In the 17th and 18th centuries musicians composed
"Tenebrae Lessons" after Jeremiah's Book of Lamentations.
These lessons were sung on Holy Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays.
During these "Tenebrae Services" candles were put out one by one,
until total darkness was reached, as a symbol of worldly ignorance.
TENEBRAE LESSONS
"Confining oneself to see only the world's beauty
is an imposture which even the most clairvoyant fall into. "
The nineties got off to a rather bad start.
Returning to life all you did was test others, and things.
Like them you learned to play.
This now seems to you like a long night of watching over, of waiting.
No battle can hold you back any more.
Emotions, sensations, it all became the same to you.
It is time to establish a few certitudes,
to remind yourself once again
of what and who you really love.
You know it: This journey won't be like any other...
FIRST LESSON UTRECHT
You miss him.
You're almost happy to realize it: You miss Tadeusz.
Yet you left Paris without warning him,
employing as usual your harsh,
abrupt, and often damaging manners.
Of course, you could have gone directly to Italy -
no one is waiting for you in Utrecht.
But you wanted to see.
Ever since you met,
little by little you've confined this man
who says he cares for you to the role of an extra.
His absence makes you realize
how much your existence depends on him.
You grew attached to him despite yourself.
This realization no doubt scares you,
but, with the help of pills, it is also exalting.
And the small warm pain that invades you at this moment
seems to give meaning to this route, to this night.
What you miss -
isn't it the constant tension his presence gives to your life?
No, it's him,
his shoulders, his torso.
As early as the first kilometers, a nostalgia has settled in:
You count on taking advantage of it...
You noticed him at the "Thermos. "
He's probably been there for a while already.
A tanned body, curled up,
prostrate, not at all nervous.
You can't do it -
at any rate, you thought you couldn't.
But it's almost in,
giving way all of a sudden and your hand finally feels the damp warmth,
the warmth before birth.
He doesn't say a thing.
Vague sighs lost between pain and pleasure reach your ears,
smothered by the leatherette mattress his face is buried in.
Go in a little deeper,
just a bit more...
take care not to unfold your fingers,
your nails might tear him from the inside.
You have complete control over him -
you could turn him inside out like a glove
and his infinite confidence moves you immensely.
You too remain silent -
nearby you hear
the regular beating of a head against the cabin's partition,
like a heart beating too hard.
You pull out your fist, in extreme slowness.
A fist you wish to brandish before the world.
You think he's thanking you for some kind of favor.
You notice you didn't use the rubber gloves
he had put next to him.
Upon leaving the sauna,
you regain the distant tolerance of the outside -
the canals, the bicycles, the drunkenness of communication,
the blind neutrality of a world where you have no place.
Back when, defeated,
you often mocked tourists while walking along the Grand Canal
listening to Mahler's Adagietto, wearing earphones -
as if by this they reached a higher, privileged reality.
But since the beginning, aren't you doing the same thing?
To your advantage: The isolation
and the solitude that scare you sometimes,
but which, day by day, grow more opaque.
You took a long time to find the place.
But he is in front of you now, shivering and tense.
He can feel, up against his tired face,
the drunken smells of the two men.
Red-faced, as he is.
They lean their weight upon the circle of thorns
which dig deeper into the temples
and the forehead of the Innocent One.
Two massive bodies, expressing no particular mood or cruelty.
The white body of the Innocent One shows only the slightest reaction.
The weary expression on his face could pass for a smile,
almost acquiescent.
How this show attracts you
and how little you resist compassion.
Tadeusz has returned
and you head off in silence toward the dark acuity of another gaze -
the fixed soldiers of another murder.
You would like emotions to bring you closer, in common experience,
but far from that, it separates you even more.
So as you observe Tadeusz standing before the next painting,
you sense it's you he's trying to understand.
But the issue in painting has never been the sharing of emotions -
it's an issue of possession.
You know these repetitive disputes are sapping his strength.
You wanted to believe that the illness would make him detached,
patient, and devoted - but no,
Tadeusz is defending himself. His suffering is a burden on you.
So you account for things, you look back at the images:
What you are seeking is not here.
Beyond the paintings, between you and these brick walls,
there is a thin impassable layer that sterilizes everything,
makes everything interchangeable -
that same barrier you feel when, night after night,
you dress Tadeusz' member with a shining condom.
In fact you are angry at him for having come,
for being there only to make you feel good.
Never would the word love be pronounced.
But Tadeusz has no more time, no more strength.
Some time later, on the freeway, as had already happened in Paris,
his intestines let loose -
an unbreathable odor invaded the car.
A remainder of compassion that you usually reserve for still images,
stopped you from making the slightest remark.
You didn't say a thing.
You didn't open the window, looking disgusted.
You let him fall softly asleep, his head on your shoulder.
You didn't shed a tear either.
For those of us who confront this kind of confusion
and all these appeals to our attention,
we don't really know where to look,
where to think, what to think, in what terms to think.
I believe one can see this in Caravaggio and the others,
in an obviously visual, esthetic form,
yet which stems directly from the same issues.
It's not really that during Caravaggio's epoch
there was as much media confusion,
but the situation is the same:
It's what I would call an attention disorder.
SECOND LESSON NAPLES
You contemplate the city that gives itself up to the night.
At your feet,
real life bursts all over and a new hope submerges you.
An unheard of, intense emotion.
Colors, sounds, bodies, everything becomes readable,
awakens forgotten desires in you, desires from before.
You're willing now to approach the fire.
Forever that rancid, Mussolinian,
odor, forever that conspiring darkness.
Forever that infinite resonance that confines one to whispering,
mixing the groans during the movie with the sighing viewers
and the high-pitched laughter of the feminielli
coming and going on the side of the unlikely toilets.
The filthy johns of the Trianon.
The soldier who sat next to you slipped his hand in your pants.
You feel the freshness of his fingers against your cock.
Then, slowly, you slip your hand in his pants
and finally find yearning.
You stayed there, on the first balcony,
for a time difficult to estimate.
The soldier looked at you a few times with kindness.
He gave you what the city has that is most precious:
Pure gentleness.
Returning to the Napoli Centrale din of night, for a moment
you had the reassuring feeling of belonging.
He is not from here.
The first evening, Werner brought you to his place,
but you wouldn't know how to find his flat
in the complicated building, near the Vomero funiculars.
You knew only the strict minimum about him: He'll do.
Both of you can, for a few days, a few nights, feed your lies.
You think you're indifferent, you're protected,
but you sense once again that you won't get out of this unhurt.
And the names you invoke together will be of no help to you.
In what secret world did you meet them?
Merisi-II Caravagio, Honthorst-Gerardo delle Notti,
Carraciolo-II Batistello, Ribera-Lo Spagnoletto,
II Valentin, II Guido,
the Pensionary, the Candlelight Master,
the Master of the Announcement to the Shepherds,
the Master of the Emmaus of Pau,
the Master of the Emmaus of Sarasota...
How these names ring so brightly.
Their mystery protects you.
You take them as witnesses because you know they cannot answer you,
except through the open enigma of their images.
Now you must compose with this large available body,
the providential accomplice from which you expect nothing.
There are contraband cigarettes.
There is, far off, the dark mass of the Volcano.
There is the furtive odor,
and the breeze coming from the sea found to be nowhere.
There is, despite the promiscuity of classes, the rubbing of bodies,
the central darkness of profit.
You ask yourself what you represent to him:
A godsend, a breather, comfort?
Every time you make love, he hurts you.
And every time, you avoid telling him.
But in the morning you separate once again
and he regains his mystery, far from you.
Nothing that is revolting to you, in the end:
Any excessive abandon would put an end to your relationship.
Some evening,
it may happen that he won't show up,
that he'll disappear.
Both of you know the rules.
His music and his paintings are what he really loves -
there is no room for anybody.
In that he is like you,
and you are going nowhere.
But at this very instant,
the two of you are heading directly toward the Palm Theater
and you both feel closer to each other than ever,
in the fragile truce of a shared moment.
The old man with a gray beard, though almost asleep,
holds the young child in his arms.
In shadow, the numb vehemence of tenderness takes on body,
without sufferance.
Does the man in his sleep want to retain his meagre warm life
that is already escaping him.
When you felt then the weight of Werner's arms,
still heavy with the balminess of sleep,
they seemed to be your only refuge, your only possibility.
You would like to stay there,
to fix the reassuring image for all times.
You invent a lullaby for him:
Sleep, my child, sleep...
The world is crumbling, there, outside
Sleep longer
Go on dreaming
You must be strong for two
For there is no truth or falsity
You are real, I believe
I hear you breathing gently
So gently, as if in sleep...
We must help each other go on believing
Nothing more to await than your hour of awakening
And waiting is my only treasure
Sleep, fragile love born of evening
Don't turn indifference inside out
At bodies' distance
Don't fear being slightly dead
Sleep, my fine treasure,
The end has already taken place Outside
In the painting of Saint Jerome, showing the passage
of energy between life and death suggests
that the presence of death in the body
gives a form to all activities in life,
it informs life.
That is to say
that all one does in life is inflected
by the writing "death"
which is inscribed in our body from the moment we are born...
And we forget that...
like a promise and also like a form:
Each person has his own death
which informs the acts of his life.
And death is not merely an event that arrives at the end,
but something that defines the form of energy...
and so death is something
that estheticizes life.
THIRD LESSON ROME
The smell of pine trees and the flashes of nostalgia
seize you by the throat as the taxi crosses the public garden.
You apprehend this return.
You risk running into Spartaco or another dealer
on San Callisto Piazza, at Santa Maria Fountain, everywhere.
You regret what you have left behind there,
on the piazzas, at the foot of the churches:
Open nights, feverish waiting,
tense laughter, the comfort of a cold needle,
the langor of slow summer dances...
But Rome has changed and you have changed.
Tadeusz has already been there since last evening
and you're ready to relive the abandonment of being together,
of being tender again, of lightness.
Try to be happy, for once,
try to experience the moment, easily, tenderly.
There will be no abrupt gesture.
Let yourself go a bit, you'll see how easy it is.
The shadows will wait.
You come to see her each time.
She calms you, reassures you.
Her endless, mineral rest,
her pose both twisted and languid, her dead silence...
Her bones were supposedly found arranged that way.
Petrified in the clear marble, alone, the gaping neck wound,
the folds of the undone tunic and turban,
the infantile roundness of the hands,
re-establish a time when
palpitating flesh inhabited the frail bone structure.
Before you, life shudders,
traverses, disturbs the sickly body of stone.
In a more stable world, Cecile could be your child.
For now, she merely represents your childhood, frozen.
People's Piazza.
You've always liked this name,
even though you've never seen it like this,
peopled with cars parked one next to the other.
But it's the People's Piazza
and you often wonder who your People are?
In the end, you know them well,
the small, imprecise people who for a minute, a week, or a year,
wanted you, loved you, gave you life.
As you loved them too.
And as you miss them now.
You see Tadeusz desperately trying to read,
to retain, to live -
you also see the great shipwreck of Rome, of the world...
You are trembling somewhat and it is not the exhaustion,
nor is it the pills - you've finished them all.
No, the love he offered you is gently falling apart.
You distinguish only your two solitudes
intermingling, yet not filling one another.
In the space of a breath, you will have been two,
but tomorrow,
the eyes of Tadeusz will no longer watch over you
with their affection, nor even their pity.
You'll have nothing left then to contemplate yourself
but a dead mirror.
At the end of the film the lights went back on
and you were led toward the platform.
You looked around for Tadeusz amidst the remaining viewers,
but you couldn't find him.
His seat was empty.
He is not even angry at you.
He simply can't go on any more, that's all.
At the Tritone cash machine
you realize that you're almost out of money.
You put the bills in your pocket without counting them.
The future no longer scares you.
There where you're going you'll be rich, immensely rich.
But the treasure cannot be shared.
You are alone now.
Only for you -
the dark gazes, the tension of the attitudes,
the shoulders, the shadow on the shoulders,
the bodies stopped in their movements,
the stifled cry of pain, of pleasure,
the sensual offering of the muscles,
the dark splendor of the faces, the tragedy of the light,
the glacial, metallic flash of the knives.
You would like to take back the cutting words,
erase the irreversible gestures,
the tears, but it's too late.
You don't want to know a thing any more.
The sudden heaviness of the air,
the nervous haste of the passers-by on Via Nazionale
imply the threat of a storm
and Rome suddenly dons the dark mugginess of summer nights.
Tadeusz is already far away, so far away...
You'll be able to pass through to the other side of the images,
finally traverse them.
If you were more attentive, you would hear a cry of warning.
But you hear nothing.
You know what is left for you to do, you always have...
UBTITLES SUB-TIL Adaptation Joseph Simas