Solaris for Lem and Tarkovsky. Novel and film between the impossibility of progress and the abyss of the past
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.13135/2704-8195/11182Keywords:
Solaris, Tarkovsky, Lem, Time, Science-FictionAbstract
In 1961 the Polish writer Stanislaw Lem realized Solaris, one of his best known and most
appreciated works. Describing the encounter with an indecipherable planet-ocean, Lem highlights the
impossibility of truly communicating with the Other and brings out the aporias and complexities of positivist
thinking. Eleven years later, Andrey Tarkovsky adapts Lem’s subject for cinema. In the homonymous movie,
though, the Russian director imprints his own peculiar conception of time and history: the Tarkovskian
ocean becomes a source of connection with a past seen as the only hold for the present, a crystal in which,
however, the actual seems to succumb to the virtual. Lem’s peculiar conception of progress is here put in
contrast against the personal and humanistic nostalgia of the Russian director. The aim of the text consists in
this comparison: two divergent philosophies of time expressed by two authors through their respective work.
Downloads
References
Belov, Igor. n.d. “Lem vs. Tarkovsky: The Fight over ‘Solaris’”. Culture.pl. https://culture.pl/en/ article/lem-vs-tarkovsky-the-fight-over-solaris.
Bird, Robert. 2014. Andrei Tarkovsky: Elements of Cinema. London: Reaktion Books.
Bohman, James, and William Rehg. 2014. “Jürgen Habermas (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy).” Stanford.edu. 2014. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/habermas/.
Bould, Mark. 2019. Solaris. Bloomsbury Publishing.
Csicsery-Ronay, Istvan Jr. 1985. “The Book Is the Alien: On Certain and Uncertain Readings of Lem’s ‘Solaris’ (Le Livre Est l’Extraterrestre: À Propos de Lectures Certaines et Incertaines Du ‘Solaris’ de Lem)”. Science Fiction Studies 12 (1): 6–21. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4239658.
Deleuze, Gilles. 1991. Bergsonism. New York: Zone.
———. 2007. Cinema 2: The Time Image. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Deltcheva, Roumiana, and Eduard Vlasov. 1997. “Back to the House II: On the Chronotopic and Ideological Reinterpretation of Lem’s Solaris in Tarkovsky’s Film”. Russian Review 56
(4): 532. https://doi.org/10.2307/131564.
Freedman, Carl Howard. 2000. Critical Theory and Science Fiction. Hanover-London: Wesleyan University Press.
Geier, Manfred. 1992. “Stanislaw Lem’s Fantastic Ocean: Toward a Semantic Interpretation of ‘Solaris’”. Science Fiction Studies 19 (2): 192–218. https://www.jstor.org/stable/4240151.
Gudauskas, Andrius. 2020. “I Segni Cinematografici Di Deleuze E Tarkovskij.” E|c Rivista
Dell’Associazione Italiana Di Studi Semiotici 14 (30): 97–104.
Guerlac, Suzanne. 2017. Thinking in Time. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Habermas, Jürgen. 1972. Knowledge and Human Interests. Boston: Beacon Press.
Halligan, Benjamin. 2006. “On Tarkovsky Aesthetic Strategy” in Through the Mirror: Reflections on the Films of Andrei Tarkovsky, edited by ÓttarssonThorkell Á and JònssonGunnlaugur A, 40–64. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Press.
Jameson, Fredric. 2007. Archaeologies of the Future. London-New York: Verso Books. Johnson, Vida T, and Graham Petrie. 2003. The Films of Andrei Tarkovsky: A Visual Fugue. Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press.
Kozin, Alexander. 2009. “The Appearing Memory: Gilles Deleuze and Andrey Tarkovsky on Crystal-Image’.” Memory Studies 2 (1): 103–17. https://doi.org/10.1177/1750698008097398. Lem, Stanislaw. 1982. Solaris. Translated by Eva Bolzoni. Milano: Mondadori.
–––. 2019. Solaris. Translated by Joanna Kilmartin and Steve Cox. San Diego: Harcourt Brace & Co.
Lem, Stanisław, and Peter Swirski. 1997. A Stanislaw Lem Reader. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press.
Lima e Silva, Jason de. 2022. “Autonomy of the Duplicate Woman and the Seduction of the Strange in Tarkovsky’s Solaris – Autonomia Da Mulher Duplicada E Sedução Do Estranho No Solaris, de Tarkovsky”. Estudos Feministas 30 (2): 1–13. https://www.jstor.org/ stable/48689129.
Loska, Krzysztof. 2006. “Lem on Film” in The Art and Science of Stanislw Lem, edited by Peter Swirski, 153–72. McGill-Queen’s University Press.
Loughlin, Gerard. 2009. “The Long Take: Messianic Time in Andrei Tarkovsky’sNostalghia”. Journal for Cultural Research 13 (3-4): 365–79. https://doi.org/10.1080/14797580903244753. Marrati, Paola. 2012. Gilles Deleuze: Cinema and Philosophy. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press.
McFadden, Daniel. 2012. “Memory and Being: The Uncanny in the Films of Andrei Tarkovsky.” Verges: Germanic & Slavic Studies in Review 1 (1). https://journals.uvic.ca/index.php/verges/article/view/10846.
McSweeney, Terence. 2006. “Sculpting the Time Image: An Exploration of Tarkovsky’s Film Theory from a Deleuzian Perspective” in Through the Mirror: Reflections on the Films of Andrei Tarkovsky, edited by ÓttarssonThorkell Á and JònssonGunnlaugur A, 79–99. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Press.
Menard, David George. 2003. “A Deleuzian Analysis of Tarkovsky’s Theory of Time-Pressure, Part 2”. Offscreen.com. August 2003. (https://offscreen.com/view/tarkovsky?/new_ offscreen/deleuzian_pressure2.html.)
Moss, Yelizaveta Goldfarb. 2022. “ReFocus: The Films of Andrei Tarkovsky” in Framing the Infinity in Tarkovksy’s Nostalghia, edited by Sergey Toymentsev, 119–33. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Paisley, Livingston. 2006. “Skepticism, Realism, Fallibilism: On Lem’s Epistemological Themes” in The Art and Science of Stanislw Lem, edited by Peter Swirski, 117–30. McGill-Queen’s University Press.
Paul, Johnson. 2006. “Subjectivity and Sociality in the Films of Andrei Tarkovsky” in Through the Mirror: Reflections on the Films of Andrei Tarkovsky, edited by ÓttarssonThorkell Á and JònssonGunnlaugur A. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Press.
Reeh-Peters, Christine. 2021. Being and Film. Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Rose, Mark. 1981. Alien Encounters. Harvard University Press.
Rovatti, Pier Aldo. 2019. “Un Tema Percorre Tutta L’opera Di Bergson” in Il Bergsonismo e Altri Saggi. Torino: Einaudi.
Skakov, Nariman. 2012. The Cinema of Tarkovsky: Labyrinths of Space and Time. I B Tauris & Co Ltd.
Suvin, Darko. 1982. “The Open-Ended Parables of Stanislaw Lem and Solaris” in Solaris, translated by Joanna Kilmartin and Steve Cox, 212–23. New York: Berkley Books.
Swirski, Peter. 2006. “Solaris! Solaris. Solaris?” in The Art and Science of Stanislaw Lem, edited by Peter Swirski, 172–80. McGill-Queen’s Press – MQUP.
Tarkovskij, Arsenij. 1987. Sculpting in Time: Reflections on the Cinema. Austin, Tx: University of Texas Press.
–––. 2015. I Burned at the Feast: Selected Poems of Arseny Tarkovsky. Translated by Psurt︠s︡ev Dmitriĭ and Philip Metres. Cleveland, Ohio: Cleveland State University Poetry Center.
Totaro, Donato. 1992. “Time and the Film Aesthetics of Andrei Tarkovsky”. Canadian Journal of Film Studies 2 (1): 21–30. https://doi.org/10.3138/cjfs.2.1.21.
Toymentsev, Sergey. 2022. “ReFocus: The Films of Andrei Tarkovsky” in Does Tarkovsky Have a Film Theory, edited by Sergey Toymentsev, 46–66. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Turovskaya, Maya. 1989. Tarkovsky: Cinema as Poetry. London: Faber and Faber.
Turris, Gianfranco de. 1972. “Solaris, O Dell’Irrazionale” in Solaris. Milano: Mondadori. Weinstone, Ann. 1994. “Resisting Monsters: Notes on ‘Solaris’”. Science Fiction Studies 21 (2): 173–90. https://www.jstor.org/stable/4240332.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2024 Edoardo Rugo
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
