I loved Andrei so much, and love him so much, that I loved and love everything connected with him: his family, his father in particular, his father’s poetry, his father’s character. Several times I saw his father at the Writers’ Union and, though we were not acquainted, almost went up to say: I knew your Andrei, I am an admirer of his talent, and of yours too. I knew he also had some connection with Armenia. I had not met him in Armenia. In Moscow I did not approach him either. If I had, what would I have said?
The first film by Andrei I saw was “Ivan’s Childhood,” shown to us at Moscow’s Higher Screenwriting Courses. Amid that torrent of the finest foreign films, that saturation, we found it a little difficult to adjust to Soviet films. They showed us the treasures of world cinema, showed us Antonioni, and we were thirsty for them: youths, children, boys, young creators who absorbed everything good that had accumulated over the years and was still being made. It was simply a wonderful time for us. There was something truly saving in the screenwriting and directing courses: they gave us everything, opened the world’s doors to us, to make artists of us, obtain a generation that would save culture, forge what were called cadres. And against that background of world culture, the classic film heritage created by Fellini, Antonioni, Bergman, Kurosawa and the others, they screened “Ivan’s Childhood.” I harboured an opposition to Soviet Socialist Realist culture, and it extended to that film. I did not receive it well. I was somewhat hostile to that kind of art, to the theme of war and cruelty. Besides, the manner seemed unlike Antonioni’s magnificent manner, that of Western culture. To Andrei’s credit I must say my attitude to this work was later corrected. Years afterwards I had the chance to see it again on television and saw that it was a film that had been saved, a wonderful film, a magnificent film. I saw it from a new angle: amid all the turmoil of war, it is nevertheless the unprotected orphan who becomes the victim, a child left absolutely alone beneath the full cruel blow of fate, and he must answer for it. It recalls our Vahan Teryan’s poem, “We are all, all orphan children.” But in Andrei’s film the orphan is literally both an orphan and a child. He is a child and answers fate’s blows beautifully, bears his cross beautifully: he becomes a victim, inevitably, because he does not become a crawling creature. That was how I understood the film later. But going back, even at the screenwriting courses, despite my unfavourable impression, I nevertheless inherited, took on, received and absorbed my fellow students’ attitude towards Andrei, which was extremely positive. I already looked upon him as the future saviour of Soviet cinema, the man who would let the cinema of this vast country hold its head up, the saviour of our generation. This often happens. Rarely do we judge rightly with an untouched attitude, receive great figures without preconceptions. Almost always our attitude is prepared for us; my fellow students prepared mine towards Andrei. We thought: here, alongside us, a little ahead of us, is someone who must be our teacher and friend.
So that inherited attitude was within me, and I was to spend the courses’ summer practical placement at Mosfilm, where “Andrei Rublev” was being made. I very much wanted to, and asked my supervisor Yezhov, if possible, to attach me to Andrei Tarkovsky’s work on “Andrei Rublev.” Unfortunately for me, the film was already being edited, and I found it difficult to sit beside the editing table. I wanted to be beside Andrei during the process, at the initial stage, during the creation of the screenplay, even its director’s version. I wanted to gain something, but the work was already finished, already closing. At the same time I somehow did not consider myself a cinema person; I considered myself something like a partisan and, taking the opportunity, fled. So the film was already being edited, and I fled without seeing Andrei’s face.
I knew he had heard of me and had even passed on some assignment through someone. I was already in Yerevan when “Andrei Rublev” reached the screen, four or five years late. Much had been said about it before its release, and I knew what I would be watching. I must say “Andrei Rublev” is one of the greatest films I have seen in my life. So many years have passed, yet the impression has not faded at all. I watched it recently, and it was wonderful again. I am simply its captive. I accept no reservations; there is nothing to remove from it. It is a magnificent epic image of medieval Russia, whose philosophy and direction are also a guide.
He had been invited to Yerevan for the screening of “Andrei Rublev,” and brought “Solaris” with him. He invited me to see his new film, but I had seen “Andrei Rublev” only the day before and told him: I will deliberately not come to your new film, because I am afraid of slightly clouding my impression of “Rublev,” the image of you formed within me. I said I was leaving a span of time within myself for “Andrei Rublev.” So I did not go to see “Solaris.” Later I saw chance fragments of it. Those fragments convinced me that Andrei remained Andrei.
During his stays in Yerevan we became, one might say, a little friendly. One meeting took place at our home. We talked for a long time, and although I considered myself a writer not without ambitions, here I was simply his ordinary spectator and admirer. Before major talents I always become an ordinary spectator and reader, with deep reverence. The meeting at our home stayed with me as a demonstration of mutual understanding and love. That day we seemed to become friends, so much so that when I later went to Moscow for a writers’ congress, I was told he wanted to meet me. I went to their home with my friends. He received me like family. Sadly, I was a little ill, and the meeting was not quite what it might have been. His wife too received us like a sister, for which I am very grateful…
My strongest impression is of “Mirror.” When it was screened, I told myself: the span of time I allotted to “Andrei Rublev” has now passed. Let me go and see what my brother has done. So I went with people close to me to see it. The impression was wonderful. A female medical student expressed hers best: a considerable time after seeing it, she said she had understood nothing, yet not a single image had left her mind; the whole chain of images remained within her. I too have forgotten nothing; all the images have remained within me. “Mirror” is a very great artistic achievement. I do not know whether anything in it troubled the officials, but he was anxious on that account. I must also say that “Mirror” made a profound impression particularly through its search for points of contact with metaphysical mystery. It was an extraordinarily beautiful structure, and Andrei achieved all that by ordinary means. Was there opposition to the past and our present reality in that work? In my view, there was not; opposition arises only when there is artistic imperfection. I saw no artistic imperfection here. Artistic perfections, I think, ought to make their way easily under every regime, even fascist regimes, because true art, in my view, ought to have no enemies. I do not know, do not understand: what executioner’s hand was raised, what executioner’s eye looked and saw something in the work for which Andrei was harassed and insulted, forbidden to create freely, forbidden to blaze up and devote the twenty years of his life wholly to us? In our telephone conversations before he went abroad, he seemed reluctant to say he was going to make a film there. He left and, for me, seemed to die, to vanish. We, the filmgoers of this country, were simply deprived of him. As though my brother had left me and disappeared. As though this was his first death. Of course, the world is not so narrow. There too he created for this country. Honour and praise to the foreign countries that let the dissidents we have expelled and persecuted continue. There they are given the chance to create, and they have truly done something for this country, for Russia’s future culture. What should have been done for this country was done there. What left an impression of desert here was done there.
Nevertheless, I believe that hurt feelings are hurt feelings, and the Romanovs and Yermashes are what they are, yet in his staying and working in Italy there was a kind of dying agony, a kind of end. He of course knew better, felt better. Still, in his short life he managed to do immense work. I know little of his theoretical writings, and it would not be true to say I seek them out. I am a little strange in this sense: after encountering a new name, a few works and words, once I have assured myself that he really exists, is a whole presence, I am at peace. I know something will be done there, no defective work will emerge from there. I know one interview of Andrei’s; I read the record of his meeting with Moscow University students. It was wonderful. As though I myself were speaking to the students, my answers were being given. Wonderful too that he was what I was not—a film-maker; but had I been a film-maker, I would have wanted to do what he did. He was new, a man of my way of thinking. He did exactly what I did. There must of course have been differences. For instance, I would not have surrendered so much to symbolism. It turns out he was so great a man that he could demonstrate from such a distance and say: this is what is right. That interview, the transcript, an oral remark about this film-maker or that person, were simply accurate. I remember his unease, his inner nervousness. There was anxiety within him, a moth, a moth gnawing constantly. He knew art was not yet reality, that reality transferred onto film or paper was not yet art, and one had to cross to the other side of reality to bring something from there, from another world, from the seventh heaven, to create something. He was one of our scouts. A scout for us all. One of the first to open a path in the jungle of the unknown. Despite our difficulties, the difficulties of our life, he managed to become fully himself. He did. He simply removed our generation’s shame before future generations. In him our generation was not barren, and his generation’s achievement was ours.
It was beautiful that he had no national complexes. To me that is a kind of measure of greatness. In our grave conditions today, when, say, Armenia’s situation has become very difficult and the very best simply hide their heads, draw them back, he was the great artist for whom there were no borders, for whom saying a word in our defence would have posed no difficulty at all. Truly, the symbol of his art, its pure spirit, erased national boundaries. As a person too, as a particle of his works, he was beyond national boundaries and became an achievement of the world. He himself became a man of the world—a world that has become national, nationalist, while the square of internationalism stands empty for lack of great people. That emptiness, the absence of internationalism, is particularly present among us.
He was precise, knew reality. In great people it seems there is a god sitting within, as though they themselves created the world and wherever they go it is familiar: they know the sources, the sources of creation, and everywhere the world seems familiar and dear. So he too seemed to know the secrets of the Armenian world’s creation and came here as a son, a creator, someone who had helped build this house. It is no accident that there is considerable Armenian symbolism in his work. He gave Christianity importance as part of our spiritual life and something that created it, something not accidental here but a symbol he wanted to see. I think he felt bad that the finest works were not being made here, as bad as any decent, honest person should feel. A man of broad soul, he saw possibilities in everyone and encouraged even the smallest success. He encouraged and regretted it when people did not fulfil themselves. A very beautiful quality. William Saroyan had that wonderful quality too: he wanted to awaken confidence in a person, lengthen a person’s stride, make it firm. That is a beautiful quality of raising a human being up, a wonderful quality.
Later, in my contacts with intellectuals, particularly Moscow intellectuals, when the conversation often turned to Andrei, I saw that at best they did not share my admiration. I saw ill-wishers, people who did not share my admiration for “Rublev” or “Mirror” and, on the contrary, noted with a kind of pleasure that, say, “Hamlet” at the Taganka had not succeeded. I did not see the production and cannot say whether it succeeded. Apparently it was not a great success. But why did they receive that with pleasure? His departure from this country was, in effect, a victory for reaction. Reaction managed to push him out, won, drove him away. There was an alliance between those below who resented him and the officials above, the officials who did not want this kind of genius, did not tolerate this kind of talent. Without him their affairs would have gone very well, very easily. He was not provincial; he was in the capital and could confront and clash with the leadership. Relations were clear, and I saw that he was already elsewhere, wanted to be where nobody would obstruct him. There is always that ill will towards great, bright talents; like Pilate, people rejoice when one falls, when one is absent. They always receive them with hostility and delight when hostility can defeat them, bring them to their knees, destroy them. How does William Saroyan put it? He says: “Do not die, reader. You are desperate, he says, but I ask one thing: listen and do not die. Do you think those sons of bitches beside you will sympathise? They will not; they will not care at all when you die. So put your hand in your pocket—you have a couple of cents left—go buy bread and cheese, sit in the sunshine and eat properly, with appetite, and quietly listen to the universe, the world, the sun. Then rid yourself of those thoughts and go about your work. Do not die; do not think you will have mourners after you.”