By Inti Yanes
“Not without regret does one leave, once discovered, the place of origin.”
Hörderlin
Σά βγεῖς στόν πηγαιμό γιά τήν Ἰθάκη, να εὔχεσαι νἆναι μακρύς ὁ δρόμος…[1]
Ἰθάκη, Κωνσταντίνος Καβάφης.
In his research on the “origin of the work of art,” Martin Heidegger develops one of the fundamental ideas of his aesthetic thought and legacy: “The origin of the work of art is art: that is, art is in its essence an origin, a characteristic way in which truth is brought to entities, becomes historical event.[2]“. This conception encloses a specific way of apprehending the essence of art beyond any “external” criterion (such as technique, a certain thematic-stylistic orientation, etc.), in the sense of a vital activity, a process, an action.
It is not, however, just any activity of a technical nature (such as that of producing a pair of shoes in a factory), nor is it an analytical-conceptual praxis with pretensions of demonstration and mastery (such as scientific-technological praxis), but a peculiar type of activity characterized by the onto-existential fact that through it the subject is given to become conscious of its most essential “itself” as a historical entity, abandoned daily to the oblivion of its origin, and therefore of its most peculiar horizon of being: existence. Artistic-creative activity thus appears as an original existential function, because its concrete intention is based on a primordial intentionality: “Art is then the becoming and the realization of truth”[3].
In the essence of the artistic, in its dynamic interiority, is enclosed a struggle, an interaction that originates in the very form of being of the entity through which it is historicized, man. A system of meanings, of voices, listeners and silences, a world of signs and interpretations, a “Weltanschauung” constructed from one’s own experiential perspective, tries to impose its cosmos on the blind and even amorphous tendency of the telluric, of the untamed that emerges at the very “edges” of the experience of existing, and which is an indispensable condition for the concretion of that totality that the work pretends to be, because there is contained the power that pro-moves that world of signs in se ipsum dormido: Heidegger’s phenomenon called “the struggle between the Earth and the World”[4].
Every authentic work of art, as well as every process of thinking, is a creational struggle between the Earth and the World, between pure impulse and meaning, between the nothingness that becomes being and the Logos that ex nihilo shapes a world; a struggle within which the emergence of entities to the consciousness of men in their primordial significance takes place. This emergence is a coming to light of what had hitherto remained hidden; the light is a Lichtung, a clearing in which the ray of vision breaks, if only for a moment, the dense dark night of the everyday. When this emergence takes place, we are in the presence of the Adamic language, in which the human being names Creation with the original verb of God[5], without hiding it yet with the petrifying gaze of Medusa, which casts upon entities the “negative light” of pure intrahistorical subjectivity….
The proposal of artist Ernesto Benítez is built on the above assumptions. An inquiry from the symbolic heritage of the spiritual tradition -although it is unfair to pretend that it is reduced to that- with the aim of unveiling transcendental contents that leads to a serious attempt of comprehension, which I consider successful, of the existential condition of the human being. The creator himself explains that
motivated by the history of our infinite question about the why of our existence and starting from the conceptual principle that the true mystery is existence itself, I have assumed for some years now a broadening of the frontiers of art towards the fields of philosophy and gnoseology in a general sense…”.
This extension would not be possible at all if the artistic activity and the cognitive-spiritual processes did not originate in the same source, that is, in existence as a “search” for unity with oneself, as a search for the destiny of “being in the world”.
This search implies the use of appropriate morphostructural resources, hence the existence of a symbolic correspondence between the materials (organic substances: ashes, earth, charcoal, etc.) and the aforementioned concept of the telluric as the intrinsic power of existence. The appearance of symbolic landmarks in the universal mystic-religious tradition such as the heart and the mirror, among others, as well as the constant interaction between the corporal and the spiritual, sometimes in opposition, sometimes in complementation and full reconciliation, refer to the duality that underlies, both in semantic and structural terms, this proposal.
However, the constant referentiality to symbolic-spiritual elements does not mean that there is a necessary or special legitimization of certain discourses or systems of religious beliefs and practices, but, on the contrary, we find ourselves in front of the opening that leads to the foundation (the existential as a problem of the meaning of being) that gives rise to all forms of religious-spiritual expression. The author himself considers God as “living in things”, or better “being things themselves”, in a vision -in some way- pantheistic of the Universe.
Like existence, and in correspondence with human destiny, art is a process that is realized when it transcends itself in the intuitive understanding of its primordial content as the very meaning of Being that presents itself on the horizon of the historical as the fundamental destiny of “being there”. This “conjunctural” condition of the artistic, linked to a more general becoming that originates in the foundation from which it emerges and in which it disappears again, is aesthetically reproduced in the ephemeral condition of many of the artist’s works. “Conjunctural” does not come to mean here something unimportant or lacking in artistic-aesthetic weight, it points on the contrary to the fact that the creation of the artist Ernesto Benítez has an intention-destination that is situated beyond the very being of the work as an artifact. The work must “disappear” from the horizon of immediate perception in order to leave behind it the trace of the essential significance it brought to the surface of the historical, and this trace, the chronotopic trace of the presence that at the same time hides itself while allowing the significance to self-signify, takes on special intensity until it becomes a luminous flash of meaning, thus revealing, in an always silent and interior way, the very reason for the historical in whose bosom it manifests itself. And when we speak here of the historical, if we wish to grasp the transcendence of this experience proper to the human being, we must take into account that history does not consist of a series of isolated events or events interlinked only by the external bond of chance or by the mere repetition or arithmetical succession of events, but signifies above all a permanent eschatological movement, which from within governs the expectation of meaning of the historical whole, of the totality of its events, assumed, redeemed and resized by the Logos and which, in the end, fulfills its “destiny” in the total realization of that original expectation of meaning.
Thus, when the work in its ephemeral condition disappears from the historical, having interpreted it in its fleeting appearance, then the historical unveils its unity of meaning, and hermeneutics ceases to be a mere exercise of critical pseudo-intellectuality to become a true interpretation of the essence of man, which is none other than the very essence of history.
Ultimately, the divisions of Spirit-Nature, or Art-Nature, Body-Spirit, are perishable; everything will return to its original Unity: Nature-Divinity. The artist explains: “There is in all my work a marked interest in conceptualizing the pieces of a chthonic spirituality that evokes the mystical foundations of nature and in function of this the materials and expressive resources in general are employed”.
The work remains beyond all this open to the “reading” that the responsible and open to listening receiver is able to make, but it happens here as with the magi in the reflection of John Chrysostom, if we take into account that in the worldview of Ernesto Benitez, and therefore in his work, the journey, the light and the truth are inseparable, we cannot forget that “the magi did not set out because they saw the star, but they saw the star because they had already set out”. Having set out on the road, on the road to the truth of being, to itself as primordial mystery and silent answer, is then an indispensable condition and a necessary aesthetic-hermeneutic presupposition for the approach, assimilation and understanding -paradoxically supra-artistic- of Ernesto Benitez’s work. And this happens because the work of art shows itself in its full maturity precisely when it allows itself to stop being perceived as a simple “work” or as “art”, and allows itself to be apprehended as “revelation” and “hierophany”[6], as “liturgy”, that is creative praxis that transcends the artist himself, as a living emergence of Meaning in history. We are placed in front of a necessary crossing, in front of a journey called to lead to the supraconceptual, mythical and symbolic Ithaca, which is no less real for being symbolic and mythical. It is up to us to respond – or not – to the poet’s call.
Come, my friends. T is not too late to seek a newer world. Push off (…) for my purpose holds to sail beyond the sunset, and the baths Of all the western stars, until I die, tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’ we are not now that strength which in old days moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are, one equal temper of heroic hearts, made weak by time and fate, but strong in will to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.[7]
Athens, May 17, 2009.
Notes:
[1] “When you set out for Ithaca, wish the road to be long…”, Ithaca, Constantine Cabafis, cfr. Κ.Π. Καβάφης, Τα Ποιήματα, Εκδόσεις Μετόπη, Θεσσαλονίκη, Ελλάς.
[2] Martin Heidegger, The origin of the work of art, in Martin Heidegger, Basic Writings, Ten Key Essays, plus the Introduction to Being and Time, Edited by David Farrell Krell, HarperSanFrancisco, HarperCollins Publishers, NY, 1992.
[3] Martin Heidegger, op. cit.
[4] M. Heidegger, op. cit.
[5] See on this subject Gen, 2-19.
[6] The term hierophany (whence hierophanic) comes from the combination of the Greek terms φαίνομαι, φαίνεσθε, φαίνειν (to appear, manifest, become perceptible to the eyes, mind and senses) and ἰερόν (sacred, sacred, by extension divine), and is used in relation to every event, occurrence, experience and system of signifying objects, through which a “dichte Gegenwart”, a “dense presence” (Gadamer), a mysterious παρουσία of the Divine manifests itself, in phenomenologically dissimilar but always essentially identical ways, opening a “Lichtung”, a “clearing” (Heidegger) in the dense and complex chronotope of cultural being, in which “lets itself be seen”, often hiding, the Meaning.
[7] Ulysses, Alfred Tennyson, 1842.
Published in ArteCubano, Revista de Artes Visuales del Consejo Nacinal de las Artes Plásticas. Havana, Cuba. Edition No.1/2010. Pp 74-79