Tarkovsky and Don Quijote
Near the end of Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1972 science-fiction masterpiece, Solaris, one witnesses a small and somber birthday party. The attendees are the three surviving members of the space station’s crew: Dr. Snaut (the birthday boy), Dr. Sartorius, and Kris Kelvin, a psychiatrist sent from earth to determine if the mission to the planet Solaris is still viable. With them is Hari, a projection of Kelvin’s late wife generated by the planet and based on Kelvin’s memories of her.
The crew refer to Hari and other apparitions as “guests,” and they remain largely inscrutable if not uncanny. They come when one sleeps. Kelvin kills the first version of Hari, while the second kills herself after the birthday party only to regenerate minutes later. Why does she attempt to end her life? To begin to understand this, it is necessary to examine the birthday party in more detail.
The party takes place in the space station’s library, which is dark and lit mostly with candles. There are books, a chandelier, works of art on the wall, and even stained glass. In fact, it looks much more like an hidalgo’s personal library than a room on a space station. This comparison matters, since a passage from the end of Don Quijote also figures prominently in the scene.
Dr. Snaut shows up 90 minutes late to his party and is already drunk. His entrance suggests Diego Velázquez’s Las meninas, with Kelvin and Hari reflected in the mirror and the door behind Snaut open to a corridor in the space station. It is a striking image, interrupted only by Dr. Sartorius expressing his annoyance at Snaut’s late arrival and Hari moving a candelabra closer to Kelvin. Snaut walks to the table where Kelvin is sitting and asks what he is reading. He grabs the book and calls it “rubbish” before dropping it to the floor. He then walks to a stack of books next to the wall and searches for a particular book. He finds it and starts flipping through the pages.
Referring to the “guests,” he states that they “come at night,” while one is asleep. Their visits are largely inevitable, as he puts it, since “one must sleep sometime.” He then reveals the central problem: “Man has lost the ability to sleep.” As if to explain what he means by this, he hands the book to Kelvin and has him read a passage. It is from chapter 68 of the second volume of Don Quijote. In the passage, Don Quijote wakes up in the middle of the night, sees that Sancho Panza is sound asleep, and wakes him. He asks Sancho how he can sleep so soundly when he is required to whip himself 3,300 times to disenchant Dulcinea. Sancho responds that he is no religious figure to wake in the night to whip himself, and he asks Don Quijote to leave him alone. This doesn’t sit well with Don Quijote, who curses Sancho’s hardened heart. The next passage is a monologue, in which Sancho offers a philosophical statement on sleep. It is the passage that Kelvin reads aloud: “I know only one thing, Señor. When I sleep, I know no fear, no hope, no trouble, no bliss. Blessings on him who invented sleep. The common coin that purchases all things, the balance that levels shepherd and king, fool and wise man. There is only one bad thing about sound sleep. They say it closely resembles death.” Snaut then steps in to finish the passage: “Never before, Sancho, have I heard you speak as elegantly as now.”
Tarkovsky chooses to use only part of Sancho’s monologue in the scene, but the full passage is not much longer. It reads as follows (in Edith Grossman’s 2003 English translation):
I don’t understand that,” replied Sancho. “I only understand that while I’m sleeping I have no fear, or hope, or trouble, or glory; blessed be whoever invented sleep, the mantle that covers all human thought, the food that satisfies hunger, the water that quenches thirst, the fire that warms the cold, the cold that cools down ardor, and, finally, the general coin with which all things are bought, the scale and balance that make the shepherd equal to the king, and the simple man equal to the wise. There is only one defect in sleep, or so I’ve heard, and it is that it resembles death, for there is very little difference between a man who is sleeping and a man who is dead.
[“No entiendo eso,” replicó Sancho. “Solo entiendo que en tanto que duermo ni tengo temor ni esperanza, ni trabajo ni gloria; y bien haya el que inventó el sueño, capa que cubre todos los humanos pensamientos, manjar que quita la hambre, agua que ahuyenta la sed, fuego que calienta el frío, frío que templa el ardor y, finalmente, moneda general con que todas las cosas se compran, balanza y peso que iguala al pastor con el rey y al simple con el discreto. Sola una cosa tiene mala el sueño, según he oído decir, y es que se parece a la muerte, pues de un dormido a un muerto hay muy poca diferencia.”]
What follows from this is not so much that humans have lost the ability to sleep as it is that we no longer can sleep as Sancho describes. Our sleep is not restful or restorative—it brings strange dreams and nightmares. We wake up troubled and unrested. And it is this troubled state that Solaris reflects back to us in its attempts to communicate. It holds up a mirror to us, plumbing the depths of our fractured consciousness as we sleep and looking for a way to connect. The resulting “guest” is uncanny, especially as it pushes the limits of perspective and recollection, as Hari does.
After Kelvin finishes reading, Snaut purposefully finishes the passage with Quijote’s response to Sancho. Their journey together is nearly over (soon Quijote will, as Job’s wife puts it, “curse God and die”), and there is a strong sense that Sancho is no longer subordinate to Quijote, that he has either gained some independence or developed into a kind of mate for his former master. It seems clear that Hari wishes for the same transition. When Sartorius roughly dismisses Hari as a non-human reproduction, she responds: “I am becoming a human being. I can feel just as deeply as you. Believe me. I can already get by without him. I … love him. I am a human being.” In this scene, which features a partial reproduction of Las meninas, a vetting of books in a library, and even the reading of a key passage from the Quijote, it seems reasonable to question whether the similarities between Sancho and Hari are not more than casual.
