Oriental Elegy

What a strange dream… a stork… a river… an old park… a voice… through the mist, the outline of a house becomes visible. The houses seem to push each other aside, they huddle together, they rock on small waves, and suddenly it looks as if the town is a small island, floating round in the space of an immeasurable ocean… the muffled lapping of the water and the light gusts of ocean wind know this fragile and shaky corner of creation… somewhere in a house, someone at a window lights a feeble lamp, that is extinguished almost at once, but most of the houses remain quiet and shrouded in darkness… such islands disrupt the expanse of the ocean… at any moment, the Forces of Nature, that work on the reconstruction of the earth, without noticing anything, can crush the foundations of this life… the inhabitants who have subjected themselves to this fate, lead their lives with dignity on this sad island… early in the morning they emerge to clean the streets. When they have finished, the mist clears for a short time and then the people start talking to and getting to know each other… that is the habit, the mist is actually hiding that which you desire, that which you love… when a ship is wrecked one night in the storm, the fishermen head out next morning with their nets in search of the corpses of the dead sailors in the breakers and not far from the water they are laid out on the beach and covered with mats… Islands try to imitate the mainland on a small scale. They are not good at it, because they are aware of their isolated position from other civilisations. But mainlands are also really islands, larger islands in the space of the immeasurable ocean… Alexandr Sokurov