Character Sketch of Napoleon...

A character who mocks his own mocking. Napoleon inhabits a world tracing his own private mythology, overcoming his diminutive stature, becoming a play-actor of his own ideals. As Spengler asserts, Napoleon is a Romantic as his idol Alexander The Great. Both characters are eschatalogical in temperament and with proleptic imaginations - They see their own fates synonymous with destiny and relate their own idiosyncratic problems as problems and flaws within the universe itself. Before they have reached maturity they see themselves devouring the world as time and space receedes before them. Their personalities come as comets from afar which leave a burning tail before them and wherever the eye peers. The comet coalesces and cools forming a rigid character structure forever seeking its own dissolution in apprehension, and seeking merit in action.

One wonders if these 'comets' see with eyes of impunity (As some shakespearean characters believe in their suffering more than others.) or with eyes that seek cures to their own sufferings? (As one devises cures to injuries.) - Such a height of consciousness must rebel and disdain the subservience of itself to mortality - This tragic fact gives rise to the annihilation instinct, or the capacity for self destructive, non rational behaviour (as opposed to the biology or self presevation.) One can merely speculate on what desires and motivations consume such men, but it is erroneous to subtract and reformulate paragons of genius and will by reductive factors. Within such men lie ironical standpoints, a disconcerting fact which aligns such men to poets, such is the human stain. (as opposed to modern bureacrats and mandarins in life and goverment.) It is no wonder that Hamlet identified the solution to his own problems as an identification with Fortinbras.

Led by a delicate and tender prince,
Whose spirit with divine ambition puff'd
Makes mouths at the invisible event,
Exposing what is mortal and unsure
To all that fortune, death and danger dare,

I would suggest that such men in action or in brooding petrification, are seeking in thought or in action the solution to the psyches tension which must lie in the cessation of the tension and motivates the discharge of the personality as a biological necessity.

When I reflect on such personalities, I tend to think this presupposes that 'peace is not an absolute good.' and is merely an abstract moralism which has no grounding in the historical record nor in human desire itself. An inescapable fact which mocks logic, ethics and conscious desires - namely, maximum pleasure, minimise pain, because if humans did desire such axioms, then human nature itself would fit into a socialist system, a phalanstery and economic determinism. This itself is refuted by history and the living processes. A thymos, or a meglothymos. The earth is a sepulcher to great men. This is the pathos and irony underlining Hamlet's graveyard scene.

Alexander died, Alexander was buried,
Alexander returneth into dust; the dust is earth; of
earth we make loam; and why of that loam, whereto he
was converted, might they not stop a beer-barrel?
Imperious Caesar, dead and turn'd to clay,
Might stop a hole to keep the wind away:
O, that that earth, which kept the world in awe,
Should patch a wall to expel the winter flaw!

One can see this as Hamlet's answer to 'What is this quintessence of Dust?' - And reflects Hamlets own anger and ambivalence to his own personality as subservient to the dictates of mortality - ending in a meaningless, that this personality becomes a corpse and wittily associates Caesars and Alexanders own 'corpse - making' as an auxiallary to their own corpses as the earth and wind are a staging and burial ground to men.

Science as a sympton - formation of the universal neurosis.

1 - The ultimate goal of science is instinctual repression resulting from the same original sin. - IT belongs to the same case history as religion except religion was/is an wish fufilment and a distortion of a mystery which explains the desire of mankind in metaphors. Science as a sympton in the phylogentical timeline is the result of the individual becoming sicker - A process of eradicating the guilt and moralising the atrocities of the human will and original sin.

2 - Original sin is the resulting consciousness arising from unconsciousness ( Its birthpangs either being a mere 'freedom to rise', or an epiphenomenal phenomena arising from nature.) The attending guilt is the arising of the tension of consciousness - and the drive to eradicate the tension.

3 - The 'Will to science' is the perpetuation of the repressive instinct of society and the ever increasing anxiety and repressive instinct of the individual.

4 - The repressive instinct of the individual is the despairing element of consciousness - and its tension - the desire to be other than what it is, and hence, the despair of what it is.

5 - The essence of huaman nature is the denying of that human nature which is ego consciousness - namely, repression and censorship. Seen on a macrocosmic level the history of civilization has been the desire to cease tension and its root, thinking, via two means : Society relatively abolishing nature and labour and increasing the means of procuring pleasure, and science, the process leading to the cessation of the tension, despair and guilt : The ultimate instinctual repression : Transhumanism.

6 - The goal of this social engineering is the cessation of two main disharmonising tendencies of human nature and it's specific attributes. - The will to power and suffering -

On power relations.

On power relations.

When we cast our eye upon the food chain and our own projected beliefs we come across a strange peculiarity between morals and power relations. One main aspect of human projection is a belief in the Benign - may it be a god, state, parent, person, or nature. In regards to war, one may call himself a pacifist and take pride in such an expression. But that which we call humility, or modesty, is merely a [literal] curling up, so one does not get stamped on, or more colloquially, reduced to size. We see this even with domestic animals, a cat will act with gentleness towards a human and yet, anything which the cat can overpower or master, it will pounce and attack. Insects or rodents will attack any size or power but that is merely a lack of intelligence. In regards to pacifism, it is the mere waving of a ‘white flag’ - because this attitude is a literal lying down - I won’t fight, so don’t hurt me.’ - This attitude makes perfect sense to those who will lose, or are weak, such as the Geneva convention, or even the mosaic laws of the Old Testament - but one can see in the historical record that such laws have no inhibitory effect, and in regards to will, such laws are superfluous. However, if morality is a herding instinct and the weak making laws, it is still crucial to civilization and human relations, but one must not forget that force rules the world, and not rationality and laws. Therefore one has to take a stance of incredulity when one maintains that the state is good, or humans are intrinsically good, or such corporate conspiracies cannot happen - It is a mere fact of life, and anything other than this view can be characterised as a mere projection. If we take this view to its extreme connotation, one must be pro war, even if the war is not morally justified. - Imperialistic conquest can be seen as a pro emptive attack on that which would devour if not devoured before it gain strength. However, the end game of such a relation would be the complete devouring of the world. - which ultimately may come to pass under its multitudinous disguises.

However, there is a reversal to this - and yet, it is not a solution. If one wants to reign in the financial disparity and power, if one wants to end suffering and violence - through neurological and chemical conditioning - we enter a Orwellian and Huxley dystopia. One where all our needs may be satisfied but without suffering and without violence there is no meaning, or value. A race who’s sole means of meaning would lie in material production/re production - and thus enables Eugenics, anti depressants, I.D, mass herding and surveillance, and servitude…. And yet, ostensibly, we are slaves to either the instincts or a master herder who banishes such instincts. The only difference lies in ‘social progression’ - without identity or meaning, other than the collective. - The very term ’social progress’ reminds one of making morality a clutch, as the ’working class’ make their ’we the working class’ a worship of their own failure - Or, ‘Instinctual discharging’ and yet, meaning in a hostile world which will duly wipe itself out, or at least, those who cannot succeed in the game; however, there may be the possibility that a new order will form, likewise, as the old present order formulated itself, but one can quite clearly see we are entering a ‘post democratic‘,[ even if that term is a joke] ‘post American’ world.

Chaos. Camus.

On the reflection of Chaos.

Harold Goddard believed Shakespeare’s main theme was ‘ chaos.’ and the ‘ cure for it’ One could take Schopenhauer’s view that our individual life is made of perpetual chaos and adversary : One dies with sword in hand. A Jungian would say, therefore, our inner nature is in permanent chaos, and a Freudian would connect it with our perpetual aggressive instincts which must be projected outward or less destroy ourselves. - A theory very akin to Schopenhauer’s, and Nietzsche. Shakespeare’s main cause was very similar to Freud’s ’ Man must by perforce prey upon each other like monsters from the deep’ - Man must by necessity act upon each other : In relation to his aggressive instincts and to ward off other’s aggressions; this leads to imperialism, rape, avarice etc. And one can come to the conclusion, that which we call virtue is civilized aggression.

Camus.

Camus’s protagonist in ‘The outsider’ main complaint is the eternal flux of things, rather than the indifference of the world and nature. One would only have to count how many lamentations there are in reargards to the temporality of sense data, and comments thereof sense experiences, and therein lies his main fitful distinction, it is not that he is enlightened at the ontology of being, but that he is himself a perpetual changing of sense data and one without a core - Thus, he only kills the Arab due to circumstance and because the sun shining in his eyes. The existentialist critique at the end of the book seems tacked on to make a didactical point - and is confirming an expression rather than a statement, belied by the fact, that his ending epiphany is the relief of nature’s sense experiences. Unlike most people, I think Camus is extremely mediocre with a weak critique that belies his own passionless forays, and a mere mediocre imitator of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche. One would only have to witness his political liberal herding - He and Sartre cry out ‘individual’ while feeling their tails! They join ‘Communism’, or try to establish ‘ Liberal political edifices’ such as the EU, or any other society of mandarins and bell ringing.

Dostoyevsky vs Socialism.

Dostoyevsky was very critical of Socialism. He simply didn't believe it could be tenable, not could it ever sustain itself in the admist of human suffering and will to power - those tendencies which want and produce individuality and personality. Ostensibly it is the 'I vs Collective' but it branches of into other anthropological and theological areas : One, it deals with man's relationship to suffering. If man cannot bare suffering, he will want to erase his suffering and identity. Kierkegaard said ' the torment of despair is that the despair cannot terminate consciousness. This is why it is very sinister, in my opinion, that the rise of legal medication for depression and medical disorders have rapidly risen while we enter a socialist age. It is also one of the reasons literature itself is ridiculed and dying. Because man doesn't want introspection anymore. 'Why would an ant need or want introspection?' And secondly, the social controllers can only fit man into their system where suffering and will to power is eradicated and Dostoyevsky and Nietzche saw this very early on and were very worried about it, as am I, and is one of the reasons for the general debasement of values and discipline in modern society, not to mention, the neurological, and subtle biological and chemical conditioning. - As one would control an ant hill.

Dostoyevsky, even in the darkly humourous 'Notes of the underground' is imploringly arguing about man's volition and self will. Man has a right to build, but he must be allowed to destroy it. He must be able to say 2+2 is 4 is a fine number, but just as fine is 2+2 is 5! He must be able to live for a reason more than bread alone. A reason more than his instinctual needs being satisfied. Not forgetting, this is also an argument out of and which leads to Freud's dichotomy between the pleasure and reality principle.

If we end 'alienation and suffering' and become communist, or socialist, the consequences are for all to see. We also degrade our individuality, and freedom.

Edit : I would also extend this critique to liberalism, and liberal values, which have the most corrosive affects upon personality and society under ' Tolerance, equality, and promiscuity.' Which alwas invetiably end in either authoritarianism from the right or left. I also think they are weak ideas and critiques in general, and are edifices that arise from pity.

Bridging the film and literary gap.

In my own mind, I have bridged the gap which has eluded me for so long. An acceptable package of literary and theatrical merit to be inserted into film. The film noir genre can absolutely be remoulded to fit my own principles, while keeping an acceptable movie structure. Also the colour scheme fits my ideas on colour, emphasising the black and white and sepia while eluding the whole colour palette. The differences between my films and traditional film noir, will be the metaphysical film lurking behind the surface. They can be as bleak and as weird as any Kafka, or Borges story or characters as absurdly funny as any Beckettian grotesque caricature. The films can also be an allegory of the unconscious with a man who follows the signs and the symbols; is a direct offshoot of Tarkovskian and Bela Tarr - In the most reductive sense they can be seen as allegories of philosophical and religious ideas. Musically, the scores will be very minimalist - highlighting the claustrophobia and the paranoiac environments of the metropolis, and the violence that lurks behind every corner - except [too blunt its realism but to sharpen its connotations] it will be mostly metaphysical violence., or crimes and psychology resulting from sexual envy ala Proust. The interior monologue will be the main narrative device because he can comment on his own memory and perception while looking through a glass darkly.

This would be the main historical form for film which many have hinted at but rarely touched. Threats of the apocalypse and of damnation; sexual violence, robbery and the destruction of social norms - The degeneracy of civilization - Overlapping time - And the psyche coming into terms with itself. - And underneath the signs and symbols which lead to the ever becoming destruction of the metropolis and the character himself.

Ivan's Childhood - A love letter.

Firstly, I am a big fan of Tarkovsky and had seen all his released films except for Ivan’s Childhood. Though, I am a massive fan, as being principally a dramatist, I have one or two issues with his digressions and didactical impulses within his films, while holding him as an artist of the first rate level and heir to the Russian literary tradition. It was a particularly uninspiring evening : Bored of writing. Antipathy towards reading. Very disappointed with most films. And my heart was heavy with longing for a new experience or outlook. In this film, with a simple story, Tarkovsky stayed very close to the story without many digressions, while imprinting his indelible genius and social commentary. On a second viewing, I did see the shots he wouldn’t of been happy with, and understood while people claim the film to be his weakest directorially. Nevertheless, the film is a poetic masterpiece, and one has to marvel at the ability of Tarkovsky to turn a simple story into a tour de force. In all fairness to Tarkovsky, for a man to have such a legacy after only 20 years of filming, and a mere seven films is miraculous, and shows his ability. The films I have a problem with are the ones who filmed in exile from Russia, which are ’Nostalghia’ and the ‘Sacrifice.’ - Had Tarkovsky lived longer and not died so young, these films would be considered completely irrelevant and a mere plateau in the film history of this Soviet genius. [He was from Belarus in modern day geography, but USSR in his living - geography] *

I sat down at two o’clock in the morning, bored and not knowing what to do. So I decided to watch Tarkovsky’s ‘Ivan’s Childhood.’ - Which had been laying around unseen and gathering dust for months. Within moments of starting the DVD, I was in awe of the black and white aesthetics , and was in agreement with Tarkovsky that black and white are the most authentic colours in Film. The Film starts with a dream of Ivan’s mother and a prelapsarian innocence, throughout the movie with differing conversations and Ivan’s dreams, we find out the origin and meaning of the dreams and the tragic fate and trauma which inhabits Ivan. It could be said Tarkovsky’s crowning achievement is achieving a kind of apotheosis of being in the death and suffering of Ivan. - I for one, was happy for him to die. As Sartre pointed out 1 [to paraphrase] ‘ Ivan was already dead, and if he kept on living, his mission of revenge would’ve never stopped. In the this truly touching story of innocence lost, the depth and the meaning of the film comes from the haunting and trauma that inhabit the fringe of Ivan’s waking consciousness, while completely submerging him in dream, and periods of reflection. The dreams themselves are of an innocence which always end in a foreboding, or a situation of doom. This is no more than clearly reflected in the penultimate dream where the prelapsarian innocence is heightened and symbolised with his sister being offered apples by Ivan and his sisters changing countenance each time she offered the apple ending with an expression of foreboding doom [One cannot miss the biblical metaphor of Adam and Eve - not as the primal parents but as a metaphor of pre ego consciousness, and the transgression of ego consciousness in the minds of men. - It is important to note that Ivan offers the apple to his sister but we never see her eat it, which underscores the metaphor of innocence and the brutality of consciousness and memory.] Later in the film we see Galtsev accidentally finding a record of Ivan being hanged [with the executioners record showing a photograph of defiance, and the mud on the face also showing a disingenuous innocence] the director finishes the film with a dream which has none of the trauma of the previous dreams, and just the prelapsarian innocence regained; laughing and chasing his sister on the beach and a reunion with his mother, with his favourite gesture of her rubbing her forearm across her head. We can easily surmise that the director is showing us that Ivan has been liberated from the brutality and trauma of consciousness and memory. I found it a heart wrenching scene and spent all night trying to inhabit Ivan’s mental states and work out if the dreams were soothing or horrifying.

On a personal note, I have always conceived a film of an army officer realising the war will never end, and he will never get home to see his loved ones, and his subsequent descent into madness. I hade seen Herzog’s film version of ‘Woyzek’ without being very moved - while enjoying it. But Woyzek’s descent into darkness always resulted from an external opposition and down trodding; even though this is superficially true of ‘Ivan’s Childhood.’ the inner process and the horrifying efficacy of memory is given supreme importance to Ivan’s own sense of mission and self fragmentation. Early on in the film we see the persona Ivan has to inhabit in times of duress and war. He comes across aggressively with a quick fire temperament, only softening up when he sees his former colleagues such as Capt. Kholin, who Ivan smothers with affection after Ivan’s escape to an alternative bunker after a botched mission in reconnaissance [Where the other two scouts are hung with a message forewarning any Russian embracement upon the German bank.]

Quite quickly within the first opening scene, Tarkovsky has shown us the energies which will narrate the film and give it depth. - The Haunting and innocence of memory [ One would point out the similarities to Freud’s anecdote of the burning child.2] The aggressive stance of the child in the face of adversity and the tenderness the child still has. Ivan awakes alone in a windmill after spending the night crawling and swimming through a swamp that would [to quote a character] drown most men. - This is part of the story, but the trial and tribulation itself of the immersion in muck [situation and suffering which would drown most men] And the alienation of waking alone in a windmill after hearing cannon fire.

Throughout the film, Ivan is ordered to attend a military school, but Ivan has already escaped from one and joined the partisans war effort, and the order once more to attend school is vociferously denounced by a trembling Ivan which gives away two of his motives 1) of revenge ‘ As Ivan says anyone useful should be helping in the war effort and not wasting food.’ 2) What can school teach a boy whose been through so much - Whose seen the concentration camps, whose hid in the forests with the partisans derailing Nazi trains, who has lost his father [Who was a border guard] his mother and his sister. Furthermore in the trenches when Ivan is alone he is reading the chalk messages of the desperate who are about to be executed and hallucinates a figure [which is a coat] and the victory and revenge against the Nazi’s - When the bombs start go off, Galtsev tells Ivan not to be scared, and Ivan with dagger in hand say’s [with tears down his face] ‘ I’m not.

It is pretty haunting trying to imagine the mental state of Ivan. We [obviously] get glimpses of this in his dreams, but also in times of rest - One only has to meditate on Ivan’s countenance before Galtsev lifts him from his chair and puts Ivan into bed. For a 12 year old child to lose his mother, sister, and father must be asking ’What is left?’ and within this despair must also be the Kierkegaardian sickness unto death - The despair that the despair itself is not powerful itself to terminate it’s own consciousness. Has Ivan ever considered suicide? And is his revenge an even more powerful driving force because one has to compensate for this lack of ability to terminate the despair? Either the feeling of revenge is so powerful it will drive Ivan through life [And never cease, even in victory] or he is hell bent on revenge for possible vengeance and to end his own life. And then one tries to ask the question ‘ What was Ivan like in the final moments before his execution? Did he regress and recourse back to his family - In tears because they are murdered or because he couldn’t avenge them, or did he show one last moment of defiance? One would hope he was murdered on the battlefield, so he didn’t have to go through those final moments where he could’ve lost all standing of courage and character in his own eyes - Even if it is understandable why. One only has to read Dostoyevsky’s accounts on a fake execution to imagine the horror of such moments, where men recourse to insanity in an instant. - Or Dostoyevsky’s account in the Idiot, of a man who has lost all hope and cannot stop the tears flowing, but put the same man in a battlefield with a smattering of hope and he is defiant to the end. An allusion could also be made to Ahab in Melville’s ‘Moby Dick’ - Once Ahab has lost his leg in a battle with the Great white Sperm whale ‘ Moby Dick’ Ahab goes frothing at the mouth and turns temporarily insane - while he is frothing at the mouth and acting mad, he tries to trick madness by resolving himself a resolution to strike and kill Moby Dick and strike through the fabric of evil; so Ahab calms himself down and internalises this vengeance realising no -one would join a crazy captain on a mission which would result in certain death, nor would a ship owner admit such a Captain, so Ahab quietens himself and makes his resolution against the universe. - One could ask did Ivan go through such a struggle and temporarily suppress these murderous thoughts which come out in dreams, and hallucinations? And is Ivan striking out against the fabric of the universe itself, and finding repose only in death as in the Christian myths against evil in higher places and principalities?

One could argue Tarkovsky is making a Christian Statement of the suffering of the world, and the repose after death - and the ‘ indiscriminate slaughter of the universe’ - This may be true, but we would be forgetting the intensity of feeling, and religious rapture, one can find and feel within war, and between colleagues, moments of self sacrifice and tenderness. In some scenes seemingly unrelated to the film, Capt. Kholin tries to seduce the naïve teenage nurse Masha, after moments of unsuccessfully wooing her, he takes control of her and kisses her - while lifting her in mid air over a trench and with his legs on opposite banks of the trench. The metaphor is obvious and is also Tarkovsky’s statement of symbiosis. Masha succumbs to his charms, but Capt. Kholin dismisses her [ I don’t know why!] and could be making a statement on the intensity of feelings in war and if they are real or artificial - A question I’ve always had after reading Hemmingway’s ‘ For whom the bells toll’ And Robert Jordan’s relationship with the Spanish Gypsy ‘Maria’

Tarkovsky’s ‘Ivan’s Childhood.’ had the effect of affecting evocative and visceral emotions; like all great art bypassed the intellectual centres. As from reading Tarkovsky’s ‘Sculpting in time‘, and viewing the last scene before, I knew what was going to happen, and yet, I could not help but feel profoundly moved by the scenes and was biting my nails, becoming flustered and hoping ’somehow’ Ivan would survive. I had viewed the last scenes, but without context, with context they help the film reach an emotional level unsurpassed by nearly every film I have ever seen. It is a perfectly paced and carefully wrought film. Tarkovsky’s use of the elements in his films gives once a sense that the human affairs are largely a drama which is temporary in comparison to the primal world of Lakes, wind, rain, and sea. This is also reflected in a primal use of sound, where horror is, only we hear the primal world. Or in times of duress a discordant riff, and a searching melody which cannot rise. The choice of music rather than modern films which impose itself are always underscoring and embellishing the films own inner rhythm.

Ostensibly, Tarkovsky’s movies are an inquiry to man’s relationship to God. 3. Which have changed dramatically since the world wars, the same time the Romans lost faith in their own system of belief and government in the Carthaginian wars. In a metaphorical sense, the defining statement of the World Wars was that ‘ God had hidden his face.’ - The sense of supra personal values had been eradicated; no - one could find the significance in the tragedies, and nor frame them into any coherent framework. It ripped the fabric of civilization and revealed that behind civilization lies chaos and destruction awaiting to erupt, and makes all notions of progress, or the brotherhood of man ideas, seemingly a charade. Therefore it is incredulous to me [and no doubt Tarkovsky] that man has not learned these simple principles of existence, and maybe, why I speculate he tells the same story twice while in exile - Of man regaining the spirituality, or sacrificing himself in a spiritually [but not materialistically] meaningful act and thus saves civilization. One could speculate that Tarkovsky would probably hold the view that it is pure arrogance to assume that modern western civilization will even survive into the next century. - One would think the buildings would still stand, like the pyramids, but one cannot escape the fact that Oswald Spengler brought out that the monuments and architecture may still stand but the civilization that built them eradicates - Lewis Mumford goes on to say ‘ The metropolis is rank with forms of negative vitality. Nature and human nature, violated in this environment come back in destructive forms… in this mangled state, the impulse to live departs from apparently healthy personalities. The impulse to die supplants it … is it any wonder Dr. Freud found a death wish at the seat of human activity.’ Tarkovsky like Jung [in the answer to Job] speculates that the Christian myth itself rose itself because mans relationship towards God had changed from that of archaic man and man himself comes to know God to eradicate his sins and original sin [ one could change original sin for waking consciousness] and for God himself to keep his behaviour in check through man [ Unconscious urges and instincts] Thus Tarkovsky takes exemption to the idea that God had hidden his face and placed firmly the responsibility at mans feet, and tried to show ways [metaphorically] that man could redeem himself. In Ivan’s Childhood two metaphors immediately stick out - The windmill shaped as a cross in a resulting blast tips it’s axis and lands in a position about 45 degrees from 0 degrees - And thus is a metaphor for mans changing relationship to God, and that the axis of history and inner meaning had changed. [Whether Tarkovsky meant this consciously or intuitively is irrelevant as an artist of his calibre, neither owns his genius, nor is it not his property.] And secondly, the tortured child himself is a metaphor of pre rational innocence gone askew and reveals to us the price of ego waking consciousness and the burden of unconsciousness.

All in all it is such a genuinely moving film that one can enjoy without spotting the metaphors or the allusions; it is not hard to admire, or being swept up by the emotional intensity and religious efficacy of the film.


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* It’s quite interesting to remember that while making this film, Tarkovsky had never seen a Western film - as they were banned at film school. The Soviet film institution considered Western Films to be mediocre, consumer trash [and one cannot doubt this comment! However they only watched 4 or 5 eastern films a year.] Tarkovsky was incredulous - It would be like trying to be a writer without ever reading a book! - Tarkovsky himself considered himself an eastern person , and had much more affinity with eastern spiritual principles and expressions.

1 - http://people.ucalgary.ca/~tstronds/nostalghia.com/TheTopics/Sartre.html

Satre’s praise of ‘Ivan’s Childhood.’ in a long letter to a friend.

2 - Freud’s anecdote of the burning man concerns a man who has been looking after his dying son in bed, when after a long fought out illness the kid is dying in bed, the father distraught leaves the dying boys room and falls asleep that his son is in bed and has knocked over a candle and is on fire, so the dad rushes out the room to dowse his son.’ Freud concluded the death of his son was so traumatic, the father would rather have a memory where his son is painfully injured than to face the real consequences of the situation. - Freud said it was also a type of wish fulfilment. - the pleasure of the dream as unbearable as it was, was preferable to the unbearable tragedy of caring for his dying child.

Tarkovsky returns to this theme when the Old man in the battered ruins is talking to Ivan [who has ran away] is asking Ivan what happened to his ‘mother’ The old man continues to talk and reveals the death of his wife, but at the same time is hanging up a framed stitching declaring his wife will be back soon.

3 - God can be substituted to the Lacanian big ‘other’ , or especially in Jungian terms the ‘unconscious’ Or in more pragmatically terms ‘ man’s relationship to life.’