Development occurs in leaps, on both small and grand scales. When we, as individuals or as humanity, take a leap and everything begins to move, it is the enduring—the eternal—that serves as a buttress for change. It’s no surprise therefore that in moments of great transformation, we look back on our entire lives, and humanity as whole looks to that which sustains and bestows life: the sun. The sun bears witness to and ensures that identity is not lost in the midst of change. When Akhenaten initiated a monotheistic revolution around 1350 BCE, his “Great Hymn to the Sun” resounded—the sun was God. When the millennia-old Oracle of Delphi was silenced in the 4th century, the young Emperor Julian wrote his “Hymn to the God Helios,” which can be interpreted as indicating that the gifts of the sun are divine. At the time when Francis of Assisi invoked the sun in the 12th century, culture took another leap forward, moving from scholasticism to modern thought. In his “Canticle of the Sun,” the heavenly body has now arrived on Earth as the “work of God.” Today, it is the poets who point the way to the future. As Novalis writes, “Man is a sun; his senses are his planets.” And Ingeborg Bachmann says, “There is nothing more beautiful under the sun than to be under the sun.” With the religion of Assisi, we have arrived on Earth; with art, we rise beyond it.
Translation Laura Liska
Image Der heilige Franziskus predigt zu den Vögeln [St. Francis Preaching to the Birds], Greg Tricker, Portland limestone
