from
Contemporary Art
Globusspiel
Alexander Eibach
COMMENTARY (I)
The word “enthusiastic” has a deeper meaning than its present-day sense of “very excited” might initially suggest. In particular, Hermann Hesse’s phrase panisch begeistert (“ecstatically panicked”) lends it an intriguing double meaning, bringing enthusiasm, Pan and Dionysus into relation with one another.
1. “Enthusiastic” originally meant “filled with a god”
“Enthusiasm” derives from the Greek ἐνθουσιασμός (enthousiasmós), which is related to ἔνθεος (éntheos):
en (ἐν) = in, within; theos (θεός) = god.
Literally, éntheos can thus be understood as “filled with a god”, “having a god within oneself” or “possessed by a god”. Correspondingly, enthousiazein referred to a condition in which a person was inspired or seized by a deity, even to the point of ecstasy.
The crucial point is that enthusiasm originally did not mean merely an especially intense personal joy. The source of the experience lay, as it were, beyond the ordinary ego: a person was seized by something greater. This also explains the ancient term’s close association with prophecy, poetry, music and religious ecstasy. In antiquity, the inspiration of the Pythia or Dionysian ecstasy, for instance, could be understood as enthousiasmos; Plato too speaks of the poet’s divine inspiration (in the dialogues Ion and Phaedrus).
2. Dionysus: enthusiasm as ecstasy
In the figure of Dionysus, this original meaning becomes particularly vivid. Dionysian worship sought to suspend or transcend the ordinary state of the ego. Dance, music, wine, rhythm and ecstatic movement could lead people beyond the limitations of their everyday selves.
In this original sense, an “enthusiast” would not simply be someone saying, “I think that is wonderful.” Rather, it would be someone seized by a power. This is the deeper meaning of the German Begeisterung, which still carries the idea of being animated by a spirit.
With Dionysus, the process is especially radical: for a moment the individual loses their isolated position and becomes part of a larger, cosmic, intoxicated continuum of life.
3. And then Pan enters the picture
This makes Hesse’s expression panisch begeistert especially interesting, for Pan represents another kind of being seized. Our word “panic” derives from his name. In Greek mythology, Pan could overwhelm people with sudden, seemingly groundless terror through his appearance or cries. This accounts for the connection between Pan and “panic” fear.
Yet Pan is also associated with nature, music, inspiration and prophecy, and is closely related to Dionysus. A striking polarity thus emerges:
Pan → terror, the force of nature, sudden possession.
Dionysus → intoxication, ecstasy, the dissolution of boundaries, divine inspiration.
Both, however, carry us beyond the ordinary rational ego. The essential feature of panisch begeistert is therefore its combination of two seemingly opposed states: terror and enthusiasm, fear and ecstasy, shock and rapture.
4. “Panically enthusiastic” in Hesse
In connection with Hesse’s The Glass Bead Game, I would therefore not translate the expression simply as “very enthusiastic”. To begin with, Belpunt is indeed the place to which Knecht goes with Tito toward the end of the novel. In the text, Belpunt is described as a secluded house beside a mountain lake high in the Alps.
More important, however, is the novel’s broader context. The Glass Bead Game is repeatedly presented as something that goes beyond mere intellectual technique. It can seize and elevate a person, carrying them into another spiritual dimension. Hesse explicitly speaks of the game’s religious turn and its kinship with contemplation and a “sacred” meaning.
Read as a key phrase, panisch begeistert therefore acquires an almost programmatic significance:
Enthusiasm originally means: a god is within me.
Panic means: Pan takes hold of me.
Dionysian means: I am torn beyond the boundaries of my limited ego.
In this sense, panisch begeistert describes a double movement of transcendence.
5. The paradox of the expression
It is precisely the paradox that makes the expression so powerful. “Enthusiastic” initially sounds positive, bright and joyful. “Panicked”, by contrast, suggests fear, loss of control and terror. Together they convey an enthusiasm so powerful that it shakes the ordinary ego.
This comes closer to the original Greek sense of enthusiasm than the everyday modern use of the word. Originally, the enthusiast is not fully master of themselves. They are “beside themselves” because something other is at work within them. This links the term with the Greek ἔκστασις (ékstasis), literally “standing outside oneself”.
6. A particularly revealing connection to Hesse’s The Glass Bead Game
This makes Hesse’s choice of words especially fruitful for the theme of Belpunt. On the one hand, the Glass Bead Game involves order, mathematics, music, structure and intellect. On the other hand, it involves absorption, being seized, ecstasy and transcendence of the ego.
Hesse describes precisely this tension. The game is not meant to be merely an intellectual technique: its deeper significance lies in contemplation and an experience that exceeds the mere combination of signs. In this context, panisch begeistert might seem an almost ideal formula:
The rational is permeated by the irrational. Order is touched by ecstasy. Spirit is seized by nature. The ego is shaken by something beyond the personal.
This would also provide a bridge between the Apollonian and the Dionysian: between form and intoxication, measure and boundlessness, order and chaos.
Read this way, panisch begeistert is a remarkably concentrated expression. It links the everyday notion of enthusiasm with its archaic religious meaning and, through the word “panic”, adds the dimension of a sudden, natural and overwhelming experience of being seized. That is understandable both in the presence of the awe-inspiring high-mountain landscape of Belpunt and in view of the master’s sudden, sacrificial death.
COMMENTARY (II)
The name Abraxas is one of the most enigmatic terms in the history of religion in late antiquity. In Hermann Hesse’s Demian, it acquires a new literary and psychological meaning: Abraxas becomes the symbol of a deity that unites opposites within itself—male and female, good and evil, light and darkness, spirit and nature, the divine and the demonic.
1. Where does the name “Abraxas” come from?
Abraxas (also Abrasax) is found especially in the writings and amulets associated with late-antique Gnosticism, particularly in the second century CE. The exact origin and meaning of the name remain uncertain. A widespread ancient interpretation relates ABRAXAS to the Greek numerical values of its letters:
Α Β Ρ Α Ξ Α Σ
1 + 2 + 100 + 1 + 60 + 1 + 200 = 365
The number 365 was symbolically associated with the days of the year and with the completeness of the cosmic year. In certain Gnostic systems, Abraxas thus appears as a superior cosmic power. The idea that Abraxas originally meant simply “365” is an ancient and later numerological interpretation, not an established translation of the name.
2. How is Abraxas depicted?
The iconography of Abraxas is particularly fascinating. The so-called Abraxas gems frequently show a composite figure:
a human torso; the head of a rooster or another bird; snakes in place of legs; weapons or other attributes in the hands; sometimes a shield or whip.
This figure seems to combine several distinct realms. The rooster can evoke light, morning and wakefulness, while the snakes associate the figure with the earth, the underworld, renewal and chthonic forces. Abraxas is therefore not a “beautiful” god in the classical Greek sense. Its appearance is, in a manner of speaking, a collage of opposites.
3. Abraxas and Gnosis
Gnostic systems often begin from a fundamental tension between spirit and matter, light and darkness, a higher divine realm and the imperfect human world.
Within certain Gnostic traditions, Abraxas cannot simply be understood as “the good god”. Rather, the figure stands for a superior cosmic power that integrates or encompasses opposites.
4. Abraxas in Hesse’s novel Demian
In Demian, Abraxas is introduced and explored in greater depth through the organist Pistorius. The central idea, paraphrased, is that Abraxas is a god encompassing both the divine and the devilish. This is crucial to the novel, for Sinclair experiences an inner conflict between two worlds:
The world of light: family, religion, order, morality and security.
And the dark world: sexuality, instinct, violence, guilt, the demonic and the unconscious.
Traditional morality demands a choice between the two. Abraxas, by contrast, stands for their union in a higher unity.
5. “God and the Devil” — the central idea
Let us remain with Hesse a moment longer. The famous Abraxas motif in Demian can be read as a critique of a purely dualistic conception of the world and of morality. If a person acknowledges only the “good” and represses everything dark in their consciousness, the result is a divided self. Hesse formulates the problem radically: the divine cannot be fully understood if darkness is excluded from it. Abraxas thus becomes the symbol of a religious vision that encompasses not only the light but the whole of reality.
This does not mean that “good and evil are simply the same”. Rather, it means recognizing that human beings carry both opposing dimensions within themselves, and that their development is not completed by denying or repressing either one.
6. Abraxas and C. G. Jung
Here Hesse’s Abraxas becomes especially interesting. Demian appeared in 1919, at a time when Hesse was deeply engaged with psychological questions, including depth psychology.
The Abraxas motif can therefore fruitfully be read alongside C. G. Jung’s concept of the integration of the shadow. In simplified terms, Jung’s “shadow” refers to those aspects of the psyche that the conscious ego cannot accept or has repressed. Something similar happens to Sinclair: he must recognize that the repressed “dark” side cannot simply be eliminated. It is real and belongs to his own existence. Abraxas thereby becomes a symbol of the integration of opposites.
7. Abraxas and the bird
Another central symbol in Demian is the bird. The familiar image is of a bird struggling to break out of its egg. The egg represents Sinclair’s world as it has existed up to that point. The bird must break this world apart in order to enter a new form of existence. This bird is closely connected with Abraxas.
Abraxas is not simply one figure among others in the narrative. The name signifies a process of inner transformation. Sinclair must move beyond his previous world and discover what Hesse later calls the “unity behind the opposites”.
8. Abraxas and the individual
Abraxas thus becomes a symbol of a theme that recurs throughout Hesse’s later work: a person must realize themselves—or, more precisely, realize their Self—but this “Self” is larger than the conscious ego.
It encompasses reason and instinct; light and shadow; order and chaos; spirit and nature; love and violence; the sacred and the demonic.
Human beings are not simply meant to act out these oppositions, but to recognize them and bring them into a higher unity.
9. Abraxas and Dionysus
Here an interesting connection with Pan and Dionysus becomes apparent. Abraxas, Pan and Dionysus do not belong to the same religious tradition, yet their symbolic worlds invite revealing comparisons.
Dionysus stands for intoxication, nature, instinct, ecstasy and the dissolution of the boundaries of the ego.
Pan stands for nature, sexuality, instinct, terror and the unconscious.
Abraxas, in Hesse’s interpretation, stands for the union of light and darkness, god and demon, spirit and nature.
One might therefore say that Pan and Dionysus represent forces that transcend the bourgeois, rational ego, whereas Abraxas signifies a more encompassing unity of these opposites. In this sense, Abraxas symbolizes a new level of consciousness. This is an interpretation of the symbolism, however, not a historical identification of these deities.
COMMENTARY (III)
Logos spermatikos (Greek λόγος σπερματικός, lógos spermatikós) literally means something like “seed-bearing logos,” “generative principle of reason,” or “reason acting in germinal form.” It is also rendered as “germinative force,” “principle of generation,” or “creative seed of the world.” It is one of the most fertile ideas in ancient philosophy because it connects mind, nature, becoming, and the emergence of form. For this reason, it is particularly relevant to art and, above all, the process of artistic creation.
1. Origins of the term
The expression consists of two elements:
-
lógos (λόγος) – word, speech, reason, meaning, order, relation
-
spermatikós (σπερματικός) – pertaining to seed, seed-bearing, germinal
The underlying image is that of a seed in which a future form already exists as a possibility. The concept comes from Stoicism, especially Stoic philosophy of nature. For the Stoics, logos is the rational, ordering power that permeates the entire cosmos. Nature is therefore not merely chaotic matter; it has an inner rational structure (for example, the laws of nature). The logos spermatikos denotes the generative rational forces through which this cosmic order is realized in individual things and living beings. Put simply: logos is the cosmic order; logos spermatikos is that order as a creative seed.
2. The image of the seed
The crucial word is “seed.” A seed is not yet the fully grown tree. Yet it contains the conditions for the tree—not as a finished image, but as potential and the force of becoming. This suggests an important distinction: form → not a finished product, but form → a possibility in the process of becoming. The logos spermatikos is therefore not a completed blueprint; rather, it is a formative power at work within matter, unfolding freely. This is what makes the idea especially compelling for art.
3. Logos spermatikos and art
Applied to art, one might say that a work of art does not necessarily begin with a clearly defined conception. At the outset there may instead be:
-
a fleeting perception,
-
an image,
-
a thought,
-
a rhythm,
-
a color,
-
a movement,
-
a mood,
-
a memory...
This is the germ of the later work. The artistic process then consists in accompanying the further development of this nascent form. This is precisely the conceptual figure of the logos spermatikos: what stands at the beginning is not the finished work but a free, form-generating power of imagination—an invisible possibility that brings something into being as a work and presses toward visibility; in short, a being that seeks to be there.
COMMENTARY (IV)
1. Alberti’s “Window” — the birth of pictorial perspective
“Alberti’s window” refers to a famous metaphor from Leon Battista Alberti’s treatise on art, De pictura (On Painting, 1435/36). It is one of the most important formulations in European art history, because Alberti uses it to explain what a painting is and how the viewer relates to it.
Alberti writes, in effect: first I draw on the surface a rectangle of any size, which I regard as an open window through which I view what is to be painted. This “window” is not merely a poetic metaphor. It describes a fundamental change in the understanding of images compared with the Middle Ages.
2. What is “Alberti’s window”?
Imagine a pane of glass between the viewer and the world. Objects are represented on this pane in such a way that they seem to extend into the space behind it. The decisive relationship is:
Viewer → window/picture plane → represented world
The painting becomes an opening onto a constructed, three-dimensional space. The physical surface of the image remains flat, yet it creates the illusion of a three-dimensional world beyond that surface.
3. Why a window, specifically?
A window has a dual character: it separates the inside from the outside, yet at the same time it connects them, allowing us to look from one space into another. This is precisely what makes it so appropriate for Alberti. The picture separates the material world of the viewer from the illusionistic world depicted within it, while simultaneously granting visual access to that world. The painting thus becomes a boundary between two spaces that appear to relate to one another as though they were a single space.
4. The window as a model of perspective
Alberti’s metaphor is directly connected with linear, one-point perspective. The world is depicted from a particular position and angle of view. Perspective organizes space through mathematical and geometrical rules. Parallel lines may appear to converge toward a vanishing point, and the apparent sizes of objects change with their distance. A new conception emerges: the image is a systematically constructed view of the world from a particular standpoint.
5. The viewer becomes part of the picture
This is perhaps the most interesting consequence. Before Alberti, images were not generally conceived as “windows onto the world” in this sense. With the development of linear perspective, however, the viewer’s position becomes crucial. The picture seems to say: look from precisely here. It therefore presupposes an implicit vantage point. The viewer no longer simply stands before an image; the image places the viewer in a particular relationship to the depicted space.
6. The world becomes a visible construction
Alberti’s window therefore also implies that seeing can be constructed. This is a decisive development in the Renaissance. Painting no longer merely attempts to render objects as faithfully as possible. It first constructs a visual space ordered according to rules, which is then populated with objects. Geometry becomes the mediator between world, eye and picture:
World → eye → picture
The image becomes a kind of translation of vision into mathematical order.
7. “Window” and “picture plane”
Here we encounter a fascinating paradox. A painting is in fact a flat surface, but the viewer is not supposed to perceive that surface as a surface. The viewer is meant, as it were, to look through it. A tension results: the image is at once surface and space.
In other words, it is a material wall pretending to be an immaterial window. This is one of the fundamental illusions of European panel painting. The picture acts as though something were there beyond it. Put more sharply: it deceives us.
8. Alberti and narrative painting
Alberti’s window is not simply a theory of perspective. For Alberti, the central task of painting is to depict a historia: a meaningful narrative or action, a scene often involving several figures. Perspective provides the stage on which this can unfold. One might say:
Perspective → creates space; space → allows action; action → generates a story; the story → produces meaning.
The image thus becomes a kind of visual stage. The viewer stands before it as before a window—or a theatrical stage—and follows what is being presented.
9. An epistemological significance
Alberti’s window can also be read epistemologically. Perspective makes one thing clear: we always see the world from a particular standpoint. The picture does not simply show “the world”; it shows the world as it appears from a specific point of view. The viewer’s position thus becomes part of the structure of the image. This is remarkably modern.
Renaissance perspective introduces a conception that would later become highly significant for European science: the world can be ordered and represented from the standpoint of a particular subject.
10. The window and the birth of the autonomous viewer
This leads to another important consequence. The viewer stands outside pictorial space and looks at a world opening up before them. A distinct subject–object structure arises:
I → see → world.
This corresponds to the modern conception of the viewing subject. Renaissance painting might therefore be understood as an early model of the modern worldview: the world lies before the human observer and can be disclosed through an order of vision.
11. Is that really the case?
Modern art has long questioned Alberti’s window metaphor, and its critique of the modern conception of the world creates a revealing contrast.
Alberti / linear perspective: viewer (subject) → world (object).
The world is arranged before the human being as a visible space governed by geometry. Modern art often proceeds differently. Human beings do not simply stand before the world and observe it; they already exist within a world (being-in-the-world, thrownness). That is a fundamental difference.
Alberti’s window can therefore be understood as a model of distancing: I stand here; the world is over there—a subject–object division. Modern artistic movements have radically questioned this model through multiple perspectives, Cubism and Surrealism. The human being is never simply an isolated subject confronting an objective world.
12. Alberti’s window and modern art
And this is where the history of modern art begins. If linear perspective asserts that the picture on the wall is a window onto the world, modern art can ask: why must a picture be a window at all? Impressionism, Cubism, Surrealism and abstract art progressively challenged this assumption, though they never entirely discarded it.
In simplified terms, the window metaphor undergoes a radical transformation, yet survives, while the space of single-point perspective loses its authority. The picture plane becomes visible once again as a plane. In Cézanne, for example, landscape is no longer organized solely through a mathematically unambiguous perspective. In Cubism, the unified standpoint and line of sight fragment. In abstraction, the image no longer needs to be a “window” onto an external world at all.
One could therefore read the history of modern painting as a history of dismantling—or deconstructing—Alberti’s window metaphor. One could. But where does WINDOWS fit into the picture? Windows that we constantly open and close, and that increasingly turn the world itself into an image for us.
