films after emigrating to the West. In Nostalgia, a co-production with Italian television, the film’s rootless and alienated protagonist searches for the spiritual meaning of life and eventually undergoes a kind of inner purification as he relives his life through a series of memories. Finally, although playing on fears of a nuclear apocalypse, The Sacrifice presents a world in which simple acts of faithfulness, honesty and self-sacrifice offer hope and salvation for the human race. Tarkovsky died in 1986.249 Špidlík’s analysis revealed the spiritual depth of Tarkovsky’s films and posed philosophical-theological questions about the tensions human beings experience in the nexus between temporality and eternity. Many passages in the films are difficult to follow on first viewing; a full understanding of certain characters and scenes, and of how the scenes are shot, comes only in retrospect and with knowledge of the meaning behind the whole narrative. Špidlík told me once about an invitation he received to a screening of Nostalgia. Many in the audience found the story unengaging and the long scenes boring; some of them even fell asleep. After the screening, however, when Špidlík explained the meaning behind some of the scenes and illuminated many of the subtle details, suddenly everyone wanted to see the film again. If the hidden mysticism—the truth—in Tarkovsky’s films is to be revealed in anything like its fullness, it is clearly an advantage to have some kind of theological understanding. Špidlík compared Tarkovsky to the author Fyodor Dostoyevsky, whose novels are as challenging as Tarkovsky’s films despite having been interpreted so many times from a variety of religious and ideological perspectives. Špidlík finds the principal similarity between the two in their anthropological approach to story-telling, a subject much under discussion in the (Catholic) theology of their respective eras:
249) For more on Andrei Tarkovsky and his films, see for example, Lyudmila Boyadzhieva, Andrei Tarkovsky: A Life on the Cross, trans. Christopher Culiver (London: Glagoslav, 2014); Robert Bird, Andrei Tarkovsky: Elements of Cinema (London: Reaktion, 2008); Andrei Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time: Reflections on the Cinema, trans. Kitty Hunter-Blair (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1989). ( 98 )
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Tarkovsky is called the poet of film. He is religious in the same way Dostoyevsky is religious. He does not start from religious principles and look at reality from that perspective. His approach is in fact the opposite. He starts from a particular life, from an individual, the way that person is, then seeks solutions to the person’s human problems. It becomes apparent that these problems have no solution; that a human being cannot live as a human being unless seen in a deeper perspective.250
Špidlík saw Andrei Rublev as a treatise on the essence of art and religious beauty and the search for an artistic form following the initial inspiration, and pointed out the possible pitfalls in the artist’s search for symbols in the created world. But before we select some images from the film, we should briefly recap Špidlík’s view of integral knowledge. In Russian thought, the creative act of coming to know the truth is intuitive, integral, all-encompassing. Russian thinking was wary of making abstractions that bear no relation to the concrete, and held that coming to know the truth requires a relationship with real life. We see this very clearly in Russian art, and especially in iconography. On the one hand, the necessary ‘fasting of the eyes’ prevents the iconographer from being so absorbed in the created world that it loses its symbolic significance for his or her spiritual growth. On the other, the artist needs a sense of realism, because “one aspect of iconographic symbolism is real forms drawn from concrete life and reduced to their most sober expression.”251 After the initial inspiration, the artist seeks a form in the created world which will become a symbol that transcends the created. It is this part of the creative process which forms the backdrop to Andrei Rublev. Špidlík used two scenes from the film to explain the possible stumbling blocks in the creative process. In the scene entitled “The Holiday,” the somewhat aimless monk and future iconographer accidentally sets light to his monk’s habit while spying on a naked women at an orgiastic pagan celebration of spring. In the next scene, “The Last Judgement,” while the Scriptures are read aloud, Rublev and his assistant are attempting to paint frescoes of 250) Tomáš Špidlík, “Tarkovského film ‘Oběť’” [Tarkovsky’s “The Sacrifice”], Nový život 4 (1988): 65. 251) Russian idea, 304. ( 99 )
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the Biblical scene on the walls of the cathedral, but the walls remain resolutely blank. What was it that Špidlík saw in these scenes that was counter-productive to the creative process? First, in giving in to the sensual and immersing himself in the physicality of a pagan cult, Rublev loses the symbolism behind the physical and with it any possibility of capturing a vision that will transcend the created world. By contrast, in their efforts to give creative expression to a spiritual vision, the monks reading the Scriptures and painting the walls lack the necessary contact with real life which would offer, through its symbolism, the necessary inspiration for a spiritual vision. Špidlík suggests that “a true religious image grows slowly, like the laborious casting of a bell,”252 and this is eloquently illustrated in the final scene, “The Bell.” Špidlík sees the work on the bell as symbolic of the artist’s patient search for a religious image and the desire “always to create a work that is in some way eternal.”253 After the initial inspiration, the purpose of the creative process is to capture, soberly, the symbolism concealed within a created object, a symbolism which reveals the intention of the Creator. For an artist, this often requires the acquisition of new knowledge and the painful process of creative rebirth. In this final scene, a prince is searching for someone who will cast him a bell. A young boy lies about knowing the secrets of bell-casting, and Rublev, who has temporarily given up painting, watches as the boy directs the work. When the bell is finally cast, it rings beautifully. In tears, the boy confesses to Rublev that he had lied about his father teaching him how to cast bells. After this confession, Rublev decides to start painting again and asks the boy to become his assistant. In 1987, Špidlík was invited to a school of cinematography in Rome to present a lecture on the spiritual background to Tarkovsky’s films. In line with his theological synthesis of Russian thought, his starting point was the ontological, liturgical and iconographical nature of spirituality. First, Christian spirituality is ontological: it concerns the totality of human being in its very essence, which in Russian thinking is 252) Tomáš Špidlík, “Andrej Tarkovskij,” Salve 2 (2004): 46. 253) Ibid. ( 100 ) Ukázka elektronické knihy