Excerpt from Bible of Cinema “Sculpting In Time by Andrey TARKOVSKY”
There can be no question of a person’s remaining passive once he has grasped the truth of tat order; for they come to him without his willing it, and overturn all his earlier idea about how the world is. In a very real sense he is divided, aware of being answerable for others; he is an instrument, medium, obliged to live and to act for the sake of other people.
Thus Alexander Pushkin considered that every poet (and I have always seen myself as a poet rather than as a cinematographer), every true artist regardless of whether he wants to be or not—is a prophet. Pushkin saw the capacity to look into time and predict the future as a terrible gift,and his allotted role caused him untold torment. He had a superstitious regard for signs and portents: we only have to recall how,when he was dashing from Pskovto Petersburg at the moment of the Decembrist rising,he turned back because a hare had run across his path;he accepted the popular belief that this was an omen.In one of his poems he wrote about the torture he endured through being conscious of his gift of prescience,and of the burden of being called to be poet and prophet.I had forgotten his words,but the poem came back to me with new significance,almost like a revelation.I feel that the pen which wrote those lines in 1826 was not held by Alexander Pushkin
alone:
“Weary from hunger of spirit
Through grim wasteland I dragged my way,
And a six-winged seraph came to me
At a place where two paths crossed.
With finger-tips as light as sleep
He touched the pupil of my eyes,
And my mantic pupils opened
Like eyes of an eagle scared.
As his fingers touched my ears
They were filled with roar and clang:
And I heard the shuddering of the sky,
And angels’ mountain flight,
And sea beasts moving in the deep,
And growth of valley vine.
And he pressed against my mouth,
And out he plucked my sinful tongue,
And all its guile and empty words,
And taking a wise serpent’s tongue
He thrust it in my frozen mouth
With his incarnadine right hand.
And with his sword he cleft my breast,
And out he plucked my trembling heart,
And in my gaping breast he placed
A coal alive with flames.
Like a corpse I lay in the wasteland,
And I heard God’s voice cry out:
‘Arise, prophet, and see and hear,
Be charged with my will-
And go out over seas and lands
To fire men’s heart with the words’