Magyar Egyház, 2007 (86. évfolyam, 1-4. szám)
2007-07-01 / 1-2. szám
4. oldal MAGYAR EGYHÁZ MUNKÁCSY’S CHRIST The Trilogy’s Biblical and theological explanation By Professor Botond Gaal, Debrecen, Hungary Introduction The recorded facts all testify that the Christ-event has profoundly preoccupied Mihály Munkácsy. Some kind of mystical and holy inner tension compelled him to create while harmonizing historical fidelity and a believer’s vision. His era treated, as we do, the existence of Jesus the Nazarene as a historical person an accepted certainty, his life a factual historical occurrence, but that this man was the second person of the Holy Trinity, and redeemer of the world, that cannot be confirmed by any scientific methodology or research. Even back then, this was understood to be solely attainable through the gift of faith. This was the case with Munkácsy also, and if now we aim to get closer to our painter’s state of mind, we must complete the journey, guided by this indirect tracing of faith. At our disposal are only the wonderful paintings and the source of inspiration for these “religious” works of art: the Bible. A renowned Protestant theologian wrote in his dissertation given at the Academy of Berlin in 1932: “As Jesus’ history of suffering is presented in the Gospels, the way it is developed in full view, is the greatest accomplishment religious poetry could ever achieve.” Evidently this only attempts to convey to us that the story of the passion is presented in the form of “religious poetry”, - carefully composed and written in choice words, its content and proportions well structured. All four Gospels contain differing elements, resulting not in any contradictions in their essence, but in shifts in their emphasis. Given their diverse knowledgebase and way of thinking, the four evangelists present a different account. Never the less, the fact is that a historical event is bought to life by their words. Obviously this means that the events are presented in a light filtered by human intellect, consequentially the question arises: in what proportion is factual history portrayed? In other words how much history is there in these colorful and stylized descriptions of the so-called “religious poetry”? This is not irrelevant to Christianity either. It is reassuring that large scale researches conducted in the twentieth century, employing independent, objective and authentic sources outside “religious poetry”, - including already the Dead Sea Scrolls also, - have shed light not only on the great work by the evangelists in maintaining historical accuracy, but upon the congruence of their stories with potential historical facts, which were never recorded in writing. We should not have the same expectations in ability and precision of scientific exploration of the nineteenth century, however. Strauss and Renan may be fascinating, but neither of them goes beyond a fictional narrative or psycho-evolutionary representation. From a scientific point of view, the English R.H. Lightfoot far surpasses his German and French contemporaries. He indeed was a genuine theologian. The unscrutinized adaptation of historical writings is characteristic of Strauss, while Renan places Jesus in his own religious milieu, and his absolute standardization of this unwillingly demotes him to the rank of an ideological anarchist. Moreover they were very popular writers of their times and with respect to Jesus-biographies then, it may seem that they created the greatest. In reality they were the most popular. They idealized Jesus' figure. One might think, therefore that Munkácsy also could have taken sips of their intellectual cocktail. It is more plausible that this did not influence Munkácsy, more so his Christ paintings are evidence to the fact that he was a man of his own ways. This didn’t mean any eccentricity or extravagance on his part, but the most natural solution: to research the Bible! It is not by chance that in the midst of wondering opinions the painter himself formulates his clearest artistic and ideological desire: “I have never attempted to paint divinity as a person, for whatever is divine man is unable to capture. I wanted to portray God who appeared in human form.” The Christ Trilogy is Hungarian painting’s prominent creation, a national treasure of its kind. A visible treasure! One can relate to it in various ways; however as a general rule, we should not make interpretations thereof, or create meanings according to our own ideologies, when the painter’s intentions and reasoning were evidently different. We may freely contemplate it; we may freely form our own opinions about it, but shifting or in any way altering its meaning is not appropriate. The need to distinguish between the projected facts and their interpretations has to be dealt with in the case of the Trilogy also. It is important that we firmly establish that these two are separate while simultaneously inseparable. Munkácsy was fundamentally tied to the Christ-event, and since his faith played an important role in his work, we must accept and understand his hence inspired artistic objective. Disregarding any philosophical or ideological bias, if we instead think about the trilogy’s historical, religious and faith background, we realize that when we examine the facts and their interpretations we pretty much only have the Judeo-Christian Jesus-traditions to rely on. Even these two differ in their tendencies. From a Christian perspective the perception of facts are in the service of promoting our faith in Christ, while the Jewish religious conviction evidently finds its antagonism of Christ justified. In such a case what a Christian person creates is “confessional poetry”, i.e. a work reflective of an existential relationship, while from a Judaic religious perception is that of a cartoon-like Christ, in worst case, it may even lead to the anti-Semitic suspicion of the artist. This however is an erroneous assumption, since Christianity and anti- Semitism are mutually exclusive. The moral therefore is that upon examination of a work of art never the underlying facts and their explanations’ harmonious ideological truths should be debated, but the abundance of the artist’s belief-system and frame of mind should be sought. The artist does not simply copy the events, does not only reflect ideas, but concurrently creates and generates something new. Relating this to Munkácsy, it will mean, and it will bring up this thrilling question: what is it that the painter’s brush seeks to express, - something that shattered human intellect and words could not adequately convey. Munkácsy didn’t have it easy with his undertaking of painting the Passion story. Obviously he knew that both a religious and a political trial have taken place side by side. If we look at the individual paintings we get the impression that they all represent various episodes of the same drama, almost condensing the entire plot. It is of utmost importance to understand and see that the painter’s artistic freedom allowed him not to present one event in space and time, but in reality superimposes frames of activities at different places and times. Neither one of the Trilogy’s individual pieces is a snapshot, rather sliding of various spatial elements and planes of time into another. We already see these together as a fully assembled composition. We have to be astutely aware of this fact when we attempt to collate the painted pictorial and the written Biblical stories. Employing this clever technique Munkácsy was able to display a larger number of characters.
