Cyfrowa Etnografia

http://zbiory.cyfrowaetnografia.pl/public/6076.pdf

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Part of Coming Back Home.(In Praise of the Province) / Polska Sztuka Ludowa - Konteksty 2014 Special Issue

extracted text

W

hat ancestor speaks in me? I can’t live simul­
taneously in my head and in my body. That’s
why I can't be just one person. I can feel within
myself countless things at once.
There are no great masters left. That’s the real evil of
our time. The heart’s path is covered in shadow. We must
listen to the voices that seem useless in brains full of long
sewage pipes of school wall, tarmac and welfare papers.
The buzzing of insects must enter. We must fill the eyes
and ears of all of us with things that are the beginning of a
great dream. Someone must shout that we’ll build the pyra­
mids. It doesn’t matter if we don’t. We must fuel that wish
and stretch the corners of the soul like an endless sheet.
If you want the world to go forward, we must hold
hands. We must mix the so-called healthy with the so-cal­
led sick. You healthy ones! What does your health mean?
The eyes of all mankind are looking at the pit into which
we are plunging. Freedom is useless if you don’t have the
courage to look us in the eye, to eat, drink and sleep with
us! It’s the so-called healthy who have brought the world
to the verge of ruin. Man, listen! In you water, fire and
then ashes, and the bones in the ashes. The bones and the
ashes!
Where am I when I’m not in reality or in my imagina­
tion? Here’s my new pact: it must be sunny at night and
snowy in August. Great things end. Small things endure.
Society must become united again instead of so disjointed.
Just look at nature and you’ll see that life is simple. We
must go back to where we were, to the point where we took
the wrong turn. We must go back to the main foundations
of life without dirtying the water. What kind of world is
this if a madman tells you you must be ashamed of your­
selves!
[Fragment from Nostalghia, a film by Andrei
Tarkovsky1]

ZBIGNIEW
BENEDYKTOWICZ

Coming Back Home.
(In Praise of the
Province). The Italian
Experience of
Tarkovsky and Kantor
minutes of work on the final image; I am well aware
that considering the time intended for presentations
at our conference this might prove to be a rather
risky attempt. The sequence starts with Domenico’s
speech. Let us then briefly recall who he is. W hat is
Nostalghia about?
Domenico is an apparently deranged former small­
town maths teacher, who for seven years forbade his
wife and children to set foot outside their home in or­
der to protect them against the end of the world, a
catastrophe whose approach he fears. Having set his
family free, he becomes possessed by an idée fixe - we
learn that every so often he is detained by the police
and then escorted home, rendering the realisation of
his project impossible. This is the way in which the di­
rector described Domenico‘s dramatis persona, whose
role grew while shooting the film:
Tonino Guerra [the co-author of the Nostalghia
screenplay - Z. B.] found this person in a newspaper clip­
ping and we since developed it a bit further. (...) He is
obsessed with the thought of committing an act of faith,
such as walking straight across a pool —a gigantic, square,
old Roman bath in the centre of the Tuscan village of
Bagno Vignoni — with a lit candle in his hand3. On
the eve of his return to Russia (the Soviet Union),
Gorchakov - the film’s leading protagonist, a Russian
intellectual, poet, scholar, and expert on Italian cul­
ture conducting a scientific trip around Italy in the
footsteps of another Russian émigré, a musician and
a composer (more about him in a while) - decides to
carry out Domenico’s plan. He does so just before go­
ing back home, having found out about Domenico’s
act of sacrifice on television news. - “Switch on your
TV “ - an Italian translator, Gorchakovs‘ travelling
companion, phones him. Domenico left for Rome to
commit self-immolation next the statue of Marcus
Aurelius on the Capitol and in this way to stridently
convey his protest; the pertinent scene, however,
shows him calmly warning about the state of the con­
temporary world in the throes of a crisis and on its
way towards self-annihilation. A t the same time, Gor­

These words originate from a speech given by
Domenico, one of the protagonists of Andrei Tark­
ovsky’s film Nostalghia. Actually, I am fascinated
by the extraordinary and memorable final image,
introduced by Domenico‘s statement. In his excel­
lent: What Is Nostalgia? Leonid Batkin conducted an
in-depth and detailed analysis of the film, conclud­
ing that the whole film is actually a two-hour long
preparation for a single frame shown at the very end.
I cannot surmise how this was accomplished, he wrote.
Nonetheless, the whole plot is resolved in this astonish­
ing drawn-out take. I am ready to explain the whole film
as a two-hour long preparation for a single frame that
is not simply the last but prime and essential. All that
which appeared to be overly obvious, demonstrative, and
allegorical, all those banal conversations, the instructive
story of Domenico or the intentionally “wise" conver­
sations with the “simple folk" suddenly disclosed their
amazing sense. The concluding single take restored an
air of mystery to everything2. We shall watch only 12

47

Zbigniew Benedyktowicz • COMING BACK HOME

fall on the man gazing ahead, the dog at his side, the
house, and the church. It starts to snow.
The dramaturgy of this sequence is probably best
evoked in: The final editing plan of “Nostalghia”, re­
corded in Tarkovsky’s Diaries [Time within Time: The
Diaries]:

chakov (his suitcases packed and waiting in front of
the hotel) cancels his ride to the airport (the taxi is
ready), and returns to Bagno Vignoni, where earlier
he had learned about Domenico’s “story“, met and
talked with him at his home; now, he intends to ful­
fil Domenico’s irrational project which, he believes,
will save humankind. Gorchakov walks into the pool,
which at that moment is being cleaned (the water
spouting from the steamy springs is shallow, and the
small-town dwellers are engaged in removing assorted
debris of contemporary civilisation, bottles and coins
thrown in for luck by tourists); he lights a candle and
embarks upon the arduous attempt at carrying it from
one end of the pool to the other. Gorchakov is sick
and weary (this is the way he appears throughout the
whole film - he suffers from a heart condition). Fi­
nally, after two unsuccessful attempts (the wind puts
out the candle midway and then just before complet­
ing the task) Gorchakov, who each time starts anew,
shields the flickering flame with his coat and hand
(watching him, we can almost feel his physical effort
and fatigue) and manages to place the candle at the
foot of a wall on the opposite end of the pool. From
here, a single long and slow take leads us to the abovementioned final shot: a wooden cottage straight out
a Russian village, inscribed into the ruins of a Cister­
cian abbey, the twelfth-century Gothic cathedral of
San Galgano. Actually, we do not see this image right
away and it comes into view gradually. First, there is
Gorchakov sitting on the ground in front of a pud­
dle; behind him there stretches a Russian landscape
with the cottage and a path gently winding down into
a valley and leading to the house. This is the same
house, which appeared at the beginning of the film as
part of a dream, a reminiscence (?) accompanying the
protagonist on his Italian journey. The dog lying next
to Gorchakov is the one from the recurring images of
the Russian country house, and from an Italian hotel
room where at night it sleeps next to the bed of the
tired Gorchakov. This is the dog from under the col­
onnade in Piazza de Campidoglio amidst people indif­
ferently listening to Domenico a moment before his
self-immolation, the same dog which anxiously twists
and turns, and howls in fear and pain as it witnesses
the flames embracing Domenico’s convulsively writh­
ing body. In the last shot, the puddle reflects three
rectangular shafts of light. The slowly withdrawing
camera pans back, revealing the architecture of the
cathedral; only then do we see the image in its en­
tirety: man, dog, and country house inserted into the
walls of the ruined cathedral of San Galgano. The
light glistening in the puddle actually shines through
the empty windows of the presbytery. We hear sing­
ing, a plaintive chant, a Russian folk song resembling
a blend of a lament and a lullaby. Illuminated snow­
flakes melting on the ground and in the puddle slowly

(...)
9. Campidoglio
The deranged; Domenico on horseback; Gorchakov
returns to Bagno Vignoni; Domenico’s two hour-long
speech; petrol; broken tape recorder; fire; Domenico’s
death; Beethoven.
10. Crossing over with a candle; Gorchakov’s death;
Gorchakov’s country house within cathedral walls; Freezeframe; Russian song; Verdi.
11. Dedication: In memory of my mother.4
Let us once again cite Batkin and his description
of the closing image: This shocking, surrealistic and
possibly ingenious shot is constructed in such a way
that space is perceived completely naturally as a ho­
listic image stemming from the film’s theme. It sim­
ply remains in front of our eyes, and will always do
so. This is the afterlife future, the next world. Inside,
there is our Italian present, the courtyard of a church
already mentioned by Dante. The future within a Ro­
manesque church, Italy, emigration, and the present.
Russia is that village with the protagonist sitting on
the slope of a hillock and the same dog at his side.
Initially, the camera notices only a puddle strangely
divided by sunbeams. A t first, I was unable to un­
derstand the nature of the rays and the source of the
light falling through an arcade of an Italian, probably
twelfth-century church.
Finally, all became one —the past, the present and the
future, Russia, Italy, life and eternity. All matched the
space of that world, surrealistically constructed thanks to
the magnificent quality of the image. The most amazing
thing is that we are simply unaware of the editing. Italy is
the suitable place for this green slope, that glistening pud­
dle, all that which is Russian. Peace descends upon the
soul. And yet this is one of the most artificial moments in
the whole film...
I felt confused. After all, everything that which I liked
and disliked in this film, its epiphany and suffering, its sin­
cerity and artificiality, came together in the finale. This is
a blend of higher art and truth, the demonstrative quality
of the idea and visual conviction. I do not know how this
was achieved. Nevertheless, the whole plot is resolved in
this unusual, long take.5
Why have I decided to take you back to this symbol
at a conference about the Images and Myths of Europe?
The Western and the Eastern Perspectives? There are at
least several reasons. To start with the most obvious
one, I believe that the image in question could become

48

Zbigniew Benedyktowicz • COMING BACK HOME

a framework for further reflections, or constitute a
firm point of reference and landmark in the course of
our discussion. One could say that Nostalghia and its
closing or, as Batkin declared, “prime and essential“
depiction contain almost everything that is associated
with the province and its eulogy: a Russian country
house inscribed into the walls of a cathedral. That
which is connected with the landscape of folk, provin­
cial and “low“ culture, that which is low, mundane,
simple, human, and local has been installed into that
which is lofty, universal and high. The architecture
of the towering cathedral, whose raw, unadorned and
decaying walls and transparent openings-remnants
of a rosace and windows let in the light from above,
embraces the whole image. “This world“ (“my local
world“) has been literally incorporated into “that
world“, a historical, geographical, cultural, mythical,
existential, religious and metaphysical dimension. You
see how difficult it is to describe this composite, poign­
ant and original image, which I regard as part of a cer­
tain tendency that could be described as an “Eastern
perception“ of Europe and art. I discern an amazing
coincidence between Tarkovsky’s imagery with that
which in the 1980s (at exactly the same time, since
Nostalghia was made in 1983) Janusz Bogucki (art
critic and author of numerous exhibitions) described
in a series of displays featured in Poland as “art go­
ing back home“, “a return to the church“. I have in
mind his “Labyrinths” series, shown in the ruins of a
church undergoing reconstruction in Żytnia Street in
Warsaw, or later in the austere interior of a church
under construction in the district of Ursynów. In the
1990s, the same current was present in the “Epitaph
and seven spaces“ exhibition at the “Zachęta“ Gallery
in Warsaw and at the nearby Ethnographic Museum,
the site of an encounter of popular folk art accompa­
nying the cult of the images of Our Lady of Guadalupe
and Our Lady of Częstochowa. The leitmotif of these
shows was a fusion of secular and religious art, high art
and “low“ folk art, popular native art with the art of an
ostensibly distant culture, and, finally, modern art and
art inspired by folk architecture. In “Seven spaces“
Holy Mount by Grzegorz Klaman, Tents by Magdalena
Abakanowicz, and School Desks from Kantor‘s The
Dead Class were shown together with Home by the
Group from Lucim (Bohdan and Witold Chmielewski,
Wiesław Smużny).6 The concept of these exhibitions,
apart from emphasis on the multi-cultural experience
of the sacrum, was to arrange a meeting of assorted
religious, spiritual traditions. (The subtitle of “Seven
spaces“ was: “The paths, traditions and peculiarities
of spiritual life in Poland reflected in the mirror of art
at the end of the twentieth century”).
Could there be a more apt description of the com­
plex imagery proposed by Tarkovsky in Nostalghia
than “going back home - a return to the church“? We

49

Zbigniew Benedyktowicz • COMING BACK HOME

Photos from the Nostalghia, by Andrej Tarkowski

ing again and again, for instance, what rain signifies in my
films; why does it figure in film after film; and why the
repeated images of wind, fire, water? I really don’t know
how to ideal with such questions.
R aif is after all typical of tha landscape in which f srew
uSi in Russia you have those Iona, dresry, persistent rains.
And I can
say/
that:
I
iove
nature —I
and aeei perfectly happy when S’m away erom the para­
phernalia of modern civilisadon, just as t felt wonderful in
Russia when I was in my couatra house, with three hun­
dred kiiometret between Moscow and myself Rain, fire,
water, snow, dew, the driving ground wind —all are part:
of the material setting in which we dwell; I would even
say of the truth of our lives. I asm therefore puzzled when I
am toid that peopte cannot simply enjoywatching nature,
when it is lovingly reproduced on the screen, nut have to
look tor some hifdsn mepning they feel it must coniain. O f
course, ruin can be just seen as tad weather, wherefs I use
it to create a particular aesthetic setting in which to steep
intsopuce the plot. But that is not at all the rame things
as bringing nature into my films as a symboi of something
elso. Tteavenforbid! In commersial
cinema nature often does nol exist at all; aii one has is
the most advantapeoue lighting and exteriors for the pur­
pose of quack shoo ting — everybodyy follows the plot and
no one is bothered by the artificiality of a settieg that is
more or lese right, nor by tie disrepard for detail and at­
mosphere. When the screen brings the reai world to the
aedience, the world as it actually is, so that it can be seen
in depth and frem all sides, evoking its very smell, allowing
eudiences to feel on their spin its moisaere or its dryness

come across the s ame spirit, tone, reflection of an idea,
and longing Sor unity in yet another arrival from “a dis­
tant land“ ; the discussed image reflects a conception
close to the viiion expounded by John Paul II when
lie spoke about trine two lungs of Europe (eastern and
waetern tradition).
It is a known fact that the author of Andrei Rublyov
frequently disassociated himself from symbolic and
m etcphorical interpretations of his films. Actually, the
whole question Ss mneh mora com plicated7, since it is
possible to formulate and justifiably defend the thesis
that we are dealing with a pure symbol, a combination
(Greek: ssn-balio, tymbafein) of two sepaoate parts, in
other words, Nostalghia pnd ittfin a l Smage possess a
feature described by Richard R. Niebhur writing about
the symbol: We do not embe(lish our experiences with
symboSs but it is they, which coo.erate with our experi­
ence via processes of affiliation, which we understand onis
partially. To symbolize means to arran.e those partscles
and elements oh a flrwina stream of cxScrisnces, which,
once united, create luminescence, temporary or perma­
nent rays, in whieO a part of the cosmos, a corner of our
habitat or some dork subterranean labyrinth ligfiens up8.
In Tarkovsky’s film this merger and luminercence
tire conspicuous. The director’s distance towards the
symbol neoer changes. In a chaptrr on Aptes Xinishino
Nostalahia in his Zapiechttennoye vremia (Sculpting Sn
Tim e) he wrote: O f late, I have frequently foundmyself
addressing audiences, and I Sraee noticed that whenever
I declare shat there are no symbols or metaphors in my!
films, those present express incredulity. They persist in ask­

50

COMING BACK HOME

Zbigniew Benedyktowicz

— it seems that the cinema-goer has so lost the capacity
simply to surrender to an immediate, emotional aesthetic
impression, that he instantly has to check himself, and ask:
‘Why? What for? What’s the point?9
Slightly further on, in a reference to the image of
interest to us, the director added:
I would concede that the final shot of Nostalgia has
an element of metaphor, when I bring the Russian house
inside the Italian cathedral. It is a constructed image which
smacks of literariness: a model of the hero’s state, of the
division within him which prevents him from living as he
has up till now. Or perhaps, on the contrary, it is his new
wholeness in which the Tuscan hills and the Russian coun­
tryside come together indissolubly; he is conscious of them
as inherently his own, merged into his being and his blo­
od. And so Gorchakov dies in this new world where those
things come together naturally and of themselves which in
our strange and relative earthly existence have for some
reason, or by someone, been divided once and for all. All
the same, even if the scene lacks cinematic purity, I trust
that it is free of vulgar symbolism; the conclusion seems
to me fairly complex in form and meaning, and to be a
figurative expression of what is happening to the hero, not
a symbol of something outside him which has to be deci­
phered.10
There is no time for expanding and justifying the
thesis that the discussed image is a symbol if only due
to those features whose presence is stressed by hermeneutist: the ambiguity, multiple meanings, composite
nature, complexity, and, more precisely, the dynamic
and dialectic of the symbol are the reasons why it is
both simple and complicated, ever enrooted in the
concrete and reality. Why it combines the sensual
and the intellectual. Why its characteristic traits in­
clude the retention of a dual character: reality and
unreality/irreality since it would have not been a sym­
bol if it had been only real, it would have been a real
phenomenon which could not be symbolic; only that
which within one thing encompasses another is sym­
bolic. If a symbol were to be unreal, then it would be
empty and imaginary, with no references to any sort of
reality, and thus it would not have been a symbol (C.
G. Jung); the symbol always contains something or­
ganic, archaic (S. Avierintsev, Y. Lotman). They are
the reason why one can see the whole via a particle:
each time it refers to that what is most prominent —the
idea of the wholeness and unity of the world, a fully cos­
mic and human universe (S. Avierintsev, Y. Lotman).
Why the symbol is not only (a single) given meaning,
but a “task“ —the sense of the symbol comes into being
not solely as a ready presence but also as a dynamic ten­
dency: it is not given but assigned. You must change your
life [ultimately, this is Domenico’s message to the
divided world of the “healthy“ and the “normal, the
“people from the centre“ and the “peripheries“. His
sacrifice takes place in front of an uninterested audi­

51

ence to the strains of Beethoven’s Ode to Joy from the
Ninth Symphony, today the hymn of a united Europe];
the sense of a symbol cannot be deciphered through the
effort of the mind alone, one must “enter into its spirit”11.
Finally, they are the reason why it has a dialogical
structure, and why consideration of the symbol is a
dialogical form of cognition (S. Avierintsev). And so
on, and so forth.
On the other hand, it is worth drawing attention
to yet another factor essential in the structure of the
symbolic image from Tarkovsky‘s finale. In its primary
meaning, the symbol was identification. In antiquity
- a topic extensively discussed by Pavel Florensky in
his Ikonostasis12 - the symbol was an object made of
clay, wood, or metal, divided into two parts, a pic­
ture cut into two, a document, a cube, a tablet, or
anything which after being put together regains its
meaning and once again serves as an identification.
It was mutually offered by friends, business partners,
debtors and creditors, pilgrims, people linked by vari­
ous bonds, who split the “symbol“ into two fragments
that in the future, placed side by side either by them
or their messengers could comprise an identification.
The symbol made it possible to recognise one’s own.13 It
contains all the warmth of a secret that binds togeth­
er. The symbol acts as a sign of identity and unity (it
is also a credo). In the case of Tarkovsky, it is two
different parts, two different images brought together.
These are not merely images of Europe as such, W est­
ern Europe, Italy and the Russian provinces, but ba­
sically of two provinces: the West European, Italian
province (Tuscany) and its Russian counterpart. Im­
ages of the country house and the cathedral, parallel
symbolic images of the world: the house and the c h
u r c h (both comprising imago mundi, essentially the
home and the church are one14) are here put together
and coalesced into a single organic whole without ob­
literating the differences. This surreal image-symbol,
an identification, assembled and offered in the final
act of Nostalghia, expresses, demonstrates and discov­
ers that which is held so dear by anthropology, and
which is close to its motifs and fundamental expe­
riences, as well as the European vision and idea (of
what Europe is, could or should be). It is a discovery
of unity in diversity.
Returning to the main theme, I shall try to propose
a greatly abbreviated designation of the foremost land­
marks and motifs on our map of meanings contained
in reflections about the province; produced by that
special perception of Europe seen from the East, this is
the vision recorded by Tarkovsky in the oft-mentioned
finale of Nostalghia.
In the person of the leading dramatis persona we
have: 1. an arrival from a distant province, 2. a motif
of the home and going back home, 3. an attachment
to one’s native land and a longing for it, 4. nostalgia:

Zbigniew Benedyktowicz • COMING BACK HOME

suffering caused by separation from the home and
motherland, the impossibility of going back home or
the efforts such a return entails.

N ostalgia
Gorchakov is a poet who travels to Italy to collect
material about Beryozovsky, a Russian serf, musician
and composer (in the film he is mentioned as Sosnovsky). Beryozovsky is an historical figure, Tarkovsky
wrote. He showed such musical ability that he was sent
by his landowner to study in Italy, where he stayed many
years, gave concerts and was much acclaimed. But in the
end, driven no doubt by that same inescapable Russian
nostalgia, he eventually decided to return to serf-owning
Russia, where, shortly afterwards, he hanged himself;21
elsewhere, the director added: ... he turned alcoholic
and subsequently committed suicide.22 A t this point, we
arrive at the specific phenomenon of nostalgia, whose
very meaning is enclosed in a combination of two
Greek words: nóstos - return, and algos - suffering. In
the earlier mentioned essay: What is Nostalgia? Leonid
Batkin, whose interpretation is often extremely criti­
cal and full of scathing irony and malice towards the
film, its author, and the solutions applied in certain
scenes, acknowledged the importance of the closing
image, which “restores an air of mystery to every­
thing“. (I shall never forgive Tarkovsky this, from my
point of view, disastrous film in which his heretofore
poetics falls apart). On the other hand, Batkin appears
to agree with the director as regards one thing: Rus­
sian nostalgia is exceptional. Batkin started collecting
solutions to the key question concerning the nature of
nostalgia by comparing poems by Josif Brodsky (De­
cember in Florence, and then other works) with Tarko­
vsky’s film in order to disclose the strikingly unusual
condition of the main protagonist. While travelling to
and across Italy Andrei Gorchakov constantly turns
away from its beauty and outright tries to ignore it. (I
shall cite only a fragment of the poem mentioned by
Baktin, indispensable for the clarity of further argu­
mentation):

Home
The home appears already at the very onset of the
sequence: Domenico sets fire to his body, “the home
of his soul“, and someone else (Gorchakov) carries
the light to the other end of the pool in his stead. In
Nostalghia we have, therefore, not only a forecast of
Tarkovsky’s next film The Sacrifice (whose finale fea­
tures a burning house), but also a continuation of the
theme and image of the home present also in this di­
rector’s other films preceding Nostalghia. In her essay
Home and Road, Neya Zorkaya15 extensively discussed
the significant motif of the home in Tarkovsky’s oeu­
vre. We see it in Solaris: The home- ideal and the homereminiscence —this is the home of Kelvin-the father, built
not in a fantastic landscape but in native Russian coun­
tryside: a house standing under oak trees, a green glade
on the banks of an overgrown stream.16 “The thinking
ocean bestows peace upon Kris‘ troubled soul, offering
him an image of his father’s home. Ivan [My Name is
Ivan (Ivan’s Childhood)] wanders across a wartime wil­
derness, while the charred house gazes after him with
empty eye sockets”.17
In Mirror it is the family home, enveloped in love and
the sadness of nostalgia, made out of beams and stand­
ing under pine trees —the promised land of childhood.18
In Stalker the dream-sequence room, to which the
hero keeps on returning, shakes to the rhythm of a
speeding train - the lamp, the table, the whole room
tremble. It is simply impossible to ignore the oneiric
motif of the “dream home“, whose portrayal in Nostalghia accompanies the protagonist in his dreams and
reminiscences throughout his Italian voyage and re­
appears at its end. It is the home described by Gaston
Bachelard:
The real world becomes obliterated whenever we
transfer our thoughts to the home of our memories.
What is the significance of the houses we pass by while
walking down a street if our memory recalls our fam­
ily home, the home of absolute intimacy, the home
from which we derived the very conception of inti­
macy? This home is somewhere far away, we have lost
it, and no longer live in it, and we know, unfortunately
for certain, that we shall never again do so. Then the
home becomes more than a mere memory - it is the
home of our dreams. (...) What is real: the home in
which we go to sleep, or the home to which we loyally
return once we had fallen asleep?19
Tarkovsky wrote about Gorchakov: (...) acutely
aware of being an outsider who can only watch other pe­
ople’s lives from a distance, crushed by the recollections of
his past, by the faces of those dear to him, which assail his
memory together with the sounds and smells of home.20

In a smoke-filled café, in the semi-shade of his cap
He grows accustomed to the nymphs on the ceiling, the
cupids, the stucco
(...)
A sunbeam refracted against a palace,
The dome of a church with Lorenzo’s final resting
place,
Permeates the curtains and warms the veins
Of dirty marble, a vat with a flowering verbena:
And trills resound in the centre of Ravenna made of
wire.
Behold, a Russian émigré in Italy, Batkin wrote. His
name is Josif Brodsky. Perhaps he is the protagonist of
Tarkovsky’s Nostalghia. The words used by Brodsky
convey visual impressions — “smoke-filled”, “semi­
shade”, “dirty” (...) Gazing from under a Russian cap
(I made it up), he reluctantly and even with disgust gets

52

Zbigniew Benedyktowicz

COMING BACK HOME

used to Baroque or Renaissance forms. Brodsky wrote
about the dome of a church with Lorenzo's final resting
place... Dear God, this is Santa Maria del Fiore! Quite
possibly the most amazing dome in the whole world. He,
however, does not want to look at it. The curtains are
drawn. A sunbeam indifferently passes the magnificent
church and occupies itself with something else: it warms
up the dirty marble and a vat. Such a vat could have eas­
ily found itself in Tarkovsky’s film. We can easily imagine
the whole situation: a café, the camera focused on the
stuccoed ceiling, halting next to a birdcage, observing the
curtains penetrated by a sunbeam, and the dust floating
in the air. In a drawn-out take we see the veins of the
unwashed marble floor. The caged goldfinch, an impris­
oned singer, exiled. Dante in Ravenna, and the Russian
artist —Brodsky or Tarkovsky, or simply some “Andrei,
the writer” —as an émigré, homesick, alone, in the wire
cage of Italy.23
Further on, there is no more scoffing, and the au­
thor of Nostalghia and his interpreter concur. Nostal­
gia is a truly serious issue.

ing us; the heart of the matter thus involves the tragedy
of being unable to communicate ... I have in mind com­
munication in the supreme meaning of the word. (...) In
addition, we are forced to take into account the fact that
no translation of a literary work, even the most sensitive
one, can convey the true profundity and subtlety of a lan­
guage. Take the example of the word “nostalgia". Even if I
were to become fluent in Italian, as a Russian I shall never
understand Petrarch entirely, just as an Italian will not
understand Pushkin. (...) We in the Soviet Union pretend
that we understand Dante and Petrarch, but this is not
true. And Italians pretend to know Pushkin, but that is
also an erroneous assumption.26
[About Gorchakov]: Knowing full well that he can­
not make use of his Italian experiences increases his inter­
nal pain, "nostalghia", which includes an awareness of the
fact that he is totally unable to share his experiences with
his dear ones at home, even with those who were closest to
him before he left for Italy.27
Batkin:
[About Gorchakov] "He says: I have grown bored
with your beauty, I don't want it for myself alone... [...]
This is the feeling of an utterly personal and terrible depri­
vation committed by those who are not accompanying him
in Italy. An extremely private spiritual agitation. I consider
this question through the prism of my own experiences. I
spent my whole life studying Italy, and last year for the first
time I stayed for a few days in Rome and Bari. I became
haunted by a strange feeling: why only I? In such a mo­
ment it is quite natural to think about those closest to us,
all those Russians standing at bus stops and in enormous
queues in front of shops, who do not even suspect that it is
possible to lead a different life. This is by no means some
sort of an altruistic reflection. We weep over our joint
plight, in which your individual life also takes part“28

Tarkovsky:
The nostalgia of my film is a fatal illness suffered
by someone who is far from his own origins and cannot
return there. It is an illness. How else can one describe
something, which deprives man of his vital forces, entire
energy, and joy of living? Not simply a feeling of sadness.
The victim becomes crippled, and a certain part of him
ceases to exist. A Russian will not harbour any doubts
—this illness is real. I find it very difficult to speak about
nostalgia in a manner comprehensible to people who are
not Russians. I repeat, this is a illness (...). If a person
proves incapable of overcoming it, it becomes a fatal ill­
ness, contracted only abroad. Travelling across Russia I
might experience sadness but not nostalgia. (...) [Nostal­
gia] is more than longing.24

Tarkovsky (supplementing this singular meaning
of the word “nostalgia“):
This is the reason why nostalgia is not grief for the
past (...)
And we Russians, for us nostalghia is not a gentle and
benevolent emotion (...). For us it is a sort of deadly di­
sease, a mortal illness, a profound compassion that binds
us not so much with our own privation, our longing, our
separation, but rather with the suffering of others, a pas­
sionate empathy.29

Batkin:
Russian nostalgia is exceptional, deprived of all hope,
and incurable . It is, however, the last level of that which
Petrarch, also familiar with this emotion, as is every man
of the West (there is no need to exaggerate: although we
live on different planets we still remain in the same galaxy
of culture), described as “acedia" —the final stage of an
inexplicable dislike towards the world.25
Nostalgia is caused by a division of the world.

O nce again Batkin, since the last word always
belongs to the interpreter:

Tarkovsky:
This will be a film about how appalling it is that in the
twentieth century we are incapable of enabling all those
persons dearest to us to witness our journeys. Or, on the
contrary, that we would like to tell everyone whom we
meet, in this case in Italy, about our native land, and are
unable to do this well owing to the great differences divid­

What is this terrible Russian nostalgia? I asked myself:
was Gogol homesick while in Rome? He led a peaceful
life, loved the town, and wrote Dead Souls. Did Turgenev
long for Russia? We cannot tell. Perhaps he felt homesick
in the winter, but certainly not in the summer when he

53

Zbigniew Benedyktowicz • COMING BACK HOME

moved back to his estate. Quite possibly, this is just com­
mon human homesickness, a yearning for the homeland
experienced by everyone. In the case of Tarkovsky, how­
ever, it is the longing of an exile, a political émigré, and
not simply the homesickness of a person who had left for a
short while. The exile's homeland has been amputated. He
cannot return whenever he wishes to do so. Unlike others,
he cannot see his native land. This is the first and sim­
plest secret of Russian nostalgia. We are not dealing with
commonplace departure, but with amputation. When one
leaves at the age of fifteen, one turns into a Frenchman or
an American, and even more so if one leaves aged five. As
a rule, however, we set off as adults, and this means that
we become deprived of our childhood, youth, the best years
of our lives, our health and strength —all that which existed
in Russia when we were young, even if this was corvee-era
Russia. (...) To this we must add something, which Eu­
genia [Gorchakov's guide and translator] noticed, namely,
that we never arrive from another country, but move to a
different planet. I believe that this holds true also for An­
drei Tarkovsky; we never travelled while young, although
it has been known for centuries that one should start see­
ing the world in one's youth. We find the West, America
and Italy strange. We arrive there when we are already
tired. We do not speak the language and find ourselves
in a different civilisation, not Russian and even more so
not Soviet. We adapt with much greater difficulty than a
Calabrian peasant woman in northern Italy.30

who, apart from fanatics and experts, not to mention
Western anthropologists specialising in nostalgia, is
familiar with the works of Tarkovsky and Brodsky or
even heard about them? This is why I regard the mod­
el-like, serious, “Russian“ clinical case as noteworthy
and deserving to be included into our anthropological
musings. Even more so considering that the imagery
proposed by Tarkovsky combines the motif of the
home and going back home with certain findings by
David R. Lachterman about the relations between the
Greek noos - intellect and nostos - return. The article:
Noos and Nostos. The Odyssey and the Origins of Greek
Philosophy, was published in a special issue of “Kon­
teksty” about the anthropology of memory. In places,
it sounds very specialist and philosophical, but from
our vantage point it is of great value owing to its po­
etic and anthropological reflections. Those interested
in the whole argumentation are recommended to read
the article32, from which I have selected only those
trails that could cast a certain light on the profound
qualities of the imagery in Nostalghia and its closeness
to the archaic base.
In order to recall the dark and gloomy likenesses of
Italy recorded in Nostalghia let us see what the direc­
tor had to say - after finishing work, he registered a
surprising reaction:
I have to say that when I first saw all the material shot
for the film I was startled to find it was a spectacle of unre­
lieved gloom. The material was completely homogeneous,
both in its mood and in the state of mind imprinted in it.33
While reflecting on the connections between
noos-intellect and nostos-return, Lachterman drew
our attention to the absence of clarity in the con­
trast between mythos and logos (which up to this day
serves as a basis for our characterisations of the myth,
contrasted with the precise speech of science, and
for comparing “pre-scientific“ poetry and suppos­
edly abstract “scientific“ philosophy). He also traced
the subtle play of the meanings of the noos/nostos
combination recorded in the Odyssey (if only in the
names of those who assisted Odysseus in his return
home: Alkinoos [the king of the Phaiakians, alke =
force, power], and those who hampered it - Antinoos
[the leader of the suitors, anti]). Lachterman wrote:
There is no need to present in detail the studies con­
ducted by Frame and Frei, each of whom ascertained
that noos is a derivative of the root* ne, historically
confirmed in the passive-active verb neomai and in
the noun formation nostos. Frame associated the
root *nes with “archaic solar mythology”, suggest­
ing that originally noos signified “a return from the
dead to light and life”. Despite the fact that Frei had
less dealings with the Sanskrit he reached a similar
conclusion, indicating that the oldest (pre-Homer)
meaning of noos is “getting over something”, “a for­
tunate evasion of danger”.

Why have I devoted so much attention to bitter re­
flections about nostalgia (not by chance is “the writer
Andrei“ in Tarkovsky’s film called Gorchakov - from
the Russian word for bitter)? In contemporary culture
numerous types and variants of “going back to the
province“ or the concept of nostalgia in popular mass
culture (the cinema, television series) have assumed a
gentle character, and tend to resemble reminiscences,
an alluring return to the past. Or, even if this sounds
like a contradiction: a realised nostalgic return. N os­
talgia has become fashionable. In Czytanie kultury
(Deciphering Culture) Wojciech Burszta31 devoted a
whole chapter: Nostalgia and myth, or on the mechanism
of the return to this mild version of facile and pleasant
nostalgia; here, nostalgia is situated in close proximity
to such concepts as fashion, pastiche, and stylisation,
and becomes a commodity. In Burszta’s meticulous
survey of assorted interpretations of nostalgia in con­
temporary anthropological literature, based chiefly on
American works on the topic, we would seek in vain
an Eastern view of the titular question, its “difficult
case” (although the author should be praised for cit­
ing Czesław Milosz’s poem Capri from the volume: On
The River Bank). Apparently, a division of the world
into the centre and the province, at least in anthro­
pological reflections (a global world without bounda­
ries and history), retains its firm position - but then

54

Zbigniew Benedyktowicz • COMING BACK HOME

We discover all the motifs contained in noos/nostos
within the dark imagery devised by Tarkovsky, and la­
boriously traverse them until we arrive at the final im­
age of “going back home“, “getting over something”,
“evading danger”, “returning from the dead to light
and life“. Father Tomás Spidlik interpreted Nostalghia
as a transition from nostalgia to anamnesis: The con­
cept of anamnesis is liturgical, but it possesses its secu­
lar counterpart - nostalgia. There are two perceptible
variants. Nostalgia is experienced as a result of a past
regarded as lost. On the other hand, anamnesis is joy­
ful reminiscence, which renders the past a fragment
of the present to an extent greater than when it was
first experienced. The film by Tarkovsky is entitled
Nostalghia. If I were to describe its contents I would
apply precisely those two concepts - the film shows the
enormous force of religious feelings, capable of trans­
forming nostalgia into anamnesis.34

biguity. What do they have in common with the M a­
donna del Prato, which the writer Andrei did not even
want to look at, as if he had specially come in search
of poor objects? Theirs is the true beauty. Poverty,
dirt and neglect, which Brodsky perceived as a con­
centration of improbable and ultimate hopelessness
and longing, serve Tarkovsky as a source of some sort
of strange hope, prophecy and beauty. That which is
lowliest proves to be the most important. The poorer
the object shown while the camera descends increas­
ingly lower - examining the details of earthly dust and
decay below our feet - the more we notice that, which
is heavenly.35
Below is a description of Kantor’s epiphany in a
seaside province, inaugurating his theatre of death, the
theatre of memory. Kantor wrote his texts in a curious
fashion and used capital letters to accentuate the rank
of words; in this case, the whole text was originally in
full capitals. I preserved only the long “pauses“ - the
spacing and underlining (added later?). The original
version is available in the second edition of Kadysz:36
“The year is 1971 or ‘72. The seaside. A small town.
Almost a village. A single street. Small, poor, groundfloor buildings. And perhaps the poorest of them all:
the schoolhouse. The time was summer and school
holidays. The school was empty and abandoned, with
only one classroom. One could look at it through
two small, wretched windows set low, right above the
sidewalk. The whole impression was that the school
had sunk below the level of the street. I glued my face
against the panes and peered for long into the dark
and disturbed abyss of my memory.

The Italian experiences of Tarkovsky’s Nostalghia
(1983) and Tadeusz Kantor‘s Wielopole, Wielopole
(1980, a theatrical spectacle staged as part of the
Florentine programme at Teatro Regionale Toscano,
Florence) share the motif of the return home, inscribed
into the Italian cultural landscape. The next problem
is the inclusion of local, own cultural tradition into the
universal entity. Both works share the motif of coming
back home, nostalgia, the experiencing of the prov­
ince, an epiphany of poor reality, and the significance
of “reality of the lowest rank”.
In Nostalghia we are dealing with the same epipha­
ny as in the case of Tadeusz Kantor - the epiphany of
“poor reality“.
While seeking beauty in Nostalghia, distinguishing
between the poetics of Brodsky and Tarkovsky, and,
simultaneously, accentuating the dissimilarities of
their perception of the West, Batkin described Tarko­
vsky’s concept of poor reality:
Before I say what I think about the different ways
in which Brodsky and Tarkovsky understood the West
and its beauty, I would like to draw attention to the
most captivating frame in the film. I recall especially
two episodes: the little room, one of the longest shots,
in which the protagonist lay down, bowing his head
and assuming a cramped, uncomfortable pose, dozing
as if he were falling asleep, while outside the window
there is feeble, scattered autumn light and rain, rain,
rain. This scene can be watched for long without be­
coming bored - one simply cannot grow bored. It al­
most corresponds to the dirty marble - here too there
is a floor with puddles, rubbish, beautiful bottles, to
be observed for long, and light reflected in the bottles
and the puddle. Every bookshelf, window pane, and
Domenico‘s apartment can be studied at length, since
each poor life object is a thing of beauty harmonising
with the ruins and, at the same time, retaining its am­

Once again I became a little boy, sitting in a poor
village classroom, at a desk scarred with penknives,
turning the pages of my primer, moistened with spittle,
with ink-stained fingers; the eternally scrubbed floor
boards had deeply ingrained rings, somehow matching
the bare feet of the village boys. Whitened walls, with
the plaster peeling at the bottom, and a black cross on
a wall.
Today, I realise that something important had tak­
en place in front of that window. I had made a discov­
ery. I grew extremely vividly aware of the
EXISTENCE
OF REMINISCENCE.
This declaration is by no means, contrary to ap­
pearances, the result of exaltation and exaggeration.
In our rational world reminiscence did not have a
good name and was totally ignored in cold accounts
with reality.
All of a sudden, I grasped its mysterious, unimagi­
nable force.

55

Zbigniew Benedyktowicz • COMING BACK HOME

I
found out that it is an element capable of destruc­
tion and generation, that it stands at the beginning of
creation.
A t the beginning of art.
Suddenly, everything became clear, as if many
doors had opened up towards distant, infinite land­
scapes and spaces.
This was no longer that shameful symptom as­
cribed to old age and young girls.
It transpired in its terrifying perspective, ending
once and for all, in the pain of passage, and in the
is
sweetness created by longing.
(...)
This fact,
at that precise moment when I was standing in
front of the mentioned window, would not have been
some sort of an exceptional reason for extolling rem­
iniscence. This was a time when all art rapidly and
light-heartedly was losing its trust in V ISIBILIT Y .
On the other hand, placing this act of distrust
within a phenomenon which, I dare say, is despised
and suspected of mysticism and banal or senile senti­
mentalism,
was an act of great departure from my
beloved practices, risking the flames of the STAKE
and the Verdicts of the HOLY INQUISITION OF
t h e in t e l l e c t .

In order to close this chapter
it became necessary to conduct a
r e v is io n

and a REH ABILITATION of the concept of the
P A S T.
I did that.
Wandering around the world I proclaimed the
T R I U M PH
OF THE PAST,
daring to believe that this is the only time which
real and significant
(in art)
because it is already in the past tense!
Finally, there came that memorable moment of
deciding that one should
EXPRESS REM INISCENCE.
It then became compulsory to learn about the
functioning of
MEMORY.

Thus began the decade-long era of
my two works
“The Dead Class” and
“Wielopole, Wielopole”,
which were to confirm
the truth of the blasphemous ideas that I pro­
claimed.
This was an era of my own avantgarde.
Reminiscence lives beyond the range of our sight.
It grows and expands in the regions of our emotions
A N A VA N TGA RD E OF:
and affection
REMINISCENCE,
and tears.
m em ory,
I
could not have chosen a worse time, when the THE INVISIBLE,
tribunal of the intellect wielded indivisible rule.
EMPTINESS A N D
DEATH.
One was accused not of apostasy but
also of backwardness.
Death.
It ends that initially innocent
One had to possess a harsh heretical nature.
gazing through a window.
I regarded myself as a great heresiarch.
Since a window conceals many dark mysteries.
This nostalgia, which already for a certain time
The window awakens fear and a premonition of
had been
that which is “beyond“.
making itself known increasingly vividly,
And that absence of the children,
the impression that the children had already lived
T H IS R E V E L A T I O N
with something on the other side of the threshold
their life, had died
and that only through this fact of DYING,
of the
through death
V I S I B L E,
mysterious and imperative,
this class becomes filled with reminiscences,
this discovery of REM INISCENCE
and that only then do reminiscences begin to live
came right on time, because in that great battle
and assume a mysterious spiritual power.
against the visible and the material,
Then nothing is greater or stronger ...
in which I took part,
(...)“.37
the heaviest arguments of
SCIENTISM
This experience undergone in a provincial “small
which I found infinitely alien, had been brought
town“ was the source not only of the origin of The
Dead Class (1975), Wielopole, Wielopole (1980) and
forward!

56

Zbigniew Benedyktowicz

COMING BACK HOME

and which continually dies.
Together with its dwellers.
These occupants are my family.
They all endlessly repeat their activities,
impressed as if on a plate, for eternity
they shall repeat, until boredom sets ig,
concentrated on the same gesture,
with the same facial grimace,
those banal,
elementary mediocre activities,
devoid of all expression ane purposegulness.
With excessive dull precision
with ierrifying ostentation,

successive spectacles: Let the Artists Die (1985), I Shall
Never Return (0988) and Today is My Birthday (1991)
- a proclamation of the itinerant Theatre of Memo­
ry, with which Kantor triumphantly travelled across
the world, but also of new discoveries. “Many doors
seemed to have opened“, casting light on tlie meaning
o f “poor realisy“, the “peripheries“, the province.
In a commentary to Wiclopoh, WielopoL, which re­
sounds with, ii a. an echo of Bfuno Sc°ulz (Book, of
Letters), Kantoz wrote:
Not everything, however, is lost. The periphcrios do
not denote fall end humiliation —My private diclionayy
contains the term Reality of the Lowest Rank. A terrain
reserved (illegally) for Art. And thus for all supreme human values. There, the peripheries have their own high
rank. Explosions of that myth, manifesting themselves in
the most unexpected places, transpire precisely in those pe­
ripheries. Speaking in the language of art and poetry —in
the poor courtyard, in the pitiful corntr, where we conceal
our ionermost hopes, fur imagination our threacened hu­
manity, and our personality. And - probably only therf
may we become redeemod. It is diyficulf to describe the
spatial dimension of reminiscence:
here is the room of my childhood,
which I constantly! arrange anew

persistentlr,
those petty occupations filling our lives...
DEAD DUMMIES,
graining reality and importance
through that obsgnate - REPETITION.
Quite possibly, this is a property of
Reminiscence,
this pulsating rhythm,
increasingly recurring,
ending in emptiness,
futile...

Bagno Vignoni

57

Zbigniew Benedyktowicz • COMING BACK HOME

... And then there is the place “BEHIND THE
DO O R“
somewhere at the back and on the edges of the
ROOM,
a different space
in a different dimension.
Where our memories press together
our freedom breeds,
in this poor place,
somewhere "in a corner“,
“behind the door“ ,
in some nameless interior of the imagination...
we stand in the doorway, saying farewell to our
childhood,
helpless,
on the threshold of eternity and of death,
in this small, gloomy space,
behind this door
human hell and tempests rage,
the waves are gathering of that flood from which there
is no shelter.38

Everyone who has ever seen and remembers Kantor’s face looking at his actors knows that we are else­
where... next to a very different window...
After all, the “room of my childhood”, mentioned
by Kantor in the above-cited commentary, is:
a dark and cluttered HOLE.
It is not true that the childhood room in our memory
is always sunny and bright.
It is merely rendered such by
a conventional literary manner,
it is a DEAD room
and a room for the DEAD.
Recalled by memories —
it dies.40
Kantor required only a window and a door, ... to
put this spectacle together.41 To build a room, to en­
act his Forefathers‘ Eve rite,42 so that memory may
recall a holy picture, which, in the finale, served him
in arranging his dead at a table in a reference to the
iconographic depiction of The Last Supper by Leon­
ardo de Vinci.

Franco Quadri, the author of an introduction to
the Italian programme of Wielopole, Wielopole, aptly
revealed the connections between the theatrical spec­
tacle and the cinema:
In the centre - the figure of Tadeusz Kantor, who directs his actors and calls to life his heroes and who now
takes on a different dimension: he identifies himself in the
action and remains in a concrete way outside it, with this
décalage towards to the resurrected images which brings
to mind Proust or —iconographically - Bergman’s Wild
Strawberries, with old Sjôstrôm who introduces his old
man’s ruin into the discovered picture of childhood, to
produce the impression of a poignant confrontation. While
working in Florence, the anti-traditional undertakings of
the artist from Cracow extolled national tradition: a Polish
micro-cosmos, with its culture and religiosity, becomes re­
vived in his father’s home under the incessant pressure of
the same motif, while the stations of daily life are unable to
free themselves from the presence of war and violence. In
the mythical village of Wielopole, where Kantor was born,
the stations of Christ’s Passion encounter a wartime night­
mare. In a syncopated construction, edited in cinematic
fashion out of snippets from the past, history assumes the
form of a protagonist. The theatre of repetitions speaks the
language of universal quests.39

A t this point, there is a perceptible connection
with Bergman, who in one of his statements declared
that he had fallen under the spell of a painting enti­
tled The Dance of Death, which as a child he saw in an
old mediaeval church; this was the inspiration for The
Seventh Seal. Perhaps while rehearsing his Florentine
programme Kantor had once stood in Milan in front of
the wall featuring Leonardo’s Last Supper and looked
at it through the prism of his Eastern memory to envis­
age Wielopole, Wielopole?
This is what artists, masters from the East, had
brought:
A childhood room, a Forefathers‘ Eve rite inscribed
into The Last Supper.
A family home and Viechnaya pamiat’43 inscribed
into the cathedral in San Galgano.
Praise be to Italy for welcoming them and offering
refuge!

The province, the praise of the province, what
praise could be greater than the gamut of moods, tones
and shades that the province might contain: Arcadia
- Et in Arcadia ego...Auch ich war in Arkadien geboren...
- “the small homeland”, “the poor courtyard”, “some­
where in a corner”, “Reality of the Lowest Rank”.
The home to which one returns. An asylum. But not
only, since just as in the case of the home, which one
has to leave, the province might turn out to be a prison
from which one must flee as quickly as possible...
This is why we end with three quotations from a
gloss once prepared for a similar topic44 and probably
of use also for our reflections on the province:

The comparison with Bergman, proposed by
Quadri, cannot be upheld in any feasible way. In Wild
Strawberries the image of the childhood home to which
old, frigid Professor Borg, played by Sjôstrôm, returns,
is almost Arcadian, with a garden basking in sunlight,
full of blossoming white flowers, and with white cur­
tains fluttering in the summer breeze in wide-open
windows...

58

Zbigniew Benedyktowicz • COMING BACK HOME

Endnotes
1 Nostalghia (Nostalgia), directed by Andrei Tarkovsky,
screenplay by A. Tarkovsky, Tonino Guerra, production:
RAI Rete andi Opera Film, Italy, 130 min. Premiere 16
May 1983 in Cannes.
2 Leonid Batkin, Co to jest nostalgia?, transl. Rev. Henryk
Paprocki, "Kwartalnik Filmowy” no. 9-10, spring-sum­
mer 1995, p. 216.
3 Andrei Tarkovsky, Co to jest nostalgia? [in:] Kompleks
Tołstoja. Myśli o życiu, sztuce i filmie, selected, prep. and
preface Seweryn Kuśmierczyk, Warszawa 1989, p. 278.
4 Andrei Tarkovsky, Dzienniki, transl. and prep. Seweryn
Kuśmierczyk, Warszawa 1998, pp. 350- 351.
5 Leonid Batkin, Co to jest nostalgia?, op. cit., p. 216.
6 On those exhibitions cf. my interviews with Janusz
Bogucki and Nina Smolar, Emaus. Za mało, czy za dużo
wolności? Z Januszem Boguckim i Niną Smolarz rozmawia
Zbigniew Benedyktowicz, "Konteksty. Polska sztuka
Ludowa”, no. 1/1993, pp. 22-29 and with Jacek
Sempoliński, O „Eptafium i siedmiu przestrzeniach" - roz­
mowa z Jackiem Sempolińskim, ibid., pp.19-21.
7 More extensively on this topic cf. Dariusz Czaja,
Tarkowski i symbol, ”Kwartalnik Filmowy” no. 9-10,
spring-summer 1995, pp. 107-113.
8 Richard. R. Niebhur, quoted after: “Harvard Divinity
Bulletin”, October-November 1981, p. 3.
9 Andrei Tarkovsky, Czas utrwalony, transl. Seweryn
Kuśmierczyk, Warszawa 1991, pp. 146-147.
10 Ibid., p. 148.
11 Cf. special issue of "Polska Sztuka Ludowa”, no. 3/1988
about the symbol, containing texts by Sergei S.
Avierintsev, Symbol, pp. 149-150, Yuri Lotman, Symbol
w systemie kultury, pp. 151-154, and my Symbol w
etnografii, p. 145-148. Declaring that the symbol not
only ”means” but also exists in a dialogue, Avierintsev
appealed to the reader while citing Archaic Torso of
Apollo by M. R. Rilke: You must change your life.
12 Pavel Florensky, Ikonostasis, transl. Zbigniew Podgórzec,
Warszawa 1981.
13 Sergei S. Avierintsev, Symbol, op. cit., p. 149.
14 Gerardus van der Leeuw, Fenomenologia religii, transl.
Jerzy Prokopiuk, Warszawa 1978, p. 441.
15 Neya Zorkaya, Dom i droga, transl. Rev. Henryk Paprocki,
"Kwartalnik Filmowy” no. 9-10, spring-summer 1995,
pp. 130-136.
16 Ibid., p. 131.
17 Oksana Musiyenko, Tarkowski i idee ‘filozofii bytu’, transl.
Marta Sałyga, ’’Kwartalnik Filmowy” no. 9-10, spring­
summer 1995, pp. 232-236, 234.
18 Neya Zorkaya, Dom i droga, op. cit., p. 131.
19 Gaston Bechelard, Wyobraźnia poetycka, Wybór pism,
selection Henryk Chudak, transl. Henryk Chudak,
Anna Tatarkiewicz, preface Jan Błoński, Warszawa
1975, p. 301.
20 Andrei Tarkovsky, Czas utrwalony, op. cit., p. 142.
21 Ibid.
22 Andrei Tarkovsky, Kompleks Tołstoja, op. cit., p. 272.
23 Leonid Batkin, Co to jest nostalgia?, op. cit., p. 208.
24 Andrei Tarkovsky, Kompleks Tołstoja, op. cit., pp. 270­
271, 272.
25 Leonid Batkin, Co to jest nostalgia?, op. cit., p. 212.
26 Andrei Tarkovsky, Kompleks Tołstoja, op. cit., passim.
27 Ibid., p. 272.
28 Leonid Batkin, Co to jest nostalgia?, op. cit., pp. 209­
210.

Mirosław Żuławski:
I recall hazily the house, which I regarded as my fam­
ily home although I was born in another. No photograph,
no drawing survived. But I could describe every detail of
its construction and every piece of furniture in each room.
Not a single utensil from that home lasted, not a single item
that existed in it at any time, not a single speck of dust,
which one takes out on a shoe, shakes off or keeps. Only
memory, which means more than all the others, remains.
This is why I am so sensitive to the house: the walls covered
with a roof and containing our family and its history. This
was our home, standing apart, and no one had anything to
say in it but we. It’s not true that people live in a country;
people live in houses standing in a country.
Witold Gombrowicz:
Fatherlands ... how is one to approach them? This is
almost a banned topic. When one writes about the father­
land one’s style becomes warped. How is one to write, for
instance, about Poland without succumbing to the classi­
cal: "because, we the Poles”, without turning oneself into
a European, putting on a brave face, humiliating oneself
or putting on airs —without overacting, hamming it up,
biting, kicking and shoving ...; how is one to stick fingers
into one’s wound without making all sorts of faces due to
the pain? How is one to tickle this Achilles heel without be­
coming a clown? (...) In my case, perhaps owing to greater
geographical distance or greater spiritual distance (an art
work [Gombrowicz had in mind: Trans-Atlantyk] dif­
fers from a Diary), this anti-Polish process became halted
and I always wrote about Poland unemotionally as one of
the obstacles making my life difficult and regarded Poland,
and still do, to be merely one of my numerous problems,
without forgetting for a single moment about the second­
ariness of this topic.
Mircea Eliade:
For any exile, fatherland signifies the mother tongue
that he or she continues speaking. Fortunately, my wife
is Romanian and plays the role of the homeland, if you
will, as we speak to each other in Romanian. There­
fore, to me “fatherland" is the language I speak with her
and my friends, primarily, with her. It is the language
in which I dream and write my journal. Thus, it is not
only an inner, dream-related land. Nevertheless, there is
no contradiction, not even a tension, between world and
homeland. Everywhere, there is a Center of the World.
Once one finds oneself in this center, one is home, one is
truly in one’s very self and in the center of the cosmos.
Exile helps one understand that the world is never unfa­
miliar, once one has identified a center in it. This “center
symbolism" is something I do not only understand, but I
also live by it.

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Zbigniew Benedyktowicz • COMING BACK HOME

29 Andrei Tarkovsky, Kompleks Tołstoja, op. cit., pp. 274­
275.
30 Leonid Batkin, Co to jest nostalgia?, op. cit., p. 216.
31 Wojciech Burszta, Czytanie kultury. Pięć szkiców, Łódź
1996.
32 David R. Lachterman, »Noos« i »nostos«: Odyseja i źródła
filozofii greckiej, transl. Wojciech Michera, "Konteksty”
no. 3-4/2003, pp. 213-216.
33 Andrei Tarkovsky, Czas utrwalony, op. cit., p. 142.
34 Father Tomás Spidlik, Religijne podłoże
filmów
Tarkowskiego, "Kwartalnik Filmowy” no. 9-10, spring­
summer 1995, p. 187.
35 Leonid Batkin, Co to jest nostalgia?, op. cit., p. 211.
36 Jan Kott, Kadysz. Strony o Tadeuszu Kantorze, second
revised edition, Biblioteka Mnemosyne ed. Piotr
Kłoczowski, słowo/obraz terytoria 2007.
37 Ibid.
38 T Kantor, Wielopole-Wielopole, Cricot 2 Theatre,
Florentine Programme.
39 F. Quadri, ibid.
40 Ibid.
41 Ibid.

42 I discuss this more extensively and in greater detail in
the article: Przestrzenie pamięci [in:] Film i kontekst, ed. Z.
Benedyktowicz and D. Palczewska, Ossolineum,
Warszawa 1988, pp. 149-201.
43 An interpretation of Nostalghia and its closing image in
the category of Russian Orthodox liturgy in: Father
Tomás Spidlik, Religijne podłoże filmów Tarkowskiego,
"Kwartalnik Filmowy” no. 9-10, spring-summer 1995,
pp. 178-190: Time does not disintegrate into fragments but
changes into eternity: viechnaya pamiat', p. 187. Cf. more
extensively a text by Michał Klinger: Wieczna pamięć.
Eschatologiczny wymiar pamięci, "Konteksty. Polska
Sztuka Ludowa” no. 1-2/2004, pp. 237-242: At the end of
the Russian Orthodox funeral ritual, which, as we saw, is
based on images of corporeality and its drama, there appears
a conception expressly borrowed from the Bible and the
Mosaic revelation: a grand hymn comprised of only two
words: ”Eternal memory, eternal memory, eternal memory
..." repeated endlessly, p. 241.
44 Home is where one starts from. Glosa, "Polska Sztuka
Ludowa” no. 4/1990, pp. 62-63.

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