The veiled image of Sais

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The veiled image of Saïs has been a classic topos since antiquity and the early Enlightenment . It is the veiled statue of the gods Isis or the goddess of Sais , who was already regarded as the divine embodiment of nature in ancient times. There is said to have been an inscription above the entrance to their temple, which, depending on the author, read something like this:

“ I am everything that is, that has been and that will be. No mortal human has lifted my veil. "

- Friedrich Schiller , On the Sublime (1793)
Sculpture The veiled image of Saïs in the Luisium Park

Friedrich Schiller's ballad

Schiller also dedicated his ballad from 1795, written in blank verse , to this theme. In it, Schiller combines Greek, Egyptian and biblical motifs. Schiller published the poem for the first time in his magazine Die Horen .

content

A young man comes to Saïs in Egypt in search of the truth . There he meets an oversized, veiled picture in a rotonde . When asked what was veiled there, the high priest replied : “The truth”. He is amazed that nobody has lifted this veil yet. The hierophant explains that the deity forbids this. But the young man wants to know, at night he looks for it and lifts his veil. What is hidden behind the veil is not said, but the next day the priests find the pale youth; he does not talk about what he has seen, is never happy again and finds an "early grave". The closing lines of the poem are its message:

"Woe to him who goes to the truth through guilt,
it will never be pleasing to him."

reception

The motif of the veiled Isis as the incomprehensibility of nature and its unveiling by science can be found in numerous natural history works of the Enlightenment. B. in Alexander von Humboldt , Ideas for a Geography of Plants (1807).

In addition, aspects of Isis were received in the priesthood, such as initiation into the community and the secret doctrines. Schiller's ballad is set in the Isis priesthood and is about an unsuccessful initiation. The mystery teachings of Isis were in Schiller's time in certain circles, such as B. Among Freemasons, a very popular topic. In this regard, Schiller's Masonic-inspired essay Die Sendung Moses must also be taken into account, in which Schiller refers to the inscription on Sais and in particular emphasizes the Isis mysteries as the basis for the Mosaic religion.

Immanuel Kant referred to this motif as the ultimate example of his theory of the sublime in his 1790 Critik der Jatzskraft .

Inspired by Kant's theory, Schiller then developed his theoretical treatise On the Sublime (1793), in which he also referred to Isis von Sais and, in its mysterious disguise, presented her as a prime example of the sublime.

In Goethe's Faust poem, the protagonist Doctor Faust complains at the beginning of his futile search for truth and how "nature cannot be deprived of Schleyer's" and finally meets a "goddess" who resembles Isis and who he asks to "see her secret" to be allowed. This goddess is invoked in a similar way to Isis in Apuleius' The Golden Donkey and the "look" (" Epoptie ") of the mystery of the mystery goddess unites (together with the search for truth) Doctor Faust with Schiller's apprentice von Sais (the apprentice calls out to Schiller the revelation: "I want to see it.").

As a counterpart to Schiller's ballad, Novalis ' art fairy tale Hyacinth and Rosenblüthe can be read in the fragment of the novel Die Lehrlinge zu Sais (1799). Hyacinth leaves his beloved Rosenblüthe to find the statue of the veiled Virgin and to lift the veil. When he succeeds in this he recognizes the face of rose petals behind the veil. Truth reveals itself to him as what he started from, at the same time - in contrast to the truth in Schiller - as an individual truth that can only be grasped through the mind. In the romantic counter-concept to Schiller, the absolute truth can indeed be grasped, but only by grasping the inner world.

Novalis also mentions a veiled virgin in the sacred songs .

The underlying story also served modern authors as a basis for their work. One of them was created at the Vienna Film Academy . Directed by Henri Steinmetz , the short film Das verhangene Bild with Kathrin Resetarits and Richy Müller was made in 2005 in collaboration with ZDF / 3sat .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Jan Assmann: Moses the Egyptian. Hanser. Munich 1998. ISBN 3-446-19302-2
  2. ↑ cf. Friedrich Schiller (Ed.): Die Horen, born in 1795, 9th item in the Friedrich Schiller Archive
  3. ↑ Jan Assmann: Schiller, Mozart and the search for new mysteries . In: Ernst Behler / Manfred Frank (eds.): Athenaeum. Yearbook for romance. Paderborn 2006 (vol. 16). Pp. 13–37, pp. 14 and 20.
  4. ↑ Jan Assmann: The veiled picture of Sais. Schiller's ballad and its Egyptian and Greek backgrounds . Berlin 1999, p. 20.
  5. ↑ »Perhaps nothing has ever been said more sublime or a thought expressed more loftily than in the inscription above the temple of Isis (Mother Nature):" I am all that is there, that was and will be, and no mortal has uncovered my veil. "(Immanuel Kant: Critique of Judgment . Leipzig 1922, p. 171. See also: https://archive.org/details/kritikderahrungs00kantuoft/page/170 )
  6. ↑ “Everything that is veiled , everything mysterious , contributes to the terrible, and is therefore capable of sublimity. The inscription that was read in Sais in Egypt over the Temple of Isis is of this type. "( Https://de.wikisource.org/wiki/Vom_Erhabenen )
  7. ^ Johann Wolfgang Goethe: Faust I , line 673.
  8. ^ Johann Wolfgang Goethe: Faust II , line 12103.
  9. ^ Johann Wolfgang Goethe: Faust II , line 12000.
  10. ↑ George Cebadal: Goethe, Schiller and the veiled truth. A small contribution to the mystery culture in Goethe's "Faust" poetry and the Weimar Classic . Norderstedt 2019, pp. 29 and 48.

literature

  • Friedrich von Schiller: Schiller's works in ten volumes. First volume: poems. , Birkhäuser Verlag, Basel 1955.
  • Novalis: poems. The apprentices at Sais. Philipp Reclam jun. GmbH & Co., Stuttgart 1984.
  • Herbert Uerlings: Novalis . Philipp Reclam jun. GmbH & Co., Stuttgart 1998.

Web links

Wikisource: The veiled image of Sais  sources and full texts