The Leftover Objects State of Objects in Andrei Tarkovsky's Image Motif

The leftover objects State of objects in Andrei Tarkovsky's image motif The Hunters in the Snow (1955) by Pieter Brueghel Babu Thaliath Centre of German Studies Jawaharlal Nehru University New Delhi 1 The leftover objects∗ State of objects in Andrei Tarkovsky's image motif Abstract You can hear the sound of old life breathing: Slime covered mushrooms grow in the wet grass, Slugs have bored through into the very core, And a gnawing dampness niggles at the skin. from Ignatievo Forest by Arseniy Tarkovsky1 Objects – from natural to domestic – constitute an essential element in various cinematic image motifs of Andrei Tarkovsky, as depicted in his films Solaris (1972), Mirror (1975), Stalker (1979), Nostalgia (1983) and Sacrifice (1986). In his polemic against Sergei Eisenstein's film theory of montage, Tarkovsky emphasises the temporality of objects that precludes the overpowering subjective temporalisation (which the theory of montage would presuppose). Time and the temporality of objects should, therefore, remain intact in the mise-en-scène. Most of these objects in Tarkovsky's image motifs have a characteristic in common; they are leftover objects - left over from the past, from the narrative continuity of the present, from dreams and mysterious incarnations, in ruins and uninhabited and abandoned terrains, from memory and oblivion. Tarkovsky's notion of mise-en-scène as sculpting in time suggests a mode of temporal existence which lingers on the leftover objects. The time that elapses in mise-en- scène is apparent in the creation of a film image, in which the present persists in the objects left behind. Therefore, in the scene compositions of image motifs, the camera does not necessarily follow the narration and its continuity, but often remains fixed on simple objects that are otherwise hardly regarded in the montage. In my paper I attempt to show how Tarkovsky's cinematic image motif, as displayed in slow motion, flight motif (overcoming the gravity), cinematic still life or constellations of painting, poetry and music, is mostly built on leftover objects. The accompanying music and recitation (of poems by his father, Arseniy Tarkovsky) creates a synthe- sis of verbal, auditory and visual metaphors that essentially characterises Tarkovsky's image motifs. The constant presence and perseverance of the leftover objects also points to an epis- temic potential of Tarkovsky's image motifs, that the status of objects as remnants resists the ∗ Following treatise is a revision of my lecture with the same title that I gave on 30th January 2019 at a conference on The Intersection of the Verbal and the Visual Arts at the Center of German Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. The investigation is based on my following previous papers: Die Phänomenologie des Biographierens : Erinnerung und Wiedererinnerung im Prozess der biographischen Rekonstruktion, FreiDok, Alberts-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, Freiburg i. Br. 2018, p. 28-59. URL: https://freidok.uni-freiburg.de/data/16295 Grenzlinien des Daseins : das Bildmotiv bei Andrej Tarkowskij, Reader, Heidelberg 1999. FreiDok, Albert-Ludwigs-University Freiburg, Freiburg i. Br. 2005. URL: http://www.freidok.uni-freiburg.de/volltexte/2028/ The process of geometric-optical perspectivisation in the visual space perception (Der Prozeß der geometrisch-optischen Perspektivierung in der visuellen Raumwahrnehmung), FreiDok (Freiburger Dokumentenserver), Albert-Ludwigs-University Freiburg, Freiburg i. Br. 2001, p. 210-240. URL: https://freidok.uni-freiburg.de/data/271 1 Tarkovsky, Andrey: Sculpting in Time, trans. Kitty Hunter-Blair, University of Texas Press, Texas 1987, p. 161. 2 prevailing subjective transcendentalism (to which the montage principle belongs within the framework of film aesthetics) and its reduction of objects to a merely given entity in perception. Mirror: 'Mother came and beckoned me, and flew away.’2 Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sWGmsi_wFw Andrei Tarkovsky, widely considered as one of the greatest directors in the history of cinema, believed that the past is much more stable than the present. As Tarkovsky observes in his opus magnum on film aesthetics, Sculpting in Time, the present slips and vanishes like sand between the fingers. The now moment of time, ever since it was determined by Aristotle in Physics as an unresolvable aporia,3 remains a mystery to us, as the present can be embodied neither in formal – mathematical or mechanical – nor in phenomenal-material finalities. The being of the now, the present, as Aristotle emphasizes, is coupled with the nothing. In the history of contemporary philosophies – from Plato to Ricœur – numerous attempts have been made to explain the aporia of time and the aporicity of the present. The topicality of this discourse is amply confirmed in Ricœur’s identification and discussion of the three aporias in the thinking of time by Brentano, Husserl and Heidegger.4 Compared to the various philosophical discourses on time – by Plato, Aristotle and Augustine in antiquity, Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas in the Middle Ages and Descartes, Locke, Kant, Brentano, Husserl, Heidegger, Bergson and others in the modern age – Tarkovsky's philosophy of time in the context of his film aesthetics marks a unique undertaking in the genesis of time aporetics. Tarkovsky seeks the imperishable reality in the ever-transitory present, which is clearly an unsolvable time aporia. He tries to overcome this riddle in his cinematic image motifs, i.e. in the framework of aesthetics. According to Tarkovsky, the present is materialized only in the past that the present always leaves behind. The past, which is left over from the present, becomes remnants of the real in the embodiment of memory. 2 Tarkovsky, p. 156. 3 Aristotle: Physics (Book IV, Chapter 10), in: The Complete Works of Aristotle, ed. Jonathan Barnes, Volume 1, Princeton University Press, Princeton 1984, p. 369-370. 4 See Römer, Inga: Das Zeitdenken bei Husserl, Heidegger und Ricœur, Springer Verlag, Heidelberg 2010, p. 254- 255. 3 Time is said to be irreversible. And this is true enough in the sense that 'you can't bring back the past', as they say. But what exactly is this 'past? Is it what has passed? And what does 'passed' mean for a person when for each of us the past is the bearer of all that is constant in the reality of the present, of each current moment? In a certain sense the past is far more real, or at any rate more stable, more resilient than the present. The present slips and vanishes like sand between the fingers, acquiring material weight only in its recollection. King Solomon's ring bore the inscription, 'All will pass'; by contrast, I want to draw attention to how time in its moral implication is in fact turned back. Time cannot vanish without trace in our material world for it is a subjective, spiritual category. The time we have lived settles in our soul as an experience placed within time.5 The persistence of memory or the past remembered necessitates the presence of objects that the present leaves behind. For memory is a subjective state of time consciousness, which requires the persistence of the objects left behind or left over in which the past lingers. Accordingly, in Tarkovsky's mise-en-scène, especially in his cinematic image motifs, we identify a constant presence of objects left behind – left behind from the past, from the narrative continuity of the present, from dreams and mysterious incarnations, in ruins and uninhabited and abandoned terrains, from memory and oblivion. Tarkovsky's notion of mise- en-scène as sculpting in time suggests a mode of temporal existence which lingers on the leftover objects. The time that elapses in mise-en-scène is apparent in the creation of a film image, in which the present persists in the objects left behind. Therefore, in the scene compositions of image motifs, the camera does not necessarily follow the narration and its continuity, but often remains fixed on simple objects that are otherwise hardly regarded in the montage. The indispensable presence of the leftover objects in Tarkovsky's image motifs can be attributed to various sources in terms of film aesthetics and film technique. They are: 1. Tarkovsky's polemic against Sergei Eisenstein's prevailing theory of montage 2. Tarkovsky's basic idea of mise-en-scène as sculpting in time 3. The interface between verbal, visual and auditory arts: poetry (poems by his father, the famous Russian poet Arseniy Tarkovsky, which are recited in some image motifs by Andrei Tarkovsky himself), music (Johann Sebastian Bach), painting (Leonardo Da Vinci, Pieter Brueghel and others) 4. The cinematic still life 5. Flight motif, gravitational falling 6. Slow motion Before I explain how Tarkovsky polemicises against Eisenstein's montage theory through his notion of mise-en-scène as sculpting in time, I would like to show how an interface between verbal, visual and auditory arts come into being in Tarkovsky's image motifs. These arts, which Tarkovsky inherited and learned, and their film-aesthetic constellation require the presence of the objects left behind or left over in mis-en-scène. In one of the earlier scenes in Mirror, the everyday life in protagonist's old ancestral house and the surrounding nature is shown, in which nostalgic memories of the past surfaces in a poem by Arseniy 5 Tarkovsky, p. 58. 4 Tarkovsky, recited by Andrei Tarkovsky and accompanied by many everyday objects that the camera follows in the mis-en-scène. Both the recited poem and the scene sequence refer to the persistence of leftover objects in the present and the past: Every moment that we were together Was a celebration, like Epiphany, In all the world the two of us alone. You were bolder, lighter than a bird's wing, Heady as vertigo you ran downstairs Two steps at a time, and led me Through damp lilac, into your domain On the other side, beyond the mirror.

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