Andrey Tarkovsky and the Happy Prince

" On the set of the film The Mirror, Andrey Tarkovsky included himself in one scene, lying in a hospital bed and holding a tiny bird on his right hand. And this is what happened to him at the end of his life: in his sick-room in Paris, the room where he died, a little bird would fly every morning through the open window and come to light on him."

From the book "Instant Light - Tarkovsky Polaroids"

"...Then the Swallow came back to the Prince.

"You are blind now," he said, "so I will stay with you always."

"No, little Swallow," said the poor Prince, "you must go away to Egypt."

"I will stay with you always," said the Swallow, and he slept at the Prince's feet.

All the next day he sat on the Prince's shoulder, and told him stories of what he had seen in strange lands. He told him of the red ibises, who stand in long rows on the banks of the Nile, and catch gold-fish in their beaks; of the Sphinx, who is as old as the world itself, and lives in the desert, and knows everything; of the merchants, who walk slowly by the side of their camels, and carry amber beads in their hands; of the King of the Mountains of the Moon, who is as black as ebony, and worships a large crystal; of the great green snake that sleeps in a palm-tree, and has twenty priests to feed it with honey-cakes; and of the pygmies who sail over a big lake on large flat leaves, and are always at war with the butterflies.

"Dear little Swallow," said the Prince, "you tell me of marvellous things, but more marvellous than anything is the suffering of men and of women. There is no Mystery so great as Misery. Fly over my city, little Swallow, and tell me what you see there..."

From Oscar Wilde’s The Happy Prince and Other Tales (1888)