|
 |
|
|
|
The
Letter to the artists is dated April 4, 1999, the Easter day that
was looking out at the third millennium. With that Letter, destined to
all who work in the very much variegated horizon of fine arts, and
indirectly to all those who are convinced that beauty is “an invitation
to taste life and to dream the future, John Paul II entered an ideal
territory that had been safeguarding the imprint of the Christian
message over the centuries, through its dazzling apparatus of symbols,
figures, narrations, signs and colours. It is meaningful to take in our
hands that writing after a decennium, in the tentative of resuming the
interrupted thread of dialogue between arts and faith, after many
generations, provocations and misunderstanding. Let us think of the
present fecund, though not always easy, encounter with the architecture
in the construction of new temples or of the ventilated project of
presence of the Holy See, through the pontifical Commission for the
Cultural Goods of the Church, of the Venice biennial in the 2011
construction.
The
golden thread between faith and arts
Going back to the text
of John Paul II, we soon come to a rather unexpected element in a
pontifical document: it is surprising to discover, in the tissue of
those pages, the presence of Dante and of Dostoevskij, of Claudel, of
the great singer of the icons and their beauty, namely Pavel Florenskij
as well as of other protagonists of culture. Moreover, it is surprising
to see the combination of Nicolò Camano’s rarefied intuitions and the
sumptuous dough
of Chagall. These
references of the Letter to the artists reveal a Pope who has
been playwright, poet, writer and a voice that sings, deeply linked to
the culture of his land: in fact, on one side we see a quotation from
Adam Mickiewicz (1798-1855), the Polish bard, and on the other side he
evokes the figure of Cyprian K. Norwid (1821-1883), a friend of Chopin,
famous for his poem Il
pianoforte
di Chopin,
which in Poland is considered as a kind of national emblem. It was he
the one who sang the arts like the flower of love, which deepens its
roots into the soil of freedom.
Naturally the letter of
a Pope always has a theological, spiritual, pastoral and ecclesial
finality. At the basis of this intensive and suggestive document,
however, there is a historical consideration, the golden thread uniting
faith and arts over the centuries. Without hesitation the critical
Canadian Northrop Frye, in his famous essay “Il grande codice”,
wrote that “the Bible is the universe within which the Western
literature and arts have worked up to XVIII century and are still
working largely”. Nietzsche himself – who fought against the abandonment
of the Hebrew-Christian culture- in the preparatory material for the
drafting of L’aurora, was compelled to admit that “for us Abraham
is more than any other person in the Greek or German history. There is
the same difference between what we feel in reading Pindaro or Petrarca
and the Psalms as between a motherland and a foreign land.
However, this union was
cracked and risked to break up. This is why John Paul II re-launched
this message of the Council to the artists, the very beautiful text that
I had the luck of listening to directly on 8th December
morning, 1965, in St. Peter’s square: “To all of you, artists, who have
fallen in love with beauty and who work for it (….). Today, like
yesterday the Church needs you and addresses you. Through my voice she
says to you: do not allow the covenant among all to be interrupted.
«Re-weaving» the alliance between arts and faith
Paul VI, a pontiff who
was very sensitive in arts, poetry, music and thought, during his deep
magisterium, repeatedly confirmed the importance of “re-weaving” the
alliance between arts and faith.
The Letter of John Paul
II does it insistently, not only by retracing the glorious past, when
“the material was bent to the adoration of the mystery” and the icon
somehow became a “sacrament” of divine presence, but also by manifesting
the conviction –expressed under the veil of a question- that art needs
the Church”. It needs her because the Bible –as the papal document
reminds us- is the “great iconographic lexicon of fine arts (Claudel),
"the coloured alphabet of hope in which the artists of all centuries
have been dipping their brushes over the centuries” (Chagall). The fine
arts will always need Christian faith also because “the central dogma of
Incarnation of the Word offers a horizon particularly rich in motives of
inspiration to all the artists”.
Naturally, the
reflection of the Pope stretches along an exquisitely theological
trajectory. Art is an epiphany of the divine beauty, therefore it is a
generator of grace and illumination; using a famous phrase of Dante, art
is "a Dio nepote" (a nephew of God). John Paul II leads in Trinitarian
key the reading of this transcendent dimension of arts. The artist
participates in the creative work of the Father: “God called man to
existence transmitting to him the task of being an author (…) calling
him to share his creative power”. The incarnation of His Son has
radiated light, truth and beauty throughout history and the world,
making them available for the eye, the mind and the heart, as Gospel
richness of the truth and of goodness; it has revealed also a new
dimension of beauty: the evangelical message overflows”.
Finally, the Holy
Spirit, “mysterious artist of the universe, that from the very beginning
pervades the work of creation”, transfigures every artistic creation
“with a sort of interior illumination that unites together goodness and
beauty”, offering the “the possibility of going throught some experience
of the transcending Absolute”. Having this divine illumination at its
root, art becomes in its turn a sign of the divine: “Fine arts must make
the spiritual world of the invisible God perceptible and fascinating”.
This is the
via pulchritudinis,
which Christian
tradition has always travelled, and it has been formalised further by
the theological thought of Hans Urs von Balthasar; it is the intention
that was in the heart of the artists of the past; in fact, in the
Statutes of the painter of Siena in the years 300 we read; “We manifest,
to men who cannot read, the miraculous things operated by virtue of
faith” (here the thought runs to the
Biblia pauperum).
More recently, the French poet Jules Laforgue exclaimed, “L'Art
c'est l'Inconnu,
the art is the epiphany of the Unknown, with capital letter, that is, of
the mystery, of the transcendent and divine.
The
beauty of living
Nevertheless, though
pastoral by its nature, the Letter of the Pope reveals a subtle anxiety
that we could call “existential”. In fact, few do need fine arts in a
world that is turning grey, that loses its colour because of
superficiality, that misses the energy of the spirit, that advances
gropingly without a route and a destination. John Paul II made a
recourse to a beloved poet, the quoted Mickiewicz, who was convinced
that “the world of the spirit emerges from chaos”. The Pope was sure
that humanity of all times –including today’s humanity- wait to be
enlightened along its journey and destiny”. In this perspective, beauty,
truth and goodness entwine spontaneously in the authentic art. The
famous assertion of Dostoevskij can be understood in this light;
according to him, “Humanity could no longer live without beauty”. Let us
listen once again to the quoted message of the council of the artists.
“The world we live in needs beauty not to grow obscure in desperation.
Beauty, like truth, puts joy in the heart of men, it is a precious fruit
that resists the temporal wearing that joins the generations and joins
them in admiration. This happens thanks to your hands”. 1
Gianfranco Ravasi
President of the Pontifical Council of Culture
Piazza Città Leonina, 9 -
00193
|
