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The Artistic Impulse of the
Munich
Conference 1907
An
Overview
If one looks deeply at the
appearance of the meeting room of the Munich Conference 1), it is
possible to discern its meaning in relation to the new artistic
impulse that Rudolf Steiner gave for a spiritualised cultural
evolution of humanity. This conference, given when Rudolf Steiner
was the German representative of the Theosophical Society, can be
seen as a precursor of Anthroposophy.
As Hilde Raske
writes: “ The Planetary Columns emerge out of ‘spiritual
hearing’ and the Apocalyptic Seals emerge out of ‘spiritual
seeing’. The Seals are sketches from the book of “Revelations” of
St. John.
For the conference, seven columns
were painted on two metre high narrow boards. These were imprinted
with the signs of the planets as expression of the great levels of
cosmic development. These columns were placed on a festive
red wall, and between them were the seven Apocalyptic Seals… The
red–blue polarity of the wall [red] and ceiling [had to be imagined
as blue] colours was represented in a red and a blue column. The
red one carried the letter “J” and the blue one carried the “B”,
the initials of Jachim and Boas from the columns of Salomon’s
temple. The two columns are also to be seen on the fourth, the
middle, of the Apocalyptic Seals…”[Das Farbenwort. Freies
Geistesleben 1983]
In the first lecture of the
Munich Conference, the following is written: “Our inner world must
become as purified etherically, as the world ether above, which
moves toward us in blue. Our learning about it is pictured as the
colour red [our surroundings]. If red surrounds us in an
outside representation (as in the walls of a building), there lives
its complementary colour inside us… The esoteric sense is conveyed
in the colour red…In the Rosicrucian worldview the area
above ( as in the ceiling of a
building) would be lifted up as blue-domed curves, having an
exoteric ceremonial significance… In the two columns represented,
the red one is the expression the red blood, the “I am”[The Tree of
Life]; The blue blood is the expression for “death”[The Tree of
Knowledge]…There will be a time in the future when the human being
will be able, by his own higher consciousness to change the blue
blood into red..”
I believe that the contemplation
of the mantra “Jachim and Boas” can also bring forth an
understanding of spiritualised seeing, “J” and hearing,
“B”:
J
B
In clear thought will you
find
Transform your feeling into
light,
The self that remains
upright.
And you will manifest forming forces.
Change your thoughts into
pictures
Forge your will into existence,
And you will experience
creative wisdom. And you will create in the
World-Being.
This configuration leads,
in a later lecture, to a perception of “body-free
thinking, feeling, and willing” in relation to five arts. The art
of painting is there seen as a merging of the wellsprings of
artistic phantasy and supersensable cognition.[GA 271 Munich, 5.May
1918], and is manifested already in the Apocalyptic
Seals.
The question is, “What emerges
effectually from this level of art in the consciousness of those
who partake in it, the reciprocal giving and taking of the artist
and the onlookers or the listeners?”
Certain archetypal spiritual
realities are brought down from higher realms into physical
representation through the individualities of artists who have
evolved the soul organs with which to accomplish this. It is a
process of sending back up into the spirit that which it was
destined to receive it in the course of cosmic evolution. This
occurs not only in artistic spheres, but can be
made accessible as art to benefit cultural development. The human
being makes himself an instrument to use all the mediums at hand
for cultural development. The spirit learns to delve into matter,
so that the human being can grasp the relationships of the deepest
physical matter with the spiritual.
A “stream” has been prepared for
this kind of deed in the course of the last five hundred years.
Spirit has descended deeply into the material plane of matter. This
was a necessary development for the consciousness of mankind. The
Rosicrucian stream has helped to see to it that spirituality can
flow back up, as offering for the gods. Since the last third of the
19th century, spirit has begun to
ascend again… All who strive spiritually, are striving to ascend
out of the depths of involvement in the physical…to sense its
intrinsic link to the spirit, which was evident to us in ages
past.
How can we arise again, in a
healthy way, and in full consciousness? To facilitate this Rudolf
Steiner was to give indications for a number of artistic paths in
the next sixteen years [among which are architecture, sculpture,
painting, music, speech and drama, and
eurhythmy].
Such a high mission can serve to
unite the strivings of artists in our century where materialistic
competition seems to run rampant. After the artist ascends and
brings down a higher archetype into his individualised style, that
new artistic creation can exist on the earth, to benefit humanity
and as “food for the
gods”.
In the highest sense the
archetypal creative activity of procreation, will be fulfilled by
human beings of the future. Human beings will be “called” into
incarnation through speaking. Marie Steiner brought “The
Drama of Eleusis”, by Eduard Schure to the Munich Conference. It
portrays the essence of the Persephony Mythos, which has an
essential connection to the process of descent and ascension. As
Theodore Willman writes in his poem
“Life”:
“…to illumine in fire-the
hieroglyphs of the deep-and unloose Pluto’s bonds-so to release
spirit from matter’s limitations-in the shining lustre-which in
unfolding-attests to new forms…”[The Art of
Colour, Freies
Geistesleben,1980]
The first experiences of
Formative Speech were given in “The Drama of Eleusis” The “word”
springs to life from the printed page, the forming forces of the
etheric are manifested in the weaving together of vowel and
consonant; creative breath becomes a reality in time, space and
rhythm-a healing in a personal and a universal
sense.
As represented in the Apocalyptic
Seals of the conference, the larynx will be transformed into a
spiritualised organ of reproduction. Human beings will incarnate in
transformation. “In the beginning there was the Word”, and at the
end there will be the Word. When mankind brings forth what is a
realisation of the Word, we will no longer have the physical forms
we have today; we will have progressed to the form that existed on
old Saturn, to fire matter. All will be fiery, hence the fiery
sword that projects from the mouth of the figure in the first Seal,
as well as the fiery feet of flowing metal. The condition that
comes forth when the lower forces are finally conquered is
symbolised in the Holy Grail of the last Seal. Seeds of this future
development are to be found in the evolution of Formative
Speech.
From the spiritual world there
come the revelations that disclose themselves to mankind, only when
we continue to progress; then the Book with Seven Seals will be
opened to us.
The Munich Conference has an
immense application to artistic striving. In the spring of 1908,
Karl Stockmeyer, who had sensed in the hall decorations, the hidden
presence of a new architectural impulse, began the work which
evolved into the “model building” in his garden at Malsch, Germany;
where one can still see the Seals and Columns. Ideally, according
to Steiner, the building itself should have been hewn out of a rock
face of granite, reminiscent of the underground temple in Goethe’s
Fairy Tale].
The columns and architraves of
the first Goetheanum, which tragically burned down in 1923,
as well as those of the second Goetheanum, which is located in
Dornach Switzerland on the grounds where the original edifice was
burned, manifest the etheric sculptural initiative of the Munich
Conference. ( See the poem ‘Intervals’ in the Hexameter Section of
this website).
Here I have only been able to
give an impression of some of the content and impulse of the Munich
Conference. What comes out of it, in our artistic striving today,
is a matter for each individual to decide.
1) See
Bilder Occulte Siegel und
Saulen - Der Muenchner Kongress Pfingsten,1907
und seine
Auswirkungen, 1977, Rudolf Steiner Verlag,
Dornach, Schweiz.
© Copyright 2010 Katherine Rudolph
Exploring the Word in Colour and Speech
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