Pagan art, Christian art, Spiritist art.

At the session of the Society, of November 23, the Spirit of Alfred de Musset having manifested himself spontaneously (see detail further on), the following question was addressed to him:

Painting, sculpture, architecture, and poetry have successively drawn their inspiration from pagan and Christian ideas. Can you tell us whether, after pagan art and Christian art, there will not one day be a Spiritist art? — The Spirit responded:

“You ask a question that answers itself. The worm is a worm, becomes a silkworm, then a butterfly. What is more ethereal, more graceful than a butterfly? Well then! pagan art is the worm; Christian art is the cocoon; Spiritist art will be the butterfly.”

The more one delves into the meaning of this graceful comparison, the more one admires its exactness. At first sight one might suppose that the Spirit had the intention of lowering Christian art, placing Spiritist art at the crowning of the edifice; but there is nothing of the sort, and it suffices to meditate on this poetic image to assimilate its precision. In fact, Spiritism rests essentially upon Christianity; in no way does it come to replace it: it completes it and clothes it with a brilliant tunic. In the beginnings of Christianity are found the germs of Spiritism; if they were to repel each other mutually, the one would disown its child, and the other its father. By comparing the first to the cocoon and the second to the butterfly, the Spirit indicates perfectly the bond of kinship that unites them. There is more: The image itself describes the character of the art that the one inspired and that the other will inspire. Christian art had to draw its inspiration from the terrible trials of the martyrs and to take on the severity of its maternal origin. Represented by the butterfly, Spiritist art will draw its inspiration from the vaporous and splendid landscapes of the future existence that unveils itself; it will delight the soul that Christian art had filled with admiration and dread; it will be the song of joy after the battle. Spiritism is found entirely in the pagan theogony, and mythology is nothing but a picture of the Spirit life poetized by allegory. Who would not recognize the world of Jupiter in the Elysian Fields, with its inhabitants of ethereal bodies? and the inferior worlds in Tartarus? and the wandering souls in the manes? and the protecting Spirits of the family in the lares and the penates? in Lethe, the forgetting of the past, at the moment of reincarnation? in the pythonesses, our seeing and speaking mediums? in the oracles, the communications with the beings of beyond the tomb? Art necessarily had to draw its inspiration from that source so fecund for the imagination; but to rise to the sublime of sentiment, it lacked the sentiment par excellence: Christian charity. Men knowing only the material life, art sought, above all, the perfection of form. Bodily beauty, then, was the first of all qualities: art devoted itself to reproducing it, to idealizing it; but it was reserved to Christianity alone to make the beauty of the soul stand out above the beauty of form; thus Christian art, taking the form from pagan art, added to it the expression of a new sentiment, unknown to the Ancients. But, as we have said, Christian art felt the effects of the austerity of its origin and drew its inspiration from the sufferings of the first adherents; the persecutions impelled men toward a life of isolation and seclusion, and the idea of hell toward the ascetic life. This is why painting and sculpture are inspired, in three quarters of cases, by the picture of physical and moral tortures; architecture takes on a grandiose and sublime character, though somber; music is grave and monotonous like a sentence of death; eloquence is more dogmatic than moving; beatitude itself is marked by tedium, by idleness, and by a wholly personal satisfaction; besides, it is found so far from us, placed so high, that it seems to us almost inaccessible; this is why it touches us little, when we see it reproduced on canvas or in marble.

Spiritism shows us the future under a light more within our reach; happiness is closer to us, at our side, in the very beings who surround us, with whom we can enter into communication; the dwelling of the elect is no longer isolated: there is incessant solidarity between Heaven and Earth; beatitude is no longer a perpetual contemplation, which would be nothing but eternal and useless idleness, but rather a constant activity for good, under the very gaze of God; it is not in the quietude of a personal contemplation, but in the mutual love of all creatures arrived at perfection. The wicked one is no longer relegated to the burning furnaces, hell is found in the very heart of the guilty one, who finds within himself his own punishment. But God, in his infinite goodness, while leaving him the path of repentance, leaves him, at the same time, hope, that sublime consolation of the unfortunate.

What fecund sources of inspiration for art! How many masterpieces these new ideas can create for the reproduction of scenes so varied and, at the same time, so gentle and so poignant of the Spirit life! What subjects at once poetic and palpitating with interest in that incessant commerce of mortals with the beings of beyond the tomb, in the presence, beside us, of the beings who are dear to us! It will no longer be the representation of cold and inanimate remains, but the mother, having at her side the beloved daughter, in her ethereal form radiant with happiness; a son attentively listening to the counsels of the father, who watches over him; the being for whom one prays, who comes to testify to his gratitude. And, in another order of ideas, the Spirit of evil breathing the venom of the passions, the wicked one fleeing from the sight of his victim, who forgives him, and the isolation of the perverse one in the midst of the crowd that repels him, the perturbation of the Spirit at the moment of awakening, his surprise at the sight of his body, from which he is astonished to be separated, the Spirit of the deceased in the midst of his greedy heirs and hypocritical friends; and so many other subjects, all the more capable of making an impression the more closely they touch real life. Does the artist wish to rise above the terrestrial sphere? He will find subjects no less attractive in those happy worlds, which the Spirits like to describe, true Edens from which evil has been banished, and in those lowest worlds, true hells where all the passions reign, sovereign. Yes, we repeat, Spiritism opens for art a new, immense field, not yet explored. When the artist works with conviction, as the Christian artists did, he will draw from that source the most sublime inspirations.

When we say that one day Spiritist art will be a new art, we mean that Spiritist ideas and beliefs will give to the productions of genius a particular stamp, as occurred with Christian ideas and beliefs, and not that Christian themes will fall into discredit; far from it. But, when a field has been gleaned, the reaper seeks to gather elsewhere, and he will gather abundantly in the field of Spiritism. Doubtless he has already done so, but not in so special a manner as he will do later, when he is encouraged and stimulated by general assent. When these ideas are popularized, which should not be long in coming, for the blind of the present generation daily disappear from the scene, the new generation will have fewer prejudices, by the very force of things. Painting has more than once drawn its inspiration from ideas of this kind; painting, above all, is full of them, but they are isolated, lost in the multitude. A time will come when they will give rise to masterly works, and Spiritist art will have its Raphaels and its Michelangelos, as pagan art had its Apelleses and its Phidiases.