The Avatars of the Word in Romanian Postmodern Poetic Discourse

Study sustained at the XVIth International Symposium of Science, Theology and Arts, ISSTA 2017, at Alba-Iulia, May 8-9, 2017: ARS LITURGICA - From the Image of Glory to the Images of the Idols of Modernity, 

and published in the proceedings of the symposium (pp. 327-338, Editura Reîntregirea, Alba Iulia, 2017)

The Avatars of the Word in Romanian Postmodern Poetic Discourse

Abstract: Poetry is the freest of the arts, because it is the least related to a material support. In an era in which  arts are increasingly subservient to technology, poetry remains the art that is the least subject to industrialization. Being the least dependent on technology, poetry is the most direct art, the art that reflects most faithfully the aspirations of the creator's ego. Therefore, poetry is, at least since modernity, the first of the arts that reflects the creative spirit’s trends of a particular era. Progressive industrialization of society has deepened this feature. Thus, poetry is the first of the arts that most directly reflects "the avatars of the image", specific to the  postmodern phenomenology. The study explores the changing of the poetic paradigm in Romania in the second half of the XX century, and thus the paradigm shift regarding the social responsibility of the poet. However, this paradigm shift has not cancelled the classical poetic paradigm, but has just put it into the shade. From this shade, the classic paradigm of the creator ego launches challenges to postmodern paradigm, as in an invisible war led on the territory of arts. This invisible war concerns us in this study. Operating a few brief comments on some trends in Romanian poetry, from the postwar period to the present, from the fracturiste movement to religious and mystical poetry, we try to detect the anthropological creative model that underpins them. For the creative act is determined, beyond the factual material and the ideas of an epoch, by the relationship of the creative ego with his self, his fellowmen and with God. Ultimately, poetic creation highlights the relationship of the creative ego with the Divine Logos: a relationship either of dialogue, either corrupted by the isolationist or even sacrilegious monologue of the artist.

Keywords: literary trend, paradigm of creative self, unseen war, fracturism, mystagogical art

1. Introduction: What is Poetry? The Classical Paradigm

In order to understand the situation of contemporary poetry, we should remind the essence of poetic creation in its classic paradigm and the changes of this paradigm from classicism to modernism and postmodernism. 

In its essence, poetry is the freest of the arts, because it is the least related to a material support. In our times, when arts are increasingly subservient to technology, poetry remains the art that is the least subject to industrialization. Being the least dependent on technology, poetry is the most free art and, by the other hand, the art that most faithfully reflects the inner aspirations of the creator's ego. Therefore, at least since modernity, poetry is the art that best reflects the trends of the creative spirit and the state of mind of a particular epoch. Progressive industrialization of society has deepened this feature. Thus, poetry is the art that most directly reflects "the avatars of the (sacred) image", a fact that is specific to the phenomenology of postmodernity. So, until nowadays, poetry is the best spiritual barometer of an epoch, and the best indicator of the relationship between the individual and the symbolic world in a certain cultural epoch. The desemantisation, that is the break of the relation with the symbol, specific to the phenomenology of postmodernity, reflects particularly accurate in contemporary poetry. 

This substantial change of paradigm from classicism to modernism and postmodernism is closely bound with the change of the paradigm of the author. The role and social responsibility of the writer, especially of the poet, had radically changed in the last three centuries. 

The classical (or so-called traditional) paradigm, issued in Greek Antiquity, considers the poet to be the prophet, the visionary, the minstrel, and the spiritual educator of the society. His moral influence and contribution to the coagulation of local and national cultures were very significant. Such models have crystallized in Greek and Roman Antiquity, and they continued in the European Middle Ages, up to Romanticism; but we find them practically the same in Eurasian and Far Eastern cultures and everywhere in traditional cultures. This classical model penetrated with minimal changes until the late nineteenth and early twentieth century in Europe, up to the literary Avant-garde trends. 

The quasi sacerdotal elevation of the author, proclaimed in Antiquity, continued almost unchanged until modernity. We can enumerate consistent lists of very different landmark authors, from very different epochs and cultures (from Homer and Ovidius to Hafiz, from Petrarca, Shakespeare, Goethe, Byron and Victor Hugo, to Shota Rustaveli, Sayat Nova and the japanese Basho, from Pushkin and Lermontov to Eminescu and Lucian Blaga). Their common denominator is the artistic genious, materialized in the ability to access and synthesize the permanent spiritual values, but also the civic consciousness, the feeling of responsibility for the peoples and countries they belonged to, and sometimes the responsibility for the whole humankind. Sometimes the image of the prophet-poet was replaced by that of the citizen-poet or the poet-as-a-hero, or all the three were joined into a single image of the exemplary poet, the poet par excellence (like Byron, Sayat Nova, both Pushkin and Lermontov, and Eminescu). That’s why their strong artistic personality was able to irradiate through ages and cultural borders, and to enrich with elevated ideals the cultural and moral climate of their epoch, and even of subsequent ages. 

2. A More Recent History of (East-European) Poetry

2.1. The Conservation of the Traditional Paradigm

Even in the twentieth century, important artists, and especially poets and writers, have morally supported with their talent, courage and personality the resistance against the totalitarian regimes from Cuba to Spain, Eastern Europe and Africa. Many of them have paid a high price for their heroism; in Eastern Europe, especially in the years of the bolshevik dictature (like Anna Akhmatova, Marina Tsvetaeva, Boris Pasternak in the USSR, Ciabua Amiredjibi in Soviet Georgia, Radu Gyr, Sandu Tudor, Dinu Pillat, Nichifor Crainic and other poets of the communist prisons in Romania, and so on).

But the model of the Citizen-poet did not dissapear together with the violent opression of the totalitarian regimes. It survived in the period of political thaw, when the opression was not evident, but was still present, being perceived through the censorship, which controlled all the fields of the culture. During the Thaw of the seventies in Romania and the Perestroika of the eighties in the USSR, the dissident poets and writers and the bard-poets appeared (like Bulat Okudzhava and Vladimir Vysotski in the USSR, Václav Havel in Czechoslovakia, Adrian Paunescu and Ana Blandiana in Romania, and so on). Despite the fact they dared to criticise the regime in their poems and songs (a courage which before was paid with jail or even with life), they were tolerated by the communist regime, as long as their critique was benign, that is was moderated and did not manifest too often; and as long as their critique did not urge to social rebellion, but only to a certain revival of society and exit from the lethargy, into which the brutality of the proletcultist regime had thrown it. In order to protect their image of democratic regimes (the so-called “socialist democracy”), the communist ideological apparatuses realized that they need the disident poets and bards. It is true that some of them had to make small compromises with the regime, but still kept their voice, their identity and ability to inspire the masses. This period of relative freedom of expression in the Eastern Block led to the synchronization with the Western European artistic trends. 

In Romanian poetry, this led to the birth of the generation of the eighties, which nourished from a civic and artistic paradigm, that was radically different to that of the “Citizen-poets”. They were anti-heroic, apolitical, not socially subservient, and were allergic to the so-called “engaged art”, but also to the humanist and metaphysical ideals of the previous generations. They cultivated the so-called “concrete poetry”, as the artists inspired by pop art and abstract expresionsm cultivated concrete art. A fragmentary poetry, operating with fragments of reality, drawn from the immediate proximity of the poet, and cut off from any symbolic or metaphysical connection. A pseudo-automatic dictee, close to that that was practiced by some avant-garde poets, but lacking the enthusiasm and the overflowing eccentricities of the former. The forthcoming poetic trend of fragmentarism will inspire from here. 

2.2. The Opposite, Anti-iconic Paradigm

The situation radically changed since the fall of the communism in the Eastern-European Block: since the freedom of speach was now for all, the disident artist and the hero-poet were no more needed! Their myth increased for a short time, together with the declassification of the Security records, but declined gradually and irreversibly. After the 90s, the model of the “Citizen-poet” hopelessly fall into desuetude. The prominent poetic personalities of the sixties and the seventies (like Marin Sorescu, Ștefan-Augustin Doinaș, Cezar Ivănescu, Mircea Ivănescu, Ioan Alexandru, Dan Verona) were still active and influential, but they were growing old, and, step by step, some of them physically disappeared from the literary scene, or felt into silence (like Dan Verona). So, their place was taken by the newcomers. A few “veterans” succedet do adapt to the new epoch of freedom of expression, generated by the social and politic freedom (like Nora Iuga, Ana Blandiana, Mircea Dinescu – for a short time). The best adapted those, whose poetic programme did not contain political, nor social goals. But even so, after the nineties the public audience of the poetic discourse considerably diminished. And, despite the freedom of the publishing, the circulation and visibility of the books and magazines that published poetry considerably decreased. 

The generation of the eighties, continued with “the poets of the nineties” and the so-called “poets of the year two thousand” (“douamiiști”), expressed now freely in post-communist Romania, practically without any ideological, nor artistic opposition. Despite they did not distinguish too much from each other, despite the fact they never gained a numerous public, they gradually conquered the university chairs, the editorial boards of the literary magazines, penetrated into the juries of poetry contests and into the organising boards of the new-born poetry festivals. All this tacit, but rather aggressive self-promotion was made under the banner of generational cliques (in accordance with the unwritten law “who is not with us is against us”), and not on the basis of the artistic abilities of the new poets and of their power of vision – attributes, which they programmatically avoided, for the simple reason that they (the atributes) would have been disqualified them. So, gradually, they became the most visible and the best internationally promoted Romanian poets, the official trend and landmark of contemporary Romanian poetry abroad. And all these, under the banner of no political or social commitment, and under a dogma of artistic laxity and “democracy”, as pretended forms of freedom of thought and expression. 

3. Two Case Studies of the Anti-iconic Paradigm

3.1. Marius Ianuș, Dumitru Crudu and  “The Fracturist Manifesto”

But how sounds this dogma? Of course, there is not a unique code. Here is, for example, a fragment of a manifesto of the geneation of “nineties” (“nouăzeciști”), “The Fracturist Manifesto”, signed by the poets Marius Ianuș and Dumitru Crudu, the initiators of the “fracturist” trend in Romania. It was initially published in Monitorul de Braşov in October 19981 1. Like most literary manifestoes of the twentieth century (because those of the XXI century are much less), it is full of pretentious and radical formulas, contradicting each other in the following paragraphs, of authorial vanities and spirit of revenge against the previous generation, of the “poets of the eighties”, but also it contains historical and autobiographical inaccuracies or mystifications. However, it was treated seriously by the literary critics, who did not note the abundent and hilarious “logical fractures” of the “Fracturist Manifesto”. 

For example, the current claims to be apolitical, more precisely, “anarchist”, but repeatedly uses Marxist terminology, criticizing the “petty bourgeois” spirit of the generation of its predecessors. The current criticizes the previous generation of poets for their “outdated, but fixed ideas”, but invokes himself Marxist ideas, which are also “fixed” for those who cultivate them now, especially in Eastern post-comunist Europe, and also “outdated”, since the generation of Louis Aragon and Vladimir Maiakovski (to which the authors of the “Manifesto” even do not refer, to define their separation). Ignoring its illustrious, but forgotten predecessors, so, the ideological reality from which it issues, the current pretends to be “a literary reflection of a new reality”. So, like other postmodern subtrends, it ignores his predecessors during the historical Avanguard, identifying only its synchronous influences (contemporary Polish and Eastern-European poetry in general). The authors of the Manifesto believe that Fracturism was “the first model of a radical break to postmodernism”, ignoring their affiliation de facto to this meta-current, since they define it as cultivating the fragmentation and the concrete, immediate reality – essential features for postmodernism. Finally, the authors of the Manifesto exhibit a typical and non-original allergy to culture as a source of poetic creation, as did all the Avant-gardists, ignoring, once again, their historical predecessors. 

And the examples of logical inadvertencies and lack of originality can continue. But that isn’t the problem. The problem is that, under this mask of opportunism with Marxist polishing, hides the egoistic cult of auctorial, limited ego and the cult of the sensorial reality, as the only reality, both raised at the rank of literary dogma, ignoring man's connection with the universe, with his ancestors, and ultimately with the Divine. All these small impostures or sightlessnesses lead, in the plan of artistic creation, to the loss of the iconic dimension of the poetry. 

Here are more arguments to this idea, extracted from the texts of the second signatory of the Manifesto, the Bessarabian poet Dumitru Crudu. As the renowned literary critic Marin Mincu observes, Dumitru Crudu states that “fracturism ... considers that no sacrament is hidden in everyday life” and “refuses to bind the immediate to a mythological world”, since “nothing can no longer be related to other things, because only what can be seen exists”2. 

This iconoclastic, anti-metaphysical and antireligious perspective is fully valorised by Marius Ianuș, a poet who will have later the power to embrace faith and even become a brother in an Orthodox monastery2; but not to the religious age of his life we are referring here, but to his debut period, which was fully enrolled in the Romanian postmodern trends (assumed or not as such) of the years 1999-2000. His poetic approach from the first two volumes, which imposed him, entitled „Hartie igienica“ (“Hygienic Paper”, 1999) and „Manifest anarhist si alte fracturi“ (“Anarchist Manifesto and Other Fractures”, (2000), is analyzed by the literary critic Mihai Iovănel. He compares Marius Ianuș’s writing with that of the American poet Allen Ginsberg3, observing his “broad rhetoric, based on [...] a shocking, ideological, paranoid sincerity" [...]. In particular, a sequence of the first poem, entitled “Romania”, from his second volume, “provoked scandal, given the hardcore erotic register in which the poet, simultaneously projected in the violator and the vulnerable victim, approximates the image of the homeland, as Ginsberg in his poem “America””- the literary critic comments. 

“Such verses and others, even stronger, although preceded by poets like Daniel Bănulescu and Mihai Gălățanu,  provoked numerous outraged reactions […] Marius Ianuș' character is disputed relatively equally by neuropathy, uncensored aggression and chronic depression, by social and sexual fantasies: a member of the generation lost in the dawn of the post-communist transition, practicing self-analysis in the form of “shameful songs”. The criticics were, in the first instance, disoriented by the self-referentiality of Marius Ianus, who introduces in his verses, in a hip-hop style, the most trivial sketches of personal reality”3.

3.2. The Case of  Mihai Gălățanu

Another case, typical of the deformation, up to mutilation and sacrilegy, of the word and of the image of man, of the homeland and of God, is that of Mihai Gălățanu. Debuted in 1983 and holder of two national poetry awards, the poet gained his visibility as a result of the scandal caused by his volume “A Night with Motherland and Romania with Nonsense” (“O noapte cu Patria și România cu prostii”, Vinea Publishing House, 2001). The violent sub-urban vocabulary and the dense pornographic imagery, simultaneously attacking the image of love, of the woman, and of the Motherland, made the tour of the literary press of the time. The poet, supported by most influential literary critics, like Nicolae Manolescu, Alex Stefanescu and Gheorghe Grigurcu, was labeled as “satanist” by the critic Octavian Soviany. All these had only increased his prestige and opened to him the doors into the most comfortable positions of the literary world. The quoting of his lyrics within this symposium, but also on the written page in general, is impossible, even for even for immune and experienced readers, for reasons of minimal decency.

However, even his former defender, Alex Ştefănescu, reveals the increasingly abusive sacrileges that Mihai Gălăţanu uses to maintain his top position on the front page of literary magazines. Quote: 

“The title of Mihail Gălăţanu's last book, “The Memorial of Pleasure” (Coresi & ASB Publishing, 2000) is an impiety.) The author makes a cheap game of words starting from a TV series that shook consciousness. The title was taken from a poem in which Mihail Gălăţanu, equally uninspired, finds a similarity between the paroxystic voluptuousness, generators of groans, of the sexual intercourse, and the tortures of the political prisoners in the communist prisons. […]  The author has specialized in writing such texts to scandalize readers. He has done, as it is known, even from the homeland, the heroine of an imaginary pornographic film, drawing upon him the flashes of anger of the public opinion. Recently, a police officer even wanted to prosecute him, but the literary world reacted promptly, defending the terrifying poet”4. 

4. Conclusion

Unfortunately, on the background of social depression and moral disorientation of the post-decembrist transition, both quoted cases created numerous precedents in recent Romanian poetry, even generating in the young poets the fixed idea that injuries to human, moral and national values, are the firm recipe for literary success. This has further diminished the climate of uncertainty, void of values and decadence of the today Roman literature.

Fortunately, however, this dangerous paradigm shift did not cancell the classical poetic paradigm, but just has put it into shade. From this shade, the classical paradigm of the creator launches challenges to postmodern paradigm, as in an invisible war, a spiritual war, led on the territory of arts.

This invisible war concerned us in this study. Operating a few brief comments on two opposite trends in Romanian poetry from the postwar period to the present, we tried to detect the anthropological model that underpins them. For the creative act is determined, beyond the factual material and the ideas of an epoch, by the relationship of the creative ego with his self, with his fellows and with God. Ultimately, the poetic creation highlights the relationship of the creative ego with the Divine Logos: a relationship either of dialogue, either corrupted by the isolationist or even sacrilegious monologue of the artist. 

Notes

1. Dumitru Crudu, Marius Ianuş, „Manifestul Fracturist”, Suplimentul de marți al ziarului Observator de Constanţa, no. 85-86, 5 iunie 2001, http://asalt.tripod.com/a_086.htm / 10.04.2017.

2. Ibid. 

3. Marin Mincu, „Fracturismul poetic – o negaţie neoavangardistă a optzeciştilor”, Suplimentul de marți al ziarului Observator de Constanța, http://asalt.tripod.com/a_086.htm / 10.04.2017.

4. Marius Ianuș, „De la Fracturism la Dumnezeu, Rezumatul conferinţei ţinută la Biblioteca Bucovinei din Suceava”, https://yanush.wordpress.com/2012/03/16/de-la-fracturism-la-dumnezeu / 10.04.2017.

5. An american poet, a leading figure of the Beat Generation and an energic promoter of the homosexuals’ rights.

6. Mihai Iovanel, “Marius Ianuș, de la „hârtie igienică“ la „fularul alb“”, Revista Cultura, nr. 347 din 27-octombrie-2011, http://revistacultura.ro/nou/2011/10/marius-ianus-de-la-%E2%80%9Ehartie-igienica%E2%80%9C-la-%E2%80%9Efularul-alb%E2%80%9C/) / 10.04.2017.

7. Claudia Minela, “Mihai Gălăţanu îşi aniversează ziua cu prietenii, amintindu-şi” (“Mihai Gălăţanu celebrates her day with friends, remembering”), Bocancul literar.ro, undated, http://www.bocancul-literar.ro/Forms/CreatieLiterara/DetaliiCreatie.aspx?id=28676 / 10.04.2017.

8. București, Coresi & ASB Publishing, 2000.

9. Lucia Hossu-Longin, „Memorialul durerii”, Romanian Television (TVR).

10. Alex. Ștefănescu, “Mihail Gălăţanu has lost his patience”, România Literară, no. 36/2000, http://www.romlit.ro/mihail_glanu_i-a_pierdut_rbdarea / 10.04.2017.

VISUAL ANTINOMY OF SACRED PERFECTION. GINEVRA DE’ BENCI’S MYSTERY IN TARKOVSKY’S MIRROR

Paper sustained at the international conference "THE ART OF CINEMA: ANTHROPOLOGY, PEDAGOGICS, CULTURE" / "ИСКУССТВО КИНО: АНТРОПОЛОГИЯ, ПЕДАГОГИКА, КУЛЬТУРА", Tomsk State Pedagogic University & Novgorod State University "Yaroslavl the Wise". Published in the Journal of Visual Theology / Визуальная теология, no. 1/ 2021, pp. 119-130. 

Abstract

The article examines the significance of Renaissance aesthetics for Andrei Tarkovsky and explores the functioning and semiotic effects of the Renaissance figurative model in the film Mirror. The study focuses on one of the least commented stills with a great symbolic significance – the “Portrait of Ginevra de’ Benci” (or “Portrait of a Young Woman with a Juniper”) by Leonardo da Vinci. The author emphasizes the visual and semantic connection between Leonardo’s canvas and the image of the main character of the film , showing how the director creatively develops the mysterious connection between the two women from different times and cultures. 

On one hand, the inner world of the main heroine is reflected in Leonardo’s canvas. On the other hand, a certain view of the camera on Ginevra's portrait and the lighting technique reveal the secret world of the spiritual evolution of the main character. Tarkovsky visually connects the biographical plot with the sacred themes of eternity, immortality, the antinomic perfection of man, and the salvation of the soul, using the symbolically rich Renaissance imagery created by Leonardo da Vinci.

Резюме

В данной статье исследуется значение эстетики Возрождения для творчества Андрея Тарковского. На примере фильма «Зеркало» анализируются способы функционирования и семиотические эффекты ренессансной изобразительной модели. В центре внимания этого исследования находится один из кадров, который имеет большое символическое значение, но до сих пор мало комментируется , – «Портрет Джиневры де Бенчи» («Портрет молодой женщины с можжевельником») Леонардо да Винчи. В статье установлена визуальная и смысловая связь между картиной Леонардо и образом главной героини фильма «Зеркало». Режиссёр творчески развивает идею таинственной связи женщин из разных эпох и разных культур: с одной стороны, внутренний мир главной героини фильма отражается и выражается в холсте Леонардо; с другой стороны, определённый взгляд кинокамеры на портрет Джиневры, приёмы освещения открывают внимательному зрителю тайный мир духовного становления главной героини. Тарковский визуально связывает биографический сюжет с сакральными темами вечности, бессмертия, антиномического совершенства человека, спасения души, пользуясь для этого символически богатым ренессансным образом, созданным Леонардо да Винчи.

Andrei Tarkovsky was creating his films, as he said himself, according to the compositional models of paintings. The compositional principles of Renaissance painting are especially noticeable in his work, notably in the films he made in his homeland. This is how the film Mirror was created: you have to look at this film like to a painting, the filmmaker said, emphasizing the secondary importance of the time axis of the film and the primacy of the compositional structure of the images-symbols. Nevertheless, the musical compositional model is also present in Mirror: this is how the rhythm of narration, and the sequence of figurative and sound symbols were conceived, for Tarkovsky always followed the principles of symphonicity in his films.

One of the principles of symphonicity is the use of the motif of doublets, that is, of double symbolic elements (objects, heroes, significant gestures, camera movements, editing techniques, musical themes). Their alternation in the narrative of the film creates the internal rhythm and the axis of spiritual evolution of the heroes, as well as the complex dialogue between symbols, which enter into subtle correspondences. These correspondences, especially in Mirror, create a unique symbolic organicity and refinement of the film, its spiritual and philosophical depth and beauty and an inexhaustible semantic richness.

The figurative painting model, mainly used in Mirror, was established by Andrei Tarkovsky together with his cinematographer Georgy Rerberg: the painting of the Renaissance and especially that of Leonardo da Vinci. Why exactly this way?

Andrei Tarkovsky does not explain this aesthetic principle, he simply postulates it. But we can suppose his choice was caused by the director’s adherence, since his youth, to the art of Renaissance as to the peak of world culture, expressing in the best way his own philosophical, anthropological and aesthetic ideals, which are to inscribe the human being into eternity and eternity into the human being. Specifically, the aesthetics of Renaissance offered Tarkovsky the elements of cinematic language suitable to express the so-called “goal” of the film (as the director himself used to say). The role of the film Mirror, said the director on the film premiere’s eve, was to prove the immortality of his mother, to inscribe the main character of the film and thus to some extent people close to her into eternity: “I cannot reconcile myself to the thought that my mother will ever die. I will protest and shout that she is immortal. I want to convince others of her individuality and uniqueness. The internal premise from which I started was my desire to analyse her character in such a way as to prove her immortality” [Turovskaya 1989, 61].

Renaissance painting and Baroque music contribute in the best way to this goal. But how do exactly they work in Mirror? The film speaks about ordinary people of 20th century, who do not ask themselves too many questions about faith and do not have a clear idea about ​​eternity. How can one inscribe their biographical story, set out like a mosaic, into eternity using the cinematic language? Narratively, Tarkovsky accomplishes this task by inscribing his heroes into the great history, which is read according to such keywords, like: collective suffering and self-sacrifice for homeland and humanistic ideals, patient enduring of the sufferings of the war and of the Stalinist regime, hope and heroism. These ideals are reflected by the selection of documentary newsreels of the Soviet and world history of the 20th century, combined with moments of Tarkovsky’s family chronicle, expressing, on their level, almost the same main themes.

On the level of the soundtrack, the inscribing of personal, family and world history into eternity is facilitated by the baroque music, evokinghighest ideals, and by the off-screen commentary with Arseny Tarkovsky’s poems, almost all speaking about eternity, life of the soul and higher humanistic values (like purity of love, courage, self-sacrifice). However, all these incarnations of highest ideals are subtle and are semantically sustained by the visual and audio registers of the film. Therefore, the visual palette of Mirror predominantly adopts motives, compositional and lighting techniques, and even concrete specific paintings of the Renaissance, especially from Leonardo da Vinci.

Leonardo da Vinci is the Russian filmmaker’s favorite artist. Tarkovsky constantly uses da Vinci’s works also in his other films (starting with Solaris and especially in the films produced outside USSR). One of the reasons of this artistic reverence is the specificity of Leonardo da Vinci’s manner of painting, which is ideal for the audio-visual expression of the idea of infinity and of other metaphysical topics, like inscribing the human being into eternity and eternity into the human being. Therefore, all Tarkovsky’s work, that is his so-called meta-film (in the Russian interpretation of this term), is based on the anthropologic and artistic model of Renaissance.

The Renaissance visual model is used by Tarkovsky in Mirror in the following ways:

    • by constructing frame compositions according to some famous Renaissance canvases,

    • by adopting compositional techniques of the Renaissance, especially mise en abîme – the most ancient artistic technique built on recursion, that is, the repetitive principle of reproducing or mirroring an object within oneself: “an image within the same image”, “a film within a similar film”, “a story within a similar story” (in Russian traditional culture this technique is simply called “the matryoshka principle” – referring the famous Russian folk wooden painted dolls, placed one inside another, expressing the continuity of generations and infinity of life),

    • by adopting visual techniques of lighting (chiaroscuro, sfumato) to the landscape compositions and portrait shots, techniques which are also associated with the concept of infinity (of the macro- and microcosmos) and with the idea of the mystery of the self (of the person) — principles belonging to the Renaissance philosophy,

    • by quoting concrete referential canvases: classic landscapes (like the famous Bruegel’s winter), but especially portraits hinting at certain female characters of the film and suggesting their iconic alter ego, their image in eternity.

The Girl with a Pearl Earring, Vermeer, 1665

The girl with a cracked lip. Mirror

The main Renaissance portrait, around which the heroines of the film are

secretly gravitating (although it is not directly quoted in Mirror), is Johannes

Vermeer’s “The Girl with a Pearl Earring” (the so-called “Dutch Mona Lisa”).

This portrait is visually referenced by well-remembered frames and scenes of the

film: rich doctor’s wife trying on turquoise earrings and the girl with a cracked

lip in the so-called “Bruegel Winter Landscape” scene. The glance and elusive

(simultaneously sensual and distracted) expression of this girl’s mouth remind us

of the named Vermeer’s canvas (fig. 1).

But while the images and gestures reminding Vermeer’s “The Girl with a

Pearl Earring” express the sublime hypostasis of the film’s heroines, that is the

heavenly archetype of their spiritual evolution, Leonardo’s canvas “Ginevra de’

Benci” (fig. 2) is a disturbing and even shocking appearance through its direct

non-diegetic quotation.

Ginevra de’ Benci, Leonardo da Vinci, 1474–1476

The shocking effect is emphasized by the sudden change of the sound track. The opera music is a short excerpt from the Oratorio St. John Passion, started in the flash-back with father's return from the war and ended on Ginevra's face. The fragment in which J.S. Bach puts in the mouth of St. John the Theologian St. Matthew's apocalyptic verses (Matt. 27, 51-52) raises even more the threshold of the mystery. The tenor's loud, paroxysmal voice — from which the common Soviet spectator of the seventies doesn't understand a single word — initially evokes the emotion of war-sick children meeting their long-awaited father (their tears and troubled faces confirm it), but the same voice changes its function in the next insert, where it deconstructs Ginevra's apparent serenity and makes us scrutinize her thoroughly. We should notice that in the original version of the film the text of the opera recitative, despite its obvious loudness — therefore emotional importance — did not have translated subtitles, which looked like a provocation for the usual Soviet spectator, who felt unfamiliar and even unfriendly with German language. One could think that the avoiding of translating the Bible verse could have been motivated by censorship considerations, but the real reason seems to be deeper: it seems to be not an ideological compromise for the approval of the film, but a strictly aesthetical choice. 

In this light the portrait of the Florentine poetess expresses the mystery in its impenetrability and its deep ontological property: the ambiguity. Here is what Tarkovsky himself was saying about it: “The Portrait of a Young Woman with a Juniper by Leonardo da Vinci <...>. There is something in it that lies on the other side of good and evil<...> In Mirror we will need this portrait in order to confront it with the heroine and to emphasize both in her and in the actress M. Terekhova, who plays the main role, the same ability to be charming and repulsive at the same time” [Terekhova 2002, 136] (fig. 3).

Fig. 3. Margarita Terekhova in Tarkovsky’s Mirror

One important role of Renaissance painting in Tarkovsky’s Mirror and perhaps the most important is the materialization of ambiguity. But how does this ambiguity work in the film? Structurally, ambiguity consists of an organic combination of opposites belonging to the same world or person and having the same right to exist. Internal contradictions characterize the real world on all its ontological levels. At the level of perfection, the internal so-called contradictions consist of unspoken antinomies that silently speak about the apophatism of the Perfect Being.

Tarkovsky proves his undeniable genius, as a master of ambiguity, as he is able to observe and conceive, maneuver and recombine opposite attributes, easily and with subtle details, so that he is able to raise ambiguity from the status of formal mechanicism of opposite dualisms (such as Yin and Yang), opening to ambiguity the upper sphere of the antinomies of perfection. The director manages to do this with the same inspired skill with which Leonardo da Vinci distinguishes and recombines light and darkness, layers of transparency and color, shadows and partial shade in the sfumato technique, directing all this sophisticated combination not towards speculative illusion1, but towards Heaven.

Among the performers of the film, the best one who expresses the state of ambiguity is Margarita Terekhova. In Mirror, the actress plays two roles: the role of Maria / Marusya (the Author’s mother) and that of Natalia (the Author’s wife). This becomes a reason for subtlest separations and recombinations of the two poles (positive and negative) of feminine ambiguity, according to fluid artistic criteria. At a first glance, this may serve as a pretext for Freudian interpretations (as happened in a considerable number of Western commentaries on the film), but this psychoanalytic approach leads to a dead end, because the film is not subject to the materialistic Freudian paradigm, but to deeper spiritual and anthropological principles. And, most importantly, by these combinations of symbols and archetypal polarities, the filmmaker aims to project his heroes and their lives into eternity, that is to iconize people and history.

Tarkovsky immortalizes the character of the Mother (Maria) through a mirror game with the image of the living heroine and an almost naïve allegorical painting, layering them one upon another in a complex alternation of time axis. This takes place in the scene after the flood in the old village kitchen. At the end of the mute semi-onyric scene, the main character – wet through Marusya (young Maria, played by Margarita Terekhova), wrapped in a white wooden shawl, looks at herself in an old mirror on the wardrobe door, and in the mirror image she sees not herself, but Maria Vishnyakova, that is her (Marusya’s) elderly hypostasis. How does this visually happen?

Maria Vishnyakova – Andrei Tarkovsky’s mother, and in the film the mother of the Author, approaches the mirror, in which one can see the reflection of an allegorical landscape with a tree (let’s call it the “Tree of Life”), with a sky and clouds (fig. 4). A small fire is flaming in front of the tree, but the fire is not painted on the canvas: it’s just a reflection of the flaming kitchen stove, which burned strongly and dangerously in the previous scene (of the hair washing), as if the flame of the kitchen stove and its mirror reflection burned Marusya alive. But now the fire calmed down. Initially a feral fire, devouring the heroine through family quarrels and the sufferings of the war, now calmes down and quietly warms the “tree” of Marusya’s life, like a vigil lamp or the flame of a prayer. And indeed, in the next scene of the warming of hands at an ignited splinter in the night, the close palms resemble the gesture of a prayer, as if the children’s palms were embracing the sacred fire of supplication.

One important role of Renaissance painting in Tarkovsky’s Mirror and perhaps the most important is the materialization of ambiguity. But how does this ambiguity work in the film? Structurally, ambiguity consists of an organic combination of opposites belonging to the same world or person and having the same right to exist. Internal contradictions characterize the real world on all its ontological levels. At the level of perfection, the internal so-called contradictions consist of unspoken antinomies that silently speak about the apophatism of the Perfect Being.

Tarkovsky proves his undeniable genius, as a master of ambiguity, as he is able to observe and conceive, maneuver and recombine opposite attributes, easily and with subtle details, so that he is able to raise ambiguity from the status of formal mechanicism of opposite dualisms (such as Yin and Yang), opening to ambiguity the upper sphere of the antinomies of perfection. The director manages to do this with the same inspired skill with which Leonardo da Vinci distinguishes and recombines light and darkness, layers of transparency and color, shadows and partial shade in the sfumato technique, directing all this sophisticated combination not towards speculative illusion¹, but towards Heaven.

Among the performers of the film, the best one who expresses the state of ambiguity is Margarita Terekhova. In Mirror, the actress plays two roles: the role of Maria / Marusya (the Author’s mother) and that of Natalia (the Author’s wife). This becomes a reason for subtlest separations and recombinations of the two poles (positive and negative) of feminine ambiguity, according to fluid artistic criteria. At a first glance, this may serve as a pretext for Freudian interpretations (as happened in a considerable number of Western commentaries on the film), but this psychoanalytic approach leads to a dead end, because the film is not subject to the materialistic Freudian paradigm, but to deeper spiritual and anthropological principles. And, most importantly, by these combinations of symbols and archetypal polarities, the filmmaker aims to project his heroes and their lives into eternity, that is to iconize people and history.

Tarkovsky immortalizes the character of the Mother (Maria) through a mirror game with the image of the living heroine and an almost naïve allegorical painting, layering them one upon another in a complex alternation of time axis. This takes place in the scene after the flood in the old village kitchen. At the end of the mute semi-onyric scene, the main character – wet through Marusya (young Maria, played by Margarita Terekhova), wrapped in a white wooden shawl, looks at herself in an old mirror on the wardrobe door, and in the mirror image she sees not herself, but Maria Vishnyakova, that is her (Marusya’s) elderly hypostasis. How does this visually happen?

Maria Vishnyakova – Andrei Tarkovsky’s mother, and in the film the mother of the Author, approaches the mirror, in which one can see the reflection of an allegorical landscape with a tree (let’s call it the “Tree of Life”), with a sky and clouds (fig. 4). A small fire is flaming in front of the tree, but the fire is not painted on the canvas: it’s just a reflection of the flaming kitchen stove, which burned strongly and dangerously in the previous scene (of the hair washing), as if the flame of the kitchen stove and its mirror reflection burned Marusya alive. But now the fire calmed down. Initially a feral fire, devouring the heroine through family quarrels and the sufferings of the war, now calmes down and quietly warms the “tree” of Marusya’s life, like a vigil lamp or the flame of a prayer. And indeed, in the next scene of the warming of hands at an ignited splinter in the night, the close palms resemble the gesture of a prayer, as if the children’s palms were embracing the sacred fire of supplication.

Fig. 4. Old Maria in the mystical mirror. Still from Mirror

Sending into the future the image of Author’s mother (visually, through her mirror reflection), Tarkovsky overlaps on this image the miniature fire of prayer and the little “tree of life”. In the cinema language it means the immortalization of Mother, her heavenly glorification through the reflected play of the film characters and through Renaissance paintings, everyday life and the sphere of world culture, inscribing through mirroring effects one ontological level into another.

Out of all the Renaissance paintings used in the film, those of Leonardo da Vinci work most effectively. Approximately at the end of the first third of the film, after the newsreel with the rise of the Soviet stratospheric balloon, commented by Pergolesi’s celestial music, we see the scene where teenager Alexey flips through the Renaissance prints album (fig. 5). The gaze of the camera stops especially on the works of Leonardo da Vinci: secular portraits and sketches for religious compositions; the scene is accompanied by the sublime music of J. S. Bach. The flipping scene ends on an engraving with sketches of palms joined in prayer. The longest gaze of the camera stops on them, defining thus the meaning of the scene: the Olympian, supermundane peace of the Spirit, as a response to earthly tragedies and suffering, evoked by the previous historical newsreels (few people know that the rise of the first Soviet stratospheric balloon ended tragically). The flipping through the engravings album, one of the most memorable scenes of the film, symbolically connects, like in a polyphonic dialogue, with many syntactic elements of the film.

Fig. 5. Album with Renaissance gravures. Mirror.

The scene with the album is followed by a family everyday episode, where Ignat pricks his finger and tells his mother that this has happened to him once before – a hint at the mirroring of history or at its repeatability and at the multilayered structure of reality. The scene continues with the mysterious visiting of Ignat by guests from the future, including Ignat’s grandmother (aka Maria Vishnyakova), whom Ignat does not recognize, and only by the end of the scene (known as “the reading of Chaadaev’s letter to Pushkin”) the boy realizes that something supernatural has happened in his house.

All this is symbolically connected with the interweaving of the theme of historical newsreels with the themes from Pergolesi’s and Bach’s music and from the Renaissance engravings: the expansion of individual consciousness to a wider, universal scale of all mankind. However, if all the works of Leonardo from Mirror are evoking eternity and the expansion of human consciousness, Ginevra de’ Benci’s portrait plays a narrower or more punctual role, more precisely, the role of a semantic accent. The Florentine poetess’ portrait is closely associated with the images of the main female characters, Maria and Natalia, especially with the prototype of Natalia. This Leonardo’s canvas is much more difficult to remember in the film because it appears only once (which is not typical for Tarkovsky’s significant frames and scenes, which usually function in doublets) and lasts relatively short (about 15 seconds, which is short enough for the average duration of Tarkovsky’s shots).

Rarely in Tarkovsky’s movies and in any grammatically correctly constructed films significant images appear only once. Most often, the main cinematic motives function in doublets (double appearances), thus strengthening their presence in the symbolic world of the film and firmly inscribing themselves into the drama. This is a general law of film composition, valid not only for Tarkovsky. In his movies, especially in Mirror, the function of the doublet motifs is very carefully and subtly developed. Therefore, the unique appearance of Ginevra’s portrait indicates that its function is closer to a semantic accent, albeit very mysterious and strong, than to a main significant motive, firmly embedded in the dramaturgy of the film. What does this accent consist of?

According to the chronological axis of the narrative, Ginevra’s portrait appears between the touching scene of father’s return from the war, when he embraces his children in the forest, and the scene of Natalia’s second quarrel with her husband, which belongs to the time axis of the seventies, that is the present time of the film. The family quarrel scene, filmed in black and white, begins with Natalia’s close-up sitting against the light in a dim, diagonal lighting from bottom to top, and is preceded by the mysterious portrait of Ginevra. The bottom-up illumination is unnatural; this lighting technique is specific for the horror genre, and it is charged by Tarkovsky with a fairly clear psychological meaning1. In the same way Marusya (also aka Terekhova) was filmed in the scene of the cock's beheading in the village house, also a moment with discrete horror connotations (as Tarkovsky himself declared). This manner of lighting emphasizes Natalia's nervousness, her anxiety and spiritual disharmony, caused by her inner rebellion. And all this disharmony enters into a secret but strong correlation with the Olympian coldness of Ginevra’s lunar-pale portrait. The impenetrable, cold and extremely ambiguous face of the Florentine lady is visually correlated with Natalia’s sour air from the scene of the family quarrel.

Fig. 6. A spot of blue light. Still from Mirror

    The troublous passage from “Saint John Passion”, begun at the end of the scene with father’s return and continued until Ginevra’s close-up, amplifies the shock and the mystery. In the fragment of the oratorio J. S. Bach quotes the words of Evangelist Matthew about the death and Resurrection of Christ: “Und die Erde erbebete, und die Felsen zerrissen, die Gräber taten sich auf, und standen auf viele Leiber der Heiligen“ [And the earth did quake, and the rocks rent; and the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose] (Matt. 27, 51–53) [Kononenko 2011, 249]. The tenor’s disturbing syncopal voice seems at first to express the emotion of the children, meeting their long-awaited father (their tears and anxious faces confirm this). But the role of the tenor’s voice changes in the next insert, where it obviously undermines Ginevra’s Olympic serenity, forcing the audience to attentively peer at the famous Leonardo’s canvas.

      But immediately after the “musical aggression” over the painting Tarkovsky the opera recitative“consoles” Ginevra with a spot of blue light. As the camera passes over the details of the canvas, a faint spot of bluish color appears, moving along the same contour with the camera, like a lighting and magnifying device that discovers and highlights a fragile tree trunk in the background of the canvas – an element of nature that also participated in the “glorification” of Maria, as if a gentle moonlight spot conciliates Ginevra’s cold and also moonlike appearance. Reputable analysts (the first of which is, chronologically, Natasha Synessios) also noticed the similarity between Ginevra and Natalia [Synessios 2001]. Thus, the vague circle of blue color, revitalizing Ginevra’s portrait and illuminating her tiny “tree of life” (fig. 6), can symbolize functions like a discreet blessing sent to Natalia, perpetuating and existentially orienting the confused heroine, who has not yet found her terrestrial path and archetypal image.

Fig. 7. Ginevra de’ Benci, Leonardo da Vinci, detail

    Therefore, the portrait of Ginevra expresses the ambiguity inherent to both heroines, interpretated by Margarita Terekhova. In the order of the dichotomies from the film, as we already mentioned, there is a doublet relationship (like Yin–Yang) between Maria and Natalia, concretized in two aspects: the formal similarity between the two women up to their formal identification, and a certain complementarity. Maria, who had accepted the trials of fate with dignity and without grumbling (the sufferings of the war and of the Stalinist regime), wins a moral victory grace to her patience and devotion, and therefore is worthy of “iconic exaltation”. By the other hand, rebellious Natalya is passing through the hardest ordeal of her life (the divorce), which she does not clearly understand; she is still going across her personal hell. And exactly on the bottom of this “hell” (the hell of family quarrels and lack of inner orientation), the light spot on Ginevra’s portrait offers a ray of hope – to whom? – to the heroine with whom Ginevra is symbolically closely associated, that is Natalia.

So we can say – and this analysis is just one of the many proofs for this – that the secret principles of Tarkovsky’s cinematic language are similar to the general laws of symbolic language and particularly to the principles of sympathetic magic. Of course, they are used by the filmmaker according to his genius intuition and artistic intelligence, and not mechanically, according to some hidden artistic handbooks and recipes, or by copying some occult alchemical algorithms.

In the order of the doublet relationship between the two heroines, Maria’s steady “cinematic immortalization” should be put into correspondence with at least a modest “glorification” of Natalia. These cinematic projections of the two heroines into eternity are not identical, for the two women are at different stages of their spiritual formation and have different narrative functions in the film. Maria’s “cinematic immortalization” is almost explicit and firmly semantically grounded, while Natalia’s “exaltation” is discreet and barely tangible. Nevertheless, through his cinematic language, Tarkovsky offers to each of them the chance for “heavenly exaltation”, drawing the narrative frames for the “salvation” of their souls.

This is exactly what means “to sanctify” or “to consecrate” the cinematic image by developing a unique cinematic language, capable to effectively operate in the sphere of the sacred. Tarkovsky gives us this lesson in the highest degree, that is on the level of the perfect organicity between film, life, and transcendence.

REFERENCES

Dulgheru 2021 - Dulgheru E. Film as a Prayer. The Poetics of the Sacred in Tarkovsky's Films, Saint-Petersburg, 2021. In Russian.

Dulgheru 2014 – Dulgheru E. Tarkovsky. Film as a Prayer. Bucharest, 2014.

Kononenko 2011 – Kononenko N. Andrei Tarkovsky. The Sounding World of the Film. Moscow, 2011. In Russian.

Synessios 2001 – Synessios N. Mirror. London, New York, 2001.

Terekhova 2002 – Terekhova М. With Andrei Tarkovsky. About Tarkovsky. Ed. by М. А. Таrkovskaya. Moscow, 2002. P. 135–140. In Russian.

Turovskaya 1989 – Turovskaya M. Tarkovsky: Cinema as Poetry. Transl. by N. Ward. London, Boston, 1989.

Turovskaya 1991 – Turovskaya М. 7 ½ or The Films of Andrei Tarkovsky. Moscow, 1991. In Russian.

1^ As are doing the Dutch artist M. C. Escher and other art illusionists, but also some reputed filmmakers (like Alfred Hitchcock, Peter Greenaway, Lars von Trier and others).

Andréi Tarkovski y la cultura universal

Several days ago, at the beginning of December 2020, at Shangrila Publishing, in Spain, issued a new book on Andrei Tarkovsky, to which I have been one of the contributors ("The Organic Architecture of Andrei Tarkovsky"), among recognized specialists in the field.

The book is entitled Andréi Tarkovski y la cultura universal and is coordinated by Tamara Djermanovic and Olena Velykodna from Pompeu Fabra University (Barcelona, ISBN 978-84-122568-1-9). 

The Content of the book:

Prólogo: «¡Solo hacía cine cine y quería ser feliz!». Motivos biográficos en las películas de Andréi Tarkovski - Marina Tarkovskaya

Arte y memoria: a propósito de Solaris - Rafael Argullol

Tarkovski, un poeta en el cine - Donatella Baglivo

Tarkovski como regla - Robert Brid

Referencias literarias y estéticas en Tarkovski - Tamara Djermanovic

La arquitectura orgánica de Tarkovski - Elena Dulgheru

Sacrificio: Andréi Tarkovski como coleccionista de sueños - Layla Alexander-Garret

La crisis de la civilización moderna en el contexto de la visión filosófica de Andréi Tarkovski - Ígor Evlampiev

Polaroids en Tarkovski (1979-1984): un cruce revelado - Neide Jallageas

La voz del poeta: afinidades artísticas entre Arseni Tarkovski y Andréi Tarkovski - Kitty Hunter Blair

«El hogar que nunca tendré». Una biografía de Andréi Tarkovski por sus hogares, perdidos y recordados - Ruxandra Kriazopoulos-Berinde

Del tiempo y la muerte - Carlos Losilla

El pensamiento en su tempestad. Sobre las Lecciones de cine de Andréi Tarkovski - José Manuel Mouriño

Andréi Tarkovski y «Los españoles» - Carlos Muguiro

Hermenéutica cinematográfica de Andréi Tarkovski - Dimitri Salynski

Trabajar con Tarkovski: secretos de la filmación de Stalker - Evgeni Tsímbal

Tarkovski y la estética documental del cine soviético - Olena Velykodna

Andréi Tarkovski: recuerdos a través del espejo - Roger Vilanova i Jou

Esculpir el camino: impresiones paralelas entre Stalker y Esculpir el tiempo, de Tarkovski - Paula López

The word of the coordinaters:

Este libro es fruto de la admiración y el amor por el cine y la figura de Andréi Tarkovski (1932-1986). Solo después emerge la parte profesional o académica. El grupo de autores que firman los capítulos del libro representan un grupo heterogéneo: algunos vivieron o trabajaron con Tarkovski, otros se dedicaron a su obra como críticos, académicos o cinéfilos. También hay aportaciones de dos jóvenes investigadores que añaden al análisis de la obra de Tarkovski una mirada pura y entusiasta, no por ello menos válida a la hora de invitarnos a indagar por el universo tarkovskiano.

La idea de hacer un libro que integra el conjunto de estas diferentes miradas, transversales y complementarias sobre la obra de Tarkovski, nació cuando los autores de los textos se dieron cita en Barcelona para participar en El Simposio Internacional ‘Andréi Tarkovski en el contexto de la cultura universal’ (Universidad Pompeu Fabra, 16-18 de noviembre 2016). Este encuentro fue la inspiración que origina el presente libro, junto con las clases dedicadas cada año al arte, pensamiento y estética del cineasta ruso que sus coordinadoras, Tamara Djermanovic y Olena Velykodna, comparten con sus estudiantes, ávidos de tener las claves que les aproxime más al cine-pensamiento tarkovskiano. El libro invita a descubrir los enigmas de la vida y la obra de Tarkovski sin olvidarse de las referencias a la tradición rusa y a la cultura universal.

https://shangrilaediciones.com/producto/andrei-tarkovski-y-la-cultura-universal/?fbclid=IwAR1e-J1wEBoqY5EKiRJWY4eAzLSuduc5M0ftFKSCfdAVUpBk-afCEP12Gcs

🙏 Unfortunately, one of the contribuitors of the book, the philologist Robert Bird, had passed away this autumn (on September 7) at the age 52. His book on Tarkovsky, translated into Russian by himself (”Andrei Tarkovsky. ELEMENTS OF CINEMA”), is fothcomming in Russia. 

May God rest his soul in peace!