Transcendence and Sensoriness : Perceptions, Revelation, and the Arts [1 ed.] 9789004291690, 9789004274525

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Transcendence and Sensoriness

Studies in Religion and the Arts Editorial Board James Najarian (Boston College) Eric Ziolkowski (Lafayette College)

volume 10

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/sart

Transcendence and Sensoriness Perceptions, Revelation, and the Arts Edited by

Svein Aage Christoffersen Geir Hellemo Leonora Onarheim Nils Holger Petersen Margunn Sandal Translated from Norwegian and Danish by

Frances E. Hopenwasser Leif Stubbe Teglbjærg

LEIDEN | BOSTON

Cover illustration: Qal’at Si’man, detail of portal with ‘wind-blown’ acanthus. Photograph by Tobias Fleischer. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Transcendence and sensoriness : perceptions, revelation, and the arts / edited by Svein Aage Christoffersen, Geir Hellemo, Leonora Onarheim, Nils Holger Petersen, Margunn Sandal.   pages cm. -- (Studies in religion and the arts, ISSN 1877-3192 ; volume 10)  Includes bibliographical references and index.  ISBN 978-90-04-27452-5 (hardback : acid-free paper) -- ISBN 978-90-04-29169-0 (e-book) 1. Aesthetics--Religious aspects--Protestant churches. 2. Christianity and the arts--Scandinavia.  3. Protestant churches--Doctrines. I. Christoffersen, Svein Aage, 1947- editor.  BX4817.T66 2015  246.01--dc23 2015013002

This publication has been typeset in the multilingual “Brill” typeface. With over 5,100 characters covering Latin, IPA, Greek, and Cyrillic, this typeface is especially suitable for use in the humanities. For more information, please see www.brill.com/brill-typeface. ISSN 1877-3192 ISBN 978-90-04-27452-5 (hardback) ISBN 978-90-04-29169-0 (e-book) Copyright 2015 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill nv incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi and Hotei Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Contents Preface ix List of Figures x List of Contributors xiii Introduction: Art and Aesthetic Experience as Signals of Transcendence? 1 Svein Aage Christoffersen

Part 1 Approaching the Sphere of Sense Perception Introduction to Part 1 17 Svein Aage Christoffersen 1 Theology and Poetic Openness 20 Svein Aage Christoffersen 2 The Loss of the Aura and the New Sensuousness: Walter Benjamin on the Conditions for Sense Perception in the Age of Technology 34 Dag T. Andersson 3 Sensoriness and Transcendence: On the Aesthetic Possibility of Experiencing Divinity 63 Dorthe Jørgensen 4 The Phenomenon of Revelation: Jean-Luc Marion’s Outline for a Phenomenology of Religion 86 Mikkel B. Tin

Part 2 Visual Art and Its Basic Conditions

Introduction to Part 2 113 Geir Hellemo

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5 The ornamenta ecclesiae in the Middle Ages: Materiality as Transcendence 117 Kristin B. Aavitsland 6 Ottoman Sensoriness: Nature as a Source of Religious Cognition in Istanbul in the Mid- sixteenth Century 131 Geir Hellemo 7 “I Can See Byzantine Art and Understand It”: The Problematic of the Byzantine Images and the Immanent Transcendence in Per Kirkeby’s Art 196 Hans Jørgen Frederiksen 8

God among Thorns: On Anselm Kiefer’s Pietà (2007) 222 Leonora Onarheim

PART 3 Music and Transcendence Introduction to Part 3 251 Nils Holger Petersen 9 The Finished Fragment: On Arnold Schoenberg’s Moses und Aron 257 Arnfinn Bø-Rygg 10 Time and Space in W.A. Mozart’s Ave Verum Corpus (1791): Transcendence and the Fictive Space of the Musical Work 287 Nils Holger Petersen 11

The Broken Hallelujah: The Super Hit as Sacred Space 326 Kristin Rygg

PART 4 Transcendence and Presence in Church Architecture Introduction to Part 4 349 Margunn Sandal

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The Fullness of Space 355 Ettore Rocca

13 Space, Wind and Light: On Transcendence and Early Church Architecture 375 Jens Fleischer 14

On Earth as It is in Heaven: St. Hallvard’s Church and Abbey 412 Margunn Sandal

PART 5 Theological Considerations: Imago Dei, Grace and Resurrection Introduction to Part 5 451 Svein Aage Christoffersen 15

Transcendence and the Use of Images 455 Svein Aage Christoffersen

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Faith’s Creative Mirror Reflection of Heavens’s Bliss 474 Theodor Jørgensen

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The Ambiguity of the Demonic in Paul Tillich’s View of Art 486 Espen Dahl

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When We Dead Awaken: Art, Life and Death 504 Trond Skard Dokka

Final Considerations and Perspectives 541 Svein Aage Christoffersen, Geir Hellemo, Leonora Onarheim, Nils Holger Petersen and Margunn Sandal Index 561

Preface

The Editors

This volume is the outcome of a collaboration which was made possible through generous funding by the Research Council of Norway for a collaborative project entitled Sanselighet og Transcendens (Sensoriness and Transcendence) with the editors of this volume as its five core members. During the years 2007 through 2014 this has enabled us to plan and undertake several research trips, organize workshops and conferences, and not least to set aside valuable research time for this project including two Ph.D. projects at the Faculty of Theology, University of Oslo. It has further led to fruitful collaborations with (mainly but not only) Scandinavian scholars from various fields which have enriched the project and its perspectives to a very high degree. The articles in this book have been planned and written as a result of the project work and some of these collaborations. Drafts of the articles have been discussed at workshops and subsequently revised. The book as it now appears is thus the result of a substantial process over several years to which also numerous scholars have contributed who are not directly represented as contributors. We are deeply grateful to the Research Council of Norway for the funding, as well as to many individual scholars and their university departments for interest and support which has made this book possible. In particular, we are grateful for the support and the understanding of The Faculty of Theology and The Practical Theological Seminary at the University of Oslo. The Norwegian Institute in Rome, the Foundation for DanishNorwegian Collaboration with its two institutions at Lysebu (Oslo) and Schæffergården (Copenhagen), and also the Edvard Munch Museum (Oslo) have supported workshops and conferences providing stimulating venues for a number of the activities which have been of great importance for the project and thus also for this book. Among the many scholars who have been important for the project, we would especially like to thank one of the editors of the book series “Studies in Religion and the Arts,” Prof. Eric Ziolkowski (Lafayette College, Pennsylvania), whose visit to Oslo proved tremendously inspirational for us and whose interest in the project paved the way for the book being accepted for publication in this series. During the publication process also the many important suggestions by the anonymous peer reviewer have been important for the end result. We are also grateful for the collaboration with Brill’s competent and helpful editorial team in Leiden. Finally, we would like to emphasize that what we have undertaken and have been allowed to undertake remains a work in progress. We hope that our work will lead to further interest in and discussion of the complex relationship between the arts and religion, not only but maybe especially in Protestant cultures where, in our views, such discussions are in particular need of further elaboration.

List of Figures 5.1

Altar frontal and retable with crucifix, Sahl Church, Jutland, Denmark, c. 1225 122 5.2 Inscription on the altar frontal from Lisbjerg Church, Jutland, Denmark, c. 1135 124 5.3 Samples of lettering from Danish Romanesque altar frontals 125 5.4 Altar frontal and retable with crucifix, Lisbjerg Church, Jutland, Denmark, c. 1135 127 5.5 Altar frontal, Stadil Church, Jutland, Denmark, c. 1225 128 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 6.6 6.7 6.8 6.9 6.10 6.11

Wicker shield, Topkapi Sarayi Müzesi, Istanbul, mid-sixteenth century 134 The tulip gardens of Emirgan, April 2010 135 Şehzade Mehmed Türbe, interior, Istanbul, 1543 137 Şehzade Mehmed Türbe, interior, Istanbul, 1543 141 Selim I Camii, interior, Istanbul, 1522 142 Şehzade Mehmed Türbe, interior, Istanbul, 1543 143 Lacquered binding interior, Topkapi Sarayi Müzesi, Istanbul, ca.1540 145 Yeni Kaplica, interior, Bursa, 1552 147 Rüstem Paşa Camii, exterior, Istanbul, 1561/2 148 Rüstem Paşa Camii, exterior, Istanbul, 1561/2 150 Dragon in foliage from an album, The Cleveland Museum of Art, mid-sixteenth century 152 6.12 Sünnet Odasi, Topkapi Sarayi, Istanbul, 1527/8 153 6.13 Plate with saz spray, private collection, mid-sixteenth century 154 6.14 Sokollu Mehmet Paşa Camii, interior, Istanbul, 1571/2 156 6.15 Illuminated tuğra of Sultan Süleyman, Museum of Turkish and Islamic Art, Istanbul, mid-sixteenth century 157 6.16 Illuminated manuscript of Sultan Süleyman (detail), Süleymanname, Topkapi Sarayi Müzesi, Istanbul, mid-sixteenth century 159 6.17 Eski Camii, interior, Edirne, 1403–14 162 6.18 Şehzade Mehmed Camii and Türbes, exterior, Istanbul, 1543–48 163 6.19 Rüstem Paşa Camii, Istanbul, axonometric projection 166 6.20 Rüstem Paşa Camii, interior, Istanbul, 1561/2 167 6.21 Sokollu Mehmet Paşa Camii, Istanbul, axonometric projection 172 6.22 Sokollu Mehmet Paşa Camii, interior, Istanbul, 1571/2 173 6.23 Geometrical pattern 177 6.24 Calligraphy 178

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7.1

Per Kirkeby, The Byzantine Island, National Gallery of Denmark, Copenhagen, 1976 197 7.2 The great dome in Hagia Sophia, Istanbul, 532–537 and 558 206 7.3 Theophanes the Greek, The Transfiguration, Tretyakov, Moscow, c. 1400 214 7.4 Giovanni Bellini, The Transfiguration, Museo Correr, Venice, c. 1455 216 7.5 Per Kirkeby, Bronze sculpture, Frejlev near Aalborg, Denmark, 1999 219 7.6 Per Kirkeby, Part of decoration at The Geological Museum in Copenhagen, 2004 220 7.7 Per Kirkeby, Part of decoration at The Geological Museum in Copenhagen, 2004 220 8.1

Anselm Kiefer, Pietà, Maria durch ein Dornwald ging, Exhibition in Salzburg 2008, 2007 223 8.2 Enlarged copy of Käthe Kollwitz’s sculpture Mother with her Dead Son (Pietà), in Neue Wache, Berlin, 1993 224 9.1

Arnold Schoenberg, Moses und Aron Oper in drei Akten, Klavierauszug von Winfried Zillig, Act 2, scene 2, bar 200–206 276 9.2 Schoenberg, Moses und Aron, Act 1, scene 1, bar 1–7 278 9.3 Schoenberg, Moses und Aron, Act 1, scene 1, bar 8–15 279 9.4 Schoenberg, Moses und Aron, End of Act 2, scene V, bar 1128–1136 280 12.1 Bruder Klaus Field Chapel, Peter Zumthor, Wachendorf, Germany, 2007 372 12.2 Bruder Klaus Field Chapel, Peter Zumthor, Wachendorf, Germany, 2007 373 13.1 13.2 13.3 13.4 13.5 13.6

Trajan’s foot on the globe. Nymphaeum, Ephesus, 2nd century 378 The Basilica of Constantine in Trier, Germany, after 310 381 Altar stone, Saint Pancras Church, London, 6th–7th century? 385 Apse arch with two crosses, Qalb Lozeh, Syria, c. 480-90 392 Wall in Santa Maria Maggiore, Rome, c. 432–40 397 Gable mosaic, Basilica Eufrasiana in Poreč, Croatia, end of the 6th century 399 13.7 Lintel with a cross motif, Dar El Kous, Tunisia, 6th century 401 13.8 Qal’at Si’man, detail of portal with ‘wind-blown’ acanthus, after the end of the 5th century 405 13.9 Santa Prassede, capitals with ‘wind-blown’ leafage, Rome, 822 406 14.1 St. Hallvard’s Church and Abbey, Lund & Slaatto, exterior, Oslo, 1966 415 14.2 St. Hallvard’s Church and Abbey, Lund & Slaatto, plan, Oslo, 1966 416

xii 14.3 14.4 14.5 14.6

l ist of figures St. Hallvard’s Church and Abbey, Lund & Slaatto, interior, Oslo, 1966 417 St. Hallvard’s Church and Abbey, Lund & Slaatto, interior, Oslo, 1966 418 St. Hallvard’s Church and Abbey, Lund & Slaatto, interior, Oslo, 1966 419 St. Hallvard’s Church and Abbey, celebration of the mass 421

20.1 Peter Brandes, Isaac. From exhibition in Tel Aviv 1995 545 20.2 Kjell Torriset, East-West (Dialogues 3). Exhibition in The National Gallery, Oslo, 2004 547 20.3 Kjell Torriset, East-West (Dialogues 3). Exhibition in The National Gallery, Oslo, 2004 549 20.4 Bagsværd Church, Jørn Utzon, exterior, Copenhagen, 1976 554 20.5 Bagsværd Church, Jørn Utzon, interior, Copenhagen, 1976 555 Throughout the book, biblical texts have been quoted from the New American Standard Bible (NASB) if nothing else is indicated.

List of Contributors Kristin B. Aavitsland, PhD Professor of Medieval Culture and Church History, Norwegian School of Theology, Norway. Email: [email protected] Dag T. Andersson, Dr. art. Professor emeritus of Philosophy, Department of Philosophy, University of Tromsø, Norway. Email: [email protected] Arnfinn Bø-Rygg, Mag. art. Professor emeritus of Aesthetics, Institute of Musicology, University of Oslo. Email: bo_rygg@lyse. net Svein Aage Christoffersen, Dr. theol. Professor of Ethics and Philosophy of Religion, Faculty of Theology, University of Oslo, Norway. Email: [email protected] Espen Dahl, Dr. art. Professor of Systematic Theology, Department of History and Religious Studies, UiT - The Arctic University of Norway. Email: [email protected] Trond Skard Dokka, Dr. theol. Professor emeritus of Hermeneutics, Faculty of Theology, University of Oslo, Norway. Email: [email protected] Jens Fleischer, Mag. art. Associate Professor emeritus of Art History, Department of Arts and Cultural Studies, Faculty of Humanities, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. Email: [email protected] Geir Hellemo, Dr. theol. Professor emeritus of Church History and Liturgy, Faculty of Theology and Practical Theological Seminary, University of Oslo, Norway. Email: [email protected] Dorthe Jørgensen, PhD, Dr. phil., and Dr. theol. Professor of Philosophy and History of Ideas, Department of Philosophy and History of Ideas, Aarhus University, Denmark. Email: [email protected]

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List of Contributors

Theodor Jørgensen, Dr. theol. Professor emeritus of Dogmatics, Department of Systematic Theology, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. Email: [email protected] Leonora Onarheim, Cand. philol. Doctoral Candidate of Systematic Theology, Faculty of Theology, University of Oslo, Norway. Email: [email protected] Nils Holger Petersen, PhD Associate Professor of Church History, Department of Church History, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. Email: [email protected] Ettore Rocca, PhD Associate Professor of Aesthetics, Department of Architecture and Territory, University of Reggio Calabria, Italy. Email: [email protected] Kristin Rygg, PhD Associate Professor of Musicology, Department of Arts and media, Hedmark University College, Hamar, Norway. Email: [email protected] Margunn Sandal, PhD Ordained Pastor in the Church of Norway and Lecturer at the University of Oslo. Email: [email protected] Mikkel B. Tin, Dr. phil. Professor of Philosophy of Culture, Faculty of Culture and Humanities, Telemark University College, Norway. Email: [email protected]

Introduction: Art and Aesthetic Experience as Signals of Transcendence? Svein Aage Christoffersen More than forty years ago, Peter Berger asked in his book A Rumor of Angels if there is still room for the transcendent and the supernatural in a modern world.1 The background of the question was the widespread thesis that modernization and secularization are two sides of the same coin. According to this thesis, which was pretty much a dogma in the first decades after World War II, the religious belief in the transcendent would disappear concurrently with the progress of modernization. A thoroughly modern world consists of nothing but what can be empirically ascertained and sensed. God is dead and religion belongs to a pre-modern period. Against this background Berger raised the question of whether this picture of secularization as an unstoppable, triumphal progress in the wake of modernization had overlooked some basic phenomena or signals of transcendence in human existence. He pointed in particular to five aspects in this perspective: the human being’s tendency to create order, to play, to hope, to condemn misdeeds and humor. To Berger all these were signals of transcendence within the empirically given human situation.2 Much has changed since Berger wrote his book about signals of transcendence in a modern world. At the time it was the secularization thesis which dominated the view of the relation between religion and modernity. Today religion has made a surprising ‘come-back’ in the modern, western world, and the belief in the unstoppable, victorious progress of secularization is not quite as indisputable as it was ten or twenty years ago. In a post-modern world, old and new forms of religion can live side by side with modern forms of secularity. Nevertheless, Berger’s question concerning transcendence in a secularized world is still important. The question is not primarily whether modernity and religion may live side by side, but whether it is possible to talk of transcendence in a modern, secularized world, and not only next to it. The challenging question is whether it is possible to find room for speaking of the transcendent on modern premises. Is the transcendent only an addition to the modern world, or is it also found in the modern world? Is there, in the natural sensory world also something that transcends this world? 1 P.L. Berger, A Rumor of Angels. Modern Society and the Rediscovery of the Supernatural (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1970; first published 1969), pp. 94–95. 2 Berger, A Rumor of Angels, p. 52.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi 10.1163/9789004291690_002

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Berger’s starting point was anthropological. What he referred to with the expression ‘signals of transcendence’ was phenomena that belong in human life as it exists to us as empirically given, at the same time as they seem to point beyond this empirical reality. He did not use the word ‘transcendence’ as a term belonging strictly to the philosophy of religion, but as the everyday term for that which seems to transcend or go beyond the world as it seems to appear to us in our daily life. Berger did not mention aesthetic experiences as a sign of transcendence, but he might easily have done so, since art can also be an expression of the human being’s creating order, of playing and hoping and, for that matter, also of damnation and humor. The question, however, is whether a signal or sign of transcendence in a modern world can also be found in art as art and hence as an expression of a more comprehensive form of aesthetic experience. Even though there is hardly any generally accepted definition of what art is, literature, drama, music, visual arts and architecture have historically been recognized for centuries as particularly intensive, meaningful, non-dogmatic and sensory approaches to the world. Without having to or being able to define or delimit the concept of art, it is therefore meaningful to ask: do these forms of ‘art’ give us access to forms of experience which transcend the sensory world in depth, so that it becomes not less sensorial than before, but more so? Two circumstances in particular make this question a point of departure for the articles in this book. First, the new interest in religion and religiosity has created a renewed interest in religion and aesthetics, not only in academic contexts, but also among people in general. In the kind of religion that has returned, aesthetics plays a more prominent role than before. We see a significant affinity between aesthetic and religious experience, and a new interest has grown forth, both in the aesthetic forms of expression found in religiosity, and in religious aspects of the visual arts, literature, architecture and music. This ‘aesthetic turn’ is a noticeable trait in what is often called the return of religion, not least in Northern European culture and its Lutheran cultural tradition. In the ‘come-back’ of religion, then, aesthetics plays a new and thoughtprovoking role. Hence, on the one hand, connections are made that go back to the 19th century Romantic-idealistic linking of religion and aesthetics (F.D.E. Schleiermacher), and the view of art as a truer substitute for institutionalized religion (Richard Wagner). On the other hand, the aesthetic turn also appears as a notable aestheticization of institutionalized religion. The aestheticization takes place, not only outside but also within institutionalized forms of religion. Therefore it is a central question for theology how it can understand and relate to this new convergence between religion and aesthetics.

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It seems that this question is in particular a challenge to Protestant theology. This may partly have to do with the fact that the aestheticization of the religious has also influenced the kind of religion and religiosity that has grown forth within the Protestant churches and in Protestant countries. But it also has to do with the fact that the Protestant, and in our context specifically Lutheran, cultural tradition has been characterized by a reserved, at times skeptical, attitude to the use of art and aesthetic forms of expression in a religious context. Protestant theology has not to any great degree entered into a detailed discussion of the relationship between religion and aesthetics, and therefore has no extensive tradition to build on in its encounter with the challenges of today. This is the other consideration that has been the impetus for the articles in this book.

Aesthetics in Protestant Theology

A good basis for understanding the reserved, partly ambiguous, attitude to sensory forms of experience in the Lutheran tradition is found in Luther’s understanding of the sacrament. On the one hand, Luther maintains the material presence of the divine, not least the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist, sharply refuting reformed understandings, which in Luther’s eyes were spiritualizing. On the other hand– as opposed to the Roman church – he grounds this divine presence entirely in the Word, and connects it directly to the Word which is heard at the actual celebration of the Eucharist. Doing so, he denies that the religious objects as such have a transcendent meaning. Luther’s theology, as it is unfolded, for example in Vom Abendmahl Christi. Bekenntnis (1528), is polemically turned against the so-called Enthusiasts, but moderate in its fight against the sacramental theology of the Roman church.3 Yet it is so focused on the Word that God’s use of the material is in danger of being pushed to the background. We find a similar attitude in Luther’s view of images, as it is expressed, for example, in the iconoclastic conflict in Wittenberg in 1522. In this conflict Luther steered a middle course. On the one hand he admitted that images are unnecessary and that it would be better if we did not have them. But we are on the other hand free to have them, and no one should be forced to abandon images unwillingly. Christians may have images and make images, as long as 3 M. Luther, Vom Abendmahl Christi. Bekenntnis (1528) in D. Martin Luthers Werke. Kritische Gesamtausgabe. Schriften 61 volumes (Weimar: Böhlau, 2003–2007; unchanged reprint of the 1883–1909 edition) [henceforth wa], vol. 26, pp. 261–509. English translation (“Confession of the Lord’s Supper”) in Luther’s Works (Saint Louis, mo: Concordia Publishing House/ Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1955–1989) vol. 37.

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they do not worship them.4 Some years later, in his book Against the Heavenly Prophets (1525) Luther defended images for the sake of remembrance and better understanding.5 Whereas Luther’s own attitude to the relation between word and materiality in the communication of the salvation is ambiguous and tense, the Lutheran tradition later moves in the direction of an ever stronger accentuation of the Word alone, as the only medium for the connection between God and man. It is the Word, understood as Revelation, which exclusively contains the possibility of transcendence and hence of belief. The Word is the medium of revelation, gospel and grace in quite a different way than pictures, sculpture, architecture and music are and can be. These forms of expression may well be used as an aid to bringing forth the word, but indeed only as practical instruments for the communication of the essential, the Word. Of course words are also a medium and instrument for communication. Words, too, have an aesthetic aspect which is expressed in images, metaphors, rhythm and sonority, both orally and in writing. Seen thus, words are also art, word art and oratorical art, and in his figurative and metaphorical language Luther himself is perhaps the greatest word artist in Protestant theology. In that light, we might have expected that this very concentration on words would have led to extensive reflection on aesthetic issues, if nothing else in the form of a theological poetics. But such a poetics has not been developed either, in a Protestant context. To explain the reserved attitude to the aesthetic found in Protestant theology, it is therefore not sufficient to just refer to the central position the word has in Protestant theology. It is also necessary to take a closer look at what concept of scholarship and, even more, what understanding of language theology is based on. The transition from the age of Reformation in the 16th century to the orthodoxy of the 17th century meant a shift in mentality which concerned the culture as such, not only theology. The written word now took precedence over the spoken word, the concept took precedence over the metaphor, and logic over rhetoric. Not least as a result of these changes, dogmatics was now established as an independent area of theology, whose task it was to carefully consider and justify the content or tenets of the Christian faith on a systematic and scientific basis. 4 M. Luther, “Ein Ander Sermon D.M. Luthers Am dinstag nach Invocavit” wa 10. III Band, pp. 21–30. 5 M. Luther, Wider die himmlischen Propheten, von den Bildern und Sakrament, wa 18, pp. 62–214. English translation (“Against the Heavenly Prophets in the Matter of Images and Sacraments”) in Luther’s Works, vol. 40, pp. 79–223.

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That dogmatics was established as an independent theological discipline did not, of course, lead to the disappearance of imagery and rhetoric from the theological repertoire as such, but rhetoric was relegated to a theological province, to the edifying speech and song. Rhetoric and imagery in language lived on in the art of preaching and in the writing of hymns, but in both cases subject to the logic and suspicious regard of dogmatic theology. From now on, it became an important theological exercise to be able to test the content of preaching and hymns against the conceptual logic of dogmatics. Some were strict in their evaluations, others were more latitudinarian and wrote off dubious formulations in the name of communication and poetry. It must be allowable to stretch a point in favor of communication. A higher or lesser degree of accommodation, that was the question. From the 18th century the historical disciplines then grew forth within theology, as a critique of dogmatic theology. The establishment of historicalcritical Bible research and church history as historical disciplines in Protestant theology in the 19th century resulted in theology being split in three different discourses: an historical discourse, a dogmatic discourse and a homiletic discourse. Eventually these three discourses came to live side by side as parallel ways of working with the content and basis of the Christian faith. The basic understanding of theology, however, led to the dominance of the historical and the dogmatic discourses in theological work, whereas homiletics and hymnody were given a subordinate role as communicators of the subject matter that had been crystallized by historical and dogmatic theology. There were sometimes sharp conflicts between historical and dogmatic theology about which form of theology was to define the content of the preaching, but there was no disagreement that homiletics and hymnody were inferior areas, subject to either dogmatics or biblical exegesis. In this inferior area the ranking was also clear: homiletics was superior to hymnody.

Aesthetics in the Protestant Theology of the 20th Century

The relation between theology and preaching was put on the agenda again by dialectical theology after World War I. Now, the task of preaching was not derived from theology, but the task of theology was derived from preaching. Such a re-evaluation of the relationship between theology and preaching might actually have led to a thorough reconsideration, also of the aesthetic basis for the preaching of the Gospel. When it nonetheless did not happen, it was partly because the emphasis was moved from the word as reference to the word as address. It was the decision and the choice that now were given a

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central position, and this did not lead to a heightened sense of aesthetic issues, on the contrary. Precisely because aesthetics could draw attention to form rather than content, it could also interfere with the individual’s existential choice. Equally important, however, was the fact that dialectical theology also represented an extreme form of ‘theology of separation’. In this theology of separation a sharp distinction was made between God and man, revelation and culture, the church and the world. Dialectical theology was in no way alone in its radical reorientation of theological thought seen from a perspective of separation. On the contrary, it represented a neo-orthodox movement which was to dominate the theological landscape in the interwar period, and eventually also most of the 20th century. The distinction between what was Christian on the one hand, and common to all mankind on the other, between the Word of Revelation and human thought, was set up in different ways, both within and outside systematic theology, but basically the way of thinking was the same, and left its mark on the theological climate. The Word of Revelation was seen as central, in a way that radicalized the Word as the only connection between God and man. Of all the theologians of separation, the most consistent was probably the Swedish theologian A. Nygren, who with his seminal work on the Christian concept of love distinguished sharply between a general concept of love (eros) and a specifically Christian concept of love (agape).6 According to Nygren, eros (represented by Plato) and agape (represented by Paul, John and Luther!) represent diametrically opposite understandings of the concept of love in just about every respect. If one attempts to make a synthesis of eros and agape, it will unavoidably lead to a devaluation of the concept of agape, Nygren thought. The conflict is permanent. Nygren’s theology of separation is basically made to the same pattern as F. Nietzsche’s critique of Christianity as a re-evaluation of all the values of antiquity, an “Umwertung aller Werte.”7 But for Nygren, this does not lead to a criticism of the values of Christianity but to a criticism of the values of this world. Nygren himself primarily exerted his criticism in the area of ethics and of the doctrine of salvation (soteriology), but avoided the aesthetic issues. There is no doubt, though, that if carried through with consequence, the program of the theology of separation leads to a sharp separation of theology and aesthetics. The aesthetic is indissolubly connected with this world in its sensoriness. 6 A. Nygren, Den kristna kärlekstanken gennem tiderna. Eros och Agape (Stockholm: Svenska Kyrkans Diakonistyrelsens Bokförlag, 1930–1936). 7 F. Nietzsche, Zur Genealogie der Moral. Sämtliche Werke vol. 5 (Berlin: Walter de Guyter, 1980), p. 70.

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The reserved attitude of Protestant theology to aesthetics and the aesthetic forms of expression is, in other words, sharpened in the twentieth century, partly because the Word of Revelation was understood primarily as existential address, and partly because the way of thinking found in the theology of separation accentuates the opposition between God and the transcendent, on the one hand, and this sensory world and its values, on the other hand. As a result, very little room is left for aesthetic reflection in Protestant theology. An apt summary of the attitude to aesthetics in twentieth century Protestant theology is found in W.P. Eckert, G. Rohrmoser and H. Schröer’s article on ‘Ästhetik’ in Theologische Realenzyklopädie.8 Here Schröer remarks that the work which has after all been done with aesthetic questions in Protestant theology is not anchored in a specific discipline of theology. The relevant works are spread over a wide area of different disciplines, without showing any inner coherence. This cannot be otherwise, Schröer thinks. The work with aesthetics ought not to be anchored in any specific theological area of study within Protestant theology.9 This does not necessarily mean that it is the lack of coherence as such Schröer wants to defend. No doubt he thinks that greater coherence is needed, only the problem is that this coherence cannot be established by anchoring the work with aesthetics in one particular theological discipline. The aesthetic can be anchored neither in the historical nor the systematic disciplines, but in practical theology.10 The strongly disparate works dealing with aesthetic issues that we can find in historical and systematic theology converge in practical theology; that is where the coherence is found. The position of aesthetics in practical theology is reflected in the way the article in tre is structured. The article falls in three parts. The first part deals with aesthetics in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. The second part deals with aesthetics as a philosophical problem, and (more recently) a problem in the philosophy of religion, and the third part deals with aesthetics “In praktisch-theologischer Hinsicht.” So there is no room for a dogmatic angle on the aesthetic in Protestant theology, for historically such an angle belongs in the Middle Ages. Nor is there room for the angle of the philosophy of religion, since, as it turns out, the philosophy of religion is left to philosophy, i.e. to Plato, 8 9

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W.P. Eckert, G. Rohrmoser and H. Schröer, “Ästhetik.” Theologische Realenzyklopädie Band I (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1977), pp. 544–572. “Die Problemgeschichte zeigt, dass es für die theologische Beschäftigung mit der Ästhetik keinen verbindlichen fachdiziplinären Ort gibt und auch nicht geben sollte.” Eckert et al., 1977, 567. Eckert et al., 1977, p. 566.

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Schiller, Hegel, Lukács, Adorno, T. Mann and H. Broch. There is no room for theologians in this context, only for philosophers. Aesthetics in its Protestant representation only turns up in connection with practical theology. Schröer of course realizes that alternatives to the Protestant placement of aesthetics in practical theology do exist. He himself refers to the Catholic theologian H.U. von Balthasar’s coupling of theology and aesthetics in his comprehensive work Herrlichkeit.11 A similar work on the aesthetic in a dogmatic context is not to be found in the Protestant field, Schröer admits, but he adds that this probably cannot be otherwise.12 However, he says nothing about why this is so. It remains an unanswered question. Another alternative is to anchor the aesthetic in the philosophy of religion. But as we have seen, this possibility is not open for Schröer either. Interestingly, also in this context he avoids giving any explanation of why it cannot be otherwise. So we find ourselves in the somewhat peculiar situation that whereas aesthetics in a Catholic context brings us to doctrinal theology (cf. von Balthasar), and in philosophy to the philosophy of religion, in a Protestant context it leads to practical theology. Hence, the question is not first and foremost who ascribes the greatest or the least importance to aesthetics, but in what kind of discourse theology’s work with aesthetic questions should be anchored: in a philosophical discourse, in a dogmatic (or historic) discourse or in practical theology? In Protestant theology the answer is practical theology, according to tre. There is no need to deny that there is a close connection between aesthetics and practical theology, not least when it comes to the church service and its liturgy, the central area of practical theology. It is not possible to discuss liturgy as ‘representative action’ (Schleiermacher) without also seeing it in an aesthetic perspective.13 Nevertheless, this connection between aesthetics and practical theology does not explain why there is not also a connection in Protestant religion between aesthetics and dogmatics or between aesthetics and philosophy of religion. So why has neither systematic theology nor philosophy of religion been possible alternatives for the work with aesthetic questions in Protestant theology? In the light of what has been said previously, the answer may at least partly be found in problems connected with basic presuppositions in the theology of creation in modern Protestant theology. The theology of creation deals with basic preconditions for human life in this world, and should therefore in principle have been a suitable place for the work with 11 12 13

H.U. von Balthasar, Herrlichkeit. Eine theologische Ästhetik (Einsiedlen: Johannes Verlag, 1961–1967). Eng: The Glory of the Lord (Edinburgh: T.& T. Clark, 1962–1968). Eckert et al., 1977, p. 567. Cf. Eckert et al., 1977, p. 570.

INTRODUCTION

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aesthetic questions, in dialogue with for example philosophy of religion, aesthetic theory and art. When this is not after all the case, it is reasonable to assume that it is because Protestant theology has placed the theology of creation within the theology of revelation, in such a way that the revelation has become an exclusive condition for talking about the world in the perspective of creation. Hence, the theology of creation has become instrumental to a theology of separation. The Profile of This Book, Seen from the Perspective of Theology, Aesthetics of Religion and Art History In this book we have not wanted to relegate the theological discourse on aesthetics within the field of practical theology. On the contrary, our aim is to combine dogmatics and philosophy of religion in one discourse with actual works of art as the pivotal point. Therefore we have not taken our point of departure in God’s exclusive revelation in Jesus Christ and in man’s aesthetic approach through art to this revelation. Many have done just that lately, in an attempt to renew the work with aesthetic questions in a theological context. Our point of departure, however, is a theology of creation which makes it possible to compare dogmatic perspectives with issues within the aesthetics of religion as well as with analyses of a broad spectrum of works. Seen in that perspective, the theology of creation is not an exclusive figure of thought rooted in the revelation, but on the contrary a meeting place for reflection on man’s general experiences and their basis, in the areas of theology, philosophy of religion, metaphysics and aesthetics. If it is true, as we have argued above, that the concentration on the word of revelation has caused the created world and its sensoriness to have lost their theological meaning, renewed work with aesthetics cannot only base itself on the dogma of God’s word as the revelation of salvation in Christ. The work must also and primarily be related to the Christian doctrine of the world as created. The theological ‘place’ of aesthetics, then, is not the theology of revelation but the theology of creation. Of course this does not mean that the idea of revelation and the belief in salvation in Jesus Christ lose their aesthetic importance, but it means that the path to understanding the importance of the aesthetic forms of expression, also for Christian belief in God as Savior, goes via the idea of God as the Creator of heaven and earth. The idea of creation is the horizon of understanding within which the idea of revelation must be seen, so renewed work with aesthetics must take its point of departure in the theology of creation. In Scandinavian Lutheranism, the theology of creation has been of

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particular importance, not least thanks to theologians, such as K.E. Løgstrup (1905–1981) and G. Wingren (1910–2000) and the great theologian, historian and poet of the 19th century, N.F.S. Grundtvig (1783–1872). When we have dealt not only with the Protestant theological tradition, but also with themes beyond that tradition, it is of course connected with our wish to renew and develop this tradition in a broader perspective. Especially within Catholic theology there have been important contributions in the field of aesthetics and theology. H.U. von Balthasar’s abovementioned studies of religious aesthetics resulted in a revitalization of the interest in aesthetic issues in theological work. This meant that classical problems which had long been overlooked were put on the agenda. Primarily it meant that the concept of ‘the beautiful’ was taken up again, and so was the understanding of the beautiful as an integral element in theological work in general, not least through a re-evaluation of the traditional coupling of the beautiful, the good and the true. Balthasar’s theological aesthetics suggests that aesthetic insights, deriving both from the natural world and from art, can be used as fundamental building blocks in theology. The beautiful in the world is analogous to the beautiful in theology. The interplay between the sensory world and our acquisition of the sensory came to play a central role in Balthasar’s works. The perspectives were pithily brought together in the following formulation: the form as it appears to us is beautiful only because the delight that it arouses in us is founded upon the fact that, in it, the truth and goodness of the depths of reality itself are manifested and bestowed, and this manifestation and bestowal reveal themselves to us as being something infinitely and inexhaustibly valuable and fascinating.14 Balthasar’s theological aesthetics have had great influence, primarily in Catholic theology, but also in wider confessional contexts.15 Even though he in this way came to make an important contribution to the revitalization of aesthetic investigations in a theological framework, his comprehensive perspective has since been challenged in various ways, also within Catholic theology. Richard Viladesau’s contribution, for example, represents an approach which is rooted in K. Rahner’s theology, but in contrast to Balthasar, is oriented “from below,” and thus wishes to explore “the conditions of possibility in humanity 14 Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord, p. 118. 15 See O.V. Bychkov and J. Fodor (eds.), Theological Aesthetics after von Balthasar (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), especially O.V. Bychkov’s “Introduction” (pp. xi–xxvii).

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for the reception and interpretation of a divine revelation in the forms of sensation, beauty, and art.”16 The authors of this book have more affinity to Viladesau’s perspective than to Balthasar’s. This must be understood in light of the pronounced interest in phenomenological philosophy which can be traced in many of the contributions. The articles show an explicit interest in experience in its broad, open and universal sense and its importance for an approach to the theme of transcendence. This means that the book’s interest in the theology of creation enters into a close interaction with a more general philosophical interest in the field of aesthetics. J.-L. Marion, W. Benjamin, M. Merleau-Ponty og C. NorbergSchulz are found here as central references. The ideas of the Danish philosopher and theologian K.E. Løgstrup form a natural addition to this picture. Taking his departure in a distinctive form of theology of creation, Løgstrup has studied the phenomenological condition for being able to experience transcendence through sensoriness and for being able to interpret such experiences religiously. He sees the aesthetic experience and the aesthetic basis of experience as poetic openness to the world.17 This harmonizes quite well with the main perspective in this book. The overall focus of the book is the question of being able to perceive the world and existence in a way that is different from what we take for granted. It is when we deal with what it means to see the visible and hear the audible that the motif of transcendence stands out with renewed strength. The aesthetics of religion does not only deal with the relation between aesthetics and theology or art and theology. It is about the foundation of theology and not just its content. The aesthetic is a basic trait in the way we experience the sensory world. In this book this broad context for thinking within the aesthetics of religion plays a central role, and aesthetics of religion finds close affinities with the philosophy of religion and the history of ideas. For that reason, the perspective also had to include artistic expressions and artistic practices found outside clearly delineated institutional religious contexts. The dividing lines between the sacred and the profane are not important when it comes to understanding the conditions of possibility for a sensory transcendence, no matter whether the understanding is found through philosophical reflection or through the analysis of different forms of art practice. Consequently, if we look for aesthetic expressions of the connection between sensoriness and transcendence, we cannot limit the area to Protestant 16 17

R. Viladesau, Theological Aesthetics (New York: Oxford University Press 2013), p. 37. K.E. Løgstrup, The Ethical Demand (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997), pp. 192–206.

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theology alone, nor to Christian theology alone. Nor can we be satisfied with working solely with theories and principles. Impulses and stimuli which can open up new perspectives must be brought in from many places, ages and traditions, and above all, they must be developed in close connection with quite concrete expressions of art and aesthetic practice. Dealing with works of art, we have employed different approaches. Firstly, we have oriented ourselves in relation to a broad spectrum of artistic forms of expression. We have wanted to get impulses from visual art, architecture, music and literature. These impulses have been both multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary in various ways. We are convinced that the multiplicity of approaches contribute to creating open access to the theme of transcendence. Secondly, we have analyzed works of art that have been created in different historical periods and in different religious and confessional contexts. The Byzantine, as well as the Western medieval understanding of Christianity represent typologies with important impulses for Protestant ways of thinking and may in a fruitful way contribute to defining new approaches. In addition, postReformation Catholicism and Islam may also prove to be fruitful in a Protestant context. Islamic sources very clearly put into relief the potential which a theology of creation may have with regard to the theme of transcendence. Contemporary source material adds topicality to the aesthetic issues and clarifies the need for an aesthetic reorientation. In other words, it is intentional when the book appears heterogeneous in its combination of material from a number of different traditions, periods and artistic disciplines. At the same time, the aim has been to unify the heterogeneous material in the perspective of the theology of creation. The word ‘perspective’ must be emphasized, as the material on which the book is based contains many different interpretations and opinions of the world and our experience of it and there is no intention of ironing out these differences. On the contrary, they are to invite the reader to regard the aesthetic experiences in the perspective of the theology of creation and ask what role they can have as a horizon of understanding for a Christian view of revelation and salvation. The book is divided into five parts. The first part deals both with the lack of interest in issues within the aesthetics of religion in Protestant theology and with different approaches to aesthetic questions that can challenge and inspire to renewed work with the aesthetics of religion. In all the articles in the three subsequent parts, it is a concrete aesthetic material which raises the issues within the aesthetics of religion. These parts are therefore organized by art form: the second part deals with visual art, the third with music, and the fourth with architecture. In the final part, fundamental questions related to religion

INTRODUCTION

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and art in a biblical perspective are discussed, based on texts by N.F.S. Grundtvig and H. Ibsen. All parts begin with an introduction to the individual articles and the context they are part of. The book is rounded off with an epilogue in which each editor has selected one Scandinavian artist who represents some concern that plays an important role in the book as such.

PART 1 Approaching the Sphere of Sense Perception

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Introduction to Part 1 Svein Aage Christoffersen In this first part, we have chosen to engage in the discussion of the relationship between sensoriness and transcendence from a theoretical point of view. Four different perspectives are brought to the fore. This does not of course imply that there are not other approaches to consider, but in our context, these perspectives have proved to be fruitful challenges to the somewhat categorical division in Protestant theology between sensoriness and transcendence. In, “Theology and Poetic Openness,” Svein Aage Christoffersen takes his point of departure in what Hans Joas calls the universal human experience of being gripped by something to the point of overlooking and forgetting oneself.1 This experience can be described as a form of self-transcendence. Thus, when we are moved by something, our attention is moved away from ourselves, and this experience of being moved is often connected with an aesthetic aspect of the thing that moves us. We are caught up in the colors and contours of the picture, the sound and rhythm of music or the rhythm, colors and forms in nature, and for a moment we forget time and place – and ourselves. In this state of aesthetic captivation, we are open to the world outside ourselves. The form of self-transcendence that is being dealt with here, then, is a self-transcendence that is initiated by impressions that come to the self from the outside. Aesthetic captivation is, indeed, often presented as our fleeing from ourselves, but Christoffersen shows – with the assistance of Pascal Mercier2 – that it can also lead to our finding ourselves. When the individual transcends himself, he can both lose himself and find himself. The author connects this idea of self-transcendence as openness to man’s possibilities of existence in the world to Søren Kierkegaard’s definition of man’s self as a relation that relates itself to itself.3 With an expression from Knud E. Løgstrup, Christoffersen calls this aesthetic captivation, understood as an expression of man’s self-transcendence and openness to the world, poetic openness.4 The idea of man’s poetic openness and approach to the world does not make revelation into a derivative of the aesthetic experience, but points to a creation-given horizon of 1 Cf. H. Joas, Do we need Religion? (London: Paradigm Publishers, 2008), p. 7. 2 P. Mercier, Night Train to Lisbon. (London: Atlantic Books, 2008). 3 The Essential Kierkegaard, eds. H.H. Hong and E.H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000); p. 352. 4 K.E. Løgstrup, The Ethical Demand. (New York: The University of Notre Dame Press, 1997), p. 197.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi 10.1163/9789004291690_003

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understanding for the revelatory word. Without a frame of understanding such as this, revelation is incomprehensible. In order to develop this idea of the aesthetic experience as a frame of understanding for revelation, it is, however, necessary to examine closely the aesthetic form of experience as such, which leads us to the other articles in this part. As was seen in the introduction to this book, it is not only transcendence that has apparently lost its solid base in the modern world. Sensory experience has also done so. The connection between the loss of transcendence and the loss of sensory experience is central to Walter Benjamin’s writings, and in “The Loss of the Aura and the New Sensuousness,” Dag T. Andersson presents Benjamin’s view on the conditions of sensory experience in what Benjamin calls the age of technology. Again, we find that the motion from phenomena and the sensory world to the individual is a precondition for the individual being able to go beyond him/herself to the sensory world. This motion is implicit in the individual’s mimetic relation to the world. The theory of mimesis in Benjamin is, as Andersson points out, a theory about the particular way in which things communicate and express themselves. The human project, which is no longer possible in the age of technology, is to translate the silent language of things into an audible language and give the nameless a name. Benjamin unfolds his thought in a particular use of language and terminology, as for example in the use of the word ‘aura’, which is also used in theosophy and anthroposophy. Andersson shows, however, how Benjamin repudiated the esoteric and ‘spiritualized’ use of the concept of aura and instead lets the aura describe our aesthetic relation to the world in its materiality. The aura is not about the extrasensory, but about sense perception and thus about the individual’s mimetic ability as a special capacity for impressions. Transcendence is not a departure from sense perception, but to sense perception. In “Sensoriness and Transcendence: On the Aesthetic Possibility of Experiencing Divinity,” Dorthe Jørgensen focuses on aesthetic experience, using Peter Greenaway’s film The Pillow Book, which she analyses in light of philosophical aesthetics and phenomenology. Jørgensen emphasizes the idea that the aesthetic experience is an experience that draws us into things in a way that makes it possible to recognize the value these things have in themselves. The aesthetic experience does not, then, level off values, as has often been claimed, but it is a form of cognition in which the value of things in themselves becomes apparent. In Jørgensen’s opinion, this experience of values is a constitutive aspect of the experience of the beautiful. Jørgensen’s analysis of the aesthetic experience discloses transcendence in the immanent, in that sense perception is charged with meaning. Aesthetic transcendence is not a movement that goes beyond the sensory, but deeper into the sensory.

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The aesthetic experience of immanent transcendence is related to religious experience, but it is not the same as religious experience. While religious experience interprets what it experiences as transcendent (God), the aesthetic experience interprets what it experiences as something immanent. Both forms of experience are nonetheless experiences of transcendence, and in order to elicit the affinity between them, Jørgensen calls transcendent experiences experiences of divinity. Experiences of divinity indicate a form of experience that is found in both aesthetic and religious experience, but which does not involve particular ideas about the divine in a religious sense. In that way, a space is opened for a closer inspection of the connection between aesthetic and religious experience. The French philosopher, Jean-Luc Marion connects religious experience with the concept of revelation, and with his description of what he calls saturated phenomena, he includes the concept of revelation in phenomenology. Mikkel Tin examines Marion’s phenomenological concept of revelation in “The Phenomenon of Revelation: Jean-Luc Marion’s Outline for a Phenomenology of Religion.” Tin arrives at the conclusion that Marion’s concept of revelation as a pure given, that is, transcendence in a pure and radical sense, leads to the loss of meaning in much of religious life. This applies not only to phenomena like prayer and devotion, forms of communication that presuppose a form of commensurability between man and God, but also aesthetic phenomena, such as religious ceremonies and the construction and ornamentation of God’s house, which use sensory means to prepare us for the encounter with God. That Marion does not connect the phenomenology of religion to any form of empirical given empties the concept of revelation of content, and it becomes difficult to determine whether that which is conceived of as a revelation really is a revelation. Marion’s concept of revelation shows what can happen to an understanding of religion if the idea of creation is not given the opportunity to function as a counterbalance to the concept of revelation. If we take an overall view of the introduction and the articles in this first part of the book and ask what the presuppositions are for conceiving of the aesthetic experience as a signal of transcendence, we see, firstly, that this presupposes a conception of man’s poetic openness to the world. Secondly, it must be emphasized that the transcendence of the aesthetic experience does not necessarily mean an abandonment of the sensory, but can also mean penetrating more deeply into the sphere of sense perception. Thirdly, aesthetic experience as a signal of transcendence cannot be treated purely abstractly, but must be treated contextually, and thus with a material basis in a given expression of the connection between sense perception and transcendence in a religious context. The articles in the following parts of this book continue along this track, but also contribute to a clarification of the two first points.

chapter 1

Theology and Poetic Openness1 Svein Aage Christoffersen Protestant theology has traditionally been quite reserved regarding art as a religious form of expression and in particular regarding pictorial art and architecture. Even though the relationship has seldom been directly conflict-ridden, the aesthetic forms of expression have not been placed centrally on the theological agenda. Protestant theology has primarily seen itself as a theology of the Word, and in its view on images, it has carried on the medieval dictum that the written word is for those who can read what pictures are for those who cannot. Pictures have first and foremost a pedagogical significance for the illiterate. The literate, on the other hand, do not need to take the long way around pictures, but can go directly to the written word. However, this simple ranking of the relationship between word and picture is connected with a more basic conflict related to pictures as an expression of the sensory. When Alexander Baumgarten laid the groundwork for aesthetics as a distinct field of philosophical inquiry in the mid-18th century, aesthetics was not a philosophy of art, but an investigation of sensory cognition. And even though aesthetics after Baumgarten was developed into a philosophy of art, the art forms continued to be understood as sensory forms of expression. Yet, it is precisely the sensoriness of the aesthetic forms of expression that has been a bone of contention for Protestant theology, not least in the 20th century. Christianity and theology are about God, and God does not exist as a sensory thing in this world. God is transcendent. Seen this way, sensoriness and transcendence are irreconcilable opposites. The sensory is without transcendence, and the transcendent is without sensoriness. As aesthetics is tied to sense perception, there is no possibility for transcendence in aesthetic forms of expression, like art, sculpture, architecture and music in themselves. Aesthetic forms of expression can at best have limited, pedagogical significance. At worst, the aesthetic can lead to sensory obstruction of the word, leading to a conflict between image and word. Aesthetics can bind us to this world if it gains too much power over us. In the following, we will be looking more closely at this field of tension between sensory forms of expression and transcendence. This can, of course, be done either taking a point of departure in a particular definition of sense perception or 1 This article is a further development of my article, “Transcendence, Self-Transcendence and Aesthetics” in W. Stoker and W.L. van Merwe (eds.), Looking Beyond? Shifting Views of Transcendence in Philosophy, Theology, Art and Politics (New York: Rodopi, 2012), pp. 209–222. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi 10.1163/9789004291690_004

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in the concept of transcendence. However, regardless of what we choose, it may lead to our presupposing the dichotomy that we are going to examine more closely, already in our point of departure. Therefore, it makes sense to try to take an alternative route that links sense perception to transcendence in human experience. The concept of self-transcendence is just such a route. In essence, self-transcendence is man’s ability to go beyond the form of existence he has, at a given time in his life, and thus, go beyond his own limits, physically or psychologically. When self-transcendence becomes the theme, seen from an ethical point of view, it is most often about man’s ability or possibility for transcending a purely egotistical preoccupation with himself and his own life. This is also Merold Westphal’s definition of self-transcendence in the book Transcendence and Self-Transcendence. Self-transcendence is “the movement that draws us away from our natural preoccupation with ourselves.” In divine transcendence, on the other hand, God is above or outside this world without excluding the presence of God in this world.2 Westphal’s thesis is that the conception of God’s transcendence must be understood as inextricably bound to human self-transcendence, and his conclusion is that God’s transcendence is the necessary prerequisite for the individual’s self-transcendence: “the voice of transcendence” is necessary in order for me to become “what I most immediately am not, one who loves God and neighbor.”3 Only in my encounter with the transcendent God do I become capable of transcending my own egocentricity. Thus, Westphal’s correlation of divine transcendence and human selftranscendence means that self-transcendence is only possible in the encounter with the divine revelation in Jesus Christ. In that way, he expropriates the concept of self-transcendence on behalf of theology, which in itself is a problem in our context. A more open approach to the concept of self-transcendence is to be found in the German sociologist, Hans Joas. In his book, Do We Need Religion? Hans Joas presents another approach to self-transcendence than Westphal’s, in that Joas asks more or less phenomenologically for experiences of self-transcendence. These experiences of transcendence share the characteristic of being “pulled beyond the boundaries of one’s self, being captivated by something outside of myself, a relaxation of or liberation from one’s fixation on oneself.” A German word for this experience is “Ergriffensein.”4 Self-transcendence is a state of being captivated by something 2 M. Westphal, Transcendence and Self-Transcendence. On God and the Soul. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004), p. 2. 3 Westphal, Transcendence and Self-Transcendence, p. 230. 4 H. Joas, Do we Need Religion? On the Experience of Self-Transcendence. (London: Paradigm Publishers, 2008), p. 7.

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as for example when we encounter enthusiastic experiences in the context of nature, love and charity. However, Joas also mentions – with reference to Paul Tillich – the experience of anxiety.5 What is particularly interesting about these experiences is that they are not about the self transcending itself by itself. The transcendence is not initiated by virtue of the self, but by something outside the individual bringing the individual himself out of himself. Transcendence is not initiated from the inside, but from the outside. The self grasps neither things nor ideas, but is grasped or grasps itself in being grasped. The latter is the decisive factor as the question is whether the individual loses himself in his state of being grasped or whether he grasps himself. Joas keeps the door open for both possibilities. In the following, we will examine more closely some aesthetic aspects of this state of being grasped with a point of departure in Pascal Mercier’s novel Night Train to Lisbon.6

Understanding Oneself through Others

On his usual route to the school where he teaches, the meticulous philologist, Raimund Gregorius, comes by chance to prevent a woman whom he does not know from taking her own life. As she speaks with an accent that is unknown to him, he asks her what her mother tongue is and she says, “Portoguês.” The manner in which she says it leads to his life turning in another direction. First and foremost, he is not fascinated by the woman, but by her language. The perfectionist expert in Hebrew, Greek and Latin, the man who loves the tranquility and beauty of the past in languages that most people think of as dead, he of all people is gripped by the very sound of the Portuguese language: The o she pronounced surprisingly as a u, the rising, strangely constrained lightness of the é and the soft sh at the end came together in a melody that sounded much longer than it really was, and that he could have listened to all day long.7 Being gripped linguistically leads Gregorius to the Spanish bookstore in Bern, where he comes across a little book by the Portuguese doctor and author, Amadeo de Prado. Gregorius does not know any Portuguese, but the bookseller translates the first paragraph for him: 5 Joas, Do we Need Religion? pp. 7, 10. 6 P. Mercier, Night Train to Lisbon (London: Atlantic Books, 2008). 7 Mercier, Night Train, p. 7.

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Of the thousand experiences we have, we find language for one at most and even this one merely by chance and without the care it deserves. Buried under all the mute experiences are those unseen ones that give our life its form, its color, and its melody.8 Absorbed in this book by Amadeo de Prado, Gregorius lets school be school and gets a seat on the night train to Lisbon. He is on a quest for the seminal experience that lies unspoken in de Prado’s text, and which has been stored in the text’s own language and in de Prado’s wish to be able to shape the Portuguese words in a new way. The words were not to be odd or eccentric, nor should they be exalted, affected or artificial, writes de Prado. The words must be as unblemished as polished marble and pure as the notes in a Bach partita, and they should bring all other words to perfect silence. Is Gregorius’ trip to Lisbon an escape? It is of course. Gregorius steps out of his established existence, leaves his job and his home because he is in the grip of another person. However, this path away from himself is at the same time a path back to himself. In his pursuit of de Prado, Gregorius is forced at one point to ask himself, Was it possible that the best way to make sure of yourself was to know and understand someone else? One whose life had been completely different and had had a completely different logic than your own?9 In the novel, this other, whom Gregorius tries to understand in his attempt at gaining certainty about himself, is a real person. However, Gregorius does not get an opportunity to meet Amadeo de Prado face-to-face, but is forced to try to understand him through the book de Prado has written and through what others say about him. However, for the readers of Mercier’s book, both Raimund Gregorius and Amado de Prado are purely literary figures, whom we only have a possibility of meeting as literature. Our path to ourselves goes through Mercier’s fictive universe. Can our literary encounter with the perfectionist philologist, Raimund Gregorius and his world also be a path for us to get in touch with ourselves and not just enjoy a few hours’ diversion from everyday life? In order to answer yes to this question, Mercier’s own text must have some of the same aesthetic qualities that set Gregorius in motion. There has to be some kind of connection between the state of being aesthetically gripped that the text is about and the text’s own aesthetic ability to grip the reader. That is 8 Mercier, Night Train, p. 17. 9 Mercier, Night Train, p. 98.

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the boldness of Mercier’s fiction project, but it will not be discussed further here. The interesting thing for us is the form of self-transcendence that we encounter in Mercier’s novel and above all, the role that the aesthetic plays in Gregorius’ transcendence of his actual existence. Indeed, Gregorius is grabbed by words, not pictures. But it is not the content of the words that grips him first off. It is the aural sensoriness of the words, their sound, melody and color that fascinate him and which little by little give him access to their content as well. If the Portuguese language had not been sensorial in this way, it would never have captured Gregorius’ interest. It is the sensorial experience that enables his self-transcendence, in search of an aesthetic experience that makes words as pure as the notes in a Bach partita.

The Unfinished Person

How are we to understand this kind of self-transcendence that is both a way outwards and a way inwards at the same time? An obvious reference for a closer examination of man’s self-transcendence is the characterization of man as the as yet undetermined animal, “das noch nicht festgestellte Tier.” What constitutes man is not an obvious given. The human being is not a finished product by nature in the same way as animals are. Thus, the individual must determine himself what it means to be a human. This phrase is associated first of all, of course, with Nietzsche, but the point itself can be traced far back in time and can be said to be a common denominator for the heritage from the Greco-Hellenistic and the Judeo-Christian cultures. Both Plato and Paul can be read profitably from this point of view. Nietzsche’s phrasing has been handed down to posterity both in Arnold Gehlen’s philosophical anthropology and in modern biotechnology, where man can be described as man’s own experiment. Furthermore, Heidegger’s and the hermeneutic philosophy’s view on man’s basic openness to his own existence can also be understood as an expression of self-transcendence. The definition of man as the as yet undetermined animal is then the common denominator for a series of differences and partly contradictory views on human existence. Despite the differences and contradictions, they all point to the idea that being a human being is not just a given, but something the individual himself must address. It is part and parcel of being human that humans must transcend themselves in order to be themselves. In this sense, self-transcendence is irrevocably connected with being human. This does not mean, of course, that everything that has been said about man’s self-transcendence in the past and present ultimately means the same

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thing. For the time being, we have just found a particular phrase that can be interpreted in different ways. Nietzsche has interpreted the statement in one way, others have done so in other ways. Søren Kierkegaard has been a central reference for a variety of different ways of understanding self-transcendence. Thus, we will look more closely at some central passages in Kierkegaard’s The Sickness Unto Death. The Sickness Unto Death is a book about man’s self, and the self, according to Kierkegaard, is understood as man’s relationship to himself: But what is the self? The self is a relation that relates itself to itself, or is the relation’s relating itself to itself in the relation; the self is not the relation, but is the relation’s relating itself to itself.10 The self is not a synthesis of finite and infinite, time and eternity, freedom and necessity or body and soul. Such syntheses are just a relationship between two entities. As a self, the human being is neither a substance nor a synthesis, but a relation that relates itself to itself. In this relation lies the possibility of despair, which can mean that one is not aware of having a self, that one does not want to be oneself or that one wants despairingly to be oneself. Thus, the possibility of despair modulates in different ways how the individual can relate to himself as a relation that relates to itself, and therefore, it is also the possibility of despair that separates man from the animals. Even though despair is perceived as a sickness, it is nonetheless man’s advantage over the animals, “…and this superiority distinguishes him in quite another way than does his erect walk, for it indicates infinite erectness or sublimity, that he is spirit.”11 In despair, the individual raises himself in a far more significant way than he does by walking on his two legs. He not only goes beyond the ground he walks on, but also beyond himself. That the individual has to relate to himself in order to be himself, and thus transcend himself as a given, implies that self-transcendence is a basic characteristic of the human way of being. Thus, from a Kierkegaardian point of view, self-transcendence does not mean that man’s soul transcends his body or that the eternal in man transcends the temporal, but that man relates to himself as a self. If we go back again to the view of man as the as yet undetermined animal, we see that for Kierkegaard, this is not a lack that somehow has to be overcome or left behind, as the time-marker, “noch nicht,” in the Nietzsche 10 11

The Essential Kierkegaard, eds. H.V. Hong and E.H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), p. 351. The Essential Kierkegaard, p. 352.

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quote seems to indicate. The individual is not to define himself once and for all. On the contrary, it is precisely as ‘unfinished’, as “Mängelwesen” (Gehlen) that man is himself as a self.

Paths of Self-transcendence

Two questions arise in immediate extension of Kierkegaard’s identification of the self: how can the individual in practice relate to himself and what constitutes the individual as a self? The questions are closely related, but we shall take them into consideration one by one, beginning with the first one: how can man in practice relate to himself? Kierkegaard is often read as saying that the path of the self to itself goes through a kind of introspection or internalization. This way of reading is found in particular in existentialism, where we also find the sharp distinction between the aesthetic and the ethical. In ethical introspection, the individual relates to himself, while in aesthetic extroversion he forgets himself and his self. However, if we take a look at Kierkegaard’s body of work as a whole, it is obvious that for the most part, what he does as a writer is the same as what Mercier does in Night Train to Lisbon. Kierkegaard’s path to himself and to the self goes through a cascade of literary works, stories and figures, in which he explores different possibilities for the self’s relation to itself. As readers of Kierkegaard’s texts, we are drawn into the same process, due to the rhythm, sound, melody and imagery of the texts. We become engaged in the task of understanding ourselves by understanding another. This ‘other’ is not the author, understood as Kierkegaard himself, as the author plays hide-and-seek with the reader through the use of a series of pseudonyms. ‘The other’ or ‘the others’ are kept as literary figures who suspend a personal or institutional position of authority, and who thus initiate the reader’s understanding of himself as a relation that relates to itself. It is precisely the aesthetic form of expression that makes way for the individual’s self-transcendence. The image of the aesthete in Either/Or has somewhat paradoxically overshadowed Kierkegaard as an aesthetic author. Judge William, as the author of Part II may well have many good arguments in defense of his way of living, compared with A, as the author of Part I. But at this particular point in his life, Kierkegaard himself has chosen not to live like Judge William. He has chosen not to work in the service of the church and in that way secure himself a good income. He has chosen not to marry his Regine, despite the Judge’s energetic defense of marriage. He has broken with Regine and traveled to Berlin in order to establish himself as an aesthetic writer and literary critic.

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Either/Or, Part I, is often read as a kind of confessional literature, in which A displays his own states of mind and mental agitations. In particular, “Diapsalmata” is favored reading matter on this subject, but also “The Diary of a Seducer.” However, this kind of reading overlooks the fact that Judge William and A write in two different genres. William writes letters, which are, in fact, a kind of confessional literature, while A creates a literary collage. If Kierkegaard hides behind A, then A hides behind his literary form. And to make the work’s play on pseudonyms perfect, Victor Eremita, the pseudonymous publisher, hints in the preface to the book that one can imagine that both parts of the book are written by one and the same person, that is, by an author who has contemplated both patterns of existence that unfold in this work as a literary whole.12 Kierkegaard’s own way of life has more in common with A as a literary author than with B as a judge, a married man and a letter-writer. It is of course not always the case that he who engages in another or in something else necessarily ends up coming back to himself. It is entirely possible to leave oneself and never come back to oneself again. He who focuses on the external may also end up losing himself. The point is, however, that this is not necessarily so. As Pascal Mercier suggests, it is also possible that the act of being preoccupied with another can initiate a process of self-understanding, so that we relate to ourselves via our relations to the other. If we pursue this train of thought, it will lead us to the realization that the path to the other is not just a possible path to ourselves, but a necessary path to ourselves. We can never relate to ourselves without also relating to the world outside. Our self-understanding must always be catalyzed or processed through our relation to other people and to the external world. An exclusive path inward does not exist. In and of themselves, these are quite obvious insights from a socialpsychological point of view. It seems that the child is socially conscious before it becomes self-conscious, and that self-consciousness arises as a reaction to the challenges the child is confronted with through his social consciousness. In brief, the child discovers the outside world before he discovers the inner world and himself as a self.13 What we can add, following the line of reasoning above, is that aesthetic experiences can play a decisive role on this alternative route from the outer to the inner world. It is the aesthetic experience that opens Gregorius to de Prado’s world, and it is the aesthetic experience in the 12

13

Kierkegaard’s Writings, III, Part I: Either/Or. Part I. Eds. H. and E. Hong (Princeton: Princeton up, 1988). Kierkegaard’s Writings, IV, Part II: Either/Or. Part II. Eds. H. and E. Hong (Princeton: Princeton up, 1988). Cf. R.J. Bogdan, Our Own Minds. Sociocultural Grounds for Self-Consciousness (London: The mit Press, 2010).

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encounter with Either/Or that enables the reader to contemplate his or her self as an individual. Similarly, it is the lines, colors or composition in a picture that capture our attention and initiate a reflection on existential questions addressed in the picture.

Aesthetic and Ethical Self-abandonment

If we are to understand the other, we must look away from ourselves and forget ourselves for some period of time. Of course we use our life experience and knowledge of self in our attempt to understand the other, but we do not reflect on them as our own experience. Rather, we direct them towards the other. An interesting trait of this self-abandonment is the role that the aesthetic plays here. It is the form, colors, melody and sound that get us to forget ourselves and our own situation for a while. Seen from this point of view, Westphal’s characteristic of man as primarily self-centered does not hold good. We all know that being self-centered is a demanding task. It demands enduring concentration and attention. Even if we are determined to think only about ourselves, we cannot keep it up at length. The sound, colors and forms of sense impressions break in all the time in our self-centered world and make us forget ourselves. This objection to Westphal can of course be countered with the argument that Westphal is preoccupied with the ethical, that is, with self-centeredness understood as egotism. However, this point of view does not hold good either. First of all, aesthetic self-abandonment does not in any way exclude an ethical perspective regarding openness to the other. Because he forgets himself, Gregorius gets involved with the ethical and moral aspects of de Prado’s life and fate, in the same way that we do when we read Mercier’s book. Secondly, the aesthetic experiences are not the only way in which we may be aware of the other. This is also true of the phenomena that the Danish theologian and philosopher K.E. Løgstrup calls “sovereign expressions of life” (“suveræne livsytringer”).14 A central characteristic of phenomena like trust, mercy and openness of speech is that they open us to the world outside ourselves. In trust we forget our own distrust and suspiciousness and let ourselves be overpowered by trust in the other. Thus, trust often comes as a surprise and negates our self-centeredness. Of course, it is not always wise to be trusting, as it can lead to our being deceived and betrayed. But that precisely shows how trust can get us to forget our own resolutions and decisions. Løgstrup calls trust a sovereign expression of life 14

K.E. Løgstrup, Beyond the Ethical Demand (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007), pp. 50–52.

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precisely because it can come to expression against our will and intentions, at the same time as we cannot put it to a particular purpose without it falling apart. If I enact trust for the purpose of achieving something in my relationship to the other, the trust between us is no longer there. However, life is not just trust and mercy, but also phenomena like envy, revenge and jealousy. In these feelings, we keep focusing on ourselves. We are imprisoned in ourselves and can never forget ourselves. That is the curse of envy. But we are not just envious, for then life would fall apart. We can also from time to time be detached from envy, thanks to the sovereign expressions of life, like trust and mercy. If we could not do so, we would perish in our own egocentricity. Thus, it is not only the aesthetic experience of the lines, forms and colors of the external world that can make us forget ourselves. The sovereign life expressions can also do this. In that way, a conflict between aesthetics and ethics can arise, in so far as the aesthetic experience can get us to forget not only ourselves, but also the other. But even if the aesthetic can lead us away from the ethical, it does not always have to be this way. As mentioned, it is possible that the aesthetic experience opens our eyes to the other, also in an ethical sense, as is the case in Mercier’s novel.

Poetic Openness

In his book, The Ethical Demand, K.E. Løgstrup focuses on the aesthetic experience in the encounter with poetry. The life experience that is expressed in a poem is not necessarily beautiful, Løgstrup writes, but the expression must have a certain aesthetic quality connected with the use of metaphors, rhyme, etc. This is what makes us aware of the expression as a poetic expression. Poetic expression dissolves the atmosphere of triviality that we otherwise ascribe to existence.15 However, poetry differs not just from triviality, but from information as well. Normally our relationship to the world is based on information, Løgstrup writes. Preoccupied as we are with things, we define ourselves by defining things and the form of reality that things represent. However, in poetry, this is different. Here we do not define ourselves, but we are defined. In poetry, we no longer have ourselves and our lives in hand. It is life that has us in hand: Normally our relation to the world is based primarily on information. Oriented as we are toward things, particularly those things we can see, we 15

K.E. Løgstrup, The Ethical Demand (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997), p. 195.

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define ourselves by defining things. In the very act of defining determining things, we also limit and define ourselves in terms of the reality thus known. All of this is different in the case of poetry. Here we do not define ourselves; we are defined. We do not possess in our relation to poetry the particular freedom which is normally ours through information. Poetic openness does not disclose information.”16 Poetic openness not only reveals an aspect of the world we live in, but it also includes and embraces the person who is gripped by the poetry. Through poetic openness, the person is drawn into the world which opens up for him or her: Openness to the world is different from information concerning it, and in this difference, which the poet calls openness, there is an identification with things, with nature, with the outside world. “Identification” means that things are present in a more essential way than they are through some particular interest one may have in them.17 “Presence” is also what distinquishes poetry from philosophy: Philosophy can at best make understanding clear. Poetry can make it a present reality.18

Self-transcendence – Self-deception?

Poetic openness is then an expression of what we called self-transcendence earlier on. Two things become clear when we regard self-transcendence from this point of view. One is the decisive role that the aesthetic plays in the individual’s self-transcendence; the other is that the individual in self-transcendence gains access to an external world. It is the aesthetic character of the experience of transcendence that opens the world for us. The question, however, is whether this conception of self-transcendence is just an illusion. From a philosophical point of view, the idea of poetic openness confronts us with the following alternatives. On the one hand, what happens when I am gripped by the aesthetic character of the sensory world can be that the 16 Løgstrup, The Ethical Demand, p. 197. 17 Løgstrup, The Ethical Demand, p. 197. 18 Løgstrup, The Ethical Demand, p. 205.

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aesthetic qualities come into being inside my mind. In my mind there is a world of colors, sounds, rhythm and form. However, outside my mind this world does not exist, as it is just a result of the way in which my sensory apparatus presents sensory data. It is not me who is out in the world of color and form, but the world of color and form that is in my mind. This is the theory of the secondary quality of perception. On the other hand, it is also possible that poetic openness is created in the aesthetic impressions in which self-abandonment breaks through the world of triviality and information and draws us into the world outside ourselves. It is not the world that is inside me, but it is me who is out in the world. Løgstrup discusses this alternative, among other things, in his dispute with Bertrand Russell, who supported the theory of the secondary qualities of perception.19 We are not going into this dispute in its entirety here, but will simply point out that Løgstrup believes that the alternative is substantial. It is not possible to prove that Russell is wrong. He may be right. But there is also another possibility, which is the possibility that has phenomenology and general life experience on its side. Is the world as sensed inside my mind or am I in the world as sensed? Both views can be defended. A point that Løgstrup emphasizes in support of the phenomenological point of view is that in practice, it is not possible to live as if Russell were right. When I am overwhelmed by a sunrise, birdsong, the sound of words, the play of colors in polished marble or by Bach’s partitas, I cannot at the same time imagine that all this only exists as perceived qualities in my mind without these phenomena losing their overwhelming character. I can think purely intellectually that the beauty of birdsong is a function of my sensory apparatus, but the moment I am overwhelmed by it, I disregard this theory. The aesthetic qualities of the impression are too strong for me to renounce them in my experience and in my way of living. However, it is equally important that the theory of the secondary qualities of perception that Russell supports is not a logically compelling argument against the concept of the significance of aesthetic experiences for the individual’s self-transcendence. Even if sense impressions do get their aesthetic character from my sense apparatus, this does not necessarily mean that the image that the sensory apparatus gives is wrong. It is also possible that the sensory world obliges our sensory apparatus. Even if the sensory apparatus has its limitations, it may well communicate some characteristic traits in the world that exist outside our minds. That the sensory apparatus is a prerequisite for our being able to see some characteristic aspects of the sensory world, like 19

K.E. Løgstrup, Skabelse og tilintetgørelse (København: Gyldendal, 1978), p. 204ff.

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colors, does not mean that colors only exist inside our minds. Russell may be right, but it is not absolutely necessary that he is. The question is open.

Self-transcendence and Divine Transcendence

Self-transcendence is a basic characteristic of being human. However, God’s transcendence is not a prerequisite for or logical consequence of the individual’s self-transcendence. Even if aesthetic experience plays an important role for man’s self-transcendence, aesthetic experience does not lead us beyond this world to a transcendent God. God’s transcendence can of course be a theme in poetry and literature as well as in paintings, sculpture, architecture and music. But this does not mean that we then are facing the transcendent God or that we transcend this world’s temporality and evanescence. The individual is still in this world. Thus, Westphal emphasizes rightly that the relationship to God presupposes a transcendent movement from God to man, and not a transcendent movement from man to God. This, however, is not all there is to be said about the relationship between man’s self-transcendence and divine transcendence, as transcendence deals not only with the relationship between God and man, but also with God’s relationship to the world that man is a part of, and which makes human self-transcendence possible. We return again to Kierkegaard and to the second question that came up in connection with the understanding of the self in Sickness Unto Death: what determines or constitutes man’s relation to himself? Here are two possibilities, according to Kierkegaard: “A relation that relates itself to itself must either have established itself or have been established by another.”20 Both are in principle possible, but the first possibility leads to a circular argument (petitio principii), because how can the self determine itself without first being a self? Naturally, Kierkegaard moves on to the second possibility: the self is determined by another. This has also previously been a central point. The first presupposition for man being able to relate to himself is that he is gripped by something other than himself. Thus, he must relate to ‘the other’ when he relates to himself. As we previously have emphasized, the self being determined by being gripped by something in this world means that the self and its relationship to the world are inextricably interconnected. In order to be able to have a distance to myself, I must have a distance to the world. If what it means to be a human being is not a given, what it means that something is ‘my world’ or ‘the world’ is not a given either. Therefore, it is not just that man is 20

The Essential Kierkegaard, p. 351.

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“das noch nicht festgestellte Tier,” but also that the world is “die noch nicht fest­ gestellte Welt.” What we are dealing with is not one variable (the human being) and one fixed point (the world), but two variables (the human being and the world). How the world appears depends on how I relate to myself and vice versa. Man’s relationship to the world is an open relationship, and in this openness lies a hidden metaphysics. When I am gripped by birdsong, it does not mean that birdsong is God. On the other hand, it does not exclude the possibility that it is God who grips me through birdsong. This interpretation will of course not be a necessary interpretation, but it will be one among other possible interpretations. In birdsong, in a sunrise, in the pure tones of Bach’s partitas, it may be God who confronts me and grips me. How I relate to this is not just about my relationship to the world, but also about my relationship to myself. The state of being gripped which determines the relation of the self to itself is not salvation, it is creation. In this relation to the self, the world appears as God’s creation. Behind K.E. Løgstrup’s idea of man’s poetic openness to the world lies, in brief, the Christian idea of creation. When Protestant theology has had a general tendency to place sensoriness and transcendence in sharp antithesis to each other, it can be connected with it not having had a theology of creation that has opened up for the idea that God as Creator meets man through the sensory world. The idea of creation in Løgstrup’s conception of man’s poetic openness to the world is, however, not theology, but philosophy, and this means that this idea of creation is ambiguous. As we have already seen in Hans Joas, man can be gripped both by good and evil. Philosophically speaking, the idea of creation does not mean, then, that the world is utterly good, but it means that man is thrown into a battle between good and evil. However, the idea of creation also implies that man is thrown into the battle on the side of good. That man can reject good in favor of evil, is man’s tragedy, which leads to the question of salvation. The question of salvation will not be discussed further here, as the aim of this article has been to point out the idea of creation as a path to a renewed discussion of aesthetic problems in a theological context.

chapter 2

The Loss of the Aura and the New Sensuousness: Walter Benjamin on the Conditions for Sense Perception in the Age of Technology Dag T. Andersson Benjamin’s ‘theory of art’ or ‘aesthetic theory’ is a theory of experience. Thus, definitions of elements of a theory of the historical conditions of sense perception must be seen within the frame of a comprehensive theory of the historicity of experience. Or: aesthetics as a theory of aisthesis, perception, is placed within the frame of a theory of historical experience. An axiom in Benjamin’s theory of historical experience is that experience has been ‘devalued’. It is experience ‘in the strictest sense’ that has been devalued. Benjamin uses this designation in order to distinguish genuine experience (Erfahrung) from the subjectivized and privatized experience (Erlebnis). “Where there is experience (Erfahrung) in the strict sense of the word, certain contents of the individual past combine in the memory (Gedächtnis) with material from the collective past.”1 In the early essay “On the Program of the Coming Philosophy” (1918), Benjamin defines experience as follows: “Experience is the uniform and continuous multiplicity of knowledge.”2 In other words, he identifies uniformity, continuity and multiplicity as signs of experience, signs that stand in contrast to that which characterizes ‘the age of reproduction’, that is, the fractured, the ruptured, the similar.3 In “Experience and Poverty” (1933) and in the essay “The Storyteller” (1928–35), Benjamin writes,

1 W. Benjamin, Selected Writings, volume 4, trans. E. Jephcott and Others, eds. H. Eiland and M.W. Jennings (Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2003), p. 316. 2 W. Benjamin, Selected Writings, volume 2, trans. R. Livingstone and Others, eds. M.W. Jennings, H. Eiland, and G. Smith (Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999), p. 108. 3 ‘The similar’ (‘das Gleichartige,’) which is typical of ‘the age of reproduction’, differs from ‘sameness’ or ‘correspondence’ (‘Ähnlichkeit’), which Benjamin connects with the mimetic and which is the object of investigation in the essays, “On the Mimetic Faculty” (“Über das mimetiske Vermögen”) and “Doctrine of the Similar” (“Lehre vom Ähnlichen”). See below, pp. 8, 10 and 20. While the mimetic is a sign of a ‘homogenized’ world, the ‘similar’ and ‘similarity’ are part of a ‘heterogeneous’ order of things.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi 10.1163/9789004291690_005

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It is as if something that seemed inalienable to us, the securest among our possessions, were taken from us: the ability to exchange experiences. One reason for this phenomenon is obvious: experience has fallen in value. And it looks as if it is continuing to fall into bottomlessness. Every glance at a newspaper demonstrates that it has reached a new low, that our picture, not only of the external world but of the moral world as well, overnight has undergone changes which were never thought possible. With the [First] World War a process began to become apparent which has not halted since then. Was it not noticeable at the end of the war that men returned from the battlefield grown silent – not richer, but poorer in communicable experience? What ten years later was poured out in the flood of war books was anything but experience that goes from mouth to mouth. And there was nothing remarkable about that. For never has experience been contradicted more thoroughly than strategic experience by tactical warfare, economic experience by inflation, bodily experience by mechanical warfare, moral experience by those in power. A generation that had gone to school on a horse-drawn streetcar now stood under the open sky in a countryside in which nothing remained unchanged but the clouds, and beneath these clouds, in a field of destructive torrents and explosions, was the tiny, fragile human body.4 A focal point in Benjamin’s discussion of the many different aspects of the loss of genuine experience and the transformation of the conditions of experience in the age of technology is that the question of experience is connected with the examination of its material impact, the experiential space, which Benjamin describes as ‘image-space’ (Bildraum) or ‘body-space’ (Leibraum). With his emphasis on the significance of historically altered conditions, he aims at gaining an understanding of how they contribute to understanding the relation to materiality in our existence. By emphasizing experience and examining the places in which it manifests itself, as in the examination of its image-space and body-space, Benjamin emphasizes the significance of thinking experience and materiality in an essentially different way than they are thought of in classical materialism and the equally simplified extension of it into Marxist-Leninist theory. Rather, Benjamin’s thought is in keeping with the dogmatic theory’s critical counterpart, as found in the ‘anthropological materialism’ of surrealism. In his essay on surrealism, it is precisely the image-space and body-space 4 W. Benjamin, Selected Writings, vol. 3, trans. E. Jephcott, H. Eiland, and Others, eds. H. Eiland and M.W. Jennings (Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2002), pp. 143–144.

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that are examined. Both the political and the objective reality, the very physis of modern reality, says Benjamin, is technically organized and it is only in the image-space which penetrates it that we can find our locus of belonging in the world. The topography of the image-space has to be examined in light of the experience of place which is characteristic of Benjamin: we must proceed as we do when we face “a place where you feel dimly that you’ll later have to search for something you’ve forgotten here.”5

A Mimetic Relation to the World

In the essay, “The Storyteller,” Benjamin distinguishes between two forms of human communication: story-telling and the imparting of information. The two forms are strictly speaking separated by the definition of experience. While the story is connected with the sphere of genuine experience, imparting information is the form of communication which characterizes a world in which genuine experience is about to disappear. With his focus on the significance of this distinction, Benjamin looks not only into the core of the change that is happening to the conditions of experience in contemporary society, but far into the future. Benjamin’s identification of the relationship between genuine experience, a concrete experience, story, and information can give an extremely fruitful perspective on the question of the ideology of communication and information that characterizes our own time. The essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility” takes up the question of the transformation of man’s aesthetic, or ‘sensuous’ (in the most basic sense of the word) relation to things and to the world that the new technology brings about. The study of what specifically relates to the importance of the technology of reproduction for determining the ontology of the work of art is a study of a delimited field within a larger one, dealing with the effects of technology on our sense experience in general. As the study presented here raises questions that apply to the altered conditions for man’s experiential relations to the world as such, it is important to pay due attention to Benjamin’s theory of the ‘mimetic faculty’, a theory which gives us the basis 5 W. Benjamin, Selected Writings, vol. 2, p. 635. That a sense of belonging, inklings, forgetting and remembering go together has been made clear by Ernst Bloch in the final words of The Principle of Hope: All traces of hope in human history, the hidden as well as the manifest, point in the end to one place, towards something that we had a sense of in our childhood, but where nobody had yet been: a place called home. (E. Bloch, Das Prinzip Hoffnung, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1985), p. 1628.

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for understanding what is specific to the present historical situation. The changes in our sensuous relation to the world, as they are determined by the effect of the new technology on our experience, are to be understood as changes in our mimetic relation to the world. The theoretical foundation for Benjamin’s specific theory on the work of art is to be found in the mimesis theory, a theory of man’s ‘imitative’ faculty in a wide sense, a theory of mutual interrelations between man and things and the world. It is also a theory that involves a philosophy of language and involves the idea of ‘the signature of things’. The theory of mimesis is a theory of the particular way in which things make themselves known, express themselves, ‘speak’. Already in the early essay “On Language as Such and on the Language of Man” (1916/17),6 we find Benjamin’s fundamental idea regarding man’s ‘relation to the world’, which he understands as a mimetic relation. Both our understanding of the experiential and epistemological relation to reality, and, not least, the understanding of our place and our belonging in the world go back to a mimetic premise. Within this perspective, Benjamin understands human language as a variation of language as such and sees it as a phenomenon which, in relation to its origins, should not be seen as a means of communication in an ordinary sense. Whatever is communicated through language must be understood in a wider context in which the dimension of expression in language is more fundamental than the communicative one. Language is the way in which things ‘show’ themselves, says Benjamin. Benjamin’s ‘broadened’ understanding of language can also be seen as a form of language phenomenology, with interesting connections to Ernst Cassirer’s theory of the world as a ‘phenomenon of expression’. In the third volume of Philosophie der symbolischen Formen (The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms), Cassirer deals with ‘the dimension of expression’ in human experience. He criticizes a psychologistic and empiristic approach as well as an epistemological (Kantian) approach to understanding the phenomenon of sense perception. Both these approaches end with things disappearing, either because they are reduced to our mental images of them, as in empiricism and psychologism, or by excluding them from our experience as inaccessible ‘things in themselves’, as in Kant. And both these approaches have theoretical science as a reference point. If we are to speak meaningfully about perception, we have to disregard the conditions that theoretical science proposes. If we dare do that, we will not descend into chaos and formlessness, as is argued 6 W. Benjamin, Selected Writings, vol. 1, eds. M. Bullock and M.W. Jennings (Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996), pp. 62–74.

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from a ‘scientific’ point of view. On the contrary. What then meets us and encompasses us, says Cassirer, is a ‘cosmos’. The world is a plethora and fullness of physiognomic characters.7 The world has a characteristic ‘face’, a face which shows itself for us every moment and lets us understand it as a whole, without dissolving into general configurations, into geometrical-objective lines and outlines. The ‘meaning’ (Sinn) which is found in expression fastens onto our actual sensual experience. From Benjamin’s expanded understanding of language there is an interesting connection to Hans-Georg Gadamer’s definition of language in the essay “Die Natur der Sache und die Sprache der Dinge.” There is a clear affinity between Gadamer and Cassirer, even though Gadamer criticizes the aspect of Cassirer’s understanding of language that regards language as a phenomenon of expression on a par with myth and art. For Gadamer, language has a more fundamental significance. Language is something other than an expression of man’s ability to create forms, as myths and art do. Gadamer seems closer to Benjamin when he says that language, from the beginning, encloses all being and does so by virtue of the possibility that is found in all things, namely the possibility of making oneself known through language. Is not language, then, less to be understood as human language and more as the language of things, asks Gadamer.8 Also in Freud’s Psychoanalyse und Telepathie, Benjamin finds an understanding of language that expands its range and lets us see the connection between human language and other language forms. Freud shows “in passing – as he often enlists the greatest thoughts,” says Benjamin, a connection between telepathy and language, in which the former makes the latter understandable if regarded phylogenetically as a forerunner. Freud looks to insect communities as a model. Here Benjamin rediscovers thoughts, he says, that he himself had put into words in a draft of “On the Mimetic Faculty.”9 With Novalis, Benjamin is able to talk about ‘the signature of things’, an expression which lets the naming function of language recede in favour of its 7 E. Cassirer, Philosophie der symbolischen Formen. Dritter Teil. Phänomenologie der Erkenntnis (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1994). Benjamin ascribes a meaning to the physiognomy of things corresponding to that which we find in Cassirer. His thought has been characterized as ‘physiognomic’. An account of Benjamin’s philosophy with an emphasis on its physiognomic character is found in H. Schweppenhäuser, Ein Physiognom der Dinge. Aspekte Benjaminschen Denkens. (Lüneburg: Dietrich zu Klampen, 1992). 8 H.-G. Gadamer, Die Natur der Sache und die Sprache der Dinge. I: Kleine Schriften I. Philosophie. Hermeneutik. (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1967), p. 65. 9 In a letter to Gretel Adorno, who had sent him Freud’s text. I: Gesammelte Briefe V, 1935–1937 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1999), pp. 171–172.

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expressive function. Benjamin connects the naming function with Adamitic naming. By virtue of God’s creative words, things in the world have their signatures and Adam can give them names, a naming which is to be understood as a kind of ‘baptism’. Language ‘imitates’, that is, it participates mimetically in God’s act of creation. The naming of things secures the mimetic connection and confirms the baptism. However, in the name, Benjamin says, the creative aspect of the word, which alone belongs to God, has not been preserved. The name is rather to be understood as receptive. “[…] it aims to give birth to the language of things themselves, from which in turn, soundlessly, in the mute magic of nature, the word of God shines forth.”10 Man’s task is to’translate’ the silent language of things into an audible one, to give the nameless a name. The mimetic affinity between the creative word and the designating and cognizing word is recorded momentously in The Fall. The Fall is the moment of birth of the human word. From now on the name does not live on ‘undamaged’. The language of the name loses its ‘immanent magic’ and ‘judgmental’, communicative language arises. Language is characterized by a division of the semiotic function. We must distinguish between a contingent signifier and an unattainable signified. Language is defined from the outside. It no longer speaks from the middle of being. In the linguistic Fall, Benjamin sees the basis for the sadness of things: natura lapsa. Human language has lost the ability to bring the silent signatures of things close to hand. If things had mouths, says Benjamin, their speech would be ‘plaintive’. Things suffer under what he calls ‘over-naming’. It is “the deepest linguistic reason for all melancholy and (from the point of view of the thing) for all deliberate muteness.”11 It belongs to the disruption of naming language and to the contingency of designation that human language speaks of things endlessly and in all tongues. The connection with things is broken. The words no longer have a ‘baptismal function’. They become the source of the sad and plaintive nature of things, for with over-naming, things tend to become silent.

The Aura’s Mode of Experience

‘Aura’ is the fundamental word in the “Work of Art” essay. In what he calls aura, Benjamin elaborates on and develops in an intensified and transformed way the idea of a relation of mutuality between men and things, as it is formulated in the theory of the mimetic faculty, and as it was already expressed in the 10 Benjamin, Selected Writings, vol.1, p. 69. 11 Benjamin, Selected Writings, vol.1, p. 73.

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early essay on language. With the aura, the significance of things is emphasized in this relation. The aura allocates the specific in our aesthetic relation to the world by stressing materiality and by emphasizing how the relation changes historically. The aura experience applies to our aesthetic relation to things and the world in general, that is, not only to our relation to artistic things and the production of art. Furthermore, Benjamin takes a distance from the esoteric and ‘spiritualized’ use of the concept of aura that he finds in theosophy and anthroposophy. At a time when the aura is on the verge of disappearing, Benjamin goes in another direction and maintains the esoteric and material aspects of the aura, aspects that can ‘rescue’ experience by transforming it, opening up a hidden potential for experience. The aura is in general a concept that emphasizes the significance of the ‘materiality’ of things. In this way, the concept of aura can be understood as the fundamental concept in Benjamin’s ‘materialistic’ aesthetics. He emphasizes three aspects of the ‘genuine’ aura: First, genuine aura appears in all things, not just in certain kinds of things, as people imagine. Second, the aura undergoes changes, which can be quite fundamental, with every movement the aura-wreathed object makes. Third, genuine aura can in no sense be thought of as a spruced-up version of the magic rays beloved of spiritualists and described and illustrated in vulgar works of mysticism. On the contrary, the characteristic feature of genuine aura is ornament, an ornamental halo, in which the object or being is enclosed as in a case. Perhaps nothing gives such a clear idea of aura as Van Gogh’s late paintings, in which one could say that the aura appears to have been painted together with the various objects.12 When we speak of aura experience or an auratic mode of experience, we speak of an experience that is aesthetic in a broad sense and in which the emphasis on the significance of materiality in the experiential relationship to things and the world underlines the historicity of experience in the sense that it changes in time, dependent on social, cultural and religious factors. It is characteristic of aura experience that we only become aware of the aura of things when it is about to disappear. That the aura declines, similarly to the way in which experience is devalued, means that man’s sense perception of things is changing in 12 Benjamin, Selected Writings, vol. 2, pp. 327–328. As an ornament, as a kind of encapsulation of the thing, the aura can be seen as an underlining of the idea that the aura’s way of enclosing the thing means that the thing is elevated as something belonging to the materiality of the world. The aura shows us the thing in another way than the spiritualized version of it that the ‘spiritualists’ bespeak.

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a radical and unique way. In “The Storyteller,” where Benjamin connects the disappearance of the genuine story to a corresponding historical change in man’s experiental relation to the world, he claims that change comes ‘from far away’; it is not a phenomenon particular to our modern times, but it is a fact that technology’s effect on our modern reality has played into this process of change in a decisive way. As a motto for “The Work of Art” essay, Benjamin chooses a quote from Paul Valéry: Our fine arts were developed, their types and uses were established, in times very different from the present, by men whose power of action upon things was insignificant in comparison with ours. But the amazing growth of our techniques, the adaptability and precision they have attained, the ideas and habits they are creating, make it a certainty that profound changes are impending in the ancient craft of The Beautiful. In all the arts there is a physical component which can no longer be considered or treated as it used to be, which cannot remain unaffected by our modern knowledge and power. For the last twenty years neither matter nor space nor time has been what it was from time immemorial. We must expect great innovations to transform the entire technique of the arts, thereby affecting artistic invention itself and perhaps even bringing about an amazing change in our very notion of art.13 Valéry refers here to the pervasive influence of technology on man’s relation to the world, calling attention to how the changes that take place in the sphere of art are an expression of changes that apply to our fundamental understanding of matter, time and space. And the most extensive change of all is connected with the way in which technology gives us power over things that we did not possess before. In the era of handicraft, people were far more dependent on the objects’ own qualities. It is still the case in the sphere of craft that the tools that are used correspond to the things they are used for. Handicraft, not only in its creative execution, but also in its instrumentality, recognizes the distinctness of things. The new technology does away with distinction by virtue of its ability to interfere with the very core of things. In that way, technology subjectivizes the world of things. The objective steadfastness of things yields to the manipulation of things through technology. Handicraft allowed things to remain at a distance in the sense that the materiality that things possessed was decisive for their subjective designing. The 13 Benjamin, Selected Writings, vol. 4, p. 251.

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new technology makes it possible to transcend the limits set by the materiality of things. It ‘infringes’ on things in a whole other way. Technology violates the independence of things that is maintained by a dimension of distance and, thus, invades the very nature of things. In the area of art, reproduction techno­ logy can be seen as a violation of the autonomy of the work of art. The new technology can bring things so near that we do not see anything else in them. When we regard things through our own designing of them, we only see ourselves. Thus things become a mirror for us, not in the sense that we recognize ourselves in the differentness they express for us, as nature earlier could be a mirror for people, but in such a way that differentness rather disappears in our own image. For Benjamin, the change we can observe is an alteration in our basic mimetic relation to things and the world. How our relation to experience in the world is changed is most clearly expressed by the changes in the exercise of our mimetic faculty. The mimetic faculty underlies and expresses itself in all human activities. As a faculty, it is connected with need. It appears not least in our ability and need for imitation. Nature produces similarities; one need only think of mimicry. The highest capacity for producing similarities, however, is man’s. His gift for seeing similarity is nothing but a rudiment of the once powerful compulsion to become similar and to behave mimetically. There is perhaps not a single one of his higher functions in which his mimetic faculty does not play a decisive role.14 The mimetic faculty is thus fundamental to our capacity to shape things, to produce art, but its significance extends across and applies to our whole relation to the world. In ‘children’s play’, Benjamin sees a clear expression of the mimetic faculty. In his playing, the child not only replicates human activities, but also the activities of things. : He is ‘not’ only a shopkeeper or teacher but also a windmill and a train.15 Children’s play is a rudiment of an archaic ability that pervaded all of cosmos.16 Just how fundamental the need for imitation is can be seen not least in the joy with which we experience it. Aristotle writes in Poetics: 14 Benjamin, Selected Writings, vol. 2, p. 720. 15 Benjamin, Selected Writings, vol. 2, p. 694. 16 B. Lindner, Benjamins Aurakonzeption: Anthropologie und Technik, Bild und Text in: U. Steiner (Hrsg.): Walter Benjamin 1892–1940 zum 100. Geburtstag. (Bern: Peter Lang Verlag, 1992), p. 219.

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Imitation is natural to man from childhood; he differs from the other animals in that he is the most imitative: the first things he learns come to him through imitation. Then, too, all men take pleasure in imitative representations.17 Thus, things lose their aura when the intrusion of technology eliminates their distance, when the possibility of reproducing them takes away their independent and unique character. The new technology of photography is the best example. Photography breaks through the veil of the aura and reveals layers in the image that were previously hidden. The aura was like a case that protected the distinctiveness of the thing. It protected things, as the pod protects its seed, says Benjamin. Even though Benjamin sees the aura as a historical phenomenon and emphasizes that it must be understood in the context of how people’s perception of the world changes historically, he uses an image from nature when he wants to clarify the experience of aura. We are to understand aura as follows: …the unique apparition of a distance, however near it may be. To follow with the eye – while resting on a summer afternoon – a mountain range on the horizon or a branch that casts its shadow on the beholder is to breathe the aura of those mountains, of that branch.18 The ‘reciprocity’ in the relationship between man and thing, which is characteristic of the aura experience, is a reciprocity that is supported by the dimension of distance that characterizes the mimetic relation to the world. In the article “Benjamin’s Aura,” Miriam Bratu Hansen clarifies what is specific to the aura’s dimension of reciprocity. The aura is a medium that encompasses and physically connects subject and object. At the same time, it makes the boundaries between subject and object unclear. The traditional subject-object relation shifts. The aura makes it clear that our relationship to things is a corporeal relation. In accordance with the etymology of the word, the onlooker in Benjamin’s image is characterized not only by the visual regard, but by ‘breath’. The aura is something we breathe in physically. Let us briefly remind ourselves of the biblical and mystical connotations of breath and breathing. They remove

17 Aristotle, On Poetry and Style, translated, with an introduction, by G.M.A. Grube (The Library of Liberal Arts published by Bobbs-Merrill Educational Publishing: Indianapolis, 1982), p. 7. 18 Benjamin, Selected Writings, vol. 4, p. 255.

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us from a spiritistic and spiritualized understanding and lead us instead19 to understand how the aura’s form of perception involves surrendering to the object as something other than ourselves. The decline of the aura indicates a change that takes place in the practice of our mimetic faculty causing distance and difference to be substituted by proximity and conformity. The change in our mimetic faculty shows in a new way of sensing: The stripping of the veil from the object, the destruction of the aura, is the signature of a perception whose ‘sense for sameness in the world’ has so increased that, by means of reproduction, it extracts sameness even from what is unique.20 The “Work of Art” essay was written during Benjamin’s exile in France. The fact that he points out the significance of the social conditions for the change that the work of art and our relationship to it has gone through is altogether founded in his understanding of the historical substance of experience, but gains further accentuation through the relationship to the contemporary political situation. The “Work of Art” essay was written as a statement on the political significance of art, but it is first and foremost an attempt at rescuing art from the political exploitation it was exposed to in Fascism. It speaks explicitly against the aestheticization of politics which characterizes the conditions of art under Hitler’s regime, and it aims, says Benjamin, to propose a theory of art that is “useless in the service of fascism.” A main distinction which Benjamin introduces into the examination of the basic conditions for the historical changes the work of art has gone through is the division between ‘cult value’ and ‘exhibition value’. The “Work of Art” essay clearly marks Benjamin’s affiliation with Marxist theory. Not only does he refer to Marx’ A Critique of Political Economy in order to accentuate the political goal of the essay, but in a substantial philosophical sense as well, Benjamin takes his point of departure in Marx. Marx’ delineation of changes in the conditions for work and the relation to things and the world it causes puts Benjamin’s understanding of the change in our mimetic relation to the world into perspective. For Marx, capitalist production of commodities means that the usevalue of things is subordinated to their exchange-value. Seen in the abstract perspective of exchange-value, all things become equal. All things can be exchanged with each other on the basis of an abstract common denominator. The distinctive and individual character of things disappears. 19 M. Bratu Hansen, “Benjamin’s Aura.” In: Critical Inquiry/Winter 2008, p. 351. 20 Benjamin, Selected Writings, vol. 4, pp. 255–256.

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The auratic work of art had the ability to engage the viewer. It drew the viewer into its magic circle, there and then. This ability – this power – ceases with the technology of reproduction. This technology makes the image available to us independent of time and place. It covers nearly all our needs for looking at images, but nonetheless there is something reproduction techno­ logy cannot do: it cannot reproduce all the characteristics of the original. It can only reproduce for us how the camera sees the image. Even though the image can photographically be reproduced in the most precise way, reproduction technology cannot reproduce for us the very foundation which the image’s particular character rests on, that is, its materiality. This being the case, one might think that the most decisive aspect of the unique character of the work of art would not be affected by the new technology. However, Benjamin claims, along with Valéry, that the materiality of the work of art is affected by techno­ logy in a completely vital way. Photographic technology can be used in such a way as to expose aspects of the image that are inaccessible to the naked eye. For example, it can show us stages in the creation of the painting. The picture we see with our ‘natural’ eye is, thus, deprived of its autonomy. We ‘know’ that technological reproduction can reproduce the image in a whole other way than the way we see it. Thus, the image loses its ability to draw us into its magic circle, which is broken. The original must surrender an important part of its authority to the new technology, says Benjamin. The work of art cannot withstand the double attack aimed at it from both mass production and reproduction technology. Our mimetic relation to the world is going through a radical shift in our time, but change in itself is nothing new. As is the case of experience, our mimetic faculty has always been subject to change. Here, too, the change comes ‘from far away’. Technological reproducibility is completely new, but it is still a kind of imitation, mimesis.21 In the essay “On the Mimetic Faculty,” Benjamin returns to the theme from the earlier essay on language, referring to how we can observe this transformation in the development of human language. Our linguistic-mimetic relation to the world is such that we can ‘read’ nature, read things. This kind of reading is the oldest, far, far older than the reading of texts. Text-reading is only a pale imitation of the reading of things. This oldest form of reading, a reading prior to all language, is a reading “from entrails, the stars, or dances,” says Benjamin.22 Only later in human history do we meet the well-known means of communication for linguistic reading, such as runes and hieroglyphs. In these, the ‘natural’ mimetic reading has found its 21 Lindner, Benjamins Aurakonzeption, p. 230. 22 Benjamin, Selected Writings, vol. 2, p. 722.

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way into language and writing. However, language still contains remains of the original mimesis. Benjamin’s concept of reading and language, anchored as it is in the theory of mimesis, points far beyond the limits of the sphere we regard as that of understanding and interpreting, what we normally understand as the sphere of ‘hermeneutics’. The mimetic concept of reading, where reading reminds us of our connection to “entrails, stars and dance,” also contains the form of reading that Benjamin describes with an expression he borrows from Hofmannsthal: “to read what was never written.”23 In the understanding of reading as the execution of our mimetic faculty, an aspect of remembrance is contained in reading. Benjamin underlines this connection. The mimetic reading, as it still exists as a remnant in our textual reading and as it takes us back to the origin of all reading, lets us remember an as yet unactuated potential for meaning. Mimetic reading, remembering, is capable of ‘rescuing’ a body of meanings that are forgotten, repressed, disparaged. Remembrance understood in light of the mimetic faculty has a rescuing function. Benjamin’s concept of  ‘rescuing critique’, a concept with both historical-philosophical and art-­ theoretical content, is founded on the idea of mimetic reading. The idea of rescuing remembrance plays a central role in his theses on the philosophy of history: in remembrance we have access to a potential for meaning of a rescuing and liberating nature, a potential that the history of progress has hidden and repressed. And in the area of art, a ‘rescuing critique’, a critique that reads what is not yet written, can disclose a layer of meaning with a liberating potential. When Benjamin sees that the new technology in the arts can open up a wider, deeper relation to things and the world, a relationship that strengthens our sensuous-corporeal belonging in the world, we must understand it against the background of the basic meaning of mimesis theory.

Primeval Perception and Remembrance

In his “epistemo–critical prologue” to The Origin of German Tragic Drama, Benjamin uses the term Urvernehmen in a passage in which he deals with the question of the relationship between truth and representation, idea and language. The idea is linguistic, Benjamin says, and it expresses itself in single words in what we could call the word’s symbolic meaning. Through the ‘sense’ of meaning which words in the experienced world give us access to, it is the task of philosophy to show how the symbolic character of words, always juxtaposed with the secondary and purely communicative meaning, is deeply 23 Benjamin, Selected Writings, vol. 2, p. 722.

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rooted in a primary meaning. As philosophy’s mode of expression cannot be the same as that of ‘revelation’, it can only offer a mode of expression of this primary meaning through a remembrance that points backwards to ‘primeval perception’. This kind of remembrance is related to the Platonic anamnesis, says Benjamin. It takes us back to the origin of language where we belong to a world that extends farther and deeper than the one defined by how the language of communication familiarizes us with the world. The language of communication can forget the mimetic foundation of language. Even if language is understood detached from its mimetic layer, and first and foremost is regarded as a medium for communication, words still contain a remembrance that can let as yet hidden layers of meaning arise, turn up, emerge. The model for such a remembrance is described in Thesis VI of the theses on the philosophy of history.24 We appropriate a memory, says Benjamin, as it suddenly, without a motive, involuntarily, in a flash of lightning and in the hour of danger, lights up and then disappears again. Benjamin finds the counterpart to this form of memory expressed in the souvenir (Andenken). It is the form of memory characteristic of the subjectivized and privatized experience (Erlebnis), the counterpart of genuine experience. The souvenir is “the secularized relic.” With this kind of memory, man’s growing alienation from himself has taken root in the individual’s own past, “which is inventoried as dead effects.”25 In the remembrance that lights up in a flash of lightening, we are reminded of a language which points us in the direction of redemption, says Benjamin. He speaks of a language that is universal in a genuine sense, that is, understandable for all. It is a language which has transcended the trammels of printed letters, a language that is illuminated by the way in which the language of birds is understood by Sunday’s children.26 Primeval perception contains a remembrance that opens up another perspective on history than that which is found in the Hegelian-Marxist ‘progressive’ view of history. Benjamin’s philosophy of history contains an element of ‘natural history’. Human history is seen in the context and perspective of ‘another’ history, a history that we tend to overlook, repress and forget, but which can manifest itself in sudden reminders, experiences which lift us out of the usual patterns and connect us to a past which not only also concerns our fellow beings, but which includes all of nature. Primeval perception connects us with this ‘other’ history as it reminds us that we are a part of a far-reaching kinship. The form that remembrance takes in primeval perception is different 24 Benjamin, Selected Writings, vol. 4, p. 391. 25 Benjamin, Selected Writings, vol. 4, pp. 182–183. 26 Benjamin, Selected Writings, vol. 4, p. 406.

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from that of recollection. It gives us the opportunity to develop our humanity by extending its reach. In primeval perception we transcend the traditional boundaries of what we consider ‘human’ and add content to the concept of the ‘human’ by emphasizing our kinship with the rest of nature. In Walter Benjamin’s Other History. Of Stones, Animals, Human Beings and Angels (1998), Beatrice Hansson makes the ‘natural history’ dimension in Benjamin’s philosophy of history a main theme. The insertion of natural history into Benjamin’s understanding of history is theological at base. To be reminded of our natural historical origins constitutes a kind of experience that cannot be understood without a theological approach. He himself underlines the theological keynote in his thinking when he says, My thinking is related to theology as blotting pad is related to ink. It is saturated with it. Were one to go by the blotter, however, nothing of what is written would remain.27 On the basis of this image, Benjamin seeks to find a mode of expression for his own thinking that leaves something out. The theological keynote resonates anyway and is heard clearly when he writes about language, as in the early language essay, but also later in literary essays on Kafka and Kraus, where the ‘rescuing’ critique is a main concern. In the late Theses on the History of Philosophy, the rescue motif becomes the main one. Here the significance of the theological basis of rescue emerges clearly, even though, according to Benjamin in the first thesis, theology itself “as we know, is small and ugly and has to keep out of sight.”28 In a letter written in 1931 to the Swiss critic Max Rychner, Benjamin emphasizes the significance of Jewish theology for his thinking: I have never been able to do research and think in any sense other than, if you will, a theological one, namely, in accord with the Talmudic teaching about the forty-nine levels of meaning in every passage of Torah. That is, in my experience, the most trite Communist platitude possesses more

27

W. Benjamin, The Arcades Project, trans. H. Eiland and K. McLaughlin (Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press 1999), p. 471. With reference to this quote, George Steiner speaks of Benjamin (and of Heidegger!) as one of the ‘parodists’ among theologians in the 20th century. See Steiner: “Von Walter Benjamin sprechen,” in: Sinn und Form, 6, 2004, p. 732. 28 Benjamin, Selected Writings, vol. 4, p. 389.

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hierarchies of meaning than does contemporary bourgeois profundity, which has only one meaning, that of an apologetic.29 Stéphane Moses has pointed out that already in his writings from the 1920’s, we find the idea of ‘rescuing’ theological concepts by reinterpreting them into the sphere of the profane.30 From a rescue perspective, Benjamin looks for traces of theological thinking in secularized concepts, and he attempts to ‘rescue’ this way of thinking by giving the concepts new expression. Moses refers to the “Work of Art” essay, where both the ‘aura’ with its emphasis on the unique character of things and the emphasis on ‘tradition’, which gives things independence and identity, are concepts that can be traced back to theological thinking. Gershom Scholem has pointed out how a text like “The Work of Art” essay with its decisively materialistic approach finds nourishment “in a field of thought in which we once both were at home.”31 The theological layer in the ideas of “The Work of Art” essay shows its significance not least in the way in which Benjamin stresses how both aura and tradition are threatened phenomena that can only be rescued by turning the substance of their experience into a profane expression. In a fragment following the ‘blotting pad’ image in The Arcades Project, Benjamin takes up the question of how we can speak of the ‘end’ of history, and he emphasizes the fact that history cannot just be made into a ‘science’, but is also a form of ‘remembrance’ (Eingedenken). What science has ‘established’ can be modified by remembrance, which can have a rescuing function in relation to the past. The past has not yet been brought to an end. “That is theology,” Benjamin says, “but in remembrance we have an experience that forbids us to conceive of history as fundamentally atheological,” and then he adds, in continuation of the blotting pad image, “little as it may be granted us to try to write it with immediately theological concepts.”32 The layer of meaning opened up by the transformation of our sensory relation to things can also be seen as coherent with the primeval perception that 29

W. Benjamin, The Correspondence of Walter Benjamin 1910–1940, edited and annotated by G. Scholem and T.W. Adorno; trans. M.R. Jacobson and E.M. Jacobson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), pp. 372–373. 30 S. Moses, “Benjamins Judentum,” in: Daniel Weidner (Hrsg.), Profanes Leben. Walter Benjamins Dialektik der Säkularisierung (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 2010), p. 145ff. 31 W. Benjamin, Gesammelte Briefe V, p. 401. Scholem here refers to their common interest in Jewish theological questions, an interest that brought them together in friendship and discussion in the period around World War I and the early 1920s. 32 Benjamin, The Arcades Project, p. 471.

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Benjamin describes and the connection that primeval perception has to memory as remembrance. The new layer of meaning that can be liberated by our changed perception of things becomes accessible to us through a form of experience that is particular to remembrance by the way in which it connects our nature, and the as yet unused abilities this nature possesses, with the nature that our human nature is surrounded by and which the understanding of the ‘human’ is determined by. Remembrance is a reminder of a forgotten depth and breadth in that which gives content to our understanding of what is human. While recollection in the form of the souvenir (“Andenken”) turns memory into inventory and turns it inward, remembrance is directed outward and beyond. Primeval perception can thus open up for an ‘inner transcendence’ – move us through remembering our ties to and our kinship with other beings and things that are part of a world that extends beyond the ‘purely’ human. Kafka is for Benjamin a spokesman for the kind of transcendence gained through the experience of remembrance. For him, “What has been forgotten (…) is never something purely individual. Everything forgotten mingles with what has been forgotten of the prehistoric world, forms countless uncertain and changing compounds, yielding a constant flow of new, strange products.”33 In Kafka’s stories, we find an “inexhaustible intermediate world,” which from oblivion, where it is contained, “presses towards the light”34 Animals are the bearers of the forgotten. “For Kafka,” writes Benjamin, …the world of his ancestors was as unfathomable as the world of realities was important, and we may be sure that, like the totem poles of primitive peoples, the world of ancestors took him down to the animals. (…) One can understand, then, why Kafka never tired of hearing about the forgotten from animals. They are not the goal, to be sure, but one cannot do without them. (…) This much is certain: of all of Kafka’s creatures, the animals have the greatest opportunity for reflection.35 And the thoughtfulness of the animals leads us back to ourselves. If we listen to Red Peter in the short story “A Report to an Academy” telling about his earlier life as an ape, we are confronted with our own amnesia. In his book on Mahler, Theodor W. Adorno points out an affinity between Mahler’s ‘fairytale music’ and Kafka’s ‘fabels’. Both art forms move into a world 33 Benjamin, Selected Writings, vol. 2, pp. 809–810. 34 Benjamin, Selected Writings, vol. 2, p. 810. 35 Benjamin, Selected Writings, vol. 2, p. 810.

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‘in-between’, a world Kafka describes as “that intermediate world – at once unfinished and everyday, comforting and silly,”36 but also a world in which we can find “a token of hope.” And hope is connected with what Adorno sees as a particular characteristic of both Kafka and Mahler: that they occupy the threshold between the human and the non-human. This in-between realm of the threshold makes ‘space’ for the human in a particular way. The animals let our humanity appear to us as something confined in our nature. As in Kafka’s fabels, Mahler’s ‘fairytale tone’ brings to life a similarity between humans and animals. The animal shows us what it means to be human, seen from the point of view of redemption. In Mahler’s music, says Adorno, the reminder of the tie between man and nature, the kinship between man and other creations, comes through in a way that is both hopeless and full of hope at one and the same time. Hopeless because we have drawn a sharp dividing line between that which is alien and ourselves, but also comforting because we still have a remembrance from which hope emanates. Superstitious belief in the absolute division between humans and other beings, and thus the repression of nature in ourselves, is also expressed in autonomous art music, Adorno claims. The autonomy of art, which is disturbed by the disappearance of the aura, has also been connected with a clear limitation to that which belongs not to art but to nature. Up to Mahler’s time, music strove to master material based on the idea that the specifically human is manifested by demonstrating our domination over nature. Mahler is still bound by the ties that culture had imposed on man in relation to nature. Nonetheless, we can see in his music a striving to “make peace with our natural being,” says Adorno.37

The Threshold and the Image

Since Benjamin’s description of how we can experience our sense of belonging to nature and a kinship with our fellow beings can be seen as a kind of inner transcendence, we have to do with a transcendence that does not take off, but takes place. This ‘topography’ of transcendence shows that it never leaves the world of materiality, but confirms our belonging to it. And it is in remembrance that transcendence takes place. Remembrance makes space for an experience in which the nature we are a part of becomes evident and which we recognize in our own nature. What we experience in remembrance is to be understood 36 Benjamin, Selected Writings, vol. 2, p. 799. 37 T.W. Adorno, Mahler. Eine musikalische Physiognomik (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1972), pp. 17–18.

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more as something we happen upon rather than find, more something that comes to us than something we come to. The remembrance that makes space for transcendence is related to Proust’s ‘involuntary memory’. Here we happen upon “images which we did not see before we remembered them.”38 We are brought back to a forgotten and overlooked world of images, which remembrance allows us to recognize. The space of transcendence is an image-space and a corporeal space.39 It is a space in which we become enlightened about our belonging in the world. In his essay on Surrealism, Benjamin says that enlightenment comes in the form of a revelation, “a profane illumination” that “initiates us.”40 In the little ‘thought-image’ “Excavation and Memory,” Benjamin says that memory is not an instrument for researching the past, but the medium. What we call ‘the matter itself’ is none other than a stratum which only the most meticulous research can uncover. Images are torn loose and given to us as precious things in a collection of fragments. Anyone who just focuses on the contents of the finds loses out on the best part. The ‘site’ itself is all-important. Memory goes forth epically and rhapsodically, and like archeology, it tells not only about the stratum in which the find was found, but also about all the other, earlier, strata that had to be passed through to get there.41 Memory as remembrance can be understood as a threshold phenomenon. The threshold differs from the boundary, Benjamin emphasizes, in that it makes space, as we saw in Kafka and Mahler, by opening rather than enclosing. The threshold is a passage. Benjamin’s great unfinished Arcades Project is an accomplished study of thresholds. With an eye to Paris in the 19th century, Benjamin examines the many transitions, fragmentations and openings that show the growth of modern society, at the same time as it reminds us of the connection with the past, even with the ‘primeval past’. The threshold is a passage that connects past, present and future. But it is also a place where it is possible to stay. The passage is not primarily an indicator of where to go in order to get on with life. It reminds us of where we come from, where we show restraint and put up resistance, so that we stop and get a sense of what we understand as our place, and where we belong in the world. Also, in Benjamin, the passage shows its ‘mythic’ significance. There is a particular mythico-religious primeval feeling to spatial thresholds, says Ernst Cassirer. The temple’s threshold not only marks the distance between the inner space of the house of God and the profane world 38 Benjamin, Gesammelte Schriften II, 3, p. 1064. 39 See above, p. 35. 40 Benjamin, Selected Writings, vol. 2, p. 217. 41 Benjamin, Selected Writings, vol. 2, p. 576.

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outside, but it is the place where the divine comes forth and is present.42 The threshold experience opens up and brings near our belonging to the cosmos, a belonging that cannot be defined by setting up limits, but rather by kinship. Threshold experiences can give us what Benjamin calls threshold proficiency.43 The experience that we find in Kafka of how our forgetting has ties back to ‘primeval times’ is spoken of by Benjamin as a “threshold of Kafka’s work.”44 In Berlin Childhood Around 1900, Benjamin describes different threshold experiences. He recalls entrances, landings, porticoes, and doorways – places where “specimens of the race of threshold dwellers,” guard our entrance to life or to a house.45 Benjamin directs his attention at the singular world of images in which we encounter dream images on the threshold of waking up. The Arcades Project can be read as a study of such dream images. The threshold is a place for images which the decaying culture has overlooked and forgotten, but in which there is a rich potential for meaningfulness. With its interest in dreams, surrealism is nourished by the image space of the threshold and surrealistic art reminds us of and looks back on this image space. In his book Schwellenkunde. Walter Benjamins Passage des Mythos, Winfried Menninghaus underlines this rescuing, redemptive dimension in Benjamin’s understanding of the threshold and its image-space, when he says that for Benjamin every time period and any space is “potentially a threshold,” from which it is only one step into the realm of the messianic.46 The rescue motif, which underlies Benjamin’s emphasis on the significance of remembrance and the threshold, is most clearly expressed in the last of the theses on the philosophy of history. Rescue has its place. The soothsayers who queried time and learned what it had in store certainly did not experience it as either homogeneous or empty. Whoever keeps this in mind will perhaps get an idea of how past times were experienced in remembrance – namely, in just this way. We know that the Jews were prohibited from inquiring into the future: the Torah and the prayers instructed them in remembrance. This disenchanted the future, which holds sway over all those who turn to soothsayers for enlighten42

E. Cassirer, Philosophie der symbolischen Formen. Zweiter Teil: Das mythische Denken (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1994), p. 127. 43 Benjamin, Gesammelte Schriften IV, 1, p. 147. 44 Benjamin, Selected Writings, vol. 2, p. 809. 45 Benjamin, Selected Writings, vol. 3, p. 354. 46 W. Menninghaus, Schwellenkunde. Walter Benjamins Passage des Mythos (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1986), p. 54.

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ment. This does not imply, however, that for the Jews the future became homogeneous, empty time. For every second was the small gateway in time through which the Messiah might enter.47 And remembrance reaches out way beyond the biographically describable. It carries us to the not yet existing and to that which existed in the far distant past. In a flash of lightning, remembrance can show us an image or even a fragment of an image, which in its monadological form can open up a whole world of forgotten meaning. A kind of transcendent experience that memory can give us, preferably in the glimpse of a fleeting moment, is that a feeling is awakened from its slumbering state so we are transported into “the feeling of existence as it may quiver in the depths of an animal.”48 From this ephemeral reminder, an experience can be given space and can grow, corresponding to the moment’s transcending experience, which Plato speaks of in his seventh letter: “it is brought to birth in the soul on a sudden, as light that is kindled by a leaping spark, and thereafter it nourishes itself.”49 In the mimetic relation to things it is not just we who cast a particular glance at things. Things catch our eye and respond to it. In the essay Über einige Motive bei Baudelaire, Benjamin defines the aura as the glance’s expectation of a response.50 We have to do with a glance of a certain type, an ‘attentive’ glance. The too purposeful glance lacks such attentiveness (Aufmerksamkeit). Benjamin quotes Novalis, who says that the ability we have to take in things and the world through the senses is to be seen as attentiveness.51 In the Kafka essay, Benjamin defines attentiveness by referring to Malebranche: attentiveness is “the natural prayer of the soul,” a prayer, Benjamin emphasizes, “that includes all creatures, as saints include them in their prayers.”52 A sensuously attentive relation to things is simply that of the aura, he says. When the expectation of getting a response to our glance is fulfilled, we are on the receiving end of an experience which we can call auratic. The aura experience rests on a transference of a reaction form from the sphere of human relations to the relationship between man and nature, to the relationship between non-living 47 Benjamin, Selected Writings, vol. 4, p. 397. 48 D. Heller-Roazen, The Inner Touch. Archaeology of a Sensation (New York: mit Press, 2007), p. 77. 49 Plato in Twelve Volumes (Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England: Harvard University Press, 1989), Volume IX, p. 531. 50 Benjamin, Selected Writings, vol. 4, p. 388. 51 Benjamin, Selected Writings, vol. 4, p. 338. 52 Benjamin, Selected Writings, vol. 2, p. 812.

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things and man. The one who is gazed at or thinks himself gazed at opens his eyes. To experience the aura of a thing, says Benjamin, means that the thing is endowed with the ability to open its eyes. This endowment is a central point in poetry, he says. Where the poet has endowed a person, animal or some soulless thing with the ability to open his or its eyes, he finds himself drawn into the distance. The eye on nature that is awakened in this way is a dreaming one, and it draws the poet with it into the dream. Words, too, can have this ability. Benjamin refers to Karl Kraus, who describes how a word, when we stare closely and lengthily at it, withdraws from the meanings we associate with it dragging us into an endless distance.53 The glance of the thing, however familiar it is when it returns our glance, is experienced by the subject as something ‘other’, something ‘primary’. The subject is confronted with a fundamental ‘foreignness’ and something ‘heteronomic’ in itself.54 In one sense we can say that the aura experience and the mimetic world condition that it is a part of assume a humanization of non-human things, but this humanization is not to be understood as a projection of human characteristics on things and nature. It is to be understood as an expanded and elaborated experience of how far humanity reaches out to our fellow creatures and things, and correspondingly, how far into ourselves ‘the others’ reach. What must have been experienced as the inhuman, indeed almost the fatal in daguerrotypes, Benjamin says, is that the individual peers into a thing, an apparatus that is capable of making a picture of us within itself – without our look being returned. For it is in the nature of the glance to expect reciprocity.55 Adorno suggested to Benjamin that the aura could be understood as “the forgotten human side of work.” By connecting the aura to the reciprocity between man and nature characteristic of work, Adorno wanted to give the concept of aura a less poetic and metaphysical base than Benjamin does in the descriptions of the aura that we have mentioned. However, Benjamin rejects an understanding of the aura that limits it to the aspect of our relations to things conditioned through work: But even if, in fact, the issue is a “forgotten human something” in the aura, the issue is not necessarily what is actually present in the work. The tree and the shrub vouchsafed to people are not made by them. Thus there

53 Benjamin, Selected Writings, vol. 4, p. 354. 54 See Hansen, “Benjamin’s Aura,” p. 345. 55 See Hansen, “Benjamin’s Aura,” p. 346.

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must be something human about objects that is not bestowed by the work done.56

A Revitalized Capacity for Sense Experience

In her book about The Arcades Project, The Dialectics of Seeing, Susan BuckMorss has some interesting considerations regarding the hopes Benjamin had for art in the new age of technology. She refers to the essay “On the Mimetic Faculty” in which Benjamin says that what may look to modern man like the weakening of the mimetic faculty may well be a new stage in its historical transformation. Buck-Morss sees Benjamin’s optimism based on “the possibility of a future development of mimetic expression, the potentialities for which are far from exhausted.”57 The new film and camera technology reveals for us the possibilities that are found in a non-verbal language. On the one hand, film furthers insight into the necessities governing our lives by its use of close-ups, by its accentuation of hidden details in familiar objects, and by its exploration of commonplace milieux through the ingenious guidance of the camera; on the other hand, it manages to assure us of a vast and unsuspected field of action (Spielraum).58 In this way, says Buck-Morss, technological reproduction gives back to humanity “that capacity for experience which technological production threatens to take away.”59 A main characteristic of the experiential world of technological production is the ‘experience of shock’. Our sensory relation to the world is dominated by our need to master the ever-increasing stream of shock impressions we are exposed to. The possibility that film technology has of creating a series of images that subject us to shock effects is seen by Benjamin as a constructive counterbalance to the destructive side of the new technology’s shock effect on us. By virtue of its shock effects, he says, film “proves to be the most important subject matter, at present, for the theory of perception which the Greeks called aesthetics.”60 Film offers a horizon for an understanding of our sensory life as well as our social life, writes Miriam Bratu Hansen, so that a 56 The Correspondence of Walter Benjamin 1910–1940, p. 629. 57 S. Buck-Morss, The Dialectics of Seeing (Cambridge Mass.: mit Press, 1989), p. 267. 58 Benjamin, Selected Writings, vol. 4, p. 265. 59 Buck-Morss, The Dialectics of Seeing, p. 268. 60 Benjamin, Selected Writings, vol. 3, p. 120.

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hope appears of healing the wounds which technology, now serving as a tool of industrial capitalism, inflicts on us as physical-sensual beings. Film can reverse the dulling of the senses that the defense against shock impressions causes.61 Benjamin focuses on Chaplin and how his films respond to the way technology fragments man’s physical existence through gestures which, in concentrated form, consist of a whole series of prior ‘choppy movements’. The classic example of such gestures is Chaplin’s walk, the way he holds and uses his cane, or the way he lifts his hat.62 In Chaplin we find a “productive self-alienation” in which the individual is allowed to encounter fragments of his own existence, fragments that can be reminiscent of another, older existence.63 According to Buck-Morss, Chaplin rescues the ability to experience by miming the fragmentation of the world that threatens it.64 In Kafka’s poetry and in Brecht’s form of theater, Benjamin finds a similar rescuing of experience through the role that gesture plays in a meaningful correspondence to a fragmented reality. The particular form of images in cartoons can have a productive alienation effect. In the early Mickey Mouse cartoons, Benjamin finds a gesticular mode of expression that in its exploitation of the alien makes it possible for the public to recognize their own lives.65 Through the new technology, it will be possible to lead man back to a sensuous relationship to things where we can recover what we have lost to alienation in the name of the cultural history of progress. Benjamin shows that the camera can stop the ever-increasing stream of sense impressions that we are exposed to and capture the most subtle physical gestures. Through the camera we can experience the optic unconscious, as psychoanalysis has let us experience the spiritual unconscious. Film gives our mimetic faculty new training: in a blow-up, space is stretched out, and in slow motion, our experience of movement expands. We discover whole new structural forms in the material. The kind of nature that speaks to us now through the camera lens is different from the one we see with the naked eye. Instead of a space that is permeated with human consciousness, we confront a space that is filled with the unconscious. And for the first time, we are now able to examine this space analytically. Benjamin imagines that new mimetic techniques can teach us to exploit our capacity for impression better. Thus, we do not only find a way to defend ourselves against the trauma of industrialization, but a means of reawakening the 61 Hansen, “Benjamin’s Aura,” p. 370. 62 Benjamin, Selected Writings, vol. 2, p. 695. 63 Benjamin, Selected Writings, vol. 4, p. 319. 64 Buck-Morss, The Dialectics of Seeing, p. 269. 65 Benjamin, Selected Writings, vol. 4, p. 327 (“On Mickey Mouse”).

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ability to experience, which the technological development up to this point has limited. The transformation of our mimetic faculty in the new technological framework can even bring out a hidden expressive potential in human language. We can look forward to the repossession of our own powers, so that forgotten and suppressed forms of self-expression can be brought to life. In Baudelaire, Benjamin finds a forgotten and overlooked world of sensuality that has been reawakened through correspondences. In the essay “Doctrine of the Similar” (“Lehre vom Ähnlichen”), Benjamin refers to the ‘natural correspondences’ as reminders to us of our mimetic faculty.66 The correspondences remind us of a kinship between the sensory world and the spiritual, as well as a kinship between the individual senses. With the correspondences Baudelaire is referring to synesthetic experiences. The opposite of the correspondences is ‘shock experience’ and more than anyone Baudelaire is the poet who incorporates the experiential sphere of shock. It is not only in the machine world of mechanical work that we are exposed to a relationship to things and the world that has shock as its basic kind of experience. The growth of the big cities expands the area of impact of the shock effect. Baudelaire has taken the shock effect into the heart of his artistic project, says Benjamin. He stands intransigent in the face of the impressions he receives, using the duel as an image of the artist’s situation. Before he is defeated, he screams loudly. Poetry becomes an exercise in parrying impressions. Fencing becomes an image of how to protect oneself against the shocks.67 Anxiety, aversion and horror typify the experiences of the big city. As Poe describes them in “The Man of the Crowd,” the experiences are somewhat barbaric. To discipline the impressions by protecting oneself against them is an emergency solution.68 Freud seeks to understand the nature of psychological phenomena like anxiety, aversion and horror and the suffering connected with them as traumatic shocks breaking through our different ways of protecting ourselves.69 Valéry, says Benjamin, is the one closest to Baudelaire in his seeing man’s impressions and sense experiences as belonging to “the genre of surprises.” They testify to an ‘insufficiency’ in man.70 Baudelaire’s poetry carries the message of this insufficiency in the face of an ever more intrusive world of impressions. His poetry is founded in a sphere of experience in which the shock experience has become a norm.71 66 Benjamin, Selected Writings, vol. 2, p. 695. 67 Benjamin, Selected Writings, vol. 4, p. 319. 68 Benjamin, Selected Writings, vol. 4, p. 327. 69 Benjamin, Selected Writings, vol. 4, p. 317. 70 Benjamin, Selected Writings, vol. 4, p. 318. 71 Benjamin, Selected Writings, vol. 4, p. 318.

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While the nature of the shock experience is to demand that we guard ourselves against impression, the correspondences open up a forgotten form of reception of impressions. They are carriers of a memory that takes us far back in time. “The correspondences are the data of recollection,” says Benjamin, “not historical data, but data of prehistory.”72 The correspondences clarify for us the image we have of a world of the past, an image that, in Baudelaire’s words, is veiled in the tears of homesickness.73 The thought that our capacity for impression can be revitalized by new forms of materiality, which the new technology has produced, is a view that Benjamin shares both with other representatives of modernist art and architectural theory and with contemporary practitioners of the arts. The closest kinship is perhaps to be found in surrealism, but also Benjamin’s interest in and friendship with Brecht is a part of this kinship. In Brecht’s art as well, Benjamin finds the free image space that is otherwise characteristic of surrealism. Traditional imagery is destroyed in this image space. Brecht does it by utilizing the Verfremdung effect in the theater, an effect that denies the traditional basis of artistic experience by altering the role that identification plays in our experience of the action on the stage. By creating a distance, the image space on the stage is changed and in the new image space – paradoxically – a new form of belonging to the altered historical world is expressed. When surrealism changes the artistic image space, it is first and foremost by emphasizing the corporeal nature of that space. Through corporeality, the collective’s belonging to the historical world becomes clearer. Only when the change of reality becomes clear to the collective’s corporeal relation to the world will it be possible to speak of real belonging to the world, says Benjamin. He sees the new technology as a medium that can liberate man from the ties that bourgeois culture has placed on physical materiality. The aesthetics of experience and the idea of the creating subject are two sides of the same story and they strengthen these ties. By overlooking the multifarious potential of the mimetic faculty, man’s capacity for impression is limited and the area of artistic development is diminished. This is precisely where the ‘narrow-mindedness’ of bourgeois culture is to be found. We have seen that the ‘meaning’ we can read out of things is for Benjamin concomitant with the sensory experience of them. That it is the characteristic of the material-sensory aspects of experience under the conditions of the new technology that occupies Benjamin, is clearly expressed in his interest in Ludwig Klages, not least in his reading of Klages’ On Dream Consciousness 72 Benjamin, Selected Writings, vol. 4, p. 334. 73 Benjamin, Selected Writings, vol. 4, p. 338.

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(Vom Traumbewusstsein, 1919). What Benjamin emphasizes is the role played by the sensuous characteristics of the dream, while he plays down the aspect of the dream’s content, which Freud emphasizes because it can be made the subject of the interpretation of the dreams. We must see Benjamin’s belief in film’s liberating capacity from a perspective that emphasizes the significance of the material-sensory. Film opens up a perspective that liberates limited aspects of our capacity for impression, a perspective that can even let a revolutionary image space unfold. Benjamin ties his hope to an image space that is liberated at the zero point after the veil of the aura has been torn away. The disappearance of the aura involves a radical change of the mimetic relationship of reciprocity between man and the world. Something gets lost, but destruction of the aura can open up a form of ‘purification’ of our experience. Benjamin sees film as the medium of a new experience. The social significance of film, he says, “is inconceivable without its destructive, cathartic side: the liquidation of the value of tradition in the cultural heritage.”74 With the destruction of the aura the work of art can be released from its tie to the idea of autonomy and subjective creation. Catharsis can be seen as a basic tenet of the dialectic between loss and gain in the disappearance of the aura. In the loss of the aura something is won with regard to our aesthetic experience in a broad sense. The disappearance of the aura opens up for a widening of our sphere of sensory relations to things and the world. In the expansion of the aesthetic space, extending far beyond that which makes room for art as a subjective creation, Benjamin sees a possibility for the emergence of a new relationship between man and the world. The expansion of the aesthetic space lets us see before us that a new – and broader – form of humanity can emerge. Thus, the inner transcendence can manifest itself in the outer. The mimetic relation to the world recognized the difference and alienness of things, their evasion of and independence from purely subjective creation, and Benjamin sees the new technology as the carrier of a possible transcendence of the kind of subjectivity that subdues things. In the essay on surrealism, it is with this transcendence in mind that he so forcefully emphasizes the new technology’s liberation of corporality and collectivity. Corporality and collectivity show sides of our existence that disturb the dominion of subjectivity. In surrealistic photography Benjamin sees the preparation for “a salutary estrangement between man and his surroundings.”75 This healthy alienation can perhaps also be seen as ‘catharsis’, a kind of purification. 74 Benjamin, Selected Writings, vol. 4, p. 254. 75 Benjamin, Selected Writings, vol. 2, p. 519.

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That technology can encourage such a liberation constitutes the ‘political’ side of what Susan Buck-Morss has called “a means of reconstructing the capacity for experience.”76 This assumes that man’s creative faculty is no longer seen as separated from a vitalization of the physical world, as has been the case in bourgeois culture. The transcendence of subjectivity involves a reconstruction of the relationship between body and soul, the soul’s ‘coming home’ to the body. This is how Benjamin sees the possibility of recapturing forces that have long been defunct. The transcendence of subjectivity opens up for a sphere of action that the emphasis on the creative subject has closed off. The aesthetic sphere widens and becomes a sphere of praxis.77 The sphere of action is reunited with the sphere of dreams. We look at our life of action with another regard. Action becomes the sister of dreams, says Aragon. Just as the transcendence of subjectivity can transform our sphere of action, it can similarly reverse the place held by ‘work’ in a society that has abandoned the reciprocal relation to nature, and instead seen work as a source of progress by subjecting itself to it. What we call progress is progress in the supremacy over nature. The success of work is measured by the degree to which the subject subordinates nature. Work has been given its place defined by praxis forms that limit our relationship to things and the world and disparage the sensuousmimetic side of this relationship. Our concept of work is “corrupted,” says Benjamin. It has as its complement “the sort of nature that (as Dietzgen puts it) ‘exists gratis’.”78 In contrast to this concept, he enlists Fourier’s ‘visions’. In Fourier’s utopia on human work, we find illustrations of “a kind of labor which, far from exploiting nature, would help her give birth to the creations that now lie dormant in her womb.”79 The transcendence of subjectivity can also make it possible for us to take seriously the warning Benjamin already formulated in One-Way Street, a warning which is to be understood as a reminder also to awaken to life the ‘moral’ experience lying hidden in our reciprocal relationship to the world: The earliest customs of peoples seem to send us a warning that in accepting what we receive so abundantly from nature we should guard against a gesture of avarice. For we are able to make Mother Earth no gift of our own. It is therefore fitting to show respect in taking, by returning a part of 76 Buck-Morss, The Dialectics of Seeing, p. 268. 77 This is the opposite movement of the aestheticization of politics that Benjamin sees as a basic characteristic of Fascism. See Selected Writings, vol. 4. pp. 269–270. 78 Benjamin, Selected Writings, vol. 4, p. 394. 79 Benjamin, Selected Writings, vol. 4, p. 394.

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all we receive before laying hands on our share. This respect is expressed in the ancient custom of the libation. Indeed, it is perhaps this immemorial practice that has survived, transformed, in the prohibition on gathering forgotten ears of corn or fallen grapes, these reverting to the soil or to the ancestral dispensers of blessings. An Athenian custom forbade the picking up of crumbs at the table, since they belonged to the heroes. If society has so degenerated through necessity and greed that it can now receive the gifts of nature only rapaciously, that it snatches the fruit unripe from the trees in order to sell it most profitably, and is compelled to empty each dish in its determination to have enough, the earth will be impoverished and the land yield bad harvests.80

80

Walter Benjamin, One-Way Street and Other Writings, trans. Edmund Jephcott and Kingsley Shorter (London: New Left Review Editions, 1979), p. 60.

chapter 3

Sensoriness and Transcendence: On the Aesthetic Possibility of Experiencing Divinity Dorthe Jørgensen

Duck’s Eggs or Aestheticism

“Duck’s eggs. Ice flakes in a silver bowl. Wisteria. Snow-covered dark purple flowers. A child who eats strawberries.” This list of elegant things is found in Peter Greenaway’s film The Pillow Book (1996), which was inspired by The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon from the 10th–11th centuries.1 The Japanese ladyin-waiting Sei Shonagon tells that her book was started when she decided to fill a stack of notebooks with anything from poems, tales, reflections, and diary notes to lists of things.2 When Greenaway, who is himself known to be manically obsessed with figures and with collecting, first read this book in 1972, its lists were among the things that appealed to him. Sei Shonagon says that during her notations she was especially interested in things she found magnificent and charming,3 whereas Greenaway in movies such as The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (1989) has cultivated not least the macabre and morbid. Likewise, The Pillow Book is not entirely devoid of either death or unseemly intercourse with corpses, but Greenaway must have been caught by Sei Shonagon’s preference for the pleasanter sides of life. At least, in this film one is not only confronted with the above list of elegant things, but also, for example, a list of things that make the heart beat faster: “Walking past a place where a child sleeps. Sleeping where fragrant incense burns. Finding that one’s Chinese mirror has become a little misty. A lover on his second nightly visit.” And a list of beautiful things: “Chinese brocade. A sword with an embellished scabbard. The marbling on a Buddha statue. An imperial procession led by the empress. A large snow-covered park. Indigo-dyed silk. Everything indigo is wonderful. Indigo flowers. Indigo thread. And especially indigo paper.”

1 See The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon, trans. I. Morris (London, Melbourne and Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1967). Greenaway’s film is not a screen version of this book, but quotes freely from it. 2 Shonagon, The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon, pp. 267–268. 3 Shonagon, The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon, pp. 267–268.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi 10.1163/9789004291690_006

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Elegance, grandness, charm are things suitable for an aesthetician to deal with. This is true whether one was a lady-in-waiting in the Land of the Rising Sun centuries ago or whether one is a present-day British multi-artist. Greenaway is regarded as a particularly visual film-maker, who paints rather than edits his films, and not least, who uses the screen to create baroque visual tableaus. He is also regarded as an artist who is more concerned with form than with content, and who is therefore easily categorized as postmodern. On the face of it, Greenaway and his art must therefore be an obvious subject for the criticism of the aestheticism of the modern era, formulated by HansGeorg Gadamer in Truth and Method (1960). Gadamer’s criticism deals with what he calls aesthetic differentiation and regards as a result of the abstract way of thinking of a particular aesthetic consciousness. With the term aesthetic consciousness, Gadamer refers to an attitude that came into being at the end of the 18th century. It is characterized by disregarding the origins of things, to focus solely on their purely aesthetic qualities, typically the formal, rhetorical or performative aspects of the things in question. Thus, the aesthetic is made autonomous, and it becomes visible in its difference from, say, the ethical, religious or political. According to Gadamer this is historically a step forward, but one that has come at a price. When something is made into an aesthetic object this way, it can no longer be seen as part of the practical world where it could mean something to people. As an aesthetic object it can only be part of the aesthetic world of the aesthetic consciousness, giving rise to mere impressions marked by sensuous pleasure, but offering no opportunity for experience.4 In Truth and Method Gadamer primarily deals with the consequences of the aesthetic consciousness for the understanding of art, namely that the abstraction leads away from the work’s original context of life: the religious or profane function that originally gave the work significance and motivated the spectator to not evaluate it only aesthetically.5 Thus art becomes autonomous, and the work of art becomes visible as a ‘pure work of art’, but the work is also deprived of its place and the world it derives from, and it loses contact to what really distinguishes art, namely that it can give rise to experience of cognitively crucial value. Altogether, the aesthetic consciousness results in a wholesale levelling of all values other than the purely aesthetic impression of the aesthetic, 4 The word ‘impression’, alternatively ‘mere impression’, is used as a translation of the Danish word ‘oplevelse’ in order to distinguish in English, as well, between what in Danish (and German) is called ‘oplevelse’ (Erlebnis) and ‘erfaring’ (Erfahrung), respectively. 5 H.-G. Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode: Grundzüge einer philosophischen Hermeneutik (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1975), pp. 84–96; Truth and Method, trans. J. Weinsheimer and D.G. Marshall (London/New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013), pp. 81–91.

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because it indiscriminately regards everything aesthetically, dissolving content and context. The gaze of the aesthetic consciousness is thus marked by simultaneity, an equalization of everything, no matter where and when it is from – which results in historicist and eclectic relativism. However, according to Gadamer we do have other options than regarding works of art as aesthetic objects. They may instead be regarded as play, symbol and festival. Understood as play, the work of art sets up a world one can be drawn into and changed by if one is willing to join the play, i.e. experience instead of witness.6 This has to do with the fact that the work, understood as symbol, shows more than it contains in a literal sense. It co-produces meaning that only exists by virtue of the work itself, and gives rise to experience that is not just of the moment. In this experience the work is dwelled on, and ordinary time must give way to a differently charged time. This latter fact is the reason why the work of art is also festival, suspending chronometric time and opening up to community between people in the true sense. If The Pillow Book is to be criticized for aesthetic consciousness, this presupposes that the gaze expressed in this film levels out all values, or that the film in its entirety does not draw its audience into its dominion, but only titillates their senses and reduces their view of the world. These two things are interrelated and can only be separated analytically. If the work does not draw us into itself, we will not be able to notice anything that furthers true cognition, in the gaze expressed by the film.7 We will solely have access to the sensuously 6 Here witnessing is synonymous with having an impression – understood as less than experiencing. 7 The philosophical terms ‘Erkenntnis’, ‘Verstand’, and ‘Vernuft’ are difficult to translate adequately into English. Referring to heterogeneous philosophical positions, here not only Baumgarten’s rationalistic and Kant’s critical philosophies, but also various phenomenological and hermeneutic philosophies such as Gadamer’s, increases the problem. For example, ‘Verstehen’ (understanding) doesn’t mean the same to Kant and Gadamer. Therefore, both ‘Erkenntnis’ (cognition, comprehension, etc.) and ‘Wahrheit’ (truth) also mean something different to them. Furthermore, Kant’s term ‘Verstand’ is traditionally translated as ‘understanding’, though ‘Verstehen’ (understanding) means something other than ‘Verstand’, not least in Gadamer’s interpretation. For the sake of consistency in the presentation of my own thought, I primarily call the phenomenon in question ‘cognition’ (or ‘knowledge’), not ‘understanding’, because in Baumgarten it is termed ‘Erkenntnis’, and because to hermeneutic philosophers understanding is, indeed, as kind of cognition, only not rational but sensitive cognition. However, for the sake of readability I am not necessarily faithful to the traditional translation of ‘Verstand’ (or of the cognition/thinking connected with it). I not only translate it ‘understanding’, but also ‘rationality’ and ‘rational understanding’ (‘rational cognition’, ‘rational thinking’, etc.).

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pleasurable quality of that gaze. Conversely, we cannot be drawn into the work unless it, in addition to its character of play, also has the symbolic and festive character so characteristic of a gaze that appreciates meaning. As to Greenaway himself, he is clearly fascinated by sensuous forms and colors, and he culls from the tradition as he pleases. He pulls things out of their usual context and makes free with the original meaning. In interviews, however, Greenaway gives expression to strong opinions rather than to aestheticism, and in The Pillow Book he does not simply empty things of meaning without infusing them with new meaning. Greenaway’s gaze is creative. He signs his own name to the things he borrows, and thus breathes new life into them. Such is the gaze that finds artistic expression in The Pillow Book. Therefore, this film does not confront its audience with a levelling of the value of the things it dwells on, but on the contrary demonstrates a sense for beauty. It is a gaze that captivates – it opens up a world and presents more than is physically given – and hence it gives the spectators of the film the possibility of also experiencing beauty themselves.

The Appearance of the Beautiful

In Truth and Method, Gadamer precisely aims at experience of beauty, not aesthetic impression. Like the ancient Greeks, he regards the beautiful as everything that has a value in itself, and which thus differs from the useful by having its purpose in itself – in the very fact of existing. The beautiful comprises everything “that is not part of the necessities of life but is concerned with the ‘how’, the eu zen [the good life].”8 In spite of this connection between the beautiful and the good, only the beautiful distinguishes itself by the fact that it “of itself presents itself, […] makes itself immediately evident (einleuchtend).”9 According to Gadamer this entails that the beautiful has the most important ontological function existing, namely that of mediating between idea and phenomenon. Being concepts and therefore transcendent, the true and the good do not show up in the immanent sphere as themselves, but in the shape of what we call beautiful things, including beautiful thoughts and actions. The beautiful, however, though being a concept and therefore transcendent, shows up as itself when it appears in the immanent sphere as the beauty of the things we find to be beautiful. According to Gadamer, the philosophy of beauty, i.e. the metaphysics of beauty, therefore illuminates what he as a hermeneutic 8 Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode, p. 453; Truth and Method, p. 493. 9 Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode, p. 456; Truth and Method, p. 497.

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philosopher appreciates as true cognition and terms understanding. Studying the appearance of the beautiful contributes to the understanding of the evidence of the understandable, because both the experience of beauty and the cognition of truth are events, and because both these events are characterized by immediacy. Whereas the aesthetic consciousness says something about what prevents true cognition, namely the dominance of mere impression, the metaphysics of beauty tells instead what distinguishes cognition that qualifies as true. The metaphysics of beauty is able to do so because already the experience of beauty is a kind of true cognition.10 Following this line of thought we are far from what today is usually understood by ‘truth’ and ‘cognition’. Since the scientific revolution in the 16th–17th centuries and the Enlightenment’s subsequent reformation of philosophical thought, cognition has been defined as an experiential identification of empirical – not least causal – matters, and truth has been conceived as a question of correspondence between thought and experience. Cognition is thus regarded as a mental act, performed by a mind that in order to execute its act of cognition consciously reaches out for something that consequently takes on the character of an object. So cognition is something a subject does and necessarily must do in order to attain knowledge of something other, whose status is that of an object, which consequently means that this other does not do anything itself, i.e. from a cognitive point of view. However, according to Gadamer’s thinking, which was articulated in terms inspired by Martin Heidegger, cognition is not an act, but an event, and thus cognizing is something that happens to the subject, instead of being something that it is in charge of. Therefore, in this kind of cognition the subject is not really a subject, but mere Dasein, and it is rather the ‘object’ of cognition that does something: it shows itself to Dasein. The event that this comes to be is both the cognition, and the truth about what shows itself, as well as about what cognition is, and about what it means to be present – in the midst of being, among beings. And as Gadamer notes, such an understanding of truth and cognition does not make its first appearance in his and Heidegger’s philosophies, but was already a factor in the metaphysics of beauty in antiquity and the Middle Ages, albeit they termed it beauty – but indeed beauty understood as an event characterized by immediacy. In this metaphysics of beauty and Gadamer’s hermeneutic use of it we are not only far from the concepts of truth and cognition that are prevalent today. We are also a long way off from what aesthetics in recent centuries was often 10

Regarding the concept of beauty, see also my book, Skønhed – En engel gik forbi (Beauty An Angel Passed By; Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 2006).

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considered to be. Since the days of Søren Kierkegaard, aesthetics – by him termed the aesthetic that is worshipped by the aesthete – has been accused of subjectivism and relativism. An aesthete is allegedly characterized by finding sensuous pleasure in particular phenomena, and by being different from the ethicist or the religious person in being unable to recognize or commit himself to anything universal. It is this negative use of the word ‘aesthetic’ that echoes in Gadamer’s criticism of the aesthetic consciousness – a kind of consciousness he believes he can trace back to Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Judgment (1790) and not least to Friedrich Schiller’s use of this work.11 As Gadamer notes, Kant’s concept of knowledge is reductive, and this reductionism has consequences for Kant’s aesthetics. However, in Truth and Method, Gadamer ignores what was the very ambition of Kant’s analysis of aesthetic judgment: it was not to make the judgment of taste autonomous, but to argue for its universal validity. For the same reason, he fails to notice the true result of Kant’s analysis, namely that the judgment of taste is not only emptied of all knowledge (in the sense of rational cognition), but simultaneously endowed with insight (led by reason rather than by rationality). According to Kant, the beautiful is the symbol of the morally good, and even though the judgment of taste delivers no knowledge, it does give us insight, into ourselves and into our possibility of developing as the freely acting and thinking reasonable creatures we are by nature, according to Kant. Being far from the prevalent concepts of truth and cognition, as well as the concept of aesthetics according to which the aesthetic is non-committal sensuality, we are, on the other hand, right at the center of philosophical aesthetics. When Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten founded aesthetics in the 18th century, it was, indeed, neither as a philosophy about rational cognition nor as a theory about sense perception and lack of morals.12 On the contrary, Baumgarten introduced aesthetics as the philosophy about what he called sensitive cognition and regarded as synonymous with the experience of beauty.13 Translated into current terminology, Baumgarten founded aesthetics as a philosophy about aesthetic experience understood as a kind of true cognition that has the 11

12 13

I. Kant, Kritik der Urteilskraft, Kant’s gesammelte Schriften, vol. V (Berlin and Leipzig: Walter de Gruyter & Co, 1963); Critique of the Power of Judgment, trans. P. Guyer and E. Matthews (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). A.G. Baumgarten, Ästhetik 1–2, trans. D. Mirbach (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 2007). Regarding the philosophical aesthetics introduced by Baumgarten, see the section on Baumgarten (74 pages) in my book Den skønne tænkning: Veje til erfaringsmetafysik. Religionsfilosofisk udmøntet (Beautiful Thinking: Pathways to Metaphysics of Experience. Religio-philosophically Implemented; Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 2014).

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beautiful as its object and is itself beautiful, as well. In other words, philosophical aesthetics is the philosophy about what appears by itself, both in an objective and a subjective sense – both as a property of the object and as a quality of the cognition. Philosophical aesthetics, more precisely, is the philosophy of beauty understood as something third, i.e. as a phenomenon. According to hermeneutic phenomenology, a phenomenon is exactly “what shows itself in itself, what is manifest.”14 Already for this reason – but also for others which must remain undealt with here, however15 – aesthetics can be said to have approached phenomenology from the beginning. Focusing on the experience of beauty, it deals with what shows itself by itself, only more explicitly and more focused than the metaphysics of beauty did previously. Conversely, hermeneutic phenomenology can likewise be said to have been aesthetic from the beginning. Hermeneutic phenomenologists such as Heidegger and Gadamer did indeed reject the concept of aesthetics, and the aesthetics introduced by Baumgarten, but focusing on phenomena they themselves dealt with something that shows itself by itself, and in itself – and thus appears in the same way as the beautiful.

The Symbol and Peripheral Vision

This will become more explicit if we return to The Pillow Book. The film begins with the young Japanese woman Nagiko’s memory of two rituals her father and her aunt performed on her birthday when she was a child: he calligraphed on her face and the aunt read aloud out of Sei Shonagon’s pillow book. Nagiko’s father, who always completed his work by writing his signature on the back of her neck, said while calligraphing: When God made the first clay model of a human being, He painted in the eyes, the lips, and the sex. And then He painted in each person’s name lest the person should ever forget it. If God approved of His creation, He brought the painted clay model into life by signing His own name. As an adult, Nagiko yearns to experience again the meeting between body and brush to which her father introduced her, just as she, a little less consciously, 14

M. Heidegger, Sein und Zeit (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1986), p. 28; Being and Time, trans. J. Stambaugh, rev. D.J. Schmidt (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2010), p. 27. 15 See Den skønne tænkning for a more detailed discussion of the relation between philosophical aesthetics and hermeneutic phenomenology.

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also yearns to ‘realize’ herself as an author. Image and literature are in general so intimately conjoined in Japan that their histories coincide, Greenaway tells in an interview from 1997.16 It is this connection he takes over in The Pillow Book, and here transforms to a correspondingly close relation between flesh and word. Every time you see flesh, you see text, Greenaway says in the same interview, and flesh and text are so intimately conjoined that the pleasures in them intersect. The transcendent is present in the immanent; the carnal, corporeal, or sensuous is charged with meaning. Representing the naked body as text in The Pillow Book, Greenaway adds something to it that it does not contain as only the object of physical desire. The body is the material incarnation of the immaterial word, and it is therefore not only pretty, but beautiful. Greenaway saturates the body with meaning that does not refer to anything anywhere else, but to something more within the body itself: the word it incarnates. It is precisely not as flesh, but as symbol, that the body is beautiful. This understanding of the body as symbol and of the symbol as something that transcends in an inward direction, to meaning in the symbol itself, is difficult to understand today. Nowadays the symbolic is often misunderstood as something that refers us to some other place. It is understood as representation, and representation is regarded as building on a traditional metaphysical opposition of immanence and transcendence. Thus the symbol is regarded as something that points away from the immanent that it is itself part of, towards the transcendent that it symbolizes, thereby bridging a gulf, the actual existence of which it simultaneously confirms. According to Gadamer’s way of thinking, which as demonstrated is close to the metaphysics of beauty, this is not how symbols actually function, however. A symbol does not point beyond itself but into itself – to an extra layer of meaning found there. It does not symbolize something distant that the symbol reaches out to but can never entirely reach because the symbol and the symbolized are different – immanent and transcendent, respectively. On the contrary, the symbolized is totally present, thanks to the symbol, which does not refer to anything in a distant transcendence, but points to what in the symbol itself is constituted by the symbolized. The meaning that the symbol contains in the form of the symbolized is thus given with the symbol and found nowhere else than in the symbol, which in its immanent presence is itself thus saturated with transcendence. So when we experience the meaning of a symbol, we are quite literally experiencing immanent transcendence. This kind of experience we all know, but many perhaps only from their childhood, because modern man’s world is emptied of 16

See C. Hawthorne, “Flesh and Ink,” Salon Magazine June 6 1997 (www.industrycentral.net/ director_interviews/PG02.HTM).

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content that generates meaning – it is profane and pragmatic. In reality, the world is presumably still studded with possibilities of experiencing cohesion and meaningfulness, but modern man is blind. If we are blind, the world is a sum of objects that can be used and consumed, but do not give occasion for contemplation of a ‘dwelling’ character, i.e. lingering. This perception of the world around us is coupled with a primitive conception of metaphysics, according to which metaphysics is by definition a way of thinking that opposes something distant with something close. Such a view of things does not only cause problems for the understanding of the symbol, but also for our understanding of the body. It hinders us in comprehending the holistic relationship between body and mind that philosophical phenomenologists try to articulate in order to go beyond modern epistemology and its ­burden of dualism. Among these phenomenologists we find Maurice MerleauPonty, whose phenomenology of the body has inspired Juhani Pallasmaa to think of human experience as multisensory. In The Eyes of the Skin (1996) Pallasmaa distinguishes between the focused vision that confronts us with the world, and a peripheral vision that envelops us in the flesh of the world. The focused vision is visual, whereas the peripheral is multisensory, and, not least, tactile. “All the senses, including vision, are extensions of the tactile sense,” Pallasmaa writes, and therefore he is of the opinion that “all sensory experiences are modes of touching.”17 Because the peripheral vision is primary for human experience, experience, according to Pallasmaa, builds more on tactility than on visibility. It is with ‘the eyes of the skin’ that we experience the world; with the eyes we have in our heads we only view the world from without. Yet it is the sense of vision and the focused vision that dominate, for example in modern architecture and town planning, which for that reason make us feel left out. If instead we built with respect for the peripheral vision, our buildings and cities would enfold us in their space, as do nature and historical places. We would have a spatial and bodily experience, because “[p]eripheral vision integrates us with space, while focused vision pushes us out of the space, making us mere spectators.”18 Pallasmaa criticizes the ocularcentric paradigm which, in his opinion, has dominated in the West ever since antiquity – its isolation of the eye, suppression of the other senses, and reduction of experience to visual impression. Such a critique of imbalance has an immediate appeal, which is also true of Pallasmaa’s desire for a multisensory architecture that furthers the feeling of 17

J. Pallasmaa, The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses (Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, 2005), p. 10. 18 Pallasmaa, The Eyes of the Skin, p. 13.

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belonging to and being integrated into our environment. Privately, many people try to create spaces that accommodate needs of this kind; spaces that enclose without being too tight – that embrace, and through which you may breathe peacefully. Yet Pallasmaa’s treatment of the relation between body and mind is not entirely unproblematic. In The Eyes of the Skin he does not only criticize the hegemony of the eye. Nor does he only think that its growth “seems to be parallel with the development of Western ego-consciousness and the gradually increasing separation of the self and the world.”19 He also associates this with “the consequent spectator theory of knowledge in Western thinking.”20 However, in Praise of Theory (1983) Gadamer states that the originally visionary quality of theoria did not at all consist in ‘seeing’ in an external ascertaining way, but in an immanently lingering way. Theoria is not so much the individual momentary act as a way of comporting oneself, a position and condition. It is ‘being present’ in the lovely double sense that means that the person is not only present but completely present.21 The spectator theory of knowledge mentioned above is, then, in reality a theory of lingering – or at least was so originally – and therefore has more to do with the peripheral view than with the focused. For the same reason we may not have to seek out the body at all, in order to let go of modern epistemology’s worshiping of the mind. The body may not be the solution at all.

Flesh or Felt Body

Unlike the epistemologists of the modern era, Merleau-Ponty – whose bodyphenomenology Pallasmaa is inspired by – regards body, mind, and the world as inextricably conjoined. In Phenomenology of Perception (1945), he therefore replaces the Cartesian cogito with a bodily cogito, understood as a pre-reflexive cogito. According to Merleau-Ponty, the world is not a sum of objects of a conscious mind, but appears phenomenally to the body, and the body is not only the physical body, but lived corporeality and as such incarnated subjectivity. 19 Pallasmaa, The Eyes of the Skin, p. 25. 20 Pallasmaa, The Eyes of the Skin, p. 19. 21 H.-G. Gadamer, Lob der Theorie: Reden und Aufsätze (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1985), p. 44; Praise of Theory: Speeches and Essays, trans. C. Dawson (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1998), p. 31.

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This body, by Merleau-Ponty referred to as le corps propre, has already perceived and created meaning before any reflection sets in, and body and mind, therefore, cannot be separated. All knowledge has its roots in an immediate bodily kind of experience, in which the body is in direct contact with the world, and all thinking presupposes bodily pre-consciousness in the form of bodily sensation and signification. The lived corporeality Merleau-Ponty refers to is a state in which we do not have a body, but are body. It predates the experience of the body as mere physical object, and it is always situated, which means that by definition we have to do with being-in-the-world. In later works, such as The Visible and the Invisible (1964), Merleau-Ponty, however, finds that his earlier ideas were not enough to escape epistemology’s prioritizing of the mind, and he therefore introduces the concept of flesh (la chair).22 This concept he coins to denote a chiasmus between body and world: the common tissue that is situated before or under subject and object, and from which these two entities develop into independent poles in our cognition. Thus, it is in the flesh that the immediate experience takes place on which all knowledge builds, and this experience is therefore exactly a fleshly experience. The French word for flesh, chair, can also be translated as the lived body – an extremely important term for phenomenologists such as Hermann Schmitz and Gernot Böhme, who both systematically distinguish between Körper and Leib, by Schmitz in English called ‘material body’ and ‘felt body’.23 “When I speak of the felt body I do not have in mind the human or animal body that can be viewed or touched,” Schmitz says in Der unerschöpfliche Gegenstand (The Inexhaustible Object, 1990), “but instead what one senses of oneself in its proximity without access to a ‘sense organ’ such as eye or hand […].”24 The felt body is a state that one senses emotionally, and it has spatial extension, a little like noise. The felt body is “the essence of such corporeal impulses as, for example, fear, pain, lust, hunger, thirst, disgust, vigor, tiredness, emotional affection.”25 22

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M. Merleau-Ponty, Le Visible et l’Invisible suivi de notes de travail (Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1964); The Visible and the Invisible: Followed by Working Notes, trans. A. Lingis (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1968). For an introduction in English to Schmitz’ phenomenology, see H. Schmitz and others, “Emotions outside the Box – the New Phenomenology of Feeling and Corporeality,” Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences (Netherlands: Springer, 2011, Vol. 10, Issue 2, pp. 241–259). For Böhme, see “The Concept of Body as the Nature We Ourselves Are,” Journal of Speculative Philosophy 24/3 (2010, pp. 224–238). H. Schmitz, Der unerschöpfliche Gegenstand: Grundzüge der Philosophie (Bonn: Bouvier Verlag, 1990), p. 115. H. Schmitz, Kurze Einführung in die Neue Phänomenologie (Freiburg and München: Verlag Karl Alber, 2009), pp. 34–35.

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The material body, on the contrary, is a physical thing that one may view and hold in one’s arms, and it is spatially limited like a receptacle. Böhme writes similarly in Ethik leiblicher Existenz (The Ethics of Felt Bodily Existence, 2008) that “the body is the nature that we ourselves are.”26 In his interpretation, the term material body represents an experience of our nature as something alien, whereas the term felt body represents an experience of nature understood as an experience of self. As material bodies, we are things among other things, whereas being felt bodies we are a given, for ourselves as ourselves. Both Schmitz and Böhme think that modern man has forgotten his felt corporeality and constantly regards and treats himself as material body. According to Schmitz, early phenomenology – i.e. Edmund Husserl’s – was too much a dualist philosophy of mind to solve this problem, so Schmitz has introduced a socalled new phenomenology, which focuses on the felt body rather than on the conscious mind. Correspondingly, Böhme argues for a new aesthetics, which takes interest in our felt bodily presence and the emotional effect things have on us. Such an aesthetics is necessary, in his opinion, because the philosophy of art reduces art and other phenomena to aesthetic objects, i.e. objects of the conscious mind, and because not even Schmitz’s new phenomenology has reformulated aesthetics in sufficient depth. Merleau-Ponty’s term chair is usually translated ‘flesh’ (German Fleisch), the word used so far in this chapter. Translating chair as flesh, however, creates an obstacle on our way to understanding the experience Merleau-Ponty had in mind as something other and more than physical sensation. The word flesh has connotations of blood and muscle tissue, dead bodies, refrigerated counters with chopped meat, and the ‘meat markets’ of night life, but Merleau-Ponty had in mind the experience of significance that brings about meaning, albeit experience produced by the senses. It is therefore an obvious idea instead to translate chair as felt body, which at the same time synchronizes his, Schmitz’ and Böhme’s philosophies. In favor of such a synchronization it can be mentioned that all three have problematized the dualistic way of thinking in modern epistemology by seeking out a level of experience that predates the experience of things as objects. Even though the flesh in which the immediate experience takes place is precisely not to be understood as the physical body, according to Merleau-Ponty, it is, however, difficult to read his texts without imagining something rather physical. Merleau-Ponty wants to put behind him the way of thinking found in the dualist philosophy of mind and its oppositions, e.g. the one between body and mind, but his terminology (corps, chair) and examples 26

G. Böhme, Ethik leiblicher Existenz: Über unseren moralischen Umgang mit der eigenen Natur (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 2008), p. 156.

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(for instance a blind man’s impression of his stick as a part of his arm, or the sensation of the body as both exterior and interior which anyone can have by folding one hand around the other) suggest that in his texts he really just shifts the existing focus on mind to a focus on the body. In other words, his terminology and examples give the impression that he turns the usual relation between body and mind upside down, rather than really putting the dualistic way of thinking behind him; that he actually does not bring some third possibility into focus, but prioritizes the body rather than the mind, which invariably reduces the body to the physical body, for it is the latter that is in contrast to the mind. As mentioned above, it was Merleau-Ponty’s realization, that he remained fettered by the way of thinking found in the dualist philosophy of mind, as long as he kept speaking about the body ‘only’, that brought him to introduce the concept of flesh. The question is, however, if by choosing this terminology he perhaps aggravated the problem in question, instead of solving it. Flesh is supposed to denote something that is neither purely physical nor purely of the mind, but the word flesh does not give the impression of some third position; it rather gives the impression of more body, even more physical body. As long as the word body (or flesh or the like) is used – precisely as if the word ‘mind’ were used – it may be difficult not to reproduce the traditional way of thinking, only now in reverse. This could at least explain why it apparently is so difficult for recipients of MerleauPonty’s phenomenology, for example Pallasmaa, to avoid a reduction of experience to sense perception, even though the ambition is to arrive at something that cannot be categorized as either sensory impression or concept-engendered knowledge. In spite of their distinction between Körper and Leib, not even the terminology of the German phenomenologists is entirely unproblematic. Also the term Leib automatically calls to mind images of physical phenomena, except that Leib sounds more old-fashioned than Körper or Fleisch. Still, even apart from its philosophical use the word Leib distinguishes itself by sometimes denoting something other than a physical phenomenon, e.g. something as closely connected to ‘the intermediate world’ as religious phenomena or astral bodies. This is utilized by the German phenomenologists, as is seen when Schmitz tries to exemplify what he understands by felt bodily experience and mentions feelings such as fear, disgust or vigor, and not the impression of a stick as part of the arm.

The Sense of Beauty

Merleau-Ponty begins in the body because it is the opposite of the epistemologically profiled mind, but he searches the limit of the physical body, the transition between body and flesh, since that is where the body meets the world

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and all knowledge begins. Contrariwise, Schmitz begins in the mind, as it is the starting point of modern thought, but he seeks out the shadowy side of the conscious ego, where it is still just coming into being, and still coheres with everything, for it is in this emotional corporeality that all knowledge begins. In a sense, Merleau-Ponty’s and Schmitz’s phenomenologies take their point of departure at opposite ends of the paradigm of the dualist philosophy of mind, but in a common attempt to go beyond that very paradigm, beyond both body and mind, understood as independent entities, to explore the human being-inthe-world, whether the ‘locus’ of it be described as the flesh or the felt body. It is the very experience associated with being in the world – sensing alertly and with an open mind – that is interesting to phenomenological thinking. It is this presence – of a both sensuous and cognitive character, or rather of a feeling, sensing, and presentimental character – that philosophical phenomenology was created to interpret, by absorbing itself questioningly in the phenomena that appear to it. Or this is at least the case when philosophical phenomenology takes on a hermeneutic guise, which is exactly what happens in the case of Schmitz and Merleau-Ponty, in both cases helped on by Heidegger, who founded hermeneutic phenomenology and thus created what was also the point of departure for Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics. The aesthetic consciousness criticized by Gadamer actually more or less does to things what the conscious mind (here termed the reflective movement) does to the body, according to Merleau-Ponty in Phenomenology of Perception: The experience of one’s own body […] is opposed to the reflective movement that disentangles the object from the subject and the subject from the object, and that only gives us thought about the body or the body as an idea, and not the experience of the body or the body in reality.27 As mentioned above, the aesthetic consciousness isolates things as singular objects and thus strips them of meaning. It tears them out of the context they originally belonged to, and ignores their original function, to instead focus exclusively on so-called aesthetic qualities. Conversely, this also means that if the body is regarded aesthetically (in the sense of the word used here) it will be regarded in the very way Merleau-Ponty tried to escape. Instead of being perceived as something we are, and through which we are connected to 27

M. Merleau-Ponty, Phénoménologie de la perception (Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1945), p. 231; Phenomenology of Perception, trans. D.A. Landes (London and New York: Routledge, 2012), p. 205.

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everything else that is, the body is perceived as something we have, and which we can shape and change beyond all recognition. This relation to the body is not science-fiction, but is widespread today, where the so-called aesthetic attitude makes us remove superfluous body fat with scalpels and fill facial crevices with Botox. We deal with our bodies in a beauty-industrial way that affirms Gadamer’s judgment when he claimed that an aesthetic gaze of this character is levelling. The beauty industry apposes all bodies without taking the provenance and history of the individual into account. It measures them by the same standard and reshapes them into copies of the same prototype, whose only characteristic is that the model is wholly defined as western. In The Pillow Book, however, something else happens when Greenaway has the child Nagiko feel the calligraphy on her face or makes the adult Nagiko and her lovers cover each other’s skin with characters. Here, the gaze on the body is rather aesthetic, understood as directed by a sense of beauty, than it is aesthetic in Gadamer’s negative sense of the word, and the beauty involved is not the beauty-industrial prototype, but transcendence in immanence. As mentioned above, the beautiful is everything that has value in itself. It is the absolute and unconditional in which the true and the good come together and find a way to appear – not as themselves, but as beauty. In other words, the one who has an aesthetic eye for the beauty of this world not only sees and praises something neat and well-trimmed, but senses something of both cognitive and moral value. It is therefore meaningless to regard the beautiful as the tame opposite of the sublime, as has long been common. This opposition of the beautiful and the sublime, in which the beautiful is reduced to something harmonious and the sublime has a monopoly on all that is exciting, on disharmony and transgression, on transcendence in immanence, is not a matter of course. It presupposes that beauty is reduced to a question of harmonious proportionality.28 Only when beauty has deteriorated into a shadow of itself is it necessary to describe the transcendent as sublime rather than beautiful. In the metaphysics of beauty, in which the ancient understanding of the beautiful was intact, the word beauty was absolutely sufficient – even as the designation of something so absolute and unconditional as the divine, and even in spite of the double character of the divine, at once close and distant.

28

Similarly the thoughts phrased by Kant in his Critique of Judgment about the beautiful and the sublime are built on a distinction between understanding and reason that is only possible at a time when rational thinking (e.g. science) is no longer per definition reasonable (i.e. philosophical). And also the latter is not obvious, but a product of a historical development: the farewell of the modern era to the more holistic thought of the past.

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However, it is not for us as subjects, but as subjectivity that is connected with the world, and therefore, in a way, is a-subjective, that the beautiful is given, and with it so much else. It is precisely when we are emotionally present that the transcendence occurring in immanence may happen. As human beings we are present by definition, according to Heidegger, but we may be present in several ways. In the lecture “Gelassenheit” (Releasement, 1955), these ways are described as being a question of thinking in a calculative or a meditative way.29 In contradistinction to the meditative thinking, which is suitably gelassen (released), the calculative thinking, because of its intentional character, prevents Dasein from being aware of what shows itself. The meditative thinking, in contrast, allows Dasein to be what it is, i.e. allows it to show the openness so characteristic of Dasein to what shows itself. From Being and Time (1927) we additionally learn that Dasein is fundamentally defined by attunement (Befindlichkeit) and understanding (Verstehen), and that they are equiprimordial. Being present, we sense the world and are already by sensing it familiar with the world. Not only when we rationalize, but already in the immediate experience, is the observed interpreted, and is thus meaningful. Noise is never only noise, but for example the sound of a car; light is never merely light, but for example sunlight. Therefore Gadamer understands man as the interpretive being, whose way of being in the world is so fundamentally characterized by understanding that we will never reach a point before understanding, though we may forget that understanding precedes everything else. This leads to Gadamer’s idea of the universality of hermeneutics: that hermeneutics is about what is most fundamental to the human Dasein, and which forms the basis of everything, also philosophical thought, so that philosophy is conversely hermeneutic by nature.

Aesthetic Transcendence

Already Baumgarten’s philosophical aesthetics pointed to a basic simultaneity of attunement and understanding. According to his aesthetics, human cognition has its roots in a sensitivity that is fundamental to cognition – and which we cannot discard, though we may forget it, as we often do. We 29

M. Heidegger, “Gelassenheit,” Reden und andere Zeugnisse eines Lebensweges 1910–1976, Gesamtausgabe Bd. 16 (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 2000); approximately one-fourth of “Αγχιβασιη: A Triadic Conversation on a Country Path between a Scientist, A Scholar, and a Guide,” Country Path Conversations, trans. B.W. Davis (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010).

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cannot reach a point before this sensitivity, which already by itself, however, constitutes a kind of cognition. Therefore, philosophical aesthetics, as it was founded by Baumgarten, invites us to challenge Gadamer’s idea of the universality of hermeneutics with a thesis of the universality of aesthetics. Such a challenge may be necessary, because Gadamer’s attempt at integrating aesthetics in hermeneutics seems to let attunement (sensitivity) fade out in favor of only understanding (cognition). Thus a point is lost, which – albeit unacknowledged by phenomenology – is common to aesthetics and phenomenology, namely that attunement and understanding are equiprimordial: that we know, already when we sense emotionally. This, however, does not mean that aesthetics and phenomenology are identical. Philosophical aesthetics was conceived by Baumgarten within the framework of a dualist philosophy of mind and introduced as a philosophy about the subjective faculties that are the source of sensitive cognition. So far aesthetics represents the kind of epistemological thinking that phenomenology has tried to distance itself from. However, thanks to the focus of aesthetics on sensitivity rather than rationality (rational understanding), early philosophical aesthetics spoke about human cognition in a way that was partly at variance with the framework of its own dualist philosophy of mind. Aesthetics sowed a seed that phenomenology later on had the chance of bringing to fruition, although still without being able to realize and acknowledge its debt to aesthetics.30 The paradigm-disrupting aspect of philosophical aesthetics does not only consist in the shaking of the subject – defined by rationalism as an agent of logical (not sensitive) cognition – that occurred when Baumgarten studied sensitivity from the point of view of his philosophical aesthetics. The subject, understood as the conscious instigator and controller of cognition, also became endangered because what Baumgarten now studied comprised imagination, among other things. Imagination produces ideas of something that is not directly given in an empirical sense, and it is therefore by nature of a transcending character. Being of this character it also by definition goes beyond what the subject of logical cognition can control: it also exceeds what is accessible to rational understanding, as it proceeds to a dimension that is only comprehensible to reason. In other words, imagination has access to what in Kant is called ideas, and which he does not see as something transcendent somewhere else, but as a ‘more’ – a transcendence – in the immanent sphere. This very imagination, according to Kant, is given particularly free rein in the work 30

For a more thorough exposition of the thoughts presented here I must again refer to my book Den skønne tænkning.

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of the aesthetic power of judgment, where understanding does not with its concepts restrain imagination’s production of thoughts (representations). This, however, is also to say that the subject does not control the thinking practiced by the aesthetic power of judgment, whose way of thinking Kant called expanded. With its expanded way of thinking, the aesthetic power of judgment unites different things in thought, without reducing difference to sameness. It transcends to something universal, but without losing what is unique about the particular. The aesthetic power of judgment is capable of this expanded way of thinking thanks to imagination’s contribution of free reflexivity to the working of the power of judgment, which also, conversely, means that this expanded thinking suspends the subject as it was defined by rationalism and was taken over by Kant.31 Understood as the way of thinking of the aesthetic power of judgment, expanded thinking is aesthetic thinking. Already Baumgarten’s interest in sensitivity and the related sensitive cognition opened up for exploration of this thinking, and so, in a way, began the substitution of the subject with Dasein, which was since carried out by hermeneutic phenomenology. Thus, there is on one hand an abyss of difference between the original subject of aesthetic philosophy and Dasein as understood by phenomenology. On the other hand, there is also a bridge of similarity: Dasein and the subject of sensitive cognition have in common the transcendence associated with imagination, for imagination is central among the nether powers of cognition dealt with in early philosophical aesthetics, and Dasein, according to Heidegger, distinguishes itself by being ecstatic, i.e. self-transcending. Regarded as Dasein, man is indeed transcending by nature. Not only understood in the sense that we can ignore our bodies or have an eternal soul, but in the sense that in us a force is active that expands our awareness – in both time and space. It is not that we transcend in the epistemological sense that we ourselves consciously reach for something, be it incomprehensible or not. But it is about being open to transcendence, to sensing what happens in the immanence, sensing occurrences of an evidential character. Being present, we are constantly expanded, constantly brought beyond ourselves, to something other than ourselves, by which we are present – both in the present space and in memory. This Dasein, as said above, is of the felt body (in distinction to the material body or the mind) and its characteristic openness to transcendence 31

For the thought connected with the expanded way of thinking, see my book Aglaias dans: På vej mod en æstetisk tænkning (Aglaia’s Dance: Towards an Aesthetic Thinking; Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 2008), for example the chapter “Skønhedens betydning: Om Kants æstetik” (The Significance of Beauty: On Kant’s Aesthetics).

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is an aesthetic or properly aisthetic openness to that in the sensible world which transcends the merely sensuous.32 Also in The Pillow Book does imagination play an important part. Imagination is what Nagiko misses in the man she is unwillingly married to for a while. The husband is an inane boor, who refuses Nagiko’s wish of feeling the brush against her skin. He does not understand the spirituality associated with this physical act; he does not have the imagination to follow her in his mind. If the body is to be seen as a symbol, and if the symbol is to be understood as something that transcends into itself to otherwise inaccessible meaning, what is needed is precisely imagination. Thus, it is lack of imagination that is the real scourge in a time like ours, where bodies are reduced to physical flesh, symbols are misunderstood as allegories for something distant and inaccessible, and metaphysics is ridiculed as an outmoded idea belonging to another world. Where imagination is absent, the sensuous world is not, like in The Pillow Book, an occasion for aesthetic pleasure that is more than merely sensuous, i.e. a way to experiencing what Theodor W. Adorno called the aesthetic more. Aesthetics is, therefore, not – as Gadamer demanded – to be integrated into hermeneutics, but hermeneutics must be founded on aesthetics, because we already know when we sense – understanding already takes place in the attunement. If understanding is separated from its source in the aesthetic experience and made independent, the result will be exactly everything that Gadamer himself criticized and wanted to depart from. Understanding shrinks to rational explanation, what Heidegger called calculative thinking. Aesthetic experience is reduced to aesthetic impression, and sensitive cognition is confused with sensory perception. Philosophical aesthetics disintegrates into the study of art, works of art become objectified as aesthetic objects, and the many possibilities of aesthetic transcendence in our existence end in an empty worship of mere bodily pleasure.

Experience of Divinity

Thinking back Nagiko associates her childhood birthdays with a Japanese form of congratulation – by her also referred to as ‘my father’s blessing’. In The Pillow Book Greenaway mixes European and Asian elements in a willful filmic interpretation of the aesthetically mediated experience of transcendence. This experience of transcendence can be understood as a kind of experience of 32

The word aisthetic derives from the ancient Greek word aisthesis, which, as opposed to what is often said about it today, did not in antiquity only mean sense perception, but also – and this is important – experience in a wider sense of this word.

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divinity, which also lets the sense of beauty artistically expressed by the film appear as a disposition for experience of divinity. Aesthetically mediated experience of transcendence is precisely neither the same as nor something entirely different from experience of divinity. In so far as we talk about experience, and not just impressions, aesthetic experience is by definition experience of transcendence. This has been said already by the metaphysics of beauty, and the same message is found in philosophical aesthetics, and, as was demonstrated, actually in hermeneutic phenomenology as well, whether the aesthetic experience is treated as an experience of beauty or as an experience of the sublime. Religious experiences are of course also experiences of transcendence, but the object of religious experience is something transcendent, regarded as God by the religious person. Conversely, the object of aesthetic experience is something immanent that is regarded as secular by the experiencer, and which has in modernity been limited to the formal side of a universe of objects generally classified as art. As mentioned, both religious and aesthetic experiences are experiences of transcendence, however, and if we want to reflect on this fact, we must have a terminology for the relation. One possibility is to simply speak in abstract terms about transcendence, in order not to repel readers who are frightened by religion. Another possibility is to use the term experience of divinity, but devoid of any religious meaning.33 Dasein does not only transcend; it is not just ecstatic, not only in a state of already being elsewhere, along with something else. Dasein also interprets permanently, already understands, by virtue of its emotional sensitivity, and its interpretations are historically situated. We sense and understand where we find ourselves, and with the load of knowledge and experience we have in that context. The same thing can, therefore, be interpreted differently, depending on who interprets and where and when the interpretation takes place, but what is interpreted is – at least partly – still the same. It is exactly such a duality of rupture and continuity that characterizes what in Skønhedens metamorfose (The Metamorphosis of Beauty) and later works was called experience of divinity, and which is a reference to experience of transcendence. In these 33

I introduced the concept of experience of divinity used here in 1999, in the article “Profan metafysik: Om det guddommelige i metafysikken” (Profane Metaphysics: On the Divine in Metaphysics), Kritisk Forum for Praktisk Teologi no. 78 (Frederiksberg: Anis, 1999, pp. 80–94). This concept became more widely known when in 2001 I published the book Skønhedens metamorfose: De æstetiske idéers historie (The Metamorphosis of Beauty: History of Aesthetic Ideas; Odense: Odense University Press). Since then I have elaborated it in Historien som værk: Værkets historie (History as a Work: The Work’s History; Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 2006), Skønhed – En engel gik forbi, and Aglaias dans, and it has been commented on in Den skønne tænkning.

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works the term experience of divinity is not used synonymously with religious experience, but serves to denote what is common to, for example, religious and aesthetic experiences. Conversely, this also entails that both religious and aesthetic experiences are interpretations of experience of divinity, but exactly interpretations, and in this case different interpretations, of the same common element of transcendence. The term experience of divinity thus denotes the very experience of a surplus of meaning characterized by cohesion and meaningfulness according to which there is something with intrinsic value, and accordingly also something that is absolute. It was this surplus of meaning that already the metaphysics of beauty was aware of and termed the beautiful. It is the same surplus of meaning various theologians have contemplated on, but spoken about as God and the beauty of God, changing experience of beauty into religious experience. And it was also this surplus of meaning that modern philosophers began to treat as something aesthetic, moving the focus from God and His creation to the man-made work of art and its secular beauty. The term ‘experience of divinity’ is inspired by the early testimony about interpreting the experience of transcendence that is constituted by the Homeric tale about the genesis of poetry: that poetry comes into being when a poet is seized by divine madness, and thrown into inspired ecstasy. Thus, the term experience of divinity basically refers to the event Homer thought the birth of poetic language was – rather than aiming at anything religious in a theological sense. This justifies the use of ‘experience of divinity’ as a term for the experience of transcendence as such – not religious experience (which is, however, itself an interpretative manifestation of the experience of divinity). The interpretative history of the experience of divinity is long, and in Skønhedens metamorfose and kindred works of mine the latest addition has been termed ‘experience of immanent transcendence’. However, in the previous pages the term immanent transcendence was also used in a wider sense. It was used to denote the occurrence, pure and simple, of transcendence in immanence. Conversely, in Skønhedens metamorfose and kindred works, the same term was used in a narrower sense, referring to a specifically contemporary interpretation of the experience of divinity. In that case, the designation ‘experience of immanent transcendence’ does not only presuppose transcendence in immanence but also an absence of ability to interpret the event that the experience of transcendence essentially is. In the case of experience of immanent transcendence in this narrow sense, the one who is thrown into the experience is hesitant as to what is happening. The person is unable to interpret it with reference to the traditional religions and philosophies – he or she has no clue to the meaning of what occurred. This, as well, is an experience of a surplus of

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meaning, but here the occurrence remains indefinite and therefore it is the more disturbing to the daily order of things.34 In The Pillow Book, not only the words about divine creation uttered by Nagiko’s father, when he calligraphed on her face, call something religious to mind. For example Greenaway alludes to the sacrifice of Christ, when he has Nagiko’s lover, Jerome, offer her something that in the film is actually termed a sacrifice, and which he eventually dies of, whereas she ‘realizes’ herself as an author. However, the gaze that finds artistic expression in The Pillow Book is, as said before, of a creative nature, and this does not only characterize the idiom of the film, with its experiments with the fragmented images of tv and computer games. The creative aspect of the gaze expressed in this film also comes through in relation to its content, where Greenaway steers clear of all dogmatism. In The Pillow Book Greenaway presents his own artistic interpretation of late modern man’s experience of aesthetically mediated transcendence, and the result suggests how people without firm points of reference can handle the openness to transcendence to which Dasein is doomed. As Dasein we have always already interpreted what we sense, but as late modern people, for whom 34

To deal with the phenomenology of experience comprising experience of divinity as such and the interpretations of it that consist of its various manifestations, for example religious and aesthetic experience, I proposed in the article “Guddommelighedserfaring i en moderne verden” (Experience of Divinity in a Modern World) that a discipline called aesthetics of religion be developed. See “Guddommelighedserfaring i en moderne verden,” Interesse for Gud, eds. H. Brandt-Pedersen and N. Grønkjær (Frederiksberg: Anis, 2002). A German translation was published in Gelebte Religionen, eds. H. Piegeler and others, trans. C. Diehn (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2004). The term aesthetics of religion has been used in Germany since 1988 as a term for a discipline of religious studies of a non-theological and thus actually also a non-philosophical character. However, in my article mentioned above, I introduced the term aesthetics of religion as a term for a philosophical discipline. My message was that a philosophical concept of aesthetics of religion can be of service to the development of – and is necessary to – the theoretical foundation both theology and religious studies need in working with aesthetic phenomena, not least to enable them in this endeavour to approach a thematization, not only of religious or aesthetic experience, for example, but of experience of divinity. However, the already established meaning in religious studies of the term ‘aesthetics of religion’, and the connotation associated with it of cultural analysis rather than systematic thought, is difficult to escape. This is one of several reasons why in a number of recent works, like Den skønne tænkning and the article “Teologisk æstetik i Norden?” (Theological Aesthetics in the Nordic Region?), I argue for theological aesthetics. See “Teologisk æstetik i Norden? Den ’æstetiske vending’ til diskussion,” Kontinuitet og radikalisme, eds. K. Garne and R. Vangshardt (København: Vartov, 2013).

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tradition has been eroded, we no longer understand what we understand. It could be so easy: something has intrinsic value and so it is – we all experience this. Instead, however, it is infinitely difficult. Today only few dare use the words God or beauty. Therefore we need works such as Greenaway’s – works that take up the phenomenon, the experience of transcendence that still occurs, and give it artistic expression without forcing on anyone anything that can stand in the way of the phenomenon itself.

chapter 4

The Phenomenon of Revelation: Jean-Luc Marion’s Outline for a Phenomenology of Religion Mikkel B. Tin It is in the nature of religious experience that something makes itself known, appears, reveals itself to us, and that we then interpret this something that is revealed as the holy. Now, the idea that something reveals itself to us in our experience is also phenomenology’s definition of the phenomenon in general. This would suggest that there is a kinship between the revelation of the holy and the phenomenon in general, and it seems obvious to ask if revelation can be regarded and described as a phenomenon in a phenomenological sense. On the other hand, if we are to talk about a specifically religious experience, there must be something which distinguishes this revelation from other phenomena, and the question is, then, whether phenomenology can explain what distinguishes the revelation of the holy. On grounds of principle, phenomenology cannot say anything about the holy per se, but yet, perhaps about the holy for me, and that is exactly the revelation: how does the holy reveal itself to me, and how can I receive it in order to actually have a religious experience? One of the people who have attempted to answer these questions is Jean-Luc Marion (b.1946, professor of philosophy at Sorbonne and the University of Chicago). In the intersection between philosophy and theology, he wants to establish a phenomenology of religion, which can remedy the shortcomings of the philosophy of religion – without becoming theology. The philosophy of religion, in his opinion, necessarily comes up against an insoluble problem: as philosophy on one hand, it must “describe, produce and constitute phenomena”; as a philosophy of religion, on the other hand, it must “render visible what nevertheless could not be objectivized.”1 If the inherent premises of philosophy demand that it objectivizes its object, these premises preclude the religious phenomenon, because according to Marion it is not and cannot be, in an objective sense. That is not to say that this is a sufficient criterion for a religious phenomenon. Marion distinguishes between philosophy and phenomenology, and it is true that phenomenology works on other premises than philosophy, and in as far as it precisely criticizes the idea of an objective world found in both 1 J.-L. Marion, “The Saturated Phenomenon,” in The Visible and the Revealed, transl. C.M. Gschwandtner et al. (New York: Fordham University Press, 2008), p. 18. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi 10.1163/9789004291690_007

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philosophy and science, there is reason to expect that it can include the religious experience without removing from it what is characteristic of it. On the other hand, phenomenology directs its criticism against the concept of an objective world in general, and not against the objectivization of the religious phenomenon specifically. It is therefore still an open question how Marion in his phenomenology of religion will distinguish this phenomenon from other phenomena. Marion thinks he can find the basis for making the religious experience accessible to methodical examination in a combination of Husserl’s and Heidegger’s phenomenology. Husserl therefore had restored any intuited given inasmuch as intuited to the phenomenon and hence had legitimated the validity of religious lived experience inasmuch as it is given intuitively. In the same way, Heidegger integrates into phenomenality all that shows itself (sich zeigt) only by indication (Anzeige), inasmuch as the ‘showing itself’ is still accomplished ‘from itself’ – and hence he legitimates the possibility of a phenomenology of the unapparent in general. […] What philosophy of religion tends to close, phenomenology of religion could open. […] In short, phenomenology would be the method par excellence for the manifestation of the invisible through the phenomena that indicate it – hence also the method for theology.2 This role, as a method for elucidating the religious experience, can only be played by phenomenology, it is true, after it has undergone a number of modifications. In the following pages, we will see how Marion imagines that the phenomenological method must be modified to accommodate the religious phenomenon as he defines it. I especially follow Marion’s argumentation in his seminal article “The Saturated Phenomenon.” The article was published in 1992 in the book Phénoménologie et théologie,3 together with texts by Marion’s contemporaries, 2 J.-L. Marion, The Visible and the Revealed, pp. 6–7. Marion expresses his belief in the possibilities of phenomenology, and especially the possibility of overcoming metaphysics, already in 1984 in the preface to the anthology Phénoménologie et métaphysique (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France): “After the demise of metaphysics, whether it was in its completion in Hegel or in the twilight in Nietzsche, philosophy has only been able to proceed authentically in the form of phenomenology” (p. 7). 3 Phénoménologie et théologie, ed. J.-F. Courtine (Paris: Criterion, 1992). Marion published an unchanged version in his collection of articles Le visible et le révélé (Paris: Les Éditions du  Cerf, 2005), published in a new edition in 2010. It was first published in English in Phenomenology and the ‘Theological Turn’. The French Debate, eds. Dominique Janicaud et al.,

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Jean-Louis Chrétien, Michel Henry and Paul Ricœur. Originally it was a contribution to a seminar ‘Phénoménologie et Herméneutique de la Religion’, which took place in 1990–1992 at the Centre de Recherches Phénoménologiques et Herméneutiques – Archives Husserl in Paris. Of course, I also refer to other of Marion’s articles, and especially to the comprehensive work Being Given which was first published in 1997, and in an English edition in 2002.4 In conclusion, I will discuss Marion’s proposal, both from a phenomenological point of view and in light of other definitions of the holy.

Dualism and the Metaphysical Ground

Marion describes the philosophical tradition as a thoroughly metaphysical tradition. Metaphysics demands a meta-physical ground for the physical, in other words it searches for the basis and conception of things outside themselves. Metaphysics culminates with Leibniz, who defines God as the ultimate cause. Marion is of the opinion that making God the ultimate cause in a metaphysical construction is to make him small, and that it is understandable that this God, together with the demand for a ground made by metaphysics (which Marion here, like Heidegger, calls onto-theo-logy5), dies with the ‘philosophers of skepticism’, first with Marx, and then also with Nietzsche and Freud. They all show how God is compromised along with the constructions which are supposed to be grounded in God: the class society, Christian morality, the sexual taboo. If the ‘death of God’ in philosophy belongs essentially to the ‘end of metaphysics’ and if the latter follows essentially from the concept of ‘metaphysics’, then the overcoming of onto-theo-logy becomes the condition for surpassing the naming of ‘God’ in philosophy as efficient ground.6 transl. J.L. Kosky and T.A. Carlson (New York: Fordham University Press, 2000), Re-published in 2008 in a new translation by T.A. Carlson in the collection of articles The Visible and the Revealed. My quotations are from the latter edition of “The Saturated Phenomenon.” 4 J.-L. Marion, Being Given. Toward a Phenomenology of Givenness, trans. J.L. Kosky (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2002). 5 With the word ‘onto-theo-logy’, Heidegger criticizes metaphysics, which by reducing God to an, albeit privileged, being contributes to the forgetfulness of Being which characterizes our time. 6 Marion, The Visible and the Revealed, p. 55.

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Marion thus sees metaphysics as a hindrance for the understanding of the religious phenomenon proper. Marion sees traces of the same metaphysical heritage in philosophy, also where it is not God who serves as a last ground for objectivity. Thus, Kant maintains that understanding is not caused by das Ding an sich, but by the interplay between our faculties: through perception the thing is given to us, and we think it with the aid of our understanding. So for Kant it is not enough that the phenomenon shows itself; to be it must show itself in accordance with the categories and concepts of the understanding. “[…] nothing ‘is done’, nothing ‘happens’, in short, nothing appears without the attestation that it is ‘possible’; this possibility, in turn, is equivalent to the possibility of knowing the sufficient reason for such an appearance.”7 In the philosophical tradition, at least as far as to Kant, it is the cognitive ability that determines the conditions of possibility, and on the other hand, the sufficient ground is sufficient for making possible that which without it would have remained impossible. In brief, “In a metaphysical system, the possibility of appearing never belongs to what appears, nor phenomenality to the phenomenon.”8 In the history of philosophy, phenomenology marks a new direction when it takes a distance from these conditions, which Marion terms metaphysical. Phenomenology differs from metaphysics in philosophy by acknowledging and describing the phenomenon as it shows itself, without setting up conditions for it beforehand. The possibility of apparition is not limited by the subject’s understanding; it belongs to that which shows itself, that which gives itself.

Phenomenology and Appearance as Their Own Ground

Husserl avoids the aporia of metaphysics, Marion says, with the principle of principles that he has formulated: “that every originary presentive intuition is a legitimizing source of cognition, that everything originarily (so to speak, in its ‘personal’ actuality) offered to us in ‘intuition’ is to be accepted simply as what it is presented as being, but also only within the limits in which it is presented there.”9 This means that phenomenology waives the demand for a cause or reason, causa sive ratio, and that it acknowledges the phenomenon as it is given, in so 7 Marion, The Visible and the Revealed, p. 20. 8 Marion, The Visible and the Revealed, p. 21. 9 Marion, The Visible and the Revealed, p. 18.

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far as it is given. But if phenomenology makes no other demands on the phenomenon than that it show itself in an intuition, the revelation cannot a priori be excluded as a phenomenon, either. On the contrary, it might turn out to be a phenomenon par excellence for the phenomenological analysis.10 Now we see that Husserl does not acknowledge apparition entirely without conditions. He acknowledges the phenomenon that gives itself, “but also only within the limits in which it is presented there.”11 We will return to these limits below. For now, let us just mention the two limitations Marion particularly emphasizes: Firstly, the limitation caused by the horizon. For according to Husserl, the incarnation means that our view is limited by a horizon and that any intuition can and must be completed by a new intuition with a new and as yet unknown horizon.12 The intuitive fulfillment will therefore always be insufficient in relation to the intention of meaning.13 Marion reproaches Husserl that with the horizon as a condition for intuition, German Anschauung, “phenomenality remains limited by the defect of what renders it partially possible: intuition.”14 We must understand this in the sense that not all intuition, according to Marion, has to be sensuous, and that phenomenality therefore is not always limited by a horizon either.15 The other limitation imposed on the phenomenon is the consciousness, the subject, the I, for which it gives itself. For even though the phenomenon shows itself from itself, it necessarily only gives itself for a consciousness. But also this condition is a metaphysical remnant, according to Marion, a prejudice which hinders phenomenology in seeing the phenomenon in all its possible guises. Marion finds it possible to demonstrate a contradiction in phenomenology, insofar as it subjects the phenomenon to these two limitations. To realize its full potential, in the meeting with the religious phenomenon, it must liberate itself from these limitations: 10 Marion, The Visible and the Revealed, p. 17. 11 E. Husserl, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, 3 vols, I: General Introduction to a Pure Phenomenology, trans. F. Kersten (The Hague: Nijhoff [1913] 1982), p. 44. 12 Marion, The Visible and the Revealed, p. 23. 13 Marion, The Visible and the Revealed, p. 27. 14 Marion, The Visible and the Revealed, p. 29. 15 Here Marion seems to narrow down Husserl’s definition of intuition, where Husserl himself rather seeks to widen it. In the quotation above he emphasizes precisely that “every originary presentive intuition is a legitimizing source of cognition.”

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Could one not envision a type of phenomenon that would reverse the condition of a horizon (by surpassing it, instead of being inscribed within it) and that would reverse the reduction (by leading the I back to itself, instead of being reduced to the I)? To declare this hypothesis impossible, without resorting to intuition, would betray a phenomenological contradiction.16 With this unconditioned phenomenon the phenomenology of religion acquires a field of study which is entirely its own, the religious phenomena. Marion refers to Heidegger’s definition of the phenomenon, ‘das Sich-an-ihmselbst-zeigende’. The phenomenon does not simply appear, when it appears it also gives a ground for its own appearing, its own givenness. In that way one may claim that “Givenness precedes intuition and intention because they make sense only for and through an appearance…”17 If Husserl in a “first phenomenological reduction” reduces the phenomenon from its transcendent facticity (in the world) to its immanent objectivity/ideality (in the consciousness), and if Heidegger, in a “second reduction” reduces the phenomenon from the being to Being, in what he calls a “third reduction,” Marion wants to reduce the phenomenon to its pure givenness: “The more reduction, the more givenness.”18 The aim of Marion’s reduction, then, is not the consciousness to which the phenomenon shows itself, and nor is it the Being which hides in that which shows itself, but the givenness of the phenomenon, that it gives itself, that the phenomenon is or has been given.19

Various Forms of Givenness

Jean-Luc Marion takes his point of departure in the fact that the phenomenon is given. He asks, 16 Marion, The Visible and the Revealed, p. 24. 17 J.-L. Marion, Reduction and Givenness: Investigations of Husserl, Heidegger, and Phenomenology, trans. T.A. Carlson (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1998), p. 32. 18 Marion, Being Given, p. 16. 19 The French word for givenness, donation carries a double sense that is difficult to translate into English. It can mean the process, that something gives itself or is given, or it can mean the result of this process, that something has been given. Marion has himself recommended English givenness as a translation of donation. However, this causes a problem when Marion, in accordance with ordinary terminology, writes that la donation precedes the gift. Cf. J.-L. Marion, Certitudes négatives (Paris: Grasset, 2010), p. 156.

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To the phenomenon that is most often characterized by a defect of intuition, and therefore by a disappointment of the intentional aim and, in particular instances, by the equality between intuition and intention, why would there not correspond the possibility of a phenomenon in which intuition would give more, indeed unmeasurably more, than intention ever would have intended or foreseen?20 Marion blames philosophy for always only having dealt with the first two kinds of phenomena, in which consciousness is superior to intuition, or where it is on a par with it, i.e. in such cases that Thomas Aquinas calls adequatio intellectus et rei. What Marion wants to find out is “what phenomenological possibility is put into operation when the excess of giving intuition thus begins to play freely.”21 With this in mind he looks at the various forms of givenness in the kind of phenomena that he thinks give themselves with an intuitive surplus, the phenomena he calls ‘saturated’. Revelation is such a ‘saturated phenomenon’, but of a particular kind. Saturated phenomena are, then, characterized by transcending the intentional consciousness and its limitations. When Marion wants to describe the saturated phenomena, it is therefore primarily done by freeing them of the conditions of possibility which philosophy has traditionally formulated for phenomena: 1.

2. 3.

Quantity: the saturated phenomenon is unpredictable and therefore cannot be the object of an intention. It is of such extensive magnitude that it surpasses any expectation, it is immense and incommensurable. It shows itself as a momentary synthesis and therefore cannot be calculated on the basis of its constituting elements. Quality: the saturated phenomenon is so bedazzling that the gaze cannot bear it.22 It is of such an intensive magnitude that the gaze can as little endure it as foresee it. Relation “[…] in giving itself absolutely, the saturated phenomenon also gives itself as absolute: free from any analogy with the experience that has already been seen, objectivized, and comprehended. It frees itself from such analogy because it depends on no horizon.”23

20 Marion, The Visible and the Revealed, p. 32. 21 Marion, The Visible and the Revealed, p. 33. 22 Marion, The Visible and the Revealed, p. 36. 23 Marion, The Visible and the Revealed, p. 42.

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Modality: in the history of philosophy, the possibility of the phenomenon of being constituted as object traditionally depends on its reducibility to the transcendental I and its conditions. The contemplation of the object presupposes a subject pole, while the saturated phenomenon gives itself as “incapable of being looked at,”24 and therefore cannot be reduced to the I.25

“These four characteristics imply the term-for-term reversal of all the rubrics under which Kant classifies the principles and thus the phenomena that these determine,”26 Marion remarks, almost triumphantly. At the same time there is something odd in the way Marion is able, albeit in negative terms, to describe how the saturated phenomenon manifests itself, when according to his own description it totally surpasses our understanding.

The Saturated Phenomena In other words, it concerns the situation in which intuition would not only validate all that for which the concept assures intelligibility but would also add a given (sensations, experiences, information, it matters little) that this concept would no longer be able to constitute as an object or render objectively intelligible. […] What is at stake here is offering legitimacy to nonobjectifiable, even nonbeing phenomena […].27

We see that by opening up to such phenomena, Marion gives up the demand of adequation, in the same way as Kant when he describes the aesthetic ideas. To illustrate the saturated phenomena, Marion refers to the ‘aesthetic ideas’ which Kant mentions in Kritik der Urteilskraft. They are examples of phenomena that cannot be contained in a concept. It is, indeed, true that these ideas have a unique position in Kant’s philosophy, in as far as they break the principles he otherwise formulates for understanding. “In the case of the aesthetic idea, the ‘representation of the imagination furnishes much to think [viel zu denken veranlasst], but no determinate thought, or concept, can be adequate to it [adäquat sein kann]’.”28 24 Marion, The Visible and the Revealed, p. 42. 25 Marion, The Visible and the Revealed, p. 43. 26 Marion, The Visible and the Revealed, p. 45. 27 Marion, The Visible and the Revealed, pp. 120–121. 28 Marion, The Visible and the Revealed, p. 33.

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That it is no longer a question of intuition of objects in such cases is not fortuitous; on the contrary it is part of the essence of the saturated phenomenon that it eludes objectivity. The saturated phenomenon is given to us before it is constituted as an object by a constituting subject, and it is given to us so overwhelmingly that it cannot at all be constituted as an object within a horizon.29 In general the saturated phenomenon is tantamount to a reversal so radical that it is the concept of experience itself that has to be given up, inasmuch as the experience as an act presupposes a subject which experiences the object.30 The saturated phenomenon appears in spite of and in disagreement with the conditions of possibility for experience, namely, by imposing an impossible experience (if not already an experience of the impossible). Of the saturated phenomenon only a counter-experience would be possible. […] The eye sees not so much another spectacle as its own naked impotence to constitute anything at all. It sees nothing distinctly, but clearly experiences its impotence before the excessiveness of the visible […]. Through sight it receives a pure givenness, precisely because it no longer discerns any objectivizable given therein. Let us call this phenomenological extreme a paradox. The paradox not only suspends the phenomenon’s relation of subjection to the I, it actually inverts that relation. Far from being able to constitute this phenomenon, the I experiences itself as constituted by it. […] The I loses its anteriority and finds itself, so to speak, deprived of the duties of constitution, and is thus itself constituted: it becomes a me rather than an I.31 The reversal of the relationship between subject and object, between I and me, which the saturated phenomenon brings with it, is an experience many will probably recognize, and which Marion can fairly criticize philosophy for having overlooked or even excluded on purpose from its field of work. And this reversal is a positive quality. Otherwise it is the various negative qualities of the saturated phenomenon which are the center of Marion’s account. As we have seen, he connects them with various manifestations and groups them somewhat differently in his different books. In addition to the two kinds of phenomena he mentions in “The Saturated Phenomenon,” “pure historical events” and

29 Marion, The Visible and the Revealed, p. 42. 30 Marion, The Visible and the Revealed, p. 122. 31 Marion, The Visible and the Revealed, pp. 43–44.

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“the phenomena of revelation” (the idol, the icon, and theophany),32 beginning with Being Given (Étant donné, 1997) the revelation is a particular and fifth form of phenomenon, which in a certain sense sums up and completes the others.33 1. “The event takes place in history’s abundant intuition, without any concept having been able to foresee the possibility or conceivability of it, to such a degree that long after it has actually taken place, it remains incomprehensible, unthinkable and in the strictly metaphysical sense of the word, impossible (which is why it also demands the infinite hermeneutics of the historians and novelists).”34 The event saturates the category of quantity, it is epoch-making, it is immeasurable. The lack of a uniform horizon practically forbids constituting the historical event into an object.35 2. “The idol or the surplus of sensory quality that surpasses what the sense organs can grasp and deal with and which thus seem dazzling, visually or auditorily or through any of the other five senses (it is here primarily about pictorial art and music).”36 However, the idol is primarily defined as the image. “Saturation marks the painting essentially. In it, intuition always surpasses the concept or the concepts proposed to welcome it.”37 Marion talks of blocking, to the point of returning intentionality towards itself. 3. “The flesh, or rather my flesh, in so far as it is in my flesh I experience the feeling of feeling itself, i.e. not a physical body (which I feel without it feeling me, and which therefore remains exterior in relation to me), but the feeling of self, (where I feel myself feeling and even feel myself feeling that I feel), which evokes the experience of oneself, the experience of the self. My flesh no longer 32 Marion, The Visible and the Revealed, p. 47. 33 Marion talks of various ‘topics’, of which “the first (1992) included the Revelation directly among the saturated phenomena as one of them, i.e. the fourth, whereas the second [topic] (1997) as a precaution distinguishes the four forms of saturated phenomena (event, idol, flesh and icon, which in that way are restituted in their specificity) from ‘the revelational phenomenon’ which in itself ‘collects the four forms of saturated phenomena’ in a ‘saturation of a fifth type’ (Etant donné, p. 327). This distinction between on the one hand the saturated phenomenon in its fourfold banality and on the other hand the revelational phenomenon (that is, the possibility of the Revelation) makes it possible to maintain a clear distinction between phenomenology (even when it is about givenness) and theology (even when it is about the Revelation).” Le visible et le révélé, (Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 2010), pp. 183–184. 34 Marion, Certitudes négatives, p. 312. 35 Marion, Being Given, p. 229. 36 Marion, Certitudes négatives, p. 312. 37 Marion, Being Given, pp. 229–230.

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allows any concept and does not enter into any other relation than to itself, because it only identifies with itself and by itself alone […].”38 The flesh is the place where the touch takes place, before the separation of the I and its object. The flesh is the environment which is affected, not only by something exterior, but first and foremost by itself in what Marion calls a “self-affection” (auto-affection).39 4. “The face of the other (or the icon), as it evades the lifeless visibility of an object that remains in the world, and which even evades the presence of a being which I can use and exploit for my own purposes, i.e. as it becomes invisible (because it offers nothing for my intentional gaze), but which on the other hand speaks to me because it challenges me and addresses me with a reverse intentionality, which now goes from it to me. The icon thus opens a space for ethics, but no doubt also other spaces – all those that do not have any concept with which to control he phenomenon, but where I at best receive the phenomenon as an imperative.”40 “The gazer takes the place of the gazed upon; the manifested phenomenon is reversed into a manifestation not only in and of itself, but strictly by and on the basis of itself (auto-manifestation) […]”41 5. “The saturated phenomenon […] culminates in the type of paradox I call revelation, one that concentrates in itself – as the figure of Christ establishes its possibility – an event, an idol, a flesh, and an icon, all at the same time.”42 “In contrast to the common-law phenomenon, whose poverty in intuition (and its limitation in meaning) permits objective knowledge, production, predication, and reproduction, the phenomenon of revelation (if it exists) is characterized by its excess of intuition, which saturates all meaning and which, due to this saturation, provokes an event whose unpredictability escapes any production or reproduction. This phenomenon thus takes on the status of a gift, appearing to emerge freely and suddenly out of itself. The phenomenon of revelation therefore is revealed from itself and appears in the mode of what gives itself. In a word, revelation only appears as a gift.”43 This gift is absolute in the sense that it is not dependent on the receiver: being given is an interior quality of the gift and its manifestation, rather than a function of the exterior relation between a giver and a receiver. The gift of revelation is part of no form

38 Marion, Certitudes négatives, p. 312. 39 Marion, Being Given, p. 231. 40 Marion, Certitudes négatives, p. 313. 41 Marion, Being Given, p. 232. 42 Marion, Being Given, p. 241. 43 Marion, The Visible and the Revealed, p. 80.

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of gift economy or exchange. The pure givenness of the pure gift is the paradoxical essence of revelation in Marion’s phenomenology. In spite of the special qualities Marion himself attaches to the saturated phenomena in general and to the revelation in particular, and in spite of the extraordinary role the revelation has played in the history of religion, Marion is not willing to see any qualitative leap from the ‘unsaturated’ to the saturated phenomena. Presumably to counter a lot of sharp criticism, Marion assures us, a little surprisingly, that The saturated phenomenon must not be understood as a limit case, an exceptional, vaguely irrational, in short, a “mystical” case of phenomenality. On the contrary, it indicates the coherent and conceptual fulfilment of the most operative definition of the phenomenon: it alone truly appears as itself, of itself, and starting from itself, since it alone appears without the limits of a horizon and the reduction to an I. I will therefore call this appearance that is purely of itself and starting from itself, this phenomenon that does not subject its possibility to any preliminary determination, a “revelation.” And I insist that here it is purely and simply a matter of the phenomenon taken in its fullest meaning.44 With convincing consequence Marion establishes the revelation as such a transcendent paradox, which would then distinguish the religious phenomenon from other phenomena. He is able to describe the religious phenomenon without objectivizing it, as he thinks the philosophical-metaphysical tradition always has done, at the same time as demonstrating its place in the phenomenological context. When we object that much in religious life loses its meaning if revelation is pure givenness which changes the I into a me, an unlimited intuition which deprives the I of any possibility of directing itself intentionally towards it, and that it seems impossible for the believer to prepare for it, to deserve it, to accommodate the revelation, that prayer and penitence, devotion and invocation lose their focus, that the limitation and consecration of the sacred space, that the building and decoration of the house of God, the ceremonies, will be of no use if the revelation is radically unforeseeable, − to all these objections Marion can answer that it all belongs to the history of religion and to psychology. And in the transcendental perspective that he wants to adopt in his phenomenology, all this will be bracketed as a contingency. It is no longer a 44 Marion, The Visible and the Revealed, pp. 45–46.

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question of this or that revelation, but of the conditions of possibility for revelation as such. So although the saturated phenomenon as revelation has no direct empirical-­historical manifestation, it does have an indirect manifestation, seeing that the revelation is experienced as a call.45 The call demands a response,46 and only in the response will the call show itself. So though the believer in her religious life cannot prepare herself for the meeting with God, she may perhaps subsequently bear witness to it, as a ‘reaction’ to the ‘action’ of the holy, as an answer to the call. The answer entails what Marion calls “an infinite hermeneutic.”47

The I, the Horizon and the Religious Experience

In spite of Marion’s assurances that the saturated phenomenon is simply the phenomenon taken in its fullest phenomenological meaning, and that it therefore does not only have its place in the field of phenomenology, but also in a certain sense will bring phenomenology to completion, there are, as mentioned, some obstacles that have to be removed first, primarily because “Phenomenology refuses to admit the full possibility of revelation, because it imposes two limits on possibility in general: the I and the horizon.”48 1. The I. “In short, the givenness of phenomena presupposes the point of reference that accommodates their givenness. As broadened as this givenness may appear, it nevertheless only allows things to appear to an I.”49 The problem is that the revelation, as Marion defines it “surprises any anticipation of perception and surpasses any analogy to perception. The I has not the slightest idea, notion, or expectation regarding who or what is revealed. […] What is revealed is not necessarily experienced, because it transgresses the dimensions of Erlebnis.”50 But how does Marion know that the revelation has these qualities and that the subjects experience it like this, i.e. have such a non-experience of the revelation? He postulates them, and therefore he cannot accept the phenomenological reduction: “Because it institutes the I (or Dasein) as the

45 Marion, Being Given, p. 266. 46 Marion, Being Given, pp. 282–296. 47 Marion, The Visible and the Revealed, p. 143, and Certitudes négatives, p. 312. 48 Marion, The Visible and the Revealed, p. 13. 49 Marion, The Visible and the Revealed, p. 8. 50 Marion, The Visible and the Revealed, p. 9.

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originary instance of phenomenality, the very concept of reduction damages the possibility of revelation as such.”51 Here Marion points out that this I-pole, which makes the inclusion of the revelation in the field of phenomenology difficult, in itself has an uncertain status in phenomenology: “one of the instances that restrict phenomenology’s acceptance of the full possibility of revelation, namely, to know the I (and its equivalents), does not offer any certain phenomenological guarantee.”52 It is here, in phenomenology’s insufficient or missing ground for the I as origin, that Marion sees the possibility of including the revelation. In Marion’s philosophy the revelation is characterized by making I into me, because the revelation is not the object of my intention, it comes to me, I am constituted as me through it: “Far from the I restricting the possibility of a revelation phenomenologically, would one not have to venture that maybe the I can only attain its proper phenomenological possibility from a givenness that cannot be constituted, cannot be objectified and is prior to it – maybe even from a revelation?”53 As we see, the saturated phenomenon means a redefinition of the subject that experiences it. “The constituting subject is succeeded by the constituted witness.”54 We talk of having a revelation – and the revelation is, then, the object of the subject who experiences it. Marion wants us to think revelation in the reverse way: the revelation reveals itself, and the experiencing subject is rather subjected to revelation, and thus its object. Therefore Marion can say that the person to whom revelation reveals itself is only a witness, a witness who “does not stop thinking this intuitive excess by having recourse to all the concepts available to her, in a labor that can be called an infinite hermeneutic.”55 The witness will bear witness about her experience, but perhaps without ever fully understanding it: according to its nature revelation is beyond any kind of concept.56 51 Marion, The Visible and the Revealed, p. 10. 52 Marion, The Visible and the Revealed, p. 14. 53 Marion, The Visible and the Revealed, p. 14. 54 Marion, The Visible and the Revealed, p. 44. 55 Marion, The Visible and the Revealed, p. 143. 56 As Marion describes the revelation, it comes to resemble the experience of beauty in Gadamer. This is not only true of the infinite hermeneutics: “Therefore, in this kind of cognition the subject is not really a subject, but mere Dasein, and it is rather the ‘object’ of cognition that does something: it shows itself to Dasein. The event that this comes to be is both the cognition, and the truth about what shows itself, as well as about what cognition is, and about what it means to be present – in the midst of being, among beings.” D. Jørgensen, “Sensoriness and Transcendence: On the Aesthetic Possibility of Experiencing Divinity,” p. 67. She actually suggests thinking religious and aesthetic

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2. The horizon. At the same time as the revelation ruptures phenomenology’s precondition of a constituting I, it also ruptures the other precondition of phenomenology, a horizon within which the phenomenon can show itself, and which can secure meaning for it – an essentially contextual, i.e. relative meaning. So here the question is: “Does revelation admit of a horizon (still to be identified), or does it exclude being presented by any horizon whatsoever in principle?”57 Marion’s answers are yes and yes: “Revelation presents itself in a horizon only by saturating it.”58 That which then reveals itself transcends the dimensions and possibility which this frame opens for, to such a degree that the resulting phenomenon itself becomes confusing. The phenomenon is not only saturated itself, it also saturates the frame of understanding, i.e. the horizon of the one the phenomenon reveals itself to. 3. Truth. The chaotic and paradoxical character of revelation, then, is among its distinguishing features: Revelation does not enter phenomenality except under the figure of a paradox – as saturated phenomena that saturate the entire horizon of phenomenality. ‘Saturated phenomenon’ means: instead of common phenomenality striving to make intuition adequate to intention, and usually having to admit the failure of givenness of an incompletely intuited though fully intended object, revelation gives objects where intuition surpasses the intentional aim. Under the regime of revelation, intuition offers neither as much nor less than but infinitely more than intention, hence than the significations elaborated by the I.59 [...] In this situation, truth no longer comes from δόξα, (true or false) appearance, but from παράδοξον, an appearance that contradicts opinion or appearance, and above all saturates the horizon.60 So if phenomenology is to do justice to the revelation, the conditions are (a) that the I accepts its non-original character and thinks it back to an original givenness, and (b) that it renounces determining the horizon a priori, and instead allows it to be saturated with givenness, and (c) that the truth then no longer is the obvious aspect of δόξα, but παράδοξον in the revealed. What is at ­experiences into one system under the term “experience of divinity,” but without assigning “any religious meaning” to this term (p. 82). 57 Marion, The Visible and the Revealed, p. 15. 58 Marion, The Visible and the Revealed, p. 15. 59 Marion, The Visible and the Revealed, p. 16. 60 Marion, The Visible and the Revealed, p. 16.

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stake here, according to Marion is the cleansing of phenomenology of its metaphysical impurity and “freeing the possibility of revelation, hence possibility as revelation, from the grip of the principle of sufficient reason, understood as the a priori condition of possibility (hence of impossibility) for any event to come.”61

The Intention of Phenomenology

Marion is a philosopher, but he thinks that philosophy is unable to recognize the revelation in its otherness. Philosophy only recognizes such phenomena as can be constituted objectively by consciousness. For its formal language, philosophy only needs a categorical intuition, i.e. phenomena which show themselves with a deficit of intuition; and to constitute objectivity with evidence, philosophy only needs such phenomena as give the intention of meaning an adequate intuitive fulfillment. These phenomena will never threaten the superior position of consciousness. The saturated phenomena, however, which show themselves with a surplus of intuition, and which therefore cannot fully be constituted objectively, have been denied as irrelevant by philosophy. In this respect Marion sees an essential difference between philosophy and phenomenology. He believes that not only the saturated phenomena in general, but also the revelation itself, can be described, and thus be accepted as 61 Marion, The Visible and the Revealed, pp. 16–17. Marion is of course not the only one to describe revelation as an overwhelming reversal of the relation between subject and object. As we can read in Svein Aage Christoffersen’s article in the present volume Transcendence and Sensoriness, pp. 21–22, H. Joas describes the experience of transcendence as an Ergriffensein, “being moved”: “Transcendence is not initiated from the inside, but from the outside. The self grasps neither things nor ideas, but is grasped or grasps itself in being grasped.” And Christoffersen adds, quite pertinently, “The latter is the decisive factor as the question is whether the individual loses himself in his state of being grasped or whether he grasps himself.” The experience of being moved is akin to the experience of anxiety, and here Joas refers to Paul Tillich, whom Espen Dahl takes up in his article “The Ambiguity of the Demonic in Paul Tillich’s View of Art,” also in the present anthology. According to Tillich the holy simultaneously contains the divine and the demonic, both ground and abyss, i.e. the mysterium fascinosum of the ground and the mysterium tremendum of the abyss (p. 491). However, Dahl’s article is not primarily concerned with the immediate revelation, but rather its communication in the art of modernism as Tillich interprets it. Nevertheless, the form-dissolving power, which according to Tillich characterizes the demonic is akin to the chaotic experience which revelation causes, according to Marion.

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phenomena by phenomenology. It is obviously important to Marion to be able to describe the revelation and thus give it a discursive acceptance. On the other hand, he maintains that it is only with this extension of its field that phenomenology will achieve its completeness, that is, as a phenomenology of religion. This, however, does not entail any new type of phenomenology, Marion says, “for it is only a matter of pushing the phenomenological intention to its end.”62 No doubt Marion is right when he points out that experience is not limited to the experience of objects, and that the constitution of objects only makes up a special and limited case of our encounters with phenomenality; more often it is characterized by an intuitive saturation or an intuitive surplus.63 Husserl himself has thematized this in his analysis of various intentional attitudes, and it has been an important theme in phenomenological studies ever since. It will be enough to mention Heidegger’s philosophy of things and Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy of the invisible in the visible. Therefore it can hardly be regarded as controversial when Marion in the preface to his collection of articles, The Visible and the Revealed, writes that to be what it pretends to be, phenomenology “must enlarge the production of everything that can appear in the world as far as possible”; but it becomes more problematic when he adds, “hence especially what at first glance and most often does not yet appear there.”64 Because it is part of Marion’s definition of revelation that it transcends any horizon of understanding and any subjective understanding, it cannot belong to facticity in its usual sense; he must therefore describe it as a possibility, rather than a reality. “[…] broadening phenomenality to include phenomena of revelation, by granting the possibility of phenomenalizing Revelation (according to its own modalities) might fulfill phenomenology as essentially as it would liberate the rights of theology.”65 One of the doubters is Marion’s main critic, Dominique Janicaud: This consists, on the one hand, in playing on the notion of ‘negative phenomenology’ – which calls for examination, as it is not evident that it coincides with the most founded phenomenology – and, on the other hand, in introducing the idea that there would be ‘phenomena not yet

62 Marion, The Visible and the Revealed, p. 48. 63 Marion, The Visible and the Revealed, p. 136. 64 Marion, The Visible and the Revealed, p. XI. 65 Marion, The Visible and the Revealed, p. XII.

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manifest’ – a strangely surreptitious displacement toward a kind of progressivism in phenomenality.66 Marion’s problem as a phenomenologist is that with a revelation which is only a possibility of a givenness, he must exclude noesis, eidetic variation, and eidetic intuition, in brief the possibility of a phenomenological description of the phenomenon. He writes revelation with a lower case r to emphasize that he has separated it entirely from the biblical Revelation with an upper case R, and from any other concrete experience of the holy. And when he has thus freed revelation of all the conditions objectivity is subject to, because he rightfully thinks that revelation cannot be determined objectively, he is left with pure possibility. He has left theology and the history of religion to get into transcendental phenomenology, since phenomenology is transcendental only in so far as it puts the historical and psychological circumstances into brackets. But then it is perhaps a characteristic of revelation that it precisely only exists in a historical and psychological experience; by reducing it to pure possibility of givenness Marion ends up in that very futile philosophical abstraction out of which Husserl wanted to lead the philosopher by exhorting her to go back to the things themselves. In his book The Holy and the Everyday. Toward a Phenomenology of Religious Experience after Husserl, Espen Dahl refers to Janicaud’s critique: Having reduced the objective restrictions – that would paradigmatically be those of the thing – the presence of the fully given givenness presents itself in its overabundant manner, and leaves no remainder behind – it is there, es gibt. Marion thinks this is sufficient to grant saturated phenomena the status of being beyond doubt, and to refute the fear that purity might be the empty gesture of an abstraction. Despite Marion’s awareness of such critique, he does not offer a strong argument in the face of the pertinent objection from Janicaud, put in the ramifying question: ‘Is not this experience…too pure to dare pass itself off as phenomenological?’67 On principle, Marion has refused a theological interpretation because he wants to hold on to pure potentiality and not get lost in empirical actuality. But for phenomenology it is a problem to relate to a phenomenon that is nothing 66 67

D. Janicaud, “The Theological Turn of French Phenomenology,” in Phenomenology and the ‘Theological Turn’. The French Debate (New York: Fordham University Press, 2000), p. 64. E. Dahl, The Holy and the Everyday. Toward a Phenomenology of Religious Experience After Husserl (doctoral thesis, University of Oslo, 2006), p. 128; D. Janicaud, op. cit., p. 63.

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but a mere possibility, and which in its possibility can only be described through what it negates. Marion writes about the revelation that it eludes any quantitative as well as qualitative definition, that it is without any relation, without any modality, that it is “the paradox of paradoxes.”68 And even, assuming transcendental phenomenology succeeds in describing the revelation as a “negative certitude,”69 it is still an open question what would then make this absolute givenness an experience of the holy.

The Revelation: The Entirely Other or the Everyday Heterogeneous?

When Marion writes revelation with a lower case r, it is to emphasize that it is not an empirical givenness, as the Revelation of God is in Christian theology, but a phenomenological possibility, the possibility of religion without religion.70 Therefore Marion’s presentation of the revelation cannot be descriptive, since he has no historical facticity to describe. His presentation rather becomes normative, and thus fortuitous: it is Marion who presupposes that a phenomenon that can be reduced to pure givenness is a revelation, and that the revelation therefore must be radically different from any intuition that is subject to the intention and constitution of the I. This means that in principle the revelation is incomprehensible. What we can comprehend cannot be a revelation, for the very reason that we comprehend it, and thus subordinate it to our I and adapt it to our horizon of understanding. What we do not understand may, logically, be a revelation since it has not yet been subjected to an I and a horizon; but when it exists as only a possibility, how can we know that it is a possible revelation, and not the possibility of something quite different, or a possibility that cannot become reality at all? Marion maintains about his revelation that it represents a possibility independent of this or that historical religion. If this is so, wouldn’t it be reasonable to ask, like Jocelyn Benoist, one of Marion’s critics: “What will you say to me if I say to you that where you see God, I see nothing?”71 Marion is of the opinion that the question disqualifies the asker, rather than the revelation he asks about. But this answer does not solve the problem: if Benoist sees nothing

68 Marion, Being Given, p. 5. 69 See his work Certitudes négatives. 70 J. Derrida, “Donner la mort,” in L’Ethique du don. Jacques Derrida et la pensée du don, eds. J.-M. Rabaté et al. (Paris, 1992), p. 52. Cf. The Visible and the Revealed, p. 167, Note 35. 71 Marion, The Visible and the Revealed, p. 124.

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where Marion sees God, is the revelation then a transcendental possibility or an impossibility in phenomenology? It is not the aim of phenomenology to end up in abstractions; on the contrary, the reduction is to bring the phenomenologist back to the things themselves and their essence. And that does not mean the things in themselves, but for us. Nor is it the aim to remain in the reduction and eidetic intuition: the world is what it is, unaffected by the phenomenological reduction, and even the phenomenologist lives on in her life-world. What reduction gives her is a deeper insight into the relationship between intention and intuition, i.e. the noetico-noematic correlation that shapes the world we live in. It is this insight which ultimately motivates the phenomenological project. With his definition of revelation, Marion in principle excludes it from this relationship. Marion’s revelation may have its interest in his philosophical construction, and also in phenomenology, but it must also prove its relevance as lived experience in our life-world, when the epoché is over and the brackets are resolved. And here the history of religion tells of revelations which take forms very different from the ones Marion describes. It is true that there at times have been mystical or apophatic tendencies in the monotheistic religions, which have tried to define God via negationis, but it seems both arrogant and unconvincing to exclude the personified figure of god who after all for thousands of years has been, and still is, a religious reality for the majority of the believers: The central motif of [the] prophetic religions is confrontation or a personal meeting between God and humanity. This God is experienced as an imperative to action; he calls us to himself; gives us the choice of rejecting or accepting his love and concern. This God relates to human beings by means of a dialogue rather than silent contemplation. He utters a Word, which becomes the chief focus of devotion and which has to be painfully incarnated in the flawed and tragic conditions of earthly life.72 Marion not only wants to disregard the Revelation of the Bible, but also the history of religion and the other historical manifestations of the holy. To be included in Marion’s project, revelation must be separated from religious experience and thus from any form of conditionality. But if the revelation is absolute, as maintained by Marion, it might as well not exist at all; it has no limits,

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K. Armstrong, A History of God: From Abraham to the Present: The 4000 Year Quest for God (London: Mandarin, 1994), pp. 243–244.

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no distinctive features which can identify it, no horizon of understanding in which it can be classified. Marion seems to run into the same problem as Lévinas, when the latter in his major work, Totality and Infinity operates with an “absolute experience” which “is not disclosure but revelation.”73 Janicaud comments on this claim, “More radically than ever, we must pose this question: Is the notion of ‘absolute experience’ admissible?” – and demonstrates the extreme weakness of such a claim, “– all of Lévinas’ discourse is suspended on this presupposition.”74 This is also true of Marion’s colleague Michel Henry who in his great work The Essence of Manifestation ends up with an “absolute autorevelation,” “a receptivity so fundamental that it escapes, while conditioning, every phenomenal grasp.”75 For both Marion, Lévinas and Henry, Janicaud’s criticism is relevant, that “The more phenomenality becomes attenuated, to the point of annihilating itself, the more the absolute inflates and amplifies itself, to the point of apotheosis.”76 Janicaud maintains that this leads to “a complete scorn for all of life’s actual determinations,”77 so that “Phenomenology is turned into its contrary, the most idealist metaphysics.”78 Espen Dahl, too, although somewhat more subdued, criticizes the “logic of separation” which he thinks governs Marion’s project.79 It is not able to capture our religious experience: Marion states that if philosophy of religion is possible at all, it must be open to the absolutely pure, in the sense of unconditioned phenomena. In other words, for the holy to occur, it must be uncontaminated by human restrictions and conditions. […] One must agree with Marion that the initiative of such experience of the holy is initiated from beyond subjectivity, even irreducible to the capabilities of subjectivity, but it must still be given within the scope of those capabilities. […] The exaggeration of otherness or foreignness runs into the danger of remaining abstract as long as it does not manifest itself within the reach of subjective experience, that is, as long as the foreign does not emerge on a familiar horizon.80 73

E. Lévinas, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, transl. A. Lingis (Pittsburg, Pennsylvania: Duquesne University Press, 1961), pp. 65–66. 74 Janicaud, Theological Turn, p. 42. 75 Janicaud, Theological Turn, pp. 74 and 73. 76 Janicaud, Theological Turn, p. 63. 77 Janicaud, Theological Turn, p. 78. 78 Janicaud, Theological Turn, p. 74. 79 Dahl, The Holy and the Everyday, p. 11. 80 Dahl, The Holy and the Everyday, pp. 5–6.

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Instead of isolating the holy entirely from ordinary secular life, Espen Dahl therefore suggests looking for the holy in the middle of everyday life, thus acknowledging not only the heterogeneity of everyday life, but also the incarnation of the holy. His point of departure is not the polarization between the holy and the profane, but the everyday life we live: What I will attempt is, therefore, to overcome the account of the everyday as homogeneous and suggest such a view rests on an illegitimate prejudice, and in its place to suggest an inherently heterogeneous everyday in which foreign and familiar, profane and holy are part of the same field. This opens up for a search for the holy as posited in the everyday, incarnated into its middle.81 This does not mean that one disputes the specificity of the holy, but rather that one ensures a phenomenological description of the holy, seeing that a phenomenological description is also a form of hermeneutics, i.e. a description of the phenomenon and its meaning, precisely for an I and within a horizon: […] once one starts the phenomenological work of excavating the hidden meaning-implication of the everyday, one is led to the tradition, or as Husserl often says, the inner history, not as an element externally added to the everyday, but as an internal dimension. The turn to history must therefore be thought of not as research into a new phenomenological field, but as a deepening of the everyday with particular weight on its mediation of sense. To suggest the importance and necessity of such mediation, it is enough to recall one important aspect of Otto’s and Levinas’ exaggeration of the Other: along with the abstraction of this conception comes also a lack of meaning resources to determine identity, and where there is no meaning to inform the experience, there is no way of deciding whether the foreign is holy or profane, divine or diabolic, good or evil.82

81 Dahl, The Holy and the Everyday, p. 11. 82 Dahl, The Holy and the Everyday, p. 184. The “logic of separation” that Espen Dahl demonstrates in Marion is not without similarities with the “aesthetic separation” which Gadamer demonstrates in the aestheticizing of modernity. Thus, Dorthe Jørgensen writes in her article in the present anthology, “On the Aesthetic Possibility of Experiencing Divinity,” that the work “loses contact to what really distinguishes art, namely that it can give rise to experience of cognitively crucial value.” (p. 64).

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Like Ricœur and Bernhard Waldenfels, Espen Dahl thinks that the revelation can only be understood as a revelation of the holy against the background of that which is not itself holy.83 It is not possible to experience the revelation absolutely, i.e. immediately. In accordance with his hermeneutical interests, Ricœur has claimed that the most acute problem for phenomenology of religion is not intentionality and its alleged exclusion of what exceeds adequate comprehension, but the immediacy of religious phenomena, or rather, the recognition of the impossibility of such immediacy.84 This means that there is no such thing as “the possibility of religion without religion”; Ricœur calls it a “rootless comprehension.”85 To experience the revelation as a revelation of the holy, we must ask about its meaning, and then we depend on the kind of mediation ensured not only by language, but also by tradition, history, and the history of religion. Even in a phenomenological perspective the revelation demands interpretation, and that is why it can only be experienced indirectly. In his article “The Banality of Saturation,” Marion himself concedes that it is not always immediately obvious whether an intuition can be reduced to an object or whether it is a saturated phenomenon; and sometimes what first appears as an object may later turn out to be a saturated phenomenon. “This affair is not decided abstractly and arbitrarily. In each case, attentiveness, discernment, time, and hermeneutics are necessary.”86 Perhaps he has acknowledged some of the criticism formulated by Ricœur, who writes about the religious phenomenon that “it is each time in a different way and with a different signification that what we above called obedience to the Most High is felt  and practiced. Height: immanent or transcendent? Anonymous or personal? Obedience passively submitted to or actively missionary? Solitary or 83

E. Dahl, Det hellige. Perspektiver (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 2008), pp. 54–55. In contrast to the grandiloquent French rhetoric, Dahl also calls the holy “en svak gest” (a weak gesture) (pp. 126 and 154). In The Holy and the Everyday he prefers to characterize the call as “interruptions,” rather than “irruptions”: “[…] the call – even if rarely heard – already resides in the midst of the everyday. It can come to the fore in various interruptions – and it is indeed prone to do so in cultic interruptions.” (p. 318). 84 Dahl, The Holy and the Everyday, p. 184. 85 P. Ricœur, “Experience and language in religious discourse,” in Phenomenology and the ‘Theological Turn’. The French Debate, eds. D. Janicaud et al., transl. J.L. Kosky and T.A. Carlson (New York: Fordham University Press, 2000), p. 132. 86 Marion, The Visible and the Revealed, p. 136.

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communal?”87 The realization that the religious phenomenon is conditioned in many different ways makes Ricœur draw a number of conclusions. Primarily one must give up constructing a phenomenology for the religious phenomenon in its universality and be content with the main characteristics in a specific religion. Secondly, to understand what religion is about, one must proceed hermeneutically from within a given religion and not postulate an outside view. Via analogies, one may then be able to widen the perspective to include other religions. Finally, a phenomenology of religion as such can at most function as an idea which motivates an inter-religious approach. In his article The Saturated Phenomenon, Marion begins, as we saw, by pointing to the “disastrous alternative” the philosophy of religion faces, of either “addressing phenomena that are objectively definable but lose their religious specificity or of addressing phenomena that are specifically religious but cannot be described objectively.”88 It is to avoid this unfortunate choice that Marion builds his phenomenology of religion emphatically distanced from theology. This means that he defines revelation as a transcendental possibility at the expense of Revelation as a religious experience.89 Now, phenomenology consists primarily of the reductive movement it makes from a givenness to the possibility of this givenness, and transcendental phenomenology is in danger of losing itself in speculation if it does not take experience as its starting point. It is not the choice between philosophy and religion that is unfortunate, it is Marion’s choice of the transcendental perspective on a phenomenon which first and foremost exists as a living experience, i.e. as a part of religious history. He establishes the conditions of possibility for a possible revelation thus constituted that even if we believe, we cannot perhaps experience it and never understand it, leaving the Revelation of history and faith to theology. But if revelation is a phenomenon, and the phenomenon is “das Sich-an-ihm-selbstzeigende,” it is not only true that it shows itself an-ihm-selbst, as a gift, as givenness, but also that it altogether is a Sich-zeigende, i.e. a revelation which actually reveals itself. 87 Ricœur, Theological Turn, pp. 130–131. 88 Marion, The Visible and the Revealed, p. 18. 89 Janicaud does not believe that Marion really chooses as he claims to do. On the contrary, he uses phenomenology as a springboard in his search for divine transcendence. For reasons of principle, transcendence cannot be described phenomenologically, but only be grounded in faith. With a reference to Heidegger’s Tübingen lecture in 1927, “Phänomenologie und Theologie,” Janicaud writes that “Faith explains itself essentially out of itself, that is to say, in terms of the historicity proper to Christian revelation.” Janicaud, Theological Turn, p. 100.

PART 2 Visual Art and Its Basic Conditions

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Introduction to Part 2 Geir Hellemo The four articles in this part focus on fundamental conditions for the use of visual expression in a religious context. The most basic question that all religious visual art must confront is whether or not the pictorial expression in itself is to be understood as religiously legitimate. Judaism promoted the prohibition of images (Exodus 20. 4–5) as a characteristic of its own religion, claiming with great force that the prohibition marked a decisive boundary vis-à-vis the religions that allowed themselves to represent the divine in something as contemptible as ‘graven images’, carved in wood or chiselled in stone. The dispute over the Golden Calf may be called a prototype narrative which brings up precisely the theme of the fundamental dispute about images in a religious context (Exodus 32). It is generally thought that the early church lacked visual representations due to its origins in Judaism. However, the encounter with Greco-Roman culture, which was rich in images, made imagery a matter of debate for the first Christians. In time, the debate about images was transformed into a debate of basic theological questions concerning a Christian understanding of creation, as implied by the incarnation of Christ. In the end, it is about questions that are also central to the scholarly work that has gone into this volume: does the divine leave traces in physical, material phenomena, or is the divine outside the world of experience? In this discussion, the figure of Christ inhabits a thoroughly central place: those who defend the position of images in Christianity claim that it is because God became human that we can produce images of him. Those who take a distance from religious images, on the other hand, claim that the divine was present in Christ in such a way that it would never be possible to reproduce it in images. Hans Jørgen Frederiksen’s article contains a summing up of the characteristics of the great iconographic conflict that raged in the Eastern church in the 8th–9th centuries. He emphasizes that the controversy left indelible traces. It will forever be incontestable that the Christian image is located on the border of what can be reproduced in pictorial form. Christian visual art came to carry within itself an intermittent uneasiness regarding its own images. Islam lies indisputably close to the religious discourse that Judaism and Christianity represent. The rejection of portraiture, at least in a public setting, is well known. However, this does not mean that Islam stands out as a religion that devalues aesthetic forms of expression. In his study of Ottoman culture in the mid-16th century, “Ottoman Sensoriness: Nature as a Source of Religious

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Cognition in Istanbul in the Mid-sixteenth Century,” Geir Hellemo shows that Islam is energetically preoccupied with visual forms of expression, precisely at the time when the reformation movement in the Western church placed the question of images on the religious agenda again. This time it is the Reformed Church that aggravates the image question by insisting that the infinite does not allow itself to be depicted in the finite. At the transition to modern times, a new challenge to the uses of images in a religious setting is introduced into Western culture. The rich and highly complex use of vegetation motifs in Ottoman art makes clear how Islam roots its religious thinking and practice in clear and goal-oriented observation of the created world. In this way, Islam actually documents the idea that incarnation is not a necessary prerequisite for the ability of religion to orient itself towards and seek inspiration in the created world. On the contrary, Islamic piety reflects an alluring and ever-returning interest not only in the beauty in everything created, but also in the power that can be derived from the understanding of God’s creative work in the world. Despite new disputes about images at the time of the Reformation, Christianity more or less appears as an image-friendly religion. Ever since the iconoclasts were finally defeated in 843, Christianity has officially rejected religion as a purely inner, spiritual phenomenon. The words of John of Damascus are classic: “I will not stop glorifying matter, because it was through matter my redemption went.” (see p. 201). It could be argued that the doctrine of incarnation as well as the belief in creation have given the image a secure place within the Christian tradition. In Western pictorial practice, the persistently positive interest in the created world is traced not only in reproductions of the biblical creation narrative, but also more indirectly in an insuppressible joy at producing vegetation motifs within more or less clearly defined ornamental contexts. However, it is characteristic of the development within the Western church that Christological themes attract more and more attention. In representations of Christ, the Passion gradually becomes the paramount theme. Kristin B. Aavitsland places her main emphasis in her article, “The ornamenta ecclesiae in the Middle Ages: Materiality as Transcendence,” on the significance of the incarnation for the development of Western pictorial expression. She documents that it is first and foremost the incarnation as a physical, sensory phenomenon that influences liturgical furnishings in the artistic practice of the Middle Ages. The connection between altar ornamentation and the administration of sacraments constitutes the most important point of focus in this context. But Aavitsland also emphasizes – with reference to a source from the 14th century – that the actual sensory qualities of the

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furnishings are perceived as temporal, secondary and imperfect, when placed in contrast to a future, perfect sense perception of God. In all its materiality, the sensory quality of the objects in this way discloses its own limitations. This tendency is strengthened in the late Middle Ages and lays down important guidelines for religious practice in the Post-Reformation period. The clear focus on Christ’s redemption, understood as a total submission to death on the Cross, reflects important changes in the perception of the ideals of beauty. The aesthetic ideals of the Middle Ages recede in favor of a greater awareness of the hideous and the offensive, which not least through the Reformation is ascribed a new kind of theological dignity. In time, the sublime also turns up as a supplementary category. In the sublime, harmony gives way to the expressive and overwhelming, not least as we encounter it in impressions of nature (see p. 254, 281ff.). This involves the Western pictorial expression becoming more experimental, at the same time as the theological framework becomes more open and challenging. In the two articles dealing with modern art there is a discussion of two contemporary artists that share important common characteristics: Per Kirkeby and Anselm Kiefer. Both actively interact with older Christian pictorial tradition. At the same time, they emerge as artists who reflect their own time in a direct and confrontational way. In the article, “ʻI Can See Byzantine Art and Understand Itʼ: The Problematic of the Byzantine Images and the Immanent Transcendence in Per Kirkeby’s Art,” Hans Jørgen Frederiksen underlines Kirkeby’s sense of connection and proximity to older art traditions. It is characteristic of Kirkeby that he speaks of “The Byzantine Island” in the following words: “The center is what I call the dynamic emptiness, that sort of nothing,” (see p. 196). Is this kind of statement an expression of Byzantinism, or is it an expression of our contemporary experience? No matter what the answer might be, Per Kirkeby in this type of statement resorts to the basic debate on the raison d’être of the image, also outside the religious space. In his article, Frederiksen underlines, in a way that reminds of early Christianity, the significance of materiality for talking about God. He utilizes the expression transcendent immanence, and thus ties the discussion to the general thematic of the project (see p. 19, 83). The reference to Teilhard de Chardin stands out as a central theological point of reference for a similar thought: “By matter we are nourished, lifted up, linked to everything else, invaded by life. To be deprived of it is intolerable […],” (see p. 217). Leonora Onarheim’s article, “God Among Thorns: On Anselm Kiefer’s Pietà (2007),” supplements this discourse on central points. She analyzes Kiefer’s work, Pietà (2007) in light of Kiefer’s sharp focus on the prohibition against images, and his interpretation of the second commandment as an order to

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create despite the impossibility of doing so. While Frederiksen’s material is oriented towards the Eastern artistic traditions, the examples that Onarheim uses – primarily Kiefer’s Pietà – have elements of Catholic piety and traditional Christian iconography. Onarheim shows how Kiefer’s Pietà has iconoclastic characteristics, in that it departs from the established image tradition connected with the Pietà motif, which normally shows the Virgin Mary holding the dead Jesus on her lap. At the same time, Kiefer widens the thematic repertoire through the use of supplementary motifs, which we recognize from other religious art traditions. For example, the rose seen in Kiefer’s Pietà is equally central to Ottoman iconography as it is within Catholic practice. Kiefer not only renews these art traditions as visual expressions, he challenges them quite fundamentally as well, by placing them in harsh and controversial relations, first and foremost to German war history. The images thereby gain an ambivalence that challenges both our understanding of contemporary society and of religion. Onarheim analyzes Pietà in relation to Christian iconography, to the Holocaust and to a general experience of the sensory. The articles about Per Kirkeby and Anselm Kiefer document a tendency which has not been weakened in recent times: as material for artistic creativity, religious traditions play an almost surprisingly central role in our own time. Both articles show that a work of art has a particular ability to bring established, religious artistic traditions into a space that clearly and directly encourages the viewer to open up for new reflections and thoughts.

chapter 5

The ornamenta ecclesiae in the Middle Ages: Materiality as Transcendence Kristin B. Aavitsland Introduction The religion and aesthetics project, Sensoriness and Transcendence, which was run by the University of Oslo in 2007–2011, has attempted to ask the question, “If the holy is an expression of transcendence, how can art represent or reproduce the holy as a sensuous presence?”1 The motivation for working with this question has been, as I understand it, a wish to establish an aesthetics of Protestant religion, and thus leave behind the rejection of or skepticism towards material expressions of faith, which was found in the Reformation – and which to a certain degree still characterizes Protestant thinking and religious practice. The aim of the project is both of a theological and philosophical nature. Consequently, a historical approach to Christianity’s aesthetic inheritance is not the primary path to comprehension chosen in the studies presented here. However, as an art historian and medievalist invited to contribute to the discussion, I maintain that a historical perspective can supplement and refine the topic of religious aesthetics. Therefore, this article is intended as a contribution to reflections on the historicity of aesthetic paradigms and the historically conditional nature of transcendent art experiences.2 As a medievalist I will shed light on the historicity of transcendent art experiences in the staging of holy presence in Romanesque ecclesiastical art. Even though the relationship between materiality and spirituality, between sense perception and transcendence was anything but unproblematic in medieval theology, the medieval ‘paradigm of the senses’ can, nonetheless, be said to represent an alternative to that of Post-Reformation Catholicism and 1 Project description: http://www.tf.uio.no/forskning/prosjekter/sanselighet/santra-nfr-soknad. pdf. See also Christoffersen’s introduction to this volume, p. 2. 2 Parts of the following argument has been presented in two other contexts: K.B. Aavitsland, “Visual splendor and verbal argument in Romanesque golden altars,” in Inscriptions in Liturgical Spaces, Acta ad archaologiam et artium storiam pertinentia, 23/9, eds. K.B. Aavitsland og T. Karlsen Seim (Roma: Bardi Editore, 2011); K.B. Aavitsland, “Incarnation. Paradoxes of Perception and Mediation in Medieval Liturgical Art,” in The Saturated Sensorium. Principles of Perception and Mediation in the Middle Ages, ed. H.H. Lohfert Jørgensen (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 2014). © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi 10.1163/9789004291690_009

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Protestantism, which is the project’s point of departure. Where the Protestant paradigm is characterized by a withdrawal of theology from the sphere of the arts,3 the medieval paradigm demonstrates an integrated, extensively sensebased culture in which, paradoxically, the holy takes on sensoriness, for example through the demonstrative insistence on material qualities in ecclesiastical art. In the following, using a representative, French, 14th century source, I will attempt to establish a basic frame of reference for the conditions of sense perception in the Western, Christian Middle Ages. Against this background, I will try to elucidate the point at which the issue of sense perception and transcendence is most acute, that is, the Eucharist, the sacramental celebration of Christ’s sacrifice in the mass. I will concentrate not on the liturgy itself, but on certain aspects of the material ornamentation of the sacramental altar, ornamenta ecclesiae. Indeed, the altar furnishings, in particular in the Romanesque period, give us an idea of how this sensory perception is to be understood. In the end, I will be more specific by extending the discussion to the altar inscriptions, which in form and content treat the status of the perceived picture as a source of transcendental cognition.

The Paradox of Sensory Perception

Between 1350 and 1380 in Normandy, a tract on the art of hunting was written, a work which some scholars connect with the name of the nobleman Henri de Férrière.4 The tract, which is handed down in thirty or so manuscripts, bears the title Les livres du roy Modus et de la royne Ratio. The king and the queen are personifications of practice and theory respectively, but the concepts of modus and ratio of course also play on the idea of moderation and reason. Like so many other medieval, didactical works, this one is also in the form of a dialogue. King Modus and Queen Ratio teach a group of courtiers about hunting techniques, how to hunt different types of game, as well as how to set snares and traps, handle weapons, use hunting dogs and falcons, etc. The courtiers ask and the king answers the practical questions, while the queen takes care of 3 Cp. pp. 3–5. 4 G. Tilander, Le livre de chasse du roy Modus (Paris, 1931), p. xxiii. See also E. Sears, ‘Sensory perception and its metaphors in the time of Richard of Fournival’, in Medicine and the five senses, eds. W.F. Bynum and R. Porter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 17–39 and K.B. Aavitsland, Imagining the Human Condition in Medieval Rome (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2013), pp. 218–219.

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more theoretical questions. However, the work turns out to contain far more than guidelines for hunting methods. Queen Ratio’s errand is, in fact, to show that theories of the hunt also have ontological and theological, indeed, redemptive-historical, dimensions. The queen is asked how it can be that the hart can see through the hunter’s tricks and thus avoid being captured, and how the hound, in turn, is able to out-smart the hart. The queen replies that this is due to the sharply honed senses of the hart and hound. One shouldn’t be surprised by the fact that animals’ senses are sharper than humans’, she points out. Humans can thank themselves for that. Originally, God created Adam, the first beste humaine, with a perfect sensory apparatus, so that he could perceive God’s glory. The dumb animals, les bestes muez, who have no understanding of a creator and thus no soul, stood at the time below humans in sensory acuity and hence insight. Queen Ratio explains further that she and King Modus (that is, reason and moderation) have been sent to the earth by the Lord himself in order to rule humans and guide their will to do the right thing. However, since humans have chosen to neglect both reason and moderation and have let themselves be blinded by the world and the devil, their senses have been blunted. They can no longer sense God. So deep have humans fallen that the soulless animals now surpass them in sensory acuity.5 Queen Ratio’s interpretation of the relationship between animals’ and humans’ senses illustrates two basic assumptions for the understanding of sensory perception in medieval culture. Firstly, sense perception has only one single legitimate aim, that is, the recognition of God. The aim of sense perception is transcendental. Secondly, the human sensory apparatus is corrupted due to Original Sin, thus impairing man’s ability to sense God. These two very different ideas constitute what could be called the paradox of sensoriness: sense perception’s great objective is incompatible with the corrupted state of the senses. Therefore, the senses are the source both for man’s salvation and damnation. However, Christian salvation implies an eschatological dissolution of the paradox of sensory perception: belief in the resurrection of the body involves hope for a future perfect sensory perception of God. As St. Paul has 5 “Quant Dieu Nostre Sire crea Adam, qui fu la premiere beste humaine, il lui donna es cinc sens de nature et en toutes autres choses plus de perfection que il ne fist en nulle autre beste, et m´envoia ovesque li pour son governement. Mes il ne voust mie tenir ma doctrine, par quoy il perdi la greigneur partie de toutes les graces que Dieu li avoit faites, et en telle maniere il obliga les ames de toutes les autres bestes humaines d´aler en enfer. Et pour ce demoura aus bestes mues greigneur perfection quant aus sens de nature qui ne fist aus humainez, et pour celle cause es tu plus merveillé du senz que les bestes ont que tu ne fusses se Adam m´eust creu,” Les livres du roy Modus et de la royne Ratio, ed. G. Tilander (Paris, 1932), p. 60.

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put it, “Videmus nunc per speculum in aenigmate; tunc autem facie ad faciem”; “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face…” (1 Cor. 13.12). It seems clear that the conditions for sensory perception in medieval culture are (1) that its actual goal is God, (2) that this goal is unattainable in life on earth because the senses were corrupted in Original Sin, but (3) thanks to Christ’s sacrifice, the senses aspire to perfection through the resurrection of the body and in this way, they can fulfill their goal, which is the perception of God. This triadic conception is stable from the early to late Middle Ages and constitutes a shared premise for the many shifting and often contradictory notions of the status and limitations of sensory perception.

Multi-Sensory Sacramentality

On the basis of the aforementioned, we see that the conditions for sensory perception here and in the hereafter are carefully connected with Christ’s sacrifice, which reconciles man with his creator and allows the senses to fulfill their goal at the end of history. Not surprisingly, the paradox of sensory perception comes into play in the liturgical celebration of this sacrifice, in the Eucharist. The altar’s sacrament was a paradoxical staging of an imperceptible reality, communicated to believers through all five senses: the eye is stimulated by the altar’s shining chalice and other ornamentation, the ear through song and bell-ringing, the sense of smell through the incense that consecrated the altar and the offerings, the senses of taste and touch through the consumption of the Lord’s flesh and blood. It is true that participation in this act was socially differentiated, in so far as participation in the Holy Communion was not open to the general public, and nor was there free visual access to the choir from the nave during most of the Middle Ages. As the German art historian Hiltrud Westermann-Angerhausen notes, the fragrance of incense must have been the most democratic way of sensing the sacrament.6 Despite the fact that the sensuous approach to the sacrament was socially differentiated, this strictly formalized and carefully staged act is understood as a manifestation of the paradox of sensory perception: the celebrant sees, smell, touches and tastes something that according to the teachings of the church is totally different from what his human, corrupted senses communicate, that is, the Lord himself. The Eucharist is, in a way, a staged 6 H. Westermann-Angerhausen, “Incense in the Space between Heaven and Earth. Inscriptions and Images on the Gozbert Censer in the Cathedral Treasury in Trier,” in Inscriptions in Liturgical Spaces, Acta ad archaologiam et artium storiam pertinentia 23/9, eds. K.B. Aavitsland og T. Karlsen Seim (Roma: Bardi Editore, 2011).

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deception of the senses: “Visus, tactus gustus in te fallitur” (“The sight, the touch, the taste are all in you deceived”), says Thomas Aquinas in his famous hymn, Adoro devote, to the altar’s sacrament.7 Even so – or perhaps for that very reason – the church insisted that the Eucharist should be experienced sensualiter.8 This was pointed out emphatically in the last half of the 11th century and throughout the 12th century by the theologians who put much energy into repudiating Berengar of Tours’ doubts about the transsubstantiation of wine and bread at the altar. The argument seems to be that paradoxically, sensory perception is necessitated precisely by its own insufficiency. It is worth noting that in precisely this period, in the wake of Berengar’s condemnations and before the transubstantiation dogma was finally laid down during the fourth Lateran Council (1215), all altar furnishings surrounding the sacrament were surprisingly ‘sensuously’ designed. Book covers, altar crosses, censers, chalices, reliquaries, and altar frontals from this period practically exude material substance and appeal to the senses.9 Their shining surfaces, precious materials and opulent ornamentation appeal not only to the eye, but possess a nearly tactile sensoriness. Metal, ivory, enamel and many types of stone are taken into use in order to create pictures, scenes with figures and ornaments, but despite the fact that the materials serve the purpose of depiction and ornamentation, they themselves do not disappear out of sight. On the contrary, the objects are designed in such a way as to elucidate and emphasize the materials qua substance.10 The glowing colors of the enamel, the translucence of quartz, the hardness of the stones, the whiteness and softness of ivory, the shining surface of metals, which are not accentuated primarily to create the illusion of some other texture, but in order to demonstrate their own (Fig. 5.1). This is quite a different aesthetic and sensory strategy than that of late medieval and early modern illusionism. Depictions of the truths of belief do not strive towards mimesis. On the contrary, through their explicit material character, the depictions point toward their own status as manufactured artifacts. This quality in the Romanesque altar is described by JeanClaude Bonne as choséité, materiality. ‘La choséité’ has a defining function in 7 8

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P.G. Walsh and C. Husch, eds. and trans, One Hundred Latin Hymns: Ambrose to Aquinas (Cambridge, Mass and London: Harvard University Press, 2012), pp. 366–367. M.C. Ferrari, “Die Wende zum Körper. Dialektik und Eukaristie im 11. Jahrhundert” in Canossa 1077. Erschütterung der Welt. Geschichte, Kunst und Kultur am Aufgang der Romanik, eds. C. Stiegemann & M. Wemhof (München: Hirmer Verlag, 2006), vol. 1, p. 268. For an ample presentation of this type of objects from the 11th and 12th centuries, see the exhibition catalogue Ornamenta ecclesiae, volumes 1–3, published by Schnütgen Museum in Köln, 1985. H. L. Kessler, Seeing Medieval Art (Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2004), p. 19.

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Figure 5.1 Altar frontal and retable with crucifix, Sahl Church, Jutland, Denmark, c. 1225 Photo: Nationalmuseet, Copenhagen

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relation to the ability of the objects to depict – paradoxically – the extra-sensory, the sacred.11 Like the wafer and the wine, the altar furnishings also demonstrate the paradox of sense perception by virtue of their materiality, their substance. Matter is at once absolutely necessary and completely inadequate to the goal of sense perception: knowing God. However, in the Romanesque world view, the sensory perception of the Eucharist, and thus also of the material frames surrounding it, work not only phenomenologically, as we have seen, but also analogically. The bodily sense impressions, which are at the root of the celebration of the Eucharist, also represent an analogy to the sense experience of the soul, for parallel to the body’s corrupted sense apparatus, that of the soul is intact. With the help of faith, the senses of the soul mirror the perfected physical experience of the glory of God, which awaits the righteous after the Resurrection. As the celebration of the mass is a kind of anticipation of and analogy to the realization of the Kingdom of God at the end of time, it is possible to see the strictly formalized and staged sensory experience of the Eucharist as a kind of precedent of the sensory experience of God awaiting his followers in heaven.

The Image between Text and Materiality

Thus, the materiality of the Romanesque altar furnishings shows the paradox of sensory experience and anticipates its dissolution through the literally eyecatching use of various precious, bright and magnificent materials. Another striking and equally consistent characteristic of the Romanesque altar furnishings is the fact that they are full of text. This liturgical epigraphy consists of carefully composed lines of poetry which comment on the cultic meaning of the pictures or of whole objects. Like verbal arguments, the inscriptions in principle represent a whole other medium than the demonstrative, wordless, but nonetheless heavily signifying materiality. Traditionally and in particular within a Protestant paradigm, we are used to thinking of the text as a ‘stronger’ medium, and these inscriptions have in turn been read as exhaustive ‘explanations’ of the object’s iconographic content or liturgical function, as a kind of authoritative stamp of approval, so to say, for a definitive and unambiguous interpretation. I wish to emphasize that the Romanesque inscriptions are 11

J.-C. Bonne, “Entre l’image et la matière: la choséité du sacré en Occident,” Bulletin de l’Institut historique Belge de Rome, 69 (1999), pp. 77–112; K.B. Aavitsland, “Materialiet og teofani. Om bruken av kostbare materialer i romansk alterutsmykning,” Kunst og kultur 2 (2007), pp. 78–91.

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subordinate to the objects’ materiality, their choséité. This subordination can be observed both with regard to form and content, and I will give examples of both. The examples are taken from a group of spectacular metal altars in Danish country churches in Jutland. These altars are highly representative of European altar ornamentation in the Romanesque period.12 The degree to which the majuscules on the golden altars are aestheticized is remarkable. There is apparently a strong consciousness of the immanent visual value of the writing in the design of the letters, which in places are raised up from the metal sheets, in other places painted on the copper, gilded or with a brown varnish (Fig. 5.2). On all the altars, the lettering is clearly monumentalized and on some, ornamented. The inscriptions on the Lisbjerg altar, which is the oldest one, have ‘stung’ letters, while the younger altars from Odder and Sahl have profiled rings around the letters (Fig. 5.3). In fact, aesthetics seems to take precedence over readability in the golden altars’ versified frame inscriptions: the reader is not helped in any way. Apart from the small crosses that mark the beginning of a new verse line, the inscriptions do not indicate where the single words or periods begin and end. In contrast to the graphic image in contemporary manuscripts, in which the organization of the text is visualized with the aid of ornaments or otherwise clearly marked initials, punctuation marks and paragraph indentations, the visual form of the inscriptions reveals neither the grammatical nor the poetic structure. There is no attempt at

Figure 5.2 Inscription on the altar frontal from Lisbjerg Church, Jutland, Denmark, c. 1135 Photo: Nationalmuseet, Copenhagen 12

A seminal work on the golden altars is P. Nørlund, Gyldne Altre. Jysk Metalkunst fra Valdemartiden, København 1926. See also P. Grinder-Hansen, Nordens gyldne billeder fra ældre middelalder (Copenhagen: Borgen 1999); S. Kaspersen and E. Thunø, eds., Decorating the Lord’s Table (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2006); K.B. Aavitsland, “Materialitet og teofani”; eadem, “Visual splendor and verbal argument”; eadem, “Visual orders in the golden altar from Lisbjerg,” in Ornament and Order. Essays on Viking and Northern Medieval Art, eds. M.C. Stang og K.B. Aavitsland (Trondheim: Tapir Academic Press, 2008).

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Figure 5.3 Samples of lettering from Danish Romanesque altar frontals FROM NØRLUND: GYLDNE ALTRE, 1926

adjusting the length of the lines of verse to the length of the frame. Rather than presenting a clearly exposed text, the goal seems to be ornamentation of the writing. The inscriptions appear as cohesive, decorative borders with almost iconic qualities. It is clear that the text on the altars is meant to be seen as much as read, and the image of the text is equal in significance to the text itself.

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In a study of inscriptions on Anglo-Saxon artifacts, Leslie Webster maintains that “the image of the word delivers its own powerful message quite distinct from its spoken counterpart.”13 Furthermore, she shows that every ornamented inscription in medieval culture contained in all likelihood an indirect allusion to the incarnation of Christ, the Word that became flesh and took on a visible form. In the golden altars, this allusion is particularly obvious (Fig. 5.4). The liturgical connection between incarnation, on the one hand, and the Eucharist, on the other, has a long tradition in medieval theology, growing in significance in the course of the 12th century in the wake of the Gregorian reform.14 Petrus Damianus claims, for example, that the mystery of the incarnation is repeated every time the Eucharist is celebrated at the altar, as the invisible God becomes accessible to the individual’s senses in the shape of bread and wine. In the golden altars, the inscriptions can be said to reinforce this cultic reality purely visually and by virtue of their aesthetics.15 Independent of its content, the ornamented lettering represents in itself the incarnate Word made visible. The ornamentation of the lettering implies a ‘materialization’, which makes the text as much an expression of firm, physical and sensorial realities as an expression of abstract ideas. In this way, the inscriptions find their place in relation to the choséité of the altars, the phenomenological and analogical perception of which remains the foremost carrier of cultic meaning. Furthermore, in the contents of the inscriptions there are at times hints of this train of thought. On the illustrious golden altar in Stadil Church in Western Jutland, dated to c.1225, the contrast between verbal argumentation and visual perception is an explicit theme in the three distichs that run along the frame of the frontal (Fig. 5.5). The inscriptions are as follows: + QVAM CERNIS FULUO TABULAM SPLENDORE NITENTE(M) PL(U)S NITET YSTORIE COGNITIONE SACRE PANDIT ENIM CHR(IST)I MYSTERIA QVE SUP(ER) AURVM IRRADIANT MVNDIS CORDE NITORE SVO ERGO FIDE MVNDES MENTE(M) SI CERNERE LVCIS GAUDIA DIUINE QVI LEGIS ISTA UELIS 13

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L. Webster, “Visual Literacy in a Protoliterate Age,” in Literacy in Medieval and Early Modern Scandinavian Culture, ed. P. Hermann (Odense: University Press of Southern Denmark, 2005), p. 21. A. Van Dijk, “‘Domus Sanctae Dei Genetricis Mariae’ – Art and Liturgy in the Oratory of Pope John VII,” in Decorating the Lord’s Table, eds. S. Kaspersen and E. Thunø pp. 13–42; J. Wirth, L’image à l’époque romane (Paris: Cerf, 1999), pp. 195–200. K.B. Aavitsland, “Visual splendor and verbal argument.”

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Figure 5.4 Altar frontal and retable with crucifix, Lisbjerg Church, Jutland, Denmark, c. 1135 Photo: Nationalmuseet, Copenhagen

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Figure 5.5 Altar frontal, Stadil Church, Jutland, Denmark, c. 1225 Photo: Nationalmuseet, Copenhagen

Here is my attempt at a translation of the inscription: You behold this tablet shining with golden splendor, but it shines even more with the knowledge it radiates of the sacred story. For the pure of heart it reveals the mysteries of Christ, whose own splendor outshines gold. To you who read this: purify your mind in faith if you want to behold the joys of the divine light. The inscription is appellative and addresses the reader or observer directly. Rhetorically it plays on the contrast, and at the same time the similarity, between physical and spiritual light, between material and spiritual splendor, between seeing with the eye of the body and of the soul. The verb cernere (behold, observe, but also discern) is used for both forms of perception. In the first distich, the verb refers to the physical observation of the tablet (cernis tabulam/“you behold this tablet”), while in the third distich it refers to the spiritual observance of the heavenly splendor (si cernere lucis gaudia divine velis/“if you want to behold the joys of the divine light.”) The inscription can of course be read as a warning against materialism, as it has often been interpreted, as is also the case in Abbot Suger’s renowned

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inscription on the bronze doors of St. Denis.16 However, it can also be read as a type of meta-commentary on perception and understanding. The reader is reminded that the golden tablet’s real radiance comes not from the brilliant, bright materials, but from “the knowledge it radiates of the holy story” (nitet ystorie cognitione sacre). This can hardly refer to anything other than the reliefs with scenes from Christ’s childhood, i.e. the images (historiae) on the altar frontal. The sensorial radiance of the reliefs is understood as being analogous to that of knowledge, that is, the radiance of the contents which reveal “mysteries of Christ” (Christi mysteria). The inscription, in contrast, is assigned the humble function of guiding the eye of the viewer. It is the visibility that is meaningful – for those who are pure of heart (mundis corde; cf. Matt. 5.8). This interpretation of text-reading and image-viewing deserves a moment’s reflection. Even though we know by now that there are certain interpretive challenges to Gregory’s dictum that images are the writing of the unlettered, we are nonetheless used to encountering this position in medieval pedagogy, not least because Gregory’s dictum is so often repeated. In keeping with Gregory, the written word is given priority as an effective communicator of religious knowledge, while the images are relegated to having some kind of illustrative, auxiliary function. The Stadil inscriptions seem to take the opposite point of view and turn Gregory upside down: perception of the images reveals knowledge of the holy story, while the text guides the observer’s perception. This is an interpretation which can also be found among some medieval commentators, in particular in the 10th to 11th centuries among men who defended the monastic reform movement based in Cluny. The zealous monastic reformer, William of Volpiano (962–1013) is one of them, and he maintains that, Using writing to point out the beauty and perspicacity of a work of art to those who are less educated is not in vain, as many aspects of a work contain a mystical meaning, which is attributed to divine inspiration rather than handicraft skills.17 A hundred years later, in a far more renowned and oft-cited text, Abbot Suger claims almost the same thing. It is remarkable that these two abbots, who were both large-scale patrons of ecclesiastical ornamentation and involved 16

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O. Norn and S. Skovgaard Jensen, The House of Wisdom – Visdommen i Vestjylland (Copenhagen: Christian Ejlers, 1990), pp. 19 and 74; E. Dahl, “Kirkeutsmykningen i middelalderen. Bernard av Clairvaux og Suger av St. Denis som representanter for to motsatte åndsidealer,” Lumen, 14 (1971), pp. 103–106. R. Favreau, Epigraphie médiévale, L’ateliér médiéviste, 5 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1997), p. 192.

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practically in great building projects, both affirm the fact that the visual aspect of the images is the primary conveyor of meaning. However, the meaning that is conveyed is mystical in nature and must be seen through the eye of the soul. Some, however, need explanatory inscriptions in order to be able to understand, or, perhaps, rather to believe. The Stadil inscriptions propound a similar view: the inscription is for guidance and support, while in the divine mysteries, reachable only through belief, it is only the images that can convey – sensualiter. Conclusion In summary, I have attempted to account for how Romanesque ecclesiastical art functions as an aesthetic interpretation of a (sacramental) religious practice in which ornamenta ecclesiae appear as a firm material expression of sensoriness and transcendence and at the same time, as manifestations of the paradox of sense perception. I hope to have shown that this aesthetic interpretation is contingent on a concrete liturgical practice as well as a given historical context. Thus, it can possibly be concluded that the understanding of expressions of (aesthetic) transcendence or transcendent sensoriness (aesthetics) demands a historical contextualization. The Romanesque paradigm’s integration of sensoriness and transcendence is not immediately accessible to us today. Only to a very limited degree do we share Romanesque taste, and without a systematic study of the texts and images of the period, many of us find it difficult to see anything but a banal display of material splendor in the insistent materiality of these works. As far as possible, we have to ignore our own aesthetic preferences in the study of Romanesque aesthetics. The integrated Romanesque culture of the senses charts new territory but functions on premises that we post-moderns do not necessarily share. In the medieval paradigm, the primary condition for the paradoxical connection between sense perception and transcendence is not rooted in the perceiving subject, but in the incarnation of Christ, which is repeated in the Eucharist, and which thereby gives sense perception a value that extends beyond its own capacity. Furthermore, the Romanesque staging of sacramental holiness assumes that all media and all sense impressions are temporal and therefore secondary and imperfect. Behind the mirror and the mystery, beyond the temporally corrupted sensory apparatus waits absolute reality and perfect sense perception.

chapter 6

Ottoman Sensoriness: Nature as a Source of Religious Cognition in Istanbul in the Mid-sixteenth Century Geir Hellemo Introduction In his book I Æventyrland (In a Fairytale Country), K. Hamsun writes, “When the last war between the Greeks and Turks broke out, a Turkish officer of course said who was bound to lose. And he continued: Oh, the rivers will run with blood and there will be blood on the flowers, the Greeks will fall in such numbers! I once read this somewhere, and it struck me because of its language and strange image. Blood on the flowers! You, sirs, Prussian officers, when did you speak like that […]”1 The strange idea which fascinates Hamsun is mentioned in a travel book which was written after a colorful journey through The Caucasus in 1899. The description is not the only one of its kind. It appears as a characteristic expression of a literary genre which was not least cultivated in connection with journeys to the Orient around the change of the century. E.W. Said is basically critical of the frameworks this kind of description is found within. They support a kind of voyeur mentality which has generally marked the European attitude to the Orient, he claims. “The Orient […] is for the European observer, and what is more […] the Orientalist ego is very much in evidence, however much his style tries for impartial impersonality.”2 Of course it cannot surprise anyone that travel narratives have the traveler himself as their primary reference point. It is more important that this kind of narrative, according to Said, is often part of a Romantic construction of an undifferentiated entity that is termed The Orient, and which Europeans utilize to accept their own existence more readily.3 For his own part, Said writes off 1 K. Hamsun, I Æventyrland. Oplevet og drømt i Kaukasien (Oslo: Gyldendal Norsk Forlag, 2000 (1903)), p. 35. 2 E.W. Said, Orientalism (London: Penguin Books, 2003 (1978)), p. 158. 3 Cp. his statement: “The Orient as a place of pilgrimage… The vision of Orient as spectacle, or tableau vivant.” Studies of the Orient often aim at “a comprehensive interpretation of the Orient. Most of the time, not surprisingly, this interpretation is a form of Romantic restructuring of the Orient, a re-vision of it, which restores it redemptively to the present,” Said, Orientalism, p. 115. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi 10.1163/9789004291690_010

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the Orient as a ‘redemptive’ project, since he regards the Romantic re-creation as a subjective, fanciful and idle endeavor. It is not surprising that this kind of characteristic has come under fire. Indeed, Said underestimates both the critique of civilization and the creatively challenging impulse which is the background not only of the Hamsun quotation, but which in a wider sense has been engendered by the Western interest in the Orient for nearly two centuries.4 This does not mean that Said’s perspective is devoid of interest. He manages convincingly to expose a main tendency in the meeting of the West with the Orient, that of superiority.5 When the Orient is viewed from a Western perspective it has a tendency to come across as inferior in all essentials.6 It is this basic attitude that Said primarily wants to reveal: “The absolute and systematic difference between the West, which is rational, developed, humane, superior, and the Orient, which is aberrant, undeveloped, inferior.”7 Conceivably, the solution to the problem Said pins down could be that the Western exterior perspective was substituted by an interior perspective. The

4 It is natural to regard Hamsun’s interest in Eastern cultural impulses as an element of his criticism of the cultural life he met during his stays in the usa in the 1880’s. See R.N. Nettum, “Generasjonen fra 1890-årene,” Norges litteraturhistorie IV (Oslo: J.W. Cappelens forlag, 1975), p. 138f. Hamsun’s critique of culture is a prominent element in great parts of his work. See R.N. Nettum, “Generasjonen fra 1890-årene,” p. 167ff. In Owen Jones og den islamske inspirasjonen, brosjyre til Nasjonalmuseets utstilling 30.1–30.4 2011 (Oslo: Nasjonalmuseet, 2011), it is emphasized that whereas orientalism in the 18th century had taken the form of a Romantic movement, it developed in artists and scholars in the first half of the 19th century into a more matter-of-fact and analytic attitude. For general critical perspectives on Said, see M. Sharafuddin, Islam and Romantic Orientalism, Literary Encounters with the Orient (London: I.B. Tauris Publishers, 1996 (1994)), pp. XVI–XX. To sum up, Sharafuddin states, “I do not believe that the thought of all Western writers was wholly conditioned by an all-enveloping cultural grid, nor that they were the inevitable product of their age’s imperialist and political ideologies. Insofar as they were part of their period (a period which contained the American and French revolutions), they had available to them its innovative as well as its conservative tendencies,” p. XVII. 5 “I have been arguing that ‘the Orient’ is itself a constituted entity, and that the notion that there are geographical spaces with indigenous, radically ‘different’ inhabitants who can be defined on the basis of some religion, culture, or racial essence proper to that geographical space is equally a highly debatable idea,” E.W. Said, Orientalism, p. 322. 6 “The Orient and Islam have a kind of extrareal, phenomenologically reduced status that puts them out of reach of everyone except the Western expert,” Said, Orientalism, p. 283. 7 Said, Orientalism, p. 300.

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Orient must represent itself.8 This would then entail that the dialogue with Western research traditions which have, broadly speaking, played a decisive role in the study of Eastern sources, was put on hold. Today one gets the impression that the most important scholarly contributions are found in the fertile gap between an exterior and an interior perspective. In my opinion, this is a good place to occupy. It is important to be wary of inherited prejudices. One can never be enough on guard against an unreflective dissemination of traditional patterns of thought.9 At the same time, it is essential that one is stimulated and truly challenged by the problems one tackles.10 This is a demanding project. There is no reason to hide the fact that Eastern sources represent alien ideas which are difficult to engage in a dialogue. For example, there can be no doubt that ‘the blood on the flowers’ is a phrase German soldiers would never think of using. This is still a strange image. Nevertheless, we are not dealing with concepts that are totally impenetrable. If one studies a parade shield from the 16th century, one may find that it is embellished with tulips (Fig. 6.1). At least this suggests that it must have been quite common to combine war and flowers. The immediate association which brings them in contact is in all probability the red color. ‘Blood on the flowers’ thus seems to presuppose that the red color of the flowers is associated with the bloodshed of war in such a direct way that the blood can actually be transferred to the flower itself. The one who sees red tulips sees the streaming blood of war (Fig. 6.2). Hopefully, such an interpretation is adequate in relation to Hamsun’s text. But it is not sufficient for understanding the use of flowers within more extensive war imagery. The Turkish historian Kemalpashazade describes the battle of Mohacs on April 21, 1526 against the Hungarians as follows: “When the akinci11 joined the attack in impetuous waves, a sea of blood began to be stirred up in seething waves. Their red head-dresses made the battlefield a bed of tulips […] Shields cracked like the heart of a rose, helmets filled with blood like the lips of a rose-bud. Mists of blood rising like a purple cloud to the horizon were like a rosy sky above the head of victory’s betrothed.”12 Here there are many strange concepts or many images which we would never think of employing. The point 8 Said, Orientalism, p. 283. 9 Said, Orientalism, p. 283. 10 Said, Orientalism, p. 283. 11 akinci = troops stationed in frontier regions. 12 Quoted from A. Clot, Suleiman the Magnificent (London: Saqi Books, 2005), p. 58. Quotes from languages the author does not himself master are presented in the translation found in the sources referred to.

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Figure 6.1  Wicker shield, Topkapi Sarayi Müzesi, Istanbul, mid-sixteenth century E. Atil: The Age of Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent no. 101

in this connection is not to find the ultimate key to Turkish war imagery, but a reminder that when we are going to study the Ottoman art of the 16th century, we are faced with a constant challenge to free ourselves from our own aesthetic categories connected with flowers, color, and form. To put it differently, the Hamsun quotation documents the fact that Kant’s aesthetics cannot  contribute much to the understanding of Oriental sources, since it is based on a perception of life connected with feelings of pleasure, i.e. the sensations of desire and distaste, and thus reflects characteristic traits in Western thought.13 In this article we will take a closer look at selected examples of Ottoman iconography from the middle of the 16th century. It is not the aim to reveal all 13

Cf. G. Hellemo, Øyet som ser. Historiske perspektiv på kunst, estetikk og teologi (Oslo: Solum forlag, 2011), p. 179.

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Figure 6.2 The tulip gardens of Emirgan, April 2010 Photo: G. Hellemo

its alien qualities, but this does not prevent us from believing that it is possible to shed some light on some aspects of what we see, if we keep a watchful eye on it. Our sources will document the fact that plants and nature play an extremely important role and enter into very different interpretive connections within Ottoman culture.14 In this connection, the religious material plays an absolutely central role. Plants do not only belong to war; judging by the decoration programs in the religious buildings of the Ottomans, they belong primarily to religion. We have now pinpointed the thematic material of this article. We want to explore the status given to vegetation and nature in Ottoman religious culture, primarily in the golden age under Sultan Süleyman, who ruled from 1520 to 1566. 14

“The most conspicuous feature of Ottoman art is the joyful representations of nature, depicting fantastic or realistic flora in perpetual growth,” E. Atil, The Age of Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent (Washington: National Gallery of Art, 1987), p. 17. See also M. Al-Asad, “Applications of Geometry” in The Mosque. History, Architectural Development & Regional Diversity, (eds.) M. Frishman and H.-U. Khan (London: Thames & Hudson, 1964), p. 65.

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The thematic material deserves attention from a research perspective since it has hardly been the object of targeted research.15 This is true, not only of the use of motifs of vegetation in a more general sense. In the literature, we also find modest reflections on the role played by plant motifs in religious contexts. There is often only a reference to the connection between vegetation and a religiously colored paradise theme, but an extreme reluctance to give fuller descriptions of how the interplay between them must be understood.16 In our work with this material, we will primarily study the pictorial expression closely, to establish typical characteristics in the representation of the natural elements (Part I). We will then study the vegetation theme in light of the other visual forms of expression used in the relevant religious buildings (Part II). Finally, we will look further, to wider iconological horizons, where in particular mystic, philosophical thinking from the Sufi traditions plays an important part (Part III). It goes without saying that the study will conclude in a discussion of the conditions for a theology of creation in a religious universe which is basically non-incarnational, as opposed to Christianity. In many ways it is the realization of the theology of creation, on other premises than the ones we are familiar with in a Christian context, that stands out as the most important source of inspiration for this work.

Part I: Analysis of Ottoman Plant Motifs

In 1543 Şehzade Mehmet died of smallpox, only 21 years old. It was said that Süleyman mourned at the boy’s dead body for three days before he allowed the burial to take place. Then he decided to build a mosque complex in his memory. The task fell to Sinan, who was the court architect from 1538, and who

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E. Atil writes, “The iconography of flowers on İznik ceramics has not been properly studied, although Ottoman society was deeply involved with their meaning, and produced volumes devoted to such flowers as tulips and hyacinths,” The Age of Sultan Süleyman, p. 275. W.B. Denny is for example very general in his descriptions of the religious content of the vegetation motifs: “The central metaphor of the Qur’an that has given birth to the richest artistic legacy, however, is that of Paradise, the reward promised by God to true believers in the world to Come […] Practically speaking, in the Ottoman artistic tradition this leads to a situation where any artistic depiction of an idyllic landscape or of flowers, or any silken cushion or carpet, whether intended for religious or secular purpose, inevitably assumes the religious symbolism of Paradise,” Iznik. The Artistery of Ottoman Ceramics (New York: Thames & Hudson, 2004), p. 21f.

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completed the work in 1548.17 As was usual, a garden was planted next to the mosque, with türbes (mausoleums), the finest of which belonged to Prince Mehmet (Fig. 6.3). This, Şehzade Mehmet’s türbe, is going to be our point of orientation. We will later return to the actual design of the building (see p. 163), but first we have to analyze the decoration we find in this small, exquisite, but inaccessible sepulcher.18 First of all, we note that the decorative program of the room quite predominantly consists of ceramic tiles. This is hardly surprising. In Ottoman tradition it becomes more and more common to cover public buildings, predominantly

Figure 6.3 Şehzade Mehmed Türbe, interior, Istanbul, 1543 G. Necipoğlu, The Age of Sinan. Ill. 164

17 18

R. Günay, Sinan. The Architect and his Works (6th Edition) (Istanbul: yem Publication, 2009), p. 21. In the summer of 2011 the türbes connected to the mosque complex were under renovation. This suggests that in the near future they may be made more accessible than they have hitherto been.

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mosques and türbes, in ceramic tiles.19 This study will therefore primarily deal with the types of decoration which are used in this medium. In that way, the study will be placed centrally in the total production of Osmannic art of the period. At exactly this time, ceramic production goes into a period of greatness which is only paralleled in ancient Chinese porcelain, on the one hand, and modern, Western porcelain production from the 18th century, on the other. It is not least the development of a rich palette of colors that characterizes Ottoman ceramics. Only at the end of the 19th century do we find a comparable richness of color in modern, Western, ceramic production. For a period of about 150 years, Iznik (Nicaea) is the principal center of the ceramic production, which is regulated more than anything by the needs that the sultan’s building activities create at any given time.20 Before 1550 the ceramic production is marked by older, Eastern traditions. Two conflicts between the Ottomans and Eastern dynasties came to play a considerable role for the dissemination of Eastern tradition into the Ottoman culture. In the first, Timur Lenk takes prisoners of war with him to Samarkand (now in Uzbekistan), after having vanquished the Ottomans in 1402. On their return, they bring back inspiration from the Timurid culture, which can be clearly seen in the use of the so-called cuerda-seca technique, which is first used in an Ottoman context in the mosque complex of Sultan Mehmed I (1413–1421) in Bursa (see p. 143).21 In the other conflict, it is the Ottomans who conquer Tabriz (in north-western Iran). Subsequently Sultan Selim I (1512–1520) takes a great number of craftsmen with him to Istanbul. They created a workshop in Istanbul which was responsible for the total tile production, still in the cuerda-seca technique. The most influential of the craftsmen who were brought to Istanbul in this way was Şahkulu, who introduces a whole new decorative style at the Ottoman court (see p. 151).22 It must also be noted that Selim brought considerable amounts of Chinese porcelain with him from Tabriz as war booty. Yet Eastern influence did not lead the Ottomans to ignore Western impulses and Western influence.23 If we look at the architectural forms that dominate the religious Ottoman buildings, there can be no doubt that all the building activity that takes place in Constantinople after the conquest in 1453 is dependent on the Byzantine heritage. It is safe to say that all the mosques for which 19 20 21 22 23

G. Öney, Ceramic Tiles in Islamic Architecture (Istanbul: Ada Press Publishers, 1987), p. 68. J. Carswell, Iznik Pottery (London: The British Museum Press, 2006 (1998)), p. 13ff. N. Atasoy & J. Raby, Iznik. The Pottery of Ottoman Turkey (London: Alexandria Press, 1989), p. 83. Atasoy & Raby, Iznik, p. 83, p. 96: Cf. E. Atil, The Age of Sultan Süleyman, p. 66f. Clot, Suleiman the Magnificent, p. 285.

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Sinan is responsible must be understood as commentaries on Hagia Sophia, Emperor Justinian’s unsurpassed church building from the middle of the 6th century.24 Also, the great number of Christians in the state administration and the considerable Greek element in Constantinople’s population in the centuries after the take-over have undoubtedly been an important creative influence in Ottoman culture in general.25 Thus, there is no doubt that the Ottomans’ attitude to the west changes after Mehmet II’s conquest. Mehmet did not only see himself as a custodian of the traditions from the caliphs and sultans, but also as a successor to the Byzantine emperors, and even of rulers such as Julius Caesar and Alexander the Great. Therefore, he engaged Greek painters, collected Greek icons and hired classical philologists to make himself familiar with the literary heritage from antiquity. To maintain the reputation of the city, he also hired Italian artists to work in Istanbul.26 When that is said, there is still no doubt that Byzantine tradition had little to contribute to the development of the characteristic Ottoman iconography. This is of course connected with differences in the understanding of images and in the artistic praxis. We note that when the Ottomans have to develop their own picture scheme, they initially turn to the East, where they can draw on the work their fellow Muslims have developed over several centuries.27 In this way the Ottoman culture presents itself as a strange amalgamation of highly different traditions which, precisely by virtue of its diversity, represents a challenging material for analysis. However, we here deal not only with the 24

25

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For example G. Necipoğlu in his reference to Süleymaniye remarks that the mosque has been seen as “a ‘structural criticism’ and ‘rationalization’ of Hagia Sophia’s scheme with a new spatial definition,” “Anatolia and the Ottoman Legacy” in The Mosque. History, Architectural Development & Regional Diversity, (eds.) M. Frishman and H.-U. Khan (London: Thames & Hudson, 1964), p. 154. Se N.M. el Cheikh, Byzantium Viewed by the Arabs (Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004), p. 2f. It is estimated that at Süleyman’s time c. 40% of the population were Christians or Jews, Clot, Suleiman the Magnificent, p. 202. Cp. also E. Rogan, The Arabs. A History (New York: Basic Books), p. 26. R. Irwin, Islamic Art (London: Laurence King, 1997), p. 96. This does not mean that the cultural heritage of Christianized antiquity does not leave traces, also in the Ottoman artistic expression. From antiquity, the Byzantines continue a strong and vital ornamental tradition, which was periodically connected with, if not necessarily iconoclastic preferences, then at least non-figural preferences. Thus, the original pre-Islamic decoration of Hagia Sophia, appears as surprisingly non-figural in the whole construction of its pictorial program. Indeed, the interest in sometimes strongly stylized representations of vegetation motifs follows the Byzantine tradition right up to Mehmet II’s conquest of the city. By and by we will also come across plant motifs which because of their realism are regularly connected with Western herbarium traditions.

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exchange of different types of artistic traditions but just as much with different but kindred ideological impulses which clash and enter into close and challenging dialogues. When we turn our interest towards the decoration in Şehzade’s türbe, we immediately notice that thematically it is completely dominated by vegetation motifs of various kinds. The motifs are arranged according to strictly managed symmetrical principles. Altogether this creates a basic ornamental character which we could easily see as mere ornament, i.e. relatively uninteresting as  an artistic expression.28 But the iconography of the türbe cannot be dismissed so quickly. Analyses of the motifs open up for a number of interesting observations. In the large ceramic surfaces between the window areas on the first floor of the building, the most distinctive plant motifs resemble stylized lotus flowers seen obliquely from above (Fig. 6.4). Here we also find buds belonging to the same plant, rosettes, i.e. wreaths of symmetrically ordered petals, and some large, slightly irregular flower shapes that are difficult to identify. The flowers are connected with curved vines from which single leaves sprout. All these motifs are combined in a unified structure by white frames. The color scheme is mainly rose, light and dark blue on a green ground. This type of theme is often called hatay, which means from China, and is thus a result of Chinese influence. Plant representations of this type can therefore be termed chinoiserie. Another thematic sphere is primarily characterized by large, elegantly shaped split leaves which form part of a strict, geometrically arranged framework. Here the color scheme is predominantly ochre, but the leaves have inset, light blue fields which deepen and nuance the organic form of the leaf. This type of theme is generally termed rumi, i.e. Roman, and designates an affinity to the old Byzantine domains which were since conquered by the Seljuqs.29 The term arabesque, however, which is also sometimes used to describe this type of motif, generally covers a wider spectrum of two-dimensional geometrically arranged decorative patterns.30 The combination of arabesques and chinoiserie is sometimes regarded as a specific rumi-hatay style in which it is exactly this singular combination of 28 29 30

J. Trilling, The Language of Ornament (London: Thames & Hudson, 2001), pp. 14–15. For the term rumi, see N.M. el Cheikh, Byzantium Viewed by the Arabs, pp. 22–24. “These geometrically organized two-dimensional decorative patterns consisted not only of abstract geometric shapes, but included inscriptions and vegetal designs organized according to rules of regular geometry, and the relatively ambiguous term ‘arabesque’ can be used to describe the various forms of two-dimensional geometric patterns,” M. Al-Asad, “Applications of Geometry,” p. 65.

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Figure 6.4 Şehzade Mehmed Türbe, interior, Istanbul, 1543 Photo: G. Hellemo

flower vines and arabesques which is seen as the most important stylistic characteristic.31 In this way, the decoration comes to consist of two separate, but combined structures, which together form a unified motif group. The organization of the surface in several ornamental layers is also known from older Ottoman art. In Selim I’s Camii from 1522, lotus flowers with white contours, orchid-like flowers 31

N. Atasoy & J. Raby, Iznik, p. 76.

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and various kinds of rosettes, together with split leaves, form a pictorial layer which immediately is seen as separated from an underlying network of blue leaves growing on winding vines in the same color (Fig. 6.5). Even more clearly than in Şehzade’s türbe we see that the surface is characterized by an overall undulating, symmetrically arranged structure of vines, which binds together the composition of the area. The two levels are not, however, consistently kept separate in the mosque, as they are in the türbe, as the blue leaves can sometimes overlay the white vines, and flowers outlined in white grow mainly on blue vines. In addition, lotus flowers, orchids and various rose-like flowers grow effortlessly side by side on the same vines. This indicates a rather free attitude to the vegetative base behind the representation. This is not very surprising, for here we do not deal with a representation of vegetation which the creators of the pictures know at first hand. These flowers were disseminated into Ottoman iconography via Chinese porcelain. Thus, the creators of these images have had to reproduce the plants in the same stylized way as the originals they had at their disposition, and they have even transformed plants into hybrids which are

Figure 6.5 Selim I Camii, interior, Istanbul, 1522 Photo: G. Hellemo

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without natural counterparts.32 The uncertainty involved in the identification of the vegetation motifs is expressed in the fact that in the literature the plant motifs can also be described as peonies, camellias and the like. The stylized tendency was reinforced by the cuerda-seca technique which was employed in both the picture programs mentioned. In cuerda-seca, a fatty pigment was used to isolate the various areas of glaze with thin line drawings (Fig.  6.6).33 As mentioned above, the technique was first employed by the Ottomans in Mehmet I’s mosque complex in Bursa.34 From this time the

Figure 6.6 Şehzade Mehmed Türbe, interior, Istanbul, 1543 Photo: G. Hellemo

32

J. Carswell, Iznik Pottery, p. 63. Carswell claims that the Ottomans did not understand the Chinese flora: “Nor did they really understand the Chinese flora, the peonies and lotuses being transformed into hybrid forms far removed from the natural world,” p. 91. 33 Carswell, Iznik Pottery, p. 83; V. Porter, Islamic Tiles (London: The British Museum Press, 1995), p. 18ff. 34 Carswell, Iznik Pottery, p. 83. see also G. Öney, Ceramic Tiles p. 70 and V. Porter, Islamic Tiles, p. 99.

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technique is continued in Ottoman court art right up to our türbe, which is the last monument in Istanbul to have extensive ceramic decoration of this kind. The cuerda-seca technique sets up a framework for the further development of ceramic art within a clearly stylizing expression. Thus, the technique does not only demand a simplification of form, but the color range becomes similarly limited. In the context dealt with here, we find no motif which can be said to be imitative of nature, and when it comes to the choice of color, it seems extremely free.35 From picture program to picture program the color scheme also varies considerably, even though the yellow-green palette of the türbe is much more typical of works created in the cuerda-seca technique than the blue-purple keynote of Selim’s mosque. On that background, we can state that we have to do with a highly stylized reproduction of vegetation in the prince’s türbe, which is determined by the technique and iconographic originals. The monument itself represents a kind of final point for the style commonly known as Ottoman court style up to c. 1550. An intimation that something new is in the offing can be found in the tympanum areas above the lower window openings in the türbe, which are mainly filled with calligraphy. Among the characters, small detached flower motifs are found, some of them single tulips. This is a flower with which the Ottomans were much more familiar than with the lotus. A much clearer expression that fundamental changes are taking shape is found on the inside of a book cover made for the same Şehzade Mehmet, and which therefore must be dated before 1543 (Fig. 6.7). The flora that turns up here can only be characterized as revolutionizing in reference to older Ottoman art. The most striking fact is that the plants reproduced are well-known plants which the artists themselves have had an opportunity to see. Here, a rose bush grows next to a flowering apple tree. In addition it is easy to recognize at least iris, tulip, carnation, violet and hyacinth, which are all painted separately. This new thematic material was introduced at the court by Kara Memi, who was Şahkulu’s student.36 This turn towards direct naturalistic representation of nature is important, not least because before long it is going to influence the production of the ceramic tiles. However, the new iconography presupposed the emergence of a porcelain-like type of ceramics, which primarily opened possibilities of 35

In fact, the same flowers can be given very different colors within one single program (Şehzade), or different flowers may get the same coloration within the same program (Selim). 36 Atil, The Age of Sultan Süleyman, p. 31; W.B. Denny, Iznik, pp. 41–54.

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Figure 6.7 Lacquered binding (interior), Topkapi Sarayi Müzesi, Istanbul, c. 1540 E. Atil: The Age of Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent no. 18a

creating imitations of the genuine Chinese porcelain.37 Such ceramics were developed by the Timurids in Persia in the 15th century, but the further development towards white ceramics of high quality takes place in Iznik towards the end of the 15th century.38 This white ceramic is then painted before the glazing takes place. The technique is therefore known as underglaze.39 It is immediately understandable that this type of painting creates a whole different degree of freedom to reproduce details than was possible with the older cuerda-seca technique. In the beginning the white ceramics were solely painted with patterns in cobalt blue, later in cobalt blue and turquoise. 37 Denny, Iznik, p. 44. 38 Denny, Iznik, p. 49. 39 On the difference between underglaze and overglaze, see J. Bloom & S. Blair, Islamic Arts (London: Phaidon, 2010), p. 281f. og Porter, Islamic Tiles, p. 17.

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The new technique was introduced into monumental architecture in the mihrab in Murad II’s (1421–1451) mosque in Edirne as early as around 1435. The mihrab, i.e. the niche indicating the direction of Mecca, resembles the corresponding prayer niches in Bursa a lot, but is different in one important respect, as all the indentures in the stalactite vaulting are decorated with underglazed ceramics. We recognize the lotus flower and rosettes, which are sometimes described as camellia-like.40 The mihrab, which is otherwise decorated with cuerda-seca tiles, has in its entirety been created by one single group of craftsmen, which again emphasizes the fact that the diverging techniques and styles have not been administered by rivaling groups of craftsmen, but appear as different elements in an all-embracing craft tradition. In the same mosque we also find large wall areas covered by hexagonal tiles, whose choice of motifs in general is marked by chinoiserie. If we compare the chinoiserie in these tiles with similar motifs, for example in the prince’s türbe, we immediately see how the new technique opens for a much greater wealth of detail. But it can hardly be claimed that the growth of the new technique is behind the wish to depict the motifs as naturalistically as possible. Chinoiserie actually characterizes the production of underglazed ceramics until well into the 16th century. The new, more realistic style which we have met in the book cover from Şehzade Mehmet’s time is found again in the hexagonal tiles that decorate the Yeni Kaplica hamam in Bursa. The tiles are dated to before 1552–3. We will dwell on two of the nine motifs which are repeated any number of times. One represents a bouquet of spring flowers ordered strictly symmetrically (Fig. 6.8). They are tulips, carnations and hyacinths. The demand for symmetry means that the depiction of the flowers is more stylized than in the book cover. For example the three tulips that constitute the central motif of the tile are arranged in such a way that the central tulip is depicted with a straight stalk, while the two at the sides bow gently to either side. They are also depicted with clearly separated petals. The carnations and the hyacinths encircle the tulips with slightly curved stalks, and in that way fill in the open spaces in the tiles. The motif as a whole comes across as more quiet and restrained than the depiction of the flowers on the book cover. On the other tile we see depicted a bunch of branches with flowers ordered asymmetrically, but still in such a way that the surface is covered evenly with flowers. What is most sensational in these tiles, however, is the color scheme. Whereas the tulips are blue and green, the carnations have light blue stalks with purple flowers. The hyacinths, on the other hand, are dark blue. The same four colors are repeated in the tile with the 40 Carswell, Iznik Pottery, p. 20.

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Figure 6.8 Yeni Kaplica, interior, Bursa, 1552 Photo: G. Hellemo

flowering twigs, in both cases on a white background. The color combination is not only less naturalistic than on the book cover, but it is also extremely rare in terms of the production of ceramic tiles. After a fairly brief period, red was introduced as an alternative to purple in ceramic production. A significant monument with extensive naturalistic flower motifs, with red as an important color element, is found in the Rüstem Paşa Camii, the mosque that was built in 1561/2 by Süleiman’s son-in-law and great vizier, Rüstem Paşa. In our context, the mosque is the main monument for the analysis of naturalistic vegetation motifs. In this relatively modest mosque, which has the most extensive tile decoration of all the mosques of Istanbul, we will concentrate on the left lateral area of the mosques main entrance (Fig. 6.9). Within a niche of considerable size, a magnificent depiction is presented against a cobalt blue ground. The dominant theme in the picture is the two branches from a flowering fruit tree, probably belonging to the prunus genus, which protrudes through a bunch of large leaves with serrated edges. The leaves, which are covered with chains of hyacinth flowers, give the impression of having been stirred by the wind. In addition to the white flowers that grow on the two branches along with their buds, we recognize tulips, roses, carnations, hyacinths, pomegranates and narcissi. The arrangement is not symmetrical, but nevertheless gives a unified and calm impression, thanks to the dominance of the white

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Figure 6.9 Rüstem Paşa Camii, exterior, Istanbul, 1561/2 Photo: G. Hellemo

flowers. The leafage is generally turquoise, and the tree trunks are purple. In most of the flowers we find elements colored red, a color that had recently come into use. Several parameters have to be considered to assess how naturalistic the depiction of the motifs is. The depiction of single flowers on separate vines often with their characteristic leaves pull in a naturalistic direction. In this respect the rose is typical; it grows on its own stalk and is surrounded by the odd-pinnate leaves characteristic of the rose genus. We also note that like so

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many of the other flowers, it is depicted in a characteristic position, in this case in profile, and both the flower and the leafage are positioned in such a way that we will be able to recognize them without any disturbing elements. This means that the plants are depicted almost as if they were to be used as plates in a herbarium. It has, indeed, been suggested that the pictorial expression has been inspired by Western herbaria.41 In our context it is more important that such a depiction of the motif means that one limits the possibility of representing any random nature impression. It is not some rose chosen at random that is depicted, but the rose itself, practically in an archetypical sense, as one of several plants that make up the glory of spring.42 If we now turn our attention to the flower branches, we see that the flower buds are always reproduced in profile, whereas the flower itself is depicted in a frontal view. In addition, the flowers are depicted in carefully ordered rows. The depiction also breaks a certain monotony by grouping the flowers into two 41 42

Atasoy & Raby, Iznik, p. 222. The tension in Islamic art between the plants of our experienced world and the stylized but still naturalistic depictions of that world of experience can be described in various ways. Nasr writes quite generally, “Islamic art does not imitate the outward forms of nature but reflects their principles,” S.H. Nasr, Islamic Art and Spirituality (Ipswich: Golgonooza Press, 1987), p. 8. This type of representation is connected with characteristic traits in Islamic art in general: “The undeniable intellectual character of Islamic art is not the fruit of a kind of rationalism but of an intellectual vision of the archetypes of the terrestrial world” p. 8. For the understanding of archetypes, see, H. Corbin, Alone with the Alone. Creative Imagination in the Sūfism of Ibn’Arabī (Bollington series XCI), (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997 (1969)), p. 4. In My Name is Red (London: Faber and Faber) 2001, O. Pamuk gives precise characteristics of the unique character of this kind of representation. Pamuk writes: “‘But didn’t the great masters also create their masterpieces from memory without ever even looking at real horses, trees or people?’ said Black. ‘True’, I said, ‘but those are memories acquired after years of thought, contemplation and reflection. Having seen plenty of horses, illustrated and actual, over their lifetimes, they know that the last flesh-and-blood-horse they see before them will only mar the perfect horse they hold in their thoughts. The horse that a master miniaturist has drawn tens of thousands of times eventually comes close to God’s vision of a horse, and the artist knows this through experience and deep in his soul. The horse that his hand draws quickly from memory is rendered with talent, great effort, and insight, and it is a horse that approaches Allah’s horse’” p. 306. The same concern is central in T. Burckhardt, Art of Islam. Language and Meaning (London: World of Islam Festival Publ. Comp. Ltd., 1976): “In general terms, the Persian miniature […] does not seek to portray the outward world as it commonly presents itself to the senses, with all its disharmonies and accidentialities; what it is indirectly describing is the ‘immutable essences’ of things, by which a horse is not simply a particular member of the species but the horse par excellence; it is this generic quality that the art of the miniature seeks to grasp,” p. 36.

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different categories. Both seem to have two or three rings of petals, of which the two inner ones vary in both color and form. So, strictly speaking, it is not the same flower type that grows on the twigs. We also find single flowers which in the overall program have the character of pure hapax legomenon, and as such are without clear references to any recognizable flower (Fig. 6.10). In this way the pictorial representation itself suggests clear limitations for what degree of nature imitation we are supposed to read into the motifs.

Figure 6.10  Rüstem Paşa Camii, exterior, Istanbul, 1561/2 Photo: G. Hellemo

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Variants of this type of image are repeated in the mihrab and minbar of the mosque, that is, in the prayer niche and on the lectern, but they also turn up in a number of other imperial monuments of the period. An unusually beautiful example is found in Roxelana’s türbe from 1558. However, this does not mean that it is this kind of representation that dominates the pictorial expression in Rüstem Paşa. The walls of the mosque are predominantly covered by a great number of different, strongly stylized vegetative motifs which are mainly arranged in repeating, wallpaper-like patterns. Thus far, but no further, can we trace a development in a naturalistic direction within the Ottoman iconography of the 16th century. With the development of Western painting as a frame of reference it would be tempting to imagine that this is to be understood as an Islamic parallel to the development of painting during the Renaissance. Strongly stylized expressions must give way to a more naturalistic representation. But then we overlook a third and final tendency which actually becomes the most influential trend within 16th century court art in Istanbul. Again we must seek its roots in older Eastern traditions which were communicated in a western direction by Şahkulu who was to direct the sultan’s workshop (nakkaşhane) from 1526 to 1556. As mentioned, he originally came from Tabriz, and then lived for a while in Bagdad before he came to Istanbul in 1520/21 (cp. p. 138).43 Şahkulu introduces the so-called saz style in Ottoman art. The word saz is of Turkish origin and is used about an enchanted wood, full of fantastic spirits. The term corresponds well with an iconographic idiom which is known from cartoon strips and which depicts an imaginary world which is full of composite flowers which grow among abnormally large leaves and which are inhabited by dragons, female spirits (peri) and wild animals.44 A good example is found in a folio from the Cleveland Museum of Art in which a fearsome dragon crashes through heavy foliage on its way towards a creature which sort of grows out of some equally luxurious foliage and thus is given zoomorphic, i.e. animal-like traits (Fig. 6.11). The imminent wrestling match between them is added to by an attacking lion which has already sunk its teeth into the dragon’s neck, thus suggesting that the dragon may not be the one to leave the battle as the victor. If the animal battle does not exactly breathe spirit into nature, we can at least state clearly that the plant motifs which are reproduced here are pulled into a mythic battle between opposing forces. In such circumstances nature is no longer just a neutral decorative sphere, but it is filled with powers that are 43 Carswell, Iznik Pottery, p. 56; Atil, The Age of Sultan Süleyman, p. 102. 44 Atil, The Age of Sultan Süleyman, p. 101.

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Figure 6.11 Dragon in foliage from an album, The Cleveland Museum of Art, mid-sixteenth century E. Atil: The Age of Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent no. 46

connected with life and growth. E. Atil connects the pictorial representations with mystical and shamanistic traditions.45 If we take a closer look at the plant motifs themselves, we notice that the leaves are serrated – they are sometimes described as feather-like. The flowers, which are here partly hidden by the leaves, are large and fantastical. Sometimes they are described as lotus-like, even though the correspondence with the lotus we have met previously is marginal. We would prefer the term imaginary flowers for this type of flora. We also notice smaller, rosette-like flowers which grow in rows on long tapering vines. Şahkulu is also associated with the five panels which today decorate the facade of Sünnet Odasi, the circumcision room, in the fourth inner yard of the sultan palace Topkapi Saray.46 Even though the dating has been controversial, it looks as if a consensus is being found, that they were painted as early as  in 1527/8, i.e. right after Şahkulu took over the leadership of the sultan’s

45 Atil, The Age of Sultan Süleyman, p. 100. 46 Carswell, Iznik Pottery, p. 56; Atil, The Age of Sultan Süleyman, p. 102.

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workshop.47 The more than meter-high tiles also unmistakably belong to the same tradition we found in the folio just mentioned (Fig. 6.12). We immediately recognize the characteristic feather-like edge of the leaves and the large flowers, which have both been given a wealth of detail, which is unique in Ottoman tile tradition. The tiles are, indeed, regarded as among the most outstanding of their genre.48 But the battle motif itself is totally removed in favor of a peaceful pastoral idyll, in which large birds, possibly pheasants, are nibbling at the flowers. Even though the animal pairs at the bottom of the picture, which seem to be mythical Chinese antelopes,49 may seem slightly frightening, it is the far more harmonic display of vegetation which shelters peaceful birds

Figure 6.12 Sünnet Odasi, Topkapi Sarayi, Istanbul, 1527/8 Photo: G. Hellemo

47 Atasoy & Raby, Iznik, p. 102. 48 Atasoy & Raby, Iznik, p. 102. 49 Denny, Iznik, p. 72.

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that now determines the basic character of the pictorial expression. In addition to the color scheme, which is cobalt blue with additions of turquoise on a white ground, we also note that the picture is not arranged according to symmetrical principles. This departure from symmetry as the leading principle of composition is to characterize the further development of the saz tradition, which only picks up speed in the 1540’s. A characteristic example from the pottery production after this period is the exquisite plate which today belongs in a private collection (Fig. 6.13).50 From a pair of twisted leaves two stalks grow forth. The smaller stalk on the left ends in a large jagged saz leaf which partly conceals two small vines of small rosette flowers. The main stalk, on the other hand, leads directly to the central flower of the plate, where a richly composite center medallion is surrounded by a large ring of jagged leaves. From this flower the stalk leads on

Figure 6.13  Plate with saz spray, private collection, mid-sixteenth century E. Atil: The Age of Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent no.182 50 Atil, The Age of Sultan Süleyman, p259.

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and curves to the left until at the edge of the plate it makes a sharp bend left, after which it follows the shape of the plate in a long 360 degree curve. On this curve are placed five lesser buds and five different flowers, of which two are rosette-shaped and two are lotus-like. The stalk is then finished with a large jagged leaf penetrated by its own stalk. The rotating movement gives the depiction a lively, dynamic character. We notice that the leaves are outlined with a very thin black line which resembles the ink used by the manuscript illuminators.51 The invention of this new technique which took place around 1550 gives the drawing a precise, but first and foremost delicate, subtle character which we have not met previously. The plate belongs to the small exclusive group of polychrome ceramic art works, which employs the four colors, cobalt blue, light blue/turquoise, grayish green and purple, and which we have met before in the hamam in Bursa. We especially note how the purple, for example in the buds, has been painted in a water color technique, which gives the motif a kind of depth and a unique veracity. The whole palette is played out in the largescale flowers, whereas the leaves are a natural green, but veined in purple and with cobalt stalks. As already mentioned, it is this saz style that becomes dominating within the monumental art in the second half of the 16th century. We find it employed already in the prince’s türbe from 1543. Just as much, but in a quite different way, it dominates the last mosque to be mentioned in this connection, the Sokollu Mehmet Paşa Camii, which was built for one of the most prominent great viziers in the Ottoman empire, in 1571–72. Sokollu rose to grand vizier already under Süleyman, but continued in his position all the way up to 1578, when he was killed by a mad soldier. We will give special attention to two characteristics of the decorative program in this mosque (Fig. 6.14). The first is connected with the detailed depiction of the saz motifs, which totally dominate the two large side panels of the mihrab and which are considered among the largest and finest of their kind.52 As before, we recognize the characteristic serrated leaves, the small flowery vines, and the rosette-shaped and lotus-like large flowers from the plate discussed above. If we take a closer look, however, we will find some peculiar and unique traits. The leaves no longer have the suggestion of veins we found on the plate, but are instead filled with blue and white cloud-like formations. These are familiar in older ceramics inspired from China, but nevertheless, it is surprising that they can be used as characteristic markings on the leafage. In addition, the flowers, with a few new developments, can be drawn in practically the same manner as 51 Denny, Iznik, p. 49. 52 Denny, Iznik, p. 102.

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Figure 6.14  Sokollu Mehmet Paşa Camii, interior, Istanbul, 1571/2 Photo: G. Hellemo

we know from older saz depictions. Sophisticated contour drawing, not in black, but as a darker variant of the main color is a general trait. A kind of dotting technique is also used, particularly in the blue areas, to give life to the surface. In addition, red now replaces the purple of the older style throughout. The clear emerald green color also contributes to giving the general pictorial expression an extremely intense and energetic character. Most striking, as regards motifs, is yet the fact that small rosette-shaped flowers can sprout from a larger blue flower as a kind of flowers in the flowers. It is also surprising that large rosette-shaped flowers can have as much as seven to eight circlets of petals in different colors, which are actually finished in a tiny new rosette at the tip of the petals. We see this as an unmistakable will to re-develop the pictorial expression in an imaginative direction. Even though both leaves and flowers within the saz tradition have always been imaginative, one gets the impression that now it is permissible to give almost free reign to the imagination. It is as if the pictorial expression insists on wishing to distance itself from any nature-given expression. The other special characteristic in Sokollu Camii is only noticeable when we study the accent wall as a whole. We will then notice that the plant forms we have been studying, and which are placed at either side of the mihrab,

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continue upwards around the calligraphic areas until we reach the window areas. Between the window openings we find motifs which are clearly distinguished from the one we have just looked at, because here easily recognized tulips with carnations, roses and several other distinctly depicted flowers, wind energetically up the wall in what one could call languorous, rhythmic movements. The decorated area certainly has a sensual character which has few parallels in monumental art, but what is most striking is the combination of vegetation motifs that are both imitative of and distanced from nature, in the same pictorial area. As it turns out, this way of working is not unique. If we take a proper look at Süleyman’s tuğra, i.e. monogram, we will find that the different, limited areas within the monogram itself draw on very different iconographic traditions: whereas one area uses the saz style in its traditional archaic form, we find flower motifs that imitate nature in other areas (Fig. 6.15). One particular area even seems to be filled with rumi-like figurations. What is most interesting in the traditions we have studied is exactly this breadth in the choice of artistic expression. Within one and the same cultural

Figure 6.15 Illuminated tuğra of Sultan Süleyman, Museum of Turkish and Islamic Art, Istanbul, mid-sixteenth century Photo: G. Hellemo

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sphere, within one and the same period of time, very different ways of dealing with nature have been developed. It is striking how much variation is found in the period from 1540 to 1570. This breadth goes hand in hand with a wish to experiment and a will to explore that is unmistakable. We can almost sense the joy and freedom of being able to create new and different pictorial expressions, which do not to any great extent compete with, but rather supplement the existing pictorial repertoire. Abstractions, as we know them from the cuerda-seca technique exist side by side with more realistic expressions. And even when the cuerda-seca technique becomes obsolete around 1550, and realistic representations of motifs, with a special interest in the richness of detail, become dominating, there is still room for other forms of nature representation. Thus imitating nature and exceeding nature is allowed to exist side by side, as adequate and parallel expressions of the Ottoman attitude to nature. Thematically, the motifs vary from the depiction of unknown and strange, but beautiful flowers, handed down through imported pieces of art, to dealing with well-known spring vegetation based on personal observation. Add to this the imaginary forms, which apart from finding inspiration in existing pictorial traditions, are mainly nourished by the human imagination. This constantly recurring occupation with vegetation as a challenge in both form and content emphasizes the special status this type of pictorial expression had within Ottoman culture. It is as if the interest and experimentation are driven forward by a constant passion for growing plants in all sorts of different shapes and kinds. From the cool distanced treatment of motifs in the cuerda-seca style, we notice a clear change of direction towards the more sensual representation of plant motifs in the saz style. In Part III, we will return to the different frames this provides for religious association. In Part II, though, we will concentrate on the more immediate connection between the plant motifs and a religious thematic in a wider sense.

Part II: Plant Motifs in Religious Buildings

In Part II we will take a closer look at the context of the vegetation motifs in the three buildings that are central to our analysis. Henceforth, the main focus will be on the religious utilization of the vegetation theme. Yet it is important not to forget that vegetation motifs play a central role in most types of pictorial expression in Ottoman art in this period. An example, in addition to the ones that were discussed above, is found in a depiction of Sultan Süleyman himself,

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in which he is pictured with a rose in his hand (Fig. 6.16). Immediately, we see the pictorial expression as odd, a strange conception once again. Süleyman’s fame seems to have little to do with roses. His empire had an extent and an economic and cultural strength that is without parallel in the Ottoman world. He threatened Vienna after he had conquered Belgrade and Budapest, so that the leaders of Europe, including the Pope, regarded him as the greatest political and religious threat of the time. Indeed, that is how he is

Figure 6.16

Illuminated manuscript of Sultan Süleyman (detail), Süleymanname, Topkapi Sarayi Müzesi, Istanbul, mid-sixteenth century Refioğlu publications

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known by us today, as the most outstanding representative of the ‘Turkish peril’.53 But Süleyman also expanded his realm towards Persia and made sure he gained control of most of the Mediterranean trade, so that he could secure enormous incomes for his realm through duties on trade. Having also regular revenues from tribute levied on his subjects, he could create a unique economic basis for cultural activity within well-functioning administrative frames.54 In the Arab world Süleyman bears the name of ‘the Lawgiver’, with reference to his administrative abilities.55 Today, it is the cultural activity that is best known, and which is expressed in the appellation, ‘the Magnificent’. More than anything, the explosive building activities, started under the leadership of Sinan, show an economic and cultural strength that is unrivalled. Süleyman’s whole enterprise was also inscribed in a religious context, however. After a while he wins the right to the title of Caliph, which means that he understands himself as the guardian of the faith and the spiritual leader of the whole Islamic world.56 It is not unlikely that the rose symbol is primarily to be understood in light of this role. The religious commitment imbued his whole political and cultural activity. This was explicitly expressed in the poetry he wrote, which was of quite considerable extent.57 Even though little of the material is available in modern translation, a small, but well-known fragment suggests that religion sets the overall frame for everything he did.58 Within such a framework the rose may express a religious perspective which pervades all sides of life. In that case, it becomes a symbol of a political, administrative and cultural activity which is interpreted in light of a mystically colored spirituality.59 The rose actually becomes the symbol of Süleyman 53 Said, Orientalism, p. 59. 54 For general descriptions of the extent of the Ottoman Empire and its administrative and cultural boom under Süleyman, see Clot, Suleiman the Magnificent, pp. 13–22 and Atil, The Age of Sultan Süleyman, pp. 17–27. 55 Clot, Suleiman the Magnificent, p. 72. 56 Clot, Suleiman the Magnificent, p. 93. 57 Atil, The Age of Sultan Süleyman, p. 24 and p. 67; Atasoy & Raby, Iznik, p. 223. 58 “The people think of wealth and power as the greatest fate, But in this world a spell of good health is the best state. What men call sovereignty is worldly strife and constant war; Worship of God is the highest throne, the happiest estate,” quoted from Atil, The Age of Sultan Süleyman, p. 67. 59 In accordance with such a primary understanding, Atasoy & Raby explain lale, which is often translated as tulip, in the following way: “Lale came to be used for wild flowers of a red colour […] and entered mystical literature as the ‘flower of blood’, and the ‘flower of suffering’, a symbol of the soul in search of the Divine,” Iznik, p. 223.

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himself, which is why the poet Baki says about him in the elegy at his death, “The colour in his cheeks is faded, he lies with lips dried out, like a pressed rose without sap […]”60 The leader of the whole Islamic world presents himself, makes his dignity known through the rose as an imperial insignium. It is against this background we now have to determine the meaning of the message brought to us by the rose, as well as by the other vegetation themes. The central question will be how vegetation motifs are able to convey a religious meaning. In this work, the Koran will have the key role, not only because the Koran is the most prominent authoritative work of Islam, but because texts from the Koran play an absolutely dominant role in the decoration programs of the three building complexes we have selected. Text fragments of course direct our interest to the content of the full text, but they also represent a meditative focus point which transcends the meaning of the text in a narrower sense, because the Koran quotations appear as a visible representation of a divine reality. They reveal the word of God in the guise of human speech. In this light, the appearance of the written word must be seen as a perceptual glimpse of the divine. Visual concentration on the Koran as God’s word, therefore, becomes an expression of the utmost possibility earthly man has to see God face to face. In this way the Koran quotations get to replace the holy pictures we know from Christianity as the primary visual expression (Fig. 6.17).61 Considering this way of thinking, it is not crucial that the texts are either legible or understandable for the viewer.62 They carry meaning anyway, and the content is carefully matched with the position in the room. It is the way the text interacts with the shape of the room and the other decoration which will be the center of our analyses. Thus, it is not the Koran in its full range that is our textual reference, but the texts that we find in the three buildings selected,

60 Clot, Suleiman the Magnificent, p. 186. 61 “Islamic calligraphy is the visual embodiment of the crystalization of the spiritual realities…contained in the Islamic revelation,” Nasr, Islamic Art and Spirituality, p. 18; on the term “visual sacrament” see p. 27; cp. pp. 19 and 21. 62 “Here we say ‘readable’ and not ‘legible’, for almost all inscriptions are ‘legible’ in the sense that they are capable of being read – or deciphered – eventually if not immediately. In no sense, however, are they all immediately readable: some are placed in obscured areas; others are too high and too far away to be read; others are so intertwined and convoluted that it is beyond the ability of the average person to puzzle them out,” W.M. Thackston, “The Role of Calligraphy,” in The Mosque. History, Architectural Development & Regional Diversity (eds. M. Frishman and H.-U. Khan) (London: Thames & Hudson, 1964), p. 45.

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Figure 6.17  Eski Camii, interior, Edirne, 1403-14 Photo: G. Hellemo

i.e. the texts which are directly a part of the picture program’s will to express itself.63 63

Nasr emphasizes the importance of conquering forgetfulness as a characteristic trait in the Islamic understanding of life: “Islam emphasizes the primordial nature of man himself. This nature it seeks to revive and reaffirm by awakening man from the dream of forgetfulness, arousing within him the consciousness of the reality of the One or the Absolute, a consciousness which constitutes the very substance of primordial man and the raison d’ être of human existence,” Islamic Art and Spirituality, p. 38.

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However, the provenance of the texts in the buildings is not limited to the Koran. In addition to Arabic inscriptions from the Koran we also find examples of Persian texts. Thanks to G. Necipoğlu’s extensive study from 2005 of Ottoman architecture under Sinan, all this material is now available in translation. The epigraphic material which has not hitherto been utilized much in the work of interpreting the picture programs has an important place in this study.64 Şehzade Mehmed’s türbe is an octagonal building with an elaborate dome and a grandiose portico (Fig. 6.18).65 The building is centrally situated in the grounds behind the mosque itself. Above the entrance of the mausoleum we find the following Persian inscription: In the end, no one from high to low shall remain in the palace of the world, because of the words, ‘Say: He is Allah, the One’.

Figure 6.18  Şehzade Mehmed Camii and Türbes, exterior, Istanbul, 1543–48 Photo: G. Hellemo

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On the building-related source material that Necipoğlu pulls on in her analyses, see G. Necipoğlu, The Age of Sinan. Architectural Culture in the Ottoman Empire (London: Reaktion Books, 2005), p. 23. 65 Necipoğlu, The Age of Sinan, p. 198. About the mausoleum as a central building, see M.AlAsad, “Applications of Geometry,” p. 57.

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The prince with pure faith passed from this transitory realm to the permanence of eternity, may God the eternal have mercy on him. In as much as he has gone to rest in the next world by God’s command, may the days of the sultan’s [Süleyman] life be filled with endless eminence. Its date was inspired by God the timeless: ‘May the resting place of Sultan Mehmed become eternal paradise, the year 950 (1543–44).’66 In the text we immediately note the clear distinction made between the eternal and the transitory. What is created must endure transience, whereas God’s most prominent quality is connected with eternity. The striking feature in the text, however, is the fact that these two thematic spheres are not simply talked of as dichotomous elements. In the third verse the prince’s rest in the world-tocome is somewhat surprisingly combined with a wish for his father’s earthly life. And the text ends with a prayer that the resting place of the prince may become an eternal paradise.67 In this way the text opens basic questions regarding the relationship between God and the world. How can the actual tomb be understood as a paradisical place? Where do we find the eternity the text refers to? The theme is taken up again in the two Koran inscriptions which flank the entrance to the türbe. In one it says, “And those who keep their duty to their Lord are conveyed to the Garden in companies until when they come to it, and its doors are opened and the keepers of it say to them: Peace be to you! you led pure lives; so enter it to abide” (39.73).68 Even though the sura is found in a futuristic context there can be no doubt that the gates referred to in the text must be seen in connection with the physical doors of the mausoleum. This means that the text in an indirect way refers to the türbe as the garden of paradise. The other Koran inscription at the entrance reads as follows: “Peace be to you, because you were constant – how excellent is then the final Abode” (13.24). Again it seems obvious to see a connection between the türbe and “the final abode,” which is remarkably open and provisional. This impression is strengthened by the decorative program of the interior. The sum total of the inner surfaces become a garden reference, with tiles in the 66 Necipoğlu, The Age of Sinan, p. 200. 67 ‘Paradise’ derives from Avestan pairi-daeza which means garden, Nasr, Islamic Art and Spirituality, p. 70. See also S. Murata & W.C. Chittick, The Vision of Islam (London: I.B. Tauris Publishers, 2000), p. 211. 68 This and the next quotation from the Koran, as well as the quotations in note 79 and 80, are based on the translation of Maulana Muhammead Ali, see http://www.aaiil.org/text/ hq/trans/ma_list.shtml. In the other quotoations I follow Necipoğlu, The Age of Sinan.

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cuerda-seca technique. This is brought about partly by the general use of green, partly through the choice of subject matter.69 Nicipoğlu also calls attention to the fact that the tiled imitation arcades that frame the window lunettes suggest illusionist arches with celestial turf, which is then continued in the garden outside the windows. But in that way we are really only kept in a form of uncertainty, or perhaps better, openness, around the ‘where’ of the garden. In no way is it possible to read the program of the türbe as an expression of ‘otherworldliness’. It remains the physical resting place for Şehzade, after he has left this transitory world. At the same time the paradisical characteristics are of course connected with this physical place. This doubleness constitutes the immediate interpretive challenge of the türbe. Nevertheless, we can already at this point determine that even though the occasion for the text is the prince’s death and final fate, the inscription is primarily directed at the ones who visit the türbe. It takes the opportunity to tell the visitor that everybody is subject to the transience of time. In this situation one must trust in God’s grace, while at the same time living in the hope that life here on earth will be as rich and good as possible. This is the context in which the reference to the eternal paradise belongs. We must presuppose that this eternal paradise is beyond what we may come across in this world. At the same time the türbe is a physical manifestation of this very paradise. It exists before the eyes of the ones who come here, who have already wandered through a garden, and who meets the türbe as a sophisticated part of the grounds. This means that in the mourning over a lost child, the mourner does not only meet death or despair, but the dead body in a lush and life-giving paradise. But here the text introduces an important reservation, since it is formed as a prayer that the place may become an eternal paradise. This suggests that something quite crucial is left to the one who seeks the türbe. The religious project is only brought to completion in the dialogue between God, the one who prays and the physical environment one finds oneself in. The garden references are also important in the first mosque we are going to study. Rüstem Paşa Camii is situated on a high terrace above a complex of shops (Fig. 6.19).70 The mosque itself, which is provided with a double vestibule, consists of an octagon which is inscribed in a rectangle. The rectangle gives the building a characteristic wide character, which is preferred to the longitudinal building we know best from the Christian context. The shape of 69

“Green is ‘the spiritual, liturgical color of Islam’ […] the color of the supreme center, the ‘mystery of mysteries’, the ‘Muḥammad of thy being’, is green,” H. Corbin, Alone with the Alone, p. 56f. 70 Necipoğlu, The Age of Sinan, pp. 320–331.

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Figure 6.19  Rüstem Paşa Camii, Istanbul, axonometric projection G. Necipoğlu, The Age of Sinan p. 322

the building is thus well-suited for a ritual practice which presupposes that the prayer is not only directed at Mecca, but generally takes place in long rows parallel to qibla, i.e. the accent wall.71 The galleries to the south and north rest on small marble columns which are placed between huge pillars that carry the domed roof construction (Fig.  6.20). The mosque represents the first major Ottoman building in which ceramic tiles from Iznik are widely used as an important element in the aesthetic design of the building.72 It was built by Rüstem Paşa in 1561–62. Rüstem Paşa was married to Süleyman’s daughter Mihrimah and was grand vizier in two periods, from 1544 to 1553 and from 1555 to his death in 1561.

71

M. Frishman, “Islam and the Form of the Mosque,” in The Mosque. History, Architectural Development & Regional Diversity, (eds.) M. Frishman and H.-U. Khan (London: Thames & Hudson 1964), p. 35. 72 Denny, Iznik, p. 91.

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Figure 6.20  Rüstem Paşa Camii, interior, Istanbul, 1561/2 R. Günay, Sinan p. 103

Like the prince’s türbe, the mosque has an extensive calligraphic program. And again the paradise theme plays in undeniable role in the choice of texts. The paradise references are found among the 14 rectangular lunette inscriptions above the windows and doors of the gallery. Even though the word paradise is only used in a couple of the inscriptions, the theme offers important guidelines for the understanding of the space as a unity. The most important text goes, “O God! Remove us from the Fire and make us enter Paradise together with the righteous ones by showing your mercy. O, the most merciful of all!”73 The text, which is formed as a prayer to allow us into the garden, can hardly be said to have a basically presential character. Yet, it does not read as futuristic in any strict sense: the wish to be removed from the fire seems to have suggestions of the present, since the praying man under no circumstance finds himself in the fire of hell at the present moment; and the sense of belonging to the community of the righteous who are thrown on God’s surpassing mercy has a kind of inclusive aim which transgresses clear categories of time. 73 Necipoğlu, The Age of Sinan, p. 330.

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It is an even more important thing that the wish to enter paradise is realized at one level when the visitor enters the richness of vegetation in the mosque.74 In this way the prayer to enter paradise relates directly to “the enchanting garden-like ambience of the microcosmic mosque,” as Necipoğlu claims.75 But can the coupling between vegetation motifs and paradise really be understood as a simple anticipation of the paşa’s wish to place himself in paradise, as Necipoğlu suggests?76 It would be more true to say that the text proposes a more subtle juxtaposition of the garden here and the garden yonder, as it is so clearly expressed in a few of the other inscriptions in the picture program. A characteristic inscription in this respect quite explicitly relates to life and afterlife simultaneously: “O God! Give us forgiveness and health in the world and the Hereafter.” And likewise, “Thou art my Protecting Friend in the world and the Hereafter. Make me die submissive (unto Thee), and join me to the righteous” (12.101). It seems that life and its manifestations, understood as something more comprehensive than what can be connected to our physical life on earth, is a thematic area that is constitutive for the ideology of the building and that the garden theme is in some way part of this unified thought. Contemporary commentators add interesting perspectives on the paradise theme as such. The historian Ramazanzade Mehmed describes the mosque as a “noble sanctuary resembling paradise,” and in the paşa’s waqfiyya (endowment deed) for 1570 it is said that the sultan’s daughter had a mosque built that “in beauty […] is […] the envy of the sublime garden of paradise, as if it were a sign of the pavilions of paradise.”77 We note that both texts avoid identifying the mosque with paradise, but instead establish a sign-related relationship between paradise and the decoration of the mosque. The latter of the texts is particularly interesting, as it emphasizes that the beauty of the decoration creates a dynamic, psychologically colored desire for the sublime garden of paradise. Thus, the vegetation in the mosque is able to trigger a religiously determined movement which is transgressive in the sense that brings this world into contact with the world to come. This dynamic is connected to beauty and grace, but here we also find unambiguous references to a place of fire against which one has to be protected.78 74

On the presentation of the various forms of vegetation in the mosque, see F. Cimok, The Book of Rüstem Paşa Tiles (Istanbul: A Turizm Yayinlari, 2006). 75 Necipoğlu, The Age of Sinan, p. 330. 76 Necipoğlu, The Age of Sinan, p. 330. 77 Necipoğlu, The Age of Sinan, p. 330. 78 Al-Asad is very reluctant to see mosque architecture as “a visual manifestation of certain Islamic doctrines.” He primarily argues that such interpretations “are not supported by

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And yet, the garden theme is not the most important thematic choice within the overall calligraphic program of the mosque. Over the main portal is placed a rectangular marble plate with the following inscription: “He is Allah; the Creator, the Shaper out of naught, the Fashioner. His are the most beautiful names. All that is in the heavens and the earth glorifieth Him, – and He is the Mighty, the Wise” (59.24). This theme is taken up again in the painted central area of the dome (35.41). In full accordance with this basic theme, the names of God are listed in the circular text panels placed in the pendentives of the central dome. The calligraphic concentration on the nature of God is in no way surprising. In the prince’s türbe mentioned above, the throne verse (2.255)79 has the quite central position bestowed on it, by being reproduced in the brick lunettes above the lower row of windows. And the cartouches which form a broad calligraphic band in the middle of the walls between the windows represent God’s beautiful names (59.22–24).80 In this way, both in the türbe and in the mosque, God’s power of creation is particularly emphasized. Through the actual shape of the dome, this power of creation is additionally given a direct architectural reference, as the building appears as a microcosmic representation of God’s all-embracing work of creation. Thus, the architecture of the mosque works as a visualization of the idea that God is the only one who can make sure that the stable structures of the

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contextual evidence found in contemporary historical texts or building inscriptions.” Instead he prefers to read geometrical patterns “as symbolically neutral systems of aesthetic expression having no specific iconographic significances.” See “Application of Geometry” p. 67ff. In contrast, we will maintain that the interplay between relevant texts, iconographic program, spatial arrangements and in some cases the geographical situation do indeed document ideological connections that cannot be ignored. “Allah – there is no God but He, the Ever-living, the Self-subsisting by Whom all subsist. Slumber overtakes Him not, nor sleep. To Him belongs whatever is in the heavens and whatever is in the earth. Who is he that can intercede with Him but by His permission? He knows what is before them and what is behind them. And they encompass nothing of His knowledge except what He pleases. His knowledge extends over the heavens and the earth, and the preservation of them both tires Him not. And He is the Most High, the Great.” “He is Allah besides Whom there is no God: The Knower of the unseen and the seen; He is the Beneficent, the Merciful. He is Allah, besides Whom there is no God; the King, the Holy, the Author of Peace, the Granter of Security, Guardian over all, the Mighty, the Supreme, the Possessor of greatness. Glory be to Allah from that which they set up (with Him)! He is Allah; the Creator, the Maker, the Fashioner: His are the most beautiful names. Whatever is in the heavens and the earth declares His glory; and He is the Mighty, the Wise.”

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world will endure.81 In our context, it is just as important to underline that the paradise theme in this way is anchored in a distinct creation theology. This thought, which is also well-known in a Christian context, is supplemented by a dwelling on God’s name which deserves distinct attention. It is an established tradition within Islam to talk of God’s 99 names. The most important are the two that are used in the introductory prayer in many of the suras in the Koran: “In the name of Allah the most merciful and most graceful.” The names of God themselves have here a key importance ascribed to them which finds no parallel in a Christian context. One might say that theo-logy is expressed in a pregnant way in these names.82 In this way the overall theological expression is given an extremely clear theocentric centre of gravity.83 The concentration on the divine being is accentuated even more through the religious practices which are connected to the names. Here a central role is given both to their auditory and their visual dimensions. The iconographic programs show how important it is to retain the names of God visually as a central part of the decoration of the building. The actual spoken sound is furthermore regarded as an integrated part of the meaning of the names. Especially the Sufis were known for developing religious practices in which the recitation of God’s names played an important meditative part. The constant contemplation of the names of God, whether audible or silent, can be seen as a way of internalizing the Koran, where the final goal was understood as a concentration on nothing but God himself.84 The practice is in some way akin to the recitation of litanies in a Christian context. If we bring such a basic understanding of the Koran quotations with us to the interpretation of the decorative program of the mosque, we will understand not only that holy text holds the absolutely central and determining position in the overall program of the mosque, but also that in terms of content, the whole mosque complex is to be understood as a homage to the god who manifests himself through the work of creation and through his innumerable names. The names can be divided into two groups, of which one refers to God’s majesty, whereas the other refers to his beauty. Terms referring to God’s power, anger, authority and justice belong in the former group, while terms that relate 81

Cp. what is said about the void as the meeting place between emptiness/poverty and invisible spirituality in Nasr, Islamic Art and Spirituality, p. 46 and p. 186; about the dome as the vault of heaven, see p. 49. 82 Murata og Chittick, The Vision of Islam, p. 58. 83 Burckhardt, Art of Islam, p. 197. 84 C.W. Ernst, The Shambhala Guide to Sufism (Boston: Shambhala, 1997), p. 92.

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to grace, generosity, pity and mercy belong in the latter. Behind this division is the conviction that everything, life as well as death, success and adversity, come from God.85 Through the epithets for God, we also get an impression of a structure which underlies and determines the thematic structure of the total textual program. The names of God make it explicit that God commands everything and everyone. Here, the judicial activity is subordinated to a much more prominent emphasis on God’s merciful acts. It is therefore typical that the themes of judgment and hell have no visual references in the program, beyond the powerful epithets for God. The actual program correspondingly appears with a much greater interest in connecting the divine with the garden theme than with the theme of judgment. This is in good accordance with the point in the first Koran quotation we studied in the analysis of the mosque, in which the focus is not the destiny individuals might be subject to in the future, but a prayer to be removed from the fire and given access to the garden. Entirely in accordance with such a way of thinking, it is said in a well-known Hadith: “God has 99 names; he who counts them will enter into paradise.”86 Here, a pious mediation on the names of God, i.e. the concentration on the deity, establishes the promise of access to the longed-for garden. The accent is on the value of prayer and meditation. Fear of the fire is subordinate to the longing for the garden so that the attention will be directed to the divine being itself – the merciful and graceful God. We will finish our study of mosque inscriptions by taking a close look at the text program in Sokollu Mehmet Paşa Camii. In this case, we have a hexagonal room, inscribed into what is almost a square (Fig.  6.21). As in Rüstem Paşa Camii, the dome is surrounded by four semi-domes. On all sides, apart from the accent wall, the room is equipped with galleries (Fig. 6.22). The mosque itself is connected with a madrasa (an educational institution), which encloses the area in front of the mosque. A cloister with a semahane, (a hall for ritual dance) is situated behind the mihrab wall. The complex was built by Sokollu, who became grand vizier for Süleyman in 1565, and who continued in the post under the following two sultans. The mosque was built in 1571–2 by Sinan in honor of Selim II’s daughter Esmahan, who was Sokollu’s spouse. As mentioned before, Sokullu was assassinated in 1578. In the dome of the mosque the same sura is quoted as in Rüstem Paşa Camii, and the 6 pendentives and the 16 areas above the windows of the gallery refer to the names of God. In this way, both mosques are framed by the absolutely 85 Ernst, The Shambhala Guide to Sufism, p. 97. 86 Ernst, The Shambhala Guide to Sufism, p. 85.

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Figure 6.21  Sokollu Mehmet Paşa Camii, Istanbul, axonometric projection G. Necipoğlu, The Age of Sinan, p. 334

central thematic sphere in Islamic ritual practice and become “a visual medium for contemplation and a visionary experience of the divine.”87 In addition – as in Rüstem Paşa Camii – sura 12.101 is quoted, a sura which dwells on God’s protection and care, both in this life and in the life to come (see p. 168). Between them, these text references give the decoration of the two mosques the same basic thematic character. Apart from this, it is noteworthy that Sokollu Mehmet Paşa Camii adds some important new thematic groupings. On the pilasters, i.e. the flat half-pillars which frame the qibla wall, Allah’s and Muhammed’s names are reproduced, in the traditional manner.88 But here the inscriptions are supplemented with the sura which most explicitly refutes the Christian trinity dogma (112.1–4), and the well-known reference to the main content of the Islamic faith (There is only one God […] and Muhammed is his prophet). The polemic note is taken up again through references to the first four caliphs, which makes a Sunni context obvious.89

87 Necipoğlu, The Age of Sinan, p. 341. 88 qibla = the direction of prayer towards Mecca, indicated by the presence of the mihrab set in the wall of a mosque. 89 Necipoğlu, The Age of Sinan, p. 344. Cf. Thackston, “The Role of Calligraphy,” p. 47.

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Figure 6.22  Sokollu Mehmet Paşa Camii, interior, Istanbul, 1571/2 Denny, Iznik p. 16

This highlighting becomes understandable if one takes a closer look at the architectural context the mosque is part of. The connection to both the madrasa and the monastery does not only make it natural to see the need for theological pithiness, but also gives the key to understanding a series of the supplementary inscriptions that belong to the entire building complex. Here the need for knowledge is underlined, as well as the need for prayer and meditation. A characteristic Hadith is the one placed on the portal of the class room, where it says “Striving for knowledge is a sacred duty of all Muslim men and

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woman.” And on the inside of the mosque’s portal itself we can read, “The messenger of God, peace be upon him, said: The highest rank among the people, according to God are the reciters of litanies.” The inscription emphasizes the importance given to the ritual practice, which is regarded as a confirmation of the original revelation as it has been brought to us through the words of the Koran.90 The waqfiyya of the mosque lays down rules for the duties the shaykh and dervishes of the monastery had regarding preaching and praying in the mosque. There is reason to believe that the whole text program of the mosque was devised by Nureddinzade, who was shaykh for the halveti monastery when it was built.91 Nureddinzade, who was highly esteemed not only by Sokollu, but also by Süleyman, was widely known for his sermons, in which he combined characteristic traits of Sufi-influenced Islamic introspection with a comparable awareness of extrovert sharia practice. In this way, the mosque complex came to exemplify “the symbiosis of Sufism with orthopraxy during the second half of the sixteenth century.”92 The Sokollu complex becomes important in our context, not only because it has an interesting picture and text program and is in addition regarded as one of Sinan’s finest works,93 but also because it so explicitly documents the fact that Sufic traditions play a central role in Islam under Süleyman. Sokollu is our most important source for the idea that it is legitimate to look for a deeper understanding of the picture and text programs, precisely in the Sufic traditions.94 The work with the text programs and the well-documented contemporary statements about the mosques have continuously dealt with one concern, the wish to place the vegetation themes of the buildings in a meaningful theological framework. Here the texts have made an important contribution. Not only have they shown that the plant themes belong naturally within religiously colored paradise thematics, but the texts have also made it clear how the paradise thematics are rooted in a creation theology which determines the whole ideology of the buildings. 90

“The act of reciting the text represents a commitment to worship. The act of worship therefore serves to reaffirm the manner of the original revelation, making it the permanent wellspring of the Muslim community,” M. Frishman, “Islam and the Form of the Mosque,” p. 20. 91 Frishman, “Islam and the Form of the Mosque,” p. 20. 92 Frishman, “Islam and the Form of the Mosque,” p. 20. Cp. Nasr, Islamic Art and Spirituality, p. 12. 93 Nasr, Islamic Art and Spirituality, p. 345. 94 On a general basis, Irwin emphasizes the close relationship between Sufism and Islamic art: “Understanding the writings and aesthetics of Sufism is essential to any study of Islamic art,” Islamic Art, p. 52.

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Creation theology, in its turn, consistently orients itself within a wider framework than the physically accessible world. It is this basic understanding of what ‘the world’ is which gives the paradise thematics a kind of openness of locality. An area of special interest is the marked enthusiasm shown for both the buildings and the decoration programs, which is also directly written into the waqfiyyas for the buildings. Here we find such terms as ‘delightful and comfortgiving’,95 ‘joy-giving and ‘soul-expanding’.96 A eulogy connected with the Şehzade Mehmet complex sums up this interest in an apposite way. Here it says, “How lofty is this paradise-like building, Whose air is soul-reviving and its waters purified.”97 The interest in paradise seems to be particularly intended to further a positive way of living for the people who visit the türbe or the mosque. One can also get the impression that the paradise theme can have this very function because it is theologically based. Paradise brings positively restorative and revitalizing perspectives to life, because it is God’s place. This place of God is also found here on earth. It is meditation on the connection between the ordinary life experience and the transcendence of that experience of life that defines the wide framework for the activity of both the mosque and the adjacent Sufic monastery.

Part III: The Continuation of the Theme in Sufism

The analyses in Part II make it clear that the vegetation themes, which are continually nourished by the transcendent references to paradise, are supposed first and foremost to support a positive conduct of life based on a belief in creation for those who visit the buildings. Entirely in keeping with this, the analyses in Part I maintained that the feeling for life concerned here is not only rooted in the kind of vegetation we know from nature, but is quite as often nurtured by alien, unknown plants from distant lands. In addition to this, plants which have grown forth in people’s own imaginary world can take part in the mental configuration of ‘the world’. When these different motifs are combined in a unified visual expression, the pictorial expression itself creates some tensions which have clearly transcendent traits. This seems to be generally true of all the material studied here. It is expressed most clearly in Şehzade Mehmet’s türbe, which we will use as the point of 95 Irwin, Islamic Art, p. 202. 96 Irwin, Islamic Art, p. 344. 97 Irwin, Islamic Art, p. 202.

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departure for further studies. Here it is important to emphasize that the vegetation motifs do not only create transcendence through their interplay, but also by entering into dynamic relations with other pictorial elements. First of all, we are dealing with the close connections established between the representation of the vegetation themes and various forms of geometrical patterns, as well as calligraphically executed text within a unique and relatively unified architectural framework. The study intends to underline the fact that the pictorial expressions we are interested in are continuously trying to capture characteristic traits in the existing world that have a potential for religious interpretation. So the interplay with geometry and calligraphy, understood as characteristic visual text design, plays an important role. The common point of departure, if we are to see these elements in a relevant way, is that they all appear as rational, understood as in accordance with given structures in life. Snow crystals or symmetrically shaped flowers are examples from nature of such basic forms which directly point to rational structures in the natural world. It is precisely the mathematical laws that in this way can be derived from natural elements which are carried on here in artistic expressions. Because we always have to do with forms that reflect overall structures, such perspectives on the material constitute useful points of departure for religious interpretation, too. Here geometry plays a very important role.98 The prince’s türbe, which in this respect is entirely in keeping with traits typical of Ottoman decoration in a more general sense, utilizes geometric patterns in, for example, the window shutters and the canopy above the grave itself. These patterns reveal complicated structures and can be seen as the element in the decoration that appears most intellectually challenging.99 It turns out, though, that we often have to do with a symmetrical division of surfaces which utilizes very simple basic shapes. Here the point and the circle play an important role. The shapes can be reproduced and combined in a number of different ways. It has become almost a literary genre to decode complicated Islamic geometrical patterns (Fig. 6.23). In their combination of simple shapes within complicated structures, the patterns can be claimed to explore “the relationship between Unity and multiplicity.”100 Primarily, the thematics refers to the multiplicity found within a unified, created structure. At the same time, such patterns may point to a form 98 Geometry is defined as the branch of mathematics that deals with the properties and relations of magnitudes (as lines, surfaces, solids) in space. (New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary). 99 Burckhardt, Art of Islam, p. 63. 100 Sutton, Islamic Design, p. 1.

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Figure 6.23  Geometrical pattern D. Sutton, Islamic Design p. 3

of interplay between a omnipresent center and infinity, and thus also become referential in relation to special traits of the deity.101 Of course one imagines that the divine unity is found behind all the representations, but nonetheless it is also reflected in this world in a harmony which is understood exactly as unity in multiplicity, which is the same thing as multiplicity in unity. The intertwining in the geometrical patterns maintains both these perspectives. The unity found behind things is also expressed by patterns often being developed from a single element, for example a single line “which comes endlessly back upon itself.”102 This means that a motif has only been seen when 101 Cp. the phrase “infinity and the omnipresent center,” D. Sutton, Islamic Design. A Genius for Geometry, p. 1. Burckhardt’s interpretation is in agreement when he emphasizes that the forms are to be seen as “an extremely direct expression of the idea of the Divine Unity underlying the inexhaustible variety of the world,” Art of Islam, p. 63. 102 Burckhardt, Art of Islam, p. 63.

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Figure 6.24  Calligraphy D. Sutton, Islamic Design p. 13

the eye has followed the complicated movement of the line and in that way become involved in the complexity that characterizes the pictorial surface. What is especially interesting is the fact that this double play takes place in the actual surface of the picture. It can be deciphered, but at the same time as the basic structures “are openly concealed in the finished design, hidden in plain view by the clothing through which they can be perceived.”103 This way of 103 Sutton, Islamic Design, p. 16. Al-Asad calls this a dematerialization of the surface. “Application of Geometry,” p. 60. I dislike this term, as it gives the impression that the

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thinking is reminiscent of the way a number of modernists emphasize basic natural forms as the given base for their artistic and architectural activity. Indeed, it is also very probable that Le Corbusier was inspired by Islamic art, which made itself strongly felt within European art from the beginning of the 19th century.104 Geometric structures are found again within calligraphy, which, as we have already seen, plays a central role in all of the three monuments dealt with here. In the türbe the calligraphy was probably designed by Ahmet Karahisari (d.1556), who was the most prominent calligrapher under Süleyman.105 Also here geometrical patterns create a basis for the execution of the writing. To be more precise, “every letter [is] carefully proportioned in relation to the circle, its diameter, and the point” (Fig. 6.24).106 In this way, the written page of the Koran does not only express harmony between the structure of the world and a certain cultural expression, but also a correspondence between the structure of the world and the revelation of the Koran.107 This means that the revelation is seen as being in accordance with the experience one gains from the study of nature. In principle, then, the studies of nature and the study of the Koran must correspond with each other.108 The architectural design of both türbes and mosques is an integral part of this geometrically oriented understanding of art. In this case, the geometrical basis is not connected to surfaces but to bodies. The various shapes of the rooms we are concerned with here, which are based on the circle, the octagon or the hexagon, are understood, just as the basic geometrical forms were, as corresponding to structures on which the created world is based. The buildings usually terminate in a dome which is associated with “the unity of the cosmos and importance of materiality is discarded in favor of the immaterial, cp. G. Hellemo, Øyet som ser, p. 61. 104 See Owen Jones og den islamske inspirasjonen. 105 Necipoğlu, The Age of Sinan, pp. 198–199 and Atil, The Age of Sultan Süleyman, pp. 47 and 50. 106 Sutton, Islamic Designs, p. 12. 107 Nasr, Islamic Art and Spirituality, p. 49. 108 “The Koran is God’s speech, directed at human beings […] If the Koran expresses God, however, it is not the only thing that expresses him. Other scriptures also express him, and so do his creatures. The Koran employs the word aya (sign) in almost four hundred instances, in the most general sense to anything that gives news of something else. In a slightly mores specific sense, the word is used to refer to everything in the heavens and the earth, inasmuch as it gives news of God. All things are signs to God for the same reason that they are muslim – because they submit to God’s creative power. Everything that happens tells us something about God’s activity within creation,” Murata and Chittick, The Vision of Islam, p. 52f.

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beyond that realm […] the Unity of the Divine Principle Itself.”109 Here, again, we find the close connection between references that are relevant to the world and references which characterize God. It is in this framework we must understand the representations of vegetation in the türbe. Visually the use of the so-called hatay-rumi style in the prince’s türbe (see p. 140) fills in or complements the use of the geometrical patterns: “They aim not to imitate the plant kingdom naturalistically but to distill visually the essence of rhythm and growth it manifests.”110 The vegetation motifs can thus be understood as rhythm, or more precisely, they can be seen as a visual transcription of rhythm. One must then perceive unbroken forms more or less as a wave which in contrasting phases pulsates in an unfinished alternation between sound and silence.111 At the same time the vegetation motifs also refer directly to the world of vegetation, and partake in the plants’ innate vitality. Historically the motifs are probably derived from representations of the grape vine, which is traditionally coupled with the acanthus. In such connections one can freely combine many different plant elements with total disregard for botanical categories, as we also know it from, for example, Ara Pacis in Rome.112 In the same way as in the building in general, the natural elements have been given the task of bringing forth aspects of the created structure which are not immediately accessible. Whereas the geometrical patterns reflect the rational structure of the created world, the vegetation motifs are more in tune with the dynamic aspects of the created world. These two aspects are sometimes characterized as respectively masculine and feminine, to emphasize how they complement each other.113 The prince’s türbe thus represents the vegetation motifs within symmetrically ordered and organically shaped structures. At the same time, the pictorial program is strongly stylized, both as regards form and the choice of color. Together with the geometrical structures it becomes part of a reflection on the structures found in the random shapes one comes across in the interaction with one’s surroundings. They bear witness to a unity within a multiplicity of forms which gives an insight into both the created structures and the divine being. 109 Nasr, Islamic Art and Spirituality, p. 57. 110 Sutton, Islamic Design, p. 14. 111 Burckhardt, Art of Islam, p. 63. 112 Burckhardt, Art of Islam, p. 56. 113 Nasr, Islamic Art and Spirituality, p. 29.

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So the prince’s türbe invites to a kind of meditation on the harmonious and unified structures which are found in the existing world, but which we only indirectly have access to. The artistic expression articulates both the divine order that exists within the complexity of this world, and characteristic traits in the divine being. In this way the artistic expression makes hidden structures visible which do not in any real sense exist behind the existing world, but which may at any time manifest themselves in the organization of the world, both as snow crystals and flower shapes.114 This turn towards nature and the reality surrounding us, combined with genuine religious perspectives on the same life, seems to constitute a fundamental element in the Islamic understanding of reality. Observations of this kind lay out a main direction for the continued work with the interpretation of the vegetation motifs in our monuments. They emphasize a goal-oriented interest in representing the outer, existing world in ways that make it clear that the world is a source of religious understanding. This interest is rooted in a pronounced awareness of immediate, observable phenomena, like order and rationality in complex and multiform phenomena, or growth and development within organic forms. But we have also seen how things that are close at hand are in a sense reworked continually in ways that demolish an enclosing and limiting way of understanding. Ornaments are woven into each other in the most subtle ways, to develop a unique multi-dimensionality. Geometrical patterns are simultaneously complex and simple; well-known plants are combined with alien and imaginary organic forms. Evidently, this whole complex game has something to do with religion and the religious understanding of reality. Taking these comments as our framework, we will now take a closer look at the picture programs in Rüstem Paşa Camii and Sokollu Mehmet Paşa Camii. Quite explicitly, we will try to enlarge on how the naturalistic and imaginary vegetation motifs can serve various religious learning projects, i.e. how they in 114 This interpretation corresponds quite well with the general summary Nasr gives of the Islamic understanding of reality: “Islam itself is based on the nature of Reality. It is profoundly ‘realist’ in the traditional and not in the modern sense of the word […] It refuses to confuse one level of reality with another or to address itself to a would-be ideal that is not in the nature of the being in question […] There are no created tensions, no upward pull to a heavenly ideal in Islamic architecture as one finds in Gothic cathedrals which are based on another spiritual perspective than that of Islam. The space […] rests serenely and nobly in a stillness which conforms to the inner nature of things here and now rather than seeking to participate in an ideal which belongs to another level of existence and is contrary to the nature of the material at hand,” Islamic Art and Spirituality, p. 55.

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different ways create a framework for reflection on the divine presence in this world. It turns out that Rumi, one of the very greatest Sufis, shows interest in the actual existing nature in a way that is somehow reminiscent of the representation of nature as we know it from Rüstem Paşa Camii. In both places, for example, we find a striking interest in the vegetation of spring. We will therefore use Rumi as a key to the interpretation of the naturalistic representation of plant motifs we have come across in Rüstem Paşa Camii. Rumi’s real name is Mawlana Jalaluddin Muhammad (1207–1273). He was born in Balkh, which is situated in modern-day Afghanistan, and which was long a center for Islamic mysticism. In 1228, the family came to Konya in Anatolia, which was the center of the Seljuq empire. Here Rumi continued his studies within mysticism. For many years he worked alone, until a wandering dervish turned up in 1244. The dervish made an indelible impression on Rumi. W.M. Thackston writes: “Rumi’s friends and students were scandalized to see their sober master so completely absorbed in this bizarre dervish, but in him Jalaluddin had found the ideal ‘beloved’, the one in whom the Divine was most perfectly mirrored.”115 The dervish, however, disappeared as suddenly as he had come. Rumi’s son, however, traced him to Damascus and brought him back to Konya, where he stayed until he disappeared for ever in 1248. Rumi found new ‘mirrors’ for the perfect love, which once again caused resentment among his disciples. Rumi’s writings consist of both poetic texts and prose texts, either written after dictation, or composed by disciples from memory after Rumi’s death in 1273.116 Altogether there is an enormous body of text. Only parts of the work have been translated into Western languages. Next to Ibn’Arabī, he is regarded as the most important figure within Sufism.117 When Rumi writes eulogies to nature, it is particularly spring that is central to his interest. To Rumi, spring is first and foremost the flowering of spring as it appears to the human eye. Spring is in every respect a dynamic movement: Again, the violet bows to the lily./Again, the rose is tearing off her gown!/ The green ones have come from the other world,/tipsy like the breeze up to some new foolishness…/Again, the season of Spring has come and a springsource rises under everything,/a moon sliding from the shadows.118 115 W.M. Thackston, “Introduction,” in Signs of the Unseen. The Discourses of Jalaluddin Rumi (Boston: Shambala, 1999), p. X. 116 Thackston, “Introduction,” p. XII. 117 Corbin, Alone with the Alone, p. 110; Cf. Nasr, Islamic Art and Spirituality, p. 134f. 118 Rumi, Selected Poems, translated by C. Banks (London: Penguin Books, 2004), p. 33.

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We also register a form of play with sensual forces, in which erotic undertones and references to the dulling but positive effect of wine contribute to creating an exhilarated feeling around the appearance of spring. It may seem as if all this vernal movement at the end points towards a ‘source of spring’, an underlying power which Rumi finds behind all the vegetative activity. In this way, spring points to a source behind or outside itself. Yet it is not only a question of hidden power. The color green in all its immediate visibility is also a messenger from another world.119 This suggests that religiously suggested transcendence is found both in what is visible and behind the visible. But this does not necessarily mean that the dimensions Rumi talks about are immediately accessible to everyone. The reference to the moon and the nightly shadows can suggest that not everything is open to the view here. The whole quote gives the impression of goal-oriented observation by an observer who is able to read the events of spring in a poetic-mystic way. The active role of the observer is expressed much more clearly in the following quote: I feel like the ground, astonished/at what the atmosphere has brought to it. What I know/is growing inside me. Rain makes/every molecule pregnant with a mystery./We groan with women in labor./The ground cries out, I Am Truth and Glory Is Here,/breaks open, and a camel is born out of it.120 Once more, it is striking how dynamically Rumi relates to the events of spring. This time it is the rain that brings about a birth out of the ground. The birth is described as being as painful as a woman in labor. Again the text is religiously transcendent in the sense that in some arcane way it makes truth and glory appear. That this can take place at all is completely beyond understanding. It is as if a camel were to emerge from the ground. Quite simply, it means that it cannot be deducted from a purely exterior view of things. Therefore Rumi compares the outer events with an inner course of events which runs parallel to the exterior observation. Exterior and interior processes are merged in a common religious act. The interest in the vivid colors of the spring vegetation, but perhaps even more the emphasis on the realism of the plant representations, together with the position within a religious context, make it an obvious idea to see Rumi’s poem together with the decoration of Rüstem Paşa Camii. In both places the 119 Cp. note 69. 120 Rumi, Selected Poems, p. 39.

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growth of spring points towards a divine power of creation which is manifest in this world for the watchful observer. From the vegetation of spring Rumi draws lines to growth in a more general sense. In such a perspective, a garden can be understood as the primary reference to everything that is beautiful in this world: “Beauty surrounds us,/but usually we need to be walking/in a garden to know it.”121 Here the garden is seen as a favorite place, precisely because it contains so much beauty. This also introduces beauty as a central concept, but in the beginning it is limited to appearing in plants that are cultivated in gardens. On this basis we are not surprised that the beauty the garden contains can point beyond itself. But we are, once again, struck by Rumi’s wish to root the transcendent reference clearly and unmistakably in this world. For example, people’s well-disposed interaction with each other, in other words something as mundane and common as good manners and customs, is not only directly comparable to the fragrance of herbs and the sight of the rose bed; it is also paradisiacal, says Rumi: If someone speaks well of another person, the good word returns to him and in reality this praise is for himself. It is like someone who plants a rose bed and odoriferous herbs around his house; whenever he looks out, he sees roses and odoriferous herbs, so that he is constantly in Paradise.122 The one who plants roses in his garden and is courteous to his fellow human beings gets an eternally present paradise as a kind of reward.123 But then we are also in religious transcendence. It is as if Rumi is aware that in this world, and we can presumably add in the beauty of this world, the divine presence is 121 Rumi, Selected Poems, p. 172. 122 Quoted from A. Schimmel, Rumi’s World. The Life and Work of the Great Sufi Poet (Boston: Shambala, 2001 (1992)), p. 65. 123 In this way the garden is given value in itself. At the same time it can also be seen as a messenger to remind us that all the beauty one meets here is intimately connected with a beauty which is not material. The spring is then described as a messenger from paradise “when ‘those dressed in green’ […] arrive from the blue hall of heaven to dwell among humans in order to remind them of the eternal spiritual beauty.” Schimmel, Rumi’s World, p. 58. This spiritual beauty is often connected with man’s interior, which can be described as impervious to that which grows in the physical world, p. 71. Shimmel emphasizes, however, that the latter perspective cannot be seen as typical of Rumi. As substantiation she quotes: “Thanks to the gaze of the sun, the soil became a tulip bed – To sit at home is now a plague, a plague,” p. 71. In this way Schimmel emphasizes that Rumi’s fundamental perspective is always rooted in the visible, sensory world.

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constantly to be found. This presence, though, does not create a complete identification between divine being and the work of creation. The beauty of the garden is derived from God’s beauty, or as Rumi says, everything created must be understood as a pretext, a portent of God himself: In the garden are hundreds of charming beloveds/And roses and tulips dancing around/And limpid water running in the brook./All this is a pretext – it is He alone!124 How, then, are we to understand the relation between God and the world? Rumi also imagines a clear separation between that which is mortal and that which is immortal, as we saw it in the inscription above the prince’s türbe. This separation tells of different roles for the deity and the human beings. Ultimately we are looking at a fundamental contrast between being and not-being. But for Rumi it does not seem to be a matter of importance to enlarge on this difference. The whole point of the transcendence he is so intent on seems rather to be the transfer of man from not-being to being. This is brought about when the divine reveals itself in the mortal and in that way transmits his gifts to the mortal. The gifts in question are nothing less than participation in being through the act of creation; participation in beauty, and eventually participation in love. Thou art the absolute appearing in the guise of mortality. That which moves us is thy Gift: our whole being is of thy creation. Thou didst show the beauty of Being unto not-being: after Thou hadst caused not-being to fall in love with Thee.125 Even though the text presupposes a separation of mortal existence from God, it is the dependence and closeness between the divine and the created which is given most attention here. We also note that the interplay between God and man is further developed within a clearly designed dynamic relation. This is perhaps most clearly expressed in the fact that the relationship between God and man is seen as a love relationship. God awakens our love for him by revealing his beauty in the world.126 Beauty, which is seen as an attribute of God, 124 Quoted from A. Schimmel, Rumi’s world, p. 70. 125 Quoted from Nasr, Islamic Art and Spirituality, s. 138. 126 Nasr sums up: “Rūmī saw beauty as the divine imprint of the Divine in this world of generation and corruption and the most immediate means of awakening in man the consciousness and awareness of the spiritual world. He saw in beauty the direct proof of God

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exists in the world, where it manifests itself as derived from or borrowed from divine beauty.127 The world is thematized within this frame, not as God’s opposite, but rather as a place which can potentially be filled with the presence of God. The meeting point between God and man is aesthetic, in the sense that it is the experience of beauty that is understood as the place where God can be experienced. The relation which is established between God and man in this way is understood as nothing less than a union, which again presupposes purification on the part of man. Awake, the time hath arrived, awake, awake!/Without union with Him, detest thyself, detest thyself!/… In an inexplicable way He shall purify thee, and make thee rosy-faced,/He shall remove the thorn from thy hand; become a/garden of roses, become a garden of roses!128 The result of the purification is that man becomes rose-like. The rose here seems to refer to a kind of theomorphism which man can partake in through a unifying metamorphosis. Again, there is reason to believe that it is the beauty of the rose that man can partake in. In this way nature is endowed with an almost sacramental character, which subsequently may be transferred to man. It is possible that Süleyman’s rose is to be understood in the light of this way of thinking (cp.p. 158f.). The goal of every man is to become beautiful like a rose, because the beauty of the rose is God’s own. It is as if Rumi insists that we primarily have the garden and the plants there to relate to when we want to get into contact with the divine. The plants cause a form of mental movement in man, but this movement is continually rooted in the experience of and the meeting with actual earthly beauty. Contact with God therefore springs from the movements beauty generates in the individual human being. and His infinite Mercy and Power. One could say that for Rūmī the proof of the existence of God could be summarized in the statement, ‘there is beauty, therefore God is’. Moreover, Rūmī saw beauty everywhere, in virgin nature, in the being of man, and in art,” Islamic Art and Spirituality, p. 127. 127 “It should be obvious that in the Muslim view, beauty is God’s attribute. The Prophet said, ‘God is beautiful and He loves beauty’. This follows naturally upon the Shahadah, ‘None is beautiful but God’. Things made of dust can only borrow beauty, and they must give it back to its owner quickly. After all, why do flowers fade so fast?” Murata and Chittick, The Vision of Islam, p. 212. 128 Quoted from Nasr, Islamic Art and Spirituality, p. 137.

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As we have already suggested, such thought structures serve as good interpretive horizons for an iconography that is imitative of nature, as we know it from Rüstem Paşa Camii. But it does not necessarily follow that they are the obvious framework of interpretation for the iconography in Sokollu Mehmet Paşa Camii, where the nature imitations give way to a far more imaginative way of dealing with the surrounding world. Below we will see this way of reproducing nature in connection with Ibn’Arabī’s thinking. The background for this is that Ibn ascribes an importance to the human imagination which seems to find its counterpart in Sokollu’s imaginary representation of nature. H. Corbin does not only connect Rumi and Ibn with the same Sufic tradition. He calls attention to differences in their spirituality, but maintains that the similarity is most decisive. Both are inspired by the same theophanic sentiment, the same nostalgia for beauty, and the same revelation of love: Both tend toward the same absorption of the visible and invisible, the physical and the spiritual, into an unio mystica in which the Beloved becomes the mirror reflecting the secret face of the mystic lover, while the lover, purified of the opacity of his ego, becomes in turn a mirror of the attributes and actions of the Beloved.129 Against this background, we will try to reveal different profiles for the two authors. But first Ibn’Arabī needs a short introduction. He was born in Andalusia in 1165. Here he came into contact with Averroes whom he met on one occasion.130 He was also present at Averroes’ burial. However, he dissociated himself from his Aristotelian thinking. Instead his understanding of life was rather that “to everything that is apparent, literal, external, exoteric […] there corresponds something hidden, spiritual, internal, esoteric.”131 Such perspectives have common features with a philosophy influenced by Plato. Indeed, Ibn had greater sympathy for Avicenna than Averroes, and this sympathy is combined with impulses from old Persian traditions of wisdom, as known from Suhrawardi.132 At the age of 36, Ibn left Spain forever, and lived the rest of his life in the East. In 1201, he went on a pilgrimage to Mekka. Here he met the daughter of a well-to-do sheik. She combined an unusual beauty with great 129 Corbin, Alone with the Alone, pp. 70–71. 130 Corbin, Alone with the Alone, p. 41. 131 Corbin, Alone with the Alone, p. 78. 132 Corbin, Alone with the Alone, p. 8.

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spiritual insight and became extremely important for Ibn’s future work: “She was and remained for him the earthly manifestation, the theophanic figure, of Sophia aeterna.”133 It is worth noting that both Rumi and Ibn get into contact with a key figure who substantially influences their religious thinking. Like Rumi, Ibn has an enormous scholarly production which is only partly accessible in Western languages.134 He died in 1240 and lies buried just north of Damascus. A first glimpse into Ibn’s thinking supports Corbin’s emphasis on the similarities between the two Sufis. As for Rumi, beauty plays a key role in Ibn’s thinking. This highlighting of beauty must primarily be seen in connection with its power of attraction. About God he says, “For you I am preferable to all other good things, I am beauty, I am Grace.” But beauty does not only become important because it directs our interest to that which is desirable and good, but also because the divine so effortlessly can be associated with the same sphere. Whereas Rumi orients his thinking in relation to experiences found in nature, Ibn leaves the impression that his reflections in a quite different way take their point of departure in weighty statements on the nature of the divine, in which beauty and goodness play a key role, as was said above. Next, love is added to this interplay between the good and the beautiful, because it is the beautiful that causes love to be awakened.135 In this way the themes of love and beauty are intimately connected. Also the statements on love are to be understood primarily as theological statements: “Love me, love me alone./Love yourself in me, in me alone. Attach yourself to me.”136 Within these contexts the descriptions have a markedly dynamic character. A characteristic trait, of both the divine beauty and the divine love, is precisely that they turn towards something beyond themselves that corresponds to characteristics of the divine being himself. Thus, as in Rumi, it is not distance and difference that are emphasized in the description of the relationship between creator and created, but corresponding similarities. In accordance with this way of thinking, the beautiful God is himself a seeker of beauty: “God is a beautiful being who loves beauty.”137 This way of thinking becomes 133 Corbin, Alone with the Alone, p. 52. 134 Corbin, Alone with the Alone, p. 75. 135 Corbin elaborates, “The love whose mover is Beauty has God as its object – since ‘God is a beautiful Being who loves beauty’ and who in revealing Himself to Himself has produced the world as a mirror in which to contemplate His own Image, His own beauty – and since if it is written that ‘God will love you’ (Koran III:29), it is because He loves Himself in you,” Alone with the Alone, p. 148. 136 Corbin, Alone with the Alone, p. 174. 137 Corbin, Alone with the Alone, p. 163; cp. note 92.

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absolutely decisive in the definition of the relation between God and the world, because transferred to categories of creation, God’s own fascination with beauty must be understood as expressing his having created the world to be a mirror in which God regards or contemplates his own image. In this way the world comes to be understood as God’s revelation to himself.138 When we see God and the world together in this way, the existing nature does not play the same important part as in Rumi. Instead it is striking how fast the perspective is turned in a theological direction. In other words, it is not our perception that is the center of interest, but the importance is attached to God and his perception: “I have created perception in you in order to be the object of my perception.”139 Thus, the intention behind human perception is that God must be able to see himself through it. In this way, human sensory perception is involved from the very beginning and made part of the divine project: “It is through my eyes that you see me and see yourself/Through your eyes you cannot see me.”140 At the same time, Ibn points out that man sees himself by taking part in the divine project. We might say that God’s view of man is defined as the right or correct view of human life. If Ibn actually imagines that human perception must have God’s view as its point of orientation, it becomes important to clarify how he imagines God sees. It is in this context that imagination is not only endowed with absolutely central epistemological importance, but also becomes a substitute for the real sense impression. Yet imagination does not seem entirely independent of the reconfiguration of the sensible world. Corbin sums it up like this, Unlike common knowledge, which is effected by the penetration of the sense impressions of the outside world into the interior of the soul, the work of prophetic inspiration is a projection of the inner soul upon the outside world. The active Imagination guides, anticipates, molds sense perception; that is why it transmutes sensory data into symbols. The Burning Bush is only a brushwood fire if it is merely perceived by the sensory organs. In order that Moses may perceive the Burning Bush and hear the Voice calling him ‘from the right side of the valley’ – in short, in order that there may be a theophany – an organ of trans-sensory perception is needed.141

138 Corbin, Alone with the Alone, p. 148. 139 Corbin, Alone with the Alone, p. 174. 140 Corbin, Alone with the Alone, p. 174. 141 Corbin, Alone with the Alone, p. 80.

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We are here at the very crux of the matter in relation to Ibn’s epistemology. As we see, imagination is forwarded at the expense of ordinary sense experience. At the same time it enters into a dynamically creative interplay with the experienced world. Corbin says that there is a projection of the soul on the outside world. Imagination performs a trans-sensory act. In that way the burning bush can be something more than a chance event, and instead appear as a theophany. In fact, Corbin goes so far that he can let imagination appear as independent of the actual visual impressions encountered in the world of experience: “Theophanic visions, mental visions, ecstatic visions in a state of dream or of waking are in themselves penetrations into the world they see.”142 Thus, the inside world is undeniably given pride of place: “These objects themselves have their places in the outside world, but their genesis and meaning flow primarily from the inner world where they were conceived.”143 In keeping with this way of thinking, the true reality is placed inside man.144 When Corbin seems to connect the visions he talks about with archetypes,145 one must presuppose that the characteristics of the archetype are derived from their theophanic character, which, in its turn, can find sensory reflections in ordinary sense data. The true reality, however, is found not in the sensory world, but in imagination.146 According to Corbin, this form of thinking provides the adequate expression for the joining of the earthly and the heavenly. Love makes it clear how this takes place. Corbin distinguishes between three types of love: divine love, spiritual love and natural love.147 These three meet in mystic love, which is physical in the sense that it is directed at and contemplates a specific image.148 This image is to be understood as “the physical form of a theophany,” i.e. it is a materialization of the spiritual enterprise.149 Even though the transcendence will always be decisive, some form of contact with the physical, sensory world

142 Corbin, Alone with the Alone, p. 93. 143 Corbin, Alone with the Alone, p. 180. 144 Corbin, Alone with the Alone, p. 153. 145 Corbin, Alone with the Alone, p. 4. 146 Corbin, Alone with the Alone, p. 153. 147 Corbin, Alone with the Alone, p. 148. 148 Corbin, Alone with the Alone, p. 151. 149 Corbin, Alone with the Alone, p. 151. Cf. “In the nature of mystic love this dialectic discovers the encounter (co-spiration) between sensory, physical love and spiritual love. Beauty is the supreme theophany, but it reveals itself as such only to a love which it transfigures. Mystic love is the religion of Beauty, because Beauty is the secret of theophanies and because as such it is the power which transfigures,” p. 98.

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is retained. Ibn gives us a good example of how he understands the relation between the physically sensible and the spiritual: One of the most subtile phenomena of love is that which I experienced in myself. You experience a vehement love, a sympathy, an ardent desire, an emotional agitation so great as to provoke physical weakness, total insomnia, disgust at all food, and yet you do not know for whom or by whom. You cannot determine the object of your love […] It is the most subtile that I have observed in love by personal experience. And then by chance a theophany appears to you in an inner vision. Then this love attaches itself (to this mental theophany).150 A love experience can suddenly appear as an expression of divine love, as the result of an inner event. Whereas love was formerly directed at self-satisfaction, it now sees itself as a mirror for divine love. In this framework, the world becomes codes (ciphers) for that which is to become manifest.151 Again Corbin emphasizes that the process in question is aimed at bringing forth intimations of “the immaterial and spiritual realities in external or sensuous forms.”152 The condition for this way of imagining the unity of creator and created, is understood as a coincidentia oppositorum, i.e. a coincidence, not of irreconcilable contrasts, but of differences which complement each other.153 This way of thinking can be termed esoteric or mystic monism.154 It has a clear mystical orientation, in that it insists on the connection between the spiritual and the natural, and it continuously looks for unity in life between the material and spiritual, the world and God.155 The aim of this whole theological project, in this way of thinking, becomes unio mystica, which Ibn himself gives significant expression to in the following text:156 Dearly beloved!/Let us go toward Union./And if we find the road/That leads to separation,/We will destroy separation./Let us go hand in hand./

150 Corbin, Alone with the Alone, p. 146, note 18. 151 Corbin, Alone with the Alone, pp. 208–209. 152 Corbin, Alone with the Alone, p. 208. 153 Corbin, Alone with the Alone, p. 209. 154 Corbin, Alone with the Alone, p. 173. 155 Corbin, Alone with the Alone, p. 151. 156 Corbin, Alone with the Alone, p. 98.

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Let us enter the presence of Truth./Let us be our judge/And imprint its seal upon our union/For ever.157 An epistemological approach of this type sits well with the main impression from the Sokollu decoration. Both the leafage and the flower formations here give a clear feeling that it is not about getting to know reality with a basis in the actual sensible world, but instead one is facing a kind of transfigured world. It is about some kind of trans-sensory perception which is adapted through an imagination to which we may well ascribe some kind of theophanic character. The plant motifs in Sokollu are to be understood as transmuted plants, plants which approach you from another, unknown, but just as attractive world. We started the presentation of Ibn by referring to Corbin, who warned against distinguishing too sharply between Rumi’s and Ibn’s ways of approaching the deity. Nevertheless, they come across as markedly different. Whereas Ibn’s perspective can be characterized as an ab intra ad extra perspective, Rumi must be seen as a representative of the opposite view. The important question is whether these basic types within our context are to be seen as incompatible. There is a lot to suggest that they are not. The background for their interplay and mutual supplementation is that they represent a monistic world view in which the exchange of similar characteristics is foregrounded, not contradictions and differences, as they are in various forms of dualistic approaches. Within a project like that, it is basically unimportant whether the point of departure is the divine or the human, since both reflect the same kind of reality. The monistic project itself of course presupposes that God’s view is not to be understood as different in character from that of men, in the same way as the Koran as divine revelation corresponds to the created structure. Within such a fundamental understanding, the pictorial program of the türbe, in which divine and created reality are perhaps most obviously encountered in the same structures, also finds its place. Here we deal not so much with a movement from outside in or from inside out, but rather with a mental readiness to trace transcendence in the complex picture surfaces we see. Even though the dynamics are different in the türbe and the two mosques, they are comparable, in our view, if one chooses to see them in light of monistic thought. Quite in keeping with such an understanding, it also makes sense to combine disparate forms of expression within the sultan’s tuğra (cp.p. 158), in the same way as we have seen that both the türbe and the two mosques have elements of all the pictorial traditions mentioned. So even though the 157 Corbin, Alone with the Alone, p. 175.

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iconographic material has clear individual traits, which in our view reflect different tendencies within mystical thought, it does not necessarily follow that these individual traits pull in the direction of incompatible views of reality. Such an approach also seems to be in tune with Sufic self-understanding.158 Conclusion We will relate our conclusory and summary reflections to Corbin’s overall view of Islamic mysticism. Taking his point of departure in Ibn’Arabī’s thought, he  emphasizes that it differs from Christian thought in that it resembles Gnosticism and Montanism more than mainstream Christianity, which emphasizes the importance of external given events. To Corbin the theology of incarnation constitutes the most marked difference between Christianity and Islam. If we relate Corbin’s statements to the material we have analyzed, classical Christianity seems to have more in common with Rumi than with Ibn’Arabī. Like Rumi, Christianity ascribes an importance to the outer given events, which is absolute. In both, religion is understood as the interpretation of outer events. This does not necessarily mean that the aspect of appropriation in the single individual becomes less prominent. We have seen this in Rumi, and we know it from the Christian tradition.159 So it is hardly in the interplay between inner and outer events that the difference between Islam and Christianity becomes most conspicuous. In fact, it can be documented that types of 158 “Most varieties of Sufism actually stand in opposition to a single explanation or understanding of the world around us as being the only explanation, or the only acceptable explanation. Sufism tends to stand for the view that the truth may be variously constructed out of the experience which we all have, and we should respect all those different ways of seeing the world,” O. Leaman, Islamic Aesthetics. An introduction (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2004), p. 170f. 159 Good examples are found in the New Testament stories which presuppose that what takes place in the material world must be decoded, so that the stories can become meaningful. The stories about Jesus’ life, but even more clearly about his resurrection, suggest that only a few understand the point of what is happening. In the Jewish tradition it is an established idea that there is a difference between seeing and distinguishing (Matt. 13. 14). A clear example of the exercising of this distinguishing activity is found in John. The story of Maria Magdalena is characteristic, “When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, and did not know that it was Jesus” (John 20. 14). What is it that then makes her suddenly recognize him again? Well, it is something as prosaic and exterior as Jesus calling her by name (John 20. 16). In these outer occurrences the hidden meaning of the events is decoded.

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Christianity that call Ibn’Arabī to mind were not simply refuted by the early church, but have had an impact on more recent Protestant mysticism.160 Nevertheless, it may look as if the idea of incarnation is prominent in a discussion of religious marks of distinction. According to Christian understanding the divine is really present in the man Jesus. But is not that the case, too, with Rumi’s Sufi friend? Doesn’t he also in a particular way carry the divine in him? The greatest difference between the Sufi and Jesus is probably connected with how the divine presence is perceived. In Rumi’s world it is exclusively connected with beauty. It is beauty that reveals itself in nature and man. This is not foreign to Christian thought. In Christianity the divine also makes itself known in what is beautiful. At the same time, we find a consciousness in Christianity that neither nature nor man is simply subsumed by this beauty. Jesus was born in a stable and died on a cross. Stories like that mark the limit for how monistic Christianity can become. It cannot, and will not, minimize the difference between the divine and the human. In the balance between closeness and distance, beauty and ugliness, Christianity found its classical expression. Not monism, as in Islam; not dualism, as in Gnosticism, but maneuvering carefully between them. The divinely beautiful and good is to be found in the ugly and evil, in order to bring new life to what is damaged and deformed. This does not necessarily mean that the last word has been said about the difference between Christianity and Islam. Also within Islam there is obviously a consciousness that the world is subject to ruination and destruction. The form of monism which we have come across does not entail a denial that there is a difference between the finite and the infinite. When the Islamic project dwells so little on the destruction of the world, it must in all likelihood be seen in light of the dominant theocentrism that characterizes Islamic thought. It is the overriding interest in the divine being that leads to pushing human misery to the background. There is an awareness of the human limitations, but it is the meditative concentration on the divine being that is at the center, since this is where one comes into contact with the transformative power of religion. The same emphasis is found again in early Christian art. In San Vitale in Ravenna, it is Christ’s ability to re-create the world which is central, not human weakness and impotence. So what, when all comes to all, is the difference in the view of nature or the relationship between God and the world, between Islam and Christianity? It is not easily defined, and is not made easier if one includes modern types of 160 Corbin mentions Boehme, Gichtel, Weigel and Swedenborg as examples from Protestant tradition, of mystics who can be compared to Ibn ‘Arabī, Alone with the Alone, p. 92.

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Christianity as frames of reference. Seen against more recent western types of Christianity which are marked by internalized, soteriologically oriented thinking with a heavy emphasis on the boons of salvation in the hereafter, in other words a strongly anthropologically oriented understanding of religion, Islam fades as oddly incarnational, presentist and creation-oriented in its entire theocentric expression. At the same time, more recent interpretations of Christianity appear as markedly iconoclastic, in the sense that, in a way, entirely different from Islam, they challenge the thought that the divine can, in fact, have an impact on this world. Thus, the experience of the divine is under the threat of being emptied of real, lived experience. It seems strange to go to Islam to find a conviction that the divine can actually be traced in physically given entities. It is just as strange to turn to Islam to find an emotionally based devotion to the created world, instead of disdain for the world. Perhaps the fact is that the similarity between classical Christianity and Islam is in important respects greater than the similarities between classical and modern Christianity?

chapter 7

“I Can See Byzantine Art and Understand It”: The Problematic of the Byzantine Images and the Immanent Transcendence in Per Kirkeby’s Art Hans Jørgen Frederiksen In 1976 Per Kirkeby painted a picture entitled Den byzantinske ø (The Byzantine Island) (Fig. 7.1).1 This was the year before his first visit to the old Byzantine capital, Constantinople/Istanbul.2 In 1997 Per Kirkeby declared in connection with this picture: The center is what I call the dynamic emptiness, that sort of nothing. Every­ thing that is motivic and has energy is almost always situated on the periphery, but there is no doubt that it is the center it is about, and that the statement is found in there. I do not want to make too much of that, but I guess it has to do with emptiness and stuff like that.3 It is about the formal aspect of the painting, but also about the ‘content’. Kirkeby himself says that it was that kind of thing (like The Byzantine Island) he had to ‘cheat’ to do in those days ‘during the prohibition’: The thing is that I did not paint to create a single painting, I did not even paint a painting, but filled square sheets which were only points, inter­ changeable points, in a large concept. That everything was interchange­ able, that it was without meaning, in the sense that nothing gained anything significant by being painted. Each separate element (picture) had no aura or authority as a picture, but was a great flow. All the elementpictures were square (sides of equal value) sheets of Masonite, which were always hung in long series with exactly the same distance between the squares. So I could maintain that it was about sequence and equality. It was a minimalist sequence, a series of elements, and not old-fashioned

1 P. Kirkeby, Den byzantinske ø (mixed media on masonite, 122 × 122 cm), 1976, National Gallery of Denmark, Copenhagen. 2 According to Lars Morell in L. Morell, Per Kirkeby. Bygningskunst (Humlebæk: Aristo 1966), p. 33. 3 In L. Morell: Samtaler med Lars Morell (Copenhagen: Borgen 1997), p. 12.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi 10.1163/9789004291690_011

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Figure 7.1 Per Kirkeby, The Byzantine Island, mixed media on masonite, 122 × 122 cm, National Gallery of Denmark, Copenhagen, 1976

paintings. Said I, and was free of my acceptance of the “prohibition” and found room for “desire.”[…] Without struggle, no pictures.4 When he talks about the ‘prohibition’ in the 70’s, when painting had widely been replaced by other forms of expression for the young generation, it is of course with reference to the historic iconoclasm in the eastern part of the Christian world in the 8th and 9th centuries. He goes on to say about this, “The iconoclastic controversy of the old Byzantines was a discussion of these matters 4 P. Kirkeby, Håndbog (Copenhagen: Borgen 1991), p. 96f.

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that showed great insight. Not only a bureaucratic edict. In principle a discus­ sion that must be taken up continuously.”5 What, then, is Byzantine in the painting (Fig. 7.1)? Apparently nothing icon­ ographic, and not the formal content in any conspicuous degree either. It is rather that the picture – like Byzantine art – follows upon, and is the result of an iconoclastic controversy. A picture island in the midst of an iconoclastic sea. Something motivic, like the woman’s head at top, tries to break through, but all in all the picture is non-representational. Later something Byzantine becomes more apparent in many of Kirkeby’s pictures; but before considering this, it is useful to look at the most important arguments both for and against images in the iconoclast controversy.

The Byzantine Iconoclast Controversy

In the year 726 a ban on religious images was issued on the emperor’s initiative, which led to an iconoclast movement in Byzantium. The problem, seen from the point of view of the iconoclasts, was first and foremost that some might get the idea of identifying the icon (the image) with its original (the primordial image), or worship it in a way that was due only to God. The risk had been called attention to several times already in the 7th cen­ tury and refuted as many times, by Bishop Leontius of Cyprus, among others: “We do not say to the holy cross or to the icons, ‘you are my God’, because they are not our God, but they are open books which are there to remind us about God, and they are placed in the churches and are venerated there to his glory.”6 In 754 (during the iconoclasm) the ban against images was consolidated at a church council near Constantinople. The arguments for it were as follows: (1) The worship of images is idolatry and forbidden, according to Exodus 20. 4–5. Furthermore, it is claimed, both the New Testament and the church fathers take exception to images, emphasizing their general material and physical nature. (2) Christ, according to Christian orthodoxy is both God and man. Thus, according to the ecumenical council in Chalcedon in 451, He has two complete natures which are not blended, but which are yet insepara­ ble. If images of Christ are produced, they can only relate to his human

5 Kirkeby, Håndbog, p. 99. 6 N.H. Baynes, Byzantine studies and other essays (Athlone Press: London 1955), p. 232.

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nature, as the divine in no way can be limited or described in an image, and thus one will pull apart the two natures, which is heresy. (3) The Eucharist is the only true picture of Christ, instituted by Our Lord himself. (4) The saints are rightly ‘depicted’ in the extent to which they are taken as ‘ideals’, i.e. in the extent to which the believers become living images (of saints).7 The main advocate for images (at least seen in retrospect) was John of Damascus (675–749), who lived in a Muslim-governed area outside the Byzantine emperor’s jurisdiction, from where he could speak freely. John thought that it is foolish to want to depict the Old Testament God; but since this God chose to become man, wholly and fully, it is reasonable to depict God incarnate. In fact, incarnation is altogether the most substantial argument for images in the Christian context. John’s theology expresses the attitude or understanding that on one hand an image is only an image, not to be taken for the primordial image, but on the other hand the image is in no way something banal or less essential, since it is theologically and epistemologically an exceed­ ingly central and faceted phenomenon. John of Damascus operates with six image categories, which in a slightly simplified form may be represented as follows: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

The natural image Ideas Man Objects Events The man-made ‘icons’ 8

It is important that this is seen as an unbroken chain or ladder from top to bottom. The natural image is Christ, who according to the New Testament is “the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.”9 In the NiceneConstantinopolitan creed from the 4th century, it says about Christ that he is 7 M.V. Anastos, “The Argument for Iconoclasm as Presented by the Iconoclastic Council of 754,” in Late Classical and Mediaeval Studies in Honor of Albert Mathias Friend jr., ed. by K. Weitzmann (Princeton n.j.: Princeton University Press 1955), pp. 177–188. 8 M. Barasch, icon. Studies in the History of an Idea (New York: New York University Press 1995), pp. 222–236. 9 Colossians 1. 15.

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“begotten, not made, of one essence with the Father by whom all things were made.” It is in this sense he is the natural image: begotten not created. Through the second image, The ideas, the belief is expressed that before anything was created it was, so to speak, potentially present with God as ‘ideas’ or ‘forms’, for otherwise it would not have come into being. God is here seen as no thing (which is not the same as nothing) and everything, which might well be compared to Kirkeby’s ‘dynamic emptiness, that sort of nothing’ (but more about that later). With the third image, Man, we move into (or ‘down into’) creation. “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them,” it says in Genesis 1. 27. So human beings are images, and carriers of a certain theomorphism. But they are created images, it should be noted. Things, the created things, are images in the sense that any thing is part of a larger whole. They refer to other things, which they may resemble more or less, and in the final analysis to the Creator. To the one who knows how to see and understand, all images are carriers of meaning, for example in a symbolic sense. In this we find the possibility for the anagogic thinking so widespread in the Middle Ages: from the creation to the Creator. In a similar understanding also Events are images, for they all in various ways point to something that has already happened and something that is to hap­ pen. This is a precondition for the evolvement of the typological way of inter­ preting, which has been prevalent since the first beginnings of Christianity.10 Only with the sixth and last category does John of Damascus arrive at what may be called a picture, also to a quite commonplace secularized way of thinking, i.e. the man-made painting or the like, for example – and not least – the holy icons of the church. It is of paramount importance to icon theology that the latter category, in which John incidentally also includes the written word, takes its place in the greater whole as a step on the ladder or a link in the chain. At the second ecumenical council in Nicea in 787, the iconoclasts were denounced and the religious images were rehabilitated. In refutation of the claim that an image of Christ could only relate to his human nature and accord­ ingly must separate it from the divine nature, it was said that the image’s rela­ tion to the depicted person is a formal likeness to his or her person, i.e. (in accordance with the meaning of the Latin word persona) his or her mode of manifestation. Theodoros of Studion (759–826), who was among the most important iconodules during the second phase of the prohibition (815–843), 10

Cp. E.A. Nielsen, Kristendommens retorik (Copenhagen: Gyldendal 2009).

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expressed the crucial difference between essential identity and the depiction’s formal similarity by referring to the imprint of a signet in wax. No thing is trans­ ferred; the signet is pressed into the wax, but form is transferred. Here again, there is a difference between no thing and nothing! John of Damascus several times uses the expression ‘through the icons’. He calls the icon ‘a door’, ‘a road’, ‘a meeting place’. Through the icon the believer moves into the dimensions of the holy space and the holy time, in living con­ tact with the person depicted or the mystery depicted. He is connected to the timeless liturgy of Heaven. Among several aspects of the orthodox icon theology it must be mentioned that the icon furthers our appreciation of the material world. Not only does it call attention to the reality of Christ’s physical body, but – as we have seen – also the spiritual potential of all material things. Seen from the point of view of the iconodules, the iconoclasts had a tendency to limit the worship of God to the spiritual sphere and did not consider the material aspects of Christianity. In John of Damascus’ words, “I will not stop glorifying matter, because it was through matter my redemption went. Do not despise matter, for it is not despi­ cable. Nothing of what God has created is despicable. To claim such a thing is Manichean heresy.”11 Thus the iconodules were also of the opinion that the holy relics are to be honored, whereas the iconoclasts typically were more reserved or totally rejected the worship of relics. The icon artist uses material things (tesserae, paint etc.) which are part of the created world, and which are thus already in advance marked by God. And with his artistic talents, the iconographer makes the divine explicit in a new and dynamic way. Material things are given voice. In the words of Bishop Leontius of Cyprus from the 7th century: Creation does not glorify God directly and through itself, but through me do the Heavens declare God’s glory, through me the moon worships God, through me the stars glorify Him, through me the waters and the rain showers, the dew and all creation worship God and give him glory.12 It almost sounds like St. Francis of Assisi’s famous “Canticle of Brother Sun” nearly six hundred years later! So for these iconodules the icons show us how

11

12

Apologia of St. John Damascene against those who decry holy images, Part I, p. 5, in the internet edition of “Medieval Sourcebook,” ed. P. Halsall, 1998. After St. John Damascene, On Holy Images, translated by M.H. Allies, (London 1898). N.H. Baynes: Byzantine studies, p. 235.

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we as ‘created in the image of God’ can operate as ‘sub-creators’ in imitation of God the Creator. In 843 Empress Theodora repealed the ban of images on behalf of her minor son, the later emperor, Constantine VI. A church council called by the empress denounced iconoclasm, and since 843 the icons have been absolutely neces­ sary elements in the orthodox life of piety, indeed the icon theology is so much a touchstone for orthodoxy that every year on the first Sunday of the Easter fast, Orthodox Christians celebrate the icon’s victory over iconoclasm as the Victory of Orthodoxy. The Byzantine/Orthodox pictorial art has subsequently to a remarkable degree been marked by being the result of a dispute. In its idiom and its iconog­ raphy it is, in a manner of speaking, ready to reply to anyone who might regard it as an expression of idolatry. It is still the form, and not the essence or the substance which connects the image with the primordial image. In that sense the icon can be likened to a shadow or a mirror image.

Modernism, Per Kirkeby and ‘the Byzantine Conflict’

The leap from Byzantine icons to modernist art is in many respects enormous. True, we must not overlook that a number of artists associated with symbolism and early non-figurative art, for example, found much inspiration in the ancient holy images. But if we take a look at the long lines, it is irrefutable that modernism, in the course of the 20th century, was more and more associated with the demand for the original, new, provocative, different, untraditional, critical, non-conformist etc. Around 1981 the Danish sculptor and theologian Hein Heinsen (b. 1935) said, It is liberating to give up a sequence of events. It is liberating to take part in and embrace a series of events, contemporaneous and unconnected. The new sculptures state nothing beyond their exterior. They participate in a situation.13 And on March 13th, 1993, the newspaper Kristeligt Dagblad can quote Heinsen for the following: “The modern is characterized by not being bound to symbols and set references.”

13

Quoted from E. Böttzauw, Modernismens rødder (Copenhagen: Amtscentralens pædago­ giske værksted 1986), p. 30.

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A very different attitude to ‘modernity’s incompatibility with depiction’ is expressed by Bjørn Nørgaard (b. 1947) in the newspaper, Weekendavisen, July 15th–21st, 1994. To Marianne Juhl’s question: ‘Now the former horse-butcher is working on tapestries based on Danish history, which are to be hung in the Great Hall at Christiansborg. Is vice paying tribute to virtue?’ he answers: What has happened to modernism today is that what I am doing with these tapestries is not allowed. They represent the history of the royal power. That is unacceptable in art today. They refer to concrete historical events. That is also unacceptable. They are figurative, and they are deco­ rative, and that is an absolute no-no. So I do it.

Post-modern? Late Modern?

Representational or non-representational? At least it is about something. Few people have maintained this more insistently than Per Kirkeby: Everything you make is about something, of course. It is something that especially the people who write about art sort of overlook, that it is about something. And it is often about something that is very little sophisti­ cated or advanced when you name it for what it is.14 [A]rt sure as hell does not come from nothing. It is always about something, not in the sense that it is legible, but it is always about something, and it always springs from something!15 Not least in connection with art in an ecclesiastical context does the question about meaning, content and reference become precarious. In a letter to me from November 4th 2001, Per Kirkeby writes in this context about the situation “when as an artist, one plunges into this world and tries to navigate between the crude Bible illustration and the non-committal abstraction which any meaning can be ascribed to. Not to mention any names.” Thus, the potential of art lies somewhere between the two poles, crude illustration and non-committal abstraction! In the article from Kristeligt Dagblad from March 13th 1993, quoted above, where Hein Heinsen said that “The Modern is characterized by not being bound to symbols and set references,” he continued, “The preaching of the 14 P. Kirkeby, Arnasco. Samtaler med Ib Michael (Copenhagen: Brøndum 1995), p. 102. 15 Kirkeby, Arnasco, pp. 141–142.

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church, on the other hand, does not experiment freely, but is bound to sym­ bols. That is the problem!” And a little later in the same article: “In general terms, the problem is that the closer we come to what really matters, the holy, the more difficult it is to create a depiction without taking it prisoner.” Of course this is totally a product of God’s transcendence, but what about incarnation, then, and what about the symbols? That there is a problem with the very well-known, well-defined conventional symbols is rather obvious. But what if reality itself is symbolic? Then, supposedly, art must become symbolic too? That was at least what K.E. Løgstrup expressed in 1978: [...] that religiously speaking it is reality, the actual phenomenon, which is symbolic, and not first the image of reality in the icon or in the ritual act. […] The artistic symbol becomes a symbol of a symbolic power which is already found in everything that exists and happens. Not only art is symbolic, reality is too, indeed first and foremost […] What the image symbolises is a comprehensive and manifold unity of existence, which also the images are part of.16 (Cf. John of Damascus’ six image categories). If Løgstrup is right, is Hein Heinsen then wrong? In one of his books Per Kirkeby writes: […] the Byzantine conflict is also dead serious for me […] I can see Byzantine art and understand it because it belongs to the cultural sphere I was born into. I can be moved by it, it is part of the magic I use to “under­ stand” life for better or worse, or in death. Those are the images the icono­ clasts tear down and substitute with new images. Instead of an image of Jesus we get an abstract cross. It is an act I can understand. The great striving towards the genuine image which transgresses all limits, which annuls itself as an image.17 Poul Erik Tøjner sees it as an important point that Kirkeby does not take sides, “because it is not a dispute in which one can decide […]” And Tøjner argues his point by saying, “It would be a limitation to take sides, for both parties go for the ultimate. In impotence and pictorial courage, respectively.”18 This is unusu­ ally well and precisely put, and yet it is incorrect in a certain sense, for in the 16 17 18

K.E. Løgstrup, Skabelse og tilintetgørelse, Metafysik IV (Copenhagen: Gyldendal 1978), p. 190. P. Kirkeby, Naturens blyant (Copenhagen: Borgen 1978), p. 144. P.E. Tøjner, Per Kirkeby. Maleri (Klampenborg: Bjerggaard 1998), p. 79.

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Orthodox, Byzantine situation, sides were actually taken in favour of the motivic side of religious art, and primarily in reference to incarnation. For the believer in incarnation the image does not only become a possibility but a necessity. The Byzantine image, the icon, primarily expresses the belief in God’s incarnation as man. But where doubt is prevalent, it may be impossible to take sides. In 1988 Kirkeby writes about the Danish painter Edvard Weie (1879–1943) that “he has the same problem as the post-iconoclastic painters: the rules are restrictive”. And he continues to deal with “the painterly happiness after icono­ clasm. In a certain sense one can go ahead and paint without worries. Things fall into place if one keeps to the prescribed components.” Then it becomes truly existential: “But is this falling into place the content and aim of the pic­ ture? Is it divine or simply the fullfillment of conventions? Can doubt be ban­ ished in ether fumes?”19 Kirkeby, of course, does not dare answer in the affirmative, since he would then be finished as a painter, wouldn’t he? But in a commentary to his work in Frejlev church near Aalborg, 1996 and 1999, he writes, “The house of God deserves no less than the best. And the best is a com­ mitted hand. A responsible hand. All the way down into the most common­ place: even the hand of the artisan painter must be seen. […] The fear of God begins in pigment and linseed oil ...”20 For the painter there is no other way. Kirkeby’s use of structures and motives from Byzantine icons will be elaborated later, but first some of the artist’s state­ ments quoted above must be commented on with Byzantine references. It must be emphasized that the aim is not to impute Orthodox tenets to the art­ ist, but simply to exemplify correspondences between the said statements and the traditions of the Eastern Church.

‘That Sort of Nothing’

When Kirkeby, as quoted in the beginning of this article, talks of “the centre […] the dynamic emptiness, that sort of nothing […] it is the central area it is about […] the statement is found in there. I do not want to make too much of that, but I guess it has to do with emptiness and stuff like that,” I will take the liberty to ‘make much of it’ by first commenting on the picture of the great dome in the main church of Constantinople, Hagia Sophia, which was erected 532–537 and was given its present form after an earthquake in 558 (Fig. 7.2). 19 20

P. Kirkeby, Edvard Weie (Hellerup: Bløndal 1988), p. 18f. Kristeligt Dagblad, September 3, 1999.

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Figure 7.2

The great dome in Hagia Sophia, Istanbul, 532–537 and 558

Thanks to the ring of 40 close-set windows and the four elegant pendentives in the corners between the spherical form and the supporting pillars, the dome rather seems to be floating above the room, especially in strong sunlight. Or as Procopius, who was contemporary with the building, wrote in his book about Emperor Justinian’s building activities, “It seems not to be built of heavy brick, but looks as if it hung from heaven in a golden chain.”21 This expression, which probably refers to the beginning of the 8th song of Homer’s Iliad, first and fore­ most expresses a belief in the aforementioned unbroken connection between Heaven and Earth. The experience of the inner space of Hagia Sophia is in a certain sense the opposite of the impression of a Gothic cathedral, in such a way that they do not contradict but rather complement each other. Whereas the most impor­ tant lines in the Gothic church strive dynamically and purposefully towards the peaks of the pointed arches and vaults and thus visualize the scholastic spirit, methodology and endeavour, which Panofsky has written a whole book about, the Byzantine domed church seems rather to float down from on high.22 21 22

C. Mango, The Art of the Byzantine Empire 312–1453 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1986), p. 75. E. Panofsky, Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism (New York: World 1972).

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Since the earliest building of churches in the 4th century, the Christian church, as is well known, has been connected with several symbolic layers. One of them concerns the conceptions of the coming state of salvation, the heavenly Jerusalem, particularly as this city is described in Revelation. The western longitudinal church, the basilica, especially profits from Apocalypse 4, where the description gives associations to an imperial Roman audience basil­ ica. The eastern, Byzantine centralized church, on the other hand, seems par­ ticularly to relate to Revelation 21. 2, “And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband.” The bride imagery is used to express the dream of and belief in the whole and perfect, which one cannot gain by conquest, but which one must be available for and accept. In the picture (Fig.  7.2), one looks directly into Hagia Sophia’s enormous dome. The image of Christ that adorned it for a period is long gone, and the iconoclasts – both Christian and Muslim, − can feel satisfied. In the four pen­ dentives, the mighty six-winged cherubs and seraphs worshiping the deity are still seen, but their faces have been covered with something like rosettes, so that only their wings are visible. Everything originates in a point at the top of the dome. From here the move­ ments spread in all directions like a fantastic firework display – a ‘big bang’. The point becomes the circular garland of windows and via the four penden­ tives the circle is transformed into a square: from the ‘nothing’ of the point via the infinity of the circle to the square of time and space. The whole thing starts with nothing, and it returns to nothing. “The center, […] the dynamic empti­ ness, that sort of nothing.” God is nothing and everything! Before anything was created there was nothing, and in this nothing everything that was, that is, and that is to be was potentially present. “That sort of nothing […] it is the central area it is about […] the statement is found in there.” Per Kirkeby takes a painterly approach to it, but is reluctant to ‘make too much of it’. Hilary of Poitiers (ca 315–367), who is respected both in eastern Orthodox and in western Catholic tradition, would probably – albeit based on slightly different premises – agree with him: But the errors of heretics and blasphemers force us to deal with unlawful matters, to scale perilous heights, to speak unutterable words, to trespass on forbidden ground. Faith ought in silence to fulfil the commandments, worshipping the Father, reverencing with Him the Son, abounding in the Holy Ghost, but we must strain the poor resources of our language to express thoughts too great for words. The error of others compels us to

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err in daring to embody in human terms truths which ought to be hidden in the silent veneration of the heart.23 “Nothing comes of everything. And everything comes of nothing.” “Form is emp­ tiness. Emptiness is form.” Thus Per Kirkeby is quoted in a book from 2001.24 The first statement has in a sense been commented on above. As to “Form is empti­ ness. Emptiness is form,” it must be stated, first of all, that art is form, purely and simply, above anything else. And this, it should be noted, is form understood as something which is so intimately connected to content that it would be totally absurd to try to separate them or even to regard them separately. Not least in Orthodox Byzantine images is form absolutely central. It is by virtue of form that the icon has a form of identity with the figure depicted. To the believer, identity is ‘essential’ or ‘substantial’ in the sacrament of the Eucharist, where bread and wine are said to be the body and blood of Christ, although this cannot be seen. But in the image the relation is formal. The rela­ tion of the Orthodox icon to its motive can, as said above, be likened to the imprint of a signet to the signet itself. What is transferred is no thing; but it is not the same as nothing! When the Danish scholastic philosopher Boethius of Dacia, who taught at the University of Paris in c.1270, writes that “the willed originates from the will­ ing, proportionate to the attitude of his will,” it is by virtue of the fact that his modern Danish translator, Niels Jørgen Green-Pedersen, has chosen to trans­ late Boethius’ Latin forma as attitude.25 No doubt the translation is very well founded; but the forma chosen by Boethius gives more relevant and useful associations. Form is theologically speaking pre-existent in God before cre­ ation and ‘before’ time. In emptiness. In nothing. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and void,” it says in Genesis 1. 1–2. In the old Catholic Bible, Jerome’s Latin Vulgate, the words are ‘inanis et vacua’, and when it says in the English translation of Genesis 2. 7 that “then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground,” it corresponds to “formavit igitur Dominus Deus hominem de limo terrae” in the Vulgate. The previous pages have dealt extensively with the “image problem,” with abstraction/representation, and in that context with the image’s ability to 23

24 25

Hilary of Poitiers, De Trinitate, Liber II,2 (Migne, Patrologia Latina 10,51). Quoted from NPNF209. Hilary of Poitiers, John of Damascus, by Philip Schaff, Grand Rapids, mi: Christian Classics Ethereal Library. url: www.ccel.org/ccelschaff/npnf209.html. B. Bækgaard, Stilladsarbejde – samtaler med Per Kirkeby (Klampenborg: Bjerggaard 2001). Boethius de Dacia, Verdens evighed. Det højeste gode. Drømme (Frederiksberg: Det lille forlag 2001), p. 70.

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relate to the absolute, to the divine. In this connection, the symbol as a phe­ nomenon inevitably stands out. What is the meaning of ‘symbol’ in artistic and religious contexts, and what possibilities does it contain? Symbols In Byzantine Pictures (Bornholms Kunstmuseum, 1989) Lars Kjærulf Møller writes about Per Kirkeby and Edward Weie (p. 10): In these pictures, the Byzantine element we find in both is quite obvious: how the motif is merely a basically trivial pretext for the picture itself, which thus takes on the character of an icon. The artist’s eternal endeav­ our solely with color and composition to express more general consider­ ations of issues common to all mankind, and hence in reality also the paradox of painting, renouncing the painting for painting’s sake. There are several interesting viewpoints in this brief condensed statement, but in one respect I think Lars Kjærulf Møller is wrong, i.e., regarding the under­ standing of the motif as a ‘trivial pretext’. I find more relevance in Vincent Greenberg’s view: “I do not wish to be understood as saying that a more enlight­ ened connoisseurship will hold that what, as distinct from how, Rembrandt painted is an indifferent matter.”26 Neither Weie’s nor Kirkeby’s pictures are iconographic in the same sense as Byzantine icons, but nonetheless they are about something. In what sense are they about something? In an article from 2001, Lars Morell writes as follows in relation to Per Kirkeby’s monumental work “Anastasis” (Greek: resurrection) in Aarhus University: It has nothing to do with the power of death over the individual, for that is unabated. What it is instead about is that the conquest of death is among the most remarkable and most fascinating stories and images mankind has fostered. It is not to be taken literally, for it is an image, and hence has a figurative meaning.27

26 27

C. Greenberg, Art and Culture (London: Thames and Hudson 1973), p. 138. The paragraph in question was first published in 1954. L. Morell, “Når Gud fører penslen,” in Århus Stift (Aarhus 2001), pp. 92–104.

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The last sentence is rather interesting, and perhaps more so than Lars Morell is aware of. Not literally, he says, but in a figurative sense. Literal and figurative correspond to word and impression (impression, a nearly Aristotelian term for seeing), so that we almost imagine ourselves in an image dispute at the time of the Northern European Protestant Reformations or perhaps even back in the Byzantine iconoclasm of the 8th and 9th centuries. For the iconodules in a Catholic Orthodox tradition, it is of paramount importance, as mentioned above, that image is form. An image has a formal likeness to what it depicts and not an essential identity with it. So when Morell describes the meaning of the image as figurative, it is in a way acceptable, only not in the sense of metaphor or allegory or anything like that, because a very intimate connection may exist between the signet and its transferred, imprinted seal.28 As said before, no thing moves from signet to wax – merely form. “This stamp effect is part of art’s striving for realism. A striving for uncompromising realism,” Nina StenKnudsen writes in 2003.29 In the Orthodox, Byzantine, Christian tradition, there is, as said, a belief in an unbroken chain or ladder of images from the first image, Christ, who, according to Paul’s Letter to the Colossians 1. 15, is “the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation” (Vulgata: “imago Dei invisibilis primogenitus omnis creaturae”), down to the sixth and last image, the mosaic or the painted icon. In the light of this firm belief, everything has meaning, also all motifs and subjects; but some forms, structures and motifs are more potentially charged with content and meaning than others, that is, the symbols, the fundamental natural symbols which differ from cryptograms and the like, by having a form of (mystical) identity with that which they symbolize.30 The symbol, then, is not merely a sign like a traffic sign, for example. Such a sign has been agreed on, and its meaning has been precisely defined. Its practi­ cal usability depends on its ability to quickly and simply convey a message which might have been expressed more adequately in many words if the situ­ ation had allowed it. 28 29 30

The word seal derives from Latin sigillum, which is a diminutive of signum, sign! N. Sten-Knudsen, “Wave. Landkort og labyrint,” in Ud-tryk, Magasin for Randers kunstmuseum, 1 (2003), p. 4. C.S. Peirce’s (1839–1914) influential semiotics operates with a number of different signs, the most important of which are icon, index and symbol. The icon is characterized by (a certain) similarity. The index is a sign that shows something about the thing because it is physically connected to it, e.g., an imprint. Symbols are signs which have become con­ nected via use. Thus the symbol in Peirce is something culturally determined which has to be learned. It depends on conventions. As the following lines will show, however, symbol is used in a somewhat different sense in the present context.

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Also words, according to the founder of modern linguistics, the Swiss Fer­ dinand Saussure (1857–1913) are to be understood as signs, which are a unity of “content [concept, meaning] and sound image [form],” which he calls signifié (signified) and signifiant (signifying). According to Saussure the relation between the word ‘car’, for example, and the means of transport which every day brings me to and from work is arbitrary, random and accidental. Only acquired knowledge creates a meaningful connection between the word (the sign) and the signified. In that respect the sign is ‘less’ than what it signifies (although the production of meaning goes both ways), indeed its whole value lies in referring to something else.31 The symbol, on the other hand, is much more comprehensive, and it is not something we invent, it is something we find. It is something like this the German/American theologian Paul Tillich (1886–1965) has in mind when he writes in his book The Dynamics of Faith that symbols come into being ‘of their own accord’, and that they relate to collective human experience and the subconscious.32 In the symbols, abstract relations become partly tangible. Within the Byzantine Orthodox icon tradition we may speak of two main categories of symbols. The ones which function by virtue of a certain similar­ ity to that which they symbolize, and those that function by apparently denot­ ing something quite different from, indeed the very opposite of, what they symbolize. The originator of this distinction is the Syrian writer Dionysius Areopagita who wrote his books in the first half of the 6th century and who, although his books do not explicitly deal with the image problem, became very influential, first for Orthodox image theology, and subsequently – after having been trans­ lated into Latin in the 9th century – also for the Latin Christian community.33 In Dionysius’ apophatic theology, which continually underlines the impos­ sibility of understanding or describing God, great caution is shown in connec­ tion with symbols which, in some sense, can be regarded as resembling that which they symbolize, since there is an obvious danger that in such cases we imagine that we understand more than we can actually grasp, indeed, imagine that we can understand what man in principle cannot understand. He, there­ fore, prefers symbols that are characterized by non-similar similarity, as they 31 32 33

Saussure’s linguistic theory was published in 1916 under the title Cours de linguistique générale. P. Tillich, Dynamics of Faith (New York: Harper & Row 1957). The complete works are published in an english translation by C. Luibheid, entitled Pseudo-Dionysius. The Complete Works (The Classics of Western Spirituality) (London: Paulist Press 1987).

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express basic paradoxes or antinomies, of which the primary example is the incarnation. Within pictorial art, the rock is often an example of a structure, a motif, a symbol, which works through non-similar similarity. We will therefore go on to take a look at this particular phenomenon in Byzantine art and in Per Kirkeby’s work.

The Rock

In 1996, Per Kirkeby said to Henrik Wivel in an interview in the newspaper Berlingske Tidende (Dec. 14th), “Byzantine art is like a mountain with strange stylized details, but a kind of mountain formation which is at the same time solidified and continuously mobile. It is the earth itself which shakes under you and shifts.” It seems decisive for the inspiration that Kirkeby finds in Byzantine forms, structures, motifs, that art itself is what it symbolizes. It does not only depict mountains, rocks, cracks and fissures. It is like “a mountain with strange stylized details.” It will not be reasonable (in continuation of the above discus­ sion) to speak of transferred meaning at least not in the sense we normally talk of figurative meaning. The connection between image and primordial image, between the symbol and the symbolized is far too intimate to allow that. In religious (Orthodox, Catholic, Biblical) traditions it is on the basis of such relations that the symbol – and not only the symbolized – can be called holy. In John 1. 41, we hear about the Apostle Andrew, that immediately after hav­ ing first met Jesus he “found first his own brother Simon and said to him, ‘We have found the Messiah’. He brought him to Jesus. Jesus looked at him and said, ‘You are Simon the son of John; you shall be called Cephas’ (which is translated Peter).” Cephas is the Aramaic word for rock, which in Greek is translated Petros. It is after the quite decisive event in Matthew 16. 16, where Peter pro­ fesses his belief in Jesus as “Christ, the Son of the living God” that Jesus speaks the famous words to him: “Blessed are you Simon Barjona, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. I also say to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of Hades will not overpower it.” Peter is the rock, even though he is by no means immovable: “Before a rooster crows, you will deny Me three times.”34 He is the rock because he has received a revelation. Here we are near the basic symbolic meaning of the rock: spiritual cleansing, proximity to God, revelation, transfor­ mation, conversion. 34

Matthew 26. 34.

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The rock, which is basically something of the heaviest, deadest and most bar­ ren we can spontaneously imagine, becomes light, living and life-giving. It is para­ doxical, an antinomy. And according to Jesus, if one has faith and does not doubt, one can “say to this mountain, ‘be taken up and cast into the sea’, it will happen.”35 One of the most important motifs in Orthodox icons is The Transfiguration on the Mount (Fig. 7.3).36 As is well known, this is the tale of how the Apostles Peter, James and John have accompanied Jesus to climb a mountain, where he is suddenly transfigured before them: “His face shone like the sun, and his gar­ ments became as white as light.”37 He shows himself in his divine form as “Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one sub­ stance with the Father by whom all things were made.”38 Moses and Elijah appear to them and talk with Jesus, and the two, who according to the Old Testament have met God on the Sinai mountain, where he spoke to them from a burning bush and in ‘the soft whisper of a voice’, can testify that this is an epiphany, an appearance of God, not only to be heard, but by virtue of the reincarnation also to be seen.39 This is about immanent transcendence40 as well as what I would call transcendent immanence. The divine nature of Christ is given visual expression, and the visible world transcends. The rock Christ stands on becomes literally the central motif of the image, an image with great elasticity. It seems to come alive and be fertile, and the black holes that open into Hades become ‘birth caves’ from which lush plants grow. The Apostles see something that casts them to the ground, and it becomes impossible to distinguish between the physical and the metaphysical world, between the bodily and the spiritual, indeed, between God and man in Christ. When the Transfiguration on the Mount is among the most important and widespread motifs in Orthodox art, it is because this biblical event in a com­ pressed form contains the core of an understanding to which theology is com­ mitted, of being founded on an antinomy which is in principle incomprehensible. This is why the rock can command attention and receive the absolutely cen­ tral position and presentation in the icon. What is material, heavy, dead and 35 36 37 38 39 40

Matthew 21. 21. Theophanes the Greek, The Transfiguration, second half of the 14th century, Tretyakov, Moscow. Matthew 17. 2 et al. Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed from 325 and 381. Exodus 3. 4 and 1 Kings 19. 12. D. Jørgensen, Skønhedens metamorfose. De æstetiske idéers historie (Odense: Odense Universitetsforlag 2001), p. 22 et al.

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Figure 7.3 Theophanes the Greek, The Transfiguration, tempera on wood, 184 × 184 cm, Tretyakov, Moscow, c.1400

barren becomes spiritual, light, living and life-giving, for “unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”41 The typical Byzantine rock seems to grow out of the ground, and as it moves, it cracks, opening the dark abyss. Parts of the rock seem to resemble animal heads with fangs, and stair-like ledges connect heaven and earth: “Come, let us 41

John 20. 24.

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go up to the mountain of the Lord,” as it says in Isaiah 2.3. The mountain symbolizes transcendence and hence epiphany. The mountain in the first instance symbolizes verticality, the connection to the heavenly, intimations of divinity. In contrast we see the two scenes halfway up to the left and right in the icon: Jesus and the three apostles on their way up the mountain and again on their way down. In a narrative perspective, they are in a way completely superfluous, for of course they first had to go up the mountain and then down again at some point, one supposes. But at a higher level, they are important: They show that there is a before and after in relation to the blessed state of spectating. They point to the horizontal dimension of time and life on earth, which in the now of the cross meets the vertical of heavenly eternity. In that way, the antinomic aspect is also seen in the overall composition and iconography. In 1999, Per Kirkeby commented on Giovanni Bellini’s picture Trasfigurazione (Transfiguration) from about 1555 (Fig.  7.4).42 “No theological knowledge is needed here,” he writes.43 Nor do we need any figures. The mountain and its light is transfiguration enough. The mountain is not just a mountain in so-called nature. The mountain is a figure, a conceptual figure. Geology as “transfigurazione.” A ‘conceptual’ figure is justified – in spite of its awkwardness – because we are not dealing with pure abstraction.44 And he continues (p. 8), I believe that even at that time the scholar within the painter was the painter’s adversary. A necessary adversary, as it is today, but an adversary who had to be conquered (as I see it today), or an adversary who pushed the painter into the stage scenery. Into the sky, the stones, the cliff, the flower, the tree, the wedges at the foot of the cross, the nails on the ground and everything else. Wouldn’t Bellini have been happy to make the sleep­ ers on this mountain into a bit of geology, like the wonderfully con­ structed ledge of rock at the bottom? […] The rocky ledge is nowhere to be found in nature, but nor is it a pure construction.

42 43 44

G. Bellini, Trasfigurazione (143 × 68 cm), 1455, Museo Correr, Venezia. P. Kirkeby, Bellini (Hellerup: Edition Bløndal 1999), p. 5. Cp. his statement quoted above, about “navigat[ing] between the crude Bible illustration and the non-committal abstraction.”

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Figure 7.4 Giovanni Bellini, The Transfiguraton, tempera on wood, 143 × 68 cm, Museo Correr, Venice, c.1455

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And finally, on page 10: I used to have a vague feeling of not being sufficiently serious because I left out the figures, and hence the alleged content of the picture. Even this feeling of guilt has evaporated. I actually feel that this picture would be much more formidable if the three figures at top were removed. But at best that says something about myself at this moment of time. I go home and leave paint fingerprints in my notebook, while trying to make the abducted rock ledge give my pictures structure and meaning. So what many interpreters of paintings see as mere ‘stage scenery’, which is to tell us whether we are out of doors or indoors, in town or country, Kirkeby sees as the vehicle for the true content. Removing “the three figures at top” in favour of the expressivity of the rock might be seen as an iconoclastic act; but in reality iconoclasts are much more interested in spiritual signs than in physical symbols. In contrast, the iconodules – as we have seen – recognize the created world as testimony to the creator, and when Kirkeby talks about “the wonderfully constructed ledge of rock” it is, as far as I can see, an expression of an acceptance of matter which is comparable to the thoughts of great Geologist-theologians like Albertus Magnus (1206–80), Niels Steensen (1638– 86) and Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955). The latter writes in his book The Divine Milieu, On the one hand matter is the burden, the fetters, the pain, the sin and the threat to our lives. It weighs us down, suffers, wounds, tempts and grows old. Matter makes us heavy, paralysed, vulnerable, guilty. Who will deliver us from this body of death? But at the same time matter is physical exuberance, ennobling con­ tact, virile effort and the joy of growth. It attracts, renews, unites and flowers. By matter we are nourished, lifted up, linked to everything else, invaded by life. To be deprived of it is intolerable […]. Asceticism deliberately looks no further than the first aspect, the one which is turned towards death[…] But what would our spirits be, O God, if they did not have the bread of earthly things to nourish them, the wine of created beauties to intoxicate them, and the conflicts of human life to fortify them? What feeble powers and bloodless hearts your creatures would bring you if they were to succeed in cutting themselves off prema­ turely from the providential setting in which you have placed them! […]

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By the virtue of your suffering incarnation disclose to us, and then teach us to harness jealously for you, the spiritual power of matter.45 In 1999, Per Kirkeby made a c. 3 meter high bronze sculpture for the church­ yard at the small Romanesque village church of Frejlev near Aalborg. On the west side, which faces the church, a little above the middle, there is a win­ dow-shaped indentation like a dark opening in the face of a cliff (Fig. 7.5). Underneath lies something that looks like a random heap of rocks. In this way, the Christian hope of and belief in resurrection is expressed: the empty grave. This is darkness, and there is no way to the light except through darkness. On the east side of the sculpture the lower part is shaped as a rock wall in a quarry. About halfway up, the shape retreats a little and leans slightly, so that it reflects more light at the top than at the bottom, so that when the gaze moves from bottom to top, it is from something heavy and material to some­ thing light and ethereal. It is like a transfiguration – but without “the three figures at top”! Geology/Theology In 2004, Per Kirkeby decorated a hall and a staircase in The Geological Museum in Copenhagen – one of the places where the young artist studied geology in the beginning of the 1960’s. The result was a formidable tour de force in the interior of the earth with a plethora of evidence of volcanic and other uncontrollable activity, but also of geological science. Not beautiful in the traditional sense, but ‘tremendum et fascinosum’ in an expression taken from religious studies: terri­ fying and fascinating (Fig. 7.6). Here are raw and untamed rock formations and red-hot lava, but also marble ashlars and various testimonies to human activity. Here are continental plates which are pushed apart, but also (in Kirkeby’s words) a ‘Mantegna-zone’ where rock formations which almost become orna­ ments, resemble structures in certain of the rock paintings of the famous Italian Renaissance painter.46 Among the motives, in a conspicuous position halfway up the stairway, is seen the famous ‘trapgang’ (dolerite dike) from Runamo in 45

46

P. Teilhard de Chardin, The Divine Milieu. An Essay on the Interior Life (New York: Harper Torchbooks), pp. 105–106. (s.a.). Quoted from the internet version, https://archive.org/ details/TheDivineMilieu, pp. 106–107. Accessed December 2, 2013. L.B. Rønberg in the exhibition publication, Per Kirkeby. Jorden skælver, køs, Museum for kunst i det offentlige rum (Køge 2010), p. 21.

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Figure 7.5 Bronze sculpture by Per Kirkeby, height 3 m, Frejlev near Aalborg, Denmark, 1999

Blekinge (Fig. 7.7). The dolerite dike was formed in a very distant past, when magma from the centre of the earth was pressed through a fissure in the bed­ rock. The small cracks in the dolerite dike resemble runes to an astonishing degree, so it is no wonder that it has been believed, as early as the Middle Ages, that they were letters. In 1833 the geologist, professor J.G. Forchhammer from the Museum of Mineralogy was of the opinion that he could prove that the

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Figure 7.6

Part of Per Kirkeby’s decoration at The Geological Museum in Copenhagen, 2004

Figure 7.7

Part of Per Kirkeby’s decoration at The Geological Museum in Copenhagen, 2004

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cracks were not a random formation, but were man-made, and the following year the famous Icelandic runologist Finnur Magnusson interpreted the signs as a report from the battle of Brávellir, well known from saga literature! In 1844 the archaeologist J.J.A. Worsaae, however, proved that it was a question of nature, not culture. The ‘runes’ were nature’s own signature.47 But what is the difference, basically? In his postscript from 1994 to the Danish edition of Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s fine little volume, Cézanne’s doubt, Per Kirkeby dealt with this problem, pondering the Danish Romanesque vil­ lage churches, built of granite which the ice dragged from northern Scandinavia and across Denmark many thousands of years ago. The ice and medieval man are equally creative, equally conscious and equally determined. And the process will continue, that is foreseeable. Some day the stones of the church will again end as stones in the fields, and there become part of a structure which is as significant as the human building.48 Either or: either what we do and think is as predetermined as the movements of nature, or the origin of the earth must be described as creation. Faith and knowledge, art and science. They are not identical, but in Per Kirkeby’s art, they seem inseparable, like the two natures of Christ. This may be best expressed in the artist’s own words, when he says in connection with the ideas behind the decoration of the Geological Museum, mentioned above, that he wanted to “reinstate beauty and fear in geology.”49 When John of Damascus talks of the icon as a door, a window, a road, and frequently uses the expression ‘through the icon’, it may to some degree corre­ spond to Kirkeby’s dream of “the genuine image, which transgresses all limits, which annuls itself as an image.” 47 48 49

M. Rosing, Verdensbillede: geologi og kunst (Klampenborg: Bjerggaard 2008). M. Merleau-Ponty: Cézannes tvivl, translated by Uffe Harder with a postscript by Per Kirkeby, Edition Bløndal, Hellerup 1994, p. 74. Lene Bøgh Rønberg: Per Kirkeby. Jorden skælver, køs, Museum for kunst i det offentlige rum, Køge 2010, p. 23.

chapter 8

God among Thorns: On Anselm Kiefer’s Pietà (2007) Leonora Onarheim The art work, Pietà (2007), by Anselm Kiefer (b. 1945) has been given little attention by scholars (Fig. 8.1). It is an example of how references to memory and mourning,1 and Kiefer’s use of religious language,2 come together and challenge common notions of the representation of suffering. The theme of the representation of suffering is explored in this article through a study of Pietà in relation to other works by Kiefer and the Christian tradition of commemoration and devotion connected with the pietà motif, and in relation to Kiefer’s reflections on the limits of representation. Kiefer is preoccupied with the challenges connected with representation, and he describes the prohibition against images as one of the two most important sources of inspiration in his artistic work. However, the way he interprets the commandment almost reverses its literal meaning, turning it into a warning that it is the making of images without getting to the essence that is wrong. On the other hand, living up to the commandment, thus understood, is impossible: Two things have always been important in my work: Firstly, the commandment: “Though shall not make thyself a graven image” a commandment that is not repressing, but a reminder of the fact that looking at the essence of things, it is impossible to create an image, and at the same time is a commission to do so, to do so because and although it is essentially impossible. The Jews in their tradition never used an explicit name for God but always circumscriptions, negative terms: Ain Soph, which means the limitless Nothing. The coming into existence of a picture, as I understand it, 1 For comprehensive studies, see R. López-Pedraza, Anselm Kiefer: ‘After the catastrophe’ (London: Thames and Hudson, 1997), L. Saltzman, Anselm Kiefer and art after Auschwitz (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), D. Arasse, Anselm Kiefer, (London: Thames & Hudson, 2001) and Andréa Lauterwein, Anselm Kiefer/Paul Celan: Myth, mourning and memory (London: Thames and Hudson, 2007). 2 As first described by G. Inboden in Paul Maenz & Gerd de Vries (eds.), Anselm Kiefer, published on the occasion of Anselm Kiefer’s exhibition at the Galerie Paul Maenz, Cologne, March 11–April 19, 1986 (Köln: [Galerie Paul Maenz], 1986), and later by M. Rosenthal, A.J. Speyer and A. Kiefer, Anselm Kiefer, (Chicago: Prestel-Verlag, 1987), H. Häussler, Anselm Kiefer: Die Himmelspaläste. Der Künstler als Suchender zwischen Mythos und Mystik (dissertation.de – Verlag im Internet, 2004) and many others. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi 10.1163/9789004291690_012

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Figure 8.1 Anselm Kiefer, Pietà, Oil, emulsion, acrylic, shellac, brambles, cardboard, dried roses on canvas in steel and glass frame. 191 × 381 cm. 2007 THANKS TO PERMISSION BY Anselm Kiefer

may be compared to what Rabbi Isaak Luria tells us about the Tsim Tsum: There is a space opened up and left over by the Ain Soph, into which the world can unfold itself in its imperfect and fugitive way. The picture in its failure and it always fails – will light up, however faintly, the greatness and splendor of what it could never attain […] The second notion which, being an artist, I am constantly aware of, is separation[…] I am talking about a reunification which will never happen. I am talking of the two halves of a picture which will never again be one because those who were the one side of it have been murdered.3 Kiefer sees the prohibition against images in connection with experiences of  separation and loss, and he interprets the injunction as a command to ­create – in spite of the fact that it is impossible. What is created under this command can be created within a space which Kiefer compares with the ­creation myth of the cabbalistic mystic, Isaak Luria (1534–1572). Luria des­ cribes  how God (Ain Soph) withdraws, thus creating a space in which an ­imperfect world can unfold.4 In the same way, Kiefer describes his artistic ­process of creation. The titles of Kiefer’s pictures are often derived from Luria’s creation myths and other religious texts and tales. The pictures also refer to theological themes and Christian iconography, but always at a certain distance. The distance can 3 A. Kiefer, “Speech held on the occasion of the presentation of the Wolf Foundation Prize,” in Anselm Kiefer, ed. by G. Celant (Milano: Skira, 2007), p. 203. 4 G. Scholem, Kabbalah (New York: Quadrangle/New York Times Book Co, 1974) pp. 128–144.

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be expressed through the gap between what the title contains seen from a theological point of view or an iconographic tradition, and the picture’s design and content. For example, the trinity is represented as three chairs or gray stones in flames in Father, Son, Holy Ghost (Vater, Son, Heiliger Geist, 1973) and I am who I am (Ich bin, der ich bin, 2008), respectively. The latter was shown at the exhibition, “Mary Walks Amid the Thorn” (“Maria durch ein Dornwald ging”) in Salzburg in 2008, an exhibition which focused on Mariology and the representation of the holy, with a particular focus on the Marian dogmas. The pictures on the Marian theme showed how Kiefer extends and at the same time breaks with the pictorial tradition connected with Mary. Pietà is an example of such a picture, which was also shown in Salzburg in 2008. The title of the work refers to a pictorial motif from the devotional tradition of

Figure 8.2 Mother with her Dead Son 1993. Enlarged bronze copy of Käthe Kollwitz’s Pietà 1937-38/9, in Neue Wache, Berlin. PHOTO: SVEIN AAGE CHRISTOFFERSEN

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the Middle Ages, which shows Mary holding her dead son on her lap. The motif is perhaps best known from Michelangelo’s first treatment of it, the marble sculpture, Pietà (1498–99), which now stands in St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. The sculpture has become an icon for Mary’s role in the Passion. Today, the pietà motif is used in secular settings, such as war memorials (Fig.8.2), and in Kiefer’s work. In the following, Kiefer’s Pietà (2007) will be analyzed and discussed in light of the traditional rendering of this motif. The study is centered on three questions. How does Kiefer break with the usual iconography of the motif, and at the same time, is there something that is retained and carried over by way of the religiously charged title? How does the work reflect Kiefer’s strong consciousness of the limits of representation, which emerges in the quote on prohibition against pictures and separation? How can existential suffering, as exemplified by the Passion story or the Holocaust, be represented?

Pietà (2007)

Kiefer’s Pietà consists of a glass casket which resembles Michelangelo’s wellprotected Pietà in St. Peter’s Basilica, but behind the glass there is no marble sculpture. In the case, one can catch a glimpse of a painted, naked man. He is lying on his back, stretched out on dark earth painted in warm tones of black. His right side is turned towards the viewer, his head somewhat closer than his feet, revealing a bald crown. His skin is as white as marble, his eyes are closed and his hands rest along his sides. He is almost a full man’s size, the whole work being about 2 by 4 meters. The painted figure is covered by a real thicket of roses, twigs and thorns. The rose bush could have been expected to be green, fierce and succulent, suggesting fragrances of newly picked bushes and rose bouquets. However, this is not the case. The rose bush consists of a lot of short twigs with many short branches filled with short thorns. The twigs are placed vertically, as if they grew straight out of the ground all around as well as over the body. The recreated thicket grows freely and does not suggest a woven crown of thorns. The pronounced gray and brown colors of the twigs show that they were torn off long ago, while the bush was still in bloom, and the flowers have followed them into the glass casket. The flowers have the brittle, crisp, pale form that dried flowers have. A moment right in between flowering – life – and withering – death – is retained. The physical presence of branches and roses reinforces the contrast to the painted body. At the same time, the body appears nearly more alive than the twigs. They are clearly dead, while the body can be interpreted both as living and dead.

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Pietà is not an isolated work in Kiefer’s artistic universe, but appears as typically Keiferesque. The picture is one of several works from the same year with the same title. The structure in the pictures is the same: behind glass, there is a naked man who lies alone under a dried rosebush.5 The simple display communicates a complex, sensorial expression which is characterized by the tension between the painted figure and the physical rose bush. In the following, these two elements will be further examined.

A Reclining Man

The painted man in a bed of thorns is a part of a motif that is much used by Kiefer in some periods, but is totally absent in others: the artist’s self-portrait. Kiefer had his breakthrough with the series, Occupations (Besetzungen, 1969), in which he shows pictures of himself in a Heil pose. According to the artist himself, his use of his own body in the series is not about being a fascist, but about his having to go fully into the role in order to understand the madness.6 Several self-portraits in different poses can be found in many works up until around 1980. From then on, self-portraiture disappears from his artistic expression and does not return until a full fifteen years later, with particularly many representations around 1995–1996 and in 2007.7 In scholarship, the portraits are not primarily interpreted as self-portraits in the usual sense, but as pictures in which the artist uses his own body as a prototype of a human being, and in which he goes into roles in order to test psychological experiences that people have or can have.8 In this interpretation, Kiefer becomes a conveyer of a collective experience, a perspective that can apply to all Kiefer’s self-portaits. 5 Compare, for example, the above-mentioned Pietà from 2007 (191 × 381 cm. Oil, emulsion, acrylic, shellac, brambles on canvas under glass, Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Salzburg) with Pietà from 2007 (192 × 281 × 12 cm. Acrylic, oil, shellac and dried branches on photographic paper under glass fronted vitrine, Gallery Lia Rumma, Milano). 6 “‘I do not identify with Nero or Hitler, but I have to reenact what they did just a little bit in order to understand the madness. That is why I make these attempts to become a fascist’.” Quoted by Rosenthal, Anselm Kiefer, p. 17, after A. Hecht and W. Krüger, “Venedig 1980: Aktuelle Kunst Made in Germany,” Art: Das Kunstmagazin (Wiesbaden), June 1980, p. 52. 7 In 1995 and 1996 the human figure is seen in both Ash Flower, Sol Invictus, Stars, Man under a Pyramid, Star Picture, The Famous Order of the Night, Les Reines de France, Untitled, Jacob’s Dream, Dat Rosa Mel Apibus and Plaza de Tlatelolco, cf. Arasse, Anselm Kiefer, p. 151, and around 2007 Kiefer created a series of versions of self-portraits in connection with the decoration of the Louvre, cf. Anselm Kiefer au Louvre/Musé du Louvre (Paris: Musé du Louvre éditions, 2007). 8 Arasse, Anselm Kiefer, pp. 251–265.

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The portrayal of a man who is lying stretched out on his back is among the most common portrait motifs in Kiefer’s works and is referred to as reclining man.9 The motif is mainly found in three variants. In one variant, the man is alone and without contact with the world around him (as in Pietà), possibly framed by geometrical figures, such as circles in The Rose Gives Honey to the Bees (Dat Rosa Mel Apibus, 2006). In a second variant, something grows out of the stomach region of the reclining man. It can be a pointed twig, as in Reclining Man with Branch (Liegender Mann mit Zweig, 1971), or a flower as big as a man in the pictures Untitled (Ohne Titel, from 1972 and 1996) and Sol Invictus (2007). In the third variant of the motif, it looks as if the direction of what sticks out of the stomach area is reversed. In Emanation (2007) and Athanor (2007), a stream of light seeps down from above towards the chest of the reclining man. In all versions of reclining man the body is either on a par with or in contrast to nature, and change seems to be a pervasive theme. The resting body is not just a closed entity, it is a place from which something can grow further or which something can inhabit. This ‘something’ is light and plants and can resemble a cycle motif. The cycle motif is particularly pronounced in the work, Untitled (Sans Titre, 2007), in which the figure is rendered both in the upper and lower part of the picture. The body in the upper part is full and vivid. A stream of painted flowers in red, yellow, blue and purple with clear, black seeds guides the eye down to an emaciated, shrunken and mirrored versions of the same body that lies on the crust of the parched earth. The work belongs formally speaking to the same series as Emanation (2007) and Athanor (2007),10 but is also connected with Pietà through the use of flowers and a reclining man. But in contrast to Pietà, in which the body is isolated between roses and thorns, the body seems to be lifted up in Untitled (2007) via the flowers to a more exemplary form of itself, or – read in the opposite way – pulled down to a shadow of itself. The picture reinforces the connection between the motif of reclining man and the theme of life, death, and rebirth. In the reclining man Kiefer may allude to traditions which can be related to the experience of change. Mark Rosenthal has pointed out how the motif, in particular of something growing out of the stomach region, alludes to a well-known motif from 9

10

In the photo series connected with Occupations Kiefer was portrayed in other positions. There is also a series of other works that among other things show the artist standing with a burning bush in his hand in Man in the Forest (Mann im Wald, 1971) or empty-handed in I Hold All Indias In My Hand (Ich halte alle Indien in meiner Hand, 1995), or in totally other activities, such as bathing in I Hold All Indias In My Hand (Traigo todas las Indias en mi mano, 1995). The works have the same format and size and resemble the decoration in the Louvre from 2007, cf. Anselm Kiefer au Louvre/Musé du Louvre, passim.

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the Middle Ages.11 In the manuscripts connected with mystical traditions like alchemy, for example the Ashburn Manuscript from the 14th century, a reclining man is shown with a tree growing out of his sex.12 According to Rosenthal, this motif is connected with the idea of rebirth after death and is interpreted as a symbol of transformation. Daniel Arasse finds the same symbolism in another parallel. He points out the similarity in form between the lying pose and a Hatha yoga position, savasana, also known as the corpse pose.13 Arasse uses Mircea Eliade’s description of yoga to show how this position is the point of departure for a transformation of the body, which can happen when the experience of death is internalized. The aim of meditation, as of all yoga, is to liberate the individual from the illusion of the world, maya, and human experience, dependent on karma – and, Arasse adds, the liberation from memory.14 Remembrance is the building block in the construction of habits and tendencies that yoga, among other things through the corpse pose, seeks to change, and Arasse finds a corresponding project in Kiefer: reconciling the memory of Holocaust.15 Alchemy and yoga have an important common trait, as Eliade has pointed out, which Arasse does not mention in his discussion of Kiefer, Eliade and yoga, and nor does Rosenthal: the soteriological focus. Eliade refers to the way in which yoga and alchemy, like other mystical movements, such as Sufism, use the human body as a laboratory to experiment with the soul in order to achieve purification and transmutation.16 If we include this perspective, we may say that the coming salvation that smolders in the man in the Ashburn Manuscript or in the yogi in corpse pose, also glowed in Christ’s dead body. This parallel is particularly relevant in a picture like Pietà, which with its title unites the reclining man motif and the dead body of Christ. The pose also resembles a series of representations of the motif, the dead Christ, which is characterized by a dialectic between suffering and redemption. An example is The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb (Der Leichnam Christi im Grabe, 1521/1522), by Hans Holbein the Younger (1497–1543), which shows the tormented, dead body of Jesus. Jesus is seen directly from his right 11 Rosenthal, Anselm Kiefer, p. 18. 12 Ashburn Manuscript (14th century) (Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Firenze), reproduced and interpreted in connection with Kiefer in Rosenthal, Anselm Kiefer, p. 18. 13 Arasse, Anselm Kiefer, 251–254. Cf. M. Eliade, Yoga, Immortality and Freedom (New York: Pantheon, 1958). 14 Arasse, Anselm Kiefer, 254. Cf. Eliade, Yoga, Immortality and Freedom, p. 12. 15 Arasse, Anselm Kiefer, p. 254. 16 Eliade, Yoga, Immortality and Freedom, pp. 274–292.

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side and lies stretched out on his back with his hands resting along his sides in a glass coffin. In Holbein’s version of the dead Christ, pain has let go of its hold on the body, but the memory of the physical pain that Christ has suffered has left lasting traces. His eyes are half-open and have an upward-turned, empty look. This half-opened form is repeated in the gash in his side, and one can sense the deep sores from the nails in his hands and feet, his stigmata. Nor is his mouth closed, but repeats the wracked form, and it is as if Jesus’ last words continue to hang on his lips, with an echo of “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” (Matthew 27.46, Mark 15.34). The corpse is laid in a closed wooden coffin, which the viewers can look into through a glass wall on one of the long sides. The kinship between the motif of the dead Christ and Kiefer’s reclining man reinforces the religious reference to the passion theme in Pietà, and broadens the theme of change and transformation. Holbein’s work is cited by Käthe Kollwitz (1867–1945) in a series in which she works with realistic expressions of poverty, resistance and death within a secular context, among other things in From Many Wounds You Bleed, O People (Aus vielen Wunden blutest du, o Volk, 1896).17 Here we see a corpse that is nearly identical with Holbein’s Christ, but there are no stigmata. The body lies uncovered in an open room. A man with a sword leans over it and touches the side where Jesus’ wound would have been. On either side of the room there is an adult, naked woman tied to a column. This tripartite composition is elaborated further in a later version called Downtrodden (Zertretene, 1900). In Downtrodden, the two women are gathered around a column at the foot-end of the corpse: one of them is older and dries her eyes with her hand, while the younger one looks straight at the viewers. At the head end of the corpse, behind a demarcation which marks a kind of wall, a standing man and a sitting woman mourn a dead child. The child is sitting between the mother’s feet, and the lifeless head is held up by her knees and hands. The mother strokes the child’s hair, while the father holds up a rope with a knot on it. Kollwitz’ versions both amplify and tone down the religious aspects of the dead Christ. On the one hand, Kollwitz emphasizes the religious aspects of the motif by making the composition tripartite, as if it were a triptych, an altarpiece. On the other hand, she has glossed over all stigmata. Thus death is located in Kollwitz’ own time, in a poor Berlin and in a secular context. The naked women, who appear more as types than women of flesh and blood, can 17

To start with, the etchings were inspired by G. Hauptmann’s The Weavers (Die Weber, 1892), a story about a rebellion among weavers in Silesia (today an area that covers parts of Poland, Germany and the Czech Republic) in 1844. Cf. N. MacGregor and E. Langmuir, Seeing Salvation. Images of Christ in Art. (London: bbc Worldwide Limited, 2000), p. 180.

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refer to poverty and shame, prostitution or other aspects of the misery that Kollwitz tries to communicate.18 As with Holbein, the dead man has found peace, but Kollwitz shows what is merely implied in Holbein’s work: that people continue to suffer. The Disciples could hope for Resurrection and Easter morning sun, but is there hope for the poor people of Berlin? The tripartite framing of the corpse may emphasize the difference between the hope of the Gospel and the realities of the contemporary world. But it may also imply a certain sense of hope. In Kiefer’s reference to the dead Christ in his Pietà, it is possible to trace several parallels to Holbein and Kollwitz. The isolation of the corpse behind glass points back to Holbein’s version, and the secluding character of suffering is reinforced in Kiefer as in Holbein by the placement of the corpse in a glass coffin. The suffering is not, as in Kollwitz, enhanced by mourning people, but by a bush of thorns. At the same time, the absence of stigmata is the same strategy that Kollwitz uses for placing the body in a contemporary setting. This is marked by representations of people from Kollwitz’ own time, and with a similarity in the portrait between the corpse and Kiefer himself in Pietà. If the similarity in form is interpreted as in other portraits by Kiefer, indicating that the one who is depicted is the bearer of the collective, this person is not an arbitrary dead person among many, but a representative of anyone who has suffered and died. Does the body in Pietà show signs of change, as the reclining man often does? Despite the representations of the reclining man as a part of a cycle, which is both in Kiefer’s own works and in the traditions he plays on, like alchemy and yoga, the body is apparently not in a state of metamorphosis. Nothing physical grows out of the body, and it does not look as if anything is injected into it. Rather than change, another theme is emphasized: pain and mourning. This comes out through the title, which refers to the passion, and through the similarities between the reclining man and the dead Christ. In that way, the focus in the picture is shifted from the apparent, a man who rests, to a more complex and less visible theme: all who suffer.

A Rose Bush

In the years from the time when the self-portrait disappears until it turns up again, Kiefer develops a personally derived iconography in which certain objects function as human representatives. Therefore, it is natural to examine 18

As pointed out in MacGregor and Langmuir, Seeing Salvation, p. 180.

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the objects in Pietà, the thornbush and the roses, and ask what or whom they represent in Kiefer’s imagery, and to what extent he plays on Christian traditions? Organic, genuine thorny underbrush usually appears in Kiefer’s pictures that have religious titles, and in particular those that in different ways refer to Mary.19 An early example is Blest Mary Wanders through the Forest of Thorns (Maria durch ein Dornwald ging), made in the period 1988–1991. Here, framed in steel and glass, as in Pietà, there is a whole little thornbush with small flowers which seems to grow out of the lower right-hand part of the big lead plate. Otherwise, one does not find a figurative representation of Mary in the picture, as the title might lead one to believe. However, in the middle of the picture there is a modest, dried lily with a hanging head. It can bring to mind lilies which appear in so many annunciation scenes and hence, Mary. The rose bush takes on a more conspicuous role, and the rose another visual expression in a later work with the same title, Blest Mary Wanders through the Forest of Thorns (Maria durch ein Dornwald ging) from 2006. This work has almost the same dimensions as Pietà and a similar frame, but the thorny thicket is thicker and wilder, and pops out of a rust red, fractured, clay soil, which covers the whole surface of the picture. Painted ‘roses’ in sun yellow, blood red and sky blue nuances shine through the branches. The flowers have a round form with welldefined black seeds. The flowers suggest poppies and tie the objects together, the thornbush, the rose and the poppy, at the same time as they mix the organic and the painted. The painted flowers can be seen in several other works, and in two of them, they are connected with the name, flowers of blood, in the title Blood Flowers (Blutblumen, 2001 og 2010). The two works are formed like a book made of lead. Each book contains many lead pages, and on the pages collages of photographed roses and rosebuds are combined with the painted flowers which also appear in Blest Mary Wanders through the Thorn (2006). By the recycling of the flowers, a series of associations from roses by way of the painted poppies leads to flowers of blood. The shifting use of real roses and painted flowers is typical of Kiefer, and a similar exchange between presentation and representation also takes place in the thorny thicket. In Storm of Roses (Gewitter der Rosen, 1998) the same painted flowers are seen as in Blest Mary Wanders through the Forest of Thorns 19

The thornbush appears as well in works with other types of titles, as in an earlier version of the motif of Aaron (ca. 1979). The picture shows a large painted thornbush, and in the middle of the thicket, it is not a human being as in Pietà, or a flame, as in the story from Exodus 3.2 of God and the burning bush, but the word ‘Aaron!’ (with an exclamation mark) is written in the bush.

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(2006) and Blood Flowers, but now the thorny thicket is replaced by the razorblade variety of barbed wire. Barbed wire is a man-made material which in expression and function resembles a thorny thicket, and in Storm of Roses it coils over a meadow like a thornbush. In between the barbs, the painted flowers shine through. The flowers are marked here with small tags. On each tag is a long series of letters and numbers, which can be reminiscent of NASA’s codes for stars, but also of numbers tattooed on the arms of prisoners at Auschwitz. One can catch a glimpse of the name tags with the flowers, as far into the flowering meadow as the eye can reach before it meets a restless sky with the inscription “Wherever we turn in the storm of roses the night is lit up by thorns,” (“Wohin wir uns wenden im Gewitter der Rosen, ist die Nacht von Dornen erhellt”).20 The thorny thicket and the flowers are often interpreted as references to the Holocaust. Andréa Lauterwein analyzes Kiefer’s use of the poetry of Ingeborg Bachmann (1926–1973) and shows how it treats their parallel attempts at entering into a dialogue with the Jewish concentration camp prisoner and the poet Paul Celan (1920–1970) and the way he has worked with the memory of Holocaust.21 Lauterwein finds attempts at dialogue in the use of the imagery of the rose and the thorn, which is used a great deal in both Celan, Bachmann and Kiefer. An example which Lauterwein uses is Bachmann’s poem In the Storm of Roses (Im Gewitter der Rosen, 1953), which is both the title of and is cited in Kiefer’s Storm of Roses.22 The rose and thorn in the poem refer to Celan’s Silence! (Stille! 1952): Silence! I drive the thorn into your heart, For the rose, the rose, Stands with the shadows in the mirror, she bleeds!23 Silence! was dedicated to Bachmann, to whom Celan had close contact for a period of time, but whose love he could not return. Thus, Lauterwein interprets the thorn as a metaphor for Bachmann’s unrequited love and the

20

Translated by P. Filkins, in Darkness Spoken: The Collected Poems of Ingeborg Bachmann. (Munich: Piper, 1978), and included in Lauterwein, Anselm Kiefer/Paul Celan, p. 184. 21 Lauterwein, Anselm Kiefer/Paul Celan, p. 181. 22 Lauterwein, Anselm Kiefer/Paul Celan, pp. 181–189. 23 The first three lines of Paul Celan’s Stille! Translated by J. Felstiner in P. Celan, Selected Poems and Prose by Paul Celan (New York: Norton, 2001) and included in Lauterwein, Anselm Kiefer/Paul Celan, p. 181.

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suffering it inflicted on her in her many attempts at redemption.24 She also reads the rose in the same way as a sign of the pains of rejection. Kiefer further uses the image of a bleeding rose in Blood Flowers and ties it to the painted flowers, which – as Lauterwein points out – can also be reminiscent of and interpreted as open wounds.25 As Lauterwein and others show, flowers and thorns can refer both to the collective suffering of the Holocaust and to the personal suffering of Bachmann, but it can also refer to Christian iconography, as the title Pietà suggests. In depictions of everlasting wreaths in early Christian art, roses accompanied by lilies are mainly found as representatives of the fruits of spring.26 In the iconography, the roses remain symbols of life and the yearly cycle, but in the course of the Middle Ages, the rose is tied closer and closer to Christ’s crown of thorns and other symbols of suffering, as can be seen in his Arma Christi (Instruments of the Passion). For example, five flowering roses are used as a sign of Jesus’ wounds, and the rose bush and tree become a sign of the Passion story.27 When stylized roses decorate the pedestals of a number of pietàs, the flowers are often regarded as a sign of suffering and not as a sign of life or the cyclical.28 Thorns are associated with Christ’s suffering, but also with legends of the child Jesus and Mary, as in the German pilgrimage song “Blest Mary Wanders through the Forest of Thorns” (“Maria durch ein Dornwald ging”). The song tells about a forest of thorns, which was infertile for seven years, but when Mary carries the child Jesus through the woods, it blooms. The story is used in the song as an allegory of how Mary and Jesus redeem the world. It is not uncommon that the miracle of redemption is connected with the thorny woods, as in the song. Thorns are a common metaphor for the punishment of sin in many hymns, and they allude to the story of Paradise (Genesis 3.18) and the idea of Jesus as the new Adam in The New Testament (Romans 5). In “Blest Mary Wanders through the Forest of Thorns,” the forest of thorns is depicted as receptive to the Gospel, as opposed to the thorns in the parable on the sower, which choke the seeds (Matthew 13.7, Mark 4.7 and Luke 8.7). The thorns are connected directly with God through the story of the burning 24 Lauterwein, Anselm Kiefer/Paul Celan, p. 184. 25 Lauterwein, Anselm Kiefer/Paul Celan, p. 181. 26 G. Hellemo, Guds billedbok. Virkelighetsforståelse i religiøse tekster og bilder (Oslo: Pax, 1999), p. 35. 27 G. Schiller: Ikonographie der christlichen Kunst. Band 2. Die Passion Jesu Christi. (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus Gerd Mohn, 1968), pp. 206–209. 28 Schiller, Ikonographie der christlichen Kunst, p. 194.

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bush (Exodus 3.2–22) and the crown of thorns (Matthew 27.29; Mark 15.17; John 19.2). With his painted, organic flowers and the title Blood Flowers, Kiefer captures the characteristics of the rose in Christian iconography in themes of suffering and the conflict between life and death. In Kiefer, the flower can also be seen as a part of the cycle in the above-mentioned Untitled (2007), in which the flowers with the black seeds stretch between the two reclining men and function as a kind of mediator between life and death. In Kiefer’s Pietà as well, the genuine roses are stuck in the cycle that they are a part of. They are not painted or stylized. However, they can be read as an extension of the tradition of depicting the suffering of Jesus by five red roses or roses on the pedestals of the pietàs. Thus, the roses appear both as blood flowers and symbols of pain, at the same time as they are signs of the cyclical nature of life. In Kiefer’s works, the thornbush is tied first and foremost to mariological iconography. The juxtaposition of the titles of the works and the exhibition in Salzburg, Blest Mary Wanders through the Forest of Thorns allows for the interpretation of the thornbush as a reference to Mary or more correctly to her presence, for the bush has flowered, but the roses have withered. The dry flowers suggest that Mary was here, but it is quite a while ago, and the spark of life and message of joy that she brought with her have literally dried up. At the same time, the bush continues to be a witness of Jesus and the Gospel, as was said in the pilgrimage song and in contrast to the parable of the sower. Is it the same interpretation of the rose bush that lies in Pietà, or is the thicket presented more as an instrument of torture in this work, with references to Arma Christi? The representation opens up for both interpretations because it is not Mary, but a male figure who is seen in the thorny woods. If the thicket is connected with Christ, it can be read as an emphasis on and reinforcement of the significance of the suffering motif for the Pietà. Through the overlapping use of organic materials and painted representations and references to the Holocaust and Christian iconography, Kiefer reinforces and emphasizes certain characteristics in the objects. The ability of the thornbush to exclude and include and cut like a razor blade becomes clearer in its resemblance to a barbed wire fence. Similarly, the rose’s kinship with the poisonous poppy and the red blood are emphasized, and something is added: each flower is marked, identified and catalogued as a star in the universe or a prisoner in a concentration camp. No flower or star escapes oppression and suffering. Thus, the bush and flower become a sign of everyone’s pain. These expanded meanings of the materials resonate in the thorny thicket in Pietà and contribute to the impression that the individual represents everyone’s suffering.

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Mary In Kiefer’s Pietà, Mary is absent, as if Mary were not a necessary part of the pietà motif. In the following, Mary’s role will be examined more closely from three perspectives. Firstly, the pietà motif and Mary’s role in the corresponding devotional tradition will be looked at. Is Kiefer’s representation a clear break with the tradition or a not uncommon variation of the motif? Secondly, one who was critical of the representation of Mary in the devotional tradition, and who both represents pre-Reformational and early modern thought will be heard, that is, Martin Luther (1483–1546). Thirdly, Kiefer has been engaged in philosophical discussions in talks, interviews and lectures and expressed some of his thoughts about the representation of Mary. This will also be taken into consideration. The juxtaposition of the devotional tradition, Luther’s critique of it and Kiefer’s reflection on Mary will form a basis for a discussion in the last part of the article of the relationship between the picture in itself and the religious title on the one hand and the relationship between the picture and the prohibition against image-making on the other hand.

An Intercessor

Mary, mother of Jesus, does not have a central role in the Passion stories in The New Testament. In John, Mary is described as being present at the cross (John 19.25), but it is Joseph of Arimathea (Matthew 27.57–60; Mark 15.43–46; Luke 23.50–53) and in part, Nicodemus (John 19.38–42) who take care of Jesus’ dead body. However, Mary’s presence is described in the visions of Birgitta of Sweden (1307–73) and other mystics in the Middle Ages.29 The mystics also describe Mary’s mourning, which is not described in the Bible either. The sorrow of a mother is described, on the other hand, in the text about Rachel’s lamentation in Ramah (Jeremiah 31.15), a text which has gone into the story of the murder of the children at Bethlehem: “A voice was heard in Ramah,/Weeping and great mourning,/Rachel weeping for her children;/And she refused to be comforted,/ Because they were no more.” (Matthew 2.18). Nonetheless, there is a difference between the sorrow in Ramah and Bethlehem and Mary’s mourning in Jerusalem. The mourning for Jesus is more complex in so far as Jesus by his death saves the world and conquers death. 29

T. Noll, ‘Zu Begriff, Gestalt und Funktion des Andachtsbildes im späten Mittelalter’, Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 67 (2004), pp. 315–319.

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The word Pietà is first and foremost connected with lamentation, and in particular, a mother’s lamentation. Moreover, it can also mean piety and compassion, obligation and passion, and it can be interpreted as both a religious, secular and even a sensuous or sexually charged concept.30 The designation captures a spectrum of meanings, which are not reflected in the German name of the motif, Vesperbild, which refers to the time at which the event is believed to have taken place on Good Friday in the evening.31 Pietà is usually used about a category of sculptures, but the name is also used in relation to paintings.32 The term pietà belongs to one of the best known and widespread devotional motifs. A typical pietà, i.e. one of the great many wooden sculptures that were made in Germany in the period of 1300–1500, shows a lamenting Mary, who holds her dead son on her lap as if he were an infant.33 There is also a variation of the pietà motif called angel pietà, in which angels and not Mary hold Jesus’ body.34 In these versions, Christ’s upper body is often erect, even though he is clearly dead. That the title pietà is connected both to Mary and angels shows that Jesus is the most central figure in the motif, despite the fact that Mary often has a prominent role.35 What is common both to pietà and other devotional motifs that are developed from the end of the 12th century is a strong desire to experience Jesus’ humanity and all aspects of it. Jesus as a child, man, son, sufferer and mortal is at the center of a new form of spirituality, which develops and affects the religious life of this period of time.36 The images display the passion of Jesus and encourage the viewer to immerse oneself into Jesus’ humanity and the suffering he went through and to take it on. What lies in the motifs is, then, an 30

31 32 33

34 35 36

For an explanation of the extent of the use of pietà in Italian in the Middle Ages, see R. Ball, ‘Theological semantics. Virgil’s Pietas and Dante’s Pietà’, in The Poetry of Allusion: Virgil and Ovid in Dante’s «Commedia», eds. R. Jacoff and J.T. Schnapp. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991), pp. 19–36. W.H. Forsyth, ‘Medieval Statues of the Pietà in the Museum’, The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, New Series, Vol. 11, No. 7 (Mar., 1953), pp. 177–184. For a description of the development of the motif, see Schiller, Ikonographie der christlichen, pp. 192–195. For a review of variations over the pietà motif and for studies of them, see J.E. Ziegler, Sculpture of Compassion: The Pietà and the Beguines in the Southern Low Countries, c. 1300–c. 1600, (Brussels: Brepols, 1992), pp. 25–51. G. von der Osten, “Engelpietà,” Reallexikon zur Deutschen Kunstgeschichte, vol. 5, 1967, pp. 601–621. Noll, ‘Zu Begriff, Gestalt und Funktion des Andachtsbildes im Späten Mittelalter’, p. 303. J.E. Ziegler, “Michelangelo and the Medieval Pietà: Sculpture of Devotion or the Art of Sculpture?” Gesta, Vol. 34, No. 1 (1995), pp. 28–36, (p. 29).

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emphasis on mortal suffering, but also a striving after a union with the suffering Christ. Mary’s role in the devotional images is to be present as a mediator between the viewer and Jesus, who suffers on behalf of all mankind. She shows the believer how he or she ought to react to the violent pain one encounters in the Passion: with prayer and thanksgiving. This paradoxical reaction to the suffering of Jesus is not obvious, but demands a mediator, and it demonstrates the role Mary play’s in the pietà motif. Mary is not only depicted as torn apart by grief, but she shows insight and confidence in God’s mercy, as can also be seen in Michelangelo’s first pietà. The pietà madonna’s lament is filled with belief in God’s good deeds and Providence. This brief examination of the pietà motif shows that Kiefer takes an unusual step by leaving Mary out, at the same time as he maintains an important part of the motif, the human nature of Jesus. Thus, he continues one central point of the devotional tradition, but breaks with the traditional iconography. The break challenges the viewer in a particular way. The viewer is placed in front of Jesus without any mediator and auxiliary interpreter and must figure out for him/herself how the represented should be experienced and reflected on. In Kiefer’s version, the challenges are placed within a secular context, detached from the devotional tradition, but in connection with the general question of representation – as Kiefer’s focus on the prohibition against images shows.

A Model

The leaders in the Reformation, among others, Luther, were preoccupied with the contrast between their understanding of Mary and the way she was represented in art.37 Luther’s reflections on Mary and her role and significance are expressed in his interpretation of Mary’s exaltation of the Lord (Luke 1.46–55) from 1521 (Magnificat).38 Here Luther attacks the idealised image of Mary, as beautiful and perfect. In his opinion, depicting her as flawless has serious theological consequences: But the masters who so depict and portray the blessed Virgin that there is found in her nothing to be despised, but only great and lofty things – 37 38

B. Heal, The Cult of the Virgin Mary in Early Modern Germany: Protestant and Catholic Piety, 1500–1648, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). M. Luther, ‘Magnificat’ in Luther’s works, eds. Helmut T. Lehmann, Jaroslav Pelikan, Vol. 21, pp. 295–355, trans. A.T.W. Steinhaeuser, (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1958).

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what are they doing but contrasting us with her instead of her with God?39 Such works of art, Luther claims, lead us to Mary and not to God himself. This is not only wrong, but completely at odds with Mary’s own wishes, and as Luther argues: “She does not want you to come to her, but through her to God.”40 There are three characteristics in Mary and her exalting God that Luther particularly emphasizes. Firstly, in contrast with the usual depiction in his time, Luther emphasizes Mary’s ordinariness. Luther indeed refers to her as a holy virgin,41 but he points out that she was a completely ordinary and insignificant person: “she was but a simple maiden, tending the cattle and doing the housework, and doubtless esteemed no more than any poor maidservant today, who does as she is told round the house.”42 In Luther’s description, Mary is neither particularly beautiful nor outstanding, and she is not worth more than the tree trunk that was used by chance to make Jesus’ cross.43 For Luther, the important thing about Mary is simply “her low estate and nothingness.”44 She, a nobody, experienced God’s free grace. Secondly, Luther puts emphasis on the humble stance Mary shows throughout her exaltation. Even if she was common, she became the mother of Christ, and who would not be praised then, Luther asks rhetorically.45 But Mary does not want to be praised. She says, “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant, Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed.” (Luke 1.46–48). Luther points out that in speaking of herself as a humble bondslave, Mary shows that she herself does not take the honor for what has happened to her. Mary’s lowliness is emphasized by the fact that Luther does not use the obvious translation of the word humilitas when he translates the adoration. Instead of humility (Ger. Demut), which alludes to the highest virtue, he chooses a word that can be translated as poor, worthless or insignficant (Ger. Nichtigkeit). Thanks to her exemplary attitude, as Luther says, Mary does not take credit for anything regarding her worthiness, but gives all credit to God’s goodness and 39 40 41 42 43 44 45

Luther, ‘Magnificat’, p. 323. Luther, ‘Magnificat’, p. 323. Luther, ‘Magnificat’, p. 299. Luther, ‘Magnificat’, p. 301. Luther, ‘Magnificat’, p. 327. Luther, ‘Magnificat’, p. 301. Luther, ‘Magnificat’, p. 311.

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mercy. It is God’s name that is holy. This is how Luther interprets it when Mary says, “for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is His name.” (Luke 1.49).46 Mary expects nothing, but is thankful for everything. The attitude that Luther emphasizes is exemplified by the pregnant Mary, but it can also be transferred to the pietà’s paradoxical expression of thanksgiving and prayer. Thus, a grieving mother, Mater Dolorosa, has not lost her belief that God performs great deeds. Thirdly, Luther attempts to show how Mary leads the way in worshipping for the sake of humankind. Mary does not praise God for her own sake, “but for us all, to sing it after her.”47 This is how Luther understands Mary as a precenter and a role model. Even if he refers to Mary as an intercessor and a comforter, there are two clear differences compared to the tradition. Luther maintains that she herself is completely ordinary, and that she cannot sing instead of us, but can only be a precenter. Mary’s message is meant “for the strengthening of our faith, for the comforting of all those of low degree, and for the terrifying of all the mighty ones on earth,” says Luther.48 He emphasizes that Mary shows that God can and will help anyone, also you.49 Thus, Mary’s role in Luther’s interpretation becomes that of a role model in worship, spreading hope and instilling faith in God’s mercy. Luther is strongly critical of the idealization of Mary and descriptions of her as superhuman, because such images of Mary only make a person timorous: Thus they make us timid and afraid and hide the Virgin’s comfortable picture, as the images are covered in Lent. For they deprive us of her example, from which we might take comfort; they make an exception of her and set her above all examples. But she should be, and herself gladly would be, the foremost example of the grace of God, to incite all the world to trust in this and to love and praise it, so that through her the hearts of all men should be filled with such knowledge of God that they might confidently say: “O Blessed Virgin, Mother of God, what great comfort God has shown us in you, by so graciously regarding your unworthiness and low estate. This encourages us to believe that henceforth He will not despise us poor and lowly ones, but graciously regard us also, according to your example.”50 46 47 48 49 50

Luther, ‘Magnificat’, p. 313. Luther, ‘Magnificat’, p. 306. Luther, ‘Magnificat’, p. 306. Luther, ‘Magnificat’, pp. 306–307. Luther, ‘Magnificat’, p. 323.

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While Luther’s concern is that Mary is no longer a role model and example, Kiefer simply leaves her out of the Pietà. In the following section we shall see how Kiefer has even described Mary in terms that in some ways are parallel to Luther’s statements.

A Hollow Form

Mary’s role as a mediator and comforter has a strong position in Kiefer’s consciousness as well, and for him she is of quite particular importance. In a conversation with the theologian Klaus Dermutz, published in connection with the first exhibit of Pietà, Kiefer tells about his relationship to Mary and her signficance for him and for people in general.51 When I look at the gospels, Mary seems to me to be the most unfamiliar of all persons. As to Jesus, you know his character approximately; you know what he has done. Mary, however, appears to be a complete neuter. You don’t know anything about her character; you don’t know who she was. You know nothing. There is no description of Mary in the Bible. Mary Magdalene is characterized in much more detail than Mary. Mary is actually a hollow form.52 Dermutz adds an objection to this statement: “Mary is a woman who devotes herself to the divine will. Mary stands near the cross: Stabat mater dolorosa. And there is the image of the pietà.” To this, Kiefer replies, “Mary suffers and then holds her son in her arms. But that scene doesn’t show her as a living woman but instead as Our Lady of Sorrows, as her role prescribes it.”53 Kiefer’s description of the biblical Mary as a hollow form stands in contrast to Kiefer’s own image of her. For Kiefer, himself, Mary is filled with memories and experiences. One of the ways Kiefer explains it is as follows: Mary is for me like a land where I grew up, a land that I once visited, to which I once travelled. It is for me a memory which I can recall. Regarding fertility and creativity, all that, regarding the seasonal cycle, too, I have 51

52 53

A. Kiefer, “I ‘secrify’ the matter by divesting it. A conversation with Anselm Kiefer,” in Anselm Kiefer: Maria durch ein Dornwald ging, ed. Arne Ehmann, (Salzburg: Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, 2008). Kiefer, “I ‘secrify’ the matter by divesting it,” p. 124. Kiefer, “I ‘secrify’ the matter by divesting it,” p. 124.

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pictures and sensations at the levels of all senses […] The whole cosmic process is included in this memory.54 Thus, Mary represents a place filled with all kinds of sensory perceptions. As he himself emphasizes, there is a gathering of things here that have especially to do with growth, the creative force and renewal, that is, positively charged processes which can give hope and the possibility of change. The motif of change is tied to a cyclical idea that is repeated many times in Kiefer’s descriptions of Mary. Among other things, he says, I see Mary constantly ascending and descending, I see her constantly wandering around the border. Mary ascends, she descends. She suffers everything you can suffer on earth. As an assistant goddess, she ascends again with the redeemed humanity. With Mary, it is a constant ascent and descent.55 Mary is described here as an “assistant goddess,” a mediator between heaven and earth, who is present and who participates in the suffering of human distress. She does this by wandering between heaven and earth in an eternal circle. Kiefer makes this conception of Mary’s wandering more precise as follows: “She doesn’t stay in heaven but goes back down to earth. In that, I see a rhythm, a cosmic rhythm so to speak.”56 Thus for Keifer, Mary is not a figure who abandons a person in need, but one who is always there and who wanders in a cosmic rhythm between heaven and earth. The cosmic rhythm which Kiefer connects in several places with Mary does not resemble the traditional conceptions of goddesses that are reflected in a number of cyclical myths. For example, many cultures have stories that explain the seasons with a goddess who for different reasons disappears and reappears again. A classic version is found in Greek mythology in the story of Persephone, the goddess of vegetation and growth. Persephone is abducted by Hades, the god of the underworld, but after an agreement between Hades and Zeus and Demeter, Persephone’s parents, she is allowed to stay in Hades’ kingdom in the winter months only, and the rest of the year she is free.57 It is characteristic of Persephone’s cycle that when she is away, mourning over her absence results in suffering and neediness on earth, and when she comes back, there is growth 54 55 56 57

Kiefer, “I ‘secrify’ the matter by divesting it,” p. 121. Kiefer, “I ‘secrify’ the matter by divesting it,” p. 120. Kiefer, “I ‘secrify’ the matter by divesting it,” p. 120. T. Agha-Jaffar, Demeter and Persephone: Lessons from a Myth, (London: McFarland, 2002).

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and joy again. Persephone can never be seen on earth, but the effect of her presence and absence is clear. In contrast with Persephone, Kiefer’s understanding of Mary is that she is present when humankind suffers on earth, as the historical Mary actually also was. Thus, he inverts the cycle motif so that the god is closest at hand when humans suffer, not when they are doing well. Kiefer’s reflections on Mary show that he regards her as significant in several ways. Mary is present and personal for Kiefer, in contrast with his experience of the descriptions of her in the Bible. Kiefer’s descriptions underline the paradox of her being absent in Pietà. Contemplation From a pictorial point of view there are striking differences between the traditional pietà motif and Kiefers use of this motif in his Pietà. At the same time, Kiefer’s title insists that there is a connection. What does it add to the reading of the work that the title maintains a relationship to the pietà of the devotional tradition, the suffering motif, and the intercessory motif?

An Obscured Mary

In light of what Kiefer himself says about Mary, her absence in his Pietà may seem paradoxical: it was exactly at this point that Mary should have been here for man as one who suffers with man. However, is Mary really absent or is she present through another form of representation? Kiefer’s statements make it possible to understand her presence in a metaphorical way. She can simply be there, as a hollow form, a glass coffin which contains both the body and the thornbush. She can also simply be a place, the place that Kiefer has created in the showcase. Kiefer’s Pietà can also be seen as a parallel to Luther, just as Kiefer’s notion of the hollowness of Mary corresponds to Luther’s nothingness. At first glance it seems as if Kiefer’s pietà maintains only the moment of suffering. If so, the praising of the good God is missing. Luther however was preoccupied with Mary not just as an ordinary woman, but as “nothing.” In Kiefer’s Pietà Mary has become invisible, or “hidden” by an open form. The idea of Mary as an open form presents some possibilities, but also some challenges. The form is just as Kiefer describes Mary: hollow. On the one hand, this empty space is filled by the viewer. Through the title of the work, the viewer is led towards the pietà’s complex meanings of sorrow, piety and

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compassion, duty and passion and is confronted with the madonna’s dilemma: can one praise God while experiencing deep pain or sorrow? In Pietà one is challenged by the artist’s own figure, and it is possible to respond to his situation, both in the world and in relation to God, without being disturbed by leading intermediaries, like Mary. When Mary is absent she is at the same time like everyone else; anyone can assume her role, she is not elevated over anyone as being unusually beautiful or unattainable. On the other hand, the hollow space that represents Mary in Pietà can be filled by anything. How is it possible to know which response is most adequate if you do not have a model? How can a person worship when he or she does not see that there is an alternative to hopelessness, and how can one pray with the correct attitude when the humble Virgin does not appear? Kiefer’s image gives no unequivocal answers. Indeed, the eye is directed at the viewer herself, but the mind is not led by symbols of hope or comfort, which a representation of Mary could have given, but is completely missing in the image.

A Face on Suffering

In 1937–38/39 Käthe Kollwitz in an attempt to come to terms with her grief over the death of her own son,58 created a little wooden sculpture that shows an older woman and her adult, dead son. They are both sitting on a hill, he between her knees and collapsed, almost as if he were a part of her body. The woman is small and broadly built, and she has coarse features. One little gnarled fist touches the man’s hand, the other is held up in front of her mouth as if she is choking a sob. The mother’s eyes are closed, as if she is totally immersed in herself. She does not seem to turn to any higher power, and she could have been any mother weeping desolately over her child. In her diary notes Kollwitz characterises the sculpture as something like a pietà. The general human expression made it possible to use this particular sculpture in the memorial for victims of war and tyranny in Berlin, Neue Wache. Here is found an enlargement of Pietà under the more neutral title, Mother with Dead Son (Mutter mit totem Sohn, 1993) sculpted by Harald Haacke (Fig. 8.2). For Kollwitz, the sculpture does not just represent pain, but contemplation (Nachsinnen). The woman reflects, “that her son was not accepted by people.

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Kollwitz’s son Peter fell in 1914, but the work is considered a personal coming to terms with this experience, see K. Kollwitz Museum, https://www.kollwitz.de/module/werkliste/ Details.aspx?wid=350&lid=10&head=Rundgang+−+Folge+Krieg [Accessed April 7, 2015.]

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She is an old, lonely and gloomily contemplating woman.”59 Kollwitz connects the title, Pietà, with more than just suffering: with reflection and insight. Her comments reflect the title’s crucial significance for the reading of the work. She lifts the theme up to another level and shifts the focus from pain to contemplation. Kollwitz herself uses the religious title, despite the fact that she does not consider herself a believer.60 When her work was included in the memorial in Berlin, the motif was made universal by the change in the title. The name pietà indicates a motif that unites suffering and contemplation. In Kollwitz’ work, the title is not necessary as the visual similarity to the pietà motif is obvious. Kiefer, on the other hand, has broken the visual connection to the traditional motif, and unlike Kollwitz, he needs the title. It is a reminder that directs the interpretation of the image towards suffering in a way that initiates contemplation. The suffering is reinforced by everything being isolated behind glass and steel, and the man’s loneliness in suffering is emphasized. The title, however, not only emphasizes human abandonment, but at the same time, it maintains that someone is participating in the suffering. Who is it that participates in Kiefer? Mary, who according to Kiefer, suffers with man, is not to be seen, despite Kiefer’s pronounced idea that Mary is with man, precisely when he is suffering. In Kiefer’s Pietà, there is not just mourning over, but mourning with someone, and this compassion is interpreted physically and presented through a self-portrait. The pain is universalized through the absence of stigmata, a solution which Kollwitz also chose. The person depicted in Kiefer’s Pietà can be anyone. The title also points to the fact that Mary is absent. Who can mediate and interpret the suffering that the viewer encounters in the work and in the world when Mary is absent? In the pietà motif, Mary is used as a representative of all mothers’ grief over a dead child, but with a more comforting expression than is found in the accounts from Ramah and Bethlehem. What happens when Kiefer leaves Mary out? Are we left without any kind of role model, or is it possible that this is the only way, through hollow forms, that role models can be presented in the contemporary world? What the artist actually does is to hold onto the viewer in a moment of suffering and reflection. The viewer can dwell on the ambiguous signs, like the body, the roses and the thorny thicket. Nonetheless, the viewer is helped a bit along the path by the title’s implicit reference to Michelangelo’s harmonious sculpture and other older pietàs. 59 60

K. Kollwitz: Die Tagebücher 1908–1943, ed. by J. Bohnke-Kollwitz, (Berlin; Siedler, 1999), p. 698. (December 1939). K. Kollwitz Museum [Accessed April 7, 2015.]

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The older pietàs resonate and let the viewer remember Mary’s function as a model for the faithful, and the need to have someone as a mediator. The title also brings to mind that the viewer needs a mediator in order to come to terms with the violent pain one witnesses both in history and in the contemporary world. At the same time, the viewer is not given any answer to what or who this mediator can be. Kiefer’s work points out that in the contemporary world, we no longer know what or who it is, or what it will take to keep the paradoxes of suffering and worship together. The memory of Mary’s function in the motif reminds one that grief and worship may be kept together, but how and in what form will be up to the individual to decide. Does Kiefer’s ‘hollow space’ contain any guidelines nevertheless? Can Mary’s absence lead to the presence of something else, perhaps something connected to references that thorns and roses awaken? Or can the life cycle that is brought to a halt under the glass, where flowers and bushes are not withered, but dried, remind us of a cycle which has taken a different direction and a God who has not abandoned us, but who is with us when we suffer? The actual process of making memories present is more important than all the results of these associations. Since Mary can be understood as a land of memories, as Kiefer himself says, the work, Pietà, can be experienced as a memoryspace. In this space, what one thinks one has lost, what one mourns and what creates suffering and pain are conserved through memories and sensory experiences which are awakened in the encounter with thorns, roses and an unclothed body. Memories do not come like an emanation to the body or from it, but as a change which must come from the inside. Is the memory of Holocaust, which has haunted Kiefer’s pictures ever since the Occupation series, also included in this memory-space? Kiefer has broadened the meanings of the thorny woods and roses in a series of works. The barbed wire, which is used in parallel with the thorny branch, not only emphasizes one side of the thorny thicket, but perhaps refers directly to the concentration camp fences. And the blood flowers refer not only to the rose of pain and, but also to the executioners’ census cards in Auschwitz. Kiefer’s version of pietà can thus be used as the Federal Republic of Germany uses Kollwitz, to remember victims of war and tyranny.

Tsim Tsum

In the quote in the beginning of this article, Kiefer talks about the prohibition against images as a commission to create images despite the fact that it is essentially impossible. Kiefer’s forty-five year long artistic career shows that he

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interprets the command creatively and with great freedom to express himself artistically. The tension between representation and its impossibility is reflected not least in Kiefer’s struggle with the process of image-making. Painted and found objects are used interchangeably. In Pietà this comes out in the choice of a genuine thorny thicket, a painted human figure and the absent Mary. It is an open-ended, explorative work in which different sensory expressions are tried out in an attempt to represent something that cannot be said, either in word or image. Does the open form which Kiefer has given Pietà correspond to his clear consciousness of the prohibition against images? The open form can resemble the mythic image Kiefer uses to explain his own process of creation. Kiefer takes the image from Luria’s creation myth: in the stage of Tsim Tsum, Ain Soph retreats and makes room for the earthbound. In Kiefer’s descriptions of Tsim Tsum and of Mary, there is a melding of the two images into something that withdraws to make space for something else. Mary is an empty space, as the world itself is. Kiefer speaks of a space in which something can unfold creatively and of creating in and out of such spaces. Pietà is an example of a space created in order to explore the possibilities for representation that follow from his creative interpretation of the prohibition of images. The void described by Luria makes room for the world as imperfect, a description Kiefer invokes in order to describe the falling short of the image: “it always fails.” However, the imperfect points towards the Creator, just as the empty space refers to Ain Soph. Despite the fact that it falls short, the work of art always wants to point towards that which is perfect, says Kiefer. Can such a reference to perfection also be seen in Pietà; does the hollow form point towards the perfect? Perhaps there lies a reference in the allusions to transformation which are implied in the body’s position. The picture shows an ordinary man, without stigmata and basically in an ordinary supine position, but this position makes him into an image of a yogi, an alchemist and a Christ figure – even though the representation “fails” and there is no guarantee that any transformation has taken place. The representation ‘and its failure’ can be seen in the context of Kiefer’s focus on separation, which, along with the prohibition against images, is at the core of his artistic production. Separation for Kiefer is the same as death, but this does not invalidate the connection between the separated elements. He shows here a consciousness of that which is eternally lost and separated, and how it has left something behind that will never again be whole. This is described with the metaphor ‘a half image’: “Two halves of a picture which will never again be one because those who were on the one side of it have been murdered.” In this statement, the one who is gone and the one who is left

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behind are juxtaposed; they are two sides of the same image, but they cannot be joined again and therefore, attempts at making the imperfect perfect are doomed to fail. Separation is a central theme in Kiefer’s mediation of the Holocaust, but also in the pietà motif. The point of departure for Christology is man’s separation from God due to the Fall, and in Jesus’ complete union with humanity, he, too, is abandoned by God, as witnessed by his last words on the cross (Matthew 27.46; Mark 15.34). In death, Jesus was also separated from the people who loved him, also his mother, who in the moment of the pietá mourns her loss and separation. In Kiefer’s version, the separation is escalated and inverted into a further separation, in that Mary is also gone. Just as Kiefer inverts the cycle myth through his reference to Mary, he also transforms the pietà scene by her absence. It is Jesus who has lost everything, but it is Mary who is on the other side of the image, which can never be whole again because someone was murdered. For the viewer, it is not the survivor who is left behind, but the one who is gone. The viewer is confronted with the victim, the murdered one, displayed as a curiosity framed behind glass. That which is lost is found again by viewers at an exhibition. In Pietà the viewer might also find an answer to the question of how the existential significance of suffering can be represented. Kiefer sticks explicitly to the religious version of the theme. Suffering is placed in a specific history, which, with simple visual characteristics, stretches far back in time. Pietà in Salzburg pointed towards Auschwitz, and towards Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Ramah. And to these places belong memories and stories: they are places and occasions that can be remembered, and suffering is thereby placed in a context. The individual in Kiefer’s Pietà can perhaps experience being lonely and left behind, but the suffering that is experienced is given dignity because the single person is joined together with victims from time immemorial. The religious imagery that Kiefer uses assists this remembering. His Pietà seems to indicate that art that incorporates experience from the Holocaust can renew Christian iconography and mediate an experience of suffering in the world today.

Part 3 Music and Transcendence

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Introduction to Part 3 Nils Holger Petersen The Western European history of music is closely connected with musical notation, and thus a particular way of creating music, writing music, which has later given the concept of composing a special meaning which was not semantically contained in the original Latin word componere (to put together). In the Middle Ages, this word could be used about putting words together, compiling and editing bits of music into new entities, or about making entirely new melodies. The liturgical reforms around 800 are traditionally seen as the beginning of European music history, since it is in this period we find the earliest written musical sources. Before this time the melodies for the chants used in the divine services were not written down, but were handed down from generation to generation through practical training. We therefore know little about the chants and the stability of the tradition, even though we, increasingly, know the texts for liturgical chants since the early Middle Ages. We do know, however, that music, primarily chant, has been connected with divine services right from the earliest Jewish and Christian practice. The particular emphasis of European music history on the composer as a musical author or creator of ‘works’ came into being through a process that lasted for several centuries.1 But from the ninth century on, when we increasingly find musical notation for the songs in liturgical manuscripts, it becomes clear how much music was regarded as an important medium for divine services. We see this in the amount of commentary on music, both as regards the technical-theoretical aspect and in relation to theological reflection on the importance of music, in this period and onward.2 The most important music at this time was music written for and sponsored by the church. Also polyphony was developed in the following centuries (and so, consequently, was the rhythmic control of the music). Around 1200, we know of highly complex compositions for certain elements of the service, in the so-called Notre Dame school. During the next centuries, the regularly repeated elements of the mass (the so-called mass ordinary) were set to music 1 See E. Østrem, “Deus artifex and homo creator: Art Between the Human and the Divine,” in Creations: Medieval Rituals, the Arts, and the Concept of Creation, eds. S.R. Havsteen et al. (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007), pp. 15–48, especially pp. 29–30. 2 See A. Ekenberg, Cur Cantatur? (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1987) and also N.H. Petersen, “Carolingian Music, Ritual, and Theology,” in The Appearances of Medieval Rituals: The Play of Construction and Modification, eds. N.H. Petersen et al. (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004), pp. 13–31.

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in polyphonic compositions, and in the 14th century we find the first complete mass ordinary cycles, the composition of which through the next half millennium became one of the most important duties of the composers (besides other music for divine services and other ceremonial and entertainment contexts). But the European music culture altogether has not primarily been religious. For most people today music is probably first and foremost seen as an art that is not restricted to a religious or ecclesiastical area, but as something that can be used both in secular and religious contexts. The development of music outside the church especially picks up speed around 1600–1700 when public musical institutions begin to turn up outside the ecclesiastical framework, and from around 1800 the church’s position as the main sponsor of musical culture is gradually much reduced. Nevertheless, also in this period, the historical religious background is reflected in many speculations that the medium of music has a special relation to the divine, the transcendent, whether or not such ideas mainly spring from music’s historical religious context. These ideas have a long history behind them, which reaches all the way back to late antiquity, not least to the Church Father St Augustine (354–430), in whose writings it can, however, be difficult to determine whether the ideas are directly connected with the actual music at his time (see Kristin Rygg’s and Nils Holger Petersen’s articles in this part). But parallel to the misgivings expressed by several men of the church, including St Augustine, that the music might get the better of the religious content, ideas of a close connection between music and the divine are very much to be found, both in Augustine and throughout the Middle Ages, in Luther,3 and after him, in both Lutheran and Catholic contexts, all the way up to the present. Johann Sebastian Bach’s position in this connection is almost a matter of course, particularly, but not exclusively in a Lutheran context. In addition, famous theologians like the Reformed Karl Barth (1882–1965) and the Catholic Hans Küng (b. 1928) have discussed whether it is possible, in particular for Mozart’s music, to open up channels to the divine.4 It is interesting that exactly early Romanticism also had such ideas about music’s connection to the divine, albeit only loosely connected with theology. 3 On Luther and music, see S.R. Havsteen, “Music as a Topos in the Lutheran Construction of a Confessional Identity in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,” in Commonplace Culture in Western Europe in the Early Modern Period vol. I: Reformation, Counter-Reformation and Revolt, eds. D. Cowling and M.B. Bruun (Leuven: Peeters, 2011), pp. 51–75; R.A. Leaver, Luther’s Liturgical Music: Principles and Implications (Grand Rapids: Lutheran Quarterly Books, 2007). See also the special issue of the periodical Transfiguration (2002), The Arts and the Cultural Heritage of Martin Luther, eds. E. Østrem et al. (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2002), also about Luther and music. 4 On Barth, Küng and Mozart, see N.H. Petersen’s article.

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It is such “loose” connections between music and the spiritual or divine that Kierkegaard has his aesthete, A, comment on sarcastically in Either/Or (EntenEller, 1843), where the idea that music in a spiritual sense is above language is termed a “sentimental misconception” (en smægtende misforstaaelse).5 In continuity with the general tendency, especially in the later Protestant theological tradition, Kierkegaard’s aesthete sees language, the word, as a medium for spirituality, whereas the field of music is primarily limited to the purely sensory. Conversely, the early Romantics regarded precisely the indeterminate character of music as a way to spirituality, as we find it in a famous quote by the music critic, composer and musician E.T.A. Hoffmann from his “Beethovens Instrumental-Musik” (1814: based on his review of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony in 1810). Hoffmann writes that Mozart leads us into the depths of the spiritual realm. Fear surrounds us, but without torment it is rather an inkling of the infinite. […] In a similar way Beethoven’s instrumental music opens the realm of the immense and immeasurable. […] Beethoven’s music moves the threshold of fear, awe, terror and pain and awakens exactly that infinite yearning which is the essence of the Romantic. Therefore, he is a completely Romantic composer, and could it be for that reason that he succeeds to a lesser degree in vocal music, which does not allow the character of indeterminate longing, but only represents affects determined by words as felt in the realm of the infinite?6 It is difficult not to connect this with the concept of the sublime as it had essentially been interpreted by Emmanuel Kant for his contemporaries, in his 5 S. Kierkegaard, Either/Or, Part I, eds. and trans. by H.V. Hong and E.H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), p. 69; S. Kierkegaard, Enten – Eller, publ.by the Søren Kierkegaard Research Center eds. N.J. Cappelørn et al., part 1, Søren Kierkegaards Skrifter 2 (Copenhagen: G.E.C. Gads Forlag, 1997), p. 75. 6 “In die Tiefen des Geisterreichs führt uns Mozart. Furcht umfängt uns, aber ohne Marter ist sie mehr Ahndung des Unendlichen. […] So öffnet uns auch Beethovens Instrumental-Musik das Reich des Ungeheuern und Unermeßlichen. […] Beethovens Musik bewegt die Hebel der Furcht, des Schauers, des Entsetzens, des Schmerzes und erweckt eben jene unendliche Sehnsucht, welche das Wesen der Romantik ist. Er ist daher ein rein romantischer Komponist, und mag es nicht daher kommen, daß ihm Vokalmusik, die den Charakter des unbestimmten Sehnens nicht zuläßt, sondern nur durch Worte bestimmte Affekte als in dem Reiche des Unendlichen empfunden darstellt, weniger gelingt.” E.T.A. Hoffmann,” “Beethovens Instrumental-Musik,” in Fantasiestücke in Callot’s Manier, Werke 1814, eds. H. Steinecke et al. (Frankfurt am Main: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 1993), pp. 52–61, quote pp. 53–54.

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Critique of the Power of Judgment (Kritik der Urtheilskraft, 1790), partly based on Edmund Burke’s more empirical understanding of the concept in his A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757/1759). Both works are based on the experience of the transcendent, the awe-inspiring (see also Arnfinn Bø-Rygg’s article for further discussion of the sublime). In his presentation, Kierkegaard’s aesthete does not entirely deny that music can communicate spirituality, but he claims that music is primarily connected with the sensory, which Christianity excludes; music communicates the “sensuous in its elemental originality” (“den sandselige genialitet”), i.e. expresses the sensory experience of the moment. For A, seduction, the theme of Mozart’s Don Giovanni (which is the primary theme of the essay), is therefore a particularly musical theme, something which he asserts that Mozart completely lives up to. What makes this point interesting is not really whether or not one agrees with A’s interpretation of the opera (which I do not).7 It still constitutes a basic retort to the traditional idea of music’s spiritual dimension. Kierkegaard’s text raises the question of whether music, and especially instrumental music, simply communicates sensory experiences of the moment rather than transcendence, as is claimed with the idea of “romantic,” infinite longing. All the three articles that follow in this part deal with a transcendence problematic close to these questions, but based on quite disparate musical matter and historical periods: Arnfinn Bø-Rygg’s article “The Finished Fragment: On Arnold Schoenberg’s Moses und Aron” is a discussion of Schoenberg’s only opera, a biblical twelvetone opera in which a decisive motif, both for the entire work and for its protagonist, Moses, is the paradox of trying the impossible, of communicating the divine. A theme in that connection is the question of music’s relation to the invisible and incomprehensible God. There is no iconoclastic problem here, in the traditional sense of prohibition. In fact, Schoenberg has a musical representation of God’s voice at the beginning of the opera, in the scene with the burning bush (Exodus 3.4–6; see also Bø-Rygg’s article). The crucial question that is discussed is the concomitant idea that music cannot capture the infinite, the divine or the absolute. The complicated protagonist Moses (who is not just a direct representation of the biblical Moses) cannot sing, except once, and eventually words fail him, too: “O Wort das mir fehlt.” 7 See N.H. Petersen, “Seduction or Truth in Music? Mozart’s Don Giovanni and Søren Kierkegaard’s Either/Or” in Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook 2008, eds. Niels Jørgen Cappelørn et al. (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2008), pp. 109–128, especially pp. 109–114.

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Schoenberg’s work is a ‘work’ in the particular understanding of music as work, i.e. a delimited and self-contained unit created by a “great composer,” an understanding which particularly from the 19th century was to become the basis of the aesthetics of music. Schoenberg’s opera is also – perhaps for this very reason – an unfinished work, because what must be demanded of a work that was to do justice to the story of the absoluteness of God’s spiritual command and man’s misuse of it is impossible to accomplish. The work had to remain a torso. This is closely connected with modernism’s paradoxical protest against the aesthetics of musical works, precisely through “works.” And this is deeply consistent with the presentation of the problem of work aesthetics in Petersen’s article “Time and Space in W.A. Mozart’s Ave Verum Corpus (1791): Transcendence and the Fictive Space of the Musical Work” and with a different but nevertheless corresponding fragmentation of an overall musical-religious context in Kristin Rygg’s discussion of a modern (more or less) religious popular song hit in “The Broken Hallelujah: The Super Hit as Sacred Space.” Where Schoenberg’s opera in many ways represents a paradoxical musical breakdown of the forenamed religious idea that music had a special access to the absolute, Petersen’s article on Mozart and the fictive spaces of music deals with a music that directly interprets words from the Christian liturgy in accordance with a fundamental and traditional theological frame of understanding: Mozart’s Ave Verum Corpus, a short but famous work of sacred music. This work in particular has been understood as representing a particularly spiritual or angelic music, something which was also expressed in the way Franz Liszt many years later used this music (without the words) as a kind of divine (re-)solution in a major piano work. Petersen discusses the relationship between music and text and builds on K.E. Løgstrup’s philosophical ideas on fictive spaces of memory to consider to what degree such a musical space of memory depends on our listening practice. Whether the music is heard detached from the words (i.e. as “absolute music”), heard more or less in connection with the words, or heard with the inclusion of an understanding of the original religious context, decisively influences the fictive memory space and the determination of a possible representation of transcendence in the music listened to. Kristin Rygg’s article is about contemporary popular music by Leonard Cohen and Jeff Buckley. The song Hallelujah is read as Bible reception through textual analysis, but also through contextualization with other texts by Cohen. It appears that the “theology” or religious attitudes we come across in various versions of the song to a high degree consist of broken relations to traditional

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Judeo-Christian religion. Nevertheless, they are of importance, independently of whether they appear as being fragmented. Also the musical presentation of the song, in Jeff Buckley’s version, is analyzed in relation to the use of musical means that through century-long traditions have made it possible to remember – more or less consciously – associations to religious musical meaning. In other words, there are lines that connect Rygg’s article with Bø-Rygg’s and Petersen’s articles, although in a traditional sense there is little connection between the musical areas treated in the three articles. None of the authors take up Kierkegaard’s ideas directly, but conversely Kierkegaard puts all their arguments into relief. Since antiquity (St Augustine), and revived in early Romanticism on other premises, it has been believed of music that it was able to express what language could not express. As already mentioned the semantic indeterminacy in music which gives it that possibility was seen in a quite different light by Kierkegaard’s aesthete. Where the more precise character of language furthers reflection and (hence) spirituality, he maintains that music only expresses immediate sensoriness. The tension between Kierkegaard’s text and the understanding of music’s possibility of communicating spirituality found in tradition and in early Romanticism thus becomes a frame within which the three articles discuss and interpret each their own musical works and situations. The question of the “essence” of music in relation to religion and transcendence – which on very different premises and in different ways is answered by for example Augustine, Luther and Kierkegaard – presents a problematic that must always end up in historical interpretations and discussions, and which can hardly be resolved by philosophy once and for all. The contextual connection of music to a religious cult can therefore be regarded as seduction or delusion (which is basically what Kierkegaard’s aesthete claims) or as a culture of memory in which music is associated with certain contexts and meanings which then, within certain cultural and social frameworks, cannot easily be removed as long as those contexts are remembered. But they may collapse when those frameworks no longer are seen as intact. In a modern culture of listening determined by cds and smart-phones, it is an open question to what degree such conditions for a religious understanding of music still exist. Similar questions were also debated by Walter Benjamin and Theodor W. Adorno in the first half of the 20th century, on the basis of the political and technological conditions existing at the time (see especially Dag T. Andersson’s and Espen Dahl’s articles in this volume). But the issue is just as relevant and insistent today, as witnessed by all the three articles in this part, irrespective of the differences among them.

chapter 9

The Finished Fragment: On Arnold Schoenberg’s Moses und Aron Arnfinn Bø-Rygg Die meinende Sprache möchte das Absolute vermittelt sagen, und es ­entgleitet ihr in jeder einzelnen Intention, lässt eine jede als endlich hinter sich zurück. Musik trifft es unmittelbar, aber im gleichen Augenblick verdunkelt es sich, so wie überstarkes Licht das Auge blendet, welches das ganze Sichtbare nicht mehr zu sehen vermag. adorno

Alle, welche dich suchen, versuchen dich. / Und die, so dich finden, ­binden dich / an Bild und Gebärde. rilke

Introduction Arnold Schoenberg’s unfinished opera Moses und Aron1 from 1930–32 has many layers and is open to many interpretations. It can be elucidated in a philosophical-­ aesthetical perspective, from the perspectives of compositional technique, theology, his Jewish identity and politics. An integral understanding of this complex work demands that all aspects are taken into consideration. In Moses und Aron we meet in a singular way a condensation of music, religion and life. However, one must both see these traits together and at the same time keep them apart. This will be one of the focal points in this article. The article will touch upon all the above-mentioned elements, but the main focus is on the question of whether the unpresentable can be presented. This question also includes the relation between what is sensible/audible and transcendence. In other words, Schoenberg’s work goes directly to the core of the project which has occasioned this book. The conflict between Moses and Aron which is played out in the opera and which goes far beyond the Bible texts Schoenberg uses, deals with the question of whether God is pure transcendence 1 Schoenberg wrote Aron without the two a’s that are common in German, to avoid the ­number 13, because of his superstition. Interestingly, he was born on September 13th (1874) and died on July 13th (1951). © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi 10.1163/9789004291690_014

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or someone who is manifest in the sensible and sensory. The Utopia, the nonsensible, un-presentable and non-expressive spirituality, is up against the people’s real passion, suffering and joy. In Schoenberg both sides appeared in a contradictory relation. It was a conflict to which there was perhaps no solution. Adorno and Lacoue-Labarthe are the critics who have most clearly thematized the unpresentable, and in this context seen the necessarily fragmentary aspects of Schoenberg’s opera. The most extensive study of the many aspects of Schoenberg’s work, that of Marc M. Kerling, also sees Moses und Aron as a necessary fragment, as “incomplete complete.” Otherwise, the literature which emphasizes one aspect of the opera in particular – the biographical, the Jewish, the political, the theological, the technical-compositional – is enormous. In important respects the article builds on the Egyptologist Jan Assmann’s article on Moses und Aron, but is also a discussion of it.2 In keeping with Assmann, the emphasis is on the text more than in most expositions and analyses of the opera, and it is demonstrated how Schoenberg intervenes in the Bible text. The ambiguous is a key concept in the opera: the thought, der Gedanke, which refers both to the idea of God – which is praised in the text as “vieldeutig” (ambiguous) – and the musical idea which is the very central concept in Schoenberg’s musical poetics. But perhaps the most important question concerns the way we are to understand the work. Is it, as has already been suggested, a fragment, or should we consider it completed? (Only two acts were completed, but Schoenberg wrote a libretto for a third act). The finished libretto, which Schoenberg based on the Pentateuch (Exodus, Numbers, Deuteronomy), was written by himself, and the Bible text is at times treated quite freely and with additions. The whole full-length opera, which lasts 2 hours – we have 2106 bars – is based on one single twelve-tone row.3 This can be interpreted both symbolically: God as the only One, omnipresent, and musically: Schoenberg could now demonstrate that the twelve-tone technique 2 J. Assmann, “Die Mosaische Unterscheidung in Schönbergs Moses und Aron,” Musik & Ästhetik 33 (2005), pp. 5–29. See also T.W. Adorno, “Sakrales Fragment. Über Schönbergs Moses und Aron,” in Quasi una fantasia (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1963), pp. 306–39; English translation: “Sacred Fragment: Schoenberg’s Moses und Aron,” in: Quasi una fantasia. Essays on Modern Music, trans. R. Livingstone (London: Verso, 1994), pp. 225–248. P. Lacoue-Labarthe, “Die Zäsur der Religion. Zur Schönbergs Moses und Aron,” in C.L. Hart Nibbrig, ed., Was heisst ‘Darstellen’? (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1994), pp. 451–483. 3 The whole work is based on one single twelve-tone row: C sharp, D, G sharp, F sharp, G, F, B, A, B flat, C, E flat, E. This row is first heard when Aron enters in act 1, scene 2 (bar 124): “Du, Sohn meiner Väter, schickt dich mir der grosse Gott?” (O son of my fathers, are you sent by mighty God?).

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was possible, also in a major form. Add to this what is perhaps most important: one cannot hear the twelve-tone row, but with its transformations it is omnipresent.4 The opera sets up contradictions which cannot be resolved and are perhaps irreconcilable, between the unconditional and the conditional, the absolute and the limited, the transcendent and the immanent, thought and image, the unrepresentable and the represented. It is Schoenberg’s greatness that he does not iron out these contradictions and aporias. In Moses und Aron he takes what you might call the problem of representation to its extreme. The question will be whether he transgresses a limit (lat. limes), i.e. whether the musical work can transgress such a limit, or whether he stops on the threshold (lat. limen).

Synopsis of the Opera

The outer action, based on the libretto and Schoenberg’s stage directions, is as follows:5 In a kind of prologue or introduction of seven bars, before the curtain rises and the action begins, we hear six solo voices and instruments. The solo voices, which according to Schoenberg’s directions must be localized in the orchestra, sing a vocalise, “O.” In Act 1, scene 1, “The Calling of Moses,” Moses speaks to God the words that go like a monotonous leitmotiv through the whole opera: “Einziger, ewiger, allgegenwärtiger, unsichtbarer und unvorstellbarer Gott…!”  (Only one, infinite, omnipresent, unperceived and unrepresentable God!). Here we must presuppose God’s revelation, which has “reawakened” Moses’ thoughts. A dialogue begins between the voice from the burning bush and Moses, in which Moses is commanded to “remove the sandals from his feet” (Here lay your shoes aside), he is on “holy ground.” The voice from the bush, recited by a speech choir, enters on “Gott” and exhorts Moses to proclaim the one and only God and thus free his people from the Egyptian bondage. He has seen how cruelly they are afflicted. Moses doubts his ability to convince his people: “Meine Zunge ist ungelenk ich kann denken, aber nicht reden” (But my

4 The row is circular and has neither a beginning nor an end, i.e. there is no theme but an abstract principle of organization. Thus it represents an analogy to the idea of one God which Moses proclaims at the very beginning of the opera: “Einziger, ewiger, allgengenwärtiger…. Gott!” (Only one, infinite, omnipresent, …God.) 5 It must be emphasized here that for Schoenberg the text only constituted a quite minimal basis and only took shape during – and often after – composing, which was Schoenberg’s usual way of working.

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tongue is not flexible: thought is easy, speech laborious).6 But the voice commands him to go meet his brother Aron, who will be his mouth, and thus win the people for his cause. In this scene we also hear the words about a “chosen people” which are repeated throughout the opera. In the second scene, “Moses meets Aron in the Wasteland” Aron is given the task by Moses of proclaiming the message to the people. In the third scene, “Moses and Aron bring God’s Message to the People” we hear that for some among the people a new God means hope, whereas others fear new blood sacrifices, since Moses’ God was the one who killed the overseer. In scene 4, Moses and Aron urge the people to worship the God who cannot be represented. But the people demand that Aron give them a picture of his God. As a sign of the power of the invisible God, Aron changes Moses’ staff into a snake and heals his leprous hand. Then he pours Nile water from a jar, which changes into blood – a symbol of slavery – and changes blood to water again – a symbol of the destruction of the Egyptians. The people are now convinced by these wonders and trust that Aron will lead them into the wilderness. After an invisible interlude with a choir which in canon form whispers, “Where is Moses? […]Where is his God?” comes Act 2, scene 1, “Aron and the 70 Elders before the Mountain of Revelation,” where the elders blame Aron that Moses does not return – he has been gone for 40 days. The people are despairing and beginning to lose confidence. In the second scene the crowd threatens the elders: Moses has brought disaster on the people and must be delivered. The call for the old gods becomes clear. Aron tries in vain to calm the crowd, but finally promises that the people will get their old gods back. Scene three, “The Golden Calf and the Altar,” forms a kind of peripeteia: caravans with camels, asses, horses and wagons loaded full of gold, grain, skins of wine and oil, and cattle gather round the idol. Male and female beggars bring forth sacrifices, while the old people take their own lives at the sight of the calf. The chiefs of the tribe kill a young man because he tries to keep the crowd away from their idolatry. It develops into orgies, with drunkenness, the sacrifice of virgins, rape and uninhibited eroticism, a celebration of the old gods which reaches its climax in “Heilig ist die Lust!” (Holy is desire!). When the fire dies out and peace falls upon the scene, a man sees Moses with the tablets of the law from afar, and exclaims: “Moses steigt vom Berg herab!” (Moses is descending from the mountain!). It is a cry, Schoenberg writes in the score, which is to be heard faintly from afar, yet uttered with great force. In scene four, with a hill in the background, Moses makes a sign, whereupon the golden calf perishes and the people retreat. 6 There is some apocryphal evidence that Moses was a mute or a stutterer.

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In the fifth scene, “Moses and Aron,” a furious Moses calls Aron to account. Aron defends himself by claiming that Moses is tied up in his thoughts. Yes, Moses answers, in my thoughts as these tablets express them. To which Aron answers that they, too, are an image, a simplification of the thoughts. Moses sees his thoughts falsified, and in despair he shatters the tablets of the law. In the distance, led by a pillar of fire, and then a pillar of cloud, the people march through the wilderness. To Moses, the pillars are idols: Aron has made thought into image and image into sign. Aron answers that also the burning bush was such a sign. Moses then exclaims what has gone through the whole opera as a leitmotif, “Unvorstellbarer Gott! Unaussprechlicher Gedanke!” (Unrepresentable God! Inexpressible, many-sided idea!), and concludes: “So war alles Wahnsinn, was ich gedacht habe, und kann und darf nicht gesagt werden!” (Thus, all was but madness that I believed before, and can and must not be given voice). He then falls despairingly to the ground, with the words “O Wort, du Wort, das mir fehlt!” (O word, thou word, that I lack). Act 3, which has not been set to music, comprises one scene, in which Aron is led before Moses as a prisoner. Moses orders him freed of the shackles, but because Aron is only able to live in the images he has created, he falls to the ground, dead. Then Moses at the end declares that “in the desert you shall be invincible and shall achieve the goal: unity with God.” Schoenberg’s libretto is full of contrasts, antitheses, which characterize both micro- and macro-structures: God – Pharaoh; Moses – the people; Moses – Aron; a chosen people – all other peoples; an invisible God – old gods; iconoclasm – demand for images; the distant – the everyday; the unimaginable – the limited comprehensible; the unrepresentable – the sensible; thought – speech; thought – matter etc. Considering Schoenberg’s prolonged work with the text, the history of its development, we can see how it continuously has been on his mind. The development of the text can be followed in the so-called Textbuch,7 which shows that the work began in 1922, and was then and until 1926 planned as a cantata. The text was then expanded (in 1928) into an oratorio, and only in 1930 was it made an opera. The character of cantata and oratorio is traceable in several places in the opera. 7 In Sämtliche Werke, Abteilung III: Bühnenwerke, Reihe B, bind 8/2, ed. Chr. M. Schmidt (Mainz/ Wien: Schott, 1998). The most thorough analysis and use of Textbuch for the understanding of Moses und Aron, is found in M. Kerling, O Wort, du Wort, das mir fehlt. Die Gottesfrage in Arnold Schönbergs Oper “Moses und Aron” (München: Matthias-Grünewald-Verlag, 2004), in particular p. 45ff.

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Turning Towards Jewishness

Schoenberg was not a ‘Christian composer’ like Stravinsky or Hindemith. What Carl Dahlhaus calls Schoenberg’s “aesthetic theology”8 was a heritage from the Romantic religion of art, in which a metaphysical calling was attributed to the artist, who could impart a spirituality that could lead mankind away from both materialism and atheism. Here he was in agreement with Wassily Kandinsky who wrote Über das Geistige in der Kunst (Concerning the Spiritual in Art), and with whom Schoenberg corresponded intensively in 1911–1912 and sporadically right up to 1936.9 They agreed that they were both doing the “same thing,” ­liberating art from the objective (Kandinsky) and dissolving tonality. Schoenberg strongly believed that he was performing a (music) historical necessity: “No one else wanted the job, so I had to take it on,” he is supposed to have said.10 He also thought that his Harmonielehre would ensure the precedence of German-Austrian music for the next one hundred years. Schoenberg’s turn towards the religious in a more genuine sense, and more specifically towards the Old Testament, is undoubtedly connected with his experiencing the campaign against the Jews quite early in the 1920’s,11 the Möding and Bauhaus affairs in 1921 and 1923, respectively,12 and later the resignation from the professorship in Berlin in 1933. In the same year, he converted to Judaism, in Paris on July 24 (with Chagall as one of his witnesses), before he went into exile in the usa. We also encounter his Jewish identification in other works, Die Jacobsleiter, Der biblische Weg, some of the choral pieces in Op. 27 and Kol nidre (written for a liturgical purpose, the beginning of Yom Kippur). “Du sollst nicht, du musst” (Thou shalt not, thou must), it says in one of the four pieces for mixed chorus (1925). Schoenberg wrote the text himself, and it deals with central motifs in the Jewish prohibition of images. “Thou shalt make no image,” the chorus sings, and it continues in lines that go beyond the Decalogue: “For an image restricts, limits, grasps what should remain unlimited 8 9 10 11 12

C. Dahlhaus, “Schönbergs ästhetische Theologie,” in R. Stephan, ed., “Bericht über den 2. Kongress der Internationalen Schönberg-Gesellschaft 1984” (Wien: E. Lafite, 1986), p. 13ff. See J. Hahl-Koch, ed., Arnold Schoenberg. Wassily Kandinsky. Briefe, Bilder Dokumente (Salzburg and Vienna: Residenz Verlag, 1980). Quoted from Rosen, Charles, Arnold Schoenberg (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1996), p.XI. Jan Maegaard traces this back as far as to 1910, cf. J. Maegaard, Præludier til musik af Arnold Schönberg (Copenhagen, Ed. Wilh. Hansen, 1976), p. 172. Already in this year, Schoenberg prophetically asked himself the question, “Where will anti-Semitism lead if not to acts of violence? Is it so difficult to imagine”? See A. Schoenberg, Letters (London: St Martin’s Press, 1965), p. 95.

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and inconceivable.” At the end, a credo is formulated: “Thou must believe in the spirit! Without mediation, without emotion and without self. Thou must, chosen one, must, if you want to remain that!”13 His Jewish-political position is even clearer in the drama Der biblische Weg (1927), which is about how the Jews can become a people and in which their leader, Max Aruns sets out to found a new Jewish state, the new promised land, in Africa. He fails because the people cannot unite and because he himself falls short. As a character, he incarnates both Moses and Aron. But already in 1917, Schoenberg had turned to Old Testament subject matter.14 In Die Jacobsleiter, Schoenberg bases his libretto both on Strindberg’s Inferno (In German Jacob ringt), Balzac’s novel Séraphita and the Swedish mystic Emanuel Swedenborg. As Jan Maegaard puts it, it is about “the purification of the spirit through concentration and prayer.”15 One of the souls who confesses to the archangel Gabriel is “the Chosen One,” an inspired artist who feels misunderstood and humiliated by his friends because of his originality and visionary power. Both this oratorio and the later modern hymn are unfinished. What concerned Schoenberg was in particular the possibility of prayer for modern man. “And yet I pray,”16 are the final words in the modern hymn, Op. 50c, which begins with words akin to the voice from the burning bush. Like Moses und Aron, these words bear witness to Schoenberg’s wish to make the religious subject matter available to his own time. In a letter to the poet Richard Dehmel, December 13, 1912, he writes that he has long worked on an oratorio – this was 13

A. Schoenberg, “Vier Stücke für gemischten Chor” op. 27. The translation into English is found in Bluma Goldstein, Reinscribing Moses: Heine, Kafka, Freud, and Schoenberg in a European Wilderness (Cambridge, ma: Harvard University Press, 1992), p. 141f. 14 It is characteristic that several people turn towards such matters at this time: Freud in Der Mann Moses und die monotheistische Religion (Moses and Monotheism) and Thomas Mann in the chapter “On God’s Jealousy” in Joseph and his Brothers. (Vol.1 Jacob’s Stories). When Freud realized that anti-Semitism was taking a dangerous turn in Austria and Germany, he did not ask the question of what was going on in these countries, but what it is about the Jews who “become the objects of such unquenchable hatred” (cf. J. Assmann, Moses der Ägypter. Entzifferung einer Gedächtnisspur, (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1998), p. 22). Thomas Mann has the narrator explain God’s jealousy as a relic of his past as the desert god “Jahu.” Through his pact with Abraham (and Jacob) God initiates a mutual purification and sanctification. God and the human spirit purify each other. The jealousy is a relic of an earlier stage, before the sanctification, a relic the holy god has not quite managed to rid himself of. God is jealous of the idols, and Jacob’s sensuous addiction to Rachel is a kind of idolatry and must therefore be punished. Both Mann’s and Freud’s work with the subject matter of the Old Testament can be seen as “Arbeit am Mythos.” 15 Maegaard, Præludier, p. 134. 16 These very words were the last thing Schoenberg set to music.

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Die Jacobsleiter, which ends with the prayer of the choirs – and which was to be about “(how) modern man, having passed through materialism, socialism, and anarchy and, despite having been an atheist, still having in him some residue of ancient faith (in the form of superstition), wrestles with God and finally succeeds in finding God and becoming religious. Learning to pray!” (Letters, p. 35). What his text is to be about is not first and foremost the story, which will at most be suggested, will be a point of departure and will be kept in the background. What it is really about is this: And above all: the mode of speech, the mode of thought, the mode of expression, should be that of modern man; the problems treated should be those that harass us. For those who wrestle with God in the Bible also express themselves as men of their own time, speaking of their own affairs, remaining within their own social and intellectual limits. That is why, though they are artistically impressive, they do not offer a subject for a modern composer who fulfils his obligations.17 (Letters, 35f.). Arbeit am Mythos Thus, Schoenberg aims at making the biblical matter topical, in a good hermeneutical sense. Or better, he does what Hans Blumenberg calls Arbeit am Mythos: re-works, re-tells, re-remembers a subject matter which he – as well as we – cannot be rid of. We see it in Moses und Aron, in the way he deviates from the Scripture. He does not quote the Torah. I will deal a little more closely with this, depending a good deal on Jan Assmann’s elucidating article “Die Mosaische Unterscheidung18 in Arnold Schönbergs Oper Moses und Aron.”19 Several important works on Schoenberg’s opera neglect the text or do not draw the necessary consequences of it. The otherwise so reliable Charles Rosen quite simply thinks that the libretto is of no value as literature, but yet had the power to inspire an unusual work.20 In my opinion Assmann’s article does the most elucidating work to remedy this.21 It also shows that there are Jewish and Christian as well as Greek and Protestant features in the texts, although much of the literature on the opera overly stresses the Jewish side. 17 18

Schoenberg eventually wrote the text of Die Jacobsleiter himself. The difference (Unterscheidung) in question is that between the one true God and all the other, false ones. 19 See above, n. 2. 20 Rosen, Arnold Schoenberg, p. 94. 21 Also Kerling, O Wort, analyzes various places in which Schoenberg deviates from the Bible text.

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In general, Assmann thinks that Schoenberg treats the Bible matter as a canonical text in the classical sense (and not as a unique historical event, devoid of myth). Schoenberg’s opera is not exegesis or midrash. The Bible texts are not interpreted, but re-thought as figures of remembrance, in line with the liberation of the biblical texts by the Enlightenment and by historicism, for the purpose of de-mythologizing them, on the one hand, and for the artistic work with mythos, on the other. “That is where [the opera’s] unsurpassed significance for theology and philosophy of religion is found” (Assmann p.7). Assmann takes up the words of Moses’ leitmotif, “Only one, infinite, omnipresent, unperceived and unrepresentable God!” and calls attention to the fact that only “Only one,” “infinite,” “omnipresent” and “unperceived” are found in the biblical writings, not “unrepresentable” (p. 10). But it is exactly “unimaginable,” “unvorstellbar,” we may add, that Schoenberg emphasizes musically, in that Moses’ Sprechstimme here rises, and dwells on un- in “unvorstellbarer Gott.” Likewise, there is evidence that Moses’ speech was laborious (kevad peh), but not that he could “think but not speak.” Aron is not supposed to articulate what Moses cannot, but to communicate Moses’ abstract thoughts by couching them in linguistic images. Schoenberg’s Moses is, so to speak, a philosopher who knows of Wittgenstein’s “Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen” (What we cannot speak about we must consign to silence).22 The contrast Schoenberg’s Moses sets up, between knowing and thinking, on one hand, and Aron’s emphasis on love of a God one can imagine – “Gebilde der höchsten Phantasie” (O vision of highest fantasy) he sings – cannot be substantiated in the Bible. Nor do we find the idea of justice and mercy in Schoenberg’s Moses; religion has nothing to do with ethics. Instead, Moses in the opera commands Aron to “Reinige dein Denken, lös es vom Wertlosen, weihe es Wahrem” (Purify your thinking. Free it from worthless things. Let it be righteous). This, we may add, is the only place in the opera where Moses is allowed to sing, as if to underline the importance of the statement, not only to Aron, but to mankind. The twelve notes Moses sings is a reversal of the twelve-note row of the work. Assmann thinks that these “worthless things” from which Moses has to purify his mind is “the biblical preaching of God, the revelation of one God in 22

L. Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (London: Routledge & Paul, 1961), p.150f. It would not be wrong to see Moses’ missing ability to communicate in Schoenberg as an expression of the general crisis of language or representation in the Viennese culture around 1900. It was articulated both by the critic of language, Karl Kraus, the architect Adolf Loos and the poet Hugo von Hofmannsthal. The latter wrote his famous “Lord Chandos letter” about how “the words crumble in my mouth like moldy fungi.”

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his historical, biblical form of appearance” (p. 12). Hence, he can here conclude that Aron is the biblical Moses, and that Schoenberg’s Moses is a character unknown to the Bible, who has his roots in Greek thought, the negative theology of Dionysius the Areopagite, the rationality of Rabbi Moscheh ben Maimon, Sebastian Franck’s theology of the spirit and modernist iconoclasm.23 Assmann may be right in this. From the very start, Moses appears as a fundamentalist. He champions pure thought, being obsessed by theologia negativa: “Only one, infinite, omnipresent, unperceived and unrepresentable God!” he cries passionately into the burning bush. But his brother Aron, Moses’ mouth, exclaims, “Kannst du lieben, was du dir nicht vorstellen darfst?” (Can you worship what you are not allowed to represent?). Assmann also calls attention to the fact that Aron performs all the wonders, also the ones the Bible ascribes to Moses and God, because to Schoenberg’s Moses these are all false images which betray the thoughts (p. 13). Hence, we can add, the actions are also images to Schoenberg, images for the eye, or images for the ear.24 Another place where Schoenberg changes the text as we saw in the synopsis of the opera, is where Moses shatters the tablets of the law. In the Bible, Moses ascends to the mountain again and returns with new tablets. In Schoenberg they stay shattered,25 and also the pillars of fire and cloud are seen as Aron’s idols. And he breaks the tablets, as we saw in the libretto, not at the sight of the golden calf, but in the conviction that the inscriptions are also a mere image, “falsch, wie ein Bild nur sein kann” (false, as an image must be). Confronted with this, Moses sinks into what Assmann calls “the abyss of negative theology” (p. 25). This theology may well be based on the biblical prohibition against images, Assmann comments, “but it is also limited by the positive theology of the revelation.”

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25

Another feature Assmann mentions, where Schoenberg deviates from the Bible text, is in the treatment of the political aspect. Here, there is a radical de-politicization, and nor does the liberation of the people of Israel play any considerable role (p. 17). Assmann also emphasizes that Schoenberg takes a distance from what is specific to Judaism, the 603 special laws, injunctions and prohibitions which are connected with the 10 commandments, and which Schoenberg sees as a strategic invention of Aron’s, as one of the priests. Schoenberg was not so strict earlier in his process of writing the text. Cf. Kerling, O Wort, p.123ff., who remarks that the levels of idea – word/language – image were not so strictly separated. Several have seen the shattering of the tablets at the sight of the golden calf as a competition between text and sculpture. The text wins, because Moses receives new law tablets, written by God’s finger. But in Schoenberg, they remain shattered, which is in keeping with his radical prohibition of images. Words are images, too.

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One of Assmann’s conclusions is that even though Aron in actions and words fails Moses’ sublime idea of God – Moses received the thought from God, he did not make it up – “it is without any doubt the biblical God who speaks and acts through Aron.” His conclusion here is that the line Schoenberg draws between Moses and Aron “places the biblical God on Aron’s side. Thus the whole Torah is exposed as a false image, as idol and idolatry, and the biblical God falls as a victim to his own prohibition, the prohibition against making for himself a carved image” (p. 13). While biblical monotheism distinguishes between God and the world, words (The Torah) and images, Israel and Egypt, the dividing line in Schoenberg, in Assmann’s words, goes “right through the biblical monotheism” in the conflictful opposition between Moses and Aron.

The Prohibition against Images

Schoenberg boils down the action to the conflict between Moses and Aron: Moses as the man of thought and spirituality, Aron as the communicator and seducer, through linguistic images and sensory representations. One level in this conflict, the focus point, is the prohibition against images: You shall not make for yourself a graven image, or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water under the earth. You shall not worship them or serve them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and the fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing ­loving kindness to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments. Exodus 20:4–6

The words for graven image and likeness are pessel and temunah. Pessel is a carved object, and is related to the word for hewing or carving. Temunah means figure, form. It is about something carved as a figure that represents something living. One must not produce such a thing to fall down before and worship. Any such image is an image of another god, and God is a “jealous” god. Assmann makes the point that here there is no thought at all of linguistic images or representations (imago). Nor are images prohibited because God cannot be represented (p.14): “The images are prohibited because God has not shown himself as form, but expressed himself in words” (ibid.). “Wo Bild war, soll Torah werden” (Where the image was, the Torah will be), Assmann says wittily, with an expression that associates to Freud (p. 25).

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In Moses und Aron this is different. Here thought is in opposition to both image and word. “Ahnst du nun die Allmacht des Gedankens über die Worte und Bilder?” (Do you now sense the power which idea has over both word and image?), Moses exclaims to Aron in Act 2, scene 5. As mentioned, Moses hears Aron’s objection that the law tablets are also images and shatters them. Schoenberg underlines the fact that God is “unvorstellbar.” As Assmann says, the biblical prohibition against images has nothing to do with God being beyond all imagining, in an absolute transcendence. “We must not represent God, because he has spoken and not shown himself to us” (ibid.). Nor in Sinai did God show himself in any form. And we may add that it is only God’s name which lives on Mount Zion, not God himself. To Schoenberg, the unrepresentable has to do with spirituality – spirituality vs. sensoriness. This corresponds to Freud, who in Moses and Monotheism (1939) sees the Jewish prohibition against images as “a step forward in spirituality”: Among the precepts of the Moses religion there is one that is of greater importance than appears to begin with. This is the prohibition against making an image of God – the compulsion to worship a God whom one cannot see. In this, I suspect, Moses was outdoing the strictness of the Aten religion. Perhaps he merely wanted to be consistent: his God would in that case have neither a name nor a countenance. Perhaps it was a fresh measure against magical abuses. But if this prohibition were accepted, it must have a profound effect. For it meant that a sensory perception was given second place to what may be called an abstract idea – a triumph of intellectuality over sensuality or, strictly speaking, an instinctual renunciation, with all its necessary psychological consequences.26 freud 1975, p. 112f.

It is tempting to see a parallel between Moses’ conception (Gedanke) and Schoenberg’s musical thought, and thus identify Schoenberg with Moses. 26

S. Freud, Moses and Monotheism, in: The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud, vol. XXIII (London: Vintage, 1975), p. 112f. As is well known, it was Freud’s thesis in the book about Moses and early monotheism that the historical Moses was an Egyptian priest and continued the monotheistic Akhnaton religion. But that was actually not Freud’s primary concern. He, too, “works with the myth” and how a later age came to remember Moses and the beginning of monotheism. But by tracing the Moses figure back to the Egyptian religion he undermines the idea of a chosen people (unlike Schoenberg). Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi remarks that in Freud’s book it is “not only the ‘origin’ of a religion that should engage us, but ‘what has come out of it’,” Y.Y. Hayim, “The Moses of Freud and the Moses of Schoenberg: On Words, Idolatry and Psychoanalysis,” in The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child 47 (1992), p. 87. For another extensive discussion of Freud’s Moses book, see Assmann, “Die Mosaische Unterscheidung.”

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A central concept in his musical poetics, as mentioned, is “der musikalische Gedanke.”27 According to Schoenberg himself, the musical conception has its root in notions which are unconsciously structured through the “infallibility” of the imagination, an unconscious construction which then appears as a unity of content and form, and is made the object of compositional representation in the musical material. A third step is constituted by the listener’s perception of this conception’s structure in the music, which Schoenberg thinks must correspond to the composer’s conception. At the same time as the conception is something timeless, pre-existing, it is the basic character and meaning of the work, connected to the unity in a directionless musical space where there neither exists an “up or down, right or left, forward or backward.”28 Schoenberg worked with the concept of the musical conception from 1925 to 1936. It is collected in a manuscript, the so-called “Gedanke” manuscript, which remained unfinished.29 The concept can be difficult to define, which may in a sense be to its advantage. Carl Dahlhaus thinks that it is hardly ­possible to define it “technically-formally”; yet it is “no empty word.”30 To Schoenberg, the conception was pure intuition, which had to be manifested in a material. Perhaps the philosopher of language par excellence, Wittgenstein, who like Schoenberg saw music as a kind of language, is more precise than anyone else concerning this matter, when he says that, Language disguises thought. So much so, that from the outward form of the clothing it is impossible to infer the form of the thought beneath it, because the outward form of the clothing is not designed to reveal the form of the body, but for entirely different purposes. wittgenstein, Tractatus, p. 37

The concept of pure thought points to the very central point in the opera: on one hand, the conception (at least the conception of God) has an existence in itself, even an absolute one, outside time and space; on the other hand, it must 27

28 29 30

Gedanke is quite erroneously translated into “idea” in the Anglo-American language area. Idea is a general philosophical concept, which is found in Plato, Aristotle, Neoplatonism, Empiricism and German Idealism (with different content). A. Schönberg, Stil und Gedanke (Frankf. am Main: Fischer Verlag, 1995), p. 77f. A. Schoenberg, The musical Idea and the Logic, technique, and Art of its Presentation, P. Carpenter and S. Neff eds., (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), pp. 88–349. C. Dahlhaus, Schönberg und Andere. Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Musik (Mainz: Schott, 1978), p.120.

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be represented in some aesthetic, sensory medium. The conception must be made ‘understandable’ (Fasslichkeit), and for Schoenberg this very much means that it must be based on coherence and musical logic. Here he does not differ greatly from the traditional (German) morphology. The new thing in Schoenberg is that this idea, the conceptual, must be shed light on from all sides. By adducing passages from Schoenberg’s Textbuch, Marc M. Kerling has compared these two aspects with Kant’s ‘pure reason’ and ‘practical reason’.31 Seen in that context, Moses (thought) and Aron (understandability) would be in Schoenberg himself and in music (art), however aggravated the distance between these poles (image prohibition and image compulsion) becomes. It might be said, in view of the close relationship between work and life in Schoenberg, that through Moses and Aron contrastive traits in his own artistic personality emerge: an understanding of the true which is unable to make itself understood (Moses) and a need for communication which must necessarily compromise (Aron). In an interview with Schoenberg’s daughter, Nuria Nono-Schoenberg, (who was married to the late Luigi Nono), she says that she thinks Schoenberg identified with both. “I believe he wouldn’t have written such beautiful music for Aron if he had something against him.”32 Kerling calls this relationship between the brothers complementary, saying that Aron can be identified as Moses’ alter ego.33 On the other hand, the representation of the conception is a conflict between abstract idea and concrete gestalt, which is insoluble. Assmann finds this conflict or this dilemma intrinsic to the monotheistic religion itself. The problem is communication, compromise and tradition. The Mosaic element is irreconcilable with the Aaronic, but needs it (Assmann, “Die Mosaische Unterscheidung,” p. 28). The dilemma is insoluble and the result tragic in the second act. But Schoenberg wrote the text for a third act (only one scene), which he had plans of composing for a considerable time. Here Aron is in a 31 Kerling, O Wort, particularly pp. 134f and 146f. 32 D. Cohen-Lévinas, ed., Le siècle de Schoenberg (Paris: Hermann Éditeurs, 2010), p. 22. Whereas performances of the opera normally come down on the side of Moses, the Schoenberg specialist Michael Gielen sides with Aron. He sees the two protagonists as two sides of the same coin. “But what is the idea worth if it is not realized? […] my sympathies are one hundred percent with Aron.” Gielen made this statement in connection with his phenomenal recording of the opera in 1974 (on Philips). A special upbeat technique made it possible to separate the sound of the orchestra, the chorus and the solo parts. What has been called the ‘lopsided’ dialogue between the brothers – because of Sprechstimme vs. song – is particularly pronounced here. 33 Kerling, “Moses und Aron,” in: G.W. Gruber, ed., Schönberg – Interpretationen seiner Werke. Vol. II, (Laaber: Laaber Verlag, 2002), p. 202.

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situation opposite to the one he was in, in Act 2. He is brought forward in chains by the warriors, Moses commands them to free him, but Aron falls to the ground, dead. As was seen in the analysis of the action above: instead of the punishment God imposes on Moses and the people to wander in the wilderness for 40 years – the punishment becomes a blessing and the wilderness a place where they meet God: “in the desert you are invincible.”34 Here Schoenberg deviates from the Bible again. In Assmann’s words: “The Gordic knot is cut. The problem with communication and tradition is embodied in Aron, but here it is split off and deprived of life […]. Schoenberg takes the monotheistic religion into therapy in a violent way, through the splitting off, destruction and denial of the Aaronic element” (Assmann, “Die Mosaische Unterscheidung,” p. 28). According to Assmann, this shows that Schoenberg did not conceive Moses und Aron as a tragedy, but with a positive message or perspective as its conclusion. His attitude to the Moses stories is thus that the thought must never decay into tradition, but be understood again and again in a contemporary light. “It is an arch-Protestant impulse,” Assmann concludes, “and presumably also a Jewish one” (ibid. p. 29). This is an interesting interpretation, but not without problems. If Moses’ rigorous demands were to prevail, the utopia, the un-sensuous and nonexpressive coldness of the spirit – what would become of Schoenberg as the expressive composer par excellence? It is difficult to imagine Schoenberg writing music corresponding to the final scene of the libretto. But the ending of Act 2, like the ending of Die Jacobsleiter – which was also unfinished and ends in a floating chord which disappears into nothingness – has an overwhelming effect, as an extremely complicated movement is succeeded by a unison violin line, and Moses’ words “O word, thou word, that I lack!” are followed by one single note which slowly rises to forte and sinks to pianissimo. Therefore it is more profitable to look at the opera as a fragment.35 34

35

In his book Fin-de-siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture (Chicago: Vintage, 1981), Carl E. Schorske interprets this wilderness as Schoenberg’s self-imposed solitude as a misunderstood prophet, away from the ‘garden’ which the Viennese culture in many ways was. He calls Moses und Aron an opera “written against the opera, the queen among the arts in the Catholic Austrian culture.” It was a denial of one of the shaping forces in the Austrian tradition: “the Catholic culture of grace, wherein the word is incarnate and made manifest in the flesh….” (p. 361). In performance, this has been tackled in different ways. Boulez suggested letting “Act 3” consist of Schoenberg’s three orchestral pieces Begleitmusik zu einer Lichtspielszene. Others have had the libretto for act three read aloud, as Schoenberg himself suggested as a possibility. But by far the majority of performances and recordings end the opera with act two.

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The Twelve-tone Row – God’s Thought?

In his study of Schoenberg’s sacred opera, David Lewin makes the point that the twelve-tone row can be equaled to God’s thought: the row is an abstraction which is omnipresent in the work, without ever appearing openly in a corporeal, tangible form.36 Pamela White says it even more clearly and specifically, concluding that “Schoenberg intended the purest use of his own system, the twelve-tone system, to represent God. […] Schoenberg most likely viewed the row itself as a compositional rule parallel to the Law (Torah) or the Commandments.”37 Enrico Fubini likewise thinks that the row in its basic form (Grundgestalt) represents the divine in its purest and most essential form. According to him, the transformations of the original row correspond to situations further from the idea of God, where the idea appears at a lower level. Thus, for example, harmonics based on fourths which are far from the tonality, are used in “the serious moment of highest abstraction, while the twelve-tone material is worked on and gives allusions to a harmonic structure based on thirds which give the listener a tonal atmosphere, when the composer wants to evoke moments of idolatry.”38 We can add here, that fourth chords are often associated with something mysterious or religious (for instance by Liszt and Scriabin), and on the other hand, that Schoenberg in “The Dance Around the Golden Calf” ‘sins’ against the prohibition against parallel fifths. It is undoubtedly possible to find such an understanding substantiated in Schoenberg’s own writings. The problem with going so far in drawing a parallel between twelve-tone music and Judaism (cf. Fubini, “Herméneutique et judaïsme,” p. 180ff.), is that the relationship between the row and its transformations might just as well be understood as a way of tackling a basic aestheticmusical problem, known traditionally as “unity in plurality” (and Schoenberg succeeded in extreme measure in creating a plurality of motifs from one single twelve-tone row). This is not to say that Schoenberg himself did not see a ­connection between an artistic principle, an ethical demand and a religious command. 36

37 38

D. Lewin, “‘Moses und Aron’: Some general remarks and analytical notes for act I, scene I,” in: R. Stephan, ed., Die Wiener Schule (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1989), p. 126 ff. P. White, Schoenberg and the God-Idea: The Opera Moses und Aron (Ann Arbor: umi Research Press, 1985), p. 87. E. Fubini, “Herméneutique et judaïsme chez Schoenberg,” in: Lévinas ed., Le siècle de Schoenberg, p. 186.

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But the fact is that the twelve-tone row39 does not appear in its basic form at the very beginning of the opera when God speaks to Moses. The first seven bars have been subjected to thorough analysis, and in his seminal book on Schoenberg’s work, Karl Wörner regarded the first four chords as representing God as idea, based on the perfect symmetry he finds through his analysis.40 But the row is not used in its pure form till later in the opera; first by Aron, in the second scene of Act 1, where he sings it melodiously, and later by Moses in the only place where he does not use the Sprechstimme, and sings, turned against Aron, “Purify your thinking. Free it from worthless things. Let it be righteous. No other reward is given your offerings.” So for a start, the row does not seem to represent God (in the prologue and scene one) but it gradually comes into being, grows out of the unfolding action. In an article, Alexander Rehding has pointed to the striking fact that this, which is not yet a twelve-tone row, but gradually comes into being, has a tradition: the beginning of Beethoven’s Ninth, the beginning of Haydn’s Creation, the beginning of Wagner’s Rheingold. In the latter case the Rhine maidens sing words both with and without semantic content. Rehding’s point is that the beginning of Moses und Aron is subject to a process which ensures that the twelve-tone row will turn up eventually.41 However, like Kerling, one can emphasize the character of exception in the first bars, where elements from the row mirror each other horizontally and vertically, so that we nevertheless do find a perfect symmetry, as Wörner thought he could demonstrate (Kerling, O Wort, p. 58ff). It is Kerling’s thesis that the final scene in the opera corresponds to this beginning, which in my opinion is beyond doubt. The enormous compression both in the absolute beginning and at the end, which appears as an open fragment, awakens a feeling of the sublime in the listener.

How Does Schoenberg Configure ‘The Image’?

Throughout the opera Schoenberg weaves a web of voices with a huge orchestral contraption. In addition to an expanded classical orchestra, he uses piano, 39

40 41

The twelve-tone row does not consist of a sequence of fixed pitches or a series of fixed intervals, but a sequence of classes of pitch. This can lead to an indefinite number of concrete sequences which each make up a distinct musical unit. K.H. Wörner, Magie und Gotteswort: Schönbergs Moses und Aron (Heidelberg: Schneider, 1957), p. 45. A. Rehding, “Moses’s Beginning,” in: The Opera Quarterly 23, no.4 (2001), p. 407.

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harp, celesta, mandolins and plenty of percussion. For the vocal side he employs six singing soloists, one Sprechstimme, and both sung and spoken choruses. The spoken choruses have a quite special timbre. Moses is a singer “with a deep and very powerful bass,” performed with Sprechstimme (Sprechgesang) – something which is not quite song yet, or is no longer song. Aron is a lyric tenor with an accomplished bel canto, and it is of symbolic importance that Moses, the man of thought, is denied song; in a sense we see a prohibition against singing. According to Schoenberg himself, Moses was inhuman, like Michelangelo’s Moses (Letters, 172).42 It is hardly necessary to say that the music in Schoenberg’s work also sometimes has this inhuman or superhuman character. This is the terribilità which since the 18th century has characterized the sublime.43 Through the transformation of the twelve-tone row (which as mentioned cannot be heard), Schoenberg shapes a wealth of themes and melodies, which appear in incredibly inventive variations. In long stretches the musical course is structured as composed dialogues, even though Moses and Aron, especially at the beginning of Act 1, talk/sing at cross purposes. As soon as Moses has said something, Aron gives his ‘interpretation’, often while Moses speaks, as in a kind of polyphonic fugue. The dramatically narratorial is here enhanced by Moses’ Sprechstimme and Aron’s song, and also by differences in instrumentation. Schoenberg in his opera equals the contrast between thought and speech (reden) with the contrast between Sprechgesang and song. Often the role of the choruses is underplayed in the literature on Moses und Aron. Pierre Boulez has emphasized this and made it audible in his last recording (Deutsche Grammophon, 1996). The choral scenes are complex, with a certain oratorical character, and provide a counterbalance to the dramatic dialogues. But the chorus has two roles: it represents the people (sings), and it incarnates the voice from the burning bush (with Sprechstimme). In other words: now Aron, now Moses. David Lewin says about this, “The speaking facet is identified with the ‘unvorstellbar’ nature of Gods, the singing facet with His demand to be ‘verkündet’” (Lewin, 128). But whether the chorus whispers in a Sprechstimme or represents the masses (and comments on the events), it is also a vehicle for the dramatic. It has at times an enormous polyphonic power. In its role as representative of the people, it is also the third central character in the opera (the voice from the burning bush being the fourth). Sometimes, with its compact mass, it sounds as if it represents a whole nation. The 42 43

Also Rembrandt’s Moses Breaking the Tablets of the Law (1659) has the suggestion of something Old Testament superhuman. See A. Bø-Rygg, “Det klassiske i den klassiske musikken – fins det?” in K. Gundersen and M. Malmanger, eds. I fortidens speil: Klassikk og klassisisme i vestens kultur (Oslo: Aschehoug, 1998), p. 410.

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polyphonic web of thematic material, which is characteristic of the whole opera, makes one think of Bach. When the music is expressive, it is a nonsubjective expressivity. Pamela White finds a web of leitmotifs in Moses und Aron which is quite as subtly composed as in Wagner (White, p. 160ff.). In “The Dance Around the Golden Calf,” in Schoenberg’s words, we find the scenes where “the opera is most opera.” The large muster of camels, sacrificial animals, horses and riders, male and female beggars, old men and naked virgins is not free of exoticism. But primarily it has an enormous aesthetic impact: it shows the power of the old gods, the image as presence. The scene lasts almost 30 minutes, 130 bars which make up “a five-movements dancesymphony.”44 Forceful fanfares, the wild dance of the butchers, sharp and irregular rhythms in the scenes of murder and suicide, drunkenness in waltz time, etc. Alban Berg found this “the strongest half hour known to the opera scene (or any scene at all).”45 MacDonald compares the ferocity, the violent and untamed force in “The Dance Around the Golden Calf” with Stravinsky’s Sacre du printemps. This is apposite, because in Schoenberg, too, we find rhythms and dissonances that associate to the heathen and the barbaric. MacDonald even thinks that Schoenberg surpasses Stravinsky, in that he places it in a dramatic text where its violent character is only one part of the story, but a central part of human nature. “For it is at the human level, as a tragedy of any real seeker after truth, that Moses und Aron evokes a response from those who may not share its religious convictions” (MacDonald, Schoenberg, p. 286f.). To Schoenberg, this adoration of idols is pure regression. The danger is not in the impotence of images to represent the unimaginable, but the power of images to represent other, false gods. The gods, as opposed to the one God, appeal to our senses, “the images we have before us,” and give the people happiness.

How Does Schoenberg Configure the Image-less?

How to configure the image-less in art? Abstract painting may be seen as such an ‘image’ of the image-less, and Lyotard, as is well-known, sees one type of abstraction in modern art as “presenting the fact that there is an unpresentable.”46 There is a long tradition for seeing music’s special character 44 45 46

M. MacDonald, Schoenberg (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 286. Charles Rosen characterizes the dance as having “hopelessly square rhythms” (p. 94). He must have neither read the score nor heard the recordings of Solti and Boulez. J.-F. Lyotard, The Inhuman, transl. G. Bennington (Oxford: Polity Press and Blackwell, 1991). See also G. Boehm, “Die Epiphanie der Leere,” in E. Nordhofen, Bilderverbot: Die Sichtbarkeit des Unsichtbaren (München: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2001), pp. 39–59.

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figure 9.1 Arnold Schoenberg, Moses und Aron, Oper in drei Akten, Act 2, scene 2, bar 200–206. Klavierauszug von Winfried Zillig. edition schott 4935 (Mainz: B. Schott’s Söhne, w.d.), p. 194

in its being without images and objects, and poets and painters among the Romantics have envied composers for it. In the Romantic period, the idea of ‘absolute music’ was developed (the term was first used by Wagner), of purely instrumental music, and Schopenhauer placed music at the top of the artistic hierarchy. He thought that like the sublime itself it incarnated the will which

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contemplates itself. This, as said, was true of the instrumental music, the wordless music, without content and reference. But also Western music, as Adorno says, fell under the spell of the image. Especially when music is made into opera, the pictorial character becomes prominent. Schoenberg’s ‘prohibition against pictures’ consists in “producing pictures […] and letting them disappear again.”47 And, indeed, we see in Moses und Aron how the operatic, so to speak, is annulled where the imageless and non-imaginable in the most precarious way strive for presence on the stage. In contradistinction, the work becomes most opera where the prohibition against images is set aside, in the scene with the dance around the golden calf, when the people abandon themselves to uninhibited idolatry. In Schoenberg’s art of ideas – and his “confessional opera” (Bekenntnisopera) Moses und Aron is emphatically an art of ideas – both words and music are thought, even though Schoenberg, as we saw, separates words from thoughts where he is most radical in the opera. Schoenberg configures the unrepresentable through the use of several voices (both Sprechgesang and song). An example of ‘God’s voice’ is found in the five bars before scene one – a “beginning before the beginning” (Rehding) or an “absolute beginning” (Kerling). It really gives us a frisson nouveau, where it mixes instruments and voices which only sing “O,” so that they are mutually indistinguishable. The first chord begins in ppp, then rises, and then falls; a similar crescendo-diminuendo effect then follows in the following chords: The voice from the burning bush in the first scene is the clearest example of God letting his voice be heard. Here God’s voice is articulated: the presence of speech which must transcend human language. Schoenberg notes that this voice (which, as said, is made up of several voices) must come from off-stage and suggests that they may be communicated through telephones to speakers, so that the voices only meet on the stage! Here it is not just a question of quoting or ‘reading’ from the Torah, but of making God’s own speech audible. The true language cannot speak, only be heard. Another example of God’s voice, to which Erik Steinskog calls attention in his dissertation,48 is found in that the Jewish instrument the shofar (ram’s horn), which according to the Old Testament was used both in cultic and secular contexts, can be recognized in Schoenberg’s use of trombones (and tuba) in particularly dramatic passages in the opera. In several instances this use has 47 48

S. Neef, “Über das hervorbringen und verschwinden von Bildern. Zum Beispiel “Moses und Aron” von Arnold Schönberg,” in Oper heute 11 (1988), p. 29. E. Steinskog, Arnold Schoenberg’s Moses und Aron. Music, Language and Representation, dr. art. dissertation, ntnu, Trondheim 2002, pp. 133ff. Steinskog here rests on Mladen Dolar’s article “The Object Voice,” which in its turn refers to Theodor Reik (cf. Steinskog, Arnold Schoenberg’s Moses und Aron, p.134).

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Arnold Schoenberg, Moses und Aron, Act 1, scene 1, bar 1–7. Edition Schott 4935, p. 1

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Arnold Schoenberg, Moses und Aron, Act 1, scene 1, bar 8–15. Edition Schott 4935, pp. 2–3

an overwhelming effect (which the shofar instrument was also supposed to have). Steinskog mentions a particularly expressive example, where Moses asks God how he can convince the people and who he can say he was sent by. God says that the answer is just to be “the only name” (“der einzigen Name”). Here trombones and tuba are added to the voices in the chord on the word “name” (ibid. p. 139). As is well known, the name is central in Judaic theology, and in Exodus (3:13–14) formulated “I am who I am.” Erich Fromm’s suggestion for a way of formulating this name of God is: “my name is nameless.” The revelation of the name for God as jhwh, must be understood in a privative sense, the usual relation between sign and signified does not apply for this name. “jhwh,” Nordhofen says, “is a hapax, an absolute singularity, for any other bearer of a name can, if needed, be shown or presented sensuously. But not this one.”49 49

Nordhofen, ed., Bilderverbot, p. 17.

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figure 9.4 Arnold Schoenberg, Moses und Aron, End of Act 2, scene V, bar 1128–1136. EDITION SCHOTT 4935, p. 300

Also in Adorno, the ‘Name’ is central. In “Music and Language: A Fragment,” music is said to contain “a theological dimension. What it has to say is simultaneously revealed and concealed. Its idea is the divine Name which has been given shape. It is demythologized prayer, rid of efficacious magic. It is the human attempt, doomed as ever, to name the Name, not to communicate

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meanings.”50 In the article about Schoenberg’s opera, “Sacred Fragment. On Schoenberg’s Moses und Aron,” Adorno states clearly that “Schoenberg’s own need to express is one that rejects mediation and convention and therefore one which names its object directly. Its secret model is that of revealing the Name.”51 But is it true, as claimed by Lacoue-Labarthe, that instead of “O Wort, du Wort, das mir fehlt,” it could read “O Name, du Name, der mir fehlt!” No, as we saw, Schoenberg places the word alongside the image in the opera, with his radical prohibition against images. What Adorno calls the “imaginary intention” of the opera also comes out in the use of Sprechstimme (voices, chorus, Moses). In Moses’ Sprechstimme some have thought they found a similarity with the song in the synagogue, the psalmody. Fubini thinks there is not musical similarity, but textual similarity: the music and the melody in the synagogue chant must not cover the words, but support them, emphasize, just as Moses’ Sprechstimme “devoid of the vocal, must let the word, the text come to expression in its full semantic force” (Fubini, “Herméneutique et judaïsme,” p. 180). Another, more artistic-aesthetic way of looking at it is to regard the Sprechstimme as a kind of Verfremdung effect. In a conversation between Adorno and Boulez on the occasion of the latter’s recording of Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire (which employs the Sprechstimme), Adorno talks of a “de-naturalization of the voice,” and sees it in connection with the imaginary character of this voice: “The speech is not naturalistic speech here, but precisely through the disparity between the spoken and the musical tone something of the alien stands out even stronger than if it had remained pure and left to itself.” Boulez agrees that Sprechstimme is an “impure” device which harms the purity of the music, but thinks that the voice must still be very similar to the singing voice, though separated from it by a strict prohibition against singing.52

Excursus on the Sublime

If we think of the first introductory bars and of the final scene, but also of that “monumentality of tone” (Adorno) which characterizes the work in crucial 50 51 52

Th.W. Adorno, “Music and Language: A Fragment,” in: Quasi una fantasia. Essays on Modern Music, trans. R. Livingstone (London: Verso, 1994), pp. 1–6, (p. 2). Adorno, “Sacred Fragment,” p. 233, (see n. 2). Th.W. Adorno/P. Boulez, Pierre, “Gespräche über den Pierrot lunaire” in: Schönberg und der Sprechgesang, Musik-Konzepte 112/113, eds. H.K. Metzger and R. Riehn, (München: Verlag Text und Kritik, 2001), pp. 73–94, (84f).

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passages, the concept of the sublime is impossible to avoid, when we hear (and see) Moses und Aron. A whole work, in its totality, can hardly be seen as sublime. It is characteristic of the sublime that it makes its appearance suddenly, in a flash, as it happens again and again in Schoenberg’s work. Hence this little excursus on the sublime. Kant’s definition of the sublime is that it is contrapurposive for judgment, in contrast to ‘the beautiful’, since imagination is hindered in summing up that which is intuited. But the frustrated imagination prompts reason, yet without leading to the conception of definite ideas. Thus an interaction comes into being, between imagination and reason, which comes to completion in the feeling of the sublime. This does not lead to any harmony, as in the disinterested pleasure in the beautiful in the interaction between imagination and understanding, but to a conflict between imagination and reason. And from this conflict, according to Kant, springs what he calls the “subjective finality of the mental faculties”; this happens in the experience of the autonomy of reason, which is not forced or oppressed by the powerful and magnificent, but is heightened and affirmed in its independence. Thus, in Kant it is reason that is sublime; the threat of entirely losing one’s composure is counteracted by the sovereignty of reason, which is able to think the infinite, as ideas. In E.T.A. Hoffmann, in the meeting with Beethoven’s symphonies, reason is superseded by “an indefinite longing,” through which we are drawn towards the “realm of infinity.” But it happens in a ghostlike, haunted – unheimlich – way, which is a challenge to any interpretation/performance. In Arnold Schoenberg, the triumphant side of the sublime is not to be found, neither in its Kantian form nor in the Hoffmannesque Romantic form. In general, we can say about Schoenberg that the dissolution of tonality – and the very stumbling block in modern music, the unresolved dissonance – incarnated the modern sublime in music. In his second string quartet, we can follow the dissolution of tonality from the first movement to the culmination in the last, where Schoenberg (for the first time in the history of the string quartet) has the human voice break in with the words from Stefan George’s poem “Ich fühle Luft von anderen Planeten” (I feel air from other planets). But there is not a jot of “Oh, Mensch” pathos here. But Kant mentions two examples of the sublime which have a special ­status, one of which is the Jewish prohibition against images. Kant says that the feeling of the sublime is never anything but a negative representation, “but still it expands the soul. Perhaps there is no more sublime passage in the Jewish Law than the commandment: ‘Thou shalt not make unto thee any

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graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven or on earth, or under the earth, etc.’”53 As regards the final scene, which begins with “Inconceivable God! Inexpressible, many-sided idea!” (“Unvorstellbarer Gott! Uanaussprechlicher, vieldeutiger Gedanke!”), it is of paramount importance to expose oneself to a high volume – it must hurt. We cannot fill our ears with wax like Odysseus’ crew. But perhaps we can have ourselves tied to the mast, to perceive this as art. With its intensity and magnificence of tone the scene has an enormous aesthetic impact. Adorno has remarked that faced with such a “magnificence of tone” the listening must be like the upward glance of someone who enters a cathedral – another expression of the sublime. The work ends with this scene, which only lasts about a minute and a half. It can go no further. The work is almost shattered, like Moses’ stone tablets. The last words in the unfinished opera are Moses’ “Oh word, thou word, that I lack!” The last six bars is a highly expressive passage in the violins. The last bar is one note which rises and then sinks in volume (p-f-pp). Perhaps Malcolm MacDonald is right that this splendid melodic invention has “all the expressive power that Moses is denied, and seems to say all he would want to say” (MacDonald, p. 282). Or does Moses lack the word because he shattered the stone tablets? And doesn’t Schoenberg let Moses say this ‘word’ because it is unheard and unheard-of?

Incomplete Complete

Must also the music be silent here? Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe thinks so. Here lies the caesura54 and here Lacoue-Labarthe wants to introduce Kant’s prohibition against images and Hegel’s idea that the Jewish sublime is an affirmation of “the incommensurability between the finite and the infinite” (ibid.). To him, the paradox of the opera is the fact that this “pure word” gets to express “the meaning of the impossible otherworldly.” He calls this “the meta-sublime.” “It tells the truth about the sublime in a sublime way: that no possible representation of the metaphysical of the absolute exists.” Gary Tomlinson, who 53

54

I. Kant, The Critique of Jugdment (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989), p.127. And here Kant adds: “This commandment can alone explain the enthusiasm which the Jewish people, in their moral period, felt for their religion when comparing themselves with others, or the pride inspired by Mohammedanism.” P. Lacoue-Labarthe, “Die Zäsur der Religion,” p 473.

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takes up this thought in Lacoue-Labarthe comes closer to Adorno with his formulation that “In the process of representing metaphysics through an integrated musical totality […] Schoenberg loses the possibility of representing the impossibility of representing metaphysics – the most basic premise on which the whole endeavor of Moses und Aron was predicated.”55 Adorno, with whom both Lacoue-Labarthe56 and Tomlinson are in dialogue,57 wants the caesura itself to become music. Like Lacoue-Labarthe and Tomlinson he sees Moses und Aron as a necessary fragment, but partly for different reasons from the other two. For Adorno, who is the first one to acknowledge Schoenberg’s supreme skill in treating the musical effects in the opera, the fragmentary character has to do with the impossibility of representing the absolute; it becomes “an image of the image-less.” But he also sees a sacred work, and not least a sacred chefd’oeuvre, an opus magnum, as an impossibility in modernity. To Adorno, this impossibility is historical, because it is no longer, as already Hegel said, substantial. Adorno thought that what made Schoenberg put this idea to the test was the bourgeois belief that for a genius anything is possible at any time. This does not mean that to Adorno art must a priori avoid the impossible: “presenting the fact that there is an unpresentable.” It is obligated to articulate what cannot be expressed (any longer). It must strive for it, but at the same time demonstrate that the attempt is bound to fail. The unpresentable, the unimaginable must appear, but as breaks, caesuras and interruptions.58 A totality is impossible, the fragment a necessary form and an expression of the work’s historicity. Hope is found in the fragments. Important works of art are the ones that aim for an extreme; they are destroyed in the process and their broken outlines survive as the ciphers of a supreme, unnameable truth.59 55 56

57 58 59

G. Tomlinson, Metaphysical Song: An Essay on Opera (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), p. 151. Lacoue-Labarthe thinks that Schoenberg’s opera was a reaction to what he calls Wagner’s saturation of the opera. Others, for example Kerling, think that Moses und Aron can be seen as an answer to Wagner’s Parsifal, which mixes Germanic myths, Christianity and Buddhism in a doubtful syncretism, and preaches an immanent redemption. Lacoue-Labarthe says explicitly that his article is a new reading of Adorno’s “Sacred Fragment.” We might also say, with Erich Zenger, that “religion is interruption and caesura,” E. Zenger, Am Fuss des Sinai. Gottesbilder des ersten Testaments (Düsseldorf: Patmos Verlag, 1993), p. 104. Adorno, “Sacred Fragment,” p. 226.

The Finished Fragment

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Interestingly, Nietzsche connects the fragmentary with the sublime, which is true precisely when it comes to music, the Dionysian, which like the god is fragmented. The sublime moment, the epiphany, has the reverse effect of Kant’s sublime: it disintegrates the autonomous subject. Likewise, for deconstruction (Derrida and de Man), the fragmentary is not a fragment of a totality, but on the contrary a structural density caused by the disjunction of a textual production in which a “universal text” is never present. This touches on the problem of the impossible masterwork in the modern, as it was probably first dealt with in a story by Balzac on “The Unknown Masterwork.” In his book Das unsichtbare Meisterwerk,60 Hans Belting has taken this story as his point of departure for a thorough discussion of modern pictorial art. He has subsequently declared that the book was about Deus absconditus; the impossible masterwork appears in God’s place. “The work can never (as believed by the moderns, author’s note) be the absolute, it can at most refer to it. However, it re-presents in the sense of an absence which is expressed compensatorily or referentially in the presence of the work.”61 When it comes to the point, it is the image prohibition itself that makes Moses und Aron impossible to finish. But this fragment, as Kerling expresses it, “also points to the fragmentariness of all reference to God” (Kerling, O Wort, p. 262). The work is therefore – as a fragment – incompletely complete. Epilogue The last sentence in Schoenberg’s opera gives us cause also to think about the music-language relation, in two different ways, firstly, is music a language?62 Schoenberg himself thought so, and even a particularly expressive one. Here he disagrees with his pupil, Anton Webern. Whereas for Schoenberg the music ends where its linguistic expressivity ends (perhaps at Moses’ “word”), it begins for Webern in the absence of language, in the “cut crystals” with no conception of time that are the music of Webern. Adorno here sides with Schoenberg. Music resembles language, but “aspires to be a language without intention” (Adorno, “Music and Language,” p.2). “It is by distancing itself from language 60 61 62

H. Belting, Das unsichbare Meisterwerk (München: C.H. Beck, 1998). H. Belting, “Skizzen zur Bilderfrage und zur Bilderpolitik,” in Nordhofen, ed., Bilderverbot, pp. 27–39, (p. 28). For a thorough discussion, see A. Wellmer, Versuch über Musik und Sprache (München: Carl Hanser Verlag, 2009).

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that its resemblance to language finds its fullfilment” (Adorno, “Music and Language,” p.6). Another question is whether we lack language to say something satisfactory about great music. This is particularly relevant in relation to Moses und Aron, which musically and textually is about the most extreme questions. We also lack words to express music’s impression on us. Roland Barthes was right when he exclaimed, “I struggle to join a Language, a nomination: my kingdom for a word! ah, if I could only write! Music then, is what struggles with writing.”63 We heard above that Schoenberg said in connection with his religious works that it was important to learn to pray. Prayer may be the medium which achieves contact with the transcendent.64 Music can be such a prayer, a language that reaches deeper down or higher up than the spoken language, since it is both before language (as pure sound) and after (it goes beyond concepts). Even if there is no harmonious relationship between God’s language and man’s different languages, it was Schoenberg’s vision that these languages could enter into an indissoluble and impenetrable polyphony. 63 64

R. Barthes, “Rasch,” in The Responsibility of Forms: Critical Essays on Music, Art, and Representation, trans. R. Howard (New York: Hill and Wang, 1985), 299–312, (p. 308). In the booklet for Boulez’ recording of Moses und Aron (1996, p. 10), Moshe Lazar has pertinently called attention to the fact that “O word, thou word that I lack!” corresponds to remarks by Martin Buber, which Walter Kaufmann gives a fine interpretation of, “The only God worth keeping is a God that cannot be kept. The only God worth talking about is a God that cannot be talked about […] He cannot be spoken of, but he can be spoken to; he cannot be seen, but he can be listened to.” – but in his text Lazar goes too far in ascribing to Schoenberg “a project to save European Jewry” (pp. 8–10).

chapter 10

Time and Space in W.A. Mozart’s Ave Verum Corpus (1791): Transcendence and the Fictive Space of the Musical Work Nils Holger Petersen Introduction Ave Verum Corpus, a Latin hymn known since the end of the thirteenth century, has been set to music several times. Well-known composers, like Orlando di Lasso (1532–94), William Byrd (1540–1623), Franz Liszt (1811–1886), Camille Saint-Saëns (1835–1921), Edward Elgar (1857–1934) and Francis Poulenc (1899– 1963) have composed for this text, but W.A. Mozart’s short motet Ave Verum Corpus kv 618 has gained fame beyond any of these. It was written in June 1791, only a few months before his death, to be used, most probably, for the Corpus Christi festival in Baden, outside Vienna. The rather brief piece, 46 bars with a playing time of three or four minutes, has since been regarded as one of Mozart’s finest compositions of church music. It has been proclaimed an important example of Mozart’s characteristic late style: a composition which unites simplicity with harmonic subtleness, and has even been compared to the Palestrina style of the late 16th century.1 In a remarkable analysis of the work, Bernd Edelmann has taken his point of departure in this traditional view, which he regards as a topos in the Mozart literature on Ave Verum Corpus. He has taken up the task of describing precisely – in detail – what Mozart, musically speaking, did to the text, and in addition he has contributed with considerations on the aesthetic and theological content of the work. In the final part of this article, I will revert to Edelmann’s analysis as a background to an interpretation of Mozart’s piece from the point of view of religious aesthetics, i.e. a discussion of whether this work by Mozart can be said to represent an experience of transcendence, and if so, in what way. Another question that is relevant here is whether such an experience of transcendence can also be communicated through the music alone, independently of the text. In the first part of this article, I will comment on the relationship between the musical work and its liturgical function, in light of a modern musical 1 B. Edelmann, “Dichtung und Komposition in Mozarts Ave verum corpus kv 618,” MozartStudien 2, ed. Manfred Hermann Schmid (Tutzing: Hans Schneider, 1993), pp. 11–55.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi 10.1163/9789004291690_015

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­listening practice and work-based aesthetics, especially with regard to a p ­ resentday understanding of Mozart. The gradually developed western concept of musical “works” as a central category for music history and aesthetics within so-called classical music, has been problematized and denied by many modern composers, music historians and music philosophers. Yet, there is no doubt that this aesthetic has preserved its dominant influence on the practice of listening up to this very day, both when it comes to public performance and private listening. In some connections, and this is not least true of so-called sacred music, this has a quite problematic influence on the perception of the music in question. In the second part of the article, within the context of the philosophy of religion, I will connect K.E. Løgstrup’s discussion of time and space in his Metafysik IV, Skabelse og Tilintetgørelse (Creation and Annihilation) (1978) with the concept of the musical “work.” Løgstrup’s discussion leads to an idea of a “fictive space” constituted by a melody, and in that context, I will include Aleida Assmann’s ideas on memory space. Finally, in the third and last part of the article, I will apply the considerations from the first two parts in my interpretation of Mozart’s Ave Verum Corpus in the light of religious aesthetics.

Music and Liturgy

Mozart’s Ave Verum Corpus must originally have been written as part of the celebration of the day of Corpus Christi (dealt with below in Part 3 in more detail), but today this piece is predominantly performed as an independent “work,” i.e. an aesthetic product which has an autonomous value, independent of its religious or ritual function. As a small, but highly valued element in Mozart’s oeuvre it is often played in church concerts, but also in choral concerts in secular contexts. Last, but not least, the work is heard in the personal (electronic) listening practice of individuals, i.e. performed privately, for example via a cd recording, just as it is also frequently heard in radio transmissions of classical music, either recorded at a concert or played from a cd. Historically, this has primarily been made possible by a technological development which has made music of very different genres, styles and instrumental combinations available to everybody in technologically and economically developed societies. Thus, the choice of music very much occurs on the basis of individual taste and immediate inclination. I put on a cd with precisely the music I feel like hearing at this very moment; similarly, I choose or reject radio programs at will. In other words, it is a consumption of music which in some

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respects is quite parallel with the consumption of other products that can be bought or borrowed: books, films, food, drink and clothes. Already in the first half of the twentieth century, this as yet potential development formed an important background for the discussions of the cultural critics Walther Benjamin and Theodor W. Adorno. On this background, Adorno emphasized the avant-garde music that could not be regarded as consumption, and which thus resisted the market mechanisms, the capitalist system. Seen from this perspective, the critical potential in the compositional technique developed by Arnold Schönberg – and others – through twelve-tone music acquired particular importance. Adorno’s focus on this music was highly influential in musical circles after World War II and for the development of the avant-garde, which for example took place in the so-called Darmstadt School, named after the famous summer courses in composition in Darmstadt in the post-war period, and where one finds notable figures, such as Olivier Messiaen, Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen and many others. In his Philosophie der neuen Musik, first published in 1949, Adorno expressed his belief in the importance of the musical technique developed by Schoenberg, with almost mystical formulations as for example, “Music, compressed into a moment, is valid as an eruptive revelation of negative experience. It is closely related to actual suffering” (“Musik, zum Augenblick geschrumpft, ist wahr als Ausschlag negativer Erfahrung. Sie gilt dem realen Leiden”).2 In a longer historical perspective, the background for a musical culture of consumption is to be found in the transition from a more ritually based musical culture to a bourgeois musical culture, with the establishment of the first public opera in Venice in 1637, and eventually similar institutions in the cities of Europe. In addition, we see the appearance, especially during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, of commercial and institutionally based concert activities, which not least Mozart utilized in establishing himself as an independent composer after his break in 1781 with the Prince and Archbishop of Salzburg, Hieronymus von Colloredo.3 2 T.W. Adorno, Philosophie der neuen Musik, Gesammelte Schriften, XII (1975), ed. R. Tiedemann, 20 vol. (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1970–84), p. 40. English translation: Philosophy of Modern Music, trans. A.G. Mitchell and W.V. Blomster (New York: Seabury Press, 1973), p. 37. 3 S. Leopold, Die Oper im 17. Jahrhundert, Handbuch der musikalischen Gattungen 11 (Laaber: Laaber-Verlag, 2004). H.W. Schwab, Konzert: Öffentliche Musikdarbietung vom 17. bis 19. Jahrhundert, Musikgeschichte in Bildern IV.2 (Leipzig: Deutscher Verlag für Musik, 1971). H.C. Robbins Landon, Mozart, The Golden Years, 1781–1791 (New York: Schirmer Books, 1989). For the biography of Mozart in general, and his argument and break with Colloredo, see R.W. Gutman, Mozart: A Cultural Biography (New York: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1999).

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Leo Treitler has called attention to the interest of the Western university discipline of music history in creating a specialist area for itself, a European or Western history of music. As a beginning point of this Western history of music, the monophonic medieval liturgical song was chosen, the oldest extant European music, fragmentarily notated in manuscripts from the ninth century, in which the pitch of the notes in the melodies cannot be transcribed with any certainty, and eventually found in fully notated manuscripts in the course of the following centuries with forms of notation that from the late 11th century often allow a precise musical transcription, but which do not normally give any information about rhythm.4 In this way, the history of secularization has to a certain degree added a perspective to music history: it tells about music from a beginning when music was part of the rituals of the Latin (and Greek) church, through a complicated development up to a pluralistic modern music culture in which music is of course still part of the rituals of various religious communities. But the Western history of music primarily focuses on the public music culture in concert halls and operas and on musical works by “great” composers, everything that normally goes by the name of “classical music,” as well as of course other so-called popular genres and performance contexts in more recent times. Thus classical music is generally seen as including the whole tradition of sacred music (albeit often as a peripheral part of contemporary music culture), at the same time as a certain canon of sacred music works also figure as central classical works and are performed at concerts, also outside the sacred space. These are typically works like Bach’s St Matthew Passion and St John Passion, his Mass in B minor, Mozart’s Requiem, Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis, to mention a few very wellknown examples. The gradual gestation of a canon of central music works belongs primarily to the first part of the 19th century, and was a basic reason why music history, once it became an academic subject in the course of the century, mainly got to focus on the history of music as the history of the great composers and their “canonic” works, works which were then studied through musical analysis intrinsic to the work itself, and mostly fairly independently of the performative context of the work.5 It is worth considering the aesthetic importance, of both recent concert hall practice and what is probably the most widespread modern performance 4 L. Treitler, With Voice and Pen (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), especially p. 212. 5 A. Hamilton, Aesthetics & Music (London: Continuum, 2007), especially pp. 3–4 and 194; D. Heartz and B.A. Brown, “Classical,” Grove Music Online http://www.oxfordmusiconline. com/ (accessed January 1, 2010); W. Weber, “The History of Musical Canon” in Rethinking Music, eds. N. Cook and M. Everist (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 336–355.

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practice, cds and other recent electronic media for playing music, like the smart-phone. The premise for these media is that the musical work is basically independent of the original performance context, an understanding which has been furthered by an aesthetics based on musical works and which corresponds to the concert situations in which musical works are programed on the basis of appraisals of the works themselves as independent units in their own right. Modern theories of performativity and other music theories of aesthetics have questioned such a work-based aesthetics, and questions of what really constitutes the musical work have been asked for a long period of time: what defines Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony? The score, Beethoven’s own perception of the work or the realization of the work as it sounds when performed?6 Søren Kierkegaard was not in doubt: Music does not exist except in the moment it is performed, for even if a person can read notes ever so well and has an ever so vivid imagination, he still cannot deny that only in a figurative sense does music exist when it is being read. It actually exists only when it is being performed.7 To a certain degree, the opposite attitude is found in satirical form in Thomas Mann’s Doktor Faustus (1947), in which the protagonist, Adrian Leverkühn refuses the international impresario Fitelberg’s offer to have his works performed and introduced into the world of international music. Thomas Mann has Fitelberg take over the whole representation of their conversation as a monologue which ends as follows, 6 See, among many possible references, N. Cook, “Music as Performance,” The Cultural Study of Music: a critical introduction, eds. M. Clayton, T. Herbert and R. Middleton (New York: Routledge, 2003), pp. 204–214, and several other articles in the same book, as well as articles in Rethinking Music (note 5 above). For a more thorough discussion of the work concept and aesthetics in a music historical context, see also C. Dahlhaus, Grundlagen der Musikgeschichte (Köln: Musikverlag Hans Gerig, 1977), published in English as Foundations of Music History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983); both the German and the English versions have since been republished several times. 7 “Musikken existerer ikke uden i det Øieblik, den foredrages, thi om man endog nok saa godt kunde læse Noder og har en saa levende Indbildningskraft, saa kan man dog ikke negte, at det er kun i uegentlig Forstand at den er til, idet den læses. Egentlig existerer den kun idet den foredrages.” S. Kierkegaard, Enten – Eller. Første del, Søren Kierkegaards Skrifter 2, udgivet af Søren Kierkegaard Forskningscenteret (København: Gads Forlag, 1997), p. 75; English translation in S. Kierkegaard Either/Or Part I, eds. and trans. By H.V. Hong and E.H. Hong (Princeton, nj: Princeton University Press, 1987), p. 68.

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It is not your way to linger with the finished work. For you the doing of a work is its performance, it is done when it is written down. You do not play it, you do not conduct it, for you would straightway change it, resolve it in variations and variants, develop it further and perhaps spoil it.8 This attitude, although pushed to extremes in Thomas Mann’s fictive story, nevertheless describes something that is characteristic of work-based understandings of music in the twentieth century avant-garde, where the score was often regarded as the only criterion for the work, whose existence thus no longer depended on its being performed. In other words, we now see an abstraction of the musical work from auditory sense perception, possibly a shift from the auditory to the visual, a development which is dependent on a certain understanding of the history of musical notation and its importance for the Western conception of music, which I will return to below. This fits well with one use of musical notation in certain avant-garde composers from the so-called Darmstadt School, where an extremely precise notation of nuances in rhythm and timbre tends to change the performer (or performers) into technocratic executors of precise directions. Such an attitude is expressed by the German composer Roman Haubenstock-Ramati, who sees art music in contrast to improvisational music. […] the ideal for musical composition will be one of music tied to a system, i.e. music tied to an a priori understanding. That is the only music which we westerners – rightly or wrongly – think of or recognize as art music. And it is exactly the systematic character of musical notation which demands a priori decisions and makes possible the establishing of the highly developed art of musical composition. It follows that the history (i.e. the transformation) of music as art is also the history of musical notation and that the actual process of composing music, the invention of music, includes the simultaneous invention of a graphic representation reflecting the intentions of the composer; this also makes it possible to recognize the musical idea of the work: here idea is not to be understood in a literary sense, but in the indirect sense of the musical a priori; 8 “Es ist nicht Ihre Art, sich beim Vollendeten aufzuhalten. Für Sie ist die Ausführung eines Werkes seine Aufführung, es ist für Sie mit der Niederschrift abgetan. Sie spielen es nicht, Sie dirigieren es nicht, denn sogleich würden Sie es verändern, es in Varianten und Variationen auflösen, es weiterentwickeln und vielleicht verderben.” Thomas Mann, Doktor Faustus (Berlin: Fischer Verlag, 1963), p. 432; English translation by H.T. Lowe-Porter: Thomas Mann, Doctor Faustus (London: Everyman’s Library, 1992), p. 411.

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it should not be taken in a semantic sense but in the sense of the reproducibility of the work.9 This corresponds to Schoenberg’s idea of the performer as necessary solely to make the music understandable to a public that unfortunately cannot read the music themselves.10 Quite a lot of other attitudes, however, both to notation and the understanding of what a work is and what music is, including great interest in improvisation, inspired by jazz and music from other cultures, have had an impact parallel to the radical work aesthetics in parts of the twentieth century avant-garde exemplified here. Still, this does not change the overall importance the work aesthetics has had for Western culture, not only for our  way of thinking, but perhaps primarily, as mentioned, for our listening practice. If one now plays a cd with liturgical music, no matter if it is from a medieval mass or devotional prayer or for example Mozart’s Ave Verum Corpus, what is heard is re-contextualized or perhaps decontextualized – in relation to the context the music originally belonged in and for which it was composed. The new context is quite individual and generally has no other connection with the music than the quite subjective one, that the listener wants to listen to that music. In principle, there is nothing wrong in this, of course. This is a new and meaningful context, and it is this possibility of re-contextualizing musical works, thus giving them new significance, which has made it possible to preserve this music as present-day art in a time when the original – ritual – contexts are often found irrelevant by most listeners. The point I want to make, 9

10

“[…] das Ideal der komponierten Musik [wird] eine systemgebundene Musik sein, das heißt, eine Musik, die an ein apriorisches Denken gebunden ist. Das ist die Musik, die wir Abendländer – mit Recht oder Unrecht – einzig als Kunst betrachten oder anerkennen wollen. Und es ist eben der Systemcharakter der musikalischen Notation, der apriorische Entscheidungen fördert und das Zustandekommen der hochentwickelten Kunst der musikalischen Komposition ermöglicht. Daraus ergibt sich, daß die Geschichte (d.h. die Veränderung) der Musik als Kunst gleichzeitig die Geschichte der musikalischen Notation ist und daß der Kompositionsvorgang, sozusagen das Erfinden von Musik, gleichzeitig die Erfindung einer graphischen Darstellung bedeutet, die die Absichten des Komponisten widerspiegelt, die musikalische Idee des Werkes erkennbar macht: ‘Idee’ nicht im literarischen Sinne, sondern im Sinne des musikalischen Apriori verstanden, das mittelbar ist, zwar nicht im semantischen Sinne, aber im Sinne der Reproduzierbarkeit des Werkes.  Roman Haubenstock-Ramati, “Notation – Material und Form,” Darmstädter Beiträge zur Neuen Musik: Notation, ed. E. Thomas (Mainz: B. Schott’s Söhne, 1965), pp. 51–54 (quotation pp. 51–52). Cook, “Music as Performance,” p. 204.

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quite simply, is that what is heard has undergone a radical transformation, not least a loss of both musical and other (often textual) context, and that one has to be conscious of this transformation and what it implies. Of course it is also a re-contextualization if one listens to a Beethoven symphony on a cd at home, but there is a difference of degree, in that the Beethoven work and other musical works written for the concert hall have been composed with a situation in mind in which the work does not normally point (very clearly) beyond itself. Usually, the original compositional work does not include any planned close connection to other works or particular architectural circumstances or to other conditions of performance. The question is how much this means for the liturgical music. Music historians have often dealt with the historical question of when liturgical compositions grew to be so liberated from the liturgical context that it makes sense to regard them as compositions from the point of view of work aesthetics.11 Nobody doubts that it makes musical sense to perform for example Bach’s and Mozart’s and later “great” composers’ sacred works, also outside the original liturgical contexts. That is precisely why they have been able to become “classical masterpieces.” But that does not mean that it is not worthwhile to be aware of which musical and discursive information one is barred from by “being satisfied with” listening to them as classical works for the concert hall. Obviously, this can only be remedied through an analysis of the work in relation to its original intention and is therefore dependent on how much we know about it. Already a broad view of some simple matters gives a new perspective to the purely auditory perception of music. A typical modern performance of a mass as a musical work, for example on a cd, will give precisely the parts of the mass that the composer has set to music (even though we today see a number of more historically informed cd releases, especially within early music, i.e. medieval and Renaissance music, in which also other parts, for example with 11

See N.H. Petersen, “Liturgy and Musical Composition,” Studia Theologica 50 (1996), pp. 125–143, where Perotin’s organum Sederunt principes from about 1200 and Schubert’s Mass in E flat major D. 950 are brought into a discussion of the music’s degree of independence of the context and content of the liturgical connection it was written for. In the article, there is a discussion of the claims of prominent music specialists that Perotin is the first composer in a “modern” sense, i.e. an expression of a work-aesthetic understanding of Perotin’s work. (Nothing is known of Perotin’s biography). See also the thorough historiographic exposition in J. Stenzl, “Perotinus Magnus: Und die Musikforschung erschuf den ersten Komponisten. Nach ihrem Ebenbilde erschuf sie ihn,” Perotinus Magnus, Musik-Konzepte 107, eds. H.-K. Metzger and R. Riehn (München: Edition Text+Kritik, 2000), pp. 19–52.

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recitations and monophonic chanting of texts and prayers, are included to a certain degree). In their original context, the parts of the Ordinary of the Mass that were set to music, usually Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus (with Benedictus) and Agnus Dei, were parts of a greater whole in which parts (from the so-called Mass Proper) with varying texts for different days of Mass, were either recited on traditional recitation notes or sung to traditional so-called Gregorian melodies. This has doubtlessly had an influence on the auditory experience, when, for example, parts set to music by Mozart were sung and played between parts sung in unison in a totally different style. Among other things, Mozart’s sporadic use of quotations from a Gregorian melody will have a different frame of reference than when the Mass Ordinary is played out of context as apparently a five-movement work. When it comes to Ave Verum Corpus, we know, as mentioned, that the work with great probability was written to be performed at the Corpus Christi feast in Baden, but we do not know its exact use in the celebration of the day.12 Mozart’s wife, Constanze Mozart, stayed in Baden from June through October 1791 to visit the spa, and Anton Stoll, a choral director and school master, whom Mozart had known for some time and who had performed mass compositions by Mozart a few times, had arranged accommodations for her stay. Mozart visited Constanze in the middle of June, and on June 18 (in Baden) he entered Ave Verum Corpus in his Verzeichnüß aller meiner Werke (begun in February 1784, with a last entry November 15, 1791; Mozart, as is well known, died on December 5 of that year).13 The text, to which I will return below, is a hymn to the true body of Christ, meant for the feast of Corpus Christi, an adoration of the sacred host, which is celebrated on this day in the Catholic church, the second 12

13

A.L. Belli, “L’ave verum di Mozart: la semplicità conquistata,” Mozart-Jahrbuch (1996), pp. 39–51, claims that the work was performed at the feast of Corpus Christi on June 23, 1791 in the parish church of Baden during the procession at the solemn final blessing ceremony. She produces no documentation; I regard it as a very likely scenario (see also note 14 below). W.A. Mozart, Verzeichnis aller meiner Werke und L. Mozart, Verzeichnis der Jugendwerke W.A. Mozarts, ed. E.H. Mueller von Asow (Wien: Doblinger, 1956), pp. 94–95. Regarding Constanze Mozart’s stay in Baden and Mozart‘s visit, see several letters between nos. 1153 and 1196, in Mozart: Briefe und Aufzeichnungen. Gesamtausgabe, eds. W.A. Bauer and O.E. Deutsch; with a supplement by J.H. Eibl, enlarged edition by U. Konrad. 8 volumes (Kassel/München: Bärenreiter und Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 2005 [originally published in 7 volumes, Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1962–1975]), IV, pp. 133–163, and commentaries to these letters in VI, pp. 409–426. See also H.C. Robbins Landon, 1791: Mozart’s Last Year (London: Fontana, 1990 [first published 1988]), pp. 48–54, in which the work is seen as a part of Mozart’s new campaign for writing sacred music in a new way.

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Thursday after Pentecost. The text is not an official part of the Corpus Christi liturgy, but has often been a part of the celebration of the day.14 Anton Stoll certainly got Mozart’s autograph score, and it is highly probable that the work was performed on the day of Corpus Christi, June 23 1791, in Baden. An additional fact indicates that the work was intended for this feast: musically, Mozart refers directly to Michael Haydn’s music for Lauda Sion, the sequence for the Corpus Christi Mass, as has been demonstrated by Edelmann.15 Mozart’s music is central when it comes to the transformation of liturgical music from a ritual context to a concert hall performance. Mozart is possibly the first composer whose production of liturgical music (partly) came to be included in a concert hall practice. This is difficult to know with any certainty, but it is a fact that at Mozart’s time they did not usually perform mass parts (or whole mass compositions) in a concert context. In 1785 Mozart re-used the Kyrie and Gloria from his Great Mass in C minor kv 427, the great torso from 1782–83 (in which the Credo is unfinished and the Agnus Dei is not found at all), in a cantata, Davide penitente (kv 469) for concert use by the Tonkünstlersozietät, founded by Viennese musicians to support widows of musicians and their families, a society of which Mozart tried to become a member (but with no success because of a missing birth certificate). The text, possibly written by Lorenzo da Ponte, which is loosely based on David’s Psalms, 14

15

The text has been preserved in several versions, which all contain the text Mozart composed for (with minor variations), but in some cases with extra stanzas. See Analecta hymnica medii aevi, 55 vols. eds. G.M. Dreves, C. Blume, and H.M. Banister (Leipzig: Reisland, 1886–1922); Register ed. Max Lütolf, 2 vols. (Bern: Francke, 1978), vols. 34, 49; vols. 37, 40; and vol. 54, pp. 257–258. In all the manuscripts here the text is listed as belonging to Corpus Christi. See also: B.R. Walters, V. Corrigan and P.T. Ricketts, The Feast of Corpus Christi (University Park, pa: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006) where the history of the feast is discussed and the earlier liturgies (13th–14th centuries) are edited. None of the liturgies listed there contain Ave Verum Corpus. They do not, however, contain the liturgy for the procession. A special blessing with the sacrament at the end of the procession, though, may have attracted compositions like Ave Verum Corpus. See J. Harper, The Forms and Orders of Western Liturgy from the Tenth to the Eighteenth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), pp. 163–164 and Rituale Romanum. Editio Princeps (1614), eds. M. Sodi and J.J.F. Arcas (Città del Vaticano: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2004), p. 178. Edelmann, “Dichtung und Komposition,” pp. 23–42. On the sequence Lauda Sion (for the Corpus Christi Mass), see Walters, Corrigan and Ricketts, The Feast of Corpus Christi, pp. 312–18. For Michael Haydn’s work – including the connection to Mozart’s Ave Verum Corpus, see M.H. Schmid, Mozart und die Salzburger Tradition (Tutzing: Hans Schneider, 1976), pp. 146–164. The work is printed in the supplement to Schmid’s work: Notenteil, pp. 48–64.

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was adapted to the music of the mass.16 There is little doubt that Mozart recycled the music because he was short of time, and in a modern perspective, one may wonder why he did not simply perform (parts of) the mass in C minor. However, it had hardly been acceptable in a concert context – outside the sacred space and the liturgical context – to perform a mass. Before long, however, this happens with Mozart’s Requiem kv 626. The work was left as an unfinished torso at his death, and after a number of attempts to have the composition finished at Constanze Mozart’s initiative, it was finally finished by one of Mozart’s pupils, Franz Xaver Süssmayr (1766–1803) in 1792. Finished parts of the Requiem (probably only the Introitus and Kyrie parts) had already been performed at the Requiem Mass for Mozart in St Michael’s church in Vienna on December 10, 1791, according to a notice in the newspaper in Der heimliche Botschafter (Dec. 12, 1791). When he had finally received the finished work, the secret commissioner, Count von Walsegg, had it performed in the context it was originally commissioned for, as a Requiem Mass for his dead wife, on December 14, 1793. But before then, the Requiem had also been performed in a concert context to support Mozart’s widow and children, at the instigation of Mozart’s patron, the music lover (and author of the texts for Haydn’s The Creation and The Seasons), Baron Gottfried van Swieten, on January 2, 1793.17 It seems that Mozart’s tragically early death – and perhaps not least the mystery which was soon connected with his death and the then still unknown background to the commission of the requiem – were partly instrumental in breaking down the barrier between liturgical music and concert hall music, and thus making it possible that especially important sacred works could become part of a concert hall canon, and hence eventually part of the conception of classical music which is slowly taking form precisely in the 19th century.18 Very early on, the Requiem was perceived in light of the concept of 16

17

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E. Edelmann,“Oratorien,” Mozarts Kirchenmusik, Lieder und Chormusik. Das Mozart Handbuch IV, eds. T. Hochradner and G. Massenkeil (Laaber: Laaber Verlag, 2006), pp. 297–314. H. Schick, “Die geistliche Musik,” Mozart Handbuch, ed. S. Leopold (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2005), pp. 163–247, in particular pp. 237–239. Mozart: Die Dokumente seines Lebens, ed. O.E. Deutsch (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1961), p. 374; Mozart: Die Dokumente seines Lebens. Addenda und Corrigenda, ed. J.H. Eibl (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1978), p. 78; A. Herzog, “Aus Wahre und ausführliche Geschichte des Requiems von W.A. Mozart. Vom Entstehen desselben im Jahre 1791 bis zur gegenwärtigen Zeit 1839,” Mozart: Die Dokumente seines Lebens. Addenda und Corrigenda, pp. 101–107. See also C. Wolff, Mozarts Requiem: Geschichte Musik Dokumente Partitur des Fragments (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1991) and Robbins Landon, 1791: Mozart’s Last Year. See also N.H. Petersen, “Classical Music,” ebr: Encyclopedia of the Bible and its Reception. Vol. 4 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2012), columns 391–97.

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“the sublime,” a central aesthetic concept which spread from literature and also began making its impact on music in the years around 1800. Franz Xaver Niemetschek (1766–1849) wrote the first biography of Mozart, published in 1798 and again, slightly revised, in 1808. Niemetschek relates the mystery of the commissioning of the Requiem, which at the time was not yet solved. When he tells about Mozart’s compositions in the last years of his life, he uses the expression “das furchtbarerhabene Requiem” (the terrifyingly sublime Requiem), an expression whose meaning is well illustrated by the contemporary literary and philosophical discussion of “the sublime.”19 Translations into Latin, French and English in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries of a Greek work, probably from the first century, On the Sublime (Peri Hypsous), by an unknown author often referred to as Pseudo-Longinus, became greatly influential, primarily in literary circles. The work deals with the rhetorical question of sublimity with reference to classical Greek philosophical and dramatic texts and a single biblical reference, the creation of light in Genesis. With A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757, revised 1759) by Edmund Burke (1729–97), the concept of “the sublime” was separated from “the beautiful” by emphasizing that the notion of the sublime is based on power and terror. Although he is highly empiricist in his approach, Burke refers to religious awe as a decisive background for his understanding of “the sublime,” through references primarily to the Book of Job and the Psalms: But the scripture alone can supply ideas answerable to the majesty of this subject. In the scripture, wherever God is represented as appearing or speaking, every thing terrible in nature is called up to heighten the awe and solemnity of the divine presence. The psalms, and the prophetical books, are crouded with instances of this kind. The earth shook (says the psalmist) the heavens also dropped at the presence of the Lord. And what is remarkable, the painting preserves the same character, not only when he is supposed descending to take vengeance upon the wicked, but even when he exerts the like plenitude of power in acts of beneficence to mankind. Tremble, thou earth! At the presence of the Lord; at the presence of the God of Jacob; which turned the rock into standing water, the flint into a fountain of waters! […] Thus we have traced power through its several 19 F.X. Niemetschek, Leben des K.K. Kapellmeisters Wolfgang Gottlieb Mozart, nach Originalquellen beschrieben (Prag: In der Herrlischen Buchhandlung, 1798), Ich kannte Mozart: Die einzige Biografie von einem Augenzeugen, herausgegeben und kommentiert von Jost Perfahl (München: LangenMüller, 2005), p. 48.

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gradations unto the highest of all, where our imagination is finally lost; and we find terror quite throughout the progress, its inseparable companion, and growing along with it, as far as we can possibly trace them. Now as power is undoubtedly a capital source of the sublime, this will point out evidently from whence its energy is derived, and to what class of ideas we ought to unite it.20 Also Emanuel Kant’s Kritik der Urteilskraft (published in 1790), was inspired by Burke although it philosophically placed the notion of “the sublime,” das Erhabene, in a different category. Neither Burke nor Kant were interested in music in this context, and there is not much to suggest that Burke and Kant have had a great direct influence on the understanding or interpretation of music in Mozart’s lifetime. In the article “Erhaben” in the second edition of Johann George Sulzer’s Allgemeine Theorie der Schönen Künste (1792; the first edition is from 1771–74), an article of more than 17 pages with a detailed bibliography which not surprisingly refers both to Burke and Kant, there are references to literature on the sublime in pictorial art, but not in music. In the article’s own presentation, which is by and large identical with that of the first edition, the concept of the powerful and sometimes awe-inspiring is an element in the discussion of the understanding of the concept itself; about music, it is briefly said that also music affords examples of the sublime: Nor is music deprived of the sublime; the sublimity of the passions is within the power of music, and probably also the calm grandeur of the soul. Händel and Graun have often achieved this. Whoever wants to be persuaded might listen to Händel’s Alexander’s Feast and to Graun’s opera, Iphigenia.21 20

E. Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, ed. with an introduction by A. Phillips (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990). The quotation is found on pp. 63–65; it was included through Burke’s revisions in the second edition (1759). 21 “Auch die Musik ist nicht vom Erhabenen entblößt; sie hat das Erhabene der Leidenschaften, auch wohl die ruhige Größe der Seele in ihrer Gewalt. Händel und Graun haben es oft erreicht. Wer sich davon überzeugen will, darf von dem ersten nur Alexanders Fest, und von dem zweyten die Oper Iphigenia hören,” see “Erhaben,” Allgemeine Theorie der Schönen Künste, ed. Johann George Sulzer (Leipzig: in der Weidmannschen Buchhandlung, 1792); reprint from “the collection of the University of Michigan Library” n.d., II, pp. 97–114 (p. 102). “Erhaben” in the first edition of Sulzer’s Allgemeine Theorie is found on http://www.textlog.de/2538.html (accessed February 27, 2011); access to the whole work: http://www.textlog.de/sulzer_kuenste.html.

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In Heinrich Christoph Koch’s Musikalisches Lexikon (published 1802), “erhaben” is defined as “that which fills us with admiration and deference for grandeur and perfection.”22 Sublime music must be serious and weighty. But there is no marked influence from Burke’s and Kant’s conception of greatness and awe. However, in the poet Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroder (1773–1798), in his work Herzensergießungen eines Kunstliebenden Klosterbruders (1797), edited, and more or less supplemented, by his friend, the poet Ludwig Tieck (1799), after his early death, we find a literary description of the music at a church service in Rome which, to a high degree, draws on conceptions of awe and holy terror communicated through music. In Phantasien über die Kunst, likewise published posthumously by Tieck in 1799, we find a discussion of various types of church music, in which one of the types is based on the violently sublime, another on humility, but in which the experience of the humble music is also described in words that point towards Burke’s and Kant’s sublime: “the quiet advancing force of the tones makes us shudder with fearful shivers.”23 In Mozart, the violently, powerfully sublime is often found in juxtaposition to a quiet, humble music, often within the same work, even within short continuous passages, and not least in a number of the movements in his Requiem. 22

“dasjenige, was uns mit Bewunderung und Achtung über Größe und Vollkommenheit erfüllet.” See “Erhaben,” H.C. Koch, Musikalisches Lexikon. Faksimile-Reprint der Ausgabe Frankfurt/Main 1802, ed. N. Schwindt (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2001), p. 542. 23 “die leise-vordringende Gewalt der Töne durchzittert uns mit bangen Schauern,” W.H. Wackenroder, Phantasien über die Kunst, the chapter “Von den verschiedenen Gattungen in jeder Kunst, und insbesondere von verschiedenen Arten der Kirchenmusik.” The text can be found at http://www.zeno.org/Literatur/M/Wackenroder,+Wilhelm +Heinrich/Schriften+­und+Dichtungen/Phantasien+%C3%BCber+die+Kunst+f%C3%B Cr+Freunde+der+Kunst (accessed on February 27, 2011).  See also W.H. Wackenroder, Herzensergießungen eines Kunstliebenden Klosterbruders, especially the chapter “Brief eines jungen deutschen Malers in Rom an seinen Freund.” The text is accessible at http://www.zeno.org/Literatur/M/Wackenroder,+Wilhelm+­ Heinrich/Schriften+­und+Dichtungen/Herzensergie%C3%9Fungen+eines+kunstliebend en+Klosterbruders (accessed on February 27, 2011).  See a discussion of Wackenroder’s ideas in connection with Burke and Kant, and a surprising use (in 1792) of a Kantian conception of the sublime in music (by J.A.P. Schultz) in a Danish aristocratic salon milieu, in N.H. Petersen, “Jens Baggesens poetiske teologi,” Jens Baggesens liv og værk, eds. A. Sandberg and S. Skriver (Hellerup: Spring, 2010), pp. 400–437, and in N.H. Petersen, “Sacred Space and Sublime Sacramental Piety: the Devotion of the Forty Hours and W.A. Mozart’s Two Sacramental Litanies (Salzburg 1772 and 1776),” in Heterotopos : Espaces Sacrés, ed. Diana Mite Colceriu (Bucarest: Editura universitãtii din Bucuresti, 2012), pp. 171–211, pp. 195–199.

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This is also true of a number of his other works of sacred music, for example the Great Mass in C minor kv 427 mentioned above and the independent Kyrie in D minor kv 341, which is now believed to date from the last year of Mozart’s life.24 On a much smaller scale, one may point to a similar musical attitude in Ave Verum Corpus, as we will see in the third part of this article. Even though Burke in his presentation of the idea of the sublime draws on biblical concepts of holiness, his understanding means that religious experiences of holiness are made aesthetically independent. It is less than likely that Mozart has been aware of the development of these literary and philosophical discourses. He based his musical interpretation of the mass and other liturgical acts on traditions of sacred music, not least in contemporary Salzburg, and – in a wider sense – on a general religious experience of the holiness of the church rituals as they continued a medieval liturgical practice.25 Also in works written for secular musical life, he has composed in such a way that the music must be experienced as sublime as the concept was understood by Burke and Kant, terrible and appealing at the same time. This is particularly true of the opera Don Giovanni (1787), where Giovanni and Leporello meet the statue of the Commendatore in the graveyard scene, and again in the scene of judgement, where the Commendatore condemns Don Giovanni to hell, but the effects serve the dramatic content, and therefore hardly point in the direction of isolated, self-contained musical sublimity.26 With the early Romantics, the consciousness of the special spiritual dimension of music gradually appears, for example in Wackenroder and Tieck, but also in Jean Paul (1763–1825) and E.T.A. Hoffmann (1776–1822), a consciousness which builds on the idea that music can express and arouse feelings where words fail, a thought which has a lot in common with St Augustine’s claim that the wordless song, iubilus, can express praise from the heart where words are

24 25 26

U. Konrad, Mozart-Werkverzeichnis (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2005), pp. 18 and 22. See Petersen, “Sacred Space and Sublime Sacramental Piety.” See R. Hammerstein, Die Stimme aus der anderen Welt: Über die Darstellung des Numinosen in der Oper von Monteverdi bis Mozart (Tutzing: Hans Schneider, 1998); N.H. Petersen, “Seduction or Truth in Music? Mozart’s Don Giovanni and Søren Kierkegaard’s Either/Or,” Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook 2008, eds. N.J. Cappelørn, H. Deuser and K.B. Söderquist (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2008), pp. 109–128; N.H. Petersen, “Religious Judgment or Ghost Story: Modern Productions of Mozart’s Don Giovanni,” Religion, Ritual, Theatre, eds. B. Holm, B.F. Nielsen, and K. Vedel (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2009), pp. 159–78; N.H. Petersen, “Mozart und das Jüngste Gericht: der Komtur, die Posaune Gottes und…Søren Kierkegaard,” Mozart und die Religion, ed. P. Tschuggnall (Salzburg: Verlag Mueller-Speiser, 2010), pp. 191–205.

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insufficient.27 For the early Romantics, this is in particular associated with instrumental music, which is an important precondition for the development of the concept of the autonomous musical work, which certainly derives from the idea of “absolute music,” a phrase coined by Richard Wagner (1813–1883), but in actual fact already contained in the thinking of the early Romantics.28 This marked music-aesthetic transformation, which Mozart himself had no part in, came to influence the understanding of his music. His Requiem was transformed from being music for an ecclesiastical ritual to being a work in its own right, a “terrifyingly sublime” (furchtbarerhaben) work, which because of the special circumstances could be performed as Mozart’s last work of genius, but then of course it was a work which was well suited to these circumstances. Niemetschek also uses the word “sublime” (erhaben) about other sacred music by Mozart, apparently including Ave Verum Corpus.29 In such a connection, Ave Verum Corpus is moved into a category where the focus is not on the original context, the liturgical celebration the music is a part of and contributes to, but on the music as a work. In other words, only a few years after Mozart’s death there are signs of a tendency which – as ­mentioned – eventually led to an overall understanding of music as independent of any performance context, and hence, in a longer perspective, to opening the way for the modern electronic kinds of listening practice. This development has in important respects been a great help for the communication of so-called classical music, and not least for works – for instance sacred works – which have been inscribed in ritual practices which are no longer of topical interest. It is also clear that the very fact that this development has been possible has shown that the music of the works in question could be received in a meaningful way on these non-contextual premises, in other words as “absolute music.” But the price is, as mentioned, that contextual information, both of discursive and auditory nature, is lost. As regards the discussion of music from the perspective of the aesthetics of religion, it then becomes important to ask what influence this may have on a possible experience of 27

Regarding this ineffability topos in the Romantics, see C. Dahlhaus, Die Idee der absoluten Musik (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1978), pp. 62–80, especially p. 66. On Augustine and the comparison between the early Romantics and Augustine, see Petersen, “Liturgy and Musical Composition” (see note 11), pp. 129–131 and 135–136, and E. Østrem, “Music and the Ineffable,” Voicing the Ineffable: Musical Representations of Religious Experience, ed. S. Bruhn (Hillsdale, ny: Pendragon Press, 2002), pp. 287–312, especially pp. 291–293 and 299–300. 28 See C. Dahlhaus, Die Idee der absoluten Musik (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1978), pp. 24 and 38. 29 Niemetschek, Ich kannte Mozart, p. 95, (cf. note 19 above).

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transcendence in this music and a possible communication of such an experience to those who ­listen to this music.

Løgstrup’s Fictive Space: Melody and the Musical Work

In K.E. Løgstrup’s discussion of time and space from the perspective of the philosophy of religion, in Skabelse og Tilintetgørelse (1978), the passage of time is exemplified by continuing Augustine’s discussion of the concept of time from Confessiones (Book XI, Chapter XXVII).30 Augustine’s point of departure is the imagined recitation of a melody from the point where it exists solely in the future (before one begins singing) until it is entirely in the past (when one has finished singing). So on the way the melody proceeds from future, through the present, to the past. Løgstrup takes over Augustine’s image, hardly out of a primary interest in the actual example, but rather to maintain the continuity from Augustine’s argumentation. Like Augustine, and in keeping with Heidegger’s philosophy of time, Løgstrup discards a positivistic understanding of time, and additionally includes Husserl’s concept of retention. Løgstrup follows Augustine’s idea that time is measured in our consciousness, since neither the future nor the past can be said to exist, and since the present can in its turn be subdivided into arbitrarily thin slices of future, present and past, so that the present cannot be supposed to have any real extension. Nevertheless, Løgstrup claims that even though time – as thought by Augustine as well as Husserl and Heidegger – must be understood and measured subjectively, it must never­ theless be supposed that time also contains something objective, something ­outside man’s consciousness: Without sharing a positivistic notion of time, I cannot deny that there is an insight which is inadequately dealt with in Augustine’s, Husserl’s and Heidegger’s analyses. As already stated, this is the insight that we only know time through our rebellion against it. For that reason, there exists a time which is independent of and more original than our existence: exactly the time against which we rebel. If we enquire further about what kind of time this is, we get into trouble since we cannot experience it. We can only experience the time produced by our rebellion against it. 30

K.E. Løgstrup, Skabelse og tilintetgørelse (Creation and Annihilation): Metafysik IV (København: Gyldendal, 1978), pp. 11–45; Augustinus, Confessionum libri XIII. Corpus Christianorum Series Latina XXVII, eds. L. Verheijen after M. Skutella (Turnholt: Brepols, 1981), Book XI: XXVII, pp. 211–213.

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We  cannot get behind our rebellion. We can, however, say something about time prior to our rebellion, indeed that it is the irreversibility of annihilation. But we are cut off from experiencing the irreversibility of annihilation as time. We can only experience time as it results from our fight against the irreversibility of annihilation, a fight that consists in holding back and reproducing what has been irretrievably lost as past: a fight that we fight in retention and memory.31 In other words, when a melody can be retained in our consciousness, either through retention or reproduction, this is an expression of man’s philosophically speaking necessary rebellion against annihilation (through memory) which retains what has physically disappeared, in a form that is defined by what happened, what has become past, but which is retained as remembered in its unchanged spatiality. A premise for this is Løgstrup’s concept of the character of time: objects are timeless – and spatial – but are given duration for us through our consciousness of time: “Things receive a relation to time either by undergoing changes or by being experienced by us. Thanks to our consciousness, their timelessness becomes duration for us.”32 But the opposite is also true, in a certain sense. Only what has extension – spatiality – makes it possible to experience changes in relation to timelessness and thus gain consciousness of time. Furthermore, this duration is decisive for our not experiencing time “discretely,” i.e. sporadically, but as something continuous, where the future proceeds into the present, and the present into the past. We remember, Løgstrup claims, not only because of a special mental memory function, but memory consists in our retaining something which has extension and thus 31

32

“Uden at tilslutte mig et positivistisk tidsbegreb, kan jeg ikke komme bort fra, at der er en indsigt, der kommer til kort i Augustins, Husserls og Heideggers analyser, og det er som allerede sagt, at tiden kender vi kun fra vor opstand imod den. Altså er der en tid, uafhængig af vor væren og oprindeligere end den, akkurat den tid, som vi gør opstand imod. Spørger vi så videre om, hvad det er for en tid, kommer vi i forlegenhed. Erfare den kan vi nemlig ikke. Vi kan kun erfare den tid, der er et produkt af vor opstand imod den. Bagom vor opstand kan vi ikke komme. Noget kan vi nok sige om tiden før opstanden, så meget at den er irreversibiliteten i tilintetgørelsen. Men erfare irreversibiliteten i tilintetgørelsen som tid er vi afskåret fra. Erfare kan vi kun den tid, der kommer ud af vor kamp imod irreversibiliteten i tilintetgørelsen, en kamp der består i at holde igen på og reproducere det uigenkaldeligt tilintetgjorte som fortid, en kamp som vi fører i retention og erindring.” Løgstrup, Skabelse og tilintetgørelse, pp. 31–32. “Et forhold til tid får tingene først ved enten at undergå forandring eller opleves af os. Takket være vor bevidsthed bliver deres egen tidløshed for os til varen.” Løgstrup, Skabelse og tilintetgørelse, p. 34.

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also provides the present with extension through the spatiality which is part of what we remember: […] without the timelessness of the spatial we would have no consciousness of time. My point of departure is Augustine’s clarification of how we speak about time in three stages, about how our present relates to the past in memory, our present relates to the future in anticipation, and our present relates to the present in perception. […] the present is a liminal concept, at least when it is considered as a moment without extension, but not otherwise. Otherwise, my present has extension. We are used to reserving the word extension for space, but also the present has extension. It extends back into what has passed and forward to what will immediately arrive. The question, however, is in what way my present attains extension. Augustine’s answer is that the relation of the present to the present is necessary; that relation consists in stretching out the present, retaining what has passed. It does that by way of perception, more precisely by way of the perceived. […] But it cannot be memoria which stretches out the perceived while perceiving. That is impossible because the perceived would then only exist as remembered and anticipated. But what is perceived does exist in another way. It is not given extension by the memoria of the soul. Rather, it already has extension because of its immutability as spatial. What is perceived is not only present by way of the perception in the present; it is also present outside of the present perception and, for that reason, the perceived is able to extend the present. Outside the perception in the present, the perceived is timelessly present as far as it is immutable. But this means that what exists, the perceived in its timeless immutability, is a necessary condition for the present to relate to the present, to use Augustine’s vocabulary.33 33

“[…] uden det rumliges tidløshed ville vi ingen bevidsthed om tid have. Jeg tager mit udgangspunkt i Augustins præcisering af talen om tidens tre faser til en tale om vor nutids relation til fortid i erindring, vor nutids relation til fremtid i forventning og vor nutids relation til nutid i anskuelse. […] nutiden er et grænsebegreb, vel at mærke som udstrækningsløst moment. Ikke ellers. Ellers har min nutid udstrækning. Vi er vante til at forbeholde ordet udstrækning for rummet, men også nutiden har udstrækning, den strækker sig tilbage i det lige forgangne og frem i det umiddelbart ankommende. Men så er spørgsmålet, hvordan det går til, at min nutid får udstrækning. Augustins svar er, at nutidens relation til nutiden må til; den består i at udstrække nutiden, holde igen på det passerede. Og det gør den med anskuelsens hjælp, nøjagtigere sagt med det anskuedes hjælp. […] Men […] det kan ikke være memoria, der i anskuelsen strækker det anskuede ud. Det er udelukket, for så var det anskuede kun til som erindret og forventet. Men det

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This whole way of thinking about time and memory is now placed in a larger perspective, in that Løgstrup makes the point that man’s existence (and that of everything living) is subject to time, which is the manifestation of annihilation, that which stands as the ultimate contradiction of what is permanent, but at the same time claims that the permanence of the universe, not the separate objects, but spatiality itself is not subject to time.34 Løgstrup remarks that it can be argued that in memory we manage to retain something that is entirely time-dependent, for example a melody which does not in itself contain anything spatial or immutable. His immediate answer to this is that there is something immutable also about the melody, its form: “the fictive immutability and the fictive timelessness of the structure, the character, the totality and the unity which belong in a fictive space.”35 According to Løgstrup this is even a prerequisite for us to be able to retain the melody. So at this point Løgstrup does have a meaningful idea of what a melody is, even though in Løgstrup it is not a central point. Retaining a melody is something other than retaining its single notes; the point for Løgstrup is that the spatial has its role in connection with the totality, the structure of the melody. The basic premise of the fictive space is that this structure, the form, is immutable.36 Thus, the melody that is retained in our memory is exactly like the one that was sung, with regard to structure, to fictive space. To sum up, it can then be said that for Løgstrup the possibility of retaining a melody in our memory is explained through the importance of space for our perception of time. On the one hand, space is the immutable which puts the anskuede er nu engang til på anden vis. Det får ikke udstrækning af sjælens memoria, men det har på forhånd udstrækning takket være dets uforanderlighed som rumligt. Det anskuede er ikke kun til stede i den nutidige anskuelse, men det er også til stede uden for den nutidige anskuelse, og af den grund kan det anskuede strække nutiden ud. Udenfor den nutidige anskuelse er det anskuede tidløst til stede så langt som det er uforanderligt. Men det vil sige, at det værende, det anskuede i dets tidløse uforanderlighed er en betingelse for, med Augustins vokabular, at nutid kan forholde sig til nutid.” Løgstrup, Skabelse og tilintetgørelse, pp. 34–35. 34 Løgstrup, Skabelse og tilintetgørelse, pp. 37–38. 35 “strukturens, skikkelsens, helhedens og enhedens fiktive uforanderlighed og fiktive tidløshed, der hører hjemme i et fiktivt rum.” Løgstrup, Skabelse og tilintetgørelse, p. 38. 36 Løgstrup, Skabelse og tilintetgørelse, p. 38; see also K.E. Løgstrup, Vidde og prægnans (Width and Conciseness) (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1976), pp. 13–15, where Løgstrup writes, partly on the background of remarks by the composer Vagn Holmboe, “In music […] the notes create their own fictive world. The totality of form which is created by the connections between the notes has its own fictive space.” (p. 14).

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passage of time into relief and is thus a necessary basis for (and contrast to) the mutability of time. When it comes to the melody, and other non-material manifestations, it is at the same time for Løgstrup a precondition for the whole Augustinian model with the melody which moves from the future through the present to the past into annihilation, and for the retention of the melody, that it does not consist of single notes, but that they form this fictive space, i.e. that the melody has character, form, something that makes possible the perception of the melody as a totality, the remembered totality. The melodic, which is not a central theme in Løgstrup, is of course a primary theme in a musical context, such as this article. What is a melody? Any succession of notes? And do rhythm and other elements than pitch play a role? Løgstrup does not discuss this but his conception of the character of the melody as a totality, its character, its form, makes it necessary to discuss it in my context. We must suppose that Løgstrup thinks in relation to traditional Western culture, in which melodies have been sung in certain styles, and where it does make sense to maintain that there is a certain common consciousness of when a series of notes may be said to form a melody, to have character, even though it is very difficult, not to say impossible, to find a generally accepted definition of melody within this cultural area. But then one is left with the same problem, only for the concept of character or form. If we are to make Løgstrup’s philosophical construction fruitful for an historical material, which in reality is peripheral to Løgstrup’s discussion (even though he uses a number of examples to illustrate a point as part of his philosophical discussion to throw light on the texts), it is important to look at how far notions of the character and form of melodies have been a part of musical understanding through the ages, in different cultures. Such a question reaches far beyond the possible, both with respect to this author’s knowledge and the possibilities within the framework of an article like this. Nevertheless, keeping within the cultural area which has had direct influence on European art music, i.e. the Greek and Latin cultures, I will take up a few examples which may hint at the character of the problem and at the background that after all makes it reasonable for Løgstrup to write what he does, even though he does not consider questions of musical history or include musical technology in his discussion. Seen in the perspective of a Løgstrup-oriented reading, my question is not so important. The melody is really only an example of his way of thinking about memory, time and space, and the reason why the melody was chosen as an example is probably primarily that it is the example Augustine uses in his discussion of time. In the context of this article, however, the question is of paramount importance.

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In Plato’s The State, 3:10, music is discussed with the term melos, which is often translated melody. But as Thomas J. Mathiesen notes, melos as Plato explains the concept does not correspond to the modern word melody, seeing that melos consists of three elements; text, harmony and rhythm, where also the word harmony is misleading to modern readers, since it has to do with the relationship between pitches, i.e. the intervals, and thus really is closer to the question of the melodic in the modern way of thinking. But as it turns out, harmoniai in The State is about different ethnic types of music, often understood as special scales, because of the names which were since appropriated in the early Middle Ages for the so-called church modes, Lydian, Mixolydian, Phrygian and Ionian. In this place the dialogue focuses on which modes can give a melos that can be employed morally-politically in relation to men (and soldiers). Whereas “melodies” with Lydian or Mixolydian “harmony” are not even good enough for women, Dorian and Ionian “melodies” are suitable, also for men.37 The German musical scholar Max Haas has commented on the problem of adjusting linguistic musical terms that belong in a certain historical context to a modern music-theoretical terminology, in connection with the Arabic word maqām, which originally means “place,” but which eventually got to mean “a place where one sings in a particular way.” In this sense, the word has often been translated into German as Melodiemodell (melodic model). In this context, Haas refers to Harold Power’s point, that scale and melody mark the end points of a continuum of “melodic predetermination.”38 In other words, it is not so easy to say at all what corresponds to a modern European conception of melody, and Plato’s discussion does not seem primarily to identify anything that quite corresponds to such a category, but rather to associate to a broader typology of melodic characteristics or quite simply scales to which these groups of melodies belong. When we look at Augustine’s considerations on song, which are Løgstrup’s point of departure, it does not get much easier. In the whole part on the song that proceeds from the future through the present to the past (Book XI, Chapter XXVII), Augustine uses no words at all which characterize the musical aspect. 37

38

T.J. Mathiesen’s “Introduction” and his commentary on Plato, “From the Republic” in “Greek Views of Music,” ed. T.J. Mathiesen, Strunk’s Source Readings in Music History, Revised Edition, ed. L. Treitler (New York: Norton & Co., 1998), pp. 1–109, especially the introduction, p. 5 and the text example pp. 10–11. M. Haas, Musikalisches Denken im Mittelalter: Eine Einführung (Bern: Peter Lang, 2005), p. 35. See also H.S. Powers, “Mode,” Grove Music Online http://www.oxfordmusiconline. com/ (accessed January 1, 2010).

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He writes about verses, and specifically mentions St Ambrose’s hymn Deus Creator Omnium as his example. He writes about the voice (vox) and whether it sounds long or short, and in Chapter XVIII he uses the word canticum, song, but there is nothing to indicate that he considers a concept like melody. This is also so when he talks about the very same hymn in Book IX, Chapter XII after his mother’s death, where there is also reference to Psalm 101 (Psalm 100 in the Vulgate) being sung; but again, no words are used that can characterize the music as melody in any modern sense. In the references mentioned above to iubilus in Augustine’s interpretations of the book of Psalms (see above, pp. 301–2), a lot is said about voice and sound, of singing correctly, but nothing that will allow us to say that Augustine thinks about melodic identity the way Løgstrup does. There are, however, a few places that give occasion to speculate whether Augustine has after all had such a conception of “a melody” in the later sense, i.e. a characteristic, recognizable musical gestalt. In Confessiones, Book X, Chapter XXXIII, Augustine discusses music as a temptation of the ears. He raises the question of whether song can lead the congregation (and Augustine himself) away from the content of the Word, or whether it assists in leading people to the Gospel. He admits that at times he is too strict and wants to remove “all the melodies and sweet chants” (melos omne cantilenarum suavium) literally: all the melody from the sweet songs.39 The translation quoted is problematic, as shown by the literal translation, for the Latin text may refer either to all the melodiousness or to all the beauty of the sweet songs, and thus the very idea of a concept of melody disappears in favor of the idea of sweet song in a more general sense. That Augustine has been familiar with the idea of the sweetness of music in general is beyond doubt. It is clearly expressed in his ­discussion of iubilus. The other example I will adduce is from his interpretation of Psalm 133 (132 in the Vulgate): For these words from the psalter, this sweet sound, this soft melody, has brought forth monasteries, as much through the song as through the meaning [of the words]. Brothers who desired to live together were stirred up by this sound; this verse became their trumpet [signal].40 39 Augustinus, Confessionum libri XIII (see above, note 27), Book X:XXXIII, p. 181: The English translation quoted is Saint Augustine’s Confessions: A new translation by H. Chadwick (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008, orig. 1992), p. 208. 40 “Ista enim uerba psalterii, iste dulcis sonus, ista suauis melodia, tam in cantico quam in intellectu, etiam monasteria peperit. Ad hunc sonum excitati sunt fratres qui habitare in unum concupierunt; iste uersus fuit tuba ipsorum.” Aurelius Augustinus, Enarrationes in

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Here, finally, there seems to be no doubt that he speaks of a quite concrete melody as melody (in a present-day sense). But for one thing, one may ask if melodia here might mean something less abstract than the gestalt concept we find in Løgstrup, for instance that melodia stands much more as a joint term for sound and melody (in our sense), and hence includes the words too, and for another, this is in any case a rare example which can therefore hardly make it probable that there would have been a general idea of such a structural concept of melody at Augustine’s time. In the Carolingian age, a new marked musical development takes place with the introduction of Roman liturgical song in the church, which to a high degree was a further development built on this Roman song, according to modern scholarship. A lot is still to be clarified, but the most spectacular new departure in that process was doubtlessly the invention of musical notation in the Franconian area in the 9th century, which from fragmentary notation in single manuscripts in the course of the century leads to many fully notated manuscripts for the use of singers in the church services in the 10th century.41 Something most scholars have noted is that the chant that was the result of this complex process presents a relation between words and music which quite tentatively is described by Leo Treitler as follows: There is a story to be told about the creative consolidation of a musical culture in Carolingian Europe, and that story does indeed entail new interactions of music and language that resulted in a different idea of musical form from what is at work in the old chant tradition […]42 Precisely the idea of musical form has repeatedly been important to the historiography of the so-called “Gregorian chant” (named after Gregory the Great, who was presented by the Carolingians as the authoritative figure behind the Roman chant, an idea scholars have given up long ago). Leo Treitler also emphasizes that one has to be very cautious on this count, because the European composition music – not least in the 19th century – precisely made psalmos eds. D.E. Dekkers and I. Fraipont, Aurelii Augustini opera pars X (1–3), Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina, XXXVIII–XL (Turnhout: Brepols, 1956), pars X, 3, vol. XL, cols. 1926–27. 41 There is a great amount of scholarly literature on this subject. Here I will primarily refer to L. Treitler’s book mentioned above (note 4), which consists of his articles through about 40 years, when he was one of the leading, albeit rather controversial, researchers in this area, with newly written commentaries on each article, and hence also on the most recent research process. 42 Treitler, With Voice and Pen, p. 118.

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musical form the foundation of music aesthetics, and because in accordance with the use of Gregorian chant as the starting point of music history, it had ideological reasons for “finding” musical form already at the establishment of this field.43 In any case, what happens is quite concretely that music is “made into” form in connection with the Carolingian reform: music is beginning to get notated, and thus at least is represented in form, in something visible, and stored copies of the songs can be referred to. In Leo Treitler’s opinion they were mainly used for reference, to check that performances were in accordance with authorized versions which the cantors were in charge of in the scriptoria of the monasteries and the cathedrals. Notation was probably also occasioned by the Carolingian concentration on writing as authority, in connection with what Rosamond McKitterick has emphasized so much, the effort for learning based on piety, the correctio of the Carolingians. This concept aims at reforming, changing, correcting, doing things correctly, music as much as other parts of the service – which also indicates that the practical music was taken seriously here to a hitherto unknown degree.44 This turn towards a written transmission in musical culture must be understood as relative. For a long time still to come, the chants were sung without sheet music, and were learned by the singers through the cantors’ practical instructions. Nevertheless, I think that there cannot be any doubt that the very fact that music turned into something that could be seen and taken in by the eye must have had great consequences for the perception of it. Graphic representations of chant from around 900 – new at the time – represent in pictures what could earlier only be retained in the memory. Performative acts were now represented in discernible shapes through neume notation. At least since St Augustine, a theologically reflected theory of time and history had been available, which in book eleven of his Confessiones was exemplified through the discussion of the performance of a canticum. This canticum, however, as well as any segment of time could only be measured in the mind – using the memory. The beginnings of visual representations of music in the Carolingian era, by contrast, may be constructed as a new departure: it became possible to visualize the intangible and ineffable.45 43 Treitler, With Voice and Pen, p. 219. 44 R. McKitterick, Charlemagne: The Formation of a European Identity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). 45 N.H. Petersen, “Carolingian Music, Ritual, and Theology,” The Appearances of Medieval Rituals: The Play of Construction and Modification, eds. N.H. Petersen et al. (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004), pp. 13–31 (27).

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It is therefore no surprise that in the following centuries one can find a new way of referring to musical compositions with more or less precise instructions for how to create chants in accordance with certain criteria for good or beautiful melodies. In Scolica Enchiriadis from the last half of the ninth century, it is asked – in connection with a formulation by Augustine – “What is music?” and the answer given is, “to control melody so that it sounds sweet. But this must be done in full conformance with the rules.”46 Eventually – albeit not often – we do find descriptions of melodies and more detailed instructions for creating “proper melodies.”47 When we get to Mozart’s time, the concept of melody has long been established as a well-defined entity, so that it would make sense to treat the subject as Løgstrup does, i.e. as a musical structure which has character, something which can be characterized by way of its “fictive space,” a space which – depending on one’s attitude to musical notation – when we move to modern times, can be considered no longer to be fictive, but in reality identical with the real space of the notated music, as was found in the discussion above, exemplified with a quotation from the German composer Roman Haubenstock-Ramati. In Sulzer’s Allgemeine Theorie (both the first and second editions), this is found in the long article: Melody is the succession of tones that comprise the singing part of a composition in so far as it is to be differentiated from the accompanying harmonies. It is the essence of a composition; the accompanying voices serve only to support it. Song is the primary aim of music, and all harmonic elaboration ultimately serves the goal of beautiful song. Thus it is futile to ask whether melody or harmony takes precedence in a composition. Without question, the means is always subordinate to the goal. 46

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“Musica quid est? […] Melos suavisonum moderari. Sed haec quantum ad artem.” Musica et scolica enchiriadis una cum aliquibus tractatulis adiunctis, ed. H.S. (Munich: Verlag der bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1981), p. 60. English translation Musica Enchiriadis and Scolica Enchiriadis Translated, with Introduction and Notes, by R. Erickson, ed. C.V. Palisca (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), p. 33. For an aesthetic instruction in composing from the 13th century, which emphasizes the importance of giving the chant the right form (formula iure figurat), see Summa musice: A thirteenth-century manual for singers, ed. and trans. C. Page (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 198, English translation p. 121. For the description of the melody for a procession chant for Easter day by the monk Rupert av Deutz from the beginning of the 12th century, see N.H. Petersen,“Sedit angelus ad sepulchrum: Reading the Words and Music of a Processional Easter Chant,” Cantus Planus: Papers Read at the 9th Meeting, Esztergom & Visegrád, Hungary, 1998, ed. L. Dobszay (Budapest: Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Institute for Musicology, 2001), pp. 611–24.

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It is more important for the composer continually to keep in mind the essential characteristics of a good melody, and to think about the best means by which they may be attained, at least as far as this depends upon art. […] The essence of melody lies in expression. It must always depict some kind of passionate feeling or mood. All who hear it should try to imagine listening to the speech of a man seeking to convey to us the particular emotion with which he is filled. In so far as this melody is a product of art and taste, though, this passionate discourse must constitute a whole in which unity and variety are combined, as should be the case with all other art works. Such a whole must be of a pleasing form and be so constituted, both overall and in its individual parts, that the attention of the listener is continually maintained. The impression it makes should be received without offence or distraction, but with delight.48 Heinrich Christoph Koch’s much shorter article quotes Sulzer, but gives its own definition: 48 Melodie. (Musik.) Die Folge der Töne, die den Gesang eines Tonstücks ausmachen, insofern er von der ihn begleitenden Harmonie unterschieden ist. Sie ist das Wesentliche des Tonstücks; die begleitenden Stimmen dienen ihr bloß zur Unterstützung. Die Musik hat den Gesang als ihr eigentliches Werk, zu ihrem Ziehl und alle Künste der Harmonie haben bloß den schönen Gesang zum letzten Endzweck. Darum ist es eine eitele Frage, ob in einem Tonstück die Melodie oder die Harmonie das vornehmste sei: Ohne Zweifel ist das Mittel dem Endzweck untergeordnet.  Wichtiger ist es für den Tonsetzer, dass er die wesentlichen Eigenschaften einer guten Melodie beständig vor Augen habe und den Mitteln, wodurch sie zu erreichen sind, insofern sie von der Kunst abhangen, fleißig nachdenke. […] Das Wesen der Melodie besteht in dem Ausdruck. Sie muss allemal irgend eine leidenschaftliche Empfindung oder eine Laune schildern. Jeder, der sie hört muss sich einbilden er höre die Sprache eines Menschen, der von einer gewissen Empfindung durchdrungen, sie dadurch an den Tag legt. In so fern sie aber ein Werk der Kunst und des Geschmacks ist, muss diese leidenschaftliche Rede, wie jedes andere Werk der Kunst ein Ganzes ausmachen, darin Einheit mit Mannigfaltigkeit verbunden ist; dieses Ganze muss eine gefällige Form haben und sowohl überhaupt als in einzelnen Teilen so beschaffen sein, dass das Ohr des Zuhörers beständig zur Aufmerksamkeit gereizt werde und ohne Anstoß, ohne Zerstreuung, den Eindrücken, die es empfängt, sich mit Lust überlasse. “Melodie,” Allgemeine Theorie der Schönen Künste, 1792 (see note 20), III, pp. 370–388 (pp. 370–71). “Melodie” in the first edition of Sulzer’s Allgemeine Theorie is found at http://www.textlog.de/2790.html (accessed March 1, 2011). English translation quoted from Aesthetics and the Art of Musical Composition in the German Enlightenment, eds. and trans. N.K. Baker and T. Christensen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 91–92.

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Thereby is indicated partly a succession of tones altogether, and partly and especially such a sequence of various tones from a scale in a key underlying the sequence, divided according to a particular key, which also contains certain points of repose through which it can be dissolved into individual parts.49 No matter how one regards these definitions of melody, it is obvious that they are an expression of the beginning work aesthetics which went with the incipient concert hall culture and in general the independent musical culture that developed gradually through the 17th and 18th centuries and on, independently of ecclesiastical and other social functions, as mentioned above. Thus, it is also obvious that Løgstrup’s thoughts cannot be applied to a concrete piece of music unless Løgstrup’s philosophical systematics allows of historicization. However, Løgstrup has already made this possible in a short posthumously published article in the journal Fønix.50 Here Løgstrup himself takes up the discussion of the relation between historicity and philosophical systematics. The main point is that one cannot move philosophical cognition back in time to before that cognition was arrived at, but that it is historically valid forever after the cognition: What is true at one time cannot be untrue at another time. What is true today cannot be untrue tomorrow; that would annul the concept of truth. What has been thought cannot be made into not having been thought. What has happened cannot be made into not having happened. It can be forgotten, but to forget it is not to make it not have been thought and not have happened. In order to forget it, it must have been thought and must have happened. But this does not mean that what at one time is true must have been present as truth for all past time. It is possible that in the past the truth had not yet come into existence.51 49

50 51

“Man bezeichnet damit theils eine Folge der Töne überhaupt, theils und insbesondere eine solche Tonreihe, die aus abwechselnden Stufen einer zum Grunde liegenden Tonart bestehet, in eine bestimmte Tonart eingetheilt ist, und gewisse Ruhepunkte des Geistes enthält, wodurch sie in einzelne Glieder aufgelöset werden kann.” “Melodie,” H.C. Koch, Musikalisches Lexikon (see note 22), cols. 940–946 (940). K.E. Løgstrup, “Sandhed og historie,” Fønix 5, 4 (1981), pp. 313–22. “Det er rigtigt, at hvad der til een tid er sandt ikke til en anden tid kan være usandt. Det er også rigtigt, at hvad der er sandt i dag kan ikke være usandt i morgen, det ville ophæve sandhedsbegrebet. Hvad der er tænkt kan aldrig gøres utænkt. Hvad der er sket kan aldrig gøres usket. Det kan glemmes, men at glemme det er ikke at gøre det aldrig tænkt og ­aldrig sket. For at kunne glemme det må det være tænkt og sket. Men dermed er ikke sagt, at hvad der til én tid er sandt for al fortid må have været til stede som sandt. I fortiden kan det være, at sandheden endnu ikke var blevet til.” Løgstrup, “Sandhed og historie,” p. 321.

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Løgstrup’s abstract interpretation of the concept of melody mentioned above hardly existed in the classical Greek period; probably not in Augustine either, but in the Carolingian period, with its gradual change to written versions of the chant, a development took place in the direction of being able to perceive music spatially through the written music. This development is behind a practical development of forms of notation and perceptions of musical works in relation to the written scores, which of course gives occasion for many different aesthetic positions in relation to what music is or ought to be, but which very much was to advance the work aesthetic behind modern musical practice, in which music is often used independently of genre and original social function. The concept of melody seems already at Mozart’s time to have had an independent function in connection with music, irrespective of genre and function. In the 18th century, musical production is clearly seen as the act of creating works for different occasions, but different contexts make different demands. Works of a liturgical nature cannot be transferred from the liturgy to the concert hall as a matter of course. But this does not mean that forms and techniques cannot be transferred from one area to another, as witnessed by Mozart’s Davide Penitente, mentioned above, and the frequent use of secular music for sacred works, not least in the Baroque period. Monteverdi’s re-use of the fanfare from the opera Orfeo (1607) in the Maria Vesper (1610) is only one famous example; J.S. Bach’s use of his own secular cantatas in the Christmas Oratorio is another. Mozart borrowed fragments of melodies from his own Agnus Dei movements for the Countess’s arias in The Marriage of Figaro.52 It is obvious that when Løgstrup used the melody as a category for his analysis of time and space, he could have used any piece of music. The fictive space will be established in exactly the same way. And everything that has been discussed here about the melody as a concept in that connection will then be transferred to musical form in relation to the work concept. Thus, it also becomes clear that these fictive spaces can be subject to distinctions which have to do with the distinctions between works. It will be possible to divide the fictive spaces into groups corresponding to genres and ecclesiastical and other functions, to the extent that they demonstrate 52 For The Christmas Oratorio, see C. Wolff, “Cantatas,” in C. Wolff et al., “Bach, §III: (7) Johann Sebastian Bach,” Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online http://www.oxfordmusiconline .com (accessed August 10, 2011). For The Marriage of Figaro, see D. Heartz, “From Beaumarchais to Da Ponte: The Metamorphosis of Figaro” in D. Heartz, Mozart’s Operas. Edited, with contributing essays, by T. Baumann (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), pp. 106–121, especially pp. 117–120.

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characteristics that can be read out of the “form.” But what distinctions between works will we not be able to read out of the “form”? The answer to that will depend on our perception. Ave Verum Corpus will create one fictive space if it is perceived as “absolute music,” i.e. as a work which adequately can be heard as music, quite independently of text and context, a second one if it is perceived as a totality of text and music, and a third if it is perceived as a fragment of a larger context, the Corpus Christi feast in Baden in 1791. What is retained, then, is not only the music and an abstract musical gestalt; in that respect Løgstrup’s formulations do point to entirely traditional work aesthetics, music as independent of context. But if we include the context, then we retain contexts in the fictive space, memories of much more than the music as it sounds. We have then included both what gave rise to the composed music and what gave it meaning. In that context, Jan and Aleida Assmann’s thoughts on cultural memory and memory space are important, understood on the basis of the social, dynamic processes through which communities or parts of communities choose their “canonic” memories, choose what is seen as important for the members of the community in terms of identity, a dialectically and socially extremely complex and complicated process.53 While Jan Assmann has thoroughly discussed the basic mechanisms of this social process of remembering, Aleida Assmann goes further into certain types of especially literary memory, but also through other media which can further process and transform memory. She also discusses how modern communities have acquired archives of “silent” memory which must be called forth to be seen, i.e. which must be re-remembered to become memory, the Speichergedächtnis (storage memory) of the computer world.54 The three different types of fictive space mentioned for Ave Verum Corpus above (and likewise of course for other works that can be heard both as absolute music and as contextually bound) will have functions that to a certain degree correspond to Aleida Assmann’s different memory spaces. The first two types of memory space consist in a transformation of the work and the situation Mozart wrote it for. The third is in a way an archival space because it stores memories of a religious function with a sensitive response to that situation. But if one does not know about it beforehand, this memory space is 53

54

J. Assmann, Das Kulturelle Gedächtnis: Schrift, Erinnerung und politische Identität in frühen Hochkulturen (München: Beck, 2005 [1992]); J. Assmann, Religion und Kulturelles Gedächtnis (München: Beck, 2004[2000]); A. Assmann, Erinnerungsräume: Formen und Wandlungen des kulturellen Gedächtnisses (München: Beck, 2003[1999]). A. Assmann, Erinnerungsräume, Einleitung, especially pp. 18–23.

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inaccessible, like the files stored in the computer if no one outside the computer knows about them. Just as Løgstrup remarks that an experience that is forgotten does not mean that the experience has not been had, so all three types of memory space exist for Ave Verum Corpus. An absolute musical memory space, of course depending on the concrete performance, preserves the tones that became the result of Mozart’s work of composition. The space that preserves the text-music relation correspondingly stores Mozart’s tones and their relation to the text on the basis of a particular performance. And a third, contextually defined space stores words and tones in relation to the whole event of which the composition was part, based on the attempts of the performance in question of clarifying these conditions in performance. No matter which type of space we have access to or have chosen to use (and in addition there are thousands of variants springing from different performances’ possible ways of processing these three markedly different approaches to the “work”), such a space will define and preserve Mozart’s work in relation to a specific reception. All such memory spaces are found in and are part of the rebellion against annihilation that is Løgstrup’s main theme. But this rebellion against annihilation can be exercised in different ways: it can be straightforward as Løgstrup describes it, quite simply something that happens because we are human beings and listen, and retain what we hear, a kind of human unconscious rebellion against annihilation. But the contextual memory space (and to a lesser degree the text-music space) also constitute a rebellion against the annihilation of cultural experiences which have given rise to the culture which has to some degree forgotten these memories. This gives a special possibility for an experience of transcendence in such music; this of course demands a discussion of what the contextual experience stored in the musical work consists in. This is taken up in the next and third part of the article.

Ave Verum Corpus and Experiences of Transcendence

Edelmann’s analysis of Mozart’s Ave Verum Corpus, mentioned above, has convincingly documented that Mozart used his Salzburg colleague Michael Haydn’s Lauda Sion from 1775 as the background of his composition, so that he transferred a number of harmonic and melodic structures from Haydn’s much longer work to his own piece, while he in other respects transformed this material radically. Lauda Sion belongs to Haydn’s best known works, and Mozart had much earlier (in 1783) asked his father Leopold to send him the score of

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this work, which he clearly already knew.55 As Edelmann points out – and as mentioned above – Mozart’s use of Haydn’s work also establishes a textual/ musical connection with the established liturgy of the feast of Corpus Christi. In addition, Mozart’s composition is conscious of and responds to meter and content in the medieval text, down to the smallest detail. Edelmann has demonstrated how Mozart makes these two aspects of the poem take part in a build-up of tension that adds to the Haydn dimension of the work and dramatizes Haydn’s lyrical adoration. Edelmann also notes the aspects of the text that are particularly accentuated by Mozart, where the music changes in relation to the overall procedure emphasizing the words written in capital letters in the text below in a particular, harmonically tense setting: Ave verum corpus natum / de Maria virgine, / vere passum, immolatum / in cruce pro homine. / Cuius latus perforatum / unda fluxit et sanguine, / esto nobis praegustatum / in mortis examine. Hail, true body, born / of Virgin Mary, / who in truth suffered and was sacrificed / on the cross for man. / From his pierced side / flowed water and blood, / Be for us a foretaste / to examine death.56 These are words that primarily emphasize the Passion and at the same time – via the musical use of Michael Haydn’s Lauda Sion – are related to the liturgy of Corpus Christi. The procedure is reminiscent of the sixteenth century parody. Mozart does not take his point of departure in the melody but in a complete four part setting, appropriating it for his own purposes by way of techniques 55 See Edelmann, “Dichtung und Komposition,” pp. 23–39. Schmid, Mozart und die Salzburger Tradition I, pp. 146–155. See also above, at note 14. W. Hoffmann,“Satztechnische Bemerkungen zu Mozarts Ave verum corpus kv 618,” Mozart Studien 8, ed. M.H. Schmid (Tutzing: Hans Schneider, 1998), pp. 113–124, emphasizes the special traits which in his opinion separates it from Haydn’s work, with a certain distance to Edelmann. Edelmann, in his turn in no way claims that Mozart’s work is “only” an adaptation of Michael Haydn, but an appropriation, a conscious use where Mozart in his own way draws on Haydn, but brilliantly employs it for his quite personal musical-theological purpose. 56 On Mozart’s version of the text and the music’s relation to it, see Edelmann, “Dichtung und Komposition,” pp. 12–23. Also compare Analecta hymnica, 54, p. 257 (see above n. 13) with the text of Mozart’s work: W.A. Mozart, “Ave verum corpus für gemischten Chor, Orchester und Orgel,” Neue Ausgabe sämtlicher Werke. Serie I: Geistliche Gesangswerke, Werkgruppe 3: Kleinere Kirchenwerke, ed. H. Federhofer (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1963), pp. 261–62.

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such as interchanging individual voices and changing the part writing. The resulting ‘version’ musically preserves the old in the new – and also makes sense theologically. It realizes the double meaning of Corpus Christi as body and corpse, because the idea of the Corpus Christi Feast is the Eucharistic body of Christ. By contrast the text of the Ave Verum Corpus speaks about the violated corpse of Jesus on the cross. Exactly because Mozart retains the basic character of the Lauda Sion, a song of praise, the passion and death text of the Ave Verum Corpus becomes appropriate for the feast. This reconciliation of opposites constitutes the secret of the solemn aura, of the mildly transfigured sparkling character of the motet, Ave Verum Corpus.57 For Edelmann, it is an important point that in terms of musical theology this  contributes to a reconciliation between two aspects: the adoration or praise of the consecrated Eucharistic elements, in other words the ceremonial content of the Corpus Christi feast, and the background for the Holy Communion, the Passion. One could just as well talk of a build-up of tension which contributes to giving the praise a listening, meditative and humble ­character, quite the opposite of an ecclesia militans-like representation of the church’s ownership to the means of grace, which can become an aspect of the celebrations of Corpus Christi, through its focus on the Passion aspect of the text which in itself constitutes a connection between the idea of incarnation and the theology of atonement. Beyond the tempo indication adagio, slow, there is only one indication of performance: above all the choir voices we find the indication sotto voce, i.e. with muted voice. Edelmann interprets this as “a shadowy unreal sound effect which de-materializes and negates the harmony of Lauda Sion, so that it is suitable for the death-sphere of Ave Verum Corpus.” For Edelmann it is a 57

“Das Verfahren gemahnt an die Parodie des 16. Jahrhunderts. Mozart setzt nicht bei einer Melodie, sondern bei einem kompletten vierstimmigen Satz an und adaptiert ihn durch Techniken wie Stimmtausch und geänderte Stimmführung für die eigene Bedürfnisse. Die so gewonnene ‘Fassung’ bewahrt musikalisch das Alte im Neuen – und macht auch theologisch Sinn. Sie verwirklicht den Doppelsinn von Corpus Christi als Leib und Leichnam. Denn der Festgedanke von Fronleichnam ist der eucharistische Leib Christi, dagegen spricht der Text des Ave verum corpus vom geschundenen Leichnam Jesu am Kreuz. Indem Mozart am Grundcharakter des Lauda Sion, eines Lobgesangs, festhält, wird der Passions- und Sterbetext des Ave verum corpus erst fronleichnamsfähig. Diese Versöhnung von Gegensätzlichem ist das Geheimnis der feierlichen Ausstrahlung, des mild-verklärten Leuchtens der Motette Ave verum corpus.” Edelmann, “Dichtung und Komposition,” pp. 52–53.

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reference to “the dramatic other, to expressive speech.”58 I tend to agree, but one has to acknowledge that this is not unambiguous. Through a discussion of the tempos – for example against the background of Michael Haydn’s work and the relation to his tempo indication allegro moderato, as well as Mozart’s transfer of melody and harmonic structure from Haydn, Edelmann arrives at the conclusion that traditionally Ave Verum Corpus has been performed too slowly, in his opinion also under the influence of Cecilian ideas of the 19th century, so that the dramatic has been smoothed over to emphasize a beautiful sweet tone.59 Edelmann compares with Liszt’s piano adaptation of Mozart’s work in the piano piece A la Chapelle Sixtine. Miserere d’Allegri et Ave verum corpus de Mozart pour piano par Francois Liszt (1865). He calls attention to the fact that Liszt slows down the tempo and demands a celebrative pianissimo, “una corda dolcissimo, sempre dolcissimo, sempre dolcissimo e quieto” and refers to the performance indication “cantando angelico” in connection with the Mozart theme from Ave verum corpus. In other words, Edelmann points to a musical topos of angel music in Liszt, with the somewhat condescending comment that “one would have to disregard this with a smile” (darüber könnte man nun lächlend hinwegsehen) if it had not become a regular practice in the tradition of performing Mozart’s work. I do not find Edelmann’s condescending “criticism” of Liszt fair, even though he is right that Liszt’s reception changes the original work radically; so did Mozart’s reception of Michael Haydn, no further comparison intended. Liszt receives Mozart into a new context which removes the music from both the textual context and the general liturgical context. In Liszt we find a meditation on the conception of a divine aesthetic: beauty, sublimity, but not, indeed, suffering and earthly gravity. The interpretation of and dependence on the text of Ave Verum Corpus disappear (obviously) and therefore the harmonic tensions can be aesthetically beautiful and airy, without the precision involved if one knows what these harmonies are connected with. In other words, it is two totally different theological approaches to the idea of transcendence. In Liszt – as opposed to Mozart – there is an “angelic” meditation on a world elevated above suffering and death, in which the music does not relate to these earthly phenomena. But Mozart’s music certainly does just that. Here the presentation of transcendence in the music is connected with Incarnation and Passion: a classical theology of atonement. In other words, the way the music presents transcendence to the listener is bound to a traditional 58 59

Edelmann, “Dichtung und Komposition,” p. 55. Edelmann, “Dichtung und Komposition,” pp. 54–55.

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Christology with its maintenance of the connection between the heavenly and the earthly. Hence, it can be presented dramatically because transcendence in the last resort is played out on earth, even though it can only do so because it comes from Heaven. This, to use Edelmann’s analysis and interpretation, is a consequence of the music’s deep rootedness in the text, both in relation to the metrics of the text and because it emphasizes those crucial words that underline the aspect of suffering and its function in relation to man’s situation as mortal, as was made clear above. In an absolute-musical fictive space for Ave Verum Corpus – as discussed above – it would not be possible to establish this in any other way than through interpretation of the sotto voce indication. But it is not unambiguous enough to refute a Liszt-like interpretation. In principle sotto voce may suit the ethereally quiet “angelic” harmony in the Liszt analogy. In a text-based fictive space, on the other hand, this aspect is clear, but then lacks the connection to the Eucharist, which can only be read clearly when it is obvious that the feast of Corpus Christi constitutes the context of the music (and text). This latter fact means, among other things, that human suffering and the redemption of Christ have a corporate content. There is not an individualized experience of transcendence “for me – alone,” but a transcendence which in Mozart’s context includes the whole community. Esto nobis, it says in the text, not esto mihi. In truth, the music does not particularly emphasize this nobis, but that is unnecessary, seeing that the context of the feast makes it obvious to all participants. Musically the experience of transcendence can be traced to the quite sudden transitions between beautiful harmony and insouciance (in music and text) and intense tension (in harmony and text), which follow the text. This is seen most clearly in bars 22–29 at the words which refer to John 19:34 “cujus latus perforatum unda fluxit et sanguine” and thus unite the death on the cross, already emphasized by the minor coloration at the word “immolatum,” sacrificed, with the salvation through baptism and communion which the text from John is probably supposed to refer to. This intensification of the musical language, which is also noted by Edelmann, grows quickly and directly out of the beautiful and insouciant setting and thus musically represents a world view in which suffering and death and sacrifice are quite closely and unproblematically connected with expressions of joy and the experience of the positive sides of life. This very much reflects Karl Barth’s ideas about Mozart’s music as an aspect of the total world, inclusive of suffering and death. Pain is no contradiction of the meaning of life. I have called attention to such musical juxtapositions and their insertion in well-balanced musical forms in Mozart’s instrumental music in an article which on a number of counts confirms Barth’s

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response in his theology based on listening, in his Kirchliche Dogmatik. Barth’s ideas also appear to be quite in accordance with the understanding of Mozart as the “last great optimist” among classical composers, which we find in one of the most prominent Mozart interpreters in the 20th century, the conductor Ferenc Fricsay (1914–63). Inspired by Fricsay and Barth, I have interpreted this as a musical response to the world which corresponds to the idea of Providence at Mozart’s time, and which we also find documented in Mozart’s letters.60 Alessandra Lazzerini Belli interprets Ave Verum Corpus in the same way, primarily based on its musical structure and with reference to Karl Barth.61 It is obvious that this musical experience will make itself felt, also in an absolute-musical fictive space, by virtue of its being expressed in music through a close juxtaposition of markedly different musical representations of feeling. In that sense it is my contention that it makes sense to interpret Mozart’s instrumental music in relation to Christianity, but, as demonstrated by Kierkegaard (see the introduction to Part 3), such an interpretation is not a must, as long as it is based on what is purely musical. In a text- and music-based fictive space for Ave Verum Corpus, the elements of praise and prayer will also become clear, and the rootedness in a specific Christian interpretive universe will become unambiguous. In a contextual fictive space, the corporate element will be added: a manifestation of transcendence in the community’s reception of redemption through the suffering and death of Christ. This is the church/community as the carrier of or receiver of the body of Christ, which is sustained by it and where people individually live and die with the body of Christ. In that connection, it is contextually an interesting detail that Mozart, in a letter to Constanze some days after the Corpus Christi day mentions that he is to take part in the Corpus Christi procession on the outskirts of Vienna (which took place on the Sunday after the feast of Corpus Christi itself, when Ave Verum Corpus as mentioned seems to have been performed in Baden).62 One may speculate whether there is a connection between the fact that he has just written music for this feast and that he participates (without any musical function) 60

See K. Barth, Die Kirchliche Dogmatik. Dritter Band: Die Lehre von der Schöpfung. Dritter Teil (Zürich: Evangelischer Verlag A.G. Zollikon, 1950), pp. 336–338. See also the English translation (approved by Barth), K. Barth, Church Dogmatics, III, 3 (Edinburgh: Clark, 1960, repr. 1996), pp. 297–299. See also N.H. Petersen, “Time and Divine Providence in Mozart’s Music,” Voicing the Ineffable: Musical Representations of Religious Experience, ed. S. Bruhn (Hillsdale, ny: Pendragon, 2002), pp. 265–286, and N.H. Petersen, “Mozart, Karl Barth og den kristne troslæren,” in Norsk Teologisk Tidsskrift 1 (2010), pp. 10–23. 61 Belli, “L’ave verum di Mozart,” p. 46. See also her conclusion pp. 50–51. 62 Mozart, Briefe und Aufzeichnungen, IV, p. 142 (no. 1170) [reference, see note 13 above].

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in a Corpus Christi procession a few days later. In that connection, it is hard not to think of one of the – controversial – Rochlitz anecdotes which were told by Friedrich Rochlitz in Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung ten years after Mozart’s death. In it Mozart mentions (supposing that the anecdote is authentic) that he forgets or loses contact with the holy in everyday life, but at the same time emphasizes that when he is composing for the parts of the Mass – and in the context he mentions specifically Benedictus and Agnus Dei, i.e. parts which belong in the celebration of the Eucharist – it comes back, “stands before one and moves one’s soul.”63 It is not unthinkable that the same could have been the case with Corpus Christi, i.e. that the composition of Ave Verum Corpus has again brought him into contact with the liturgy for this day. As a young man – in Salzburg – Mozart also composed great, impressive works, so-called sacramental litanies, Litaniae de venerabili altaris sacramento K. 125 and K. 243 (from 1772 and 1776), for use in the so-called 40-hour devotion in the cathedral of Salzburg, works which precisely – in text and music – emphasize the mystical veneration of the Eucharist, which was on display during this Catholic service (going back to the 16th century).64 This raises the question whether the representation of transcendence that can be experienced in Mozart’s sacred works is a particularly Catholic understanding of transcendence. The “absolute” musical experience is not unambiguously connected with a religion or an ecclesiastically defined way of thinking, although I have indeed claimed above that it is connected with Mozart’s relation to Christianity. When we include the relation to text and liturgy, the answer must in a way be yes, as expressed by Mozart himself, if we can believe the Rochlitz anecdote. But at the same time, it is just as noteworthy that it is not the transcendence experience of the militant church that is 63

64

For the anecdotes, see M. Solomon, “The Rochlitz Anecdotes: Issues of Authenticity in early Mozart Biography,” in Mozart Studies, ed. C. Eisen (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), pp. 1–59, but see also the discussion in H. Küng, Mozart – Spuren der Transzendenz (München: Piper, 1991), pp. 33–35 and in Petersen, “Sacred Space and Sublime Sacramental Piety,” pp. 193–95. Regarding the 40-hour devotion, see J. Imorde, Präsenz und Repräsentanz Oder: Die Kunst Jesu Leib auszustellen (Emsdetten: Edition Imorde, 1997); on the music for this practice, see E. Østrem and N.H. Petersen, Medieval Ritual and Early Modern Music: The Devotional Practice of Lauda Singing in Late-Renaissance Italy. Ritus et Artes 1 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2008), pp. 154–162. On sacramental litanies, see J. Roth, Die mehrstimmigen lateinischen Litaneikompositionen des 16. Jahrhunderts (Regensburg: Gustav Bosse Verlag, 1959), K.A. Rosenthal and Arthur Mendel, “Mozart’s Sacramental Litanies and Their Forerunners,” The Musical Quarterly 27, 4 (1941), pp. 433–455 and Petersen, “Sacred Space and Sublime Sacramental Piety.”

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emphasized by Mozart, not the authoritative church. Contextually, we know about Joseph II and his church policy, which broke with the Vatican in the socalled Josephism, during which the church in reality was nationalized throughout Joseph II’s ten years as absolute ruler (1780–1790). We also know that Mozart on his own behalf broke with the Archbishop of Salzburg and supported the Emperor, although we know little of Mozart’s ideas about church politics and papal power.65 If we were to define transcendence through the contextual knowledge we have – and in connection with the musical settings – it seems to be connected with the understanding of transcendence and the experience of the existence of providence as they were prevalent in parts of the age of Enlightenment, and also in the Christianity of Josephism as it was found for example in the wing of the freemason movement Mozart had joined.66 Musically, the earthly is emphasized, but also the hope of and prayer for help in the face of need and death. The sacramental aspect in Ave Verum Corpus, as in the unfinished Requiem from the same year, does not stand in opposition to the providential aspect. Barth does not include such an aspect, which is logical, given his view of Mozart. We do find it discussed in Hans Küng,67 but it must be said that the sacramental experience of transcendence, which is most clearly to be seen when Mozart is received in a contextually based fictive space, is strongly connected with the earthly and with the musical representation of the idea of redemption. Musically, they are not different, but Mozart also injects his world view into the representation of transcendence in the Eucharistic elements, which in themselves represent God’s transcendent grace through earthly materiality, just as music also does through its sensory effects. The representation or experience of transcendence can hardly be proved analytically. But as has been seen, one can point to quite concrete points in Mozart’s music, in his instrumental music as well as in his operas and sacred 65

Regarding Joseph II and Josephism, see T.C.W. Blanning, Joseph II (Harlow, Essex: Pearson Education Limited, 1994) and on Mozart’s relation to Joseph and the church (and the freemasons) see N. Till, Mozart and the Enlightenment: Truth, Virtue and Beauty in Mozart’s Operas (London: Faber and Faber, 1992), especially pp. 124–29 and 189–191. See also N.H. Petersen, “Seduction or Truth in Music?” especially pp. 115–122. 66 See Till, Mozart and the Enlightenment, pp. 124–129. 67 Küng, Mozart – Spuren der Transzendenz. Like Barth’s Mozart interpretations, the book is in many ways a response to listening, which does not pretend to analyze the music, but rather gives the author’s (the theologian’s) immediate and theologically reflected reaction to the music. To Küng, Mozart is precisely a (culturally) Catholic composer with a basic belief in providence, see especially pp. 24–43.

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music, where it is obvious to interpret it as potentially representing transcendence. In addition, as attempted here, one can also demonstrate how such “absolute” musical traits can be connected both with the interpretation of the text and with a performance context, in a work like Ave Verum Corpus. The retention of Mozart’s work in a fictive space, will give rise to an experience of the communication of an enlightened Catholic belief in providence (depending on which kind of listening one employs), and at the same time the communication of a quite basic Christian understanding of grace and redemption which entails a basic interpretation of Christianity, so basic that it can hardly be said to be problematic, either in a Catholic or a Lutheran context.

chapter 11

The Broken Hallelujah: The Super Hit as Sacred Space Kristin Rygg Introduction It was many years ago on a late night. A long work session had ended, and a cd I hadn’t yet heard was taken out and put on the cd player. Gentle guitar tones and the softest, purest male voice made me completely vigilant: I heard Jeff Buckley sing Hallelujah for the first time. I don’t know how many times the song was played that night. But I do know that I sensed how music and light filled the room, embracing me, as the experience of time passing vanished. I was surprised by the stirring effect of the continued repetition of the word of praise in the midst of a bitter love story, and by the strange feeling of peace which accompanied it. Buckley’s Hallelujah still has much of the magic I experienced on my first encounter. Furthermore, it continues to manifest itself as something sensual, beyond what music normally does. And it continues to open up to a state of consciousness that is a strange mixture of intensity and tranquility; for me it has a particularly transcending force. The song was originally written and composed by Leonard Cohen and came out on his album Various Positions in 1984, but it was only after Buckley’s version in 1994 that Hallelujah gradually achieved remarkable popularity. Of course it’s impossible to wring from a musical work an explanation of its beauty or magical quality, or, for that matter, its popularity. But I choose to believe that some of the particular qualities that I experience in the song can also be felt by others and thus be interesting to explore. In this article, then, I wish to develop an understanding of some of the aspects that establish the particular sensibility and transcendence created in Buckley’s cover version of Cohen’s Hallelujah. In the process, there is also a discussion of the transformation of the sacred, which I believe Buckley’s cover version represents, and of the new meanings which this transformation generates.

A Super Hit is Born

Genesis There was no particular stir after Cohen’s first recording of Hallelujah in 1984; nor was there when Bob Dylan was the first artist to play his own concert

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi 10.1163/9789004291690_016

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version of the song four years later.1 Cohen himself continued working with the song, and John Cale reported that when he wanted to make his own version of the song in 1991, Cohen sent him all of 15 pages of text with stanzas that he could choose from. Cale himself said that he chose the lyrics he liked best, and his version was the one that Jeff Buckley used in his Hallelujah on his debut album Grace in 1994. This version of the song was not a particular success either; but well-known artists like Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, Elvis Costello, Bono and Jimmy Page gradually became more and more aware of Buckley and impressed by his music, and concert tours where the cd was promoted showed good results.2 During the first two years, Grace achieved golden records both in France and Australia. Nonetheless, not until several years after Buckley died in a drowning accident in May 19973 did his Hallelujah truly become popular, and in the years 2006–2009, it was on the hit list in one country after another and was used in numerous tv series and films.4 Clearly, unusually many experienced that this song related deeply to their lives. This was not only shown by the placements on the hit lists and by the sale of records, but also by the stream of cover versions which now in earnest started turning up. 1 Where no other source is given, this and the following information on Hallelujah’s history is taken from Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallelujah_(Leonard_Cohen_song). [Accessed on Jan. 3, 2011]. The lack of source references in a few Wikipedia documents which I have used for my article, is problematic. However, whether some of the factual information in these sources is completely correct does not affect the main perspective or arguments presented here. After my article was finished, two new books related to its theme have been published: S. Simmons, I’m your Man: The Life of Leonard Cohen (London: Jonathan Cape, 2012) and A. Light, The Holy or the Broken: Leonard Cohen and Jeff Buckley and the Unlikely Ascent of “Hallelujah” (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2013). The latter, sadly, rarely provides sources for the information given, and never in a scholarly way. Therefore it is in principle as problematic as the Wikipedia sources just mentioned. Neither of the books brings new information regarding the material I have used for the present article, though. 2 B. Flanagan, ‘A Decade of Grace’, the liner-note of the cd Grace (Legacy Edition), Columbia Records, 517460, 2004. 3 See D. Browne, Dream Brother: the Lives and Music of Tim and Jeff Buckley (London: HarperCollins Publishers, 1988), pp. 1–13 for an account of Jeff Buckley’s death. 4 For a detailed overview of the reception history of Buckley’s Hallelujah, see http:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Buckley and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallelujah_(Leonard _Cohen_song) [Both last accessed on Nov. 3, 2011]. The latter also gives a tabular overview of the song’s placements on hit lists from 2006 to 2009. Films in which Buckley’s version of the song are included are for example Robert Benton’s A Cup of Love (2007), Sara Johnsen’s Vinterkyss (2005), Hans Weingartner’s Die fetten Jahre sind vorbei (2004), and Andrew Niccol’s Lord of War (2005).

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It seems as if neither listeners nor artists can leave this song behind. Nor, indeed, can Cohen himself. He still works with the song, which by now has turned into a never-ending hallelujah project. The same year Buckley released Grace, Cohen released a new album, Cohen Live: Leonard Cohen in Concert,5 on which the song is again included in a concert recording from 1988. A bbc journalist has said that Cohen once talked about the experience of still working with the song: “I filled two notebooks and I remember being in the Royalton Hotel, on the carpet in my underwear banging my head on the floor and saying, ‘I can’t finish this song’.”6 Several internet sites claim that over the years Cohen has written around 80 different stanzas for Hallelujah. Even in more recent years, he has sung different variations on several big concert tours, and just in the many authorized and unauthorized recordings that are available on the internet, you can hear and see considerable variation in both choice of text and methods of performance. Today, more than 30 years after Cohen created his first edition and more than 20 years after Buckley released his Hallelujah, a remarkably large number of reputable artists have produced their versions of the song.7 The range in this group of artists is wide, with Bob Dylan, Britney Spears, Rufus and Martha Wainwright, Justin Timberlake and Nick Cave as some of the best known. In 2008, Alexandra Burke won the American X-Factor with a forceful performance, resulting in the fastest-selling single in history which landed at the top of hit lists in a number of countries. At the same time Buckley’s version topped many hit lists again, whereas k.d. lang even sang one of her ­versions at the opening ceremony of the winter Olympics in 2010 in Vancouver, Canada.8 It is apparent that the song in its many forms has achieved a special position. And while one artist after another appropriates the song and achieves more or less success with it, Buckley’s version is essentially the basis of them all. There is no standard concept for such things, but it must be reasonable to speak of Buckley’s Hallelujah as a super hit. The lyrics that he uses are important in the following discussion, so here they are: Well I heard there was a secret chord That David played and it pleased the Lord But you don’t really care for music, do ya? Well it goes like this, the fourth, the fifth, 5 Columbia-SONY, CK80188. 6 A. Connor, ‘Smashed Hits’, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7787355.stm [accessed Oct. 10, 2011]. 7 Several internet sites estimate that around 100–120 established artists have placed their versions on the net. 8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e26D3w5Glqk [accessed Oct. 3, 2011].

The Broken Hallelujah

The minor fall, and the major lift The baffled king composing hallelujah. Hallelujah, hallelujah Hallelujah, hallelujah Your faith was strong but you needed proof. You saw her bathing on the roof her beauty and the moonlight overthrew ya. And she tied you to her kitchen chair And she broke your throne and she cut your hair And from your lips you drew the hallelujah Hallelujah, hallelujah Hallelujah, hallelujah Baby I’ve been here before I’ve seen this room and I’ve walked this floor You know, I used to live alone before I knew you And I’ve seen your flag on the marble arch And love is not a victory march It’s a cold and it’s a broken hallelujah Hallelujah, hallelujah Hallelujah, hallelujah Well there was a time when you let me know What’s really going on below But now you never show that to me, do ya But remember when I moved in you And the holy dove was moving, too And every breath we drew was hallelujah Hallelujah, hallelujah Hallelujah, hallelujah Maybe there’s a God above But all I’ve ever learned from love Was how to shoot somebody who outdrew you And it’s not a cry that you hear at night It’s not somebody who’s seen the light It’s a cold and it’s a broken hallelujah

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Hallelujah, hallelujah Hallelujah, hallelujah9

Cohen, David and the Book of Mercy

For anyone familiar with the Judeo-Christian traditions, it is impossible not to see the most obvious biblical allusions in this text. The Old Testament David was known for his spirited harp-playing and for his unrestrained love for Bathsheba, the woman he happened on, bathing on a roof.10 Furthermore, according to tradition, he was the main author of The Book of Psalms, from which the laudatory “hallelujah” stems. Thus there is no doubt as to what is the source of Cohen’s “baffled king composing hallelujah.” And because the connections to the David figure are so linked to the Old Testament world, she who “destroyed your throne and cut your hair” immediately acquires a name and history: Samson, the judge, was the leader of the Israelites, but he lost his super-human strength when his wife Delilah cut off his hair while he was sleeping. After that, the Philistines captured and blinded him.11 Cohen has said that when he released his album with the first Hallelujah in 1984, he had worked on the song for at least two years. In 1984 he released Book of Mercy, which he must have been working on at the same time. It would go far beyond the scope of this article to discuss this work in its entirety, but we must briefly look at certain aspects of the text that are particularly relevant to Hallelujah. The book is dedicated to “my teacher.” It is generally known that this teacher is Joshu Sasaki Roshi, the leader of a branch within Zen Buddhism which Cohen had been close to for many years and whom he continued to work with.12 In fact, he was ordained a Rinzai Zen monk in 1996, notably without regarding it as a break with his Jewish background.13 He has stated on several occasions that Judaism is his religion, while Zen Buddhism is for him a method.14 9 10 11 12 13

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J. Buckley, Grace & Other Songs. Guitar Tabulature Edition (London: Wise Publication, 1999), pp. 40–47. 1 Samuel 16.14–23, 2 Samuel 11.2–26. Judges 16.4–31. I.B. Nadel, Various Positions: A Life of Leonard Cohen (London: Bloomsbury, 1996), p. 8. In many places Cohen has talked about the importance of his Jewish upbringing, for instance, about the grandfather, who was a Rabbi and read Jewish scripture with his grandson, and whom he liked a lot being with. See Nadel, Cohen, pp. 19–22. One of his more recent references to the relationship between Judaism and Zen Buddhism is in an interview with Larry Rother, ‘On the Road, for Reasons Practical and Spiritual’, The New York Times, Feb. 2, 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/25/arts/music/25cohe .html?_r=0 [accessed Nov. 10, 2011].

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Book of Mercy is a collection of 50 short prose texts characterized by metaphorical, lyrical, mystical language. The texts are rarely more than a page long and most are shorter, and for the most part, clearly religious. There is a recurrent lyrical “I,” and occasionally, a “he.” Nonetheless this “he” appears to be identical to the “I,” looking at and referring to himself. Thus the book gives the impression of having one main character, a lyrical I, and this lyrical I addresses a “you,” the Lord of Unity, Father of Mercy, god, or it mentions the king, The Name.15 In the 10th text, he says, “From Abraham to Augustine, the nations have not known you, though every cry, every curse is raised on the foundation of your holiness.” Thus, it is God in both the Jewish and Christian traditions that is implied, but the lacking ability of humans to know this God is emphasized in the same text as well: “Who can tell of your glory, who can number your forms, who dares expound the interior life of god?” The I-person presents himself right from the start as the singer seeking a god, a king he once knew of, but who does not often let himself be seen. Only after the I-person has begged for mercy is there an extremely hesitant opening up: Slowly he yields. Haltingly he moves toward his throne. Reluctantly the angels grant to one another the permission to sing. In a transition so delicate it cannot be marked, the court is established on beams of golden symmetry, and once again I am a singer in the lower choirs, born fifty years ago to raise my voice this high, and no higher.16 From his own soul, he hears a song that just gets more and more powerful as he tries to tone it down. He also tries to search among words, but finds no comfort there. He asks again for mercy and ends up leaving “to rescue the angel of song.” With her – the angel in his text is a ‘she’ – he finds a kingdom in which “Adam is mysteriously free” and in which his seeking for words continues.17 It is impossible to read these texts without experiencing that there is a strong similarity or even identity between the singer’s “I” and Cohen himself. This connection is already present in the quote from Text 1 above: Cohen himself was 50 years old when he published Book of Mercy. Thus one can easily conclude that when the lyrical I is afraid that what he is doing just derives from 15

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Leonard Cohen, Book of Mercy, (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1984). Cohen consistently writes “god” in lower case. The implications of this practice cannot be dealt with here, but when I directly quote from or refer to Cohen’s text, I write god in lower case while in other contexts I conform to the Judeo-Christian tradition of using the upper case for the initial letter G. The first text. Both texts 1 and 2 refer to a king and his court. Texts 3 and 4.

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superficial skills, it is Cohen himself who longs to create “holy art.” “When will I sing to your mercy? […] Oh draw me out of an easy skill into the art of the holy.” And the dream of this holy art is connected with the idea of higher dimensions where music nearly becomes a part of the divine presence that both reveals itself and hides itself: Lift me up with a new heart, […] for the sake of your name which rings in heaven and hell, through worlds destroyed and worlds to come, tangible music shining between the hidden and the perceived.18 And then there is the blessed moment when art perhaps actually becomes holy: You let me sing, you lifted me up, you gave my soul a beam to travel on. You folded your distance back into my heart. You drew the tears back into my eyes. You hid me in the mountain of your word. You gave the injury a tongue to heal itself.19 There is also another connection that is established in Book of Mercy. Throughout the 50 texts, an outer story, a person’s path through life, is hinted at in glimpses. Text 7 opens with a statement of this type: “I pushed my body from one city to another, one rooftop to another, to see a woman bathing. I heard myself grunt, I saw my fingers glisten. Then the exile closed around me. Then the punishment began.” Initially, these lines are nearly incomprehensible, but keeping the story of David and Bathsheba in mind, it is clear what they refer to. In the extremely melancholy text 12, in which the lyrical I is bitter and depressed by the cost of believing in the midst of the world’s misfortune, comes the memory of the plagued David: “Find me here, you whom David found in hell.” In text 20 the biblical king appears again: “Bathsheba lies with David, apes come down from the Tower of Babel, but in my heart an ape sees the beauty bathing.” The echo of Jewish lore is also heard here: in a Jewish fairy tale it is said that one of the peoples who had contributed to building the Tower of Babel was punished by God by being made into apes. Furthermore, apes are a symbol of sexual appetite.20 Both being punished by God and 18 19 20

Both quotes are from text 24. Text 19. http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/2279-babel-tower-of [accessed Dec. 11, 2011]. The story of the Tower of Babel in which God scatters mankind all over the earth and gives them different languages appears in Genesis 11.1–9, but here there is no mention of apes.

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knowing forbidden desires in one’s heart are hinted at in the ape symbolism. Another allusion to David turns up in text 25, in which the I-person has settled in Jerusalem and opened a bookstore with his wife, who sells dual language editions of The Book of Psalms. The image of a man who goes from rooftop to rooftop in order to see a beautiful woman bathe is a clear indication of a certain identification between the biblical David and the book’s singer-I. It speaks of the experience of a common ground – on several levels – and the same thing also applies to the tormented person who screams from the abyss, and to him who knows the ape in his own heart, once again attracted to destructive temptation, the bathing woman. There is no doubt that there is a strong parallel in Book of Mercy between King David of the Bible and the book’s own lyrical I, and there is a corresponding parallel between the biblical Book of Psalms and Cohen’s Book of Mercy. The Book of Psalms is the scripture that the I-person in Book of Mercy gives to the world through his bookstore business, but what the I-person actually writes is in fact Book of Mercy. Furthermore, the similarity between the two works is apparent. They are texts written by the individual who in his loneliness, sorrow and despair calls out to god and carries with him the horror of being excluded from the divine, while struggling with his negative tendencies. But they are also texts about the longing for the divine that empowers the individual to do good works, texts about life’s happy times when one turns to god to express joy and gratitude. And there are texts about mercy.21 There is a strong paraphrastic similarity between The Book of Psalms and Book of Mercy. But there are about three thousand years between them. Cohen’s book is obviously modern, and it does not tell about the old Israelitic king’s life and thought. On the contrary, it is characterized by its concern with an inner journey, which has also extended itself in biographic time: from the outset of a quest for a nearly lost god up to the moment when the journey has temporarily come to an end because a new understanding has been achieved: I lost my way, I forgot to call on your name. The raw heart beat against the world […]. Your name unifies the heart, and the world is lifted into its place. Blessed is the one who waits in the traveller’s heart for his turning.22 In more ways than one, Book of Mercy obviously has roots in a biblical tradition, in relation to which it also clearly takes liberties. In text 1, the I-person is joyous at the prospect of again being a “singer in the lower choirs.” There is a classic 21 22

Nadel points out that the texts in Book of Mercy are numbered without title in the same way as The Book of Psalms. See Nadel, Cohen, p. 258. Text 50.

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notion of “higher and lower choirs,” and this refers to choirs of angels. They do not stem from the Bible, but from Pseudo-Dionysus’ description of nine hierarchies of angels from about 500 A.C.23 In the medieval Christian church these are granted a strong position as singing – and playing – choirs.24 The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri from the beginning of the 14th century becomes one of the most important channels for handing down the tradition of the singing hierarchies of angels, even up to our own time.25 The protagonist in Dante’s book is taken on a journey to the hereafter: through Hell, Purgatory and up to Paradise. The descriptions of the hierarchies are mainly found in “Paradise,” song 28, 1–96, while the angelic song is mentioned several times during the trip to Paradise. We can practically assume that Cohen has read this book. Ira B. Nadel, the biographer who has worked closest with Cohen, describes the bedroom in his childhood home, such as it still was at the time of the writing. In the room there were two bookcases with books which clearly belonged to Cohen, among which was The Divine Comedy.26 Thus, it is reasonable to assume that the singer in Book of Mercy rejoices at having regained a place in the lowest choirs of angels. There is possibly also another connection to Dante’s work in Book of Mercy. Around the throne that is referred to in text 1 is “the court established on beams of golden symmetry,” and in the next text we hear about “The swept courtyards of the king.” “The Courts of Heaven” are spoken of in the 31st song in “Paradise,” and in the 32nd song, it says that “Unto the canticle divine responded/From every part the court beatified.”27 23

Angels are important figures in Judaism as well, for example, in kabbalistic traditions, and the idea of angel hierarchies is also found here, although they are quite different from those described in the writings of Pseudo-Dionysus. But notions of singing angels do not enter here. They are connected with the Christian church. See L. Blau and K. Kohler, ‘Angelology’ in JewishEncyclopedia.com, http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/ 1521-angelology [accessed Jan. 10, 2012]. 24 Dionysus the Areopagite, Mystical Theology and the Celestial Hierarchies (Whitefish: Kessinger Publishing, 2003) [accessed Jan. 10, 2012]. See also “Pseudo-Dionysus the Areopagite” in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ pseudo-dionysius-areopagite [accessed Jan. 10, 2012] on his influence on the church’s angelology; and G. Iversen, Laus angelica: Poetry in the Medieval Mass, edited by J. Flynn and translated by W. Flynn (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010), Chapter 5, “To Sing with the Host of Angels. Sequences of the Early Period,” pp. 127–159, in particular, p. 137 and pp. 149–157. 25 According to the book, this journey in the hereafter is said to have taken place in 1300, whereas the book was written between 1308 and 1321, the year Dante died. 26 Nadel, Cohen, p. 15. 27 Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, translated and annotated by A. Mandelbaum (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980–1982), 3 vols., vol. 3.

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Furthermore, there are certainly many stories about encounters with angels both in the Old and New Testaments, but “the angel of song” does not derive from there: she is Cohen’s own invention. Thus, she could be understood as an allegorical figure, but in the context of the book, she becomes more than that: she comes into being through the text as a constantly singing divine presence within the lyrical I. And the search for closeness to the divine, which pervades the whole book, is correspondingly inextricably tied to the song as medium. The main theme is not identical in Book of Mercy and Hallelujah. The book centers on an inner existential and religious quest, the song on difficult love. But there are striking similarities between them: the general allusions to biblical stories and persons, an I-person who is created through substantial references to the biblical King David, and who has the ability to create music with a particularly transcendent force. These similarities contribute to the book functioning as a sounding board for the song. How particular listeners experience and interpret the different versions of Cohen’s Hallelujahs will of course vary, but the notion that there is a basic, underlying, religious mood in most of them can hardly be contested. Not least, the repeated hints of references to a religious world support this idea. One of the stanzas that he still sings mentions the misuse of God’s name (“You say I took the name in vain/I don’t even know the name”), while another refers to ­standing before “The Lord of Song,” which, of course, is not a biblical reference, but obviously one of Cohen’s own names for god. I did my best, it wasn’t much I couldn’t feel, so I tried to touch I’ve told the truth; I didn’t come to fool you And even though it all went wrong I’ll stand before the Lord of Song With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah.28 In most versions a choir sings the hallelujah refrains in a decidedly gospel style. This contributes to the experience of listening to religious music, both in terms of content and style. Some commentators see the erotic aspect of the song as an opposition to the religious. This interpretation is odd, not least because the most erotic moment in the song is tied to divine presence.29 This is not about a religious song in the usual sense. Rather, it seems as if all the Cohen variants are connected with a life project that unfolds within the space of the religious quest and consciousness that we encountered in Book of Mercy. 28 29

Both stanzas are included in a number of versions of Cohen’s text, see, for example, http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/leonardcohen/hallelujah.html [accessed Jan. 30, 2012]. See my own interpretation of the song below.

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The Holy Hallelujah

“Hallelujah” comes from Hebrew and means “praise Yah,” with Yah coming from the first syllable of the Hebrew word ‫( יהוה‬in Latin jhvh), which represents God’s name, the Old Testament Yahweh. The word came into the JudeoChristian tradition through the Old Testament Book of Psalms which consists of 150 poetic texts called psalms. Psalmos stems from the Greek and means “the music of the lyre” or “songs accompanied by the harp.” Within biblical research there are different theories about who the authors could have been, but traditionally, they are attributed to David and even often referred to as “David’s Psalms.” The beginning of Psalm 148 is an example of how ecstatic the praise expressed through hallelujah can be: Halleluyah! Praise Adonai from the heavens! Praise him in the heights! Praise him, all his angels! Praise him, all his armies! Praise him, sun and moon! Praise him, all shining stars! Praise him, highest heaven, and waters above the heavens!30 Hallelujah appears in as many as 20 of the Psalms. Moreover, it only appears in one other place in the Bible, that is, in Revelation 19. 1–4. The use of hallelujah, then, is a rarity in the biblical scriptures, despite the fact that it is extremely important in Christian liturgies, and it is one of the most common expressions for praise in the Christian cultural tradition. This phenomenon may well suggest that being able to abandon oneself to outbursts of praise and joy is a fundamental human need, which still finds new expression in a rich hallelujah tradition. “Jubilation” (Latin jubilus or jubilatio, or jubilare in the verbal form) is in itself a concept that has been connected with this tradition, but the meaning of the word has changed content.31 In the earlier texts in which the word jubilus appears, the reference is to wordless song in general, and often to work songs, in particular in connection with farming the land. Marcus Aurelius’ 30 From The Complete Jewish Bible (cjb), http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search =Psalm+148 [accessed April 24, 2014]. 31 The following account of jubilus is based on J.W. McKinnon, “Jubilus,” Grove Music Online www.oxfordmusiconline.com [accessed Nov. 30, 2011].

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teacher gives an account of how workers began the harvesting of grapes while they “sweated and rejoiced [iubilavimus],”32 while others point out that jubilus is uttered in a “rustic” voice. And then when Silius Italicus (c. 28–c. 103) writes about the Cyclops who delights in the Sirene’s jubilation [iubila],33 a very different form of expression in song is hinted at. Augustine of Hippo (d. 430) is one of the first to write about the jubilus tradition of the farmers as a phenomenon, and in particular his comment on Psalm 32 is important in this context. Here he connects the joy of the earth’s rich gifts in a good harvest to a worker’s song: What is it to sing in jubilation? To be able to understand, to express in words, what is sung with the heart. For they who sing, either in the harvest, in the vineyard, or in some other arduous occupation, after beginning to manifest their gladness in the words of songs, when filled with such joy that they cannot express it in words, they turn away from the syllables of words and proceed to the sound of jubilation. The iubilus is that sound which signifies that the heart gives birth to what it cannot utter. And whom does jubilation befit but the ineffable God?34 It is worth noting that what Augustine describes here is in itself an experience of transcendence – the soul is lifted into another state where the wordless song is not only an indicator of this heightened state, but also the fulfillment of it. It is not difficult to see a connection between the language of praise in Psalm 148 above, where it seems as if language tries to surpass its own limits, and Augustine’s account of the soul that bursts out in song when words no longer suffice. However, despite the fact that Augustine writes about this in a commentary on the Psalm, he does not indicate that there is a direct connection 32 Fronto, Ad M.Caes. iv.6, quoted in McKinnon, “Jubilus.” 33 S. Italichus, Punica, xiv 475, referred to in McKinnon, “Jubilus.” Tiberius Catius Asconius Silius was a roman orator, politician and poet. He left behind him the work Punica, on the second Punic War. 34 “Quid est in iubilatione canere? Intellegere, uerbis explicare non posse quod canitur corde. Etenim illi qui cantant, siue in messe, sive in uinea, siue in aliquo opere ferventi, cum coeperint in uerbis canticorum exsultare laetitia, ueluti impleti tanta laetitia, ut eam uerbis explicare non possint, auertunt se a syllabis uerborum, et eunt in sonum iubilationis. Iubilum sonus quidam est significans cor parturire quod dicere non potest. Et quem decet ista iubilatio, nisi ineffabilem Deum?” Augustin, Ennarationes in psalmos, XXXII, II, 8. Latin text and English translation quoted in E. Østrem, “The Ineffable,” in N.H. Petersen, C. Clüver og N. Bell (eds.) Signs of Change. Transformations of Christian Traditions and their Representation in the Arts, 1000–2000 (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2004), pp. 265–292 (279–80).

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between jubilus and hallelujah here or elsewhere.35 As Nils Holger Petersen has shown, Augustine discusses jubilus several times within the frame of commentaries on the Psalms, thus making it possible to see how the germ of recognition of this connection is already there. Already in the early Middle Ages there is an element in the hallelujah song in the mass called jubilus, and Petersen also shows how Amalarius of Metz (c.775–c.850), one of Charlemagne’s most prominent bishops, is the first one to explicitly connect this understanding of jubilus as we know it from Augustine to hallelujah as a liturgical genre: The alleluia verse touches the cantor in his interior, so that he may think about in what way he owes to praise the Lord or to rejoice in him. This jubilatio, […] includes in us a mental state when the utterance of words will not be necessary […].36 It is clear that the cries of hallelujah have inspired in particular those who have composed music for the mass and the liturgy of the hours. Early on, hallelujah becomes a part of the mass and thus belongs to a standard repertory that is known to everyone, and it is drawn into a number of other liturgical and compositional genres. Hildegard of Bingen’s (1098–1179) flourishing Alleluia, O virga mediatrix is one of the first hallelujah compositions we have by a composer whose identity we know.37 The hallelujah choir is not just a genre that is connected to the rather distant past. Among the more noteworthy hallelujahs of the last century are the hallelujah parts of the third movement in Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms, composed over Psalm 150 in 1930; L’ascension, four meditations for orchestra by Olivier Messiaen from 1932–33, with two hallelujah movements: “Alleluias sereins d’une âme qui désire le ciel” and “Alleluia sur la trompette, alleluia sur la cymbal.” And in recent years, there is notably Arvo Pärt’s “Alleluia” from his Berliner Messe from 1990 and his Alleluia-Tropus for 35

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For this and the following see these survey articles on the hallelujah tradition: K. Schlager, “Alleluia,” The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, London: Macmillan Publishers, 1980; vol. 1, p. 268–274, og J.W. McKinnon, “Alleluia,” Grove Music Online www .oxfordmusiconline.com [accessed Dec 11, 2011]. See also D. Hiley, Western Plainsong: a Handbook (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), pp. 130–139. N.H. Petersen, “Liturgy and Musical Composition,” Studia Theologica 50 (1996), pp. 125–143, in particular pp. 129–130. The Amalarius quote is from I.M. Hanssens, ed., Amalarii Episcopi Opera Liturgica Omnia, I – III, Studie e testi 140 (Città del Vaticano: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1948–50), II, p. 304, quoted in Petersen 1996, pp. 139–140. O.C. Mather, “The Music of Hildegard von Bingen,” The Orb: Online Reference Book for Medieval Studies, http://the-orb.net/encyclop/culture/music/mather.html [accessed January 30, 2012].

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mixed choir and string orchestra, which had its premiere in Hagia Irene in Istanbul, June 7th, 2010. It would exceed the limits of this article to continue along these lines, but two important aspects are relevant in this context: hallelujahs expressed in music constitute such a prominent cultural tradition that most people in our contemporary Western society are to some degree familiar with this genre; and a number of works, like the hallelujah chorus from Händel’s Messiah, constitute a particularly rich musical expression of praise and jubilation.

Buckley’s Broken Hallelujah

In strong contrast to the signals that the title sends, Buckley’s recording opens with a deep sigh. Then follows soft tones strummed on a guitar and then the song.38 Already in the first sentence of the first stanza, David, who played the harp so beautifully that the Lord rejoiced, is introduced. With reference in the last stanza to the king who composes his Hallelujah, the identification of the biblical King David is clear, and the guitar’s role as David’s harp becomes apparent. The solitary singer who just accompanies himself on the guitar becomes an image of David and the harp, and throughout the song, the fingering on the guitar identifies it clearly as a harp.39 But the biblical story has been altered: it is in Cohen’s story that the Lord rejoices over David’s playing. In the biblical version, his playing heals, but we are not told what the Lord might think of it. And as in the many stories from antiquity on music with magical powers, there is a built-in mystery: what created this strange force in music? Here the singer has discovered the answer to the riddle: the text says that it is a series of four chords: “the fourth, the fifth, the minor fall and the major lift.” The song is in C major, and the chords that are played are F major, G major, a minor and F major again, that is, the basic chords that belong on the 4th, 5th and 6th level in the C major. While “fourth” and “fifth” are standard designations for chords, the two others are not. “The minor fall” in all likelihood points to the minor third connection to C major, while the “major lift” rather refers to

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I have not succeeded in finding any published sheet music that has the whole musical weave of sounds included in the recording, and most likely it doesn’t exist, so in the following pages the reference is to the recording. The allusions to biblical characters and to Buckley’s guitar as a harp have certainly been mentioned earlier, for example on several websites, but the interpretations I offer of this are entirely my own.

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the melody line in the phrase, which reaches its highest point exactly on that chord. So in reality there is nothing at all covert about this series of chords, but Buckley sings the melodic rise with an intensity that makes it appear like a picture of Saul’s soul that is raised from the deep. As I hear it, the whole first stanza radiates musical beauty. However, already after a two-note upbeat, on the first beat in the first bar, several measures before the text begins, that is, a harmony creeps in that is traditionally anything but beautiful, a tritone. It keeps recurring throughout the whole prelude. In the Middle Ages the tritone interval was experienced as being so ugly that it became known as “the devil in music,” and throughout music history quite up to our own time the interval has kept an aura of representing devilish forces that seek to divide man from God. When Buckley opens with the tritone harmony, he plays so softly and quietly that one can almost not hear what he is playing, but it keeps returning insistently. Before the first stanza is over, we have in fact confronted the idea of a God-chosen king and musician who has access to the magical, healing powers of music, and what’s more, we have an example of how these powers begin to function – but before this, as an introduction to the whole song, we have as well the symbol of the forces that separate man from the divine, that is, the symbol of destruction. The narratorial perspective changes in the course of the song. First, we hear the lyrical I that tells about David and his playing with a casual comment on a “you” who does not like music. Then, in the second stanza, the text goes on to mention another “you” whose mirroring of David is obvious: “You saw her bathing on the roof/Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you,” but the sweetness of the magical first meeting is instantly substituted by images of the destructive force in a given love relationship. Here the “you” of the stanza has been tied to a kitchen chair, lost his power and had his throne destroyed. While the daily triviality of the kitchen chair places the story solidly in our own time, the reference to Samson functions as a violent image of the desertion and destructive power of the beloved. The outside perspective that lies in “you” disappears: in the third stanza and in the rest of the song, it is again “I,” and it becomes clear that it is about the singer’s own despairing love story. The images of the destructive relation continue, and the singer-I directs his attention to the woman who destroys and degrades him. With reference to the fact that her flag waves from Marble Arch, the description of the relationship as a war zone is reinforced, as triumphal arches connote the celebration of victors in war.40 Here he is with his own 40

Marble Arch was constructed as a copy of Constantine’s triumphal arch in Rome, built in memory of his victory over Maxentius in 312. It is also related to L’Arc de Triomphe in Paris

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experience of love: “And love is not a victory march/It’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelujah,” and the refrain’s returning hallelujahs is here given an explanatory description: with this statement, the song is placed in the context of the great Hallelujah tradition, and the expression “cold and broken” is clarified musically. The hallelujah of the refrain consists of three notes up and three notes down, with the mournful minor third as the basic interval, over and over again. When we compare this with the magnificent and exuberant musical jubi­ lation  we know from the many great Hallelujahs, we see exactly how Cohen’s/Buckley’s minimalistic refrain becomes a unique metaphor for the little, nearly completely stifled, celebration, which nonetheless contains a love that does not let itself be entirely crushed, but which is aching, bitter and resigned at the same time. In the fourth stanza, the I-person remembers a time before the destructiveness began: “[…] remember when I moved in you/And the holy dove was moving, too/And every breath we drew was Hallelujah.” As we know, there are two stories in particular about doves that are central in the biblical tradition. The first one stems from the story of Noah and the Flood, in which the Ark has stranded on Mount Ararat, after which Noah sends out a dove which comes back with an olive branch, which shows that the earth is again about to become fertile, and which thus becomes a symbol of divine mercy and compassion.41 The other example is the story of the christening of Jesus in Jordan, when the heavens open and the Holy Spirit descends on him in the form of a dove.42 The dove from the christening in Jordan has become a sign of God’s presence, and the “holy dove” of the song thus tells of a time when the very act of love was one of mercy and holy presence. After this stanza, the hallelujah refrain does not end as usual; the interlude on the guitar is developed further and is lifted to ever higher registers, reminiscent in the end of a harp being played. When it finally sounds as if the song has faded out, there is yet another stanza. It is again resigned, like before: all the I-person has learned from love is to shoot the one who is faster on the draw than himself. And the notes we hear are neither a shout nor a rejoicing. They are still a cold and broken hallelujah, says the text. But the hallelujahs that follow tell another story. First, there are the usual three notes up and three notes down, but then something is set free: where one expects the refrain to end, Buckley sings on,

41 42

from 1806, ordered by Emperor Napoleon after the victory in the Battle of Austerlitz, which itself was a copy of Titus’ triumphal arch in Rome from the first century, which had been constructed in memory of his many victories in war. Genesis 6–8, in particular, 8:8–11. Mark 1.9–11; Luke 3.21–22; Matthew 3.16; John 1.32–33.

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shouting out a hallelujah that extends slightly upwards, then another, continuing with a little, embellished melody until a soft, beautiful, sustained note on the syllable ‘lu’ over undulating fingering brings the song to an end. The hallelujahs in the finale are still a far cry from the mighty rejoicing we know from works like Händel’s Messiah, but they have grown richer than the repetitive, three-note ones that otherwise characterize the song, and they are clearly not cold. More than anything else, they have a quiet, introverted and peaceful beauty. In a version in which the musical language is as significant as it is here, it is impossible to believe that this turn is without meaning. The text does not tell of any event that could be a basis for change. Nonetheless, something has happened, and we as listeners have heard it: the singer-I has played his harp and sung like David. In a sense, one can say that Buckley’s Hallelujah is a realization of both the old myth of David and the harp, and of the dream of Book of Mercy’s singer: “You let me sing, you lifted me up, you gave my soul a beam to travel on. […] You gave the injury a tongue to heal itself.”43

The De-Sanctified Sacred Space

As far as I can see, Buckley’s version of Hallelujah is not a song with a religious theme. It refers to biblical stories and figures, but they don’t appear to be part of a personal religious universe of the I-person in the song. Just one quick comment in passing touches on the question of belief, in the last stanza: “Maybe there’s a god above.” As the question is not pursued, it does not appear to be essential. Furthermore, the song lacks the small sprinkling of references to religion that are so important in Cohen’s versions of Hallelujah. Without being placed in the context of belief, the hallelujah refrain loses its force as a religious statement, and the outburst that it is “cold and broken” supports the experience of the missing connection to sacred roots. The different biblical references are, however, not without forcefulness; in a sense, they get their power through a mystical investment. Jan Assman’s theories of cultural memory can shed light on parts of this process. What he calls das kulturelle Gedächtnis – cultural memory – includes the handing down of meaning and it is directed at Fixpunkte – points of reference – from the past. However, cultural memory can never embrace the past as it actually was. Cultural memory is dependent on symbolic figures to which these notions are attached. Myths can be such notions, and the division between myth and 43

See p. 332, n. 19.

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history is insignificant in the process during which cultural memory is being developed. For the cultural memory it is not the actual history, but the remembered history that is important. Assmann refers to Exodus, the story of Israel’s exodus from Egypt, which, entirely independent of its historical veracity, is Israel’s founding myth and a cornerstone in the cultural memory of the people. Through memory, history becomes myth. This does not make it unreal – on the contrary, this is what makes it real, in the sense that it becomes a lasting, normative, and formative power.44 Assmann still speaks here of myths in such a way that they can be understood as invested with sufficient truth to remain normative, and he refers to a specific story that is so rich in metaphysics that it functions at the same time as a long religious narrative. The same doubleness is clearly present in the biblical stories that Cohen alludes to in his text. These stories clearly function as myths, which, among other things, are formative on a certain level for the development of identity, but they are no longer normative, either regarding world view or way of living. They have lost their status as being authoritative; however, they function as potent instruments of communication, precisely because they are a part of cultural memory. The many brief references – the king who composed, the one who got his hair cut off and throne destroyed, the holy dove – all point towards long, complex, well-known stories. In that way, concise language becomes extremely charged; just a few words open up universes of meaning that at the same time have great emotive force. Freedom to appropriate the original stories is also apparent. We meet the adoring and singing king-poet, the crushed and suffering Samson, the holy dove that blesses carnal lust – not the ruthless warlords and conquerors that Samson and David also were, not the terrifying God who, before sending the dove, nearly annihilated the earth in anger. However, whether or not the myths as they are used by Cohen and Buckley have lost their normative authority, it is clear that for these poets and musicians they have veracity in the sense that they say something essential about people’s lives. The significance of cultural memory is also central for my further interpretation of Buckley’s Hallelujah, and in particular connected with aspects of the function of the altar in Jewish and Christian cult. In the book, The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion, Mircea Eliade discusses among other 44

J. Assmann, Cultural Memory and Early Civilization: Writing, Rememberance, and Political Imagination. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 6–7, 37–38.

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things a Jewish tradition in which the construction of holy space takes place according to the instructions of God himself and becomes the prerequisite for his presence. The mover is Yahweh, who through Moses orders the Israelites to make a sanctuary in which he can live among them. When the old King David gives his son Solomon the plan for the building of what was to become the famous temple, David says that the plan has been inscribed in him by God himself. Later, Solomon says to God about the same temple: “Thou hast commanded me to build a temple upon your holy mount, and an altar in the city where thou dwellest, […].”45 Nils Holger Petersen shows how Old Testament texts were used in medieval liturgy as a basis for understanding the altar as the privileged place for God’s presence, and furthermore, how it was two aspects of the altar that constituted it as the holiest place. The story from Genesis 28.11-22 about Jacob’s dream, in which he meets God, is central to this understanding. The morning after the encounter has taken place, Jacob erects a stone in memory of the meeting, a stone which in later interpretive tradition is understood as an altar. The sacredness of the altar rests, then, both on the notion that this is the place where God is encountered, and the notion that this is the place such encounters are commemorated, a lieu de mémoire. This understanding becomes paradigmatic as well for medieval practices in the Christian church, where the altar becomes the place in which Christ’s sacrifice takes place, as also for the place in which man commemorates this sacrifice.46 What is important in this train of thought in this context is that the altar in medieval liturgical tradition assumes its holiness not only through some form of direct divine presence, but also through its function as a symbolic – and cultural – commemoration of the encounter with the divine. My further interpretation of Buckley’s Hallelujah is parallel to this old understanding of the altar. Throughout the song there is a series of invocations of elements from a religious tradition: David, Bathsheba, Samson, the dove, the guitar that ever more clearly becomes the harp, and not least, all the repetitions of the hallelujah call that in a way takes on a nearly mantric character. Gradually, there is a sense of an imaginary space being built, nearly stone by stone, and it takes shape as a holy space by virtue of the cultural memories carried by these symbolic elements. In Christian tradition there is a general consensus that the altar is not only the holiest spot in the physical church, but that its holiness radiates 45 46

M. Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion (Orlando, Florida: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Publishers, 1987), p. 60. N.H. Petersen, ‘The Role of the Altar in Medieval Liturgical Representation’, in Image and Altar 1000–1300 ad, ed. Poul Grinder-Hansen (Copenhagen: Publications of the National Museum, 2014), 15–25.

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out into the room and fills it. This means that the holy space is not limited to the altar, where the sacraments take place; it also emanates out into the surrounding church, a place where people go with their sorrows and joys, to give thanks or to seek comfort, to find hope and strength. The holy space that Buckley constructs through his Hallelujah is de-sanctified; the connections to the divine roots are broken in what constitutes this space. But it is still a space of joys and sorrows, where people can ponder the conditions of their lives, where they can learn to let go of dreams that have vanished and create energy to go forward – and where through atonement or acceptance they can find their way to the broken hallelujah of their lives. But as it once was for Saul and David, it is still the song and the playing that mystically provides this liberation and lifts the soul.

part 4 Transcendence and Presence in Church Architecture

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Introduction to Part 4 Margunn Sandal In this part, we take up the question of the significance of church architecture for the access to transcendence. Seen from an historical perspective, the church building is connected with a wide range of phenomena, from sociopolitical forces and religious power relations to processes of cultural identity and architectural regionalism. Church-building has given rise to and continues to involve problems that are normative, theoretical-architectural and philosophical in nature. Within this web of discourses, theoretical and philosophical approaches can contribute to elucidating challenges involved in the build­ing of churches. The disciplines of architectural and art history are able to shed light on the significance church architecture has had in different periods of time. Without knowledge of the history of theology and liturgy, however, these approaches will be incomplete. When architectural and art historical, theological and philosophical disciplines, with their different research traditions, are brought together, the relationship of the church building to transcendence becomes a complex question. The Christian tradition is marked by ambivalence in relation to the church as a building. This ambivalence is reflected in everyday speech. The word ‘church’ can mean both the Christian congregation, possibly the church as an institution, and the concrete church building or structure. The same is true in German (Kirche), Norwegian (Kirke), Italian (Chiesa), French (Église) and Spanish (Iglesia). All the words have the same multiple meaning. However, in ecclesiology, the theological field of study that deals with the church, recent Protestant theology has mainly been concerned with the church as a congregation of believers and not as the place or the building where the faithful gather. A pragmatic, functionalist attitude is typical of how the church building is seen in Protestant tradition. This attitude can already be found in Luther: There is no other reason for building churches, if indeed there is a reason, it is solely so that Christians may assemble to pray, to hear the Gospel and to receive the sacraments. When this reason no longer is there, these churches should be pulled down, as other buildings are when no longer of use.1 1 M. Luther, “Kirchenpostille 1522. Epistel am St. Stephans Tage.” in D. Martin Luthers Werke. Kritische Gesamtausgabe. Schriften 61 volumes (Weimar: Böhlau, 2003–2007; unchanged

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Luther’s pragmatic attitude to the church as a building is connected with his view of the Word as the constitutive basis of the church: I think everyone knows that ‘God’s house’ means where He dwells, and that He dwells where His Word is, be it in the field, in church, or on the sea. On the other hand, where His Word is absent, He is absent, nor is His house there; but there the devil dwells, though it be a church of gold blessed by all the bishops. But where God’s house is, there is pure blessing, grace, and life, as the psalmist says: ‘We bless you from the house of the Lord.’ You are blessed, because you are in the Lord’s house. God says (Ex. 20.24): ‘In every place where I cause My name (that is, My Word) to be remembered, I will come to you and bless you.’2 Thus, it is neither the building nor the place that makes God present, but the Word. This liberates the faithful from particular spaces and places as locations for God’s presence. But it does not prevent the congregation from coming together in a particular place and in a particular building, which Luther also knew. He was probably involved in the designing of the chapel in Schloss Hartenfels in Torgau. During the consecration of the chapel in 1544, he gave a sermon in which he underlined Christian freedom with regard to holy feasts and holy places, at the same time as he emphasized that it is both practical and necessary to allow time and space for the gathering of the community. Now this multitude must have some kind of a room and its days or hours, which will be convenient for the listeners. Therefore God very wisely arranged and appointed things, and instituted the holy sacrament to be administered in the congregation at a place where we can come together, pray, and give thanks to God.3

reprint of the 1883–1909 edition) [henceforth wa], Band 10/I, p. 252. Our translation (“Church Postil 1522. Epistle on St. Stephen’s Day”) “Denn keyn ander ursach ist kirchenn zu bawenn, ßo yhe eyn ursach ist, denn nur, das die Christen mugen tzusammenkomen, betten, predigt horen und sacrament emphahen. Und wo dieselb ursach auffhoret, sollt man dieselben kirchen abbrechen, wie man allen andernn hewßern thutt, […].” 2 M. Luther “Auslegung des 118. Psalms 1529–30” wa 31/I, p. 179. English translation (“Selected Psalms III. Psalm 118”) in Luther’s Works (Saint Louis, mo: Concordia Publishing House/ Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1955–1989) vol. 14, p. 103. 3 M. Luther “Predigt am 17. Sonntag nach Trinitatis bei der Einweihung der Schloßkirche zu Torgau gehalten (1544)” wa 49, p. 593. English translation (“Sermon at the Dedication of Castle Church in Torgau (1544)”), in Luther’s Works, vol. 51, p. 337.

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This pragmatic attitude has, nonetheless, not prevented Protestants from building magnificent, imposing church structures. K.E. Løgstrup brings this paradox to light, when he points out that we (as Protestants) “make much out of building a church that is necessary for the sake of regular church services,” but then adds that we must not imagine that this building activity is in the service of God’s Kingdom. We build churches for our own sake, Løgstrup says, and because we have so little faith. Magnificent church buildings are supposed to be ‘miracles’ or ‘works of power’ that strengthen a faltering faith.4 The question is, however, if this is everything. Are church buildings nothing more than a witness to a universal need for gratification and for ascertainable ‘miracles’? Can the building as a piece of architecture not give access to the mystery celebrated within its walls? Even though it is the Word and the sacraments that mediate between human beings and God, the Word must be preached and the sacraments administered in a place where the congregation can come together in order to receive them. Thus, there is a tension between this freedom from specific holy spaces and the dependency of the church service as a spatial event. Even though the Word is not tied to a specific place, the individual and the congregation of believers are always physically situated. The embodied individual is always located in a particular place and must receive words and sacraments in that place, no matter where that is. The church as a congregation of believers is, thus, both free and bound to the church as a specific building. Is this relationship between freedom and restriction simply a pragmatic question of functionality, or does it also have an aesthetic aspect that relates to the congregation’s experience of the transcendence that words and sacraments convey? Within ecclesiology there is an on-going, multifarious discourse on the church and its being. If we add to this discourse perspectives on what the church is as architecture, it may help to a better understanding of the church service both as a physically situated event and a situation-transcending event. In a Nordic context, it is natural to draw on the Norwegian architectural theorist, Christian Norberg-Schulz’ claim that the importance of architecture cannot only be seen in relation to practice; the significance of the building is also based on a relationship to place. What we build, he claims, reflects an understanding of our earthbound existence under heaven and our relationship to our natural environment.5 An approach to transcendence can thus be 4 K.E. Løgstrup, Kunst og etik (Copenhagen: Gyldendalske Boghandel. Nordisk Forlag, 1961), pp. 209–210. 5 C. Norberg-Schulz, Genius Loci.Towards a Phenomenology of Architecture (New York: Rizzoli, 1980), p. 50.

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constructed architecturally, based on the relationship between building and nature, such as landscape, vegetation, light, wind and water, etc.6 From this point of view church architecture represents a different kind of discourse than those based on the understanding of church as congregation. The building is not just a physical shell around the congregation and its practice. It may express a surplus of meaning thanks to its architectural form, taking the relationship to nature as a point of departure. The field of tension between the church as congregation and the church as building makes it necessary to investigate the concept of transcendence both from an architectural and from a liturgical point of view. How these perspectives are related to each other is an ongoing question. Ambivalence in relation to the significance of church architecture can indicate that there are still discussions of how an approach to a surplus of meaning is to be understood. The theologian, Peter Hammond, summed up some of these traits in his book, Liturgy and Architecture.7 In Denmark, similar questions were treated in Kirkebygning og Teologi.8 The Swedish theologian Axel Rappe’s dissertation, Domus ecclesiae: studier i nutida kyrkoarkitektur, an exploration of the relation between the church as God’s house (Domus Dei) and the church as the place of gathering where the church service is celebrated (Domus Ecclesiae) has also been an important Nordic contribution.9 The three articles in this part examine the significance of the church building and its interior to the experience of transcendence on the basis of the philosophical, theological and aesthetic ‘project’: how can the church building as a sensory space give access to transcendence? This ties in closely with the question of what expression of transcendence can be coded into a church interior and a church building, and which historical, philosophical and theological assumptions we build our reflections on with regard to these questions. With “The Fullness of Space,” we are led into a theoretical-philosophical discourse on the approach to the transcendent. Ettore Rocca takes his point of  departure in Søren Kierkegaard’s understanding of “the moment” in The Concept of Anxiety (1844), which is interpreted as ‘the fullness of time’: the moment when the individual becomes free and is capable of doing good. 6 See also K.E. Ellefsen ‘A model practice’ in Jensen & Skodvin works 1995–2010, ed. K.E. Ellefsen (Oslo: Akademisk Publisering, 2010), p. 16. 7 P. Hammond, Liturgy and Architecture (New York: Columbia University Press, 1961). 8 Kirkebygning og teologi, eds. J. Exner and T. Christiansen (København: Gads forlag, 1965). 9 A. Rappe, Domus ecclesiae. Studier i nutida kyrkoarkitektur (Stockholm: Diakonistyrelsens bokförlag, 1962).

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Insofar as time also has spatial significance, Kierkegaard connects it with God who has the omnipotence to be able to retreat in order to make space for the others’ (our) freedom. Rocca elaborates on the spatial perspective by referring to the cabbalistic concept of zimzum (Hebrew), which means that God must contract in order to make room, ‘space’, so that creation can take place. Thus, Rocca sees a possibility for transforming the fullness of time into ‘the fullness of space’ and thus add a new interpretive potential to the church building. He argues that to design a church is not to build the house of God or to create a sacred space. On the contrary, it is to give space to man and his freedom. The task is to create an interior that represents God’s retreat in order to make room for us. On the basis of a Kantian-Hegelian understanding of symbols, it is further argued that the interior of the church approaches the sacred act symbolically, just as it is filled out with light architecturally – with theological emphasis on the light not created by human beings. Thus we are again led back to late antiquity and its both metaphorical and metaphysical reference to light. The Constantinian basilica took on the paradigmatic characteristic of ‘the fullness of light’ on the basis of a ‘theology of light’ which was inspired by Neoplatonism and played quite an important role in the Eastern church in rituals and in writing. In “Space, Wind and Light: On Transcendence and Early Church Architecture” Jens Fleischer discusses how the building’s presence, its sense of place gives man a memory-space and a possibility for a temporal orientation, which can be understood as a movement between past, present and future. This train of thought is developed on the basis of an historical perspective, taking its point of departure in the genesis of the Christian church building. In late antiquity, the Christian cult building turns inward as an architectural screen around the mystery – and at the same time it is rooted in the world in order to speak to the world. Fleischer compares Heidegger’s view on the Greek temple, which is exposed to all kinds of weather, but which also reflects man’s changing circumstances and Christian church buildings, from among other places Syria. In these buildings the exterior ornamentation seems to speak to the world about the building. This may be seen in a particular kind of leafy capital, termed ‘windblown acanthus’ which appears in several Syrian churches on the exterior as well as in the interior. This expressive form of capital plasticity can be interpreted as an elucidation of the spiritual church, a paradise where the spirit (God’s spirit) is a moving force. Light is a similar but visible force, which at the same time points back to the not-created light and, with a patristic expression, ‘inhabits’ the space. The ‘wind’ and light give the space a transcendence that can elaborate the idea of ‘the fullness of space’ from an architectural point of view.

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In “On Earth As It Is in Heaven: St. Hallvard’s Church and Abbey” Margunn Sandal takes up the new emphasis on sacrality in recent Norwegian churchbuilding projects. She finds that the building’s sacrality is connected both with liturgical practice and is distinguished from it. On the one hand, architecture is understood as spatially organizing the liturgical encounter between God and the world. On the other hand, she argues that the church building mediates this encounter in a way in which words, for example, cannot. The architectural expression of the sacred is rooted in the congruence between liturgical practice and the building, where place and act conjoin to create liturgy. This interplay between the church service and the place is put into the context of a close study of St. Hallvard’s Church and Abbey in Oslo, built in 1966. The liturgical practice for which this complex was built has been inspired by the liturgical revision of the Catholic Church and by the Franciscan tradition of piety. Sandal argues that the architecture does not exclusively find the basis for its form in the liturgy; the sacred space is also constructed poetically in relation to the natural environment and the site of the building. Her argumentation draws on Norberg-Schulz’ phenomenology of place. On this basis, it is examined how the building communicates a kind of spatial transcendence by dealing with our presence on earth and under heaven. Furthermore, it is argued that the architectural initiation of the transcending encounter between God and the world should be seen in light of a Franciscan spirituality. In this way, architecture, spirituality and liturgical practice resonate.

chapter 12

The Fullness of Space Ettore Rocca

The Fullness of Time

When I reread Søren Kierkegaard’s analysis of the moment in The Concept of Anxiety (Begrebet Angest, 1844) a few years ago, I became aware of something that I had not noticed before: the significance of space in Kierkegaard’s concept of the moment (Øieblik). It occurred to me that the moment is not only the origin of temporality, but also the origin of space. And even more radically, the moment can only be the origin of temporality as a result of its spatial function. This is what I will try to show in a close reading of a few pages of The Concept of Anxiety. Kierkegaard uses the concept of the moment to shed light on coming into being, the transition in which something comes into existence, and first and foremost, to shed light on the coming into being of freedom, which, from his point of view, is synonymous with the coming into being of faith. Kierkegaard’s interlocutor is Plato and his concept of exaiphnes in the dialogue of Parmenides. Plato proposes here eight hypotheses regarding the highest metaphysical entity: the one, to en. He introduces the term exaiphnes, the moment, in the third hypothesis of the dialogue, in order to explain how the one goes from participating in being to participating in non-being and vice versa, that is, how the one can come to be (gignesthai) and perish (apollusthai).1 Furthermore, to exaiphnes explains how it is possible to go from being at rest to being in movement. Plato’s answer is that transition is only possible through something that is timeless and placeless, i.e., outside time and space. To exaiphnes, the moment, must neither be at rest nor in movement, as one can only occupy space by being either at rest or in movement, so the moment must be outside space. And since the moment can neither be in the time belonging to rest nor in the time belonging to movement, it occupies no time whatsoever; hence, the moment must be outside time. The one’s emergence into being and its demise can only happen through something that is neither in time nor space.2

1 Cf. The Parmenides of Plato, ed. A.E. Taylor (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1934), 156a, p. 93f. 2 Cf. The Parmenides of Plato, 156c–157a, p. 94f.

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Kierkegaard is not interested in all types of transition, but only in the “leap” through which “the new is brought about.”3 And the new is here to be understood in its most eminent meaning as the moment in which freedom enters a person’s life. The moment is the point in time and space in which freedom goes from possibility to reality, from being a potential to being actual. That is why Kierkegaard criticizes Plato’s moment as being purely abstract,4 detached from any temporal and spatial root. The transition of the moment must be a “state” (“Tilstand”),5 life’s most significant state, and not, as in Plato, a non-state. In this way, Kierkegaard attempts to root the moment in time and space and even make it the origin of temporality – and of spatiality. The former (the moment as the origin of temporality) is well-known, while the latter (the moment as the origin of spatiality) is what I will attempt to demonstrate. First, time. The moment …is the first reflection of eternity in time, its first attempt, as it were, at stopping time. … The moment is that ambiguity in which time and eternity touch each other, and with this the concept of temporality is posited, whereby time constantly intersects eternity and eternity constantly pervades time.6 To make the moment understandable, time and eternity must be defined. Time is “an infinite succession,” “a passing by,”7 in which one does not have a foothold, a pivotal point from which one can articulate the past, present and future. The infinite series of points in time elapse, replace each other, one after another, all equal, inseparable. Kierkegaard calls this series of points in time Momenter, not Øieblikke, and notes that momentum in Latin comes from

3 “…det Ny kommer ved Springet”: Søren Kierkegaards Skrifter, eds. N.J. Cappelørn, J. Garff, J. Kondrup et al., 55 vols (København: Gads Forlag, 1997–2012), IV: Gjentagelsen, Frygt og Bæven, Philosophiske Smuler, Begrebet Angest, Forord (1997), p. 388 (hereafter, sks with volume and page number); English trans.: Kierkegaard’s Writings, eds. H.V. and E.H. Hong, 26 vols (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978–98), VIII: The Concept of Anxiety, trans. R. Thomte and A.B. Anderson (1980), p. 85 (hereafter, kw with volume and page number). 4 sks 4, 385; kw VIII, 82. 5 sks 4, 388; kw VIII, 85. 6 “Det er Evighedens første Reflex i Tiden, dens første Forsøg paa ligesom at standse Tiden. … Øieblikket er hiint Tvetydige, hvori Tiden og Evigheden berøre hinanden, og hermed er Begrebet Timeligheden sat, hvor Tiden bestandig afskærer Evigheden og Evigheden bestandig gjennemtrænger Tiden”: sks 4, 391f.; kw VIII, 88f. 7 “…den uendelige Succession…en Gaaen-forbi”: sks 4, 388f.; kw VIII, 85.

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movere, move. Thus, that which defines the moments of time (“Momenter”) is “the merely vanishing.”8 However, Kierkegaard also defines a concept of space corresponding to this empty concept of time, thus allowing us to understand abstract time with our imagination. In representation, this infinite disappearing corresponds to “an infinite, contentless nothing.”9 “Incidentally, this is space,” writes Kierkegaard in the footnote and adds, “for abstract thought, time and space are entirely identical (nacheinander, nebeneinander).”10 Space is here an infinite nebeneinander of points that do not have any dimensions. The sum of infinite points without dimensions is zero, a space with zero dimensions. Abstract time corresponds to spatial nothingness. Thus we have one time-space concept, one concept that has both a spatial and a temporal significance. The same thing happens with the concept of eternity. Temporally, eternity is “the present in terms of an annulled succession,”11 an eternal presence that never disappears. Spatially, the eternally present corresponds to the omnipresence.12 With regard to eternity as well, the spatial and temporal conception become one. Eternity is a spatial and a temporal concept. This eternity, which is all times and all places, is neither divided into moments of time; nor does it contain empty space. Kierkegaard does not say so, but eternity’s absolute light can easily be turned into the absolute nothingness of darkness. Time and eternity touch each other in the moment. Only in the moment does the triad of past-present-future become possible. The moment is called “the fullness of time” (“Tidens Fylde”),13 pleroma tou chronou, an expression which is borrowed from Galatians 4.4. In Paul, the fullness of time is the moment when God sent his Son into the world, the moment when Christ was born, when “the Word became flesh” (John 1.14). In contrast, in The Concept of Anxiety the fullness of time is the moment when the individual becomes free, is set free, becomes capable of doing good. It can be said that the personal fullness of time is the appropriation of Christ as the fullness of time, so that this fullness only achieves its effective meaning in the individual at the moment of appropriation. 8 9 10 11 12 13

“…den blotte Forsvinden”: sks 4, 391; kw VIII, 88. “…et uendeligt indholdsløst Intet”: sks 4, 389; kw VIII, 86. “Dette er forøvrigt Rummet. … Tid og Rum ere for den abstrakte Tænkning aldeles identiske (nacheinander og nebeneinander)”: sks 4, 389; kw VIII, 86. “…det Evige er det Nærværende som den ophævede Succession”: sks 4, 389; kw VIII, 86. sks 4, 389; kw VIII, 86. sks 4, 393; kw VIII, 90.

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From here the dimensions of time are opened. For the individual set free, “the future…reappears as the past.”14 The past returns as a new memory, as an expanded memory, a memory that for the first time has a complete consciousness of sin. The eternal in time also expands into the future, opening up to the future, so that the eternal takes the form of the future. When we think about the eternal, we think about the endless future. Despite freedom, the future cannot avoid bringing with it anxiety, because relating to the possibility of losing freedom is inevitable. In this way, present, future and past are one in the moment.

The Fullness of Space

Does the moment also have a spatial meaning? Do the dimensions of space also become possible only in the moment? Is there anything called the fullness of space? We would expect so as both time and eternity – the concepts that constitute the moment – have spatial significance. The first example of spatiality mentioned next to the temporal is in the passage in which Kierkegaard has to explain the “metaphorical word” (“billedligt Udtryk”) moment. He refers to a place in Esaias Tegnér’s Frithiof’s Saga (1825), in which Ingeborg looks out over the sea for her beloved Frithiof. She looks in the direction in which he sailed off and disappeared on the horizon, and she longs for his return despite her engagement to another. The glance of her eye is the moment. Kierkegaard writes: “Nothing is as swift as a glance of the eye, and yet it is commensurable for the content of the eternal.”15 Here the eternal is not meant to be God, but rather Ingeborg’s time-transcending love and longing. The problem is whether one can find an adequate illustration of the complete content of the eternal. Kierkegaard finds this illustration in the glance, or better, in what the glance can contain. The glance is fleeting, claims Kierkegaard, and its flight is an indication of time, but it can be objected that a glance is first and foremost a perception absorbing space: a glance embraces a space. The moment is Ingeborg’s glance across the sea: this means that the moment is a spatial synthesis of elements. However, it is not just any spatial synthesis, but precisely the spatial synthesis that makes full and adequate space for the eternal.

14 15

“…det Tilkommende…kommer igjen som det Forbigangne”: sks 4, 393; kw VIII, 90. “Intet er saa hurtigt som Øiets Blik, og dog er det commensurabelt for det Eviges Gehalt”: sks 4, 390; kw VIII, 87, translation modified.

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Kierkegaard claims that only in the moment (Øieblik) is the division of time into present, past and future possible. But he adds that this division takes place as “the moment [Moment] is s p a c e d, but thereby the infinite succession comes to a halt.”16 To space means to make a space in between. The moment (Øieblik) is then the origin of space: a moment (Moment) of time which has no dimensions (as we noted above), becomes spaced, stretched out, expanded, so as to acquire dimensions, volume, depth. Space comes into being. By expanding the moment (Moment), the moment (Øieblik) makes space for the content of the eternal.17 Furthermore, the extended and expanded and thus spatial capacity of the moment is confirmed when Kierkegaard writes about freedom and the demonic. The moment is freedom that comes into being. “Freedom is precisely the expansive.”18 In contrast, unfreedom is “closure” (“indesluttet”), and it “makes itself a prisoner.”19 Denying freedom means allowing space to shrink. Thus, the moment, the coming into being of freedom, not only has spatial significance, but it makes the dimensions of space possible. However, the crucial point is whether there is actually anything called fullness of space. What does fullness of space – pleroma tou topou – consist of? In a later entry in his journal from 1846, Kierkegaard touches on the relationship between space and freedom in a context of the theology of creation. His problem is how God’s omnipotence can be united with man’s freedom. One is bound to think that it is one or the other: God’s omnipotence or human freedom. Kierkegaard turns the problem around and answers that it requires the 16 “…man s p a t i e r e r et Moment, men derved er den uendelige Succession standset”: sks 4, 389; kw VIII, 85, translation modified. 17 In his “Postscript” to Kierkegaard’s The Lily of the Field and the Bird of the Air (Lilien paa Marken og Fuglen under Himlen), N.J. Cappelørn has pointed out the spatial significance of Kierkegaard’s claim that “Joy is the present time”: “And joy is precisely the present time, Kierkegaard adds, placing all the emphasis on the present time. In the first printing of the book the emphasis is expressed not with italics but by using a stretched-out font. True, in accordance with the typographical conventions of the times, this was the usual way of expressing emphasis, but in this case it has a significance of its own. The present time is stretched out in the sense that it has space within itself, volume, and in particular the volume of time; the present has e x t e n t as opposed to the now, which is a point and is fleeting and entirely devoid of extent in time and space”: N.J. Cappelørn, ‘Postscript’ to Søren Kierkegaard, The Lily of the Field and the Bird of the Air. Three Godly Discourses, with monotypes by M.L. Engelhardt, trans. B.H. Kirmmse (New York: Elizabeth Harris Gallery, 2013), p. 90. 18 “Friheden er netop det Udvidende”: sks 4, 425; kw VIII, 123. 19 “… Ufriheden netop gjør sig selv til en Fange”: sks 4, 425; kw VIII, 124.

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highest possible power to make someone free and independent. “The absolutely greatest thing that can be done for a being, greater than anything one could make it into, is to make it free. It is precisely here that omnipotence is required.”20 It is part and parcel of omnipotence to be able to restrict itself in order to make space for the other’s freedom. To dispense freedom and to retreat are one and the same thing. “Only omnipotence can take itself back while it gives away, and this relationship is indeed the independence of the recipient.”21 The inconceivable thing is that omnipotence is able to produce “the most impressive thing of all, the totality of the visible world” and “the most fragile thing of all, a being that is independent vis-à-vis omnipotence.”22 Absolute human power always wants to make the other dependent, is always colliding with the other’s independence, “only omnipotence can create independence.”23 Even if we want to give each other space and make each other free and independent, we cannot avoid causing dependence. Even the best parent, the best spouse or the best teacher cannot give the other space and freedom without rendering the child, the beloved or the pupil dependent. The idea that humans can allow each other perfect independence necessitates hiding the exertion of power. Here the paradox is also that humans can only become independent by means of the power they “owe absolutely everything.”24 Omnipotence expresses itself by giving space, making room. And this gift is not a means by which God abandons man, but, by making space, God is present. This free room corresponds to what I call the fullness of space, that is, the expanding space where freedom – the moment, the fullness of time, faith – can appear. Freedom is a spatial expansion that is against the laws of entropy. Freedom is filling up the space created by God. In that way, man is dependent on God’s stepping aside and on God’s gift. Space has not, in fact, been created by man and his freedom, but freedom fills up the created space. This does not mean, however, that the created space is like a pre-existing box that man has to 20

21 22 23 24

“Det Høieste der overhovedet kan gjøres for et Væsen, høiere end Alt hvad En kan gjøre det til er at gjøre det frit. Netop dertil hører Almagt for at kunne gjøre det”: Journalen nb, no. 69, in sks 20: Journalerne NB-NB5 (2003), p. 57; English trans.: Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, eds. N.J. Cappelørn, A. Hannay et al., 12 vols (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007-), IV: Journals NB-NB5 (2011), p. 56. “Kun Almagten kan tage sig selv tilbage medens den giver hen, og dette Forhold er jo netop Modtagerens Uafhængighed”: sks 20, 58; Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, IV, 57. “…det Imposanteste af Alt: Verdens synlige Totalitet…det Skrøbeligste af alt: et lige overfor Almagten uafhængigt Væsen”: sks 20, 58; Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, IV, 57. “…kun Almagt kan gjøre uafhængig”: sks 20, 58; Kierkegaard’s Journals and Note­ books, IV, 57. “…absolut skylder Alt”: sks 20, 58; Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, IV, 57.

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fit into. Space only becomes real for man at the moment it is filled up. It is the space that can contain the individual. “Eternity is…in space as generosity,” writes Løgstrup.25 The gift is freedom, independence; God makes himself known by giving freedom as a gift, by giving liberty of movement. And this is the greatest imaginable gift, the embodiment of God’s relation to man. It means that freedom is not unlimited; it is not the ability to expand infinitely and boundlessly. As fullness is spatial, it is limited.26 How can we relate Christology, which the concept of fullness of time alluded to, to the theology of creation, which the journal entry from 1846 represents? The two levels should be understood in the opposite order. By making room for man, God creates space, a space for human anxiety and expansion. To expand in that space, to fill up that space, to be free, means that man can achieve his fullness of time and thus attain his fullness of space. In this way, time and space become real for the individual. And as mentioned above, the individual fullness of time builds on the Christological fullness of time. A parallel can be drawn between Kierkegaard’s journal entry and the Kabbalistic concept of zimzum. According to the Kabbalistic thinker Isaac Luria (1534–1572), God, or rather Ein-Sof, the infinite, had to contract himself to 25

“Evigheden er…i rummet som gavmildhed”: K.E. Løgstrup, Skabelse og tilintetgørelse. Religionsfilosofiske betragtninger. Metafysik IV (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1978), p. 42. On space and transcendence in Løgstrup, cf. S.A. Christoffersen, ‘Tid, rom og transcendens hos K.E. Løgstrup’, Slagmark. Tidsskrift for idéhistorie, 57 (2010), pp. 107–122. 26 This interplay between independence and dependence appears more than once in Kierkegaard in diverse contexts. Here are some examples: “…to be dependent on God, completely dependent – that is independence. … Dependence on God is the only independence, because God has no gravity; only the things of this earth, especially earthly treasure, have that – therefore the person who is completely dependent on him is light.” “…at være afhængig af Gud, ganske afhængig, det er Uafhængighed. … Afhængighed af Gud er den eneste Uafhængighed, thi Gud har ingen Tyngde, det har kun det Jordiske og især jordiske Skatte, Den, der derfor er ganske afhængig af ham, han er let”: sks 8: Opbyggelige Taler i forskjellig Aand (2004), p. 279f.; English trans.: kw XV: Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits (1993), p. 181f.  In Works of Love, Kierkegaard interprets the command “You shall love” in the sense that love is “eternally made free in blessed independence” (“…frigjort i salig Uafhængighed”). On the other hand, this independence “depends only on love itself” (“kun afhængig af Kjerligheden selv”): sks 9: Kjerlighedens Gjerninger (2004), p. 36 and 46; English trans.: kw XVI: Works of Love (1995), p. 29 and 39.  And in The Sickness Unto Death the self becomes itself in its independence when it “rests transparently in the power that established it” (“grunder gjennemsigtigt i den Magt, som satte det”): sks 11: Sygdommen til Døden (2006), p. 130; English trans.: kw XIX: The Sickness Unto Death (1980), p. 14.

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make way for creation, for something that was not Ein-Sof. This withdrawal, zimzum in Hebrew, which resembles an inhalation, must come before any form of revelation or creation. In that way, God limits himself and makes room for the primordial space, called tehiru, so that creation can take place. Without this contraction, no space, and without space no possibility for creation to take place.27

Church and Space

What is the relationship between the space of the moment and the space inside the church? I speak of the space inside the church because it is the religious space with which I have most experience, and because it is the space related to the philosophical and theological thoughts presented up to this point. The moment fills its space, which is the space of freedom and which is a sacred space. And this space can be anywhere. It is a space that is independent of a particular physical space, as for example the church interior. The church interior is not capable of creating the fullness of space, that is, the sacred space, in its architectural design alone. Is the physical space of the church then useless in relation to the space of freedom? Perhaps it is not useless, but the church interior doesn’t seem to be the only place in which the fullness of space can be found. However, the architectural act also makes space. Let us consider Leibniz’ relational definition of space: an order of coexisting things (“ordre des Coexistences”).28 Space is not something that exists in itself, but it is a relation between things. Therefore, the architectural act is a way of arranging things that exist at the same time. By arranging things, elements and materials, the architectural act makes space. But it is not enough to arrange elements in order to carry out an architectural act. Something more has to happen: arranging co-existing things must serve a need in a living being, a person or an animal. Seen from that point of view, there is no difference between designing a church or an elephant house at the zoo. In both cases, it is a question of arranging co-existing things – that is, making a space – to meet needs. 27

28

Cf. G. Scholem, Kabbalah (Jerusalem: Keter Publishing House, 1988), pp. 129–135; G. Scholem, Die jüdische Mystik in ihren Hauptströmungen (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1967), pp. 285–290. Leibniz’ letter to Samuel Clarke from February 26, 1716, in G.W. Leibniz, Opera philosophica omnia, Faksimiledruck der Ausgabe 1840 (Aalen: Scientia, 1959), p. 752.

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What need must the design of a church interior meet? There are rituals that have to be carried out, the church service, communion, baptism, funerals, song, etc., which are codified and which require more or less specific practices. And there must be room for a certain number of people. However, we still have the feeling that we have not mentioned the decisive factor. Perhaps, the need to be met is, in fact, the need for fullness of space, for freedom, for finding room and being embraced, for receiving God’s greatest gift. How can a church meet the need for fullness of space? For centuries, architecture has been regarded as the art that best reflected the order of creation. In the Renaissance – in the tradition that extends from Alberti to Bramante and to Palladio – it was believed that man could create a building (first and foremost, an ecclesiastical building) on the basis of the proportional laws by which God had created the universe and the creature representing the accomplishment of the universe, the human being. The spatial relations in a church were considered the true relations, that is, the harmonious relations that constitute the world and are described in Plato’s Timaeus.29 This dialogue was combined with the Old Testament and the Gospels, as is clearly expressed in, for example, Francesco Giorgi’s memorandum written in 1535 on the occasion of the construction of the San Francesco della Vigna Church in Venice.30 Moreover, these relations were good relations because God only created the good, and the human senses could only perceive these good relations as beautiful ones. Thus, the architect was assumed to be capable of creating the true and sacred and beautiful space according to God’s ideal. Leon Battista Alberti defines beauty, concinnitas, as “the absolute and fundamental rule in Nature,” and the architect must follow it precisely.31 However, these relations were primarily ori29 Plato, Timaeus, 31b–36d. 30 ‘Francesco Giorgi’s Memorandum for S. Francesco della Vigna’, reproduced in Rudolf Wittkower, Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism, 4th ed. (Academy Editions: London, 1988), pp. 138–140. 31 “…si satis constant, statuisse sic possumus pulchritudinem esse quendam consensum et conspirationem partium in eo, cuius sunt, ad certum numerum, finitionem collocationemque habitam, ita uti concinnitas hoc est absoluta primariaque ratio naturae postularit. Hanc ipsam maiorem in modum res æaedificatoria sectatur”: Leon Battista Alberti, De re aedificatoria (Florence: 1485), IX, 5; English trans.: “If this is accepted, let us conclude as follows. Beauty is a form of sympathy and consonance of the parts within a body, according to definite number, outline, and position, as dictated by concinnitas, the absolute and fundamental rule in Nature. This is the main object of the art of building, and the source of her dignity, charm, authority, and worth”: On the Art of Building in Ten Books, trans. J. Rykwert, N. Leach and R. Tavernor (Cambridge, Mass.: The mit Press, 1988), p. 303.

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ented towards reason and not towards the senses. The senses were just a bridge to the mental place in which beauty could be understood and decoded: the intellect. According to this view, the church was God’s house, as the tabernacle was God’s abode on earth in the Old Testament. In Exodus 25.8–9, the Lord tells Moses that the Israelites should “…construct a sanctuary for Me, that I may dwell among them. According to all that I am going to show you, as the pattern of the tabernacle and the pattern of all its furniture, just so you shall construct it.”32 Giorgi comments that the model for the sanctuary is God’s universe and the church should resemble the creation by following its proportions so that God can live in it. And rightly so, because it was necessary that the particular place should resemble His universe, not in size, of which He has no need, nor in delight, but in proportion, which He wills should be not only in the material places, in which He dwells, but particularly in us of whom Paul says, writing to the Corinthians: “Ye are the temple of God.”33 The dream of being able to create the sacred space, that is, God’s abode, with the aid of the theory of proportions fell apart in the 18th century. With its theoretical distinction between the good, the true and the beautiful, the birth of modern aesthetics is a sign of the demise of this dream. I regard any attempt at reviving the dream of a unity between the good, the true and the beautiful as a return to a pre-modern state. It may be important to reread Hegel’s interpretation of classical architecture. Contrary to Renaissance interpretation of classical architecture, Hegel claims that there is a division between means and goal in classical architecture. While the Egyptian, pre-classical architecture, which Hegel terms autonomous, wanted to express the holy directly in the architectural structure, the Greek world becomes conscious of a religious need which cannot be satisfied by the architectural space. Therefore, architecture becomes the means to achieve a goal outside itself. For example, the goal is God’s image in the form of a statue and the architecture delivers the environment, the wrapping for the statue.34 The architecture serves a spiritual content, a religious content, in this 32 33 34

Trans. New American Standard Bible. ‘Francesco Giorgi’s Memorandum for S. Francesco della Vigna’, p. 138. “…die Architektur nur das Mittel der Umgebung, der Hülle usf. liefert”: G.W.F. Hegel, Werke, 20 vols (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1970), XIV: Vorlesungen über die Ästhetik II, p. 268; Eng. trans.: “…architecture provides only the means, i.e. the environment, the

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case the worship of the statue, which has nothing to do with the architectural, geometrical language. It is interesting to note that both the holiest place in the Hebrew temple and the cell with the god’s statue in the Greek temple were absolutely dark rooms and thus uninteresting from an architectural point of view. Architecturally, the most important thing is what surrounds the most holy or the cell; the most important thing architecturally is the structure hiding what is most holy. I think that we can still use Hegel’s considerations for maintaining that the church as an architectural space cannot create the fullness of space or create space for the fullness of time. In other words, the church as space cannot satisfy the need or the desire for the holy by creating the holy. As with other higher or spiritual needs, an architectural space cannot satisfy the needs as such, but it can give a framework that allows the needs to be lived out. The architect who designs a church interior must attempt to create a frame for the need of the fullness of space, knowing full well that there are many other possible frames than the church interior.

Perceiving God’s Retreat, Perceiving the Fullness of Space

That the architect can only create a frame for the need of fullness of space may sound like a very limited result. However, creating a frame means just that: making room for the religious need, making space for the need for fullness of space. Thus, the very architectural act contains a reference to God’s original retreat in order to make space. The crucial point here is a shift in paradigm. To design a church interior no longer means designing God’s house, but designing a space that represents God’s retreat. The task is no longer to create God’s space, the sacred space; on the contrary, the task is to show that God makes room, makes space for man and his freedom. I do not walk into God’s house, but into a house in which God gives me space, where God can contain me. The consecutive question is whether one can represent God’s retreat and the fullness of space spatially. And how? Is God’s retreat and the fullness of space something that can be seen, felt or generally perceived? It is obvious that this cannot be seen, felt or perceived, like a book, a tree or a building. How, then, is it possible to make room for something that cannot be perceived by the senses? In the words of Kant, God’s retreat and the enclosure, etc.”: Aesthetics. Lectures on Fine Art, trans. T.M. Knox, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), II, p. 632.

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fullness of space would be an “idea of reason,” that is, “a concept which only reason can think, and to which no sensible intuition can be adequate.”35 It would then be on an equal footing with other ideas of reason, such as God or freedom: concepts which do not allow for a direct sensory perception that can prove their reality. Seeing a cat is enough to make the concept of cat real, but what about God? Kant claims that the only possibility for illustrating something that cannot be perceived is to express it “symbolically” in an “indirect presentation.” Here one takes a sensory perception that can be traced back directly to an empirical concept and refers it analogically to another concept that cannot be illustrated directly. In this way, writes Kant, a machine can symbolize an absolutist state; a living body can symbolize a democratic state. That the symbol is not a direct presentation of a concept also means that there is always an imbalance, a disproportion between the symbolic expression and that which is expressed. This disproportion is, however, the richness of the symbol. At times it is possible to express ideas of reason as what Kant calls an “aesthetic idea.” The aesthetic idea can be regarded as an extension of man’s ability to create symbols. An aesthetic idea is strictly speaking not an idea, but a representation created by our imagination, a representation “that occasions much thinking though without it being possible for any determinate thought, i.e., concept, to be adequate to it, which, consequently, no language fully attains or can make intelligible.”36 There is a strange parallel between the idea of reason and the aesthetic idea. The idea of reason is a concept that cannot find an adequate figurative presentation; the aesthetic idea is a figurative expression that cannot find an adequate concept. However, an aesthetic idea can be the only way in which we can illustrate an idea of reason and thus lend it an indirect and analogical reality. Let us, for example, take the idea of God, expressed as an aesthetic idea. The aesthetic presentation never fully covers the idea of reason that it wants to express; otherwise it would allow a direct perception of a concept, like a perception 35

“…ein[] Begriff[], den nur die Vernunft denken, und dem keine sinnliche Anschauung angemessen sein kann”: I. Kant, Werkausgabe, 12 vols (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1974), X: Kritik der Urteilskraft, § 59, p. 295; English trans.: Critique of the Power of Judgment, ed. P. Guyer, trans. P. Guyer and E. Matthews (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 225. 36 “…unter einer ästhetischen Idee aber verstehe ich diejenige Vorstellung der Einbildungskraft, die viel zu denken veranlaßt, ohne daß ihr doch irgend ein bestimmter Gedanke, d.i. Begriff adäquat sein kann, die folglich keine Sprache völlig erreicht und verständlich machen kann”: Kant, Kritik der Urteilskraft, § 49, p. 249f.; English trans.: Critique of the Power of Judgment, p. 192.

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of a cat in relation to the concept of cat. This means that the idea of reason itself becomes indefinite when it is expressed as an aesthetic idea. On the other hand, the aesthetic idea expands the concept by making it concrete and by giving it a quantity of associations without being able to define the exact boundaries of the concept. As mentioned, the aesthetic idea “occasions much thinking.” Hegel captured the ambiguous nature of the symbol by emphasizing that expression and meaning in the symbol are only partially coincidental. An expression can symbolize more than one meaning; and a meaning can find several symbolic expressions.37 Even though symbolic art for Hegel does not reach the perfection of classical art, it constitutes the form of art that Hegel at times identifies as sublime art.38 It should, however, be noted that this reflection on the symbol is different from Schelling’s concept of symbol in The Philosophy of Art, in which the symbol is Ineinsbildung, the complete and mutual interpenetration of the real and the ideal, of the particular and the universal, of form and content. The symbol alludes to nothing other than itself.39 It is also different from Gadamer’s understanding of the symbol in Truth and Method. Here the relationship between the symbol’s expression and content is totally arbitrary; the symbol can only refer to that which it symbolizes if one already knows the symbol’s code. A crucifix, a flag, a uniform are Gadamer’s examples of symbols. They function as substitutes in relation to the values they 37 38

39

G.W.F. Hegel, Werke, XIII: Vorlesungen über die Ästhetik I, pp. 393–397; English transl.: Aesthetics, I, pp. 303–306. “Jenseits der in solcher Versöhnung geschehenen Vollendung der Schönheit in der klassischen Kunst liegt die Kunst der Erhabenheit, die symbolische, worin die der Idee angemessene Gestaltung noch nicht gefunden ist, vielmehr der Gedanke als hinausgehend und ringend mit der Gestalt als ein negatives Verhalten zu derselben, der er zugleich sich einzubilden bemüht ist, dargestellt wird”: Hegel, Werke, X: Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften im Grundrisse 1830. Dritter Teil, § 561, p. 369f.; Eng. trans: “On the further side of the perfection (which is reached in such reconciliation, in the beauty of classical art) lies the art of sublimity – symbolic art, in which the figuration suitable to the Idea is not yet found, and the thought as going forth and wrestling with the figure is exhibited as a negative attitude to it, and yet toiling to work itself into it”: Philosophy of Mind, trans. W. Wallace (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), p. 295. Cf. also Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Kunst. Berlin 1823. Nachgeschrieben von Heinrich Gustav Hotho, ed. A. Gehtmann-Siefert (Hamburg: Meiner, 1998), p. 135f. F.W.J. Schelling, Werke, ed. by Manfred Schröter, 13 vols (München: Beck und Oldenbourg, 1927–59), III: Schriften zur Identitätsphilosophie 1801–1806 (1927), Philosophie der Kunst, § 39, pp. 426–433; English trans.: The Philosophy of Art, trans. D. W. Scott (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989), pp. 45–50.

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stand for, but they add nothing to the content. In Gadamer’s words, symbols “do not mean an increase of being for what is represented.”40 In Gadamer’s understanding, the symbol cannot be a work of art. Thus, the Kantian concept of the symbol that I use here is neither Gadamer’s external relation between form and content, nor Schelling’s perfect fusion between them. There are a few pages in Kierkegaard’s dissertation, On the Concept of Irony, that come as close as possible to Kant’s theory of the aesthetic idea, namely the pages in which Kierkegaard discusses ‘the mythical’ in relation to the speculative idea in Plato’s dialogues. Kierkegaard writes: The mythical becomes the metaphorical. It is the idea in a state of alienation, the idea’s externality – i.e., its immediate temporality and spatiality as such. … Weary of the dialectical work, the imagination begins to dream, and from this comes the mythical. During this dreaming, the idea either floats by quickly in an endless succession or it stands still and expands until infinitely present in space.41 The mythical is the immediate expression of the idea in time and space; it is the imagination’s dream of the idea; it is the idea that unfolds in time and expands in space. Furthermore, Kierkegaard distinguishes between the mythical and the poetic. The poetic is a product of a conscious creating activity. The mythical is only partially conscious of itself; it is not only a product of the imagination, but also of a power that overwhelms the imagination. The imagination is both active and passive in relation to the mythical, which has a duplicity; it is both reality and ideality. Myth cannot only be taken as reality, but, on the other hand, 40

41

“…bedeuten sie [Symbole] keinen Seinszuwachs für das Repräsentierte.” H.-G. Gadamer, Gesammelte Werke, 10 vls (Mohr: Tübingen, 1985–95), I: Wahrheit und Methode. Grundzüge einer philosophischen Hermeneutik (1986), p. 159; English translation: Truth and Method, 2nd ed., trans. G. Bowden and J. Cumming, revised by J. Weinsheimer and D.G. Marshall (London: Sheed & Ward, 1989), p. 154. “Det Mythiske er det Billedlige, det er Ideens Udlændighedsstand, dens Udvorteshed, [i.e.,] dens Timelighed og Rummelighed umiddelbar som saadan. … Træt af det dialektiske Arbeide lægger Phantasien sig til at drømme, og heraf fremkommer det Mythiske. Under denne Drømmen svæver Ideen enten hastende forbi i uendelig Succession, eller den staaer stille og udvider sig uendelig præsent i Rummet”: sks 1: Af en endnu Levendes Papirer, Om Begrebet Ironi (1997), 154; English trans.: kw II: The Concept of Irony with Continual Reference to Socrates (1989), 100f.

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since reflection has not as yet been permitted to annihilate it, the myth still exists, and just as it is taking its leave and departing, it raises itself up from the earth, but in farewell it reflects itself once again in the imagination, and this is the mythical presentation.42 Myth is always about to disappear – between naivety and reflection, between dream and a waking state. Even though the mythical only refers to verbal ­language, Kierkegaard’s reflections can be transferred to other modes of expression. How can God’s retreat and the fullness of space be represented by an aesthetic idea, or by the mythical? How can they be represented in space? How can one express God’s zimzum in space, God’s retreat in order to make man independent, to make room for freedom and faith, and at the same time express the idea that God’s retreat is not a way of disappearing, but is equal to God’s presence? How can one make room, in a sensory way, for the ability to expand in space, the ability to occupy the free space? This is the challenge of church interior design. The church interior seems to be more difficult to work with than other forms of artistic expression: the church interior cannot express something symbolic as can a painting or a sculpture or a poem or a video. A painting, i.e. a thing, can attempt to represent creation or God’s incarnation or the Day of Judgment according to the biblical text and an iconographic tradition. In the case of the church interior, however, it is a space – an arrangement between things – that must try to express the divine act of giving man the fullness of space. By making room for the fullness of space, one has to imitate the origin of any act of making space. The architectural act must try to be mimesis, an imitation of the original liberating act. I think that in the end, this is the aim of any church interior and in general of any room to be used for a cult. Here, however, this imitation is not a copy of anything that can be seen or understood somewhere, or that happened at some point in time. The original liberating act, God’s retreat, is in the words of Kant an idea of reason that cannot be seen or touched. One has to imitate something that is not before one’s eyes. It is not something that happened once in time, and thus was once in the present. It is – like the unreflective experience in Merleau-Ponty – “a past which 42

“…da Reflexionen endnu ikke faaet Lov at tilintetgjøre den, er Mythen endnu til, og netop i færd med at bryde op og drage bort, løfter den sig fra Jorden, men spejler sig til Afsked endnu engang i Phantasien, og dette er den mythiske Fremstilling”: sks 1, 155; kw II, 102.

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has never been a present.”43 Or, again with Merleau-Ponty, the original “is not of long ago.”44 A church interior can let us sense God’s liberating act in the space in a way which we otherwise could not experience. Gadamer writes: “The joy of recognition is rather the joy of knowing more than is already familiar.”45 In our case, the original liberating act is acknowledged sensory so that we expand our understanding of it. The imitation contains more than the original. On the other hand, it contains less than the original because it will never be the idea or ideal of the church interior; because it will expand our understanding in one direction at the expense of other directions; because it will take into consideration a particular place, time and tradition. Expansion and limitation go hand in hand. The church interior has the possibility of communicating spatially one of the strongest experiences a human being can have: to acquire free space and to fill up free space. It is an experience that will be mythical in the sense that it will always contain a duplicity: it will always be situated between dream and reality, between activity and passivity. The church interior, then, is not first and foremost God’s house in the sense that God fills up the room and nearly pushes me out, but it is the house in which God retreats and makes space for me so I can embrace the space and me in the space. This withdrawal can easily seem anxiety-producing, and the church interior can thus be the space in which I experience, more than anything, an empty space or the absence of God. This withdrawal is, however, only the first movement. The second movement that the space represents is the one expressed by a God who says, “Fear not. Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens (Matthew 11. 28). This space is for you to fill up; here you can be free.” Architecturally, the church interior is filled with light.46 Light that spreads out and fills the room is an image of the second movement: the individual that 43

“…un passé qui n’a jamais été présent”: M. Merleau-Ponty, Phénoménologie de la perception (Paris: Gallimard, 1945), p. 280; English trans.: Phenomenology of Perception¸ trans. C. Smith (London: Routledge, 1962), p. 242. 44 “L’Urtümlich, l’Ursprünglich n’est pas d’autrefois”: M. Merleau-Ponty, Le Visible et l’Invisible, ed. C. Lefort (Paris: Gallimard, 1964), p. 320; English trans.: The Visible and the Invisible, trans. A. Lingis (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1968), p. 267. 45 “Die Freude des Wiedererkennens ist vielmehr die, daß mehr erkannt wird als nur das Bekannte”: Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode, p. 119; English trans.: Truth and Method, p. 114. 46 For the meaning of light in early church architecture, see Jens Fleischer’s inspiring remarks in this volume in ‘Space, Wind and Light. On Transcendence and Early Church

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is open to freedom and dares to fill out the space. The light is not man-made, but by daring to fill out the space I make the light my expanding light. Similarly, freedom in the church interior is not man-made, but by appropriating it, it becomes my freedom. There are of course no rules or guarantees for the success of this symbolic expression as an aesthetic idea, just as it is not always possible to reach agreement on the degree to which it has succeeded. If it does not succeed, the church interior – the architectural frame – will steal space and deplete the room of the fullness of space. In that way, the church interior will necessarily be measured against that which it is making room for, even if the measuring stick is indeterminate, and it is impossible to evaluate. That is possibly the architect’s most hazardous task. But at the same time, it is the task through which the architectural act is expressed in its purest form. It is about nothing other than making room for the sensation of free space. To sum up: the church interior does not create the house of God, nor does it guarantee human freedom. However, by creating a frame around an act that some people experience as sacred, the church interior cannot avoid relating symbolically to (and thus being compared with) the sacred act that takes place in it. It can sort of obstruct the act by stealing space from it, or it can offer it space. If the church interior succeeds in giving space in a way that can be neither learned nor demonstrated, it suddenly becomes a spatially enriching accompaniment to the space-creating act that takes place there. Perhaps here again, Hegel is rearing his head. He interpreted the Christian or Romantic architecture as being both frame and symbol. I do not think we are done understanding what he meant by that.

An Example: Bruder Klaus Field Chapel

I conclude with a short reference to a church interior in contemporary architecture that made a strong impression on me when I saw it one cold December afternoon. It is not even a church, but a chapel; I am referring to Peter Zumthor’s Bruder Klaus Field Chapel in Wachendorf in Germany, consecrated in May 2007 (Figures 12.1 and 12.2). The chapel stands in a field in a hilly landscape, about a kilometer from the country road (Fig. 12.1). In the distance it looked like a tower, without my being able to clearly identify its form. While I was approaching it, I got changing Architecture’, in particular the final section entitled ‘The Abode of Light’. Furthermore, I wish to thank Jens Fleischer for fruitful response to earlier versions of my article.

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Figure 12.1

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Bruder Klaus Field Chapel, Peter Zumthor, Wachendorf, Germany, 2007 Photo: Ettore Rocca

impressions: now it looked like a triangle, now a square, now a hexagon. Only when I was very close could I sense that the tower was irregularly pentagonal. It is built out of concrete, but it is not the usual concrete construction. First, a tent-like construction consisting of 112 trunks of Norway spruce was built. The body of the chapel was formed with 50 cm-thick layers around this wooden tent. River gravel and reddish-yellow sand from the area together with white cement were used for the cement mixture. Afterwards, the wood was slowly burned, so the concrete inside took on the negative form of the trunks. A heavy triangular metal door opens into the small inner room (Fig. 12.2). Although we are dealing with a Catholic chapel, it is striking that there is almost a total absence of Christian signs. There is only a little wheel that is shaped like Bruder Klaus’ meditation symbol and a little bronze, half-length statue depicting the saint. There is not even a cross in the chapel. The chapel is there only to create a setting for stillness, prayer and meditation. And there is nothing cozy inside the chapel. Neither electric lights nor heating are available. The chapel does not even have the primary function of protecting you against rain and cold. There is a drop-shaped opening in the ceiling, letting rain in. That day it had rained so there were puddles in the middle. If it had snowed there would have been snow in the middle. There is only one

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Figure 12.2



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Bruder Klaus Field Chapel, Peter Zumthor, Wachendorf, Germany, 2007 Photo: Ettore Rocca

one-meter long bench to sit on. You are cut off from the landscape as there are no windows, but you can hear the landscape. The only thing you can see is a piece of sky above, sometimes also mirrored in the puddle, as was the case that day. A little light also seeps in through 350 tiny holes, which were necessary in the casting of the concrete and needed in order to attach the tree trunks to it.

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These holes were then filled with glass marbles. You enter onto a floor of zinclead, some of the heaviest material imaginable. The concrete has small vaults which were once the trunks of the Norway spruce. You can see the color of fire on the concrete and smell the smell of the fire in the room. Normally, fire is the enemy of a building; here it is tamed and used as a constructive and sensual element. Water in the form of rain and puddle, air in the form of a view to heaven, fire in the form of color and smell, earth in the form of lead and concrete – the four elements of nature are present. The priority is on the vertical connection between heaven and earth and even between sky and sky when sky mirrors itself in the water on the floor. The chapel forms a frame for prayer – a quick one on a raw December day – though not by protecting the religious act, but by exposing the praying subject to the open and unprotected space. In this way, it is as if the chapel makes room for the worshipper in spite of the confined inner space. In the chapel there is not only the relational space between the constructive elements but also a feeling of expansion of the space, in part because a relation is created to something that cannot be localized particularly clearly: heaven, earth – in the form of the surrounding landscape – and fire. The space does not symbolize anything definite, but reproduces the process that originally created the space. What is being symbolized and made sensory is the very act that created the space. In this way, the space of the chapel is a symbol of God’s retreat for the purpose of making man independent, of making room for freedom. In my opinion, Zumthor has created not a sacred space, but a form that can house a sacred act and take care of it by symbolizing the original space-creating and freedom-creating act.

chapter 13

Space, Wind and Light: On Transcendence and Early Church Architecture Jens Fleischer One of the most famous places in confessional literature is the scene in which Aurelius Augustinus, the church Father, was staying with his mother in a villa in the seaport of Ostia. While looking out of the window into a garden, they engage in an intimate conversation. From imagining what the eternal lives of saints might be, they mentally pass through the physical world to its farthest boundaries. Beyond the sun, the moon and the stars they arrive at a place where God “feeds Israel eternally with truth for food.”1 The vision in Ostia, which took place after Augustine’s baptism in April 387, has since spawned a series of important commentaries relevant to the understanding of the Augustinian universe. Basically the subject is his introspection, his view of life and the influence from Neoplatonic thought.2 In his memory, the celestial 1 “sed ne conmemoratione quidem digna videretur; erigentes nos ardentiore affectu in idip­ sum, perambulavimus gradatim cuncta corporalia, et ipsum caelum, unde sol et luna et stel­ lae lucent super terram. Et adhuc ascendebamus interius cogitando, et loquendo, et mirando opera tua, et venimus in mentes nostras, et transcendimus eas, ut attingeremus regionem ubertatis indeficientis, ubi pascis Israel in aeternum veritatis pabulo,” Confessiones IX, 10, 24; Migne pl 32: Col. 774. For an English translation, see Saint Augustine. Confessions. Translation and introduction by H. Chadwick (Oxford – New York: Oxford University Press, 1992 (1991)). 2 A central question based on the transcendence motive has been to what degree Augustine was influenced by Neoplatonism, especially the writings of the Neoplatonist Plotinus. In 1933 Theiler proposed the thesis that Augustine only knew the Neoplatonist Porphyrios through Marcus Victorinus’ translation. See W. Theiler: Porphyrios und Augustin. Schriften der Königs­ berger Gelehrten Gesellschaft, Geisteswiss. Klasse, Jahr 10, Heft I (Halle: Niemeyer, 1933). Against this Henry maintained that Marius Victorinus had also translated part of Plotinus’ Eννεάδες (The Enneads), which Augustine could have had opportunity to read. P. Henry, Plotin et l’Occident, Spicilegium Sacrum Lovaniense, fasc. 15 (1934). For an evaluation of the two views, see W. Wieland, Offenbarung bei Augustinus. Tübinger theologische Studien, Band 12 (Mainz: Matthias-Grünewald-Verlag, 1978), p. 63, note 81. O’Meara regards both Neoplatonics as rele­ vant, but emphasizes Porphyrios. See J.J. O’Meara, The Young Augustine. An Introduction to the Confessions of St. Augustine, revised edition (Longman: London – New York, 1980 (1954)), pp. 153–154. Chadwick also sees similarities between the vision in Ostia and the Neoplatonic philosophy, with reference to Plotinus’ Enneades, V.1. 2. 14–15. Saint Augustine, Chadwick (1992), p. 171, note 25. O’Donnell notes about Confessiones IX, 10. 24, “We must not believe, much less try

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi 10.1163/9789004291690_019

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journey is given a special accent through the expressions – ascendebamus (‘we ascended’) and transcendimus (‘we transcended’). Augustine’s description of transcendence, ‘going beyond’,3 opens up the essential question: in which way is the Christian house of worship in the early Middle Ages an experiential space of religious aesthetics in which the sensory world is transcended? In Augustine’s wandering from the physical world (the view from the win­ dow) to the otherworldly, the extrasensory, there are similarities to the shift happening at the time towards seeing something beyond materiality in the Christian house of worship. Through allegory, a way of interpreting the biblical texts to reveal hidden truths, the congregation was compared to a domus spiritualis, a spiritual building. Thus, the Christian temple came to express a move­ ment between spaces belonging to this world and a transcendental world. It can also be described as a movement in a space rooted in the world, in which eternity breaks into the present. It raises the question whether the architecture is only a shell without traces and vestiges of this span between the present and eternity. This is where the allegorical domus spiritualis becomes important, by pointing to a basic structure: a hierarchy of relations, all based on the move­ ment of the mind. Just as the congregation is spiritually related to the material building, the building is related to the human body (in several senses). In con­ tinuation of this way of thinking, it is possible in St. Methodius of Olympus (d. c. 311) to see a chain of relations. Joseph Rykwert sums it up like this: “Methodius identifies his own body with the tabernacle; the tabernacle with the temple; and the temple with Paradise and Christ.”4 Bishop Cyril of Jerusalem to demonstrate, that the ‘experience’ was either really Neoplatonic or Platonic or really Christian.” O’Donnell also sees Platonic parallels to Book VII in Confessiones, see IX.10.24 in www.stoa.org/hippo/frames9.html [accessed June 19, 2014] (an electronic edition of Augustine: Confessions, a text and commentary by James J. O’Donnell. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992). Stock raises the question “whether the ecstasy is genuinely Plotinian,” and like O’Donnell he calls attention to Confessiones VII: “neoplatonic immanence and transcendence are absorbed into a Christian framework.” See B. Stock, Augustine. The Reader, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, Mass. – London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1998), p. 119. See also P. Cary, Inner Grace, Augustine in the Traditions of Plato and Paul (Oxford – New York: Oxford University Press, 2008). 3 For a metaphysical, religion-philosophical and historical treatment of the concept of tran­ scendence, see Theologische Realenzyklopädie, eds. H. Balz et al, Band XXXIII (Berlin – New York: Walter Robert de Gruyter, 2002), pp. 768–773. 4 J. Rykwert, On Adam’s House in Paradise, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, Mass. – London: The mit Press, 1981), p. 184. Source: St. Methodius of Olympia, The Symposium (ed. and trans. H. Mursillo), 9.5. It can be added here that the Roman architect Vitruvius (c. 33–c. 14 bc) compares the human body to a temple, see De architectura, Liber III, I.1-3. See also D. Vesely, “The Architectonics of

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(d. 386) takes this way of thinking one step further in an instruction to the baptismal candidates. Taking his point of departure in Moses who humbly turns to Yahweh and sees himself as the most abject being, nothing but dust and ashes,5 Cyril unfolds the following series of relations: For take, saith he, the comparison of ashes to a house, of a house to a city,  a city to a province, a province to the Roman Empire, and the Roman Empire to the whole earth and all its bounds, and the whole earth to the heaven in which it is embosomed; − the earth, which bears the same proportion to the heaven as the centre to the whole circumference of a wheel, for the earth is no more than this in comparison with the heaven.6 Likewise, the Roman Empire was compared to a body.7 Thus, Constantine the Great writes in connection with the dispute in the North African churches, raised by Arius, that he has endeavored to give new energy to the body of the world (the realm), which had suffered a severe wound (civil war), and that he has healed it.8 Seeing the world empire as a body is a power-political expres­ sion in a fragment of Emperor Trajan’s colossal statue, which stood in a recess

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Embodiment,” in G. Dodds and R. Tavernor, Body and Building. Essays on the Changing Relation of Body and Architecture (Cambridge, Mass. – London: The mit Press, 2002), pp. 29–32. Philo of Alexandria compares the Ark to the human body in Questiones et solutiones in Genesim, See C. Whitehead, Castles of the Mind. A Study of Medieval Architectural Allegory (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2003), p. 40, notes 3–6. In The Epistle of Barnabas the believer is taught that Christ opens our lips like doors in the spiritual temple which is being built. See Early Christian Writings, trans. M. Staniforth (New York: Dorset Press, 1968), p. 216. Genesis 18. 27. Cyril of Jerusalem, “Procatechesis or, Prologue to the Cathechetical Lectures of our Holy Father, Cyril, Archbishop of Jerusalem,” Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Vol. VII, eds. P. Schaff and H. Wace, reprint (Edinburgh: T&T Clark – Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1989), p. 34. An example of this understanding is Umbilicus Urbis Romae, the mythological center (the navel) in the city body, Rome. The mark is still to be found near Septimius Severus’ triumphal arch in Forum Romanum. De Vita Constantini, II, 65. In Schneider’s German re-translation of the Greek text, the more complex meaning of ‘the body of the world’ becomes apparent: “…zweitens dem Leib der gemeinsamen οἰχουμένη, der gleichsam an einer schlimmen Wunde litt, neue Lebenskraft geben und (ihn) zusammenfügen.” The Greek oikoumenē means something that is inhabited. The common ‘inhabited world’ understood to be the world, is the Roman Empire. Eusebius von Caesarea, De Vita Constantini. Über das Leben Konstantins, eds. B. Bleckmann and H. Schneider. Fontes Christiani, vol. 83 (Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2007), p. 293.

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in a nympheum in Ephesus.9 On top of a plinth, a piece of a tree trunk in mar­ ble has been found that served as a support for the statue.10 In front of the fragment, a world globe whose fractured surface has vestiges of a cornucopia is placed. Next to it is seen the emperor’s right foot, and a fragment of the left (Fig. 13.1). The identification of the statue is confirmed by an inscription on the front of the plinth. Here Emperor Trajan is mentioned, but without his later title, optimus, which dates the building to the years between 102 and 114. Ursula Quatember interprets the whole arrangement as a symbol of the emperor who rules both the world, with reference to the globe, and the water, with reference to the water conduit of the nympheum.11 The Early Christian way of thinking in relations, thus, has its parallel in, if not even a direct influence from, a Roman world view. Laura Salah Nasrallah

Figure 13.1  Trajan’s foot on the globe. Nymphaeum, Ephesus, 2nd century Photo: Fleischer 9

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For an excavation report and preliminary interpretation, see Franz Miltner, “Vorläufige Bericht über die Ausgrabungen in Ephesos,” Jahreshefte des Österreichischen Archäeologischen Institutes in Wien, vol. XLIV, 1959, Beiblatt XXIII, pp. 326–329. A detailed documentation, description and interpretation of the building’s iconography and decorations has recently been published, see U. Quatember, Das Nymphaeum Traiani in Ephesos, Forschungen in Ephesos; vol. XI/2 (Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2011). Quatember, p. 102.

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has made important analyses in support of this view.12 According to Nasrallah, Vitruvius sees the Roman Empire from two perspectives.13 The first operates with a ‘world map’, with Rome as its center: “Thus the divine intelligence estab­ lished the state of the Roman people as an outstanding and balanced region – so that it could take command over the earthly orb.”14 In the other example we do not have to do with a center-periphery relation, but the movement between different cultural spaces. The cultivated Roman is a citizen in every foreign country he visits.15 Nasrallah also quotes the Greek rhetorician Aelius Aristides (117–c. 80), who in Eis Rōmēn (Roman Oration) praises Rome for her position: “What another city is to its boundaries and territory, this city is to the boundar­ ies and territory of the entire civilized world.”16 In these examples, the relation shows a constant interaction between the exterior and the interior, between corporeal and spiritual, in which transcen­ dence – the ineffable – enters and is clothed in words and images from man’s earthly world. Christopher Walter notes that it is the analogies rather than the differences between the heavenly and earthly life that were accentuated in early Byzantine art.17 In addition to the two spaces described previously, which can represent the ascent of thought and spirit, two other forms of movement must be included: wind and light. It is my contention that these movements, in dialogue with the architecture, open up towards the extrasen­ sory. It is the aim of the present article to expound this in greater detail. Much of the source material will be found in the area of the Eastern Mediterranean. Below follows a brief sketch of the material church building as our point of departure. 12

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L. Salah Nasrallah, Christian Responses to Roman Art and Architecture. The Second-Century Church Amid the Spaces of Empire (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011 (2010)), p. 10. See also the section “Commercium spirituale: The spiritual exchange” in: P. Brown, Through the Eye of a Needle. Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity in the West, 350–550 ad (Princeton – Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2012), pp. 230–232. See also note 4 on Vitruvius. De architectura, VI, 1, 11. Quoted after Vitruvius: Ten Books on Architecture, Trans. I.D. Rowland, Commentary and Illustrations by T. Noble Howe (Cambridge – New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 77. Vitruvius,VI, preface, 2. Nasrallah, p. 94, note 23. For the whole speech, see P. Aelius Aristides, The Complete Works, trans. C. Behr, 2. Vols. (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1981–86). C. Walter, “Expressionism and Hellenism. A note on stylistic tendencies in Byzantine figu­ rative art from Spätantike to the Macedonian “Renaissance,” Revue des Études byzantines 42 (Paris), 1984. Reprint in C. Walter, Prayer and Power in Byzantine and Papal Imagery. Variorum Collected Studies Series CS396 (Aldershot: Variorum, 1993), p. 275.

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Features of Historical Development

The Christians were quite concretely without an independent sacred architec­ ture when the edict of tolerance was issued in Milan in 313. At the same time, the congregations had a growing need for large houses of worship, as com­ pared to the small and anonymous meeting places of the period of persecu­ tion. The idea of re-using or re-thinking the Roman temple was problematic,18 not least seeing that the altar in pagan practice was often placed outdoors on the stairs leading to the building, or in the area in front.19 But the Roman basili­ cas turned out to be suitable, having mainly served secular purposes, typically as markets, court buildings, baths or military basilicas. The imperial basilica had a special status. In Trier an example has been preserved, a hall of several floors, erected after 310 (Fig. 13.2).20 It was part of the imperial palatium and symbolically represented Roman power on the Germanic frontier. As a throne room, it was an aula sacra for the enthroned, deified emperor.21 Primarily, the basilica type had some practical advantages. It was dimen­ sioned as a spacious hall with a rectangular ground plan and covered with a flat ceiling or an open wooden roof construction. In its simplest form this type could have only one aisle, in its more elaborate form a hall flanked by side aisles. In ground plans with multiple aisles we see examples of side aisles with galleries. The third important characteristic was the tribunal, a raised floor set up for the magistrate and placed in the main aisle or one of the side aisles; occasionally as part of a semicircular apse with a half-dome,22 which gave the space a spherical quality. Starting from this basic plan, the Early Christian basilica took form, typically as a three- or one-aisled longitudinal church with its altar in the east-facing choir and a bench for the priests and bishop’s throne 18

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However, examples of Christian re-use of heathen cult buildings are sometimes seen, for example in Athens; see J-M. Spieser, Urban and Religious Spaces in Late Antiquity and Early Byzantium. Variorum Collected Studies (Aldershot, Hampshire – Burlington, Vermont: Ashgate, 2001, VI), pp. 1–13. H. Kähler, Der römische Tempel (Berlin: Gebr. Mann Verlag, 1970), p. 32; J.B. Ward-Perkins, Roman Imperial Architecture, second edition (New Haven – London: Yale University Press, 1994 (1981)), fig. 60 B. Trier. Kaiserresidenz und Bischofssitz. Die Stadt in spätantiker und frühchristlicher Zeit, Redaktionsarbeiten: J. Merten. Rheinisches Landesmuseum Trier (Mainz am Rhein: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 1984), Cat 52–58. E. Zahn, Die Basilika in Trier, Schriftenreihe des Rheinischen Landesmuseums Trier. Nr. 6 (Trier: Rheinisches Landesmuseums Trier, 2003 (1991)), p. 35. R. Krautheimer, Early Christian and Byzantine Architecture, rev. R. Krautheimer and S. Ćurčić (New Haven – London: Yale University Press – Pelican History of Art, 1986 (1965)), p. 41.

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Figure 13.2  The Basilica of Constantine in Trier, Germany, after 310 Photo: Fleischer

in the apse. Finally, one also has to consider the development of a new building type in early Byzantium (East Rome), which evolved from martyria and palace churches and turned the basilica into a vaulted centrally-planned building.

Meanings and Paradoxes

If the Christian house of worship – critically regarded – is the physical and con­ secrated, yet not in itself sacred, frame,23 how, then, are we to understand the architecturally designed material space? Ettore Rocca speaks of the sacred space’s independence of a particular physical space.24 Against that we may argue that here we are faced with a fracture between the medieval world picture and a modern frame of understanding. The Christians of late antiquity would have had a different experience and understanding of the architecture that created the 23

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Characterizing the Romanesque church building, the Danish art historian Otto Norn talks of “the physical, consecrated but not in itself sacred frame around the preaching of the message of salvation and the administering of the Eucharist.” O. Norn, At se det usynlige. Mysteriekult og ridderidealer (København: G.E. C. Gad, 1982), p. 13. See E. Rocca’s article in this book: “The Fullness of Space.”

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sensory space. But in that case, how was the house of worship of that time some­ thing ‘more’ than just a physical shell, something irreducible, and how can this ‘more’ be tied to transcendence? Basically, and under a Christian aspect, the rit­ ual space was constituted through the Old Testament story of the patriarch Jacob’s dream. Having ‘seen’ the celestial ladder, he woke up, exclaiming in fear, ‘How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven’. So Jacob rose early in the morning, and took the stone that he had put under his head and set it up for a pillar and poured oil on the top of it.25 In a larger perspective, this text constitutes the place (the altar), the ritual act of sacrifice (the Eucharist) and the meeting between earth and heaven, (mat­ ter and spirit). In an Early Christian context one of the great rhetoricians of the Eastern church, later the Patriarch of Constantinople, St. John Chrysostom (c. 344–407), explains in De sacerdotio (On the Priesthood) how the act of sacri­ fice is the place of “fear and trembling.”26 What at the same time is accentuated in Jacob’s dream is the vertical axis between earth and heaven. Compare the concept of axis mundi (the world axis) in Christian Norberg-Schulz’ study of what establishes a space in a world that has ‘corners’, as well as the fact that in our lived experience there is something that is above and below.27 In addition, it is told about John in the apocryphal books about the Acts of the Apostles that on the third day of his journey to Ephesus he took a wooden cross, propped it up facing east, kneeled and prayed.28 Thus, the horizontal axis and orienta­ tion of the space of worship was determined by the position of the cross.29 25 26

27 28

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Genesis 28. 17–18. De sacerdotio, III.4; VI.4; see H. Chadwick, The Early Church (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1977 (1967)), pp. 266–267; see also C. Jones, G. Wainwright, E. Yarnold SJ and P. Bradshaw (eds.): The Study of Liturgy, rev. ed. (London: spck – New York: Oxford University Press, 1992 (1978)), p. 248. O. Andrén argues that the work must have been written by Chrysostom after his ordination in 386, see Johannes Chrysostomos. Om prästämbetet, trans. O. Andrén (Skellefteå: Artos Bokförlag, 1993), p. 28. (Introduction to the translation). C. Norberg-Schulz, Architecture: Presence, Language and Place (Milano: Skira, 2000), p. 150. Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles, ed. A. Wright, Vol. II (London: Williams and Norgate, 1871) Ouoted from: www.ccel.org/ccel/pearse/morefathers/files/apocryphal_acts_02_john_his­ tory.htm [accessed June 19, 2014] For a discussion of prayer and direction of praying which includes the apocryphal text about John, see E. Peterson, Frühkirche, Judentum und Gnosis (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1959), pp. 15–35. Seen in the light of the study of rituals, the Latin term Oriens is firmly embedded in every­ day usage in the word ‘orientation’. In the Danish clergyman and poet N.F.S. Grundtvig’s

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It is these ritual traits that were continued and that created something ‘more’ in dialogue with the apse (the spherical element) of the Roman basilica: a space oriented towards the sun and heaven. But it is also here that a contrast appears, creating a more and more deep-seated basic motif in the Bible and in the early Christian thinkers. Was it at all possible for Yahweh to take up his abode in this earthly world? Conversely, one could argue that Moses erected a tabernacle for the Ark of the Covenant at the command of the Lord, so that He could dwell among His chosen people.30 In the Prophet Isaiah the contrast is deepened when Yahweh asks how one can imagine a house in which His Being could reach from heaven to earth.31 Benedikt Otzen has called attention to how this Cosmic dualism found its expression in “the transcendence of the distant god of heaven”32 and in the apocryphal writings of Jewish antiquity, the pseudoepigraphs.33 As an example he quotes 2 Esdras 4. 21: “so also those who inhabit the earth can understand only what is on the earth, and he who is above the heavens can understand what is above the height of the heavens.”34 According to Otzen, the insurmountable contrast is broken, however, because through the vision man is given sporadic insight into the beyond.35 In The Book of Enoch, 1st Vision, a journey to heaven is described, in which Enoch sees Paradise (Chapter 5). In the 14th chapter he is led by the winds to a city whose walls are of icy hail and surrounded by tongues of fire; and from there

30 31 32 33 34 35

second edition (1867) of Haandbog i Verdenshistorien from 1833 the loan-word ‘orientere’ (to direct) has been changed to ‘solrette’ (to sun-direct) to emphasize the connection between sun and direction. The change was part of the author’s general project of purify­ ing the Danish language. See M. Thing, Den historiske jøde. Essays & ordbog (Copenhagen: Forum, 2001), pp. 47–48. As regards ‘orientation’ and cult in the Graeco-Roman world, see W. Hübner, “Himmel und Erdmessung,” in Die römische Feldmeßkunst. Interdisziplinäre Beiträge zu ihrer Bedeutung für die Zivilisationsgeschichte Roms, Hrsg. O. Behrends and L.C. Colognesi (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1992), pp. 148–153; for the direction of the church axis and the symbolic meaning of the corners of the world, see J. Sauer, Symbolik des Kirchengebäudes und seiner Ausstattung in der Auffassung des Mittelalters, mit Berücksichtigung von Honorius Augustodunensis, Sicardus und Durandus. Zweite ver­ mehrte Auflage, reprint (Münster: Mehren u. Hobbeling, 1964 (1924)), pp. 87–98. Exodus 25. 9. Isaiah 66. 1–2. B. Otzen, Den antike jødedom. Politisk udvikling og religiøse strømninger fra Alexander den Store til Kejser Hadrian (København: Gad, 1984), p. 144. The terms for the writings that were not accepted into the Hebrew Bible of the Jews. They were written in the period from c. 200 bc to c. 100 ad. Otzen, p. 144; 2 Esdras is also called 4 Ezra; quotation from http://bible.oremus.org/ ?passage=2+esdr. [accessed June 19, 2014]. Otzen, p. 144.

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on to a house, also built of hail, whose interior is as hot as fire and cold as snow. Overcome with fear, Enoch reaches an even larger house of tongues of fire, where the top floors are made of bolts of lightning and balls of fire. There he saw a tall throne of ice crystals, its wheels were like the shining sun and the throne was guarded by cherubs. But he was unable to look at it, for there was seated “The Great One” in a halo, brighter than the sun and whiter than snow.36 There is a certain inner logic to these attempts to describe the indescribable, as one of the mystagogues of the time, Rabbi Akiva ben Joseph (c. 50–c. 135 ad) explains that each of Yahweh’s limbs measures ten million units, each 18.000 fingers wide, for thus does he reach from one end of the world to the other.37 Gershom Scholem notes that Yahweh’s ‘fullness’ in space has parallels in Hellenism and early Christianity, where the concept of plērōma is found (Gk. πλήρωμα, of πληρόω, ‘I fill’).38 Rocca has demonstrated how on the basis of Kierkegaard’s Begrebet Angst (The Concept of Anxiety), we can talk of “the full­ ness of space,” which constitutes a transcendence.39 Perhaps it is here – and in a new context where the word ‘fullness’ is left without an appendage of word images – that modern man meets the extrasensory. In the canonical tradition, it was Isaiah’s words that carried the theme on to the early Christian congregation. Thus in Matthew,40 and again in Acts of the Apostles, where Stephen in his defense speech declares that “the Most High” does not live in man-made houses, but only has heaven as his throne and earth as his footstool.41 In the Christian thinker, Clement of Alexandria (d. before 215) the question was put more sharply.42 In his work Stromateis (Miscellanies), he talks about the relationship between the Christian soul, the material church and the congregation. If God contains all things, how can men build temples, 36

37 38

39 40 41 42

Two groups of texts exist. Here Enoch’s journey to heaven is reproduced from an English translation of the Ethiopian Enoch; see The Book of Enoch or I Enoch. A New English Edition, commentary and notes by M. Black (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1985), p. 33. D. Krochmalnik, Im Garten der Schrift. Wie Juden die Bibel Lesen (Augsburg: Sankt Ulrich Verlag, 2006), p. 93. “Die Thronwelt bedeutet für den jüdischen Mystiker, was für die hellenistischen und früh­ christlichen Mystiker dieser Epoche, die die Religionsgeschichte als Gnostiker und Hermetiker kennt, das ‘Pleroma’ (die ‘Fülle’), die Lichtwelt der Gottheit mit ihren Potenzen, Äonen und Herrschaften ist.” G. Scholem, Die jüdische Mystik in ihren Hauptströmungen (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Taschenbuch Verlag, 1980 (1957)), p. 47. See Rocca, “The Fullness of Space.” Matthew 5. 34. Acts 7. 48–49. The tone in this work was marked by Clement’s having to distance himself from the Gnostics at the same time.

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which can contain God? The doubt makes Clement ask whether a building can at all be sacred if it has been built by builders and stonecutters. His answer to this must be that only the whole world and the universe are capable of con­ taining and glorifying an exalted God. Clement eventually reaches the conclu­ sion that only the assemblage of the elect (i.e. believers) is the right temple for God’s exalted being.43 In the following chapter Clement develops his theme, interpreting the earthly altar as “the congregation of those who devote them­ selves to prayer, having as it were one common voice and one mind (Fig. 13.3).”44 Through these introductory examples a paradox has been described: that it is impossible for man to build an earthly abode for an incomprehensible God and simultaneously that He had His tabernacle erected among the Israelites. This tension was radically intensified when the Israelitish tribal people changed from a nomadic to an urban culture, where the temple in Jerusalem became the chosen and only place for the worship of Yahweh.45 In philosophy and theology, the paradox is termed an antinomy, i.e. laws, principles and the

Figure 13.3  Altar stone, Saint Pancras Church, London, 6th–7th century? Photo: Fleischer 43 44 45

Stromateis, VII, Chapter 5. earlychristianwritings.com/text/clement-stromata-book7.html [accessed June 19, 2014]. Stromateis, VII, Chapter 6. 2 Samuel. 7.

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like, which contradict each other. It articulates the question of how, on the premises of the paradox, we are to understand the significance of the church building (with its aesthetic and ritual possibilities) in relation to the extrasensory?46 Here the ascetics contributed to the contemplation of themes connected with the sacred space: the cross, Paradise, and the light, and there­ fore also to a metaphysics of beauty marked by mysticism.47 Thus, there was a wide range, from philosophical thought to the enigma of the cross. The Hellenistic heritage, especially the ideal of education, paideia, was also inter­ woven into this.48 Early on we see an awareness of the paradox in Gregory of Nyssa (d. 394), one of the great church teachers from Cappadocia. In his work On the Soul and the Resurrection (from the beginning of the 380’s) which is set up as a dialogue between Gregory and his sister Makrina, the nature of the extrasensory is dis­ cussed. Gregory accepts that it is not anything material. But then, what can be said about it? Makrina responds that it cannot be perceived with our sense organs. But negating what we know from our world of experience brings us no closer, since it is neither a colour, nor a form, nor a hardness, nor a weight, nor a quantity, nor a cubic dimension, nor a point, nor anything else perceptible in mat­ ter; supposing, that is, there does exist a something beyond all these.49 To come to terms with, on one hand, the ‘being-in the-world’ of the building (with a reference to Heidegger), and on the other hand, its role as the ritual place for an opening towards the beyond – it is my thesis that in this field of tension, designated “non-similar similarity,”50 what I will term a negotiation with the indescribable comes into being – with allegory, vision and aesthetics as tools. Through the power of paradox, the mystics and homilists of the Early Church created an immaterial building by constantly referring by turns to the material 46

47 48 49

50

H. Frederiksen mentions a special predilection for this question in the Eastern church, where John of Damascus (c. 675–749) describes it as “non-similar similarity.” See H.J. Frederiksen’s article in this book, “I Can See Byzantine Art and Understand It.” D. Jørgensen, Skønhedens metamorfose. De æstetiske idéers historie (Odense: Odense Universitetsforlag 2001), pp. 126–127. Clement of Alexandria, trans. G.W. Butterworth, Loeb Classical Library reprint (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press – London: William Heinemann, 1968 (1919)), p. xiii. Gregory of Nyssa “On the Soul and the Resurrection,” Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Vol. V, eds. P. Schaff and H. Wace, reprint (Edinburgh: T&T Clark – Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1988), p. 436. See note 46.

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building and the congregation.51 It must be added here, that by virtue of being a ritualized place for the incursion of eternity into the present, the space repre­ sented yet another paradox, which can be termed non-contemporaneity. With the use of imaginatio52 in the formation of analogies, however, the allegory at the same time met with criticism in the Early Church. The suitability of the alle­ gory for opening the Christian to the extrasensory is thus not unproblematic and will therefore be dealt with in greater depth.

Allegory, Space and the Extrasensory

When Clement of Alexandria speaks of the community of the chosen as the true temple, he uses the allegory (Gk. allēgoría, ‘to say something else’) as his method. In each sentence member, another, (i.e. deeper) meaning than the one that is literal and directly accessible to the reader is disclosed. In Clement’s case the reference is to the New Testament, where Christ is the cornerstone – the whole foundation.53 Paul the Apostle contributed to the same construc­ tion of ideas when he likened James, Cephas and John to pillars,54 and the congregation to stones: You also, as living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house for a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.55 In a Christian context this interpretational practice was later used by Hippolytus (c. 200), and it was greatly influenced by his intellectual environment. This was 51

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Pope Gregory the Great (590–604) went so far in this ‘negotiation’ with ‘being-in-the-world’ that in July 601, in his instruction for the missionary work in England, he prescribes that the people’s temples should not be demolished, but that only the idols found in them should be destroyed. Then holy water should be sprinkled in those same temples, alters be erected and relics be instated. The Letters of Gregory the Great, translated, introduction and notes J.R.C. Martyn (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 2004, Vol. 3, Book 11.56). For a general treatment of this theme, see J. le Goff, The Medieval Imagination, trans. A. Goldhammer (Chicago – London: The University of Chicago Press 1992 (1988)). Le Goff mentions that medieval man thinks in oppositional pairs, as for example interior and exterior, up and down, seeing interior and up as positive values, whereas exterior and down expressed the negative. Le Goff, p. 91. Matthew 21. 42; with parallels: Acts 4. 11; Ephesians 2. 20; and I Peter 2. 4f. Galatians 2. 9. I Peter 2. 5.

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also true of Origen (185–c. 254), Clement’s direct inheritor. They were both active in Hellenistic Alexandria, where Judaism and Neoplatonism played important roles. In the case of Origen’s relation to the Neoplatonic Plotinus and his exegesis, Daniel Boyarin sees philosophy as a frame within which Origen could ponder the question of how to interpret.56 Boyarin finds it important not to see Neoplatonism with the traditional understanding that it controlled and warped Christian theological thought. On the contrary, Christian theology offered significant answers to philosophical questions.57 In a commentary on Song of Solomon in the Old Testament (The Song of Songs in the Hebrew Bible) Origen explains his understanding of allegory. We learn from the Apostle Paul that God’s invisible things must be understood through the visible things, and “that this earthly scene contains certain pat­ terns of things heavenly.”58 The expression “certain patterns” here underlines a connection between the sensory and the extrasensory.59 An example of how he brings forth hidden meaning is the final verse in the first chapter of Song of Solomon, where “The beams of our house are cedar, our rafters are cypresses.”60 In Origen the rafters represent the bishops because just as the rafters in the church building (i.e. the roof construction) protect against rain and sun, so do bishops protect the church, and have the gift of grace to teach the congrega­ tion. In the same context the cedar is an image of the priests.61 The degree of detail and the concrete nature of this practice are found again in Augustine, when he interprets Noah’s Ark in De civitate Dei. Here the square form of the beams represents “the thoroughly unshakeable life” of the believers,”for in whatever direction you turn a squared object, it will remain stable.”62 Another 56

57 58

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60 61 62

D. Boyarin, “Origen as theorist of allegory: Alexandrian contexts,” in The Cambridge Companion to Allegory, eds. R. Copeland and P.T. Struck (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), p. 39. Boyarin, “Origen as theorist,” p. 41. Origen: The Song of Songs. Commentary and Homilies, Ancient Christian Writers. Translated and annotated by R.L. Lawson (Westminster, Md.: The Newman Press – London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1957), p. 218. For an overview of previous scholarship, see J. Strange, “Højsangen i gudstjeneste og forskning,” in Det gamle Testamente og den Kristne fortolkning, Forum for bibelsk eksegese 1 (København: Museum Tusculanums Forlag, 1988), pp. 70–84. In the two-part work Against the Heathens and The Incarnation of the Word of God, Athanasius of Alexandria (ca. 298–373) explains (to the heathens) that the good exists, since it has its pattern from God, who exists. Song of Sol. 1. 17. Origen, pp. 175–176. De Civitate Dei, XV, 26. For the translation, see Augustine: Concerning the City of God against the Pagans. A new translation by H. Bettenson (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1984), p. 643.

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example will clarify how the allegorical practice could stretch, since the peda­ gogic discourse also seems to be present in the conception of the spiritual building. In his epistle to his congregation, Bishop Ignatius of Antioch (d. c. 110) talks of the principle of the elevation of the soul in very realistic imagery, in which the Holy Spirit is also likened to a hoist on a building site: Deaf as stones you were: yes, stones for the Father’s Temple, stones trimmed ready for God to build with, hoisted up by the derrick of Jesus Christ (the Cross) with the Holy Spirit for a cable; your faith being the winch that draws you to God, up the ramp of love.63 In these examples the mimetic element is forcefully present. No believer could doubt that the Christian house of worship was a material reality. But it was equally easy to bring forth an image of a domus spiritualis. For the educated members of the congregation, this figurative expression probably stood even stronger when mythology was made use of. An example of this is the story of Amphion who with his lyre moved the stones to take their place in the city wall, which was being built around Thebes.64 The example was used by Clement of Alexandria in his Exhortation to the Greeks, in which he explains that the Theban (i.e. Amphion), Orpheus and other singers of Antiquity deceived with their enticing songs, whereas Christ sings the new true song, the song that will make living humans of those who were formerly ignorant as stones, nay, petrified against the truth. Here Clement builds a connection from Greek mythology to Matthew 3.9: “for I say to you, from these stones God is able to raise up children to Abraham.” Like in other places in Clement’s Exhortation to the Greeks there is a clear element of paideia,65 which we also encounter in Gregory of Nazianzus.66 In the fifth didactic poem from the col­ lection Carmina quae spectant ad alios, which deals with higher education, Gregory explains: 63

“The Epistle to the Ephesians,” in Early Christian Writings. The Apostolic Fathers, trans. M. Staniforth (New York: Dorset Press, 1968), p. 78. See also Sauer, p. 103. 64 Homer, Odyssey, XI, 260–264; Ovid, Metamorphoses, VI, 146–203. 65 For the concept of paideia, see W. Jaeger, Paideia: the Ideals of Greek Culture, trans. G. Highet, Vol. 1 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1946); for an important contribution to our under­ standing of classical mythology to the Greek Fathers, see: V. Pyykkö, Die griechischen Mythen bei den großen Kappadokiern und bei Johannes Chrysostomos (Turku: Turun ylio­ piston julkaisuja, Sarja B, Humaniora, nr. 193 (1991)). 66 F.W. Norris, “Gregory contemplating the beautiful: Knowing human misery and divine mystery through and being persuaded by images,” Gregory of Nazianzus. Images and Reflections, eds. J. and T. Hägg (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2006), pp. 27–28.

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I suppose that Orpheus’ Khitara,67 with which he charmed everybody, good as well as evil people, was oratory; thus Amphion, too, has per­ suaded stones with his lyre, that is to say, hostile, hard-hearted people.68 Immediately, the allegorical principle may seem unambiguous, but it was con­ nected to three other principles of interpretation, which with Augustine and Cassian evolved into a four-fold method. Cassian (c. 360–c. 435) distinguished between four levels of meaning in a text: the literal, the tropological (moral), the allegorical and the anagogical (soul-elevating).69 Calvin B. Kendall stresses the fact that in their use of the Alexandrine exegesis, the medieval text com­ mentators were looking for multiple meanings in the Bible.70 According to Kendall this complexity is expressed by the Venerable Bede (? 673–735): Two or more things or texts could have the same allegorical meaning, one thing could have several meanings on the same level, and a single thing could have one or more levels of interpretation.71 In fact, Bede concedes that in some cases a historical allegory will reveal a lit­ eral meaning, a mystical [i.e. typological] meaning as regards Christ or the Church, a tropological meaning, an anagogical meaning – all at once.72 Basically the allegorical reading also gave rise to criticism in the Early Church,73 which may be partly explained by the unclear distinctions between the differ­ ent methods.74 It is certainly a fact that the church Father, St. Basil the Great 67 68 69

70 71 72 73

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Pre-Greek stringed instrument which is larger than the Greek lyra. Translated after Pyykkö, Die griechischen Mythen, p. 45. C.B. Kendall, The Allegory of the Church. Romanesque Portals and Their Verse Inscriptions (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998), pp. 7–8. See also J.W. Trigg, “Allegory,” in Encyclopedia of Early Christianity, Second Edition, eds. E. Ferguson, M.P. McHugh and F.W. Norris, Vol. 1 (New York-London: Garland Publishing, 1997), p. 36. Kendall, p. 7. Kendall, p. 11. Kendall, pp. 11–12. Maguire has contributed valuably to our understanding of the interpretive practice of the Early Church, for example a criticism of the allegorical method of interpretation. See H. Maguire, Earth and Ocean. The Terrestial World in Early Byzantine Art (University Park – London: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1987), p. 18. Dawson notes, based on a modern view of the complexity of the allegory, “An allegorical reading is, then, both a linguistic and philosophical process that connects literal impossi­ bilities, historical realities and literal fictions, producing a single coherent narrative.” See D. Dawson, “Allegorical reading and the embodiment of the soul in Origen.” In Christian

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(? 329–379) could write the following, in opposition to the widespread use of allegory I know the laws of allegory, though less by myself than from the words of others. There are those, truly, who do not admit the common sense of the Scriptures, for whom water is not water, but some other nature, who see in a plant, in a fish, whatever their fancy wishes, who change the nature of reptiles and wild beasts to suit their allegories, like the interpreters of dreams who explain visions in sleep to make them serve their own ends. For me, grass is grass; plant, wild beast, domestic animal – I take it all in the literal sense, for I am not ashamed of the Gospel.75 How, then, can we maintain that the allegory is useful, and thus important, while at the same time we try to understand its weaknesses? In addition, we are aware that the allegory has also more recently been the object of criticism, when compared with the symbol. The fact is that the symbol gained increasing acknowledgement from the end of the 18th century. Coleridge, one of the Romantic poets, criticized the allegory for its mechanical ‘translation’ in the interpretive process.76 But in Wahrheit und Methode (1960 and later), HansGeorg Gadamer sees allegory and symbol as working together. According to Gadamer, the symbol as concept was connected to the rhetorical-hermeneuti­ cal concept of allegory in the Christian understanding of Neoplatonism. As an example, he adduces the work De coelesti hiearchica by Pseudo-Dionysios (c. 500),77 where the symbol was invested with anagogical meaning, so as to seek to do the same thing as the allegory – striving for the highest.78 Gadamer sums up their reciprocal relations by maintaining that both the allegorical pro­ cess of interpretation and the symbolic process of cognition are necessary, the common reason being that we can solely experience the divine if we take our point of departure in the sensory world.79 In the re-discovery of Baroque poetry in the past few decades, as well as in modern art studies, Gadamer sees

75 76 77 78 79

Origins. Theology, Rhetoric and Community, eds. L. Ayres and G. Jones (London – New York: Routledge, 1998), p. 37. Quoted from F. Carlsson, The Iconology of Tectonics in Romanesque Art (Hässleholm: Am-Tryck, 1976), pp. 7–8. R. Copeland and P.T. Struck, “Introduction,” in The Cambridge Companion to Allegory, p. 9. Some scholars have ascribed the work to a Syrian monk, under the name of PseudoDionysios about 500, but its provenance is uncertain. H.-G. Gadamer, Hermeneutik I. Wahrheit und Methode. Grundzüge einer philosophischen Hermeneutik (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1986), p. 79. Gadamer, p. 79.

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a general rehabilitation of the allegory.80 With the reservation that the real meaning of allegory depends on its translation (e.g. of concepts), Northrop Frye (1981) sees the allegory as a challenge to Christianity, as the continuation of the ‘story’ progresses, with its deferment of the Day of Judgement.81 Gadamer’s understanding of the symbol-allegory relation perhaps finds its clearest visual expression in the extensive use of crosses carved into the Syrian churches. They are typically found on door lintels and apse arches. The richly ornamented apse arch in Qalb Lozeh (c. 480–90) even has two crosses, of which the uppermost is placed above the keystone of the arch (Fig. 13.4). For the 7th century mystic, Isaac of Syria,82 the cross is interpreted as God’s invisi­ ble presence, in Syriac called Shekhina.83 The very moment it is depicted on a wall, a tablet or in a work of precious metal, it is filled with divine power and makes place for God’s Shekhina. So that this may not be doubted, Isaac adds

Figure 13.4  Apse arch with two crosses. Qalb Lozeh, Syria, c. 480–90 Photo: Fleischer

80 81 82 83

Gadamer, pp. 86–87. N. Frye, The Great Code. The Bible and Literature (San Diego – London – New York: Harcourt Brace, 1983 (1981)), p. 84. Also known as Isaac of Nineveh. H. Alfeyev, The Spiritual World of Isaac the Syrian, Cistercian Studies Series: Number One Hundred Seventy-Five (Kalamazoo, Mich. – Spencer, Mass.: Cistercian Publications, 2000), p. 165.

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that the cross is much more able to be a place (and hence space) for the pres­ ence of God than the Ark of the Covenant was.84 Elswhere, Isaac talks about the cross as being the gate to the mysteries, because this is where the mind opens up to insights into the heavenly mysteries.85 But it is also here we see Gadamer’s understanding of the Early Christian mode of interpretation, as Isaac connects the cross (as a symbol) and its allegorical meaning (as a gate­ way) to the extra-sensory. The placing of the crosses on the apse arch at Qalb Lozeh can in addition be read as an articulation of the heavenly, represented by the ‘spherical’ quality of the apse vault. When these examples refer to a spiritual space beyond materiality, this perspective is enforced in the offertory. With the altar as focus the mystery is performed. When he coined the expression ‘performing the mysteries (Gk. mystēria telein), the historian of liturgy Gregory Dix emphasized that the per­ formative was conceived at the time as the core of liturgy.86 Bernard McGinn has similarly emphasized the ecstatic, soul-elevating dimension in the house of worship, referring to the altar and a sermon by Augustine, which builds on Psalm 41. How shall I seek God, Augustine asks. He finds the answer by enter­ ing where the Tabernacle is, which leads him into the House of God.87 Augustine describes the place as a tabernaculum admirabile, and McGinn argues that Augustine thus, like the other Church Fathers, emphasizes the Church as a necessity for redemption.88 McGinn adds that in terming the church admirabile, Augustine sees it as the only locus for an ecstatic experi­ ence, for a glimpse of the heavenly pleasures and admission to Heaven’s domus Dei.89 In the tradition of the eastern church, the liturgical space is given a special dimension in St. John Chrysostom’s De sacerdotio (On the Priesthood), where he describes the offertory at the altar, in Book 6, Chapter 4. When the priest has invoked the Holy Spirit, the angels stand around him, and the heavenly powers

84 85

86 87

88 89

Alfeyev, p. 167. Mystic Treatises by Isaac of Niniveh, translated from Bedjan’s Syriac text with an introduc­ tion and registers by A.J. Wensinck, Verhandelingen der Koninklijke Akademie van Wetenschappen te Amsterdam. Afdeeling Letterkunde, Nieuwe Reeks, Deel XXIII No. 1 (Amsterdam: Koninklijke Akademie van Wetenschappen, 1923), p. 365. G. Dix, The Shape of the Liturgy, Second Edition (Westminster: Dacre Press, 1945), p. 12. B. McGinn, “From Admirable Tabernacle to the House of God,” in Artistic Integration in Gothic Buildings, eds. V.C. Raguin, K. Brush and P. Draper (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000 (1995)), p. 42. Migne pl 36: Coll. 469–70. McGinn, p. 42. McGinn, p. 42.

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fill [my emphasis] the room with their praise of Christ.90 St. Crysostom also tells of an old man who in a vision had seen “a multitude of angels clothed in shiny robes, and encircling the altar, and bending down as one might see sol­ diers in the presence of their king.”91 In the Middle Ages the figurative interpre­ tation of the connection between the physical building, the congregation, the performative aspect of the liturgy and Christ were interwoven in this manner. In Charlemagne’s imperial chapel in Aachen, the inscription on a cornice frieze on the inside of the central aisle reads, + CUM LAPIDES VIVI PACES COMPAGE LIGANTUR  +  INQUE PARES NUMEROS OMNIA CONVENIUNT  +  CLARET OPUS DOMINI TOTAM QUI CONSTRIUT AULAM + 92 In the Kariye Camii church in Constantinople where a mosaic image of Christ was made in the 14th century, above the entrance to the inner narthex, this perspective is maintained in the inscription “Jesus Christ – the land of the liv­ ing (Gk. chōra tōn zōntōn).”93

Building and Man – Only the Outer Signs of an Inner Reality?

In connection with the change of sacred architecture in late antiquity from an external to an internal ritual function, the research has, from different perspec­ tives, seen a new man emerge. This may be well founded, since it is based on the written sources: the Bible, the pseudographs, the Apocrypha, the Church Fathers and their closest followers. In the early work De vera Religione (c. 390), 90

91 92

93

Summarized from H. Petersen, “Johannes Chrysostomos’ skrift om præsteembedet. Asket og præst.,” Dansk Teologisk Tidsskrift, eds. N.K. Andersen, J. Munck and N.H. Søe, 1. Hæfte, 23. Årgang (1960), p. 8. Petersen, p. 8. Here quoted from www.documentcatholicaomnia.eu [accessed December 11, 2013]. “As the living stones are bonded in a fabric of peace, and all come together in matching numbers, the work of the lord who has built the entire hall shines forth brightly.” Translation from N. Hiscock, The Wise Master Builder. Platonic Geometry in Plans of Medieval Abbeys and Cathedrals (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000), p. 148. P.A. Underwood, The Kariye Djami. Volume 1. Historical Introduction and Description of the Mosaics and Frescoes. Bollingen Series LXX (New York: Pantheon Books, 1966), p. 39. According to Underwood it is a reference to Psalm 116. 9 “I walk before the Lord in the land of the living”; the ‘live stones’are also discussed in, E. Westergaard, “De levendes land og det ikke-rummeliges rum,” Kritisk forum for praktisk teologi, 56 (juni 1994), pp. 52–67.

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Augustine exhorts his fellow believers to turn away from the outer world and find truth inside themselves instead (‘the inner man’).94 In the same work, he also speaks of “illustrationem interioris hominis.”95 This concept, of ‘inward-looking’, ‘enlightened’ man, was based on New Testament texts96 and had a wide influence on the literature of the Early Church. In his allegorical interpretation of Song of Solomon, Origin wrote, “For if our outward man is corrupted, yet the inner man is renewed day by day.”97 In conclusion Boethius may be adduced. In De consolatione philosophiae (c. 523) he talks of “the closet of his thoughts,”98 and again in Book III, Song 11, of “Whoever seeks truth deep within himself.”99 In his study Late Roman Art Industry (1901), Alois Riegl was one of the first art historians to discuss the introspective trait in the culture of late antiquity, which he found expressed in the art of portraiture in Late Imperial Rome, for example in a bust of Emperor Decius (249–51).100 Riegl connected the outer, stylized features with “the inner spiritual life,” which he found vastly different from the classical art tradition. Riegl also saw the Christian basilica as an expression of space-creating endeavors. They were manifest in the interior of the building, with a “Tiefraum” (deep space), which invited the subject to bodily movement and visual perception of the elements of the room.101 This understanding of the mentality of late antiquity is the background for a later discourse proper. In his study of the stylized physiognomic expression in the art of portraiture of late antiquity, the archaeologist and art historian H.P. L’Orange characterizes the heathen philosopher and the Christian seer as homines spirituales.102 At a later date, Hjalmar Torp has discussed the same 94

Cp. Augustine’s Confessions, where he speaks of ‘truth’ – “inside man lives the truth.” For the Latin version “noli foras ire, in teipsum redi, in interiore homine habitat veritas,” see Migne pl 34: Col.154. 95 Augustine’s Confessions, p. 144. 96 See II Corinthians 4. 16 and Ephesians 3. 16. 97 Origen, p. 25. 98 “Tum defixo paululum uisi et uelut in augustam sueae mentis sedem recepta sic coepit.” Anicii Manlii Severini Boethii: Philosophiae consolatio, ed. L. Bieler (Turnhout: Brepols, 1957, Liber III, 2.1). 99 Boethius, Philosophiae consolatio, Liber III, Carmina XI. 100 A. Riegl, Spätrömische Kunstindustrie, mit einem Nachwort zur Neuausgabe von Wolfgang Kemp (Berlin: Gebr. Mann Verlag, 2000 (1901)), pp. 134–135. 101 Riegl, p. 51. 102 H.P. L’Orange, “Plotinus-Paul,” Byzantion, T. 25/27 (1955/1957), Brussels 1958, pp. 473–486; L’Orange has dealt in depth with this theme. See also: H.P. L’Orange, “The Origin of Medieval Portraiture,” Acta Congressus Madvigiani, Proceedings of the second international

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phenomenon103 and the historian Peter Brown talks of “an imminent ‘break­ through’ of divine energy in the inner world of the individual.”104 Ernst Kitzinger reads a change in the formal language of art as an expression of an  “‘other-directed’ as well as ‘inner-directed’” phenomenon,105 a concept Kitzinger borrowed from the American sociologist David Riesman.106 Robert Stalley sees an architectural parallel to the pictorial arts of late antiquity, when he declares that “the Early Christian church [i.e. the physical building] was essentially inward-looking.”107 No one, however, expresses the connection between the inward-looking and the extrasensory more clearly than Bernhard Schweitzer: .

The true being which the Greeks had given a physical form faded slowly away from the corporeal world [Körperwelt], indeed, completely from the material world [Sinnenwelt], and the meaning of life, world reason [Weltvernunft], Godhead or how one should name it, moving into some­ thing extrasensory behind the things, and in order to represent this the arts had to create new forms of expressions.108

congress of classical studies, Vol. III (Copenhagen, 1954), 53–70; also H.P. L’Orange, Mot Middelalder (Oslo: Dreyers Forlag, 1963), pp. 30–65. 103 H. Torp, “The date of the conversion of the rotunda at Thessaloniki into a church,” in The Norwegian Institute at Athens. The first five lectures. Papers from the Norwegian Institute at Athens 1. Eds. Ø. Andersen and H. Whitaker (Athens: Norwegian Institute at Athens, 1991), pp. 23–24. 104 P. Brown, The World of Late Antiquity (London: Thames & Hudson, 1971), p. 52. It has also been debated whether traits of introspection are found in Marcus Aurelius’ work Meditationes. See C. Gills introduction to Marcus Aurelius, Meditations. Wordsworth Classics of World Literature, trans. R. Hard (Ware, Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions, 1997), p. ix. 105 E. Kitzinger, “On the Interpretation of Stylistic Changes in Late Antique Art,” Bucknell Review, 15, (December 1967), p. 3. reprint in E. Kitzinger, The Art of Byzantium and the Medieval West: Selected Studies (Bloomington, Indiana,1976); E. Kitzinger, Byzantine Art in the Making (London: Faber & Faber, 1977), pp. 13–18 continues the discussion with the author talking of a “spiritual crisis” in late antiquity. 106 Kitzinger, Byzantine Art in the Making (1977), p. 13. D. Riesman with N. Glazer and R. Denney, The Lonely Crowd: A Study of the Changing American Character (New Haven – London: Yale University Press, 1961 (1950)), pp. 8–15. But whereas Riesman relates “innerdirected” to Western culture, from the Renaissance to the 20th century, Kitzinger transfers the concept to the Middle Ages. 107 R. Stalley, Early Medieval Architecture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 21. 108 My English translation from: B. Schweitzer, Zur Kunst der Antike; ausgewählte Schriften, I-II (Tübingen: Ernst Wasmuth, 1963), pp. 204–205.

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If we look at the background in the history of ideas, Hegel speaks in his aes­ thetics about how the Greek temple is superseded by “the fully enclosed house [i.e. Christian temple] as the fundamental form.”109 Hegel compares the closed form with the inward-seeking nature of the Christian spirit: Just as the Christian spirit concentrates itself in the inner life, so the build­ ing becomes the place shut in on every side for the assembly of the Christian congregation and the collection of its thoughts. The spatial enclosure cor­ responds to the concentration of mind within, and results from it.110 The question is, however, whether it is not a simplified assumption to see an analogy between the changed form of the sacred building and the appearance of ‘inner man’. That the emphasis on the decorative expression, as for instance columns and architectural sculptures, was transferred to the interior room is incontestable. A typical example is Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome (c. 432–40), where the interior was also embellished with mosaics (Fig. 13.5). In that way

Figure 13.5  Wall in Santa Maria Maggiore, Rome, c. 432–40 Photo: Fleischer 109 Hegel’s Aesthetics. Lectures on Fine Art, trans. T.M. Knox, reprint, Vol. II (Oxford – New York: Oxford University Press, 1991 (1975)), p. 685; for a German version, see G.W.F. Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Ästethik II, neu edierte Ausgabe, Redaktion E. Moldenhauer and K.M. Michel (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Taschenbuch Verlag, 1986), p. 332. 110 Hegel, p. 332.

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the sacral space had a narrative element added as well as a tendency toward the immaterial. But how critically have the monuments in western Europe been studied, for example in terms of exterior decoration (preserved or testified to in the sources)? One of the weightiest examples in support of this criticism is the eastern gable of the old basilica of St. Peter’s in Rome. During the pontificate of Pope Leo the Great (440–61), it was decorated with mosaics, paid for by Consul Flavius Avitus Marinianus. From a few extant drawings we can deduce that the picture pro­ gram on the upper part of the gable showed Christ Enthroned, surrounded by the four evangelist symbols, and in an area below it, the 24 Elders, depicted with offerings. At its far edges, the frieze was finished with a symbolically depicted ‘Bethlehem’ (on the left) and a ‘Jerusalem’ (on the right).111 The mosaic decora­ tion on the west front of Basilica Eufrasiana in the Istrian town of Poreč (for­ merly Parenzo), also makes use of the apocalyptic theme presented by St. Peter’s. The church, with its atrium, baptisterium, martyrion (mausoleum) and an Episcopalian salutatorium was probably built towards the end of the 6th century for Bishop Euphrasius.112 A Majestas Domini, surrounded by the four evangelist symbols, was originally enthroned at the top of the gable, which today is empty. In the lower, restored area, with three arch-shaped windows, seven lighted candlesticks are seen in the area between the windows, referring to the golden candlesticks in the Revelation (Fig. 13.6). In each of the side fields are seen two unidentified forms (saints?). In both examples the exterior church building has thus displayed an eschatological message to the world. If we expand this empirical material to also include Syrian church archi­ tecture in the 5th and 6th centuries, we will find more examples modifying the traditional view: that a church building from these centuries must meet the world with bare walls, devoid of figurative or decorative elements.113 These 111 T.C. Bannister, “The Constantinian Basilica of Saint Peter at Rome,” Journal of The Society of Architectural Historians, Vol. XXVII (1968), p. 6; for a dating and description of the mosaics, see also W. Buchowiecki, Handbuch der Kirchen Roms, 1 (Wien: Verlag Brüder Hollinek 1967), pp. 106–109. 112 Snyder dates the decoration to 535–43. J. Snyder: Medieval Art: Painting – Sculpture – Architecture, 4th-14th Century (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1989), p. 42, and fig. 47. 113 Other European examples can be mentioned, as for instance Tempietto del Clitunno in Spoleto with architectural sculptures (8th century), and Orchomenos in Greece with reliefs (9th century). On the Syrian church architecture, and a discussion of exterior versus interior, see J. Fleischer, “Pre-Romanesque Church Walls and their ‘Language’” in Signs of Change. Transformations of Christian Traditions and their Representation in the Arts, 1000– 2000, eds. N.H. Petersen, C. Clüver and N. Bell (Amsterdam – New York: Rodopi, 2004), pp. 247–264.

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Figure 13.6  Gable mosaic, Basilica Eufrasiana in Poreč. Croatia, end of the 6th century Photo: Fleischer

facts suggest that the church building is not only turned inward as an architec­ tural screen around the mystery. As mentioned in the introduction, it is also rooted in the world, to speak to the world, which introduces phenomenology into the further considerations of the church building as an opening towards transcendence. In Martin Heidegger’s phenomenology the subject is brought back into the world, ‘in-der-Welt-sein’, which through this meeting also gives to the objects a way of being that is rooted in the world. Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s critique of Augustine can also be adduced. With reference to De vera Religione Merleau-Ponty answers that the truth is not to be found in the inner man: “… man is in the world, and only in the world does he know himself.”114 In The Origin of the Work of Art Heidegger illustrates this with the Greek temple. It stands on the rocky ground of the valley and its stone masses take brilliance and light from the sun.115 This rootedness in the world, subject to the 114 “l’homme est au monde, c’est dans le monde qu’il se connait,” M. Merleau-Ponty, Phénoménologie de la perception (Paris: Gallimard, 1972 (1945)), p. V. For the English trans­ lation, see Phenomenology of Perception, by M. Merleau-Ponty. Translated from the French by C. Smith, reprint (London – New York: Routledge, 1994 (1962)), p. xi. 115 M. Heidegger, “Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes” (1935/36), Holzwege, 6. durchgesehene Auflage (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1980 (1950)), pp. 27–28.

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changing light, wind and weather, but also the changing conditions of man, is our experience of the building. In Sven-Olov Wallenstein’s interpretation of Heidegger, the temple is able to ‘collect the world around it’.116 Gernot Böhme emphasizes that in Heidegger’s analysis “Existentiel experience and world experience” are elucidated.117 Margunn Sandal discusses the rocky ground as a special meeting between heaven and earth, with reference to Norberg-Schulz, which must also be included in this Heideggerian discourse.118 Regarding the exterior-interior relation, it is also important that it is the external form of the temple that is emphasized by Heidegger. The critique can also be directed from a different angle. On the basis of the research in ritual, with an anthropological angle and on the background of Anold van Gennep’s theory of rites de passage,119 the church portal can be understood as a’liminal space’. Broadly speaking, the liminal can be understood as a state or passage from one life experience to another. The passage between the outer world (the powers of chaos) and the inner world (the sacred space) was marked on the exterior of many early churches with inscriptions and crosses above the doors. This is for example the case in the early, partly preserved Christian basilica (6th century) Dar El Kous in Le Kef in Tunisia.120 Two of the south portals of the church ruins have intact lintels with relief decorations. The eastern one shows a cross of St. George inscribed in a circle ornamented with twisted strands of rope, flanked by a palm (?) and a bush (Fig. 13.7). The stylized 116 (Swedish: “samla världen omkring sig.”) S.-O. Wallenstein, Den moderna arkitekturens filosofier (Stockholm: Alfabeta Bokförlag, 2004), p. 83. 117 G. Böhme, Aisthetik. Vorlesungen über Ästhetik als allgemeine Wahrnehmungslehre (München: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2001), p. 81. In connection with Heidegger’s use of the building as an epistemological object, I want to call attention to a pre-phenomenological idea found in the German historian of architecture, R. Adamy, who published Architektonik des muhamedanischen und romanischen Stils (Hannover: Helwing’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1887). Here Adamy explains the life conditions of the north European (i.e. the Teuton). He must live his life behind the protective walls of his dwelling, he must live with his children, the cattle and the winter store: But these harsher conditions influence man: “Trübe Tage und Nebel erzeu­ gen phantastische Gebilde im Hirn des Menschen, die sich aus Traum und Wirklichkeit zusammensetzen. Kommt der längst erwartete Frühling, jauchst der Mensch um so freudiger auf und mit den Knospen zugleich schwillt die Wonne in seinem Herz.,” p. 160. 118 Sandal uses the Norwegian expression ‘fjellfast’ (‘mountain-fixed’), since parts of the building ‘grow’ out of the rock, see M. Sandal’s article in this book, “On Earth as It Is in Heaven. St. Hallvard’s Church and Abbey,” p. 431. 119 A. van Gennep, The Rites of Passage, trans. M.B. Vizedom and G.L. Caffee (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960); see also E. Fischer-Lichte, Ästhetik des Performativen (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp Verlag, 2004), p. 305. 120 Krautheimer- Ćurčić, pp. 275–276.

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Figure 13.7  Lintel with a cross motif, Dar El Kous, Tunisia, 6th century Photo: Fleischer

vegetation along with the cross expresses ‘non-contemporaneity’ and a trans­ formation of time and space: now the believer enters to meet eternity (Paradise) in the shape of a special space. That the church door was more than a mere physical barrier is emphasized in a letter sent from bishop Hypatios of Ephesos in the 6th century to a suffragan bishop, Julian of Atramyttion: We allow venerable paintings in sanctuaries, but in forbidding, as we often do, carving in wood and stone, we do not regard the latter as being free from sin except on doors.121 St. Isaac of Syria describes the powers of chaos with the empathy of the ascetic, as an enemy who “stands with us day and night before our eyes, he watches, waits and spies for some door to our senses to open and let him in.”122 121 See: Ø. Hjort, “‘Except on Doors’: Reflections on a Curious Passage in the Letter from Hypatios of Ephesus to Julian of Atramyttion,” in: Byzantine East, Latin West. Art-Historical Studies in Honour of Kurt Weitzmann, eds. C. Moss and K. Kiefer (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), p. 615. The text does not tell us whether Hypatios here relies on Ezekiel’s vision of the temple, where the posts on both sides are decorated with palmettes. 122 Early Fathers from the Philokalia, together with some writings of St. Abba Dorotheus, St. Isaac of Syria and St. Gregory Palamas. Selected and translated from the Russian text

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These anthropocentric concepts of the body as a house where the soul strug­ gles against the entrance of evil are also found in the Greek-Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria (c. 20 bc–c. 45 ad).123 Philo must have been familiar with Plato’s Timaios, in which the body is compared with a polis. Here Plato makes the body into an image of architecture which houses physiological impulses and passions, which must be subjected to the rule of the mind.124 The Syrian poet Jacob of Serugh (d. 521), in a section of his 79th homily, On the Veil of Moses, has combined the Easter lamb with Christ’s sacrificial death on Golgotha.125 Here the door is interpreted as the vulnerable opening towards the sensible world. First we are reminded of the exodus of the Israelite people: “Moses slaughtered the lamb and smeared its blood on the doors so that the angel of death should not enter to take their firstborn.”126 One of the following verses goes, It is the cross [or crucified one] who guards the gate of the mouth from Satan; the cross stood above the doors of the Israelites and preserved them from the slayer of the firstborn on earth […] The doors of the people were sealed with the blood of the lamb, do you seal your door with the blood from the side of God’s Son.127 The shift we see in Philo from the Greek polis to the house emphasizes how the outer-inner relation is a question of several levels of meaning in the early Christianity of late antiquity. If the body is corruptible, will not the material church building also be, seeing that it also meets the world and is created by human hands? Jacob of Serugh’s exhortation to close the outer senses to the entrance of evil is expressed in the west portal of St. George’s Church in the south Syrian town of As-Sanamayn, where a founder in 515 had this carved in Greek and framed with crosses: This has become a house of God which [was once] a lodging-place of demons…where [once were] idol’s sacrifices, now [are] choirs of angels, and where God was proved to wrath, now God is propitiated.128 Dobrotolubiye by E. Kadloubovsky and G.E.H. Palmer, fifth impression (London: Faber and Faber, 1973 (1954)), pp. 259–260. 123 Whitehead, Castles, p. 40. 124 Timaios, 68C-72B. More precisely, Plato has the male part of the soul curb the vices in conjunction with the rational mind; see also Whitehead, Castles, p. 25. 125 Exodus 34. 33: “When Moses had finished speaking with them, he put a veil over his face.” 126 S. Brock, “Jacob of Serugh on the Veil of Moses,” Sobornost, Vol. 3:1 (1981), p. 76. 127 Brock, p. 77. 128 H.C. Butler, Early Churches in Syria. Fourth to Seventh Centuries, ed. and compl. E. Baldwin Smith (Princeton: The Department of Art and Archaeology of Princeton University, 1929),

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By referring to the sacrificial service which pleases God, and at the same time contrasting the banished demons with the choir of angels, the celestial aspect is inscribed and outlined in the masonry of the building, where, like the human body, it is most fragile: in the portal opening to the world. Behind this opening, the choir of angels, with the power of paradox, gives the sacred space an extra­ sensory fullness.

The Wind and the ‘Living Stones’

In Syrian poetry and contemporary church architecture, the wind as a physical and spiritual entity can add an important layer of meaning to our understand­ ing of the ‘living stones’ of the allegory, a layer which opens up to the extrasen­ sory. In a series of hymns, St. Ephrem the Syrian (c. 306–73) has described Paradise in a highly spiritual way. In Hymn IX, verse 8, Ephrem describes the various breezes of Paradise. While one breeze satiates the hunger of the righ­ teous, another quenches their thirst; one is fraught with goodness, another with everything that is rich.129 In the following verse the breezes are allego­ rized more specifically, since they spiritually breastfeed the spiritual beings. In his translation Sebastian Brock calls attention to the fact that the Syriac word ruha means both ‘wind’ and ‘spirit’.130 These considerations in Ephrem find their origin in an interpretation of Genesis I. 2 found in the patristic literature of Augustine and Basil the Great. The exegetic problem was whether the expression in the Story of Creation “while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters” was to be interpreted as the work of the Holy Spirit or a wind that swept across the waters.131 In their considerations, both Fathers referred to a Syrian source.132 The wind as a representation of Yahweh is met with later in the Psalms, where the psalmist praises Yahweh “He walks upon the wings of

129 130 131 132

p. 122; For the Greek text, see Inscriptions grecques et latines de la Syrie recuellies et expliquées par William Henry Waddington, edizione anastatica. Roma: “L’Erma” di Bretschneider, 1968 (Paris 1870). St. Ephrem the Syrian. Hymns on Paradise, intr. and trans. S. Brock (Crestwood, ny: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1998), p. 139. Ephrem, p. 135. The traditional English version (King James Version) is “And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” For an extensive discussion, see H. Lehmann, Students of the Bible in 4th and 5th Century Syria (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 2008), pp. 23–35. Lehmann’s critical study was originally published as “El Espiritu de Dios sobre las aguas. Fuentes de los comentarios de Basilio y Augustin sobre el Génesis I,2, in Augustinus XXVI, Madrid 1981.

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the wind” and “He makes the winds His messengers.”133 In his study of the ideal landscape as topos in older English literature, Niels Bugge Hansen has summed up the classical ideal (e.g. in Homer and Virgil) on which this was based: The basic features of the locus amoenus are a tree, a spring, and a meadow. Sometimes the tree gives way to a grove with a great variety of trees, and the meadow is adorned with a multitude of flowers. A gentle breeze may be added to bring coolness under the shade of the trees, and set the leaves rustling.134 In the plastic art of late antiquity, a particular type of capital is found, which has been dubbed by the archaeologists a ‘windblown acanthus’.135 An example in a Roman context is the nymphaeum in Ephesos where the niche with the statue of Trajan was framed by two twisted columns of the same type as the columns in Constantine’s basilica. Quatember describes them as ‘windblown’ acanthus leaves.136 What is noteworthy is that they can specifically be con­ nected to Syrian church architecture from the end of the 5th century and later. For example they are found on the main portal of Qal’at Si’man (Fig. 13.8) and in the ruin of ‘The East Basilica’ in Baquirha (both in northern Syria). The type can also be traced to the Hagios Demetrios cathedral (late 5th century) and Hagia Sophia (c. 690–730), both in Thessaloniki, and later as spolia on the main portal of San Marco in Venice.137 133 Psalm 104. 3–4. 134 N.B. Hansen, That pleasant place (Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag, 1973), p. 9. 135 The expression has taken on a life of its own in scholarly literature. For the older use of the term, see W. von Alten, Geschichte des altchristlichen Kapitells: Ein Versuch (München: Delphin-Verlag, 1913), pp. 9–14. Butler uses the expression “wind-blown” about Corinthian capitals with ‘wind-bent’ leafage, found in Syrian churches. In his attempt to classify on the basis of form, he exposes the problems this raises, by talking of “This eccentric and animated form of a capital,” Butler (1929), p. 239. Another example is A. Carile, “Dal tardo­ antico al medioevo,” in: Konstantinopel. Scultura bizantina dai Musei di Berlino, A cura di Arne Effenberger (Roma: Edizioni de Luca, 2000), where we find the expression “Capitello ‘a foglie d’acanto mosse dal vento’.” See also Die Kunst der frühen Christen in Syrien. Zeichen, Bilder und Symbole von 4. bis 7. Jahrhundert. Hrsg. M. Fansa und B. Bollmann (Mainz am Rhein: Verlag Philip von Zabern, 2008), kat. nr. 96. 136 Two fragments of the columns have been preserved (Plate 24, 3–1; plate 25, 3–2). 3–1 are described by Quatember “als ob sie vom Wind bewegt würden.” 137 J. Fleischer, “Living Rocks and locus amoenus,” in The Appearances of Medieval Rituals, eds. N.H. Petersen, M.B. Bruun, J. Llewellyn and E. Østrem (Turnhout, Belgien: Brepols Publishers, 2004), pp. 157–158.

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Figure 13.8  Qal’at Si’man, detail of portal with ‘wind-blown’ acanthus, after the end of the 5th century Photo: Tobias Fleischer

Special attention has to be given to the ‘windblown’ capitals in the choir of Santa Prassede in Rome, where a basket of leaves enfolds the core of the capi­ tal and bend in the same direction, as to an imaginary gust of wind (Fig. 13.9). All in all, six columns are found with this motif, three on each side of the choir. The columns are of Pentelic marble and are regarded by Richard Krautheimer as being Roman work of the late antiquity “of an elegant and unusual design.”138 He traces them back to the older architectural history of the choir, as they may have been hidden by masonry for a period, but were found during renovation in 1729 and re-erected.139 The column shafts of Santa Prassede are divided into four drums of equal size, which all have fluting, from the lower part of which wreaths of acanthus leaves sprout. Similar examples of this type of column shafts from late antiquity have been preserved, and affirm Krautheimer’s defi­ nition of their idiom. In the Archaeological Museum in Corinth can be seen 138 R. Krautheimer, Spencer Corbett and Wolfgang Frankl, Corpus Basilicarum Christianarum Romae. The Early Christian Basilicas of Rome IV – IX Cent. Vol. III. Città del Vaticano: Pontificio Istituto di Archaeologia Christiana – (New York: New York University, 1967), p. 250, and fig. 218. 139 W. Buchowiecki, Handbuch der Kirchen Roms, 3. Band (Wien: Verlag Brüder Hollinek, 1974), p. 608; M. Caperna, La Basilica di Santa Prassede. Il significato della vicenda architettonica (Genova: Edizione d’Arte Marconi, 1999), p. 42, 112, and fig. 66, 151.

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Figure 13.9  Santa Prassede, capitals with ‘wind-blown’ leafage, Rome, 822 Photo: Fleischer

two of originally three fragments of an acanthus column, which was found in 1933 in connection with the extensive excavations presided over by The American School.140 The capital is missing, but both fragments show the same rhythmical division in which acanthus leaves sprout from each section into the fluting. Parallels to this expressive idiom in the sculpture of late antiquity have been treated by Aby Warburg in a dissertation from 1893. Here he calls atten­ tion to the treatment of the theme in ancient literature, e.g. in Ovid’s descrip­ tion of the wind moving the flowing robes of the fleeing Daphne.141 On the 140 O. Broneer, Excavations in Corinth, 1934. American Journal of Archeology, Vol. XXXIX (1935), pp. 65–66. 141 A. Warburg, Sandro Botticellis “Geburt der Venus” und “Frühling“: Eine Untersuchung über die Vorstellungen von der Antike in der italienischen Frührenaissance (Hamburg-Leipzig:

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basis of these analyses of texts and images, Warburg conceived the expression ‘the imaginary breeze’. Georges Didi-Huberman affirms Warburg’s observation, with reference to an article by T. Raff: The air, then, also appears as an allegorical fluid. It recuperates an entire tradition, which stretches back to Antiquity and remains uninterrupted in the Middle Ages.142 With the fusion of the late antique and early Christian uses of the wind as a motif, in the Christian context as an expression of the Spirit which ‘breathes life’, this motif is reinforced in Santa Pressede, by making the altar space a stage on which the mystery of the Eucharist is played out. Thus, to use Schmarsow’s pre-phenomenology, a sense of space (Raumgefühl)143 is created, a presence of the beyond and of transcendence. In his phenomenology Gernot Böhme uses the term atmospheric, something which emerges from the aesthetic design of a space, a piece of music, and particularly in the allegory. It is associated with qualities, and yet the atmospheric is only a Halbdinge (neither a ‘thing’, nor ‘nothing’).144 Thus the animated leaf capitals represent presence of the Spirit.

The Abode of Light

In 1913, the Russian symbolist Osip Mandelstam published the collection Kamen (‘Stone’), in which he described Hagia Sophia. In Robert Tracy’s transla­ tion one of the stanzas goes like this, Leopold Voss, 1892); for an English annotated edition of Warburg’s works, see Aby Warburg: The Renewal of Pagan Antiquity: Contributions to the Cultural History of the European Renaissance, introduction by Kurt W. Forster, translation by D. Britt (Los Angeles, ca: Getty Research Institute for the History of Art and the Humanities, 1999). 142 G. Didi-Huberman, “The imaginary breeze: remarks on the air of the Quattrocento,” Journal of Visual Culture, Vol. 2 (2003), p. 279. 143 A. Schmarsow: Das Wesen der architektonischen Schöpfung (Leipzig: Karl W. Hiersemann, 1894); for an annotated English edition, see Empathy, Form and Space. Problems in German Aesthetics, 1873–1893, Introduction and translation H.F. Mallgrave and Eleftherios (Santa Monica, ca: Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities, 1994), pp. 281–297. 144 Böhme has borrowed the term Halbdinge from H. Schmitz’ Systems der Philosphie, see Böhme, Aisthetik. Vorlesungen, pp. 61–65: Hegel noted that transitional forms occur due to nature’s Ohnmacht (impotence), and these Mitteldinge according to him, could not “dem Begriff […] treu bleiben und die Gedankenbestimmungen […] rein festhalten.” See W. Sauerländer, “The fallacies of classification discussed in the light of German architec­ ture 1190–1260,” Architectural History, 30 (1987), p. 2.

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A glorious temple floating in the world With forty windows, each exalting light; Beneath the dome four pendentives unfurled Show four Archangels, a resplendent sight.145 In the poem, the world, the light, and the powers of heaven meet in the abode of Holy Wisdom, Mandelstam using the expression “exalting light” to describe the extrasensory and dynamic aspect of this element. In theology and the aes­ thetics of religion, light represents something absolutely central in the tradi­ tion of the Eastern Church, to which we must suppose the architectural design of the Constantinian basilicas has contributed. According to Gabriele Eder, the Constantinian basilica’s Lichtfülle constituted a marked change in the architec­ ture of the time.146 The writers of the Early Church were aware of this fact. In a sermon on his father who died in 374 in Nazianzus in Cappadocia, and for whom he had erected a martyrion, St. Gregory of Nazianzus interpreted the space: “its vault flashes down upon us from above, and it dazzles our eyes with abundant sources of light on every side, being indeed the dwelling-place of light.”147 In the 6th century Prokopios was similarly inspired by the light and the cupola of Hagia Sophia. It was not the light of the sun that flowed into the sacred place. On the contrary, the rays came from within and in such abun­ dance that they filled the space.148 The flood of light represented a divine light and the wisdom of God, but also Maria, the mother of God, who gave birth to the light (Christ).149 These examples point to a parallel image of domus 145 O. Mandelstam, Stone, translation, introduction and notes by R. Tracy (London: Collins Harvill,1981), p. 119. 146 G. Eder, “Licht und Raumform in der spätantiken Hallenarchitektur,” Licht und Architektur. Schriften des Seminars für klassische Archaeologie der Freien Universität Berlin, heraus­ geben von W.-D. Heilmeyer und W. Hoepfner (Tübingen: Ernst Wasmuth Verlag, 1990), pp. 131–139. 147 Quoted from: Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Vol. VII, eds. P. Schaff and H. Wace, reprint (Edinburgh: T&T Clark – Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1989), p. 267. In the Greek text ouranós (heaven) is used to describe the construction that finishes the space overhead. 148 Procopius: VII Buildings, translation by H.B. Dewing and G. Downey (Cambridge, Mass.: Harward University Press; London: William Heinemann, 1971 (1940)), p. 17. 149 A. Karahan, Byzantine Holy Images and the Issue of Transcendence and Immanence (Dissertation. Eidos 15, Skrifter från Konstvetenskapliga institutionen vid Stockholms uni­ versitet, 2005), p. 95.

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spiritualis, which is emphasized by an instruction given by Bishop Cyril of Jerusalem to the catecumens (the baptismal candidates) c. 350, in which the fragrant breeze of the Holy Spirit and the light that illuminates the inner man are united: Already there is an odour of blessedness upon you, O ye who are soon to be enlightened: already ye are gathering the spiritual flowers, to weave heavenly crowns: already the fragrance of the Holy Spirit has breathed upon you.150 In the Eastern Church and with inspiration from Neoplatonism, an early ‘the­ ology of light’ is seen, a concept of a heavenly, i.e. not created, light. A central source is the Enneads by Plotinus (c. 205–70). Here Plotinus explains in the first Ennead, Part 6, that man must seek beauty behind the material forms with “the vision of the soul,” since it is the soul that creates the beauty of things.151 Plotinus connects this instruction with the experience of ‘the true light’.152 In the first part of the fifth Ennead, Plotinus opens his metaphysics of light towards the otherworldly by affirming that this light has its origin in The One (i.e. God). In Pseudo-Dionysius, possibly written by a Syrian monk around 500, or created by an edited combination of several works, it says: “Sensual fra­ grances are reflections of an intellectual cause, and material lights are images of the non-material source of brilliance.”153 The non-created light and its importance for the contemporary understand­ ing of sacred architecture and the mysteries of the Eucharist, is perhaps most forcefully expressed in St. Catherine’s monastery on Mount Sinai. The building complex was founded c. 540, while the mosaic in the church is presumably a 150 Cyril of Jerusalem, “Procatechesis or, Prologue to the Cathechetical Lectures of our Holy Father, Cyril, Archbishop of Jerusalem,” Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Vol. VII, eds P. Schaff and H. Wace, reprint (Edinburgh: T&T Clark – Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1989), p. 1. 151 Plotinus: The Enneads, trans. S. MacKenna (London: Penguin Books, 1991), p. 49. 152 Plotinus, p. 55: “Light which is not measured by space, not narrowed to any circumscribed form nor again diffused as a thing void of term, but ever unmeasurable as something greater than all measure and more than all quantity.” 153 Pseudo-Dionysius, De coelesti hierarchia, 3. Quoted from W. Tatarkiewicz, History of Aesthetics, Vol. II: Medieval Aesthetics. Ed. C. Barrett (The Hague – Paris – Warsaw: Mouton and pwn-Polish Scientific Publishers, 1970), p. 34. See also L. Barnard, “The Theology of Images” in Iconoclasm. Papers given at the Ninth Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies. University of Birmingham March 1975, eds. A. Bryer and J. Herrin (Birmingham: Centre for Byzantine Studies, University of Birmingham, 1977), p. 11.

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little later, though still from the reign of Emperor Justinian the Great (527–65). In the bema (choir), behind the iconostasis, the apse is covered by a mosaic where the Transfiguration (Metamorphōsis) presents the Transfiguration of Christ on Mount Tabor, (cp. Matthew 17:2): “And He was transfigured before them, and His face shone like the sun, and His garments became as white as light.” Christ is surrounded by a blue aureole, which zone by zone gradually becomes darker. The blue color symbolizes the fact that closest to the divine, everything is enveloped in darkness. Here the adjective tenebrosus serves, and it can at the same time be seen as a reference to Sinai, where Moses met the concealed Yahweh. The rays of light that penetrate the aureole touch Moses, Elijah and the three disciples. Whereas the Old Testament prophets converse with Christ and seem immovable in their existence beyond life on earth, the disciples’ bodies are in movement. John Chrysostom explains that the two prophets were present because they had both had a vision of the concealed Divinity.154 According to Gregory of Nazianzus this light was the manifestation of the divine.155 In a later theological discussion by St. John of Damascus, he introduced the argument that the evangelists’ comparison of the light of Christ with the sun was inadequate, since “for uncreated reality cannot be expressed by a created image.”156 Conceiving the motif and the windows of the choir walls as one is essential. The light intake, the purely physical backlight, contributes to giving the mosaic an immaterial quality. In the movement itself, in the ‘break-in’ of light in the choir of the Sinai church, the drama opens up for the extrasensory, the Transfiguration and the coming of Christus Oriens in an eucharistic perspec­ tive. This is similarly expressed in Armenian liturgy. Ernst H. Kantorowicz refers to the fact that on the great feast days the Christus Oriens motif is linked with ‘the great entrance’, the liturgical procession during which the elements of the sacrifice are solemnly carried from the offering table to the altar. During this ritual act, and immediately before the Cherub song, the deacon rises and loudly proclaims that the Lord has erected his tabernacle in the sun.157

154 John Chrysostom, Homily on Matthew 17.1, Migne pg 58: Coll. 550–551; see also L. Ouspensky and V. Lossky: The Meaning of Icons (Crestwood, ny: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press), 1989, p. 212. 155 Gregory of Nazianzus, Sermon on the Baptism, Migne pg 36 col. 365 A; see also OuspenskyLossky, p. 209. 156 John of Damascus’ Homily on the Transfiguration, Migne pg: 96 Col. 565 A; see also Ouspensky-Lossky, p. 209. 157 E.H. Kantorowicz, Oriens Augusti-Lever du Roi, Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 17 (1963), p. 148.

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It has often been said about the work of art in a modern context that it lives in the interpretation. Analogously, it can be maintained that in early church architecture the work opens up to the extrasensory through the allegorical aspect and in a dialogue with the wind-Spirit and the created-non-created light. The latter two have the movement motif in common. In the ‘windblown’ acanthus, the wind is invisible, an absence of presence, whereas the light is also present in its physical manifestation. As emphasized by Norberg-Schulz, and with reference to the American architect Louis Kahn, architecture cannot ‘live’ without light – and vice versa: “The sun did not understand its beauty until it grazed the side of a building.”158 This aesthetic has been found in the secularized world, but it emphasizes movement and the ‘immediate’ encoun­ ter with architecture, with matter. Thus, it is especially in Byzantine church architecture, with all its regional­ isms included that we meet the traces of transcendence. As a space of superterrestrial ‘fullness’, where the angels of light rule and eternity meet time. Without the architectural frame, all this would have nowhere to be as an object of Allegory and her siblings. 158 Norberg-Schulz, Architcture, p. 334.

chapter 14

On Earth as It is in Heaven: St. Hallvard’s Church and Abbey Margunn Sandal Introduction In recent Norwegian church architecture, the sacred has been highlighted as an important quality, as can be seen in architectural church-building competitions. The church is likely to favor architecture that embodies the sacred, and architects follow up by incorporating the sacred as a theme in their competition proposals, and in the juries there is an evaluation of the qualities that can produce a sacred effect. The architecture critics are also pleased with the term ‘sacred’ in relation to the most successful churches. At the same time, there seems to be a wide range in the understanding of what the architectural sacred is, or can be, and there is surprisingly little discussion of the significance the building has in a liturgical context.1 Interest in the sacred, combined with the unclear expectations regarding qualities and meanings can be seen against the background of the development in church architecture in the previous century. Changes in liturgical and ecclesiastical practices meant that one had to think in a new way about the plan of the churches. In connection with this, there were also great changes in church design. Le Corbusier showed with his pilgrims’ church in Ronchamp, which was finished in 1955, that religious architecture was an interesting field for innovation. After this, many architects began to experiment with sacred forms, but this reformulation of church architecture was not always entirely successful. It could end in arbitrary improvisations and meaningless signs.2 Other architects were more skeptical about seeking new forms, and they thought that church projects were best taken care of by exclusively focusing on the functional response to the practice that architecture is supposed to 1 M. Sandal, “Overskridande arkitektur. Ei undersøking av det sakrale i nyare kyrkjebygg” (“Transcending Architecture. A Study of the Sacred in Recent Church Buildings”) (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Oslo, 2014), pp. 6–19. Parts of this article are excerpts from the thesis. 2 C. Norberg-Schulz, Intentions in Architecture (Massachusetts: mit Press, 1965, 1997), pp. 20–21.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi 10.1163/9789004291690_020

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provide. At the outer extreme, vulgar functionalism could lead to churchbuilding governed by utilitarian needs, where the task of architecture is reduced to the practical planning of activities in a physically protected environment, and within a reasonable economic framework. Many of the theologians who got involved in this discussion of church architecture understood the church building as first and foremost a place to “house a congregation gathered around an altar”: “The first purpose of building a church is a purely practical one; to provide a shelter for the liturgical assembly of a particular Christian community.”3 This means that the building gains sacred significance through its practical, instrumental and functional organization for the congregation and its liturgical practice, but beyond that, architecture does not play any role in the church service. “The building should be shaped by worship, and not worship by architecture.”4 This attitude could lead to a focus on plansand layout, while the formal or symbolic architectural expression of sanctity is given lower priority. Such attitudes can be a contributing factor to the increased interest in sacred qualities in Norwegian church-building in recent years.5 In general, there is reason to believe that the great revolution in church architecture has led to both a renewed interest in the architectural expression of sanctity and to confusion about which qualities can represent it. I, myself, argue that the sacred quality in church-building is that which “is related to God.” I take my point of departure, then, in the sacred in architecture as a constructed treatment of the relationship between God and the world that is congruent with the treatment of the same relation in liturgical practice. I understand architecture, thus, as an integrated part of the liturgy; it simply is liturgy. Liturgical practice is about a divine presence, and correspondingly, the sacred in architecture is a treatment of God’s presence in the world. Like God’s transcendence, this presence should be understood dialectically. This means that it can be radicalized and modified in different ways (see pp. 455–457). In liturgical practice, the congregation around and mediation of God takes place through ­different means, such as words and song, music, wine and water. Architecture is a medium with its own laws, which govern the representation of the relation between God and the world. The building is a concrete and physical material, which is usually to be constructed in a particular place. When architecture is congruent with the liturgical acts, it is so usually through 3 P. Hammond, Liturgy and Architecture (New York: Columbia University Press, 1961), pp. 28–29. 4 Hammond, Liturgy and Architecture, pp. 28–30. 5 M. Sandal, “Eit sakralt preg. Kyrkjearkitekturen si rolle i den religiøse erfaringa,” Norsk teologisk tidsskrift 111, (2010), pp. 60–81 (pp. 60–61).

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spatial organization and the formal articulation of gathering around and experiencing divine reality. In this way, it can communicate the experience of divine transcendence as well as of divine presence through its particular medium. In a dynamic with liturgy, architecture will, on the one hand, reflect the liturgical ideals and the changes that have taken place in liturgical practice, as it implements the liturgy. On the other hand, the specific architectural implementation will affect what happens in the churches. In order to see how architecture can be a part of the liturgy, as I have suggested above, and to give a basis for reflection on the significance sacrality in architecture can have, I will describe St. Hallvard’s Church and Abbey in Oslo. The building, which was consecrated in 1966, occupies a unique position in Norwegian architectural history. Here church architecture is redefined in several ways, and the church is an interesting example of how modern architecture can express a transcending presence. The commission came originally from a small Franciscan church congregation in the eastern part of Oslo. There was a need for a monastery in which the brothers could reside and live and a church which could provide space for the contemplative and liturgical life, as well as various church activities. In posterity, a full functional analysis could explain the architecture causally as a response to the concrete needs of a physical, social and practical nature. St. Hallvard’s is an example showing that such a constricting approach is not sufficient for understanding the church architecture. The architecture of the church does not let itself be subordinated exclusively to a radically functional approach. The architecture is a redefinition of something that does not fit into the purely utilitarian. In this article I show how this redefinition takes place, and I elucidate its theological significance. To do this, I have used a phenomenological approach to the architecture of St. Hallvard's, with particular interest in the way in which the architectural construction creates space and imbues it with meaning. The study concentrates on the original structure from 1966 with the nave in the center.

St. Hallvard’s Church. A Brief Presentation

St. Hallvard’s Church and Abbey was designed by the architectural firm, Lund & Slaatto, and stands in Enerhaugen in Oslo (Fig. 14.1). The church is placed on a little range of hills between Enerhauggata and Smedgata, and it is surrounded by a green area with lawns, trees and bushes. The closest neighbors are a nursing home, a workshop and some three-storey buildings. The most conspicuous structures in the vicinity of the church are four high-rises from the 1960’s in a

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Figure 14.1  St. Hallvard’s Church and Abbey, Lund & Slaatto, exterior, Oslo, 1966 photo: Margunn Sandal

modernistic design. The complex was built as a church for the Franciscan order and the parish church in Oslo’s Catholic diocese, in Oslo’s eastern parish. The monastery was later closed down, and today the church functions as a ­parish church, where masses are held several times a day in different languages on weekends. Furthermore, the room is used fo individual contemplation and prayer. The nave itself contains 250 seats. The church and monastery facilities are in their original form a cube with a circular space in the middle of the cube (Fig. 14.2). The cube is built out of handmade, vitrified bricks in nuances of reddish brown, with wide, filled mortar joints. The cylindrical space in the cube’s center is the nave. Architecturally, this is a centralized space and centrally planned building. In the cube that surrounds the nave there are three deep slits that extend from floor to ceiling. The slits break up the circle, and through a mixture of glass bricks and transparent glass, they create a connection between the interior of the church and the world outside. At the same time, the slits divide the cube into three blocks. These smaller blocks define the interior of the church, at the same time as being independent forms. One block contains the parish church foyer and administration. The other contains the monastery section and the church’s sacristy, and in the third block we find the Maria chapel, the baptismal chapel, the confessionals, the administrant’s room, the organ and the choir gallery.

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Figure 14.2  St. Hallvard’s Church and Abbey, Lund & Slaatto, plan, Oslo, 1966 K. LUND ET AL.: ST. HALLVARD ABBEY

While the walls between the nave and the two first blocks are nearly completely closed, the room opens toward the third block. In this way, the baptismal chapel is integrated into the inner room and the Maria chapel is in close dialogue with it. Narrow, but open passageways lead past the baptismal font and the confessional and into a corridor along the outer edge of the square. The organ and choir gallery are accentuated by heavy square blocks in raw

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concrete which jut into the room on the second and third levels. Apart from these concrete blocks, the curved walls of the nave are generally in the same reddish brown brick as is found in the whole building complex. The roof is a concrete shell that hangs down. The lowest point of the shell is over a brick column that is situated right inside the entrance to the nave in the northeastern section (Fig. 14.3). The floor is rendered concrete. It rises towards the altar, a massive square concrete block placed on a circular podium in the southeastern part of the nave (Fig. 14.4). The rows of chairs are organized in such a way that an axis is formed in the direction of the altar. The benches are made of pinewood and treated so as to have a dark sheen. It is also possible to sit on the benches along the two curved walls. The tabernacle is placed on the altar in the Maria chapel (Fig. 14.5). Without electric lighting, the nave lies nearly in total darkness, but not quite. The slits between the building blocks let some light in. Furthermore, there is a narrow opening between the wall and ceiling in the northeastern section. The nave also gets indirect sunlight from the corridor and the Maria chapel. In the wall facing southeast, there is a little slit with a narrow window where one can

Figure 14.3  St. Hallvard’s Church and Abbey, Lund & Slaatto, interior, Oslo, 1966 photo: Jiri Havran

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Figure 14.4  St. Hallvard’s Church and Abbey, Lund & Slaatto, interior, Oslo, 1966 photo: Jiri Havran

get a glimpse of a wooden sculpture of St. Francis of Assisi, and at times there is light in the room behind it. The sculptor Ragnhild Butenschøn carved the sculpture. On the wall behind the altar, there was originally a simple cross. In 1986 it was exchanged with a copy of the crucifix in San Damiano near Assisi. The copy is a gift from the artist Anne Lise Knoff. A sculpture of Maria with the child Jesus, which stands in the space between the sacristy and the Maria chapel, was installed early on. That it is a departure from the modernistic design that otherwise dominates the building is connected with the fact that it had stood in the old parish church. Stations of the Cross, consisting of 14 concrete reliefs with simple letter inscriptions, decorate the wall on the other side of the room. The entrance into the church lies in the slit facing northeast, between the congregation foyer and the section with chapels and confessionals. In the tower over this slit are the church bells, and on the top is a cross. A small lane off Smedgata leads up to the courtyard outside the entrance. From the entrance in the slit there is a large glass door leading directly into the nave. A glass door on the right leads to the foyer and reception, and a third door made of wood, on the left, leads into the corridor behind the baptismal chapel and confessional. The church and monastery were expanded in 1992 with a section for the Franciscus Charitable Trust and a congregational hall. These annexes now surround the little courtyard outside the church.

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Figure 14.5  St. Hallvard’s Church and Abbey, Lund & Slaatto, interior, Oslo, 1966 photo: Jiri Havran



The Program

When architectural church-building competitions are announced, the congregation’s expectations of the building project are to be found in writing, which can help to understand the main guidelines that the architect has had for his work. In the case of St. Hallvard’s, it is difficult to dig up any adequate documentation for the commission that was made, but in secondary sources, we can read about some of the elements that have been decisive for the plan. In the book, Fra Urtegaten til Enerhaugen, St. Hallvard menighet gjennnom hundre år (From Urtegaten to Enerhaugen, the St. Hallvard Congregation Through a Hundred Years), Bruce has one chapter on the building of the

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new church.6 Here it is established that Father Castricum, who was the parish priest and the building manager, and the parish council played a central role in the planning phase. Furthermore, the blueprints had to be approved by the management of the order in the Netherlands. The new building was to have a church, a monastery and a congregation hall. It was a specific wish that the complex was to house a rich parish life, and this was included in the plans. The parish has in fact many of the same needs as other modern multi-purpose churches. One aspect of the project was that the church building had to be able to play a role in the local community; for example, the congregation hall could be used for celebrations and other gatherings in the local community. As Enerhaugen was situated in one of the poorer working class areas in the city, it was also important that the complex could contain social programs, such as the Fransiscus Charitable Trust. In the plan for Enerhaugen, the church was presented as a “social institution” and was approved by the municipality on that basis.7 Nonetheless, the social profile was not only a response to the local needs. It was Franciscans who were to stay in the monastery and have responsibility for the church. Taking care of the poor, the ill and the forsaken is deeply anchored in Franciscan spirituality. It was significant for both the location in Oslo east and the whole facility in itself. Monasteries and churches were to be guest houses for the poor. Services for the suffering were understood as a part of the church service, as it was precisely here one met Christ. Regarding the nave itself, which is at the center of my study, much is obvious, given the liturgical functions a Catholic church has to make room for, such as the celebration of the mass, baptism and confession (Fig. 14.6). But liturgy is not a static thing. It is subject to change, and St. Hallvard’s is the first church in Norway that can be said to reflect the important revision of the liturgy of the Catholic church, which emerged out of the Second Vatican Council (1962–65). The alterations were inspired by a liturgical movement which arose towards the end of the 19th century in German, French and Belgian monasteries. Ecclesiastical renewal was sought through going back to the core of the liturgy in the first Christian celebrations. The movement likes to speak of this turning back to the original as a return to the sources, retour aux sources.8 That the ideas of this movement gained support in the Second Vatican Council not only influenced Catholic liturgical life and architecture, it was to have great 6 J. Bruce, Fra Urtegaten til Enerhaugen. St. Hallvard menighet gjennom 100 år (Oslo: St. Hallvard menighet, 1990), pp. 73–101. 7 K. Hoel, Monumentalarkitektur i Oslo. Fra kongens slott til kunnskapens tempel (Bergen: Vigmostad & Bjørke, 2008), p. 280. 8 Hammond, Liturgy and Architecture, p. 27, pp. 50–51.

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Figure 14.6  St. Hallvard’s Church and Abbey, celebration of the mass PHOTO: JIRI HAVRAN

significance as well in Protestant circles. In the Netherlands, where the Franciscans of St. Hallvard’s come from, the Vatican Council’s ideas had a great impact. The aim of the liturgical reform was among other things to strengthen the church service as a community experience, as it was expressed in the Second Vatical Council’s constitution, ‘Sacrosantum Concilium’, article 14: Mother Church earnestly desires that all the faithful should be led to that fully conscious, and active participation in liturgical celebrations which is demanded by the very nature of the liturgy. Such participation by the Christian people as “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a redeemed people” (1 Pet. 2:9; cf. 2:4–5), is their right and duty by reason of their baptism. In the restoration and promotion of the sacred liturgy, this full and active participation by all the people is the aim to be considered before all else; for it is the primary and indispensable source from which the faithful are to derive the true Christian spirit;9 9 “Sacrosanctum Concilium,” Documents of the II Vatican Council, The Holy See [accessed February 10, 2014], Art. 14.

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In article 124, this is elaborated on with regard to church architecture: “And when churches are to be built, let great care be taken that they be suitable for the celebration of liturgical services and for the active participation of the faithful.”10 In practice, this meant, among other things, that the altar was to be placed away from the wall, so that the priest could carry on versus populum (facing the people). This was incorporated into the more concrete instructions for church design in the document “Inter Oecumenici,” which was issued on September 26, 1964, article 90 and 91: In building new churches or restoring and adapting old ones every care is to be taken that they are suited to celebrating liturgical services authentically and that they ensure active participation by the faithful (see sc Art. 124). The main altar should preferably be freestanding, to permit walking around it and celebration facing the people. Its location in the place of worship should be truly central so that the attention of the whole congregation naturally focuses there.11 I have not had access to any program for St. Hallvard’s in which these liturgical ideas are mentioned, but architect Kjell Lund has confirmed that the conception of the mass as a collective act permeated the work plans.12 Even though we can understand the spatial organization of St. Hallvard’s, based on the practical organization of the liturgical acts, this is not sufficient either, when we experience the building as a whole. The architecture emanates a ‘something more’ which is tied to the ceremonies, but at the same time more than these. This aesthetic surplus can also to a certain degree be connected with the building manager’s commission. Father Castricum in a text about St. Hallvard’s has judiciously expressed some of the thoughts he, as the manager, had about what this ‘something more’ could be. Castricum takes as his point of departure a modern Christian understanding of the church as God’s people wandering, like the Israelites in the desert. In this wandering, the Israelites experienced the presence of God, which illuminated the night: “In front of them was a cloud that shone at night. It was a sign of God’s presence.”13 Furthermore, this experience was later made 10 11

12 13

“Sacrosanctum Concilium,” Art. 124. “Inter Oecumenici,” Instruction on implementing liturgical norms, Adoremus. Society for the renewal of the Sacred liturgy, http://www.adoremus.org/Interoecumenici .html#anchor36495058 [accessed February 10, 2014], Art. 90–91. Conversations with Kjell Lund, summer 2011. J.C. Castricum, “Searching for the Sacred Mystery,” in St. Hallvard Abbey, eds. K. Lund et al. (Oslo: Arfo, 1997), p. 23.

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concrete in the temple as a visible sign of this presence, according to Castri­ cum: “When Solomon built his temple later on, it was a visible sign of God’s presence among his flock. And later Christian places of worship were a sign that ‘God has pitched his tent among us’.”14 Early in the project phase for St. Hallvard’s, Father Castricum and architect Kjell Lund went together on a pilgrimage to selected monasteries and churches, and Castricum describes the trip as follows: “the paramount task was to seek inspiration and to venture in search of the mystery.”15 We know little about what they found on this trip, but we understand that they went in search of a mystery which could be expressed through architecture.

How Churches Can be Meaningful

We need other approaches than the practical, functional analysis in order to understand the role the church building can play in the revelation of a mystery, and here it is phenomenology that can help us. Phenomenology rests on the basic premise that the world we live in is meaningful. Merleau-Ponty puts it this way: “Because we are in the world, we are condemned to meaning.”16 Churches are meaningful in many ways.17 They are often full of symbolic expressions, and they participate, like other buildings, in a variety of historical, social, economic, technological, etc. contexts of cause and effect. Therefore, it is important here to emphasize that at the center of this phenomenologically oriented study is the emanation of the concrete and material as it can be experienced by one who is present. In order to find concepts for this immediate experience of meaning, we need to go to the matter itself, but with an awareness of the participation of the subject in the experience. According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: The central structure of an experience is its intentionality, its being directed toward something, as it is an experience of or about some object. An experience is directed toward an object by virtue of its content

14 15 16 17

Castricum, “Searching for the Sacred Mystery,” p. 23. Castricum, “Searching for the Sacred Mystery,” p. 23. M. Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, trans. C. Smith (London: Routledge, 2000; repr. 2006), p. xxii. N. Goodman, “How Buildings Mean,” Critical Inquiry, 11, (1985), pp. 642–53 (p. 644).

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or meaning (which represents the object) together with appropriate enabling conditions.18 A study which is directed at this ‘something’ that consciousness turns towards can be directed at the object as it appears to us in different phenomena. Our object is the church building as it appears to one who is present. This does not exclude, as mentioned, that the architecture can also be understood and explained in a meaningful way through other approaches, but the question in our context is how the Christian mystery is reformulated entirely concretely in St. Hallvard’s and what meaning it can have for our understanding of this mystery. Here I believe that the Norwegian architectural theorist, Christan NorbergSchulz, can contribute with a perspective which can help us find a concept for the immediate experience of the material environment. Norberg-Schulz’ phenomenology of place was developed as a reaction to approaches within modernism that reduced architecture to a purely practical, economic venture. With regard to churches, he was preoccupied with the idea that plans that satisfy the demands of liturgical practice were not enough. Architecture in itself is a poetic understanding of human spatial existence, and in a church it will bring together and present an understanding of the holy that involves the relationship between heaven and earth. “Therefore, architecture is not a result of the actions of man, but rather it renders concrete the world that makes those actions possible.”19 At the base of this idea lies a consciousness that the human mind and its environment are closely connected. Human beings experience their natural and constructed environment as meaningful, and this experience is incorporated into architecture, which then becomes meaningful again. How this happens is, however, not fully clarified. Therefore, we will look closer at this question.

Existence is Spatial

The relationship between the human mind and its surroundings can be focused on in different ways. In his 40-year authorship, Norberg-Shultz himself went from concentrating on the structures in the human mind that contribute to human perceptions of environment to taking an interest in how 18 19

D. Woodruff Smith “Phenomenology,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy [accessed February 17, 2014]. C. Norberg-Schulz, Architecture: Presence, Language and Place, trans. A. Shugaar (Milan: Skira, 2000), p. 45.

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the environment affects the human mind. The philospher Martin Heidegger’s emphasis on human existence as a “being-in-the world” or more simply as Dasein, played an important role in Norberg-Schulz’ shift.20 Referring to Edmund Husserl, he calls the world that we inhabit and experience with immediacy, “Lifeworld” (Lebenswelt) or “world of life” defined as a “spatial world of things, as we experience it in our precognitive existence, knowing it as that which it allows us to experience.”21 For Norberg-Schulz, the crucial point here is the dimension of space. The spatial is so obvious that it borders on the banal. Precisely for that reason, it is easy to forget the significance it has. Space is not an environment or a ‘something’ that a person faces and can observe or construct freely: When we speak of man and space, it sounds as though man stood on one side, space on the other. Yet space is not something that faces man. It is neither an external object nor an inner experience. It is not that there are men, and over and above them space; for when I say ‘a man’, and in saying this word think of a being who exists in a human manner – that is, who dwells – then by the name ‘man’, I already name the stay within the fourfold among things.22 The spatial in existence is existential. Or as Norberg-Schulz finds it more precisely formulated in Maurice Merleau-Ponty, existence is spatial: “We have said that space is existential; we might just as well have said that existence is spatial.”23 Man is a rough draft that constantly interprets and tries to understand the complex, charged and transitory world that he is thrown into. He cannot choose to stand outside it, but rather acknowledge existence in this interplay. This necessitates a dynamic perspective on architecture. NorbergSchulz sees it as a form of understanding and as an articulation of a way of being. It is an image in which we are present and with which we live. The architectural ‘image’ is, in contrast, the understood world in itself, and not a ‘sign’ of it. Architecture is a form of understanding, and as man lives in verbalized language as a ‘house of being’, he also lives in the language of architecture as ‘the house of presence’.24 20 Norberg-Schulz, Architecture: Presence, Language and Place, p. 15. 21 Norberg-Schulz, Architecture: Presence, Language and Place, p. 19. 22 M. Heidegger, Basic Writing. From Being and Time (1927) to the Task of Thinking (1964), ed. D. Farrell Krell (London: Routledge, 1993; repr. 2007), p. 358. 23 C. Norberg-Schulz, Existence, Space & Architecture (New York: Praeger, 1971), p. 16. 24 C. Norberg-Schulz, Stedskunst (Oslo: Gyldendal norsk forlag, 1995), p. 83.

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Meaning Happens

For Norberg-Schulz, it is crucial, as in the quote above, that this understanding of the life-world is rooted in a concrete and material ‘here’, and he refers to Heidegger: “Space takes its essence from places and not from space itself.”25, 26 This also has an epistemological meaning, namely that one can simply understand space on the basis of place. Man understands when he “stands in it.”27 Place, with its qualities, makes sense and is a constitutive contribution to the human understanding of existence. This gives architecture meaning on several levels. First of all, meaning is derived from man’s basic conditions of life, of dwelling on earth and under heaven. Norberg-Schulz often refers to Heidegger’s fourfold (earth, sky, divinities and mortals) as an ultimate context for the meaning of spatial existence.28 The understanding of existence is connected with the concrete and the material. In the phenomenology of place, which he explains in his book, Genius Loci, it becomes clear that he looks at architecture as a meaningful and creative implementation of man’s experience with and understanding of the relationship to the natural environment as landscape, light and vegetation. From the beginning of time man has recognized that to create a place means to express the essence of being. The man-made environment where he lives is not a mere practical tool or the result of arbitrary happenings; it has structure and embodies meanings. These meanings and structures are reflections of man’s understanding of the natural environment and his existential situation in general. A study of man-made place therefore ought to have a natural basis: it should take the relationship to the natural environment as its point of departure.29 Secondly, an understanding of the meaning in the environment will be implemented in the architecture, so that in a meaningful way, it influences the life that goes on in the constructed environment. The building that stands on the 25 Norberg-Schulz, Architecture: Presence, Language and Place, p. 53. 26 In the English translation of A. Hofstadter it says, “Accordingly, spaces receive their being from places and not from ‘space’.” M. Heidegger, Poetry, Language, Thought, trans. A. Hofstadter (New York: First Perennial Classics, 2001), p. 152. 27 Norberg-Schulz, Stedskunst, pp. 7–8. 28 Heidegger, Poetry, Language, Thought, pp. 147–148. 29 C. Norberg-Schulz, Genius Loci. Towards a Phenomenology of Architecture (New York: Rizzoli, 1980), p. 50.

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earth and rises up towards heaven has an enduring character and emanates a concrete presence that people identify with when they are present. Thus, architecture adds its own kind of meaning and characterizes the actions and experiences that take place. Here it is important to notice how NorbergSchulz uses the concept of identification. The concept covers one of three basic modes of being for the human life that inhabits this place. The two others are memory and orientation. Memory is more than the psychological ability to maintain a mental represention of something from the past. It is to dwell on signs of what we first and foremost need to think about, signs that continue to fade away as insignificant question marks. This means that memory carries with it past, present and future, and it is both a rediscovery and a new project. Orientation is the spacious admission of something. This means in brief that one allows something by making space for it and by arranging it. Identification is a form of personification, a revelation of existence through implementation or embodiment in a way that affects and influences us. This aspect is inspired by Heidegger’s concepts, ‘Einräumung’, ‘Verkörperung’ and ‘Erinnerung’ or ‘Gedächtnis’.30 That life happens, within these modes of being, involves both motor skills, sense impressions, experience, logical understanding and feelings. Nordberg-Schulz speaks of these complex processes as “the use of a place,” and for him they are synonymous with a coexistence in the world of life.31

Identification as Sympathy

Identification with the environment takes place in connection with an immediate experience which is neither subjective nor objective, neither purely corporeal, nor purely mental: This sort of experience is, according to Husserl, a ‘natural experience’ as well as being ‘precognitive’, inasmuch as what he called ‘the things themselves’ are concerned. Since we live in the company of these things well before we acquire an analytic approach to them, natural experience is neither subjective nor objective, and does not establish a separation between body and awareness.32

30 Norberg-Schulz, Architecture: Presence, Language and Place, p. 42. 31 Norberg-Schulz, Architecture: Presence, Language and Place, pp. 28, 42–57, 59. 32 Norberg-Schulz, Architecture: Presence, Language and Place, p. 19.

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This immediate identification means that the sensuous body-subject lives with the physical environment, and this empathy is meaningful.33 Therefore, we need to find a concept for the immediate experiences of meaning, which living with the physical environment can give. Norberg-Schulz himself uses words like ‘mood’, ‘character’, ‘atmosphere’ and ‘impression’ to describe this interplay. For example, he writes, “It is the tonality that rings out as an atmosphere when one visits a city, and consequently it also emphasizes that genius loci that is manifested as a characteristic imprint of a comprehensive atmosphere.”34 At the same time, he does not make a serious attempt at defining concepts or explaining the relation between them. Instead, he prefers to connect them with other concepts, like presence and incarnation. In that way, he places the concept within an ambiguous interpretive horizon without accounting for his interpretation of the concept. Thus, his own usage becomes ambiguous. With regard to the actual concept of ‘mood’ and ‘atmosphere’, there is then a need for supplementing with theory. It is interesting to look at Gernot Böhme’s attempt at delineating a new aesthetics which can accommodate the moods people can experience when they find themselves corporeally present somewhere. He shows how atmopheres and moods dissolve dichotomies between subject and object, mind and body.35 In that way, he makes it possible to connect Norberg-Schulz’ notions with an aesthetic theory rooted in a general theory of perception.36 Dorthe Jørgensen elaborates on these perspectives in her article, “Sensoriness and Transcendence: On the Aesthetic Possibility of Experiencing Divinity” (pp. 63–85). She shows how Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of the body opens up for a lived experience that does not distinguish between body and mind. With reference to Herman Schmitz and Gernot Böhme, she finds concepts for the felt body’s sensitive perceptions when it is present in a concrete place with specific qualities. Both in Norberg-Schulz and Böhme, such perceptions are spoken of as atmospheres and moods, and they are indeed anchored in man’s corporeal being-in-the-world. Nonetheless, in Norberg-Schulz the perspective of meaning in this perception is stronger than in Böhme. With the approach of the phenomenology of place to architecture, it is, as I see it, possible to find concepts for a form of meaning that we become aware of in a completely particular way through sensual impressions: 33

I use the word ‘sensing’ to mean both sensuous and understanding, so that feelings, sensations, and presentiments can be included. Cf. Dorthe Jørgensen (p. 76.) 34 Norberg-Schulz, Architecture: Presence, Language and Place, p. 353. 35 G. Böhme, Aisthetik. Vorlesungen Über Ästhetik Als Allgemeine Wahrnehmungslehre (München: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2001). 36 Sandal, “Eit Sakralt Preg. Kyrkjearkitekturen si rolle i den religiøse erfaringa,” pp. 65–66.

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“conscious perception always creates meaning. ‘Sensual impressions’ can therefore be more accurately described as meaning of which I become conscious through specific sensual impressions.”37 As Jørgensen points out in her article (p. 71), with reference to the Finnish architect, Juhani Pallasmaa, the phenomenology of the body emphasizes that the experiences we have when we are present are multi-sensorial. In that context, it is interesting that Pallasmaa has pointed to St. Hallvard’s as a masterpiece with this kind of experience in mind: “St. Hallvard Church and Franciscan Abbey is an early masterpiece of the architects. It is a uniquely physical and tactile building that speaks through the body just as much a through the eye.”38 Norberg-Schulz claims that the sensuous human body senses the appearance of the architectural bodies in a way which can be similar to the dialogue that arises between human bodies. He claims as well that architecture belongs first and foremost to the world of bodies. First of all, it communicates with the human body, and it is this commerce that is the architect’s foremost domain. Norberg-Schulz does not distinguish between ‘flesh’ and ‘body’, as the representatives of the new phenomenology do. However, an understanding of the human ‘body’ lies close to an understanding of the flesh that Jørgensen describes in the previously mentioned article (pp. 72–75). As we have already seen, this involves architecture understanding the body’s sensory and sensitive experience of finding itself present ‘here’ in a particular way (Daseinsgefühle). At the same time, writes Norberg-Schulz, architecture in itself emanates moods and characters that tune us. “As a human figure manifests its presence in terms of character and mood, architecture’s forms communicate general conditions which we can identify with because we, ourselves, have bodies.”39

Consequences for the Study of Church Architecture

Norberg-Schulz’ phenomenology of place is significant on several levels in my understanding of church-building. On the individual level, the person finding him/herself present always involves what we call ‘the self’ continually being constituted by the interaction with the concrete and material environment. The religious experience does not let itself be limited to an inner spiritual 37 38 39

E. Fischer-Lichte, The Transformative Power of Performance. A New Aesthetics, trans. S.I. Jain (London and New York: Routledge, 2008), p. 142. J. Pallasmaa, “Poetry of Reason” in U. Grønvold, Lund & Slaatto (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1988), 7–11 (p. 9). C. Norberg-Schulz, Øye og hånd. Essays og artikler. Ny rekke (Oslo: Gyldendal, 1997), p. 83.

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experience. The phenomenology of place also has ecclesiological implications. Place affects how and what the church is. As a constructed environment, church architecture contributes to the church as community, as body. It is not only a spiritual body. God’s presence in the world, in the church as the body of Christ, is a concrete and physical presence, which the community can sense and experience not only in the concrete, corporeal, social community, but in the architectural environment and the natural environment as well. The church comes into being in this interaction. This also affects our understanding of the liturgical. When the liturgy is performed, it is organized in particular ways, and these, in turn, have theological significance in that they affect our experience of what is happening. As mentioned, philosophers can clarify some of the concepts NorbergSchulz uses to describe the interplay between the human mind or the human community and its environment. This gives a basis for understanding the signficance of the concrete and the material, but it does not suffice for an understanding of the role of architecture in this interaction, and it is precisely this role that is at the center of my study. I wish to examine the significance of the material environment for the way in which the church presents itself. To do this, we must return to the architectural theorist, Norberg-Schulz. He excels when it comes to describing moods and atmospheres, either in nature or in man-made environments, and he helps us investigate how architecture affects this. Norberg-Schulz points out that it is the formal way of building that in particular gives architecture its distinction and mood and thus invites to identification. In our examination of the atmosphere or character of architecture, we need to see how the constructed forms deal with the relationship between heaven and earth. Here it is about how the concrete forms stand, rest on the hill, rise, open and close, stretch or flatten out. We see built-in tensions and interconnections. The treatment of light, the use of material, color and texture also have great significance.40 As I have already pointed out, architecture creates meaning in different ways. The spatial organization has significance, as does the church’s appearance. In the following, we will look closer at the meaning that the concrete and material environment can give to a church building. Even though the spatial horizontal organization plays a central role, this study concentrates mainly on the formal elements that contribute to the appearance of the architecture. Here it is also significant how architecture emanates an understanding of the relationship to the natural and man-made environment. 40 Norberg-Schulz, Architecture: Presence, Language and Place, p. 53.

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A Mountain-Fixed Cube

Out on the edge of the Enerhaug plateau, the four high-rises dominate the big open sky. The church does not compete with the apartment buildings. Nonetheless, it is far from invisible. The complex makes its mark on the surroundings by virtue of its strong, closed, geometrical cube shape, which has its own inner harmony. The raw concrete and the handmade reddish brown bricks are expressive materials that emphasize the physical presence of the building. A cube will often radiate a general, universal and abstract air. In St. Hallvard’s, on the other hand, the architecture responds to place by being fixed to the mountain on which it is perched. On the southeastern and northeastern facades, it looks as if the wall grows out of the bedrock. The high-rises are arranged under the open sky up on the hill, as an extension of the mountain’s form, stretching ever higher towards the sky. The reddish brown cubic church does not emanate a corresponding orientation towards the sky. The cube stands heavily and securely on the mountain. In this way, the church marks its distinctive character. It gives the impression of something earth-bound. In this way, it separates itself from almost all other church architecture. Norberg-Schulz commented in an article on St. Hallvard’s that experimentation with sacred forms by architects in the 1960’s usually resulted in a striving towards the heavens. “It is so common today that churches are crowned with sharply rising roofs and shell forms that it is hoped will seem ‘sacred’.”41 It was perhaps thought that these were forms that could bring back to the church the position of being a visible meeting place between heaven and earth. When the architect in St. Hallvard’s marks the earth-bound and the place-bound ‘here’, we can, already in the exterior, sense a conception of the sacred that distinguishes itself from the heaven-turned representatives of the period. “Lund og Slaattos’ buildings remind us that sanctity runs deeper,” Norberg-Schulz points out.42

The Transition

The church’s entrance is partly hidden in a secluded space in the cube’s northeastern slit. There is no marked threshhold that separates outside from inside. Instead we are led through a transitional zone from light to dark. The transitional zone is something we can easily overlook in our eagerness to enter or 41 C. Norberg-Schulz, Et sted å være. Essays og artikler (Oslo: Gyldendal, 1986), p. 175. 42 Norberg-Schulz, Et sted å være, p. 175.

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leave a room. But if we look closer, this zone can turn out to play a completely decisive role aesthetically. The transition in St. Hallvard’s not only gives an experience of moving from one room to another. It is a transition from a particular spatial quality (light) to another spatial quality (darkness). In 1757, Edmund Burke wrote about the significance that an architecturally conscious treatment of light can have in building. If, for example, one wants to achieve an overwhelming effect, the transition from strong light to pervasive darkness, or alternatively, from darkness to light, can, indeed, release strong feelings. As the management of light is a matter of importance in architecture, it is worth enquiring, how far this remark is applicable to building. [ . . . ] the first is, that darkness itself on other occasions is known by experience to have a greater effect on the passions than light. The second is, that to make an object very striking, we should make it as different as possible from the objects with which we have been immediately conversant; when therefore you enter a building, you cannot pass into greater light than you had in the open air; to go into one some few degrees less luminous, can make only a trifling change; but to make the transition thoroughly striking, you ought to pass from the greatest light, to as much darkness as is consistent with the uses of architecture. At night the contrary rule will hold [ . . . ]43 The transition in St. Hallvard’s has the effect that in one particular way, we sharpen our senses so that we become aware of the room that we enter, and we become aware that this is a transition to something else. At the same time, the door does not mark a clear border between light and dark. On the contrary, a large glass door makes the transition fluid. It is not about crossing a sharp boundary from one limited characteristic to another, or from one state with a fixed identity (e.g. profane) to a state with a whole other fixed identity (e.g. sacred). The transcendent is exemplified here by the fact that this room is not the same as its environment, nor, at the same time, is it a completely stable other. This forms the basis for thinking that the transcendent or sacred in this building can be understood as an architectural phenomenon or a process, rather than as an architecturally limited and stable identity. In the perceptual space that arises in the transition between light and dark, the ‘material’ qualities of light and dark are in a particular way made present, and this is what creates the distinctive energy. This generation of materiality, in which the 43

E. Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 74.

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qualities flow into each other, can create an experience of transition that resembles what Erika Fischer-Lichte in her performative aesthetics calls ‘liminal experience’. Fischer-Lichte is, indeed, reserved about calling this experience aesthetically liminal, because this is about a transition to something or into something, and the liminal, as she sees it, is an effect that wants to achieve something else, in this case something religious. On the contrary, I claim that experiences can be aesthetically liminal and religious at the same time. Religious experiences can also be about what Fischer-Lichte calls the experience of a threshold, a passage in itself where “the very process of transition already constitutes the experience.”44 The religious is not always about a “transition to something and the resulting transformation into this or that,” as Fischer-Lichte seems to think.45 In St. Hallvard’s, the entrance is not a boundary that limits, but a threshhold, or a passage, where the dichotomy between the usual and that which is ‘something more’, or between the profane and the sacred, is dissolved. The architecturally arranged transition liberates a phenomenon and a process that activate emotional feelings and sharpen the senses.

Sensing in the Dark

To experience the particular architectural qualities in St. Hallvard’s Church, it is best to visit the church when the electric lights are turned off. Initially, one experiences a pitch darkness, but right inside the main door, we can experience that the brick wall guides the movement of the body. It feels natural to walk along the wall towards the interior of the room. If we follow this movement, we will gradually register the fact that the wall curves. We can discern the Stations of the Cross reliefs that are hung up on the wall. The small concrete reliefs are placed so as to give the wall ‘speed’.46 After awhile, we will also notice that there are benches along the wall. It may be tempting to stop, sit down on one of the benches along the curving wall surface, lean against the bricks and take in the calmness of the room. In the pitch darkness, no architectural element expresses itself, and one can experience an unreal emptiness and a penetrating stillness. This means as well that it is difficult to orient oneself in the room visually. We must feel and listen our way around. In the dark, the senses are sharpened. The faint smell of incense contributes to giving the room a medieval atmosphere. We can hear 44 Fischer-Lichte, The Transformative Power, p. 199. 45 Fischer-Lichte, The Transformative Power, p. 199. 46 Grønvold, Lund & Slaatto, p. 148.

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more sharply. Perhaps the quiet voices come from nuns who are taking care of something in a side room. There is also a low rumble from the local train, which vibrates weakly when it passes by, far underground. Something else can also be felt in the room: a faint sense of an embracing and heavy presence.47

The Light Comes through and Elements Emerge

Eventually, as the eye begins to adjust to the dusk, elements in the room begin quietly, but insistently to emerge. We see the rows of chairs in dark wood and the contours of a square altar on a round platform. The gold-plated crucifix on the wall behind the altar gives off a weak reflection. The encircling wall of brick comes into view. It forms a circular room, and it becomes clear that we are in a kind of cylinder. But it is not a complete circle. The wall has cracks, and the sometimes narrow slits play a completely central role in the experience of the inner space. Daylight, which at first is held back by the massive walls, slips through slits. The scant intake of light in a dark room makes the light more sensuously present, light as a quality, or nearly as a ‘materiality’. This approach to light has much in common with the light Plummer describes in Tadao Ando’s church, Church of the Light.48 In St. Hallvard’s, this intense light lets the forms of the room and the material qualities of the mass become visible. The room that we occupy is a room whose elements appear and are present in a way that can awaken or reinforce our own experience of being physically, concretely, bodily and fully present, ‘here’.

Centralization and Order

The cylinder is an encircling form, which gathers together, centralizes and creates calmness. There is a harmony in the geometrical circle: it is one with itself. In church architecture, the central symmetrical form has had enormous significance. It is, of course, not a coincidence that Kjell Lund refers to the 47

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In Böhme’s aesthetics, similar general experiences of perception are central. He lets this kind of experience of one’s own presence, of finding oneself present in a way that involves a state of mind, exemplify what he means by the concept of ‘atmosphere’. He refers to the experience of becoming aware of a mosquito: “In der Bedrohlichkeit des Sirrens spüre ich die Anwesenheit einer Mücke.” (In the ominous buzz, I sense the presence of a mosquito.) Böhme, Aisthetik, p. 42. H. Plummer, The Architecture of Natural Light (London: Thames & Hudson, 2009), p. 190.

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Pantheon in the text, “The Sacred Room,” in his book, St. Hallvard Abbey, and the experience of a timeless dimension that this room has.49 Norberg-Schulz has also been preoccupied with the sacred character of the round room: The round room originates in the act of gathering around [ . . . ] In the center the world is ‘gathered’ as all things are experienced in relation to this. Therefore, it gains a special significance, which had a sacred nature in all old cultures. Some people raised a ‘world axis’ (axis mundi) over a fixed point, others created space in which the vertical axis is symbolized by an opening over the center. The Pantheon is the greatest example of the latter.50 From a church architectural-historical perspective, we can view St. Hallvard’s in terms of the central building tradition in early Christian times. Round buildings or many-sided buildings were first and foremost used as mausoleums or martyriums and in baptisteries.51 In the Byzantine tradition, the centralized form was continued in churches with a central plan, domes and vaults. Churches are likely to have a plan which is formed according to the Greek cross with a central dome and transepts with vaults. In the Renaissance as well, centralization plays a major role. Donato Bramante’s Il Tempietto in the monastery at San Pietro in Montorio (1502) is an obvious reference, while St. Peter’s Basilica is perhaps the most important one in our context. As is known, the original plan for this church was also drawn by Bramante. Norberg-Schulz mentions the plan as the most “extravagant expression of the idea of the centralized plan in the Renaissance.”52 We find here a plan built on the Greek cross, with a center surrounded by symmetrical and harmonious spatial zones, which are ordered regularly around the center. At the same time, these form their own centralized rooms with their own domes around the big, main dome. Thus, the whole Christian world was gathered around a center in a construction that represented the whole of Christian reality. The centrally symmetrical church building was not only the center of life, but with its symmetrical order, it was also to reflect an orderly and regular divine reality.53 The project reflects 49

K. Lund, “The Sacred Room,” in St. Hallvard Abbey, eds. K. Lund et al. (Oslo: Arfo, 1997), pp. 45–62 (p. 46). 50 Norberg-Schulz, Et sted å være, p. 179. 51 C. Norberg-Schulz, Meaning in Western Architecture, trans. Praeger Publishers, rev. ed. (New York: Rizzoli, 1980; repr. 1983), p. 58. 52 Norberg-Schulz, Et sted å være, p. 191. 53 Norberg-Schulz, Et sted å være, p. 190–191.

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the Renaissance’s belief in divine cosmic harmony and a perfect order, which church buildings could make visible. This was an order that permeated the whole created world, and therefore could also be related to the human body.54 A closer study of space in St. Hallvard’s shows that there are several elements that support an ordered and harmonious impression. The over-all forms of the building are a circle in a square, and a play on the juxtaposition of square and circle is repeated in the altar podium and the altar, baptismal font and tabernacle. Steps in four directions lead to the altar podium in such a way as to create a symmetrical cross in the round. Diagonals between the slits order the building according to its own strict logic.55 The church’s characteristic of creating an ordered universe is further reinforced by its location on a mountain ridge. The centralized location on the horizontal level is combined here with the vertical movement that the mountain represents. Norberg-Schulz writes that mountains in mythical contexts have often been seen to have transcendent qualities because they have been ­perceived as vertical centers that could communicate between different cosmic spheres. Mountains were therefore considered ‘centres’ through which the axis mundi goes,  . . . a spot where one can pass from one cosmic zone to another. In other words, mountains are places within the comprehensive landscape, places which make the structure of Being manifest. As such they ‘gather’ different properties.56 Thus, a doubly reinforcing connection between a vertical axis and a horizontal centering movement is a well-known phenomenon in several contexts. Norberg-Schulz refers both to the Romans’ Capitol, understood as caput mundi and the Ka’aba in the Islamic world. But the Pantheon is “the grandest example,” he claims.57 In Ulf Grønvold’s book, Lund & Slaatto, interestingly, there is a drawing of a mountain top, a hanging firmament, a column and a figure I interpret as an altar. The picture has the title, “Enerhaugen in Oslo as Caput Mundi.”58 54 Norberg-Schulz, Meaning in Western Architecture, p. 113. 55 Grønvold, Lund & Slaatto, p. 146. 56 Norberg-Schulz, Genius Loci, p. 25. 57 Norberg-Schulz, Et sted å være, p. 179. 58 Grønvold, Lund & Slaatto, p. 146.

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Disruptions In St. Hallvard’s, one experiences the centralizing guidelines, but they do not lead to any axis in the center of the circle. Kjell Lund has suggested that a brick column placed in the periphery of the room, right inside the door, can be said to represent an axis mundi motif.59 If we understand the building isolated from what is going on there, it may be possible to argue for an interpretation of this kind, but as soon as the liturgy gets involved in the analysis, this perception falls short. The column does not have a central role in the liturgical universe that is played out here. On the other hand, it can be a first warning that there are disruptions in this room, where the centering, gathering and harmonious forces impose such strong guidelines on the spatial experience. Despite the geometrical forms, symmetrical diagonals, centering and vertical axial perspective, it gradually becomes apparent that we are not in an orderly microcosmos. There are several architectural elements that interfere. The perfect circle is broken up by the abovementioned slits in the wall that go from floor to ceiling. These can appear as cuts or cracks in the surface of the wall. In the northeastern wall, raw and angular concrete formations stick out. The liturgical center, the altar, is placed outside the architectural center. In this way, the architecture joins a long Christian tradition. Norberg-Schulz has pointed out that, “its vertical axis mundi does not usually correspond to the spiritual centre of the church, the altar. Evidently, Christian truth is distinguished from the general cosmic order concretized by the dome.”60

The Altar

As soon as we see the altar, we realize that this is what the architecture of this building complex is focused on as a whole. Other architectural ideas become subordinated to this displaced point with its own circle in the circular room. The square concrete block, on a circular podium of the same material, makes a massive impression. It draws attention to itself, and the altar establishes itself as the center of the room. The crucifix on the wall behind underlines the altar’s central role. The podium, which stands away from the wall, invites the members of the parish to gather in a ring around the altar, and this allows the priest to officiate turned towards the participants, versus populum. This supports the characteristic of the altar as an altar table for the sacramental meal, completely 59 K. Lund, “The Sacred Room,” p. 32. 60 Norberg-Schulz, Meaning in Western Architecture, p. 74.

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in line with the liturgical movement’s intentions of strengthening the mass as an act of community. It becomes clear that the plan, which was a product of liturgical innovative thinking, has also become the guiding principle for the design of the whole church. And this is how it has to be, according to Le Corbusier: “The plan is the generator,” and he continues, “Volume and surface are the elements through which architecture manifests itself. Volume and surface are determined by the plan.”61 At the same time, other elements in the architecture show that a plan based on practice is not everything. The treatment of volume and surface adds something that is neither necessary nor understandable from the perspective of a purely practical plan, but which we can understand in a broader perspective of meaning. The status of the altar as the center of the room is supported by the massive forms of a square ashlar on a circular podium, which is reinforced by the floor inclining upwards towards the altar. At the same time, both the choice of material and mass marks a strong connection with the earth. There are old traditions in church architecture for connecting altar, stone and earth with Christ. Schloeder writes that the stone altar is a metaphor for Christ, as he refers to himself as the stone that builders rejected, which became the chief corner stone (Psalms 118. 22 and Matthew 21. 42).62 Norberg-Schulz refers to the idea that Altare significat Christum.63 Rudolf Schwarz also reveals that he knows of this tradition: In the altar we see simply the table of supper. Formerly Christ was seen in it – and this is certainly right but nevertheless it is difficult for us to understand. Still, if we keep to the old custom of a stone table, set fast in the earth, this says very beautifully that the altar is the earth. And if, later on, we recognize that this earth is Christ, then the old idea proves true for us too.64 For the person who is present in the room, the massive altar, which stands at the center of attention, can contribute to accentuating a feeling of heaviness. The embracing character of the building, supports the earth-bound. 61

Le Corbusier. Toward an Architecture, trans. J. Goodman (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2007), pp. 116–117. 62 S.J. Schloeder, Architecture in Communion. Implementing the Second Vatican Council through Liturgy and Architecture (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1998), p. 64. 63 Norberg-Schulz, Et sted å være, p. 180. 64 R. Schwarz, The Church Incarnate. The Sacred Function of Christian Architecture, trans. C. Harris (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1958), p. 36.

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Nordberg-Schulz writes in a text on Corbusier’s church, Ronchamp, that the European church architectural tradition is familiar with this motif: “The encircling mass that connects the experience of returning to the earth that life emerged from.”65

The Anti-Dome – An Unrecognizable Heaven

However, what is missing at St. Hallvard’s is the edifying and liberating pinnacle that usually belongs to this motif: “the free vertical movement that we like to connect with a vision of heaven.”66 The centralized room, combined with a dome that lets in light, has played a central role in church architecture all the way back to early Christian times. In the Byzantine variation, where the building was supposed to be a picture of cosmos, the dome represented heaven, while the lower part of the building was the earthly zone. The higher one rose upwards in the room, the more sacred the zone was considered. Through the dome, heavenly light streamed down and lit up the centralized room below.67 In the Renaissance, the spatial centralization combined with the intake of light through a circular opening, an oculus or a lantern at the highest point of the dome. From the illuminated center of the church, one could imagine that the heavenly light beamed out to all people. In the Baroque period, when the aim was to create theatrical illusions, one dome could be placed over another in a continuous movement until the vertical perspective ends in endless light.68 The centralized space in St. Hallvard’s could, then, give rise to expectations of a dome, but instead, a parabolic, grey concrete shell hangs down over the church interior. The lowest point of the shell seems almost to touch the top of the column. The shell seems out of proportion and does not appear harmonious. It is not edifying and it does not supply any illumination. The sunken ceiling, which creates this odd sense of a presence from the first moment, is indeterminate, even after coming into view. The ceiling, indeed, has some similarity to the ceiling in Le Corbusier’s church in Ronchamp. But even though the church in Ronchamp has both massive outer walls and a partially lowered ceiling, there is at the same time something light and buoyant about it. The architect has, in fact, put in a strip of light between the wall and the 65 Norberg-Schulz, Et sted å være, p. 213. 66 Norberg-Schulz, Et sted å være, p. 213. 67 Norberg-Schulz, Meaning in Western Architecture, p. 65. 68 Schwarz, The Church Incarnate, pp. 97–98.

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ceiling.69 In St. Hallvard’s, there is also a narrow opening between wall and ceiling in the northeastern wall, and here a little light falls in. However, the light intake from this narrow opening under the ceiling does not lend buoyancy to the ceiling as the concrete shell hangs too low in the room for that. Furthermore, the ceiling rests so heavily on the other walls that one barely notices that a narrow opening even exists. It can, indeed, seem as it did to Norberg-Schulz when he asked if the architect should not have introduced a sliver of an opening between the wall and ceiling, so the shell could float freely over the walls. He concludes nonetheless that it is precisely this absence of light that gives the room its unique character.70 The concrete shell is powerful in the room, and it can have something of the sublime in it. Edmund Burke writes that anything that has the same effect as fear is a source of the sublime. The effect can be surprising because it anticipates reflection and grabs us with a force that we are not prepared for. In space and in nature, it is often the dark and sinister that is connected with the sublime.71 The anti-dome makes a strong impression, both because it is so overwhelming and feels so close and because it can be perceived as something threatening. The heavy hanging ceiling adds a weightiness to the room that condenses and intensifies the mood. At the same time, the concrete shell does not emanate anything unambiguous. The untreated concrete has its own life when the light plays with the material. The concrete shell seems soft and warm like the stomach of a pregnant woman. We can recognize this complex experience from Rudolf Otto’s discussion of the mystery as something numinous, in the sense of tremendum et fascinans. According to Espen Dahl, the numinous in Otto is the holy minus the rational and the moral. What is left is the emotional dimension. Emotion corresponds to the holy and plays a main role in human religiosity.72 Thus, it is not strange that Norberg-Schulz in his reference to the church uses the wording that precisely connects with this. He writes that heaven can be experienced both as frightening and comforting for one who is present in St. Hallvard’s. The irrational characteristics of the building complex reach their zenith: the hanging ‘anti-dome’ seems to represent ‘the great mystery’ itself. What is it that seems to sink down over the nave? The simplest thing is 69

D. Pauly, Le Corbusier: The Chapel at Ronchamp (Paris: Foundation Le Corbusier, 2008), p. 42. 70 Norberg-Schulz, Et sted å være, p. 181. 71 Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry, pp. 53–54. 72 E. Dahl, Det Hellige. Perspektiver (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 2008), pp. 27–28.

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to say that the ceiling has a strong character of heaven, as it has always had in church buildings in the past. But this is a new and unknown heaven, a heaven that is not distant, but wonderfully concrete, despite its  irrational expression. It sinks down over us, simultaneously aweinspiring and comforting.73 The mystical uniting of heaven and earth, the human and the divine, which is praised in the Easter Vigil Mass of the Catholic church can be perceived in St. Hallvard’s with heaven being placed surprisingly close to the worldly. Heaven can be experienced as imposing, and it holds us firmly in an embracing and intense worldly and secular presence where we are. And simultaneously, the heaven close at hand is not as one could expect it to be. We can definitely understand it as heaven, but, as Norberg-Schulz also experienced, it is another heaven. The dome in St. Hallvard’s breaks with the usual idea of the heavenly. It is a strangely ‘secular’ material, which has been given the task of emanating heavenly presence. Concrete is a material we normally associate with the concrete and the rational, the grey and the everyday. It is the most common building material in our time and as such it is a characteristic expression of modern society. The marvel is, though, that this heavy, concrete, rational and intense, gray modernity becomes irrational when it is brought into play as something divine, and it gains a soft luster. If architecture as memory is an answer to the constantly returning question of what divine reality is, this architecture creates a picture of the divine that can seem to be unrecognizable, precisely because it is much too recognizable. In this way, the dichotomy between ‘this here’ and ‘something else’ is thwarted. Is it a comfort or is it disturbing?

Interaction – As in a Mirror Dimly

Architecture does not give a simple answer. By a series of formal means, it radiates a down-to- earth, concrete, material, imposing and concentrated presence that can be experienced both as incomprehensible, unrecognizable and ambiguous. In the center of all this is the altar. But the altar does not outmaneuvre the other elements in the room. On the contrary, it goes into a dynamic and partly conflicting interplay with these. The room’s useful structure grates against the architectural forms and their emanation. A field of tension arises between altar, brick column, floor and ceiling. In the altar, the earth rises towards heaven while heaven, on the one hand, sinks deeper towards 73 Norberg-Schulz, Et sted å være, p. 181.

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earth over the column which is almost identical in form to the highrises outside.74 Heaven is in itself unrecognizable for one who is aware of what it is supposed to be. Circular forms that symbolize the universal and encircle the sacred functions enter into constellations with squares that are connected with the concrete presence. The centralizing ring of the room has cracks that reveal hidden side rooms and heterogeneous peripheral zones. Order and disorder, center and periphery enter into the dynamic. In this unclarified, indefinable and contradictory atmosphere, there are two elements that participate in the room’s dialogue in a way that I find particularly spectacular. The baptismal font, with its round, steely dome on a square brick block, stands in sharp contrast to the church cube with its asymmetrical anti-dome. The dynamic contrast is even clearer in and with the tabernacle. With a form that is clarified and harmonious, it stands forth as the perfect antithesis to the unclarified and disruptive mood of the church. The little house in refined copper, a cube with a dome that points in the right direction seems to gather light into itself in order to reflect it outwardly again. The house is literally glowing, as the light falls in from different sides. A lamp on the wall behind it indicates that Christ is present in the consecrated sacramental wafers. The Catholic church’s doctrine of real presence does not alone provide the meaning of the tabernacle’s emanation, but takes part in the total dynamic of the room.75 The perfect form and the effect of the illuminating material is reminiscent of older church architecture’s use of reflected light to shape an inner connection between the beautiful and the divine.76 Thus, yet more levels are added to the dynamic of the room. It is in a mirror dimly that we experience the interaction between the presence that reveals itself in the tabernacle and the baptismal font and the presence that the rest of the architecture emanates. This interplay is again drawn into the tension between periphery and center. The tabernacle and baptismal font are placed in the periphery of the room. 74

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The practical motivation for the design and placement of the column is that the rain water from the roof is led down here through pipes inside the column. Ideally, one could imagine that the column had stood in the center of the church, but it would be problematic from a liturgical perspective. Furthermore, the column contains a broom closet and functions as a bookshelf for hymnbooks and church service programs. According to the doctrine of transubstantiation, the substance of bread and wine is transformed in the Eucharist and becomes the real presence of Christ, that is, the flesh and blood of Christ. G. Hellemo, Øyet som ser. Historiske perspektiv på kunst, estetikk og teologi (Oslo: Solum, 2011), pp. 93–96.

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The Meaning of the Material ‘Here’

One who finds himself present in this room will contribute to creating the meaning of this interplay. The complex, dynamic and ambivalent architectural emanations activate the perceiver’s co-creative imagination. Materiality releases memories, ideas, thoughts and associations which place the spatial experience in connection with other phenomena.77 It also sets feelings in motion that involve the varied, complex and changing emotional states of the visitors. When I have had students with me in the church, some have expressed experiencing the room as threatening and oppressive, while others describe it as powerful. It can also be experienced as unifying and safe. Christian NorbergSchulz himself has offered a good example of how the experience of the room can change. In the text on St. Hallvard’s from 1966, we saw that he used the concepts of ‘irrational’, ‘awe-inspiring’ and ‘comforting’ about the roof (pp. 440–441). Thirteen years later he wrote in a revised text on the church, “a new and unknown heaven, a heaven that is not distant but strangely concrete despite its peculiar appearance.”78 This reveals how the spatial-sensuous experience can change in time. I would, however, claim that what first and foremost characterizes the experience of meaning in St. Hallvard’s is the fact that we are not just anywhere, but that the concrete and material ‘here’ is in fact a church building. The religious practice that the church was built for affects the architecture and experience of the room in a decisive way. The church is built for a liturgical celebration of the Christian mystery of the Incarnation, as it is formulated in The Nicene Creed, “For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven: by the power of the Holy Spirit he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary, and was made man.” This liturgical practice is rooted in the belief in a corporeal, divine presence in the world, and here the text in the first chapter of the Gospel of John is central. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.79 77 Fischer-Lichte, The Transformative Power, p. 140. 78 C. Norberg-Schulz, “Under Another Sky” in St. Hallvard Abbey, eds. K. Lund et al. (Oslo: Arfo, 1997), pp. 9–14 (p. 14). 79 John 1. 1–3; 14.

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The analysis of the church has shown how a change in the liturgical practice has led to changes in the spatial organization, and it shows how this has been expressed in the architecture as a whole. As it is God’s people interacting with each other in a holy act in the mass, it makes sense that the altar does not stand separated from, apart from, or outside the people, but in and among people (p. 421). Likewise, it makes sense that the tabernacle is not hidden, but visible for all, on top of an altar. The architecture corresponds with the Second Vatican Council’s ecclesiology. But it is not only the spatial organization that connects the architecture with the life of the church service. The liturgical practice is in a dynamic relation with the architectural forms, and what we do in the room affects our experience of it. The altar’s circular podium invites us to gather, but the corporeal experience of the altar as a gathering place is affected by the extent to which we gather around it or not. If the architecture becomes detached from the liturgy, the theology and the spirituality that permeate it, it will be drained of meaning, as Gadamer writes, “A building is never only a work of art. Its purpose, through which it belongs in the context of life, cannot be separated from it without its losing some of its reality.”80 The field of use makes itself felt in the analysis of the architecture and in the experience of the meaning it illicits.

On Earth as It is in Heaven

This, however, does not say everything about how architecture makes sense theologically in this church. The liturgical practice takes place in one particular room. The nave is not only a backdrop for ceremonies: there is a poetic correspondence between act and place. The analysis has shown that the architecture is an understanding of the holy mystery, in light of the earth/heaven relationship. The architectural image treats the question of how the mystery that takes place in the liturgy relates to the basic conditions of life, of being on earth and under heaven. This architectural correspondance takes place in another medium than that of the word and ceremonies, and it gives its own form of meaning which is rooted in the experience of finding oneself corporeally present in a particular place. When the congregation celebrates the mystery of the incarnation and the uniting of heaven and earth, in so far as the divine becomes flesh, this can be sensed in St. Hallvard’s by way of the strange concrete and physical closeness to the roof. The church architecture, as the 80

H.-G. Gadamer, Truth and Method, trans. J. Weinsheimer and D.G. Marshall (New York: Continuum, 1998), p. 156.

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image that the liturgy takes place in, is something those who are present in the church live with. Thus, the church architecture becomes an image that the liturgical practice dwells in, and it is something those who are present in the church live with corporeally. With regard to the architectural image, I wish, furthermore, to claim that St. Hallvard’s promotes the mystery of the incarnation which the church celebrates in the liturgy, by founding the mystery anew, figuratively speaking. This image is something in itself, and it does not primarily exist for practical or functional reasons: [ . . . ] rather it bears within itself its own significance, which therefore gladdens reality with a ‘surplus of significance’ (Mehr an Bedeutung). Therefore Gadamer describes as ‘foundation’ (Stiftung) the function of the image, hearkening back to the arcane words of Hölderlin: ‘But what remains was founded by the poets’.81 The architecture in St. Hallvard’s is and in what it is, it is more meaningful, in a way that goes beyond the ceremonies, as Gadamer points out: If a building is a work of art, then it is not only the artistic solution to a building problem posed by the contexts of purpose and life to which it originally belongs, but somehow preserves them, so that they are visibly present even though the building’s present appearance is completely alienated from its original purpose. Something in it points back to the original.82 Even thought the architectural image is a poetic interpretation of man's existential space, we have seen that this interpretation cannot detach itself from the spiritual context that the building is a part of. The founding of the relationship between heaven and earth does not take place in a spiritual or theological vacuum. I would claim that the spirit of the place (Genius Loci) in St. Hallvard’s is largely influenced by the spirit of St. Francis of Assisi. The easy-going style and the choice of raw materials can be understood in light of a spirituality that refuses to seek the divine in the lofty and glorious. A cell for alchoholics and misfits in the basement of the church and monastery complex is a witness to the idea that serving sufferers and outcasts was incorporated 81 Norberg-Schulz, Architecture: Presence, Language and Place, p. 109. 82 Gadamer, Truth and Method, p. 156.

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into the plan. The placement of the tabernacle in a side room can be seen as an expression of the belief that the presence of Christ does not reveal itself in an illuminated center. The many disruptive elements in an otherwise ordered universe support the idea that God does not need the orderly and well-functioning in his place. Nonetheless, I end with a question mark. What is this divine presence like that is founded in the church’s architectural image? If we go back to the previously mentioned scripture in John, in the mystery of the incarnation, we find a divine glory full of grace and truth, which lives among men (p. 443).83 In St. Hallvard’s we have seen that it is difficult to recognize any unambiguous glory in the image of the hanging dome. On the contrary, the architecture challenges those who are present in the room to contemplate how divinity can reveal itself in an incomprehensible and even offensive way. This is not a foreign thought for the author of the above-mentioned chapter in John, who wrote, “He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him.”84 Even in the incarnation, God is hidden. I would claim, nonetheless, that there are aspects of the Franciscan spirituality and theology which can help us in the interpretation of the indefinable architectural presence. In St. Francis of Assisi’s spiritual tradition, the uniting of heaven and earth takes place in such a way that heaven and earth are included in all-embracing love: “Himmel und Erde, Tiere, Pflanzen und die Elemente waren einbezogen in die allumfassende Liebe.”85 (Heaven and earth, animals, plants and the elements were included in the all-embracing love.) Can architecture emanate divine love? I will dare to offer a tentative yes. Father Castricum thought of the building project: “As far as building a church is concerned, it is much more of a project than constructing an assembly building. It is the mystery of Christ one encounters.”86 But the architectural presentation of a transcending, love-filled presence in St. Hallvard’s does not take place in the form of an edifying, harmonious or liberating gesture. It is another mystery of love that the architecture in St. Hallvard’s puts us in contact with. It presents itself as intense, deep, soft and dark – as it is on earth, and one who is in the church can perceive this mystery through the impression generated by the architectural bodies present. 83 84 85 86

John. 1. 14. John. 1. 10. E. Badstübner, Kirchen Der Mönche. Die Baukunst der Reformorden im Mittelalter (Berlin: Union, 1980), p. 227. Castricum, “Searching for the Sacred Mystery,” p. 23.

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Conclusion This study of St. Hallvard’s Church and Abbey shows that the architecturally sacred is connected with the basic spatial conditions of human existence. In contrast with building enterprises which are based on purely practical-­ economic, functional conditions, we see here an architecture that makes it meaningful that the religious life of the church takes place in a particular space. This happens through an architectural interpretation of existence in which a transcending presence is proffered in such a way that those who are present can feel it corporeally in the atmosphere of the room. This is meaningful in the context of the church building. Here the architectural forms seem to participate in the liturgy.

part 5 Theological Considerations: Imago Dei, Grace and Resurrection

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Introduction to Part 5 Svein Aage Christoffersen Doch alle Lust will Ewigkeit -, - will tiefe, tiefe Ewigkeit! In Nietzsche’s famous dictum from Also Sprach Zarathrustra the tension between art and religion comes to a head. Can art communicate the eternity human beings long for, or must art step aside when it comes to eternity as a theme? Can art transcend temporal life, or must a religion that takes the transcendence of God seriously be iconoclastic? If we contextualize these questions in light of biblical traditions and motifs, it turns out that they involve both Christological and eschatological issues. In the following pages we will focus on some central motifs in the treatment of the iconoclastic thematic in connection with biblical tradition, and we will see how this conglomerate of themes is reflected in literature, in texts by the Danish poet N.F.S. Grundtvig and the Norwegian dramatist Henrik Ibsen. It will also be seen, however, that the connection between iconoclasm and eschatology does not only have to do with the divine, but also with the demonic. In “Transcendence and the use of Images,” Svein Aage Christoffersen takes his point of departure in the prohibition against images in Exodus 20.4, which is a central marker of God’s transcendence in the Old Testament. The prohibition against images has often been connected with other markers of transcendence in the Old Testament, such as God’s namelessness (Exodus 3.14) and the emphasis that nobody can see God’s face (Exodus 33.17–23) In its pure form, such an understanding of transcendence ends in an apophatic theology in which everything that can be said about God is a negation. Christoffersen, however, points to the fact that this is not the only line of tradition in the Old Testament. The transcendence of God does not necessarily mean that God is the absolutely unknown, and in this sense, the alien God, for God is after all the God of the Fathers, who through the exodus also becomes the God of liberation. Therefore God in fact has a name, but this name is a story. The story of God with his people is highly perceptible,: it can be seen, it can be heard, and it can be talked about. The prohibition against images is no hindrance for extended figurative talk about God. But God’s presence in history is dialectical. He hides in it at the same time as He shows Himself. Even though the prohibition against images is continued, the Old Testament conception of transcendence is changed radically in the New Testament, in that God’s face is identified with Christ, and Christ is identified as the crucified Jesus. Thus God’s transcendence becomes both visible and hidden in Christ.

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For Paul, the fact that Christ is God’s imago means that the Law and circumcision are nullified as delimitations of the holy. Accordingly, the access to God is opened for both Jews and Gentiles. This is grace. When the God of the Fathers is at the same time preached as the God of Creation, God will not be the alien God for the Gentiles either, as the Gnostics maintained when they repudiated the work of creation as the work of the demiurge. God is also both visible and hidden in the created world. This dialectic opens up to an aesthetics in which the sensory can both reflect God’s future Kingdom in Christ, and his creation. In this way, Christoffersen creates a connection between the perspective of the theology of creation that is characteristic of this book and basic motifs in the Christian belief in Jesus Christ as the savior of the world. The perspective of the theology of creation does not push away the Christological motif, but establishes a dialectic connection between creation and redemption. In “Faith’s Creative Mirror Reflection of Heaven’s Bliss,” Theodor Jørgensen takes his point of departure in the magnificent poem “The Land of the Living” by the Danish poet and theologian N.F.S. Grundtvig, in which he in two great sequences develops the possibility that the Kingdom of God may be reflected aesthetically and poetically in this world. Can art, the poets and the pictorial artists, create moments of eternity in the temporal? With this question, the poem also raises the issue which was also a crucial theme in Grundtvig’s own active life: could one be both a Christian and a poet? In the first sequence the answer to this question is negative. Neither poetry nor images can in themselves create moments of eternity in the temporal. Grundtvig thus denies the tendency found in Romanticism of replacing religion with art. Like everything else in human life, art is subject to transitoriness. In the other sequence, however, the perspective is reversed. Here it is not about man’s possibility of raising himself aesthetically and poetically above earthbound life, but about God’s descent to this earthbound life. By virtue of this descent, art can reflect an eternity which is not only a pseudo-reality. On the contrary, the Holy Spirit liberates man to a poetry in which the Kingdom of God is reflected in the sensory and God is reflected in his work of creation. Therefore, Grundtvig is also free to be a poet. On this basis, Jørgensen sets up four criteria which delimit such a spiritual poetry. It cannot be dualistic, it cannot disregard the reality of sin and evil, it cannot disregard the demand for judgment and justice. And it cannot disregard the idea that God will be everything in everyone. One of the Protestant theologians who have actually worked with art and aesthetics in a religious context is the German-American theologian Paul Tillich. For Tillich the iconoclastic issue is not only relevant in connection with the divine, but also in connection with the demonic. In his

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article “The Ambiguity of the Demonic in Paul Tillich’s View of Art,” Espen Dahl calls attention to the fact that to Paul Tillich the demonic is aesthetically a resistance to form. The demonic is therefore not only one of several motifs in art, but is relevant for art also at an ontological level. In art as design, there is therefore a tension between the divine and the demonic which opens up an eschatological perspective. The demonic character of art is found again in Trond Skard Dokka’s article on Henrik Ibsen’s play When we Dead Awaken. With this play we have moved from a Christian to a post-Christian universe. That it is post-Christian does not mean that Christian thought is absent. On the contrary, in the play’s thematization of art’s possibility of representing the life that transcends death, there is any number of allusions to biblical images, scenes and figures of thought. But there is no cohering, anchoring point in Christianity in these biblical allusions, so it is not crucial whether the allusions are perceived as biblical allusions or not. In these allusions no hidden message is found that can be played out against the post-Christian meaning of the play. Ibsen takes up the same theme as Grundtvig, when he asks if there is a possibility in art for transcending earthly reality. Is there an earthly expression for the celestial? As a young and idealistic artist, the sculptor Rubek thinks that his sculpture “The Day of Resurrection” can do just that, make the day of resurrection come alive for us; but later in life he loses this idealistic belief in art as a human aspiration towards the elevated. Why does that happen? As Dokka points out, Rubek’s idealism fails because he realizes that the artist himself is stuck in this world, thanks to the guilt that is attached to every human being’s life. What the artist can do, therefore, is to depict not the ethereal beauty of this world, but its subterranean ugliness. The idealistic sculpture of his youth is therefore reworked into a disillusioned revelation of the materialism of this world. However, Ibsen uses the play to dig deeper into the transcendence problem in art than to what is contained in Rubek’s insight into himself. When art cannot catch the life which transcends the power of death, it is because it drains the world of life. The belief that it is possible for art to represent a celestial life actually empties it of life. In its religious striving, art sucks life out of the earthly without being able to transport this life into the celestial. Art does not create life, it consumes life, and in that way creates death. Rubek’s guilt, which binds him to the earthly, can therefore also be understood as a specifically artistic guilt. It is the guilt the artist incurs when he sucks the life out of the world around him to create art. But also the woman originally used by Rubek to create his sculpture is earthbound in her guilt, for she has fallen for the temptation to believe that art could make her immortal. Thus, in reality she allowed art to take her life away. She died, and now in the play, she regards art from the

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perspective of the dead, says Dokka, who thinks that this is precisely an important key to understanding the play’s artistic confrontation with art. In conclusion, if we bring Jørgensen’s four criteria for a genuine Christian art to bear on Ibsen’s play, we see that it corresponds with three of the four criteria. The play is not dualistic, on the contrary, it goes against a dualistic idealism. It does not disregard the reality of sin and evil, but on the contrary insists on the unavoidability of sin and evil in this world. Nor does it disregard the demand for judgment and justice. On the contrary, it sits in judgment, not least upon art. The eschatological perspective is entirely absent, however, in so far as the play does not point out that God will be everything in everyone. It is first and foremost this that makes Ibsen’s play a post-Christian play in its dealings with the biblical tradition. If we look back to Christoffersen’s article, the question is whether the eschatological break-down in Ibsen’s play is not caused by the fact that the God who in Paul is both the God of the Fathers, the God of History and the God of Creation, is no longer in Ibsen the God of the Fathers and the God of History, but only the God of Creation. When the concept of God is dissolved in this way, the door is opened for the God of Creation to be reduced to the Creating Human Being, represented by the artist. However, Ibsen’s anti-idealistic gaze reveals that the Creating Human Being in the role of artist does not create life, but death. It is therefore obvious to ask if the figure that raises its head in Ibsen’s portrait of the artist is not the Gnostic demiurge in a new guise. This does not, of course, mean that Christianity and art cannot go together, but it does mean that God in this connection must be both the Savior and the Creator.

chapter 15

Transcendence and the Use of Images Svein Aage Christoffersen To transcend means to cross over. What is crossed may be a border, a dividing line or a threshold. Whoever crosses the border goes from one area into another; from one sphere to another sphere or from one category into another category. Thus transcendence is not trivial but significant, i.e. the two areas are qualitatively, not just quantitatively, different. The transcendent is that which is found on the other side, whether this be above, below, beyond or outside what we see as ‘this side’. Transcendence means that the transcendent or ‘otherworldly’ in some way is categorically or quantitatively ‘different’.

God and the World

In the context of theology and the philosophy of religion, the word transcendence is often used to say something about the relationship between God and the world. That God is transcendent means that He is not a person or an object in this world, but is to be found beyond or outside this world. The conception of God as transcendent forms a contrast to the conception of God as immanent, that is as somehow innate in this world, either as something in this world or as an aspect of this world. The idea that God can be both transcendent and immanent does not as such weaken the distinction. A characteristic of this world is that it can be sensed. The world is sensory. The sensory is what we can see, hear, smell, taste or touch. Through our senses we get to know about the world in so far as the world is what can be sensed. That God is transcendent means that God cannot be sensed in the same way as what is found in the world. This gives rise to an epistemological dilemma, for how can we know anything about God if God cannot be seen, heard, smelled, tasted or touched? But an ontological problem is also posed, for what does it mean that God is when God is not or cannot be, in the same way as the world is, in its sensory form of being? Even though epistemology and ontology cannot be entirely separated, the problem of transcendence in the philosophy of religion will take different forms depending on whether it is presented with the accent on the epistemological or the ontological problematic. Within the history of religion, the concept of the transcendence of God or the divine has often been expressed as God being found in a different place.

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God or the gods are in heaven or on Mount Olympus, the humans are on earth. There are of course examples of heaven consequently being thought of as a place in the geographical sense, but often the geographical place is a metaphor for that which is categorically different. Heaven as an indication of place is a metaphorical expression of the fact that God is precisely not to be found somewhere else in this world, but is categorically different from this world. If transcendence is understood to mean that God or the gods are to be found somewhere else, transcendence must mean that God is also absent in the immanent. But if transcendence means that God is categorically different, God can be both transcendent and present. That God is different does not necessarily mean that He is alien. God’s alienness means that God is unknown, incomprehensible and unequalled in this world. He is neither evil nor good, or both evil and good. But if we say that God is different, it may be exactly in His goodness that He is different. Alienness is therefore only one of several ways of understanding God’s otherness. The tension between otherness and alienness is a central theme in the history of the idea of God. The relationship between transcendence and presence/absence is accentuated in a particular way in a cultic context. Even though God is not to be found in one particular place in the world, He can nevertheless be present in a special way in the cult. Thus, the problem of transcendence becomes an area of tension in two respects. On the one hand, we get the tension between transcendence and presence in the cult. Will the cultic presence rescind God’s transcendence or on the contrary confirm it? On the other hand, we get a tension between God’s presence in the cult and God’s presence/absence outside the cult. Does God’s presence in the cult mean that God is absent outside the cult, in the world, or does it mean that God is present in a different way in the cult than in the world at large? The latter question can also be formulated as a question about the relation between the sacred and the profane. God is not only the transcendent but also the Sacred, and exactly the relationship between sacred and profane also marks the dividing line between God and the world. Localizing the sacred or associating it with certain (ritual, cultic) acts sets it apart from other places and acts. Thus, a limit is established that must be transcended to make it possible to come into contact with the sacred; or vice versa, the sacred establishes a limit that must be respected. Thus, the relationship between transcendence and immanence can be considered from a number of different angles. In addition to the epistemological and ontological questions connected with the relation between God and the sensory, we also see the relation between absence and presence, alienness and

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familiarity, sacredness and profanity. The problem of transcendence is not a single problem, but a conglomerate of problems. The next step on the basis of these conceptual considerations is to look at some aspects of the problem of transcendence in a biblical context. The intention is not to give an overall picture of the idea of transcendence in the Bible, but to highlight aspects which can be particularly relevant to the relationship between transcendence and sensoriness in an aesthetic context. First of all, this leads us to the Old Testament prohibition against images. God’s Transcendence and the Prohibition against Images – Some Old Testament Perspectives A central text with a highly significant history of influence regarding the view of God’s transcendence is the prohibition against images in Exodus 20.4–6: You shall not make for yourself an idol, or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water under the earth. You shall not worship them or serve them. This commandment has been subjected to extensive interpretation both in the past and the present, but we cannot deal with all these interpretations here. If we keep inside the religious world of the Old Testament for a start, the commandment unconditionally enjoins a cult without images of God. In relation to what was said above, it is natural to take this to mean that the prohibition against images procures God’s transcendence in a cultic context. God is present in the cult, but simultaneously transcendent. The cult does not make God an object or a person in this world, of the same nature as other objects or persons. Even though the focus of the commandment is on the worship of God, it is also natural to see the commandment as a general prohibition against making images of God, not only within the cult, but in any context. How far such a commandment has been representative of the religious multiplicity which is behind the texts of the Old Testament shall remain unsaid. But in the texts as we now have them, this commandment is central. God must not be depicted. God must not be made visible or represented by an image that pretends to be an image of God. Yet this prohibition against depicting God does not mean that the cult in ancient Israel was entirely without images or cultic objects. After Moses had received the law on Mount Sinai, he was also enjoined to make a special tent as a dwelling for the Lord. From Exodus 25, we learn that in this sanctuary, the

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Tabernacle, Moses was to place the Ark of the Covenant, and on top of that he was to place two cherubim of gold. In the sanctuary, he was also to place a table with showbread and a lampstand with seven branches (a menorah). The tent itself must be made of blue and purple and scarlet material, and cherubim must be woven into the curtains (Exod. 26.1). The tent was also to contain a heavily built altar for burnt offerings (Exod. 27.1ff). The description of Solomon’s temple in 1 Kings 6–8 is also interesting, seen from this point of view. Here we meet the Ark of the Covenant again, the cherubim, menorahs, the altar and the table of showbread. However, the building is richer and more sumptuously appointed than the tent of the tabernacle. All the walls in the temple, inside and out, were embellished with carved images of cherubim, palm trees and open flowers. Costly materials were used, not least gold. In the temple there were also two bronze pillars, decorated with wreaths of flowers and rows of pomegranates, and a basin of cast bronze, the Brazen Sea, which rested on 12 oxen. Solomon’s temple was destroyed by the Babylonians in 586/587 bc. After the Israelites had returned from their exile in Babylon, the temple was rebuilt, and later restored, but never in the same sumptuous style as under Solomon. The temple was finally destroyed by the Romans in ad 70. After ad 70, the synagogue became the central place of worship for the Jews, but the eschatological expectations that the temple would someday be rebuilt lived on. We know little about how the synagogues were furnished and decorated in the first centuries ad, but the excavation of the synagogue in Dura Europos has seriously questioned the supposition that the Judaic worship of God at that time was entirely without images.1 The synagogue is richly decorated, also with narrative images, both on the exterior and in the interior. The excavations of other synagogues from the fourth century and later also show richly decorated floor mosaics.2 Coin finds are also interesting in this connection. From the time of the Maccabee king Mattathias Antigonus (40–37 bc), coins have been found which have a picture of a menorah on one side and the table of showbread in the temple on the other side. We also have similar coins from the Jewish rebellion against the Romans in 67–68 and the rebellion in 132–135.3 At this time the

1 Cf. S. Fine, “Jewish Art and Biblical Exegesis in the Greco-Roman World.” In: J. Spier, Picturing the Bible. The Earliest Christian Art (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), p. 37ff. 2 Cf. J. Spier, “The Earliest Christian Art: From Personal Salvation to Imperial Power.” In: J. Spier, Picturing the Bible, p. 2ff. 3 Spier, Picturing the Bible. p. 202f.

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menorah had become the most important symbol of Jewish identity and is frequently found in art in tombs and synagogues. So there is much that suggests that Steven Fine is right when he refutes the widespread assumption that as a result of the prohibition against images the Jews were against ‘art’. The prohibition against images was directed against images of idols, but not against images in general: Judaism was not an ‘aniconic’ or ‘iconophobic’ religion, as some scholars continue to insist. Rather, it was (and is) what I call ‘anti-idolic’. Images that were construed to be idolatrous or potentially idolatrous were (and are) forbidden, while imagery that is not tainted with idolatry – or the potential for idolatry – was perfectly acceptable.4

The Invisible God

The prohibition against images is connected with the fact that it is also forbidden or not possible to see God. This is a theme that plays an important role in a number of Old Testament texts. Let us begin with the stories about Moses in Exodus. Already in Chapter 3, we meet this theme in the story of how God calls Moses to lead the Israelites out of Egypt. The story of the call begins with the story of the bush that burns without being consumed. According to the text it is initially the angel of the Lord who appears to Moses in the flames, but when Moses approaches to see what is actually taking place, God speaks to him, calling him by name, forbids him to approach any closer, and orders him to take off his sandals, because the place on which he is standing is ‘holy ground’ (Exod. 3.5). However, Moses does not only take off his sandals, he also hides his face (prosopon in the Septuagint), “for he was afraid to look at God” (Exod. 3.6). The text does not say that Moses would really have been allowed to see God if he had not hidden his face. It only says that Moses was afraid of getting into a situation in which he would see God. So the text speaks of Moses and his fear or awe of the holy, but does not indicate that God was visually present in any other way than in a burning bush. Going from Exodus 3 to Exodus 33, we will see that this motif in a way is turned upside down in Chapter 33. In Exodus 33, Moses prays that God show him His glory (doxa in the Septuagint). God answers by saying that Moses cannot see his face, “for no man can see Me and live!” (Exod. 33.20). Moses is therefore not allowed to see God’s face, but only His back, for God’s face shall not be 4 Fine, “Jewish Art and Biblical Exegesis,” p. 28.

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seen (Exod. 33.23). This, too, is a kind of prohibition against images which corresponds to the prohibition against images in Exodus 20. At the same time, these prohibitions against images are entered into a particular context in as far as there is a connection between seeing God, seeing God’s face (prosopon), and seeing God’s glory (doxa). This connection will be taken up later, but first we will return to the text in Exodus 3. What God says when Moses has taken off his sandals and hidden his face is that He has seen the affliction of the Jews and given heed to their cry because of their Egyptian taskmasters. Now He has come down to deliver them, and He calls Moses to lead them out of Egypt. First Moses tries to push aside his calling by saying that he does not know what to answer if he goes to the Israelites and tells them that he comes from the God of their Fathers and they ask: ‘What is His name?’ The answer Moses gets is the enigmatic: “God said to Moses, ‘I am who I am’; and He said, ‘Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel: I am has sent me to you’.” This text, too, is generally read as expressing a transcendence motif. God does not have a name like everything else in this world. God is different. God calls, He wants to save, He wants to be worshipped, but nevertheless He is transcendent. If we view these texts together, we arrive at a complex of ideas according to which no picture of God exists, no name that is God’s name, no face that is God’s face. In these respects God is radically transcendent. This divine transcendence is also expressed in other texts in the concept of the incomprehensibility and mystery of God. God transcends what humans can think and imagine. Both in Judaic and Christian contexts, this idea of God has been sustained, not only in various forms of prohibitions against images but also in various forms of apophatic theology, according to which the only thing we can say about God is what He is not (via negationis).

Dialectical Transcendence

Even though the radicalized understanding of transcendence is a significant strand in Old Testament tradition, and also in the New Testament, it is in no way an adequate picture of the history of this tradition in its entirety. There are a number of texts in the Old Testament which cannot be incorporated into this understanding of transcendence. The texts in the Old Testament are diverse and manifold, and it is not possible to combine them into a unified and consistent concept of transcendence. Even within the limited number of texts that have been focused on here, there are texts which apparently contradict what we have emphasized above, as for example Exodus 33.11, which says that “the Lord used to speak to Moses face to face, just as a man speaks to his friend.”

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Thus, the complex of ideas we have concentrated on here is not universal in the Old Testament, but rather what we could call a basic motif which has indeed been important for the Deuteronomistic editors, but not necessarily for every- and anybody. To understand the role this basic motif has played for the Judeo-Christian idea of God, we must also take up some central aspects of the idea of God in the Old Testament that deal with the concept of transcendence in a more dialectic way. Primarily, it is important that we do not entirely stop at the enigmatic “I am who I am,” because the text itself does not stop there, but immediately continues, Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, ‘The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you’. This is My name forever, and this is My memorial-name to all generations. Exod. 3.15

So the text says that God actually does have a name, but this name is a story, and this story can be told. The story which is God’s name is told in the Old Testament. Neither God’s transcendence nor his holiness, then, hinders that God can be talked about in stories and images with clear references to the sensory. Not only can God be talked about in the Old Testament, it is also said that God himself speaks. And when God speaks, He does so clearly, unmistakably and directly. In addition, God does not only speak to Moses, but to a number of persons, and perhaps particularly the prophets He sends to Israel. It is not enough to say that the prophets interpret and communicate God’s word, for according to Scripture, God spoke audibly and directly to the prophets. God’s word, then, is not a text, but God’s direct speech (cf. for example Jer. 1). We must therefore say that God’s transcendence in relation to the sensory world is broken in a quite significant way, in the Word. God speaks. Gradually this happens more and more in connection with the law. God speaks and is heard in the law, and the tablets of the law were physically present in the temple, in the Ark of the Covenant, as a sign of the presence and holiness of the transcendent God. God’s presence, then, is dialectical in the sense that God is not perceptibly present, for example in a divine image, but He is indirectly present in a number of different signs of divine presence. However, this does not preclude that God can also be absent. God’s transcendence and God’s absence are of course two very different things, but there is nevertheless a connection between transcendence and absence, too, as we have already seen in Exodus 33.18, when Moses directs his appeal to God: “let me see Your glory.” This prayer resonates

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throughout the Old Testament. Not least in the Book of Psalms, where the believer is pained by God apparently withdrawing, hiding and leaving the believer, or rather the devout person, alone. The questions can be cried out, crudely and uncompromisingly, as for example in Psalm 10:1, “Why do You stand afar off, O Lord? Why do You hide Yourself in times of trouble?” Or in Psalm 13.1, “How long, O Lord? Will You forget me forever? How long will You hide Your face from me?” 42.2, “My soul thirsts for God, for the living God; when shall I come and appear before God?” Along with the accusatory questions we find the exhortations: “Consider and answer me, O Lord my God” (Ps.13.3) “Arise, O Lord; O God, lift up Your hand. Do not forget the afflicted.” (Ps.10.12) In existential and physical distress, God is implored: Show yourself! Come! Veni! It is natural to ask what creates this existential state of distress. Why does God hide? Does this only have to do with God or does it also have to do with man? Is it God’s divine transcendence – His being without image, without name, without face, His being holy – that is the problem, or is it man’s humanity, understood as his Adamite weakness and earthliness, and hence perhaps also his sinfulness and impurity? If we stay with the Old Testament, this is not a genuine alternative, however. It is not an either/or, but a both/and. Nevertheless, beneath this existential experience of God’s hiddenness, there is a belief or a hope that God, who once saved his people, will do so again. The God of the past must prove also to be the God of the future. God may be different and not only invisible but perhaps also absent. But He is not alien. God has revealed himself as the God of the Fathers. Because He is the God of the Fathers, and hence also the God who heard the people’s cry for help and saved them out of the Egyptian bondage, there are limits to how ‘alien’ this God of Salvation can become. The alienness cannot rescind the historical image of God as the Savior without jeopardizing the very belief in God. God’s goodness and care for his people can be difficult to understand, and God’s work may be difficult to see, but God’s otherness does not make him alien in relation to what is quite fundamentally seen as God’s work. This belief in God is in many ways picked up in the Aaronical blessing in Numbers 6.24–26: The Lord bless you, and keep you; The Lord make His face shine on you, And be gracious to you; The Lord lift up His countenance on you, And give you peace. Here God shows his face (prosopon) in the blessing which gives protection, grace and peace, which we may transcribe as the glory of God, his doxa.

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Theomorphism and Transcendence – Some New Testament Perspectives The prohibition against images is continued in the New Testament in an obvious way. When Paul arrives in Athens, he is shocked that the city is full of idols (Acts 17.16). In his speech to the Areopagus council, Paul emphasizes that we must not imagine that the Divine Nature is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and thought of man (Acts 17.29). In Ephesus he angers the craftsmen when he says that images of gods which are made by human hands are not gods (Acts 19.26). The craftsmen make their living by fashioning images of gods and fear that Paul will make them lose their livelihood. Paul’s criticism of images is also connected with a criticism of the idea that God or the gods dwell in certain places. God does not live in temples raised by human hands, Paul says (Acts 17.24, cf. Acts 19.27). We find the same theme again in the Gospel of St. John, where it is explicitly connected with the idea of God as spirit: “God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth” (John 4.24). It is not difficult to see the connection between this criticism of attempts to localize God in certain places or objects and Jesus’ criticism of the temple cult in Jerusalem. Paul is also solidly anchored in the Old Testament understanding of God when he maintains that the God who cannot be pictured is the God of the Fathers. But he breaks with the established understanding of the God of the Fathers by insisting that the God of the Fathers is also the God of the Gentiles. If his meaning had been that also the Gentiles can be included in the history of the Fathers by submitting to the law and being circumcised, it might well have been unorthodox, but not a radical break with the understanding of God. But Paul went further than that. He thought that the Gentiles did not need to become like Jews by being circumcised. When the God of the Fathers is also the God of the Gentiles, it is by virtue of the promise God has given to the fathers, in casu, to Abraham. Because it is the promise and not the law that makes the Gentiles Abraham’s children, they are Abraham’s children by virtue of grace and faith, and not by virtue of the acts of the law. Therefore they do not need to be circumcised to be Abraham’s children (Gal. 2–3). Paul takes this argument to its extreme by claiming that the Jews are not Abraham’s children by virtue of the law and circumcision either, but by virtue of the promise. Abraham is the father of both the circumcised and the uncircumcised, in the same way and to the same degree (Rom. 4). It is not hard to understand that this message caused outrage among those who had hitherto seen themselves as Abraham’s children. However, the Apostolic Conference in Jerusalem supported Paul and accepted that the Gentiles could join the Christian congregation without being circumcised (Acts 15). This made

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it clear that Christianity is not a national religion, but a religion without ethnic and national characteristics. Paul did not deny circumcision as a national or ethnic characteristic. Therefore he could have one of his co-workers, Timothy, circumcised to prove that he was of Jewish origin (Acts 16.1–3), but the circumcision was not a sign that Timothy belonged to the Christian congregation. The ruling of the Apostolic Conference meant that an ethnic-national and a religious affiliation are two different things. A consequence of this way of thinking is that God cannot be the Alien God in relation to the Gentiles, either. This idea can be elaborated in two ways. On the one hand, it can mean that the story about the God of the Fathers is extended to also include the Gentiles. Thus, the story of the God of the Fathers becomes everybody’s story, and a story about the world. Seen in that way, the Old Testament story is not just a story about God and Israel, it is a story about God and the world. The story about the God of the Fathers is a universal story about salvation. Thus the Gentiles, too, can understand who they themselves are in continuation of the Old Testament story of the God of the Fathers. If we are to believe the rendition of Paul’s speech on the Areopagus in Acts 17, Paul, however, also chose another strategy when he had to argue that the God of the Fathers is not an alien God for the Gentiles, either. In this speech, Paul admits that the God he preaches may be unknown to the Greeks, but this God, nevertheless, is not far from each of them, because He is the Creator, and therefore, it is in him everybody lives, moves and exists. “For we also are His children,” Paul says, quoting the Greeks’ own poets (Acts 17.27–29). The God of the Fathers is no alien God, but the Creator, and this perspective from the theology of creation is the second strategy Paul uses to show that the God he preaches is no alien, not even for the Gentiles. Of course we have no guarantee that Paul made his speech on the Areopagus exactly as it is rendered in Acts 17. Most scholars are skeptical, and some find it entirely incredible.5 Yet there are some motifs in the speech which we also find in Paul’s letters. As Jacob Jervell has noted, this is particularly true of the motifs emphasized above, which belong within the theology of creation.6 But irrespective of how the speech is to be understood in a purely historical sense, the Christianity that continued the line from Paul was also to strengthen this double track, according to which the God of the Fathers is everybody’s God by virtue both of the story of the God of the Fathers in the Old Testament and by virtue of 5 J. Jervell, Die Apostelgeschichte. Kritisch-exegetischer Kommentar über das Neue Testament Band III (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1998), p. 452ff. 6 Jervell, Die Apostelgeschichte, p. 455.

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His being the Creator of all. This becomes especially clear in the controversy with the Gnostics. Who and what the Gnostics were in the first centuries of the history of the church is a contested question. If we keep to what Christoph Markschies calls a typological model, Gnosticism can be characterized as a cluster of ideas and motifs that are primarily concerned with God as the radically transcendent, otherworldly and distant God.7 This transcendent God is not the creator of the world, and the created, material world is not good, but evil, being created by one or more, lesser divine beings. Therefore, the experiences man has in this material world makes the supreme God an alien God, or makes man an alien in this world, by virtue of his original spark of divinity. When the first Christians took over the belief that the God of the Fathers was their God and the God of Creation, it must necessarily lead to a direct denial of the Gnostic view of God’s transcendence. The Gnostics on their part logically denied not only the God of Creation, but also the God of the Fathers. How could Paul disregard the law in such a radical and groundbreaking way, and yet claim that he was still within an Old Testament tradition and preached the God of the Fathers? The explanation is of course to be found in the role Christ plays for the concept of God in Paul. In Christ, the God of the Fathers has himself gone beyond – transcended – the boundary set by the law between Jews and Gentiles. Therefore Christ is the absolute center of everything in Pauline theology, and the belief in Christ compels Paul to fundamentally reevaluate the traditional ideas about God’s transcendence. One of the texts where we can see how Paul tries to come to terms with the ideas of God’s transcendence in light of Gods transcending act in Christ, is in 2 Corinthians 3–5. The letter as such is marked by the conflicts Paul is involved in with the congregation in Corinth, and these conflicts induce a discussion which in an entirely fundamental way comes to deal with transcendence. 2 Corinthians 3–5 is a complicated text which has been the object of many and diverse interpretations. What interests us here is the way Paul treats the problem of transcendence. The text is characterized by a number of dichotomies which open up for this theme. Light/darkness, life/death, law/grace, outer/inner, visible/invisible, blind/seeing, hidden/revealed, veiled/unveiled, letter/spirit, belief/disbelief, old/new, away/at home, earthly/celestial, perishable/unperishable. It is obvious that Paul feels challenged to take up the problem of transcendence under ever new perspectives. Only a few important points will be dealt with here. 7 C. Markschies, Die Gnosis (München 2001: Verlag C.H. Beck), p. 25.

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Paul goes right to the center of the Old Testament concept of God by connecting the questions of the image of God, the glory of God and the face of God with Christ (2 Cor. 4.4). It is Christ who is the image (eikon) of God, and the glory of Christ is the glory (doxa) of God. The verse is normally understood as an interpretation of Genesis 1.27 about man as created in the image of God,8 but it is also a parallel to Exodus 33.18, where Moses, as we have seen, prays to God, “Show me your glory” (doxa). This prayer is heard, as Paul sees it, in Christ. Christ is the glory of God, and hence also the face of God. In the glory of Christ we see the glory of God. Now the one who sees God must no longer die. On the contrary, the one who sees God is given life. The image is transferred from Christ to the one who sees the glory of Christ, for the one who does so is created in this image when he or she sees the glory of God in Christ. So the believers are pulled into a process of image-making in which they are transformed into a new image, or ever new images, from glory to glory (2 Cor. 3.18). This is a very central point in Pauline theology. Christ as the image of God also becomes an exemplar for the believers. The believers must be conformed to the image of Christ (Rom. 8.29). However, this is not meant as an ethical project, as something the believers must initiate, but as the effect of the transforming power in the community with Christ. Therefore, Paul can say that it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me (Gal. 2.20). Of course this does not prevent Paul from also exhorting the believers, but the exhortations are about staying in the spiritual community with Christ. The issue of images, then, acquires an entirely new dimension in Pauline theology, not only by Christ being identified as the image of God, but also in that the believer in the likeness of Christ becomes the image of God in a derivative sense. In that way an important line from the story of creation in Genesis 1.28 is taken up again in Pauline theology. It is man who is the image of God, not as something completely new, but as a renewal of the creator’s image in man (Col. 3.10). The connecting link between God and man is always Christ, who is both the image of God and the ‘primal image’ of man. When Paul redefines the transcendence of God in this way, it has con­ sequences also for the dialectics of revealed/hidden, presence/absence and sacred/profane. Because the glory of God is the glory of the crucified Christ, it is not only visible but also hidden. That the glory of God is hidden in Christ does not, however, entail a trivial form of invisibility. The Glory is of course highly visible, but it is hidden under its visible or apparent opposite. Life is 8 J. Jervell, Imago Dei: Gen.1, 26f. im Spätjudentum, in der Gnosis und in den paulinischen Briefen (Göttingen: Vandehoeck und Ruprect, 1960), p. 173.

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hidden under death, victory is hidden under defeat, holiness under the curse of the law (Gal. 3.13). The decisive question is whether this hiddenness is accidential or whether there is a necessary connection between the mode of hiddenness and that which is hidden. Paul insists on the latter. The treasure is hidden in jars of clay for a specific reason: in order to show that the all-surpassing power is from God and not from man (2 Kor. 4.7). So the jars of clay do not just hide the glory of God but reveal it as well. This dialectical doubleness is a key point in Paul’s view of God’s transcendence in Christ. The way God reveals and hides his glory in Christ redefines the concept of what glory, and hence also holiness, is. That is seen when Paul couples the glory of God (doxa) and the justice of God (dikaiosyne) in the Gospel. It is the gospel of God’s justice which is the glory of God, and we meet this justice in Christ who died for us. Hence, man is not only allowed to see the glory of God, but becomes part of the glory of God through Christ, understood as the glory of grace. Similarly, the sacred becomes something that the believers become part of through Christ. Human beings are not in themselves holy, but holy thanks to Christ. Their holiness is a derived holiness. So, it is in no way accidential that the treasure that is God’s justice and glory is a treasure the believers carry in earthen vessels. It must necessarily be so, in order that it can become clear that the power the believers have – the glory they have – is not from themselves but from God. God’s power is completed in man’s weakness. Human beings do not have doxa from or in themselves, but as a grace from God, in that they become part of God’s doxa, thanks to Jesus. Quite concretely this means, says Paul, that we always carry the death of Jesus in our own body, so that also the life of Jesus can become manifested in it. The life of the apostle is still subject to the conditions of transience, to disease, pain and death, in order to make it evident that the glory does not come from himself, but from God, i.e. that it is grace. For Paul this becomes the key to understanding why he is not cured of the illness he has. Precisely because he is not, the Corinthians, to whom he writes, must understand that the power of the holy Gospel does not come from man himself, or from Paul, but from God (2 Cor. 4). However, the image of the treasure in earthen vessels also has another side in this text, which is “for you.” Death is active in Paul so that the congregation may live. This is the same motif we find in the parable of the grain of wheat which must fall to the ground and die so that it shall not remain alone, but bear much fruit (John 12.24ff). We find the motif again in the hymn in the letter to the Philippians 2:6ff, and it is also used in a number of places as a basis for the principle of “like master, like man.” The most visual image of this relation is the scene in the Gospel of St. John when Jesus washes the feet of the disciples. “If I then, the Lord and the Teacher, washed your feet, you also ought to wash one

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another’s feet” (John 13.14). The sacred is made manifest in Christ, in the grace that does not exclude what is unclean, but includes it and takes it into its cleanness. The sacred, then, is not that which differs, rejects and excludes, like a taboo, but that which includes. Thus, Paul redefines the relation between sacred and profane. When people in the New Testament meet the sacred, it is therefore said again and again, “Fear not!” Precisely this initial “fear not” is an important key to the understanding of the sacred in the New Testament. When the transcendent is invisible, it is not only because it is hidden behind its opposite, but also because the Kingdom of God is an eschatological reality. The Kingdom of God is of the future. But the glory of the coming kingdom is reflected in the glory of Christ here and now (2 Cor. 3.18). As we have seen, it is a deep-seated conviction in both the Old and the New Testament that the sensory can bear witness to and reflect the extrasensory, the visible can reflect the invisible, the transitory can reflect the eternal, albeit in a dialectical way. If this were not so, God would not be the God of the Fathers nor the God of Creation, but entirely the Alien God. But to an alien God it is not possible to cry an insistent “come!”

God’s Transcendence and Early Christian Art

We have no reliable evidence of a Christian pictorial art and culture before the third century. It was long common to give the explanation that Christianity took over the prohibition against images from Judaism and therefore continued the religion without images found in Judaism. When the resistance to images gradually changed in the course of the third century, some were of the opinion that it was caused by a growing paganization of the church,9 whereas others thought that the concept of incarnation played a decisive role in the development of a Christian culture of imagery. However, Judaism, as has been seen, was neither iconoclastic nor aniconic. Judaism did not reject images as such, but images of idols, and so did the Christians. So the prohibition against images cannot explain the lack of images from the early Christian period, and neither paganization nor the concept of incarnation is an obvious explanation of the growth of a specifically Christian culture of imagery in the third century. Mary Charles Murray finds it probable that the absence of images has a social aspect. Art was expensive, and before the church achieved the stability and the financial resources that made it possible to buy buildings that could be 9 M. Charles-Murray, “The Emergence of Christian Art.” In: J. Spier, Picturing the Bible, p. 56.

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used as churches or Roman burial sites, there were quite simply no places where Christians could make their faith visible in images and art.10 Another and perhaps more important reason was, in her opinion, that the Christians in the first centuries used all their creativity to develop a Christian literature and a Christian body of thought. Christianity is mainly a religion of the book. Only when dogma and life had been welded together in an intellectual system did it become possible to create art.11 There may be some truth in both of these explanations, but they primarily deal with a Christian representative art. They do not explain why the Christians were without images in their private religious lives – if they were. The evidence we have of Jewish art before the third century could indicate that it had its focus on religious signs especially connected with the temple and the temple cultus. In the Jewish culture of signs, images of the menorah and the showbread table have been central. When Paul and the Apostolic Conference said no to circumcision, they also said no to the temple cult as a reference for the Christian faith. The temple cult and the symbols connected with it now became signs of the separation between Judaism and Christianity. Especially when the conflict between Christians and Jews was aggravated after 70 ad, the menorah in particular became a symbol of belonging to Judaism, and hence an image the Christians could not very well use for their religiosity. In this situation it was actually easier for the Christians to resort to religious expressions from the heathen cultural world, since these expressions had a more general character and were not associated with one particular people. This was true of the images of the good shepherd, of the praying man, of the fisherman, of the fish, and of the repast. All these pictorial expressions are found in both Greco-Roman devotional life and in the Christian faith. Jeffrey Spier refers to the fact that such a pragmatic approach to originally heathen motifs is also supported by an interesting text by Clement of Alexandria (ca. 150–215), which deals with the question of which motifs may be used on a seal ring. Images of idols cannot be used, nor wanton or frivolous images, Clement thinks. But dove, fish, ship, lyre, anchor and fisherman are motifs that can be used, since they are images that may also be given a Christian meaning.12 Robin Margaret Jensen is therefore right when she writes that the absence of specifically Christian images from the first and second centuries does not necessarily mean that the Christian faith was not expressed in images. The reason can also be that in the beginning the Christians utilized the imagery found 10 11 12

Charles-Murray, “The Emergence of Christian Art,” p. 57. Charles-Murray, “The Emergence of Christian Art,” p. 57. Spier, “The Earliest Christian Art,” p. 5.

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in the religious world around them. They did not create new imagery, but utilized the imagery already in existence.13 This also sits well with CharlesMurray’s view, when she demonstrates that Christian art was developed in continuation of classical Greco-Roman art, not only chronologically, but also stylistically. It is not a break with this art, but a continuance.14 However, the problem is not only why we have no images from the first centuries, but also why the culture of images suddenly emerged in the third century. Here the material conditions may have played a role. Only in the third century had the church developed the financial foundation that was a condition for being able to commission art for representative locations. It is not only the growth of imagery as such that is interesting, however, but also the fact that the images now increasingly become narrative. The distinction between images as signs and images as narratives is not entirely clear-cut, of course, and there are intermediate forms. But nevertheless there is a difference between the fish or the chi-rho sign as a Christian symbol and a pictorial representation of the story about Jonah and the whale. So the evidence suggests that from the third century we increasingly move from an image-based culture of signs to a narrative culture. The finds in Dura Europos suggest that this was not only true of Christian pictorial culture, but also of the Judaic. If that is so, this development can be seen in a larger context. Paul Zanker has called attention to the fact that from the early days of the Roman empire a remarkable growth is seen in the use of sculptures, paintings, and reliefs, not only in the public spaces of the empire,15 but also in private homes.16 Especially in a private context we see a recycling and revitalization of Greek mythology. Even though these decorations can of course also have been a demonstration of luxury and wealth, Zanker thinks that this has not been the main motif. It was primarily a question of defining oneself and one’s position in the world: The Romans had no desire to become Greeks, however, despite the ubiquity of Greek images and cultural rituals in their villas. They were merely expanding and revising their cultural self-definition (and, incidentally, also laying the foundations for their claims to be a great world power).17

13 R.M. Jensen, Understanding Early Christian Art (London: Routledge, 2000), p. 62. 14 Charles-Murray, “The Emergence of Christian Art,” p. 51. 15 Cf. P. Zanker, Augustus und die Macht der Bilder (München: C.H.Beck, 2003). 16 Cf. P. Zanker, Pompeii. Public and Private Life (London: Harvard University Press, 1998). 17 Zanker, Pompeii, p. 19.

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An important aspect of this cultural self-definition was also the application of the mythological material to one’s own life experience. In the myths, one recognized oneself, one’s own situation and one’s own life experiences, and in that way, also found a means for understanding and interpreting oneself. It is in this heavily image-oriented culture that Christianity also gains a foothold and develops. In light of Zanker’s work, it is in any case difficult to imagine that century after century Christianity could remain without images. The images surrounding the Christians were not only pagan cult images, but they also had an immediate, existential function, which the Christians could not have been unaffected by either. The more important the images became in the way the culture identified and understood itself, the more natural it also became for the Christians to express their self-conception, cultural identity and life experience through their own pictorial expression, as is shown by the earliest Christian art in the catacombs. Against this background, it is not the concept of incarnation, but rather the concept of creation that is the decisive factor for opening the door to a richer culture of images in a Christian context. In her book, Understanding Early Christian Art, Robin Margaret Jensen has a very interesting discussion of images representing repast scenes with fish as one of the ingredients. These repast scenes are among the most common in early Christian funerary art and are found both on sarcophagi and in catacombs. Do they only have symbolic meaning or do they refer to actual meals in the Early Christian era?18 After discussing various alternatives, Jensen concludes that these repast images lead us as well to pre-Christian Greco-Roman culture as to a Jewish messianic tradition or expectation and to a specifically Christian Jesus tradition. These three traditions are not alternative references, but meet in these images. The images join together the three strands of tradition: We must conclude that these scenes are a symbolic combination of postresurrectional meal, messianic feast, and actual funerary banquet, meals to which the Christian agape and eucharist are not unrelated.19 What is particularly interesting is that the three traditions are conjoined in a specifically Christian context. It is not only the Jesus tradition that is Christian, but also the conjunction of the Jesus tradition with the two other traditions is Christian. So in these images we meet a Christianity which brings together a Christian, a Jewish and a pagan tradition. Theologically, this conjunction 18 Jensen, Understanding Early Christian Art, p. 52. 19 Jensen, Understanding Early Christian Art, p. 59.

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corresponds quite well with the train of thought we have seen above in Paul’s speech on the Areopagus in Acts 17. Thus, the images are not simply illustrations or pictorial reproductions of a given collection of texts. As Jensen emphasizes, the images are exegesis. They interpret the biblical tradition and its importance for its own time.20 The Christian images do not, however, only interpret the sacred text, but also the life and existence of the believers. The images apply the interpretation of texts to the lives of the believers. They are simultaneous interpretations of texts and of existence. This use of traditional motifs and stories as interpretation of existence was typical of the time, as Paul Zanker has shown. And Spier has called attention to the fact that motifs in early Christian art are also closely related to a Judeo-Christian devotional life, in which the biblical stories were utilized in the individual’s prayer for salvation and redemption. Their use was really quite simple: as God had aided the distressed in former days – Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jonah – so God will save his own today.21

Transcendence in the Middle of Life

In the previous pages, we have seen that the first Christians continued central aspects of the Old Testament understanding of God, at the same time as the ideas about the transcendence of God underwent a radical transformation through the belief in Jesus Christ as the image of God and the ‘primal image’ of the believers. Even though the phrase vere deus – vere homo is of a somewhat later date, the content of it corresponds to this joining of God and man in Christ. As a result of this view of Christ as truly God and truly man, a number of established lines of separation are reformulated, between the visible and the invisible, God’s absence and presence, the sacred and the profane. It seems natural to associate the growth of a Christian culture of images in the third century with the Christians’ faith that the God who has shown the world his face in Jesus Christ is also the originator and creator of the world. This does not lead to any definite doctrine of what an image as such ‘is’, but to a use of images as tools to combine interpretations of texts and existence. The most important thing, after all, is that the conjoining of Jesus Christ as the image of God and Christ as the ‘primal image’ of man shifts the decisive problem of images from images in the traditional sense of the word to the Christians themselves as images. It is the Christians who ‘depict’ God through 20 21

R.M. Jensen, “Early Christian Images and Exegesis.” In: Spier, Picturing the Bible, p. 84. Spier, “The Earliest Christian Art,” p. 8f.

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their belonging to Jesus Christ. Even though there is a large gap in time and space between Paul and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Bonhoeffer has expressed the radicality of this understanding of transcendence in a striking way in one of his prison letters, where he says the following: Our relationship to God is no “religious” relationship to some highest, most powerful, and best being imaginable – that is no genuine transcendence. Instead, our relationship to God is a new life in “being there for others,” through participation in the being of Jesus. The transcendent is not the infinite, unattainable tasks, but the neighbour within reach in any given situation. God in human form! Not as in oriental religions in animal form as the monstrous, the chaotic, the remote, the terrifying, but also not in the conceptual forms of the absolute, the metaphysical, the infinite, and so on, either, nor again the Greek god-human form of the “God– human form [Gott-Menschgestalt] of the human being in itself.” But rather “the human being for others”! therefore the Crucified One. The human being living out of the transcendent.22 The central idea in this understanding of transcendence is the idea of the crucified Savior who was mocked by the soldiers at the cross because he could not save himself: “He saved others; He cannot save Himself. Let this Christ, the King of Israel, now come down from the cross, so that we may see and believe!” (Mark 15.31–32). For Paul and Bonhoeffer, the decisive soteriological point is found just here, in that Jesus did not descend from the cross but remained there as a suffering human being among suffering human beings. Both heathens and Christians turn to God in their need, Boenhoeffer writes in another of his letters from prison. And they find him – crucified. “Christians stand by God in God’s own pain.”23 Pain belongs to this world, but it has no value in itself; thus, it does not belong to the Kingdom of God. Pain and agony, together with death, are part of that which will eventually be transcended (Rev. 21.4; 1 Cor. 15.26). Therefore the eschatological perspective ends in the exclamation of prayer that we found already in the Old Testament: Show yourself – Come – Veni! 22

D. Bonhoeffer, Letters and papers from Prison. Ed. J.W. de Gruchy (Minneapolis, Fortress Press, 2010), p. 559. 23 Bonhoeffer, Letters and papers from Prison, p. 461.

chapter 16

Faith’s Creative Mirror Reflection of Heavens’s Bliss Theodor Jørgensen For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known. 1 Corinthians 13. 12

In Paul’s time, mirrors were not what mirrors are today, especially with regard to sharpness and clarity. That is why one saw in a mirror, dimly. It is not the same today. Nonetheless, what you see is a mirror reflection. One does not, in fact, see face-to-face. One does not see reality, neither one’s own nor the rest of reality as it is. Is what we see or sense, what we conceive, an illusion then, a deception? Paul does not seem to think so. Nor is it a foregone conclusion. The partial and reversed in our sense perception and understanding is connected with the transience of reality. Reality is in constant motion beyond itself. It transcends itself. It does so in relation to its own future, and it does so in relation to us. Friedrich Schleiermacher in his renowned work, On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers1 has interesting considerations on intuition and sense perception. In the second speech “On the nature of religion,” he writes, All intuition proceeds from an influence of the intuited on the one who intuits, from an original and independent action of the former, which is then grasped, apprehended, and conceived by the latter according to one’s own nature. If the emanations of light – which happen completely without your efforts – did not affect your sense, if the smallest parts of the body, the tips of your fingers, were not mechanically or chemically affected, if the pressure of weight did not reveal to you an opposition and a limit to your power, you would intuit nothing and perceive nothing, and what you thus intuit and perceive is not the nature of things, but their action upon you.

1 Über die Religion. Reden an die Gebildeten unter ihren Verächtern. Berlin 1799, in Kritische Gesamtausgabe I/2. (Berlin: Walter de Gryuter, 1984), pp. 185–326. In English: Schleiermacher: On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers, ed. Richard Crouter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 24–25.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi 10.1163/9789004291690_023

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Schleiermacher turns transcendental philosophy’s concept of intuition on its head. In our intuition, it is not us who let reality appear and come into being. Quite the opposite. Reality imposes itself on us. With K.E. Løgstrup we speak of countering transcendence. It is a question of the experience of presence. Our senses are a prerequisite for the coming into being of this experience, but not for its content. The content is determined by the world imposing itself on us. But every experience of presence also contains an experience of absence. What has existed can be drawn forth from remembrance and become a part of the experience of presence, but still as the past. And what I experience here and now in its fullness is possibly gone with the wind tomorrow. Moments of the experience of presence can be so intense that past and future disappear. The moment acquires the character of eternity. Then the mirror reflection seems to vanish and a partial understanding is substituted by the full understanding. It is my claim that the truly religious experience shares this with the truly artistic experience. Presence, in art the presence of the work of art, is so strong that one becomes one with it. Then one is tempted to say to the moment: “Tarry yet! you are so beautiful!”2 However, no one is allowed to make this statement as it is a denial of his/her finitude and mortality and as such hubris. Nevertheless, we cannot desist from saying this, even though we know it is impossible. Thus, the experience is made into a dream, a utopia and is deposited in a non-existing place outside of time and space. Here is where the mirror reflection comes into effect. A mirror throws its image back to the viewer when he or she wants to see him/herself in the mirror. But a mirror can also reflect something else and send it back to the viewer. Think of the old window mirror or the side and rear-view mirrors on cars. The human eye functions as a mirror in the creation of a utopia. The content of the moment, which one so much wants to hold on to, but cannot, is transformed into a mirror image which one transcends outside of time and space or to the end of time. Here, then, the act of transcending goes in the opposite direction, from the person to that which is beyond time and space, or it occupies an as yet unknown future. Its modus vivendi is longing and hope. The mirror image is located in hope; in longing it is kept alive. Both are fundamental human manifestations of life which mutually keep each other alive and, in that way, also the person who harbors them. When a person has given up all hope and thus any longing for its fulfillment, he is near death. That is the 2 Faust to Mephistopheles in Goethe Werke, vol. 3, (Frankfurt a.M.: Insel Verlag, 1966), p. 52: “Verweile doch! du bist so schön!” If Faust let himself be tempted to say this to the moment, Mephistopheles could claim his soul.

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paradox that characterizes human existence. On the one hand, we must accept our enclosure in time and thus our transitory nature, but on the other hand, we must try to bypass it in our longing for eternity. There is a text in the literary history of Christianity, which quite uniquely expresses this conflict in words and offers a suggestion for its solution. It is the exceptional poem by the Danish theologian and poet N.F.S. Grundtvig, “The Land of the Living” (“De levendes land”) from 1824.3 The poem has without doubt a central position in Grundtvig’s body of work. He expressed the theme of the poem itself already in his essay “On Religion and Liturgy” from 1807,4 in which he writes that “we have a dim sense of there being a land on the other side of the sea with more beautiful plants and purer air – our original home.” This is a land which one tries to reach with the aid of poetry and philosophy, but both poetry and philosophy must give up. Only through religion can this land be reached, as it comes from the other side of the sea, from the land of longing itself, and it helps people to cross the sea. In his essay, Grundtvig took a critical distance to Romanticism’s belief in and expectations to poetry and philosophy as vehicles for reaching the beyond, transcendence. However, with this critique, Grundtvig put himself in a difficult position as a poet. In the poem, “The Land of the Living,” he seeks and finds legitimation for being a Christian poet and, at that, just a poet. He rewrites the poem several times, which results in two hymns.5 Grundtvig had probably conceived of the original version of the poem as a personal confession, which, in fact, it was, and for that reason, without 3 Grundtvigs Sang-Værk, vol. III (København: Det Danske Forlag 1948), pp. 145–148. The poem is printed in full in Den Danske Salmebog, 2002, no. 561. I have given an interpretation of the poem, stanza by stanza in my article “Das Land der Lebenden” in Bengt Hägglund / Gerhard Müller (eds.), Kirche in der Schule Luthers. Festschrift für D. Joachim Heubach (Erlangen: Martin-Luther-Verlag, 1995), pp. 377–388. There are also references here to other relevant literature about the poem. In English: http://www.poemhunter.com/best-poems/nicolaj -frederik-severin-grundtvig/the-land-of-the-living/. 4 Holger Begtrup (ed.), Nik. Fred. Sev. Grundtvigs Udvalgte Skrifter, vol. 1 (København: Gyldendal, 1904), pp. 135–173, in particular p. 138ff. In Danish: “…vi ahne dunkelt, at paa hin Side af Havet maa være et Land med skiønnere Vexter og renere Luft – vort oprindelige Hjem.” 5 One of which is the hymn “O, deilige Land” (Oh, Lovely Land), Grundtvigs Sang-Værk, vol. III, pp. 196–199. In a shortened version in Den Danske Salmebog (The Danish Book of Hymns, the official Hymnal of the Danish Lutheran Church), 1954, no. 649. This version of the hymn has not been included in the new edition of Den Danske Salmebog, as the original version is printed there in full. The other one is “O Christelighed” (Oh, Christian Faith), Grundtvigs Sang-Værk, vol. IV, pp. 346–347. Den Danske Salmebog, 2002, no. 321 (see: http://www.dendan skesalmebogonline.dk/salme/561).

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mediation, the poem could not function as a hymn. However, his use of the original poem and his transformation of it, in particular in the hymn, “O Christian Faith” (“O Christelighed”) shows a continuation of the clarification that takes place in the original poem. The poem is divided into two halves and expresses two big movements, in the first half, a transcendent movement from the individual forward and upward, in the second half, a movement from Heaven, from God and from the future towards the individual, that is, a countering transcendent movement. In the first three stanzas, the poet describes a dreamland, which he calls the land of the living later in the poem. What characterizes this country is that you do not grow old in it, time does not lead to decay, as the seasons form a synthesis at a higher level. It is a land which does not know sorrow, privation and pain, for which reason every person seeks this land’s smiling coast with deep longing. The third stanza is of particular interest in this context. It says, Oh, long-promised land! We greet you in morning hour’s mirror-clear strand, When perfect your shadow the child may espy And dreams that in green woods is where you must lie, Where too it can share with the rushes and flowers Its smile and its hours.6 Longing makes a person look for mirror-images of the promised land, already in the here and now. It is reflected in the morning light over the sandy shores, and in particular, the child is capable of finding this dreamland’s beautiful reflection (=shadow) in the green woods and in an immediate cohabitation with the flowers and rushes. What Grundtvig describes in the first three stanzas is the individual’s ability to project images of life here and now onto a future land. However, it is life here and now, cleansed of everything that is reminiscent of life’s transience and decay. The first three stanzas are followed by three more stanzas that are one continuous radical challenge to all the dream images of the first three stanzas. The introductions are clear indicators. Stanza 4: “Oh, transient dream/Of island eternal in time’s rushing stream!” Stanza 5: “Oh, hope-dashing dream! /You glittering bubble on time’s rushing stream! ” Stanza 6: “Oh, spell-binding dream/ 6 Forjættede Land! /Du hilses i Morgenens speilklare Strand,/Naar Barnet mon skue din Skygge fuldskiøn,/Og drømmer, du findes, hvor Skoven er grøn,/Hvor Barnet kan dele med Blomster og Siv/Sit Smil og sit Liv!

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Of pearl that’s eternal in time’s rushing stream!”7 In the flow of time, all dream images of eternal life drown, not least the ones that the poet has put all his energy into creating. “Where shadow comes closest (when the reflection is the best semblance), the small will all weep/ Who on it gaze deep.” (Stanza 5).8 And it is not better when artists attempt to achieve the same thing in their pictures, “You fool those poor persons who all seek in vain/In image and art what the heart would retain,” (Stanza 6).9 What Grundtvig does here is almost iconoclastic. Mortal, earthly people are excluded from the creative mirroring of eternal life. In this dispute with the possibilities for art to create eternal moments, Grundtvig is also playing out a dispute with the tendencies of his times, characterized by Romanticism as it was, which allowed art to substitute for religion. The human being’s self-transcendent movement towards eternal life is broken and lies dead. In stanza 7, there is a huge shift in the poem. Now a countering transcendence is introduced. Oh, spirit of love! Your hand let me kiss, reaching down from above From heaven’s fair skies to this earth’s murky hold And touching our eyes with its fingers of gold, So blue-tinged there climbs behind surf-roaring strand The wonderful land!10 “Spirit of love” is of course the Holy Spirit, but Grundtvig emphasizes that it is the spirit of the Father, the Father for Grundtvig being identical with love in the Trinity, while the Son is identical with truth and the Spirit with power. Grundtvig shares the Eastern church’s Doctrine of the Trinity. The Spirit as well as the Son radiate from the Father. This also becomes clear in the poem. Stanza 7 stands in counterpoint to stanza 3. The poet has his childhood dream, his mirror image of the promised land, confirmed. Both stanzas are filled with light, but the light in stanza 3 turned out to be a false light. The light in stanza 7 is not. 7

8 9 10

Stanza 4: “O! flygtige Drøm om Evigheds-Øen på Tidernes Strøm!” Stanza 5: “O, skuffende Drøm, du skinnende Boble på Tidernes Strøm.” Stanza 6: “Fortryllende Drøm om Evigheds-Perlen i Tidernes Strøm.” “Naar Skyggen er ligest (når afbilledet ligner mest), da hulke de Smaa, som stirre derpaa!” “giækker de Arme, der søge omsonst, hvad Hjertet begiærer, i Billed og Konst.” O, Kiærligheds Aand!/Lad barnlig mig kysse din strålende Haand/Som rækker fra Himlen til Jorderigs Muld,/Og rører vort Øie med Fingre som Guld, /Saa blaalig sig hæver bag buldrende Strand/Det deilige Land!

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It comes with the Holy Spirit’s radiant hand from Heaven to earth’s murky hold. Grundtvig emphasizes “earth’s murky hold.”The movements of the Holy Spirit are incarnational. And with its fingers of gold, the Holy Spirit touches our eye so we see differently. What we are now allowed to see is not a dream, not a fiction, but it is claimed by the Holy Spirit to be real. “Time’s rushing stream,” mortality, is, of course, still a reality. The “surf-roaring strand” as opposed to the “mirror-clear strand” reminds us of that. Nonetheless, the wonderful land swells “blue-tinged” there. The accentuation of the incarnational movement continues in stanza 8: Oh, heavenly name, Whose sacred embrace does our nature inflame, So spirit can mingle with dust without grief And bring back to life every dead withered leaf! Oh, deep in my clay let me fall on my knee So God may see me!11 The heavenly name is the name ‘Jesus’. According to Grundtvig, in the Trinity, the Son is the Father’s embrace, which he substantiates with a reference to Mark 10. 13–16, in which Jesus takes the children in his arms and blesses them. This embrace is connected with baptism, in which our names are connected with the name of Jesus, and we receive the Holy Spirit, the forgiveness of sins and eternal life. This means a total shift in our self-perception, and thus, also, a whole other view of our existence and the world around us. We no longer need to flee and dream ourselves away from our corruptible dustreality. No, on the contrary, we can accept it radically, kneel so deeply in our clay, in our earthly existence, “So God may see me!” For only God can see so deeply, and he did so in his own Son’s becoming man. In baptism, we are reborn in an incarnational movement, which is analogous to God’s becoming man in Jesus of Nazareth. We are buried with Jesus in baptism in order to arise to a new life with him (cf. Romans 6. 4ff). Mortal life appears under the sign of resurrectional hope. It has consequences for the understanding of the possibilities of art. It seems to me it can be difficult to determine who the spirit is in stanza 8. Is it the human spirit or the Holy Spirit? Or both? That Jesus, the Son in the Trinity, is the subject in the first half of the stanza speaks for it being the 11

O himmelske Navn!/Som aabner for vores din hellige Favn,/Saa Aanden, usmittet, kan røre ved Støv,/Og levendegiøre det visnede Løv,/O lad mig nedknæle saa dybt i mit Leer,/ At Gud mig kun seer!

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Holy Spirit. What speaks for it being the human spirit is that a person can kneel so deeply in the clay, which indeed is an example of the spirit being able to touch the dust immaculately and bring the withered leaf to life again. And whatever the case may be, what the whole poem is about, that is, the creative mirror reflection of faith, it is justifiable to interpret ‘the spirit’ in both senses. For only by force of the Holy Spirit as God’s creative and innovative spirit is it possible for the human spirit to create works that defy the flow of time. This involves a new understanding of art. What the artist – moved by spirit – can create “in pictures and art” is no longer representations of a false reality which does not stand firm in the face of the flow of time, but parables of real life, also eternal life. However, such an understanding of art demands faith, according to the poet, as can be seen in stanza 9: Oh, faith beyond bliss, Whose high-vaulted bridge spans the gaping abyss When drifting ice threatens in surf-roaring strand From poor mortal dwelling to far promised land! Come farther down to me, you high-honoured guest! That pleases you best.12 Faith is not a given. It is a miracle. It is a gift, which you cannot take yourself, but which visits you. And when it visits you it will most likely be lodged in something lowly, in poor mortal dwelling. With faith I can “fall on my knee” “deep in my clay.” But from there, faith builds a bridge – again the selftranscending motion – to the land of the living, to Heaven, and with its bridge-building defies the chaotic powers of death, depicted in the drifting ice of the wintry sea. The dynamic of faith’s transcending movement, which makes the mirrorimage possible, is hope. This becomes clear in stanza 10: Oh, hope fleet of wing! Oh, brother reborn through divine christening! For all journeys made to the land o’er the sea, Good tidings and comfort you’ve lavished on me, 12

O, Vidunder-Tro!/Som slaaer over Dybet den hvælvede Bro,/Der Iis-Gangen trodser i buldrende Strand/Fra Dødninge-Hjem til de Levendes Land,/Sid lavere hos mig, du høibaarne Giæst!/Det huger dig bedst!

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May I ever thank you, so joy is in store When hope is no more!13 Hope is also a gift that is given to us in baptism. Grundtvig identifies hope with Jesus, which he finds grounds for in Colossians 1. 27: “Christ in you, the hope of glory,” a scripture that he returns to time and again. As God’s true person, Jesus is “brother” to us and is born in us “through divine christening.” Again we encounter the incarnational movement from God to man, which then leads to the opposite movement from man to God. For hope, Christ, is the principal force in “journeys made to the land o’er the sea” and the content of the good message and the comfort which is connected with these journeys. They anticipate the state in which I can only see joy, and hope, therefore, is no longer necessary. This cannot mean anything other than a liberation of language. What in the first half of the poem was condemned as glittering shadows that deceive people can now be spoken. In short, a rebirth of poetry and art. This becomes even clearer in the following stanza 11: Oh, love perfect love! Quiet source of fierce torrents that mightily move! He calls you his father who ransoms our plight Your spirit all soul’s vital force does ignite; Your kingdom is there where man death does defy; May us it be nigh!14 Grundtvig has now reached love in the triad, faith, hope and love, which to him corresponds to the Spirit, the Son and the Father in the Trinity. God is love (cf. John 1. 4,8,16) and therefore the source of both the Son, who is born of the Father, and the Spirit, which emanates from the Father. Grundtvig alludes to Romans 8. 15: “but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, ‘Abba! Father!’” But he wants to say more than that. The Spirit generally loosens people’s tongues. The vitality in the soul that makes language live is the spark of the Holy Spirit. As we know, Grundtvig finds the image of God in 13

14

Letvingede Haab!/Gudbroder! gienfødt i den i den hellige Daab!/For Reiserne mange til Landet bag Hav,/For Tiderne gode, for Trøsten du gav,/Lad saa mig dig takke, at Glæde jeg seer,/Naar Haab er ei meer! O, Kiærlighed selv!/Du rolige Kilde for Kræfternes Elv./Han kalder Dig Fader, som løser vort Baand,/Al Livs-Kraft i Sjælen er Gnist af din Aand./Dit Rige er der, hvor man Død byder Trods,/Det komme til os!

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human beings in the living word on human tongues. To be a true human language, language has to contain vitality, truth and love, for in this triad it mirrors the Trinity: the Spirit, the Son, and the Father.15 Not least in poetry does this happen. The living word on the human tongue is, according to Grundtvig, an echo of the word of creation, of the Word that was in the beginning (cf. John 1. 1ff). When Grundtvig writes surprisingly in line 5 in stanza 11: “Your kingdom is there where man death does defy,” it is the living, spirit-driven word that prevails upon it here and now, and in its defiance of death makes way already here and now for the coming of the Kingdom of God. Now it is no longer just the wonderful future land behind the sea that is spoken of, but God’s kingdom amidst us. Heaven lowers itself towards earth. There is a follow-up in stanza 12, in which both movements, from Heaven to earth and from earth to Heaven are united: Our father sublime! You willingly reign in earth’s temple of grime, Who builds up the spirit in Jesu’s sweet name, In human embrace with an altar aflame, With heaven-bright dwelling of faith dearly won, For you and your son.16 In 1 Corinthians 3. 16, Paul writes to the congregation in Corinth: “Do you not know that you are a temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?” Grundtvig plays on that here. The “temple of grime” is man, constructed out of the Holy Spirit (cf. 1Corinthians 6. 19) in the name of the mediator, that is in the name of Jesus (cf. Colossians 1. 15ff; 1 Timothy 2. 5ff). Grundtvig touches on this in stanza 8, but while the incarnational movement there was dominating, the movement now goes both ways. In the celebration of the church service, they are united, but notably, the church service understood so broadly that all of mankind is understood as a church service. We can only guess at what Grundtvig quite precisely was thinking of with the expression, “In human embrace with an altar aflame.” It is not impossible that he also meant church buildings that men have built as “guest rooms” for God.17 But in this context it 15 16

17

Cf. Begtrup, Udvalgte skrifter, vol. IX, Den Christelige Børnelærdom, ch. 11, p. 428ff. Vor Fader saa huld!/Du gierne vil throne i Templet af Muld,/Som Aanden opbygger i Midlerens Navn,/Med rygende Alter i Menneske-Favn,/Med Himmellys-Bolig af Gnisten i Løn/Til Dig og din Søn! Cf. The hymn, “Dare anyone keep in remembrance” (“Tør end Nogen ihukomme”), in Grundt­ vigs Sang-Værk, vol. I, pp. 60–63, verse 9; in Den Danske Salmebog, 2002, no. 348, verse 6.

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is most natural to refer to Romans 12. 1, in which Paul writes, “Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship.” To embrace is to take a subject to heart. For Grundtvig, the heart is the seat of the image of God. From the heart comes the praisesong, in which the image of God finds its most outstanding expression. And the Spirit edifies a person as a “heaven-bright dwelling,” which it is created for (cf. John 1. 4: “In Him [the Word, which was the beginning] was life, and the life was the Light of men.”). According to line 6, man’s spirit-borne church service applies to the Father and the Son. The stanza illustrates the Trinitarian movement of the Holy Spirit from the Father and Son to man, who is edified “in Jesu’s sweet name,” into a temple from which the Holy Spirit in man’s spirit-borne church service returns to the Father and the Son. This can be called an all-inclusive conception of reality which knows no equal. It is substantiated in the final stanza 13: Oh, Christian faith sweet! You grant every heart what the world cannot greet; What barely we glimpse while our eye is still blue, Is living within us, we know this is true; Both heaven and earth are my land, life confides Where love e’er resides.18 When Grundtvig uses the word “Christian faith” (da: “kristelighed”), he is probably playing on the meaning, ‘Christ-like’. In christening, Christ is re-born in us as the living hope (cf. Colossians 1. 27), and Christian life is therefore a life in Christ.19 We are thusly blessed with a new understanding that goes far beyond what the world can comprehend. We also acquire a new vision, even though in this life it is barely a glimpse – or a mirror reflection, a mirror reflection of faith! Nonetheless, it is an experience of a reality to come which is already close at hand. We feel it already here and now. The barely glimpsed stands in contrast to the disillusioned, broken glance of the poet and artist in the first half of the poem. What we barely glimpse is real. “Both heaven and earth are my land, life confides.” The life that speaks is the Son, Jesus Christ (cf. again John 1. 4 as well 18

19

O Christelighed!/Du skiænker vort Hjerte hvad Verden ei veed./Hvad svagt vi kun skimte, men Øiet er blaat,/Det lever dog i os, det føle vi godt,/Mit Land, siger Livet, er Himmel og Jord,/Hvor Kiærlighed boer! Cf. Begtrup, Udvalgte skrifter, vol. VIII, Kirkelige Oplysninger især for Lutherske Christne, ch. III, “Det Christelige Liv som et Christus-Liv,” p. 436ff.

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as 14. 6). “Where love e’er resides.” According to stanza 11 that must mean where God lives. “My land” then is the kingdom of God as something that is present and something to come, embracing Heaven and earth and every single individual. The difference between the present and the future, Heaven and earth is relativized. The land of the living is here and now and everywhere, such as it will eventually be. What the poem’s first three stanzas described in the language of longing, is the living, if hidden, present for the Christian. There is no doubt in my mind that the way in which the poem is structured shows that Grundtvig sought and found the answer to why he could be both a poet and a Christian poet and – irrespective of poetry’s limitation of time and space – also write poetry about the land of the living. Characteristically, he placed himself in the theological tradition that had grappled with this problem since antiquity and that found a solution in the so-called iconoclastic controversy. Already then, a solution was found in incarnational theology. When God could become a man without losing his divinity, it was a legitimation of the whole Godcreated reality as being a metaphor for the divine and thus for the resurrected life, the heavenly bliss. It is this incarnational theology that is the mainstay of the poem “The Land of the Living” and which set Grundtvig free to become a poet. This becomes apparent in a significant way in Grundtvig’s hymn “O Christian faith” from 1853, which is a rewritten and shortened version of the poem, “The Land of the Living.”20 Now the hymn is introduced by the final stanza of the original poem, the only correction being that “Life” in line 5 of stanza 13 is substituted by “the Lord” in stanza 1, line 5. In the two subsequent stanzas there is a description of life in the land where death has lost its sting, and this happens with a use of metaphors that is taken from the introductory stanzas of the original poem, where they were decried as fleeting and disappointing dream images, but here in the hymn they are used positively, as for example in stanza 3: Oh, wonderful land, Where glass does not run full of tear-drops as sand, Where flowers don’t wither, where birds do not die, Where joy’s glittering bubble bursts not on high, Where a grey head, a crown of glory is dear Snow-white hair on a bier!21 20 21

Cf. note 5. From: “O Christelighed,” stanza 3, “Livsalige Land,/Hvor glasset ei rinder med Graad eller Sand,/Hvor Blomsten ei visner, hvor Fuglen ei døer,/Hvor Lykken er skinnende klar, men ei skiør,/Hvor dyrt ikke kiøbes til Krone paa Baar/De snehvide Haar!” Den Danske Salmebog, 2002, no. 321. http://www.dendanskesalmebogonline.dk/salme/321.

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Is there free choice in the choice of images when faith uses its creative mirror reflection? No, there are limits, and if a short answer has to be given, a thorough analysis of our treasury of hymns, for example, will show that the limits are determined by the creed and by the passages of the Bible that speak of eternal life. I cannot offer that analysis here, but let me just hint at some of the limits. The choice of images must not promote a dualistic world view, in which this world lies entirely in the sphere of evil in opposition to the coming world, which lies in the shining light of goodness. The goodness and glory of the work of creation must not be denied. It is rather affirmed in so far as it is surpassed by death and corruption being no more.Nor may the reality of evil and sin in their reciprocal connection be overlooked, as background for the reconciliation and redemption that the Christian hopes to see fulfilled definitively in heaven. But it must not be made absolute. There must also be room for mutual reconciliation, for images of peace among people, of clarification in human relations. But this requires that the final judgment must also be put into words, as justice must be done and God’s forgiveness must shine in all the glory that is its due. But more than anything, the creative mirror reflection of faith must find images and words for the nearly ineffable: that God will be everything in everyone, and at the same time practice the same modesty that the New Testament shows when it speaks of heavenly bliss.

chapter 17

The Ambiguity of the Demonic in Paul Tillich’s View of Art Espen Dahl Paul Tillich is not only one of the 20th century’s most influential Protestant theologians, he is also one of the few theologians who have taken aesthetic expression seriously as a source of theological reflection. In a way, this is not surprising, considering that from the early 1920’s, Tillich understands his theology as inextricably interwoven with culture. Throughout his writing, his dictum, “culture is a form of expression of religion, and religion is the substance,” remains a guideline for the role attributed to art in his theology.1 Tillich received decisive impulses from German expressionism already from the period after wwi. As expressed in his later repeated attempts at extrapolating typologies in art history, it becomes clear that he considers expressionism to be the paradigmatic expression in contemporary art. The demand for honesty in expressionism, the ability to break through the surface of reality, the reflection on the broken tradition, the re-working of form in relation to changing times – Tillich makes all these demands on genuine modernist expression, but applies them as well to his own theology. This article will approach one motif that keeps recurring in Tillich’s theological work, namely that of the demonic. It is interesting to note that Tillich makes use of this motif already in his articles on aesthetics from the 1920’s. In the following, I would like to point to different ways in which Tillich’s idea of the demonic goes hand in hand with his view of art: both how the work of art can shed light on an understanding of the demonic, but also how the demonic can shed light on central aspects of art. As a first foray into the problem I will look at the way in which Tillich interprets the demonic as it is expressed in concrete pictorial programs (1). By pursuing these lines of interpretation, I will look closer at the demonic in a general theoretical perspective, in particular the way in which Tillich identifies ambiguity and tension in the demonic (2). A central tension is tied to the demonic as resistance to form; this tension, I would claim, belongs to the work of art itself, and thus, it is possible to rediscover the demonic, not only in connection with a particular set of images, but on an ontological level as well 1 P. Tillich, Religionsphilosophie (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1962), p. 60. English translation: What is Religion?, ed. and trans. J.L. Adams (New York: Harper & Row 1969), p. 73.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi 10.1163/9789004291690_024

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(3). Finally, I will look more closely at how this problematic can be understood against the background of aesthetic modernism and suggest how Tillich’s understanding of the demonic opens up for an eschatological perspective (4).

Symbolic Representations in Visual Art

A concise and unambiguous definition of the demonic is not to be found in Tillich’s writing, and perhaps this concurs with the nature of the demonic. For one thing is certain: the demonic, according to Tillich, is highly ambivalent and dynamic. Its ambiguity is connected with the enigmatic characteristic of being in general: it seems as if there is a principle or force that belongs to being, but which at the same time turns actively against it. In other words, the demonic stems not from another, but from the same source as being itself – a source that is the origin both of creation and destruction, life and death. According to Tillich, art offers privileged access to the demonic. As a designing being, man is capable of producing symbolic and artistic expression, and paradoxically, it is precisely in these kinds of expression that the demonic is most clearly recognizable.2 This is paradoxical because the demonic, according to Tillich, is manifested as resistance to form. In his most extensive article on the demonic, Tillich starts by directing attention to so-called primitive Asian art, that is, fetishes and masks in which cruelty and orgiastic fury are expressed. What interests him is the unique ambiguity that has remained ­inaccessible to modern consciousness: They bear forms, human, animal, and plant, which we understand as such, recognizing their conformity to artistic laws. But with these organic forms are combined other elements which shatter our very conception of organic form…Those destructive elements themselves, which disrupt the organic form, are elements of the organic; but they appear in such a manner that they violate radically the organic coherence presented in nature.3

2 P. Tillich, “Das Dämonische. Ein Beitrag zur Sinndeutung der Geschichte,” in Main Works/ Hauptwerke 5 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1988), p. 104. 3 Tillich, “Das Dämonische,” p. 100. English translation: “The Interpretation of History by Paul Tillich, I: The Demonic,” http://www.religion-online.org/showchapter.asp?title=377&C=47. The interest in primitive, archaic expressions most likely stems from their connection with expressionism. Both of them are discussed in detail by Tillich’s acquaintance, the art historian, Eckart von Sydow.

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The distinguishing feature of demonic expression is precisely the indissoluble ambiguity in which the representation remains tied to the organic form and precisely in and through this form gives access to the expression of a force that does radical violence to it. In spite of the potential for destruction and the break in form, this force lets itself be subordinated to the artistic design anyway. The demonic in the actual representations is identified as a particular personified force; this is not a question of something missing or of a passive principle, but rather an active and obstinate force.4 This inner, dynamic contradiction serves for Tillich as a first cipher in interpreting the distinctive character of the demonic. It is crucial for the theological relevance of the demonic that this understanding can be transferred to Christianity. The demonic is expressed here not least in mythical representations that have been a part of the Christian conception of reality. For Tillich, mythical representations, like demonic beings, angels, reality divided into three levels, etc., can, however, only be interpreted as symbolic expressions. Nonetheless, he recognizes that these symbolic expressions are still valid because they articulate dimensions that cannot be expressed in any other way than in myth.5 Reality is only one, Tillich claims; however, it contains several dimensions – and one of these is still the demonic. The demonic dimension always opposes the divine; the demonic and the divine are each others’ deadly enemies and yet, mysteriously woven together. Even though it is essential to maintain such insights in the Christian tradition, the demonic is also pictorially represented here with the same structures, or rather: anti-structures, as Tillich revealed in the Asian expressions. In a lecture from his later period, “The Demonic in Art,” Tillich points out central characteristics in the demonic, taking his point of departure in selected works of art. A motif of particular interest from art history is the Day of Judge­ ment. Even though Michelangelo’s and Van Eyck’s representations have clearly mythical features – for example, the damned are relegated to the lower sphere and the blessed to the upper – there are nonetheless clear indices pointing in another direction. According to Tillich’s interpretation, the central concern of the paintings is man’s double vulnerability: man can be enslaved by both the divine and the demonic, and accordingly the paintings stage the basic struggle in man. An important observation for Tillich is that the human middle sphere is, in fact, not clearly separated from the upper and lower ones in the paintings: 4 Tillich, “Das Dämonische,” p. 100. 5 Tillich, Dynamics of Faith (London: Allen & Unwin, 1957), p. 50 Tillich’s alternative to demythologizing is to understand ‘the broken myth’: when the first naiveté is lost, then the myth comes into its own – as a myth.

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“What the paintings represent is a fight between the upper and the lower spheres. Man is always in both of them and he is falling or rising from the one to the other.”6 In Tillich’s interpretation, the demonic is an overindividual entity that overpowers man; demons as well as angels are thus symbolic expressions of dimensions that cannot be separated from human existence. The bizarre interweaving of human, animalistic, at times vegetative characteristics is common for pictorial representations of demons. The dialectic between the creative and destructive forces takes form here in what Tillich calls “the human spiritual form” and “the sub-human sphere.” Tillich writes: Therefore mystical and artistic symbolism likes to descend into the subhuman sphere for a presentation of the demonic; for there the vital powers with their creative-destructive force are expressed unhindered by the human spiritual form.7 Without the animalistic or other sub-human component, the power and violence are not captured; however, if it remains without an inner connection to the human spiritual form, the demonic is irrelevant to human existence. Both elements belong. In his picture analysis, Tillich emphasizes that the damned as well as the demons remain human – both the subhuman and the spiritual are recognized as a part of the human register. It is no surprise that Michelangelo’s hell is filled with human figures, for it is after all only humans who can express the inhuman. In Floris’ The Fall of the Rebellious Angels, the fallen angels have animal heads with snake hair and tails, and nonetheless, it is clear that the human body remains the inescapable point of departure for the representations. The paradox of this is, as Tillich points out, that the human body, which here becomes the bearer of the demonic, is at the same time the iconic expression of the highest creature: God’s image. This symbolism does not suggest that the unorganic, vegetative or animalistic is in itself demonic. On the contrary, they all have the same ambiguous potential as the human body.8 It is the actual unheard of coupling between them that brings out the grotesque in the images. Both the human body, the animalistic and the vegetative are a part of the good creation, but through the rupture and distortion of their fundamental 6 Tillich, On Art and Architecture, eds. J. Dillenberger og J. Dillenberger, transl. R.P. Scharlemann (New York: Crossroad, 1987), p. 106. 7 Tillich,“Das Dämonische,” p. 104. English translation: http://www.religion-online.org/show chapter.asp?title=377&C=47. 8 Tillich, On Art and Architecture, p. 108.

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principles of form, the destructive force emerges. This corresponds to the internal ambiguity that characterizes the demonic: it depends on the same creative ground that it corrodes and violates. In its outmost theological consequence this means that even hell is dependent on the same creation as reality; for as Dante wrote over the gates of hell: “I also have been created by the divine love”9 The demonic is not a total negativity, and it does not have the power to exist when left on its own, independent of the creative force of good. Tillich hence distinguishes the demonic from the concept of ‘the satanic’ that denotes an unambiguous negativity. However, the satanic cannot be understood as anything other than a liminal concept, and as such it is an abstract idea.10 Although the demonic does not contain being, it is not to be understood as absence either (here Tillich takes a distance from an understanding of evil as privation, as it is defined in the Augustinian tradition); the demonic indicates rather a metaphysical perversion and destruction that actively assails the object of creation. In Breugel’s painting of the fallen angels, the archangel Michael assumes a central position. Even if Michael’s task is to banish the doomed to hell, in reality he does not act at all, observes Tillich. “He acts as if he knew the ontology of the demonic, leaving the demons to their self-destruction.”11 This also sheds light on Tillich’s interpretation of the biblical mention of God’s anger, which does not mean that God is literally offended and angry (that would be confusing symbol and concept, and besides, it would render God demonic), but that God leaves evil to its own destruction.12

The Holy and the Demonic

Tillich’s relatively brief treatment of the demonic in art hints at central aspects of the ontological structure of the demonic. In order to penetrate into the ontological basis of the demonic, it can be useful to take a point of departure in Tillich’s understanding of the relationship between the holy and the demonic. This theme is discussed extensively in his work from the 1920’s. In this period, Tillich understands the holy as a manifestation of unconditional meaning or the ground of meaning. However, this unconditional meaning must be mediated by being expressed through something concretely existing, which becomes the bearer of the holy. The bearer of the holy is nonetheless not identified with 9 Tillich, On Art and Architecture, p. 106. 10 Tillich, “Das Dämonische,” p. 103. 11 Tillich, On Art and Architecture, p. 109. 12 Tillich, Systematic Theology I (London: scm Press, 1951), p. 284.

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the holy itself. On the contrary, its holiness is contingent on pointing beyond itself to the basis of meaning, or more precisely, to the duality of ground-abyss.13 The positive and affirmative aspect of the holy points to the significant ground from which its reality, meaning and substance emanate – Otto calls this the mysterium fascinosum of the holy. However, there is also a negative element in the manifestation of the holy, which stems from the fact that the bearer of the holy is not identical with the ground itself. Thus, the holy opens up to the experience of the abyss of meaning, or as Otto says, to the mysterium tremendum of the holy.14 Within this wide category of the holy, both the affirming element (the ground) and the negating one (the abyss) must be compared: the manifestation of the holy both participates in and is separated from the abyss that it expresses. Tillich, then, affirms the same tension in the holy that Otto has described, but nonetheless he emphasizes another necessary element: the holy is not exclusively a subjective-emotional category, but also an ecstatic category, that is, a category that points beyond itself to something other, beyond subjectivity. In contrast with Otto, he claims that the holy is still theologically underdetermined as long as its reference remains obscure.15 And it is precisely at this point that the demonic enters the picture. The holy is, in fact, highly ambiguous in its reference – it can refer both to the divine and the anti-divine, that is, the demonic. That the holy encompasses both the divine and the demonic is an understanding that Tillich maintains throughout his writing career.16 Tillich accounts for the conditions for this duality by further developing the analysis of the ground-abyss motif. In general, it can be said that man’s selfunderstanding consists of two components: form and substance. Form is the ability of thought to identify and categorize, while substance is the living, profound and inscrutable being that has to be identified. In phenomenological terms, Tillich also says that the form of meaning is the act itself, and the substance of meaning is what the act aims at, its intention.17 Tillich suggests that there is a kind of dialectical relation between form and substance but he has clear reservations with regard to Hegel’s dialectics. When Tillich rejects Hegel, 13 Tillich, Religionsphilosophie, pp. 70–71. 14 Tillich, Systematic Theology I, pp. 215–216. 15 Tillich, Systematic Theology I, p. 215. This critique of Otto coincides with Tillich’s general critique of phenomenology: it lacks a critical criteria for evaluating the substance of meaning. “Das System der Wissenchaften nach Gegenständen und Methoden” in Main Works/Hauptwerke (Berlin: De Gruyter 1989), p. 216. 16 Tillich, Religionsphilosophie, p. 74. Systematic Theology I, p. 216. Dynamics of Faith, p. 16. 17 Tillich, “Das system der Wissenschaften,” pp. 119, 123. Cf. Hannelore Jahr, Theologie als Gestaltungsmetaphysik. Die Vermittelung von Gott und Welt im Frühwerk Paul Tillich (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1989), pp. 57–58.

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it is because Hegel cannot accept that form and substance, thought and being, do not completely form a synthesis. On the contrary, cognition remains fraught with tension – in principle, it contains a ‘war of the gods’, as Tillich puts it.18 Any cognition must recognize the infinite transcendence and inexhaustability of being, as it is manifested from the point of view of finitude. The transcending substance takes on a doubleness: partly as something that gives content to the meaning-fulfilling acts of form, but also in part as an otherness that does not let itself be confined within the form. This doubleness is both the source of the idea of a deeper ground and of the antithetical other, an abyss.19 Tillich’s ontology appears here as dynamic, almost vitalistic: substance is not a passive, oceanic infinity, nor is it the absence or lack of meaning, but something like an active, confrontational will, which can be identified as resistance to form. This corresponds to the essential characteristics of the demonic, that is, the meaning-resistant tendency of the matter: The demonic is a meaning-resistant thrust of matter which assumes the quality of the Holy. It can assume this quality, for it is an expression of the abyss of meaning; therefore it has also ecstatic qualities, as does the Holy of positive character. It is a breakthrough in the direction of the destructive, but a breakthrough that comes out of the same abyss as the breakthrough in the direction of grace.20 Both the divine-holy and the demonic-holy are separated from the ground and the abyss that they participate in and refer to at the same time. They are also in concordance, in so far as they both manifest themselves by the breakthrough of the profane dichotomous order (unconditional-conditional, form-matter, rational-irrational) as a third, ecstatic entity.21 What separates them is which direction the breakthrough takes – whether it is in the direction of destruction or of grace. The demonic breakthrough does not bend to the demands of form, while the breakthrough of grace takes place in recognition of form and moves towards its fulfillment. Thus, the demonic can oppose concrete form, but not form as a universal principal. It does not make sense – other than as an (satanic) abstraction – to talk about pure substance totally detached from form, claims Tillich, but only about resistance in relation to form. Tillich consistently resists a dualism in 18 Tillich, “Das System der Wissenschaften,” p. 120. 19 Tillich, Religionsphilosophie, pp. 51–52. 20 Tillich, Religionsphilosophie, p. 75. English translation, pp. 85–86. 21 Tillich, “Der Begriff des Dämonischen und seine Bedeutung für die Systematische Theologie,” in Gesammelte Werke VIII (Stuttgart: Evangelische Verlag, 1970), p. 287.

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which the demonic is seen as constituting its own ontological reality or a pure nothingness. Again: destruction always presupposes some positive given, a formed substance, which is distorted or broken down. In the late work, Systematic Theology, Tillich generally ties the demonic to the tendency of religion to decay into idolatry. Understood thus, the demonic implies that concrete bearers of holiness are regarded as holy in themselves, so that the holy closes in on itself, is reified or even fetishized. The demonic does not mean that transcendence is brought to an end, but that this transcendence is understood as an inner characteristic of things themselves.22 The demonic in this kind of idolatrousness assumes the denial of the idea that the conditional is indebted to the unconditional, by means of an attempt at establishing the holy as unconditional in itself. The question that arises is how the understanding of the demonic in Systematic Theology is connected with Tillich’s earlier analyses of the demonic. Throughout his body of work, Tillich seems to be operating with two perspectives on the relationship between ground and abyss. According to its essence, as it must be understood in its divine origin; ground and abyss, form and substance, belong together in a dynamic unity. However, regarded from the point of view of actualized, finite created existence, ground and abyss tend to fall apart. This tendency is the necessary price to pay if the work of creation is to achieve independence and freedom. Even though the ground and the abyss are the conditions of being of things, they can quickly become antithetical. This antithesis is expressed in an inner ontological revolt against dependency on a bottomless abyss that is not contained in the things themselves. The ontological drive that Tillich calls “The will to independence” (Selbstheit), stems from this revolt, a revolt that has sin as a correlate.23 The demonic can be understood as a compulsion to purloin that which goes beyond it: At the same time, however, there dwells in everything the inner inexhaustibility of being, the will to realize in itself as an individual active infinity of being, the impulse toward breaking through its own, limited form, the longing to realize the abyss itself.  . . . Demonry is the formdestroying eruption of the creative basis of things.24 22 Tillich, Systematic Theology I, p. 216. Systematic Theology III (London: scm Press 1963), p. 102. 23 The basis for this understanding was already laid in 1912 in Tillich’s idea of sin in his doctoral dissertation, “Mystik und Schuldbewusstsein in Schellings philosophischer Entwicklung” in Main Works/Hauptwerke (Berlin: De Gruyter 1989), p. 87. 24 Tillich, “Das Dämonische,” pp. 101–102. English translation: http://www.religion-online .org/showchapter.asp?title=377&C=47.

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Against this background, we must understand Tillich’s linking of idolatry, which is central to his Systematic Theology, and the demonic, as it is explained in earlier works: in both cases it is about the demonic will to eternity, which wants to isolate the holy from its abyss and seeks to enclose the infinite in the finite. By resisting subordination to unconditional form, the demonic attempts to establish itself as unconditional.25 The demonic is the rebellion of the created against creation, and its consequence is the destruction of the created. If the holy includes both the divine and the demonic, because they both are in an ecstatic relation to the same ground-abyss, and if the unconditional ground-abyss in Tillich’s theology coincides with his concept of God, the consequence seems to be an inner division in this concept of God.26 Indeed, Tillich refers to the development in the history of religion in which the category of purity eventually purges the demonic out of the conception of God. The price is still high: purging leads to a debasement, in the worst case, a denial of the ground-abyss of reality. In several places Tillich emphasizes that on this point, he sees himself as an heir to Luther, Boehme and Schelling, all of whom operate in different ways with an irrational aspect of the concept of God. Luther operates with the hidden God, Boehme’s and Schelling’s speculative philosophy unfolds the dynamic in God in which darkness, the irrational and nonbeing are continually conquered and come together in God through will and love.27 When Tillich maintains this tension, it is probably to safeguard the depth dimension of the mystery, but more than anything, it is his mission to protect the understanding of God as living. Life is a dynamic process, with constant self-transcendence, separation and reunion as dialectical elements. Therefore, Tillich takes a clear distance to the scholastic understanding of God as actus purus, in which the whole potential is actualized, because this leads to an understanding of God as static and thus non-living.28 However, Tillich’s model contains theological dangers, which he himself makes clear. In his adherence to Luther’s dynamic concept of God, he points out that Luther always emphasizes that the hidden aspect of God must not get in the way of God’s clarity in the revelation.29 But does Tillich have the power to 25 J. Splett, Die Rede vom Heiligen (Freiburg: Karl Elber, 1971), p. 115. 26 Tillich, Religionsphilosophie, p. 76. 27 Tillich, “Mystik und Schuldbewusstsein,” pp. 78–80. Cf. H.F. Reisz, Jr. “The Demonic as a Principle in Tillich’s Doctrine of God: Tillich and Beyond,” I Theonomy and Autonomy. Studies in Paul Tillich’s Engagement with Modern Culture, ed. John J. Carey (Macon, Ga: Mercer University Press, 1984), pp. 136–143. 28 Tillich, Systematic Theology I, p. 246. The trinity is the highest expression of the life process, and in it, the inner tension and union with the living God unfolds. Cf. p. 250. 29 Tillich, “Der Begriff des Dämonischen,” p. 291.

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prevent God from becoming demonic? When Tillich presumably prevents this, it is due to the distinction between the essential and the existential, that is, a distinction that marks conditions from a divine and a finite point of view respectively. Even though, fundamentally, the demonic is made possible through the inner tension in God, it is only realized qua demonic in the finite. It is only through the created that the distinction between the conditional and unconditional is manifested, and it is this distinction that – from the vantage point of the finite – appears as an abyss. The abyss is the actual difference between God and the world. Where God still maintains his unity through an eternal synthesis despite its inner contradiction, this unity cannot be secured in the created. Form and substance, ground and abyss can fall apart – and that is exactly what happens during and after the Fall, according to Tillich. Freedom and independence in creation entails the possibility of the Fall, and with the Fall, the will to hold one’s own existence in opposition to the principal ground of being. Even though there is a tension in the concept of God, the demonic is a possibility that simply realizes itself within the created. As a designation for God, it cannot be used.30

The Demonic and the Ontology of the Work of Art

I have made use of accounts of the demonic as a guide to Tillich’s analysis of the ontology of the demonic. The question now is whether the guide leads us from the ontological analysis to a deeper understanding of art, not to a specific pictorial program, but to the ontological characteristics of art as such. Tillich’s lecture on the demonic in art makes it clear that he himself had not embarked on this path. A limitation in the lecture is that he keeps to an iconographic explication of works of art with regard to the theological dimensions that the images convey. Indeed, there are a few attempts at reflecting on the demands of style in modern, authentic religious art (in casu Rouault’s art), where Tillich takes up a dominant theme in his aesthetic writings in general: an interpretation of the relations connecting motif, form, content and style. In any case, Tillich’s awareness remains tied to different aspects of the level of meaning of the images. This seems to block what in my opinion could have put Tillich on the track of a deeper analysis of the demonic in art, which he himself sets up: that is, the tension in the work itself, between the form that creates meaning and the matter which resists it. As I have already indicated, Tillich introduces form and substance in what he calls his meta-logical theory of meaning: this presupposes a dialectic between 30

Tillich, “Mystik und Schuldbewusstsein,” pp. 87–88.

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form and substance, in which substance is tied to being as inexhaustible and transcendent, while form is established by thought through its acts. That Tillich emphasizes the transcendent in substance rests on the idea that substance is never is exhausted in the form: “In so far as the import of meaning comes to fulfillment in no form of meaning, but yet is the ground of every form of meaning, it becomes the material, the ‘matter’, of meaning.”31 When he accentuates the relative independence of substance, Tillich refers to it as matter – a matter that must not be confused with physics’ law-bound concept of objective matter. This does not mean, however, that Tillich now introduces matter as completely independent: “ ‘Matter’ as an absolute datum is a concept that is as impossible as perfect unity of form.”32 The point is to maintain the overreaching aspect of materiality. Tillich points out that this was also the necessary conclusion drawn by the ancient philosphers regarding the pair of concepts, form-content.33 Nonetheless, materiality does not seem to find full acceptance in Tillich’s aesthetic conderations. Aesthetic forms, we are told, “do not express apprehension of being, but rather of what is significant.”34 We see again how Tillich tends to limit his aesthetic reflections to meaningful expressions. If one nonetheless insists on the relevance of this materiality for aesthetics, there is an opening for interesting ties to the demonic, as Tillich writes, The possibility of the demonic resides in the peculiar relation of form and import: the inexhaustibility of the import of meaning signifies on the one hand the meaningfulness of every form of meaning, and on the other it presupposes the endless resistance of matter to form. That which is meaning-supporting is through its inner infinity therefore at the same time hostile to meaning.35 Matter is the condition of possibility for the form of meaning, but also the source of the endlessly resistent drive in opposition to form. If we transfer this to the work of art, it will mean that it must manifest itself in the tension between the form and the meaning-resistent matter. It is typical of the modernist painting that it does not attempt to resolve the tension, but acknowledges the struggle and lets it emerge: the turn towards the specificity of the medium – the optic and material qualities of the paint, the brushstrokes, the 31 Tillich, Religionsphilosophie, p. 49. English translation, p. 63. 32 Tillich, Religionsphilosophie, p. 49. 33 Tillich, “Das Dämonische,” p. 116. 34 Tillich, Religionsphilosophie, p. 52. English translation, pp. 66–67. 35 Ibid. p. 74. My emphasis. English translation, p. 85.

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flatness and delimitation of the canvas – open the work to the material conditions of the medium itself.36 Meanwhile, by making the conditions of painting explicit in the work of art, an inner tension is initiated: the material conditions that make the formal expression possible can also work in the opposite direction, where they, so to say, withdraw from the field of meaning insisting on their obstructive materiality.37 As we have seen, even where the demonic tends towards dissolving meaninggiving form, we have seen that resistance and abyss are necessary for maintaining the life of reality, its depth and dynamic. This is true as well for the inner life of the work of art. Depth and dynamics are nourished by the persistant tension between abyss and ground, between form and the contradiction of form. The demonic is just as ambiguous as a devouring fire: it both warms and destroys.38 A corresponding insight is found in Heidegger’s reflection on the work of art. When Heidegger insists on the conflict between what he characterizes as earth and world in the work of art, it is not because the selfenclosing and preserving (earth) is in direct opposition to the opening and unifying (world), but rather that as worthy opponents, they both emerge more clearly, each in the light of the other, at the same time as they challenge each other.39 It is possible to rediscover this double movement in Tillich’s favorite examples of German expressionism from the 1920’s. If I were to point out an indicative example from the contemporary period, a few of Anselm Kiefer’s large paintings from the 1980’s are close at hand. Seen as a whole, many of the large works appear doubtlessly as gestalts, even figurative, although the figuration is only intimated. The motifs tend to refer to the cultural demonic of the past – not least with references to recent German history, such as gaping train tracks alluding to extermination camps or references to Speer’s Nazi architecture. Allusions to creation myths and apocalyptic visions, which become dominant throughout the 1990’s, can perhaps also be understood as adaptations of the demonic, albeit from the perspective of an overarching critique of civilization.

36

37 38 39

Here I rely on Clement Greenberg and formalism’s understanding of modernism. C. Greenberg, “Modernist Painting,” in Collected Essays and Criticism Vol. 4 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992). Cf. H.U. Gumbrecht’s reading of Heidegger in Production of Presence. What Meaning Cannot Convey (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004), pp. 105–107. Tillich, “Das Dämonische,” p. 103. M. Heidegger, Holzwege (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann 1994), pp. 35–36.

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However, it is also possible to trace the demonic dimension within the medium of the paintings. If one steps up close to the works, the impression of the whole dissolves – not primarily as a function of the size of the canvas, but rather because the materiality of the work becomes insistent. The transition between form and the insistent materiality sets off the central dynamic in Kiefer’s work. In Daniel Arasse’s words: “the food for thought in Kiefer’s works… is the conflict (visible in the evident violence of the picture’s construction) between the transparency of the meaning and the opacity of the material.”40 Rough lumps of paint, sand, the use of lead or pasted-on objects are prominent ways in which Kiefer contest the form of the whole. The toxic quality of lead, the roughness of the sand and the power with which the paint is applied awaken in themselves a sense of resistance, even violence. In this way, Kiefer’s work initiates a play or a conflict between meaningful expression and turbulent materiality.41 It is as if the picture both presents itself as a work in a classical sense, and at the same time threatens to undermine its own character as a work. When ready-made objects at times find their way into a work (snakeskin, wings, barbed wire, sunflowers, etc.), the independence and limits of the work are even threatened. But the work does not dissolve. If one makes use of Tillich’s perspective, it makes sense to claim that this inner conflict between form and material substance reflects the dynamic relation of the demonic, at the same time as the ability of the work to survive the conflict may hint at the possibility of conquering the demonic destruction. However, it is necessary to ask here: is the contents’ own self-assertion in the work somehow demonic? Wouldn’t this be indulging in gnostic dualism, that is, an idenfication of matter as evil – something Tillich rejects emphatically in several places in his writing? However, in the Aristotelian tradition and all the way up to Husserl, form-content is thought of as a functional, conceptual pair, which does not identify the category of content with matter understood as self-subsisting substance. In Tillich, the corresponding oppositional pair, form-matter is also a functional one. The matter never appears as something that can be identified with an independent demonic force of destruction – as little as the animalistic or vegetative is demonic, according to Tillich’s picture analyses. The demonic has no existence on its own, but always presuppose a given existence that it attacks. The demonic is therefore to be understood as a certain pressure or a tendency that is expressed within the work of art – almost as a will that resists the meaningful gestalt of the work of art. It is only in and through the work as a meaningful form that which goes against the meaning 40 D. Arasse, Anselm Kiefer (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2003), p. 303. 41 Arasse, Anselm Kiefer, p. 300.

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and form can stand out. As long as it is held in check by form, resistance can play itself out without coming into being as pure destruction. In this whole, the dynamic between mysterium fascinosum og mysterium tremendum is expressed. What may be a more important objection is this: if one considers the demonic an inextricably constitutive part of a work, does not such an ontological understanding of the work legitimize the demonic itself? Does it not, by implication, mean that the demonic simply must be accepted? My development of Tillich’s thinking in the direction of the ontology of art places him in close proximity to Heidegger’s ontology of the work of art. Some commentators have seen Heidegger’s inner conflict in light of a kind of legitimization of a necessary violence in being, which again calls for and legitimizes human violence. Such a suspicion is nourished by Heidegger’s sympathies with National Socialism and his allegiance with pre-Socratic thought as a response to the overwhelming power in being. It is possible to imagine that this reverberates in the relationship to the impermeability of the earth, which is in conflict with the people’s struggle for Lebensraum.42 However, for Tillich the demonic is never legitimized, and particularly not in the guise of Nazism or Fascism. Indeed, the demonic is to be revealed and as such be taken seriously in all its more or less camouflaged expressions. As the demonic is potentially present in all the products of culture, it is no surprise that it also manifests itself in the work of art. Kiefer’s work can be regarded along the lines that Tillich sets up: Kiefer’s crafting of the demonic brings it to its fullest expression in all its ambiguity, but with a critical aim. That the demonic continually must be revealed in different configurations does not mean that it should stand uncontested. On the contrary, all forms of legitimation of or even quasi-cultic worship of the demonic are the subject of what Tillich characterizes as prophetic critique. The demonic, however, cannot be combatted with violence. According to the dialectic of the demonic, that will mean getting caught in the demonic’s own web and will simply lead to new forms of demonism.43 The only way out of this momentous dialectic is the break-in from the outside, from grace. 42

43

Matthew Biro has presented a similar reading. Heidegger’s legitimation of violence must be understood in contrast to Kiefer’s use of the indefinable and thus, the invocation of critical reflection on his representation of violence. Anselm Kiefer and the Philosophy of Martin Heidegger (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 108–109, 132. In this connection Tillich points out how dubious mysticism is replaced by an impoverished profanity, how rational supremacy is replaced by anti-rational aesthetization, and finally, capitalism and nationalism. Tillich, “Das Dämonische,” pp. 120–122.

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The Demonic, Modernism and Redemption

I have kept returning to the ambiguity of the demonic, as Tillich understands it. Tillich finds a particular dialectic in the concept of the demonic: the demonic can certainly also have a creative and productive power, as is made manifest, for instance, in Goethe’s Faust.44 Tillich then calls attention to the fact that the ingenious-productive power of the demonic is but one apparence the demonic that must be distinguished from the destructive power that is central to his interest, in so far as the demonic in the first case is no longer understood as destructive, but as creative. If, however, one further pursues the reference to Goethe’s motif of the pact with the devil in Faust, going on to Mann’s Doctor Faustus, also this ingeniousproductive understanding of the demonic appears in an ambiguous light. Mann’s book is also directly relevant to an understanding of modernism, as the protagonist, the composer Adrian Leverkühn enters into a pact with the devil in order to redeem his work, which carries compositionally clear similarities to Schönberg’s twelve-tone technique. While working on Doctor Faustus, Mann had access to Adorno’s (as yet unpublished) Philosophie der neuen Musik, in which precisely Schönberg’s compositional technique is discussed in detail. As Nils Holger Petersen has pointed out, Adorno refers to Isaiah 53 (“God’s suffering servant”) when he speaks about how art, as we encounter it in Schönberg, cannot and must not appear as meaningful, in order to uncover a meaningless world: there is nothing attractive in it, and it seeks to sacrifice itself, vicariously, by taking on itself the world’s guilt and lack of meaning.45 According to Adorno, the well-rounded work, with its references to subjective creativity and art as the object of reflection, has now declined into a lie. The shocking and almost formalistic aspect of aesthetic expression is a function of the fact that art’s demand for truth requires a radically new, modernist understanding of form. But this also entails dangers. Mann hints that Leverkühn’s pure formalism can be regarded as evidence of the demonic: art devoid of warmth, life and humanity, that is, art approaching the inhuman. Tillich also maintains the unconditional demands on honesty in modernism – no kitsch or beautifying has any legitimate place in modernist art. However, it is no longer clear how, if at all, aesthetic expressions can redeem this demand for 44 45

Tillich, “Der Begriff des Dämonischen,” p. 287. N.H. Petersen, “Introduction” in Signs of Change: Transformations of Christian Traditions and their Representation in the Arts, 1000–2000, red. Petersen, Claus Clüver og Nicolas Bell (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2004), p. 10. Cf. Theodor W. Adorno, Philosophie der neuen Musik (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 2003), p. 126.

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honesty. This applies not least to religious art, liturgy or, for that matter, theology. In one of his last lectures, which treated the topic of church architecture, Tillich writes, “Sacred emptiness” should remain the predominant attitude for the next foreseeable time. One should express our experience which has been called the experience of “the absent God.” This does not mean a negation of God but it does means: God who has withdrawn in order to show us that our religious forms in all dimensions were largely lacking both in honesty and in consecration. Saying that God has withdrawn implies saying that he may return. . . . Therefore the expression of church buildings should be “waiting” for the return of the hidden God who has withdrawn and for whom we must wait again.46 Even though there are certain similarities to Mann’s and Adorno’s understanding of modernism, Tillich’s main position is nonetheless not as radical, which, among other things, is due to the fact that early expressionism remains at the center of Tillich’s reflections. Expressionism never exceeds, but rather underlines the humane in its expression. Despite Tillich’s more traditional approach, he is nonetheless sensitive to the urgent problem of form that permeates modernism. In countless works, Tillich puts forth Picasso’s Guernica as a representative of the expression of modernism: by turning away from traditional style, reality’s frightening depth emerges for the observer. This does not mean that the work is without form, but that it has a new style (an idiom supported by a given matter) that manages to break through the surface and offer an authentic expression for an actual experience. Despite his ambivalent relationship to Roualt, Tillich assesses the painting, Christ Mocked by Soldiers, as a successful attempt at finding an honest expression for a religious theme. There is no beautifying or idealizing here; the demonic emerges in the iconography, in the soldiers’ malice and Christ’s melancholy self-understanding as God’s suffering servant.47 One finds such themes reflected in form as well: the coarse strokes, the blurred paint and the incomplete surface of the picture reinforce the picture’s air of violence. The horrible has its proper place in the expression of evil and the demonic in art. However, unlike Adorno, where art must make itself inaccessible in order to keep its truth, Tillich insists that eventually beauty has its place:

46 Tillich, On Art and Architecture, p. 228. 47 Tillich, On Art and Architecture, p. 109.

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In the moment in which the ugly is used by a great artist as subject matter, it becomes beautiful, not by being painted as beautiful (this would be a lie and this lie is very much done in beautifying naturalism in the end of the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth century, especially in religious art), but by leaving ugliness in these faces. Expressing their ugliness in an artistic form brings them into the sphere of beauty.48 The beauty that is spoken of here is not a decorative beauty, the beauty of the well-rounded work, nor is beauty tied to an idealized, reflected reality – beauty is tied to artistic form, even where it breaks with traditional conventions. Despite the ugliness that is expressed in the picture, it remains beautiful in this sense. As Tillich had already noticed in relation to ‘primitive’ Asian pictorial representations, it remains a surprising fact that art has the power to express that which challenges form, in artistic form. In spite of everything, form wins out. Leverkühn’s art in Mann’s novel is not and must not be beautiful. It lacks precisely the humane. Here the musical material and the system have been assigned a role which does not tolerate human consideration. The devil forbids Leverkühn precisely the human feelings of attachment and warmth. He has to sacrifice his own nephew and in the end perish as a forfeit for his pact with the devil. There is an implicit critique here of an attitude to art that is willing to let the demonic be played out at the expense of not only beauty, but the humanity of art. The demonic has won independence, while art has become an idol. However, Leverkühn’s main work, “The Faustus Cantata” may not be unequivocally subject to the devil’s curse. It possibly carries a message of a kind of reconciliation – if only in hints and in an indirect way. There is no comfort, reconciliation, transfiguration – the work is one continuous lament. None­ theless: in the cello’s final high G (Gnade?) a ray of hope for grace is opened, cutting through stillness and night.49 The book’s narrator, Serenus Zeitblom, asks, “grant that expressiveness – expression of lament – is the issue of the whole construction: then may we not parallel with it another, a religious one, and say too (though only in the lowest whisper) that out of the sheerly irremediable hope might germinate?”50 This question must not betray hopelessness, and at the same time open for something beyond despair. Perhaps Tillich’s ‘in spite of’, expressed in the 48 Tillich, On Art and Architecture, p. 110. 49 Petersen, “Introduction,” p. 13. 50 T. Mann, Doctor Faustus. The Life of the German Composer Adrian Leverkühn as Told by a Friend, translated by H.T. Lowe-Porter (New York: Alfred A. Knopf 1948), p. 491.

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victory of form, can be perceived correspondingly as art’s reference to an eschatological horizon, a teleological drive in which our separate, finite existence can again be reconciled with its form and essence?51 This can no longer be thought of as the certainty of belief in a future state in which harmony appears as a totality. The totality itself, even as a future entity, has turned out to be problematic and often has totalitarian traits, and thus the idea of a totality risks reverting to the demonic logic which it was meant to contradict.52 The ‘in spite of’ of redemption does, in fact, not aim at a totality, but is expressed as a hope that repeatedly makes itself known – not as knowledge and wisdom, but as faith and hope. Tillich’s most far-reaching article on the demonic ends by pointing towards just such a horizon: There is no way which could be invented to overcome the demonries, spiritual or social. . . . Only in view of the eternal may one speak of overcoming the demonic, not in the view of any time, a past or future. But that we can regard the eternal in this way, . . . that we need not, in the face of the world, grant the ultimate victory to the negation, to the abyss, to meaninglessness – that and that alone is the salvation in finite time, which again and again becomes reality; that is the fundamental destruction of demonic dominance over the world.53 51 Tillich, Systematic Theology III, p. 107. 52 Cf. P. Ricoeur, The Conflict of Interpretations (London: Continuum, 2004), p. 434. 53 Tillich, “Das dämonische,” p. 123. English translation: http://www.religion-online.org/ showchapter.asp?title=377&C=47.

chapter 18

When We Dead Awaken: Art, Life and Death Trond Skard Dokka Introduction Henrik Ibsen’s last play, When We Dead Awaken (1899),1 begins on a drowsy summer’s day at a bath hotel which is effectively a spa, where the couple Maia and Arnold Rubek are drinking a mid-morning glass of champagne, while conversing irritably, but half-heartedly and idly about life. He is an elderly, highly acclaimed and sedate sculptor; she is more youthful and lively. Both the relationship between them and the setting offer possibilities of change. Any health resort is of course based on the improvement of the ‘patient’. Being young, she is an invitation to a renewed zest for life – the place makes them consider both mountain walks and a boat trip – but nothing happens. The institution itself looms in the background as an extreme version of pent-up stagnation, it is a “meat safe” with half-dead inhabitants.2 The inactivity is interrupted by the arrival of two new characters, Squire Ulfheim, who is a boorish man of nature and a robust huntsman, and Irene, who many years ago posed for the work for which Rubek won his fame, and who is now a psychiatric patient under constant surveillance by an accompanying nursing sister. On one hand, the presence of the new arrivals leads Rubek and Maia to a deeper insight into the reality of their situation. Both separately and as a couple they feel that they are not free, that they are in bondage, albeit in different ways. On the other hand, Ulfheim and Irene also open up for the possibility of this being fundamentally changed. On a background of stagnation and captivity, the play thus develops as a study in change. All possible sorts of change are in play: changes in the past, present and future, changes that are being dreamed of or avoided, changes that are/were real or only apparent, border crossings, generational changes, life transitions, moral choices, changes in stone and in bodies, between humans and nature, between thought and action, language and reality, changes that 1 The analysis is based on the edition in Henrik Ibsens skrifter, Universitetet i Oslo, Ibsen.net (2005). Page references are to http://www.gutenberg.org/files/4782/4782-h/4782-h.htm (translated by W. Archer), where quotations have also been found. 2 Cp. A. Aarseth, Ibsens samtidsskuespill, (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1999), pp. 335–337.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi 10.1163/9789004291690_025

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take place suddenly, gradually or quite imperceptibly. But this whole plethora of more or less important changes point toward the really great, crucial changes of life – and at their possibility or impossibility. The title of the play, When We Dead Awaken, signals this radical change quite clearly: in the last resort it is a question of transcending death. The paradox of the title immediately suggests figurative interpretations of both death and a possible awakening, presupposing both a ‘we’ comprised of dead people and that these dead ‘we’ are able to consider as well as talk about their own awakening.3 Otherwise, what sense does it make to speak of oneself as dead? And is it not a transcendence of death even to speak of oneself as dead? This gravitation towards figurative interpretations of death and awakening does not, however, mean that the projects and actions which then follow in the play itself have lost their character of radical passage. On the contrary, the play insists that what happens must be interpreted in the light of the concept of awakening from the dead. Since neither the title nor the drama as such refers to any possible subjects for such an act of transcendence, other than the dead ‘we’, the question concerning the possibility or impossibility of this type of change can be phrased as follows: is it possible for us ‘dead’ to ‘awaken’, and what happens if we undertake to do so? The question of such an ultimate transcendence is found on several levels and in several guises in When We Dead Awaken. In this article I will try to illuminate it from three different points of view: one related to Rubek’s art as a possibility for transcendence, one related to the various life projects of the characters, and one to the question of the position from which life and death are considered in the play. Part I: Ars longa – vita brevis We soon find that the characters’ way of dealing with the subject of change, both in thought and action, is by and large determined by the sculpture that was the basis for Rubek’s fame, wealth and professorship, “The Resurrection Day.”

3 Ibsen had first intended to call the play Opstandelsens dag (The Day of Resurrection), then When the Dead Awaken, but ultimately chose to change the personal pronoun to the first person, cp. D.A. Seip, “Innledning” [til Når vi døde vågner], Henrik Ibsen. Samlede verker. Hundreårsutgave ved F. Bull, H. Koht og D.A. Seip, (Oslo: Gyldendal norsk forlag, 1928–1957), vol. XIII, p. 198.

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This sculpture is often referred to as a work of art within the work of art.4 Concretely, however, it is off-stage. Nobody sees it, and the one character who actually expresses a desire to see it is met with strong protests (p. 45). Its presence in the dramatic work of art is entirely limited to mental concepts of it mentioned in the text. As something imagined and represented discursively, however, the sculptural representation of resurrection is highly important. Even though “The Resurrection Day” is now carved in stone, and as such must be considered to possess immutability off-stage, it has a highly charged history of gestation, and as conceived of it turns out to have a strangely double inconstancy. The original clay version, made when Irene had posed for Rubek, has later been changed radically by him. Irene does not know this. When she meets Rubek at the spa, she relates to the original version, as she has done in the intervening period. “The Resurrection Day” looks different to him than to her. The conceptions of it which the two come to express are diffuse, in motion and not always entirely reliable. Also, the material effects of the work turn out to have been ambiguous. Just as Rubek’s life has been based on the resurrection sculpture, so has Irene’s. But whereas it has meant wealth and honor to him, it has had destructive consequences for her. She has been strapped down in an asylum and is still guarded by a nurse in a position of power, and she has long regarded herself as dead. These characteristics of the sculpture’s discursive presence in the play, that it is invisible, forbidden, unstable and has ambiguous effects, may be said to be in harmony with its own central subject matter. If a resurrection from the dead is considered literally and radically, it is a transformation for which there is no ‘experience’ in the ordinary sense – regardless of whether it might have taken place or not. In addition, its radical discontinuity means that it cannot be adequately narrated. The impossibility of experiencing and recounting such a claimed event is attested to in the New Testament stories about the resurrection of Christ: nobody saw it, and where the ‘actual’ resurrection is believed to have happened, there is a narrative gap in the gospels between renditions of the situation before and after.5 But if reproducing a resurrection verbally is difficult, the problems are additionally aggravated if the project is to make a sculptural representation of it. Given that the day of resurrection is understood as life being given to the dead, one can hardly imagine a more paradoxical project than producing such a giving of life in cold and immutable stone. Irene 4 L.P. Wærp, Overgangens figurasjoner. En studie i Henrik Ibsens Kejser og Galilæer og Når vi døde vågner, (Oslo: Solum forlag, 2002), pp. 130 and 135. 5 Cp. T.S. Dokka, Som i begynnelsen – Innføring i kristen tro og tanke, (Oslo: Gyldendal, 2000), pp. 232–236.

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is the one who sees this paradox most clearly. She sees the resurrection sculpture as dead, and speaks of its physical position in a museum as a position in a “grave-vault” (p. 45). Rubek’s sculpture is materially impossible, and discursively it is both transient and ambiguous. In fact, this whole drama is characterized by an intertwining of life and death, the giving of life and the taking of life/petrification. That the impossible sculpture in many ways ‘owns’ the play is seen in the fact that the characters (more or less consciously) mime it at important crossroads. In the first act, Irene arrives dressed in white, walking with stiff and measured steps, immediately resembling the first version of the sculpture, and in the second act, Rubek is sitting at the brook, repentant, as he did in the second version of the sculpture.6 The central characters’ fates and choices in life eventually turn out to be of the same deeply paradoxical character as the sculptural project. A central question in the play’s history of interpretation has been how the resurrection sculpture and the kindred conceptions of resurrection can be said to relate to religious symbolic systems, in particular to the Christian tradition. Eivind Tjønneland simply classifies the ‘resurrection from the dead’ in the play as Christian mythology, but at the same time maintains that it is ‘inserted’, i.e. that it has no intrinsic relation to the drama and its themes, at least not as Christian mythology.7 This claim of superficiality has since been severely criticized, among others by Lisbeth P. Wærp.8 However, the question of the possibly Christian character of the conception or mythology of resurrection in the play is still unresolved. On the one hand, Wærp maintains that both the drama and the sculpture, are, indeed, inscribed in “a Christian apocalyptic and eschatological tradition,” but that life, death and resurrection on the other hand here become “metaphorical elements in a drama where it is obviously another resurrection than the Christian that is thematized.”9 In another connection, she writes more directly about Rubek’s sculpture that “the Christian idea of the day of resurrection is used metaphorically about a worldly transition to a new life.”10 It is not quite clear when she imagines that this metaphorization has happened and 6

For a more extensive elaboration of the connections between the sculpture and the dramatic plot see D. Haakonsen, Henrik Ibsen. Mennesket og kunstneren, (Oslo: Aschehoug, 1981), cp. also Wærp, Overgangens figurasjoner, p.135. 7 E.Tjønneland, Ibsen og moderniteten (Oslo: Spartacus, 1993), p. 133. 8 Wærp, Overgangens figurasjoner, p.128. 9 Wærp, Overgangens figurasjoner, p. 136. 10 L.P. Wærp, “Noras forestilling om det vidunderlige. Drømmens betydning i Et dukkehjem (1879),” in Festskrift til Nils Magne Knutsen, Nordlit 13 (Universitetet i Tromsø, 2003), p. 306.

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who has brought it about, but the impression is that she regards the basic Christian idea as unaffected, only redefined into being a metaphorical sign for something else. It seems obvious to connect this supposed metaphorized change to Rubek’s revision of the sculpture, either in the sense that he himself metaphorizes when making his revision, or that his motives for changing the sculpture are symptomatic of, and therefore can throw light on, a metaphorization that had already taken place. The transition from one version of the sculpture to the next is interpreted by Wærp as a change from optimism to disillusion, from a belief that ‘resurrection’ is possible, to seeing it as impossible and utopian.11 Such a loss of credibility can be imagined to have been the motivation for the metaphorization of the idea of resurrection, no matter when this happened and who caused it. Wærp is not far from saying that it is the impossibility of resurrection understood in a Christian sense which prepares/has prepared the ground so that the idea of resurrection can subsequently be used metaphorically to designate worldly transitions to new life. Her interpretation gives an interesting approach to Rubek’s vacillation between optimism and pessimism as regards the possibilities of ‘resurrection’. Nevertheless it remains unclear how the relation between the literal (in Wærp’s terminology, the ‘Christian’) and the metaphorical (in Wærp the ‘worldly’) can be best understood, both in the case of Rubek’s, other characters’ and the (implied) author’s way of thinking. As to Rubek and his intentions, it is immediately clear that his sculpture was not meant for any sacred purpose; it is not commissioned church art we have here. Nor does Rubek reveal any consciousness that it was a Christian idea he intended to produce and/or use for some other purpose. All in all, he seems to have a very distant relationship to Christian tradition; no traces of belief in God or conceptions of God can be found at all.12 When Rubek is reminded of having used a phrase that we recognize as biblical, he brushes it aside as a schoolboy phrase, something he formerly used to say (p. 10). Rubek generally comes across as a post-Christian free thinker. His own perception of what the day of resurrection might be seems, at the very outset, to have been both de-Christianized and ‘metaphorized’, but probably, judging by the way he is characterized in the play, within a world view which is marked by ideal striving towards the sublime and genuine, and presumably also towards the ‘immortal’. Even though neither Rubek himself nor other characters regard his idea of resurrection as Christian, it is not, of course, impossible that others can 11 Wærp, Overgangens figurasjoner, p. 136. 12 The only character in the play who uses God’s name is Maia, but entirely ʻin vain’, as older translations of the second commandment put it.

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recognize it as such. Therefore it is of interest to take a closer look at what Rubek, in the various stages of the creation of the work, seems to have thought about “The Resurrection.” In several important passages, Rubek comments on the original central idea of the sculpture. The theme of “The Resurrection Day,” he says in his first long conversation with Irene, was to be “figured in the likeness of a young woman, awakening from the sleep of death” (p. 26) and he elaborates: “It was to be the awakening of the noblest, purest, most ideal woman the world ever saw” (p. 36). When he and Irene talk about the work in the second act, Rubek explains his ideas even more clearly. “The Resurrection” “would be most beautifully and exquisitely figured as a young unsullied woman – with none of our earth-life’s experiences” (p. 46).The explanation given for this demand that she be unsullied is that thus she would not have “to put away from her anything ugly and impure.”(p. 46) An important motif in Rubek’s lines quoted here is the idea of the resurrected life’s relationship to our former life as a continuation; ‘the sleep of death’ is a pause, a temporary stay. In their conversation in act one, Rubek says that he imagined that the awakening woman would not marvel at anything new or unknown. On the contrary, she would be “filled with a sacred joy at finding herself unchanged” (p. 00). From one perspective, Rubek here clearly thinks in terms of continuity, the resurrected woman is “unchanged,” as you are when awakening after a night’s sleep. But as has been seen, there is a marked tension between his conception of the resurrected life and life on earth and its experiences. In his whole way of thinking, there is a remarkably strong dualistic tendency, a division between on one hand the elevated, pure, noble, spiritual experiences, and on the other the earthly, ugly, impure and carnal. The life that lives on after the resurrection is to Rubek life in its unsullied purity, not earthly life.13 Even if other interpretations could be possible, it is hard here not to associate to the human ‘soul’ as the possible carrier of such unsullied purity. Rubek’s combination of continuity and dualism is easiest to understand in connection with a doctrine of the immortality of the soul – and the transitoriness of the body. Within this concept, the purpose of art is to reach for the sublimely spiritual, that which is raised above the transitory earthly life, doomed as it is by its own nature. And to the degree that art is really inspired, and in its expression

13

That this vision of the resurrection is about “an earthly resurrection to a new life,” as claimed by Wærp, is therefore an unfortunate and unfounded narrowing of the area of interpretation. Wærp, Overgangens figurasjoner, p. 139.

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on a level with its immortal spiritual subject, it belongs to the eternity it bears witness to – as opposed to the short life on earth. Ars longa – vita brevis. But there is a dilemma here. Since entities like ‘soul’ or ‘the spiritual’ cannot very well be made visible directly in sculpture, the artist has to resort to indirect representations, so that elements from the visible and transitory life metaphorically can signify the immutable soul. When Rubek says that he wanted to represent the resurrection in the likeness of a young woman awakening, there is something extremely paradoxical in the use of a sensuous body as an image of a soul whose nature consists in transcending and negating the sensuous. When he nevertheless found it possible, in spite of the rigid soul/body dualism, to metaphorize a woman’s body in this way, the explanation may be found in the actual act of sculpting and the material employed. Strictly speaking, it is not a woman’s body, but a sculpted woman’s body which is the figure in the likeness. Rubek seems generally to have worked in marble,14 which was also the case with this sculpture in its final form (p. 44). From the beginning, the intention was for the pliable and sensuous clay of the draft to be changed into cool and semitransparent marble. In the age of Romanticism, marble had a quite particular status when it came to expressing beauty and immortality. It was unsurpassable for giving expression to something invisible, spiritual and sublime. A marble statue endowed the represented body with a capacity for metaphysical associations.15 Unni Langås has demonstrated how this came to affect the literary representation of the female form in the 19th century; the idealized woman is like marble, petrified, white and unsullied. In this perspective, Irene’s change into a marble sculpture becomes a precondition for the logic of the likeness, for a body to ‘look like’ an immortal soul, without impairing the basic dualistic idea. In a modern perspective, we can immediately see that such a view of death, soul and resurrection is not particularly Christian. Twentieth century theology has seen the doctrine of the immortality of the soul as Greek rather than biblical, and many have regarded it not only as extraneous to but also as irreconcilable with the Christian faith.16 The problems found in this doctrine were connected with the ideas of both immortality and 14 15 16

Cp. the comments by Ulfheim (p. 17) and Irene (p. 26). U. Langås, Kroppens betydning i norsk litteratur 1800–1900 (Bergen: Fagbokforlaget, 2004), pp. 73–74. See for example R. Prenter, Skabelse og genløsning (København: G.E.C. Gads forlag, 1955), pp. 284–286 and 620–621; W. Pannenberg, Den apostolske Trosbekendelse, (Frederiksberg: Anis, 1991), pp. 172–174; G. Wingren, Credo (Lund: LiberLäromedel Lund, 1975), pp. 186– 188; S.Aa. Christoffersen, «Jeg tror på legemets oppstandelse og det evige liv», in Livet etter livet. Mennesket og døden, Skriftserien: «Etterutdanning for prester» Bind 5, (Oslo: Universitetet i Oslo, 1999), p. 10.

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dualism. Only God could be credited with unconditional being, ergo immortality could not be an inherent quality in man. In addition, the clear hegemony of the soul and the accompanying contempt for the body were regarded as being contrary to Christian creation theology and its positive evaluation of the corporeal. These matters may have appeared differently at the end of the 19th century, when the popular idea of Christianity was generally more influenced by Greek idealism than it was to be in a later age. However, Rubek’s conception also diverges from classic Christian doctrine on the resurrection from the dead on a number of other important points, also as the doctrine was generally understood at Ibsen’s time. Primarily, it has always had a strong element of discontinuity, and secondly, it has always been closely connected with a combined revelatory and judgmental aspect, or in some cases been entirely interwoven with conceptions of the Day of Judgment. At the time when the play was written it is not very probable, either, that anyone would have understood Rubek’s idea of the resurrection as Christian. The majority would more likely have seen his idea as part of a shared cultural heritage, an idea which some believed in and others not.17 Whether Rubek himself thought that this conception corresponded to something ‘real’, and if so, in what sense, is not said directly in the play. There is, however, every reason to believe that the belief in some idea of an immortal soul was shared by people who neither saw themselves as Christians nor as religious in a more general sense. The idea was not at all unusual in the philosophy of the Enlightenment or in Romanticism. In addition, the end of the century experienced a considerable flowering of occult traditions and spiritualistic practices. To imagine that non-Christians or irreligious people at the time had as little tolerance for idealistic metaphysics and immortal souls as the present-day atheist humanists is an obvious anachronism. That Rubek did not regard his idea of the day of resurrection as Christian, and that it cannot very well be characterized by others as such, does not, therefore, necessarily mean that he saw it as a metaphor for a strictly worldly and empirically perceptible renewal of life – as most modern Ibsen interpreters seem to do. Wærp’s alternative, either Christian or worldly, is erroneous in every respect. 17

This assessment of the distant relationship of the original sculpture concept to the specifically Christian idea is in a way confirmed by Frode Helland, who regards Ibsen’s use of the idea of resurrection as a re-telling with variations of Ovid’s Pygmalion, and who does not at all mention the possibility of a Christian world-view, cp. F. Helland Melankoliens spill. En studie i Henrik Ibsens siste dramaer (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 2000), pp. 376–387.

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Rubek’s conception of how earthly life sullies a person, and thus threatens resurrection, has not only been a determining factor for the design of his work of art, it has also made demands on the way life was conducted both by the artist and his model. His dualistic concept of resurrection is inextricably connected to an ethical project. First of all, his model must live up to the demands of purity which characterized the figure she was to model for. In Irene he believed to have found a young and pure woman who fitted the project. But once she was found and won for the task, Rubek’s artistic project entailed a continuous, strict regulation of the relationship between artist and model, also outside the artistic co-operation. “There had to be a distance between us,” he later emphasizes, speaking to Irene (p. 24). In this conversation early in the play, he explains that touching her, “save in adoring thoughts” would have been harmful to himself as an artist. His own soul would be profaned if he desired her with his senses (p. 26) and he would have been unable to accomplish the work as it had been conceived. It also emerges from the conversation between them in the second act that Irene, too, would have been harmed by anything of the sort; with such “earth-life’s experiences” she would have become useless as a model for resurrection. Even though the resurrection motif as Rubek understood it has accentuated this logic of being pure or un-sullied in a particular way, it seems to correspond to the general characteristics of his views of art and life. When it is reasonable to think in such generalizing terms, it is not least because of the status Rubek assigns to Irene. Basically, she is his only model, the only one he has really had, the only one who has lived up to the demands made by idealized depictions of human life, and the only one who has the key to the ‘casket’ inside him which must be opened if he is to become a real artist again. She is a reminder of life before and outside the sullied life on earth. She is much more than a model, she is “the fountainhead of [his] achievement” (p. 26), and it turns out that he continues to be dependent on her for all his inspiration and genuine artistic creativity. The business of art, as Rubek seems to have understood it, is to present man in his ideality, present what is more elevated and purer than life on earth. As  such, it makes demands on life in return, most directly on the model’s and artist’s lives, but in principle everybody’s life. If a model and artist are to present the ideal and immortal truthfully, they must themselves keep their ideality intact. In this connection the ideal comes across as a form of elevated, remote nonparticipation in the vicissitudes of life, in the strong feelings, in desire, joy, fear, in bodily striving or joyful activity. In Ibsen’s large spectrum of characters, it is

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the idealism of the apostate minister Rosmer that most resembles this way of thinking. Rosmer, whose project was to ennoble and elevate people to a higher sphere, preferred himself not to have contact with anything but thoughts. If ‘life’ is thought of as body and feelings, there is something clearly life-denying in his great educational project. Even though this was not at all directed only at the erotic, Rosmer’s disgust at the sexual demands his wife Beata had made on him is emphasized by Ibsen. Rosmer’s ideally motivated, non-participation, exemplified by his rebuff of Beata’s sexual approaches, thus has clear similarities with Rubek’s not wanting to touch Irene. The very lengthy cooperation between artist and model had resulted in a draft in clay. The model had been so strongly involved in the artistic creation that both understood the result as ‘theirs’. When they both (e.g. on pages 43 and 44) could refer to the sculpture as their common ‘child’, the reason is found in this intense cooperation. The sculpture was a result of an intimate relationship. That is exactly why the metaphor ‘child’ signals a surrogate relationship, as it was forbidden for them to relate in such a way that they could have a real child. Rubek speaks of the work as a child “in spirit and in truth” (p. 44). It was conceived in denial and sublimation. Their ‘child’ was elevated art. As such, it turns out, they have both, although in very different ways, come to both love and hate it. The Final Version of the Sculpture When Rubek and Irene meet again, early in the first act, Irene thinks that the ‘child’, the famous sculpture, is still what it was when she finished her work as a model and left Rubek. The only difference she imagines is that the clay has been replaced with marble. In the second long conversation between them (in act two) Rubek insists that she must not follow up on her wish to see the marble-child. Step by step, the conversation forces him to reveal that the child has been radically changed after she went away from him, which, as he says, took place “before it was completed” (p. 45). Possibly Rubek’s description of the final result is not entirely reliable, but it is at least clear that the young female figure no longer stands erect and solitary on a small plinth. The plinth has been extended and now carries “a segment of the curving, bursting earth. And up from the fissures of the soil there now swarm men and women with dimly-suggested animal-faces.” (p. 46). In the background, or the middle ground, as Rubek prefers to say, possibly to mitigate Irene’s reaction, we still find the young Irene, albeit not with her face beaming with the light of transfiguration. Perhaps the most important change, though, is that Rubek has inserted himself into this tableau:

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In front, beside a fountain – as it were here – sits a man weighed down with guilt, who cannot quite free himself from the earth-crust. I call him remorse for a forfeited life […] Never in all eternity will he attain to freedom and the new life. He will remain for ever prisoned in his hell. (p. 47) Lisbet P. Wærp is clearly right that a change has been made from optimism to pessimism.18 Such a statement calls for some clarification, however. The much greater complexity of the new sculpture is just as striking. Not only are more figures included, the figures are also ambiguous, as is seen most clearly in the swarm of men and women with dimly-suggested animal-faces, and they appear to meet with different fates. Irene’s erect female form, which presumably has not lost all its original qualities, seems to be closest to attaining the life of resurrection, the repentant sinner in the foreground definitively will not ‘rise’ that far. The swarm of other people is not so easy to place, which presumably is the point; their inner life is hidden. This introduces two motifs into the work that were absent from the first sculpture: revelation and judgment. What is hidden in us must come forth, and we will be separated according to who we are. This does not necessarily mean that Rubek’s basic idea of ‘the resurrection itself’ has changed. When the change takes place, in Wærp’s words, from a paradisiac to a hellish vision19 it is because the issue of taking part in the resurrected life has now been introduced into the sculptural representation itself. Whereas the first version represented resurrection ‘as such’, as an ‘idea’ in the likeness of an earthly body, the final version portrays the application of this idea to a selection of concrete human figures.20 But the concept of resurrection does not, per se, have to have changed because its attainability for real people in this way is represented as problematic. Rubek’s realization that achievement is problematic, both generally and as regards himself, is connected with what he has experienced and what he has committed and repents of. What this more concretely could have been, for example whether he already at that stage thought he had committed an offence against Irene, remains unsaid. It is obvious that he thought he had committed an offence against life, he had “learned worldly wisdom” (p. 46) and had been marked by worldly life. When this becomes so catastrophically decisive, the 18 Wærp, “Noras forestilling om det vidunderlige,” p. 306. 19 Wærp, Overgangens figurasjoner, p. 143f. 20 Wærp, Overgangens figurasjoner has a different interpretation (pp. 137–138). She sees the various figures as an anthropomorphization of resurrection, remorse and disruption, and later (p. 141) claims that the second version of the sculpture is more obviously allegorizing than the first.

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only good explanation is that the idea of continuity from his earlier conception of resurrection, the one his original sculpture was modeled on, is still intact. The very idea of continuity between life before and after resurrection surely entails the possibility that one’s way of life will lead to the forfeiture of a resurrected life and that instead one will be stuck in a hell which is similar to the life one has actually lived. If someone who has committed an offence in life were to have a chance to ‘rise’ to the resurrected life, the conception of resurrection would have to be far more open to radical change. Quite in keeping with the fact that phenomena like sin, repentance and hopelessness are included in the work, we now also see the inclusion of what is ‘base’, the earth and the worldly life, things that Rubek regarded as corrupting: The crust of the earth breaks and lets out those who were captive to worldly life. Is any of all the figures in the composite sculpture still untouched by earth and the life lived there? It would have to be Irene, but she, too, has suffered a revision, and now must be seen at least as a less unambiguous ideal (p. 47). These people have lived, which has made the process of resurrection problematic, and at least in one case, it is claimed, impossible. In certain ways the new version contains motifs which make it more similar to a traditional Christian concept of resurrection than the first one had been. In brief, the tableau approaches some sort of Judgment Day, cp. the classic idea of resurrection to judgment, when it will be revealed who we are and we, accordingly, will be separated from one another.21 Yet, the similarity to Christian ideas must not be exaggerated as a source to what Rubek now had come to believe. The revised sculpture is dominated by the contrast between resurrected life and earthly life. But unlike in Christianity this contrast is presented as almost a static spatial separation between earthly life and resurrected life, and the sculpture illustrates the impossibility of a resurrection understood as an ascent from one to the other. If one has not already lived the resurrected life, one cannot wake up to it either. But this pessimistic ‘day of judgment’ does not make Rubek’s conception Christian; also, being a poet can of course, in Ibsen’s jargon, be to sit in judgment on oneself. In his search for possible sources that Ibsen may have used for this revised sculpture and its version of the resurrection, Frode Helland interestingly ends up with Luca Signorelli’s “La Resurrezione della Carne” from the cathedral in Orvieto, a fresco on a grand scale, with many similarities to Rubek’s sculpture: people who come up through the crust of the earth, the sitting repentant figure in the foreground, a woman looking towards heaven centrally placed in the middle ground etc. But Helland chooses not to make much of the religious 21

Cp. Matt 25.31–46.

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aspects of this fresco’s motifs, which of course neither Rubek nor Ibsen does in the second version of the sculpture.22 Also this second and deeply pessimistic resurrection sculpture still represents a resurrection – or non-resurrection – where God is absent. Part II: Excelsior! The pessimistic keynote in the second version of the sculpture can be said to be indicative of the atmosphere of captivity and stagnation which characterizes the opening scene of the play. Rubek and Maia do not ‘escape’ and rise to a new life any more than the repentant figure in the sculpture. However, as said above, the arrival of Irene and Ulfheim effects a change: Rubek and Maia develop a keener self-understanding, and the atmosphere is vitalized, the characters begin to will, something begins to happen. They ‘awaken’. Rubek’s meeting with Irene becomes the start of a new life project – a project in which he wants Irene to accompany him, as he did in the sculpture project. This sets Maia free to redefine what she wants from her life, a change in which Ulfheim and his projects play an important part. But what are the new life projects which are entered on in this way? To describe the different life projects that manifest themselves in When We Dead Awaken, Lakoff and Johnson’s concept “metaphors we live by” makes a fruitful starting point.23 To get our bearings in life we use a set of basic metaphors, for example of bodily or spatial character, which are so deeply ingrained that often we do not even think of them as metaphors. Nevertheless they contribute to shaping our own way of life and to interpreting both that and the lives of others. Clearly the dominant conceptual metaphor in When We Dead Awaken is of a spatial character. It is immediately striking that the scenes in the drama are set at gradually higher levels – from fjord (act one) via mountain plateau (act two), to high mountain (act three). This location device mimes the dominance of space in Rubek’s resurrection conception, and corresponds entirely with the metaphors by which the characters live their lives. In their lines there is a plethora of words for ‘up’ and ‘down’, ‘high’ and ‘low’, both in descriptive and prescriptive sentences. The most important operative distinction in life has to do with differences in height, differences between up and down, and in 22 Helland, Melankoliens spill, pp. 387–410. 23 G. Lakoff and M. Johnson, Metaphors We Live By, (Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 2nd ed., 2003).

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practical terms, the difference between ascending and descending. Time and again the high/low metaphor is used to describe important choices and events in all the characters’ life stories, intentions, life projects and identity. It is, quite simply, constitutive for the thought universe and moral space within which everybody operates. Seen in relation to the time when the play was written, this is not sensational. Among the mottoes most characteristic of the time, whether for persons, associations or institutions, we find maxims like per aspera/ardua ad astra or simply excelsior. Nor is the yearning towards the elevated exactly a rare feature in Ibsen’s other works. In the perspective of the history of ideas, it is reasonable to see this striving towards the ‘stars’ as a vestige of traditional supra-naturalistic metaphysics, a philosophy of reality which was taken up and actualized in Romanticism’s feel for the high mountain peaks, and for mountaineering as a source of both panoramic views and a deep insight into the secrets of existence. As was common at Ibsen’s time (and in his works as a whole), the elevated is generally presented as desirable, the low as something inferior, cp. the sharp dualism in Rubek’s understanding of reality and resurrection. The numerous projects for change in the play are thus marked by powerful forces of upward movement. Yet several forms of ambiguity are connected to the elevated: it may seem desirable in some respects, but not in others; there is not entire agreement in what the various characters regard as elevated or base, and several characters seem to change their views both of what is elevated, and whether it really was, and still is, desirable. Although the common orientation in relation to what they regard as elevated offers a simple map onto which the various characters’ thoughts and actions can be plotted, the many ambiguities and changes also suggest reading When We Dead Awaken as a problematization of conceptions of the ‘elevated’ and the desire to ascend to it. From the start Rubek has typically been oriented towards an upper realm. As an artist he has striven towards the elevated, in the sense of the noble and pure. It was also with promises of reaching such heights he had made Irene accept working with him as his model. As mentioned, his original understanding of the elevated has also had consequences for his general ideals of conduct. Bodily needs or pleasures have been seen as base and foreign to art, and have, as such, been given lower priority or been directly forbidden. We do not get to know whether he has included immaterial things like honor and fame in his idea of the elevated and striven for them from the start.24 No matter what, he 24

For a different interpretation see Langås, Kroppens betydning, p. 241.

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has actually achieved both these and material wealth in the period prior to the play, and he expresses no direct regret for that. There is, however, no doubt that his original striving towards the ideally elevated was paralyzed when Irene left him. His operative conception of the elevated seems subsequently to have become more earthly: he grew both rich and ‘worldly wise’. For a period he has also experienced his artist’s calling as empty, and wishing to prioritize life rather than art, he has ‘acquired’ Maia. When acquisitions and marriage have not led to the vigorous and happy self-expression he had wanted, but rather deepened his sadness, the reason seems to be that he is still caught in the dualistic understanding of art and reality, with its disdain for the earthly life.25 This disdain now also clearly appears as misanthropy: in reality, he thinks, people all over the world are all domesticated animals – unable to understand his elevated masterpiece.26 At the opening of the first act, Rubek is a highly regarded man, but artistically he is in the lowlands, and he feels both captured and dissatisfied. However, a wish to soar is revived in his meeting with Irene. When she already at an early point in their conversation says, “Higher, higher, − always higher, Arnold” (p. 27), she entices him upwards by putting a name to a dormant, but essential, character trait in him. At the outset Rubek’s interest in Irene seems also now to have an artistic purpose. He needs her to unlock the casket of inspiration “which has snapped to”; she is to serve his artistic project again. Gradually, however, his new motive for ascending changes into something which looks like a more integrated life project, a project which in important respects negates the first, artistic project. Life on earth, which previously sullied his ideal art and made it impossible, is no longer to be left behind, but to be taken along on the journey ‘up’.27 Whether Rubek still thinks of this ascent as art, a differently conceived art, in that case, remains unsaid. What is now important to the climbing Rubek is that he and Irene are to be united bodily on the high mountain – witnessed by the sun and all the powers of light, and all the powers of darkness, too (p. 65). Maia, too, has heard Rubek’s promises of an ascent. The elevated, which had clearly appealed to her so strongly that she allowed herself to be bought in spite of her resistance, may have had, but at least seems gradually to have gotten, a more earthly content than the promises to Irene. “Little Maia” turned out 25 26 27

Cp. Helland, Melankoliens spill, pp. 457–458. On the misanthropy of Rubek (and the late Ibsen), se Aarseth, Ibsens samtidsskuespill, pp. 348–350. A different interpretation is found in Helland, Melankoliens spill, pp. 463–465, who regards Rubek as still an allegorizing ʻartist’, to the very last.

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not to be born to be a mountain-climber (p. 11), however, and Rubek had not taken her with him to any high mountain. She had shared his wealth, indeed, but not the glory he had promised her. She feels like a piece of furniture, even an object of luxury, the acquisition of which had become affordable for Rubek. Nevertheless, she has maintained some sort of desire to move upwards. Therefore she is not happy in her marriage to Rubek; she prefers the mountain to the sedate boat trip Rubek had suggested, and she is easily enticed up into the mountains by the virile Ulfheim. She is both alarmed and attracted by his advances, but at any rate breaks with Rubek and the life-denying effect his artistic activity has had on her. She experiences this break as an act of liberation, cp. the little song she composes and which she sings in both the second and third acts: I am free! I am free! I am free! No more life in the prison for me! I am free as a bird! I am free! (pp. 52 and 65) Yet, it is not clear what she thinks she is free to be or do. Exactly what the relationship between her and Ulfheim is at the end of the play is also an open question. When, unlike Rubek and Irene, she does not stay in the mountains, but descends from there with Ulfheim’s aid, it is in one sense to save herself from the storm. But it also seems to be a positively motivated descent to the simple, ordinary human life from which life with Rubek had excluded her, a human life, that is, in which conventional respectability is intact. When she wants to go down to the hotel after a night out with Ulfheim, it is imperative for her to arrive before people awaken down there (p. 57). The rude bear hunter and womanizer, Squire Ulfheim, is from the beginning drawn almost as a caricature. He is the man of the mountains who disdains the lowlands, and he sees through the people who stay down there in the ‘meat locker’, only half alive. There is no artistic ideality about his conception of the elevated; an artist is precisely what he is not. There is nothing affected about him, he looks, quite simply, like himself (p. 55), is ‘genuine’. He is rough nature – in conscious opposition to everything that smacks of art and culture. What is desirable for him is hunting and women. He is free and independent and enjoys living as he wishes. From his conversation with Maia, however, we understand that he has not always been like that, and that other qualities still might linger underneath the exaggeratedly rustic bluffness. He has formerly lived with high ambitions and, possibly, with noble ideals. Once, he tells her, he had taken a young girl and lifted her up from the mire of the streets and carried her in his arms so high

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that she would not dash her foot against a stone. And so he would have borne her all through life. But the girl let him down, gave him horns and made a cuckold of him (p. 57f). Behind his rough behavior he is a wounded and disillusioned man. But Maia, who initially may have struck him as just a tempting bit of fun seems to have awakened some of his former idealism. He offers to carry her – as he unselfishly had carried the one who betrayed him. Quite astonishingly, Ulfheim eventually proposes to Maia. However, there is nothing highflown and soaring here, as in the relationship between Rubek and Irene, the proposal is rather phrased as a joint venture at “the bottom of the league.” But thus Ulfheim admits that his behavior has partly consisted of gestures without inner substance, and also in a way, that the world view he propagated and possibly believed in himself, had been filled with illusory exaggerations and embellishments.28 He will now give up gestures and illusions, when he intends to descend with Maia. Why shouldn’t the two betrayed losers tack their poor shreds of life together? There is a kind of everyday, realistic truthfulness to Ulfheim here, and the proposal cannot very well be reduced to being tantamount to having given up on any kind of ideals in life.29 Irene does not herself have any clear life project when she turns up in the play. We hear that she has a wish to see Rubek’s sculpture (p. 45), but she clearly does not know where it is situated. She talks of her presence as the result of a long “pilgrimage” (p. 44) “from the uttermost regions” (p. 43), but the pilgrim project seems to have ended before she enters the action of the drama. When she left Rubek, she went into darkness, and has since traveled in many lands (p. 22). When she also says after her arrival that she has traveled afar and returned from there (p. 41), one gets the impression of a kind of ‘traveling’ which is simply her nature. In this connection it is noteworthy that in Ibsen’s list of characters she is without a name, but presented as “A traveling lady” (p. 4). For everybody else but Rubek (and the sister) she remains nameless: they refer to her as “the strange lady.” Her part is to be a stranger and traveler. Why she finds herself in this spa is not directly thematized, but one supposes that her state as a psychiatric patient must already have improved somewhat, an improvement that will possibly continue at the spa. Yet, it is highly uncertain that this is her project. The presence of the sister and the threat of a renewed use of constraint give us an impression of a captivity in which she is at the mercy of other people’s power, and where everything she does is under surveillance. The model for “The 28 Wærp, Overgangens figurasjoner, suggests that Ulfheim more or less goes through a change of personality here. p. 167. 29 For a more unambiguously negative assessment of Maia/Ulfheim, see Helland, Melankoliens spill, pp. 456–457.

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Resurrection Day” now lives a shadow life (p. 41f.) and is prevented from realizing her own life project, and largely also from having one. Deeply depressed as she is, she appears stiff, with expressionless eyes and her clothes remind us of a shroud. She regards herself and acts as a ‘living dead’. Nevertheless, one gets the impression that she gradually begins to form her own intentions, and step by step she changes into a character who acts in the drama. She tempts Rubek and seeks the heights with him. The impression of her deeper intentions that we are given in her speeches and behavior is, however, highly incoherent, and even though the intensity in her desire to go to the high mountains grows, her mind seems deeply divided. Does she love or hate Rubek? Does she herself know whether it is death or life she seeks – and wants to share with him? The ambiguities come to a climax in the ecstatic euphoria of the final scene. On the high mountain, does she really desire the same “marriage-feast” as Rubek, will she drive him to madness as she had done with innumerable men before, or does she still want to simply kill him, as she has constantly been about to do?30 Heinrich Detering has interpreted When We Dead Awaken as a representation of two contrary projects of redemption, both post-Christian, and both marked by the bourgeois ideas at the end of the century.31 Detering calls the two projects ‘vitalism’ and ‘aestheticism’, and connects each with a pair of characters, vitalism with Ulfheim/Maia, and aestheticism with Rubek/Irene. Ascribing them so directly to the couples in the play is problematic, as there are traits in both couples that do not conform with just one of the two projects, and none of the characters acts so clean-cut as Detering’s schema would bring us to expect.32 Does the passionate couple Rubek and Irene really come across in this final phase as ‘aesthetes’, or the bourgeois Maia and the Ulfheim of the proposal as ‘vitalists’? In spite of these reservations, it can be fruitful to attempt an interpretation of the various life projects as secular projects of salvation or redemption. Detering’s concept covers post-Christian, non-religious projects that would be totally life-changing if they succeeded.33 However, in the case of this drama, 30 31 32 33

On this undecided situation, see Wærp, Overgangens figurasjoner, pp. 148 and 163. H. Detering, «ʻPax vobiscum’. Allegorisering og metafysikk i Ibsens Når vi døde vågner», in Livet på likstrå. Henrik Ibsens Når vi døde vågner, ed. L.P. Wærp, (Oslo: Cappelen, 1999), p. 84. I am here in agreement with Wærp, Overgangens figurasjoner, p. 129. For a thorough discussion of Detering’s interpretation see Helland, Melankoliens spill, pp. 438–474. Detering, “Pax vobiscum,” does not give a definition proper of “post-Christian religion of redemption” (and similar expressions) but talks of “world views which attempt to restore a lost metaphysical meaning and the directions for life that go with it” (p. 84), and of “an almost religious salvation” (p. 86). He sees both the two projects as strictly immanentist, and consequently ascribes a form of “Ersatz-Transzendez” to them (p. 86).

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limiting the concept to only cover strictly innerworldly projects would lead to an unfortunate narrowing of it; also thinking and projects related to an otherworldly sphere can be non-religious and in that sense secular. Altogether, all the central life projects in When We Dead Awaken can be described in categories of ascent. One of the reasons why it seems an obvious option to see these projects under the aspect of ‘project of redemption’ is found in the complicated biblical background for the play’s ascensional imagery. The Temptation of Jesus Even though the imagery of ascension is present everywhere in the text, it is especially one and the same repeated figure of speech which gives it a paradigmatic, world-shaping status. This image is introduced by Maia, when she reminds Rubek that he had promised to take her with him “up to a high mountain and show her all the glory of the world” (p. 10). Behind Rubek’s answer, “did I promise you that, too” is the promise he had previously given Irene, a promise that she, too, upbraids him for (pp. 37f and 51). Maia repeats her experience of Rubek’s promise in her autobiographical story to Ulfheim (p. 58) – who himself has used the motif to tell the story of his life and how he became who he is (p. 57f). Now and again we find several shorter references to the same tempting image of ascension. The basis of this more or less extensively articulated image is the New Testament story of the temptation of Jesus, Matt 4.1–11 par. About the last of these three temptations it tells, Again, the devil took Him to a very high mountain and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory; and he said to Him, “All these things I will give You, if You fall down and worship me” (Matt 4.8–9).34 matt 4.8–9

None of the near-quotes, paraphrases or references found in the play suggests that such a biblical source exists. It is therefore up to the receivers of the drama to recognize the figure as biblical, which the original audience would immediately have done, with its far better knowledge of the Bible than audiences and critics seem to have today. The story of the temptation of Jesus was from very early times the text for the sermon on the first Sunday in Lent, a tradition that was also continued after the Reformation. Lent was a time when one had to fight particularly 34

New American Standard Bible edition.

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assiduously against sin and withstand all temptations.35 In this context, Jesus’ victorious battle against the tempter was first and foremost read as referring to ‘us’. For one thing, the story served as a lesson about the character of temptation, and taught not least that temptation is strongest in our ascent towards the top. Secondly, it showed Jesus firm in his resolution as an example for imitation. The story of the temptation of Christ was immediately understood both as a reminder of man’s own fallen nature and a warning against falling again, motifs which in a Norwegian context had not least been impressed on people through the medium of hymn texts: “I walk in danger all the way; The thought shall never leave me That Satan, who has marked his prey, Is plotting to deceive me.” or “If Satan any time with highness will seduce me….”36 The sum total is that the story of the temptation of Jesus on “a very high mountain” conveyed a double message: it suggested the failure of man as well as the victory of the master, and the expectation of fall as well as redemption. Apart from Ulfheim’s quote from the second of the devil’s temptations, all direct use of this biblical subject matter is based on the last of Jesus’ temptations. Yet there are several points of contact between this biblical story and When We Dead Awaken. The structural similarity between the two is difficult to overlook. The temptation story is also told in three ‘acts’, the first one in the lowlands, the second “on the pinnacle of the temple,” and the third, as said, “on a very high mountain.” And not least: Rubek’s and Irene’s ascent to the mountain peak finally climaxes in a scene which approaches a parody of the biblical temptation scene. The number of motifs from the third of Jesus’ temptations that are reflected in the play changes from dialogue to dialogue. The adoration (of the tempter) is obvious in Irene’s tales, as well as in her words to Rubek in the final scene, “my lord and master” (p. 65), but otherwise not. The role in the basic narrative that the characters play, that they verbally identify themselves or others with, is variable. Rubek is a ‘tempter’ for Irene and Maia, but he is the one who is tempted when Irene is the tempter and entices him to go higher up. Ulfheim is Maia’s tempter, but has previously entered the role as one of those angels who “will bear you on their hands” so that the one he had lifted up would not “dash her foot against a stone,” cp Matt. 4.6. The terms ‘tempter’ and ‘temptation’ are not used in the dialogues. Nor does anyone describe following the promptings to 35 36

E. Berggrav, Tider og tekster (Oslo: Andaktsbokselskapets forlag, 1947), pp. 69–70. Landstad, the hymnal used at Ibsen’s time, no 283,1.v, English translation at http://www .hymnary.org/text/i_walk_in_danger_all_the_way / «Om Satan og med Høihed vil Mig nogen Tid forføre», my (very literal) translation, (Landstad 267, 3.v).

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climb the high mountains as a possible ‘fall’ in an existential or moral sense, even though falling physically down the precipice is a danger that is described in words in act three, a danger which of course is eventually realized as far as Irene and Rubek are concerned. Only in one instance does one of the characters perform a clear role identification that quite closely corresponds to the New Testament story. It happens when Maia, assisted by Ulfheim, identifies him successively as “faun,” “wood devil” and “devil” (p. 56).37 The Rock of Salvation and the Mountain of Transfiguration Less prominent than the use of the story of the temptation of Jesus, but nevertheless important, are the references to mountain motifs from biblical tradition, which have been seen as unambiguously positive. Generally, in the biblical world there is a close connection between the mountain and divine revelation. Among the most important texts in this respect, Moses’ ascent on Mount Sinai is noteworthy, as well as several Old Testament psalms where motifs such as “the mountain of God” and “the rock of salvation” are abundant. Such motifs have had an important place in Jewish devotional tradition, and were given continued prominence in Christian visions of God’s presence, the resurrection from the dead, and the location for salvation, all the way from the Revelation of St. John to the hymn of the Danish poet Brorson, “Behold a host, arrayed in white.”38 Of special interest is the vision in Rev 21.9-10 in which the high mountain of salvation is connected with bridal imagery, cp. the hierogamy of Rubek and Irene. On the textual surface of the play, however, among such positive mountain motifs, it is transfiguration, as Bible readers know it from the story of the Transfiguration on the Mount (Matt. 17), which is most obviously present. Beyond the actual motif of transfiguration, there are also further correspondences between the Bible story and the drama (Act 3), such as the expectations of sunlight or sunrise, the cloud that hides, and the white clothes. ‘Transfiguration’, from the Latin transfiguratio, a word not actually used in the Bible text, figures in the Bible story as a vision in which Jesus’ appearance was changed (transfigured), cp. Matt. 17.2 – so that his hidden nature, his filial relation to God, in a flash was revealed to the three who saw and heard. Nor is it expressed in this case by any of the characters in Ibsen’s play that this is a motif with Biblical roots; such an identification is left to its 37 The translation has ‘demon’ for devil, and so misses this reference. 38 http://www.hymnary.org/text/behold_a_host_arrayed_in_white_like_thou.

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audience/readers, just as discovering and evaluating the relevance of the motif’s religious potential of meaning in interpreting the drama and its characters. The verb ‘transfigure’ or the noun ‘transfiguration’ is found five times, one of them in a stage direction to one of Irene’s lines (she delivers it “as” or “as though transfigured”). All the examples of its use belong in conversations between Rubek and Irene, and refer in some cases to the figure Irene had been a model for (pp. 21 and 46) and in some cases to herself (p. 41 and the stage direction on p. 65). What Rubek means by ‘transfigured’ is not said, except that it has a superlative ring to it. Irene, on the other hand is quite aware that it has to do with ‘light’ and ‘joy’, cp. the expressions “transfigured in the light” (p. 21) and “joy in the light still transfigures my face” (p. 46). Even though this does not have to be in conflict with Rubek’s conception, it yet transpires that the two think differently about transfiguration, at least about the word’s appropriateness in reference to Irene. By virtue of her return and (partial) awakening, Rubek does not only think she has “risen,” which is a word Irene might use about herself, but also that she is “transfigured” (p. 41) Irene protests against this. Throughout this dialogue she has a more reserved assessment of herself than Rubek’s rather ecstatic pronouncements make room for. Just as important as the disagreement about Irene’s character is the underlying difference in the way they understand these conceptions. As to Rubek, it is just possible to imagine that he distinguishes between ‘risen’ and ‘transfigured’ albeit such a conclusion is not probable. To understand Irene, though, such a distinction is necessary. In her linguistic universe, if one is ‘risen’ it does not necessarily follow that one is also ‘transfigured’. Precisely what she understands by being ‘transfigured’ is not made explicit, but it is clear that she regards it as something more or higher than a ‘rising’, at least in the sense she and Rubek have used the resurrection metaphor in this conversation. Whereas ‘resurrection’ seems to have been understood by both as a return to (the old) life, as a kind of restitution, and Rubek has let this restitutive element determine the transfiguration motif, Irene’s statements open up to understanding transfiguration as a far more dramatic change. Against the background of the transfiguration terminology, it is tempting to say that she thinks of transfiguration as a form of transfiguration of life – which she does not, then, think she has experienced simply with her own return to life. The Ambiguity of Ascent The way in which these biblical stories and ideas are brought into action, without the source, fragmented and with no consciousness or realization of a

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religious potential of meaning, is in keeping with the post-Christian thinking which marks the play, and makes them quite vague for the characters. What they get out of the mountains of temptation and transfiguration is first and foremost the ascent motif itself, and a feeling that something decisive could happen up there. It is only readers who are well-versed in the Bible who can benefit from the New Testament stories in interpreting the ambiguity of the ascent motif. Here it will be crucial to see the connections between temptation and transfiguration. It is no coincidence that the openings of the stories in Matt. 4.8 and 17.1 are so similar: X takes Y with him to a high mountain. In both cases something tempting is shown to test the person(s) seeing it, Jesus, in one case, the three disciples in the other. Jesus does not fall for the devil’s temptation, but the disciples misunderstand the situation and want to build dwellings for Jesus, Moses and Elijah in the high mountains. During the ascent, nobody knows for sure what the result is going to be. In the biblical stories there is, in addition, a tendency for one outcome to quickly be changed into another: the transfiguration one may get to see can afterwards lead to misunderstanding and failure. Common to the life of all the four main characters before the play begins is that all have been tempted to perform ambitious ascents, and that these have had disastrous consequences for everybody. When the play begins, they are all in their own way fallen and captive. However, within the time of the play a series of new projects come into being, all aimed at liberation. What is the result of the different new life projects? Did anyone achieve transfiguration, salvation or redemption? The results of Maia’s and Ulfheim’s projects are generally assessed quite negatively, both on the story level and on their own terms, and as existential options for the receivers of the play. The answer to the question of success is obviously dependent on which – and whose – yardstick they are measured by. With her song of freedom, Maia maintains a motif of redemption; she obviously regards herself as now being free and ‘saved’. In a concrete, material sense she is undoubtedly right about this. If her freedom were to refer to more than being saved from the storm and from the marriage with Rubek, that would have to be the rambling ambitions of ascent she is finally saved from. She is free to make do with trivia without being disturbed by speculative ideals of a radical change. She seems simply to be redeemed from the striving towards redemption. What happens to Ulfheim is less clear. Either he will accompany her on this descent into the mundane, or he will return to his identity as a hunter with its repressions and illusions. No matter what he chooses, Maia and Ulfheim stand as the most this-worldly agents in the drama.

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If the projects these two have had in the course of the play can be said to be projects of redemption, they must as such be said to remain unachieved. On the other hand, this does not bar us from imagining them, together or separately, as continuing their lives in happy satisfaction, it only means that such a possible satisfaction would not have had the character of redemption. And in case they were not to become satisfied, they would not have been able to understand this in categories of fall or perdition. The two simply do not inhabit a place where perdition and redemption exist as possibilities. For readers who find all mention of redemption high-flown, Maia’s and Ulfheim’s choice may seem an option worth considering. It must be clear, however, that such an interpretation would go against the grain of the play – which must be said instead to take an ironic look at these characters and their choice.39 And yet, even though one cannot on the premises of this drama choose like Maia and Ulfheim with any form of enthusiasm, it may nevertheless, under certain circumstances, be the only way out, − if one wants to survive. On their way down, Maia and Ulfheim meet Rubek and Irene on their way up. Ulfheim tells them that the way they have come is “deadly dangerous” (p. 61), and he warns them against the storm that is on its way; the clouds are rolling and sinking, “soon they’ll be all around us like a winding-sheet,” “it’s a matter of life and death here” (p. 62). Rubek and Irene do not heed the dangers, they orient their conduct after a different reality, and continue their ascent to the end, albeit possibly with differing motives. Rubek now realizes that he has formerly “placed the dead clay-image above the happiness of life – of love”(p. 64). Taken at his word, his project in the high mountain really means a radical reorientation. He desires Irene, just as he has admitted to desiring her when she was his model, but now sensuous life has to take the place of dead art, perhaps even be united with art in a wholly new form of expression. His expectations of this are given an enormous weight of meaning, and the rhetoric can hardly be distinguished from lofty religious pathos. The tempting mountain has now become the “Peak of Promise” (p. 65). When Rubek greets Irene as his “grace-given bride” and allows himself to be worshiped as her “lord and master” (both p. 65), one gets the impression that we almost have to do with an imagined or expected apotheosis. The revitalization Rubek already feels glowing within him, which the two of them ritualize verbally, and which he expects will be consummated on the mountain, is to him as radical as an awakening of the dead. Irene has helped him to realize 39

See also T. Eide, Ibsens dialogkunst. Etikk og eksistens i Når vi døde vågner, (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget,2001), p. 239, and, expressed in considerably stronger terms, Helland, Melankoliens spill, p. 456.

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that he was dead – he now wants to live life “to its uttermost” (p. 64), if only this once, before the two go down to their graves again. Irene, on the other hand, has brought her knife with her into the mountains. It is evident that, like ever before, she is prepared to use it against herself. It is also evident that it was originally meant for Rubek, but that she had refrained from using it against him when she realized that he was already dead. Yet, one cannot help thinking that something in her has still wanted to use it against Rubek there in the mountains. To the very last, she refuses to hand it over. As regards Rubek’s love and desire she long appears hesitant, “the love that belongs to the life of earth […] is dead in both of us.” (p. 64), it is “too late. Too late” (ibid.). Only when Rubek embraces her and says “Then let two of the dead – us two – for once live life to its uttermost” (p. 64), does Ibsen allow Irene to act passionately, but what kind of passion this is, is not made clear.40 Here, at the very end of the last scene of the last act, Rubek and Irene do indeed seem in harmony, and they begin completing each other’s lines, but seeing how unstable and divided Irene has been all the way through, this may nonetheless be deceptive. It cannot be determined what project Irene in fact now has. Whatever it is, her presence and lines serve to egg Rubek on, so that his project, and the dangers it involves, become all the more sharply delineated. She imagines that where they are going, there, above the mists, there is “the summit of the tower,” which a reader who knows the Bible will recognize as the location of the second of Jesus’ temptations, from which the devil had asked him to throw himself down. If you do that, he had said, God will command His angels to bear you up, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone (Matt. 4.6). Rubek and Irene do not make it to their holy marriage, but are instead carried away by an avalanche and perish. They descend into their graves again, as indeed, they had expected, judging by their own words, but without having achieved their love encounter first. The fact that they die in the avalanche negates any thought of new attempts or continuations in normal, empirical reality. A central point in Wærp’s interpretation is that the Christian conception of resurrection in this play is used as a metaphor for a worldly transition to a new life. Unless one sees this transitional project as fulfilled by virtue of Rubek’s new attitude to Irene and to life, one must say that what Ibsen dramatizes is the failure of a worldly project of resurrection, and of a worldly conception of resurrection.41 But it is also problematic to see the resurrection or redemption 40 41

I here agree with Eide, Ibsens dialogkunst, p. 257. Detering, «Pax vobiscum», p. 89, has the same idea:“Rubek’s and Irene’s way lead to complete failure.”

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project as fulfilled in Rubek’s changed attitude to life. Primarily, it is unclear whether a qualitative renewal of life really took place, whether Rubek does not remain the same, rather self-centered artist, even though he will now devote himself to a warm body rather than to cold stone. Secondly, this renewal is at best connected with a new intention, an intention that precisely is not realized as life, not even as living momentarily to the full, as an “eternal second.” Interpreted as a strictly inner-worldly project of redemption, the result of Rubek’s and Irene’s ascent is not only that the goal is not achieved. The result is even more negative. As an echo of the failure of the artistic resurrection project, it means the definitive end, also of the two characters’ physical life. Although most recent interpreters seem to take it for granted,42 it is yet not obvious that a strictly empirically understood worldliness is the most adequate understanding of reality with which to meet this drama and its redemption projects. In Ibsen’s time we find several forms of idealism which imagined a spiritual super-reality. Both within what we may roughly classify as vitalism and aestheticism, there existed variants of such an idealism. Vitalism was antireductionistic and insisted that a life force or life principle existed which was not material but spiritual, and in some way connected to the soul, cp. Hans Driesch or Henri Bergson. Quite a lot of movements within art and literature have been described as aestheticism, for example the Pre-Raphaelites, symbolism and the literature of decadence. In relation to this play, it is perhaps decadence that is most interesting. If we look at authors such as Joris-Karl Huysmans, Oscar Wilde or Arne Garborg [in Trætte Mænd (published in English as both Weary Men and Tired Men) from 1891], it is certainly not difficult to trace the interest in something spiritual, non-empirical. In this multifarious area, and perhaps especially in the popular reception of vitalistic and aestheticist impulses, there was undoubtedly room for more or less distinct conceptions of an immortal soul. ‘The immortality of the soul’, a concept which it is accordingly fair also to impute to Rubek, is not negated by death in the same way as the idea of an empirically perceptible transition to new life. A concept like that can hardly be either proved or disproved. It is not even threatened by death, but presupposes death, though death interpreted as the death of the body, and consequently as  the liberation of the soul. The ambiguities that adhere to the outcome of Rubek’s and Irene’s project can be made understandable on the basis of this concept. It is seen primarily in Irene’s next to last line, when she solemnly promises to follow Rubek, and in Ibsen’s direction that she says it “som 42

For example, Wærp, Langås and Helland.

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forklaret”43 (p. 65). Helland interprets this “som” as meaning “as if she were transfigured”44 No reason is given for this narrowing of the field of interpretation. A more natural possibility than interpreting “som” as quasi, is to see it as synonymous with qua “being transfigured,” only as such does she also resemble the marble image of her in the first version of the sculpture.45 In the New Testament story of the transfiguration, the transfiguration is a change in how something is seen. To read ‘qua transfigured’ means that that was how Irene was seen, involuntarily, because she ‘in fact’ was and /or believed herself to be transfigured, possibly because her confusion suddenly grew,46 or because for some reason that was how she wanted to be seen – or, of course, because that was how those who saw her wanted to see her. ‘Objective’ criteria for ‘transfiguration’ or ‘the experience of transfiguration’, if, indeed, those are different, are obviously impossible to deal with. However that may be, there is reason here to call attention to Irene’s own use of ‘transfiguration’ earlier in the play, to give a name to a transformation that transcended or was different from the form of ‘resurrection’ she had already experienced. Ergo, this “som forklaret” remains as an assertion which is perhaps valid, indeed in several possible respects – on the basis of conceptions and expectations of transfiguration which are already in play in the drama, or which a reader may bring with him to the drama. Erling Sandmoe has proposed a somewhat different reason why the play actually has an ambiguous ending. Whereas the second act has mimicked the second version of the resurrection sculpture, he argues that the first version is re-created in the third act, only with the difference that Rubek himself has now stepped into the sculpture.47 By this re-introduction of the original resurrection sculpture, Sandmo thinks that an opening is created, although of an uncanny nature, towards realizing the dream of transition, in spite of everything. In that case, one may add, it is the immortality of the soul which wins in the end – at the expense of bodily consummation. In Heinrich Detering’s interpretation the competing redemption projects end in failure for both. But in his interpretation, the impossibility of innerworldly salvation at the same time entails a paradoxical eschatologization of salvation. When redemption proves impossible within normal life, death, which establishes this, can be read as a code for other-worldly salvation, a 43 English: “as (though) transfigured.” 44 Helland, Melankoliens spill, p. 469. 45 Cp. Eide, Ibsens dialogkunst, p. 258. 46 Cp. Eide, Ibsens dialogkunst, p. 258. 47 E. Sandmo, «Drømmen om noe mer», Afterword in Henrik Ibsen, Når vi døde vågner (Oslo: Gyldendal, 2005), p. 70.

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salvation which cannot be presented in any other way than by the silence of death in the final scene and its reference to the ineffable.48 The most common arguments for ambiguity, however, are based on the role of the “Sister of Mercy” in the final scene. The sister, dressed in black, who has so far stayed silent throughout the whole play, cries “Irene!” as soon as she sees the disaster, and then makes the sign of the cross and says “Pax vobiscum!” (p. 65). This is the last line in the play (but the last word is heard in Maia’s ever fainter song of freedom from far below). A peace salutation in Church Latin combined with the sign of the cross, not least when said by a virtual officiant in black, cp. the old cassock, immediately reminds us of a funeral, which undeniably is fitting for this occasion. To many, the “peace be with you” sounds like little more than a melancholy farewell at a graveside, and there is nothing in Ibsen’s text which directly points to other possibilities of interpretation. However, this peace salutation is of course an echo of the words with which the resurrected Christ met his frightened disciples (John 20.19ff), after which he breathed on them and gave them new life.49 All in all, ‘peace’ must be said to have been established as an incredibly strongly charged ecclesiastical word, usable for the most diverse occasions, and with a very wide-ranging potential of meaning, from death and sorrow to life and joy. This richness is precisely summed up in the Danish poet Grundtvig’s hymn “Fred til Bod for Bittert Savn” which was an often sung hymn at Ibsen’s time: Peace to soothe our bitter woes, God in Christ on us bestows; Jesus bought our peace with God With His holy, precious blood; Peace in Him for sinners found, Is the Gospel’s joyful sound. Peace to us the Church doth tell, ’Tis her welcome and farewell: Peace was our baptismal dow’r, Peace shall bless our dying hour; Peace be with you, full and free, Now and through eternity.50 48 49 50

Detering “Pax vobisccum,” p. 91. Cp. T.S. Dokka, Å gjenkjenne den ukjente, (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Oslo 1989), pp. 250–257. http://www.hymnary.org/text/peace_to_soothe_our_bitter_woes, Translator: G.T. Rygh.

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Far from all of this resonates in Ibsen’s text, in which there is neither any church, baptism nor God. But for someone, now or then, who knows the ecclesiastical traditions underlying Grundtvig’s text, the feeling that something ambiguous may be going on is reinforced. Ulfheim had said to Rubek and Irene, “it is a matter of life and death, here.” The ambiguous pax vobiscum of the sister, it seems, signals that it still is. Part III: Media Vita in Morte Sumus How one interprets the redemption projects and their result clearly depends on the eyes that see and what background one has for observing what happens on the stage. Egil A. Wyller’s interpretation illustrates this.51 His extensive inclusion of related literary works, Sophocles, Shakespeare, Goethe and others, as well as other parts of Ibsen’s dramatic and poetic production, gives him a unique breadth of understanding with which to meet and process the text. The result is a philosophical-religious reading which is dependent on that breadth to such a degree that it may seem alien to readers who bring another horizon with them.52 A more strictly text-immanent reading of When We Dead Awaken will have to conclude that a lot of questions remain unresolved and are as such passed on to the readers or audience for further reflection. This is not least obvious when it comes to the many Bible allusions – which are not actually Bible references until a reader detects them and chooses to process them as such. Quite a lot depends on the eyes that see. That any interpretation is dependent on the perspective of the interpreter is also true of the interpretative sequences within the text itself. In this play this is demonstrated by the diverse ways in which the characters look at life and reality. Whereas Maia and Ulfheim, in each their own way, seem to stay on the surface of things and are worldly in a naïve-superficial sense, both Rubek and Irene are portrayed as ‘seers’. They see through things, see more deeply or beyond reality as it immediately presents itself. As an artist, Rubek is absorbed by seeing the ideal and giving it artistic expression. How this is expressed, however, changes as the plot develops. In the unique Irene, he had found an actually existing ideal specimen, or somebody 51 52

E.A. Wyller: Et enhetssyn på Ibsen: Fra «Brand» til «Når vi døde vågner» (Oslo: Spartacus, 1999), pp. 163–181. See for example Eide’s assessment of Wyller’s interpretation as “free and creative,” Eide, Ibsens dialogkunst, p. 265.

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who was at least so close to the ideal that he could see her and model her as such. Later he is to a higher degree a critical ‘seer-through’ who sees the ugly things hidden in human beings. In the final version of the sculpture, there is a swarm of people with dimly suggested animal faces, and in the later portrait busts he sees animal faces behind the striking portrait likenesses. One gets the impression that in the sculpture he has intended to express this hidden animal character, but that people have not seen it, since everybody misunderstands his art (p. 9). Behind the busts, on the contrary, there seems to have been no intention of revealing hidden secrets; what Rubek saw in the depth of those sitting for him remains his own private mockery of them. He may well have become a disillusioned bread-and-butter artist, but he is still a seer, a wily, perhaps cynical, seer.53 Rubek’s way of looking at life is seen more clearly in contrast to Irene’s. Irene quite seriously thinks that she is dead; thus her gaze is constituted as death’s gaze at life. In an important passage she turns Rubek’s perspective upside down: she is in the other world. What is other-worldly for him is worldly for her – what is worldly for him is other-worldly for her (p. 20f). While Rubek regards living and dead in the perspective of life, Irene claims to see life and the living from the perspective of death. Thus, a sharp alternative perspective is thematized: the decisive point is from where life is seen. When the alternative can be phrased simply as ‘from the perspective of life or death’, the paradoxical transcendence problematic found in the title of the play is immediately triggered. With great accuracy Ibsen has directed the dramatic dialogue about the transitions between life and death towards a problematic of seeing, cp. Rubek’s question about what will happen “when we dead awaken”: “What do we really see then?” (p. 53, my emphasis). It is not in all respects obvious how we are to assess Irene’s understanding of herself as ‘dead’ and as ‘beyond the grave’. In a trivial, literal sense, it is of course not correct that she is dead, cp. Rubek’s violent protests (p. 23). This makes it natural to understand what she says about being dead as an expression of deep depression or quite simply as a sign of a disturbed mind, and so interpret this kind of language as figurative. Though we as readers must understand Irene’s talk of being dead as metaphorical, it is not at all given that she sees it the same way.54 In any case, a lot will be missed if one sticks to such a ‘diagnostic’ reading without going on to ask what this kind of language meant to Irene herself, be it metaphorical or not. 53 54

For a more detailed treatment of Rubek’s particular way of seeing things, see Helland, Melankoliens spill, pp. 367–368. See Langås, Kroppens betydning, p. 241f for a different opinion.

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Irene is quite precise when it comes to dating and defining her own ‘death’. Several times she couples the modeling work with what she sees as her death. The first time she does so one gets the impression that she herself had given up her soul: “I gave you my young, living soul. And that gift left me empty within – soulless. [Looking at him with a fixed stare.] It was that I died of, Arnold” (p. 29). Later the tone is strongly accusatory: it was Rubek who had torn the soul out of her. When Rubek is unable to understand that she could direct her hatred against him, she addresses her hatred of him like this: “Yes, for you – for the artist who had so lightly and carelessly taken a warm-blooded body, a young human life, and worn the soul out of it – because you needed it for a work of art” (p. 44). And later, “you have killed my soul” (p. 47). Even though the self-accusation returns when she calls what happened “self-murder” (p. 47), one generally gets the impression that Irene thought that Rubek had taken her soul and so to speak placed it in the clay sculpture instead. She wants to travel to the museum, she says, to the grave-vault where her soul now lies buried (p. 45). It is easy to see allusions to the creation story in Genesis here, cp. also the direct reference to Gen. 1.26 (p. 26). In Gen. 2, it is told that the Lord God first created a human being of dust and then breathed the breath of life into this ‘sculpture’s’ nostrils, so that he, in older translations, “became a living soul.” Where Rubek, as Irene describes the events, played the role of the Creator by breathing soul into his clay draft, this creation motif is reversed in her own case: as a consequence of Rubek’s giving the sculpture a soul, she was left behind, empty and soulless, as a dead earthen sculpture. On this background it seems to be art which has most directly caused Irene’s death. More precisely the type of art Rubek was generally absorbed in, and quite especially the way it came to a head in the project of depicting the resurrection day in her likeness. That a physical sculpture is dead, even though what it presents is life-like, is one thing. Another is the point made here, that this piece of art has also caused death, it has stolen life from its model and thus also contributed to crippling the artist’s own zest for life. How Ibsen makes art and life into opposite poles, has indeed, and rightly so, been a dominant theme in this play’s reception history.55 The cause of Irene’s death may, however, also be described in a slightly different way and so be connected to a more extensive life project, a project which Rubek’s art should perhaps first and foremost be seen as symptomatic of. At one point in the play, Irene refers to following Rubek (and, by implication, taking part in the work of modeling) as “the resurrection of my childhood” (p. 25). And she later tells him that she really got to see the ‘sunrise’, when after having been 55

Cp. Eide, Ibsens dialogkunst, p. 68; Wærp, Overgangens figurasjoner, pp. 130–132.

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tempted by Rubek she fell onto her knees and worshipped him (p. 51). However, when she talks about it, retrospectively, she is able to see that back then she was duped, since the result soon proved to become the opposite of resurrection. What she died of, in this perspective, may be said to be the towering ambition of the life project Rubek had enticed her into, including the non-participation in earthly life which it entailed. It was resurrection as an all-embracing life project that took her life, not merely a limited art project. Limiting the thematics of the play to the choice between life and art is misleading, against this background. The problematic ‘art’ in this drama must be read as representative of a comprehensive life form. That way a contrast is revealed between life form and life form – which in the last resort turns out to be identical with the contrast between life and death. In the light of Irene’s self-interpretation, one must conclude that the catastrophic resurrection of her childhood prefigures the resurrection project which is terminated so fatally in the last act. When Irene in the play regards herself as dead, it is very tempting to see her self-interpretation as tantamount to having taken over a dead sculpture’s persona, analogous to the (still soulless) pillar of dust in the story of the creation. That she actually appears in the play with clothes, gestures and movements which are immediately associated with a marble sculpture is one aspect of this. Her own identification with the first version of the sculpture is so strong that she refers to it with words like “I” and “me.”56 Another aspect of her sculpture persona is that she also describes her life after posing for the statue as repetitions of the original sculptural project. Both striptease and sculpture are scenic art forms that are meant to be watched. Thus, Irene describes the variety-shows she has posed in as clearly analogous to the sculptural plinth (Cp. the dialogue with Rubek p. 64). She had become what she posed for, an exhibited figure without a living soul. Also the period when she was committed to psychiatric care is described in ways that affirm this self-image. Seen from her perspective, there is an inner connection between posing on one plinth or another, and the pathology of her soul. When she describes her hospitalization and confinement in a strait-jacket as captivity in a grave-vault, it must be remembered that ‘grave-vault’ and ‘museum’ are synonymous in her vocabulary. Yet the most important aspect of Irene’s sculpture persona is not found in her self-image as such, but in the vantage point this gives her from which to regard life in general. It is qua dead resurrection sculpture that she sees what life is like, although she does not maintain this perspective in any consistent way. For one thing, she is not ‘entirely’ dead sculpture, she is of course also 56

Cp. Wærp, Overgangens figurasjoner, p. 147.

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awakening to life, little by little, and for another, much more earthly vital forces seem to break in, as time passes. But her persona as a dead sculpture makes it possible for her, now and then, to describe life and the living from a vantage point no living person (in reality) has access to, from beyond the grave. A sculpture is dead. It endures, but has no future. It is on the basis of death’s duration that Irene views life. As a consequence, Irene’s diagnosis of the living is more interesting than her calling herself dead. She sees what they don’t, that life has no duration, that it is based on death, that everything living, seen from her perspective, which may be called a perspective of eternity, is already as good as dead, and therefore to be regarded as dead. Life lies on its bier (p. 64). Among the many paradoxes here, there is especially one that is dealt with in Ibsen’s text: dead people cannot pronounce this truth about life, and therefore the dead resurrection figure, Irene, does not speak ‘out of herself’, whatever that may be. “She is the statue which is given a voice.”57 Everything she says is whispered into her ear (p. 23), and she thus appears as a revelation from some unidentified elsewhere. There seems to be an inner connection between this type of life vision, that death is the definitive truth about life on earth, and Irene’s pronounced readiness to take life. She has had many children, she says, but she has killed them all (p. 23). Rubek, who sees everything from a completely different perspective, does not understand this and thinks she is lying to him again, but Irene insists, “I have killed them, I tell you – murdered them pitilessly. As soon as ever they came into the world. Oh, long, long before. One after the other” (p. 23). Seen within the logic of life (and Rubek’s) it makes no sense to say that one has killed someone who is not yet born. Again, modern interpreters tend to take recourse to ‘metaphorical’ interpretation, for example that she “feels that she has been deprived of the ability and right to bear children”58 But Irene does not think within the logic of life. She seems to think that seen from beyond life, death must come before life. In accordance with this thought of the primacy of death, Irene always carries a knife with her (p. 62), and she is always prepared to use it, or just about to, whether it be against Rubek (pp. 45ff, 63), herself (p. 90) or the nursing sister (p. 42). She, who is herself dead, has seen death, has spread death, always carries the means of death with her, and is always ready to kill – perhaps because she knows that death is more basic, more eternal than what we call life.

57 Helland, Melankoliens spill, p. 419. 58 Langås, Kroppens betydning, p. 248.

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Whereas Irene sees life as a brief interlude between death and death, Rubek has imagined death as a short interval between life and life. As time passes, Rubek seems to some degree to accept Irene’s view and also begins to use some of the same phrases. Yet this is agreement on the surface, and Irene’s particular perspective, which in many ways is an inversion of Rubek’s, gives rise to some clear conflicts between them. The sharpest conflict occurs in connection with Rubek’s repentance. When Rubek, via the figure “remorse for a forfeited life” in his sculpture, confesses to Irene and repents of his crime against her, she reacts with anger and calls him “poet” (p. 47). The problem, seen from her angle, is not the truthfulness or lack of truthfulness in his confession of offences against her, nor that his remorse might not be sufficiently deeply felt, but that Rubek with this repentant confession thinks that his slate is thereby clean. She reacts “Because you are […] full of forgiveness for all the sins of your life, in thought and in act. You have killed my soul – so you model yourself in remorse, and self-accusation, and penance – [Smiling.] – and with that you think your account is cleared” (p. 47). Rubek defends himself by insisting that he is an artist. Irene sweeps that aside, and she explains why she keeps on calling him a poet. There is something apologetic in that word, she says, something self-absolving that spreads a cloak over all frailty. But guilt and frailty cannot be explained away, and it does become a fabrication if a person believes he has authored his own forgiveness. Irene’s criticism of Rubek is directed at his hubris, his belief that he can repair his life, make a clean slate, with himself as an agent and his own life as a means.59 Nor does the death of the sinner mean any redemption of sin, as Irene sees it, as if death could destroy and thus ‘nullify’ our offence. On the contrary. Seen from the perspective of death, in death, what we have wasted in our lives is retained and made eternal. Rubek’s ‘fabrication’ covers the reality which death retains, that in our lives which will remain – in Irene’s eyes. She uses herself as an example: she was a human being then, with a life and a destiny to fulfill. She gave up all that in order to make herself Rubek’s bondwoman. She now interprets that as self-murder, and as a deadly sin against herself – a sin she can never expiate (p. 47). They have both, she thinks, wasted their lives, neither of them can settle their account, not even by risking their life, and neither of them will be saved by death. What is at stake here is ‘the irreparable’. We may ‘poetically’ repair it and believe in this fiction as long as we live. But the irreparable, Irene says somewhat later, we only see “when we dead awaken” (p. 53). “What do we really see 59

For a different interpretation of Irene’s definition of Rubek as a poet, see Helland, Melankoliens spill, p. 401.

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then?” – Rubek asks. “We see that we have never lived,” Irene answers. She thinks of herself as already being in a position to see it. She is ‘beyond the grave’, and sees ‘life’ from outside. Even though Irene’s comments on the irreparability of life are phrased as general truths, they all stem from the concrete interchange between her and Rubek, first and foremost from her work as a model. This could suggest that the irreparable is connected with certain isolated misdeeds, with immorality or injustices that could have been avoided. However, the one offence which is in focus here has life in its totality as its victim, the irreparable is by turns talked about as taking somebody else’s life and giving up one’s own life. Rubek’s killing of Irene/Irene’s suicide thus becomes a representative example of not letting live, and not having lived.60 Irene seems to think that that is what life essentially is for everybody, unavoidably and irreparably. ‘Life’ is constituted by loss of life, so to speak. Irene’s claims presuppose that death cannot properly be defined as an ‘end point’. On the contrary, death is characterized by duration. When Irene links her existence to what for Rubek is beyond the grave, it is an otherworldly place where death is the master, and where the rule of death, as opposed to its rule in life, is open and acknowledged. A resurrection from the dead, on these premises, can only mean waking up to the insight that in the midst of life, as well as before and after it, we are mortal, that life lies on its bier (p. 64). Death talks. It is death which is the epilogue of life when we dead awaken, cp. the subtitle of the play: A Dramatic Epilogue. There is not much hope to be found in the view Irene has of life, and her way of anticipating death seems extremely life-inhibiting. It is difficult to see that any kind of redemption project or any dream of something more could hope to succeed on her premises. When she and Rubek die, it is entirely consistent with her view, and consistent with the irreparable in both their lives. Art could not conquer death, and nor could the forces of life. The only thing that is immortal, that cannot die, is the lifeless. Yet Irene’s contribution to the play reaches beyond the actual tragic content and end of life. In any literary text there exist directions for the role a reader is invited to perform. In Wolfgang Iser’s understanding of this ‘implicit reader’ changes in his or her viewpoint are decisive; reading implies a “wandering viewpoint” on what is said and done, as it is being unfolded in the text.61 The 60 61

For a similar view of the death Irene sees as universal, see Helland, Melankoliens spill, p. 436. W. Iser, The Act of Reading. A Theory of Aesthetic Response, (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978), pp. 108–134.

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range of viewpoints for a wandering reader to try out is stretched to the limit by Irene. An attentive reader is forced by her to imagine a viewpoint beyond this life, from which to view her, Rubek and the others. Such an idea or positioning can be seen in many ways, as illusory, as pathologically depressive, as an imaginary auxiliary construction, but it has to be sampled if one wants to enter into the reflections the play invites us to. And then it is difficult to deny that Irene’s vantage point beyond life, in all its pitilessness, actually gives her a sharper eye than Rubek on human existence. In all her madness she proves herself to be a superior interpreter of life. Where Rubek dreams and fabricates, her ‘after-life’ perspective opens for realism. What an actual reader/playgoer subsequently does with the idea of such a position beyond life is of course something else. A central question will be whether it is practically possible to maintain Irene’s realistic view of life without a perspective which in some way is anchored outside life. The idea that a true assessment of this life is possible presupposes both that life can be viewed as a complete whole, can be viewed from the ‘outside’, and that criteria exist that will distinguish between what is true and what is invented in our selfinterpretation. How can we avoid ending in Rubek’s superficial and loose reproductions if there is nothing to retain what happened, what was said and done, what we suffered and what we caused, if our understanding of life is not guided by death’s constitutive role for life, by its permanent presence as a basic condition. The next question to command our attention is of course whether it is possible to think death into one’s self-interpretation without all joy and desire for life being killed by it, as was the case for Irene. Irene’s concept of being dead in the midst of life is not her (Ibsen’s) invention, and it wouldn’t be unnatural if a reader looked to earlier, kindred, traditions in his considerations of the thematics of the play. Among the possibilities which then present themselves, it will be especially relevant to call attention to the old ecclesiastical antiphony Media vita in morte sumus. This text has erroneously been ascribed to Notker the Stammerer (c. 840–914) and was probably written as early as the middle of the 8th century. It was re-written by Luther as the hymn Mytten wir ym leben synd mit dem todt vmbfangen and came to play a central role, also in Lutheran Christianity. The hymn/antiphony seems to have been a source of inspiration for several authors who were close to Ibsen in time and culture; for example, it is unthinkable that it is not an influence behind Rainer Maria Rilke’s little “Schlusstück.”62 An 62

Der Tod ist groß. Wir sind die Seinen Lachenden Munds.

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English translation of the hymn from 1854 goes, “Though in midst of life we be, Snares of death surround us.” As Ibsen and his contemporaries knew the hymn, it is a dark description of the conditions of life, “Whilst in midst of death we be, Hell's grim jaws o'ertake us,” but also a prayer to God, “Let not hell dismay us With its deep and burning flood. Kyrie eleison”63 This text communicates a perspective on life which has clear similarities to Irene’s. What primarily makes the antiphony different is, of course, that there is a God to invoke. Without this one merciful God, a God who even controls death and who forgives sin “from the outside,” the picture would be as dark as hers: man cannot save or redeem himself – and there is no one else who can do it. How does the Christian concept of a saving God relate to When We Dead Awaken? The answer to this question must be that it is not at all thematized in the play, certainly not in any direct way. The mindset of all the dramatic characters comes across as post-Christian, and the redemption projects that are problematized, from the worldly to the idealistic, are non-Christian. This problematization could be said to harmonize with the classic theological problematization of all attempts at self-generated ‘redemption’. But debunking post-Christian views of life does not in itself entail any defence of or any return to Christianity, and no positive Christian alternative is found within the play – other than indirectly, primarily in the use of Bible material and references to Christian traditions of piety. If a reader holds on to these sources, and lets them guide his own appropriation of the way the play deals with its themes, it cannot on one hand be said to be without basis in the text, but it cannot, on the other hand be claimed as the play’s own ‘message’. He who wants to change Ibsen’s no to the post-Christian into a yes to the Christian, may do so with the aid of Ibsen and his last play, both steeped in the Bible; but in any case, he does so at his own risk. Wenn wir uns mitten im Leben meinen, Wagt er zu weinen Mitten in uns. 63 http://openhymnal.org/Lyrics/Though_In_The_Midst_Of_Life_We_Be-Mitten_Wir_Im _Leben_Sind.html Trans. R. Massie 1854.

Final Considerations and Perspectives Svein Aage Christoffersen, Geir Hellemo, Leonora Onarheim, Nils Holger Petersen and Margunn Sandal There was once a time when the angels were God’s messengers and signs both of God’s transcendence and God’s presence in this world, writes Peter L. Berger in A Rumor of Angels.1 Today it is different. The angels are no longer signs of God’s transcendence, but at best they just represent a rumor of transcendence. Thus, Berger’s book is not about angels, but about what he calls signals of transcendence in a modern, secularized world. Such signals of transcendence are phenomena like, order, play, hope, damnation and humor. All these phenomena are a natural part of human existence. They are examples of how people in different ways transcend their existence, as it was originally given. That man goes beyond his existence does not mean that his self-transcendence has acquired the significance that angels had in earlier times. Man’s self-­transcendence is still a phenomenon in this world and it is not necessary to understand it as anything else. Nonetheless, with his examples of signals of transcendence, Berger has given the discussion of divine transcendence an anthropological base in phenomena, which makes it more than just a loose rumor. Signals of transcendence are rumors that are worth examining more closely. In this book, we have examined man’s self-transcendence from the point of view of the theology of creation. With this as our point of departure, it turns out that self-transcendence does not necessarily mean that like Münchausen, man tries to pull himself up by his own hair, from the immanent to the transcendent. On the contrary, self-transcendence is an expression of the potential for transcendence that lies in the materiality and sensoriness of the created world. The created world’s sensoriness is, then, not a hindrance for transcendence; on the contrary, it is a possibility for transcendence. This connection between the created world’s sensoriness and man’s self-transcendence means that it is necessary to distinguish between selftranscendence and the Christian preaching of Jesus Christ as the savior of man. Self-­transcendence is not salvation in the Christological sense of the word; nor does it make the doctrine of salvation in Jesus Christ superfluous. However, the Christological doctrine of salvation does not make man’s 1 See “Introduction,” p. 1.

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self-transcendence superfluous either. The potential for transcendence that lies in the created world’s sensoriness is, on the contrary, a perspective for understanding the doctrine of salvation. Self-transcendence as a given in creation is a condition for the possibility of understanding the doctrine of salvation. Thus, this way of thinking not only sets up a division between creation and salvation, but it also ties creation and the Christian message of salvation together. The message of salvation cannot be elicited from the theology of creation; nor should the theology of creation be derived from the message of salvation either. The theology of creation and the message of salvation are quite simply in a dialectical relationship to each other. Since the connection between sensoriness and transcendence is rooted in aesthetic experience, art has always been a central place for dealing with the relationship between sensoriness and transcendence. In a Christian context, art has been a quite particular meeting ground for the theology of creation and the doctrine of salvation, in so far as the world’s perceptibility in the form of colors, lines, rhythm, sound, texture, tactility, etc. are used as means for understanding and communicating the message of salvation. In our attempt to stimulate a renewed reflection on the relationship between sensoriness and transcendence, we have chosen material from both older and more recent times. This does not of course mean that we dismiss the differences between older and more recent works of art. ‘Art’ has become something else in our time than it was before, and transcendence has become a problem today in another way than it was before. But also older works of art are present in our time as a source of aesthetic experience. Thus, the fact that there are paintings, sculptures, buildings and music today which have been created under other forms of aesthetic reflection than that which is typical of our time expands the context for our aesthetic experience and reflection. As the art of the past can pretend to mediate transcendence in a clearer and perhaps more direct way than is often the case in contemporary art, it can be tempting to let the art of the past stand alone as a representation of a rumor of transcendence. In this book, our aim has been to avoid a nostalgic retreat to the art and aesthetic forms of expression of the past. And in contemporary art the relationship between sensoriness and transcendence can be dealt with in ways that are worth examining more closely. In order to bring this fully to the fore, we have chosen to conclude the book with an epilogue in which each of the editors has hand-picked one Nordic artist or one Nordic work of art from our own time that in a particular way keeps the question of transcendence alive and open for continued studies.

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Svein Aage Christoffersen: Isaac – Transformation and Transcendence (Peter Brandes) Peter Brandes (b.1944) is a Danish painter, sculptor, ceramic artist and photographer who must be counted among Denmark’s most important contemporary artists. His works include the St. Andreas chapel and the Royal Gate in Roskilde Cathedral (2010), glass mosaics and decorations in Vejleå Church, Denmark, (1997), in the Village of Hope Church in Los Angeles (2008), and in the Cathedral of Northern Lights in Alta, Norway (2014). Brandes has also illustrated a number of books, for example Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey and Ovid’s Metamorphoses. A central motif in the work of Peter Brandes is the story of Abraham who at God’s command sets off for a high mountain in the country of Moria to sacrifice his own son Isaac as a burnt offering (Genesis 22). The motif has often been depicted in Christian art, and both Rembrandt and Caravaggio have made versions in which the focus is on the dramatic moment when Abraham is about to stab Isaac but is stopped by an angel who forbids him to lay hands on the boy. Abraham obeys and finds a ram which he can sacrifice instead. In the story in Genesis 22, it is God who stops Abraham at the very moment when he is about to do his deed. So when Abraham does not sacrifice his own son as a burnt offering, it is not because he is less god-fearing than others. On the contrary, Abraham is willing to sacrifice his son if that is God’s will. But that is not God’s will. On the contrary, he demands that Abraham does not touch the boy. God only wants to test Abraham, so that we who hear and read the story will understand that when Abraham does not lay hands on the boy, it is precisely because he is a god-fearing man. No matter what we might otherwise think of the story and its ‘plot’, it sets up an absolute prohibition against using a human being as a burnt offering. It is therefore wrong when the story is called the sacrifice of Isaac, as often happens. The story of Abraham and Isaac is the story of the sacrifice that did not take place, which could not take place, and which cannot take place either, as long as God rules and people live a pious life. In the Christian tradition the text has of course been read Christologically, as about Christ as the one who was sacrificed instead of the many. When the text is read in this light, the vicarious sacrifice of Jesus on Calvary becomes a kind of subtext which gives the theological reason why no burnt offering of any kind is to be offered to God. God has taken upon himself the sacrifice which is needed to reconcile God and man. In that way, the original point of the text is maintained: fathers shall not sacrifice their own or others’ sons as a burnt offering to God. God himself has forbidden that. In the Christological context

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this point is sharpened, in that a sacrificial cult is in any form made needless, once and for all. In the Christological context the story of Abraham and Isaac is still a story about the sacrifice that did not take place, and which never will take place, if God is allowed to rule. In the 20th century, this sacrifice motif takes a different turn. Isaac now becomes a representative of all those who are actually sacrificed in this world. An example of this inverted version is Wilfred Owen’s poem The Parable of the Old Man and the Young, written during World War I. Owen follows the story of Genesis 22 up to the point where the angel forbids Abraham to lay his hands on the boy, and Abraham is asked to sacrifice a ram instead. But then the story takes a new dramatic turn in Owen’s version: But the old man would not so, but slew his son, And half the seed of Europe, one by one.2 Here Isaac is not spared; on the contrary he is sacrificed. This inversion of the motif comes about by making Isaac the epitome of the generation of young men who were slaughtered during World War I. Thus, the original story puts the slaughter in World War I in relief: in the same way as Abraham would have defied God if he had sacrificed his son, the old men of Europe have committed a sacrilege by sacrificing their sons. The slaughter takes place because they would not listen, but on the contrary did what Heaven itself forbade them to do. When Benjamin Britten wrote his War Requiem for the reopening of the cathedral in Coventry in 1962, he incorporated Owen’s text in the offertory.3 Thus Isaac does not only become the epitome of the generation who was slaughtered in World War I, but also a representative of all those who were sacrificed during World War II. At the same time, the text is given a new slant, in light of The Holocaust. Isaac was a Jew, and hence also becomes a representative of all the Jews who ended their lives in the crematoria of the concentration camps. Also in Peter Brandes’ pictures, Isaac is depicted as the victim (Fig. 20.1). In one picture after another we see Isaac in a set position: kneeling, and most often with his neck bent. Abraham is not in the picture, Isaac is alone, his neck taut, and already with a fatal bend. Here there is no angel to stop the sacrifice. Isaac is the sum of everyone who is slain, in our time and in any time. Isaac is those who are sacrificed. But he is also a defined group of victims. Brandes’ grandfather’s name was Isak, he was a Jew, and died in a German concentration camp. In a number of Brandes’ pictures, small barbs point out of Isaac’s back, like the barbs 2 J. Stallworthy, (ed) (1985). The Poems of Wilfred Owen (London: Chatto & Windus, 1985), p. 151. 3 B. Britten, War Requiem, op. 66. Score. (London: Boosey & Hawkes, 1962).

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Figure 20.1 Peter Brandes, Isaac, pencil and watercolour, 1994–1995. From exibition in Tel Aviv 1995. THANKS TO PERMISSION BY THE ARTIST

on barbed wire. Isaac carries the barbed wire of the concentration camp on his own body, and hence he also represents the Jewish Holocaust initiated by the Nazis. But what is the purpose of basing the stories of the many who have been sacrificed on the story of the one who was not sacrificed? Isn’t the point lost when the original story is inverted in this way? Rather the reverse. Who are they, all those who disappeared in the crematoria or who were nothing but skeletons in the heaps of corpses in the concentration camps when the war was over? They are nobody, the henchmen say. They are nothing but bones and ashes. They are Isaac, say Owen, Britten and Brandes. They are the child God forbade us to lay hands on. In this way, sacrificing the many is denounced as an outrage and an atrocity. To lay hands on Isaac is sacrilege, now as then, and at any time.

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Another question is whether this sacrilege can be expressed aesthetically. Will the aesthetic expression not automatically mean that the sufferings of the victims are made less terrible? In a certain respect, this is correct, but that does not mean that the suffering is made innocuous. Suffering must not necessarily be represented naturalistically for us to perceive it as real. In Brandes’ work the suffering is real enough in the form of the kneeling Isaac. But the important point comes across, exactly in the aesthetics of the stylized form: the image of Isaac is not about re-creating the outrage in all its horror, but about giving the victims nobleness and dignity in the midst of suffering. In the concentration camps, in the gas chambers and in the trenches, people are treated as if their lives are without importance, as if it is no matter whether they live or die. One dead person, ten dead, a thousand dead, a hundred thousand – it is of no consequence. It is all nothing but bones and ashes. No, Brandes says, there is more than bones and ashes here. Every single one is of consequence. The aesthetic qualities of the picture emphasize the importance and value of the victims. The artistic formulation is a protest and a rebellion against the outrage. It transcends the attempt at reducing the victims to bones and ashes. The aesthetic form is a sign of transcendence. What kind of transcendence are we facing here? If we base our answer on Peter Berger, it is obvious to relate to what he says about damnation as a signal of transcendence. When the victims are depicted in the image of Isaac, it is a damnation of the atrocity they have been subjected to. However, there is something more than mere damnation going on here. It is also about acknowledging the importance of the victims as something more than simply bones and ashes. I will therefore add yet another sign of transcendence to Berger’s list, and that is acknowledgement. What makes acknowledgement as a sign of transcendence particularly interesting is that acknowledgement cannot be described as a purely anthropological phenomenon. Acknowledgement is not only a question of ascribing value and importance to someone, but also, primarily, of recognizing the value and importance of the other, and thus also take the other’s value and importance as a given, as bestowed. Precisely because the aesthetic form acknowledges, the aesthetic expression is also an important sign of transcendence. Geir Hellemo: Dialogues about the Theme of Transcending (Kjell Torriset) In the summer of 2004, the Norwegian artist, Kjell Torriset was invited to exhibit his works in the National Gallery in Oslo. Kjell Torriset (b. 1950) lives in England today. For several decades he has made a name for himself as one of

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our most eminent contemporary artists in large exhibitions and important decorative commissions both in Norway and England. The pictures that were shown in the National Gallery were placed on the end wall in a rectangular room (Fig.  20.2). The pictures had three different main formats. The three largest pictures, depicting dark rectangles against a

Figure 20.2 Kjell Torriset, East-West (Dialogues 3). From exhibition in The National Gallery, Oslo, 2004 PHOTO: U. ROKKAN

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light background, hung low on the wall. The pictorial expression is strictly geometrical, with the dark rectangles of varying sizes. Offhand, they give the impression of appearing as openings into an unknown world, whose only characteristics are darkness. While the middle picture gives associations to something like a door, the smaller rectangles lead one’s mind more in the direction of small window openings. The nine approximate squares in the row of pictures above add nuances to and elaborate on this theme. Here the pictorial expression is far more varied; one could call it variations over a basic theme, which could be called transcendence. It is as if the pictures always see it as their task to point towards something which appears in extension of the immediate visual impression. But it is not necessarily about transcending inwardly or into the deep. In the picture that shows a circle, it is the very circle, the perfect form, that points beyond itself. Here transcendence is found in the picture’s own surface. In other pictures it is different. In the second picture from the left the picture surface appears as if it is transparent: it is almost as if one is peering through water or through a veil of mist – without anything concrete appearing in the water or behind the veil. And in picture number three from the right is depicted a kind of washed-out track which looks like an imprint of a hand: the picture gives a hint that someone has been by here. And one could go on like that. Several of the remaining pictures show different geometrical forms that emerge clearly through sharply delimited forms, at times with divisions that give associations to architecture. These forms, then, are placed in contrast to a background which is characterized by soft transitions between light and dark. Again we get the impression of an undefined transcendence, but this time to something that is neither light nor dark. The last picture, at the very right, is left in its entirety to a kind of shimmering of faint light on a dark surface. But actually, it is about something more: uppermost in the right corner the surface of the picture seems to fold a bit towards us. It is as if a dark, partially perforated wall can be drawn aside in order to open towards something that is more than just light: a narrow red stripe hints at a richer world behind. The upper row of pictures brings into focus the fact that all the colors – white, black and red, as well as transitional tones in different shades of beige – not only point inwards, but upwards: the pictures are rectangles whose upper edges form a point. Altogether, the wall of pictures is to be understood as a modulation of the theme, transcendence – on the surface, inwards in depth, upwards in height. But transcendence in itself appears as undefined, open-ended. The pictures tell us first and foremost that the world is to be understood as something more: something more than just its own surface, one might say. However, this is not the last word on the pictures’ surplus of meaning, as Torriset was invited to exhibit his own works with his personal selection from

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the collections of the National Gallery. He chose from the museum’s collection of Russian icons, which were hung on the opposite end wall of the exhibition room (Fig. 20.3). The icons were given an iconostasis-like hanging, which clearly corresponds to the arrangement of Torriset’s own works. The two groups of pictures should without doubt be seen as being in dialogue. The

Figure 20.3 Kjell Torriset, East-West (Dialogues 3). From exhibition in The National Gallery, Oslo, 2004 PHOTO: U. ROKKAN

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dialogic aspect was also underlined by the placement of a Cimabue-inspired cross in the middle of the room, which also gave the exhibition a suggestion of installation. The name East–west, as the exhibition was called, indicates both dialogue and difference. This is not the occasion for going further into the connecting lines between the emergence of abstract painting in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century and the religious thematic that was an important prerequisite at that time for the pioneering artistic work. Nor will we elaborate on the connection that is found between Torriset’s pictorial universe and the abstract expressionism in the usa in the 1950’s and ’60’s, when in particular Barnett Newman’s pictures constituted a clear point of contact. It will suffice here to establish that the juxtaposition of Torriset’s pictures and the Russian icons changes, or deepens, the expressive content of the pictures. The undefined transcendent in his own pictorial universe gains content by the juxtaposition with the icons, which of course have the aim of communicating a clear and implicitly understood divine reality into this world. In my opinion, the dialogue between Torriset’s pictures and the Russian icons achieves the desired effect. It means that the transcendence that Torriset works with and the transcendence that the icons presuppose enter into a genuine dialogue. The transcendence of existence and Christian transcendence in Eastern garb belong together naturally. The experience of seeing the pictures together confirms this. But it also corresponds well to the ideology that lies behind – the icons in any case, since the Christian faith insists that the general and the specific in Christianity are inseparable. Thus, it is also said in the Nicene Creed: in Him (Christ), through Whom all things were made – per quem omnia facta sunt. This means that the Christian faith itself presupposes that the created world has a fundamentally transcendent character.

Nils Holger Petersen: A Sound of the Unknown (Arne Nordheim)

The Norwegian composer Arne Nordheim (1931–2010) became one of the best known avant-garde composers of the 20th century, also internationally. Like many others who in the period after World War II were inspired by the so-called Darmstadt School, in which prominent composers like Pierre Boulez and Karlheinz Stockhausen set the trend, Arne Nordheim explored new sound universes and tried with his music to open people’s ears to the unknown. A typical title in this respect is Listen (from Nordheim’s only work for piano, composed in 1971). In several works Nordheim also deals with great fundamental questions of existence, through his choice of texts from the Bible and great literary works

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from the tradition in which transcendence in some sense is a theme. An example is his Wirklicher Wald (Real Forest) from 1983, a work for soprano solo, cello solo, choir and orchestra, in which the choir sings Rainer Maria Rilke’s poem “Todeserfahrung,” while the soprano unfolds dramatic-lyrical cascades of notes to a text from Job 14.1–2 (sung in Hebrew). The Job text takes up the frequently used biblical theme of man’s short onerous life, but in a particular variation of the thought, by emphasizing in verse 2 that man flees like a shadow. Here, apparently, the idea is formulated that man would like to transcend his existence, even though he is unable to do so on his own. In Nordheim this is set up against Rilke’s experience of death, which on the one hand expresses death’s speechless lack of commentary to man’s fundamental question to life, “Wir wissen nichts von diesem Hingehn, das nicht mit uns teilt” (“We cannot understand it, this going hence that will not answer anything we ask”), and yet gives painful access to the experience of the reality of our brief life, its sensuous reality, which in some moments can make man play his role without thinking of applause, “[…] wie ein Wissen von jener Wirklichkeit sich niedersenkend, so dass wir eine Weile hingerissen das Leben spielen, nicht an Beifall denkend” (“like intimations of that reality and of its laws, and we transcend awhile our limitations and play life without thinking of applause”).4 In Nordheim the contrast and continuity between Rilke’s thoughts and those of the Bible are brought out through a partly gliding – in an almost traditional sense beautiful – sound picture, in which the soprano and the cellist nevertheless stand out from the choir and orchestra through individual eruptions which primarily grow out of the overall, modernistic, but not hard, sound pattern. Altogether, the work is sensuously beautiful in an ethereal and simultaneously quite direct way. It seems as if the world is sensed and the play (i.e. the music) is played – quite literally – entirely straightforwardly, without ulterior motives, in accordance with the Rilke text. It is transcendence in which man’s temporality is maintained and sensed, in that one faces one’s own limitation. In other words, this is a transcendence in Kierkegaard’s sense since the work presents and makes sensory a construction of man’s relation to himself and his own mortality and limitation, partly through the message of the text constellation and partly expressed through the music. In another work, Aurora (1984), for vocal quartet and tape, verses from Psalm 139 are sung in Hebrew and Latin (Psalm 138 in the Vulgate, according to the 4 Wirklicher Wald is recorded on cd: ncd 4910, Norwegian Music Productions Ltd, 1986; biem/n©b, published by The Society of Norwegian Composers. Rilke’s text and an English translation (by J.B. Leishmann), quoted here, are printed in the accompanying booklet on pp. 37 and 39.

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Greek tradition). These verses about God who encloses the human world everywhere, and for whom the darkness is not dark, verses which point to an enclosing, powerful, boundless, unexplorable world of light, meaning and joy, are confronted at the end of the work with the last song of Dante’s Paradiso (from The Divine Comedy), in which Dante after having ascended through Hell and Purgatory and having passed through Paradise, has finally arrived at the eternal light and realizes that it is love that moves his will and desire, just as it moves the Sun and the other stars (Paradise, Canto XXXIII). The texts clearly express experiences of transcending the human world. Nordheim’s harmonies are unforeseeable (in counterpoint between the four singers and the taped music, which is also mainly based on vocal sounds), but at the same time the music presents a musical universe that is immediately accessible. It is not difficult to listen to, it is modernistic but mostly lyrical and soft sounding. At the same time, it obviously constitutes an ‘other’, a foreign universe of musical sound compared to those we can usually listen to. It transcends a well-known human universe of sound and demands openness from the listener.5 In relation to the project of this book, it is remarkable how little Nordheim’s modernist universe in these works – as we have otherwise come to expect of musical modernism – expresses meaninglessness or emptiness. Instead they express not only longing for, but also the possibility of a universe to which someone who wants to trace the rumor of transcendence can turn. Of course it does so on the premises of sensoriness, whether they are expressed in words as in Rilke or in the Bible’s clear point of the transitoriness of human life, or expressed imaginatively by conjuring up a sensory concept of transcendence which cannot be traced or proved or sensed here and now, but which a rumor can point to, and which only an expressive sensoriness in the way the rumor is presented can make convincing for human beings.

Margunn Sandal: An Architectural Sense of Light (Jørn Utzon)

Jørn Utzon (1918–2008) is probably the most important of 20th-century Danish architects, and he received the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2003. His international breakthrough came in 1957 when he won the competition to build the opera house in Sydney in Australia. The Sydney Opera House (1959–1973) became one of the most famous 20th-century works of architecture, but for various reasons Utzon resigned as architect to the project in 1966. After his return to Denmark he was asked by the members of the Bagsværd Parish Council in 1967 if he would design their new church. 5 Also Aurora is recorded on the cd referred to in n. 4 with the texts printed in the booklet also in translation.

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Utzon himself called the assignment: “the finest task an architect can have.”6 But at the same time, it made him feel insecure: I often asked when we worked on the church: What do you want? What is a church interior actually? How do we figure out if it should be light or dark, high or low, etc.? Then I said in my stupidity: how do you make a sacred space?7 The answer he received from the local minister was down-to-earth: “You do not make a sacred space. A sacred space is a place that is consecrated. It can be under a tree or it can be anywhere. You must definitely not try to make a sacred space.”8 The church that was completed in 1976 became a major work in Danish church architecture, and it has received much attention among architects all over the world. Utzon created a transcendent space, where he combined the idea of a spatial ‘anywhere’, with a concrete qualitative ‘here’. He grounds the transcendent in something that can take place anywhere, but which at the same time is an experience one can have only by finding oneself present somewhere. He creates this space through sensitive treatment of natural light. At first glance, there is little in the building that reminds one of a church. The white complex has an industrial and rational feel to it. The facades and roof are constructed out of aluminum, concrete, glass and some small areas of wood. The architecture can give associations to a grain silo.9 The construction closes off the outside world with seemingly uniform white-gray surfaces that make it impossible to look in. Only high up under the ridge of the roof can one glimpse some windows. The exterior gives a profane impression, and all immediate references to this being a sacred building are absent. There is here a kind of architectural secularization of the church (Fig. 20.4). At the same time, there is something in this exterior that suggests that the building is something more than a functional container for grain. A sensitive treatment of light starts already in the exterior of the church. The white concrete surfaces reflect much light. At first glance, the walls can seem neutral and uniform, but when you take a closer look, you will notice that the walls are neither as uniform nor as neutral as they seem at first. 6 J. Utzon, Logbog Vol. II. Bagsværd, ed. J. Utzon et al. (Hellerup: Edition Blöndal, 2005), p. 114. 7 P. Jensen, “Jeg er inspireret af skyerne…,” Bagsværd kirke, (Bagsværd: Bagsværd menighedsråd, 2004), p. 2. 8 Jensen, “Jeg er inspireret af skyerne…”, p. 2. 9 K. Dirckinck-Holmfeld, “Bagsværd Church, 1976,” in Utzon and the New Tradition, M. Keiding and K. Dirckinck-Holmfeld, eds., P. Avondoglio, trans. (Copenhagen: The Danish Architectural Press, 2005), p. 200.

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Bagsværd Church, Jørn Utzon, exterior, Copenhagen, 1976 Photo: Svein Aage Christoffersen

The concrete tiles on the outer walls have different qualities. At the lowest level on the wall there are horizontal, rectangular tiles. These are white and matte. Above them, the wall is covered with vertical rectangular tiles in a much smaller format, glazed and in somewhat more grayish-white tones than the other tiles. The tiles follow the church’s ascending movement upwards. On an ordinary gray day, the glazed tiles do not make much of an impression. Though more painstakingly made, these surfaces may seem both grayer and sadder than the other surfaces. However, under certain circumstances, sunlight is taken up and reflected in the tiles, making them shine. In this way, the building changes character with the shifts in the day and season. In contrast to the loss of particularity which a thoroughly mechanized architectural reproduction leads to, this is a building form which allows the local light to play with the material. Utzon’s use of glazed tiles in the exterior is thought through on several levels. The tiles are not only decorative. As Utzon himself has pointed out, they make an aesthetic connection between the outer and the inner: “so when approaching from the outside one senses that something or other is happening behind the big box, something that jags up and down, and when one enters, one suddenly understands.”10 10 Utzon, Logbog Vol. II, p. 117.

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What one encounters upon entering the church is a surprisingly light space (Fig. 20.5). The light that the architect takes in and keeps in the room is comfortable, soft and natural. It creates a serene and tranquil mood, which can be reminiscent of the mood that the pervasive, sourceless light of a winter sky gives. Entering into the church one does not expect this kind of light. As mentioned, this church is a closed building which only to a small degree opens up to its surroundings. So where does the light come from? After closer inspection, it becomes clear that even though the church is nearly windowless, daylight enters the building in large quantities. But it happens indirectly. At the entrance, light is first led down into a front garden, after which it is transported through a transparent grating into the rear part of the church. A window frame high up in the church’s wall towards the northwest throws light on the convex and concave vaults that constitute the roof of the church. The corridors, which both surround and penetrate the church facility, take in light through the roof and channel it, so that it both surrounds and suffuses the church interior. Utzon got his inspiration for the design of Bagsværd Church on a sandy beach in Hawaii. Here, from early morning a strong breeze came in which was carried across the sea all the way from California. At times, one could literally lean up against it and experience an uncommon serenity. The same wind often brings with it a series of clouds, through which light and sun penetrate to the sand. In these surroundings, Utzon experienced a strong feeling of peace and

Figure 20.5

Bagsværd Church, Jørn Utzon, interior, Copenhagen, 1976 Photo: Svein Aage Christoffersen

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joy and gratitude for being alive: “It is wonderful. It is a natural space which gives a deep peace of mind, and peace of mind is precisely this: it is the happiness of being alive, it is joy and gratitude.”11 This is the atmosphere that he has built into Bagsværd through his sensitive treatment of light. At the same time, the architecture is not the individual artist’s communication of his own emotions. Utzon creates a connection to a general sensory experience of a surplus of meaning, an experience of deep gratitude for something that reveals itself in nature. The particular intake of daylight, in interplay with other architectural elements contributes to a mood which cannot be experienced without being there. At the same time, this is a mood which is not reserved for the church interior. It is an experience of deep gratitude for something that is not only a result of the individual’s rational productivity, but is a gift; a wind it is possible to lean up against, a ray of sun which falls through the clouds or gives life to a wall. This is not an experience which is foreign to theology or religious practice. Thus it is not surprising that Utzon could borrow a stanza from a morning prayer which his mother-in-law used to pray with his children, and let it be a premise for his project: Thank you for the light Thank you for the gift of life Thank you for all that you have given12 Utzon has created a space which radiates an exuberance that goes beyond the utilitarian. The light gives a sense of a surplus of meaning, reminiscent of an immediate feeling of deep gratitude. The architectural treatment of the light makes possible a transcending aesthetic experience which is connected in this building with the liturgical celebration of the grace of creation.

Leonora Onarheim: Variations on Death (Jon Fosse)

The Norwegian dramatist Jon Fosse (b.1959) has written everything from short stories to novels to children’s books and hymns, but internationally he is best known for his plays. He has been translated into over forty languages and is regularly performed on stages all over the world. After Henrik Ibsen, with whom he is often compared, he is the Norwegian dramatist that is played most often. 11 Utzon, Logbog Vol. II, p. 116. 12 Utzon, Logbog Vol. II., p. 116.

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Among the aesthetic expressions of transcendence taken up in this book, literature is probably the form of expression with which theology has worked most. Religious writings, as well as hymns, poetry and prose have been and are important expressions of faith which often explore the tension between the sensory and the transcendent. In the texts chosen in the previous section, this tension is elucidated from a decidedly religious perspective (the Bible), a poetic but theological perspective in a Christian universe (Grundtvig) and a modernist and secular perspective in a post-Christian universe (Ibsen). More perspectives could have been added. Modernist and post-modern texts taken from our own time can challenge the tension between sensoriness and transcendence in a special way. What special challenges would they present? The words ‘God’ and ‘Jesus’ are today used to a considerably greater extent in Scandinavian fiction than only 15–20 years ago. This, however, does not necessarily mean that the words are replete with theological content. Texts may be full of religious words without being intentionally religious, or they may be about God without a single religious word being used.13 This may be so because words – in a world that is inundated with written information in all media – are seen as empty of meaning. It may also be related to a wish to hold on to something which cannot really be described in words, something that surpasses the understanding of man. Fosse describes his attempt to find words for the divine as follows, “But I think it is a little difficult to talk of God. The problem may be that when one talks about something it disappears. When one talks about God he disappears.”14 How to approach the transcendent through the sensory, then? Fosse, who very much works with challenges connected with language and representation, is an example of a contemporary artist who creates works in the field of tension between sensoriness and transcendence. In contrast to Ibsen, Fosse communicates descriptions of states of mind rather than actions. He depicts moods, not events. Therefore his writing also works better in the theatre than in short stories; in the latter everything is communicated through words, in the theatre pauses and silences can be inscribed, as indeed Fosse does. The pauses contribute to creating a space for something ineffable, and do not only characterize Fosse’s works, but contribute strongly to our experience of each work. Fosse’s active use of pauses shows how silence can be a strongly sensuous element of a transcending nature. 13 14

R. Nøtvik Jakobsen,” Frå tabu til bølgje – Litteratur og religion dei ti siste åra.” In: Kirke og kultur, 03/2005, p. 369. J. Fosse, interviewed by Inger Vederhus and Rolv Nøtvik Jakobsen. In Kirke og kultur, 06/2008, pp. 449–455.

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There are several other signs of transcendence in Fosse’s works. Firstly he writes plays which deal with various liminal experiences, like the little family that experiences loneliness, separation and the suicide of their child in Dødsvariasjonar (Variations on Death; 2002). Secondly his plays are considered so relevant for the church that they have been performed in several ecclesiastical contexts. For example Variations on Death was re-worked into a church play, a liturgical performance, and was shown in the Cathedral of Lund in Sweden in 2010. Thirdly, Fosse himself experiences a kind of transcendence when he writes. His experience of transcendence has come to him forcefully as a realization of something higher: “If you manage to write a poem, the magic, or the enigma, or the epiphany of that experience means you can't be an atheist,” Fosse says. He elucidates what he says about the process of writing, and explains that it “is a religious experience, no doubt. I don't know where my words come from. What I can prove is that I've written forty plays and published fifty books. But I can't tell you where they're coming from. I don't know myself.”15 The liminal experience which writing has given Fosse has also made him change from being a non-believer to what he himself describes as a Christian and a mystic.16

The Transcendence of Sensoriness

We have chosen to round off this book with some concrete examples of contemporary Scandinavian pictorial art, music, architecture and literature. The examples are meant as a suggestion of how some of the aesthetic-theological reflections of the book can be contextualized in modern work within the arts. At the same time, we have wanted to look back to the original idea of the book, which was the relationship between sensoriness and transcendence in the context of the aesthetics of religion. The question of art and transcendence has often been set up as a tension between motif and materiality. Not least in Protestant theology and ecclesiastical life, has the transcendent primarily been connected with the motif, and there has been a concern that the sensoriness of materiality will stand in the way of the transcendence of the motif. A central aim of this book has been to show that the sensory is not a potential hindrance, but carries with it a possibility of transcendence. Above, we have seen in the section on Peter Brandes how precisely the materiality of the aesthetic expression adds an acknowledgment 15 16

Jon Fosse in an interview with Brian Logan from The Independent, [10.02.2012]: “I am a Christian and a mystic.” Logan, The Independent, [10.02.2012].

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to the figure of Isaac which transcends the devaluation of the worth and importance of the historical victims. In the same way, also Nordheim’s music, Torriset’s paintings, Utzon’s church architecture and Fosse’s drama add more meaning to the motifs through the materiality of the sensory medium. What makes it possible for sensory materiality to function like that? Could it be because the sensory world shows itself as something created, God’s creation as a gift, precisely in the materiality of sound, color, line and form? In that case, art does not only show us something it has created itself, but also something we have all been given. If this is true, theology, and, in our context, Protestant theology, has a rich source of aesthetic reflection in its own theology of creation.

Index Adorno, Theodor W. 8, 50–51, 55, 81, 256–258, 277, 280–281, 283–286, 289, 500–501 Alberti, Leon Battista 363 Allegory, allegorical 81, 210, 233, 335, 376, 386–392, 395, 403, 407, 411, 514n, 518n, 521n Ambrose of Milan 309 Aniconic 459, 468 Architecture 2, 4, 12, 20, 32, 71, 146, 163, 168n–169, 181n, 349, 351–352, 354, 363–364, 370n–371, 376, 379–381, 394, 398, 400n, 402–404, 408–409, 411–414, 420, 422–432, 434, 437–439, 441–447, 497, 501, 548, 552–553, 556, 558–559 Armstrong, Karen 105n Assmann, Aleida 288, 316 Assmann, Jan 258, 263n–268, 270–271, 316, 343 Atil, Esin 135n, 136n, 138n, 144, 151n–152, 154n, 160n, 179n Atmosphere 29, 183, 272, 428, 430, 433, 442, 447, 454n, 516, 556 Augustine of Hippo 252, 256, 301–312, 315, 331, 337–338, 375–376, 388, 390, 393, 395, 399, 403 Aura 18, 24, 39, 40, 43–45, 49, 51, 54–55, 60, 196, 319, 340 Bach, Johann Sebastian 23–24, 31, 33, 252, 275, 290, 294, 315 Balthasar, Hans Urs von 8, 10–11 Balzac, Honoré de 263, 285 Baptism, baptismal 39, 321, 363, 375, 377, 409, 415–416, 418, 420–421, 436, 442, 479, 481, 531–532 Barth, Karl 252, 321–322, 324 Basil the Great 390, 403 Basilica 207, 353, 380–381, 383, 395, 398, 400, 404, 408 Baumgarten, Alexander 20, 65n, 68–69, 78–80 Beautiful, beauty 10–11, 18, 22, 29, 31, 41, 63, 66–70, 75, 77–78, 82–83, 85, 99n, 114–115, 129, 151, 158, 168–170, 184–190n, 194, 217–218, 221, 237–238, 243, 270, 282,

298, 309, 312, 320–321, 326, 329, 332–333, 339–340, 342, 363–364, 367n, 386, 409, 411, 438, 442, 453, 475–477, 500–502, 509–510, 551 Beethoven, Ludwig van 253, 273, 282, 290–291, 294 Belli, Alessandra Lazzerini 295n, 322 Bellini, Giovanni 215–216 Belting, Hans 285 Benjamin, Walter 11, 18, 34–62n, 256, 289 Benoist, Jocelyn 104 Berengar of Tour 121 Berg, Alban 275 Berger, Peter L. 1–2, 5, 41, 546 Bible Aaron, Aron 231, 257–258, 260–261, 263, 265–268, 270–271, 273–274 Abraham 263n, 331, 389, 461, 463, 472, 543–544 Aqedah, the, see Isaac Bathsheba 330, 332, 344 David 272, 328, 330, 332–333, 335–336, 339, 342–345 Fall, the 39, 247, 495 Golden Calf, the 113, 260, 266, 277 Isaac 461–472, 543–546, 559 Jacob 263n, 298, 344, 382, 461 Jonah 470, 472 Moses 189, 213, 254, 257, 259–261, 263, 265–268, 270–271, 273–274, 279, 281, 283, 285, 344, 364, 377, 383, 402, 410, 457–461, 466, 524, 526 Noah 341, 388, 472 Paul 6, 24, 119, 210, 357, 364, 387–388, 452, 454, 463–469, 472–474, 483 Saul 340, 345 Yahwe 336, 344, 377, 383–385, 403, 410 Blumenberg, Hans 264 Böhme, Gernot 73–74, 400, 407, 428, 434n Bono (Paul David Hewson) 327 Boulez, Pierre 271n, 274–275n, 281, 286n, 289, 550 Bramante, Donato 363, 435 Brandes, Peter 543–546, 558 Britten, Benjamin 544–545

562 Broch, Hermann 8 Buckley, Jeff 255–256, 326–328, 330n, 339–342, 344–345 Burke, Alexandra 328 Burke, Edmund 254, 298–301, 432, 440 Byrd, William 287 Byzantium, byzantine, byzantinism 12, 115, 138–140, 195, 197–199, 202, 204–212, 214, 379, 381, 411, 435, 439 Camii, see mosque Carolingian Reform 311 Catacombs 471 Catholic, Catholicism 8, 10, 12, 116–117, 207, 212, 252, 271n, 295, 323–325, 354, 372, 415, 420, 441–442 Cave, Nick 328 Ceramics 136n, 137–138, 140, 144–147, 155, 166 Chagall, Marc 262 Chant, liturgical 251, 281, 295, 309–312, 315 Chrétien, Jean-Louis 88 Christ, Jesus 3, 9, 21, 84, 96, 113–116, 118, 120, 126, 128–130, 193n–194, 198–201, 204, 207–208, 210, 212–213, 215, 221, 228–230, 233–238, 240, 247, 295, 319, 321–322, 341, 344, 357, 376, 387, 389–390, 394, 398, 402, 410, 418, 420, 430, 438, 442, 446, 451–452, 463, 465–468, 471–473, 479, 481–483, 501, 506, 522–524, 526, 528, 531, 541, 543, 550, 557 Christology 247, 321, 361 Chrysostom, John 382, 393, 410 Church service, see liturgy Circumcision 152, 452, 463–464, 469 Church buildings, see also architecture Bagsværd 552–556 Basilica Eufrasiana 398–399 Basilica of Constantine in Trier 381 Bruder Klaus Field Chapel 371–373 Charlemagne's Chapel of Aachen 394 Dar El Kous 400–401 Kariye Camii 394 Hagia Sophia 139, 205–207, 407–408 Lisberg Church 124, 127 Qalb Lozeh 392–393 Qal’at Si’man 4, 404, 405 Sahl Church 122–124 Saint Pancras Church 385 Santa Maria Maggiore 397

Index Santa Prassede 405–406 St. Catherine's 409 St. Denis 129 St. Hallvard 354, 412, 414–424, 429, 431–437, 439–441, 443–447 St. Peters 225, 398, 435 Stadil church 126, 128 Clement of Alexandria 384–389, 469 Cohen, Leonard 255, 326–328, 330–335, 339, 341–343 Colloredo, Hieronymus von 289 Congregation 309, 349–352, 376, 380, 384–385, 387–389, 394, 397, 413–414, 418–420, 422, 444, 463–465, 467, 482 Councils in Chalcedon 198 the fourth Lateran Council 121 the second Vatican Council 420–421, 444 Corbin, Henry 149n, 165n, 182n, 187–194n Corpus Christi, Feast of 287–288, 295–296, 316, 318–319, 321–323 Costello, Elvis 327 Creation, creator 8–9, 11–12, 17, 19, 33, 39, 69, 83–84, 113–114, 166, 119–120, 136, 169–170, 175, 179–181, 184–185, 188–189, 191–192, 194–195, 199–202, 207–208, 210, 217, 221, 246, 298, 353, 359–364, 369, 403, 452, 454, 464–466, 468, 472, 480, 482, 484–485, 487, 489–490, 493–495, 511, 534–535, 541–542, 550, 556, 559 Creed 199, 213n, 443, 485, 550 Cuerda-seca 138, 143–146, 158, 165 Cult, cultic 108n, 123, 126, 227, 256, 343, 353, 369, 380n, 383n, 456–457, 463, 469, 471, 499, 544 Cyril of Jerusalem 376–377n, 409 Dahlhaus, Carl 262, 269, 291n, 302n Damianus, Petrus 126 Dante Alighieri 334, 490, 552 Death 63, 88, 115, 161, 165, 171, 204, 209, 217, 225, 227–229, 234–235, 243, 246–247, 318–322, 324, 402, 453–454, 465–467, 473, 475, 480–482, 484–485, 487, 504–505, 509–510, 507, 510, 521, 527, 529–540, 551, 556 Dehmel, Richard 263 Demon, demonic 101n, 359, 402–403, 451, 453, 486–503

Index Derrida, Jacques 104n, 285 Dialectical theology 5, 6 Dionysius Areopogita 211, 266, 334n, 409 Dualism 71, 88, 194, 383, 492, 498, 509–511, 517 Dura Europos 458, 470 Dogma, doctrine 1, 6, 9, 114, 121, 168n, 172, 224, 442, 469, 472, 478, 494n, 509–511, 541–542 Dogmatics 4–5, 8–9 Domus Dei 352, 393 Domus spiritualis 376, 389 Doxa 459–460, 462, 466–467 Drama 2, 46, 263, 410, 505, 507, 516, 521–522, 525–527, 529–530, 535, 559 Dylan, Bob 326–328 Ecclesiology 349, 351, 444 Edelmann, Bernd 287, 296–297n, 317–321 Elgar, Edward 287 Eliade, Mircea 228, 343, 344n Epistemology, epistemological 37, 71–75, 79–80, 189–190, 192, 199, 400n, 426, 455–456 Ephrem the Syrian 403 Eschatological 119, 398, 451, 453–454, 458, 468, 473, 487, 503, 507, 530 Eucharist 3, 118, 120–121, 123, 126, 130, 199, 208, 319, 321, 323–324, 381n, 382, 407, 409–410, 442n, 471 Fine, Steven 459 Fischer-Lichte, Erika 400n, 429n, 433 Fosse, Jon 556–559 Francis of Assisi 201, 418, 445–446 Franciscan spirituality 354, 420, 446 Freedom 25, 30, 145, 158, 246, 343, 350–351, 353, 355–356, 358–363, 365–366, 369, 371, 374, 493, 495, 514, 526, 531 Freud, Sigmund 38, 58, 60, 88, 263n, 267n, 268 Fromm, Erich 279 Fubini, Enrico 272, 281 Gadamer, Hans-Georg 38, 64–70, 72, 76–79, 81, 99n, 107n, 367–368, 370, 391–393, 444–445 Garden 135, 137, 164–165, 167–169, 171, 184–186, 375, 555 Gehlen, Arnold 24, 26 George, Stefan 282

563 Gift 42, 61–62, 91n, 96–97, 109, 185, 337, 360–361, 363, 388, 480–481, 534, 556, 559 Giorgi, Francesco 363–364 Givenness 91–92, 94–95, 97–100, 103–104, 109 Glory 119, 123, 169n, 183, 198, 201, 331, 443, 446, 459–462, 466–468, 481, 484–485, 519, 522 Gnostics 384n, 452, 465 Gospel 4–5, 230, 233–234, 240, 309, 335, 349, 363, 391, 443, 463, 467, 506, 531 Grace 4, 165, 168, 170–171, 188, 238–239, 271n, 319, 324–325, 350, 388, 443, 446, 451–452, 462–463, 465, 467–468, 492, 499, 502, 527, 556 Greenaway, Peter 18, 63–64, 66, 70, 77, 81, 84–85 Gregory of Nazianzus 389, 408, 410 Gregory of Nyssa 386 Gregory the Great 310, 387n Grundtvig, Nikolaj Frederik Severin 10, 13, 382n, 451–453, 476–479, 481–484, 531–532, 557 Haas, Max 308 Hammond, Peter 352, 413n, 420n Hamsun, Knut 131–134 Handel, George Frideric 299, 339, 342 Hansen, Niels Bugge 404 Haubenstock-Ramati, Roman 292–293n, 312 Haydn, Franz Joseph 273, 297 Haydn, Michael 296, 317–318, 320 Heaven, heavenly 9, 120n, 123, 128, 169–170, 179n, 181n, 184n, 190, 201, 206–208, 212, 214–215, 241, 267, 283, 298, 321, 332, 336, 341, 351, 354, 374, 377, 379, 382–284, 388, 393, 400, 408–409, 412, 424, 426–427, 430–431, 439–446, 456–457, 477–480, 482–485, 515, 544 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 8, 87n, 283–284, 364–365, 367, 371, 397, 407n, 491–492 Heidegger, Martin 24, 48n, 67, 69, 76, 78, 80–81, 87–88, 91, 102, 109n, 303–304, 353, 386, 399–400, 425–427, 497, 499 Heinsen, Hein 202–204 Henri de Férrière 118 Henry, Michel 88, 106 Hilary of Poitiers 207–208n Hildegard of Bingen 338

564 Hoffmann, Ernst Theodor Amadeus 253, 282, 301 Holbein, Hans 228–230 Holocaust 116, 225, 228, 232–234, 245, 247, 544–545 Holy, holiness 86, 98, 101n, 103–108, 117–118, 129–130, 161, 169–170, 198, 200–202, 204, 207, 212, 239, 259–260, 263n, 300–301, 323, 329, 331–332, 336, 341, 344–345, 350–351, 364–365, 387, 421, 424, 440, 444, 452, 459, 461–462, 467, 483, 490–494, 531 Holy Spirit 341, 389, 393, 403, 409, 443, 452, 478–483 Homiletics 5 Husserl, Edmund 74, 87–91, 102–103, 107, 303–304n, 425, 427, 498 Ibn’Arabī 149n, 182, 187–194 Ibsen, Henrik 13, 451, 453–454, 504, 505n, 506, 507n, 511n, 512–513, 515–517, 518n, 520, 521n, 523n, 524, 527n, 528–536, 539–540, 556–557 Icon 95n, 96, 139, 198–202, 204–205, 208–211, 213, 215, 221, 225, 549–550 Iconoclasm, iconoclastic, iconoclasts, iconophobic 3, 114, 116, 139n, 195, 197–202, 204–205, 207, 210, 217, 254, 261, 266, 409n, 451–452, 459, 468, 478, 484 Iconodule 200–201, 210, 217 Iconography, iconographic 113, 116, 123, 134, 136n, 139–140, 142, 144, 151, 157, 169n, 170, 187, 193, 198, 201–202, 209, 215, 223–225, 230, 233–234, 237, 369, 378, 495, 501 Iconology, iconological 136, 391n Iconostasis 410, 549 Idealism 269n, 453–454, 511–512, 520, 529 Idol, idolatry, idolic, idolatrus 95–96, 198, 202, 260–261, 263n, 266–268, 272, 275, 277, 387n, 402, 457, 459, 463, 468–469, 493–494, 502 Ignatius of Antioch 389 Image, imagery 3–5, 20, 26, 31, 35–37, 42–43, 45, 48–60, 70, 75, 84, 95, 113–116, 120n, 123–126, 129–131, 133–134, 139, 151, 188n, 189–190, 196, 198–202, 204–205, 207–213, 221–223, 231, 233–237, 239–240, 243–247, 259, 261–262, 265–268, 270,

Index 273, 275–277, 281–285, 303, 333, 339–340, 364, 370, 379, 384, 388–389, 394, 402, 407–410, 423, 425, 444–446, 451–453, 455, 457–463, 466–472, 475, 477–478, 480–481, 483–486, 489, 495, 510, 522, 524, 527, 530, 535, 546 Imagination 79–81, 93, 149, 156, 158, 187, 189–190, 192, 269, 282, 291, 299, 357, 366, 368–369, 387, 443 Imago dei 210, 451, 453, 466 Immanence 70, 77–78, 80, 83, 115, 213, 376n, 456 Immanent 18–19, 39, 66, 70, 72, 79, 82–83, 91, 108, 115, 124, 196, 213, 259, 284, 455–456, 521n, 532, 541 Incarnation 70, 90, 107, 113–114, 126, 130, 136, 193–195, 199, 204–205, 212–213, 217, 319–320, 369, 388, 428, 443–446, 468, 471, 479, 481–482, 484 Intuition 89–97, 100–101, 103–105, 108, 269, 366, 474–475 Isaac of Syria 392, 401 Islam, islamic 12, 113–114, 132, 138n, 149n, 151, 157, 160, 161, 162n, 165n, 168, 170, 172, 174, 176, 179, 181–182, 193–195, 436 Jacob of Serugh 402 Janicaud, Dominique 102–103, 106, 109 Jensen, Robin Margaret 469, 471–472 Jervell, Jacob 464 Jesus, see Christ Joas, Hans 17, 21–22, 33, 101n John of Damascus 114, 199–201, 204, 221, 386n, 410 Judaism 113, 262, 266, 272, 330, 334n, 388, 459, 468–469 Julian of Atramyttion 401 Kandinsky, Wassily 262 Kant, Immanuel 37, 65n, 68, 77, 79–80, 89, 93, 134, 253, 270, 282–283, 285, 299–301, 353, 365, 368–369 Kantorowicz, Ernst H. 410 Kara Memi 144 Karahisari, Ahmed 179 Kemalpashazade 133 Kendall, Calvin B. 390 Kerling, Marc M. 258, 261n, 264n, 266n, 270, 273, 277, 284n, 285

Index Kiefer, Anselm 115–116, 222–235, 237, 240–247, 401, 497–499 Kierkegaard, Søren 17, 25–27, 32, 68, 253–254, 256, 291, 301, 322, 352–353, 355–361, 368–369, 384, 551 Kingdom of God 123, 351, 452, 468, 473, 481–482, 484, 522 Kirkeby, Per 115–116, 196–198, 200, 202–209, 212, 215, 217–221 Koch, Heinrich Christoph 300, 313 Kollwitz, Käthe 224, 229–230, 243–245 Koran 161, 163–164, 170–171, 174, 179, 188n, 192 Küng, Hans 252, 323n, 324 Lacoue-Labarthe, Philippe 258, 281, 283–284 Lasso, Orlando di 287 Lauterwein, Andréa 222n, 232–233 Le Corbusier 179, 412, 438–439, 440n Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm 88, 362 Leontius of Cyprus 198, 201 Lévinas, Emmanuel 106–107, 270n, 272n Lewin, David 272, 274 Light 50, 54, 78, 128, 213–214, 218, 227, 298, 326, 329, 352–353, 357, 370–371, 373, 375, 379, 386, 399–400, 407–411, 426, 430–434, 439–440, 442, 465, 474, 477–478, 483, 485, 513, 518, 525, 543, 548, 552–556 Liszt, Franz 255, 272, 287, 320–321 Lisbjerg altar, the 124 Literature 2, 12, 23, 27, 32, 70, 160n, 221, 264, 298, 375, 395, 403–404, 406, 451, 469, 529, 557–558 Liturgy, liturgical (Church service, mass)  8, 114, 118, 120, 123, 126, 130, 165n, 201, 251–252, 255, 287–288, 290, 293–297, 300–302, 310, 315, 318, 320, 323, 336, 338, 344, 349, 351–352, 354, 363, 393–394, 410, 412–414, 420–422, 424, 430, 434, 437–439, 441, 442n, 443–445, 447, 476, 482–483, 501, 556, 558 Love (beloved) 6, 21–22, 40, 105, 182, 185–188, 190–191, 232, 239, 247, 265, 267, 326, 329–330, 335, 340–341, 358, 360, 361n, 389, 446, 476n, 478, 481–484, 490, 494, 513, 521, 527–528, 552 Løgstrup, Knud Ejler 10–11, 17, 28–31, 33, 204–205, 288, 303–304, 306–312, 314–317, 351, 361, 475

565 Lukács, György 8 Lund, Kjell 414, 416, 422–423, 429n, 431, 433n, 434–437, 443n Luria, Isaac Halevi 222–223, 246, 361 Luther, Martin 3, 4, 6, 235, 237–240, 242, 252, 256, 349–350, 494, 539 Lutheran, Lutheranism 2–4, 9, 252, 325, 539 MacDonald, Malcolm 275, 283 McGinn, Bernhard 393 Maegaard, Jan 262n, 263 Man, Paul de 285 Mandelstam, Osip 407–408 Mann, Thomas 8, 263n, 291–292, 500–502 Marion, Jean-Luc 11, 19, 86–109 Markschies, Christoph 465 Mary 116, 224–225, 231, 233–247, 318, 443 Marx, Karl 35, 44, 47, 88 Mass, see liturgy Mathiesen, Thomas J. 308 McCartney, Paul 327 McKitterick, Rosamond 311 Melody, melodic 22–24, 26, 28, 251, 273–274, 281, 283, 288, 290, 295, 303–304, 306–310, 312–315, 317–320, 340, 342 Memory (remembrance) 34, 46–47, 49–54, 52, 54, 59, 69, 80, 136, 149n, 182, 222, 228–229, 232, 240–241, 245, 255–256, 265, 288, 304–307, 311, 316–317, 332, 340n, 342–344, 353, 358, 375, 427, 441, 475, 482n Menorah 458–459, 469 Metaphor, metaphorical 4, 29, 118n, 136, 210, 232–233, 242, 246, 331, 341, 353, 358, 368, 438, 456, 484, 507–508, 510–511, 513, 516–517, 525, 528, 533, 536 Metaphysics, metaphysical 9, 33, 55, 66–67, 69–71, 77, 81–83, 87n, 88–90, 95, 97, 101, 106, 213, 262, 283–284, 343, 353, 355, 376n, 386, 409, 473, 490, 510–511, 517, 521n Mercier, Pascal 17, 22–24, 26–29 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice 11, 71–76, 102, 221, 369–370, 399, 423, 425, 428 Messiaen, Olivier 289, 338 Michelangelo 225, 236n, 237, 244, 274, 488–489 Middle Ages 7, 67, 114–115, 117–118, 120, 200, 219, 225, 228, 233, 235, 236n, 251–252, 308, 338, 340, 376, 394, 396n, 407

566 Mimesis, mimetic 18, 34n, 36–39, 42–47, 54–61, 121, 369, 389 Modern, modernity, modernization, modernism 1–2, 8, 18, 24, 36, 41, 52, 56, 59, 64, 70–72, 74, 76, 77n, 82–84, 101n, 107n, 114–115, 121, 130, 138, 160, 179, 182, 194–195, 202–203, 208, 211, 235, 255–256, 263–264, 266, 275, 282, 284–285, 287–288, 290–291, 294, 297, 302, 308–310, 312, 315–316, 333, 364, 381, 384, 390n, 391, 411, 414–415, 418, 420, 422, 424, 441, 486–487, 495–496, 497n, 500–501, 510–511, 536, 541, 551–552, 557–558 Moment 254, 272, 289, 291, 305, 332, 352, 355–362, 452, 475, 478, 529 Monteverdi, Claudio 315 Mosque 136–138, 139n, 142–144, 146–147, 151, 155, 163, 165–175, 179, 192 Rüstem Paşa Camii 147–148, 150–151, 165–167, 171–172, 181–183, 187 Sokollu Mehmet Paşa Camii 155–156, 171–174, 181, 187, 192 Mourning 165, 222, 230, 235, 241, 244 Mozart, Constanze 295, 297, 322 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus 252–255, 287–290, 294–302, 312, 315–325 Murray, Mary Charles 468–470 Music, music history 2, 4, 12, 17, 20, 32, 50–51, 95, 249, 251–262, 263n, 265, 268–303, 306n, 307–312, 314–328, 332, 335–336, 338–342, 407, 413, 502, 542, 550–552, 558–559 Mystical, mysticism 40, 43, 97, 105, 129–130, 136, 152, 160, 182–183, 187, 190–191, 193–194, 210, 223, 228, 235, 263, 289, 323, 331, 342, 345, 386, 390, 392, 441, 489, 499n, 558 Myth, mythic, mythological 38, 52–53, 151, 153, 223, 241, 246–247, 264–265, 268n, 280, 284n, 342–343, 368–370, 377n, 389, 436, 470–471, 488, 497, 507 Nadel, Ira B. 330n, 333n, 334 Nature 17, 22, 24, 30, 39, 42–43, 45–48, 50–51, 54–55, 57, 61–62, 71, 74, 113, 115, 131, 135, 144, 149–151, 156–158, 175–176, 179, 181–182, 186–189, 194, 198–200, 215, 221, 227, 298, 352, 363, 374, 391, 430, 440, 487, 504, 556–557

Index Necipoğlu, Gülru 137, 139n, 163–168, 172n, 179n Neoplatonism 269n, 353, 375n, 388, 391, 409 Newman, Barnett 550 Niemetschek, Franz Xaver 298, 302n Nietzsche, Friedrich 6, 24–25, 87n, 88, 285, 451 Nono-Schoenberg, Nuria 270 Nono, Luigi 270 Norberg-Schulz, Christian 11, 351, 354, 382, 400, 411, 412n, 421, 424–431, 435–441, 443 Nordheim, Arne 550–552, 559 Notre Dame School (of music) 251 Nygren, Anders 6 Page, Jimmy 327 Paideia 386, 389, 389n Palladio, Andrea 363 Pallasmaa, Juhani 71–72, 75, 429 Paradise 136, 164–165, 167–168, 170–171, 174–175, 184, 233 Pärt, Arvo 338 Passion of Christ, see Christ Paul, Jean 301 Persephone 241–242 Petrus Damianus 126 Phenomenology 11, 18–19, 21, 31, 37, 65n, 69, 69n, 71–73, 73n, 74–76, 79–80, 82, 84n, 86–109, 123, 126, 132n, 354, 399, 400n, 407, 414, 423–424, 426, 428–430, 491, 491n Philosophy of religion 2, 7–9, 11, 86–87, 106, 109, 265, 288, 303, 455 Pietà 115–116, 222–231, 233–237, 239–240, 242–247 Plato 6, 8, 24, 47, 54, 187, 269n, 308, 355–356, 363, 368, 376n, 402, 402n Plummer, Henry 434 Poetic openness 11, 17, 19, 20, 29–33 Poulenc, Francis 287 Polyphony 251–252, 274–275, 286 Power, Harold 308 Practical theology 7–9 Presence 3, 21, 30, 70, 74, 76, 96, 103, 117, 172n, 182, 184–186, 192, 194, 225, 234–235, 242, 245, 275, 277, 285, 298, 332, 335, 341, 344, 350, 353–354, 357, 369, 392–394, 407, 411, 413–414, 422–423, 425, 427–431, 434, 434n, 439, 441–442, 442n, 443, 446–447, 451, 456, 461, 466, 472, 475, 504, 506, 520, 524, 528, 539, 541

Index Profane 11, 49, 52, 64, 71, 107, 343, 432–33, 456, 466, 468, 472, 492, 499n, 512, 553 Prohibition of images, see iconoclasm Protestantism 3–5, 7–12, 17, 20, 33, 117–118, 123, 194, 194n, 210, 253, 264, 271, 349, 351, 421, 453, 486, 558–559 Pseudo-Longinus 298 Rahner, Karl 10 Redemption 47, 51, 53, 114–115, 119, 131n, 132, 201, 228, 233, 284n, 321–322, 324–325, 393, 452, 472, 485, 500, 503, 521, 521n, 522–23, 526–530, 532, 537–538, 540 Reformation, Lutheran, see Luther Reformed church 3, 114, 252 Religion 1–3, 7–9, 11–12, 19, 82–83, 84n, 86–88, 91, 97, 102–106, 108–109, 113–114, 116–117, 132n, 135, 160, 181, 190n, 193–195, 256, 257, 262, 265, 268, 268n, 270–271, 283n, 284n, 288, 302–303, 323, 330, 342–343, 376n, 384n, 394, 399, 408, 451–452, 455, 459, 464, 468–69, 473–474, 476, 478, 486, 493–494, 521n, 558 Remembrance, see memory Renaissance 7, 151, 218, 294, 363–64, 396n, 435–36, 439 Resurrection 119–120, 123, 193n, 209, 218, 230, 386, 453, 471, 479, 484, 505, 505n, 506–509, 509n, 510–511, 511n, 512, 514, 514n, 515–517, 521, 524–525, 528–531, 534–536, 538 Revelation 4, 6–7, 9, 11–12, 17–19, 21, 47, 52, 86, 90, 92, 95, 95n, 96–99, 99n, 100–101, 101n, 102–106, 108–109, 109n, 161n, 174, 174n, 179, 187, 189, 192, 207, 212, 259, 260, 265–266, 279, 289, 362, 398, 423, 427, 453, 494, 514, 524, 536 Rhetoric 4–5, 64, 108n, 128, 298, 379, 382, 391, 527 Ricoeur, Paul 88, 108–109, 503n Rilke, Rainer Maria 257, 539, 551, 551n, 552 Rochlitz, Friedrich 323 Roman Church, see Catholicism Romanticism, romantics 2, 131, 131n, 132, 132n, 252–254, 256, 262, 276, 282, 301–302, 302n, 371, 391, 452, 476, 478, 510–511, 517 Rose 116, 133, 140, 142, 144, 146–149, 152, 154–157, 159–161, 182, 184–186, 207, 223, 225–227, 230–234, 244–245

567 Rosenthal, Mark 222n, 226n, 227–228, 228n Roshi, Joshu Sasaki 330 Rumi 182, 182n, 183, 183n, 184, 184n, 185, 185n, 186, 186n, 187–189, 192–194 Russel, Bertrand 31–32 Sacrament 3, 114, 118, 120–121, 130, 161n, 186, 208, 296n, 323, 323n, 324, 345, 349–350, 350n, 351, 437, 442–344, 352 Sacred 11, 97, 123, 128, 173, 255, 272, 281, 284, 288, 290, 294, 295, 295n, 297, 301–302, 315, 323–324, 326, 342, 353–354, 362–365, 371, 374, 380–381, 381n, 385–386, 394, 397, 400, 403, 408–409, 412–413, 421, 431–433, 435, 439, 442, 447, 456–457, 466–468, 472, 479, 501, 508–509, 553 Şahkulu 138, 144, 151–152 Said, Edward W. 131–132, 132n, 133n, 160n Saint-Saëns, Camille 287 Salvation 4, 6, 9, 12, 33, 119, 195 207, 228, 235, 286n, 321, 381n, 443, 458n, 460, 462, 464, 472–473, 503, 519, 521, 521n, 524, 526, 530–531, 537, 540–542 Sarcophagus 471 Saussure, Ferdinand de 211, 211n Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph  367–368, 368n, 494 Schiller, Friedrich 8, 68 Schleiermacher, Friedrich Daniel Ernst 2, 8, 474–475 Schoenberg, Arnold 254–255, 257–286, 289, 293 Schopenhauer, Arthur 276 Schröer, Henning 7, 7n, 8 Schwarz, Rudolf 438, 438n, 439n Scriabin, Alexander 272 Sculpture 4, 20, 32, 202, 218–219, 224–225, 236, 243–244, 266n, 369, 397, 398n, 406, 418, 453–454, 470, 505–507, 507n, 508–510, 511n, 513–514, 514n, 515–516, 520, 530, 533–537, 542 Second commandment 113, 115–116, 222, 267, 282–283, 451, 457–458, 460, 508n Secular, secularization 1, 47, 49, 82–83, 107, 136n, 200, 225, 229, 236–236, 252, 277, 288, 290, 301, 315, 380, 411, 441, 521–522, 541, 553, 557 Şehzade Mehmet 136–137, 140–144, 144n, 146, 163, 165, 175

568 Self-transcendence 17, 21, 24–26, 30–32, 80, 478, 494, 541–542 Sin, sinner, original sin 119–120, 217, 233, 272, 358, 401, 452, 454, 479, 485, 493, 515, 523, 531, 537, 540 Sinan, Mimar 136–137, 139, 160, 163, 171–172, 174 Soul 25, 54–55, 61, 80, 119, 123, 128, 130, 149n, 160n, 175, 189–190, 228, 238, 263, 282, 299, 305, 323, 331–332, 337, 340, 342, 345, 384, 386, 389–390, 393, 402, 402n, 409, 462, 475n, 481, 509–512, 529–530, 534–535, 537 Space, spatial 19, 35–36, 41, 51–54, 57, 59–61, 71–74, 80, 96–97, 115–116, 132n, 139n, 146, 167, 169n, 176n, 181n, 201, 206–207, 232, 242–243, 245–246, 255, 269, 287–288, 290, 297, 303, 304–306, 306n, 307, 312, 315–317, 321–322, 324–326, 335, 342, 344–345, 350–359, 359n, 360–366, 368–371, 374–376, 379–381, 382–384, 386–387, 393, 395, 397–398, 401, 403, 407–408, 408n, 409n, 411, 414–415, 418, 421–422, 424–426, 426n, 427, 430–432, 435–437, 439, 440, 443–445, 447, 470, 473, 475, 484, 515–517, 553, 555–557 Spears, Britney 328 Spier, Jeffrey 458n, 468n, 469, 469n, 472, 472n Steinskog, Erik 277, 277n, 279 Stockhausen, Karlheinz 289, 550 Stoll, Anton 295–296 Stravinsky, Igor 262, 275, 338 Sublime 77, 77n, 82, 115, 168, 253–254, 267, 273–274, 276, 281–283, 285, 298–300, 300n, 301–302, 367, 440, 482, 508–510 Suffering 39, 58, 160n, 217, 222, 225, 228–230, 233–234, 236–237, 240–245, 247, 258, 289, 318, 320–322, 343, 377, 420, 445, 473, 500–501, 515, 539, 546 Sufism, sufi tradition 136, 149n, 170, 174, 174n, 175, 182, 187–188, 193, 193n, 194, 228 Suger of St. Denis 128–129, 129n Süleyman the Magnificent 134–136, 139n, 145, 152, 154–155, 157–160, 160n, 164, 166, 171, 174, 179, 186 Sulzer, Johann Georg 299, 299n, 312–313, 313n Süssmayr, Franz Xaver 297 Symbol, symbolic 37, 46, 65–66, 68–71, 81, 136n, 160, 160n, 169n, 189, 200, 202–204,

Index 207, 209–210, 210n, 211–212, 215, 217, 228, 233–234, 243, 258, 260, 274, 332–333, 340–342, 344, 353, 366–368, 368n, 369, 371–372, 374, 378, 380, 383n, 391–393, 398, 407, 410, 413, 423, 435, 442, 459, 469–471, 487–490, 507, 529 Swedenborg, Emanuel 194n, 263 Swieten, Baron Gottfried van 297 Technology, age of 18, 34–36, 41–46, 56–57, 59–61 Temptation 309, 333 454, 522–524, 526, 528 Thackston, Wheeler M. 161n, 172n, 182, 182n Theology of separation 6–7, 9 Thomas Aquinas 92, 121, 121n Tieck, Ludwig 300–301 Tillich, Paul 22, 101n, 211, 211n, 452–453, 486–503 Timberlake, Justin 328 Time, temporal 17, 25, 32, 41, 45, 53–54, 65, 78, 80, 88n, 108, 115, 123, 130, 164–165, 167, 201, 207–208, 215, 255, 269, 285, 287–288, 303–307, 311, 314–315, 326, 333, 350, 352–353, 355–359, 359n, 361, 365, 368, 368n, 370, 401, 411, 426, 435, 451–452, 475–480, 484, 503, 509, 551 Tomlinson, Gary 283–284, 284n Torriset, Kjell 546–550, 559 Transcendence 1–2, 4, 11–12, 17–22, 24–26, 30–33, 50–52, 60–61, 63, 70, 77–85, 101n, 109n, 114–115, 117–118, 130, 175–176, 183–185, 190, 192, 196, 204, 213, 215, 254–256, 257, 268, 287, 303, 317, 320, 321–325, 326, 337, 349, 351–354, 361n, 375, 375n, 376, 376n, 379, 382–384, 399, 407, 408n, 411, 413–414, 428, 451–453, 455–457, 460–463, 465–468, 472–473, 476, 478, 492–494, 505, 533, 541–543, 546, 548, 550–552, 557–558 Transfiguration 190n, 192, 213–216, 218, 319, 410, 502, 513, 524–526, 530, 530n Treitler, Leo 290, 290n, 308n, 310, 310n, 311, 311n Tsim Tsum 222, 245–246 Türbe 137, 137n, 138, 140–144, 146, 151, 155, 163–165, 167, 169, 175–176, 179–181, 185, 192

569

Index Utzon, Jørn 552–553, 553n, 554–556, 556n, 559 Vegetation 114, 135–136, 139n, 140, 142–144, 147, 153, 157–158, 161, 168, 174–176, 180–184, 241, 352, 401, 426 Viladesau, Richard 10, 11, 11n Vitalism 521, 529 Wackenroder, Wilhelm Heinrich 300, 300n, 301 Wagner, Richard 2, 273, 275–276, 284n, 302 Wainwright, Martha 328 Wainwright, Rufus 328 Waldenfels, Berhard 108

Walsegg, Count von 297 Webern, Anton von 285 Webster, L. 126, 126n Westphal, Merold 21, 21n, 28, 32 White, Pamela 272, 272n, 275 William of Volpiano 129 Wingren, Gustav 10, 510n Wittgenstein, Ludwig 265, 265n, 269 Word of God 39, 161, 388n Wörner, Karl 273, 273n Zanker, Paul 470, 470n, 471–472 Zeus 241 Zumthor, Peter 371–374