The French Theosophist had an enormous influence on European philosophy, literature, and the visual arts of the Belle Époque. Yet, he is almost forgotten today.
by Massimo Introvigne
Article 1 of 2.
“Paris was a place you could hide away if you felt you didn’t fit in… So remember, every picture tells a story, don’t it.” So sang Rod Stewart in his 1971 “Every Picture Tells a Story.” But well before Rod Stewart, Theosophist Édouard Schuré (1841–1929) believed that both in music and the visual arts each work should “tell a story” rather than merely entertaining.
“Rama, Krishna, Hermes—Moses, Orpheus—Pythagoras—Plato—Jesus.” This genealogy of spiritual masters was annotated in his notebook for 1909–1911 by Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) with a reference to “Edouard Schuré—1907—Leipzig,” the date and city of edition of the German translation of Schuré’s “The Great Initiates,” originally published in French in 1889.
Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) abandoned Calvinism for Theosophy under the influence of “The Great Initiates,” that he read around 1900. The book remained crucially important throughout all his life. Before World War II, “The Great Initiates” had 450 French editions and was translated into two dozen foreign languages. Today, however, Schuré is almost forgotten. In this article, I present the life and main ideas of Schuré, while another feature article of “Bitter Winter” will present his influence on the visual arts.
Édouard Schuré was born on January 21, 1841, in Strasbourg, Alsace, in a Protestant family including several pastors. He married in 1866 Mathilde Nessler (1836–1922), the daughter of the Protestant pastor of Barr, Alsace. The local high school is now named after him. His Alsatian Protestant origins are important for understanding Schuré’s anti-Catholicism.
Alsace was at the center of the border disputes between France and Germany. Schuré was perfectly bilingual and felt part of German culture. On the other hand, he believed that Alsace belonged to France and became an ardent French nationalist. This tension between a German and a French identity explains several incidents in Schuré’s life.
Schuré is often regarded as the author of only one book, “The Great Initiates,” but when he published this text, at age 48, he was already well-known. He took courses in leading German and French universities, although he never graduated, and at an early age became a prominent, if self-taught, musicologist. He believed that the soul of a nation is revealed in folk songs. He applied this thesis to Germany in his first book, “Histoire du Lied.” As for the soul of France, Schuré sought it, beyond Catholicism, in the old “Celtic” roots. The search for “Celticism” in old traditions and legends preoccupied Schuré for most of his life.
In 1869, Schuré visited Richard Wagner (1813–1883) in Germany. He became the leading advocate of Wagner in France. Both Wagner and Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) considered Schuré’s book “Le Drame Musical” (1875) as one of the best interpretation of the musician’s ideas. Schuré became part of Wagner’s inner circle, and their friendship was shortly interrupted only during the French–German war of 1870.
In 1875, Schuré met in Florence Margherita Albana (1827–1887), the wife of Greek painter Giorgio Mignaty (1823–1895). While not divorcing the respective spouses, Schuré and Margherita started an intense and passionate relationship, which lasted until the woman’s death in 1887. Margherita introduced Schuré to Theosophy and esotericism and encouraged him to write a book on the fundamental unity of the great religions.
In his later years, Schuré romantically exaggerated Margherita’s role in introducing him to esotericism. Not less important was Swiss feminist writer Émilie de Morsier (1843–1896), who will become Schuré’s new muse upon Margherita’s death. She was the secretary of the Société Théosophique d’Orient et d’Occident, the first French branch of the Theosophical Society, and introduced Schuré in 1884 both to its president, Lady Caithness (1830–1895) and to Madame Helena Blavatsky (1831–1891). Although he left an unflattering portrait of the latter as “the Slavic hippopotamus,” Schuré did join the Theosophical Society.
In 1886, disturbed by the Coulomb scandal, a case of accusations of fraud against Blavatsky, both Morsier and Schuré left the Theosophical Society. Schuré had met in 1885 French esoteric master Alexandre Saint-Yves d’Alveydre (1842–1909) and for a couple of years regarded him as his spiritual master. He broke with Saint-Yves, judging him too harsh and authoritarian, in 1887, and eventually returned to the Theosophical Society in 1907.
Theosophical influences are obvious in Schuré’s magnum opus “The Great Initiates,” published in 1889. While Buddha was discussed in a separate article, Schuré’s chain of initiates went from Rama to Krishna, Hermes, Moses, Orpheus, Pythagoras, Plato, and Jesus. The phenomenally successful book claimed that there was a continuum in the chain and that, at their esoteric level, the teachings of all these Great Initiates were one.
While primarily interested in Theosophy, Schuré experimented with Spiritualist séances and occult rituals, and was in contact with a wide European esoteric milieu, including Papus (1865–1916), Stanislas de Guaïta (1861–1897), Joséphin Péladan (1858–1918), and Anna Kingsford (1846–1888). He shared his eclecticism with journalist Jules Bois (1868–1943), who was among his closest friends between 1892 and 1904. Bois even tried to organize a secret society around Schuré’s ideas.
Bois was among the select few who knew of Schuré’s confidential teachings about Lucifer. The 1900 play by Schuré “Les Enfants de Lucifer” was ostensibly about Lucifer as a symbol of freedom, which was common in a certain “romantic Satanism” of these years. In fact, Schuré experienced no less than three apparitions of Lucifer as a guiding spirit of humanity, the first time in 1872, in Assisi, Italy. When he died in 1929, Schuré’s last words might have been a call to Lucifer, although an alternative version maintained he was seeing his long-deceased father.
Schuré’s theories on Lucifer caught the attention of Marie von Sivers (1867–1948), a close associate and the future second wife of Rudolf Steiner (1861–1925). They met in 1900, and Sivers introduced Schuré to Steiner in 1905. In 1909, Steiner’s theatrical group represented Schuré’s “Les Enfants de Lucifer” in Munich. Steiner and Schuré became close friends.
Schuré had a good opinion of Annie Besant (1847–1933) but, like others, he ended up breaking with her. He left the Theosophical Society in 1913 over the controversies surrounding Charles Webster Leadbeater (1854–1934), whom he called “a learned occultist, but of an unsettled disposition and doubtful morality,” and Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986), “this passive young prodigy, who has not yet given the world the least proof of having any mission at all.”
In 1908, Schuré had published “Le Mystère chrétien et les Mystères antiques,” the first translation of Steiner into French. Schuré was among the leaders of French Anthroposophy until World War I, when his French nationalism led him to break with Steiner as he did with Wagner in 1870. The two men reconciled in 1922, but by that time Schuré believed that Anthroposophy was too Christ-oriented for achieving the necessary equilibrium between Christ and Lucifer.
Schuré’s last esoteric treatise is “L’Évolution divine, du Sphinx au Christ” (1912). He had the intention of continuing with a book “De Christ à Lucifer, la religion future,” where he would have clarified his idea that the main feature of human history was the parallel development of two currents inspired by Christ (love) and Lucifer (freedom). The future religion should be based on their convergence. After the Great War, illnesses prevented him from completing the project, although he was still a revered and well-known figure when he died in Paris on April 7, 1929.
Schuré was extremely influential both as a literary and musical critic and as an esoteric master. As a young intellectual, he was taken seriously by philosophers such as Nietzsche, and historians such as Jules Michelet (1798–1874) and Ernest Renan (1823–1892), who met with him several times. Later, he was for decades a central figure in Parisian literary salons.
Notwithstanding his anti–Catholicism, Schuré even influenced liberal Catholic theologians. The Jesuit scientist and theologian Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955) wrote in 1918 that “The Great Initiates” persuaded him that a new universalistic theology was possible “without altering the Christian dogma.” This later allowed conservative Catholic critics of Teilhard such as Louis Salleron (1905–1992) to accuse the Jesuit of following an esoteric “Gnosticism” inspired by Schuré.
Schuré’s widest and longest-lasting influence was, however, on visual artists. It will be explored in a second article.
