484
PARTISAN IUVIEW
and prose - quite wondrously, and painting, too.
I have constructed my own imaginary films without being at all ea–
ger to write screenplays. There is one film in particular that I watch on
my private screen. I am not the only one who knows the first and last
names of the people who appear in it....
JlIly
3D,
1988.... No, I would not want to transfer to the screen the
film I have fashioned in my imagination. The more intensely Schiller is
present, the more Uminska is a tangible presence, and even Zyznowski,
of unknown appearance, the more clearly I see the girls from
Pastoralka,
who today, if they are still alive, are already old women - the more
powerfully can I sense the poverty of cinematic devices compared with
the richness of human characters and fates. All these individuals exist si–
multaneously in their various phases, but it is impossible to capture that
temporal dimension in linear fashion, in an unfolding plot, despite the
ever more frequent use of the flashback technique. Nicola Chiaromonte
was probably correct when he denied the possibility of film ever rivaling
literature. Fine. But then where arc those exceptional virtues of litera–
ture? No doubt they, too, are modest. But the impotence of literature
when it attempts to capture and preserve reality in words is a separate
topic entirely.
