throat,
Lie between two oceans
Lie under your feet on the road
Star sand into star sand
So that winged gods are above you
They flew from flower to flower.

You could show up earlier
And reveal your height to me,
Before, your giantesses could
Expand your book on the fly,
Before, could you have a new name
I choose in my language -
I would flare up under your feet
And forever lost in the sand.

first dates

Our dates every moment
We celebrated like an epiphany
Alone in the world. You were
Bolder and lighter than a bird's wing,
Up the stairs like dizziness
Through the step ran and led
Through the wet lilac to your domain
On the other side of the mirror glass.

When the night came, I had mercy
Darovana, altar gate
Opened, and glowed in the dark
And the nakedness slowly sank,
And, waking up: "Be blessed!" —
I spoke and knew that boldly
My blessing: you were sleeping
And touch the eyelids of the blue universe
The lilac reached out to you from the table,
And blue touched eyelids
They were calm, and the hand was warm.

And the rivers pulsated in the crystal,
Mountains smoked, seas glimmered,
And you held the sphere in the palm of your hand
Crystal, and you slept on the throne,
And - good God! - you were mine.
You have awakened and transformed
Everyday human dictionary,
And speech up to the throat with full-sounding power
Filled up, and you revealed the word
The king meant its new meaning.

Everything in the world has changed, even
Simple things - a basin, a jug - when
She stood between us, as if on guard,
Layered and hard water.

We were led to no one knows where.
They parted before us like mirages,
Miraculously built cities
The mint itself lay down under our feet,
And the birds were with us along the way,
And the fish went up the river
And the sky unfolded before my eyes ...
When fate was following us,
Like a crazy man with a razor in his hand.

Eurydice

Man has a body
One, as a loner.
I'm fed up with my soul
solid shell
With ears and eyes
The size of a nickel
And skin - a scar on a scar,
Put on a bone.

Flies through the cornea
In the heavenly spring,
On the ice needle
On a bird chariot
And hears through the bars
Living your prison
Forests and fields ratchet,
Trumpet of the seven seas.

The soul is sinful without the body,
Like a body without a shirt, -
No thought, no deed
No idea, no lines.
A riddle without a clue:
Who will return
Dancing on that platform
Where is there no one to dance?

And I dream of another
Soul, in other clothes:
Burning across
From timidity to hope
Fire like alcohol, no shadow
Goes down the earth
A bunch of lilacs for memory
Leaving it on the table.

Child, run, don't complain
Over poor Eurydice
And with a stick around the world
Drive your copper hoop,
While at least a quarter of hearing
In response to every step
And fun and dry
The earth is ringing in my ears.

Vocabulary

I am a smaller branch from the trunk of Russia,
I am her flesh, and to my foliage
Veins reach wet, steel,
Linen, blood, bone,
Direct extensions of roots.

There is a height of domineering craving,
And that's why I'm immortal
Flowing through my veins - my pain and good -
Keys underground icy moisture,
All er and el of the holy tongue.

I am called to life by the blood of all births
And all the deaths, I lived in times
When the people's nameless genius
Silent flesh of objects and phenomena
Animated, giving names.

His dictionary is full page open,
From the clouds to the depths of the earth.
- To teach a titmouse reasonable speech
And drop a single leaf into the well,
Green, red, rusty, gold…

Polina Checherina (11 V). One poem by Arseny Tarkovsky about love.

We place the text of the report of a student of the humanities class at the Topaler Readings in 2017

Arseny Tarkovsky

first dates

Our dates every moment,

We celebrated like an epiphany

Alone in the world. You were

Bolder and lighter than a bird's wing,

Up the stairs like dizziness

Through the step ran and led

When it came night, had mercy on me

Darovana, altar gate

And the nakedness slowly sank,

My blessing: you were sleeping

And blue touched eyelids

They were calm, and the hand was warm.

And the rivers pulsated in the crystal,

Mountains smoked, seas glimmered,

And you held the sphere in the palm of your hand

And - good God! - you were mine.

You have awakened and transformed

Everyday human dictionary,

And speech up to the throat with full-sounding power

Filled up, and the word you uncovered

Its new meaning meant: tsar.

Everything in the world has changed, even

Simple things - a basin, a jug - when

She stood between us, as if on guard,

Layered and hard water.

We were led to no one knows where.

They parted before us like mirages,

Miraculously built cities

The mint itself lay down under our feet,

And the birds were with us along the way,

And the fish went up the river

And the sky opened before us...

When fate was following us,

Like a crazy man with a razor in his hand.

1962

This poem by Arseny Tarkovsky is not the first poem about love, and almost always such poems are only memories of love, and not a description of real happiness, because most of the poems about love are addressed to an already deceased beloved.

In this poem, Tarkovsky recalls just the happy moments of his meetings with his beloved, when, as in other poems, her image often appears only at the level of associations and not always clear, obvious connections, images that arise in the poet's head. Now he will hear the sound of her heels or remember the rustle of a blue dress, then a sudden rain will make him think of her, remember:

Even to this fire outside the window.

That's right, the gravel is still crumbling

Under her careful heel.

There, in the out of the window disturbing peace,

Outside of my being and dwelling,

In yellow, and blue, and red - what does she need

My memory? What is my memory to her?

(“Before the Fall”, 1929)

The beloved in Tarkovsky's poems is not only a memory, she often comes to the poet in his dreams and visions, which he describes as real events from his life that arise for no particular reason and are an integral part of this life:

The table is laid for six -
Roses and crystal...
And among my guests -
Woe and sadness.

And my father is with me
And my brother is with me.
The hour passes. Finally
There is a knock at the door.

Like twelve years ago
Cold hand
And the unfashionable make noise
Blue silks.

And the wine sings from the darkness
And the glass chimes
"How we loved you,
How many years have passed.

Father smiles at me
Brother pour wine
Give me a hand without rings
She will tell me:

"My heels are in the dust,
braid faded,
And they sound from under the ground
Our voices."

This is st creation of 1940, in which the beloved, along with other dead people, comes to the poet from under the ground, from the grave, and it is not clear whether she is calling him to her or he simply cannot let this woman go away, because she is the source of his work and inspiration.

In First Dates, blue appears in connection with the blue universe (the night that put the heroine to sleep) and with lilac:

And touch the eyelids of the blue universe

The lilac reached out to you from the table,

And blue touched eyelids

They were calm, and the hand was warm.

Lilac is often found in other poems and seems to connect, reminds the poet of past love:

Lilacs you, lilacs,

And how hard it is for you

Frozen in a difficult roll

Alto hubbub of bees?

Left impatient

From my youth

In your hot foam

And deep in the shadows.

1958

The space of the poem "First Dates" first coincides with the space of the house, and then goes beyond it and expands to infinity (after the awakening of the heroine).

Love transforms and reveals ordinary things, everything changes under its influence.

Everything in the world is now connected with the heroes who control it. The heroine sleeps on the throne, holding a crystal sphere in her hand, in which the whole world is concentrated:

And you held the sphere in the palm of your hand

Crystal, and you slept on the throne,

Heroes are now kings, because the whole world is subject to them, cities part before them, the sky opens, fish and birds follow this renewing wave or force of love.

Water appears in the poem ( She stood between us, as if on guard, / Layered and hard water.), which can mean rain, which appears quite often in Tarkovsky:

I've been waiting for you since morning yesterday

They guessed that you wouldn't come

Do you remember what the weather was like?

Like a holiday! And I went out without a coat.

Today she came and arranged for us

Some particularly cloudy day

And the rain, and especially the late hour,

And the drops run down the cold branches.

Not a word to appease, not to wipe with a handkerchief ...

1941

A cloudy day and rain are associated with love, meetings in memories take place in the rain. Rain is often compared to tears. Tarkovsky often uses this comparison, which is common in poetry:

Night Rain (1943):

Like tears, raindrops
Glowing on your face
And I didn't know what
We will survive the madness.

I hear your distant voice
We can't help each other
And the rain hits the roof all night
As then knocked all night.

These tears - raindrops - turn out to be harbingers of misfortune: “And I didn’t know what / Madness we will survive”.

Mysterious they- those who control the weather, perhaps - fate.

Solid water can be precisely due to the fact that everything in the world is transformed and changed in this love. This water can be a metaphor for a mirror.

In general, water is important for Tarkovsky and is found in poems about love or about the memory of this love:

They knock. Who's there? - Maria. -

You open the door. - Who's there?

No answer. live

That's not how they come to us

Their steps are heavier

And the hands of the living

Rougher and warmer

Your invisible hands

- Where have you been? - Reply

I don't hear the question.

Perhaps my dream is

Indistinct wheel noise

There, on the bridge, across the river,

Where the star shines

And the ring has sunk

To hell forever.

From the poem: "I will dream on a rainy day ...", 1952, in which we again see how the dead beloved comes to the poet.

The religious vocabulary of the poems that I quoted, the altar of the enemy, the epiphany and blessing of the beloved from "First Dates":

When it came night, had mercy on me

Darovana, altar gate

Opened, and glowed in the dark

And the nakedness slowly sank,

And, waking up: "Be blessed!" -

I spoke and knew that boldly

My blessing: you were sleeping, -

speaks of the initiation of heroes into this love and its holiness. This love gives the heroes the ability to control the whole world.

But at the end of the poem, all these idyllic dreams and visions disappear, because the heroes are already followed by a fate that will destroy happiness. She is like a madman, because there is no way to explain why this happened. The whole world is with the heroes, but fate is opposed to them.

The fact that fate follows the heroes is connected with the mirror. They seem to live on the other side and do not understand what will happen to their life next, they are more concerned about their own happiness than what is happening outside: alone in the world.

All the events taking place in the house are shown from the other side of the mirror glass, so all this, vision and happiness, can either only be a reflection of the real life of the heroes, or a deception, none of which actually happened.

One person is a mirror for another, helping to understand life and oneself. But at the same time, what is behind the mirror, the world of another person, remains a mystery:

We reflect anything and everything

And we understand from a half-word,

But not just one another

Life is like glass, carrying in your hands.

In the poem "First Dates" this border is overcome, love helps to see the world on the other side of the mirror:

... and led

Through the wet lilac to your domain

On the other side of the mirror glass.

"Captured Time" is Andrei Tarkovsky's main work on film theory, on which he worked from the mid-60s until his death in 1986. This book was the result of his thoughts about cinema, about his own work, about his profession and about life. For many years, Tarkovsky formulated the thoughts expressed on the pages of "Captured Time" in articles and interviews, wrote down in diaries, and confided to students and viewers at creative meetings and lectures.

Published and republished in many languages, even such rare ones as Thai, Captured Time will finally see the light of day in native Russian. Below, with the kind consent of the publisher - the Andrey Tarkovsky International Institute in Florence - a fragment of the chapter devoted to the film "Sacrifice" is published for the first time. This chapter is not only and not so much about the theoretical foundations of the director's profession, it is about the "spiritual responsibility" of each of us to society and to ourselves.
________________________________________ _____

"The idea of ​​staging "Sacrifice" arose long before the concept of "Nostalgia". The first thoughts, notes, sketches, crazy lines date back to the time when I lived in the Soviet Union. from a night in bed with a witch.Since long ago, and while fiddling with the script, I was constantly occupied with the thought of balance, of sacrifice, of sacrifice: of the yang and yin of love and personality. All this became part of my existence, and intensified and intensified with the acquisition of new life experience in the West. Although, I must say, my convictions here have not changed in the least - they have deepened, become more stable. Distances, proportions have changed. A film plan was created, it kept changing form, but the idea, the meaning of it, I hope, remained unchanged.

What touched me on the theme of harmony, which is impossible without sacrifice - double dependence in love? Mutual love? Why does no one want to understand that love can only be mutual. Another cannot exist, and in another form it is not love. Love without full giving is not love. This is a disabled person. It's nothing yet. First and foremost, I am interested in someone who is ready to sacrifice both his position and his name, regardless of whether this sacrifice is made in the name of spiritual principles, in the name of helping a loved one or his own salvation, or both. Such a step suggests a complete contradiction of self-interest inherent in "normal" logic; such an act is contrary to the materialistic worldview and its laws. It is often ridiculous and impractical. And yet - or precisely because of this - the act of such a person brings significant changes in the fate of people and history. The space in which he lives is a peculiar, exceptional picture that contradicts the empirical results of our experience, and at the same time they are no less true. I would say - more. This gradually, step by step, led me to the realization of my desire - to make a big film about a person dependent on others and therefore independent, free and therefore not free from the most important thing: love. And the more clearly the seal of materialism became for me on the face of our planet (regardless of West-East): the more I encountered human suffering, the more often I met people prone to psychoses, evidence of their inability and unwillingness to understand why life has lost all charm and charm for them. the value of why they are so cramped in this life - the more irresistible my desire became - to call this film the main one for me. Modern man is at a crossroads, he is faced with a dilemma: whether to continue the existence of a blind consumer, dependent on the inexorable pace of new technologies and the further accumulation of material values, or to seek and find the way to spiritual responsibility, which, ultimately, could become a saving reality. only for him personally, but also for society. That is to return to God. The person himself must solve this problem, only he can find the way to a normal spiritual life. It is this decision that can become a step towards responsibility to society. This step is the sacrifice, that is, the Christian idea of ​​self-sacrifice. Although it often seems that a person puts an independent decision on some kind of "objective laws" that decide everything for him. I will suggest that modern man, for the most part, is not ready to renounce himself and his own values ​​for the sake of other people or in the name of the Great, the Main; rather, he is ready to turn into a robot. Of course, I am aware that the idea of ​​sacrifice, evangelical love for one's neighbor is not popular today and is less than popular - no one requires us to sacrifice ourselves. This is either "idealistic" or impractical. But as a result of past experience, we see with our own eyes: the loss of individuality in favor of clearly expressed egocentrism, the transformation of human ties into meaningless relations not only between individuals, but also groups of people, and, worst of all, the loss of the last saving opportunities to return to a spiritual life worthy of a person. . Instead of the spiritual, we glorify today the material life and its so-called values. To confirm the idea of ​​how much the world has decomposed by materialism, I will give a small example.

It is easy to get rid of hunger through money. We use a similar and vulgar Marxist mechanism of "money" and "commodity" today, trying to save ourselves from mental ailments. Feeling signs of incomprehensible anxiety, depression or despair, we immediately rush to use the services of a psychiatrist, and even nicer sexologist instead of a confessor, who - as it seems to us - lighten our soul, bring it to a normal state. Reassured, we pay them a tax. And feeling the need for love, we go to a brothel and again pay in cash, although a brothel is not necessary for this. Although we all know perfectly well that neither love nor peace of mind can be purchased for any money.

"Sacrifice"
- a film-parable where events take place, the meaning of which can be interpreted in different ways. The first version of the script was called "The Witch" and was supposed, as I said, as a story about the amazing healing of a cancer patient who learned a terrible truth from his family doctor: his end is inevitable, his days are numbered. One of these days the phone rings. Alexander opens the door and sees a soothsayer on the threshold - this is the prototype of Otto in the film, which conveys a strange, if not absurd message to Alexander: go to a woman who has a reputation as a witch and has magical powers, and sleep (spend the night) with her. The patient believes that he has no way out, obeys and knows God's mercy of healing, which, to his surprise, is confirmed by the family doctor. And then the plot was supposed to develop in an unusual way: on one of the rainy nights, the witch herself appears in Alexander's house, and he considers it happiness to leave his magnificent house, respectable position, and in an old coat leaves with her ...

All the events taken together were supposed to represent not only the parable of sacrifice, but also the story of the physical salvation of a person, that is - and I hope so - Alexander will be saved, he, like the hero of the film completed in 1985 in Sweden, will be healed in more significant sense of the word; it is not only getting rid of a deadly disease, but it is a spiritual rebirth, expressed in the image of a woman(my selection is HX).

It is noteworthy that during the creation of characters, or rather, during the writing of the first version of the script, all the characters were clearly outlined, the actions became more concrete, more structural, regardless of the circumstances in which I was. This process became independent, it entered my life, began to influence it. Moreover, even during the filming of the first foreign film ("Nostalgia"), I had a feeling that "Nostalgia" has an impact on my life. Based on the script, Gorchakov came to Italy only for a while. But he dies in the movie. In other words, he does not return to Russia, not because he does not want to, but because the decision is made by Fate. I also did not imagine that after filming was completed I would stay in Italy; I, like Gorchakov, is subordinate to the Higher Will. Another very sad fact that deepened my thoughts: Anatoly Solonitsyn, the lead actor in all my previous films, who, according to my assumptions, was supposed to play Gorchakov in Nostalgia and Alexander in Sacrifice, died. He died of an illness that Alexander got rid of and which overtook me a few years later.

What does all of this mean? I don't know. But I know it's very scary. But I have no doubt that the poetic picture will become more concrete, the achievable truth will materialize, make itself understood and - whether I like it or not - will itself have an impact on my life.

________________________________

P.S. (mine - HX)
I won't hold back! Love as a sacrifice: what more proof of my innocence is needed when Tarkovsky, as a genius (seeing the essence) and as a man, speaks of love as a sacrifice... A man’s text perfect in its heights (and it doesn’t matter if even a small fraction of what was said was embodied Tarkovsky in his life, what has been said is valuable in itself) about the male version of self-giving in love - sacrificial.
Women's intuition of love, self-giving in love is different: not a sacrifice, but service; not a cross, but a continuous response to the needs of loved ones; not a choice between-between, but - a spontaneous, natural stay in the one and only possible reality for her of the field of love. In Tarkovsky, this is expressed in the image of a woman-witch, who gives life, saving with such her love ...