After the film of A. Tarkovski
In a time of bloodshed
incited and subjugated by savage onslaughts,
not even the great Russian fresco painter
and immaculate monk Andrey Rublyov
could remain with crossed arms before the madness:
he killed the rapist
of his feebleminded ward.
Afterwards he gave up his brush and paint
and devoted himself to the Isihastic muteness
to be only with God.
He didn’t give up his silence
even in moments when the instinct
for survival urged him to do so –
in the moment when he had to warn the one
who swung an axe at him,
from which, as if by God’s will,
he was saved by others.
But the moment came
when the church bell was tried
when he learned the heroic truth
about its young self-taught creator.
Only then
like a golden ray through heaven
did the mature voice of the man in him
speak up
promising that he would paint again.
Here is one more crucial example
that art is stronger than death.