A new poetic work by Pantelis Bukala “Christ in the Snows. Seven Nights in the World of Andrei Tarkovsky” is not only inspired, but also permeated primarily by the film poet. The text consists of ten parts: the introductory introduction is a dialogue between the director and his father, the poet Arseniy Tarkovsky. Next in prose form are Seven Nights, each subtitled with the title of a film that Tarkovsky created as a director and some as a screenwriter. The connection between father and son is erased not only in the prologue, but also in the conclusion of the films “Child” about the Victim. In this, Bukala’s father’s son-sacrifice is characterized as being in opposition to Abraham’s Sacrifice: “…this was his way of sacrificing me, since Abraham never sacrificed his son.” This is followed by the last text, Exodus – Stone Age, written in free verse. The volume concludes with sheet music and Epimythium, a selective chronicle of authorship: its starting point was the proposal of the musician Dimitra Trypanis to present a “sound performance” with the characteristics of the “Liturgy of the Exodus” for the National Opera with a great director. as its core.

This proposal gave Bukala the opportunity to compose his own reading of Tarkovsky’s work and worldview. And, of course, not only. Tarkovsky “always taught him,” as he notes at the beginning of Epimythion. Something educates you if it asks questions that you consider ordinary and seeks answers in the same way that you do, because it is at the center of your own psychological orientation. Identification with Tarkovsky in the realm of the mental background, regardless, of course, of each’s answers to painful general questions, is evident throughout Christ in the Snows. Two texts, the first from Tarkovsky’s dialogue with his father and one from The Sacrifice, where a twelve-year-old child addresses his father in a heartbreaking monologue, feel like they reflect the ongoing dialogue between father and son in the poet’s own life. life.

The book certainly exceeds expectations for the proposal that inspired it. The form and content show the extent and quality of Bukala’s command of expressive means, once again confirming his superiority in poetry and modern Greek writing. I remember the linguistic idiom in “Magoulo tis Panagia – An Autobiographical Reflection on Georgios Karaiskakis”: the speech is scrupulously precise so as to be effortlessly authentic, but not at all “persuasive” in the mouths of the play’s characters. In “Christ in the Snows” he wanders like a lazy swimmer between the majestic linguistic idiom of some texts (in the Introductions and the first four Nights) and the direct-confessional and “personal” of the last three Nights. The first has references to passages of the great poetry of the Old Testament, mainly to the psalms of David: it is a speech with a rhythm that does not lose a second and which, when read aloud, also reveals its metrical fullness. In the second crescendo of the volume, the poet’s anguish reaches its peak.

* Mr. Antonis Kotidis is Professor of Philosophy at AUTH.