Facs
Transcript
Lecture XXVI, Feb. 14, 1956
Some technical difficulties have arisen and I am afraid we must postpone the slides until Thursday. Instead of interrupting the showing of the pictures by theoretical interpretations, then I will show them one after the other and will give the theoretical introduction now ...
Now I gave you last Tuesday a survey on the meaning of artistic symbols in all the different arts. I want today to relate the artistic to the religious symbols because out of this relation our final organization of the relation of religion and art will come. I said that in all arts, artistic symbols discover a realm of reality which otherwise is shut, and open up a level of the soul, of our personal existence, which otherwise is covered and not open; and that this cannot be done in any other way than just by artistic symbols. This was the main thesis, and in order to prove that thesis I went with you through many arts, where it was always obvious that only the artistic form is able to open up that which art can open up by its symbols.
What then is the difference between these kind of symbols and the religious symbols? First, their points of identity – I only need to repeat them: symbols are not signs; symbols grow and die; symbols point beyond themselves; symbols open up levels of reality and of the soul; symbols participate in the reality of that to which they point. This is true of artistic symbols, this is true of religious symbols. But the difference is the level. The religious dimension is first of all not beside others. If you call it “level,” then we must [say] it is the ultimate level, but we had better call it a dimension and then say it is the dimension of ultimate concern. When