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Duncan, Isadora - The creation of movements of such spiritual force as to bring a new revelation to mankind
Identifier
023661
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
Isadora: My Life
There is a song of Wagner's that I love-"The Angel"- which tells of a spirit sitting in utter sadness and desolation, to whom comes an Angel of Light and such an angel then came to me, in these dark days, when a friend brought Walter Rummel, the pianist, to see me.
When he entered I thought he was the picture of the youthful Liszt come out of its frame-so tall, slight, with a burnished with a burnished lock over the high forehead, and eyes like clear wells of shining light. He played for me. I called him my Archangel………
My Archangel had a very sweet sense of compassion. He seemed to feel all the sorrow which made my heart so heavy and which often caused me sleepless and tearful nights. At such hours he would gaze at me with such pitying and luminous eyes that my spirit was comforted.
And in the studio our two arts blended into one in a marvellous manner, while under his influence my dance became etherialised. He was the first to initiate me to the full spiritual meaning of the works of Franz Liszt, of whose music we composed an entire recital. In the quiet music-room of the Salle Beethoven I also began the studies of some great frescoes in movement and light which I wished to realise from Parsifal.
There we spent holy hours, our united souls borne up by the mysterious force which possessed us. Often as I danced and he played, as I lifted my arms and my soul went up from my body in the long flight of the silver strains of the Grail, it seemed as if we had created a spiritual entity quite apart from ourselves, and, as sound and gesture flowed up to the Infinite, another answer echoed from above.
I believe that from the psychic force of this musical moment, when our two spirits were so attuned in the holy energy of love, we were on the verge of another world. Our audience felt the force of this combined power, and often a curious psychosis existed in the theatre such as I had not known before. If my Archangel and I had pursued these studies further, I have no doubt that we might have arrived at the spontaneous creation of movements of such spiritual force as to bring a new revelation to mankind.