Art and Religion

[illuminist]

This is a quote from Richard Wagner's Prose and essays entitled "Religion and Art"

"ONE might say that where Religion becomes artificial, it is reserved for Art to save the spirit of religion by recognising the figurative value of the mythic symbols which the former would have us believe in their literal sense, and revealing their deep and hidden truth through an ideal presentation. Whilst the priest stakes everything on the religious allegories being accepted as matters of fact, the artist has no concern at all with such a thing, since he freely and openly gives out his work as his own invention. But Religion has sunk into an artificial life, when she finds herself compelled to keep on adding to the edifice of her dogmatic symbols, and thus conceals the one divinely True in her beneath an ever growing heap of incredibilities commended to belief. Feeling this, she has always sought the aid of Art; who on her side has remained incapable of higher evolution so long as she must present that alleged reality of the symbol to the senses of the worshipper in form of fetishes and idols,— whereas she could only fulfil her true vocation when, by an ideal presentment of the allegoric figure, she led to apprehension of its inner kernel, the truth ineffably divine"


i would be interested to hear everybody's response to this subject matter

[term]

He's certainlly right about art in conjunction with a religious system he describes as artificial and i would call dishonest. Art in the service of such systems is often restricted to be a stereotype and can't fulfill its potencial. But generally, I'd say that art and religion fit together very well. I assume Wagner would have agreed with that.