Modern art has taken the wrong turn in abandoning the search for the meaning of existence in order to affirm the value of the individual for his own sake. What purports to be art begins to looks like an eccentric occupation for suspect characters who maintain that any personalised action is of intrinsic value simply as a display of self-will. But in an artistic creation the personality does not assert itself it serves another, higher and communal idea. The artist is always the 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 sacrifice, even though true affirmation of the self can only be expressed in sacrifice. We are gradually forgetting about this, and at the same time, inevitably, losing all sense of human calling.I especially love and believe this: The artist is always the servant, and is perpetually trying to pay for the gift that has been given to him as if by a miracle. That thought is a very un20th-, un-21st-century idea, but it feels true to my own feelings and beliefs about art. And yet, the act of making a lyric poem, say, is a stirring joy in itself, and so the initial gift is repaid by wielding the gift, which in turn creates more gifts that at their best feel in-flooded rather than, as it sometimes seems with lesser works, spun from navel lint.
Another thing that is barely suggested in that Tarkovsky sentence is the idea of the artist and humility. That is, the artist's proper stance before the monuments of art from time past should be one of humility.
And now I want to read that book...
