MovieChat Forums > Stalker (1980) Discussion > Did Balzac inspire Tarkovsky?

Did Balzac inspire Tarkovsky?

posted 10 years ago by gabridl
1 reply | jump to latest

This sounds like the central idea of "Stalker":

"Reaching France that very evening, he straight away took the road for the Auvergne and arrived at the spa of the Mont-Dore. During this journey he was struck by one of those unexpected ideas which flash through the mind like a ray of sunshine through dense cloud, lighting up a dark valley. The light of sadness, of a merciless wisdom, illumines past events, reveals our mistakes, and leaves us without forgiveness for ourselves. He thought suddenly that the possession of power, however great, did not give a person the knowledge of how to use it. To a child a scepter is a toy, for Richelieu an axe, and for Napoleon a means to bend the world to his will. Power leaves us as we are and only makes the great greater. Raphael had had the ability to do whatever he liked; he had done nothing."

—Honoré de Balzac, "The Wild Ass's Skin," tr. Helen Constantine (Oxford, 2012), 206.

[–] spijkertje 9 years ago

Nice catch, but Tarkovsky wrote in his diary:

‘Weakness is great, strength is insignificant. When man is born he is weak and malleable. When he dies he is strong and callused.

‘When a tree is still growing it is flexible and tender, and when it is dry and hard, it dies. Callosity and strength are the companions of death.

‘Pliancy and weakness are signs of the freshness of being. What has grown hard will therefore never triumph.’ – Lao-Tzu, taken by Leskov as the epigraph to Pamphalon the Buffoon. (147)

So it's a clear quote from Lao-Tzu.