“You taught me how man makes himself eternal.” Elliot Norton, Lessons of the Masters (55)

“The artist is the creator of beautiful things.” Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1)

On the opening page of Steiner we hear him ask, “What empowers a man or woman to teach another human being, where lies the wellspring of authority?”  Steiner’s answer to this is vast—

quite unending really.  One of the directions he takes this daunting question is toward the idea that the pursuit of the individual is to become eternal—to last beyond their physical body—to have their words memorized and recited, written and read—for their image to be made a masterpiece in which they will be viewed for ages to come as an object of beauty.  Through teaching, the master seeks to be the creator of not only their students, but of themselves.  Our master, the artist, desires to be made art. 

While the desire to be art, is quite a bold request, it is not one that has been kept silent.  Inherent to the master (at least in myth) seems to be need to make their desires known; to be blunt about it, in a poetic way.  Yeats gives us Sailing to Byzantium.        

Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enameling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

My initial reaction to this was, why would anyone want to be made into art?  I do admire art and create it, yet I myself have not craved being carved out of marble.  There seemed to be something quite stifling, and in contrast to the real beauty of the master at their teaching.  For some reason though, I don’t think this is what is being said here.  The “art” that is being discussed is quite different.  Maybe one that is unavoidable to the true master.  So it is from here that I leap off into my final paper about the final lesson.  With these questions guiding me I begin:

Why do people desire to be art?

What does it mean to speak about a person’s life as a work of art?

Is such a state attainable or inevitably something to be pursued?

Can the “final lesson” (to seek eternal life) be articulated in a simple and coherent way?

What is the effect of the image on the master/disciple relationship?

How do disciples devote themselves to a master’s image?

What becomes of art?     

With the help of Steiner’s Lesson’s, Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, Shakespeare’s A Winter’s Tale, Maugham’s The Moon and Sixpence, and Ovid’s Metamorphoses, I hope to start to uncover what is at the heart of the human desire to live a life as art and observe what then becomes a disciples devotion to the art.