Johannes, Capesius, eighth scene

JOHANNES:
These were the last strokes.
The picture can now be considered finished.
It was a labor of love for me,
That I was able to express your essence
Through my art.
And the most significant thing is
That you can recognize yourselves in the painting.

CAPESIUS:
I must admit quite frankly:
I am faced with a mystery,
When I consider how this painting came about
And how your work has unfolded,
Since I first saw you.
It was three years ago;
You were in deep distress at the time,
Every glance at your features showed it.
I spoke many things from my soul,
Which reminded me of a speech
That I had heard in your circle.
I had to keep checking on you,
Who, as if weighed down by the heaviest grief,
Brooded in your corner.
At that time, I truly would not have believed
That you would ever feel the urge to create.
And what a change in three years!
The sorrow has given way to a cheerfulness of life,
Which is constantly renewed by the fire of creativity.
A light shines from your eyes like the sun,
A light that penetrates the innermost being of people,
And your hand creates images of people,
Which, like forces of nature, appear animated
And reveal to people their true nature
From the deepest depths of their souls.
There is no one among the people you have painted
Who would ever have recognized for themselves
What urges them to live,
As shown to them in your picture.
Through your works, people came to know themselves;
Yes, one can say even more,
Through them, they penetrated to the essence of human beings.
Those who are allowed to see such wonders
Only then truly live;
The others only dream.
I have often half-attempted the question
Where this transformation came from.
But you always avoided any hint
That could have given me the solution to this riddle.
The matter is all the more wonderful to me
Because after that turn of fate
You felt the need to hear from me
What I can offer through my research.
One might have thought
That this research must seem insignificant to you,
Since it contains little more than dry ideas
That our minds form about human creation.
Those who create themselves usually do not care much
For those who talk about creation.

JOHANNES:
You are mistaken, esteemed professor.
I had to seek your teaching right now,
Since the spirit has given me the gift of art....
What you gave me through your words,
Which flow so clearly from your lips,
Must unite with the gifts
That have come to me from another source,
If these true fruits are to ripen.

CAPESIUS:
You said that in a short time
The friends of your work will come
To view the new creation.
I do not want to stand next to the picture myself,
So I will leave now.
But there are so many things that I would very much like
to discuss with you very soon.
(Capesius exits.)

JOHANNES:
(alone for a few moments):
Looking at this picture, I could clearly feel
why I have succeeded
to give life to the true essence of man in form
and color.
I thank you, spiritual beings,
who have honored me
by allowing me to gaze into your world with my soul.
If only I had known about this man
what my senses perceive of him,
I would only have been able to trace
What leads a ghostly existence as a physical shell.
But as it is, I was able to connect my own soul
With that which invisibly called the visible form
Into existence and infuses it with life...
I only feel like an artist
Since I have been aware of how I can shape the human form
From the same forces
With which it calls the world into existence.
I had before my mind's eye
The life paths that this man has lived through,
Before he became what he is now.
And as he is, so he had to become,
Because long-past fate shaped him.
Only when art allows this invisible becoming
To weave itself into its creation,
Does it earn its right to exist.
Those who paint only the visible color,
Will never let the color of the human being shine;
They can only create the surface of color,
Which does not reveal what it expressively reflects.

(Strader enters.)

STRADER:
It is my deep need to look at
The portrait of my dear old friend once more.

JOHANNES:
I am glad, dear Doctor,
That you do not reject our way of thinking
When it comes to art,
Which wants to be nothing more than a revelation of this kind.
(Maria enters.)

STRADER:
I have always strived
To separate what belongs to different realms.
The artist may give free rein to his imagination
And bring his own world to life;
But when imagination seeks to supplant the spirit of inquiry,
Then my sense of truth resists.
(Looking at the picture):
When I look into these eyes,
That light shines so beautifully upon me,
Which I love so much in my old friend.
The fire looks out of them, full of life,
Which ignites his soul in the listener,
When he knows how to describe the high ideals of great people
So devotedly.
You give him to me a second time.
My heart must open to his warmth;
His noble nature must have an effect on me.
I must have a whole person before me,
if I am to feel alive within myself,
as he speaks here from the color and the light.
It is as if I did not see a picture,
but rather, as if a mysterious force
were pouring into me from the picture,
warmly interweaving my soul,
arousing my vitality
And creates life within myself.
I feel as if I am looking into depths
And, looking, allowing something to arise within myself,
Something rich in meaning that flows from the sources of existence.

MARIA:
You become so warm in front of the picture, Doctor. How can you admire the work
When you decisively reject everything that can create the work in the artist's soul?

STRADER:
I do not reject the spirit
That fertilizes imagination and art;
But I must separate the spirit of research from the spirit of artistry.
Imagination is the source of art,
But it should keep its distance from knowledge.

MARIA:
One can think in this way,
But this thinking is far removed from life.
Johannes could not create images
That speak so vividly to your soul
If his soul could not dwell in the spirit,
And if the spirit did not give him life.

STRADER:
— — — — — — — —

JOHANNES:
These were probably the last strokes.
I can now call the work finished.
It was particularly dear to me
That I was able to explore your very essence
Through my art.

CAPESIUS:
This picture is truly like a miracle to me,
And wonderful to me seems the creator,
Who for three years has undergone a transformation
That surpasses anything that people of my kind
Could consider possible,
If it did not appear before their eyes.
I first saw you three years ago,
When I was allowed to visit the circle,
In which you found the means
That elevated you to such artistry.
You were in the deepest distress of soul at that time,
Every glance at your features showed it.
The speech I listened to elicited from me
Words that sounded like a confession.
And they were difficult to extract from my soul.
I spoke in a mood
In which one usually only thinks of oneself.
Nevertheless, my gaze was repeatedly drawn
To that painter who sat sadly brooding
In his corner and remained silent.
But his silence and his brooding
were of a very peculiar kind.
That he did not hear any of the words
spoken around him,
one could well believe of him,
but that did not apply to his grief.
It seemed to listen to everything
And torment its bearer
As was appropriate to what was heard.
One could also perhaps say
That the man was possessed by grief.
It has been three years
Since I saw you like that.
I met you again soon after that day,
In truth, you were a different person.
Bliss radiated from your eyes,
Strength lived in your being.
And noble fire sounded from your words.
You then expressed a wish to me,
Which seemed quite strange to me.
You said you wanted to become my student.
And indeed, since that time,
you have listened eagerly
to everything I have to say about human nature,
about goals and ideas in the pursuit of time.
As we grew closer and closer,
I experienced the mystery of your artistry.
And each of your paintings offered me new wonders.
My thinking shied away from worlds
That are unattainable to our senses.
It seemed presumptuous to me to doubt
That all existence is filled with spirit,
But no less presumptuous
That humans want to penetrate spiritual worlds.
I must now recognize with clarity
How far I have strayed from the truth.
Not to see that spirit in your soul
Nature, creating, rises above itself
And that it itself guides the brush within you,
It would be wiser not to blindfold the eye,
In order to see clearly.

STRADER:
I thought I knew my dear friend;
But I must freely admit, looking at yours,
That I knew very little about him. [Picture,

MARIA:
How can you, dear Doctor,
Have such full appreciation for this work
And yet deny the source of the work?

STRADER:
What does the admiration I pay to the artist
Have to do with belief in the spirit world?

MARIA:
Admiration for the work can certainly exist,
Even if belief in the source is lacking.
Only in this case you could not admire anything,
If all paths to the spirit world were closed.
Only because he found such a path,
Was our friend able to create the work,
To which your admiration is directed.

STRADER:
I do not deny the existence of the spirit
And I do not doubt that it works in the artist.
But to surrender to the influence of the spirit
Does not mean to penetrate it with understanding.
In the artist, the power of the spirit creates,
As it creates in trees and stones;
But the power remains as unconscious to the artist
As unconscious as it must remain to the plant.
But when my gaze turns to the picture,
I forget everything that entices the thinker.
How wonderfully these eyes shine,
Which your brush has conjured onto the canvas,
The light that works in our friend,
How the noble fire lives in these colors,
Which ignites his soul in his listeners,
When he describes the high ideals of mankind.
O this picture, it works, it lives a powerful life.
I see not only colors, flat,
I see colors that veil the spirit
And reveal it by veiling it.
And I see forms before me,
They speak inaudibly of the workings of the mind,
And following them, I feel myself to be spirit.

CAPESIUS:
My friend, I have never seen you like this.
At this moment,
You have completely lost the thinker's calm.
The picture has taken you away from yourself.

STRADER:
You need not worry,
I will find myself again.

CAPESIUS:
Oh, say nothing against this moment.
Those who can lose themselves in this way gain much.
For a short time you have felt
What I will surely feel my whole life,
Which I am still granted.
This artist has taught me
That one can live in the spirit.
And I now believe that one cannot recognize people
Any other way
Than when one first loses
What one so commonly
You perceive yourself to be and think you recognize.
For me, “know thyself”
Now has a completely new meaning.
What good does it do me if I
Often tell myself that I should know myself.
This picture is convincing for you and me.
It is undoubtedly me who is depicted.
But until now I knew not the slightest thing
Of all that the picture tells me about myself.
So for me, “know thyself” means:
See what Johannes Thomasius
Can tell you about yourself.
And he was truly guided by the Spirit.
But he often told me,
If spiritual knowledge had not approached him,
His soul would be empty,
His hand would still be paralyzed,
As it was before.

STRADER:
I can well understand your devotion,
But it is difficult for me to see
How you can bear it so calmly.
Thomasius has certainly developed in three years
Admirably the talents
That could not show themselves before;
So long may I admire him too.
But if I am to speak of a helping spirit
That guided this development,
Then science is but a delusion
And all my thinking a vain delusion.
I must now be alone.

CAPESIUS:
I would like to accompany you.
(They exit.)

MARIA:
My friend, I saw you grow from work to work;
But you never took a step
That could be compared to your last.
This image reveals so much,
That lies deep within human beings.

JOHANNES:
The help that the spirit world has given me,
Flowed most abundantly this time.
To see a person's essence so clearly,
Was only now given to me.
When I began the spiritual path,
I saw clearly this man's youth.
Then it slowly dawned on me,
What had happened to him
In earlier lives.
I was able to learn how he was destined
For a life once richly filled with deeds,
And how the hardest struggles
Shaped those forces
Through which he formed his body
For this earthly life.
I felt his eyes shine
With experiences from times long past.
Then one day Benedictus gave me a sign
That brought me the greatest clarity
What I had seen in this man until then.
But even more significant was
What he showed me next.
I had previously kept what I had seen
Too much in my thoughts
And thus let it influence my work.
I then learned that everything we see
Before it grows into strength for us,
Must first sink into the abyss of our own spirit
So deep that it seems to have died within us.
It then reemerges later from the depths.
And when it appears before our soul a second time,
It unfolds in such a way
That it grows into full vitality.

MARY:
This is one of those spiritual laws
That one thinks one has grasped
All too easily,
When one is still far removed
From its true essence.

JOHANNES:
One sins against this law,
Even if it floats so clearly before the soul.

MARIA:
Since I have been allowed to live in the spiritual realm,
I have become aware of how weak the soul is.
One can lose again and again
What you have possessed.

JOHANNES:
Only when it has been transformed
In the abysmal depths of our soul
And, growing stronger after the transformation,
Has awakened to creative power,
Then it remains unlost.
I felt this with clarity for the first time
Since I tested it with this painting.

JOHANNES:
To embody in crude colors,
What you see vividly in the spirit,
Does not correspond to the life
That has become yours in this time.
You create light in other people,
As you did as Christ's messenger
In those ancient times,
In which we found ourselves.
Benedictus, who speaks every word at the right moment,
And only when true reasons urge him to do so,
He recently told me
How the threads of our destinies are connected,
And how they must remain so in the future,
The one joined to the other.
Until we found ourselves in the realm of the spirit,
He guided us as the leader of destiny,
But now it is incumbent upon us ourselves
To dedicate the powers of action assigned to us
Together to the goal of humanity.
My power is so intimately interwoven
With all that weaves in your soul,
That I cannot live without you.
If not the powers that first arose in you,
Flowed over into my spirit,
My creative power would have to die.
I lived only at your side,
When I was not yet given
To see the spirit.
You were my helper through suffering,
Which gave me spiritual knowledge
And gave me to myself.

MARIA:
We are bound by the power of wisdom
And would have to destroy ourselves
If we wanted to separate.

JOHANNES:
Before the consecration took place,
To which Benedictus led me,
I endured great suffering.
The heaviest burden was doubt,
Whether I might be at your side.
I knew only of my love
And nothing of our shared destiny.
And often it seemed to me a duty
To tear love from my soul.
I could not do it then.
And now I recognize this as a duty,
What was once only affection.
Benedictus spoke to me meaningfully:
With your consecration, part of the guidance
Which I bestowed upon you,
Is transferred to your own soul.
You were faithful to me,
So remain faithful in the future.
And it must be a test of your faithfulness,
That you keep Mary united with you,
Even if powerful forces want to separate you from her.
Such were the words spoken by Benedictus.
I cannot yet interpret them.
I will wait patiently
until they interpret themselves.
But these words are part of the content of my soul,
which guides me to the spiritual world. — — —