In an interview with the artist Kadim Al-Sahir, he wonders:“I wonder, if the earth were gone, where would the music go? This toil that we have labored, where would it go?” This deep lament and the question that has long exhausted the philosophers and the creators in history alike: what is the fate of beauty, what is the fate of creativity, and of all art and literature, what is the destiny of the meaning that man creates? Where do the notes of music go, and where do the melodies settle? Do they dissolve into the universe and return to nothingness? Where does literature and thought go, where does Dostoevsky’s toil in describing man and his meaning go, and do the pages of his books scatter in chaos, and does the theater of the Rahbani brothers, Tawfiq al-Hakim, and Shakespeare become empty? And do the colors of da Vinci’s paintings vanish and dissolve as though they never were, and are Michelangelo’s sculptures destroyed and scattered? Where does the voice of Fairuz and the chirping of the sparrows go? And does Dmitri Koutia fall silent from chanting and are his books closed?
Kadim Al-Sahir’s lament over the fate of music and human effort intertwines with the theological vision of the Apostle Paul, which draws horizons that transcend the limitation of time and frees matter from eternal annihilation. For the question of where and of destiny is the great question that shakes the human conscience, not out of luxury or curiosity, but as an anxiety equal to the anxiety over the fate of man himself.
On that last day there will be no ruin and return to a desolate and empty earth as it was in the beginning; rather, there is the final transfiguration, the transfiguration of man and his meaning — that great meaning that will be perceived only apart from time. The Apostle Paul says: “For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face.” to the Corinthians (12:13). For Paul’s words are the answer, because they place human effort and its birth pangs on the right road. For the universe is not a journey from emptiness (the earth was desolate and empty) and then heading toward absurdity and the first ruin once more; rather, it heads toward the eternal meaning.
Human meaning refuses that this creativity should go to annihilation, like the rebellion of the child whose first scribbles, his achievements, are destroyed. If there is no immortality, then life is without meaning, and all our human toil is without value in the eyes of God. If there is no immortality for art and creativity, then everything is absurd, even existence itself. The mark of the nails in Christ’s hands after the resurrection is a sign that the trace remains, and it will be transfigured together with man. For history, the trace, the effort, and the beauty are not erased; rather, they are kept in the essence of eternity and transfigured in the light of the resurrection.
Everything that man has created will be transfigured — literature, music, and painting. The creative man will depart to eternity together with his creation; man will listen to his music and to the books he wrote, and contemplate the statue he carved, and re-read the literature with which he was in labor. Thus the reading of Dostoevsky will be not in letters but in meaning; we shall see the depths of the human soul and its salvation face to face, after they were lines and words that Fyodor wrote. Metropolitan Georges Khodr says: “ What pertains to the calculation has gone into the world of calculation, but the essence of what Beethoven wanted will remain; someone must gather up the beauty[1]”. We shall re-read and re-listen, and creativity will have been transfigured and acquired its final meaning. And the Apostle Paul says:“» For the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now«.
When Michelangelo carved the statue of Moses in 1515, he saw it as a statue pulsating with life because of the intensity of its representation of reality, and he cried out in the face of the statue:“Speak, O Moses, speak!” What Michelangelo did not hear in history will ring out in eternity; creativity will speak with meaning, because “everything is alive”[2], says the theologian Olivier Clément. What Michelangelo was unable to create through creativity, the Spirit of God will complete through the final transfiguration.
All that we experience here of the gestures of beauty, and all that we hear of great melodies, are nothing but a part of the beauty that we shall see in eternity without sorrows; and beauty remains in an immortality that does not fade. Patriarch Athenagoras says: “ The artistic painting remains, and the symphony, and the astonishing monuments, and Hagia Sophia embraces her ideal model, the new Jerusalem“[3].
But that which alone will vanish is evil and corruption, because they are not of the origin of existence; evil alone will become nothingness.
Kadim’s lament and Michelangelo’s cry are nothing but distant echoes of that divine voice that will complete what man was unable to attain in time. The universe does not head toward ruin, and what we produce does not perish, but lives in immortality, in the memory of God, in an eternal record. Thus, “ the past is transfigured and takes a place for itself in the Kingdom”, says Patriarch Athenagoras[4]. If the world were heading toward ruin, then what is the meaning of the resurrection?
References
Georges Khodr, The New Life, Dar An-Nahar, Lebanon, Beirut, first edition, February, 2001.
Dialogue with Patriarch Athenagoras (Life and Sayings), Olivier Clément, translated by Dmitri Koutia, Contemporary Orthodox Presence 5, An-Nour Orthodox Cooperative for Publishing and Distribution, Al-Yanbou’ Press, Lebanon, Beirut, 2008.
Footnotes
[1] The New Life, Georges Khodr, p. 7.
[2] Dialogue with Patriarch Athenagoras, 251.
[3] Ibid., 254.
[4] Ibid., 254.