"A mode of relationship with reality": Notions of poetry by Andrei Tarkovski

Abstract

In this paper, which is metodologically oriented of the Theory of the Filmmakers, I explore some of Tarkovski’s ideas about poetry, expressed in his oral and written statements, showing how these ideas underpin his own conception of cinema and art. Opposed to the notion of poetry as evasion or symbolic activity, Tarkovski establishes a conception of  poetry (and of cinema) founded on an experience of the real, an experience that demands an attentive observation of the phenomena in which time imprints itself and that supports the very ontology of his cinema. A dialogue of the filmmaker's thoughts with poetical ideas and practices from other poets such as his father Arseni Tarkovski, Octavio Paz, Sophia de Mello Breyner Andersen and traditional japanese haiku poets is also made, in order to broaden the reading of Tarkovski's own ideas, putting them in dialogue.