Medieval Montage: How Andrei Tarkovsky's Poetics of Time Originated in Medieval Biblical Exegesis

What is it about?

I am writing about two great Russian artists, father and son, the poet Arseny (1907-1989) and film director Andrei (1932-1986) Tarkovsky, whose all-too-modern work—for what could be more modern than cinema?—was in fact a lifelong dialogue with Christian Orthodox art and spirituality. A lifelong reflection on whether spiritual art, art as a form of prayer, is still possible and/or necessary in the second half of the 20th century. In particular, I argue that the non-linear poetics of time in both Andrei's films and Arseny's poetry has its roots in typological biblical exegesis: a form of exegesis that reads Old Testament scenes as foreshadowing of the New Testament, thereby replacing chronological order with what I have called "medieval montage." Medieval exegetes prayed to see the ultimate meaning of the biblical drama—God Incarnate, crucified and resurrected—beyond linear time. Likewise, father and son Tarkovsky sought to discern the ultimate meaning of their personal drama, which reflected, like Mirror-Zerkalo, the similar dramas of millions of others: the drama of Sacrifice, Crucifixion and Resurrection of one family torn apart by the calamities of the 20th century.

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Photo by Anastassia Anufrieva on Unsplash

Photo by Anastassia Anufrieva on Unsplash

Why is it important?

The impetus for writing this chapter was my impression that words like "spirituality", "prayer," or "faith" are rarely found in the lexicon of contemporary Anglophone humanities, including Tarkovsky scholarship. It seemed strange to me that the humanities—that is, the sciences of man as a creator and a product of his historical labor—could ignore such a profound human need as spirituality. After all, Viktor Frankl, the famous Viennese psychiatrist, psychologist, and Holocaust survivor, believed that without the spirit life has no ultimate meaning, and Jungian archetypal psychology echoed his idea. Even stranger still are attempts to understand anything about Tarkovsky, an explicitly religious artist, without trying to understand first his relationship with Christianity in general and Orthodoxy in particular.

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