On February 27th I had the honour and pleasure of presenting a public lecture on Péladan and the Symbolist milieu in my home town of Corfu, Greece. I have done a lot of Péladan-related work recently; an article on Péladan’s initiatory teachings recently submitted for publication in a special themed issue of The Pomegranate academic journal, a second article on Péladan’s Luciferian beliefs for publication in the Swedish based, English language journal The Fenris Wolf, and a lengthy interview with Swedish poet and critic Haakan Sandell on Péladan and the sacrality of art for eventual publication in cultural journals in both Norway and Sweden, and I have presented on this topic at a couple of academic conferences; however this particular presentation was particularly close to my heart for a number of reasons, not least because Corfu is my home town, and a locale with a remarkable cultural history.
Corfu’s long and turbulent history sets it apart from the rest of Greece in a number of ways; and it is worth noting that it is the only part of Greece that never came under Ottoman rule following the conquest of Byzantium, the only part of Greece to experience the Renaissance, and, along with its sister islands in the Ionian Sea (Zakynthos, Cephalonia, Ithaca, Paxos, Lefkada, Kythera), was designated the first free Greek state (named the Septinsular Republic) prior to the liberation of Greece from Ottoman rule. This paper of mine, focusing on Corfiot Freemasonry and presented at a conference in Strasbourg in 2009, gives a good sense of the cultural background, and the wikipedia article on the island gives a fair outline of its history.
This history, Corfu’s geographical location as a crossroads between East and West, and the liberal attitude of its Venetian rulers (Corfu was an independent protectorate of Venice for some 700 years, an independent protectorate of Byzantium before that, and granted independence by the Romans before that), led to a unique flowering of culture on the island; a legacy still strongly visible today. Hence, I was immensely excited at the prospect of presenting an ideology that placed Art as its highest ideal, to an audience for whom this notion is part of their daily cultural reality.
In this lecture I endeavoured to give a sense of what the Symbolists whose work was inspired by Péladan in particular, stood for ideologically and philosophically, I sketched in some of the philosophical and esoteric background to the ideas propounded by Péladan and his circle, and offered a more detailed look at three key recurrent symbols used by this circle: Orpheus, the Sphinx, and the Androgyne, using paintings from his circle to illustrate them. I’ve written on these ideas before, both for academic and popular audiences, but this was my first opportunity to talk to a general audience about Péladan’s effort at using art as a force for social change. The talk was both well attended and well received, and, as I had hoped, led to animated discussion and valuable contributions from the audience who appeared to welcome and warm to the topic.
Several attendees expressed their surprise that Péladan and his Salons were not better known since they almost instinctively identified with the philosophical – and esoteric – underpinnings that I discussed. Given Greece’s current travails, at the end I raised questions regarding the relevance of this kind of research and such ideas to modern reality, and pointed out that beyond the specificities of Péladan’s esoteric concerns, the notion of the arts as a driving force for culture seeking to rebuild meaning in the midst of chaos, and its potential for social cohesion, are as significant today as they were a century ago. Questions on the use of symbolism as a vehicle for communicating ideas, and the Symbolist axiom of “giving form to an idea” were also discussed, and the audience was particularly engaged both by the neoplatonic notions underlying this concept, as well as the Greek origins of several myths that provided the symbolic “alphabet” for the syntheses created by the Symbolists.
I can easily say that this was by far one of the most enjoyable talks I’ve ever done, not only because of my personal attachment to the location, but also because of the audience response. Rather than speaking in a close academic arena where the ideas discussed tend to remain behind closed doors, I felt that I was tapping in to a cultural space where these ideas could be mined for their cultural potential in the present. Unlike other situations where one has to explain what “esoteric” means from the ground up, in this talk I don’t think I used the e- word once, but focused on questions of what it means to seek meaning in culture and history, what social role the arts play in that process, what Symbolist art, as opposed to more modern movements, can offer to this process and how these kinds of discussions. Simultaneously, I felt – or hoped – that I was offering something to that vibrant, ongoing social phenomenon of cultural creation by sketching in part of its history and giving form to often abstract ideas that creative folk (especially Corfu’s huge contingent of musicians and artists!) instinctively understand, but do not often have the opportunity to articulate or to discover their long and involved background. I don’t know whether I was also able to offer some small form of inspiration that one day, might become part of the fabric of Corfu’s vibrant cultural matrix, but as a Corfiot artist myself (beyond my academic pursuits), I certainly intend to try!
(No, I am not intentionally seeking to resurrect Péladan’s movement, but the truth is that I have always been concerned with the idea of “giving back” to culture, and in my capacity as an artist, with producing work that actually gives something beyond aesthetic pleasure to the viewer. Ιf culture is the sum total of a society’s search for meaning and outward expression of that impulse, then the most meaningful purpose I can find in researching it is to make it relevant to the ongoing process of cultural evolution, and especially to people involved in driving it forward. If those goals correspond with Péladan’s, then that’s the cherry on the cake.)
This experience sums up a train of thought that has preoccupied me for some time now, and that relates directly to the purpose of research such as this. Perhaps the most rewarding aspect of my lecture last week was the fact that for once, it actually felt relevant and that it served a purpose beyond the purely academic usefulness of recording history for posterity, or recording ideas for the sake of mapping out the perimeter of a given discipline and entering into endless debates on the precise provenance of a given idea, which though valuable within a certain context, has little useful application outside the classroom. Rather, in this case I dusted off a piece of cultural history that can still offer inspiration to people who, right now, are out there creating culture. More specifically, to a community that is well aware of their hefty local cultural legacy, and who are in the process of attempting to understand, in some cases preserve and add to it for future generations, and this is where this kind of discussion is at its most fruitful. In addition, a number of history students from the local university attended my lecture, and not only were they very interested in the topic, but afterwards we discussed the possibility of presenting original research on unknown (many esoterically-themed) aspects of Corfiot history and culture in the not-too-distant future (watch this space!).
All of this made this lecture of mine one of the most meaningful things I’ve been able to do with my research yet, and for that I am grateful, because it was an affirmation that given the choice, I would rather be right here in my home town creating and inspiring culture, than writing grant proposals for something that will put brownie points on my CV but means little more than that out there in the real world… Was this a deliberate act of esoterrorism?* Well, time will tell!
*Esoterrorism is a term used by musician and self-designated esoterrorist Genesis P-Orridge to mean that “Occultural ideas articulated and developed in films, in literature, in music or on the Internet are able to have, through synergies and networks, a disproportionate influence on large numbers of people and, consequently, on institutions and societies.” Excerpt from Christopher Partridge, “Occultism is Ordinary,” Contemporary Esotericism. Equinox Publishing, Sheffield, p. 125.