Films [Retenance]

Monologue tiré du film Nostalghia d'Andrei Tarkovsky, écrit par ce dernier en collaboration avec Tonino Guerra:

"What ancestor speaks in me? I can't live simultaneously in my head and in my body, that's why I can't be just one person. I can feel myself countless things at once.

There are no great masters left, that's the real evil of our time. Our heart's path is covered in shadow. We must listen to the voices that seem useless. Into brains full of long sewage pipes, of school walls, tarmac and welfare papers, the buzzing of insects must enter. We must fill our eyes and ears with things that are the beginning of a great dream. Someone must shout that we'll build the pyramids, it doesn't matter if we don't. We must fuel that wish. We must 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-called 'sick.' You healthy ones! What does your health mean? The eyes of all mankind are looking at the pit into which we are all 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!

Listen, Man! In you: Water, Fire, and then Ashes. The bones, and then ashes!

Where am I when I'm not in the real world, or in my imagination?

Here's my new pact with the world. It must be sunny at night and snowy in August. Great things end, small things endure. Society must become united again instead of being fragmented. Just look at Nature and you'll see that life is simple, that we must go back to where we were, to the point where you took the wrong turning. We must go back to the main foundations of life, without dirtying the water.

What kind of world is this, if a madman has to tell you to be ashamed of yourselves?

O Mother, O Mother! The air is that light thing that moves around your head and becomes clearer when you laugh."

Lectures [Retenances]

"Gracious reader, may I venture to ask you a question? Have you ever had hours, perhaps even days or weeks, in which all your customary activities did nothing but cause you vexation and dis-satisfaction; when everything that you usually consider worthy and important seemed trivial and worthless? At such a time you did not know what to do or where to turn. A dim feeling pervaded your breast that you had higher desires that must be fulfilled, desires that transcended the pleasures of this world, yet desires which your spirit, like a cowed child, did not even dare to utter. In this longing for an unknown Something, which longing hovered above you no matter where you were, like an airy dream with thin transparent forms that melted away each time you tried to examine them, you had no voice for the world about you. You passed to and fro with troubled look, like a hopeless lover, and no matter what you saw being attempted or attained in the bustle of varied existence, it awakened no sorrow or joy in you. It was as if you had no share in this sublunary world."

--- Tiré de The Golden Flower Pot (1819), de E.T.A. Hoffmann

"Every year more and more flowers drop away withered, their buds eternally sealed; there is no spring sun that can bring the warmth of new life into old dried-out branches. I know this well enough, but the Enemy never stops maliciously rubbing it in as the year draws to an end. I hear a mocking whisper: "Look what you have lost this year; so many worthwhile things that you'll never see again. But all this makes you wiser, less tied to trivial pleasures, more serious and solid-even though you don't enjoy yourself very much."

--- Tiré de A New Year's Eve Adventure (1814), de E.T.A. Hoffmann