Synaesthesia of Sergei Parajanov’s Works (a Director’s Musical and Artistic Consciousness)

Abstract

The article focuses on the possibilities of examining the works of Soviet director Sergei Parajanov in the aspect of synaesthesia — a phenomenon studied by musical psychology, the re-expression of information received through one perceptual channel (such as, for instance, the visual) into information actualized through another channel (such as, for instance, the auditory). Making use of a methodology that incorporates biographical and comparative analysis, interpretation and intertextuality, the author aims at drawing the attention of synaesthesia analysts of different types of art towards Parajanov’s most representative works: the feature films The Flower on the Stone, The Color of Pomegranates, Shadows of the Forgotten Ancestors, The Legend of the Suram Fortress, and Ashik Kerib. The system of argumentation of the article is founded on statements by of the director himself as well as materials presented in, Kora Tsereteli’s monographic study, Parajanov’s scripts for feature and documentary films that have never been released (Miracle in Odense based on Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales, Intermezzo based on the short story of the same name by Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky, Pectoral, and The Demon based on Mikhail Lermontov’s poem), as well as the libretto for the unrealized ballet The Mother. The author’s special focus is on Parajanov’s short story Swan Lake and the film with the same name by Yuri Ilyenko, based on it. A comparative analysis of the verbal source and its film adaptation reveals how the creators work with the dominant colors — white and black — for both the story and the film. The author of the present study discerns in these particular objects of verbal discourse and screen art a kind of reverberation of the ballet Swan Lake by Pyotr Tchaikovsky.

Keywords: Sergei Parajanov, synaesthesia of musical and artistic consciousness, Yuri Ilyenko, Swan Lake, Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Virko Baley