Compassion the Art of an Ethical Problem

◄	COMPASSION

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Compassion, the keen awareness of the interdepence of all things and the ultimate and most meaningful embodiment of the emotional maturity. It is through compassion that a person achieves the highest peak and deepest reach in his or her search for self-fulfillment. Compassion may be defined as 'shared suffering' (the lowest level), 'to share a meal' but also 'shaking hands'. The moment of exchange counts. If you have the bacilli of passion or obsession, you will defeat life.

Five world-renowned intellectuals explored the meaning of Compassion for the arts and morality in contemporary society. Four days of lectures and conversations, and a concluding round table, open to Venice International University (VIU on San Servolo, an Italian island in the Venetian Lagoon) and associated university students, addressed topics such as:

Achilles' compassion in Homer's Iliad (chapter 24); durch Mitleid wissend, the compassion that Parsifal (Wagner's opera) brings to knowledge; the concept of Passion, Piety and Compassion in the art of the Renaissance, the moment in which the mystery of the Pietàs of Bellini and Titian will be penetrated, and of the lesser-known ones on the facades of Venetian palaces in the Grand Canal, and
compassion in times of cancer and of aids.

This seminar, called "Compassion, The Art of an Ethical Problem", organized in 2007, from 17 up to including 21 October by the NEXUS Institute, brought the following questions at the centre: What aesthetic and moral impact does compassion have on art and society? Can compassion in art lead to a kind of moral education? Is it possible to build a society or a legal system based on compassion?

Can a lectio magistralis on Greece and her heroes let listen a whole public with bated breath? Yes! If the speaker's name is George Steiner († 3 February 2020), a literary critic, essayist, philosopher, novelist, educator and intellectual of world-reputation. George Steiner choosed the theme "A Long Night outside Troy" (Achilles, Hector, the killings, the favorite bull of Paris, who was the son of the Trojan king Priamos). King Priamos had the idea of celebrating funeral games in memory of his supposed dead son Paris, in which a beautiful bull, taken from the royal pastures, was destined for the prize of the victors. Coincidentally, they were looking for Paris' favorite bull. To save it from sacrificial death, he hastened his march to Troy, entered the contest, and in it overcame all his adversaries.

A continuous college of almost two hours in front of a delighted and affected public on the theme 'Achilles' compassion during the long night outside the walls of Troy, inspired by the famous last song of the Iliad, where the meeting between the Archaic hero and Priamus, king of the burning Troy and father of Hector, who was perished by Achilles, is at the centre.

Afterwards there was conversation with Ingrid Rowland, expert on the Classics, Renaissance and Baroque and George Klein (biologist and humanist,† 10 December 2016).

George Steiner and Nexus director Rob Riemen

More than hundred listeners attended the first lecture out of series at the Venice International University concerning the theme 'Compassion in Art'. The writer George Steiner - famous by his book 'Una certa idea d'Europa', wherein the old continent is identified with coffee-houses, full with people and conversations, where verses are written, where is conspired, philosophized and where one is practizing in civilized conversations, lectured on compassion in art and the capacity to bring forward a kind of moral civilization. And that was done to involve one of the most recalled pages from world literature, wherein the most rigid hero of one piece got affected at the look of the tears of the old man who is asking back the body of his son.

Compassion is suffering together, said Steiner, when he described when Achilles and Priamus joined the meal together and he added that 'sharing food is the highest expression of human civilization.

Pietà Tiziano Gallerie dell'Accademia with Jean Clair, George Steiner, Mitchell Cohen

Jean Clair lectured on "Art and the Pietà" and guided us to north facade of the San Marco basilica, to the sculptural image of the Nativity above the entrance to the Porta dei Fiori - the flower portal (*) and Gallery dell' Accademia for an excursion to deepen the fascinating mystery of the art by Titiaan and Bellini. After lunch, some time to go to the yearly La Biennale di Venezia and the basilica Santa Maria Gloriosa del FRARI. In cafe Florian, plaza San Marco in Venice, we coincidently met Jean Clair, while on the watertaxi to San Servolo George Steiner and Ingrid Rowland.

(*) The so-called Flower Portal was placed in front of the original entrance in the thirteenth century. 'The Lower Arch of Arab-moorish type, with the double curve, is decorated with carved bunches and figures of angels, framing the relief of the Nativity, which together with the rich decorations of volutes, intertwining branches and the figures op Prophets, constitutes another important Romanic sculptural work of the XIII century.' The door is crowned by a sixth archery with bas-reliefs in both intra-red and extradox, of high quality stylistic quality. Between a floral entanglement, eleven Prophets with half bust, plus two others that are placed on the base left and right, full figure, who are associated with eagles, griffons, lion dragons, and angels. In the intradox the top, center of the arc, ends with the magnificent Madonna, with the palms of the hands facing outside, between two angels whose arms, wings, and the twist of the faces meet harmoniously integrating with the external floral frame. Outside in the extradox, a strong young Christ Pantocrator, blessed between Saint Peter on his left and Saint Paul on his right. The curious thing is that the hand that makes the gesture is represented not by how you look at it from the outside but from the inside. The extraordinary restorations carried out have put great emphasis on the beauty of the sculptures, and their strong and intense expressive charge, the terribleness of men - apostles - with strength-filled faces, in God's grace. A superhuman power that puts this work among the greatest interpretations of the gift of the Holy Spirit. The still obvious traces of the chromatic patina they had allow us to imagine the supreme beauty of the pictorial firework on the sculptural basis of this force. I want to say that these apostles and prophets are too convincing, to envy. Complete and soul the wonderful composition inside the outer arc a second 'Saracen' arc; decorated outside with eleven angels holding a rod, each with the symbol - flower - on the top, and with particular hand gestures. They are intervaled by four floral blood cells. Inside a similar one, smaller in size, with a frame of Eucharistic vine with muds, birds and fawns that live it, which contains a wonderful and unique Nativity. In the architrave that is the foundation of the Nativity, two high reliefs of the evangelists, San Giovanni on the left and San Marco on the right, complete the whole. Nativity manifests in its perfect compositional geometry, the transcendence of the holy episode of the Redeemer's birth. If the first frame belongs to the iconography of sacred fruit par excellence, the vine, the upper arc brings us to the glory of heaven. Angels crown the sacred scene announcing to men the birth of the incarnate verb. The scene communicates peace, not only earthly - human - but universal, the comet star is a reference to the sky, the stars, and the two angels who participate in the salvific event testify to it. In this situation of sacred immobility of the protagonists, including the three sheep caught in the arches of the base of the fold, the movement of prosthetic ox and donkey heads is contrasted, so interested in the newborn Jesus. The relief strongly synthesizes the psychology of the divine moment, the human transcends into the hieratic.

Afterwards we also did have drinks and some conversation on a terrace near the Galleria and had beer in Harry's Bar (Wagner) and a dinner near San Marco.

If someone has dreams to have college and to have the former director of the Picasso museum as guide: that dream came out. Mr. Jean Clair gave explanation about the pietà (a representation of the suffer of Jesus) situated on the left side above a side entrance of the San Marco.

The last lecture was given by Mitchell Cohen on "Wagner and Compassion". To let feel twinklinks of the German composer, theatre director, polemicist, and conductor Wagner, there was also a visit to his house Palazzo Vendramin-Calergie, a palace on the Grand Canal in the sestiere (quarter) of Cannaregio in Venice. The architecturally distinguished building was the home of many prominent people through history, and is remembered as the place where composer Richard Wagner died.

The seminar ended with a 'Wagner"-dinner: entrée in memory of the dinner Wagner, shared with the great revolutionary leader Mikhail Bakunin, a 'dish of the Doges', pheasant, an Alpine meadows cheese platter and a dessert of ice cream, with baicoli biscuits and almond brittle.