Lecture XXIV (Nr. 0303)
Facs
Transcript
[299] anticipatory reconciliation. Now this is the reason for the a b, and although for ecclesiastical reasons I have to fight against this art most vehemently, because they believe that this is religious art--- which is not, as I will show later on---I must say there is ALSO TRUTH in this understanding of art. If you experience the infinite cof artistic expressions in the idealistic period---for instance the great painting of the early and high d---then you can say: here something is fulfilling of human potentialitiesby [sic.] by artistic anticipation which cannot be fulfilled in reality. It is e. I just heard a few days ago again f's Don Juan, and here again I had the feeling it is dance in Heaven,
so to speak: the melodies are transcending the empirical possibilities of existence; it is a reality in these melodies which in its beauty and in its power of anticipating fulfilment is the rest of the soul---even the day before a lecture! Now this shows the truth of the idealistic interpretation of art: the element of anticipation. And this element is in all art; no naturalistic work of art is a work of art if there is not this element, which is usually called beauty. Now we must be very cautious today with the word gand I realize that not only I myself but most people avoid it carefully, because the word is one of those which have been deteriorized to cheap beauty, to a beautified naturalism which is the worst distortion of what art really is. Nevertheless the word beauty---In Greek kalos, which is always identified with agathos, with good---this shows there is an inner relationship between
the good and the beautiful, for Greek thinking---and they knew something about these things. Therefore what the Greeks called kalos is something which is forever valid, even if the word "beautiful" and "beauty" have been badly deteriorized.