# Understanding Art

## GA 271 — 17 February 1918, Munich

### The Sensible and the Super-Sensible in Its Realization Through Art II

There is a very witty man who has made a remarkable statement about all human philosophizing. He said in a recently published work, which discusses at length the impossibility and futility of all human philosophizing: Man has no more philosophy than an animal and differs from the animal only in that he makes frantic attempts to arrive at a philosophy and must finally admit to himself that he has to resign, must end in not knowing. — There is much in this book, which is otherwise very readable, that basically brings together everything that can be said against philosophy. The person in question has become a professor of philosophy at a university for this reason. I will quote a saying of this man, which deals with the human view of nature. The saying is quite radical. The gentleman in question says that nature is mysterious on all sides, and that if man really feels the mysteriousness of nature on all sides, he cannot help but realize the infinite smallness of his own being. Nature expands immeasurably in its eternity, and we should actually feel that we stand there with our notions and ideas about nature, holding our tongues! I quote, and it can be said that the saying is not entirely inaccurate, that when we look at nature, we as human beings do indeed feel how little what we can grasp in our thoughts, even when we are engaged in the most brilliant natural science, actually corresponds to the great, immeasurable secrets of nature. And if we did not feel that the thought — which nature itself cannot bring forth, but which can only be generated in the human mind — stands face to face with nature, if we did not know that this thought corresponds to a human need, if we did not feel that in the something of our entire human destiny and human development lies in the reign of thought over nature, we need it as the seed needs the plant, we would actually not know, with careful inner self-knowledge, why we reflect on nature. We reflect on nature for our own sake and know that when we are confronted with nature, we are actually quite far from it with our thoughts. So one feels when contemplating nature.

If one feels towards the spiritual life, the supersensible life, then one must say differently. No matter how insignificant, childlike this supersensible life may be when it presents itself in us, one feels an inner necessity to also express what the spirit reveals to one in the soul. And although one must feel the most intense responsibility towards everything one expresses in the spirit, everything one can speak out of the supersensible, everything one can bring to light in the soul, one feels that one must follow this, that one must express it out of an inner necessity, just as one grows as a child or as one learns to speak itself. Thus, one feels oneself to be in a very different position with regard to the sensual and the supersensible.

A third thing is what one can call: reflection or expression about art. When one wants to express oneself about art, one feels neither the sense of being on the sidelines, which one always feels when pondering nature, nor does one feel that sense of necessity that overcomes one when faced with the inner revelations of the supersensible. Rather, when one tries to express oneself about art, one has the feeling that one is actually constantly interfering with the thought one is developing. In terms of artistic enjoyment, thought is actually a real troublemaker. And when it comes to anything related to art, you always want to stop thinking and talking and enjoy the art in silence. If, for whatever reason, you do want to talk about art, you don't want to do it from the perspective of an aesthetics professor or, even worse, an art critic. Not from the point of view of an art critic, because it seems superfluous to lecture on why you liked a particular dish after having eaten a series of dishes. You just want to say what you yourself can experience in art, in terms of joy, edification and so on, just as you feel the need to talk about what you have experienced with a dear friend. Out of a certain abundance of the heart, not out of a critical sense, one wants to talk about art, and one does not want to claim that what one has to say somehow expresses something lawful or universally valid, but basically just a kind of subjective confession. But that seems to me to be a constant feeling when talking about art, that the thought actually bothers you, and this, in turn, seems to me to point to what art is essentially about.

Since we as human beings live primarily in the world of the senses, we can ask: What is the relationship between art and the sensual? — Or, since we as human beings can only perceive the world of the senses exhaustively if we have a relationship to the supernatural, we could also ask: What is the relationship between art and the supernatural? — Well, it seems to me that anyone who develops an elementary feeling for artistic creation must very soon come to the conclusion that art is not capable of representing the sensual as it directly surrounds us, nor is it capable of expressing thought.

In the face of sensuality, anyone with a sense of nature will always have the feeling that if one wants to depict it and create a kind of image of it, one cannot achieve nature as such, that nature is always more beautiful and more perfect than any image. In the face of the spiritual – world-view poetry or the like bears witness to this – one will have the feeling that, if one wants to represent it, one describes something straw-like and superfluous. World-view poetry has a pedantic, scholastic character under all circumstances; the allegorical-symbolic will always actually reject any true artistic feeling.

And so the question of the relationship between art and the sensual and the supersensual can seem like a vital question for art. Therefore, the question arises: Is there anything else, besides the sensual and the supersensual, that has something to do with the essential tasks of artistic creation and enjoyment? This question can only be answered by really delving into the soul process of artistic creation and enjoyment: how it cannot be described by legitimate aesthetics, but can only be experienced. When we face the world in our ordinary, sober, and at first glance inartistic lives, we are dealing, on the one hand, with sensory perception and, on the other, with what is produced in our own soul through sensory perception, with thought. To demand from nature such perception as it offers us, such as the depiction of a human being through art, seems to me, for the reasons given, to be something quite impossible and therefore superfluous. The desire to represent through art what direct perception of nature offers is actually always rooted in certain aberrations of art. On the other hand, however, it seems as if – perhaps this is a little strange, but one does experience it, as I have already indicated in relation to talking about art – in the actual process of artistic creation and enjoyment, one strives to eliminate thought as far as possible, to prevent it from arising in any way. This seems to me to be based on the fact that processes are constantly taking place in the human soul that can either flourish to their end or break off at some point. One can only follow these processes if, through spiritual observation of the soul life, one really descends into the depths of the soul life that, for ordinary consciousness, remain in the subconscious or unconscious.

Those who observe the soul life of a person will find — leaving aside observation of the outer world for the moment — that this soul life, insofar as it develops freely in meditation and inner feeling, always has a tendency that cannot be described other than as follows: What swells and surges in the soul-life as feeling, as restrained impulses of the will, as feelings and the like, that wants to emerge, and it wants — basically also in the healthy soul-life — to form itself into what one can call a kind of vision. In the depths of our soul, we are always striving to shape our surging, flowing soul life into a vision. However, in a healthy soul life, the vision must not be allowed to emerge. It must be replaced, it must be stopped in its tracks as it arises, otherwise a diseased soul life will result. But in every soul there are efforts to shape itself into a vision, and basically we go through life continually stopping visions in the subconscious, by allowing them to fade to the point of thought. Then the outer image helps us. When we face the outer world with our seething soul life, and the outer world with its impressions affects us, then this outer world blunts that which wants to become a vision, and the vision fades to a healthy thought. I said: we actually go through the world constantly striving for visions, only we do not always become properly aware of the corresponding perceptions. But anyone who tries to realize what only quietly echoes between the lines of life in what one experiences daily, anyone who is able to observe this, will see that all kinds of things do emerge. I must say: if, for example, I happened to enter someone's dining room and found a party eating inside, and the plates and bowls were painted red, I would instinctively believe through an elementary sensation: there sits around the table a party of gourmets who want to immerse themselves in the dishes and courses. If, on the other hand, I saw that there were plates and bowls painted blue on the tables, I would believe that these were not gourmets, but that they were eating because they were hungry. Of course, one could feel the same thing somewhat differently; that does not matter. What matters is that one is actually always tempted, by what one encounters in life, to trigger an aesthetic sensation and to bring it in a certain way to a fading vision. It is, of course, entirely possible to succumb to strong illusions in this area. That does no harm. But if it is not true at all that a society that eats out of red bowls must be told that they are gourmets: aesthetically, the matter remains correct. Likewise, one could say: If someone receives me in a red room and constantly lets me speak, and I am a very boring gentleman, then I say: he is lying to me. Because in a red room, I expect a person who has something to say to me, and I feel it is a lie if he always lets me do the talking.

So, actually, as we go through life, we are always inclined to reduce what we experience to a suspended vision that then fades under the external impressions of life. Artistic enjoyment and creation always go one step further. Artistic enjoyment and creation cannot allow what simmers and boils in the soul to emerge subconsciously to the mere thought. That would be something that would simply permeate us with thoughts, but would not lead us to anything artistic. But when we, as artists, or because an artist comes to meet us, are able to give expression to something that wants to come up in the soul, I just want to say a color scheme, and when we feel that this combination of colors gives us something we need, so that the corresponding vision that arises, but which must not become a vision, has an external complement, then we have something decidedly artistic before us. I can imagine that someone would simply use artistic means to express moods and feelings by combining colors that may not correspond to any external object at all – perhaps the less they correspond to it, the better – but which are, so to speak, the counter-image of what wants to come to vision in his soul life. In the somewhat abundant discussions in recent times about all kinds of artistic matters, people have also become more aware of such phenomena and, when someone creates something that has nothing to do with the external, that has the sole task that I have just described, they speak of expressionist art. It is still frowned upon today to assume that what is preparing itself in man as a yearning and striving towards a goal corresponds precisely to a basic trait of humanity: to arrive at a sensualization of that which can only reveal itself spiritually in the soul. However, if one were to express a thought, something that has already come from the stage of vision to the pale thought, through some sensual means, one would be unartistic. If one avoids the thought and directly confronts the sensory form, one has established the connection between the human being and what has been artistically created, whereby the thought is eliminated. And one may say: That is precisely the essential thing, that art represents neither the sensual nor the supersensible, but the sensual-supersensible, something in which the sensual is directly mirrored by a supersensible experience. Neither the sensual nor the supersensible, but only the sensual-supersensible can be realized through art.

On the other hand, one may ask: if it is not acceptable for what we have encountered in sober life as perception to simply be reproduced in art, how is it possible to relate to nature artistically at all? If nature contained nothing but what it presents to our external perception and what this perception inspires in us, then there would be no necessity for art. We can only speak of the necessity of artistic creation if there is more to nature than what appears in the finished natural products for the imagination, for the thought that, in the artistic, must not provide the bridge between personality and external nature. Now, of course, we have to say that nature has within it that immensity, has within it also the intense infinity that we cannot grasp directly through thought. Nature has within it, even in the sensory, the supersensible. We can grasp the basis of the sensory-supersensible of external nature itself by looking at nature in such a way that we try to gain an insight into what is present in it beyond the sensory impression. Now, let me give you an example: When you are standing in front of a person, you can focus your attention on the human form, on the fact that the incarnate reveals itself through the human form, on the fact that the soul manifests itself through the outer form in the physiognomy, in facial expressions; you can follow how life permeates what is external form. Of course you can do that. But even if one wanted to reproduce everything about a person, one could not, as I said, achieve nature, because there is something unartistic about simply wanting to reproduce external natural objects. Anyone who asks whether a work of art should resemble a natural object is, from the outset, certifying that they do not want to see a work of art, but an illustration. But another is at hand. It must be said that when one pursues what is expressed in the human form, what actually appears as form is actually killed by everything else that lives in it – by the hue that comes from direct life, by the soul content. And that is the secret of nature: this nature is so infinite in its details that every detail can be killed by something higher. But if you have the sense for it, you can awaken the dead from its own essence to a new life; you can revive that which is dead in the form of the human being through the higher life, through the spiritual penetration, in the form, so that the form itself now becomes a living being, without it containing life and spiritual content. A sculptor, for example, who works with materials, can give form to what he must take; he comes to realize that nature is so intensely infinite that it contains infinitely more in each of its details than what it represents. When it presents a form to us, it deadens the inner life of the form, the life is enchanted in it, and one can disenchant it. When we encounter something in nature that is colored, it is quite certain that the color itself is deadened by something else in the object. If I take the mere color, I am able to awaken something out of the color itself that has nothing to do with what the color is on the object. I create life out of the color that lies enchanted only in the color when the color appears on the surface of the natural object. In this way it is possible to disenchant enchanted life from everything that nature presents us with. It is possible to release what lies within nature and its intense infinity from this nature everywhere and nowhere to create an imitation of nature, but to disenchant what is found in nature through some higher power.

When talking about these things, one is tempted to speak in paradoxes; but I believe that this does no harm, because one can see from the extreme, radical cases how things actually are in the less radical cases. On the one hand, I can imagine that when the artistic works from within through the held vision and I create a counter-image from forms and lines and colors, these lines and colors can be put together in such a way that they reflect nothing other than the restrained vision. On the other hand, I can say: It seems possible to me that I can create something alive out of something natural, let's say a human being in whom life itself has died, who has become a corpse, purely artistically, by bringing something out of the general universe that can artistically revive the corpse. There is no need for such extreme cases. But the possibility exists, as a borderline case, that when nature has already killed a being, a new creation of even the corpse comes about, in that something is brought up that is now, as something quite different from what man himself is with his soul nature, ensouls this form. I could imagine that a captivating work of art could come about through a new life sprouting in a corpse, which reflects the secrets that exist in relation to man, and which are only hidden because man has his own soul within him until his death. One need not be offended by such a borderline case. It is just that: a borderline case. From this it can be seen that artistic creation can be effective in relation to external nature, because artistic creation and enjoyment actually proceed continually in this way, even if not pushed to the borderline case. Art is a continuous release of mysterious life that cannot exist in nature itself, that must be brought out. I am then confronted with a natural product in human form, which is dead, but I try to awaken the life of this form and, from within the form, despite it being only a dead form, to awaken the whole person again.

Genesis says that man was created by the breath of God, that a human soul was breathed into him. This could lead one to see something else in the air besides the combination of oxygen and nitrogen. It could seduce one to see in the air something that awakens the human soul from it, something soul-like; it could seduce one to believe that this air basically longs to become a soul when inhaled by humans. One could see in the air the counter-image of the human soul, thus more than something merely inanimate: a yearning for the human being. Now it is very difficult to arrive at such a feeling in connection with air, because air and fire inspire little in the way of artistic creation. Nobody would want to paint fire, or lightning, and one would not want to draw air either. So it is not easy to arrive at this feeling in direct contact with air; but it seems to me that one can arrive at a true artistic feeling for this sensation in contact with the world of light and color. In the world of light and color, one can truly have the feeling that every color, or at least the color relationships, have the longing to become either a whole human being or a piece of a human being. In the human being, they find expression either as an inner expression of his being or in the way the light illuminates him and is reflected back. But one can say: If one lives in the light itself, one lives with the longing of the air to shape itself into the human face, for example. One can have the feeling that red and yellow want to achieve something; they want to shape themselves into something human, they have a language that lies within themselves. Then one will not try to simply reproduce the human being in a sober way. The liberation from the model must become an ideal of artistic creation in general. He who has not overcome the model at the moment he begins to create, who does not regard it as something that gives him the instruction to eavesdrop on nature's secrets, will remain dependent on the model and create illustrations. On the other hand, he who has artistic feeling will be tempted to shape the human being or some other being or some natural form out of color. For such a person, the world of color will be able to take on an inner, differentiated life. One will find that red and yellow colors are such that they tempt one to use them wherever one wants something to express itself, to speak through itself. What confronts one in red and yellow will express itself, will, through its own power, produce the ideal of art, excluding thought. It is different when one is confronted with blue, with violet. There one will have much more the feeling that with blue, with violet, one comes close to thought, at least on one side. One will have the feeling that with blue, with violet, one cannot represent something that expresses itself, but rather, something else, more easily. One will be tempted to represent the blue of one's inwardness by showing it in motion. And you will find that it is difficult to create an inner movement of the object by evoking some lines in the red. Rather, lines, shading, I would even say physiognomy, will arise in the red. The red will speak for itself. The blue, when transformed into lines, will betray its inner nature, will lead us more under the surface of the color than lead us out of it. When something expresses itself as color, one has the feeling that the color repels one. The blue leads us under the surface of the color; one believes that in what is expressed through the blue, movement, the development of will, is possible. A purely sensual-supersensible being, that is, a supersensible being that one wants to place in the sensory world, to paint blue and to express its inner mobility through the nuances of the blue, will be able to be fruitful.

In this way, one can disenchant whatever one encounters in nature as a part, whatever is killed in nature by higher life. One can find the sensual and the supersensual in nature itself; one can give life to mere form. One will find that it can never make a truly satisfying impression if one simply reproduces the human form as it is in a sculptural work of art. Many years ago, I once had a strange experience with a friend who became a sculptor. He said to me at the time – we were both quite young –: Yes, you see, you would actually have to produce the right plastic work of art by exactly imitating every single twist of the surface. – I must confess that I was almost furious at this expression, because it seemed to me that in this way the most abominable thing of an artistic performance could come out. Because, in any case, if you want to carve out of stone or wood what has form in man, what is killed by the higher things in life, without this inner life, then you have to bring it to life for yourself, you have to call upon the surface to say what it can never say on the outer man of nature.

For example, one finds that if one bends a surface and then bends it twice more, so that the bend is bent again, one has the simplest archetypal phenomenon of inner life. A surface bent in such a way that the bend is bent again can be used in the most diverse ways, and it will — of course this needs to be further developed — the inner life of the surface will emerge from the surface itself. These things testify to the fact that there is a relationship between outer nature and the human soul, which in truth has the character of the sensual-supersensible. We come to form thoughts precisely through our encounter with outer nature, in that outer nature kills off through a higher power that which otherwise exists as members in nature and keeps a higher spiritual life enchanted. This compels us to grasp this deadened life through the sober thought. If we avoid this pale thought and seek to grasp that which lies enchanted in the parts of nature and to which we ourselves carry out the process of putting it together, of giving it the higher life, then we undergo the process of artistic creation or that of artistic enjoyment. The two are related only in that what is later in the first is earlier in the second, and what is later in the second is earlier in the first. If we follow this approach, which is directed towards the intense infinity of nature and the possibility of demystifying the secrets of nature, in terms of what it represents in the soul life of man, then we have to say that it does not evoke the pale world of thoughts. What is demystified is lighter than what mere thought can grasp. But it does establish a connection between the external object and the human soul, in which thought is excluded, and in which a spiritual relationship between the human being and the object is nevertheless sought.

This can of course be taken further and we arrive at what may still appear quite absurd and terrible to many people today. It can be understood, but what at first seemed terrible to people was always something that they took for granted after they had become accustomed to it for some time. If you look at a person – you only need to look at their skeletal structure – then even with a very superficial observation you will be able to see that the skeleton clearly consists of two very different parts – we will not consider the other one today –: the head skeleton, which is, so to speak, only attached, and the rest of the skeleton. For those who have a sense of form, it now becomes clear – not through some anatomical observation, but through a sensory observation of the head and body skeleton – that one is the metamorphosis of the other, that one can think of the main bones in such a way that wherever there is a hump, it can also grow, and wherever there is an outgrowth, it can recede. By mere transformation, one can actually — by changing the form — make the main skeleton emerge from the rest of the skeleton and, to a high degree, the rest of the skeleton emerge from the main skeleton. So that one can say: the whole human being is enchanted in the head. Even when one is confronted with a skeleton without a head, one will be tempted, if one does not want to get stuck with the sensory perception, to supplement the head to this skeleton in a sensory-supersensory way; one will be tempted to let the vision of the head arise from the skeleton. There are people who cannot imagine this. But it is impossible for a human trunk skeleton to arise in nature without a head skeleton. For those who, in their imagination, do not merely confront nature as an abstraction, but in such a way that they carry the essence of nature in their own perception and cannot perceive the natural object other than as it must be, it is self-evident that the head skeleton will also appear to them out of the body skeleton like a vision. But for him who sees through these things, it is the case that if he has only the head and now completes the whole person out of it as if from a vision, this person is different from when he completes the other the other way round. It is similar and yet different. So that one can also say here: In nature outside, a wholeness is created in man, which consists in the dissection into head and remaining organism; but each individual wants to be a whole man. In a higher whole, life, which is enchanted in each individual as a whole man, is killed. If you exclude the thought that arises when you encounter a human being, then you see yourself forced to recreate from your own inner being that which you take from the human being by analyzing him. And in this way, you rebuild nature, like nature itself. One creates this infinitely intense, significant process of unifying what must first be killed in its members in order to reappear at a higher level. And it will naturally be different if one recreates it in spirit.

I believe that this already evokes a certain horror in the imagination. We have made an attempt in our building in Dornach – one can make attempts in all fields, it can never be a matter of wanting to restrict art by means of any dogmas – in a group that is to be executed in wood – it is important that it is to be executed in wood – it cannot be done in stone – to first reunite in a central figure at a higher level that which is also united in the human being, but united through nature, where in turn the sexual organs are killed by something higher. Every human being is asymmetrical. But what wants something completely different in the left side than in the right, you can feel it: then two people stand before us, the left-handed person and the right-handed person. That which is specialized in the left- and right-handed person is united in nature to a higher unity, in that the self-will of the limbs is slain. In artistic contemplation, which confronts the will of nature, arises, I would say, the complete figure of the left-handed and right-handed man. Both basically want something different, and the artist must — this can remain very much in the subconscious — relive the process that nature carries out on another level by killing the left-handed and right-handed man and balancing them in the whole human being. If one now artistically creates a figure in which the form suggests that the human being is an asymmetrical being, then something else must be added. The sensual-supersensory, perceived, brings one into the necessity of really bringing about what is necessary as other limbs. Therefore, we were compelled to create other figures. We were obliged to compensate for the disintegration and subsequent reassembling of the left- and right-handed man by hinting at the other two opposites. What lives in man as a vision when one imagines the torso of the human body as a visionary complement to the whole human being? One would have alive in the outer form what rises from the trunk to the head as drives, as instincts, what one could call the Luciferic. One will want to shape this Luciferic in a different way than nature has done: For example, one will reshape the shoulder blades into wings; then one will be tempted to bring together what nature constricts, these wings, with the shape of the ear and head. Something different will come out of these sensual-supernatural human limbs than an ordinary natural man, but it will represent a certain side of man that one should not be allowed to represent individually. It would be dreadful if someone were to present something like this as a figure in itself, but together with the human being and in the right composition to the human being, it can be composed in such a way that one imitates the compositional power of nature. Conversely, what wants to become a whole human being in the human head must also be recreated. What wants to become a whole human being in the human head, becomes ossified, hardened, when it is developed into a whole human being. This is what we must continually overcome in ourselves, what we actually overcome by adding to the impulses that we carry in us through our head those that keep this hardening fresh from the rest of the organism. We must overcome what comes from the head with what comes from the blood of the heart organism. The human being's sensible-supersensible nature makes it possible to recreate in separate forms what is hidden in the individual human form and was composed by nature herself at a different level.

What might be called the process of re-creation actually takes place in the human soul; it is a process in the life of the soul, something that is not just an external and abstract imitation of nature, but rather a continuation of nature's evolution in the human being himself. This presupposes that the artist and the person who is artistically gifted actually face nature and themselves in a very complicated way – which remains only in the subconscious, since the thought is eliminated –. That is understandable. It must be said that, emotionally, we are in a complicated process with regard to what is to become artistic. If someone simply wanted to reproduce a beautiful woman by imitating what nature provides, he would inwardly kill this woman. He would depict her dead. She would not come to life in his work, even if he reproduced her very faithfully. You have to be able to transform her into a corpse first, but then, through what is genuine, true humor, recreate her beauty from a completely different element. Without figuratively speaking, figuratively speaking, you have to kill a beautiful woman - you have to beat her up or something like that, first transform her into something dead - you can't paint her properly. Its beauty is present in nature in a completely different way than it must be present in the finished work of art. One must first discover with humor what is to be recreated and what must be killed. One can say: when one sits opposite a serious scholar, the reproduction of this is initially actually a comedy; one might be tempted to laugh at his serious expression. But one is only artistically finished with the serious scholar's countenance when one has humorously revived it with something else. One must make it amiable again and then one can understand it from a completely different perspective.

The aim is therefore to resurrect that which has been killed in nature through one's own subjective life, to disenchant it, to redeem it. If I observe a dashing young farmer walking on the mountain pasture and simply imitate him, I will probably create something very dead; but if I make an effort to, as it were, first kill him and, through certain lines, bring about a harmony between him and the surrounding nature, I will be able to create something artistic. Hodler has attempted such things, and we can see that in the subconscious similar efforts are being made everywhere, which has also led to artistic discussion about what might be called, on the one hand, the creation of the counter-image for the unfinished vision, and on the other hand, the creation of the subjective counter-image through what enchants in nature and is always killed by a higher life. In this way the sensible and the super-sensible approach man from two sides, and through art man can endeavour to bring them to a higher, new existence.

In my earlier lecture on the same theme I endeavoured to connect the thoughts which I have developed here before you to certain thoughts of Goethe's in order to show how the sensible and the super-sensible can be realized through art. I was criticized for this, and I now realize that it worked just as well without the reference to Goethe. People reproach you for many things, especially when you refer to Goethe, because those who think they come particularly close to Goethe when they repeat something of his that they do not understand, and are able to judge those who have made an effort to penetrate into the matter. These things can be understood; it is a natural process in human life, and one must sometimes be quite pleased when what one says is judged in this way. One can even think: if it had received a different, more approving judgment, one would have to say something quite superfluous or foolish. So I will at least present what I could avoid at the end. I do believe that anyone who approaches Goethe with understanding will find in his broad-minded and perceptive view of art, even if it is expressed in a different way, what has been asserted today as the sensual-supernatural element in art. I even borrowed the expression from Goethe. And I believe, although I am quite of the opinion that in a certain sense it is correct that the one to whom art reveals its secrets has a rather pronounced antipathy to art or to enter into an aesthetic-scientific consideration, I believe that art can only be discussed from the standpoint of life, that the most correct way to discuss art is to listen to the artists themselves. However, sometimes one comes to strange experiences. As a rule, artists complain terribly about what other artists produce, and if you enjoy their works, you sometimes do not enjoy what artists say about their works, because they sometimes live in illusions about their own works. But the artist must create out of illusions, and precisely that could be right, giving the right impulse for his artistic creation. Even if I fully admit all this, and even if I understand from a certain point of view that the artist is always quite reserved about anything approaching ingratiation from the side of aesthetic science or other considerations, I still do not believe that it is completely unnecessary to have intuitive ideas about art. I believe that art must always advance with the general progress of the soul's life. I believe that it is precisely through the contemplation of the sensual-supernatural, as it unfolds through the held vision, as it confronts us from the outer nature, when we disenchant what is enchanted in it, that art solves the riddle of nature in a sensual-supernatural way. So that in the end I want to quote this beautiful, worldly saying of Goethe's as a summary of today's reflection: “When nature begins to reveal its manifest secret to someone, that person feels an irresistible longing for its most worthy interpreter, art.”