Andreï Tarkovski Citations
Andreï Tarkovski: Citations en anglais
“Poetry is an awareness of the world, a particular way of relating to reality.”
Source: Sculpting in Time
“I have a horror of tags and labels.”
Source: Sculpting in Time (1986), p. 149
Contexte: I have a horror of tags and labels. I don't understand, for instance, how people can talk about Bergman's "symbolism". Far from being symbolic, be seems to me, through and almost biological naturalism, to arrive at the spiritual truth about human life that is important to him.
“Show them life, and they'll find within themselves the means to assess and appreciate it.”
Source: Sculpting in Time (1986), p. 152
Contexte: Never try to convey your idea to the audience — it is a thankless and senseless task. Show them life, and they'll find within themselves the means to assess and appreciate it.
“A book read by a thousand different people is a thousand different books.”
Source: Sculpting in Time (1986), p. 177
“I am only interested in the views of two people: one is called Bresson and one called Bergman.”
After the Goskino representative explains that he is trying to give the point of view of the audience.
Sculpting in Time (1989)
“I have always liked people who can't adapt themselves to life pragmatically.”
Source: Sculpting in Time
“What is the essence of the director's work? We could define it as sculpting in time.”
Source: Sculpting in Time (1986), p. 63-4
Contexte: What is the essence of the director's work? We could define it as sculpting in time. Just as a sculptor takes a lump of marble, and, inwardly conscious of the features of his finished piece, removes everything that is not a part of it — so the film-maker, from a 'lump of time' made up of an enormous, solid cluster of living facts, cuts off and discards whatever he does not need, leaving only what is to be an element of the finished film, what will prove to be integral to the cinematic image.
Source: Sculpting in Time (1986), p. 38
Contexte: Art is born and takes hold wherever there is a timeless and insatiable longing for the spiritual, for the ideal: that longing which draws people to art. Modern art has taken the wrong turn in abandoning the search for the meaning of existence in order to affirm the value of the individual for his own sake. What purports to be art begins to looks like an eccentric occupation for suspect characters who maintain that any personalised action is of intrinsic value simply as a display of self-will. But in an artistic creation the personality does not assert itself it serves another, higher and communal idea. The artist is always the servant, and is perpetually trying to pay for the gift that has been given to him as if by a miracle. Modern man, however, does not want to make any sacrifice, even though true affirmation of the self can only be expressed in sacrifice. We are gradually forgetting about this, and at the same time, inevitably, losing all sense of human calling.
Source: Sculpting in Time (1986), p. 113
Contexte: Art is realistic when it strives to express an ethical ideal. Realism is striving for truth, and truth is always beautiful. Here the aesthetic coincides with the ethical.
Source: Sculpting in Time (1986), p. 133
Contexte: [About Mirror] I had the greatest difficulty in explaining to people that there is no hidden, coded meaning in the film, nothing beyond the desire to tell the truth. Often my assurances provoked incredulity and even disappointment. Some people evidently wanted more: they needed arcane symbols, secret meanings. They were not accustomed to the poetics of the cinema image. And I was disappointed in my turn. Such was the reaction of the opposition party in the audience; as for my own colleagues, they launched a bitter attack on me, accusing me of immodesty, of wanting to make a film about myself.
Source: Sculpting in Time (1986), p. 174
Contexte: If there are some who talk the same language as myself, then why should I neglect their interests for the sake of some other group of people who are alien and remote? They have their own 'gods and idols' and we have nothing in common.... If you try to please audiences, uncritically accepting their tastes, it can only mean that you have no respect for them: that you simply want to collect their money.
“Art symbolises the meaning of our existence.”
Source: Sculpting in Time (1986), p. 192
Contexte: Art must must carry man's craving for the ideal, must be an expression of his reaching out towards it; that art must give man hope and faith. And the more hopeless the world in the artist's version, the more clearly perhaps must we see the ideal that stands in opposition — otherwise life becomes impossible! Art symbolises the meaning of our existence.
Source: Sculpting in Time (1986), p. 241
Contexte: Perhaps the meaning of all human activity lies in the artistic consciousness, in the pointless and selfless creative act? Perhaps our capacity to create is evidence that we ourselves were created in the image and likeness of God?
Source: Sculpting in Time (1986), p. 234
Contexte: Freedom is inseparable from conscience. And even if it is true that all the ideas developed by the social conciousness are the product of evolution, conscience at least has nothing to do with the historic process. Conscience, both as a sense and as a concept, is a priori immanent in man, and shakes the very foundations of the society that has emerged from our ill-conceived civilisation.
Source: Sculpting in Time (1986), p. 192
Contexte: Art must must carry man's craving for the ideal, must be an expression of his reaching out towards it; that art must give man hope and faith. And the more hopeless the world in the artist's version, the more clearly perhaps must we see the ideal that stands in opposition — otherwise life becomes impossible! Art symbolises the meaning of our existence.
Source: Sculpting in Time (1986), p. 38
Contexte: Art is born and takes hold wherever there is a timeless and insatiable longing for the spiritual, for the ideal: that longing which draws people to art. Modern art has taken the wrong turn in abandoning the search for the meaning of existence in order to affirm the value of the individual for his own sake. What purports to be art begins to looks like an eccentric occupation for suspect characters who maintain that any personalised action is of intrinsic value simply as a display of self-will. But in an artistic creation the personality does not assert itself it serves another, higher and communal idea. The artist is always the servant, and is perpetually trying to pay for the gift that has been given to him as if by a miracle. Modern man, however, does not want to make any sacrifice, even though true affirmation of the self can only be expressed in sacrifice. We are gradually forgetting about this, and at the same time, inevitably, losing all sense of human calling.
On being told that his film Stalker should be faster and more dynamic by officials at Goskino.
Sculpting in Time (1989)
Letter to the central committee of the CPSU (Communist Party of Soviet Union) https://varjag2007su.livejournal.com/2591915.html?utm_source=fbsharing&utm_medium=social (20 October 1970).
“Relating a person to the whole world: that is the meaning of cinema.”
Source: Sculpting in Time (1986), p. 66
