ANDREI TARKOVSKI - quote

"I had a dream last night.
I dreamt that I was dead. But I could see, or actually 
I could feel the things around me.
I could feel Lara was beside me,
and some friends also.
I was feeling without strength, without will,
and being able to be witness of my own death,
to contemplate my corpse.
And most of all, I could feel in this dream
something forgotten for a long time,
a lost sensation -
that this wasn't a dream, but reality.
This sensation was so strong that deep in my soul
was growing a wave of sadness
and pity towards myself; a strange
feeling had appeared, like an aesthetic sense.
When one has compassion for himself,
the misfortune seems like someone else's,
has if you'd look at it from the outside and would be measuring it,
as if you'd feel beyond past life.
And that it would be like the life of a child
without any experience, defenceless.
Time stops existing, so does fear.
One senses immortality.
I could see people moving around
moved by my death. And I rose again.
But nobody seemed astonished."




"J'ai fait un reve cette nuit.
J'ai reve que j'etais mort. Mais je voyais, ou plutot
je sentais tout ce qui se passait autour de moi.
Je sentais que Lara etait a cote de moi,
ainsi que quelques amis.
Je me sentais sans force, sans volonte,
et juste capable d'etre le temoin de ma mort,
de contempler mon cadavre.
Et surtout, je ressentais dans ce reve
quelque chose d'oublie depuis longtemps,
une sensation perdue -
que ce n'etais pas un reve, mais la realite.
Cette sensation etait si forte que du fond de mon ame
montait une vague de tristesse
et de pitie envers moi-meme; un sentiment
etrange avait surgi, comme un sentiment esthetique.
Quand on a ainsi compassion de soi-meme,
c'est comme si son malheur etait celui d'un autre,
comme si on le regardait de l'exterieur et qu'on le jaugeait,
comme si on se sentait au-dela de la vie passee.
Et que celle-ci etait comme la vie d'un enfant
denue de toute experience, sans defense.
Le temps cesse d'exister, la peur aussi.
On pressent l'immortalite.
 Je voyais les gens qui s'agitaient autour,
emus par ma mort. Et puis j'ai ressuscite.
Mais personne ne s'en est etonne."