Thursday, July 02, 2009
Narcissus, Emeritus
Narcissus lifts his gaze and cranes his neck to see what he can see;
He twists his neck so painfully
What crystal pure eyes frozen
Imploded by sensations overflowing!
He sees everything through frosted blue
Each wall is transparent
And he taps on every window
But no one hears
He reaches inside of us and is lost in the void and the maze of memory.
Sweet memory
mirth and joy!
To hear the youthful voices
Of fields where he once lay.
Buffered by time
Memories so precise
Sensation of deepening fabric.
Laughter rings out,
The laughter is real though years have flown,
His cruel sentence has ended,
Fleeting beauty lingers on.
Up and away from his magic pool
He turns creaking knee
Takes leave silently
Banishing the zone to grey-white abstraction.
Narcissus Retiring
not skulking away,
at last retreat
From the feathery grasses silkily sliding in aquafingers’ grasp.
He twists his neck so painfully
What crystal pure eyes frozen
Imploded by sensations overflowing!
He sees everything through frosted blue
Each wall is transparent
And he taps on every window
But no one hears
He reaches inside of us and is lost in the void and the maze of memory.
Sweet memory
mirth and joy!
To hear the youthful voices
Of fields where he once lay.
Buffered by time
Memories so precise
Sensation of deepening fabric.
Laughter rings out,
The laughter is real though years have flown,
His cruel sentence has ended,
Fleeting beauty lingers on.
Up and away from his magic pool
He turns creaking knee
Takes leave silently
Banishing the zone to grey-white abstraction.
Narcissus Retiring
not skulking away,
at last retreat
From the feathery grasses silkily sliding in aquafingers’ grasp.
Stalker by Andrey Tarkovsky
Viewing this film for several evenings now! Netflix is good that way---I can hang on to Stalker for as long as I like. I watch and think this is the most beautiful photography, and than I realize how unique and original Tarkovsky's vision is. I have been reading Sculpting in Time the Soviet director's philosophical reflection on filmmaking. Having watched a number of Tarkovsky's films, I think Stalker is the most perfectly realized piece of cinematographic art I have yet encountered. Down to the synthesized soundtrack! The Writer's continual nihilistic babbling contradicts itself---it is an acid bath of pessimism and doubt. Then when the Stalker speaks---it is pure mystical poetry. The acting performance that the director gets with Chingachook is stellar.
Then there is the Zone itself, where all becomes color and birdsong, inside of the sepia-tinted, oilstreaked world where these men came from.
Tarkovsky nails it with the Stalker becaue he has harmonized the film-idea with the film production. It is seamless.
Consider the film shot in the puddle when the Stalker's wife is reading from the Book of Revelation, and we see the altarpiece of Ghent by Van Eyck floating at the bottom of the pool---conveys poetically the meaning of apocalypse.
Very easily one can attach a meaning to the Zone in order to decode its message. It is the Kingdom of Heaven, for example. It is like a drug trip, a psychedelic experience. Another way of reading this is to see that the Zone is the Stalker's own delusional obsession. The Professor aims to detonate a bomb and eliminate the Zone, while the Writer's unending negative chatter more or less accomplishes the same thing. The Stalker is looking for the pure of heart. The Beatles have Sergeant Pepper and Tarkovsky has Stalker!
Then there is the Zone itself, where all becomes color and birdsong, inside of the sepia-tinted, oilstreaked world where these men came from.
Tarkovsky nails it with the Stalker becaue he has harmonized the film-idea with the film production. It is seamless.
Consider the film shot in the puddle when the Stalker's wife is reading from the Book of Revelation, and we see the altarpiece of Ghent by Van Eyck floating at the bottom of the pool---conveys poetically the meaning of apocalypse.
Very easily one can attach a meaning to the Zone in order to decode its message. It is the Kingdom of Heaven, for example. It is like a drug trip, a psychedelic experience. Another way of reading this is to see that the Zone is the Stalker's own delusional obsession. The Professor aims to detonate a bomb and eliminate the Zone, while the Writer's unending negative chatter more or less accomplishes the same thing. The Stalker is looking for the pure of heart. The Beatles have Sergeant Pepper and Tarkovsky has Stalker!
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