VESPERTINE

Impressionistic prose bordering on poetry. Sensuous associations brought on by a gently touching finger. Images of kissing lips and dripping blood.

Footnotes. A second voice. Harsher, more direct. Longing too, silent confessions of love and yearning. Tenderness in the face of fate's inevitability.

The gun or the knife?

But beauty prevails. Beauty offset by pain and secrets. Still, beauty. Enhanced by the acceptance of the ugly things. The things unspoken yet known.

The silver lining of the shining blade-edge.

Though based in the (unreal) mythos of the Goncharov phenomenon, Verspertine is still a piece about love being both transient, forbidden, never-ending, and bound by time.

Like Sophia's previous title (Origin of Love), Verspetine continues on the linear retelling of a romance doomed from the start (infidelity + clock theme from Goncharov), with the use of annotated links revealing either a side note on a certain point (button) or a different perspective (numbers). The prose even resembles the poetry of Origin of Love in its descriptions.

While there is no clear timeline or setting of scene throughout the game, as Andrey jumps from his recollection of past events to his feelings for Goncharov, I've chosen to believe Andrey is waiting for his lover to awaken, admiring his sleepy self and contemplating on his situation in the meantime.

I read the piece multiple times, because I wanted to experience the story as it was, before diving into the annotation. While the main text and the button annotations are written in the third person (from Andrey's perspective and memories), the numbered links sends you into a darker screen, where the prose is shown in the first person, in a more personal and stronger voice.
I was confused at first whose voice it was between the two men at first, but the last screens made it clear Goncharov was the one.

You are told from the get go that the romance is doomed from the start: Goncharov is married and their work interfere with one another (?? the Goncharov mythos is unclear on whether the two are partners or rivals). The relationship is bound to end, time will not let them escape (sidenote: loved the references to the clock and time). Yet you can't help but feel for the two men who obviously yearn for each other's presence (and body, mind and soul). You want them to find a way to keep them embraced.

And in this pain, there is beauty. Beauty in the way the two describe each other, in the way the harshness of their lives is offset by the little moments they find each other, in the way they kiss, in the way they touch... Beauty prevails. Love, somehow, prevails.

I opened up VESPERTINE having missed the whole Goncharov moment. Still, I found a lot to enjoy this game. It is brimming with sensual descriptions–the pressure of pen on paper, of fingers on skin. Desire is portrayed as being at once voracious, destructive, desiccating. What felt most erotic to me were the descriptions of characters watching each other, and the descriptions of hands–Andrey’s hands holding an espresso cup, fidgeting with the knife, caressing the pages of his book. (As an aside, I notice this about Adrien Brody’s hands, too. I feel like he manipulates small objects with a practiced artistry that makes me wonder if perhaps he had previously trained as a mime or close up magician?)

One of the most intriguing aspects of VESPERTINE was how different perspectives are woven through the narrative. The main text seems to be in third person–but limited to Andrey’s perspective; the highlighted text connects (via a short popup in Goncharov’s POV) to sections that seem to be third person omniscient; and the footnotes link to passages narrated in first person, as Goncharov. I was puzzled by this choice at first, because Goncharov the film does not seem to be explicitly about textuality, scholarship, citation, different ways of reading, etc.–at least in the same way that a game like Harmonia is about those things. Goncharov the meme/arg, however, is kind of built on that. So in that rather meta way, the format–and its foregrounding of the ways that we “read” texts–really makes sense. There are diegetic ways in which the format is effective, too. “Goncharov’s” footnotes, commenting on “Andrey’s” exposed text, feel invasive, appraising, erotic. I don’t know, maybe that’s reading into things a bit too much. But the text-footnote dynamic did make me wonder: even though Andrey must/will eventually kill Goncharov (I think?), who is really being hunted? Who really is in control? Both are questions that, likewise, sexually charge the dynamic between the two men.

VESPERTINE was the perfect length for a brief but evocative interlude in a larger story. Just when I started to get antsy and wonder whether the plot was going to advance, it was over. It left me feeling curious about the overall Goncharov story, but at the same time satisfied with this glimpse.