“Maybe
those who crucified him loved him because they helped in this divine
plan.”
- Andrei Rublev, in Andrei Tarkovsky's film of that name [1].
My first entry, referring to humanity’s origins as hunter-gatherers, discussed how our pre-history gives lie to subsequent attempts to characterize inequality as “natural.” Explorations in my later entries have suggested that what Lacan calls “master signifiers,” integral to the processes by which language – and culture in general – have developed, are instead behind this inequality, and his seminar linked in my last two entries shows that we will always need some kind of mediator/master signifier, but it also hints that we can reverse its unfortunate side-effect. I thought it would be a good idea to go further back in his works to learn more about these ideas, as well as on a concept I had encountered before in reading about Lacan – “The Gaze.” The following book, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis [2], looks promising, especially since it apparently contains his first lecture, and his fullest discussion, of the latter concept. I’ll use the above film (which came out only a couple years after he had delivered this lecture,) about a 15th-century icon painter, to illuminate these concepts.
- Andrei Rublev, in Andrei Tarkovsky's film of that name [1].
My first entry, referring to humanity’s origins as hunter-gatherers, discussed how our pre-history gives lie to subsequent attempts to characterize inequality as “natural.” Explorations in my later entries have suggested that what Lacan calls “master signifiers,” integral to the processes by which language – and culture in general – have developed, are instead behind this inequality, and his seminar linked in my last two entries shows that we will always need some kind of mediator/master signifier, but it also hints that we can reverse its unfortunate side-effect. I thought it would be a good idea to go further back in his works to learn more about these ideas, as well as on a concept I had encountered before in reading about Lacan – “The Gaze.” The following book, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis [2], looks promising, especially since it apparently contains his first lecture, and his fullest discussion, of the latter concept. I’ll use the above film (which came out only a couple years after he had delivered this lecture,) about a 15th-century icon painter, to illuminate these concepts.
The
film consists of seven episodes in Andrei Rublev’s
[3] life as well as a prologue and epilogue. The prologue tells the
story of Yefim, a man attempting to fly in a world that views such
attempts as threatening. We see the tip of the (rather phallic)
balloon he has made as one assistant tells another to pull the rope,
then the men prepare the vehicle for flight as a group of frightened
townspeople, still in the distance, come in small boats to stop them.
Yefim climbs the church tower to reach his balloon, and we get a view
through the window (and through a number of taut ropes) of the people
advancing before he ties himself beneath his creation. His assistants
cut the ropes in time for him to evade the villagers' interference,
and he travels for a few miles, boyishly shouting, “I'm flying!”
and calling to a band of horses below, “Hey! Chase me!” We then
hear ominous music and the sound of air escaping, as he moves
downward, and his balloon crashes by a pond. Tarkovsky shows us a
horse [4] rolling on his back, getting up, and running by the
deflating balloon and still body of Yefim. We can use this feat of
daring, its opposition and eventual failure to introduce us to the
book, which Lacan starts by discussing his own “excommunication”
from the psychoanalytic community for his definition of
…a
criterion of what psychoanalysis is, namely, the treatment handed out
by psycho-analysts. … {noting the “bat-like quality” of the
work, Lacan proposes} to examine it in broad daylight. [5]
We
see an intertitle for the next scene, “The Jester, Summer 1400,”
then three monks leaving the Troitsa monastery [6] for work in Moscow, over the Father’s objections and despite
their own misgivings. It rains, and they enter a cabin full of
peasants. Inside, a jester (or skomorokh [7]) is performing a lampoon about an aristocrat (boyar [8],) a lampoon in which, for insulting them, three jesters shave the
aristocrat’s beard, causing a priest, mistaking him for a woman, to
drag him into the bushes. Concluding that the jesters had left him to
“look the same at each end,” the Skomorokh does a handstand,
letting his pants fall to reveal a smile painted on his buttocks. The
villagers laugh and give him food and beer. These scenes of doubt and
professional ribaldry can help us recollect Lacan’s subsequent
questions about psychoanalysis, such as whether it is a science, or
even what it means to be “fundamental”:
…no
doubt, the fundamentals would take the form of the bottom parts, were
it not that those parts were already to some extent exposed. [9]
When
the monks ask for shelter, the peasants welcome them, and the
skomorokh offers them beer. He mocks them for refusing, going outside
and hanging upside-down from the roof with his head in the doorway,
crowing. He drops down and stands, rubbing his arms in the rain, then
comes in and sits down. Rublev and one of his companions, Kirill,
watch him briefly, Kirill commenting that “God sent priests, but
the devil sent jesters.” The camera slowly pans 360 degrees around
the inside of cabin, and when it returns to the monks, Kirill is not
among them. Soldiers arrive. They call the Jester to them, knock him
out, hang him over a horse, and take him away. Kirill re-enters and
asks, “Shall we go?” As the three of them (Kirill now holding a
raven) leave, we see the soldiers and unconscious skomorokh in the
distance. The rain comes back and we get the intertitle, “Theophanes
the Greek, 1405-1406.” We see Kirill walking towards a cathedral
while in the background a man is being tortured and executed. On
entering the church, he sees Theophanes lying very still on a bench.
Suddenly, the man asks him if he has come to look at his frescoes.
Learning that Kirill is from Andronnikov Monastery, Theophanes asks
him if he is Rublev. Kirill says he isn’t, and compares Rublev’s
work unfavorably to Theophanes’, backing his words by quoting
Epiphanius the Wise [10]. Theophanes,
conjecturing that Kirill must be wise himself, says that: “In much
wisdom there is much grief...and he who increases knowledge increases
sorrow.” Kirill says that he has heard that Theophanes works
quickly, which the older man confirms: “I cannot work any other
way. I get bored.” Complaining that his apprentices can't read or
write, he asks Kirill to be his assistant to paint the Church of the
Annunciation in Moscow. We’ll use this literary conversation to
bookmark how Lacan links Freud’s fundamental concepts – the
unconscious, repetition, the transference and the drive to
…the
subjacent, implicit function of the signifier as such. [11]
Kirill refuses at first, then consents only if Theophanes comes “before the brotherhood, before Andrei Rublev” to ask him: “Then I shall serve you like a slave – like a dog, until the day I die.” Theophanes asks Kirill's name, then leaves to scold the Christian townspeople for judging and torturing the condemned man. We cut to Kirill, back at Andronnikov Monastery, working on an icon. We hear his thoughts as he remembers a passage in Ecclesiastes that advises “Rejoice, O young man, in your youth,” but that reminds him that God will bring him into judgment, concluding “all is vanity.” An apprentice enters, asking if he has seen Father Nikodim, saying that he had disappeared after having taken his gloves, which the boy needs to chop wood, the logs being icy. When he asks why Kirill has a candle burning in the daytime, the monk asks him if he had fed his dog. The boy replies, “Did you ask me to?” and Kirill walks him to the door and pushes him outside. The voiceover resumes: “The words of the wise...Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is man's all.” The apprentice re-enters, saying that a messenger from the prince and Theophanes has arrived. When Kirill goes out and hears the messenger telling Rublev that Theophanes wants him in Moscow, his face falls. Rublev accepts, and asks Danil, who had traveled with him and Kirill from their previous monastery, to accompany him. Danil declines, complaining that Rublev had agreed to go without asking him. Later, in Danil’s cell, Rublev says farewell, lamenting that the devil had come between them. He then confesses to Danil that he cannot do anything apart from him. The older monk, softened, says, “Go to Moscow. Paint; I shall be proud of you. The devil tempted me the other day too. Forgive me.” We then see Kirill leaving the monastery for the secular world. As he goes, he accuses his fellow monks of hypocrisy, of valuing profit above faith, and he thanks God for not having given him talent – “I can be honest and pure before God.” His dog runs to follow him, and Kirill beats him with a cane until he falls. We see him whimpering in the snow, then go still, and Kirill walking away.
The
status of the unconscious is ethical
and not ontic…and what I have said about the thirst for truth that
animated him is a mere indication of the approaches that will enable
us to ask ourselves where Freud’s passion lay. {Lacan establishes
this status by comparing and contrasting Freud’s method of
analyzing dreams with Descartes’ quest for certainty. Freud, unlike
Descartes, declares the subject “at home” in the field of the
unconscious whereas Descartes seeks reassurance in a perfect God. So
for Freud,}. [T]he subject of the unconscious manifests itself, [in
other words,] thinks before it attains certainty. [12]
In
the next chapter, “The Holiday, Spring 1408,” We see Rublev
and others from his guild gathering supplies in the woods. Rublev and
Foma, separated from the group, hear something. Foma thinks it's just
nightingales, but Rublev notices a faint, strange music, keeps
looking and spots peasants with torches. He says they're practicing
witchcraft and follows them, leaving Foma calling after him. Rublev
watches a woman go into the bushes with a man, and then Tarkovsky
shows us other aspects of the celebration, including a straw effigy
in a small boat being pushed down the lake between two rows of
torch-bearing participants. Rublev enters a cottage and watches
through a slit in a wall as a woman in nothing but an open coat
climbs two rungs up a ladder and jumps down. Some pagans come up
behind him, seize and tie him to a cross-shaped roof support.
Unimpressed by his threats of heavenly fire, they say they will drown
him in the morning. After they leave, the woman emerges, and Rublev
recognizes her, calling her Marfa. She removes her coat, kisses him
then unties him. He runs away, but doesn't find his group until the
next morning. When they ask where he was, he says he has scratches
all over him from the impenetrable forest. As the canoe with the now
burnt effigy floats by he notes that the local people are accustomed
to the woods. “For people, everything is a matter of custom.”
This scene can shed light on the distinction between the second
fundamental concept, repetition, from reproduction:
To
reproduce is what one thought one could do in the optimistic days of
catharsis … But what Freud showed when he made his next steps …
was that nothing can be grasped, destroyed, or burnt, except in a
symbolic way… [13]
Soldiers
appear, rounding up the peasants. When a young apprentice, Sergey,
asks why, a woman replies “because those accursed Pagans don't
believe in One God” Rublev has her cover the boy's eyes while the
soldiers pursue the pagans. Marfa escapes, her dress coming off as
she runs, and jumps naked into the water, and the Christians avert
their own eyes as she swims away.
Father
can’t you see I am burning? … Is there not more reality in this
message by which the father also identifies the strange reality of
what is happening in the room next door. Is not the missed reality
that caused the death of the child expressed in these words? … Does
not this sentence, said in relation to fever, suggest to you what, in
one of my recent lectures, I called the cause of fever? … Is not
the dream essentially, one might say, an act of homage to the missed
reality – the reality that can no longer produce itself except by
repeating itself endlessly, in some never attained awakening? [16]
We
cut to Rublev splattering paint on a wall as he agonizes over “The
Last Judgment.” He asks “Seryoga” (Sergey) to read from the
scriptures, but expresses no preference for a passage. We see an
unkempt young woman, a “holy fool” [17] named Durochka, with an armful of hay at the door as Sergey
reads that women should keep their heads covered as the “glory of
man.” She looks down at her feet as a puddle forms under her, turns
and walks further into the cathedral, then looks at the boy as he
reads, “the man is not of the woman; but the woman of the man.”
She sees the paint on the wall, rubs it with her hands and then
sniffs them, crying. Rublev tells the boy to continue reading, and he
reaches a passage critical of the Corinthian way of practicing communion [18]. We see a flashback of Kirill, holding his pet raven, taking
shelter from the rain under a tree, and one of Rublev there himself.
We then cut to Rublev in the present, excitedly telling his
colleague, “It's a feast, Danil, and you are saying...They are not
sinners...She is not a sinner, even if she does not wear a scarf...”
He walks out the door, and soon Durochka follows. Using Rublev’s
paint stain, we can mark Lacan’s
question (following Callois) of whether “mimicking” insects have
the effect of controlling the form of the imitated body and its
relation to the environment in relation to both their predators and
the supposed victims that look
…at
them – whether they impress by their resemblance to eyes, or
whether, on the contrary, the eyes are fascinating only by virtue of
their relation to the form of the ocelli.
{a question Lacan compares to one of the “function of a stain.”}
If the function of the stain is recognized in its autonomy and
identified with that of the gaze, we can seek its track…at every
stage of the constitution of the world, in the scopic field. We will
then realize that the function of the stain and of the gaze is both
that which governs the gaze most secretly and that which always
escapes from the grasp of that form of vision that is satisfied with
itself in imagining itself as consciousness. [19]
In
the “Autumn of 1408,” Prince Yury invites a group of Tatars to
help him raid Vladimir while the Grand Prince is away. When asked
when he had last reconciled with his brother, Yury says never, but
that the metropolitan bishop had summoned them the previous winter
and made them kiss the cross and swear to “live in harmony.” As
they enter Vladimir, we see a teenage boy shot through the neck with
an arrow, and a soldier throw a torch into a barn, lighting a cow on
fire. Yury watches the carnage and flashes back to beating his
brother in a wrestling match and later walking with him into the
metropolitan cathedral. In the present, we see Foma back away from
soldiers, asking, “Brothers, what are you doing? We are all fellow
Russians,” and one of them answering, brandishing his knife, “I'll
show you if we are fellow Russians, you Vladimir swine!” In the
next shot a woman struggles to escape two Tatars, pleading to be let
go before they drag her away, promising to show her how Tatars can
love. As soldiers pound the cathedral doors with a battering ram we
get a shot of a horse trip and fall down a flight of stairs. In the
background a group of soldiers that had been leaning over a woman
(who had been lying on her back with her skirt up) let her go as
another soldier puts a spear through the horse. The invaders break
into the church, and we see a soldier carry a crying Durochka up a
ladder, then Rublev follow them with an ax, then the soldier's
bloodied corpse fall. The Tatar Kahn asks Yury the meaning of a
painting of the nativity, then mocks the explanation, “How can she
be a virgin if she has a son? Strange things happen in Russia!” As
soldiers start to torture the cathedral treasurer, Patrikei, for not
telling them where the gold is, he calls the Prince over, saying,
“Look, you Judas, you dirty Tatar!” After the Prince calls him a
liar, “I’m Russian!” Patrikei replies,” “I recognize you.
You resemble your brother. You've sold Russia!” We get a closeup of
Yuri as he remembers, in another flashback, how his brother, while
kissing him during the aforementioned ceremony, had deliberately
pinned his foot under his own before the bishop brings the cross to
Yury to have him kiss it. We can use the elder brother’s gesture of
dominance to stand for Lacan's (following Sartre’s) definition of
the gaze:
The
gaze sees itself – to be precise, the gaze … that surprises me
and reduces me to shame, since this is the feeling he regards as the
most dominant. The gaze I encounter [is] not a seen gaze, but a gaze
imagined by me in the field of the other. [20]
The
soldiers pour steaming liquid (molten lead?) into Patrikei’s mouth
and have a horse drag his bound body through the streets. We see a
now haggard Yury look down from a tower, and we get a slow-motion
bird’s eye view of the chaos, then a ground view of Foma (in a
scene redolent of his earlier one with the dead bird) being killed by
an archer, then his body being carried downstream. Afterward, we see
a hand turning the pages of a singed book. The camera pans up – it
is Theophanes. Rublev, in this dream sequence, tells his now dead
mentor of a dream he had in which Theophanes (like the jester in the
first chapter of Rublev’s story) was suspended in a window with his
head down. “You look in, and wag your finger at me, and I'm lying
across a saddle, and two Tatars twist my head,” and he cries,
“What's happening to us? We are being murdered and raped.”
Claiming that he lived half his life in blindness working for people
who weren’t people, he reminds Theophanes of their discussion about
the peasants, saying that the Greek had been right. Theophanes
answers, “You are wrong now, I was wrong then.” Rublev bemoans
the disgrace of Russians killing their own people. He says that even
Seryoga was killed. Rublev says that he’ll never paint again, and
Theophanes replies, “Your iconostasis was burned. Do you know how
many of mine they burned?” I’ll let Theophanes’s wagging finger
in Rublev's “all is vanity” dream index Lacan’s illustration of
a dimension of the gaze – Using the Holbein painting, “The
Ambassadors,” a painting expressing the vanity of the arts and
sciences, Lacan remarks,
… we
see what the [central] magic floating object signifies. It reflects
our own nothingness, in the figure of the death’s head. It is a
use, therefore, of the geometral dimension of vision in order to
capture the subject, an obvious relation with desire which,
nevertheless, remains enigmatic. [21]
When
Theophanes tells Rublev that he is “committing a grave sin,” by
abandoning painting, Rublev confesses that he had killed a fellow
Russian to defend Durochka. Theophanes answers, “Encroaching evil
means encroaching humanity … As for your sins, what do your
scriptures say? ‘Learn to do good: seek justice, rebuke the
oppressor, defend the fatherless...though your sins be as scarlet,
they shall be as white as snow.’” Rublev says he will take a vow
of silence in penance - “I have nothing more to say to people.”
In
“The Charity, Winter 1412” We see Rublev, back at the Andronikov
Monastery, chastise Durochka for eating something she picked up by
the wood pile. Inside, the monks are discussing the current famine,
one claiming that they are slowly dying out, and they reproach
Mefody, the gate-keeper, for bringing someone else in to feed,
although they allow the newcomer to eat, anyway. He says the famine
is even worse in Vladimir, and they think he is whispering. He
explains, “Wolves chased me; I fled to the lake, … I was standing
like that till dawn. ... I've been sick for two weeks and I'm
shivering all over.” The monks tell him that one of their own is
also from Vladimir - Rublev, along with a holy fool that he has
brought “so that he may always remember his sin.” When the
newcomer asks about Rublev's guild, one of the monks, recognizing him
as Rublev's old colleague, Kirill, summons the father, to whom the
former monk begs, “Let your prodigal son Kirill back in!” To the
father's refusal, he says that the devil tempted him - “I can't
continue sinning, and without sin you cannot live in the secular
world.” The father resists for a while, but eventually relents,
ordering Kirill to copy the scriptures 15 times as atonement.
Kirill's use of the lake to evade the wolves and his resuming his
former identity can for us signify Lacan's idea (on the gaze) about
the “splitting of the being to which the being accommodates
itself”:
The
being breaks up, in an extraordinary way, between its being and its
semblance… the being gives of himself, or receives from the other,
something that is like a mask … thrown off in order to cover the
frame of a shield. [22]
Tatars
arrive. They throw chunks of horsemeat towards the dogs and laugh,
watching them fight. One of the men sees Durochka taking meat they
had left on the wood pile and has another throw her a cleaner piece.
While eating she becomes fascinated by his mirror-like breastplate,
and he, having seven wives, but none of them Russian, decides to make
her his eighth. He lets her wear his helmet and a richly embroidered
shawl (“Russian wife for Tatar husband is never dirty”) in which
she dances around, to the soldiers' amusement and Rublev's anger. He
tries to drag her away, but she spits on him. The Tatars leave,
taking her with them. Kirill tries to console Rublev – “They
won't dare harm a holy fool. It's a sin.” We see the Tatars riding
away, laughing, with Durochka. This exit can carry my last reference
to the Lacanian gaze: In his lecture, “What is a Picture?,” the
analyst discusses the painter's role in religion:
What
makes the value of an icon is that the God it represents is also
looking at it … If Javeh forbids the Jews to make idols, it is
because they give pleasure to the other gods. [23]
The
next chapter, which takes place over the course of a full year
(Spring 1423-1424,) begins with a shot of a teenage boy, Boriska,
reclining against a dilapidated hut, looking dejected at a stain on
the ground. Some messengers from the Grand Prince approach and ask
where his father the bell-maker is. The boy says he died from the
plague – in fact, almost everyone in town has either been taken
away or died. “Only Fyodor is left. Go to him; the fifth hut. But
you should hurry; Fyodor's in bed with the plague.” They talk about
a bell they need cast, and the boy tells him to bring him with them,
claiming that his father had taught him the secret before he had
died. Although they don't believe him, they relent. We’ll let this
new acquaintance introduce us to Lacan’s idea about the third
fundamental concept - transference:
[I]f
there is one domain in which, in discourse, deception has some chance
of success, it is certainly love that provides its model. What better
way of assuring oneself, on the point on which one is mistaken, than
to persuade the other of the truth of what one says! Is not this a
fundamental structure of the dimension of love that the transference
gives us the opportunity of depicting? [24]
We
see him with assistants, most of them older than he is, looking for
clay. The most senior one refuses to dig - despite Boriska's claim
that his father had said that all bell-casters must do so - and he
even hits one of the younger assistants, Andreika, for bringing him a
shovel. After the elder man and another assistant walk away, Boriska
and the rest start digging. He pulls at what turns out to be a tree
root and looks up at the tree, and we get a shot from above of him
(later in the digging process) as he contemplates a bird in flight.
We then see him jump down into the now much deeper pit. They show him
the clay they found, but he, after conducting various tests, says it
isn't the right kind, and he and Andreika run to find better clay. In
the next scene another assistant, Stephan, shows him new clay, but
Boriska says it still isn't right. Stephan complains that it is
August, and they still haven't found what Boriska wants, adding that
he feels sorry for him. Boriska retorts, “I've managed all these
years without your pity.” To Stephan's question of what clay is
right, Boriska says only that he knows what it is. Stephan walks away
with Boriska yelling after him that he doesn't need people like him.
We see him walking in the rain looking at a lake. He tries to climb
down and slips, sliding a long distance before grabbing onto a bush.
He touches the ground beside him and calls to his assistants,
yelling, “I've found it!” We get a shot of a cart driven by
Rublev, who hears the commotion and watches the boy. All this digging
can uncover Lacan’s aphorism, at the end of his “Analysis and
Truth” lecture, that, contrary to the common view that the function
of transference is to rectify the patient's delusions from the
standpoint of reality,
…the
transference is the enactment of the reality of the unconscious. [25]
We
then see the men digging at the worksite. Boriska makes various risky
decisions while Rublev looks on. For instance, when the senior
assistant refuses to apply the clay, saying that the cast hasn't been
reinforced enough and intimidating Andreika into also disobeying,
Boriska has his uncle Fyodor whip Andreika. When another assistant
says that his father had treated them better, Boriska asks, “You
remember my father? Whip him in his name.” The youth walks away,
his head bowing with exhaustion, then he suddenly looks up at an
unseen watcher. “What are you staring at? Mute?” It is Rublev.
Boriska continues, “Pity him? Comfort him – that's what Monks are
for.” He drifts off to sleep as Rublev flashes back again to taking
shelter under the tree with Kirill. The senior assistant wakes
Boriska, saying that he has started firing the cast. The youth's
initial annoyance (“Only I know when to start”) soon turns to
glee as he moves towards the fire “What heat!” We see a jester
amusing the onlookers – it is the skomorokh from the first chapter
– then we cut to Boriska approach a collection of silver objects
that the prince has sent to use for the bell. The youth has the
messenger ask for more, answering objections with, “Who knows the
secret of bell-casting, I or you?” He walks away, laughing to
himself. “Imagine, if after this it doesn't ring!,” then sees the
prince looking at him, telling him to watch out. He hears someone
yelling, “I recognize him! Beat him!,” and turns to see the
skomorokh attack Rublev. Kirill and others restrain him, and the
jester, struggling, says that because of Rublev he spent ten years in
prison, adding, “They cut off half my tongue.” He pulls away and
grabs an ax, advancing on Rublev. Kirill kneels before him, saying,
“Strike me, but don't touch him.” The jester, relenting, asks the
townspeople for a drink. As he puts the glass to his lips, his pants
fall down. The crowd laughs, and he smiles wryly, saying, “There
are worse things than that.” We watch Boriska and his assistants
work into the night smelting and pouring the metal into the cast,
then, in the morning, breaking the mold off the enormous bell.
Afterward, an exhausted Boriska sits against it - against a relief of
Saint George that seems to aim its spear into the youth's back - and
dreams of his deserted former home. Later, we see Kirill confess to
Rublev that he had left the monastery out of envy. He says that he
knows that the head of
the Trinity Cathedral [26] had sent messengers on three occasions to
convince Rublev to work for him there, and passionately urges his
former colleague to take the job. “Don't burden your soul, for it
is an awful sin to deny the divine spark.” He adds that he had been
the one who had denounced the jester. As he pleads, “Curse me, but
don't stay silent!” Rublev remains aloof, staring at the fire, and
Kirill finally walks away. We some bird’s eye views (reminiscent of
the prologue) – one of a crowd around a tower, and of long ropes to
pull the bell up into it, one view directly above the bell itself. We
then see Boriska nervously waiting, and, at the senior assistant's
urging, giving the signal to hoist his creation. As the bell rises,
we see the scores of workers needed to lift the massive object. A
bishop blesses the bell and consecrates it with holy water. The boy's
assistants push him toward The Grand Prince, who has come on
horseback with other officials and a foreign ambassador, and we hear
them make derogatory remarks about the bell and the boy as one of the
guards pushes the latter toward the former. As one of the assistants
moves toward the clapper, Someone bets the ambassador that the bell
won't ring. As they dispute the matter, we find that the Grand Prince
had had his brother beheaded (“it turns out they were twins.”)
They are suddenly distracted by the beauty of a girl in the crowd,
whom one says isn't more than 13 years old, and the other replies,
“Sometimes these girls are women at age 13.” We can let this
abrupt shift turn us to Lacan's discussion of the role of desire in
transference using Freud's story of his colleague Breuer's
relationship with their famous patient, “Anna O.” The “chimney
sweeping” therapy had been going well, with no trace of sexuality
in the process, until Breuer introduced it:
...it
came back to him from himself. [upon Breuer's decision to end the
relationship, Anna] blew up with what is called a nervous pregnancy[,
demonstrating] that the domain of sexuality shows a natural
functioning of signs. [27]
We
get a shot of Durochka in spotless white garments at the front of the
crowd, and she smiles as we hear the first chimes. Then we see
Boriska sitting with his head down, sobbing on the muddy ground. The
bell continues to ring as the Prince, ambassador, and their entourage
leave, the peasants who line the street bowing low as they pass.
Rublev approaches the boy, who is now lying on the ground, still
crying, and takes him in his arms. Boriska sobs, “My father, that
old snake, didn't pass on the secret. He died without telling me, he
took it to the grave. Skinflint scoundrel!” Rublev breaks his
silence, saying, “Let's go together, you and I. You'll cast bells.
I'll paint icons. We'll go to the Trinity Monastery together. What a
feast day for the people. You've brought them such joy, and you're
crying. Come on, come on.” We get another shot of Durochka in the
distance, now with a boy (her son?) then the camera pans across
Rublev and Boriska to some embers, zooming in and fading into a color
shot of an icon. To spiritual music, the camera moves slowly in
closeup from one fresco to another, revealing their rich detail. We
hear thunder as the camera focuses on an image of Jesus's face, then
a shot of paint running as rain falls, then a soft-focus shot of four
horses in the rain before the final fadeout. This somewhat mysterious
ending brings us to the drive, the last of psychoanalysis’
fundamental concepts – a concept which Lacan deconstructs by
pointing out the counterintuitive, and sometimes paradoxical, nature
of its four parts as described by Freud: thrust, the aim, the object,
and the source. To summarize,
1.
The drive has nothing to do with the life force - thrust,
as “a constant force,” is “not a question of something that
will be regulated with movement” or “a biological function”;
2.
One of the four vicissitudes of, and a satisfaction of, the drive –
sublimation – is “inhibited as to its aim”;
3.
“By snatching at its object,
the drive learns in a sense that this is precisely not the way it
will be satisfied”; and
4.
“It is precisely to the extent that adjoining, connected zones are
excluded that others take on their erogenous function and become
specific sources
for the drive.” [28. Emphasis mine.]
Having
used a violent “cold war era” movie as my guide, I'll end with
news of the violence one of the first
creations of that war – the state of Israel.
1.
Andrey Konchalovskiy and Andrei Tarkovsky. Andrei
Rublev. (1966.) in:
divxmoviesenglishsubtitles.com. (Undated.)
2.
Jacques Lacan. The Four Fundamental
Concepts of Psychoanalysis.
(1964/1973.) in: Ebooksclub.org. (10 Mar 2001.)
3.
Lacan. Concepts of Psychoanalysis.
[Ch. 1]
4.
Wikipedia notes that horses, in this movie, symbolize life
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrei_Rublev_(film)#Production
(July 25, 2014.)
5.
Lacan. Concepts of Psychoanalysis.
[Ch. 1]
6,
Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius.
in: Wikipedia. (July 29, 2014.)
7.
Skomorokh.
in: Wikipedia. (June 1, 2014.)
8.
Boyar.
in: Wikipedia. (April 24, 2014.)
9.
Lacan. Concepts of Psychoanalysis.
[Ch. 1]
10.
Epiphanius the Wise.
in: Wikipedia. (August 1, 2013.)
11.
Lacan. Concepts of Psychoanalysis.
[Ch. 1.] See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermeneutics.
12.
Lacan. Concepts of Psychoanalysis.
[Ch. 3]
13.
Lacan. Concepts of Psychoanalysis.
[Ch. 4]
14.
Vladimir.
in: Wikipedia. (May 5, 2014.)
15.
The two princes are played by the same
actor,http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrei_Rublev_(film)#Cast
Yuriy Nazarov.
16.
Lacan. Concepts of Psychoanalysis.
[Ch. 5]
17.
Foolishness for Christ.
in: Wikipedia. (July 9, 2014.)
18.
1 Corinthians 11:17.
in: biblehub.com. (2004 – 2014.)
19.
Lacan. Concepts of Psychoanalysis.
[Ch. 6]
20.
Lacan. Concepts of Psychoanalysis.
[Ch. 7]
21.
Lacan. Concepts of Psychoanalysis.
[Ch. 8]
22.
Lacan. Concepts of Psychoanalysis.
[Ch. 9]
23.
Lacan. Concepts of Psychoanalysis.
[Ch. 9]
24.
Lacan. Concepts of Psychoanalysis.
[Ch. 10]
25.
Lacan. Concepts of Psychoanalysis.
[Ch. 11]
26.
Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius.
in: Wikipedia. (July 29, 2014.)
27.
Lacan. Concepts of Psychoanalysis.
[Ch. 12]
28.
Lacan. Concepts of Psychoanalysis.
[Ch. 13.] For memory aids, we can use the thunder (as an incomplete
expression of the constant force of electricity) to stand for thrust;
Rublev for the aim, the running paint for the object, and the bell
for the source.
29.
in: imdb.com. (Jul 30 2014.)
