Prospero's Speech

Now my charms are all o'erthrown,

And what strength I have's mine own,

Which is most faint. Now 'tis true

I must be here confined by you

Or sent to Naples. Let me not,

Since I have my dukedom got,

And pardoned the deceiver, dwell

In this bare island by your spell;

But release me from my bands

With the help of your good hands.

Gentle breath of yours my sails

Must fill, or else my project fails,

Which was to please. Now I want

Spirits to enforce, art to enchant;

And my ending is despair

Unless I be relieved by prayer,

Which pierces so, that it assaults

Mercy itself, and frees all faults.

As you from crimes would pardoned be,

Let your indulgence set me free'

Prospero's Speech from "The Tempest"


I can't say I'm overwhelmed with any sort of intense sadness for the death of Ingmar Bergman - 89 years is quite a run. Nonetheless, the man's dedication to the medium and his largely unparalleled affinity with artistic and spiritual (Dreyer is only human) validation are more of something that is long to be admired, if not deemed impossible in this day and age. Joe DiMaggio's 56 ain't got nothing on it. And while his films will be endlessly scrutinized, analyzed, and even patronized to mere rhetorics in the decades later none of it will hold any greater thought than those who upon viewing are galvanized by them. It's quite polarizing to note that Death and what we make of such a finality was perhaps his grandest of themes, that all other motifs that incandescently streamed throughout his works complied obediently with that invariable fate. I don't love Ingmar Bergman. I don't really share a lot of what he says; it's not really the point of an artist to make us comply if we sufficiently concern ourself with be experienced. And I don't think his death will make any profound impact on my life, not that he would care or had cared. However, I'll always admire that he was able to do so much and I'm sort of envious in the regard that in subsequent years he could put out legitimate masterpieces when in this day in age we can't even spot consistency in terms of decades from our greatest of directors. And above all, I'll rejoice that he left us so many features that depict the vast parameters and tangents of the human soul, a oeuvre filled with quiet romanticism and underrated humor that only registers once we accept "flaw".

"I want to confess as best I can, but my heart is void. The void is a mirror. I see my face and feel loathing and horror. My indifference to men has shut me out. I live now in a world of ghosts, a prisoner in my dreams. "

Antonius Block in The Seventh Seal