A Companion to Experimental Cinema

1st Edition Federico Windhausen

Visit to download the full and correct content document:
https://ebookmeta.com/product/a-companion-to-experimental-cinema-1st-edition-fede
rico-windhausen/
More products digital (pdf, epub, mobi) instant
download maybe you interests ...

Filmspanism A Critical Companion to the Study of

Spanish Cinema 1st Edition Juan F. Egea

https://ebookmeta.com/product/filmspanism-a-critical-companion-
to-the-study-of-spanish-cinema-1st-edition-juan-f-egea/

The Routledge Companion to European Cinema 1st Edition

Gábor Gergely Susan Hayward

https://ebookmeta.com/product/the-routledge-companion-to-
european-cinema-1st-edition-gabor-gergely-susan-hayward/

The Routledge Companion to Caste and Cinema in India

1st Edition Joshil K. Abraham

https://ebookmeta.com/product/the-routledge-companion-to-caste-
and-cinema-in-india-1st-edition-joshil-k-abraham/

A Companion to Television 2nd Edition

https://ebookmeta.com/product/a-companion-to-television-2nd-
edition/
A Companion to Impressionism 1st Edition André
Dombrowski

https://ebookmeta.com/product/a-companion-to-impressionism-1st-
edition-andre-dombrowski/

A Companion to Steven Spielberg 1st Edition Nigel

Morris

https://ebookmeta.com/product/a-companion-to-steven-
spielberg-1st-edition-nigel-morris/

A Companion to African Literatures 1st Edition Olakunle

George

https://ebookmeta.com/product/a-companion-to-african-
literatures-1st-edition-olakunle-george/

A Brief History of Fascist Lies 1st Edition Federico

Finchelstein

https://ebookmeta.com/product/a-brief-history-of-fascist-
lies-1st-edition-federico-finchelstein-2/

A Brief History of Fascist Lies 1st Edition Federico

Finchelstein

https://ebookmeta.com/product/a-brief-history-of-fascist-
lies-1st-edition-federico-finchelstein/
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Contributors
1 Introduction
References
Notes
Part I: Overviews
2 Poetry and “Film Poetics”
What Is a Poetic Model?
Modernism, Cinema, and Poetry
The American Avant‐Garde: Deren and After Deren
Poetry and Cinema: Further Footholds
References
Notes
3 Cinematic Specificity, Intermediality, and the European
Avant‐Garde
References
Notes
4 Expanded Cinema
Introduction
The First Wave: Liberation
The Second Wave: Identity Crisis
The Third Wave: Expanded Cinema Re‐vis(it)ed
Live Cinema and Expanded Exhibition
Conclusion
 References
Notes
5 Sketches of Spain
Spanish Experimental Cinema: Problems of Definition,
Questions of Existence
First Explorations: 1927–1960
Second Interventions: 1960–1983
Third Revisions: 1987–2018
Final Remarks
References
Notes
6 The Underground and the Institution
Incommensurability and Its Possible Translations
Howls, Chiseling, and Empty Screens
Expats and Visitors: Toward an International Landscape
Passeurs and Passerbys
Galleries and Dandies
Transmitting Knowledge and Filmmaking: Vincennes
“A” History of Cinema According to the Museum
Polycentrism and Diaspora—After the End of “a” History
Epilogue—Wishful Thinking
References
Notes
7 Hollywood as Home Movies
References
Notes
8 Nothing Clarifies an Image Like Another Image
Enigmatic Dislocations
Fictional Origins
 Ongoing Investigations
Material Deaths
Affective Histories
Incongruous Archives
Future Returns
References
Additional Film References
Notes
9 Disquieting Soundtracks
Another History of Film Sound
The Aesthetics of Experimental Sound
References
Notes
10 Music Visualization and Medium Expansion
A History
Key Categories: Visual Music and Synesthetic Film
Medium Expansion: Materials and Techniques
A Closer Look: Three Contemporary Digital Animations
Concluding Remarks
References
Notes
Part II: Case Studies
11 Collage, Montage and Assemblage
The Dynamic of Montage
From the New York Film‐Makers' Cooperative to “Film as
Film”
Dissonance Between Images—Instantaneity in
Markopoulos' Films
Zeno's Arrow Paradox and Bergson's Kaleidoscope
 The Ideogrammatic Model—The Frame as Hieroglyphic
Sign
Markopoulos' Montage Theory—An Explosion of Clusters
of Frames
Twice a Man and the Discontinuous Movement of
Thought
Overprinting, Palimpsests and Logograms
Persistent Images and Memory Traces
References
Notes
12 Experiment, Cybernetics, and the Formal Film in Britain
Drama in a Wide Media Environment
Cybernetic Serendipity
Pedagogy, Process, Puzzle
References
Notes
13 Agitation and Involvement
Introduction
Experiencing Wavelength
Alterities and Disturbances in Come Out
Conclusion (by way of an Addendum)
References
Notes
14 Rebellion of the Body
Hijikata Tatsumi
Expo '70: Birth and the Midori‐kan Pavilion
Conclusion
References
Notes
15 Feminist Filmmaking from the Ground Up
 Formalism and Feminism: Yvonne Rainer
Art/Film Spaces and Feminism: Barbara Hammer
Collaboration and Feminism: Peggy Ahwesh
Audience (Barbara Hammer, 1983)
The Man Who Envied Women (Yvonne Rainer, 1985)
The Deadman (Peggy Ahwesh and Keith Sanborn, 1989)
References
Notes
16 Barbara Hammer, Optical Printing, and a Theory of Touch
A Theory of Touch
Optical Touch: Barbara Hammer and the Optical Printer
Conclusion: Hammer in Context
References
Notes
Part III: Exchanges
17 Approaching India
References
Notes
18 On the Visibility of Women's Experimental Cinema
Introduction
A Conversation with Birgit Hein
A Conversation with Ute Aurand
Concluding Reflections
References
Notes
19 “Where Are Those Lines?”
Challenging Forms and Containers: Interviews on
Experimental Ethnography with Sky Hopinka, Naeem
Mohaiemen and Deborah Stratman
References
 20 Platform, Showcase, Gathering, Exchange
2021 Postscript
Festivals Referenced
Notes
Index
End User License Agreement

List of Illustrations
Chapter 2
Figure 2.1 Ballet mécanique
Figure 2.2 Gently Down the Stream
Chapter 5
Figure 5.1 Tactile Vision experiments in José Val del Omar's
Fuego en Castil...
Figure 5.2 Time and body manipulations in Ivá n Zulueta's El
mensaje es facia...
Figure 5.3 The erasure of Thomas Edison's May Irwin Kiss
(1896) through mult...
Figure 5.4 Dancing ghosts in Dress rehearsal for utopia
(Andrés Duque, 2012)...
Chapter 6
Figure 6.1 Jackie Raynal, Deux fois (Twice Upon a Time)
(1968).
Chapter 7
Figure 7.1 Michael Wallin, Decodings (1988).
Figure 7.2 George Kuchar, Video Album 5/The Thursday People
(1987).
Figure 7.3 Cheryl Dunye, The Watermelon Woman (1996).
Chapter 8
Figure 8.1 Found Film Flashes (1973) by Coleen Fitzgibbon.
Figure 8.2 Sacris Pulso (2008) by Ana Vaz.
Figure 8.3 The Flamethrowers (1989), produced by Owen
O'Toole in collaborati...
Figure 8.4 Movie Tote (2007) by Ephraim Asili.
Chapter 9
Figure 9.1 Isidore Isou, Traité de bave et d'eternité (1951)....
Figure 9.2 Jack Smith, Flaming Creatures (1963).
Figure 9.3 Bruce Baillie, Castro Street (1966).
Figure 9.4 Guy Sherwin, Optical Sound (2007).
Chapter 10
Figure 10.1 Masanobu Hiraoka, L'Oeil du Cyclone (2015).
Figure 10.2 Nikita Diakur, Ugly (2017).
Figure 10.3 Max Hattler, Divisional Articulations (2017).
Chapter 12
Figure 12.1 William Raban and Chris Welsby, River Yar (1971).
Figure 12.2 Malcolm Le Grice, Threshold (1973).
Figure 12.3 Jenny Okun, Rounds (1977).
Chapter 13
Figure 13.1 Michael Snow, Wavelength (1967).
Figure 13.2 Narcisa Hirsch, Come Out (c. 1974).
Figure 13.3 Narcisa Hirsch, Taller/Workshop (1973–1974).
Chapter 15
Figure 15.1 Barbara Hammer, Audience (1983).
Figure 15.2 Yvonne Rainer, The Man Who Envied Women
(1985).
 Figure 15.3 Promotional postcard for Peggy Ahwesh and Keith
Sanborn, The Dea...
Chapter 16
Figure 16.1 Barbara Hammer.
Figure 16.2 Barbara Hammer with a JK optical printer.
Chapter 19
Figure 19.1 Sky Hopinka, Dislocation Blues (2017).
Figure 19.2 Naeem Mohaiemen, Afsan's Long Day (The Young
Man Was, Part 2)...
Figure 19.3 Deborah Stratman, The Illinois Parables (2016).
A Companion to Experimental
Cinema

Edited by

Federico Windhausen
This edition first published 2023
© 2023 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by law.
Advice on how to obtain permission to reuse material from this title is available at
http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions.
The right of Federico Windhausen to be identified as the author of the editorial
material in this work has been asserted in accordance with law.
Registered Office
John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, USA
Editorial Office
The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, UK
For details of our global editorial offices, customer services, and more information
about Wiley products visit us at www.wiley.com.
Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats and by print‐on‐
demand. Some content that appears in standard print versions of this book may not
be available in other formats.
Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty
While the publisher and authors have used their best efforts in preparing this work,
they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or
completeness of the contents of this work and specifically disclaim all warranties,
including without limitation any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for
a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales
representatives, written sales materials or promotional statements for this work. The
fact that an organization, website, or product is referred to in this work as a citation
and/or potential source of further information does not mean that the publisher and
authors endorse the information or services the organization, website, or product
may provide or recommendations it may make. This work is sold with the
understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering professional services.
The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation.
You should consult with a specialist where appropriate. Further, readers should be
aware that websites listed in this work may have changed or disappeared between
when this work was written and when it is read. Neither the publisher nor authors
shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but
not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages.
Library of Congress Cataloging‐in‐Publication Data
Names: Windhausen, Federico, 1973‐ editor.
Title: A companion to experimental cinema / edited by Federico Windhausen.
Description: Hoboken, NJ : Wiley‐Blackwell, 2023. | Includes bibliographical
references.
Identifiers: LCCN 2022027185 (print) | LCCN 2022027186 (ebook) | ISBN
9781119107903 (cloth) | ISBN 9781119107910 (adobe pdf) | ISBN 9781119107927
(epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Experimental films–History and criticism.
Classification: LCC PN1995.9.E96 C66 2023 (print) | LCC PN1995.9.E96 (ebook) |
DDC 791.4309–dc23/eng/20220809
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022027185
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022027186
Cover Design: Wiley
Cover Images: © Wylius/Getty Images; pashabo/Shutterstock
Contributors
Erika Balsom is Reader in Film Studies at King's College London and
the author of the book TEN SKIES (2021).
François Bovier is a senior lecturer in the Department of Film History
and Aesthetics, and he is a research fellow at the Lausanne University of
Art and Design (ECAL). He is the co‐founder of the journal Décadrages,
and he is the author of H. D. and the Pool group: from literary avant‐
gardes to “visionary” cinema (L’Â ge d’Homme, 2009). He has led
different research projects founded by the Swiss National Science
Foundation and the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Western
Switzerland. He is also an independent curator, particularly in the field
of moving images.
Enrico Camporesi oversees the research activities of the Centre
Pompidou film department. His book Futurs de l’obsolescence
(Mimésis, 2018) is about restoring artists’ films.
Josetxo Cerdán Los Arcos is professor of film and media studies in the
department of Communication at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid and
a member of the research group Tecmerin. Since September 2018, he is
the director of Filmoteca Españ ola (the Spanish film archive). Cerdá n
was the director of the Punto de Vista ‐ Navarra International
Documentary Film Festival (2010‐2013) or the development of film
programs for various national and international institutions such as the
Locarno International Film Festival (2009), Anthology Film Archives
(2013), and Lincoln Center (2014).
Jon Davies is a curator, writer, and PhD Candidate in Art History at
Stanford University. He has held curatorial positions at The Power Plant
Contemporary Art Gallery, Oakville Galleries, and the Art Gallery of
Ontario. His book Trash: A Queer Film Classic about the Paul Morrissey
film was published by Arsenal Pulp Press in 2009, and his anthology
More Voice‐Over: Colin Campbell Writings was published by Concordia
University Press in 2021.
Miguel Fernández Labayen is Associate Professor in the Department
of Communication at Carlos III University of Madrid and member of the
Tecmerin research group and the University Institute of Spanish
Cinema at the same university. He has curated experimental film and
video programs for S(8) Mostra de Cinema Periferico, the Seville
European Film Festival and the Centre de Cultura Contemporà nia in
Barcelona (cccb) among others. Together with John Sundholm
(Stockholm Univesity) he is working on a research project on the
circulation of the New American Cinema and the emergence of
experimental film cultures in Europe.
Jason Fox is the Founding Editor of World Records. He has taught Media
Studies at Princeton University, Vassar College, and CUNY Hunter
College.
Lalitha Gopalan is an associate professor in the Department of Radio‐
Television‐Film and affiliate faculty in the Department of Asian Studies
and South Asia Institute at University of Texas at Austin. Her essays and
books include Cinemas Dark and Slow in Digital India (2021), Cinema of
Interruptions: Action Genres in Contemporary Indian Cinema (2002) and
Bombay (2005); and the edited volume The Cinema of India (2010). Her
current book project explores various experimental film and video
practices across different locations globally.
Shai Heredia is a filmmaker and curator. In 2003, she founded
Experimenta, the international festival for experimental cinema in
India. She has curated experimental film programs at film festivals and
art venues worldwide, and she is currently a member of the curatorial
team of Forum Expanded (Berlinale). Her film I Am Micro (2012) co‐
directed with Shumona Goel, has screened widely in Europe, North
America, and Asia, and received a National Award from the Government
of India. Heredia & Goel’s’s most recent film An Old Dog’s Diary (2015),
won the Best Short Film award at the BFI London International Film
Festival. As an arts grant maker with the India Foundation for the Arts
(2006‐2011), Heredia set up the curatorship and extending arts
practice grant programs. She is currently based in Bangalore, India
where she teaches at the Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology
and runs Experimenta India.
Shanay Jhaveri is Associate Curator, International Modern and
Contemporary Art, at The Metropolian Museum of Art in New York City.
He is a graduate of Brown University and holds a PhD from the Royal
College of Art. His recent exhibitions include Companionable Silences
(2013) at the Palais de Tokyo, Everything we do is music (2017) at the
Drawing Room, and film programs for the Dhaka Art Summit, the Film
at Lincoln Center, and Tate Modern. His edited books include Western
Artists and India: Creative Inspirations in Art and Design, Outsider Films
on India: 1950–1990, and America: Films from Elsewhere. At the
Metropolian Museum, Jhaveri organized the 2018 Roof Commission,
Huma Bhabha: We Come in Peace, and curated Phenomenal Nature:
Mrinalini Mukherjee at The Met Breuer in 2019.
Sarah Keller is Professor of Art and Cinema Studies at the University of
Massachusetts Boston. She is the founder and organizer of the Boston
Cinema/Media Seminar, a coalition of Boston area institutions that
hosts presentations throughout the academic year. Her research
focuses on experimental form, film experience, and feminist issues in
cinema. She is the author of Maya Deren: Incomplete Control (Columbia
UP, 2014), Anxious Cinephilia: Pleasure and Peril at the Movies
(Columbia UP, 2020), and Barbara Hammer: Pushing Out of the Frame
(Wayne State UP, 2021).
Chris Kennedy is an independent filmmaker, film programmer and
writer based in Toronto. He is the Executive Director of the Liaison of
Independent Filmmakers of Toronto. He programmed for the Images
Festival from 2003‐06, Pleasure Dome from 2000‐06 and for TIFF
Cinematheque’s The Free Screen/Wavelengths from 2012‐2019. He co‐
founded and co‐programmed Early Monthly Segments from 2009 to
2018. His short experimental films have screened at over two hundred
film festivals worldwide and have been featured in solo shows at the
Canadian Film Institute, Los Angeles Film Forum, Nam June Paik Art
Center, the La Plata Semana del Film Experimental and the Pacific Film
Archive. His film Watching the Detectives won the Ken Burns Award for
the Best of the Festival at the Ann Arbor Film Festival in 2018. He has
presented the work of others in Belgium, Egypt, Germany, the US, and
Canada. He holds an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute.
Erica Levin is the author of The Channeled Image: Art and Media
Politics After Television (University of Chicago Press, 2022). Her writing
has appeared in Camera Obscura, Media‐N, World Picture, Millennium
Film Journal, Discourse, and the collections Carolee Schneemann:
Unforgivable; The Routledge Companion to Cinema & Gender; Hybrid
Practices: Art in Collaboration with Science and Technology in the Long
1960s; and Artists Respond: American Art and the Vietnam War, 1965‐
1975. She is an Assistant Professor of Art History and Film Studies at
Ohio State University.
Michele Pierson is Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at King’s College
London. She is the author of a book on special effects and co‐editor of
The Cinema of Ken Jacobs (2011). Her essays on experimental film
appear in publications such as Discourse: Journal for Theoretical Studies
in Media and Culture, Film History, Screen, The Moving Image, and
Millennium Film Journal. She is working on a longer research project
titled, The Accessibility of the Avant‐Garde: Views from Experimental
Cinema.
John Powers is Assistant Professor in Film & Media Studies at
Washington University in St. Louis. His research explores small‐gauge
media technologies within the context of the history and theory of
experimental moving image media. His writing has appeared in Cinema
Journal, Screen, October, and Discourse, among other publications. His
first monograph is forthcoming from Oxford University Press.
Lucy Reynolds has lectured and published extensively. Her research
focuses on questions of the moving image, feminism, political space,
and collective practice. She edited the anthology Women Artists,
Feminism and the Moving Image, co‐edited Artists’ Moving Image in
Britain since 1989 and co‐edits the Moving Image Review and Art
Journal (MIRAJ). She co‐ordinates the PhD programme for the Centre
for Research in Education, Art and Media (CREAM) at the University of
Westminster, and runs the MRES in Creative Practice. She is a Paul
Mellon Centre for British Art Mid‐Career Fellow 2022. As an artist, her
ongoing sound work A Feminist Chorus has been heard at the Glasgow
International Festival, the Wysing Arts Centre, The Grand Action
cinema, Paris and Grand Union galleries, Birmingham.
Julian Ross is a researcher, curator and writer based in Amsterdam. He
is an Assistant Professor at Leiden University Centre for the Arts in
Society (LUCAS). He was a programmer at International Film Festival
Rotterdam (2015‐22) and a selection committee member at Locarno
Film Festival (2019‐20). He has curated film programs, exhibitions, and
performances at Tate Modern, Art Institute of Chicago, Kunsthal
Rotterdam, Eye Filmmuseum, Tokyo Photographic Art Museum and
British Film Institute. In 2021, he was guest programmer at Singapore
International Film Festival, film curator at Other Futures, and co‐
curator of the film program at Tallinn Photomonth Biennale.
Sylvia Schedelbauer was born in Tokyo and first moved to Berlin in
1993, where she has been based since. She studied at the University of
Arts Berlin (with Katharina Sieverding). Her films negotiate the space
between broader historical narratives and personal, psychological
realms mainly through poetic manipulations of found and archival
footage. Her films have been screened at: Berlinale, Toronto
International Film Festival, International Short Film Festival
Oberhausen, London Film Festival, New York Film Festival. Awards
include the VG Bildkunst Award, the German Film Critics’ Award, and
the Gus Van Sant Award for Best Experimental Film. Schedelbauer was
a 2019/2020 arts fellow at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute.
Juan A. Suárez teaches American Literature and American Studies at
the Universidad de Murcia, Spain. He is the author of the books Bike
Boys, Drag Queens, and Superstars (Indiana University Press), Pop
Modernism: Noise and the Reinvention of the Everyday (University of
Illinois Press), and Jim Jarmusch (University of Illinois Press), and co‐
editor of several volumes. Recent essays in English have appeared in
L’Atalante, American Studies in Scandinavia, Framework, Screen, and
JCMS: Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, and in edited collections
such as The Sound and Music of Experimental Film, The Oxford
Handbook of Queer Cinema, and The Films of Andy Warhol Catalogue
Raisonné, 1963‐1965. He is completing a book titled Experimental Film
and Queer Materiality.
Paul Taberham is a Senior Lecturer at the Arts University
Bournemouth. He is the author of Lessons in Perception: The Avant‐
Garde Filmmaker as Practical Psychologist (2018), and the co‐editor of
Cognitive Media Theory (2014) and Experimental Animation: From
Analogue to Digital (2019). He has also published articles for several
edited collections and journals, and is a fellow of the Society for
Cognitive Studies of the Moving Image.
Eduardo Thomas is a research‐based visual artist and film curator
whose main interest lies in the many ways that our reality can be
constructed/explained/experienced through cinema. He is a founding
member of SOMA (MX) and collaborated as film curator in establishing
exhibition and discursive platforms such as Ambulante Film Festival
(MX) and the Berlin Documentary Forum (DE). In 2013, he was
awarded a research grant by The Japan Foundation to inquire into the
relationship between the Shinto‐Buddhist concept of “ma” and
experimental film practices in Japan. Currently, he splits his time as
faculty for the School of Film/Video at CalArts, serves as co‐curator of
the film series Film at RedCat, and is a PhD candidate at the
Department of Visual Arts of UCSD, where he is pursuing a degree in
Art History, Theory and Criticism with an Art Practice concentration.
Malcolm Turvey is Sol Gittleman Professor in the Art and Art History
Department and director of the Film and Media Studies Program at
Tufts University. He is an editor of the journal October. His books
include Doubting Vision: Film and the Revelationist Tradition (2008),
The Filming of Modern Life: European Avant‐Garde Film of the 1920s
(2011), and Play Time: Jacques Tati and Comedic Modernism (2019).
Jonathan Walley is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of
Cinema, Denison University. His scholarship on avant‐garde film and
expanded cinema has appeared in October, The Journal of Aesthetics and
Art Criticism, The Moving Image Review and Art Journal, Millennium Film
Journal, and The Velvet Light Trap, and in numerous collections of
writings on avant‐garde art and cinema. He is the author of Cinema
Expanded: Avant‐Garde Film in the Age of Intermedia (2020).
Federico Windhausen is a film historian and curator based in Buenos
Aires. He is writing a book on Argentine experimental cinema that
covers a period of filmmaking activity dating from the late sixties to the
early eighties.
Koya Yamashita has been the festival director of Image Forum Festival
since 2001 and a programmer of Theater Image Forum in Shibuya,
Tokyo since 2005. He has also been the guest programmer/curator for
many film and media art festivals and film events in and outside of
Japan.
1
Introduction
Federico Windhausen

In contemporary discussions, as in the past, invoking experimental

cinema often involves assuming a rhetorical position with regard to its
apparent relevance or obsolescence. For those who see experimental
cinema (or its terminological counterpart, avant‐garde cinema) as a
thriving area of moving image culture, its enduring value might be
located in any number of interrelated elements, including its perceived
aesthetic and formal innovations, the kind of subject matter it has
tended to value, its alternative approaches to imaging technologies, its
links to countercultural communities, and the diversity of ideas that it
has contributed to the theorization of the moving image. More skeptical
observers view the very notion of experimental cinema as an outdated
one, whether due to the conceptual limitations of a term such as
“experimental” or as a consequence of cultural transformations, such as
the apparent dissolution of the conceptual, artistic, and technical
boundaries that once seemed to divide experimental cinema from the
art world, or from independent and arthouse cinemas. This volume of
new texts asks what experimental cinema was, is, and might become. In
doing so, it addresses itself to the communities whose disagreements
and exchanges have produced a rich field of discussion, debate, and
inquiry, one that has often encompassed and bridged the interests of
filmmakers, academics, and programmers, among others. In addition to
providing detailed historical accounts of practices and practitioners
and extended analyses of specific films and texts, this collection also
provides a contemporary view of the ongoing process of
understanding, characterizing, contesting, and shaping experimental
cinema.
In this introduction, in lieu of any attempt at a comprehensive
definition, a global history of experimental cinema, or a general account
of its trajectory as the subject of academic studies, I focus on a
significant scholarly development, a move toward what can be called
“contexts of collectivity”. This expansion in scholarship has helped to
shape much contemporary academic writing, even if only as a set of
premises and interests that are more often assumed than elaborated
explicitly. In what follows, I offer a preliminary sketch of one of many
possible prehistories to the considerations of experimental cinema
included in this collection, in the hope of illuminating some of the ideas
that motivate how this diverse cultural field is studied today.
***
In the United States and parts of Western Europe, the organizational
and promotional efforts of filmmakers such as Maya Deren and Jonas
Mekas and their international colleagues, along with the work of a wide
array of film clubs and societies and the criticism of impassioned
advocates such as Parker Tyler, molded postwar perceptions of the
nature and objectives of experimental or avant‐garde film until at least
the late 1960s. In the 1970s, however, some of the most active debates
about this type of cinema—in print and at conferences and festivals, in
the U.S. and Great Britain in particular—became increasingly
influenced by academic professionals. A comparison of two instances of
scholarly position‐taking, one from the beginning of the 1970s and the
other from the end, can bring into relief some of the contours of a larger
shift, a change in the objectives, values, and assumptions that impacted
how experimental cinema was discussed and subjected to cultural
analysis.
In 1971, P. Adams Sitney gave a series of lectures about the corpus of
American avant‐garde films he had been writing about and presenting
internationally for a number of years. His talks amounted to an
overview of his developing interpretations of the work of filmmakers
such as Maya Deren, Stan Brakhage, and Michael Snow. In his first
lecture, Sitney aligned himself explicitly with aspects of the Russian
formalist tradition, and he described his project as the pursuit of a
“general theory of the avant‐garde film,” a “systematic morphology,” and
a “paradigm of forms” (with “forms” referring to genres, categories, or
types within avant‐garde film). Quoting the Russian formalist critic
Victor Shklovsky, and implicitly disclosing one of his areas of agreement
with the literary scholar Harold Bloom, Sitney suggested that his
theoretical interests are oriented toward a diachronic view: “The work
of art arises from a background of other works and through association
with them” (Sitney, 1972, p. 5). Yet a morphological theory can do more
than simply explain how a new form develops out of an old form; it can
show that when the new aesthetic paradigm opposes itself to a
previously‐dominant one, the later constellation still retains and
affirms its links to the past.1 Making this idea one of the foundational
tenets of his scholarship, Sitney went on to locate the coherence and
meaning of the American avant‐garde cinema across a series of textual
connections and dialogues, centering his writing around biographically‐
oriented interpretations of the films he deemed historically and
aesthetically significant. Expanding his purview to include a long
timeline of Western modernity, he also argued for the persistence in the
present of an established model of artistic subjectivity, rooted in the
literature of the Romantics and manifesting itself ineluctably in the
ideas and films of a select group of experimental filmmakers.
By the end of the decade, other theoretical agendas in the discipline of
film studies had become more vocal and prominent. In a pair of articles
published in the journal Screen, two members of the Camera Obscura
collective, Constance Penley and Janet Bergstrom, articulated some of
those newer concerns when they deplored various of the critical,
curatorial, and institutional biases and blind spots in the culture of
American avant‐garde cinema, including the lack of dialogue or
involvement with the forms of ideological critique that were being
advanced in recent theoretical writing and through “radical”
filmmaking. Invested in a version of film studies that aligned itself with
feminism, psychoanalysis, semiotics, and Marxist theories of culture,
the Camera Obscura authors laid out what they found lacking in the
typical critical responses to experimental cinema:
 American avant‐garde film criticism … which though it seems like a
methodological hodge‐podge, is nonetheless unified through the
priority given to formal description and the total absence of
reference to film as a discursive practice. It is this combination of
characteristics which permit one to call it formalist: a film's
structure and formal properties are described step by step, outside
any consideration of audience, social context, or the operations by
which meaning is produced by and for the spectator.
(Bergstrom & Penley, 1978, pp. 124–125)

As the passage indicates, theirs was more than a reaction against the
prevalence of close textual analysis: it was a bid for a change of course,
in the direction of different values and ideas (including those of other
theorists, such as Jacques Lacan and Jean‐Louis Baudry). It was also a
call for writers and programmers to pay closer attention to an
alternative selection of films and filmmakers. Bergstrom, for example,
explained that her version of the political avant‐garde included both
arthouse and experimental film, and she named Yvonne Rainer, Chantal
Akerman, and Marguerite Duras as filmmakers whose cinematic work
was “suggesting possible approaches to the question ‘who speaks’
when what is at stake is the woman's voice/image” (p. 126).2
In the Camera Obscura texts, a number of existing academic
ideologemes found a prominent articulation and affirmation: the
alignment of the study of the avant‐garde with theoretical orthodoxies
of that particular moment, including, as Bergstrom put it, a focus on
“the entire process of signification” (Bergstrom et al., 1979, p. 127),
requiring a type of analysis that could be less narrowly formalist and
rooted in more broad‐based claims about culture and society; the
resistance to an institutionally‐entrenched canon of films and
filmmakers; and the imperative to recognize the place of marginalized
subjects and communities within this cinema. For some academic
writers, these concerns seemed to be leading inevitably to a
hermeneutics of suspicion, often fixed to presumptive theories
(Metzian, Althusserian, and so on) about ideology and human nature.
But for other researchers, to insist on a critique of canon formation and
to focus more decisively on identity formations was to participate in a
shift—already underway—toward less rigid, more inclusive construals
of experimental and avant‐garde cinemas, a move also signaled by the
reference to audience, social context, and meaning‐making operations
in the passage quoted above.
An emerging interest in the discourses that underpin and are produced
within experimental cinema can be detected in William Wees's concise
itemization, from 1984, of the “historically accumulated meanings” of
the idea of avant‐garde film, a survey from which specifiable formal or
aesthetic features are entirely absent:
1) an oppositional stance vis‐a‐vis the social and artistic
“establishment”; 2) a seemingly compulsive urge to explore new
models of artistic expression—in a word, experimentalism; and 3) a
claim to being able to anticipate the future, to being always “in
advance.”
(Wees, 1984, p. 7)

As in numerous other attempts to pinpoint this phenomenon, here the

stress is placed on attitudes, ideas, and assertions (“stance … urge …
claim”) and hence on the notional aspects of this cinema. Rather than
discuss key organizational and institutional structures, Wees cast his
overview in the broad theoretical terms common throughout the 1980s
and 1990s, decades in which the scholarly writing on individual films
and filmmakers frequently invoked wide‐ranging historical narratives
and theories about postmodernism and the neo‐avant‐garde
(Mellencamp, 1990). Yet a more fine‐grained type of historical
examination was also being developed, in evidence in at least two
major studies of the late 1980s and early 1990s—one being an
inclusive account of the 1960s American avant‐garde and its
relationship to both independent and industrial cinemas (James, 1989),
another a feminist study of women experimental filmmakers associated
with the postwar New York film scene (Rabinovitz, 1991). Without
steering entirely clear of polemics, such studies did provide a greater
degree of historical detail when considering how experimental cinema
was imbricated in the politics of its cultural moment.
For the writer seeking to look beyond the idea of “artistic expression,”
an alternative approach to scholarship would need to take seriously a
wider array of the cultural activities, artifacts, and ideas that emerge
from, are proximate to, and shape experimental cinema. In 2005, Paul
Arthur provided a telling indicator of a broadening of scholarly
interests in a “synoptic sketch” of postwar “montage strategies” in
American avant‐garde film, an account quite similar to Sitney's
morphology (which Arthur mentions but labels “teleological”). Arthur's
chronological narrative characterized various types of experimental
films according to their editing styles, each said to be motivated by a
dominant “logic” and linked to particular meanings, and he cast the
1970s as a moment of “stalemate” in which filmmakers were caught
between “polarities of expressivist/rationalist, maximalist/minimalist”
approaches to montage. But despite Arthur's own further development
of that type of historicization in various articles, interweaving aesthetic
decision‐making, motivating ideologies, and cultural contexts in his
analyses, he also took issue, polemically, with the work of those critics,
scholars, and curators of earlier eras for whom a predominantly
aesthetic history might have been a sufficient introduction to postwar
American experimental film. Arguing for the primacy of practices that
do not directly or principally determine audiovisual content, he denied
the aesthetic dimension of avant‐garde cinema its usual central status,
asserting that the films themselves
merit the epithet “avant‐garde” not because of reciprocal or
contrasting attitudes toward cinema, as evidenced in themes and
formal designs, and not because of telling interventions in, or
dialogues with, the tidal flow of avant‐garde stylistics. From a
contemporary perspective, this activity is defined by the system
through which projects are financed, completed, exhibited, and
promoted.
(Arthur, 2005, p. xv)

Arthur mentioned Maya Deren as a filmmaker whose “efforts ‘off the

screen”’ (promoting, screening, and discussing experimental cinema)
have come to “appear inseparable from the radiant images she conjured
on screen.” Thus reconfigured, the experimentalism that Wees
understood in relation to the expressiveness of the filmmaker could be
broadened, allowing for the study of a variety of pursuits as essential to
this culture as the films themselves, including the search for “new
models” of participation at all levels of this culture.
As the example of Deren illustrates, among the models being tested and
implemented in the United States after World War II was the avant‐
garde filmmaker as inventor and promoter of a public persona. The
construction of this figure was in keeping with the typically
individualist, self‐directed nature of filmmaking practices in
experimental cinema, and yet its development also served to connect
filmmakers to groups, organizations, and circuits of exchange. The
recognition and examination of such interrelationships has become, in
the past 15 years or so, an increasingly important area of sustained
inquiry, running parallel and intersecting with the long‐evident
predilection in criticism and scholarship for presenting the
experimental filmmaker as an auteur. Dating from around the time
Arthur's text was published, David James's chronicle of Los Angeles‐
based “minor cinema,” for instance, asserted that “almost always avant‐
garde films emerge from social movements, from identity groups,
subcultures, and the like” (James, 2005, p. 15). Including figures from
the canonical American avant‐garde but also many other lesser‐known
participants, the alternative cinemas that James gathered together
under the term “minor” cohere around the politicization of sex, gender,
and ethnicity, and he regarded their search for a new “social function or
usefulness” for art and cinema, after the mid‐1970s, as a marked
challenge to earlier cinematic manifestations of “aesthetic formalism”
(James, 2005, p. 13).
For James, making films and attending screenings are “rituals by which
the group invents and understands itself, communicates with others,
extends its influence, and makes new recruits” (p. 15). His use of the
term ritual suggests the importance of patterned activities, of those
repeated efforts through which particular values can be acted upon and
recognized intersubjectively. The films themselves comprise mediated
acts of self‐invention and self‐understanding, as critical analyses of
their content can make apparent; yet it is also evident that the
significance of a particular ritual associated with an alternative film
culture can be ascribed values that are not intrinsically tied to the
content of any one film or program of films. Social and cultural
meanings and values can be introduced and reinforced through much
more than onscreen content: they are also present in the continued
existence and functional iterability of collectively‐experienced events,
including the organization of screenings that allow filmmakers and
audiences to participate in a film culture in different ways. Emphasizing
that the rituals of a film culture are grounded in specific regions, sites,
and geographies, James identified the “apparatuses” that “mediate
between a given minor cinema and its spatiality and allow it to be
produced”:
production (e.g., equipment sales and rental houses, laboratories,
and co‐operatives that make equipment available to beginning
filmmakers, media arts centers, and community‐outreach
workshops); consumption (e.g., distribution organizations,
promotional mechanisms, and screening organizations, including art
theaters and groups formed specifically for this purpose); and
suffusing these, ideological apparatuses (e.g., museums, archives,
and libraries; journals, magazines, and lectures).
(James, 2005, p. 17)

In early critical writing on experimental cinema, the individual

experimental filmmaker was a figure who was frequently considered in
isolation or only alongside a very limited selection of familiar
practitioners. But as the case‐study analysis of one or more mediating
apparatuses has become an established scholarly genre, and as more
national overviews have explored the crucial roles played by
organizations and institutions of culture, the filmmaker has been
shown to function within and move across multiple arenas of culture,
including the platforms and structures in James's list.
In the growing literature on the conceptualization, production,
dissemination, and reception of experimental cinema, a number of
researchers have examined other region‐specific versions of the
“system” to which Arthur was referring, and their subject matter has
included: the effects of the American avant‐garde's ties to academic
institutions (Zryd, 2006); the standard ways of pursuing social,
financial, and cultural capital within experimental cinema (Ramey,
2010); ambitious efforts at distribution and promotion in the United
Kingdom (Knight & Thomas, 2011); the little‐known films scattered
throughout Latin America (Lerner & Piazza, 2017); and the networks,
systems, and discursive formations that have facilitated the
development of European and Scandinavian experimental cinemas
(Hagener, 2007; Andersson et al., 2010; Bovier, 2017). Much of this
work either side‐steps, minimizes, or directly argues against the belief
that experimental cinema should be interpreted primarily in relation to
notions of radicality, novelty, rupture, and innovation (without denying
the relevance of those concepts within its cultures and communities).
This strain of contemporary research demonstrates that a cultural
aspiration toward and endorsement of the production of heterodoxy in
aesthetics, ideology, and practice can co‐exist with some of the abiding
orthodoxies and conventions that make possible various integral
organizations and institutions.
The expansion of scholarly interests to include the typical ways in
which certain forms of collectivity are produced and maintained, as
others are resisted or revised, is most apparent in empirically‐based
studies, yet it is a theoretical concern as well. Adapting a well‐known
formulation made by David Bordwell about art cinema (Bordwell,
1979), Jonathan Walley has submitted that avant‐garde cinema is a
“mode of film practice,” with a “mode” being “constituted by the norms
of production, distribution, exhibition and reception of film art”
(Walley, 2008, p. 185). This overarching framework is motivated in part
by an echo of Arthur's disinclination to make what he called “stylistics”
central to a definition or generalizable characterization: the
“simultaneously historical, institutional and discursive” aspects of this
context are presented as determinative, providing “the material
conditions under which aesthetic goals are formed by artists and
recognised by spectators” (Walley, 2008, p. 199). In concentrating on
the normativity of widely‐implemented practices, Walley aimed to
“illuminate distinctions that already exist” between avant‐garde cinema
and artists or gallery‐based moving image culture; the former's history
of favoring “acollaborative production,” typically viewed as a rejection
of the industrial division of labor in the filmmaking process, is one of
his examples, serving as a set of practices and beliefs that is far less
prevalent among contemporary artists. In addition, in a later text,
Walley echoed Arthur's earlier generalizations, pointing out that, in
contrast to the art world's economics, copies of avant‐garde films are
made to be rented and allowed to circulate—as in industrial cinema,
but usually relying upon different institutions of distribution (or none
at all, if the filmmaker prefers to work directly with screening venues)
—and their exhibition typically comes with “contextualizing
information,” at times provided by the filmmaker in person (Walley,
2020, pp. 28–29).
For Walley, “‘the film medium’ is in part constituted discursively within
each mode of film practice” (Walley, 2020, p. 29), and avant‐garde film
exhibits a particular “preoccupation with the concept of cinematic
specificity and the specificity of the film medium, an investment in
these ideas and in the material of film itself, which are much less
evident in other modes” (p. 28). This view seems to be supported by at
least two relatively recent developments: the collective efforts in a
number of countries to create and sustain independent film
laboratories that specialize in experimental cinema, and the emphasis
placed on the craft‐oriented manipulation of celluloid film as an
avowed marker of identity in two pedagogical texts on experimental
filmmaking (Ramey, 2015; Schlemowitz, 2019). But even by the mid‐
aughts it was apparent that a period of transition was underway, during
which the new “material conditions” of the digital era were removing
photochemical film from its former place of prominence and
transforming the craft approach and its various meanings (an approach
surveyed extensively in Knowles, 2020). What such developments put
to the test is less the broad outline of a framework such as Walley's
(with its discussion of tendencies, norms, and prevailing conditions)
than the terms by which a mode's key traits are identified during this
extended period of hybridization. This is not a problem specific to the
study of experimental cinema: because our contemporary moment
seems distinguished by diversity and plurality on a number of levels,
scholars must decide how to search for patterns and trends when
analyzing a mutable landscape of cultural production in which the
“distinctions that already exist” may not be applicable across different
sites, for example, or for similar stretches of time.
Much of the writing that examines this diverse field of practice and
discourse reflects and contributes to the heightened significance placed
in the humanities on the communities, identities, and attachments
which form around and through cultural texts. If we look beyond
experimental cinema as a subject, affinities with studies of other
moving image cultures come into view: a “pragmatic” characterization
of American “indie” cinema, in one study, places emphasis on the
“strategies and expectations” of a broad gamut of participants in that
particular film culture (Newman, 2011); art cinema, in another
overview, is presented as “an entirely relational concept” (King, 2019, p.
3) that is tied to “cultural value and status” and is shaped at all stages of
conception, production, and reception by the operations and effects of
“positioning” (p. 1). The analysis of the formal or textual qualities of
specific films tends to be seen as inextricable from other spheres of
discourse, wherein mediating apparatuses facilitate or direct the
production of cultural meaning and differentiation. Categories are said
to pertain to processes, including those shaped by market‐related
forces and economic structures, and “the realm of circulation is best
understood as not just as an afterthought, something secondary to the
production of texts, but as a constitutive component of this or any part
of the cinematic landscape” (King, p. 9). What this approach to
circulation attempts to interrogate is how a given film or an assortment
of films is put to use by individual agents, who tend to be strongly
motivated by their cultural investments and orientations, and by larger
cultural constituencies, special interest groups, and organizations.
Linking together many of the contemporary studies that survey the
meanings of a particular film category or term is a methodological and
theoretical commitment to some form of contextualism, the idea that
interrogating contexts of use, past and present, offers an important key
to grasping the cultural distinctions, attitudes, and associations
attached to what is called experimental or avant‐garde cinema.3
The exploration of contexts of meaning and use often raises questions
of circulation and interchange within and across minoritarian cultures,
and in addressing these, some scholars have turned to the conceptual
construct of the network (Bovier, 2017; Hagener, 2007). Network
accounts can bring to light affiliations and allegiances of various types
—aesthetic, ideological, practical, affective, and so on—and this
tracking of personal, collective, and textual circuits of exchange can
allow for the inclusion of different forms of participation within a given
film culture, perhaps more ephemeral or transitional than those that
distinguish the filmmakers who have customarily been cast as its
primary historical protagonists. In addition to diversifying the field of
study beyond a canonical “establishment,” studies oriented toward
networks can also show that experimental cinema has drawn upon and
established a much more varied and multidisciplinary array of cultural
connections than its habitual reliance on the rhetoric of binary
oppositions (hegemonic film industry vs. independent artistic practice,
or experimental film culture vs. global art market, for instance) might
suggest. Following the thread, so to speak, of different relationships and
trajectories—involving experimental cinema's individual participants,
its formal and informal groups, and the circulation of its texts, for
example—can bring forms of cultural engagement and investment to
the fore as neglected objects of study.
The diversification of scholarly approaches will likely only press further
the perennial question of whether experimental cinema can retain its
autonomy, coherence, or relevance as a cultural concept. The
contextualist tendency within recent scholarship certainly allows for a
great degree of contradiction, inconsistency, and idiosyncrasy in its
culturally‐ and historically‐grounded accounts of this cinema, and many
practitioners will continue to refuse to be affiliated with any sort of
classificatory term or notion, often because “experimental” or “avant‐
garde” seem to belong to an outmoded, constraining language of the
past. Yet there are also cultural hubs—in Latin American countries such
as Mexico and Argentina, for example—where the idea of experimental
cinema is being championed by filmmakers, critics, programmers, and
educators, just as it is being revised so that it can include both
contemporary extensions of recognizable traditions and other pursuits
and concerns with roots in underrepresented cultures. This is a
dynamic of continuity and change, adoption and repudiation, that
scholars are only beginning to chart across local and global sites of
activity.
This companion compiles the work of participants and observers who
often assume micro and macro perspectives in their considerations of
experimental cinema, moving from a focus on singular figures or
situations to their locations within a general panorama. Each of the
essays and exchanges that comprise this collection demonstrates how
experimental cinema is continually being invented and defended, made
and remade, repudiated and transformed, within a broader field of
culture. This textual production of a cultural grouping is common
among discourses on modern and contemporary experimental
practices in the arts: in his work on the forms of attachment and
performative acts that generate, reproduce, and reshape
experimentalism in American music, for example, Benjamin Piekut
argued that experimentalist networks are “arranged and fabricated”
(Piekut, 2011, p. 19). For Piekut, a lecture given by the composer
Gordon Mumma, for instance, “enacts” American experimentalism
because Mumma “performs a grouping and articulates this grouping to
a well‐connected audience,” introducing into existing discussions and
debates a text that will subsequently be published and, as it continues
to circulate, will affect other selective accounts of experimental
practices. A lecture that discusses a version of experimentalism is one
among many “acts [that] are always situated as iterations in a series …
another node in a network that gradually stabilizes as it accrues other
connections over time” (p. 7). What Piekut describes applies equally
well to the textual iterations of the filmmakers who enact and perform
experimentalism. This a culture that is also being produced by the
historians, curators, critics, and theorists who analyze and evaluate it,
and in what follows, each chapter offers a selection of groupings that
configure experimentalism in an active and even interventionist
manner, chronicling and rethinking this cinema according to a diverse
spectrum of agendas, ideologies, and objectives.
***
The three sections of this book are intended to clarify some basic
methodological differences, although all of the chapters in the
collection evince overlapping concerns. The Overviews section offers
the broadest level of generality, and includes introductions to specific
categories or genres associated with experimental cinema, surveys of
films unified by shared identities, formal techniques, or geographic
proximity, and analyses of concepts and ideas of longstanding relevance
for the field. The more granular analyses of the Case Studies section
demonstrate how new research can illuminate topics such as the
intersection of a particular body of films and collectively‐shared values
and experiences, the relation between theory and practice, and the
ways in which films circulate and are received. Finally, in the Exchanges
section, the dialogic format of each of its chapters brings more
individual, personal perspectives to bear upon larger histories and
contemporary issues. One common thread running throughout this
section is the interplay of the individual and the collective, which
emerges as one of the book's key themes.

References
Andersson, L. G., Sundholm, J., & Sö derbergh Widding, A. (2010). A
history of swedish experimental film culture. National Library of
Sweden.
Arthur, P. (2005). A line of sight: American Avant‐Garde film since 1965.
University of Minnesota Press.
Becker, H. (2008). Art Worlds: 25th Anniversary edition, Updated and
Expanded. University of California Press.
Bergstrom, J., & Penley, C. (1978). The Avant‐Garde: Histories and
theories. Screen, 19(3), 113–128.
Bergstrom, J., The Film Work Group, Penley, C., & Sitney, P. A. (1979).
Letters from The Film Work Group, P. Adams Sitney, Janet Bergstrom
and Constance Penley. Screen, 20(3–4), 151–159.
Bordwell, D. (1979). The art cinema as a mode of film practice. Film
Criticism, 4(1), 56–64.
Bourdieu, P. (1984). Distinction: A social critique of the judgement of
taste. Routledge.
Bourdieu, P. (1986). The forms of capital. In J. Richardson (Ed.),
Handbook of theory and research for the sociology of education (pp.
241–258). Greenwood.
Bovier, F. (Ed.) (2017). Early Video Art and Experimental Films
Networks: French‐Speaking Switzerland in 1974: A Case for "Minor
History". Les Presses du réel/ECAL (Ecole cantonale d'art de
Lausanne).
Burrow, C. (2019). The Magic Bloomschtick. London Review of Books,
41(22) (November). Retrieved November 1, 2021, from
www.lrb.co.uk/the‐paper/v41/n22/colin‐burrow/the‐magic‐
bloomschtick
Hagener, M. (2007). Moving forward, looking back: The European Avant‐
Garde and the invention of film culture, 1919–1939. Amsterdam
University Press.
James, D. (1989). Allegories of cinema: American film in the sixties.
Princeton University Press.
James, D. (2005). The most typical Avant‐Garde: History and geography
of minor cinemas in Los Angeles. University of California Press.
King, G. (2019). Positioning art cinema: Film and cultural value. I.B.
Tauris.
Knight, J., & Thomas, P. (2011). Reaching audiences: Distribution and
promotion of alternative moving image. Intellect Books.
Knowles, K. (2020). Experimental film and photochemical practices.
Palgrave Macmillan.
Lerner, J., & Piazza, L. (Eds.) (2017). Ism, Ism, Ism/Ismo, Ismo, Ismo—
Experimental cinema in Latin America (pp. 2017). University of
California Press.
Mellencamp, P. (1990). Indiscretions: Avant‐Garde film, video, and.
feminism. Indiana University Press.
Newman, M. (2011). Indie: An American film culture. Columbia
University Press.
Piekut, B. (2011). Experimentalism otherwise: The New York avant‐garde
and its limits. University of California Press.
Rabinovitz, L. (1991). Points of resistance. Women, power and politics in
the New York avant‐garde cinema, 1943–1971. University of Illinois
Press.
Ramey, K. (2010). Economics of the Film Avant‐Garde: Networks and
Strategies in the Circulation of Films, Ideas, and People. Jump Cut, 52
(Summer). Retrieved November 1, 2021, from
https://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/jc52.2010/rameyExperimental
Film/index.html
Ramey, K. (2015). Experimental filmmaking: Break the machine. Taylor
& Francis.
Schlemowitz, J. (2019). Experimental filmmaking and the motion picture
camera: An introductory guide for artists and filmmakers. Routledge.
Sitney, P. A. (1972). The idea of morphology. Film Culture, 53–
55(Spring), 1–24.
Walley, J. (2008). Modes of film practice in the Avant‐Garde. In T.
Leighton (Ed.), Art and the moving image: A critical reader (pp. 182–
199)). Tate Publishing.
Walley, J. (2020). Cinema expanded: Avant‐garde film in the age of
intermedia. Oxford University Press.
Wees, W. C. (1984). On defining Avant‐Garde film. Opsis, 1(1), 7–12.
Zryd, M. (2006). The academy and the Avant‐Garde: A relationship of
dependence and resistance. Cinema Journal, 45(2), 17–42.

Notes
1 A feature of Harold Bloom's model of influence that informs Sitney's
is summarized by a recent literary commentary: “The anxiety of
influence is a way of describing what Bloom called the ‘dark truths
of competition and contamination’ that connect a writer with a
predecessor. But it encompasses both the psychological anxieties in
the author—Oedipal rivalry with literary parents, the fear of death
and failure—and the evidence within a poem that it is avoiding or
transforming the work of an earlier author. It is therefore at once,
perplexingly, a psychological and a rhetorical concept. It is not just a
way of explaining how writers feel about other writers, but a way of
 thinking about how poems relate to and seek to depart from earlier
poems, and how by doing so they insert themselves into a canon of
works” (Burrow, 2019). Contemporary writing on experimental
cinema is still exploring this combination of psychobiography and
cross‐textual analysis, albeit with far less reliance on Freud in
particular and a greater emphasis on archival research in general.
2 Whether such filmmakers had ideological ties to Romantic poetry was
far less significant to the Camera Obscura collective than the
“operations” of their films, some of which could be linked to their
intentions and some of which were best understood as textual
effects, generated within each film's system of “enunciation,” to cite
the term that Bergstrom repurposed from French linguistics.
Notably, the collective's statements focused intensively on theory—
on a theoretical, but also politically engaged, examination of issues
of representation. They were not explicitly calling for research
programs that would detail the sociohistorical particulars of
audience and social context, for example, although some might argue
that the issues they were focusing on would eventually lead scholars
in that direction.
3 Much of this scholarly work on genre and its contexts of reception
reflects the influence of the sociology of art. Of particular
importance are two positions within this general area of scholarship,
the study of the collective activities and models of cooperation
realized within art worlds (Becker, 2008) and the theorization of
cultural fields and forms of cultural capital wherein conflict and
competition are given more prominence (Bourdieu 1984, 1986).
Within writing on experimental cinema, Ramey (2010) and Zryd
(2006) are among the few who have acknowledged directly some
aspect of this area of research, but the relevance of its debates has
yet to be explicitly addressed in depth.
Part I
Overviews
2
Poetry and “Film Poetics”
Sarah Keller

Poetry and cinema have intersected in a multiplicity of ways for over a

century, each one complementing, shaping, and serving as inspiration
for the other. Better rehearsed are narrative and documentary concerns
that have dominated studies of cinema; however, poetry provides an
essential third way that figures in a surprising range of cinematic
practice and theory—most centrally found in (but not limited to) avant‐
garde histories of cinema. Filmmakers have overtly engaged poetry
through direct citation or adaptation of poems; a few have also written
persuasively about their notion of the relationship between cinema and
poetry (Jean Epstein, Maya Deren, Abigail Child, among others). They
have addressed it indirectly by adopting poetic models to better
understand something about how cinema does (or could) work.
Furthermore, audiences have regarded films and descried poetic
aspects within their form, content, or ontology. The observation of
poetic influences on cinema (and vice versa) has helped express the
contours of the cinematic experience.1
Outside observers—audiences, critics, and/or scholars—who have
described films' qualities as “poetic” have both elucidated and muddied
the notion of a poetic cinema such that some sorting is in order.
Because poetry has made an appearance in every mode of cinema
production, the possibilities that inhere in “poetic cinema” are as
multiple as the meanings that inhere in poetry itself. As Abbas
Kiarostami has put it, “The poetic film is like a puzzle where you put the
pieces together and they don't necessarily match. You can make
whatever arrangement you yourself would like. Contrary to what the
general public is used to, it doesn't give you a clear result at the end.
And it doesn't give you advice!” (Sterritt, 2000). Pier Paolo Pasolini has
further suggested that “the language of cinema is fundamentally a
‘language of poetry’” (Pasolini, 1976, p. 546), which he goes on to
explain in a set of complex terms with linkages to linguistic, literary,
and socio‐political influences.2 With these many points of intersection,
what would a cohesive “film poetics” look like, if one is even possible?
Filmmakers like Kiarostami and Pasolini use a notion of the “poetic” to
afford room to experiment with other aspects of the cinematic medium
and to dash expectations implicit in narrative or documentary
conventions. They detect an openness and a sense of play in a “poetic”
mode. Other film artists from a variety of traditions and working in
every genre have likewise to a greater or lesser extent deployed
essentials of poetry for expressive purposes. These aspects of film
poetics may be their most far‐reaching benefit: they grant a model for
alternative form that does not hew to narrative structure but offers a
point of entry for other kinds of meaning—for instance, marshaling the
sensuous properties of rhythm or the intellectual pleasures of
ambiguity. Even within narrative or documentary contexts, severing the
tethers of narrative cinema, pushing outward to see how far the center
of a documentary structure will hold, poetry provides precedents and
formal conventions for experimentation in cinema.
The sheer range of types of engagements between cinema and poetry
ought to alert us to the importance of their connection. However,
although there are several benefits to framing aspects of the cinema as
poetic or citing their relationship to poetic models, forms, and
strategies, there is also cause for caution. Distinctions between
different modes of moving image practice do matter in the way we
think about and identify “poetic cinema,” and it is important to avoid
totalizing accounts that see poetry everywhere—pat accounts of how
pretty or slow‐moving cinema is “poetic.” Therefore, while it is
important to outline the multiplicity of ways we see poetry pervading
aspects of the cinema, here, I am equally concerned with winnowing
down this multiplicity into a set of consistent, key factors.3 Further,
tracing some of the key shifts in the history of film poetics elucidates
the way poetry has inflected the films made within that mode.
Therefore, first, I consider a subsection of the range of ways the
intersection of the two has been discussed, first in the mostly European
and modernist context, then in the American postwar experimental
mode, and finally in the years immediately after this postwar period,
the effects of which are still relevant. Pointing to productive
consistencies among them, I outline some of the important historical
occurrences of and basic contours for “poetic cinema,” drawing from a
broad (but by no means exhaustive) set of intersections between
poetry and cinema and the discourses surrounding them. From the
multiplicity of examples, I posit a working definition that reshapes the
terms of these categorizations, asking what is enduring in formulations
of a poetic cinema and what in the historical changes to these
formulations is worth keeping as an explanatory and exploratory model
that helps us to understand something about poetry's ingratiation of its
terms within the cinema.

What Is a Poetic Model?

The great pleasure in writing poetry is in having been carried off. It
is as if you stood astride of the subject that lay on the ground, and
they cut the cord and the subject gets up under you and you ride it.
You adjust yourself to the motion of the thing itself.
(Richardson, 1993)4

At times, the definition of poetry in relation to cinema brings about a

rather hazy collection of ideas: it can mean any and everything not fully
accounted for by narrative or documentary concerns, and it often
intersects with other arts as well, especially music and fine arts like
painting. Part of the issue may be that the notion of the “poetic” is itself
a broad idea and is moreover readily conflated with the even broader
idea of “poetics.” The latter term, going at least as far back as Aristotle
and gathering associations along the way, denotes a purpose that need
not involve verse at all but instead mobilizes a system for
understanding and accessing a sense of insight and intensity. That for
Aristotle such a system is bound up with mimetic functions seems to
anticipate a poetics of cinema in particular.5 While “poetic/s” could
therefore gesture toward broad universal systems, here it will be focus
a few tendencies. In so focusing, we will see how cinema's relation to
poetry allows the avant‐garde to develop at several moments in film
history.
Useful models for cinematic practice have emerged from filmmakers'
fascination with poetry. A remarkable number of filmmakers who
employ these models or incorporate poetry in their films have written
poetry themselves (for example, Sergei Eisenstein and Dziga Vertov
both wrote poems, Maya Deren called her filmmaking practice the
result of being a “failed poet”; Stan Brakhage, who once wrote a couple
of poems to Deren, “yearned to be a poet,” Jonas Mekas was a poet in
Lithuania before moving to the US, Pasolini was as much a professional
poet as a filmmaker, and so forth) (MacDonald, 2006). But what exactly
draws these filmmakers to poetry, and how can poetic models help
these filmmakers to explain or express a film practice that other models
cannot? Common to these models—key factors that inhere in a cinema
inflected by poetry—include the way it contrasts with narrative models
on one hand (moving beyond concerns with plot, linearity, causality,
continuity, and closure, for example) and on the other, how it positively
activates alternative structures (such as allusion, suggestion, dialectical
relationships, and repetition) for generating meaning.
Poetry finds purchase in cinema at moments when it proves especially
useful, important, or influential, especially in but not at all limited to
experimental contexts. In general, the position of poetry in cinema has
vaulted at any point when a collective questioning of the purpose or
purview of cinema has occurred. In the first decade of the 1900s, even
D.W. Griffith, ostensible father of the dominant mode of American
narrative cinema, with its emphasis on suspense generated through
cross‐cutting to create excitement and dread in the rescue situation—
for instance, at the end of The Lonely Villa (1909) or later, Birth of a
Nation (1915)—made some of his earliest films as adaptations of
popular poems, including The Song of the Shirt (1908) and Pippa Passes
(1909). Although Scott Simmon argues that Griffith's specific use of the
poems as sources for his plots in these films betrays little more than a
wager on their “cultural authority” conferred by their status as poetry
(such that, in Simmons's view, Griffith was mainly demonstrating his
urge to raise cinema to a higher cultural level), something more is at
stake in his adaptations of poems (Simmon, 1993, p. 34). As Tom
Gunning has shown, Pippa Passes adopts a remarkably complex
structure, an “opportunity for innovation” that the particulars of
literary adaptation allowed (Gunning, 1994, p. 180). The film is based
more on a theme (Pippa's innocence and inspiration to others to do
good) than on a plot. That is to say, even though each subsection has a
mini‐plot which Pippa resolves, the film as a whole adopts a circular
structure predicated on a poetic model—recursive, repetitive, and
suggestive rather than moving toward narrative closure as a whole. So,
while certainly the question of cinema's cultural position—whether it
should be an entertainment or an art form fit for more refined tastes—
factored into his use of poetry in this context, formal issues also
importantly come into play.
In these adaptations of poetry and beyond them, Griffith's work serves
as an early example of the lure of poetry in shaping cinema. Griffith
developed his ideas about cinema on tendencies that draw on poetic
principles. For instance, he co‐opted poetic structures to generate new,
more abstract meanings in films such as A Corner in Wheat (1909),
whose elliptical structure and allusive nature draw on poetry. Instead of
emphasizing the hallmarks of a narrative trajectory—linearity,
causality, closure—A Corner in Wheat dallies a while in wheat field,
alludes to famous paintings in so doing, makes connections between
situations and people functioning independent of each other, and elicits
meaning by juxtaposition of those actions. So, for instance, when
violence erupts in the bread line, it is matched by and resonant with the
violence done to the Wheat King as he falls into his own grain bin and is
killed: even if they are not actions that directly cause each other, their
meaning is effected by putting them beside each other in the film. So,
however much Griffith influenced the hegemony of narrative cinema, he
simultaneously remained dedicated to a certain strain of poetry in his
work: James Agee focuses on this quality in his tribute to Griffith after
his death in 1948:
 … he seems to have been a realist only by accident, hit‐and‐run;
essentially, he was a poet.
He doesn't appear ever to have realized one of the richest promises
that movies hold, as the perfect medium for realism raised to the
level of high poetry; nor, oddly enough, was he much of a dramatic
poet. But in epic and lyrical and narrative visual poetry, I can think of
nobody who has surpassed him, and of few to compare with him.
(Agee, 2009)

Agee focuses on Griffith's images as “some of the grandest and simplest

passages in music or poetry,” reverently describing several of these
images in terms of Griffith's “intuitive” sense, and he traffics in
descriptions of his perceptiveness and ability to craft an image as
primitive, magical, spiritual way of accessing an image that distills a
collective memory of humankind (Agee, 2009). It is this intensity and
insight, as well as a fondness for repeating thematic structures that
makes the films lean to the “poetic.” This extends to his later work as
well: Intolerance (1916), for instance, balances the suspense and linear
causality of each of its four story lines with an emphasis on thematic
juxtaposition of those story lines. Within the stories, narrative
principles predominate; across the stories, poetic principles
predominate. As such, while Griffith may well be something of a father
figure for the development of American narrative cinema, his particular
film sense in fact derives from poetic strategies, too: suggestion,
allusion, resonance, repetition, and rhythm are equally at play in his
work.

Modernism, Cinema, and Poetry

Around this same time, poetic film form also emerged outside of these
narrative developments on its own terms and in relation to other
established fields of art production. The European artistic milieu
coincident with much of the silent era and leading into the coming of
sound—particularly in France—inflects thinking that circulated among
those people practicing cinema and/or related art forms. In fact, several
worked across art media: it was not uncommon for artists in the 1910s
and 1920s to experiment from medium to medium or to collaborate
across media on a single art project, for instance for the ballet Parade
(contributions were made by artist Pablo Picasso, composer Erik Satie,
writer Jean Cocteau, and Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, 1917).
Artists working mainly in a different medium began to make films, and
in them they drew on the energies they perceived as underlying all of
the arts. Curiosity about the expressive capacities of different media
provided a ready context for the emergence of cinema within the
broader fields of modern visual, plastic, performing, and literary arts
(rather than as a mechanical recording device or something meant for
mass entertainment), and helped pave the way for a cinematic avant‐
garde. Within this context of cross‐medial experimentation, cinema's
affinities with poetry came into artists' consciousness (for the
surrealists, into their unconsciousness). Cinema conceived as a vehicle
for art began to gain purchase at this time, and several prominent visual
artists made films as an extension of their modernist project.
The films made by these artists marshal several art forms
(photography, music, dance, painting) at once. Some of the major
figures of the 1920s French cinema in one way or another imported
discourses from outside arts into their thinking about the cinema.
Poetry held special sway over these filmmakers, perhaps because of the
centrality of rhythm and its capacity to reshape visual material into
meaningful but non‐narrative structures. René Clair voices this point
when in 1925 he cautions against a too‐strict explanation of rhythm
works in the cinema: “The emotional quality of each event gives to its
measurable duration a rhythmic value that's completely relative. Let's
not be too hasty to define the nature of cinematic rhythm. Instead, let's
open our eyes” (Clair, 1988, p. 369). His film, Entr'Acte (1924) pays
tribute to different art forms and draws together several actors from
their realms: featuring cameos by Dadaist artists, it draws on the cross‐
medial energies of ballet (the film was the literal entr'acte for a
performance by the Ballets Suédois at the Théâ tre des Champs‐
É lysées), music (Erik Satie composed a score for it), art (Marcel
Duchamp and Francis Picabia also collaborated), and of course cinema.
Cinema is indebted to poetry during this period, and the influence went
both ways, as Christophe Wall‐Romana's research on cinepoetics and
other studies of poetry in relation to film at this time outline.6 Poetry is
a singularly powerful influence in several cases for films made within
the milieu of modernist art, and the filmmakers and artists who invoke
it underline the range and flexibility of poetry as an artistic point of
reference. In the conclusion to his 1924 essay “On Certain
Characteristics of Photogénie,” the filmmaker and sometimes poet Jean
Epstein provocatively states: “The cinema is poetry's most powerful
medium, the truest medium for the untrue, the unreal, the ‘surreal’ as
Apollinaire would have said. That is why some of us have entrusted to it
our highest hopes” (Epstein, 1988a, p. 318). Epstein raises several
points of key importance to the broader issues in film criticism and
theory within this period of exploration and experimentation with the
cinematic medium. In both his films and his writings, he contributes to
discourses about how poetry's purview might align with cinema's
needs as it came into its own an art form.
Epstein's earliest writings about the cinema, which precede the making
of his first film, demonstrate his sense of poetry as a vehicle for all
types of expression. Bonjour Cinéma (1921) includes as much poetry—
functioning as homage, theory, and illustration—as it does expository
writing about the cinema. Like Maya Deren's later Anagram of Ideas on
Art, Form, and Film, Epstein's Bonjour Cinema interweaves theory and
poetry intricately. Rather than adopt a theoretical, philosophical, or
discursive tone for his exploration of the nature of the film medium,
Epstein uses the domain of poetry to make sense of how the cinema
works. Near the beginning of Bonjour Cinéma (Keller & Paul, 2012, pp.
277–278), Epstein includes a poem that describes a scene in cinematic
terms:
En gros plan In close‐up
soleil pâ le Pale sunshine
ce visage règne This face reigns
La bouche d'émail s'étire This enamel mouth stretches out
comme un réveil paresseux Like a lazy awakening
The initial image of a well‐lighted close‐up of the face connects to a
longer piece in the same volume, “Magnification,” in which Epstein
discloses his predilection for close‐ups: “I will never find the way to say
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
äänensä hellyydelle ja kuuntelijain liikutukselle. Ja enemmän kuin
muut tunsi Sebastiano, että tytön ilvehtiminen etupäässä kohdistui
häneen.

Mutta hän ei voinut lähteä. Jotakin ihmeellistä oli hänelle

tapahtunut: hän oli joutunut kuin lumouksen valtaan. Parempi sietää
tuota pilkkaa kuin mennä tiehensä. Hän viipyi niin kauan, että Jovita
vaipui uneen, torkahtaen viiniköynnösten siimekseen. Ja vihdoin
Pepita laski kitaran kädestään ja nousi. Hän asettui kuutamoon ja
ojensi nauraen kauniit käsivartensa.

»Hyvää yötä», virkkoi hän. »Nyt saa Jovita teitä huvittaa. Tässä
päivässä on jo ollut liian monta tuntia.»

Hän juoksi sisälle ilman muita jäähyväisiä kuin kädenviittaus, ja

seuraavassa silmänräpäyksessä he saattoivat kuulla hänen laulavan
huoneessaan ja käsittivät, että hän aikoi mennä levolle.

Sebastiano nousi hitaasti.

»Hyvää yötä», sanoi hän Josélle.

Manuelo ja Carlos toivottivat myöskin hyvää yötä ja lähtivät

yhdessä, kulkien rinnan valkoista kuun valaisemaa tietä, mutta
Sebastiano poistui viiniköynnösten varjosta viipyvin askelin, ja José
saattoi häntä jonkun matkaa. Hänen sankarinsa vakavassa ja
hajamielisessä ilmeessä oli jotakin, mikä pelotti häntä.

»Sisarenne ei ollut huvitettu», sanoi Sebastiano vihdoin.

»Oli, oli toki», vastasi José. »Hänellä on ollut hauskaa kaiken

päivää.
Ja hän huvittelee mielellään.»
 »Hän sanoi, että tässä päivässä oli ollut liian monta tuntia.»

José puristi hetkisen miettivästi päätänsä, mutta sitten hänen

katseensa kirkastui.

»Hän tahtoi vain huvikseen hiukan ilvehtiä», sanoi hän hyväilevän

hellästi. »Ei hänessä ole mitään häijyä, Pepitassa, mutta toisinaan
hän saattaa huvin vuoksi lausua pienen valheen, mitään pahaa
tarkoittamatta, sillä hän tietää, että hänet ymmärrämme. Hän ei
odota, että sitä uskoisimme. Me, jotka olemme häneen tottuneet,
tunnemme hänet paremmin. Tekin joudutte ajan mittaan hänet
paremmin tuntemaan.»

»Saan siis tulla toistekin?» kysyi Sebastiano.

Josén raskas ruumis ihan vapisi ilosta.

»Kaikki on teidän, señor», sanoi hän tehden kädenliikkeen, johon

sisältyi pieni mökki ja koko pieni puutarha. »Se on köyhä ja
vähäinen, mutta se kuuluu teille… ja me…»

Sebastianon tummat silmät viipyivät hetkisen pienessä ikkunassa

räystään alla, missä valkoisten kukkien peittämä todellinen jasmiini
kierteli tuuheassa vihannuudessaan. Ja hänen katsahtaessaan ylös
tunki ääni tuoksuvan uutimen läpitse, huolettomasti laulaen
muutaman säveleen:

»Jasmiineill' on valkokukka,
suo sen johtaa askeleesi…»

»Pepita siellä on», sanoi José. »Hän laulaa aina, kun on

tyytyväinen.
Se on hyvä merkki.»
NELJÄS LUKU.

Jos hänen laulunsa todisti hänen iloansa, lienee hän suuresti

nauttinut elämästä lähinnä seuraavina päivinä, sillä hän lauloi
lakkaamatta. Kun hän puuhaili askareissaan, leikki hymy aina hänen
huulillaan ja silmissään, ikäänkuin hänen ajatuksensa olisivat häntä
huvittaneet. Ja hän oli niin hilpeällä tuulella, että José oli aivan
ihastuksissaan. Vain yksi seikka tuotti veljelle salaista huolta; muuten
olisi kaikki ollut hyvin.

Kaikki oli käynyt aivan kuin hän oli uneksinut, vaikka tuskin
uskaltanut toivoa niinä päivinä, jolloin hän sai niin kovin raataa ja oli
ollut huonosti ravittu ja huonosti puettu. Hänellä oli nyt hyvä paikka ja
entiseen verrattuna uskomattoman hyvä palkka. Hänellä oli pieni
sievä tupansa ja Pepita kävi yhtä hienoissa ja kauniissa
pyhävaatteissa kuin kuka muu tyttö tahansa, ja niihin puettuna hän
näytti iloisemmalta ja kymmentä kertaa kauniimmalta kuin kaikki
toiset. Tämä oli ennen kaikkea ollut Josén pyrkimyksenä, ja hänen
päämääränsä oli saavutettu. Kun hän sisarineen oli ulkona kävelyllä,
niin kaikki nuoret miehet, joiden sallittiin lähestyä — ja vielä monet
muutkin — rakastuivat tyttöön. Niin, se oli aivan totta; hän näki sen
itse ja kuuli sitä kaikilta tahoilta. Olisi tarvittu molempien käsien kaikki
sormet laskeakseen ne, jotka todella olivat häneen kiintyneet —
ennen kaikkea Carlos ja Manuelo.

Mutta tässäpä juuri olikin jotakin huolestuttavaa. Ja Pepita itse sen

huolen aiheutti ihailijainsa kohtelemisella. Jos sanoi, että hän
halveksi heitä, oli se liikaa — hän aivan yksinkertaisesti katseli heitä
välinpitämättömästi. He saivat tulla ja mennä, saivat seurata häntä ja
katsella häntä ja huokailla, — hän tuskin suvaitsi nähdä, että he niin
tekivät, ellei joku käynyt liian tungettelevaksi, jolloin hän vain lävisti
hänet lempeiden, mutta julmasti hymyilevien silmäinsä katseella.

»Hän ei huoli kestään niistä puolisokseen», virkkoi José

neuvottomana
Jovitalle.

»Oh, kyllä vielä tulee sekin aika», vastasi Jovita. »Hän on kaunis,
ja se tekee hänet hiukan hupakoksi — sellaisia ovat kaikki tytöt.
Kauan ei kuitenkaan kestä, ennenkuin se menee ohi, siitä voit olla
varma. Hän on niitä, jotka leimahtavat liekkiin äkkiä.»

»Minä en luule, että hän on yhtä hupsu kuin muut tytöt», sanoi
José vakavasti. »Mutta hän ei näytä välittävän rakkaudesta — hän ei
näy vielä heränneen. Hän ei edes sääli heitä, kun he ovat
onnettomia.»

José ei laisinkaan ajatellut itseään puhuessaan sisarensa

avioliitosta; hän asettui aivan syrjään, sillä niin pian kuin joku muu
mies täyttäisi Pepitan elämän ja sydämen, olisi hänen tehtävänsä
päättynyt ja hänelle koittaisi ikävä aika, johon hän ei helposti voisi
tottua. Hänellä oli viaton tunne siitä, että ilman tuota rakkautta, josta
kaikki niin paljon puhuivat, sisaren elämä ei olisi täydellistä, ja hän
tahtoi tehdä sen mahdollisimman valoisaksi. Pepita oli liian kaunis ja
liian hyvä jäädäkseen naimattomaksi — ilman omaa kotia ja uljasta
puolisoa, joka rakasti hänen polkemaansa maatakin.

Hänhän oli vain José, ja veli korvaa huonosti sulhasen, joka voisi
jutella, laulaa ja laskea leikkiä ja olisi niin pulska, että tyttö voisi
hänestä ylpeillä.

»Niin se on», sanoi hän järkevästi itsekseen. »Naisella täytyy olla

joku, kenestä hän voi olla ylpeä — eikä hän minusta koskaan voi olla
ylpeä. Jos olisin Sebastianon kaltainen, niin olisi toista.»

Hän hillitsi äkkiä ajatuksensa ja raapaisi korvallistaan, niinkuin

hänellä oli tapana, kun hän säikähti tai joutui hämilleen. Ja hän tuli
aivan punaiseksi kasvoiltaan. Ehkä se johtui siitä, että hän muisti
kaikkien muiden joukossa ylvään, ylistetyn, komean Sebastianon
olevan sen, jota kohtaan tyttö osoitti vähintä harrastusta. Oikeastaan
oli Pepitan suhtautuminen häneen perin salaperäistä. He olivat
tavanneet hänet usein — hän oli käynyt mökillä useinakin iltoina ja
istunut viiniköynnösten siimeksessä. Kun he menivät ulos
huvittelemaan, tapahtui melkein aina, että he kohtasivat hänet, mutta
kun hän astui heidän luokseen, valtasi Pepitan heti jokin
itsepäisyyden henki. Ajatellessaan tätä José havaitsi nyt, ettei
koskaan ollut kuullut Pepitan häntä puhuttelevan — hän muisti tytön
aina menetelleen niin, että voi välttää suoraan vastaamasta siihen,
mitä Sebastiano hänelle sanoi.

»Se on aivan ihmeellistä», tuumi José eikä tiennyt mitä ajatella,

kun hänelle tämä selvisi, »vaikka tiedetään, kuinka taitava hän on
härän kaatamisessa! Ei ole ketään toista, joka kykenee voittamaan
härän niinkuin hän. Sitä katsellessa tekisi mieli itkeä ilosta, ja
kuitenkin saattaa tyttö kohdella häntä niin pahoin.»
 Mutta hän ei tiennyt, kuinka pahoin — sen tiesi ainoastaan
Sebastiano. Siitä päivästä asti, jolloin hän kilpatantereella
seisoessaan äkkiä näki tytön — ikäänkuin tähti olisi nopeasti
välähtänyt pilvestä valaisten pienen tumman pään ja ruusuiset
kasvot, — hän oli elänyt kuin kuumehoureessa, ikäänkuin unessa,
jossa hän aina ajoi takaa jotakin, mikä näkyi olevan tavoitettavissa,
mutta kuitenkin aina pääsi häneltä karkuun. Mitä hän oli välittänyt
muista naisista? Ei mitään. Häntä oli kiusannut ja suututtanut, kun ne
olivat heittäytyneet hänen tielleen tai lähettäneet hänelle lahjoja, tai
kun hänelle kerrottiin siitä tai tästä kaunottaresta, joka oli rakastunut
hänen ylevään ryhtiinsä ja uljaaseen rohkeuteensa. Naisia! Mitä
naiset olivat? Hän oli tavoitellut vain kansan riemuhuutoja, häntä
olivat viehättäneet vain härät ja kilpakentän tarjoama hurja kiihoitus.
Hänen ainoana pyrkimyksenänsä oli ollut parhaimman iskun,
notkeimman hyppäyksen oppiminen.

Mutta tämä tyttö, joka ei koskaan ollut alentunut avaamaan pientä

pilkallista suutansa lausuakseen hänelle ainoatakaan sanaa, joka ei
kertaakaan ollut sallinut hänen katsahtaa silmiinsä — tämä tyttö oli
tehdä hänet hulluksi. Hän ei voinut ajatella mitään muuta, hän unohti
härätkin, vietti päiväkausia, toisinaan kaiket yöt, keksiäkseen jonkun
keinon, millä viettelisi hänet itseänsä puhuttelemaan, pakottaisi
hänet itseensä katsahtamaan. Kuinka itsepäinen hän olikaan! Kuin
taikakeinoilla Pepita osasi välttää häntä! Mitä hän olisikaan tehnyt
päästäkseen hänen lähelleen! Hän oli seurannut häntä kaikkialla.
José ei tiennyt, että Pepita tuskin meni ulos Sebastianon tulematta
hänen perästään ja puhumatta hänelle. Hänellä oli tapana ilmestyä
tytön sivulle aivan kuin olisi noussut maan sisästä, mutta parin,
kolmen ensimmäisen kerran jälkeen hänen ei ollut onnistunut saada
häntä edes hätkähtämään tai osoittamaan pienintäkään
hämmästystä.
 Mutta ensimmäisellä kerralla ja vielä toisellakin Pepita oli
hätkähtänyt. Ensimmäisellä kerralla hän oli ollut menossa vanhalle
kaivolle vettä noutamaan, ja hänen pysähtyessään hetkiseksi
varjoon levähtämään ilmestyi hänen eteensä Sebastiano, vihkonen
mitä kauneimpia ja harvinaisimpia kukkia kädessä.

»Jumala olkoon teidän kanssanne», tervehti hän ja laski kukkaset

kädestään ammentaessaan hänelle vettä.

Tyttö seisoi ja katseli hymyillen hiukkasen.

»Tulee kaunis ilma härkätaistelun ajaksi», sanoi nuori mies, kun

ruukku oli täytetty.

Pepita kohotti kätensä varjostaakseen silmiänsä vilkaistessaan

siniselle taivaalle, mutta ei virkkanut mitään.

»Tuletteko tänään Plaza de Torosille?» kysyi toinen. »Te saatte

hyvän paikan — kaikkein parhaan. Tänään meillä on uljaita sonneja
— mustia andalusialaisia — hurjia ja vaikeita käsitellä. Siitä tulee
jännittävä leikki. Kaihan te tulette?»

Pepita nojasi kaivonsyrjää vasten, katsellen veteen, niissä näki

kasvojensa kuvastuvan tummassa syvyydessä. Seuraavassa
silmänräpäyksessä hän näki myöskin Sebastianon heijastuskuvan.
Tämä piti kukkia kädessänsä.

»Nämä», sanoi hän, »olen saanut kuninkaan puutarhurilta. Ne

ovat samanlaisia kuin ne, joita kuningatar toisinaan pitää. Minä otin
ne siltä varalta, että kenties tahtoisitte kantaa niitä härkätaistelussa.»

Pepita näki vesikuvastimessa, kuinka ihania ne olivat. Hän ei

tahtonut katsoa niihin suoraan. Ne olivat tavattoman kauniita, eikä
hän koskaan ollut nähnyt sellaisia kukkia ennen. Ja kuningatar itse
oli käyttänyt aivan samanlaisia kukkia. Jos joku toinen olisi ne tuonut
— mutta tuoja oli Sebastiano. Ja hän muisti Saritan. Kenties hän
joskus oli antanut kukkia Saritalle ajatellen, että yksinkertaiselle
maalaistytölle, joka ei mitään käsittänyt, ne olivat ylimmäinen
ihanuus. Sarita olisi kyllä ottanut ne vastaan.

Pieni häijy ilme värähti hänen kasvoilleen. Hän kääntyi ikäänkuin

ottaakseen vesiruukun maasta. Mutta Sebastian tarttui siihen.

»Te ette tahdo puhua minulle», sanoi hän kiivaasti. »Ette tahdo
edes katsahtaa kukkiin, jotka olen teille tuonut. Teidän pitää ainakin
sanoa minulle, mitä olen tehnyt, kun minua noin halveksitte. Enhän
liene mikään paha henki? Mitä tämä merkitsee?»

Tyttö pani kätensä selän taakse ja kiinnitti suuret silmänsä

hetkiseksi häneen. Nyt hän ei enää voinut sanoa, ettei Pepita ollut
häneen katsonut. Luuliko hän ehkä, että voisi pidättää hänet, ellei
hänellä ollut halua viipyä? Hänet, Pepitan! Tyttö seisoi tuijottaen
häneen hetkisen, kääntyi sitten ja meni tiehensä jättäen hänet siihen
vesiruukun kanssa. Hän saisi seisoa siinä vartioimassa sitä koko
päivän, jos tahtoi.

Pepita meni sisälle tupaan ja huusi Jovitaa.

»Jos haluat saada veden nyt, saat mennä itse sen kaivolta
noutamaan. Se on ammennettuna ja señor Sebastiano seisoo sitä
vartioimassa.»

»Pyhä Jumalan äiti!» huudahti Jovita ja tuijotti. »Hän on hulluna

señor Sebastianoineen!»
 Mutta eukko ei saanut häntä puhumaan sanaakaan enempää, ja
ennenkuin ehti kaivolle, tapasi hän pojan, joka kantoi vesiruukkua
asuntoa kohti ja kertoi saaneensa siitä työstä maksun.

*****

He menivät härkätaisteluun, ja istuessaan muiden joukossa,

voittaen kauneudessa tukkaansa pistetyn punaisen ruusun, Pepita
kuuli sanottavan, ettei Sebastiano ollut koskaan ollut niin mainio, ei
koskaan ollut osoittanut sellaista rohkeutta ja taitavuutta.

»Hän katselee Pepitaa», sanoi Isabella Carlosille. »Kun

Sebastiano tuli sisälle, keksivät hänen silmänsä Pepitan, ennenkuin
hän näki mitään muuta.»

Niin, hän katseli Pepitaa, ja Pepita istui ja katseli häntä niin

tyynesti kuin jos se vaara, jolla Sebastiano leikki, ei olisi merkinnyt
mitään. Hänen ihanat silmänsä paloivat pitkien ripsien alla, mutta se
oli vain tilapäistä harrastusta hurjaan urheiluun — mies ei merkinnyt
mitään.

Niin ainakin Sebastianosta näytti. Hän oli saanut osalleen ilkeän

sonnin, villin ja salakavalan, joka riehui hulluna raivossaan. Kerran
oli silmänräpäys, jolloin pieninkin harha-askel olisi maksanut
Sebastianolle hengen. Silloin ei ollut aikaa katsella Pepitaa, mutta
kun vaara oli ohitse ja hän lähetti tytölle silmäyksen, istui tämä
löyhytellen hiljaa viuhkallaan ja hymyili Manuelolle ikäänkuin ei olisi
mitään nähnyt.

»Hän on sydämetön», ajatteli Sebastiano kärsimättömästi ja

suuttuneena. »Ei ole luonnollista nuorelle tytölle halveksia kaikkea,
olla noin julma, tunteeton ja aivan peloton. Hän on joko sydämetön
tai häijy.»

Hän ei tahtonut enää katsella Pepitaa, hän vannoi sen. Ja kotvan

aikaa hän pitikin valansa, mutta sitten tuli silmänräpäys, jolloin jokin
— ihan vastustamaton tunne sai hänestä voiton. Oli ikäänkuin hänen
täytyisi katsoa sinnepäin, — ikäänkuin jonkin magneettisen voiman
pakotuksesta hänen silmänsä kääntyivät tyttöä kohden vastoin
hänen tahtoaan. Ja hänen katsahtaessaan sinnepäin häntä puistatti,
sillä nyt Pepita katsoi häneen, tytön silmät olivat luodut häneen
omituisen hartaasti, ikäänkuin hän olisi unohtanut itsensä ja vain
tuijottanut häneen jo monta minuuttia. Se oli ehkä pikkuseikka, mutta
se oli kylliksi hänen kuumalle verelleen ja hänen nopeasti vaihtuvalle
tuliselle ja herkälle luonteelleen. Hän oli juuri antanut lopullisen
iskun, seisoi huohottavana ja kuumana, ja kansa riemuitsi nousten
istuinpaikoiltaan ja toistellen hänen nimeänsä innokkaiden
kättentaputusten ja eläköön-huutojen kajahdellessa.

Hän oli sattumalta joutunut lähelle sitä riviä, missä Pepita istui
Jovitan, Josén ja muiden kanssa. Nämä paukuttivat käsiänsä, kuten
muutkin — kaikki paitsi Pepita, joka ainoastaan hymyili. Ja tämän
riemun hetkellä Sebastiano teki nopean liikkeen, niin nopean, että
sen tuskin saattoi käsittää — hän kosketti vain kädellä olkapäätänsä,
ja jotakin loistavaa, koreasti väritetyn linnun tapaista lensi kaiteitten
yli ja putosi Pepitan polvelle. Se oli heleänvärinen ja komea
nauharuusu, jota matadori silmänräpäystä aikaisemmin oli kantanut.

»Se on hänen divisansa!» huudahti Isabella säikähtyneenä.

»Se on hänen divisansa!» säesti José. »Hänen divisansa, Pepita!

Hän on heittänyt sen sinulle, Sebastiano.»
 Mutta seuraavassa silmänräpäyksessä hän mykistyi
kummastuksesta ja kauhistuksesta. Pepita suoristausi ja alkoi
nauraa. Hän löyhytteli kevyesti viuhkallansa.

»Miksei hän viskannut sitä Jovitalle?» sanoi hän ja pyyhkäisi

välinpitämättömällä liikkeellä divisan polveltaan. Se putosi maahan ja
hän polki sitä jalallaan.

»Hän on astunut sen päälle», sanoi vanha Jovita. »Hän teki sen
ylpeydestä ja ollakseen muka muita parempi. Hän on valmis
paholaisen vietäväksi. Hänen pitäisi saada selkäänsä.»

»Sehän oli hänen divisansa», läähätti José. »Sebastianon divisa!»

Pepita lähti paikaltansa. Tuntui kuin hänelle olisi tapahtunut jotakin

ihmeellistä. Hänen poskensa hehkuivat ja silmät säkenöivät.

»Mitä hänen divisansa minua liikuttaa?» sanoi hän. »Minä en huoli

siitä. Se ei koske minua. Vaikka hän heittäisi tuhannen, polkisin ne
kaikki jalkoihini, toisen toisensa perään. Virukoon se hiekassa.
Voihan hän antaa sen muille. Antakoon sen niille naisille, jotka
tahtovat saada sen — ja hänet itsensä.»

Hän tahtoi heti mennä kotiin — ei huvikentälle, ei mihinkään

muualle kuin kotiin omaan mökkiin; ja José seurasi häntä nöyrästi,
kuin mykäksi lyötynä. Hän oli kyllä nähnyt tytön itsepäisenä ja
oikullisena, lapsellisen kiivaana ja hieman vaikeasti käsitettävänä
monet kerrat ennen, mutta ei koskaan tällaisena. Mitä oli hänelle
tapahtunut? Mitä oli Sebastiano tehnyt? Jovita oli korjannut korean
nauharuusun, puhdistellut siitä tomun pois ja vienyt sen mukanaan
kotiin, vihaisesti muristen. Hän murisi kyllä aina, mutta tällä kertaa,
kautta pyhimysten, oli hänellä syytäkin!
 »Ylpeydestä», toisteli hän lakkaamatta, »ja näyttääkseen olevansa
muita parempi! Pyhä Jumalan äiti! Kohta ei itse kuningaskaan ole
hänelle kyllin hyvä. Tulkoon hän vain ja rukoilkoon häntä polvillaan,
että seuraisi häntä hänen linnaansa, jossa hänelle pantaisiin kruunu
päähän, niin kyllä hän saa nähdä, mitä tuo tyttö tekee! Ne hupsut
miehet pilaavat ja tärvelevät hänet, ikäänkuin ei koskaan ennen olisi
nähty kauniita kasvoja. Heidän pitäisi kohdella häntä samoin kuin
hän kohtelee heitä, niin kyllä hän talttuisi. Hän on oikea paholainen
ylpeydessään.»

Mutta Pepita, joka kuuli kaikki, ei virkkanut sanaakaan, vaikka pari

kerta; purskahtikin ilvehtivään nauruun.
VIIDES LUKU.

Kun Pepita oli ehtinyt kotiin, oli hänen mielentilansa muuttunut aivan
toiseksi — viha oli haihtunut tai ainakin kaikki merkit siitä. Hän lauloi
laittaessaan illallista ja jutteli iloisesti Josén kanssa. Hänellä oli
sittenkin ollut hauskaa härkätaistelussa. Hänellä oli ollut
hauskempaakin kuin edellisellä kerralla; hänellä oli ollut hyvin
hauskaa.

Hän alkoi viehättävästi laskea leikkiä kaikesta, toisteli ihmisten

nimiä, jotka oli nähnyt tai tuntenut, kuvaili Josélle nuorten tyttöjen
pukuja, miesten ulkonäköä ja ritarillisuutta. Hän nauroi ja pakotti
Josénkin nauramaan, ja kaiken aikaa hän näytti niin kauniilta
säteilevine silmineen, hohtavan valkoisille hampaineen ja kirkas ruso
poskillaan, että saattoi tosiaan panna pyörälle kenen pään tahansa.

Kuu oli sinä iltana kirkkaimmillaan. Koko maa kylpi puhtaassa ja

lumoavassa valkeudessa, joka ikäänkuin henki sulotuoksua,
hiljaisuutta ja salaperäistä hellyyttä. Millainen yö! Hengitettiin
ruusujen, oranssinkukkien ja jasmiinien tuoksua.

Pepita istui ruusujen juurella, lauloi ja laverteli; José poltteli ja tunsi

itsensä onnelliseksi, mutta yhä hämmentyneeksi, vaikka hiljaisen
illan kauneus vaikutti häneen rauhoittavasti ja teki hänet
tyytyväiseksi, kun hän siinä istui mietteissään mitään virkkamatta.

Jovita vaipui uneen. Hän nukahti aina ulkona lämpiminä

kesäiltoina ja talvisin sisällä tulen ääressä. Pepita lakkasi
juttelemasta ja lauloi toisen laulun toisensa perään. Sitten hän
lakkasi laulamastakin ja näppäili vain hiljaa kitaraansa silloin tällöin.
Hetkisen perästä nukahti Josékin, joka oli ojentanut itsensä penkille.

Sitten Pepita lakkasi koskettelemasta kitaransa kieliä. Hän katseli

kuutamossa uinuvia kukkasia ja oli jonkun minuutin hyvin hiljaa.
Senjälkeen hän laski kitaran kädestään ja astui ulos kuutamoon.

Kuun valossa ei voi eroittaa kasvojen väriä. Siitä ehkä johtui, että
näytti siltä kuin olisi väri poistunut hänen poskiltaan. Hän näytti ihan
kalpealta, ja hänen kauniit kulmakarvansa vetäytyivät kokoon,
kunnes olivat yhtenä ainoana mustana juovana hänen otsallaan.
Hän pani kätensä ristiin päänsä taakse, ja kasvot hiukan ylöspäin
käännettyinä, niin että valo lankesi niille, hän vaelsi puiden ja
tuoksuvien pensaiden sekaan. Enimmin hän rakasti jasmiineja, ja
eräällä kohdalla korkeata kiviaitaa kierteli pensas, jonka kukkaset
tuikkivat kuin kymmenettuhannet tähdet. Hän meni sinne ja asettui
sen viereen, toisinaan katsellen kukkia, toisinaan tuijottaen alas
tielle, joka hohti lumivalkoisena kuutamossa.

Ja hänen seisoessaan siinä kohosi äkkiä muurin toiselta puolen

hahmo, jonka hän hyvin tunsi, ja seuraavassa silmänräpäyksessä
tämä oli hypännyt ylitse ja seisoi aivan hänen vieressään.
Sebastiano!

Pepita seisoi hiljaa kädet yhä pään takana ja kasvot ylöspäin

käännettyinä ja katsoi häneen.
 Tulija laski kätensä ristiin rinnalleen ja katsoi häneen takaisin.
Aiheuttiko sen kuutamo vai ei, ainakin hän oli kalpea kuin kuolema.

»Niin», sanoi hän, »te olette aina sama. Te ette muutu. Olette
sama, tulee koska tahansa. Mutta kuulkaa minua. Luulette, että olen
tullut teitä moittimaan. Mutta miksi sen tekisin? Minä olen taistellut
härkien kanssa, mutta se ei minulle opeta, kuinka minun on
meneteltävä naisten kanssa. Luulin, että kun antoi jollekulle koko
sielunsa, elämänsä ja henkensä, niin tuo joku kerran heltyisi ja sallisi
itseänsä ajateltavan. Te olette nainen ja olette luotu sitä varten, että
teitä rakastettaisiin; mutta sydämessänne on jotakin kovaa. Te
ylpeilette siitä, että olette ilveillyt miehelle, joka oli rehellinen ja
kunniallinen ja rakasti teitä. Mutta kuulkaa mitä sanon: Parempi on
olla vähemmän kaunis ja enemmän nainen.»

Hän vaikeni. Pepita oli muuttanut asentoansa ja seisoi

jasmiinipensaan vieressä, riipoen siitä kukkia toisen toisensa perään.
Hän alkoi hymyillä ja hiljaa hyräillä ikäänkuin itsekseen:

»Oi, pikku lintu ikkunalla, sa laula mulle vain…»

»Ja enemmän nainen», toisti Sebastiano. »Naisia miehet

haluavat.»

Pepita katsahti häneen ja nauroi. Sitten hän lauloi jälleen:

»Hipaiset yöllä kukkain rintaa,

oranssin varvun katkaiset…»

Sebastiano teki äkillisen liikkeen ja tarttui hänen ranteeseensa

säihkyvin silmin.
 »Se ei muuten mitään haittaakaan», sanoi hän. »Te olette kylliksi
nainen sellaisenakin. Aika tulee, jolloin teillä on toiset tunteet. Teidät
voidaan pakottaa rakastamaan. Niin, te olette niitä, joita täytyy
pakottaa. Silloin tekin saatte kärsiä, ja se tekee teille hyvää. Silloin te
kyllä puhutte.»

Hän vaikeni ja piti tytön kättä hiukan ulompana itsestään ja

katsahti häneen äkkiä hyvin surullisesti.

»Olette niin kaunis», sanoi hän. »Niin pieni ja kaunis! Jos olisitte
hyväsydäminen ja lempeä, ja jos saisi hiljaa silittää teidän
poskeanne ja hiuksianne, kuinka silloin teitä rakastaisikaan ja tekisi
kaikki teidän tähtenne! Ei — te ette voi liikahtaa. En ole turhaan
taistellut härkien kanssa. Jos sallisin teidän liikahtaa, te riuhtaisisitte
itsenne irti ja satuttaisitte itseänne. Kuulkaa! Minä matkustan pois.
Minä en kiusaa teitä kauemmin. Minä odotan. Jos odottaa kyllin
kauan, taukoo tuska ja toiveet unhottuvat. Niin on haavan laita, ja
miksei myöskin niiden tunteiden laita, joita meillä on naista kohtaan?
Sanoin, että teidät pakotettaisiin rakastamaan, mutta sen minä jätän
jonkun toisen miehen tehtäväksi. Minä en halua sellaista rakkautta.
Minä tahdon saada naisen. Päivä tulee, jolloin ette viskaa divisaa
jalkoihinne. Te otatte sen silloin vastaan ja kätkette sen povellenne.
Se ei ole silloin minun, vaan jonkun muun, joka rakastaa teitä
vähemmän. Minä rakastin teitä, olin melkein hulluna teidän tähtenne.
Mutta siitä tulee loppu. On parempi ajatella vain härkiä kuin näytellä
mielipuolta naisen edessä, jonka sydämessä ei ole rakkautta. Te
olette kaunis, mutta se yksinään ei riitä. Te voitte tenhota miehen,
mutta lumousketjun läpi voi murtautua. Kas niin, menkää nyt!»

Hän loi tyttöön pitkän silmäyksen, melkein paiskasi hänen kätensä

luotaan ja hyppäsi puutarhan muurin yli. Seuraavassa
silmänräpäyksessä hän oli poissa.

Pepita seisoi yhä paikallaan, nyrkkiin puristetut kätensä sivuilla, ja

tuijotti silmät suurina alas valkoiselle, kuun valaisemalle tielle.

*****

Seuraavana iltana José tuli tavallista myöhemmin työstään. Hän

kulki tietä pitkin allapäin ja raskain, hitain askelin. Istuuduttuaan
aterialle hän söi vain hiukan ja kumartuessaan liemensä yli hän kuuli
Jovitan toruvan.

»Se on poissa», ärisi hän. »Sinä otit sen ja olet kai heittänyt sen
pois.»

»Eikö se sitten ollut minun?» kysyi Pepita. »Se oli minun. Minä en
välittänyt siitä ja olen tehnyt sen kanssa mitä tahdoin.»

José kohotti päätään ja kuunteli.

»Mitä on tapahtunut?» kysyi hän.

»Hän on heittänyt pois divisan, jonka minä olin kätkenyt», vastasi

Jovita. »Minä olin piilottanut sen, ja hän on sen ottanut. Mitä se
hänelle merkitsi, kun se oli sellaisessa paikassa, missä ei voinut sitä
nähdä.»

»Otitko sinä sen», kysyi José Pepitalta.

»Ei suinkaan se ollut hänelle aiottu?» vastasi Pepita. »Sanoinhan

minä, että hänen olisi pitänyt heittää se hänelle eikä minulle.»

José taittoi kappaleen leipää ja murenteli sitä konemaisesti

pöydällä.
 »Sinä et olisi saanut sitä tehdä» sanoi hän. »Minä toivon, että olisit
antanut sen olla. Se olisi ollut parasta; emmekä me häntä enää näe.
Hän ei enää tule tänne. Ja pian hän matkustaa pois. Kuka tietää,
mitä sitten voi tapahtua?»

Pepita läksi ulos sanaa sanomatta. Hän ei palannut pitkään

aikaan, eivätkä he tienneet, mihin hän oli mennyt. Mutta kun se oli
hänen tapansa hänen ollessaan pahalla tuulella, eivät he olleet
hänestä levottomia.

Kun hän vihdoin tuli takaisin, oli jälleen kuutamo. Jovita makasi
viiniköynnösten varjossa, ja José istui penkillä oven ulkopuolella ja
poltti tupakkaa.

Pepita istahti kynnykselle ja nojasi päänsä pihtipieltä vasten. Hän

ei virkkanut mitään, vaan katseli kasteesta painuneita kuun valossa
säkenöitseviä kukkasia.

Oli muutaman minuutin äänettömyys, mutta sitten José liikahti

levottomasti ja lausui:

»Kuten sanottu, hän ei enää tule tänne ja pian hän matkustaa

pois. Parasta niin. Hän on hyvin luja ja päättäväinen. Kamppailu
härkien kanssa lienee hänet sellaiseksi tehnyt. Hän sanoi, että hän
tahtoi saada sinut omakseen, mutta että sinä et huolinut hänestä, ja
senvuoksi hänen täytyy koettaa unohtaa sinut. Hänen täytyy lakata
sinua ajattelemasta ja välttää kuulla sinusta puhuttavan. Hän pyysi
minua ystävänä, etten sallisi hänen nähdä itseäni vähään aikaan,
kunnes kaikki on ohi. Minun näkemiseni muistuttaisi hänelle sinua,
mutta se ei käy päinsä. Hän sanoi sen ystävänä — ei ollenkaan
äreästi — ja hän on minun ystäväni, vaikka hän on Sebastiano ja
minä vain tällainen raatava raukka. Kaikki tulee yhtä hyväksi kuin
konsaan, kun hän pääsee tämän yli ja me jälleen tapaamme. Jos
sinä olisit tahtonut ottaa hänet vastaan, olisi meistä tullut veljet.»

Pepita istui ääneti. Mitä ihmeellistä hänessä tapahtui? Hän ei sitä

tiennyt. Hänen hengityksessään oli jotakin vikaa. Oli jotakin, mikä
pakotti hänen sydänalaansa — jyskytti siellä niin raskain iskuin, että
hän oli tukehtua. Hän sulki kätensä niin tiukkaan, että kynnet
tunkeutuivat nahkaan. Hän ei olisi voinut lausua sanaakaan, vaikka
olisi mitä maksettu.

Ennenkuin José ehti sanoa enempää, nousi hän äkillisen kiivaasti,

meni hänen ohitseen ja oli jälleen poissa. Miesparka katseli
surullisesti pienen nopean olennon jälkeen.

»Jos Pepita olisi ottanut hänet vastaan», mumisi hän itsekseen,

»olisi hänestä tullut hyvä aviomies, ja me olisimme tulleet veljiksi.
Mutta tyttöä ei ole helppo miellyttää, eikä myöskään ole hänen
tapaistaan rohkaista niitä, jotka eivät häntä heti miellytä. Mutta
kukaan ei kaada härkää niinkuin Sebastiano!»

Pepita liiti pois kuin lintu, kunnes saapui kiviaidalle, jonka juurella
jasmiinipensas kasvoi, juuri samalle paikalle, missä oli seisonut
edellisenä iltana. Siellä hän pysähtyi läähättäen. Jasmiinien tuoksu
täytti ilman hänen ympärillään. Hän katsoi valkoiselle tielle.
Ihmeellinen uusi tunne täytti hänen rintansa. Hän ei tiennyt, oliko se
vihaa vai mitä se oli, mutta jos se oli vihaa, oli se uutta lajia,
tuskallisempaa kuin tavallisesti.

Hän ei enää palaisi — ei enää koskaan palaisi! Hän ei enää äkkiä

ilmestyisi hänen viereensä ikäänkuin maan sisästä kohonneena, hän
ei seuraisi häntä eikä yrittäisi hellyttää häntä tai katselisi häntä
kaiken aikaa, kun oli hänen läheisyydessään, — hän ei enää
koettaisi saada häntä puhumaan. Viimeksi eilenillalla hän oli täällä,
juuri samalla paikalla, ja nyt hän ei enää koskaan puhuisi niinkuin
silloin puhui. Hän unohtaisi hänet — ei enää kyselisi häntä —
unohtaisi hänet — Pepitan!

Tyttö ei tahtonut sitä uskoa. Hän tiesi, ettei hän sitä voisi…
eiväthän ne koskaan voineet. Ne rakastivat häntä aina eivätkä
huolineet kestään muusta… Ja kuitenkin jatkui raskas jyskytys
hänen sydänalassaan, ja hän hengitti työläästi ja läähättäen.

»Tule takaisin!» huudahti hän ja katsoi valkoiselle tielle. »Minä

pyydän sinua tulemaan takaisin. Sinun täytyy tulla. Kuuletko? Minä
sanon sen — minä — Pepita.»

Mutta ei kuulunut vastausta — ei äännähdystä, ei askelta; ei

näkynyt merkkiäkään mistään lähestyvästä haamusta. Tie ulottui
kauvaksi valkoisessa yksitoikkoisuudessaan, ja kummallinen, hurja
ilme tuli pieniin kauniisiin kasvoihin.

»Etkö kuule?» toisti hän. »Minä en tahdo puhua sinulle, ellet tule,
en anna sinulle mitään, en katsettakaan; mutta sinun täytyy tulla
siksi, että minä sitä tahdon — siksi että minä olen Pepita.»

Yhä oli kaikki hiljaista ja äänetöntä. Äkkiä hän nosti kätensä ylös ja
polki jalkaansa.

»Minä tapan sinut!» huudahti hän. »Ellet sinä tule, niin minä tapan
sinut!»

Ja sitten hän laski äkkiä kätensä pamppailevalle sydämelleen ja

vaipui maahan haudaten kasvonsa jasmiinin kasteesta märkiin,
tuoksuviin köynnöksiin.