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Entry: 0 - Reflections on a Rainy Day
Category: {Philosophy, Religion}
Tags: {Tarkovsky, Plotinus, St. Gregory of Nyssa}

It has been raining more or less steadily for the last few days. Most
of the time it has been at a drizzle, but it occasionally picks up and 
showers moderately. When days like these occur, I often find one of two 
thoughts going through my head. If it is at night, I'll hear a calm 
saxophone tune and picture myself as a sleepy-eyed detective (I have 
the insomnia to back up the looks), but if I'm caught in the drizzle in 
daylight, I find myself with certain reflections that I generally have 
while watching Tarkovsky. Being that I haven't been caught in the rain 
at night over these last few days, Tarkovsky has won out in occupying 
my mind. [1]

Tarkovsky was an amazing filmmaker who tried to add substance to film.
His movies are incredibly slow and the characters are often times shown
living in the present in their surroundings. Whenever it drizzles, I
find myself uncounsciously slowing down myself and my mind wanders off 
with little care for all my worries and obligations. Just as the rain 
can physically wash an object clean, so too can the rain wash away all
that is transient. 

This reflection reminds me of a passage from the great Neoplatonist
Plotinus (204/5-270 AD) that I read recently:
  "Thus it comes about that their honor for these [lesser] things and
  scorn for themselves is the cause of their complete ignorance of the
  Divine. For that which pursues and admires something else at the same
  time confesses itself to be inferior; but making itself inferior to
  things that come into being and pass away, considering itself more
  contemptible and mortal than the things it honors, it could never lay
  to heart [ie. comprehend] the nature or the power of God." 
  ~ Fifth Ennead V.1, On the Three Primary Hypostases

And my mind wanders even further; this time to St. Gregory of 
Nyssa (335-395 AD):
  "For anyone trained in the divine mysteries is surely aware that the
  life conformed to the divine nature is proper and natural to mankind,
  while the life of sense-perception, lived through the activity of the
  senses, has been granted to that nature in order that the knowledge
  of the visible world might become a guide to the soul for knowledge
  of things unseen, as Wisdom says that 'by analogy from the greatness
  and beauty of His creatures the Originator of all things is
  perceived' (Wisdom 13:5); yet human misjudgment did not see the One 
  who is revered through the physical order, but revered what it 
  actually saw." ~ Homily I on Ecclesiastes

And again, my mind bounces back to Plotinus:
  "Whatever is it, then, that has made souls be oblivious of their
  father, God, and, although they are portions from there and
  altogether His, be ignorant of both themselves and Him? The principle
  of evil for them is audacity and becoming and the first otherness and
  willing to belong to themselves. Since they appeared to delight in
  independence and indulged extensively in being moved by themselves,
  running in the opposite direction and getting very far away, they
  were ignorant that they themselves are from [the Divine]..."
  ~ Fifth Ennead V.1, On the Three Primary Hypostases

Finally, with these thoughts in mind, as I'm reading through 
Tarkovsky's book "Sculpting in Time":
  "Art is born and takes hold wherever there is a timeless and 
  insatiable longing for the spiritual, for the ideal: that longing
  which draws people to art. Modern art has taken a wrong turn in
  abandoning the search for the meaning of existence in order to affirm 
  the value of the individual for its own sake... But in artistic 
  creation the personality does not assert itself, it serves another,
  higher and communal idea. The artist is always a servant, and is
  perpetually trying to pay for the gift that has been given to him as
  if by a miracle. Modern man, however, does not want to make any
  sacrifies, even though true affirmation of self can only be expressed
  in sacrifice." 
  ~ Sculpting in Time, Chapter II: Art - a yearning for the ideal

All these four passages of the great Plotinus, St. Gregory of Nyssa,
and Tarkovsky touch upon the same things (although Plotinus was 
proposing a very different philosophical stance from St. Gregory, and
I assume Tarkovsky was almost purely working off of his artistic
intinuation). And here I am left with thoughts on the transience of all
that is arround us and the grasping for the Source that is the ideal, 
which gives form to all sensible things - that is, all things which can
be sensed. I know my reflections aren't at all original, but I do 
believe that a philosophical framework will grant me the ability to 
properly formulate these reflections once I obtain  it.

Plotinus's remarks seem to reference a falling away. Men lost sight
of the Divine, the Monad, as their gaze was elsewhere. They began to
worship the transient, they worshiped what was temporal and of a lower
rank than the ideals. This is man's fall. (Of course, my reading of 
Plotinus is no doubt colored by the early Church Fathers, so I do of 
course downplay and reject a few heavily Platonic aspects of his 
passage. In other words, I admit my biases in reading him, and I have
no shame in that.)

St. Gregory of Nyssa concluded similarly; while the transient has its
place, when man gives worship to the temporal, the instance of an
ideal, man misjudges the things that he sees. He will reverve the 
transient instead of the Divine. Such a man cannot "[comprehend] the 
nature or the power of God." (to use Plotinus's words).

Tarkovsky, likewise, must have had these thoughts constantly in his 
mind as he produced his films. While watching his works, I feel 
compelled to leave behind the cares and love for all that is 
perishable. It is in the quiet and slow moments of his films where 
I feel most at home in the present. The past and the future dissapear 
and I'm left with a sense of awe. I do believe that Tarkovsky was able 
to capture the nature of apophatic theology in film. [2]

  "...to raise the mind above sensation, to persuade it to abandon all
  that seems to be great and splendid in the world of existence, to
  catch a glimpse through the eyes of the soul of those things which
  are unattainable by sense-perception, and to conceive a desire for
  those things to which sense does not attain."
  ~ St. Gregory of Nyssa, Homily I on Ecclesiastes

  "Concepts create idols, only wonder comprehends anything. Men kill
  one another over idols, but wonder makes us fall to our knees."
  ~ St. Gregory of Nyssa

Perhaps it should drizzle on me more often.


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[1] andrei_rublev-tarkovsky.jpg
[2] andrei_rublev_lone_tree_scene.mp4


#### Page Created: 2023-04-08 ############ Last Edited: 2023-04-09 ####