СвечаSvecha

“Candle” is the song’s title, not the poem’s: Tarkovsky left it untitled, and it goes by its first line, “Sight grows dim — my strength.” He wrote it in 1977; it was printed in his Izbrannoye (“Selected poems”) of 1982, and again in Ot yunosti do starosti (“From youth to old age,” 1987).

When I finished this song, I thought it was the summit of my work, and I couldn’t wait to hear what Dad made of it. Alas, he didn’t take to it. He remembered the poem from Nostalgia, where the main character recites it, and felt it entirely differently. Or perhaps he just didn’t want to accept his own fading with such anguish.