Quotes from Sculpting in Time

“Modern mass culture, aimed at the 'consumer', the civilisation of prosthetics, is crippling people's souls, setting up barriers between man and the crucial questions of his existence, his consciousness of himself as a spiritual being.”
― Andrei Tarkovsky, quote from Sculpting in Time

“...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.”
― Andrei Tarkovsky, quote from Sculpting in Time

“Poetry is an awareness of the world, a particular way of relating to reality.”
― Andrei Tarkovsky, quote from Sculpting in Time

“My encounter with another world and another culture and the beginnings of an attachment to them had set up an irritation, barely perceptible but incurable-rather like unrequited love, like a symptom of the hopelessness of trying to grasp what is boundless, or unite what cannot be joined; a reminder of how finite, how curtailed, our experience on earth must be”
― Andrei Tarkovsky, quote from Sculpting in Time

“I have always liked people who can't adapt themselves to life pragmatically.”
― Andrei Tarkovsky, quote from Sculpting in Time

“The beautiful is hidden from the eyes of those who are not searching for the truth, for whom it is contra-indicated. But the profound lack of spirituality of those people who see art and condemn it, the fact that they are neither willing nor ready to consider the meaning and aim of their existence in any higher sense, is often masked by the vulgarly simplistic cry, 'I don't like it!', 'It's boring!' It is not a point that one can argue; but it like the utterance of a man born blind who is being told about a rainbow. He simply remains deaf to the pain undergone by the artist in order to share with others the truth he has reached.”
― Andrei Tarkovsky, quote from Sculpting in Time

“When less than everything has been said about a subject, you can still think on further. The alternative is for the audience to be presented with a final deduction (...) no effort on their part.
What can it mean to them when they have not shared with the author the misery and joy of bringing an image into being?”
― Andrei Tarkovsky, quote from Sculpting in Time

“What moved me was the theme of the harmony which is born only of sacrifice, the twofold experience of love. It's not a question of mutual love: what nobody seems to understand is that love can only be one-sided, that no other love exists, that in any other form it is not love. If it involves less than total giving, it is not love. It is impotent; for the moment, it is nothing.”
― Andrei Tarkovsky, quote from Sculpting in Time

“Art is a meta-language, with the help of which people try to communicate with one another; to impart information about themselves and assimilate the experience of others. Again, this has not to do with practical advantage but with realising the idea of love, the meaning of which is in sacrifice: the very antithesis of pragmatism. I simply cannot believe that an artist can ever work only for the sake of 'self-expression.' Self-expression if meaningless unless it meets with a response. For the sake of creating a spiritual bond with others it can only be an agonising process, one that involves no practical gain: ultimately it is an act of sacrifice. But surely it cannot be worth the effort merely for the sake of hearing one's own echo?”
― Andrei Tarkovsky, quote from Sculpting in Time

“Art is by nature aristocratic, and naturally selective in its effect on the audience. For even in its 'collective' manifestations, like theatre or cinema, its effect is bound up with the intimate emotions of each person who comes into contact with a work. The more the individual is traumatised and gripped by these emotions, the more significant a place will the work have in his experience.

The aristocratic nature of art, however does not in any way absolve the artist of his responsibility to his public and even, if you like, more broadly, to people in general. On the contrary, because of his special awareness of his time and of the world in which he lives, the artist becomes the voice of those who cannot formulate or express their view of reality. In that sense the artist is indeed vox populi. That is why he is called to serve his own talent, which means serving his people.”
― Andrei Tarkovsky, quote from Sculpting in Time

“When I speak of the aspiration towards the beautiful, of the ideal as the ultimate aim of art, which grows from a yearning for that ideal, I am not for a moment suggesting that art should shun the 'dirt' of the world. On the contrary! the artistic image is always a metonym, where one thing is substituted for another, the smaller for the greater. To tell of what is living, the artist uses something dead; to speak of the infinite, he shows the finite. Substitution... the infinite cannot be made into matter, but it is possible to create an illusion of the infinite: the image.”
― Andrei Tarkovsky, quote from Sculpting in Time

“Artistic creation, after all, is not subject to absolute laws, valid from age to age; since it is related to the more general aim of mastery of the world, it has an infinite number of facets, the vincula that connect man with his vital activity; and even if the path towards knowledge is unending, no step that takes man nearer to a full understanding of the meaning of his existence can be too small to count.”
― Andrei Tarkovsky, quote from Sculpting in Time

“Modern mass culture, aimed at the "consumer", the civilization of prosthetics, is crippling people's souls, setting up barriers between man and the crucial questions of his existence, his consciousness of himself as a spiritual being”
― Andrei Tarkovsky, quote from Sculpting in Time

“I see it as my duty to stimulate reflection on what is essentially human and eternal in each individual soul, and which all too often a person will pass by, even though his fate lies in his hands. He is too busy chasing after phantoms and bowing down to idols. In the end, everything can be reduced to the one simple element which is all a person can count upon in his existence: the capacity to love. That element can grow within the soul to become the supreme factor which determines the meaning of a person's life. My function is to make whoever sees my films aware of his need to love and to give his love, and aware that beauty is summoning him.”
― Andrei Tarkovsky, quote from Sculpting in Time

“I see it as my duty to stimulate reflection on what is essentially human and eternal in each individual soul, and which all too often a person will pass by, even though his fate lies in his hands. He is too busy chasing after phantoms and bowing down to idols. In the end, everything can be reduced to the one simple element which is all a person can count upon in his existence: the capacity to love. That element can grow within the soul to become the supreme factor which determines the meaning of a person's life. My function is to make whoever sees my films aware of his need to love and to give his love, and aware that beauty is summoning him.”
― Andrei Tarkovsky, quote from Sculpting in Time

“There are people who want to know about everything in the minutest detail, like accountants or lawyers. But show a toe sticking out of a hole in a sock to a poet and it is enough to produce an image of the whole world in him.”
― Andrei Tarkovsky, quote from Sculpting in Time

“I felt all the time that for the film to be a success the texture of the scenery and the landscapes must fill me with definite memories and poetic associations”
― Andrei Tarkovsky, quote from Sculpting in Time

“Si alguien intenta llegar a ser director de cine, está arriesgando su vida entera, y él es el único responsable de ese riesgo”
― Andrei Tarkovsky, quote from Sculpting in Time

“One woman sent me on a letter written to her by her daughter, and the young girl's words are a remarkable statement about artistic creation as an infinitely versatile and subtle form of communication:
'...How many words does a person know?' she asks her mother. 'How many does he use in his everyday vocabulary? One hundred, two, three? We wrap our feelings up in words, try to express in words sorrow and joy and any sort of emotion, the very things that can't in fact be expressed. Romeo uttered beautiful words to Juliet, vivid, expressive words, but they surely didn't say even half of what made his heart feel as if it was ready to jump out of his chest, and stopped him breathing, and made Juliet forget everything except her love?
There's another kind of language, another form of communication: by means of feeling, and images. That is the contact that stops people being separated from each other, that brings down barriers. Will, feeling, emotion—these remove obstacles from between people who otherwise stand on opposite sides of a mirror, on opposite sides of a door.. The frames of the screen move out, and the world which used to be partitioned off comes into us, becomes something real... And this doesn't happen through little Audrey, it's Tarkovsky himself addressing the audience directly, as they sit on the other side of the screen. There's no death, there is immortality. Time is one and undivided, as it says in one of the poems. "At the table are great-grandfathers and grandchildren.." Actually Mum, I've taken the film entirely from an emotional angle, but I'm sure there could be a different way of looking at it. What about you? Do write and tell me please..”
― Andrei Tarkovsky, quote from Sculpting in Time

“Hemos llegado a una situación en la que el público prefiere cualquier basura comercial a Fresas salvajes de Bergman o a El eclipse de Antonioni”
― Andrei Tarkovsky, quote from Sculpting in Time

“La fórmula de "esto no lo entiende el pueblo" siempre me ha indignado profundamente. ¿Qué se quiere conseguir con ello? ¿Quién se toma el derecho de hablar en nombre del pueblo, de verse a sí mismo como la encarnación de la mayoría del pueblo? ¿Y quién sabe qué es lo que comprende el pueblo y qué deja de comprender, qué necesita y qué rechaza? ¿O es que alguien en alguna ocasión ha hecho si quiera una sencillísima pero honrada encuesta entre ese pueblo, para ilustrarse acerca de sus verdaderos intereses, reflexiones, deseos, esperanzas y decepciones? Yo mismo soy una parte de mi pueblo. Yo he vivido con él en mi patria y yo he tendido (de acuerdo con mi edad) las mismas experiencias históricas de ellos, yo he observado las mismas experiencias vitales que él y sobre ellos he reflexionado. Y también ahora, viviendo en el mundo occidental, sigo siendo hijo de mi pueblo. Soy una pequeña gota, una partícula diminuta de él, y espero que pueda expresar sus ideas, ideas profundamente ancladas en sus tradiciones culturales e históricas”
― Andrei Tarkovsky, quote from Sculpting in Time

“في طفولتي اقترحت أمي أن أقرأ " الحرب والسلام" للمرة الأولى، ولسنوات طويلة بعد ذلك كانت أمي غالبا ما تستشهد بمقاطع من الرواية ملفتة نظري الى دقة وبراعة تولستوي في كتابة النص الأدبي، وبالتالي صارت رواية " الحرب والسلام" بالنسبة لي مثل مدرسة للفن، ومعيارا للذوق والعمق الفني. . . بعدها لم يعد ممكنا أن أقرأ أي عمل تافه لأنه سوف يولّد لديّ إحساساً حاداً بالنفور.”
― Andrei Tarkovsky, quote from Sculpting in Time

“The image in cinema is based on the ability to present as an observation one's own perception of an object”
― Andrei Tarkovsky, quote from Sculpting in Time

“إن قدر العبقري في منظومة المعرفة الإنسانية هو مذهل حقا. هؤلاء المعذبون الذين اصطفاهم الله، والذين قُدّر لهم أن يهدموا باسم الحركة وإعادة البناء، يجدون أنفسهم في حالة متناقضة ظاهريا من التوازن غير المستقر، المتقلب بين التوق الى السعادة والإيمان الراسخ بأن السعادة، بوصفها واقعا أو حالة محتملة، هي غير موجودة. فالسعادة مفهوم تجريدي، معنوي. السعادة الحقيقية، السعادة السعيدة، تكمن كما نعلم في التوق إلى تلك السعادة التي لا بد وأن تكون مطلقة: ذلك المطلق الذي نتعطش اليه.”
― Andrei Tarkovsky, quote from Sculpting in Time

“El artista no tiene ningún derecho moral para dejarse llevar a un abstracto nivel medio, para hacer que su obra sea más comprensible, más accesible. Esto no acarrearía otra cosa que la decadencia del arte, cuando en realidad esperamos su florecimiento, creemos en las posibilidades potenciales y aún no desarrolladas del artista y también en una elevación de las exigencias del público. O al menos queremos creer en todo ello.”
― Andrei Tarkovsky, quote from Sculpting in Time

“Allí donde alguien se orienta deliberadamente por el público, estamos ante un producto de la industria del entretenimiento, ante shows y espectáculos de masas, nunca ante el arte, que indefectiblemente tiene que seguir sus leyes internas, inmanentes, con independencia de que sean aceptadas o no encuentren acogida”
― Andrei Tarkovsky, quote from Sculpting in Time

“La única comunicación adecuada con el espectador es ésta: permanecer fiel a sí mismo. Sin concesión alguna a ese ochenta por ciento de espectadores de cine que, por motivos indescifrables, exigen de nosotros, los directores, que les entretengamos. A la vez, nosotros los directores hemos empezado a despreciar tanto ese ochenta por ciento de espectadores, que estamos dispuestos a entretenerles, puesto que de ellos depende la financiación de la próxima película: una situación sin salida.”
― Andrei Tarkovsky, quote from Sculpting in Time

“The allotted function of art is not, as is often assumed, to put across ideas, to propagate thoughts, to serve as example. The aim of art is to prepare a person for death, to plough and harrow his soul, rendering it capable of turning to good. Touched by a masterpiece, a person begins to hear in himself that same call of truth which prompted the artist to his creative act. When a link is established between the work and its beholder, the latter experiences a sublime, purging trauma. Within that aura which unites masterpieces and audience, the best sides of our souls are made known, and we long for them to be freed. In those moments we recognize and discover ourselves, the unfathomable depths of our own potential, and the furthest reaches of our emotions.”
― Andrei Tarkovsky, quote from Sculpting in Time

“No other art can compare with cinema in the force, precision, and starkness with which it conveys awareness of facts and aesthetic structures existing and changing within time.”
― Andrei Tarkovsky, quote from Sculpting in Time

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