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The Science-Fiction Films of Andrei Tarkovsky (Les films de science-fiction d'Andrei Tarkovsky) Author(s): Simonetta Salvestroni and R. M. P. Source: Science Fiction Studies, Vol. 14, No. 3, Science-Fiction Film (Nov., 1987), pp. 294-306 Published by: SF-TH Inc Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4239838 . Accessed: 15/11/2013 09:45
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Simonetta Salvestroni The Science-FictionFilms of Andrei Tarkovsky1

Translated and Editedby RMP Andrei Tarkovsky's SF films, Solaris (1972) and Stalker (1980), have preciseandcreativeaffinitieswith the fantasticstrainin RussianandSoviet literature.The metaphoricinteractions,the bipolarities,the relationships the anticipawith an Otherness at once externalto andinsidethe characters, that tion of ambiguous miracles,and the sense of being on the "threshold," we we meet with in Bulgakov,Dostoyevsky,Gogol, and the Strugatskys in Tarkovsky.2 The "magical also encounter Thereis, however,a difference. role" assumedby the word in Gogol's Petersburg tales3or in Bulgakov's transfers to the image,whichhe TheMasterand Margarita,say, Tarkovsky endowswith a powernot inferiorto thatof the word.It is withinthe power of the image to surmount spatial,temporal,and biologicalbarriers, materialize memories and psychic realities, and bring alien places near and humanizethem to the point that they come to life and participatein an extra-verbal communicatory relationship. In Tarkovsky's Solaris,the dialoguebetweenhumankind andthe planet transpires exclusivelythroughimages, and so finally does thatbetweenthe directorand his public, along with the process wherebyHarey-an adult alien but at the startdevoid of consciousness-becomes humanized.The Soviet director'sfirst film thus exemplifies, in an original and complex way, the mannerin which the image communicates and contributes to the of cognition.4 development films to date,from The Childhood Typifyingall of Tarkovsky's of Ivan Each sets a quo(1962) to Nostalgia(1983), is a binaryspatialorganization. tidianworld,grey, monological,andviolent,againstan anti-world which is dynamic,malleable,and full of color, the dominionof possibilityand of choice. In his 1962 film, the luminousdimensionof the dreamandof memory presentsa starkantithesisto the tragicgreynessof the war, which one of the characters defines as the suspensionof the vital flux and of communication.A similarantinomyis implicitthroughout Tarkovsky's next film, Andrei Rublev (1966). This immediatelybecomes evident to the viewer towardsthe end, whenthe black-and-white footagereservedfor a Medieval Russia devastatedby pillagings, acts of repression,and massacresgives way to the colors of the final framesdedicatedto the vital force of artand of a natureuncontaminated by violence and by the obtusemechanicalness which humanbeings, accordingto Tarkovsky,tend to be guilty of. After

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the scenes of ruinous incursions by enemies, of the tortureswhich the inflict on the Russianpeople, and of the blindingand killing of authorities the palaces artistsat the behestof princesto preventthemfrombeautifying world:thatof on the screenimagesof another of rivals,therefinallyappear Rublev'sicons andthenof the living waterof a rainfallandof a greatriver freedom.Relating traversing grassyexpanseswherehorsesmove in natural the two spheres is a matterentrustedto the film's addresseesor, in The Childhood, implicitly to Ivan, who contemporaneously inhabits both dimensions and whose point of view the spectatorgathers from images culledfromhis thoughtsandsense perceptions. Solaris introducesa substantial While repeatingthis binarystructure, element of difference.There the dialogue between world and anti-world inasmuchas one of the direct,firstundergoesa concretematerialization is the planetitself. It is here thanksto its peculiarities, personinterlocutors, that the originalityof Tarkovsky'sspatial treatmentof Lem's materials of an animatespace-or manifestsitself: in the director'smetamorphosing of the cinit-as one of the protagonists rather, the living planetinhabiting ematic text. The other partnerto the dialogue is, of course, Kris Kelvin, certainstrangehappenof investigating who has been given the assignment ings at the Solarisspace stationand of decidingon the basis of his findings whetherto destroythe alienentityor tryto establishcontactwith it. As in TheDiary of a Madmanor TheMasterand Margarita,the film Solaris centers upon a problematic communicative relationship-one which, in its context,is perilouslybeyondnormalbounds.No less thanthe society of the futureas fictive worldsof Gogol andBulgakov,the terrestrial Tarkovskyenvisions it-which has similaritiesto what was actuallyhis own-is characterized finally by its rigid organization.Founded on the premisethattruthis univocal,this social orderrefusesto acceptdiversity, which it proceeds to destroy whenever it becomes too prominentto be ignored.This is exactly the parabolicmeaningconnectedwith the Earthin its relationswith Solaris-an importfirst instancedin the dogmaticrefusal of scientiststo verify the testimonyof the astronaut Berton,andthen in the the planetonce the goings on at the space stationproveto wish to bombard be too disquieting. decidedto have his film begin on Earth, It is significantthatTarkovsky from Lem's fiction, which from its openingpage immetherebydeparting diately situates the human actors in the vicinity of Solaris. While thus focussing on the social system of the future,however, the directoroffers aboutit only indirectly. It is up to the viewerto inferits characinformation fromthe inquestconcerningBerton'sdeclarations; fromthe uninteristics: terruptedfile of automobiles that appear to whirl by endlessly, thus the mechanicalworld which Burtonreturnsto representing metaphorically of Sartorandfromtheposturings afterhis stay at the home of Kris'sfather; whatever of science, who holds it a duty to annihilate ius, that bureaucrat to its objectivelaws, which admitof nothingbeyond does not correspond themselves. Revealingitself obliquely,the Earthof the futureemergesfrom a singularprocess involving not only the futureexpressly imaged in the film butalso Tarkovsky's own present,Soviet realityin the 1970s.

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His Solaris begins and ends with the scene of the house which Kris's fatherhas built, in oppositionto the purelytechnologicaldevelopmentsof nature.As the his time, to be in contact with a living and unmechanized he has designedthe buildingso thatits structure fatherhimselfunderscores, house-a projectthat requiredresearch recreatesthat of his grandfather's also into his own rootson the landandin his familialpast.Herethe director resortsto otherimages reinforcingthat metaphoric significance:of a lake whose living watersexhibita concentricmovementcomplicated by a rainfall, and of a horse trottingfreely in a mannerreminiscentof the final framesof AndreiRublev. life withrespectto the restof Old manKelvin,then,lives an anomalous the world;and by comparisonwith a son profoundlyincapableof understandinghim, he (along with Berton)vindicatesSolaris'srightto exist. (As he asserts,it shouldnot be suppressed merelybecauseit is different.)The father'sdimensionaccordinglyadds a thirdpoint of view to the dialogue between antinomial opposites which otherwise dominate this work of Tarkovsky'sas they do his precedingfilms. Old Kelvin's point of view assumes a basically mediatoryfunction, making fruitfulon Earthyoung Kelvin's experienceof two unknowndimensions:one cosmically distant the other,nearerbut no less accessible, and embodiedin the ocean-planet; constituted by the depthsof his psyche. to terrestrial The anti-world mindsbecauseas a of Solarisis disturbing livingentity,it invalidates the fixed laws andrulesto whichtheyaremechanically accustomed, standing at once outsideand withinthe purviewof such. This doublevalence,whichscientistsfind logicallyunacceptable, has its corwith the planet,in regardto which they are relativein theirconfrontations bothhosts andguests.Theirspace stationorbitsabovethe watersof Solaris, butthatthinking mass at the sametime entersinto them,insinuatmagmatic ing itself into theirmindsas they sleep. Fromthis position,the planetconto communicate ductsits attempts with them,takingon a role analogous to, but more powerfulthan,thatof the Unconscious.It does not limit itself to it also succeedsin materializing transmitting mentalmessages; them. At this point it begins to become clear thatthe truecenterof the antiworldof limitlesspossibilitywhichthe threescientist-astronauts areexploring is not external,but instead lies inside them, in depths that terrestrial experience,confining as it is, has never allowed them to reach. The dialogue with the alienfromhereon transforms itself into an auto-communicative relationship, of any cultural doublyparlousfromthe standpoint code of earthlyprovenance. Indeed,it compelshumanbeingsto come to termswith a Differencewhichcan neitherbe distanced norevaded. Tarkovskyand Lem, no doubt influenced by Freud, have endowed Solariswith a "symmetrical" logic, one capableof nullifyingspatio-temporal distancesalongwith the distinctions betweenlife anddeath,partandwhole, mass with the capacityfor enveloping thinkingand being.5A homogeneous the planetgenerates the monstrous everything, midgetsthatpopulateSartorius's Unconscious, for example,as well as reproducing the obsessivemental picturethatKrishas of Harey,downto the markof the injectionshe took to kill herselften yearsearlier.

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For this explosion from the Unconscious,which the monologicaland the scientistdogmaticEarthof the futurewouldcondemnto non-existence, and that makes their dialogue with the astronautsare quite unprepared; Alien difficult,tense, even on the subjectivelevel. In what is perhapsthe discoversin himself are most tragiccase, the fear and shamethatGibarian strong enough to drive him to suicide. On the other hand, the tendency Sartoriusseeks (thoughonly towardsviolence that seizes the bureaucrat an externaloutlet:the single means he determineson for getapparently) part of ting free of and annihilatingthe most obscureand unsupportable himself is to destroythe planet.Nor does Kelvin, for all his specialisttrainintellectual totallyadequate ing in social psychology,proveto have brought from Earth.His first response,like thatof his fellows, amounts equipment to do away with the new Harey,the dishe endeavors to an act of rejection: quieting material message which the planet has sent him; and he thus accomplishesthe cruel deed for which in the past he was only indirectly responsible. Even so, troubledas he is in his monologicalcertaintyabout contact with the dimensionhis fatherinhabits,Krisis the one personagein the film recoveryof his capableof an evolutionwhichconcludeswith the hard-won humanintegrity.Towardsthatend, his alien companiontakes on the same has for the viewer:thatof a model interaction functionthatthe anti-world with the primaryfield of investigation-in this instance,of the memoryHarey-thereby assistingto bringto conobject which was the terrestrial sciousness new realizations,new connections(cp. Black). Renderingthis identical is the fact thatthe model,thoughapparently productive interaction to her original,lacks knowledgeand memory-an adultjust come into the plasticity. resembling an infantof extraordinary worldandtherefore the film and in logic alone is of no use for comprehending Traditional is the same Solaris's messages. Here the key to interpretation particular that governs the Unconscious,includingdreams principleof "symmetry" andemotions.Withthatidea in view, we can observethatHarey,Kris,and Solarisare autonomous beings, distinctfrom one another,and at the same time elementsin which the partis identicalto the whole. Thus Kelvin is a visitor to a planet"outthere"which is also his Unconscious,a temporary part of himself. So, too, Harey, somethingexternalwhich he finds in his of room uponawakening,at the same time is a partof him, a reproduction creature. thana totallyindependent the image storedin his mind,rather As a resultof the collaboration betweenKelvinand Solaris,Hareyconmessage stitutesfor them a point of encounter,of contact,a materialized which man and planet alike participate in as senders and intended Thanksto its peculiarities, the "text"thatthey producetogether addressees. can inform each of them about the partner.Harey brings together the humantraitsderivedfrom Kris's memoryof his woman and an Otherness she shares with Solaris (evinced by the fact that her cells are of a type unknown to Kelvinandhis colleagues). momentsof Solaris-the momentin which One of the most important the potentialities andductilityof the languageof imagesreachtheirapexis when Harey,a materialized image andat the same time a messageresult-

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ing fromthe iconic exchangebetweenKris and Solaris,in turndevelopsan interactive process,using imagesthatshe visuallyperceives. Typical of Tarkovsky'sfilms is an insistentuse of quotations: verbal ones (of the sortwhichwe shallconsiderin regard to his next work,Stalker), but also-and above all-visual ones. In Solaris there are the copies of famouspaintings,hangingon the walls of the space stationandrepeatedly focussed on, and three film inserts: the one documenting the Berton the audio-visual inquest; recordsbeforehis suicide messagewhichGibarian for Kelvin's benefit;and the shortof Kris as a child filmed by his father. The interpolation of these threemakesfor an implicitand suggestiveparallel betweenthe magicaloperations of Solarisandthe possibilitieswhichthe cinemaholds out for humanbeings. Like the productsof the Unconscious materialized by the planet,the threefilm sequencesbringthe remotenear andcause the pastandeven the deadto return Kris'smother,the (Gibarian, dog Krishad as a child). These iconic moments make for the kind of dialectical interaction whichgoes alongwith intertextuality. The situation of intertextuality, as Juri Lotmanpointsout (p. 10), carrieswith it an "awakening of the text"and"a sense of the multiplying of meanings." In Tarkovsky's Solaris, the most important of these momentsconcerns the shortdealingwith Kris's childhood(the only sequenceamongthe three mentionedfilmed in color). It workson a doublelevel. As we shall see, it initiatesin Hareythe processby which she moves towardsknowledgeand humanization.At the same time, it has an indirecteffect on Kris, who, thanksto her progress,modifieshis vision of reality,a vision whichhe discoversto be penurious anddogmatic. The only movingimagesthatHareyobserveson the screenas the short is being shown are the leaping, warm,red flames of a fire aroundwhich Kris's family is gatheredin a snow-coveredwinter landscape.It is after viewing this footage that she regardsthe reproduction of PieterBruegel's Huntersin the Snow with intense concentration. It has hithertofrequently figuredin the confinesof the space station;but, as she attendsto it now for the firsttime, it assumesfor her a polyvalentsignificance,whichTarkovsky forcefullybringshomethrough a synthesisof images. Certain commentsthatLudwigWittgenstein makesaboutvisualperceptionsproveto be especiallyhelpfulin explaining thispeculiar, indeedunique, operation which takesplace in Tarkovsky's film. The peculiarity lies in the fact thatthe author of the operation is an extraterrestrial possessingthe naturallanguage andcognitivecapacities of an adult,butdevoidof worldlyexperiences.The Austrian philosopher writes:"I contemplate a face andsuddenly noticeits likenessto another. I see thatit has not changed; andyet I see it differently.I call this experience'noticingan aspect"'(Philosophical Investigations,p. 193e [II.xi]). And again:"Imeet someonewhomI havenot seen in years.I see him clearly;butfail to knowhim. Suddenly I knowhim,I see the old face in the alteredone. I believe thatI shoulddo a different portrait of himnow if I couldpaint" (ibid.,p. 197e [II.xi]). This processexactly appliesto Harey'scase in regard to Huntersin the Snow. She notices the elementwhich the paintinghas in commonwith the

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shortshe has viewed-snow-and this triggersan associativeprocessthat permitsher to see the Bruegelin a differentaspect.Hereshe is in the same with the phenomenon positionas the viewerof Solarisconfronted constituted by the planet's magmaticmass: faced with an image novel to her, she associatesthem with otherimages, and at isolates certainof its properties, the sametime synthetizes theirshareddetailsso thatthey clarifyandilluminate one another.Throughthe eye of the camera,which follows Harey's line of vision, the viewer sees on the screensegmentedimagesof Bruegel's paintingandfootagefromthe shortaboutKris'schildhood. Unlike the latter'siconic message, the Bruegel,with its grey tonalities and its icy greens and whites, transmitsa sense of cold, of solitude, of We see on the screenhunters(andtheirdogs), lugubriincommunicability. ous anddark,men for whom the violentimpulsewhichkilling presupposes has nothingto do with a will to live, is not dictatedby the necessityfor survival; rather, they seem enclosedin an armorof ice which preventscontact with or comprehension of the Other.This centralsubjectof the painting thus has a connectionto Harey'sown case: it relatesto her impending dissolution in Sartorius'sannihilatoras victim of a cold ferocity that she obscurelysenses butdoes not understand. It is in thisway thatthe "quotation" of Bruegelbringshometo the viewer certainsecondary meaningsnot evidentin the paintingby itself. Even more important, however,is the functionthatthe painting has for Harey.Not only does it offer her a means(as the shortdoes as well) of approaching a world and a past not her own. The use of a model,in this case the shorton Kris's childhood,also allows her to connectthe painting'smessagewith her situation as victimandprey.At the sametime, it permitsher to organizea series of impressionsand intuitionshithertoleft withouta unifying center (e.g., Kris'stender attitude andSartorius's fixeddestructive resolve). The resultof this process-silent only in the sense thatit is not verbalized-is the resolutionexpressedin her explosive attackon the bureaucrat Sartorius. This is the desperateprotestof a being who senses that day by day she is becomingmore and more human,but, like the planetthat sent her, sees her rightto live aboutto be abrogated in the name of the kind of science whichupholdsits dogmaticstasisby destroying the Alien. The birthand deathof Hareyform partof the message thatthe planet transmits for the exclusive benefitof Kelvin. She is the living model which causeshim to becomeawareof the obtuseandmechanical crueltydominant in the worldfromwhichhe originates. Yet the "cruelmiracle" he passively awaitsafterlosing a being whomhe loved despiteher Differenceis not her resurrection, possible thoughthatwould be in this dimension.Instead,it is the unexpectedmaterialization of anothermentalimage, equivalentto the Unconscious because transmitting,throughdisplacement,an analogous message. This second, and again imperfect,model which the planetsends-and which Kris is able to decipherimmediately-brings the viewer back to the initial scene of the film. As we look at what seems to be the waterof the lake of the openingframes(it exhibitsthe same concentricmovement),the cameraslowly drawsdistantso thatwe perceivethatwhatwe arenow see-

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ing is an aquaticisland,envelopedin its turnby the watersof Solaris,and on the island,old Kelvin's house drenchedinside and out. The subsequent is an event occurring far from embracebetweenmen fromtwo generations of Kris's mentalimage; Earth,on the space station,as the materialization less fantasticthanHareyor and this signalshis acceptance of an Otherness the planet, though one that would have been incomprehensibleto Kris doubleexperience. beforehis extraordinary This syntheticand polysemousfinal image has not been understood by "a submission to authority andto traditionthosewho claimthatit represents of power,the fatherfigure,""a dour al social institutions" or "thearchetype the image'smeanentitywrapped up in his logic of conservatism."6 Instead, oneselfto reasing is twofold,oscillating betweenthe necessityof entrusting entitiescapableof performing miraclesandthe openingof a suringsuperior new visionof the world,a visionwhichdiscoversthe richnessof a realityfull centralto the work of Gogol, Dostoyevof possibilities.This ambivalence, in his is what Tarkovskyrecaptures sky, Bulgakov,and the Strugatskys,7 film. The Soviet director recoversbothpoles, utilizingone to the apparently the planet's"cruelmiracles" of the other.His protagonist, advantage through andthe temporary escapeinto a "symmetrical" way of seeingwhichreleases him fromhis too confiningexistentialcondition,projectshimselftowardsa future in whichthereareno staticandabsolute verities. dynamic the voyage embracing Thanksto the film's artisticmultidimensionality, If at once the cosmos andpsychicrealityis open to different interpretations. Solarisis both a thinkingplanetand Kelvin's Unconscious,and if his diathenhe is at once the intendlogue with it is thusalso a self-communication, ed addressee of a miracleandthe activeprotagonist of a searchbeginning in the depthsof his beingbutfinally,once the dialoguegets underway, leading also to the Other.In this regard, it is significant thatKelvin is able to attain the infiniteand creativepotentialhiddenin himself only with the help of a fantasticand miraculous entitybeyondhim whichcompelshim to establish for in advance. withit a contactwhichhe was notprepared to Solaris, Tarkovsky'snext film, freely adaptedfrom the Compared RoadsidePicnic, appearsdecidedlypessimistic.Absent from Strugatskys' it is the kind of autonomous developmentwhich the precedingfilm represents as difficult,but not impossible-witness, for example,the independencethatKris'sfatherattains. Fundamental to the 1980 film is a complexinteraction whichamounts to what might be called the "Solaris-ation" of Picnic, and whose operation who is the active beginsat the level of the scenario composed by a Tarkovsky andcreativerecipient of bothbooks(i.e., Lem's andthe Strugatskys'). Stalker resemblesthe Soviet director's versionof Solaris in proposinga voyage into an animatespace at once externaland internalto the protagonist and to his stateof mind.8 modifiable Thatenterprise in this instanceis according forced willy-nilly to come to not, however, imposedupon the characters, termswith themselves; it is an adventure rather, desperately sought,yet usewith the Alien and the worldremains"a less; for no contactis established be violated."9 prison" governed by "ironlaws"which"cannot

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variousphases of the film's In considering Stalker,we can distinguish conception. In the first, the director has utilized Lem's Solaris as a the or as a filterthrough whichto see his main subject: "subsidiary subject" Thanks to the processof novel servingas his pointof departure. Strugatskys' intertextualconnection that Tarkovsky as Lem's and the Strugatskys' treasures whichin Picnic wereretrievthe technological addressee performs, Nor do the blackmared fromthe Zonedo not figurein the film's scenario. ket, Red's weightof guilt,or the episodewhereinPilmanexplainshis vision the eight Furthermore, of the worldalong with the extraterrestrial mysteries. into a single day, one whichhas a compresses yearsof the novel Tarkovsky valence:as the briefanddecisivemomentof the miradoubleandantinomial routine.The 24 hours one of daily mechanical cle which is simultaneously differentfrom countlessothers lived by the Stalkerare not fundamentally for somethingwhich never will happen. repeatedly spentwaiting-searching Then, too, the film deviatesfrom Picnic (and also from Lem's Solaris) in himself stresses(pp. 48regardto the statusof the Alien; for as Tarkovsky can fromStalker thatsomething be concluded actually 51), it cannotcertainly does not imagineeverything. in the Zone-i.e., thattheprotagonist happen fromthe Strugatskys' For all its departures book, the film nevertheless centersupon and reorganizesthe last episode of Picnic, the one wherein illness, goes in searchof the legendary Red, desperateover his daughter's to rumorcan granteveryone'sdeepestwishGoldenBall, which according just as es. The Zone conceived by the Strugatskysimpels introspection, Solaris does; and it is on this point which the Polish and Russian stories a Stalker(afterabandoning have in commonthat Tarkovskyconcentrates version"morefaithfulto Picnic"becausehe foundit unsatisfying).'O drawsnot only In the secondphaseof the film's conception, Tarkovsky upon Lem and the Strugatskysbut also on passages from Dostoyevsky, Tjutchev,Lao Tze, the Gospels, and the Book of Revelation,all of which act as filters or magnifyinglenses capableof bringingout new meanings and discoveries.With referenceto Max Black's suggestivemetaphor(see his p. 41), we can say thatin Stalkerit is as if "thenightsky,"or the field of reality,were observedby Tarkovsky-and throughhim by viewers of his film-not with the naked eye directly but "througha piece of heavily smoked glass on which certainlines have been left clear."Therebyone "shallsee only the starsthatcan be madeto lie on the lines previouslypredo[es] see will be seen as orgapareduponthe screen,andthe stars...[one] eliminated. nizedby the screen'sstructure." Everything else is immediately The Stalkerof the film, thanksto an interactive processwithinthe film from the simple and weak character whom the Struitself, is transformed as attracted to adventure man." and lucreinto a "ridiculous gatskysportray In his desire to escape from his existentialprison, he is akin to Gogol's Poprishchin,to certain of Dostoyevsky's male personages,and in some herself to the camera ways to Bulgakov'sMaster.As his wife, addressing andthenceto the spectators, says of the Stalker:
Probably you have already understoodthat he is not normal. Everybody whatcould I do? I was laughedat him andhe was so lost, the poorthing....But sure I would have been okay with him. I knew there would be some bitter

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moments, but a bitter happinessis better than...a grey, boring life....And if thereweren'tany sufferingin our life, it wouldn'tbe better;it wouldbe worse. Because then there wouldn'tbe any happinesseither, and there wouldn'tbe hope even.... (Stalker, p. 53)

has in commonwith the Russiantradition WhatStalker's protagonist of the fantastic in its Gogol-Dostoyevskian strain is his locationat the margin of a rigidandossifiedsystem,in a no man'slandsusceptible to centrifugal violent forces.Herea strongpressure exertsitself on the againstautomatization Stalker,also in the personof his wife. By her reflectionson suffering,she articulatesthat impulse of a dialectic of opposites towardsbreakingthe monotonyof a mechanical and grey existence,an impulsepreviouslygiven voice by the devil who is IvanKaramazov's alterego andthenby Bulgakov's Woland. The apparent altemativethatpresentsitself in the face of the Stalker's despair is between an escape into a thaumaturgic dimension wherein to awaitan unforeseen resolutiveevent andan act of faithin the humanpossibilities hiddenin the depthsof one's being. In Stalker, however,the weight of everydaylife is so crushingas to precludethatalternative. The threshold of the room where the protagonist believes the most secret desirescan be fulfilledwill not be crossed,andwill not becauseno one daresconfrontthe doubleriskthatcrossingit involves. If the miracledoes not transpire, there will be nothingto believe in or hope for any longer.If, on the otherhand, enteringthe roommeansaccedingto the darkestpartof oneself, the perilis of not being able to bearthe shameof whatone discovers. In contrast to the Stalker'sattitude, the reactionsof the two intellectuals for whomhe is supposedto act as guide-uncreative bureaucrats of science and literature-recapitulatethe behaviorof certaincharacters in Tarkovsky's Solaris. Like the Sartorius of that film, the scientistin Stalker wants to bomb out of existence an Othernesswhich does not fit the laws of his system. The writer,instead-who is closer to Gibarian-draws back so as ''not to pour on anyone's head the loathinghe has within,"whereupon he wouldhave "toputhis headin a noose"(Stalker, p. 50). The Stalker, meanwhile, deprived of the possibilities allowed Kris himselfto dreaming of the Apocalypse Kelvin,restricts andof a regeneration for whichhe wouldbe not the architect butthe Christ-like mediator;1I yet he cannotfindwithinhimselfthe courage to believein thisdream completely. Still, one possibilityremainsopen in the film. Its indicator is a passage from Lao Tze on the plasticityand flexibility of children.As Tarkovsky cites it in the Stalker filmscript (p. 37), thatquotation runsas follows:
People are born weak and flexible; they die strongand obdurate. A growing tree is delicate and flexible; it perishesdry and strong.Rigidity and strength are the companionsof death;weaknessand elasticityexpressthe freshnessof being;whatis unrigidwill not be vanquished.

That idea, occupyingin Stalkera place similarto the thoughtof Pilman's insertedin the middleof Picnic and then picked up at the end from Red's point of view, is likewise similarlycrucialto understanding-inthis of the final framesof the film. case, particularly

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There,in a movementwhose circularity, is nonethoughonly apparent, of The Childhoodof Ivan and Solaris, Tarkovsky theless reminiscent ends the film whereit began.Fromthe luminousandcolorfulworldof the Zone, we are returned to the squalorof an everydayexistence rendered in blackand-white footage shading into tones of brown. Yet if the filthy and bemiredvillage, the stagnant watersof the lake, andthe house of the Stalker are essentiallythe same we see at the outset,they are not exactly so. For now the color footage which Tarkovsky (significantly enough)reservesfor the sequencestakingplace withinthe Zone, with exceptionmade (equally significantly) only for thosemomentswhenthe pointof view switchesfrom the adults to the Stalker's daughter,Martys'ka, again briefly comes into play. As the mute and mutantMartyska, deprivedof the use of her legs, is carriedhome on her father's shouldersfrom the bar where she had been takento wait for him, we are suddenlyand temporarily allowed to see the quotidian worldcompletelytransformed her eyes. The hitherto through polluted and dead surfaceof the lake, shot from above and as the girl sees it, suddenlyappears brightandcolorful,like the Zone. The connectionmadehere betweenMartyska and the lake ties Stalker in with Tarkovsky's previousfilms. It instancesonce againthe "intratextual" associationrecurrent in the Soviet director'sceuvrebetweenimages of waterand childhood.His conjoiningof the two, moreover,has an analogical basis-as he himself hints in his quotationof Lao Tze-which also pointsto the privilegedstatusof childhoodas a sanctuary fromthe mechanical rigidityof adultlife. Hencethe expansesof waterso insistently present in The Childhoodof Ivan and AndreiRublevand transforming themselves intoan entirelivingplanetin Solarishavea metaphoric meaning. Theyimage the elasticness,the inarrestibility, the dynamismwhich humanbeings are born with-the potential,also for apprehending the new, which figuresin Stalker's lastscene. Following the intervention of black-and-white, the color stock Tarkovsky has employedto shoot the lake from Martyska's point of view reappears. By thatmedium,we finally witness the long-awaited miracle.It takes place not withinthe Zone but outside it, in the realizationof a wish capableof subduing the "ironlaws"thatnone of the adultshas been able to violate. Whatmakes the miraclepossible is not a materialtransference to forbiddenterritory(viz., the Zone), but the momentaryescape into the worldof artachievedby Martyska, who thoughshe is, like Harey,an alien, is also a child andhencepossesses a child's "elasticity." In the sequenceimmediately preceding her "escape"-one of the last in the film-she appears silentlyabsorbed in a book while on the soundtrack a voice, objectivizing her interiormonologue, recites a lyric (untitled)by Tyutchev(pp. 59-60):
I love youreyes, my love, Theirwonderful, passionate play Whensuddenlyyou raisethem And boldlycast yourglance, Like skybomlightning,aboutyou.

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But thereis a mightiermagic: Of eyes to earthcast down All through a ferventkiss, And through the loweredlashes The sullenfaintflameof desire.

The miracleperformed by Martyska'sglance, her eyes turneddownward like the woman'sin the poem, was the realization, througha processof displacement,of a desire which this alien, deprivedof the use of her legs, is never able to fulfill otherwise.What she accomplishesby the exertionof mentalenergy is alone, from the standpoint of the dead mechanicalworld in which she lives, a prodigiousfeat, even if the resultis equivalentto the effect producedon a glass by the noisy vibrations of a trainin an opening scene of the film. The small miraclethat Martyska performssolely for her own benefit makes it clear to the viewer thatthe Zone is not some magicalterritory to be physicallyattained by passingthrough barbed-wire barriers. Rather,it is somethingexisting everywhere,outside us and within, thoughthis is lost sight of by the adultsin Stalker,who areprisoners of a shabbilyandrigidly one-dimensional world. The Strugatskys' novel and Tarkovsky'sfilm, thoughthey differ from one anotherin languageand point of view, sharethe same nucleus. Both problematically addressthe need to breakout of the rigidityand automatism producedby all-encompassingdogmatic certaintiesand by models pretending to fit all situations. While pointingin somewhatdifferentdirections, the two works are thus instructively Picnic projects complementary. its searchoutwardsvia the indicationsof a scientist(Pilman)who, rather thanseekingunshakable wantsto construct certitudes, dynamichypotheses, ones which can be extendedandmodifiedto explainever new phenomena. Tarkovsky,instead, directs his investigationstowardsthe interiorof the individualabove all, seeking to discover those uncontainable and infinite possibilitiesof a "symmetrical" being withoutwhich scientificand artistic creativity,andcognitiveadvancesgenerally,couldnot occur.

NOTES 1. The foregoingessay represents a translation of a partof the sixth chapter of S. Salvestroni'sSemioticadell'immaginazione. Dalla letterature fantastica russa allafantascienzasovietica(Venezia:Marsilio,1984)-RMP. 2. Fora discussionof the relationships amongthese artists,see my book. 3. "Petersburg tales"(or "stories") is a term(which Gogol apparently did not approveof) collectively designating"The Overcoat,"The Diary of a Madman, "TheNose,""TheNevsky Prospect," and"ThePortrait"-RMP. 4. This andothertheoretical problemsI treatat some lengthin chapter6 of my book on the "semioticsof the imagination." 5. Here and subsequentlyI use the term symmetrical(or symmetry)in the sense developedby psychologistIgnacioMatteBlanco.Forhim it namesthe principle on which the Unconscious'slogic is based-the principleaccording to which

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behaveas if they were symmetrical. asymmetrical relationships (By logico-matheare those which hold even when the maticaldefinition,symmetrical relationships do phenomenaor termsrelatedare reversed,whereasasymmetrical relationships not. Thus, for example, "Johnis the brotherof Paul" formulatesa symmetrical relation,"Thearm is partof the body"an asymmetrical one.) By consequenceof the principleof symmetry,Matte Blanco emphasizes,all the elements of a class such traditional as identicalin a way which annihilates come to be considered logical distinctionsas that between subjectand object, part and whole, thoughtand action,andpast,present,andfuture.WhatI meanto suggest,then,is thatSolarisin effect operateson thatprincipleandhence is explicablein its terms. 6. See Frezzato,pp. 65-70. Soviet criticswho discuss Solarisdo not seem any of the rich meaningsof the film. They more open than he to the comprehension affirmthatTarkovsky "didnot follow the logic andthe spiritof such a good book" as Lem's (quoted from a round-tablediscussion in VoprosyLiteratury,no. 1 [1973]). see Salvestroni, 7. For a furtherdiscussion of this bipolarity/ambivalence, "The AmbiguousMiraclein Three Novels by the Strugatsky Brothers," SFS, 11 (1984):291 -303. 8. "The Zone," the Stalkeraffirms,"mightseem capricious,but it is at any given momentexactly what our state of mind makes it... Some have died on the thresholdof the room. However,everythingthathappenshere dependsnot on the Zone buton ourselves": Stalker,p. 36. 9. "The world,"the Stalkeris told by the Writer,"is infinitelymonotonous, and thereforeneithertelepathy,nor fantoms,nor flying saucershave a place in it....Noneof that;the worldis govemedby iron laws, andhence is unbearably boring. And those laws, alas, arenot violated,cannotbe violated": Stalker,p. 26. 10. Accordingto Tarkovsky, the remaking of the film was not wholly a matter of design. After half of the first versionhad been shot, it was ruinedin the lab. "I couldn't do the same thing over again. So, together with the authors,I started accidenttook place just when the film in its original rewritingthe scenario....The conceptionwas in dangerof becominginsufficientlyprofound": "Interview," pp.
48-5 1.

11. It is here, in connectionwith the Stalker'sApocalypticdream,thatquotations fromthe Book of Revelationandthe Gospelsfigure.

WORKSCITED
Black, Max. Models and Metaphors. Ithaca, NY: 1962.

Frezzato,A. Tarkovskij. Firenze,1977. Juri."Mozg-tekst-kul'tura-iskusstvennij Lotman, intellekt," trans.by S. Salvestroni as "Il cervello-il testo-la cultura-l'intellectto artificiale,"Intersezioni,no. 1 (Apr. 1982),pp. 5-16.
Matte Blanco, Ignacio. The Unconscious as Infinite Sets. An Essay in Bi-Logic.

London,1975. Tarkovsky, Andrei."Interview" (by L. Capo),Scena,5 (1980):47-51.

_

. Stalker (Directorial Filmscript), in Rassegna sovietica, Nov.-Dec.

1980, pp. 24-53.

Tyutchev, F.I. Poems and Political Letters of..., trans. Jesse Zeldin. Knoxville:

TennesseeUP, 1973.

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Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Philosophical Investigations, trans. G.E.M. Anscombe. Oxford,1953.

RESUME Simonetta Salvestroni. Les films de science-fiction d'Andrei Tarkovsky. de sciencede deux chefs-d'oeuvre -Tarkovsky est le metteuren scene sovie'tique nompar StanislawLem, et Stalker fiction: Solaris (1972) tire du livre du me'me au bordle la route.En (1980), adaptedu livre desfreres Strougatsky, Pique-nique se servant surtout de l'image, Tarkovskyorganise ces films (comme ses films entre Solaris et l'URSS contemporain(ou, pre'cedent)autour d'une bipolarite': peut-on dire, le monde technologise')dans l'un; et entre le monde quotidien monochrome,et la Zone merveilleuseet coloree dans l'autre. En meimetemps cependant qu'il utilise les poles d'une logiquebinaire,ses films nientcette logique antinomique car leurs imagesfinales suggerentun tertiumdatur,celui qu'on voit de dans la maisondu pere de Kelvin,objet de ce mondequi, ne'anmoins, trempe' ce pluies, rappelleSolaris et s'y dissoutensuite.De facon encoreplus e'mouvante, noir et blanc de Stalkerapparait qui transpireau momentou le mondeme'canique commeil est vu par les yeux de la jeune paralytique, soudain, miraculeusement, ainsi la divisionlogiqueentrele mondequoen couleursvives, rompant Martys'ka, tidien et la Zone, et ce que chacund'eux signiflait.C'est a'ces egards surtoutque les films de Tarkovsky ont des affinite's creatricesavec les visions de Boulgakov, Gogol, et desfreres Strougatsky. (RMP) Dostoievsky, Abstract.-Tarkovsky is the Soviet director responsible for two masterpiecesof SF film: Solaris (1972), based on the book of the same title by Lem, and Stalker primarily (1980), adapted from the Strugatsky brothers'RoadsidePicnic. Working in termsof images,Tarkovsky organizesthesefilms (like his previousones) around a bipolarity:betweenSolaris and the contemporary USSR(or, more broadly,the quotidianworld technologized world)in the onefilm; betweenthe monochromatic and the colorful,marvelousZone in the other.But while takingthepolarities of a binarylogic as his startingpoint, his films finally negate that antinomiallogic as their concluding images indicate a tertiumdatur: thatfigured in the house of Kelvin'sfather, an object of this world which nevertheless,drenchedby rains, recalls (and then dissolves into) Solaris; and perhaps most movingly,that which transpiresat the momentwhen the black-and-white mechanicalworld of Stalker, suddenly,miraculously,appears, as seen throughthe eyes of the paralytic girl in vivid color, thus breakingdownthe neat logical divisionbetweenthe Marty.wka, everydayworld and the Zone and what each of themhad stoodfor. It is in these respectsespeciallythatTarkovsky's films have creativeaffinitieswith thefantastic strain in Russianand Soviet literature,with the visions of Bulgakov,Dostoyevsky, Gogol, and the Strugatskys. (RMP)

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