Poetry, Dignity and Art

 Art is a daughter of freedom

Friedrich Schiller

At a time when I had tasked myself to learn world literature and focus on the best and greatest humanity has produced, I learned about Friedrich Schiller, a German poet, philosopher, physician and humanist who lived during Germany's enlightenment movement in the 18th century. A time when art and beauty and its pursuits influenced society.

"Schiller (1759–1805) and his close friend Johann Wolfgang von Goethe were the primary proponents of Weimar Classicism (roughly 1786–1805). This movement was a form of Neohumanism that synthesized the strict rationalism of the Enlightenment and the emotional intensity of Sturm und Drang, with a focus on classical aesthetic principles, harmony, and humanistic ideals"

There was a slight countermovement called German Romanticism that glorified nature,mysticism to an idealized point. Casper DavidFriedrich was but one of its painters. 

Geniuses of their time, who also pursued morals and ethics as human goals.

When I initially traveled to many of the most stunning places in Europe I tried to retrace these heavy weights of literature and the arts.

Among them was a building with a statue of Schiller in front of it and the inscription:

Spa building

"The dignity of mankind has been placed in your hands. Preserve it! It sinks with you! With you it will ascend!"

Friedrich Schiller

I remember that I was moved and motivated. The inscription was placed there in or about 1907. I was inspired to continue to celebrate the arts and human dignity and that the intervening years had brought incremental positive changes. The building had served as a theater in a city known for its healing thermal water and baths. I left happy and impressed with a feeling that somehow everything was moving toward a positive future.

When I revisited several years ago, I had lost the idealism of my youth. The world had changed. The inscription had turned into words that no longer moved me. I felt demoralized. A building that was beautiful was just a building. The site no more than a tourist spot. The beautiful entrance led to a casino (built in 1949). In the past I would have learned about which muse the sculptures represent. It seemed pointless and irrelevant.

There is a statue of Schiller in Lincoln Park Chicago placed there in the late 19th century. 

Despite Schillers words and the sentiment of his time, I thought of how a political party had twisted the beauty and art of German thinkers poets and artists to represent their ideology, using German Romanticism as the representation of its ideology. Blemished and diminished so much achievement. Decades later, AI is reproducing imagery of gaudy idealism, reminiscent of Otto Runge and his cherubs.

Here we are again.

The inscription seemed meaningless, the caution unheaded. I walked away watching people with little baskets carry groceries and flowers. Others walking their dogs, while I was feeling cognitive dissonance.

History repeats itself, eventually it swings back in its cycle. I hang on to that. After all the beautiful building still stands. The inscription still exists. Older, I did get to revisit. Maybe, meaning will return as well.