Was the great Lithuanian painter influenced by the ideas of the Theosophical Society? The jury is still out.
by Massimo Introvigne
Article 1 of 3
A serpent high in the sky, a bird flying closer to the ground, and a man on the border of an abyss he is being called to cross. This is “Andante,” part of the “Sonata of the Serpent” cycle by Lithuanian painter and composer Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis (1875–1911). Although he died prematurely at age 36, Čiurlionis is now recognized as a crucial figure in European modernism, a decisive link between symbolism and abstract art.
“Sonata of the Serpent” was at the center of an international conference on Čiurlionis organized on July 1–2, 2022, in the Lithuanian spa town of Druskininkai, where his family moved when he was three years old and he spent his years as a child. Speakers discussed the different meanings of the “Sonata,” and its connection with Čiurlionis’ art, music, and biography.
Several papers mentioned the esoteric and Theosophical connections of the “Sonata,” including those by Nida Gadauskienė, Laura Varnauskaitė, Dalia Micevičiūtė, Julius Vaitkevičius, and Vytautas Tumėnas. Antanas Andrijauskas and Daniele Buccio mentioned parallel questions in connections with musical references in the “Sonata,” and Žilvinas Svigaris its relations with Jungian archetypes. Apologies for not mentioning all the papers (I hope they will be published soon), although I should at least add that Chinese and Japanese scholars offered (via Zoom) interesting parallels with Chinese serpent mythology, and new insights on the much-debated question of the influence of Japanese art on Čiurlionis.
Of special interest to our readers may be the connection between Čiurlionis and Theosophy, as it is part of a movement discussed in other Bitter Winter articles with broad social and political implications. New religious and spiritual movements influenced modernist art, and in turn the discovery of how deep their influence on modern artists was, legitimized these often maligned and marginalized groups.
Rather than going deeper into the chronicle of the conference, I would summarize here my own paper, which focused on the question whether Theosophy was in fact an important influence on Čiurlionis. The question started being hotly discussed by scholarship on the Lithuanian painter immediately after his death.
Boris Leman (1882–1945), a Russian poet and Anthroposophist, wrote in 1912 the first book about Čiurlionis. He immediately noted the painter’s interests in occult and parapsychological ideas. These also surfaced in articles on Čiurlionis published in the Russian magazine “Apollon” in the years after his death. Yet, the question was always controversial.
In 2019, Greek scholar Spyros Petritakis noted that poet Vyacheslav Ivanov (1886–1949), in his “Apollon” essay, part of a special issue on Čiurlionis (1914), “navigates various strands of Western European culture, from Neoplatonism to medieval philosophy and from esotericism to the Orthodox Church, whilst not referring directly to theosophy. Nevertheless, hints of Ivanov’s preoccupation with theosophy are evident in the text.”
After World War II, the debate whether Čiurlionis produced modern abstract art before Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944)—a claim originally advanced by Estonian poet and art critic Aleksis Rannit (1914–1985), and vehemently disputed by Kandinsky’s widow Nina (1896–1980)—led to a comment about Theosophy. Nina wrote in her response to Rannit that “in Čiurlionis’ paintings there is a certain rapport with the painting of the Theosophists, but there is no affinity with the work of Kandinsky.” It was of course a strange claim, considering how much Kandinsky himself had been influenced by Theosophy—but this became obvious only decades later.
Čiurlionis’ widow, Sofija Kymantaitė-Čiurlionienė (1886–1958), firmly insisted that her husband was not a member of the Theosophical Society and did not promote Theosophical or other “modern religious” theories. Rannit reported that “Mrs. Sofija Čiurlionis, the widow of the artist, told me in 1940 about the letter the artist had written in 1909 to the Theosophical Society in St. Petersburg, rejecting categorically any relationship to any modern religious or philosophical theories and dogmas in his work.” This is a letter, though, nobody has ever seen. Rannit also replied to Nina Kandinsky that “the paintings of Čiurlionis share neither a likeness nor an affinity with the paintings of Theosophists.”
Rannit also quoted the early scholar of Čiurlionis, Nikolai Vorobjov (1903–1954), in support of the idea that “any attempt to explain Čiurlionis’ work by means of occult and Theosophic influences” was doomed to fail. In 1967, Jonas Umbrasas (1925–1988), did enough homework to notice Čiurlionis’ interests in hypnosis, Spiritualism, and ancient religions, but claimed that “his interest in the new ‘modern’ religion of the time, Theosophy, […] appears to have been short-lived.”
The question, as we will see in the next article of the series, was not purely artistic. It was also political.