The
Mission of Raphael in the Light of Spiritual Science
January 30, 1913 Berlin
Raphael is one of those
figures in the spiritual [area] of mankind who rise[s] like a star. These
figures stand there, making us feel that they emerge suddenly out of the
depths of the spiritual evolution of humanity and then disappear, when
through their mighty creations, their being has been engraved into the
spiritual history of man. On closer observation it becomes evident that
such a human being, whom we have at first compared to a star that flashes
brightly and then disappears again, becomes a member of the whole spiritual
life of mankind, like a limb in a great organism. This is especially
so in regard to Raphael.
Hermann Grimm, the eminent
thinker on Art, has tried to follow Raphael's influence and fame through
the ages down to the present day. Grimm has been able to show that
Raphael's creations went on working after the painter's death as a living
element, and that a uniform stream of spiritual development has flowed
onwards from the life of Raphael to our own time. Grimm has shown how the
evolution of humanity has proceeded since the creations of Raphael, and on
the other side of the spiritual conception of history it may be said that
preceding ages too give the impression as if they were themselves pointing
to the Raphael who was later to appear in world evolution like a limb
in a whole organism. We may here recall an utterance once made by Goethe
about the world of Space and apply it to the world of Time. Goethe once
wrote these significant words: “What would all the
starry world and all that is spread out in Space amount to if it were
not at some time reflected in the human soul, celebrating its own higher
existence for the first time in the experiences of this human soul?”
Applying these words to the evolution of the ages, we may say that in
a certain sense, when we cast our eyes back into antiquity, the Homeric
gods who were described so gloriously by Homer nearly 1000 years before
the founding of Christianity, would lose something if they had not risen
again in the soul of Raphael, finding their consummation in the sublime
figures of his pictures. What Homer created long ages before the appearance
of Christianity unites in this sense into an organic whole with what
was born from the soul of Raphael in the 16th century. Again, we turn
our gaze to the figures of the New Testament, and in the face of Raphael's
pictures we feel that something would be lacking if the creative, formative
power in the Madonnas and other pictures which have sprung from Biblical
tradition and legend, had not been added to the Biblical description.
Therefore we may say: not only does Raphael live on through the following
centuries but his creations form one organic whole with all preceding
ages. Most ages indeed already pointed to one in whom they should find
their consummation, although this, it is true, could only be discovered
in later history.
The words of Lessing
when he speaks of “the Education of the Human Race” assume
great significance when we thus see how a uniform spiritual essence
flows through the evolution of humanity, flashing up in figures like
Raphael. The truth of repeated earthly lives that have so often been
emphasized from the spiritual-scientific standpoint in connection with
the spiritual evolution of humanity is perceived with special vividness
when we bear in mind what has just been said. We realized then for the
first time what it means that the being of man should appear again and
again in repeated earthly lives through the epochs, bearing from one life
to the other what is destined to be implanted in the spiritual evolution
of humanity. Spiritual Science is seeking the meaning and purpose in the
evolution of mankind. It does not merely seek to portray the consecutive
events of human evolution in one straight, continuous line, but to
interpret the various epochs in such a way that the human soul, appearing
again and again over the course of the ages, must have ever new experiences.
Then we can truly speak of an “Education” which the human
soul undergoes as the result of its different earthly lives, —
an education proceeding from all that is created and born from out of
the common spirit of humanity.
What will here be set forth
from the standpoint of Spiritual Science in regard to Raphael's relationship
to human evolution as a whole during the last few centuries, is not intended
to be a philosophical or historical study, but the result of a many-sided
study of Raphael's creative activity. There is no question of giving
a philosophical survey of the spiritual life of humanity for the sake
of bringing Raphael into it. Everything that I myself have experienced
after study and contemplation of his different works has crystallized
quite naturally into what I propose to say tonight.
It will be impossible,
of course, to enter into the details of the single creations of Raphael.
That could only be if one were able by some means to place his pictures
before the audience. The general impression of the creative power of Raphael
arises in the soul and then the question arises: what place has this in the
evolution of humanity? The gaze falls upon a significant epoch, —
an epoch to which Raphael stands in a relationship to when we allow him
to work upon us — I referred to the Greek epoch and its development.
All that the Greeks not only created but experienced as the outcome of
their whole nature and constitution, appears as a kind of middle epoch when
we restudy human evolution during the last few thousand years. Greek
culture coincides in a certain sense with the founding of Christianity and
all that preceded it seems to bear a different character from following
ages. Studying humanity in the Pre-Grecian age of civilization we find
that the soul and spirit of man are much more intimately bound up with the
corporeal, with the outer corporeality than is the case in later times.
What we speak of today as the “inwardness” of the soul when
applying itself to the spiritual or the spiritual becoming conscious of
the Spiritual underlying the universe, — this inwardness did not
exist to the same degree in Grecian times. When man used his bodily
organs in those days, the spiritual mysteries of existence simultaneously
lit up in his soul. Observation of the sense-world was not so detached
and aloof as is ordinary Science to-day. Man beheld the objects with
his senses, and with his sense impressions he simultaneously perceived the
spirit and soul-elements weaving and living within the objects. The
Spiritual was there with the objects as they were perceived. To press
forward to the Spirituality of the universe in ancient times it was
not necessary for man to withdraw from sense impressions or to give
himself up wholly to the inner being of the soul. Indeed in very ancient
times of evolution “clairvoyant perception of things” —
in the very sense of the word — was a common possession of
man. This clairvoyant perception was not attained as the result of certain
given conditions, but was as natural as sense perception.
Then came Greek culture
with the world peculiar to it, — a world where we may place the
beginning of the inward deepening of spiritual life, but where the inner
experiences of the spirit are still connected with the outer, with processes
in the world of sense. In Greek culture the balance is not between the
Sensible and the Psychic-Spiritual. The Spiritual was not so immediately
present in sense perception as was the case in Pre-Grecian times. It lit
up in the soul of the Greek as something inwardly apart, but that it was
perceived when the senses were directed to the outer world. The Greek
beheld the Spirit not in the objects, but with the objects.
In Pre-Grecian times the soul of man was poured out, as it were, into
corporeality. In Greek culture the soul had freed itself to some extent
from the corporeality, but the balance between the Psychic-Spiritual
and the bodily element was still held. This is why the creations of
the Greeks seem to be as fully permeated with the spirituality as that
which their senses perceived.
In Post-Grecian ages the
human spirit undergoes an inward deepening and is no longer able to
receive, simultaneously with the sense impression the, Spiritual living
and weaving in all things. These are the ages when the human soul was
destined to withdraw into itself and experience its struggles and conquests
in an inner life before pressing forward to the Spiritual. Spiritual
contemplation and the sense perception of things became two worlds which
the human soul must experience. How clearly evident this is in a spirit
like Augustine, for instance, who in the Post-Christian epoch is really
not so far removed from the founding of Christianity as we are from
the Reformation. The experiences and writings of Augustine as compared
with the traditions of Greek culture are highly characteristic of the
progress of humanity. The struggles of the inward turned soul, the scene
of action existing in the inner being of the soul apart from the external
world that we see in Augustine, — how impossible all this appears
in the Greek spirits who everywhere reveal how deeply their soul-content
is united with the processes of the external world. The evolutionary history
of humanity shows evidence of a division, a mighty incision. Into this
evolutionary picture there enters on the one side Greek culture, where
man holds the balance between the Psychic-Spiritual and outer corporeality;
on the other side there is the founding of Christianity. All the experiences
of the human soul were thereafter to become inward, to take
their course in inner struggles and conquests. The mission of the founding
of Christianity was not to direct man's gaze to the world of sense in
order that he might become conscious of the riddles of existence, but
to all that the spirit might intuitively hold when giving itself up
wholly to the powers of the spirit and soul. How utterly different,
— divided by a deep, deep cleft, are those beautiful, majestic
Gods of Greece, Zeus or Apollo, from the figure dying on the Cross,
— a figure, it is true, full of inner profundity and power, but
not beautiful in the external sense. Already here we find the outer
symbol of the deep incision made by Christianity and Greek culture in
the evolution of humanity. And in the spirits of the Post-Grecian ages
we see the effects of this incision as an ever more intense inward
deepening of the soul.
Thence forward this
energy-pain has been characteristic of the onward progress of evolution.
And if we would understand human evolution in the sense of Spiritual
Science we must realize that we are living in an age which represents
a still greater inward deepening, the more we observe it in relation to
the immediate past and the prospect of the future in which a cleft, still
deeper than that which the contemplation of the past reveals, will appear
between all that is proceeding in the world in a more or less mechanical,
technical life of the outer world, and the goal ahead of the human soul
as it endeavors to scale the heights of spirituality, — heights
which open up only in our inner being as we attempt to ascend to the
Spiritual. More and more we are dancing into an age of inner deepening.
A mighty incision in the
progress of humanity in Post-Grecian times toward an energy being is
what has remained to us in the creations of Raphael. Raphael stands there
as a mighty spirit at a parting of the ways in human evolution. All that
preceded him marks the beginning of the process of this inner
deepening; what follows him represents a new chapter. Although much that
I have to say in this lecture may have the appearance of symbology,
it should not be taken merely as a symbolical mode of expression, but
as an attempt to create as broad a conception and idea as possible,
that which can be clothed only in the “trivial concepts of man”
on account of Raphael's towering greatness.
When we try to penetrate
the soul of Raphael we are struck, above all, by the way in which the soul
appears in the year 1483 in a “spring-like” birth, as it
were, passing through an inward development radiating forth its glory
from the most marvelous creations. Raphael dies at an early age, at 37.
In order to deepen ourselves in the soul so that we can follow all its
stages, let us turn our attention for the moment away from all that
was going on in world history and concentrate wholly on the inner
nature of this soul.
Hermann Grimm has pointed
out certain regular cycles in the inner development of Raphael's soul.
And indeed it may be said that Spiritual Science today has no need to
be ashamed of directing the attention of modern skeptical mankind to
the existence of cyclic laws holding sway along the path to the spirit,
in all evolution, but also in that of individual human beings, if so
eminent a mind as Hermann Grimm was led to, without Spiritual Science,
to the perception of this regular inner cyclic development in the soul
of Raphael. Grimm speaks of the picture called “The Marriage of
the Virgin” as being a new phenomena in the whole evolution of
Art, saying that it cannot be compared with anything that had gone before.
From infinite depths of the human soul, Raphael created something entirely
new in the whole of spiritual evolution. If we thus gain a conception
of the gifts in Raphael's soul from birth onwards, we can readily
agree with the following passage of Hermann Grimm: “We now see
Raphael's soul developing onwards in regular cycles of four years duration.
It is wonderful to observe how this soul advances onwards thus, and
studying one such period we find that at the end of it, Raphael stands at
a higher stage of his soul's development. Four years after the picture
The Marriage of the Virgin comes The Entombment; four
years later again the frescoes in the Camera dells Segnature
in the Vatican, — and so on, by four year stages up to The
Transfiguration which stood unfinished by his death bed.”
We feel the desire to
study this soul for its own sake because its development is so harmonious.
Then however we get the impression that in the Art of Painting itself
an inwardness had to develop, — an inwardness such as that expressed
in figures which only Raphael could create. It is an inwardness borne
out of the depths of the soul experience although it appears in pictures
of the world of sense, and it then becomes part of history itself.
Having thus contemplated
the inner nature of the soul of Raphael, let us allow the age in which
he lived and all that was around him, to work upon us. While Raphael
was growing up more or less as a child in Urbino, his environment was
of a kind that could stimulate and awaken any decisive talents. The
whole of Italy was excited at that time about a certain palace that
had been built in Urbino. This was something that imbued the early talents
of Raphael with an element of harmony with their nature. After that,
however, Raphael got more refined and transplanted himself to Perugia,
then to Florence, then to Rome. Fundamentally speaking, his life ran its
course within narrow circles. These towns seem so near when we study his
life. His world was enclosed within the circles so far as the world of
sense was concerned. It was only in the spirit that he rose to “other
spheres.” In Perugia, however, which was the scene of his youthful
soul development, fierce quarrels were the order of the day. The town is
populated by a passionate, tumultuous people. Noble families whose lives
were spent in wrangling and quarreling fought bitterly against each other.
The one drove the other out-of-town, then after a short banishment the other
family would try again to take possession of it. More than once the
streets of Perugia flowed with blood and were strewn with corpses. One
historian describes a remarkable scene, and indeed all the descriptions
of that epoch are typical. A nobleman of the town enters it as a warrior
in order to avenge his relatives. He is described to us as he rides
through the streets on horseback like the spirit of War incarnate, beating
down everything that crosses his path. The historian evidently has the
impression that the revenge was justifiable and there arises before
his soul the picture of St. George bringing the enemy to his feet. Later,
in a work by Raphael, we feel the scene as described by the historian
rise up before us in picture form and our immediate impression is that
Raphael must surely have allowed this to affect him; and then what seemed
so terrible in the outward sense is deepened and rises again from out of
his soul in the subject of one of the most wonderful pictures.
Thus Raphael saw around
him a quarreling humanity; disorder upon disorder, battle upon battle,
surrounded him in the town where he was studying under his master Pietro
Perugino. One gets the impression of two worlds in the town, —
one, the scene of cruelty and terror, and another, living inwardly in
Raphael's soul, which had really little to do with what was going on
around him in the physical world.
Then, later again we find
Raphael transplanted to Florence in the year 1504. What was the state
of Florence then? In the first place the inhabitants give the impression
of being a wearied people who had passed through inner and outer tumults
and were living in a certain ennui and fatigue. What had been the fate
of Florence? Struggles, just as in the case of the other town, bitter
persecutions among different patrician families, and of course, quarrels
with the outer world. And on the other hand stirring events that had
thrown every soul in the town into a state of upheaval when Savonarola
appears before them uttering words of fire against the current misdeeds,
the cruelty, materiality and heathendom of the Church. The words of
Savonarola seem to resound again in our ears, words by which he dominated
the whole of Florence and to such an extent that the people not only hung
upon his lips but revered him as deeply as if a spirit from a higher world
were standing before them in that ascetic body. The words of Savonarola
transformed Florence as if the direct radiation of the Reformer of
Religions Himself had permeated not only the religious conceptions, but
the very social life of the town. It was as though a citadel of the Gods
had been founded. Such was Florence under the influence of Savonarola. He
fell victim to those Powers whom he had opposed, morally and religiously.
Their rises before our soul the moving pictures of Savonarola as he
was led to the fire of martyrdom with his companions, and how from the
gallows when he was to fall onto the burning pyre, he turned his eyes
— it was in May 1498 — down to the people who had once hung
upon his words, but who had now deserted him and were looking with apparent
disloyalty at the figure who had for so long inspired them. Only in a very
few, — and they were artists, — do the words of Savonarela
still resound. There were painters at that time who themselves donned
the monk's robe after Savonarela's martyrdom in order to work in his Order
under the influence of his spirit.
One can visualize the
weary atmosphere lying over Florence, Raphael was transplanted into
this atmosphere in the year 1504. And he brought with him in his creations
the very Spirit's breath of Spring, although in a different way from
Savonarela. When they contemplate the soul of Raphael in all its isolation,
— a soul so different from the mood surrounding it in this town,
visualizing him in the company of artists and painters working at his
creations in lonely workshops in Florence or elsewhere, another picture
rises up, showing us visibly in history how Raphael's soul stands out
inwardly aloof from the outer life around it. And there arises before
us the figures of the Roman Popes, Alexander VI, Julius II, Leo X, in
fact the whole Papal system against which Savonarela directed his words
of scorn, the Reformers their attacks. Yet this Papacy was the Patron
of Raphael who entered its service, although inwardly his soul had little
in common with what we find in his Patron Pope Julius II for instance.
It was said of Julius II that he gave the impression of a man with a
devil in his body, who always likes to show his teeth to his enemies.
They are mighty figures, these popes, but “Christians” in
the sense of Savonarola or of others who thought like him, they certainly
were not. The papacy had passed over into a new “heathendom”.
In these circles there was not much Christian piety. There was, however,
much brilliance, ambition, lust for power in the Popes as well as in
their environment. We see Raphael in the service as it were of this
heathenized Christendom, but in what sense in this service? From out
his soul flow creations which give a new form to Christian conceptions
and ideas. In the Madonnas and other works, the tenderest, most inward
element of Christian legend rises again. What a contrast there is between
the soul inwardness in Raphael's creations and all that was going on
around him in Rome when he entered into the outer service of the Popes!
How was this possible?
We see the contrast between our life and Raphael's inner being in the
early student days in Perugia, but we see it's still more intensely
in Rome where all his all-conquering works were created in the midst
of an officialdom of Cardinals and Priests which had been intolerable
to Savonarela. True, the two men were different, but we must nevertheless
contrast Raphael with his environment in this way if we are to obtain
a true picture of what was living in his soul.
Let us allow the picture
of Raphael to work upon us. This cannot be done in detail in a lecture,
but we can at least call up before the mind's eye one of the more widely
known works for the purpose of contemplating the peculiar qualities
living in Raphael's soul, — I mean the Sistine Madonna which is
familiar to everybody in the innumerable copies existing all over the
world. The Sistine Madonna is one of the greatest and noblest works
of Art in human evolution. The “Mother with the Child” hover
towards us on clouds which covered the Earth globe, — hover from
the shadowy world of spirit and soul, surrounded in clouds which seem
naturally to form themselves into human figures, one being the Child
Himself. Feelings arise which, when we permeate them with the soul,
seem to make us forget all those legendary conceptions which culminate
in the picture of the Madonna. We forget all that Christian traditions as
to tell of her. I say this not for the sake of giving any dry description,
but in order to characterize as fully as may be the feelings that arise
within us at the site of the Madonna.
Spiritual Science raises
us above all materialistic conception of human evolution. Although it
is difficult to understand in the sense of Natural Science according
to which the development of lower organisms proceeded until finally
it reached the stage of the human being, — nevertheless it is
the fact that man is a being whose life transcends everything below
him in the kingdom of Nature. Spiritual Science knows that man contains
a something within him much more ancient than all the beings who stand
in greater or lesser proximity to him in the kingdom of Nature. Man
existed before the beings of the animal, plant and even of
the mineral kingdom. In a wider perspective we look back to ages when
that which now constitutes our inner being was already in existence
in which only later was incorporated into the kingdoms which now stand
below man. We see the being of man proceeding from a super-earthly
world and realize that we can only truly understand it when we rise above
all that the Earth can produce out of herself to something super-terrestrial
and pre-terrestrial. Spiritual Science teaches that even if we allow
all the forces, all the living substances connected with the Earth herself
to work upon us, none of this can give a true picture of the whole essence
and being of man. The gaze must rise beyond the Earthly to the Supersensible
whence the being of man proceeds. Speaking figuratively we cannot but
feel how something wafts towards the Earthly when, for instance, we
gaze at the golden gleaming morning sunrise, — and especially
is this the case in a region like that in which Raphael lived. Forces
which work down into the Earth seem here to flow into the Earthly elements,
— forces which inhere in the being of the Sun. And then out of
the golden radiance arises before our soul the sense image of what it
is that is wafting hither in order to unite itself with the Earthly.
Above all in Perugia we may feel that the eye is beholding the very
same sunrise once seen by Raphael, who in these phenomenon was able
to sense the nature of the Super-Earthly element in man. And gazing
at the Sun-illuminated clouds there may don on us a realization that
the picture of the Madonna and Child is a sense picture of the eternal
Super-Earthly element in man that is wafted to Earth from super-earthly
realms themselves and meets, in the clouds, those elements that can
only proceed from the Earthly. Our perception may feel itself raised
to the loftiest spiritual heights if we can give ourselves up —
not theoretically, or in an abstract sense, but with the whole soul
— to what works upon us in Raphael's Madonnas. This perfectly
natural feeling may arise before the world-famous picture in Dresden.
And to prove to you that it has indeed had this effect upon many people
I should like to quote words written about the Sistine Madonna by Karl
August, Duke of Weimar, the friend of Goethe, after a visit to Dresden:
He says:
“In regard to
the Raphael picture that adorns the collection, I felt as if the whole
day long I had roamed over the heights of the Gotthard, through the
Urner clefts and looks down from thence to the green, blossoming valley.
As I looked at the picture and again away from it, it always seemed
to me a revelation of the soul. Even the most beautiful Caravaggios
were pictures only of the human; the memory of them tangible like
beautiful forms. Raphael, however, remained with me as a breath, as
one of those revelations sent to one in women's form by the Gods of
happiness or sorrow, like a figure that arises before one again and
again in waking or dream life, whose gaze, once experienced, is with
one forever, day and night, moving the innermost being.” (Karl
August to his friend Knebel, 14th October, 1763)
Another remarkable thing
is that if we study the literature of those who speak of the experiences
of deep emotion at the site of this Sistine Madonna and also of other
pictures of Raphael, we shall always find that they use the analogy
of the Sun, all that is radiant and spring-like. This gives us a glimpse
into Raphael's soul and we realize how from amid the environment already
described, it held converse with the eternal mysteries of the genesis
of man. And then we feel the uniqueness of the soul of Raphael, realizing
that it is not a “product” of its environment, but points
to a hoary antiquity. There is no longer any need for speculation. A
soul like this, looking out into the wide universe, — a soul which
does not express the mystery of existence in ideas, but senses and gives
it form in a picture like the Sistine Madonna, stands there in its inner
perfection quite naturally as mature in the highest degree. Truly, the
gifts inherent in this soul represents something that must have passed
through other epochs of human evolution, not many such epochs which
poured into it a power able to reemerge in what we call the “life
of Raphael”. But from what it re-merges?
We see the living kind
of Christian legends and traditions appearing again in Raphael's pictures
in the midst of an age when Christendom had, as it were, become heathenized
and was given up to outer pomp and show, just as Greek paganism was
represented in the figures of its gods and honored above all else by
the Greeks in their intoxication with beauty. We see Raphael giving
form to the figures of Christian tradition in an age when treasures
of Greek culture which had for long centuries been buried under ruins
and debris on Roman soil were unearthed, Raphael himself assisting.
It is a remarkable spectacle, the Rome where Raphael found himself at
this time. Let us consider what had gone before.
First there are the sentries
of the Rise of Rome, — a Rome built upon the Egoism of individual
men whose aim it was above all to establish a human society in the external
physical world on the foundation of what man, as the citizen of a State,
was meant to signify. Then during the age of the Emperors, when Rome
had reached a certain eminence, it absorbs the Greek culture which streams
into Roman spiritual life. Rome subdues Greece in the political sense,
but in the spiritual sense Greece conquers Rome. Greek culture lives
on within Roman culture; Greek art, to the extent to which it has been
imbibed by Rome, lives on there; Rome is permeated through and through
by the essence of Greek culture. But why is it that this does not remain
through the following sentries as a characteristic quality of the development
of Italy? Why was it that something entirely different made its appearance?
It was because soon after Greek culture had streamed into the life of
Rome there came the influx of that other element which impressed its
signature strongly into the spiritual life that was developing on the
soil of Italy, I mean, Christendom. The mission of this inward deepening
of Christendom was not that of the external sense element in the Greek
State, Greek sculpture, or Greek philosophy. A formless element
was now to draw into the souls of men and to be laid hold of by dint
of inner effort and struggle. Figures like Augustine appear, —
men whose whole being is inward turned. But then, — since everything
in evolution proceeds in cycles, we see a rising in men who have passed
through this inward deepening and whose souls have long lived apart
from the beauties of external life, a yearning for beauty. Once again
they behold the inner in the outer. It is significant to see the inwardly
deepened life of Francis of Assisi in Giotto's pictures for those pictures
express the inner experiences called forth in the soul by Christianity.
And even if the inner being of the human soul speaks somewhat haltingly
and imperfectly from Giotto's pictures, we do nevertheless see a direct
ascent to the point where the most inward elements, the very loftiest
and noblest in external form confronts us in Raphael and his contemporaries.
Here we are directed once again to a characteristic quality of this
soul of Raphael.
If we try to penetrate
into the kind of feelings and perceptions which Raphael himself must
have had, we cannot help saying to ourselves: “Yes, indeed, in
the contemplation of pictures like the Madonna della Sedia, for instance,
the whole way in which the Madonna with the Child, and the Child John
in the foreground are here represented, makes us forget the rest of
the world, forget above all that this Child in the arms of the Madonna
is connected with the experiences of Golgotha. Gazing at Raphael's pictures
we forget everything that afterwards perceived as the “life of
Jesus”; we live entirely in the moment here portrayed. We are
gazing simply at a Mother was a Child, which in the words of Hermann
Grimm, is the great Mystery to be met with in the outer world. Peace
surrounds this moment; it seems as though nothing could connect with
it, before or afterwards; we live wholly in the relationship of the
Madonna to her Child and separate it off from everything else. Thus
do the creations of Raphael appear to us, — perfect and complete
in themselves, revealing the Eternal in one moment of Time.
How shall we describe
the feelings of a soul able to create like this? We cannot compare them
to the feelings of a Savonarola, who when he uttered his words of scorn
or was speaking those uplifting, godly words to Christian devotees,
was seized with inner fire and passed through the whole tragedy of the
Christ. We cannot conceive that Raphael's soul burst forth suddenly
like the genius of a Savonarola, or others like him; nor can we conceive
that it was swayed by the so-called “fire of Christendom.”
Raphael could not however have portrayed the Christian conceptions in such
inner perfection if his soul had been as foreign to this “Christian
fire” as may appear to have been the case.
On the other hand, the
forms in all their objectivity and roundness could not have been created
by a soul permeated with Savonarola's fire and winged by the experience
of the whole tragedy of the Christ. Quite a different peace, quite a
different Christian feeling must have flowed into the soul. And yet
no soul could have created these pictures if the very essence of Christian
inwardness were not living within it. Surely it is almost natural to
say: here indeed is a soul which brought with it into the physical existence
of the artist Raphael, the fire that pours forth from Savonarola. When
we realize how Raphael brings this fire with him through birth from
earlier experiences, we understand why it is so illuminating and inwardly
perfect; it does not come forth as a consuming and shattering element
but as the reliance of plastic creation. In Raphael's innate gifts one
already feels the existence of something that in an earlier life might
have been able to speak with the same fire that is later found in Savonarola.
It need not astonish us to find in Raphael a soul reincarnated from
an age when Christianity was not yet expressed in picture form or in
Art, but from the age of its founding, the starting point of the whole
mighty impulse which then worked on through the centuries.
In the attempt to understand
the soul like Raphael's, it is perhaps not too bold to say something of
this kind, for those who have steeped themselves again and again in the
works of Raphael and have thus learned to revere this soul in all its
depth, cannot but realize what it is that speaks from those wonder-works
into which the artist poured his soul. Thus the mission of Raphael only
appears in the right light when, — to use expression of Goethe,
— we seek in a life already past for the Christian fire that
is revealed in the radiance of the Raphael life. Then we understand
why his soul was necessarily so isolated in the world and why it was
that having possessed to an intense degree in an earlier existence something
of the nature of a Savonarola. It was able to refresh and renew all
that had arisen in the spiritual evolution of Italy in the 16th century.
I have already described
how in the age of the Rise of the Empire, the influence of Greek culture
has entered into Roman development and how an inward deepening of the
soul had seven. Later on, in the age of Raphael, — the Renaissance,
— we see on the one side the reappearance of this old Greek culture
that had long been buried under ruins and debris. We see in Rome with
the remnants of this free culture, the reappearance of the Greek spirit
that had once adorned and beautify the city; the eyes of the Roman people
turn once again to the forms that had been created by this Greek spirit.
On the other side, however, see how the spirit of Plato, Aristotle,
of the Greek Tragedians, penetrates Roman life in the epoch. Once again
the victory of Greek culture over the Roman world! The Greek culture
which was emerging from ruins and debris and spreading over the Italian
peninsula could not help having a refreshing and renewing effect on
a spirit like Raphael's, who in an earlier existence was imbued, to
the exclusion of everything else, with the moral-religious conception
of Christendom. If we see the moral-religious impulse of Christendom
born in the gifts of Raphael, we also see that element which these gifts
did not at first contain rising before his eyes in the resurrected culture
of Greece. And just as the city, rising out of ruins and debris, influenced
this soul more deeply than all others, so also did the spiritual yields
of Greek culture that were unearthed in the hidden manuscripts. Raphael's
inborn gifts, united with his “super-spiritual” devotion
to everything of a cosmic nature, worked hand-in-hand with the Greek
spirit that was emerging again in his age. These were the two elements
that united in Raphael's soul; this is why his works express the inwardness
proceeding from the post-Grecian age, — the inwardness poured
by Christianity into the evolution of humanity which was expressed in
outward manifestation in a world of artistic forms permeated with the
purest Greek spirit.
We are faced, then, with
the remarkable phenomena of the resurrection of Greek culture within
Christendom through Raphael. In him we see the resurrection of a Christendom
in an age which in a certain respect represents the
“Anti-Christian” element around him. In Raphael there'll is a
Christianity far transcending what had gone before him and rose to a much
loftier conception of the world as it was at that time. Yet it was a
Christianity that did no dimly and vaguely direct the attention to the
infinite spheres of the Spiritual, but was concentrated into forms that
delight the senses too, just as in earlier times the Greeks expressed in
artistic forms their ideas of the gods united with the formless element
living and weaving in the universe.
This is what we find when
we try to form a general picture of Raphael, allowing one or another
of his creations in all their sublime perfection yet marvelous superfluity
of youth, — for Raphael died at the age of 37, — to work
upon us. Not for the sake of any colorless theory, or for the purpose
of building any kind of philosophical history, but as the result of
a conception born out of Raphael's works themselves, it must be said
that the law holding sway in the course of human spiritual life finds
its true revelation in a mighty spirit such as his. It is not correct
to think of this course of spiritual life as a straight line where effect
follows cause as a natural matter of fact. It is only too easy in this
connection to quote one of the so-called “Golden sayings”
of humanity to the effect that the life and nature does not advance
by leaps and bounds. Well and good, but the fact is that in a certain
respect both life and nature do continually do so, as can be seen in
the development of the plant from the green leaf to the blossom, from
the blossom to the fruit. Here everything does indeed “develop”
but sudden leaps are quite obvious. So too is it in the spiritual life
of humanity, and this, moreover, is bound up with many mysteries, one
of them being that a later epoch must always have it support
in an earlier. Just as the male and female must work in conjunction,
so may it be said that the different “Spirits of the Age”
must mutually fertilize and work together in order that evolution may
proceed. Roman culture, already at the time of the empire, had to be
fertilized by Greek culture in order that a new “Spirit of the
Age” might arise. This new Spirit of the age had in its turn to
be fertilized by the Christ Impulse before the inwardness which we then
find in Augustine and others was possible. This human soul that had
been so inwardly deepened, had once again to be fertilized by the spirit
of the Greek culture which, although it was a doubly buried, doubly
hidden, was made visible again to the eyes of man in the works of Art
resting beneath the soil of Italy, and to their souls in the rediscovered
literary manuscripts.
The first Christian centuries
in Italy were extraordinarily uninfluenced by what lived in Greek Philosophy
and Poetry. Greek culture was buried in a double grave and waited in
a realm beyond as it were, for an epoch when it could once again fertilized
human soul that had meantime passed through a new phase. It was buried,
this Greek culture, hidden from the eyes of men and from souls who did
not know that it would live and flow onwards like a river that sometimes
takes a track under a mountain and is not seen until it once again comes
to the surface. Hidden, outwardly from the senses, inwardly from the
depths of the soul was this Greek culture and now it appeared once again.
For sense perception it was brought to the light of day from out of
the soil of Italy and flowed into the works of art; first virtual perception
it was not only unearthed from the ancient manuscripts; men began once
again to feel in the Greek sense of the material is the manifestation
of the Spiritual. They began to feel all that Plato and Aristotle had
once thought.
It was Raphael in whom
this Greek culture could bring forth its fairest flower because the
Christ Impulse had reached a greater ripeness in his soul than in any
other. This is twice buried and twice resurrected Greek culture worked
in him in such a way that he was able to impress into forms the whole
evolution of humanity. How marvelously was he able to accomplish this
in the pictures in the Camera della Segnature in the Vatican! The ancient
spiritual contests rise again before our eyes, — the struggles
and activities of those Spirits who developed onwards during the epoch
of inward deepening, who were not there in the Greek culture as it reappeared
in the time of Raphael. The whole period of inward deepening was necessary
before Greek culture could become visible in this particular form, and
then it is painted on the walls of the Papal Chambers. What the Greeks
had conceived of in forms only, has now become inward; we see the inner
struggles and conflicts of humanity itself charmed onto the walls of
the Vatican in the spirit of Greece, of Greek art and beauty. The Greeks
poured into their statues their conception of the way in which the gods
worked upon the world. How this working of the gods is experienced
by man, so that he presses on words to the foundations and causes of
things, — this is what is expressed in the picture so often called
“The School of Athens”. The conceptions which the human
soul had learned to form of the Greek gods is expressed in the Parnassus,
with it's new and significant interpretation of the Homeric gods. These
are not the gods of the Iliad and Odyssey; they are the gods as perceived
by a soul that had passed through the period of inward deepening. On
the other wall there is a picture that must remain indelibly in the
memory of every one, whatever their religious creed, — I refer
to the fresco of the “Dispute about the Mass” which portrays
the deepest inner truths. Whereas the other pictures, — in a Greek
beauty of form it is true, — express the goal to be attained as the
result of a certain philosophical striving, we have in the “Dispute
about the Mass”, the fairest thing that the soul of man may
experience. Here we find “Brahma”, “Vishnu”,
“Shiva” portrayed in quite a different sense, — a prove
to us that there is no need to adhere rigidly to a narrow Christian
dogmatism. What inwardly experienced by every human soul, irrespective of
creed or confession, as the “Trinity”, faces us in the
symbolism, — though the portrayal is not merely
“symbolical”, in the upper part of the picture. We see it again
in the countenances of the church fathers, in their every gesture, in the
whole grouping of the figures, in the wonderful coloring, indeed in the
picture as a whole which portrays the inwardness of the human soul in a
beauty of form permeated by the spirit of Greece.
And so the inward deepening
experienced by the soul man in the course of 1500 years rises again
in outer revelation. Christianity, not as the heathendom of the Roman
popes and cardinals, but as the wonderful paganism of Greece with its
mighty gods, is resurrected in the works of Raphael.
Thus the soul of Raphael
stands at the turning point of ages, pointing back to days of yore,
containing within itself all that had developed up to the time of
Christendom in the beauty of external revelation, and yet at the same time
permeated by what had been brought about by the so-called “education
of the human race”, namely an inward deep pain in the reincarnated
soul. These wonderworks of so rare and art stand before us like a fusion
of two ages, each clearly different from the other, — the pre-Grecian
and the post-Grecian epochs, the one of external, the other of inner
life. But the pictures also open up a glimpse into the future. Those
who realize what the fusion of external beauty and the inner wisdom-filled
urge of the human soul may signify, cannot but feel security and hope that
this inward deepening — despite all the materiality that must needs
develop more and more as humanity progresses, — must increase in the
course of evolution and that the soul of man through successive lives will
enter into greater and greater depths of inwardness.
If we now turn to literature
and study not as “Art critics” or mere readers, the works
of a spirit like Hermann Grimm, who tried with his whole soul to portray
the workings of human fantasy, we can understand the depths of inner
sympathy with which he contemplated the creations of Raphael. If we
ourselves study a spirit like Hermann Grimm with this same inner sympathy,
we can understand the significance of certain words of his which express
what was passing through his soul when he makes a somewhat tentative
utterance at the beginning of his books, in a passage dealing with the way
in which Raphael is a product of all the ages. Grimm's formal descriptions
of the various works of Raphael do not show us once this particular
thought has sprung. In the middle of other wider historical considerations
into which Raphael is introduced, Hermann Grimm is struck by a thought
which he records somewhat tentatively in these words: “When we
contemplate the spiritual creations of humanity and see how they have
passed over from days of yore into our own time, we may well be aware
of a longing to tread this Earth once more in order to see what has
been their fate as they have lived on.” This desire for
“reincarnation” expressed by Hermann Grimm in the introduction
to his book on Raphael is remarkable, and moreover, deeply characteristic
of the feeling living in the soul of a man of our own time, — I mean
of course one who tried to penetrate into the very soul of Raphael and his
connection with other epochs. Surely this makes us feel that works like
those of Raphael are not merely a “natural product”; they do
not only induce a sense of gratitude for all that the past has hitherto
bestowed. They rather give birth to a feeling of hope, because they
strengthen our belief in an advancing humanity. We feel that these works
could not be what they are if progress were not the very essence of
humanity. A feeling of security and hope arises when we allow Raphael
to work upon us in the true sense and we are able to say: Raphael has
spoken to humanity itself in his artistic creations.
In front of the Stanzas
in the Camera della Segnatura we do indeed feel the transitoriness of
the outer work and that those ofttimes repaired frescoes can no longer
give any conception of what Raphael's magic once charmed on those walls.
We realize that at some future time men will no longer be able to gaze
at the original works, but we know too that humanity will never cease
progressing. Raphael's works began their march of triumph when out of
sheer love of them the innumerable reproductions now in existence were
made. The influence of the originals live on, even in the reproductions.
We can so well understand Hermann Grimm when he says that he wants hung
a photograph of the Sistine Madonna in his room but always felt that
he had no right to go into that room; it seemed to him to be a sanctuary
of the Madonna and the picture. Many will have realized that the soul
is changed after they have entered livingly into some picture of Raphael,
even though it is only a reproduction. True one day the originals will
disappear, but may it not be said that they exist nonetheless in other
worlds? The words of Hermann Grimm in his book on Homer are quite true:
“Neither can the original works of Homer truly delight us in these
days for when we read the Iliad and Odyssey in ordinary life without
higher spiritual faculties, we are no longer able to enter fully into
all the subtleties, beauty and power of the Greek language. The originals
exist no longer; yet in spite of this Homer speaks to us through his
poems.” What Raphael has given to the outer world however will
always remain as a living witness of the fact that there was once an
age in the evolution of humanity when the mysteries of existence were
indeed revealed through mighty creations, although at that time men
could not penetrate into these mysteries through printed writing. In
the age of Raphael then read less, but they be held a great deal more.
Raphael's internal message
to humanity will bear witness to this epoch, — an epoch differently
constituted but that will nevertheless work on through all the ages
to come, because humanity is one complete organism. Thus Raphael's creations
will live on in the outer course of human evolution and inwardly in
the success of lives of the spirit of man, destroying ever mightier
and more deeply inward treasures.
Spiritual Science points
to a twofold continuation of life, one aspect of which has been described
in previous lectures here, and will be still further described, and
to another spiritual life towards which we are ever striving. This spiritual
life becomes our guide as we passed through the epochs of earthly existence.
Hermann Grimm spoke words of truth when he expressed what his study
of Raphael imparted to his feeling and perception. He says: “A
time must come when Raphael's work will have long since faded and passed
away. Nonetheless he will still be living in mankind, for in him humanity
blossomed forth into something that has its very roots in man and will
forever germinate and bear fruit.” Every human soul who can penetrate
deeply enough into Raphael's soul will realize this. Indeed we can only
truly understand Raphael when we can sublimate and deepen in the sense
of Spiritual Science a feeling which permeated Hermann Grimm when he
turned again and again to the contemplation of the painter. (In the
last lecture we saw how near Hermann Grimm stood to Spiritual Science.)
It will help us to understand our own relation to Raphael and the sense
in which thoughts such as have been given today may grow into seeds.
If we conclude with a passage from Grimm which expresses what I have
really wished to say: “Men will always long to understand Raphael,
the fair young painter who surpassed all others, who was fated to die
early and whose death was mourned by all Rome. When Raphael's works
are lost his name will nevertheless remain engraven in the memory of
man.”
Thus wrote Hermann Grimm
went in his own particular way he began to describe Raphael. We can
understand these words and also those with which he concludes his book:
“All the world will launch and though of the life work of such
a man for Raphael has become one of the basic elements in higher development
of the human spirit. We would fain draw nearer to him nay, we need him
for our healing.”
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