The Rudolf Steiner Archive

8. The Sensual and the Supersensual in Their Realization Through Art I

[ 1 ] It was likely out of a deep understanding of the world and, above all, out of a profound appreciation of art that Goethe coined the following words: “Whoever to whom nature begins to reveal her manifest secret feels an irresistible longing for her most worthy interpreter, art.” — Perhaps one may, without thereby becoming un-Goethian, add a sort of supplement to this statement: “Whoever begins to have art reveal its secret to him feels an almost insurmountable aversion to its most unworthy interpreter, the aesthetic-scientific analysis.” And I do not wish to offer an aesthetic-scientific analysis today. It seems to me that it is not only compatible with—but indeed entirely in keeping with—the Goethean view just expressed to speak of art in such a way that one recounts the experiences one can have with it, the experiences one may well have had with it on many occasions, just as one gladly recounts the experiences one has had or still has with a good friend in life.

[ 2 ] When it comes to human development, people speak of original sin. I do not wish to dwell today on whether the rich life of humanity—as far as its dark sides are concerned—is exhausted if, with regard to this general life, one speaks only of original sin. However, with regard to artistic sensibility and artistic creation, it seems to me necessary to speak of two original sins. One original sin in artistic creation and artistic appreciation, it seems to me, is representation, imitation—the reproduction of the merely sensory. And the other original sin, it seems to me, is the desire to express, depict, and reveal the supersensual through art. But then it will be very difficult to approach art—whether through creation or perception—if one wishes to reject both the sensual and the supersensual. Nevertheless, this seems to me to correspond to a healthy human sensibility. Anyone who wants only the sensual in art will hardly be able to go beyond some finer illustrative element, which, while it may rise to the level of art, cannot actually constitute true art. And it does, as one might say, require a somewhat uncultivated inner life to find contentment in the merely illustrative element of imitating the sensory or whatever else is provided by the sensory world alone. But it takes a kind of obsession with one’s own intellect, with one’s own reason, if one were to demand that an idea—that which is purely spiritual—be artistically embodied. Worldview-based poetry, representations of worldviews through art, ultimately correspond to an undeveloped taste; they correspond to a barbarization of human emotional life. Art itself, however, is deeply rooted in life. And if it were not rooted in life, it would probably have no legitimate existence even in the very way it manifests itself: for in art, in contrast to a purely realistic view of the world, all manner of unrealities must come into play, all manner of illusions must come into play that are introduced into life. Precisely because art is compelled to introduce the unreal into life for the sake of a certain understanding, it must, in some way, be deeply rooted in life.

[ 3 ] Now one can say that, starting at a certain threshold of perception—from a lower threshold up to a higher one, which, admittedly, must first be developed in some people—artistic perception occurs everywhere in life. It arises—even if not as art—whenever something supersensory and mysterious makes itself known, even within the sensory, the ordinary, and the existence that confronts us in the world of the senses. And it arises when the supersensory—the purely thought, the purely felt, the purely spiritually experienced—shines forth before us not by being reduced to straw-like symbols or wooden allegories, but just as it wishes to reveal itself in a sensory form, in a form of sensory perception. Every person whose soul dwells between the two moods I have described senses that the ordinary sensory world, even in everyday life—as it were, enchanted—contains within itself a kind of supersensible element.

[ 4 ] One can certainly say: If someone has invited me and lets me enter a room with red walls, I have a certain expectation—one that, given the red walls, has something to do with artistic sensibility. If I am led into a room with red walls and the man who invited me then comes to meet me, I will naturally expect him to share all sorts of things with me that are valuable to me and that interest me. And if that is not the case, I will perceive the entire invitation into the red room as a lie, and I will leave feeling unsatisfied. If someone receives me in a blue room and doesn’t let me get a word in, but just keeps chattering away at me, I will find the whole situation extremely uncomfortable, and I will tell myself that the man has actually already lied to me through the color of his room. There are countless such instances in life. A woman in a red dress whom one encounters will seem extraordinarily insincere if she acts too modestly. A woman with curly hair will only seem genuine if she’s a little snappy; if she isn’t snappy, one experiences disappointment. Of course, things don’t have to be this way in life; life has the right to lead one beyond such illusions, but there are certain emotional boundaries within which one feels this way.

[ 5 ] Of course, these things cannot be reduced to general laws; some people may feel quite differently about them. But the fact remains that every human being experiences a certain kind of feeling in life in which one perceives the external world—as it presents itself to the senses—as something that, in a sense, contains an enchanted spiritual element: a spiritual situation, a spiritual state of mind, a spiritual mood.

[ 6 ] It may well seem to us that what presents itself as a demand of our soul—and in which we are so often bitterly disappointed in life—gives rise to the need to create a special sphere of life precisely for those needs that require fulfillment in human life. And this special sphere of life seems to me to be art itself. It extracts from the rest of life precisely that which satisfies the sense that lies within such limits of feeling.

[ 7 ] Perhaps the only way to truly grasp what one experiences through art is to try to look more deeply into the processes of the soul that take place, whether in artistic creation or in the appreciation of art. For one need only have truly lived with art for a little while—one need only have attempted to engage with it on a more intimate level—to discover that, although the mental processes I am about to describe in the artist and the art appreciator are, in a sense, reversed, they are essentially the same. The artist experiences what I intend to describe in advance, so that he first experiences a certain psychological process, which is then replaced by another; the art lover first experiences the second psychological process I am referring to, and only afterward the first, from which the artist began. Now it seems to me that the reason it is so difficult to approach art psychologically is that we do not quite dare to descend as deeply into the human soul as is necessary to grasp what actually gives rise to the artistic need. Perhaps our time is, in fact, the first to be suited to speaking somewhat more clearly about this artistic need. For whatever one may think of various artistic movements of the very recent past and the present—Impressionism, Expressionism, and so on—discussing them sometimes stems from a rather unartistic need; yet one thing cannot be denied: that with the emergence of these movements, artistic sensibility and artistic life—arising from certain depths of the soul that lie very far within the subconscious, and which had not previously been brought up from this subconscious—have now been brought to the surface of consciousness. Quite necessarily, there is greater interest today in the artistic and art-appreciating processes of the human soul—thanks to everything that has been said about such things as Impressionism and Expressionism—than was the case in earlier times, when the aesthetic concepts of the learned gentlemen stood very far removed from what was actually alive in art. Recently, concepts and mental images have emerged in the appreciation of art that, in a certain sense, are very close to what contemporary art creates—at least in comparison to earlier times.

[ 8 ] The life of the soul is, in fact, infinitely deeper than is usually assumed. And very few people even suspect that human beings possess a wealth of experiences in the depths of their souls—in the subconscious and the unconscious—that are rarely discussed in everyday life. But one must delve a little deeper into this inner life to find it precisely where the mood lies between the boundaries I have indicated. In a sense, our inner life oscillates between the most diverse states, all of which—more or less—represent two types: nothing I say today is meant to be pedantic. On the one hand, there is something in the depths of the human soul that seeks to rise freely from within it—something that is sometimes quite unconscious, yet torments the soul—and which, when the soul is particularly attuned to the mood I have described, constantly strives to discharge itself into consciousness but cannot do so, nor should it—even in a healthy state—as a vision. When the conditions for a particular mood of the soul are present, our soul life actually strives—far more than one might think—to continually transform itself in the sense of the vision. A healthy soul life consists solely in this: that this “desire for the vision” remains merely a striving, and that the vision does not emerge.

[ 9 ] This striving for vision, which is essentially present in the soul of every human being, can be satisfied when we present to the soul—in the form of an external impression, an external form, an external work of art, or the like—that which seeks to arise but should not arise in a healthy soul: the pathological vision. And then the external work of art, the external form, can be what intervenes to allow what actually seeks to be a vision to take root in a healthy way in the depths of the soul. We offer the soul, as it were, the content of the vision from the outside. And we offer it something truly artistic only when we are able, out of legitimate visionary aspirations, to discern what form, what visual impression we must offer the soul so that its yearning for the visionary is balanced. I believe that many contemporary artistic explorations within the movement known as Expressionism come close to this truth, and that the debates surrounding them are on the path to discovering what I have just described; yet people do not go far enough, do not look deep enough into the soul, and do not come to know this irresistible yearning for the visionary that actually resides in every human soul. — But that is only one aspect. And if one examines artistic creation and artistic appreciation, one can clearly see that a certain kind of artwork has an origin that corresponds to this need of the human soul.

[ 10 ] But there is another source of artistry. The source I have just spoken of lies in a certain quality of the human soul, in its urge to have visionary mental images as independent, free-standing concepts. The other source lies in the fact that nature itself harbors enchanted mysteries that can only be discovered if one is willing to set aside scientific assumptions—which are unnecessary here—and instead to sense what the deeper mysteries of the nature that surrounds us actually are.

[ 11 ] These deeper mysteries of nature that surround us may even seem quite paradoxical to the current consciousness of humanity when they are articulated, yet it is precisely our time that is making this kind of mystery—the one I am referring to—increasingly popular. In nature there is something that is not merely growing, sprouting, and budding life—which we naturally delight in when our souls are healthy—but in nature there is also what, in the ordinary sense of life, is called death and destruction. In nature there is something that continually destroys and overcomes one life through another. Whoever can sense this will also—to choose this most excellent example—when approaching the human form, the natural human form, be able to sense that this human form contains something mysterious in its shapes: that at every moment this form, which realizes itself in external life, is actually being killed by a higher life. That is the mystery of all life: constantly and everywhere, a lower life is killed by a higher life. This human form, which is permeated by the human soul, by human life, is constantly being killed, constantly being overcome by the human soul, by human life. And this is so in such a way that one can say: The human form as such bears within itself something that would be entirely different if it were left entirely to itself, if it could follow its own life. But it cannot follow this life of its own, because there is a higher, different life within it that kills this life.

[ 12 ] The sculptor approaches the human form and, albeit unconsciously, discovers this mystery through his intuition. He comes to realize that this human form indeed desires something that is not expressed in human beings, something that has been overcome and killed by a higher life, by spiritual life; he conjures forth from the human form what is not present in the real human being, what the real human being lacks, what nature conceals. Goethe sensed something like this when he spoke of “manifest mysteries.” One can go even further. One can say: This mystery underlies everything in the vastness of nature. Essentially, no color, no line out in nature appears in such a way that something lower has not been overcome by something higher. It can also be the other way around; sometimes the higher can be overcome by the lower. But one can dispel the magic in everything, can rediscover what has actually been overcome, and thus becomes an artist.

[ 13 ] And when one encounters something that has been overcome and demystified, and knows how to experience it in the right way, it becomes an artistic sensibility.

[ 14 ] I would like to elaborate on this last point in particular. In many aspects of Goethe’s work that remain largely unexplored, we actually find very significant human truths. Goethe’s theory of metamorphosis—which posits, for example, that in plants the petals are merely transformed leaves, and which was then extended to all natural, law-governed forms— Goethe’s theory of metamorphosis—once its inherent potential is drawn out through an even more comprehensive understanding of nature than was possible in Goethe’s time, given the state of development of his era—is destined, once nature is revealed through a comprehensive view, to unfold fully and become something much, much more. I would like to say: In Goethe’s work, this theory of metamorphosis is still very much limited by the intellect. It can be expanded.

[ 15 ] If we return to the human form, the following can be cited as an example: Anyone who looks at a human skeleton can see, even with a very superficial examination, that this human skeleton actually consists quite clearly of two parts—one could go much further, but that would take us too far afield today—namely, the head, which is, so to speak, merely superimposed on the rest of the body’s skeleton, and the rest of the body’s skeleton itself. Now, anyone who has a sense for the transformation of forms—anyone who can see how forms merge into one another, just as Goethe describes the green leaf merging into a colorful flower petal—will, upon extending this line of thought further, be able to perceive that the human head is a whole and the rest of the organism is also a whole, and that one is the metamorphosis of the other. In a mysterious way, the rest of the human being is such that, if one looks at it in the right way, one can say: It can be transformed into a human head. And the human head is something that, I would say, contains the entire human organism—only in a more rounded, further developed form. But the remarkable thing is this: If one has the capacity for visual perception regarding this matter and is truly able to transform the human organism within oneself in such a way that it becomes a head as a whole, and is able to transform the human head in such a way that it appears to one as a human being itself, then in both cases something entirely different emerges. In one case, when one transforms the head into the entire organism, the result is something that shows us the human being as if ossified, constricted, restricted—everywhere, I might say, driven to the point of sclerosis. If one allows the rest of the human organism to influence one in such a way that it becomes the head, the result is something that bears very little resemblance to an ordinary human being, something that only in its main forms still recalls a human being. What emerges is not something whose growth buds toward the shoulder blades have ossified, but something that seeks to become wings, that even seeks to outgrow the shoulders and, extending from the wings, develop over the head—appearing then as a head-like protrusion that seeks to grasp the head, so that what appears as an ear in the ordinary human form expands and connects with the wings. In short, one arrives at something that is a kind of spiritual form. This spiritual form rests, as if enchanted, within the human form. It is that which—if one develops, through expanded contemplation, what Goethe intuitively arrived at in his theory of metamorphosis—truly sheds light on the mysteries of human nature. So that one can see from this example: Nature is such that, in every single instance—not merely in the abstract, but in vivid concreteness—it strives to become something entirely, entirely different from what it appears to be to the senses. Nowhere, when one perceives things deeply, does one have the feeling that any form—that anything at all in nature—could possibly be anything other than what it is. This is expressed particularly significantly in such an example, in that in nature, one form of life is always overcome—indeed, virtually killed—by a higher form of life.

[ 16 ] We do not reveal what is commonly perceived as a “dual nature,” as a conflict within human development, only because a higher, supernatural force unites these two aspects of the human being and brings them into balance, so that the ordinary human form stands before us. That is why—not in an external, spatial sense, but in an inner, intense way—nature seems so enchanting, so mysterious to us, because in every part of it, it actually always wants more and infinitely more than it can offer, because it arranges and organizes its components in such a way that a higher life engulfs subordinate lives and allows them to develop only to a certain degree. Anyone who directs their sensibility even once in the direction indicated here will find everywhere that this obvious mystery, this magic pervading all of nature, is what—like the striving for the visionary from within, and from the outside, impels humans to go beyond nature, to insert something somewhere, to extract a particular element from a whole, and to let it radiate from there what nature intends as a single entity—that which can become a whole, but which is not itself a whole within nature.

[ 17 ] Perhaps I may mention the following here: In the construction of the Anthroposophical Society in Dornach near Basel, an attempt was made to give concrete form to precisely what I have just alluded to. An attempt was made to create a group of wooden figures representing—I would say—a typical human being, but depicting this typical human being in such a way that what is otherwise merely latent but suppressed by a higher life is portrayed so that the entire form first becomes a gesture, and the gesture is then brought back to a state of stillness. The sculptural aim here was to evoke what is suppressed in the ordinary human form—not the gesture made from the soul, but the one that is merely stifled within the soul, suppressed by the life of the soul—and then to restore it to stillness. The aim, therefore, has been to first set the calm surface of the human organism in motion in a gestural manner and then to restore it to stillness once more. This quite naturally led to the desire to bring more strongly to the fore that which is inherent in every human being but is, of course, held back by the higher life: the asymmetry present in every human being—no one is as developed on the left as on the right. But now, once this asymmetry has been brought more strongly to the fore—once, so to speak, what is held together in a higher life has been dissolved—it must be reconnected with humor on another, higher level; it is then necessary to reconcile what confronts us naturalistically from the outside. It becomes necessary to artistically atone for this transgression against naturalism—having emphasized the asymmetry, having allowed various other elements to flow into the gesture, and then having restored it to a state of calm. We had to atone for this inner crime by showing, on the other hand, the triumph that arises when the human head, through metamorphosis, transforms into a dark, oppressive figure—which is then overcome once more by the representative of humanity: it lies at his feet, in such a way that it can be perceived as a limb, as a part of that which represents humanity. The other figure we had to create for this purpose represents what the feeling demands when, apart from the head, the rest of the human form becomes as powerful as it already is in life, but is held back by a higher life, when that which has otherwise remained stunted begins to overgrow: what takes root in the shoulder blades, for example—what is already unconsciously present in the human form and constitutes a certain Luciferic element within it, an element that seeks to break free from the human being. When everything that is inherent in the human form—as sprouting from the drives and desires—takes shape, whereas it is otherwise overgrown by a higher life—through the life of the intellect, through the life of reason—which life of reason otherwise develops and is realized in the human head, then one has the possibility of demystifying nature, of wresting nature’s manifest secret from it, by taking what nature kills off in parts to form a whole, and setting it back into parts oneself, so that the observer is compelled to accomplish in his own mind what nature has otherwise accomplished before him. Nature has done all this. It has truly harmonized human beings in such a way that they are composed of various individual parts into a harmonious whole. By dissolving what is enchanted in nature, one dissolves nature into its supersensory powers. One does not even find oneself in the position of seeking, in a straw-allegorical or intellectually unartistic way, anything as an idea, as a figment of the imagination, or as a merely supersensible-spiritual entity behind the things of nature; rather, one comes to simply ask nature: How would you grow in your individual parts if your growth were not interrupted by a higher life? — One comes to redeem from the sensible realm a supersensible element that is already present within it—an element that is enchanted—while it would otherwise remain enchanted within the sensible realm. One comes to be, in fact, supernaturally naturalistic.

[ 18 ] I believe that in all the various tendencies and endeavors that have been initiated—but which have remained very much in their infancy and which have adopted the label “Impressionism”—one can sense the longing of our time to truly discover and give form to the mysteries of nature of this kind, to the sensual and supernatural of this nature. For one has the sense that what actually takes place in the artistic realm—that is, in artistic creation and appreciation—must today be raised to a higher level of consciousness than it was in earlier artistic epochs. What takes place there—namely, that a suppressed vision is satisfied, or that something is set against nature that recreates its process—is what people have always strived for. For these are, in fact, the two origins of all art.

[ 19 ] But let’s go back to Raphael’s time. In Raphael’s time, of course, these things were pursued quite differently than they are today by artists such as Cézanne and Hodler. Yet, more or less unconsciously, the goal has always been what these two artistic movements represent in art. It’s just that in earlier times, it was considered quite fundamental and primal when the artist himself was unaware that something spiritually unconscious within his soul approached nature and demystified what was enchanted within it, as he sought it in the realm of the sensual and the supersensual. Therefore, when one stands before a painting by Raphael, one always has the feeling—if one even wishes to attempt an interpretation—that what otherwise remains obscure in the depths of the subconscious, what one need not put into words, is being settled with the work of art, and thereby indirectly with Raphael as well. But regarding what one settles there, one may have the feeling—as I said, it need not be spoken, not even by one’s own soul—that one had once been with Raphael in a previous earthly life and had learned all sorts of things from him that had penetrated deeply into the soul. And what one agreed upon with Raphael’s soul centuries ago has become quite subconscious; then, when one stands before Raphael’s works, it comes alive again. — One feels as though one is facing something long ago agreed upon between one’s own soul and Raphael’s soul.

[ 20 ] One does not have this feeling toward the contemporary artist. The contemporary artist, in a sense, leads one into his inner world, and what is conveyed is close to human consciousness: One comes to an understanding with him in the immediate present. Because this longing, this need for the present moment, has now arisen, it is the case that in our time even the process of the rising mental image—which is actually a suppressed vision—seeks fulfillment in art. And, even if it is still somewhat rudimentary today, on the other hand one truly encounters the dissolution of that which is otherwise united in nature—indeed, the dissolution—and then, in turn, a reuniting, a reenactment of the natural process.

[ 21 ] What infinite significance is gained by all that modern painters have attempted—to truly study the various colors, to study light in its various shades—in order to arrive at the realization that, fundamentally, every light effect, every hue of color, wants to be more than it can be when forced into a whole where it is stifled by a higher life. What has not been attempted, starting from this sensation, to awaken light to its own life, to treat light in such a way that it demystifies what otherwise remains enchanted when light must serve the emergence of ordinary natural processes and events? We are still in the early stages with these things in many respects. But from these beginnings—which, in keeping with a justified longing, are emerging today—we will likely witness something becoming a mystery in a purely artistic sense, and then a mystery that is unraveled. That sounds somewhat banal when spoken aloud, but many things harbor mysteries that sound banal: one need only truly approach the mystery, namely the sensation of mystery itself. What I mean is the answer to the question: Why, actually, can one not paint fire or draw air? — It is quite clear that one cannot actually paint fire; one would have to lack any artistic sensibility to want to paint the glittering, glowing life that can only be captured through light. It should never occur to anyone to try to paint lightning, and it should occur to even fewer people to try to draw the air.

[ 22 ] But on the other hand, one must admit that everything contained in light harbors within itself something that strives to become like fire—to become, immediately, something that speaks, that makes an impression welling up from the light, and from every single nuance of color, just as human language wells up from the human organism. Every effect of light wants to tell us something, and every effect of light wants to tell something to the other effect of light next to it. There is a life within every effect of light that is overcome and extinguished by larger contexts. If one then directs one’s perception in this direction, one discovers in this way the sensibility of color—what color expresses—which artists began to seek during the era of the new plein air painting. Once one discovers this secret of color, this sensibility expands, and one finds that, fundamentally, what I have just said is indeed true. Not for all colors—colors speak in the most varied ways. While the bright colors—the reds, the yellows—actually assault one and say a great deal, the blue colors are what give the picture its transition to form. Through blue, one already enters into form—and specifically into the form-creating soul. We were on the path to making such discoveries, but we have often stopped halfway. That is why some of Signac’s paintings seem so unsatisfying to us—even though they may be quite satisfying in other respects—because the blue is always treated in exactly the same way as, say, the yellow or red, without any awareness that the blue patch of color, placed next to the yellow, represents a completely different value than the red does next to the yellow. This may seem trivial to anyone who can perceive colors. But in a deeper sense, we are only just beginning to discover such secrets. Blue and violet are colors that thoroughly transform the image from the expressive to the innerly perspectival. And it is entirely conceivable that simply by using blue in a painting alongside the other colors, one can bring out a wonderfully intense sense of perspective without drawing at all. In this way, one then makes further progress. One comes to realize that the drawing can truly be what one might call: the work of color. If one succeeds in setting the color scheme in motion, so that one initially has the drawing quite mysteriously embedded within the flow of the color, one will notice that this is particularly possible with blue, whereas it is less so with yellow or red, because it is not appropriate for these colors to be guided in such a way that they contain inner movement, that they move from one point to another. If one wishes to create a figure that moves internally—for example, one that flies—and which, because of this internal mobility, is at one moment small, then—without relying in any way on rational principles or any kind of scholarly aesthetics, which is never justified, but rather precisely when one proceeds from the most elementary sensation—one will find oneself absolutely compelled to use shades of blue and to set them in motion. One will notice that only then, in essence, can a line emerge, only then can the drawing appear, and only then can the figurative take shape—if one continues what one has begun by allowing the blue-tinged elements to transition into motion. For every time one transitions from the painterly, from the coloristic, into the figurative, into form, one will transform what is sensory into the fundamental tone of the supersensory. In the transition from light colors, through the blue, and from there somehow inwardly toward the drawing, one will find in the light colors the transition to a sensuous-super-sensual realm—one that, I would say, contains the super-sensual in a subtle tone, because color always seeks to express something, because color always has a soul that is super-sensual. And one will find that the more one enters into the drawing, the more one enters into the abstract-super-sensible, which, however, because it appears in the sensuous, must shape itself sensually.

[ 23 ] Today I can only hint at these things. But it is clear that in this way we can see how, in a single field, color and form can be used in artistic creation in such a way that their use already contains what I took the liberty of saying: nature keeps it enchanted, and we disenchant the supersensible—hidden in the sensible and killed by a higher life.

[ 24 ] If one looks at sculpture, one will find that in sculpture there are always two interpretations of surfaces, just as there are for lines. But I want to speak of only one interpretation. To begin with, a healthy sensibility cannot accept that the sculptural surface should remain what it is, for example, in the natural human form, for there it has been deadened by the human soul, by human life—that is, by something higher. We must seek the surface’s own life; once we have first spiritually extracted the life or soul that is present in the human form, we must seek the soul of the form itself. And we realize how to find this when we do not even allow the surface to be curved once, but rather curve the single curve once more, so that we have a double curve. We realize how we can make the form speak in this way, and we realize that deep within our subconscious, in contrast to what I have now analyzed more as an analytical faculty, there exists a synthetic faculty. For the sensory nature does indeed disintegrate into a mixture of the sensory and the supersensory, which is only overcome on higher levels of life. Within the boundaries of the soul I have indicated, there is an elemental urge to demystify nature in this way, to see how the sensory and supersensory are embedded in it as manifoldly as crystals in a druse, and how, by being embedded in a druse, their faces are cut off. But human beings also possess within themselves—often very strongly, precisely when this splitting, this analyzing, this dissolution of nature into the sensory-supersensory is intensely present in their subconscious—that ability which I would like to call synesthesia, a synesthetic sense.

[ 25 ] What is peculiar is that anyone who is able to observe human beings correctly may discover that, in fact, we always use a sense in a very one-sided way. By using our eyes to see colors, shapes, and effects of light, we develop our eyesight in a one-sided way. There is always something like a mysterious sense of touch present in the eye; the eye always feels as well as it sees. But this is suppressed in everyday life. However, because the eye develops in a one-sided way, if one is able to perceive such things, one always feels the urge to experience what is suppressed in the eye by the sense of feeling, the sense of self, and the sense of movement—which develops when we walk through space and feel how our limbs move. What is thus suppressed in the eye by the other senses is felt to be stirred—even though it remains still—in another person when one looks at them. And what is thus stirred in what is seen, but is suppressed by the one-sidedness of the eye, is reshaped by the sculptor.

[ 26 ] The sculptor actually shapes forms that the eye already sees, but sees so faintly that this faint perception remains entirely in the subconscious. The sculptor serves as an immediate conduit from the sense of touch to the sense of sight. Therefore, the sculptor must—or at least attempt to—dissolve the static form, which is otherwise the sole object of the one-sided eye, into a gesture that always inspires it to be imitated in turn as a gesture, and then restore this gesture—which has now been demystified—to stillness. For, fundamentally, what is stirred in one direction and brought back to rest in the other—what is at work within us as a psychological process when we create or appreciate art—is, on the one hand, always like the way a person inhales and exhales in ordinary life. This process, drawn forth from the human soul, sometimes makes a grotesque impression, although on the other hand it evokes a sense of the intense infinities that are enchanted in nature. The development of art—and this is precisely what certain emerging trends, which we have seen for decades and especially in the present, demonstrate—is moving decisively in the direction of uncovering such mysteries and, more or less unconsciously, truly giving form to these things. There is no need to talk much about these things; they will be shaped more and more by art.

[ 27 ] For example, one will come to feel the following—indeed, one can say of certain artists that they have felt something like this, more or less consciously or unconsciously; for instance, one understands the recently deceased Gustav Klimt particularly well if one accepts such premises in his sensibility and in his reason. One will eventually come to feel the following: Let us suppose one feels the urge to paint a pretty woman. Something like an image of this beautiful woman must then take shape in the soul. But someone with a refined sensibility may feel that, at the very moment they have made something out of a beautiful woman, they have, in that same instant, inwardly—spiritually and supersensibly—transferred this beautiful woman from life to death. At the very moment we decide to paint a beautiful woman, we have spiritually killed her; we have taken something from her—otherwise we would be able to encounter her in real life and would not be creating what can be artistically rendered in the painting— we must first have artistically killed the woman, and then we must be able to muster enough humor to revive her inwardly. The naturalist, in fact, cannot do this. Naturalistic art suffers from a lack of humor. It therefore presents us with many corpses, presenting us with that which, in nature, kills all higher life, but it lacks the humor needed to revive what it must first kill in that initial process. Even a graceful woman—when faced with her, one feels not merely as though one had mysteriously killed her, but as though one had first mistreated her and only then killed her. This is always a process that moves in one direction—this process of killing, which is connected to the necessity of recreating that which, in a higher form of life, overcomes what in nature strives to come into being. It is always a process of killing and then reviving through humor that must take place in the soul of both the artist who creates and the artist who appreciates art. Therefore, someone who wants to paint a lively farmhand on an alpine pasture does not need to reproduce what he sees; rather, he must above all be clear that, in what he has conceived as an artistic concept, he has killed the lively farmhand on the alpine pasture—or at least frozen him in place— and that he must bring this rigid form back to life by giving it a gesture that reunites what has been severed in its particular details with the rest of the natural context, thereby giving it new life. Hodler attempted such things. They are entirely in keeping with the aspirations of artists today.

[ 28 ] One could say that these two sources of art correspond to the deepest, subconscious needs of the human soul. To provide satisfaction for that which actually seeks to become a vision, but which, in healthy human nature, is not allowed to become a vision—this will increasingly take the form of expressionist art, even if one need not attach much importance to the label itself. And that which is to be created—to summarize once more—in order to reassemble what has been broken down into its sensory and supersensory components in whatever form, or from which the immediate sensory life has been extinguished so as to breathe supersensory life into it—will lead to the Impressionist art form. These two needs of the human soul have always been the source of art; it is just that, due to the general development of humanity in the recent past, I would say that the first is pursued in an expressionist manner and the second in an impressionist manner. As we move toward the future, this will likely take shape to a very special degree. People will then perceive art in a truly future-oriented way when they expand—not their intellectual consciousness, but their sensibility—more and more, and specifically and intensely in these two directions. These two directions—and this must be emphasized again and again to counter certain misunderstandings—do not in any way correspond to anything pathological. What is pathological would befall humanity precisely if the fundamentally healthy, natural tendency toward the visionary—within certain limits—were not satisfied through artistic expression, or if what our subconscious does continuously—namely, breaking nature down into its sensory and supersensory aspects—were not repeatedly and consistently infused with a higher life through truly artistic humor, so that we might be enabled to recreate in the work of art what nature accomplishes creatively.

[ 29 ] I certainly believe that the artistic process is, in many respects, something that lies deep, deep within the subconscious; yet I also believe that, under certain circumstances, it can be meaningful for life to have such strong, such intense mental images about the artistic process that these strong, intense mental images bring about something in the soul that weak mental images never can—namely, the ability to truly merge with feeling. When these two sources of art make themselves felt in the human soul through sensation, then one will indeed see how soundly Goethe’s perception was when, for a certain moment in life—such things are, after all, always one-sided—he perceived the pure, genuinely artistic in music by saying: “Music therefore represents the highest form of art—as I said, this is one-sided, for every art can reach this height, but one always characterizes things one-sidedly when one characterizes them—music therefore represents the highest form of art because it is entirely incapable of imitating anything from nature, but is, in its own element, both content and form.” — Yet every art becomes substance and form in its very own element when it wrests its secrets from nature—not through conceptualization, not through contrivance, but through the discovery of the sensuous-supersensuous in the manner hinted at today. I believe, however, that it is often a rather mysterious process within the soul itself when one becomes attuned to this sensuous-supersensuous aspect of nature. Goethe himself coined the term “sensual-supersensual.” And although he calls this sensual-supersensual a “manifest secret,” it can only be found when the subconscious powers of the soul are able to immerse themselves completely in nature.

[ 30 ] The visionary experience arises in the soul, so to speak, because the supersensible experience seeks to be released: it rises up from the soul. That which can be experienced externally as the spiritual, externally as the supersensible, is experienced by those who are capable of spiritual experience not through vision—which in Spiritual Science is then refined and purified into imagination—but rather through intuition. Through vision, one brings the inner world to the fore to a certain degree, so that the inner becomes an outer reality within ourselves; in intuition, one steps outside of oneself: one descends into the world. But this descent remains unreal if one is not able to demystify what nature holds enchanted—what it always seeks to overcome through a higher life. If one then places oneself within this disenchanted natural world, one lives in intuitions. These intuitions, insofar as they assert themselves in art, are indeed connected to intimate experiences that the soul can have when it becomes one with things outside itself. That is why Goethe was able to say to a friend about his art, which was in fact highly impressionistic: I want to tell you something that may shed light on people’s relationship to what I have created. My works cannot become popular. Only those who have experienced something similar, who have gone through a similar situation, will in reality ever truly understand my works. — Goethe already possessed this artistic sensibility. It comes to the fore poetically, especially in the still little-understood second part of *Faust*. Goethe already possessed this artistic sensibility—the sensibility of seeking out the sensual-supernatural by recognizing that part of nature as that which strives to become a whole beyond itself, which, through metamorphosis, becomes something else, and is then united with that other into a product of nature, only to be killed by a higher life. When we penetrate nature in this way, we enter into a true reality in a much higher sense than ordinary consciousness believes. But what one enters there provides the greatest proof that art does not need merely to reproduce the sensory or to express the supersensory—or merely the spiritual—which would lead it astray in both directions—but that art can shape and express what is sensory within the supersensory and supersensory within the sensory. Perhaps one is a naturalist in the truest sense of the word precisely because one recognizes the sensuous-supernatural, and becomes a naturalist in relation to the sensuous-supernatural precisely because one can grasp it only if one is at the same time a supernaturalist. And so, I believe, genuine artistic experiences will truly take shape in the soul in such a way that they also stimulate artistic understanding and artistic enjoyment, so that one can, in a sense, even develop within oneself the ability to live artistically in art. In any case, however, it is precisely such an intense, deeper contemplation of the sensuous-super-sensuous and its realization through art that will make understandable Goethe’s deeply felt words—arising from a profound understanding of the world—with which I began and with which I also wish to conclude: the words that seek to comprehensively express our relationship as human beings to art precisely when we are able to grasp art deeply in its relationship to true reality—including the supersensible. And humanity—because it can never exist without the supersensible, because the sensible itself would wither away if it did not live in the supersensible—will, through its own needs, increasingly realize what Goethe said:

[ 31 ] “Whoever nature begins to reveal her obvious secret to feels an irresistible longing for her most worthy interpreter, art.”