All rights reserved.<\/b>
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(The Sacrifice<\/i> directed by Andrei Tarkovsky, 1986)<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Barren windswept island off the south coast of Sweden. Ingmar Bergman landscape.
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Bergman’s old colleague, Erland Josephson, plays Alexander, pensioner, former writer with an unfaithful wife and young child, who is compelled to sacrifice.<\/p>\n
His wife and child? <\/i><\/p>\n
Himself.
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His sole option.
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The diseased earth is in the throes of dying. Retreat or immersion. No half-measures.
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Retreat is illusory, immersion is sacrifice.<\/p>\n
Does his sacrifice bear fruit?<\/i><\/p>\n
He lies with the good “witch,” devotee of Mother Mary. He sets fire to his house. He is forcibly restrained.
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Transported to the institution where suffering is imposed. Legislated torment.
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But the war that would holocaust the diseased earth is nullified. Time backs up. Literally.
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Temporary reprieve.<\/p>\n
Why “temporary?” <\/i><\/p>\n
Open your eyes.<\/p>\n
Does it matter that Alexander is a failed writer? <\/i><\/p>\n
Not failed. Ceased to write.
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The joy\u2014where there is joy\u2014is in the art-making. If that dies nothing remains but retreat or sacrifice.<\/p>\n
Sacrifice imitates Christ whether or not it is fruitful? <\/i>
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Didn’t Artaud, Sade, even Hitler, sacrifice in their own ways? <\/i><\/p>\n
Not Hitler.
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The other two\u2014arguably.<\/p>\n
Is the diseased earth irreparable? <\/i><\/p>\n
You ask me or Tarkovsky?<\/p>\n
Tarkovsky. <\/i><\/p>\n
Man and his institutions will not cease to filthy o’er the earth. Profiting all the while.
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The diseased earth can be cleansed solely by God’s grace.<\/p>\n
Sacrifice? <\/i><\/p>\n
Though not animals, not trees.
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Not humans, unless the sacrifice is willed, chosen.<\/p>\n
Did the “chosen people” will their “sacrifice”? <\/i>
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Their holocaust? <\/i><\/p>\n
The Jews?<\/p>\n
The Jews. <\/i><\/p>\n
I think of Mahler, Jew despite his baptism.
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Mahler had the birds killed outside his dacha to claim the silence he needed to compose Song of the Earth.<\/i><\/p>\n
That was the rumor.<\/p>\n
Why bring up Mahler? <\/i><\/p>\n
He comes to me.<\/p>\n
What happens if one’s sacrifice amounts to nothing? <\/i><\/p>\n
Nothing happens.<\/p>\n
It is the gesture that vibrates irrespective of results. <\/i>
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Even if the gesture costs your life.
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But what if it costs the lives of others?<\/i><\/p>\n
I think of John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry\u2014two of his sons killed. Brown hanged <\/i>for treason. <\/i><\/p>\n
Weird John Brown.<\/p>\n
“Weird” is Melville’s word, meaning fated<\/i>.<\/p>\n
In Melville’s poem the hanging shroud covers John Brown’s face but not his ”streaming beard” which juts sideways foretelling the meteoric energy of the anti- slave movement to come.<\/p>\n
Slavery has not been abolished. It is everywhere in numberless guises. <\/i><\/p>\n
Yes.<\/p>\n
It is the process not the result we are discussing.<\/i>
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Yours is a bleak view of the world. <\/i><\/p>\n
Made world.<\/p>\n
The world itself\u2014what remains of it\u2014is a blessing reviled.<\/p>\n
Old Testament. <\/i><\/p>\n
You sound like weird John Brown. <\/i><\/p>\n
Without sacrifice.<\/p>\n
Why without? <\/i><\/p>\n
I could have made my opportunity but hesitated.<\/p>\n
Back in the day you considered joining the Weather Underground. <\/i>
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Considered becoming a “human shield” in the Palestinian territories. <\/i>
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Considered joining the flotilla delivering supplies to blockaded Gaza. <\/i><\/p>\n
I grieved from a safe distance.<\/p>\n
You know about Pasolini’s homosexual relations with rough young boys in the Rome <\/i>ghettos.<\/i>
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Maybe you heard the odd story? <\/i>
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That he deliberately provoked the boys to beat and murder him so that the debased photo with his face battered, trousers at his knees, sex exposed, would testify to our <\/i>squalid globe.<\/i>
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Presumably he envisioned it as a sacrificial, or better, shamanic act. <\/i>Weird story, but in Pasolini’s instance, not implausible. <\/i><\/p>\n
I admire Pasolini however he choreographed his death\u2014if that’s what he did.<\/p>\n
How does one distinguish narcissism from sacrifice? <\/i><\/p>\n
They can be indistinguishable.<\/p>\n
You are a writer sans frontiere. <\/i>
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Doesn’t your writing count? <\/i><\/p>\n
Count?<\/p>\n
As a species of sacrifice? <\/i><\/p>\n
I don’t know.<\/p>\n