Abstract
The concept of visionary mimesis, central to this chapter, entails that the artist-author, who identifies as a visionary, aims not to imitate the material world but rather to represent spiritual reality. Writers such as Guy de Maupassant, Gustav Meyrink, August Strindberg, and Rainer Maria Rilke—who are investigated here—strove to move beyond naturalism by challenging traditional conceptions of realism and of reality. Proceeding from the idea that reality contains elements that are immaterial but still partly perceptible, these writers set out to achieve a new visual expression of mimesis incorporating the material and immaterial, the mundane and spiritual. This chapter investigates how the creative potential of visionary mimesis is expressed in the works studied.
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Notes
- 1.
Leon Surette sees this anti-dualism as a feature of occultism: ‘The occult is almost invariably monist, assuming a single realm modulating from material or “hylic” thickness through mental or psychic attenuation to spiritual or noumenal reality. Because of this monism, the modern occult thought it had found an ally in materialist science’s discovery of radiation and the nonparticulate nature of quantum physics’ ( Surette, 1994, 13). The theosophy of H.P. Blavatsky is an example of the sensuous-supersensuous monism: ‘The radical unity of the ultimate essence of each constituent part of compounds in Nature—from Star to mineral Atom, from the highest Dhyani-Chohan to the smallest infusoria, in the fullest acceptation of the term, and whether applied to the spiritual, intellectual, or physical worlds—this is the one fundamental law in Occult Science’ ( Blavatsky, 1988b, 120).
- 2.
As Wouter J. Hanegraaff writes in the article on ‘occultism’ in Dictionary of Gnosis and Western Esotericism, contemporary scholarship tends to view ‘occultism’ as a nineteenth-century development within the broader current of esotericism (Hanegraaff, 2006, 888). Occultism can be defined as an attempt to create a synthesis between esotericism and natural science. In that sense Blavatsky’s Theosophy represents nineteenth-century occultism in an exemplary fashion in that she combines the Darwinian theory of evolution with the idea of spiritual development. Similarly, Wouter J. Hanegraaff defines occultism as ‘an attempt to adapt esotericism to a disenchanted world’ (Hanegraaff, 1996, 423).
- 3.
In the introduction to On the Spiritual in Art, Kandinsky writes about the imitation of both inner and outer nature. The outer mimesis is linked to materialism, and the inner mimesis is linked to spiritual reality: ‘The observer of today, however, is seldom attuned to those subtler vibrations. In the realm of art, he seeks a mere imitation of nature by serving a practical purpose (a life-like portrait of depiction in the ordinary sense); an imitation following certain conventions (Impressionist painting); and, finally, those expressions of an inner feeling called “Stimmung” by the Germans and best translated as sentiment) concealing its true essence in nature-forms’ ( Kandinsky, 1946, 11). Without using the term ‘visionary mimesis’, Jason M. Wirth nevertheless distinguishes between Kandinsky’s non-figural use of the concept of mimesis and mimesis as a mere copying of an original: ‘Writing at the dusk of figurative art, when Kandinsky claimed all art to be mimetic, that it imitates nature, this could certainly not have meant copying as exactly as possible an original and certainly not a concern with the slippage between original and copy. Kandinsky’s painting[s] were on the verge of a new language of color that no longer relied on the figural. The Geist that Kandinsky reproduced, he reproduced productively’ (Wirth, 2000, 265).
- 4.
The Greek word mimesis means ‘imitation’. The mimesis principle of Plato and Aristotle, however, did not imply a mere imitation of the physically perceptible world. The Danish philosopher Dorthe Jørgensen summarizes the doctrine of mimesis as follows: ‘[A]rt is by definition mimetic, i.e. it expresses itself in imitation; art either mimes (presents) or conveys (represents) reality as a result of which artistic beauty is—in essence—a mirror of cosmic harmony’ (Jørgensen, 2001, 46) [Translation by G.M.]. Jørgensen adds: ‘Modern abstract art does not imitate the concrete forms of nature and is therefore called anti-mimetic, but it does operate in a mimetic way to something, but it imitates nature as such [and not just visible forms]. In other words, abstract modern art seeks to reconstruct the inner law of nature aesthetically—thereby reconstructing and actualizing that which lies beyond imminent perception’ (Jørgensen, 2001, 268) [Translation by G.M.].
- 5.
Milestones in the scholarly investigation of these aspects of modernity are Ringbom (1970), the exhibition The Spiritual in Art (Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Tuchman et al., 1986), and the exhibition Okkultismus und Avantgarde. Von Munch bis Mondrian 1900–1915 (Loers, 1995).
- 6.
The futurist painter Umberto Boccioni expressed this idea most clearly: ‘What must be painted is not the visible, but that which was previously regarded as invisible, namely what the clairvoyant sees’ (Müller-Westermann, 2013, 45).
- 7.
In an attempt to find a more adequate term for ‘abstract art’, Raphael Rosenberg introduces the concept ‘amimetical’. According to Rosenberg, the nonfigurative paintings of Hilma af Klint are ‘amimetical’ rather than abstract. Rosenberg defines Aristotelean mimesis as ‘imitation of nature’ as if ‘nature’ were an unproblematic concept (= the sensible world). The meaning of nature is dependent on world view, and if the artists have a spiritual world view, this has consequences for their conception of nature and visibility. Therefore, Rosenberg misunderstands the intention of Klint, Kandinsky, and other visionary artists. The concept ‘amimetical’ indicates that the artists do not wish to imitate any reality. But the aforementioned artists strive to represent a spiritual reality in a visionary way, and therefore their art is not amimetical but an expression of visionary mimesis (Rosenberg, 2015, 87–100).
- 8.
Arthur Lovejoy, the ‘inventor’ of the discipline history of ideas, used the term unit-ideas for ideas in a larger compound, such as a philosopher or school (Lovejoy, 2001, 3).
- 9.
Automatic writing is a phenomenon known both within mysticism and Spiritualism. The modern wave of Spiritualism began in 1848, when the two daughters of the Fox family in Hydesville, Margaretta (14 years old) and Catherine (12 years old), began communicating with spirits through rappings. Soon Spiritualism became a mass phenomenon. Among those communicating with spirits was Victor Hugo, who used the technique of ‘table turning’. Automatic writing appeared in the psychological discourse of the late nineteenth century. Pierre Janet , for instance, interpreted automatic writing as a form of somnambulism. In the early twentieth century, the discourses of psychology and spiritualism were not divided sharply, and mediumistic phenomena could be interpreted within both frameworks (Magnússon, 2009, 100). Within surrealism, automatic writing was an important means of artistic production.
- 10.
Walter H. Sokel defined the characteristics of Meyrink’s allegorical style as expressionism (Sokel, 2005, 80).
- 11.
The translation quoted is based on Maupassant’s revised version of the text published in 1887.
- 12.
The concept literally means ‘world around’ and refers to the organism’s subjective universe (cf. Esbjörn-Hargens and Zimmermann, 2009). The American philosopher Ken Wilber calls the field of awareness worldspace: ‘shared common interiors’ (Wilber, 2000, 126).
- 13.
This episode is inspired by Hippolyte Bernheim and Ambroise-Auguste Liébault ’s hypnotic experiments in Nancy.
- 14.
Cf. Dalrymple Henderson (1988, 1995).
- 15.
When writing in French, Strindberg had the French occultist milieu in mind. The French audience knew the occultist sources mentioned in Inferno, but his Swedish audience did not, hence the bibliographical guide.
- 16.
Strindberg considered himself a ‘naturalist occultist’ in the lineage of the Swedish eighteenth-century botanist, physician, and zoologist Carl von Linné , and he criticizes the theosophers for occupying themselves with metaphysics without having first ‘passed through physics’ (Johnsson, 2015, 332).
- 17.
One could argue that Strindberg’s naturalistic clairvoyance is not an expression of visionary mimesis, since his study of nature is anchored in science—in the widest sense of the word. Nevertheless, he does also adhere to ideas that originate in Renaissance esotericism and which hibernated in nineteenth-century occultism such as micro-macro-cosmic correspondences. Since Strindberg thought he was able to interpret earthly phenomena as signs from a higher sphere, he moves beyond the merely scientific paradigm broadly speaking.
- 18.
The connection between symbolism and occult currents is not a scholarly novelty. One of the pioneers in the scholarly investigation of romanticism was Auguste Viatte ( Viatte, 1942, 1965). John Senior authored the first monograph specifically on symbolism and occultism ( Senior, 1959). Georges Cattaui investigated the spirituality of the French symbolist current (Cattaui, 1965). Alain Mercier was the first scholar to investigate the relevance of occultism for not just the French but the European context as a whole ( Mercier, 1969–1974). The first volume of Mercier’s work dealt with French symbolism, but the second volume was devoted to European symbolism as a whole and contains a chapter on the German symbolist movement. Mercier describes the circle around Stefan George and its connection with the Cosmics from Munich (Münchener Kosmiker), Hugo van Hofmannsthal and Rilke . After describing Rilke’s reception of occultism and French symbolism, Mercier draws the following conclusion: ‘Jusqu’en ses ouevres et témoignages ultimes, le poète autrichien fut fidèle à sa quête “visionaire” de l’invisible par les choses et les signes apparents, quête qui fait de lui un héritier spirituel, beaucoup plus que simplement formel, du mouvement symboliste’ ( Mercier, 1969–1974, vol. II, 61). Friedhelm Wilhelm Fischer has shown how ‘certain spiritual ideas from the occult tradition were transferred from [symbolist] literature to [modernist] painting’ (Fischer, 1977, 344) [Translation by G.M.].
- 19.
Sphinx . Monatsschrift für die geschichtliche und experimentale Begründung der übersinnlichen Weltanschauung auf monistischer Grundlage (published 1886–1896). Corinna Treitel translates ‘übersinnlich’ as ‘transcendent’. ‘Supersensuous’, however, comes closer to the original word ( Treitel, 2004, 52).
- 20.
Rilke distinguished between the spiritualistic and artistic medium, and he held the latter in higher regard (Magnússon, 2009, 323–333).
- 21.
‘Not, however, in the Christian sense (from which I always passionately dissociate myself)’ (Rilke , 1988, 393).
- 22.
Cf. the chapter ‘ Rilke und Maeterlincks Bewusstseinsevolution. Die Bienen des Unsichtbaren’ (Magnússon, 2009, 196–209).
- 23.
German original: ‘O wie er schwinden muß, daß ihrs begrifft!/Und wenn ihm selbst auch bangte, daß er schwände./Indem sein Wort das Hiersein übertrifft,//ist er schon dort, wohin ihrs nicht begleitet./Der Leier Gitter zwängt ihm nicht die Hände./Und er gehorcht, indem er überschreitet’ ( Rilke, 1987, vol. I, 734).
- 24.
German original: ‘Ist er ein Hiesiger? Nein, aus beiden/Reichen erwuchs seine weite Natur’ (Rilke , 1987, vol. I, 734).
- 25.
The metaphor ‘roots of the willow’ seems motivically related to the ‘dark, unconscious’ God of Das Stunden-Buch (The Book of Hours, 1899–1903). Darkness and the unconscious were designations used to illustrate man’s limited scope of perception opposed to God’s immense, invisible vastness (Magnússon, 2014, 21).
- 26.
In the works of the Irish Nobel laureate William Butler Yeats , we find the same characteristics of symbolism and visionary mimesis as in Rilke’s , and the same suggestive and intuitive language. Yeats possibly relied even more on automatic writing than Rilke did. Yeats’s work A Vision (1925, 1937) was created on the basis of his wife, George ’s mediumism (cf. Mills, 2006). See further Per Faxneld’s discussion of Yeats in Chap. 5 of this volume.
- 27.
Cf. Braungart (2002); Baßler (1993); Baßler (1998a); Baßler (1998b); Baßler (2002); Pytlik (2005). See especially Pytlik (2002, 167–194) on Rilke , and Pytlik (2002, 187–194) on Rilke and automatic writing.
- 28.
One could also mention Blavatsky’s masters from whom she claimed to receive telepathic messages. In the twentieth century, many mediums claimed to receive messages from ascended masters. This communication is often called ‘channeling’ (Hanegraaff, 1996, 23).
- 29.
Madame Guyon uses almost the exact phrase: ‘In writing I saw that I was writing of things which I had never seen: and during the time of this manifestation, I was given light to perceive that I had in me treasures of knowledge and understanding which I did not know that I possessed’ (quoted from Underhill, 1960, 66). Rilke could have come across this passage in his reading of Carl du Prel (Braungart, 2002, 91).
- 30.
The ecstatic letters Rilke wrote after having completed the Duino Elegies bear witness of his self-interpretation as a medium. In a letter to Princess Marie von Thurn und Taxis-Hohenlohe , dated February 11, 1922, Rilke writes: ‘All in a few days, it was an unspeakable storm, a tornado of the spirit (as in Duino), the very fibres and tissues creacked in me—there was never a thought of eating, God knows what nourished me’ (Rilke , 1988, 352). In a letter of the same date to Lou Andreas-Salomé , Rilke writes: ‘All a few days. It was a hurricane, just as in Duino: all that was fibre in me, tissue, scaffolding, cracked and bent. There was no thought of eating’ ( Rilke, 1988, 353).
- 31.
Cf. note 5.
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Magnússon, G. (2018). Visionary Mimesis and Occult Modernism in Literature and Art Around 1900. In: Bauduin, T., Johnsson, H. (eds) The Occult in Modernist Art, Literature, and Cinema. Palgrave Studies in New Religions and Alternative Spiritualities. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76499-3_3
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