Génesis de la figura del monje en la estética del romanticismo alemán: W. H. Wackenroder, C. D. Friedrich y San Agustín

Abstract

In 1796 the Berliner W. H. Wackenroder wrote Herzensergießungen einer kunstliebender Klosterbruders (Outpourings of an art-loving friar). A publication, in theory anonymous, that because of its short length, the condition of its author —a humble young civil servant with a great sensibility to contemplate art and admire music — and the subjects discussed —Renaissance’s art and masters of the past’s works—, can seem, at first sight, not by many experts considered the founding work of German Romanticism. The text is told in first person by a monk, behind whom the real author, Wackenroder, is hidden. He offers through the chapters a very personal view of art, that he considers one of God’s languages, being the other one the nature. He takes up again artists such as Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael and Dürer, pointing out not only their works but also their personalities, emphasizing their being chosen by heaven. He tells in other chapters that for him, art and religion are mixed with confusing limits, approaching mysticism in some parts of the text. His most explicit concern is to recover in his time the ability of art to touch men’s heart, so that they look above again, recovering the human sensibility before the mystery of faith, lost by the supremacy of reason as proposed by the Enlightenment. The «author» of this text is, as has already been said, a monk, and if we think about one of the most emblematic works of the romantic German artist of greater impact in the history of the following art, Caspar David Friedrich, the image of that Mönch am Meer (The monk by de sea) appears, that the painter from Greifswald finished in 1810. His work has been described as «mystic» due to its intense spirituality, religious profundity that permeates all his texts about art, letters, and poems. His characters, like this monk, usually appear back to the watchers looking at infinity, point with a concrete dimension to Friedrich: the eternal life obtained for us men by Jesus Christ in that Cross so many times painted by him. In this way, his life and work seem to be the answer to what Wackenroder claimed: paintings that lead men to wonder about the crucial questions in life, and that open again the door to the personal God replaced by the philosophers’s god.