Tarkovsky on Romanticism

Would you agree to call your films Romantic?

No, I would not.

Yet we find in them such recurring motifs as Romantic journeys in search of one's identity, absolute values; we are dealing with sacralisation of the world, search for the sacred, mythologising of events; finally, we have faith in the original purity of the spiritual culture an artist is to express. The spirit of all this is very Romantic.

You said it very beautifully but I get the impression what you've characterised here isn't Romanticism at all. What you've just described has absolutely nothing to do with it. I guess Romanticism... Whenever I hear the word "Romanticism" I get frightened. Because Romanticism is an attempt... it's not even an attempt, it is a way of expressing a world view, a perception of reality in which man sees in real events, in the real world, more than there really is. Thus when you mention something sacred, search for truth, etc. — for me this...

This isn't Romanticism?

This isn't Romanticism because I do not make reality larger than it is. For me reality is in general much greater than what I can find in it, much deeper and more sacred than I'm able to perceive. Romanticists thought life was much richer than what they could see, i.e. they were guessing, they believed life was not so plain, that there was depth in it, a lot of what we call the exotic, metaphysics, what in itself escapes our cognizance, what cannot be grasped through knowledge. They were guessing it, were attempting to express it. Let me use an example: there are people who can see an aura, a certain multi-coloured glow around human body, those people have certain senses developed to a higher degree than most people. I spoke not too long ago to one such man in Berlin, a Chinese — he could treat you, he knows perfectly well what your condition is, how you feel, what are your problems — he can see all this in the aura.

This phenomenon was confirmed by the Kirlian photography.

Yes, these experiments are related to it — but such person simply can see this aura with his own eyes while romanticists tried to invent it, to guess that it should exist — while a poet can see it.

You might say: but there were poets amongst romanticists. Of course, I'm not denying it. There was Hoffmann whom I simply adore, there was Lermontov, Tyutchev, one of the deepest, a staggering poet, there were many of them... It's all true. But can we really call them romanticists? — They are not romanticists, absolutely they are not romanticists. And Hoffmann is a romanticist. So when they tell me: Romanticism... Obviously — the form used by these artists becomes sort of dignified, enlarged, beautified, ennobled. I think life is beautiful enough, there is enough depth and spirituality in it that it's not necessary to change anything — it is us who should take care of our own development, in the spiritual sense, instead of attempting to make reality more beautiful. Therefore this Romantic costume results from a lack of faith within man or faith mostly in products of one's own imagination.

That's solipsism.

Yes. For me personally Romanticism, or at least one of its important ingredients, seems something quite different. Well, Dovzhenko once said very aptly that even in a muddy puddle he could see stars reflecting. This sort of image I can understand perfectly. But if someone said he could see the "starry hosts of heaven" and an angel flying around, it would be a sanitised, allegorical form, totally untrue, removed from life. But that's the key, Dovzhenko could see it because he was a poet, life for him was much fuller, filled with spirituality, than for those who searched in reality around them merely an addition, a supplement to their own creative activities. For a romanticist life provides a mere reason to create while for a poet creation is a necessity because from the very beginning the spirit that's alive in him demands that. Thus an artist, a poet — as opposed to a romanticist — understands better than anybody else that he becomes God-like. That's logical. This is what ability to create is all about. It's as if this ability was assumed from the very beginning, it does not belong to man. A romanticist on the other hand would always attempt to find in his talent, in his own creative activities, some particular beauty.

Or a mission.

A mission. Beautiful. Here I would agree with you completely.

There is a word in Polish, "wieszcz," we say for example that Adam Mickiewicz was the nation's "wieszcz," a prophet, a seer who revealed before the nation concealed truths...

Yes, yes, yes. Except this isn't Romanticism.

How so?

Also Pushkin was someone like that, and later many artists as well, they are present even today and they serve... I believe that Romanticism — in a narrower sense — manifests itself when an artist is intoxicated with self-adoration, he creates himself in his art. That's a Romantic trait I find abhorrent. Also this self-confirmation, this unending self-presentation is not a result of his art, it is its goal. This is something I do not find very agreeable and in general this is the Romanticism I don't like, stuffy, terribly pretentious, pretentious paintings, artistic concepts, etc. As in Schiller when the hero travels on two swans. Remember that? That's kitsch. That's simply kitsch. By the way, in Russia, and I think in Poland, there were never artists who would talk so much about themselves as Novalis, as Kleist, Byron, Schiller, Wagner.

But this is Romantic individualism, one of the main distinguishing features of Romanticism.

That's egocentrism, thinking only within the bounds of "And what else is there for me?", that's terrible pretentiousness, a need to make oneself the centre of the universe. The polar opposite is another world, the world of poetry which I think of as Eastern, as Eastern culture. Take for example the music of Wagner or, I don't know, Beethoven — that's an unending monologue about oneself: look how poor I am, all in rags, how miserable, what Job I am, how unhappy, how I suffer — like nobody else — I suffer like the antique Prometheus... and here is how I love, and here is how I... You understand? I, I, I, I. — Not too long ago I deliberately listened to music from the 6^th century B.C., it was classical Chinese ritual music. It offers absolute dissolution of individual in nothingness, in nature, in cosmos. That's the polar opposite in quality. Whenever an artist sort of dissolves himself in a work of art, when he himself disappears without a trace, this then is unbelievable poetry.

I'll quote an example which I find utterly spellbinding. In mediaeval Japan there lived many painters who would find shelter at shoguns' courts or stay with some feudal lords — Japan was partitioned into many provinces back then — and they were excellent artists, highly praised, they would reach heights of fame. And having attained this, many of them would suddenly disappear, walk away. They would disappear completely and then reappear at another shogun's court as completely unknown individuals, under different names, and they would begin from scratch the career of a court painter creating works in a totally different style. And in this manner some of them would live five or six lifetimes.

Humility...

This is not humility. One could, I suppose, call it humility but I would rather use a different word — for me this is almost like a prayer in which my own "I" has no significance. Because the talent bestowed upon me was given from on high and — if I'm indeed given this talent — I'm somehow distinguished. And if I'm distinguished it means I should serve it, I'm a slave, not the centre of the universe — it's all clear. You quite rightly mentioned humility but this is something much more important than humility.

Now we are close to Andrei Rublov...

Indeed, he was after all a religious man, a monk...

But the characters in your films are like Romantic heroes, they are always on a path and this journey-pilgrimage becomes initiation: for example Stalker is built around a typically Romantic initiation pattern.

In that case... I don't think you would claim Dostoievsky was a romanticist? But he is no romanticist — as shown by his epoch, his outlook on life. Yet his heroes are always on a path too.

More like in a labyrinth.

Doesn't matter. It's always the same story of man searching, marching towards his goal, like Diogenes with his lantern. Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment — that was the same thing of course, not the slightest doubt about that. Alosha Karamazov — yes, of course. He is also always on a path — but he is no romanticist. That's why when you say "man always on a path" — this isn't necessarily a defining feature of Romanticism, that's not what's most important in Romanticism.