The Rudolf Steiner Archive

To-day we must bring this course of lectures to its conclusion. It has, naturally, only been possible to give certain guiding lines; much still remains unsaid and must be reserved for a future occasion. It seemed to me better to develop these guiding lines in a really fundamental way out of the nature of eurythrny itself, rather than to attempt a more encyclopedic survey of the whole domain of eurythmy.

It is of the greatest importance that each individual eurythmist should strengthen this power of creating the movements out of an inner activity, for it is in this way alone that a true understanding for eurythmy can be developed.

I shall deal first (my attention having been drawn to the matter) with the two sounds g and v (German w). Let us first take the g. In modern languages,—in modern European languages, at least,—this sound has not the same significance as it had in earlier times. For this reason we have not considered it until now. The sound g, when properly formed—gg—signifies an inner strengthening of the self, a strengthening of the soul-forces, a concentrating in itself of everything in the human being which naturally spreads outwards. It is therefore the sound of speech which, so to speak, holds our being together, in so far as the latter is a vessel for natural forces. This is the sound g.

Perhaps Frl. V. . . . will make the movement for g, in order that you may see how well the character of this gesture is adapted to show this inner strengthening and concentration. The warding off of everything external and the welding together of everything inward is expressed in the gesture for g.

Now we come to the remarkable sound v. We find this sound less frequently in the more ancient languages, in the Oriental languages that is to say. It expresses a special need of the human soul. It is as if the human soul were not used to the shelter of a firmly-built structure, but felt compelled to wander. Instead of the firmly-built house which may be experienced in the b-sound, instead of this solid house, the soul feels the need of a tent, or of the shelter of the woods. In the v-sound there lies the feeling of what may be described as a moving shelter.

This is why one always feels, with the sound v, that one is, as it were, carrying a shelter which is constantly being set up anew. Everything of a wandering nature, where the essential element is movement, must be experienced in this sound. It is the surging of the waves which is expressed by a strongly formed v; when delicately formed it expresses the sparkling of the waters. This will help you to realize what must be felt in the sound v. Now it is a remarkable fact that, when using the sound v (German w), one quite naturally finds oneself repeating it. One feels compelled to repeat it several times in succession. Something seems amiss if one simply says: ‘es wallet’; one wishes to say: ‘es wallet und woget, es weht und windet, es wirkt und webt,’ and so on. There is, in short, no sound which leads so naturally into the sphere of alliteration as this sound v. An alliteration can be made up with other sounds, but in no other way will it come about so naturally.

Perhaps Frl. S. . . . will demonstrate the sound v. You see how it demands a gesture filled with movement. V may thus be said to be that sound which permeates being with movement. Will you now show us, just going round in a circle without actually showing the structure of the alliteration,—we shall add this shortly, an alliteration built up on the sound v. In this example there are also other alliterated sounds; but observe how slight an impression they make when compared to one built up on the v-sound (German w). Thus we have

Wehe nun,
Waltender Gott,
Wehgeschick naht.
Ich wallete
der Sommer und Winter Sechsig ausser Landes,
Wo man mich immer scharte

(now comes the other alliteration)

In die Schar der Schntzen,
Doch vor keiner Burg Man den
Tod mir brachte.

Then we have a very marked alliteration, built up on m; you will feel this strongly, yet not so strongly as in the case of v:

Nun soll mein eigenes Kind
Mich mit dem Schwerte hauen,
Morden mich mit der Mordaxt!
Oder soll ich zum Morder werden?

One cannot help feeling that every alliteration based upon the v-sound appears to come about quite as a matter of course, whereas all other alliterations, no matter what sound is repeated, have the effect of being drawn out from the v.

Alliteration is an essential and fundamental element in poetry, especially where the sound v is experienced in a living way. In this connection we must develop a two-fold feeling. In the first place there lies in the nature of alliteration,—that is to say, when the first letter of certain words is repeated,—something which takes us back into earlier stages of European culture. Wilhelm Jordan has attempted to revive alliteration, and has indeed succeeded in introducing it into his work with a certain strength and conviction. In modern German this element of alliteration appears somewhat out of place. A feeling for it, however, can always be recaptured if one has the gift of going back in imagination to an earlier epoch. The short poem which I have read to you is taken from the Song of Hildebrand. Hildebrand was long absent from his native country, and on his return journey he met his son Hadubrand with whom he came into conflict. It is the battle between these two which is related in this alliterative form,—a form which was at that time an instinctive and completely natural means of expression.

An alliteration may be shown in the following way: Let a number of eurythmists form a circle, and now,—because the very essence of alliteration is consonantal, although not invariably based upon the v-sound,—they must emphasize the alliterated consonants by stepping round this circle. The vowel sounds do not form part of the alliteration; for this reason they may be shown by another group of eurythmists who stand inside the circle, making the movements for the vowels.

I will ask several of you to show the alliteration in the poem I have just read. Will you take your places in the circle; and now three others must stand in the centre and show the vowels.
The alliteration will be particularly strongly emphasized if, whenever a new alliterated sound occurs, it is shown by a different eurythmist, the preceding eurythmist at the same time repeating the previous sound. Only those vowels which follow directly after the alliterated consonant should be shown by those in the outer circle. The other vowel-sounds must be done more as an accompaniment by those standing in the centre. In order to make the whole thing quite clear let us take this example and do it quite slowly, those in the outer circle moving to the alliteration:

Wehe nun,
Waltender Gott,
Wehgeschick naht.
Ich wallete
Der Sommer und Winter
Sechsig ausser Landes,
Wo man mich scharte
In die Schar der Schützen,
Doch vor keiner Burg
Man den Tod mir brachte.
Nun soll mein eignes Kind
Mich mit dem Schwerte hauen,
Morden mich mit der Mordaxt!
Oder soll ich zum Mörder werden?

The alliterated consonant and the vowel sound immediately following it must be carried round the circle from one eurythmist to the next.

This will show you how in fact movement, and also restraint may be brought into such a poem sheerly by means of alliteration.

We will now pass on to something else, something which will help us to make of the human organism a fitting instrument for the service of eurythmy. In this connection it is very necessary to gain an understanding of the difference in eurythmy between walking and standing. Standing still always signifies that one is the image, the picture of some-thing. Walking, on the other hand, signifies that oneself will actually be something. When working out a poem in eurythmy you must be able to feel whether, at a certain point, it is a question of describing or indicating something or of representing the actual nature of something in a living way. It is according to this that one must decide whether to stand still (a lessening of the movement tends already in this direction), or whether to pass over into movement. We shall find that we have less occasion to stand still than to move, for there lies in the very nature of poetry the tendency to express something living, something which is, not merely that which signifies something. Here it is well that we should know how the human body is related to the whole cosmos. The feet of man correspond to the earth, for in their very structure they are suited to the earth, Where we have to do with gravity, with the weight of the earth,—and this feeling of the weight of the earth is present in nearly all forms of human suffering,—we must endeavour to express this in eurythmy by a graceful use of the feet and legs.

The hands and arms reveal the life of the soul. This soul-element is the most essential part of what may be brought to expression in eurythmy, and this is why in eurythmy the movements of the arms and hands play such an important part. Here already we pass over into the realm of the spiritual, for it is in the transition from one sound to the next that we find the best means of expressing that which is spiritual. In language the spiritual element finds expression in the mood of irony, for instance, or roguishness, in every-thing that is to say which emanates from the human spirit (aus dem menschlichen Spiritus), from man himself in that he is a spiritual being, gifted with intelligence in the best sense of the word. Such things must be indicated by means of the head, for the head is the instrument of the spirit.

We must become conscious of such things; then we shall be able to express them in the right way. It is specially important to be able to use the head in the most varied manner according to the possibilities of its organization.

Fri. S. . . . will you turn your head towards the right. The turning of the head towards the right may always be taken to signify: ` I will ' ; naturally I do not mean these two words merely, but everything which contains the feeling: ` I will.'

On the other hand, when you turn your head towards the left it signifies : I feel.' Thus, everything in a poem where the mood of `I feel' is dominant we must turn the head towards the left.

Now bend the head towards the right. This bending movement of the head (forwards towards the right) signifies: ` Iwill not.' Bend it in the same way towards the left and it signifies: ` I do not feel this, I do not understand it or realize it.'

And now bend the head forwards, straight forwards. You will see how natural this movement is if you do the following: Frau Sch. . . . will you stand facing Frl. S. . . . in profile, and do these movements. We must suppose that Frau Sch. . . . says: ` It is the gods who inspire the human heart with willing service.' Frl. S. . . . gives an eurythmic answer: ` You are too clever for me; I do not understand you.' She shows this by means of the aforesaid gesture, carried out clearly and definitely. You will find numberless opportunities of applying this movement. It signifies a sinking into oneself when faced with something which one is not able to understand.

Then, further, so that we may have at least one example, I must point out that the twelve gestures related to the Zodiac and the seven gestures related to the moving planetary circle may be made use of in a variety of ways. Quite apart, for instance, from what was said yesterday with regard to rhyming we must learn to understand such an exercise as the following:

Fri. S. . . . and Fri. V. . . . will you demonstrate what I am now going to describe. Fri. S. . . . will you make the gesture for Leo, and you, Frl. V. . . . the gesture for Aquarius; now, as I read this little poem, try to show it in eurythmy. In the case of the emphasized rhymes, the rhymes which fall on an accented beat, you, Fri. S.. . . must make the gesture for Leo. With the unemphasized rhymes, thus those which do not fall on the accented but on the unaccented beat, you, Frl. V. . . . must make the gesture of Aquarius. Make the movements standing still, choosing perhaps the vowel sounds, and only making the zodiacal gestures at the end of the lines so that we may really see their effect when they follow immediately after the rhyme.

Es rauschst das Bachlein -Ether Gestein... .

(You, Frl. V. . . . must hold the sound)

Ein Weidenbaum driiber gebogen,
Drauf sitzt des Miillers Büblein klein,
Im Schosse ein kleines Zitherlein,
Die Füsschen bespiilt von den Wogen.
Es kommt ein Mann des Wegs zu gehn,
Er bleibt so still, so schweigsam stehn
Sieht zu dem sinnigen Knaben;
Hatt' auch ein Büblein klein,
War auch so still und auch so fein.
Das liegt nun draussen begraben.

You see how the rhyme may be emphasized in this way by means of the zodiacal gestures. I am drawing your attention to such things so that you may be able to work out similar exercises for yourselves, thus gaining assurance and certainty in the development of eurythmic gestures.

I will now ask a number of eurythmists to come forward and make various movements as I explain them: Number one must place the feet together, stretching the arms out so that they lie in a horizontal direction, on a level with the shoulders.

Number two must stand with the feet slightly apart, holding out the arms in such a way that the hands about correspond with the level of the larynx:

Now for number three: stand with your feet somewhat further apart, and hold the arms in such a way that, if a line were drawn from hand to hand, it would pass just below the heart.

Number four: stand with the feet still further apart, quite wide, holding the arms right up above the head. The hands must be held in such a way that they could be connected with the feet by means of a straight line.

Number five: stand with the feet in a similar position to number three, and now hold the arms in such a way that a line drawn from hand to hand would pass at the level of the top of the head.

Here (in the case of Number two) the line passes across the larynx; here (Number one) the line is quite horizontal; here (Number four) it is high up above the head; and here (Number five) it is just at head-level. Continue to hold all these gestures.

Number six: you must stand with the legs close together, with the arms held upwards in an absolutely vertical line: To these gestures we must add the following words:

Ich denke die Rede—I
Ich rede—II
Ich habe geredet—III
Ich suche mich im Geiste (meinen geistigen Ursprung)—IV
Ich fühle mich in mir—V
Ich bin auf dem geistigen Wege—VI
Ich bin auf dem Weg zum Geiste (zu mir).

I think speech I speak
I have spoken
I seek for myself in the Spirit
(my spiritual origin)
I feel myself within myself
I am on the spiritual path
I am on the way to the Spirit (to myself).

Approximately in this way. And now you must try to pass from one position to the next. Frl. V. . . . will you do this? Place yourself in front of each one in turn, and, as you take up each position, you must feel impelled to express the words that are said by means of the gesture being carried out by the eurythmist standing behind you. As Number one, you have to begin:

Ich denke die Rede

Passing on take up your place in front of Number two:

Ich rede
Ich habe geredet
Ich suche mich im Geiste
Ich fühle mich im mir
Ich bin auf dem Geistwege.

In this way we get the whole series of gestures.

Ich denke die Rede
Ich rede
Ich habe geredet
Ich suche mich im Geiste
Ich fühle mich in mir
Ich bin auf dem Wege zum Geiste (zur mir).

If, when teaching eurythmy to adults, a beginning is made with this very exercise, it will certainly help them to find their way into eurythmy easily and well.

These gestures, when carried out in this way one after the other, form an exercise which may be classed among those having a harmonizing and curative effect. Thus, when anyone is so much disturbed in his soul-life that this disturbance works itself out into his physical body, manifesting itself in all sorts of digestive troubles, then this exercise, taken in such a case as a curative exercise, may always be given with the greatest benefit.

And finally, my dear friends, I must once again impress upon your hearts the fact that really good eurythmy can only be achieved when there is the determination always to make a thorough and careful preparatory analysis, of anything which is to be interpreted by means of eurythmy. Every poem must be studied in the first place with a view to discovering which are the most fundamental sounds. If in a poem expressing the feeling of wonder, the wonder experienced by the poet, we find many a sounds, then we may be quite sure that this poem is well suited to eurythmy, for it is the sound a which expresses wonder. The poet himself has felt that a is specially related to the mood of wonder. And the eurythmist will be able to intensify the effect by laying stress on the movement corresponding to the sound a. In eurythmy it is even more important to concentrate on the sounds contained in a poem than on the actual sense-content of the words. For the sense-content is the prose element. The more a poem depends upon its sense-content, so much the less is it a poem; and the more the sound-content is brought out, the more a poem is dependent on sound, the nearer it approaches to true poetry.

As a eurythmist, then, one should not take one's start from the prose-content, but should enter so deeply into the nature of the sounds as to be able to say: When many a-sounds occur in a poem it is obvious that it is a poem based upon the mood of wonder and must be so expressed. This shows us the attitude we must have towards language as such. Further we must seek in poetry for those characteristics of language which we have already mentioned here,—what is concrete, for instance, what abstract, and other details of this kind. This means that one must first enter into the nature of a poem and study it according to the structure and formation of its language, only later trying to express it in eurythmy.

In eurythmy there is still another thing to bear in mind, and that is the way in which, in the eurythmy figures, I have tried to portray Movement, Feeling and Character.¹ This is another field of study for eurythmists. The movement must be felt as movement, and is depicted as such in the figures. As a eurythmist one lives in movement. We must, however,—more especially when a veil is floating around us, but also when we are not actually wearing one,—picture this veil as expressing the aura (see Eurythmy Figures). It is only when one bears this in mind that one can bring the necessary grace and beauty into the movements. Let us look at the eurythmy figure for I. The 1-sound itself lies in the movement; but that which can be added to the 1 as feeling, is shown by the fact that here, in the region of the arms, the aura is quite wide, becoming narrower as it hangs down. You must imagine that your arms reveal your feeling by means of the floating aura of the veil. The dress which here appears somewhat wider at the bottom must be studied in a similar way. This is how one must picture oneself. As a eurythmist, one should always feel oneself attired in dress and floating veil as I have indicated here in the figure.

Character also is of the greatest importance. When stretching out the arms one should actually feel that here (see figure) the muscles are stretched and taut. Everywhere where character is indicated by means of its corresponding colour there must be a tension of the muscles. This must also be shown by the eurythmist. And here again, for example, (see figure) you must use the legs in such a way that you really experience this muscular tension. The eurythmy figures are intended to show such things and have been designed accordingly.

When you have in this way made a study of each separate sound, your whole organism will be so sensitive to sound that you will feel: This whole poem is built up upon the mood of l, let us say, or upon the mood of b; and it will then be possible for you to create your interpretation of a poem out of the sounds themselves.

All these things must be very carefully borne in mind when it is a question of teaching eurythmy. In educational eurythmy it is naturally important to introduce such movements of the body as can work with moral benefit upon the soul-life, and serve to further the development of intellect and feeling.

In artistic eurythmy the essential thing is that the soul should gain the power of working through the medium of the body. Thus the movements of eurythmy, these gestures as they are shaped and formed, must be felt to be absolutely natural, indeed inevitable. One must feel that they could not be otherwise, that it is only by means of these very gestures that certain moods or artistic concepts can be expressed.

Yet another thing must be borne in mind, and that is the fact that the learning of eurythmy entails an actual trans-formation of the human organism. Any performance which reveals the slightest trace of struggle between body and soul must be looked upon as unfinished and imperfect. In a eurythmy performance the whole body must have become soul.

A programme is sometimes given—as you yourselves know—which has been prepared with unbelievable industry and is then shown for the first time. One can enjoy such a programme, where everything is fresh and spontaneous, where there is still a struggle with the form-running, and where on occasion the arms are not moved but thrown about, appearing so heavy as to be liable at any moment to fall to the ground. There is spontaneity in all this and it gives us a certain pleasure.

Then the time comes when the programme is taken on tour and given perhaps in some ‘two dozen' towns. (As a matter of fact, I believe this has never actually happened, but it might well happen.) The programme is, as I said, performed in about two dozen towns and the eurythmists return. Then,—because Frau Dr. Steiner has had no time to prepare a new programme,—this old programme, which we saw some six weeks ago in all its youthful spontaneity, is presented again. Now the pleasure is of a very different kind. Everything has become easy and fluent. One notices, too, that the eurythmists, because they have visited new towns and learned to know fresh conditions, are stimulated by the outer world and have gained a certain inner enthusiasm. All this has had its effect on the movements and they have become effortless and free. The performance is now sheer delight, and one can only exclaim: ‘Oh, if this programme could be performed fifty times more, how beautiful it would be then!'

We must have an understanding for these things. Every artist whose work is bound up with the stage knows the truth of what I have just said. A good actor would never think that he has mastered a role before he had played it some fifty times. With the fifty-first performance he might perhaps think that he could play the part, for then every-thing would have become second nature. We, too, must acquire this attitude of mind, my dear friends. We must develop such a love for anything which is to be shown in a performance that we simply cannot put it aside. Indeed no one but the onlooker may be permitted to find an often repeated item dull or tedious! It is in the sphere of art above all, that it is important to realize this; one must come back to a thing again and again. In a place where I once happened to be staying, I had the opportunity of seeing a play repeated fifty times. I went every evening to see this same play and allowed it to work upon me. By the fifth evening I did perhaps have a certain feeling of boredom, but by the fifty-first evening I was not in the least bored. Even though the performance, in a small provincial theatre, was very mediocre, so much could be learned from its very imperfection that this experience,—peculiar though it was,—could be of life-long benefit. As a matter of fact, I did not like the play in question; as a play it did not interest me at all. (It was Sudermann's Ehre.) I could not stand the play; nevertheless, I saw it performed fifty times by a some-what mediocre cast. My aim was to enter into all the details unconsciously, thus experiencing it purely with the astral body. I wished to take it right out of the realm of conscious perception and simply to live with it.

People must learn,—and now, when I am speaking about eurythmy, I will take the opportunity of mentioning it,—people must learn the value of rhythm, even in more complicated matters. We say the Lord's Prayer not fifty times only, but countless times, and we never find it tedious. Notice is seldom paid to the fact that such things are connected with experiences of the human organism, experiences which are apparently more or less immaterial and to which our Karma leads us at one time or another.

With this, my dear friends, we must bring this course of lectures to a close. From the way I have developed the subject, you will have realized that my first aim has been to show you that it is out of the feelings, out of the soul-life, that eurythmy must proceed. Eurythmic technique must be won out of a love for eurythmy, for in truth, everything must proceed out of love.

How much I myself love eurythmy, my dear friends, I have told you recently in the ‘News Sheet'.² I said then how earnestly I wish that the great devotion demanded of all those actively engaged in the work of eurythmy,—work which was begun by Frau Dr. Steiner, begun by our eurythmy artists here in Dornach and which has gradually won wider recognition and esteem,—how earnestly I wish that all this may be rightly appreciated; for it cannot be too highly prized in Anthroposophical circles. It is my hope that this course of lectures may have contributed something towards the furthernace of eurythmy in this respect, in that all of us who are gathered together here,—whether as eurythmists who already know the fundamentals of eurythmy, as beginners, or indeed as those merely interested in eurythmy, that all of us here will feel ourselves as the helpers and promoters of eurythmy, of this art which springs from no humble source, but has as its lofty origin, that cosmic knowledge which creates from out of the spirit. If we feel ourselves as the helpers of eurythmy, either in an active or in a more passive sense, then eurythmy will be able to fulfil the mission which it can and should fulfil in the general development of Anthroposophy.

When people will see in beauty the spirit working in human movement, then this will make some contribution to the whole attitude which humanity, through Anthroposophy, should take up towards the spirit.

Let us think of all the many things which have grown up out of anthroposophical soil, forming together one great whole; and then, inspired by the Anthroposophy in our hearts, let us build up and develop each separate activity as it should and will be developed if we prove ourselves worthy of the real aims of Anthroposophy. This course of eurythmy lectures may perhaps have done something towards this end.

• 1. See page 274. The Eurythmy Figures.
• 2. S. page 260.

Introductory words to the Eurythmy performance given in Dornach, 26th December, 1923, on the occasion of the Foundation Meeting of the General Anthroposophical Society.

The nature of eurythmy has certainly been repeatedly discussed before the most varied groups of our friends, lately also it was presented in the most varied way in the Goetheanum,¹ and it is indeed unnecessary to speak at this performance, which is to be given exclusively to our friends about the essential nature of eurythmy, about the basic principles, which are known to all. Yet I should like to characterize again and again from a certain standpoint both the way in which eurythmy stands in the artistic development of the present and what its position among the arts in general is. To-day I will speak a few words about how eurythmy must in fact, as it were from its very nature, be drawn out from the being of man by a spiritual world-conception, which, in accordance with the signs of the times, is making itself felt in our present age.

We look at another art which portrays the human being—the plastic art, which portrays him in his quiescent form. Whoever approaches plastic art with a certain feeling for form, whoever experiences the human being, human characteristics, through a plastic work of art does so in the best way when he has the feeling: here the human being is silent, speaking through his quiescent form.

Now we know that in the eighteenth century Lessing wrote a paper on the limits of plastic art,—it was not called that, but that was its content,—in which he said that sculpture should in its very nature be a manifestation of that which is at rest, of that which is silent in man,—in man as a being placed into the cosmos. So that sculpture can only express that which manifests itself as silence, as stillness, in the human being. Hence any attempt to represent the human being in movement through the medium of sculpture will undoubtedly prove to be an artistic error.

In times gone by, indeed up to the time of the Renaissance, it was a matter of course that plastic art could only represent the human being in a state of rest. For it may be said: This age, which began with ancient Greece and ended with the Renaissance, was mainly concerned with the development in the human being of the intellectual soul. With regard to the inner configuration of man’s being, the sentient soul, the mind soul and the consciousness soul,—it is the mind soul, embracing as it does all that is connected with the human mind, that holds the middle place; and the mind is in fact permeated with that quiescent feeling which also comes to expression in the quiescent human form.

We live to-day in an age in which we must advance from the feeling element in man to the will element; for fundamentally speaking it is the descent into the will element which, if consciously achieved, would enable us to-day to attain to spiritual insight.

This brings us to the point where we may turn our spiritual gaze to the human being in movement; not to the human being who, as the expression of the Cosmic Word, remained silent in order to rest in form, but to the human being as he stands in the living weaving of the Cosmic Word, bringing his organism into activity in accordance with his cosmic environment.

It is this clement in man which must find expression in eurythmy. And if one is able to observe things from the point of view of the spiritual science which is suited to the humanity of to-day, one will always have the feeling that form must become fluidic. Let us look at a human hand. Its silence finds expression in its quiescent form. What then is the meaning of this quiescent form when the human being as a whole is taken into consideration? Its meaning is apparent when the quiescent element of feeling is allowed to hold sway as it did hold sway from the age of the ancient Greeks to the time of the Renaissance. There is certainly great significance in such a gesture as this, in which I indicate something with my hand, then allowing it to remain in a state of rest. But it does not enable us to understand what must be realized to-day with regard to man, it does not enable us to understand the human being in his totality.

It is indeed impossible to understand the human form, when observing the human being as a whole, unless one is conscious of the fact that every motionless form in man has meaning only because it is able to pass over into definite movement. What would be the significance of the human hand if it were compelled to remain motionless. Even in its motionless state the form of the hand is such as to demand movement.

When one studies the human being with that inner mobility which is essential to the Spiritual Science of to-day, then from out of the quiescent form, movement reveals itself on all sides. It is not too much to say that anyone who visits a museum containing sculpture belonging to the best periods of plastic art, and who looks at the figures with the inner vision arising out of the spiritual knowledge of our time, will see these figures descend from their stands, move about the room and meet each other, becoming on all sides enfilled with movement.

And eurythmy,—now eurythmy arises naturally out of sculpture. And to learn to understand this is our task also. To-day people gifted with a certain spiritual mobility feel disturbed if obliged to look for a long time at a motionless Greek statue. They have to force themselves to do it. This can, and indeed must be done in order not to spoil the Greek statue in one’s own personal fantasy. But at the same time the urge remains to bring movement into this motionless form. As a consequence there arises that moving sculpture to which we give the name of Eurythmy. Here the Cosmic Word is itself, movement. In eurythmy man is no longer silent but through his movement communicates innumerable cosmic secrets.

It is indeed always the case that man communicates through his own being numberless secrets of the universe. One can, however, have yet another cosmic feeling. Anyone who has a living understanding for such descriptions of cosmic evolution as are to be found in my Outline of Occult Science will realize from the outset that, in the case of the human form of to-day, it is as though one had allowed an inner mobility to become dried up, to become rigid. One need only to look back to the time of the Old Moon. The human being was then in a continual state of metamorphosis. Such a definitely formed nose, such definitely formed ears as man has to-day, these did not exist at that time. The once mobile forms had to become frozen. He who with his vision can transport himself into the time of the Old Moon, to him people to-day often appear as frozen, immobile beings, incapable of metamorphosis. And what we achieve by means of eurythmy, when we make it into a visible speech, is no less than this: The bringing of movement, of fluidity, into the frozen human form.

This demands a study which must in its very nature be artistic. In this sphere everything intellectualistic is positively harmful. Eurythmy is and must remain an art.

Just consider for a moment that some such eurythmy form as you have sometimes seen here in connection with poems which really have in their experience and structure the profundity, for instance, of the poems of Steffen, just consider that such a form would best be found when, let us say—one imagines ten or twelve people of the present day. You are certainly all individually different with regard to your external form; but one can say of every person, no matter whether he has a round or long head, a pointed or blunt nose,—one can say of every person how, in the case of a poem, he would move his etheric body. And it would certainly be interesting for one to take those sitting in a certain row and show how, in the case of a poem, each one of those sitting here would move in accordance with his own form, if this came about entirely from the individual characteristics of the person in question. Here are sitting, for instance, eight people in this row. In such a case quite different eurythmy forms would arise from the human form. This would be very interesting. One would have to look at many people in order to say how the human being would move for “Und es wallet und woget und brauset und zischt”.

And then one gets the idea of how the forms are necessary. Thus eurythmy is born wholly out of the moving human form, but one must be able to take up such a standpoint that, when asked why the form for a poem is such and such, one must say: Yes, that is how it is! If anyone demands an intellectual explanation in justification of such a form, then one will feel annoyed to give it, because that is really inartistic. Eurythmy is created entirely out of feeling and can also only be understood through feeling.

Of course one must learn certain things, the letters must be learned, and so on. But after all, when you write a letter, here also you do not think about how an i or a b is written, but you write because you are able to do so. The point, then, is not how the eurythmist must learn a, b, c but to enjoy what comes out of it in the end.

What must develop out of eurythmy is a newly created, moving sculpture. And for this living sculpture one must of course make use of the human being himself; here one cannot use clay or marble. This leads into a realm of art which, in the profoundest sense, touches reality just where sculpture departs from it. Sculpture portrays that which is dead in the human being, or at least that which is death-like in its rigidity. Eurythmy portrays all that in the human being which is of the nature of life itself. For this reason eurythmy can call forth the feeling of how the universal cosmic life laid hold of man and placed him into earthly evolution, giving him his earthly task. There is perhaps no other art through which one can experience man’s relationship to the cosmos so vividly as one is able to do through the art of eurythmy. Therefore this art of eurythmy, based as it is on the etheric forces in man, had to appear just at that time a modern Spiritual Science was being sought. For it was out of this modern Spiritual Science that eurythmy had to be born.

• 1. See Rudolf Steiner, foreword to a eurythmy performance in ‘Das Goetheanum’ Year 3, No. 7. 23rd Sept., 1925.

In our time together here I would like to put before you, at least in outline, certain matters relating to the art of recitation and declamation. We will begin by adopting the standpoint of recitation and declamation itself: so that we have, on the one hand the practice, and on the other, considerations of this practice. Our starting-point today will provide us with a foundation for the considerations to occupy us later. We will begin with the Seventh Scene from my first Mystery Play, The Portal of Initiation. This scene takes place, we might say, in the spiritual world. Basically, it presents to us that view on the interconnection of the spiritual, the psychic and the physical world which is revealed by anthroposophically orientated spiritual science. In a certain sense, the Seventh Scene takes place in the spiritual world, but the persons represented there belong as such to the physical world, and are not meant to be symbolic or allegorical figures. They are intended to stand before us in living reality. The four characters – Maria, Philia, Astrid, Luna – represent personalities belonging to the physical world. Yet, as will manifest itself from several points of view in my coming lectures, the consciousness of personalities in the physical world may take such a form that the human being as he is through his ordinary sense-consciousness of objects (the sort of consciousness with which he stands in the physical world) may also stand, with a more highly-awakened consciousness, in the spiritual world.

Human life in its depths is able to bring forth from itself not only the forces of instinct or common intelligence, but also those forces that are inwardly impelled from the soul- and spirit-worlds. And when you aim at a drama that does not just present man one-sidedly as a sense-being, but depicts his full nature, where he demonstrates himself a being who is animated by impulses springing from the world of soul and spirit, you are constrained to add things to the course of the action as played out in the physical world – things which lift the whole action from the physical into the spiritual world. What is portrayed inthe Seventh Scene of my Mystery Play must thus be looked upon absolutely as a representation of spiritual impulses working through the physical human beings. If you present such things, not out of any kind of fantastic or nebulous mysticism, or symbolically, or allegorically, or some similar way, but from genuine experiences of the spiritual world, you have to resort to representations quite different to those you would otherwise have applied in the physical world. In physical life those representations that have to do with the ethical and religious life, possessing a more formless character, an abstract, unrepresentational character, stand apart from those which relate to nature. These other representations have a visual character which gives them clearly-defined contours, etc. If, when you listen, you feel how the contoured word stands out against the more formless, more musically-felt word, you will everywhere notice the transition from the inwardly plastic to the inwardly musical word.

If, however, you need to lead the action up into the spiritual world, you must achieve some degree of synthesis. You must find a way of dissolving the plasticity of the word – yet not so as to lose its plastic qualities; you must bring it so far that at the same time there arises a musical quality. A “plastically-musical” mode of speech must arise. For here the ethical and religious are not divorced from the natural and physical: rather, you have to do with a series of constituents which coincide in a synthesis. And you will hear in this scene, now to be recited, that the presentation derives from a life of inner representation completely different from the one of everyday life or conventional drama. It will be spoken and presented from a life of representation which holds in one both the elemental powers of nature and that which (through the elemental nature-forces) simultaneously possesses a moral, ethical significance. The physical becomes at the same time ethical; and the ethical is brought down into physical pictoriality. In this sphere we cannot differentiate between what takes place physically and what takes place ethically. The ethical takes place in the sphere of physical form, and the physical event takes place in the moral domain. And this requires a very special treatment of speech. In any artistic representation such as this the handling of speech must not derive in the least – and this cannot he otherwise – from thought.

Perhaps I may refer to my own experience in fashioning my Mystery Play. I can say that no thought lives in it; everything you will now hear recited and declaimed was heard, albeit spiritually, exactly as it sounds here. It is not a matter of grasping a thought and then putting it into words, but of beholding what will now be presented to you – and of beholding it in the way it is presented, as inwardly sounding and taking form. In the delineation of such a scene one has nothing to do but write down externally what one has experienced inwardly as a perception.

Thereby results a very special approach to characterising the shaping of the various roles, and you will observe how the four figures, Maria, Philia, Astrid and Luna, differ from one another. The names of the respective characters should not be appended only to show that the contents are to be recited by them. Something quite unique can be heard in what found expression, for example, in Maria, who felt herself in higher perception and an exalted consciousness to be in the midst of ethically-acting forces of nature: and through her feeling of these ethically-acting forces of nature, she was inspired to express this in the way she speaks. It is something which represents an all-awareness of nature, so to speak, insofar as it is ethical – and of ethics insofar as it is already nature.

In Philia we have a personality which, in a certain sense, is irradiated by the powers of love – and yet as a completely human figure. She shows herself a human character, quite simply in that if one is alive to it, one feels pulsating within her all that a personality pervaded by love would say and do when confronted with the feelings, representations, phenomena and images that are realized through Maria. And again: Astrid represents a personality filled with what we might call inner human wisdom – in such a way that inner human wisdom unites itself through inwardness of vision with cosmic activity. And Luna represents what is manifested in a steadfast consciousness as efficacy of will.

These three personalities are not presented as symbols or allegories, any more than Nero is a symbolic representation of cruelty. These three personalities are human beings of flesh and blood, and differ from one another just as human beings in real life differ, for instance, according to their temperaments. They differ so that one personality is wholly vibrant with love, another wholly with wisdom, and another wholly with firmness. And through what reveals itself in the collaboration of the plastic and musical, where a feeling of the ethical-natural and the natural-ethical harmonizes with the human personality, borne by love, illuminated by wisdom and warmed by steadfast strength, there comes into being what can here be presented as a true picture of the spiritual world. Perhaps we may begin with this scene, because in that way it can be shown how, when one creates out of the element of recitation and declamation rather than out of thought, an art of declamation results in a quite direct and elemental kind of way.¹ In this way poetry becomes at once declamation and recitation. And an art of recitation and declamation comes into being through inner perception which one can equally believe to be poetry. This is what we shall consider further when we enter into declamation and recitation.

Frau Dr. Steiner will now recite the Seventh Scene from The Portal of Initiation:

MARIA:
Ihr, meine Schwestern, die ihr
So oft mir Helferinnen wart,
Seid mir es auch in dieser Stunde,
Dass ich den Weltenäther
In sich erbeben lasse.
Er soll harmonisch klingen
Und klingend eine Seele
Durchdringen mit Erkenntnis.
Ich kann die Zeichen schauen,
Die uns zur Arbeit lenken.
Es soll sich euer Werk
Mit meinem Werke einen.
Johannes, der Strebende,
Er soll durch unser Schaffen
Zum wahren Sein erhoben werden.
Die Brüder in dem Tempel,
Sie hielten Rat,
Wie sie ihn aus den Tiefen
In lichte Höhen führen sollen.
Von uns erwarten sie,
Dass wir in seiner Seele heben
Die Kraft zum Höhenfluge.
Du, meine Philia, so sauge
Des Lichtes klares Wesen
Aus Raumesweiten,
Erfülle dich mit Klangesreiz
Aus schaffender Seelenmacht,
Dass du mir reichen kannst
Die Gaben, die du sammelst
Aus Geistesgründen.
Ich kann sie weben dann
In den erregenden Sphärenreigen.
Und du auch, Astrid, meines Geistes
Geliebtes Spiegelbild,
Erzeuge Dunkelkraft
Im fliessenden Licht,
Dass es in Farben scheine,
Und gliedre Klangeswesenheit,
Dass webender Weltenstoff
Ertönend lebe.
So kann ich Geistesfühlen
Vertrauen suchendem Menschensinn.
Und du, o starke Luna,
Die du gefestigt im Innern bist,
Dem Lebensmarke gleich,
Das in des Baumes Mitte wächst,
Vereine mit der Schwestern Gaben
Das Abbild deiner Eigenheit,
Dass Wissens Sicherheit
Dem Seelensucher werde.

PHILIA:
Ich will erfüllen mich
Mit klarstem Lichtessein
Aus Weltenweiten,
Ich will eratmen mir
Belebenden Klangesstoff
Aus Ätherfernen,
Dass dir, geliebte Schwester,
Das Werk gelingen kann.

ASTRID:
Ich will verweben
Erstrahlend Licht
Mit dämpfender Finsternis,
Ich will verdichten
Das Klangesleben.
Es soll erglitzernd klingen,
Es soll erklingend glitzern,
Dass du, geliebte Schwester,
Die Seelenstrahlen lenken kannst.

LUNA:
Ich will erwärmen Seelenstoff
Und will erhärten Lebensäther.
Sie sollen sich verdichten,
Sie sollen sich erfühlen,
Und in sich selber seiend
Sich schaffend halten,
Dass du, geliebte Schwester,
Der suchenden Menschenseele
Des Wissens Sicherheit erzeugen kannst.

MARIA:
Aus Philias Bereichen
Soll strömen Freudesinn;
Und Nixen Wechselkräfte
Sie mögen öffnen
Der Seele Reizbarkeit,
Dass der Erweckte
Erleben kann
Der Welten Lust,
Der Welten Weh,–
Aus Astrids Weben
Soll werden Liebelust;
Der Sylphen wehend Leben,
Es soll erregen
Der Seele Opfertrieb,
Dass der Geweihte
Erquicken kann
Die Leidbeladenen,
Die Glück Erflehenden.–
Aus Lunas Kraft
Soll strömen Festigkeit.
Der Feuerwesen Macht,
Sie kann erschaffen
Der Seele Sicherheit;
Auf dass der Wissende
Sich finden kann
Im Seelenweben,
Im Weltenleben.

PHILIA:
Ich will erbitten von Weltengeistern,
Dass ihres Wesens Licht
Entzücke Seelensinn,
Und ihrer Worte Klang
Beglücke Geistgehör;
Auf dass sich hebe
Der zu Erweckende
Auf Seelenwegen
In Himmelshöhen.

ASTRID:
Ich will die Liebesströme,
Die Welt erwarmenden,
Zu Herzen leiten
Dem Geweihten;
Auf dass er bringen kann
Des Himmels Güte
Dem Erdenwirken
Und Weihestimmung
Den Menschenkindern.

LUNA:
Ich will von Urgewalten
Erflehen Mut und Kraft
Und sie dem Suchenden
In Herzenstiefen legen;
Auf dass Vertrauen
Zum eignen Selbst
Ihn durch das Leben
Geleiten kann.
Er soll sich sicher
In sich dann selber fühlen.
Er soll von Augenblicken
Die reifen Früchte pflücken
Und Saaten ihnen entlocken
Für Ewigkeiten.

MARIA:
Mit euch, ihr Schwestern,
Vereint zu edlem Werk,
Wird mir gelingen,
Was ich ersehne.
Es dringt der Ruf
Des schwer Geprüften
In unsre Lichteswelt.

From The Portal of Initiation, Scene 7:

MARIA:
Now, my sisters, at this hour

come once more to me

So have you often done. –

Then I may bid the cosmic ether stir

and ring within itself,

harmoniously resounding,

and sounding, all his soul

pervade and pierce with knowing.

I can discern the signs:

they urge us to our task.

Then let your work

make one with mine:

Johannes – as he strives

shall our creating lift him up

to Being’s truth.

bThe Brethren of the Temple

have conferred

how they might raise him up

from his abyss to light-filled eminence:

and they demand of us

to rouse his laboring soul

to strength and soaring flight.

Ah then, my Philia, come inhale

translucent essences of light from sprawling space:

Be filled with all-alluring sound

from shaping-powers of soul:

Reach to me

the gifts you cull

from the deep spirit’s ground!

And I shall weave them in

amid the stirring dancing of the spheres.

You, Astrid, too –

loved image of my spirit!

you must beget dark’s power

within light’s hurrying flux

till it blaze bright with colour;

articulate sound’s essences

till all the weaving substance of the World

lives to resound.

Then can I trust to groping human sense

the spirit’s felt perception.

You, ah steadfast Luna: you

who rooted far within stand firm

as does the vital tract

hid deep and growing in the tree

conjoin now with your sisters’ gifts

your imprint, your incomparable mark, –

let knowing’s certitude

spring up within this questing soul!

PHILIA: I will be filled with light’s

clear-bright essentiality

from wide world-space;

I will inhale

Sound-substances’ vitality,

ethereally remote:

that you, beloved sister,

may realize the task.

ASTRID: I will be weaving

the rays of light

with dampening, muting dark;

I will thicken

the living sound,

till glistering, how shall it ring,

and ringing, how shall it glister!

that you, beloved sister,

the rays of soul may direct.

LUNA: I will warm the stuff of souls,

the vital-ether densify.

Themselves they shall coagulate,

themselves they shall experience,

and in themselves abiding

guard their shaping-power:

that you, beloved sister,

within man’s questing soul

may foster knowing’s certitude.

MARIA: Philia’s broad horizons

shall brim with joyfulness;

and nymphs’ shape-shifting powers

shall stir the soul

to fluid sensitivity –

so may the sleeper

wake to feel

the world’s rapture,

the world’s recoil.

From Astrid’s weft

shall issue joys of love;

the sighing life of sylphs

shall rouse the soul

to make self-sacrifice –

so may the hallowed

bring to life

all those whom sorrows burden,

all those who joy implore.

Luna’s strength

shall pour out steadfastness;

and fiery nature’s might

shall forge the soul’s

hard certainty –

so may the knower

find himself

in weavings intricate of soul,

in world-depths of the living Whole.

PHILIA: I will beseech the gods of the worlds

to shine their natures’ light

on his enchanted soul,

and with resounding voice

enthrall his spirit’s ear –

so may he scale

(the awakening one)

the steep soul-road

to heaven-heights.

ASTRID: I will channel streams of love

that wash the world in warmth

and them impart

to his hallowed heart

so may he bring

of heaven’s good

to earthly works,

and hallowed mood

to mortal men.

LUNA: I will beg from Primal Powers

fortitude and strength,

and in the seeker’s boundless heart

I shall inlay them deep –

so may a trust

in his own self

throughout his life

attend him.

He within himself shall feel

his true self held secure,

and pluck each swelling moment, ripe

with seeds for all

futurity.

MARIA: Sisters, thus united

to achieve a noble work,

it shall be done

as I desire –

there! comes the cry

from his ordeals,

piercing our world of light.

Trans. A.J.W. [Note 2]

As a second example, we will present the first monologue from Goethe’s Iphigeneia in two forms. For there are two versions of Goethe’s Iphigeneia. During his first period of residence in Weimar, Goethe gave – out of his initial enthusiasm and first understanding – a dramatic form to the myth of Iphigeneia. This form he gave to his Iphigeneia was born out of the artistic disposition and perception that were his in Weimar, before he started out on his Roman journey; we may call it, therefore, the Weimar Iphigeneia. And then, during his stay in Rome, he saturated himself in all that came to him from Greek art, insofar as he was able to observe it in the Italian works and in the scanty remnants of Greek art that were still available. Then, in Rome, inspired by these impulses (which had now transformed his whole attitude to art, his entire aesthetic perception and understanding) he rewrote his Iphigeneia; so it is that we have this second version of Goethe’s Iphigeneia, which we may call the Roman Iphigeneia from the point of view of their artistic – their inner artistic – formation, and to see how these two forms flow into the declamatory and into the recitative.

Looking at the German, the Weimar Iphigeneia, it is borne one might say, out of the same period in Goethe’s artistic creativity as the wonderful prose hymn “To Nature”: that powerful nature-poem which begins “Nature, we are surrounded by her ...”, and contains such powerful lines as “She carries along with her, until we tire and fall from her arm ...” etc. This mighty picture of nature which, with its unusual rhythm, moves along so powerfully, is especially characteristic of that period in which Goethe’s poetic works of art were created under the tremendous artistic influence exerted on him by Strasbourg Cathedral, and the whole of Gothic culture. Thus the German, Weimar Iphigeneia arises from an artistic perception that is pervasively a Gothic-German one. Goethe handles the language in such a way that one feels: everything in the speech-formation tends to create something (if I may so express myself) that is both curved yet at the same time pointed – like the pointed arches of the Gothic Cathedral. We follow the interweaving of the rhythms with our inner being: they curve like arches, and weld themselves together, just as the pointed arches of the Gothic Cathedral weld themselves into a whole. This element of plasticity which infiltrates Goethe’s poetry – and Goethe’s poetry is always plastic – is, of course, in no way a conscious imitation of the Gothic style, but rather a poetic interpretation of what he felt when he stood, for instance, before the mighty Strasbourg Cathedral – and in particular whenever he encountered something essentially German. And in order to bring these free rhythms to expression, in a way made possible by the unrestricted Gothic style, he conceived his Weimar Iphigeneia. We see here something gnarled, rugged, something which in its plastic contours stands there like some of the figures on the Cathedral of Strasbourg, and elsewhere. [Note 3]

And then, Goethe goes to Italy, and his Iphigeneia, amongst other things, stands once more before his soul. She looks different to him now, for he is living under the Italian sky, which arches over him in southern loveliness rather than the coldness of the north. Here, through the influence of external nature itself, Goethe experiences the necessity of transforming his feelings. What he had brought with him to Rome as the Weimar Iphigeneia, he now feels to be something Nordic, rugged, gnarled, something almost barbaric. He feels it especially when he compares the line, the poetically felt line of his Germanic Weimar Iphigeneia, with the poetic line he experiences when something of the nature of Raphael’s work affects him. The sight of Raphael’s work smoothed and rounded that gnarled ruggedness which was still present in Goethe’s Iphigeneia from the Weimar period. And so Goethe feels the necessity of completely rewriting the Iphigeneia; in place of the free Gothic rhythms there arises a strict, calm verse-measure. Hence one can see that such a man as Goethe, an artist through and through, can live in this rounded, calm verse-measure only when he has above him the blue sky of Italy, and where in the museums he visits Raphael’s Madonnas and Saint Cecelia confront him. This symbiotic relation to all that he experienced in Greek art, as he reconstructed it from Italian works, this transformation of his perception is indeed tremendously characteristic of Goethe. It was this inner transformation which brought him to feel the necessity of recasting his entire Iphigeneiain another form. We can, then, clearly differentiate between Goethe’s conception and experience of art as expressed and revealed in the Iphigeneia of Weimar, and what is revealed in the Roman Iphigeneia.

Now something of this must naturally find its way into recitation and declamation. In the Weimar Iphigeneia we are dealing with an art that is more in the nature of declamation, an art that must especially elicit the inner tone-element, the fullness of tone, and pour it out into words and sentences. In the Roman Iphigeneia, we have to do with an art which is more recitative, which must bring out the metre and its even-measured flow.

In order to see empirically, as one might say, how declamation on the one hand, and recitation on the other, reveal themselves, we will now present the first monologue from the German Iphigeneia: this discloses in particular the element of declamation which corresponds to a certain period of Goethe’s poetic practice. And we shall then present the first monologue from the Roman Iphigeneia, which discloses especially the element of recitation characteristic of a southern, or even oriental-sounding, poetry. Fundamentally, the same motif is presented in both versions, and to a coarse sensibility, perhaps, the distinction between them may not be apparent. But for a sensitive perception they differ quite radically. Hence, employing just this example, will demonstrate to you how recitation and declamation are to be compared with one another in the art of speech as we understand it here – as declamation in the broader sense.

Frau Dr. Steiner will now read the monologue from the German Iphigeneia, and from the Roman Iphigeneia.

Iphigeneia (Weimar version), Act I, Scene 1:

Heraus in eure Schatten, ewig rege Wipfel des heiligen Hains, wie in das Heiligtum der Göttin, der ich diene, tret’ ich mit immer neuem Schauer, und meine Seele gewöhnt sich nicht hierher: So manche Jahre wohn’ ich hier unter euch verborgen, und immer bin ich wie im ersten fremd. Denn mein Verlangen steht hinüber nach dem schönen Lande der Griechen, und immer möcht’ ich übers Meer hinüber, das Schicksal meiner Vielgeliebten teilen. Weh dem, der fern von Eltern und Geschwistern ein einsam Leben führt ihn lässt der Gram des schönsten Glückes nicht geniessen; ihm schwärmen abwärts immer die Gedanken nach seines Vaters Wohnung, an jene Stellen, wo die goldne Sonne zum erstenmal den Himmel vor ihm aufschloss, wo die Spiele der Mitgebornen die sanften, liebsten Erdenbande knüpften. – Der Frauen Zustand ist der schlimmste vor allen Menschen. Will dem Mann das Glück, so herrscht er und erficht im Felde Ruhm; und haben ihm die Götter Unglück zubereitet, fällt er, der Erstling von den Seinen, in den schönen Tod. Allein des Weibes Glück ist eng gebunden: sie dankt ihr Wohl stets andern, öfters Fremden, und wenn Zerstörung ihr Haus ergreift, führt sie aus rauchenden Trümmern, durchs Blut erschlagener Liebsten, ein Überwinder fort. – Auch hier an dieser heiligen Stätte hält Thoas mich in ehrenvoller Sklavereis. Wie schwer wird mir’s, dir wider Willen dienen, ewig reine Göttin! Retterin: Dir sollte mein Leben zu ewigem Dienste geweiht sein. Auch hab’ich stets auf dich gehofft und hoffe noch, Diana, die du mich verstossne Tochter des grössten Königs in deinen heiligen, sanften Arm genommen! Ja, Tochter Jovis, hast du den Mann, dessen Tochter du fordertest, hast du den göttergleichen Agamemnon, der dir sein Liebstes zum Altare brachte, hast du vom Felde der umgewandten Troja ihn glücklich und mit Ruhm nach seinem Vaterlande zurückbegleite hast du meine Geschwister, Elektren und Oresten, den Knaben, und unsere Mutter, ihm zu Hause, den schönen Schatz, bewahrt, so rette mich, die du vom Tod gerettet, auch von dem Leben hier, dem zweiten Tod.

Iphigeneia (Roman version), Act I, Scene 1:

Heraus in eure Schatten, rege Wipfel

Des alten, heil’gen, dichtbelaubten Haines,

Wie in der Göttin stilles Heiligtum,

Tret’ ich noch jetzt mit schauderndem Gefühl,

Als wenn ich sie zum ersten Mal beträte,

Und es gewöhnt sich nicht mein Geist hierher.

So manches Jahr bewahrt mich hier verborgen

Ein hoher Wille, dem ich mich ergebe;

Doch immer bin ich, wie im ersten, fremd.

Denn ach! mich trennt das Meer von den Geliebten,

Und an dem Ufer steh’ ich lange Tage,

Das Land der Griechen mit der Seele suchend;

Und gegen meine Seufzer bringt die Welle

Nur dumpfe Töne brausend mir herüber.

Weh dem, der fern von Eltern und Geschwistern

Ein einsam Leben führt! Ihm zehrt der Gram

Das nächste Glück vor seinen Lippen weg.

Ihm schwärmen abwärts immer die Gedanken

Nach seines Vaters Hallen, wo die Sonne

Zuerst den Himmel vor ihm aufschloss, wo

Sich Mitgeborne spielend fest und fester

Mit sanften Banden an einander knüpften.

Ich rechte mit den Göttern nicht; allein

Der Frauen Zustand is beklagenswert.

Zu Haus und in dem Kriege herrscht der Mann,

Und in der Fremde weiss er sich zu helfen.

Ihn freuet der Besitz; ihn krönt der Sieg;

Ein ehrenvoller Tod ist ihm bereitet.

Wie enggebunden ist des Weibes Glück!

Schon einem rauhen Gatten zu gehorchen,

Ist Pflicht und Trost; wie elend, wenn sie gar

Ein feindlich Schicksal in die Ferne treibt!

So hält mich Thoas hier, ein edler Mann,

In ernsten, heil’gen Sklavenbanden fest.

O, wie beschämt gesteh’ ich, dass ich dir

Mit stillem Widerwillen diene, Göttin,

Dir meiner Retterin! Mein Leben sollte

Zu freiem Dienste dir gewidmet sein.

Auch hab’ ich stets auf dich gehofft und hoffe

Noch jetzt auf dich, Diana, die du mich,

Des grössten Königes verstossne Tochter,

In deinen heil’gen, sanften Arm genommen.

Ja, Tochter Zeus’, wenn du den hohen Mann,

Den du, die Tochter fordernd, ängstigtest,

Wenn du den göttergleichen Agamemnon,

Der dir sein Liebstes zum Altare brachte,

Von Troja’s umgewandten Mauern rühmlich

Nach seinem Vaterland zurückbegleitet,

Die Gattin ihm, Elektren und den Sohn,

Die schönen Schätze, wohl erhalten hast:

So gib auch mich den Meinen endlich wieder,

Und rette mich, die du vom Tod errettet,

Auch von dem Leben hier, dem zweiten Tode!

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832).

Iphigeneia (Weimar version), Act I, Scene 1:

Beneath your leafy gloom, ye ever-waving boughs, even as in the goddess’ holy temple where I serve, in this deep, consecrated grove do I step forth, and ever I shudder still anew – nor doth my restless soul ever feel here at home. Long hath a mighty power detained me here, beneath your shade, concealed, yet ever I feel myself a stranger as at first. For still my yearning is turned toward the beautiful land of Greece, and ever would I cross the seas to share the fate of those I love. Alas for the man who, friendless, far from his parents, far from his brethren, dwells in his loneliness; him grief doth cheat of the fairest joys; his thoughts, with longing, forever flock to his father’s distant halls, where first he beheld the golden sun unclose the gates of heaven, where day by day, leagued in sweet pastimes, brothers and sisters would twine each other about in the tenderest bonds of love. But woman’s lot is worse than all. A man, as fortune bids, at home and in the field alike doth rule and glory; or, if by the gods’ decree dark fate awaits him, still he falls in the foremost ranks of his countrymen, and dies a glorious death. But woman’s fortune is so circumscribed: she must ever be thankful to others, and often to strangers, for her welfare; and if ruin seizes on her house, she is led forth, out of the smoking wreckage and the blood of her slaughtered loved ones, by her vanquisher. – Thus Thoas holds me in this holy place, in honourable slavery! How hard it goes with me, eternal virgin goddess, to serve thee with a rebellious will! Thou, my protectress! To thee should I dedicate my life: for in thee I have ever put my hopes, Diana, and still do I hope in thee, who didst fold the outcast daughter of the mighty king in your gentle, holy arms! O, daughter of Jove, hast thou led home the man from whom thou didst demand his daughter’s life;

Trans. A.J.W.

Iphigeneia (Roman version), Act I, Scene 1:

Beneath your leafy gloom, ye waving boughs

Of this old, shady, consecrated grove,

As in the goddess’ silent sanctuary,

With the same shudd’ring feeling forth I step,

As when I trod it first, nor ever here

Doth my unquiet spirit feel at home.

Long as the mighty will, to which I bow,

Hath kept me here conceal’d, still, as at first,

I feel myself a stranger. For the sea

Doth sever me, alas! from those I love,

And day by day upon the shore I stand,

My soul still seeking for the land of Greece.

But to my sighs, the hollow-sounding waves

Bring, save their own hoarse murmurs, no reply.

Alas for him! who friendless and alone,

Remote from parents and from brethren dwells;

From him grief snatches every coming joy

Ere it doth reach his lip. His restless thoughts

Revert for ever to his father’s halls,

Where first to him the radiant sun unclos’d

The gates of heav’n; where closer, day by day,

Brothers and sisters, leagu’d in pastime sweet,

Around each other twin’d the bonds of love.

1 will not judge the counsel of the gods;

Yet truly, woman’s lot doth merit pity.

Man rules alike at home and in the field,

Nor is in foreign climes without resource;

Possession gladdens him, him conquest crowns

And him an honourable death awaits.

How circumscrib’d is woman’s destiny!

Obedience to a harsh, imperious lord,

Her duty, and her comfort; sad her fate,

Whom hostile fortune drives to lands remote:

Thus I by noble Thoas am detain’d,

Bound with a heavy, though a sacred chain.

O with what shame, Diana, I confess

That with repugnance I perform these rites

For thee, divine protectress! unto whom

I would in freedom dedicate my life.

In thee, Diana, I have always hop’d,

And still I hope in thee, who didst infold

Within the holy shelter of thine arm

The outcast daughter of the mighty king.

Daughter of Jove! hast thou from ruin’d Troy

Led back in triumph to his native land

The mighty man, whom thou didst sore afflict,

His daughter’s life in sacrifice demanding, –

Hast thou for him, the godlike Agamemnon,

Who to thine altar led his darling child,

Preserv’d his wife, Electra, and his son,

His dearest treasures? – then at length restore

Thy suppliant also to her friends and home,

And save her, as thou once from death didst save,

So now, from living here, a second death.

Trans. A. Swanwick.

You have heard the Weimar and the Roman Iphigeneia, and will perhaps have been able to see that here an entirely artistic personality has rewritten a poem, not out of any necessity of ideal, but solely from an artistic feeling for style. Goethe’s feeling for style was so strong that the whole perception, the whole conception of art expressed in the Roman Iphigeneia is entirely different to that which comes to expression in the German-Gothic Iphigeneia. From these two works which are, in fact, one and the same – you will be able to see that they differ only in regard to their purely aesthetic impulses. For to an inartistic perception the distinctions between them are simply non-existent. For artistic perception, however, the Roman Iphigeneia is quite another work to the Weimar Iphigeneia. One can see, too, how small a part is played in the true art of poetry by the mere content of the poem: fundamentally, the content is only a ladder by which true poetry – living poetry – is able to ascend. This must be taken as a basis if recitation and declamation is to be regarded as a real art-form. For everything which is here looked on as the actual life, so to speak, of recitation and declamation, rests upon such intimacies as the difference between the Roman and the Germanic Iphigeneia. It is with such artistic intimacies that we shall have to deal when, after further practical work, we resume our study of declamation and recitation.

---

• 1. For some details with regard to the speech-formation of this scene, see Creative Speech (London 1978), pp. 118f.

Our present age, inartistic as it is, shows little awareness of the fact that recitation stands midway between speaking, or reading, which are not artistic, and artistically developed singing. In many circles there is a feeling that really anyone can recite – and this, of course, is not unconnected with the fact that in these same circles everyone flatters himself that he can also write poetry. It would not so easily enter anyone's head that someone could be a musician, or a painter, without having previously undergone any sort of artistic training. When we consider current views on the art of recitation, we are obliged to admit that, just as in people's ideas about the real nature of poetry, there is also a certain lack of clarity as to the nature of the art of recitation. As to how this art of recitation must use its instrument – the human voice in connection with the human organism – even for this there is no clear understanding. This is undoubtedly connected with the fundamental absence, in our present age, of any earnest feeling for the true nature of poetry. There is no doubt that poetry stands in a relationship with the whole being of man quite different to that of ordinary prose, of whatever kind this may be; everything that man must recognize as that higher world to which he belongs with the soul and spiritual parts of his being poetry must also stand in a certain connection with all this. Along with the lack of clarity which gradually invaded ideas concerning man's relationship with the super-sensible world, there also came about another partial lack of clarity, concerning man's relationship with that world which is expressed in the art of poetry. I should like to draw attention to two facts – things which resound to us from ancient times, though from quite different peoples, with quite differently evolved characters.

One fact, though one which today is passed over so lightly, is something to which Homer, the great writer of Greek epic, draws our attention at the beginning of both his poems: namely, that what he wished to convey to the world as his poetry did not come from himself.

‘Sing, O Muse, of the anger of Peleus' son Achilles ...’

It is not Homer, but the Muse who is singing. Our age can no longer take this seriously – for the understanding that lies hidden behind the opening of the Homeric poem had, in fact, already been extinguished by the eighteenth century, with its intellectual conceptions. When Klopstock began his Messiah, he did indeed look at the beginning of the Homeric poems; but in this respect he lived entirely in abstract ideas, intellectualistic ideas, and these could only lead him to say: the Greeks still believed in gods, in the Muses – modern man can replace this only by his own immortal soul. Thus, Klopstock begins with the words:

‘Sing, immortal soul, of sinful man's redemption.’

Now this opening of the Messiah, for anyone who can see into these things, is a document of the very greatest significance. And in the nineteenth century, too, all feeling had been completely lost for what Homer meant to convey – that when I reveal myself in poetry, it is really something higher that is revealed in me: my “I” withdraws, my ego withdraws, so that other powers make use of my speech-organism; divine-spiritual powers make use of this speech-organism in order to reveal themselves. One must, therefore, regard what Homer placed at the opening of his two poetic creations as something worthy of more serious consideration than is usually accorded to such things today.

It is remarkable how something similar, and yet quite different, resounds to us from a certain period in the development of Central Europe, a period to which the Nibelungenlied points – although it was not written down until a later date. This begins in a manner similar to, yet quite different from Homer:

‘To us in olden maeren is many a marvel told’

“In olden maeren” – what are maeren, for those who still have a living feeling and perception for such things? I cannot go into all this in detail, but I need only allude to the real meaning of this expression, maer – Nachtmar (nightmare): for this same expression is used to describe certain dreams which are caused by being oppressed, as it were, by an Alp – by a nightmare. In this nightmare, this Alp, we have the last atavistic traces of what is indicated in the Nibelungenlied, when it says: “To us in olden maeren is many a marvel told…”; something is here related which does not come out of normal day-time ego-consciousness, but from a kind of perception which proceeds in the manner of the consciousness we possess in an especially vivid dream such as the nightmare, the maeren. Here again our attention is directed not to ordinary consciousness, but to something which is revealed, through ordinary consciousness, from super-sensible spheres. Homer says: “Sing, O Muse, of the anger of Peleus' son Achilles ...”; and the Nibelungenlied says: “To us in olden maeren is many a marvel told.” What is referred to in the first instance? To that which is, in reality, brought forth by the Muse, when she makes use of the human organism, begins to speak through the human organism, to vibrate musically; our attention is directed to something musical which permeates the human being, and which speaks from greater depths than are reached by his ordinary consciousness. And when the Nibelungenlied says: “To us in olden maeren is many a marvel told …” – it is something which permeates human consciousness as a perception similar to seeing, as something like visual perception, to which we are referred. The Nibelungenlied indicates something plastic and formative, something imaginative; in the Homeric epic we are given something musical. Both, however, from different sides, show us what wells up in poetry from the profounder depths of human nature, something which takes hold of the human being and finds utterance through him. One must have a feeling for this, if one is to experience the way in which true declamation gives expression in poetry, and takes hold of the human instrument of speech – though, as we shall see later, this involves the entire human organism.

The manner, the whole way in which a human being is built up is an outcome of the forces of the spiritual world. And again, the whole manner in which a human being is able to bring his organism into movement when he declaims or recites poetry – this, too, must be the result of a spiritual force holding sway in the human organism. One must learn to trace this working of the spirit in the human organism when the art of poetry is expressed through recitation or declamation. Declamation then becomes what the human organism can be, when it is tuned in the most various ways. In order to gain a practical, artistic realization of these things in some detail, we would now like to show you what must live in declamation when something more of the nature of folk-poetry, or folk-song, is taken into consideration; we shall then proceed to something which is more definitely art – poetry. We hope to show you how fundamentally different the effect of declamation must be, depending on whether it sounds forth from those depths of human nature from which earnestness, or tragedy, resound; or whether it comes from those surface realms of the human organization from which gaiety, satire and humour emanate. Only when we have learned to apprehend these things quite concretely today will I permit myself to give certain intimations of the connection between poetry and recitation and declamation. From these, we will then show how there results an exact method of educating oneself in artistic recitation and declamation.

We will ask Frau Dr. Steiner to declaim a poem of Goethe: a folk-poem in its whole tone and mood – Goethe's “Heidenröslein”.

HEIDENRÖSLEIN

Sah ein Knab' ein Röslein stehn,

Röslein auf der Heiden,

War so jung und morgenschön,

Lief er schnell, es nah zu sehn,

Sah's mit vielen Freuden.

Röslein, Röslein, Röslein rot,

Röslein auf der Heiden.

Knabe sprach: Ich breche dich

Röslein auf der Heiden,

Röslein sprach: Ich steche dich,

Dass du ewig denkst an mich,

Und ich will's nicht leiden.

Röslein, Röslein, Röslein rot,

Röslein auf der Heiden.

Und der wilde Knabe brach

's Röslein auf der Heiden;

Röslein wehrte sich und stach,

Half ihm doch kein Weh und Ach,

Musst' es eben leiden.

Röslein, Röslein, Röslein rot,

Röslein auf der Heiden.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

[Comparable in English in many respects is:

MY HEART'S IN THE HIGHLANDS

My heart's in the Highlands, my heart is not here;

My heart's in the Highlands a-chasing the deer;

Chasing the wild deer, and following the roe;

My heart's in the Highlands, wherever I go. –

Farewell to the Highlands, farewell to the North;

The birth-place of Valour, the country of Worth:

Wherever I wander, wherever I rove,

The hills of the Highlandsfor ever I love. –

Farewell to the mountains high cover'd with snow;

Farewell to the straths and green valleys below:

Farewell to the forests and wild-hanging woods;

Farewell to the torrents and loud-pouring floods. –

My heart's in the Highlands, my heart is not here;

My heart's in the Highlandsa-chasing the deer:

Chasing the wild deer, and following the roe;

My heart's in the Highlands, wherever I go. –

Robert Burns (1759-1796.]

We will now ask Frau Dr. Steiner to recite to us “Erlkönigstochter”, which gives opportunity for a quite special style in the rendering of folk-poems.

Herr Oluf reitet spät und weit,

Zu bieten auf seine Hochzeitleut':

Da tanzten die Elfen auf grünen Land,

Erlkönigs Tochter reicht ihm die Hand.

‘Willkommen, Herr Oluf, was eilst von hier?

Tritt her in den Reihen und tanz mit mir.’ –

‘Ich darf nicht tanzen, nicht tanzen ich mag,

Frühmorgen ist mein Hochzeittag.’ –

‘Hör’ an, Herr Oluf, tritt tanzen mit mir,

Zwei güldne Sporen schenk' ich dir;

Ein Hemd von Seide, so weiss und fein,

Meine Mutter bleicht's im Mondenschein.’ –

‘Ich darf nicht tanzen, nicht tanzen ich mag,

Frühmorgen ist mein Hochzeittag.’ –

‘Hör’ an, Herr Oluf, tritt tanzen mit mir,

Einen Haufen Goldes schenk' ich dir.’ –

‘Einen Haufen Goldes nahm’ ich wohl;

Doch tanzen ich nicht darf, noch soll.’

‘Und willt, Herr Oluf, nicht tanzen mit mir,

Soll Seuch' und Krankheit folgen dir.’ –

Sie tät einen Schlag ihm auf sein Herz,

Noch nimmer fühlt er solchen Schmerz.

Sie hob ihn bleichend auf sein Pferd:

‘Reit heim zu deinem Bräutlein wert.’

Und als er kam vor Hauses Tiir,

Seine Mutter zitternd stand dafür.

‘Hör’ an, mein Sohn, sag’ an mir gleich,

Wie ist dein' Farbe blass und bleich?’ –

‘Und sollt’ sie nicht sein blass und bleich?

Ich traf in Erlenkönigs Reich.’ –

‘Hört an, mein Sohn, so lieb und traut,

Was soll ich nun sagen deiner Braut?’ –

‘Sagt ihr, ich sei im Wald zur Stund’,

Zu proben da mein Pferd und Hund.’ –

Frühmorgen als es Tag kaum war,

Da kam die Braut mit der Hochzeitschar.

Sie schenkten Met, sie schenkten Wein.

‘Wo ist Herr Oluf, der Bräutigam mein?’ –

‘Herr Oluf, er ritt in Wald zur Stund’,

Er probt allda sein Pferd und Hund.’ –

Die Braut hub auf den Scharlach rot,

Da lag Herr Oluf, und er war tot.

Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803).

[Comparable in style in English is:

LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI

O, what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,

Alone and palely loitering?

The sedge has wither'd from the Lake,

And no birds sing.

O, what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,

So haggard and so woe-begone?

The squirrel's granary is full,

And the harvest's done.

I see a lily on thy brow,

With anguish moist and fever dew;

And on thy cheeks a fading rose

Fast withereth too.

I met a lady in the meads,

Full beautiful – a faery's child,

Her hair was long, her foot was light,

And her eyes were wild.

I made a garland for her head,

And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;

She look'd at me as she did love,

And made sweet moan.

I set her on my pacing steed,

And nothing else saw all day long;

For sidelong would she bend, and sing

A faery's song.

She found me roots of relish sweet,

And honey wild, and manna dew,

And sure in language strange she said –

‘I love thee true’.

She took me to her elf in grot,

And there she wept and sigh'd full sore,

And there I shut her wild wild eyes

With kisses four.

And there she lulled me asleep

And there I dream'd – Ah! woe betide!

The latest dream I ever dream'd

On the cold hill side.

I saw pale kings and princes too,

Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;

Who cried – ‘La Belle Dame sans Merci

Hath thee in thrall!’

I saw their starved lips in the gloam,

With horrid darning gaped wide,

And I awoke and found me here,

On the cold hill's side.

And this is why I sojourn here

Alone and palely loitering,

Though the sedge has wither'd from the lake,

And no birds sing.

John Keats (1795-1821).]

Now we will present Goethe's two poems “Olympos” and “Charon”, where we shall find an opportunity to demonstrate recitation or declamation as the case may be. In the Poem “Olympos”, which is drawn more from the pictorial element, we have the art of declamation; while the more metrical “Charon” is drawn more from the musical element.

OLYMPOS

Der Olympos, der Kissavos,

Die zwei Berge haderten;

Da entgegnend sprach Olympos

Also zu dem Kissavos:

‘Nicht erhebe dich, Kissave,

Turken – du Getretener.

Bin ich doch der Greis Olympos,

Den die ganze Welt vernahm.

Zwei und sechzig Gipfel zähl ich

Und zweitausend Quellen klar,

Jeder Brunn hat seinen Wimpel,

Seinen Kämpfer jeder Zweig.

Auf den höchsten Gipfel hat sich

Mir ein Adler aufgesetzt,

Fasst in seinen mächt'gen Klauen

Eines Helden blutend Haupt.’

‘Sage, Haupt! wie ist's ergangen?

Fielest du verbrecherisch?’ –

Speise, Vogel, meine Jugend,

Meine Mannheit speise nur!

Ellenlänger wächst dein Flügel,

Deine Klauen spannenlang.

Bei Louron, in Xeromeron

Lebt' ich in dem Kriegerstand,

So in Chasia, auf'm Olympos

Kämpft’ ich bis ins zwölfte Jahr.

Sechzig Agas, ich erschlug sie,

Ihr Gefild verbrannt’ ich dann;

Die ich sonst noch niederstreckte,

Türken, Albaneser auch,

Sind zu viele, gar zu viele,

Dass ich sie nicht Ahlen mag;

Nun ist meine Reihe kommen,

Im Gefechte fiel ich brav.

CHARON

Die Bergeshöhn, warum so schwarz?

Woher die Wolkenwoge?

Ist es der Sturm, der droben kämpft,

Der Regen, Gipfel peitschend?

Nicht ist's der Sturm, der droben kämpft,

Nicht Regen, Gipfel peitschend;

Nein, Charon ist's, er saust einher,

Entführet die Verblichnen;

Die Jungen treibt er vor sich hin,

Schleppt hinter sich die Alten;

Die Jüngsten aber, Säuglinge,

In Reih' gehenkt am Sattel.

Da riefen ihm die Greise zu,

Die Junglinge, sie knieten:

‘O Charon, halt! halt am Geheg,

Halt an beim kühlen Brunnen!

Die Alten da erquicken sich,

Die Jugend schleudert Steine,

Die Knaben zart zerstreuen sich

Und pflücken bunte Blümchen.’

Nicht am Gehege halt’ ich still,

Ich halte nicht am Brunnen;

Zu schöpfen kommen Weiber an,

Erkennen ihre Kinder,

Die Männer auch erkennen sie,

Das Trennen wird unmöglich.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

[A similar contrast is presented within the work of Donne, between the vivid, declamatory style of “The Sunne Rising” and the more sustained, metrical “Elegie: His Picture”:

THE SUNNE RISING

Busie old foole, unruly Sunne,

Why dost thou thus,

Through windowes, and through curtaines call on us?

Must to thy motions lovers seasons run?

Sawcy pedantique wretch, goe chide

Late schoole boyes, and sowre prentices,

Goe tell Court-huntsmen, that the King will ride,

Call countrey ants to harvest offices;

Love, all alike, no season knowes, nor clyme,

Nor houres, dayes, moneths, which are the rags of time.

Thy beames, so reverend and strong

Why shouldst thou thinke?

I could eclipse and cloud them with a winke,

But that I would not lose her sight so long:

If her eyes have not blinded thine,

Looke, and to morrow late, tell mee,

Whether both the ‘India's of spice and Myne

Be where thou leftst them, or lie here with mee.

Aske for those Kings whom thou saw'st yesterday,

And thou shalt heare, All here in one bed lay.

She'is all States, and all Princes, I,

Nothing else is.

Princes doe but play us; compar'd to this,

All honor^'s mimique; All wealth alchimie.

Thou sunne art halfe as happy’as wee,

In that the world's contracted thus;

Thine age askes ease, and since thy duties bee

To warme the world, that's done in warming us.

Shine here to us, and thou art every where;

This bed thy center is, these walls, thy spheare.

ELEGIE: HIS PICTURE

Here take my Picture; though I bid farewell,

Thine, in my heart, where my soule dwels, shall dwell.

‘Tis like me now, but I dead, 'twill be more

When wee are shadowes both, than 'twas before.

When weather-beaten I come backe; my hand,

Perhaps with rude oares torne, or Sun beams tann'd,

My face and brest of hairecloth, and my head

With cares rash sodaine stormes, being o'rspread,

My body'a sack of bones, broken within,

And powders blew staines scatter'd on my skinne;

If rivall fooles taxe thee to 'have lov'd a man,

So foule, and course, as, Oh, I may seeme then,

This shall say what I was: and thou shalt say,

Doe his hurts reach mee? doth my worth decay?

Or doe they reach judging minde, that hee

Should now love lesse, what hee did love to see?

That which in him was faire and delicate,

Was but the milke, which in loves childish state

Did nurse it: who now is growne strong enough

To feed on that, which to disused tasts seemes tough.

John Donne (1573-1631).]

We will now pass on to a more highly-wrought verse-form – the sonnet; and sonnets by Hebbel and Novalis will now be recited.

DIE SPRACHE

Als höchstes Wunder, das der Geist vollbrachte,

Preist ich die Sprache, die er, sonst verloren

In tiefste Einsamkeit, aus sich geboren,

Weil sie allein die andern möglich machte.

Ja, wenn ich sie in Grund und Zweck betrachte,

So hat nur sie den schweren Fluch beschworen,

Dem er, zum dumpfen Einzelsein erkoren,

Erlegen wäre, eh' er noch erwachte.

Denn ist das unerforschte Eins und Alles

In nie begrifftnem Selbstzersplitt‘rungsdrange

Zu einer Welt von Punkten gleich zerstoben:

So wird durch sie, die jedes Wesenballes

Geheimstes Sein erscheinen lässt im Klange,

Die Trennung vollig wieder aufgehoben!

Friedrich Hebbel (1813-1863).

ZUEIGNUNG

I

Du hast in mir den edeln Trieb erregt,

Tief ins Gemüt der weiten Welt zu schauen;

Mit deiner Hand ergriff mich ein Vertrauen,

Das sicher mich durch alle Stürme trägt.

Mit Ahnungen hast du das Kind gepflegt,

Und zogst mit ihm durch fabelhafte Auen;

Hast als das Urbild zartgesinnter Frauen,

Des Jünglings Herz zum höchsten Schwung bewegt.

Was fesselt mich an irdische Beschwerden?

Ist nicht mein Herz und Leben ewig dein?

Und schirmt mich deine Liebe nicht auf Erden?

Ich darf fier dich der edlen Kunst mich weiten;

Denn du, Geliebte, willst die Muse werden, –

Und stiller Schutzgeist meiner Dichtung sein.

II

In ewigen Verwandlungen begrusst

Uns des Gesangs geheime Macht hienieden,

Dort segnet sie das Land als ew'ger Frieden,

Indes sie hier als Jugend uns umfliesst.

Sie ist's, die Licht in unsre Augen giesst,

Die uns den Sinn für jede Kunst beschieden,

Und die das Herz der Frohen und der Müden

In trunkner Andacht wunderbar geniesst.

An ihrem vollen Busen trank ich Leben:

Ich ward durch sie zu allem, was ich bin,

Und durfte froh mein Angesicht erheben.

Noch schlummerte mein allerhöchster Sinn;

Da sah ich sie als Engel zu mir schweben,

Und flog, erwacht, in ihrem Arm dahin.

Novalis (1772-1801).

[The following three poems show some characteristics of the English sonnet:

ON THE GRASSHOPPER AND CRICKET

The poetry of earth is never dead:

When all the birds are faint with the hot sun,

And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run

From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead;

That is the Grasshopper's – he takes the lead

In summer luxury, – he has never done

With his delights; for when tired out with fun

He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed.

The poetry of earth is ceasing never:

On a lone winter evening, when the frost

Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills

The Cricket's song, in warmth increasing ever,

And seems to one in drowsiness half lost,

The Grasshopper's among some grassy hills.

John Keats

SONNET

O Nightingale, that on yon bloomy Spray

Warbl'st at Eve, when all the Woods are still,

Thou with fresh hope the Lovers heart dost fill,

While the jolly hours lead on propitious May,

Thy liquid notes that close the eye of Day,

First heard before the shallow Cuckoo's bill,

Portend success in love; O if Jove's will

Have linkt that amorous power to thy soft lay,

Now timely sing, ere the rude Bird of Hate

Foretell my hopeless doom in som Grove ny:

As thou from year to year hast sung too late

For my relief; yet hadst no reason why:

Whether the Muse or Love call thee his mate,

Both them I serve, and of their train am I.

John Milton (1608-1674).

SONNET

\

My galy charged with forgetfulnes

Thorrough sharpe sees in wynter nyghtes doeth pas

Twene Rock and Rock; and eke myn ennemy, Alas,

That is my lorde, sterith with cruelnes;

And every owre a thought in redines,

As tho that deth were light in suche a case.

An endles wynd doeth tere the sayll apase

\

Of forced sightes and trusty ferefulnes.

A rayn of teris, a clowde of derk disdain,

\

Hath done the wered cordes great hinderaunce;

\

Wrethed with errour and eke with ignoraunce.

The starres be hid that led me to this pain;

\

Drowned is reason that should me consort,

And I remain dispering of the port.

Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542).]

And now, in order to show how another, the very opposite mood must be drawn from quite different realms of the human organization when this serves as the instrument for poetry and declamation, we will end with something humorous and satirical – choosing a poem by Christian Morgenstern.

ST. EXPEDITUS

Einem Kloster, voll von Nonnen,

waren Menschen wohlgesonnen.

Und sie schickten, gute Christen,

ihm nach Rom die schönsten Kisten:

Äpfel, Birnen, Kuchen, Socken,

eine Spieluhr, kleine Glocken,

Gartenwerkzeug, Schuhe, Schürzen...

Aussen aber stand: Nicht stürzen!

Oder: Vorsicht! oder welche

wiesen schwarzgemalte Kelche.

Und auf jeder Kiste stand ‘Espedito’, kurzerhand.

Unsre Nonnen, die nicht wussten,

wem sie dafür danken mussten,

denn das Gut kam anonym,

dankten vorderhand nur IHM,

rieten aber doch ohn’ Ende

nach dem Sender solcher Spende.

Plötzlich rief die Schwester Pia

eines Morgens: Santa mia!

Nicht von Juden, nicht von Christen

Stammen diese Wunderkisten –

Expeditus, o Geschwister,

heisst er und ein Heiliger ist er!

Und sie fielen auf die Kniee.

Und der Heilige sprach: Siehe!

Endlich habt ihr mich erkannt.

Und nun malt mich an die Wand!

Und sie liessen einen kommen,

einen Maler, einen frommen.

Und es malte der Artiste

Expeditum mit der Kiste. –

Und der Kult gewann an Breite.

Jeder, der beschenkt ward, weihte

kleine Tafeln ihm und Kerzen.

Kurz, er war in aller Herzen.

II

Da auf einmal, neunzehnhundert-

fünf, vernimmt die Welt verwundert,

dass die Kirche diesen Mann

fürder nicht mehr dulden kann.

Grausam schallt von Rom es her:

Expeditus ist nicht mehr:

Und da seine lieben Nonnen

längst dem Erdental entronnen,

steht er da und sieht sich um –

und die ganze delt bleibt stumm.

Ich allein hier hoch im Norden

fühle mich von seinem Orden,

und mein Ketzergriffel schreibt:

Sanctus Expeditus – bleibt.

Und weil jenes nichts mehr gilt,

male ich hier neu sein Bild: –

Expeditum, den Gesandten,

grüss’ ich hier, den Unbekannten

Expeditum, ihn, den Heiligen,

mit den Assen, den viel eiligen,

mit den milden, weissen Haaren

und dem fröhlichen Gebaren,

mit den Augen braun, voll Güte,

und mit einer grossen Düte,

die den uberraschten Kindern

strebt ihr spärlich Los zu lindern.

Einen güldnen Heiligenschein

geb’ ich ihm noch obendrein

den sein Lacheln um ihn breitet,

wenn er durch die Lande schreitet.

Und um ihn in Engeiswonnen

stell’ ich seine treuen Nonnen:

Mägdlein aus Italiens Auen,

himmlisch lieblich anzuschauen.

Eine aber macht, fürwahr,

eine lange Nase gar.

Just ins ‘Bronzne Tor’ hinein

spannt sie ihr klein Fingerlein.

Oben aber aus dem Himmel

quillt der Heiligen Gewimmel,

und holdselig singt Maria:

Santo Espedito - sia!

Christian Morgenstern (1871-1914).

[An excerpt from “The Rape of the Lock” shows the great English satirist in a comparatively rare mood of good humoured and friendly mocking. It comes from Canto II:

But now secure the painted vessel glides,

The sun-beams trembling on the floating tides;

While melting music steals upon the sky,

And soften'd sounds along the waters die;

Smooth flow the waves, the Zephyrs gently play,

Belinda smil'd, and all the world was gay.

All but the Sylph – with careful thoughts opprest,

Th' impending woe sat heavy on his breast.

He summons strait his Denizens of air;

The lucid squadrons round the sails repair:

Soft o'er the shrouds aerial whispers breathe,

That seem'd but Zephyrs to the train beneath.

Some to the sun their insect-wings unfold,

Waft on the breeze, or sink in clouds of gold;

Transparent forms, too fine for mortal sight,

Their fluid bodies half dissolv'd in light.

Loose to the wind their airy garments flew,

Thin glitt'ring textures of the filmy dew,

Dipt in the richest tincture of the skies,

Where light disports in ever-mingling dyes,

While ev'ry beam new transient colours flings,

Colours that change whene'er they wave their wings.

Amid the circle, on the gilded mast,

Superior by the head, was Ariel plac'd;

His purple pinions op'ning to the sun,

He rais'd his azure wand, and thus begun.

Ye Sylphs and Sylphids, to your chief give ear,

Fays, Fairies, Genii, Elves, and Daemons hear!

Ye know the spheres and various tasks assign'd

By laws eternal to th' aerial kind.

Some in the fields of purest Aether play,

And bask and whiten in the blaze of day.

Some guide the course of wand'ring orbs on high,

Or roll the planets thro' the boundless sky.

Some less refin'd, beneath the moon's pale light

Pursue the stars that shoot athwart the night,

Or suck the mists in grosser air below,

Or dip their pinions in the painted bowl

Or brew fierce tempests on the wintry main,

Or o'er the glebe distil the kindly rain.

Others on earth o'er human race preside,

Watch all their ways, and all their actions guide:

Of these the chief the care of Nations own,

And guard with Arms divine the British Throne.

Our humbler province is to tend the Fair,

Not a less pleasing, tho' less glorious care;

To save the powder from too rude a gale,

Nor let th' imprison'd essences exhale;

To draw fresh colours from the vernal Flow'rs;

To steal from rainbows e'er they drop in show'rs

A brighter wash; to curl their waving hairs,

Assist their blushes, and inspire their airs;

Nay oft, in dreams, invention we bestow,

To change a Flounce, or add a Furbelow.

This day, black Omens threat the brightest fair

That e'er deserv'd a watchful spirit's care;

Some dire disaster, or by force, or slight;

But what, or where, the fates have wrapt in night.

Alexander Pope (1688-1744)]

Now the art of recitation must undoubtedly follow the poetry. Recitation introduces the human element into poetry, for the human organization itself furnishes the instrument of artistic expression. How this instrument is used in singing and in recitation – that is something which has indeed been much investigated: we have already taken the opportunity here of pointing out, in response to certain questions, how many methods (one method after another!) exist in our present age, to singing and recitation. For in a certain sense we have entirely lost the deeper, inner relationship between poetic utterance or expression and the human organization. I will take as_. a starting-point next today something apparently quite physiological – and next time, after our detour through physiology, we shall be able to show you what poetry, as expressed in recitation and declamation, really demands.

Let us look first at something which has been frequently mentioned during the lectures of the last few days: the human rhythmic system. The human being is organized into the system of nerves and senses – the instrument for the thought-world, for the world of sense-representations, and so on; the rhythmic system – the instrument for the development of the feeling world, and for all that is mirrored from the feeling-world and plays into the world of mental representations; and the metabolic system – through which the will pulsates, and in which the will finds its actual physical instrument. [Note 4]

First, let us look at the rhythmic system. In this rhythmic system, two rhythms interpenetrate each other in a remarkable way. In the first place, we have the breathing-rhythm. This is essentially regular – though everything living is different in this respect, and it varies from individual to individual – so that in the case of healthy people, we are able to observe 16-19 breaths per minute. Secondly, we have the pulse-rhythm, directly connected with the heart. Naturally, when we take into account that in this rhythm we are dealing with functions of a living being, again we cannot cite any pedantic number; but, generally speaking, we may say that the number of pulse-beats per minute, in a healthy human organism, is approximately 72. Hence we can say that the number of pulse-beats is about four times the number of respirations. We can thus represent the course of the breath in the human organism, and how while we take one breath, the pulse intervenes four times. Now let us devote our minds for a moment to this interaction of the pulse-rhythm and the rhythm of the breath to this inner, living piano (if I may so express myself) where we experience the pulse rhythm as it strikes into the course of the breathing-rhythm. Let us picture the following: one breath inhaled and exhaled; and a second inhaled and exhaled; and, striking into this, the rhythm of the heart. Let us picture this in such a way that we can see that in the pulse-rhythm, which is essentially connected with the metabolism, which touches on the metabolic system, the will strikes, as it were, upwards; thus we have the will-pulses striking into the feeling-manifestations of the breath-rhythm. And let us suppose that we articulate these will-pulses, in such a way that we follow the will-pulses in the words, inwardly articulating the words to ourselves. Thus we have, for instance: long, short, short; long, short, short; long, short, short – one breath-stream; then we make a pause, a kind of caesura, we hold back; then, accompanying the next drawing of the breath, we have the heart-rhythm striking into it: long, short, short; long, short, short; long, short, short.

¾ È È ¾ È È ¾ È È || ¾ È È ¾ È È ¾ È È ||

Then, when we allow two breaths to be accompanied by the corresponding pulse-beats, and between them we make a pause, a pause for breath – we have the hexameter. [Note 5] We can ask: what is the origin of this ancient Greek verse metre? It originated from the harmony between blood-circulation and breathing. The Greek wished to turn his speech inward, so that, having suppressed his “I”, he orientated the words according to the pulse-beats, allowing these to play upon the stream of breath. Thus he brought his whole inner organization, his rhythmic organization, to expression in his speech: it was the harmony between heart-rhythm and breath-rhythm that resounded in his speech. To the Greek, this was more musical – as if it resounded up from the will, resounded up from the pulse-beats into the rhythm of the breath.

You know that what remained as the last, atavistic remnant of the old clairvoyant images – the Alp, the nightmare – found expression in pictures, and is connected with the breathing-process: and there is still a connection between the pathological form of the Alpdruck and breathing.

Now let us assume – for me it is more than an assumption – that in those primaeval times when his experience was more closely connected with the internal processes, man went out more with the breath; the movement was more from above downwards. And then he put into one breath:

¤ ¤ ¤

‘To us in olden maeren'

Again, three high-tones: three times the perception of how the pulse beats into the breathing, and how this brings to expression an experience that is more visual, finding expression in the light and shade of the language, in the high and low tones. In the Greek we have something metrical long, short, short; long, short, short; long, short, short; whereas in the Nordic verses we have something with more declamatory impetus – high-tone and low-tone:

¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤

‘To us in olden maeren is many a marvel told

¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤

Of praise-deserving heroes, of labours manifold ...'

It is the interaction of the breathing-rhythm and the rhythm of the heart, the rhythm of the pulse. Just as the Greek experienced a musical element and expressed this in metre, so the Nordic man experienced a pictorial element, which he expressed in the light and shade of the words, in the high-tones and low-tones. But there was always the knowledge that one was submerged in a state of consciousness where the “I” yielded itself up to the divine-spiritual being which reveals itself through the human organism – which forms this human organism so that it may be played upon as an instrument through the pulsation of the heart, through the breathing-process, through the stream of exhaled and inhaled breath:

È ¾ È ¾ È ¾ È || ¾ È ¾ È ¾

You know that many breathing-techniques have been discovered, and much thought given to methods of treating the human body to facilitate correct singing or recitation. It is much more to the point, however, to penetrate the real mysteries of poetry and recitation and declamation: for both of these will proceed from the actual, sensible-super-sensible perception of the harmony between the pulse, which is connected with the heart, and the breathing-process. As we shall see next time, each single verse-form, each single poetic form including rhyme, alliteration, and assonance, may be understood when we start from a living perception of the human organism, and what it does when it employs speech artistically. This is why it was quite justified when people who understood such things spoke, more or less figuratively, of poetry as a language of the gods: for this language of the gods does not speak the mysteries of the transient human “I”; it speaks in human consciousness, speaks musically and plastically the cosmic mysteries – it speaks when the super-sensible worlds play, through the human heart, upon the human breath.

Naturally, it will only be possible to lay down certain guidelines in our presentation of the real nature of the art of declamation, as an exhaustive discussion would require us to penetrate into a fair number of the intimacies and inner aspects of man's physical, psychic and spiritual life. Last time, we were able to see the remarkable way in which blood-circulation, pulse-beat and breathing-rhythm interpenetrate each other in the human organism something of which the poet in his act of creation already has some apprehension, and all of which sounds forth again in the poem, as indeed it should whenever this is realized through either declamation or recitation. Recitation stands midway between singing and mere speech. In speech, everything that in singing is still bound up with numerical relations is transformed into something of inner intensity: when we pronounce a word, it is as though the elements which live in song were compressed from spatiality into something two-dimensional yet through its intensive force, the two-dimensional plane still gives expression, albeit of a different kind, to what was present in the singing. And between these, between singing and spoken prose, lie recitation and declamation. It may be said that recitation and declamation are a kind of singing on the way to becoming mere words, but held back, and arrested midway along this path: it is this “midway” character which makes the essential nature of recitation so extraordinarily difficult to grasp. Here again, it is the task of an intimate psychosomatic observation to seize on those elements, through which the arts of declamation and of recitation are sharply distinguished. For it is deeply founded in the very nature of poetry that, in one case, a poem is recited, and in another declaimed.

Deeply founded in the nature of poetry is the way in which all those things that in music and singing, in pitch, harmony and so on, take on a kind of independent, external existence, are here turned inward – in poetry they are so far turned inward that nothing external remains except time, which finds expression in the metre, in the long and short syllables. Now, although we look in recitation mainly for the metrical element, where pitch, and even tone-colour, and that which produces harmony, etc., is laid aside, yet the element of differentiation still makes itself felt. We have not yet proceeded as far as the mere word, where the element of differentiation in the actual substance of the word is removed and is no longer apparent.

When it comes to reciting, the physical processes involved take the following course. [Note 6] Essentially, recitation depends upon what takes place when inhaled air penetrates into our body, and through the breathing-rhythm, into the movements of the cerebral fluid which also fills the spinal cord right into the nervous-sensory apparatus of the brain. [Note 7] The breathing-rhythm presses, so to speak, against the organs of mental representation, and along this path is brought to a kind of stasis: this path ultimately becomes the inhaling-process, which is then followed by that of exhalation, as in this case the rhythm is always twofold. When this process is carried to its farthest limit, prose-representations arise. If, however, it is consciously checked before its ultimate stage, and the metre deriving from the breathing-rhythm is not destroyed, there arises what lives in recitation. Hence we can say: it is a striving from world observation to mental representation that should manifest itself in recitation; and this is why recitation is in essence the representative art appropriate to epic and narrative verse.

At the other extreme stands declamation. This is bound up with the very opposite process, in which the soul-life is not linked with the representational element, but with that of volition. Now, when we will something, when we pass over into a will-impulse – what actually is it that is overcome? (This happens unconsciously, of course, for many people but consciously for those who exercise self-observation.) Here, in fact, one must always overcome a world of harmony, a world of inner consonances and dissonances. It is from harmony, from an inner experience closely resembling what hovers behind music, that the will-impulse is ultimately formed: when the breath-stream strikes up into the brain and flows back again, descends through the canal of the spinal cord, and strikes into the whole metabolic process – and this again strikes into the pulse-beat of the blood-circulation. With this passage from above downwards is thrust into our will-nature, mainly bound up as it is with exhalation, all that lives in man in the way of vanquished or allayed harmonies, inner discords, consonances, and so on. Thus the very opposite element is brought to expression and mediated through the word, when the word is made the bearer of an impulse of will.

And when, in a poem, we let sound forth what lives within us not merely as an external narrative, but sending forth what lives in us as we exhale our breath – then, indeed, we enter the sphere of the dramatic. But this can, or rather should be described only as the last step: for the dramatic also evolves out of the epic, when this has been developed through some folk-disposition, for instance. Those who, working in this way out of a folk-disposition, give poetic form to the epic, have a grasp of man’s inner nature to which they give outward expression in the external representations. Thus, where we find such a folk-disposition, a dramatic element sounds into the epic. Recitation becomes declamation.

Today we hope to make clear to you how this comes about, by the recitation of the beginning of Goethe’s “Achilleis”. Here Goethe transposed himself completely into the epic feeling, the epic metre of the Greeks, into the entirely metrical hexameter: so that inwardly, the conscious grasping of the in-breathing process which tends toward representation is predominant. Secondly, and by way of contrast, we shall take an epic of the Nordic world, from an earlier age – part of the magnificent Finnish Folk-epic, the Kalevala. Here you will see how the dramatic element arises in the epic itself, and consequently how recitation in epic metre quite naturally becomes declamation – how, therefore, epic recitation subtly results in dramatic declamation.

With this, then, we will begin our practical demonstration. Frau Dr. Steiner will give a reading from Goethe’s “Achilleis”.

Hoch zu Flammen entbrannte die mächtige Lohe noch einmal

Strebend gegen den Himmel, und Ilios’ Mauern erschienen

Rot durch die finstere Nacht; der aufgeschichteten Waldung

Ungeheures Gerüst, zusammenstürzend, erregte

Mächtige Glut zuletzt. Da senkten sich Hektors Gebeine

Nieder, und Asche lag der edelste Troer am Boden.

Nun erhob sich Achilleus vom Sitz vor seinem Gezelte,

Wo er die Stunden durchwachte, die nächtlichen, schaute der Flammen

Fernes, schreckliches Spiel und des wechselnden Feuers Bewegung,

Ohne die Augen zu wenden von Pergamos’ rötlicher Feste.

Tief im Herzen empfand er den Hass noch gegen den Toten,

Der ihm den Freund erschlug, und der nun bestattet dahinsank.

Aber als nun die Wut nachliess des fressenden Feuers

Allgemach, und zugleich mit Rosenfingern die Göttin

Schmückete Land und Meer, dass der Flammen Schrecknisse bleichten,

Wandte sich, tief bewegt und sanft, der grosse Pelide

Gegen Antilochos hin und sprach die gewichtigen Worte:

‘So wird kommen der Tag, da bald von Ilios’ Trümmern

Rauch und Qualm sich erhebt, von thrakischen Lüften getrieben,

Idas langes Gebirg und Gargaros’ Höhe verdunkelt:

Aber ich werd’ ihn nicht sehen. Die Völkerweckerin Eos

Fand mich, Patroklos’ Gebein zusammenlesend; sie findet

Hektors Brüder anjetzt in gleichem frommen Geschäfte:

Und dich mag sie auch bald, mein trauter Antilochos, finden,

Dass du den leichten Rest des Freundes jammernd bestattest.

Soll dies also nun sein, wie mir es die Götter entbieten,

Sei es! Gedenken wir nur des Nötigen, was noch zu tun ist.

Denn mich soll, vereint mit meinem Freunde Patroklos,

Ehren ein herrlicher Hügel, am hohen Gestade des Meeres

Aufgerichtet, den Völkern und künftigen Zeiten ein Denkmal.

Fleissig haben mir schon die rüstigen Myrmidonen

Rings umgraben den Raum, die Erde warfen sie einwärts,

Gleichsam schützenden Wall aufführend gegen des Feindes

Andrang. Also umgrenzten den weiten Raum sie geschäftig.

Aber wachsen soll mir das Werk! Ich eile, die Scharen

Aufzurufen, die mir noch Erde mit Erde zu häufen

Willig sind, und so vielleicht befördr’ ich die Hälfte.

Euer sei die Vollendung, wenn bald mich die Urne gefasst hat!’

Also sprach er und ging und schritt durch die Reihe der Zelte,

Winkend jenem und diesem und rufend andre zusammen.

Alle sogleich nun erregt, ergriffen das starke Geräte,

Schaufel und Hacke, mit Lust, dass der Klang des Erzes ertönte,

Auch den gewaltigen Pfahl, den steinbewegenden Hebel.

Und so zogen sie fort, gedrängt aus dem Lager ergossen,

Aufwärts den sanften Pfad, und schweigend eilte die Menge.

Wie wenn, zum Überfall gerüstet, nächtlich die Auswahl

Stille ziehet des Heers, mit leisen Tritten die Reihe

Wandelt und jeder die Schritte misst und jeder den Atem

Anhält, in feindliche Stadt, die schlechtbewachte, zu dringen:

Also zogen auch sie, und aller tätige Stille

Ehrte das ernste Geschäft und ihres Königes Schmerzen.

Als sie aber den Rücken des wellenbespületen Hügels

Bald erreichten und nun des Meeres Weite sich auftat,

Blickte freundlich Eos sie an aus der heiligen Frühe

Fernem Nebelgewölk und jedem erquickte das Herz sie.

Alle stürzten sogleich dem Graben zu, gierig der Arbeit,

Rissen in Schollen auf den lange betretenen Boden,

Warfen schaufelnd ihn fort; ihn trugen andre mit Körben

Aufwarts; in Helm und Schild einfüllen sah man die einen,

Und der Zipfel des Kleids war anderen statt des Gefässes.

Jetzt eröffneten heftig des Himmels Pforte die Horen,

Und das wilde Gespann des Helios, brausend erhub sich’s.

Rasch erleuchtet’ er gleich die frommen Äthiopen,

Welche die äussersten wohnen von allen Völkern der Erde.

Schüttelnd bald die glühenden Locken, entstieg er des Ida

Wäldern, um klagenden Troern, um rüst’gen Achaiern zu leuchten.

Aber die Horen indes, zum Äther strebend erreichten

Zeus Kronions heiliges Haus, das sie ewig begrüssen.

Und sie traten hinein; da begegnete ihnen Hephaistos,

Eilig hinkend, und sprach auffordernde Worte zu ihnen:

‘Trügliche, Glücklichen Schnelle, den Harrenden Langsame, hört mich!

Diesen Saal erbaut’ ich, dem Willen des Vaters gehorsam,

Nach dem göttlichen Mass des herrlichsten Musengesanges;

Sparte nicht Gold und Silber, noch Erz, und bleiches Metall nicht.

Und so wie ich’s vollendet, vollkommen stehet das Werk noch,

Ungekränkt von der Zeit; denn hier ergreift es der Rost nicht,

Noch erreicht es der Staub, des irdischen Wandrers Gefährte.

Alles hab’ ich getan, was irgend schaffende Kunst kann.

Unerschütterlich ruht die hohe Decke des Hauses,

Und zum Schritte ladet der glatte Boden den Fuss ein.

Jedem Herrscher folget sein Thron, wohin er gebietet,

Wie dem Jager der Hund, und goldene wandelnde Knaben

Schuf ich, welche Kronion, den Kommenden, unterstützen,

Wie ich mir eherne Mädchen erschuf. Doch alles ist leblos!

Euch allein ist gegeben, den Charitinnen und euch nur,

Über das tote Gebild des Lebens Reize zu streuen.

Auf denn! sparet mir nichts und giesst aus dem heiligen Salbhorn

Liebreiz herrlich umher, damit ich mich freue des Werkes,

Und die Götter entzückt so fort mich preisen wie anfangs.’

Und sie lächelten sanft, die beweglichen, nickten dem Alten

Freundlich und gossen umher verschwenderisch Leben und Licht aus,

Dass kein Mensch es ertrüg’ und dass es die Götter entzückte...

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

[Sidney is one of the few English poets to transpose himself into the classical feeling for hexameter verse with even qualified success; in his case furthermore it is the pastoral, emblematic aspects of this representational, recitative mode which emerge, rather than its narrative possibilities. The following passage is an extract from the “First Eclogues” in Book I of The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia.

DORUS:

Then do I thinke in deed, that better it is to be private

In sorrows torments, then, tyed to the pompes of a pallace,

Nurse inwarde maladyes, which have not scope to be breath’d out,

But perforce disgest, all bitter juices of horror

In silence, from a man’s owne selfe with company robbed.

Better yet do I live, that though by my thoughts I be plunged

Into my live’s bondage, yet may disburden a passion

(Opprest with ruinouse conceites) by the helpe of an outcrye:

Not limited to a whispringe note, the Lament of a Courtier,

But sometimes to the woods, sometimes to the heavens do decyphire,

With bolde clamor unheard, unmarckt, what I seeke what I suffer:

And when I meete these trees, in the earth’s faire lyvery clothed,

Ease I do feele (such ease as falls to one wholy diseased)

For that I finde in them parte of my estate represented.

Lawrell shews what I seeke, by the Mirre is show’d how I seeke it,

Olive paintes me the peace that I must aspire to by conquest:

Mirtle makes my request, my request is crown’d with a willowe.

Cyprus promiseth helpe, but a helpe where comes no recomforte.

Sweete Juniper saith this, thoh I burne, yet I burne in a sweete fire.

Ewe doth make me be thinke what kind of bow the boy holdeth

Which shootes strongly with out any noyse and deadly without smarte.

Firr trees great and greene, fixt on a hye hill but a barrein,

Lyke to my noble thoughtes, still new, well plac’d, to me fruteles.

Figge that yeeldes most pleasante frute, his shaddow is hurtefull,

Thus be her giftes most sweet, thus more danger to be neere her,

But in a palme when I marke, how he doth rise under a burden,

And may I not (say I then) gett up though griefs be so weightie?

Pine is a maste to a shippe, to my shippe shall hope for a maste serve?

Pine is hye, hope is as hie, sharpe leav’d, sharpe yet be my hope’s budds.

Elme embraste by a vine, embracing fancy reviveth.

Popler changeth his hew from a rising sunne to a setting:

Thus to my sonne do I yeeld, such lookes her beames do aforde me.

Olde aged oke cutt downe, of newe works serves to the building:

So my desires by my feare, cutt downe, be the frames of her honour.

Ashe makes speares which shieldes do resist, her force no repulse takes:

Palmes do rejoyce to be joynd by the match of a male to a female,

And shall sensive things be so sencelesse as to resist sence?

Thus be my thoughts disperst, thus thinking nurseth a thinking,

Thus both trees and each thing ells, be the bookes of a fancy.

Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586).] [Note 8]

Now a passage from the Kalevala: and we will try, despite the exigency of a translation, still to read this in such a way as to show all the things I have discussed.

From the Kalevala: Rune XIV (Conclusion)

Then the reckless Lemminkainen,

Handsome hero, Kaukomieli,

Braved the third test of the hero,

Started out to hunt the wild-swan,

Hunt the long-necked, graceful swimmer,

In Tuoni’s coal-black river,

In Manala’s lower regions.

Quick the daring hunter journeyed,

Hastened off with fearless footsteps,

To the river of Tuoni,

To the sacred stream and whirlpool,

With his bow upon his shoulder,

With his quiver and one arrow.

Nasshut, blind and crippled shepherd,

Wretched shepherd of Pohyola,

Stood beside the death-land river,

Near the sacred stream and whirlpool,

Guarding Tuonela’s waters,

Waiting there for Lemminkainen,

Listening there for Kaukomieli,

Waiting long the hero’s coming.

Finally he hears the footsteps

Of the hero on his journey,

Hears the tread of Lemminkainen,

As he journeys nearer, nearer,

To the river of Tuoni,

To the cataract of death-land,

To the sacred stream and whirlpool.

Quick the wretched shepherd, Nasshut,

From the death-stream sends a serpent,

Like an arrow from a cross-bow,

To the heart of Lemminkainen,

Through the vitals of the hero.

Lemminkainen, little conscious,

Hardly knew that he was injured,

Spake these measures as he perished:

‘Ah! unworthy is my conduct,

Ah! unwisely have I acted,

That I did not heed my mother,

Did not take her goodly counsel,

Did not learn her words of magic.

Oh! for three words with my mother,

How to live, and how to suffer,

In this time of dire misfortune,

How to bear the stings of serpents,

Tortures of the reed of waters,

From the stream of Tuonela!

‘Ancient mother who hast borne me,

Who hast trained me from my childhood,

Learn, I pray thee, where I linger,

Where, alas! thy son is lying

Where thy reckless hero suffers.

Come, I pray thee, faithful mother,

Come thou quickly, thou art needed,

Come deliver me from torture,

From the death-jaws of Tuoni,

From the sacred stream and whirlpool.’

Northland’s old and wretched Shepherd,

Nasshut, the despised protector

Of the flocks of Sariola,

Throws the dying Lemminkainen,

Throws the hero of the islands,

Into Tuonela’s river,

To the blackest stream of death-land,

To the worst of fatal whirlpools.

Lemminkainen, wild and daring,

Helpless falls upon the waters,

Floating down the coal-black current,

Through the cataracts and rapids

To the tombs of Tuonela.

There the blood-stained son of death-land,

There Tuoni’s son and hero,

Cuts in pieces Lemminkainen,

Chops him with his mighty hatchet,

Till the sharpened axe strikes flint-sparks

From the rocks within his chamber,

Chops the hero into fragments.

Into five unequal portions,

Throws each portion to Tuoni,

In Manala’s lowest kingdom,

Speaks these words when he has ended:

‘Swim thou there, wild Lemminkainen,

Flow thou onward in this river,

Hunt forever in these waters,

With thy cross-bow and thine arrow,

Shoot the swan within this empire,

Shoot our water-birds in welcome!

Thus the hero, Lemminkainen,

Thus the handsome Kaukomieli,

The untiring suitor, dieth

In the river of Tuoni,

In the death-realm of Manala.

Trans. J. M. Crawford.

I think that from these two examples, Goethe’s “Achilleis” and the Kalevala, you will be able to see how on the one hand in the “Achilleis” you have something experienced as a perception – as breathed-in, I might say, and on the way to being transformed into a placid mental representation. But one does not let it arrive there: it is held back so that what should terminate in representation does not quite become a purely conceptual representation; it is arrested on the way there, and becomes what we might call an ‘enjoyed’ representation. Thus, halted on the way from perception to a concept, it is not conceptually grasped, but enjoyed. This expresses itself best in metre, in a quiet verse-measure. When, however, the will-element wells up from the human being, bearing on its waves the will-impulse as a representation – then, the force which would become the will to an act, would become an external deed, is held back; and just there, where the will-impulse still lives within man and moves him to speak, it becomes vocal, and the voice is so formed that the will lives in the waves of vocal expression. Here the transition is the very reverse of the previous one: there, we had to do with a transition from the activity of perception to the repose of mental representation; now we have the opposite – from the repose of representation to volition. But the will element is held back where it would transform itself into external movement, into life in the outer world. Just this outward movement is held back and, instead of plunging into action, it lives on the stream of the words.

All that I have here indicated takes place in recitation and declamation respectively. And we can study psychosomatically, through observation of man himself, both these forms as I have just described them – something which was actually practised in former times in a more instinctive way. In earlier methods of declamation and recitation, it was possible to differentiate very clearly between the epic and the dramatic, and also to discern, within the epic, the dramatic element; and also their interweaving in the lyric, where again both interpenetrate in the rhythm. At the present time, we must raise what used to be present more spontaneously and instinctively in methods of recitation, although with the more prosaic modes of recitation it hasbeen for some time forgotten – this must now be raised into consciousness. It must not, of course, live in the reciting just as I have presented it, when I described the more corporeal processes: this connection with the artistic formation of the breath as I have presented it must rather become a feeling, an inner perception. It is along this path that an art of recitation will be found. One must be able to study the paths taken by human consciousness.

If once more we observe the path along which the predominant inbreathing-process tends toward mental representation, our consciousness then lays hold of what is en route to becoming representation. And here we can experience two paths: either we enter into abstract prose-representation, in which case we arrive at the formation of a concept; or we do not grasp these abstract prose-representations, but enter into a movement which, before the fact comes to be represented, places us in the inbreathed air and all that it does in our body – thus our consciousness floats, as it were, on the inbreathed air, and we arrive, because the psycho-spiritual frees itself from the bonds of the body, at a sort of unconscious condition. It is not allowed to reach this state, however. It is arrested: it is held up in the region of the vowels; instead of allowing it to issue in the formation of a concept or entering an unconscious state, we move in the region of the vowels – a movement of “enjoyment”. This is what is done by these poets who revel in assonance. In this experience of the breathing-process which has not quite arrived at representation, we have consciousness moving on the waves of assonance, the repetition of the vowels (which is in fact also present, in weaker form, in terminal rhyme). This is what takes place here. When, on the other hand, the will is active, what is within strives outward: and instead of checking consciousness before it leads to purely conceptual representations, we arrest it where the will streams outward, and hold the impulse back, keeping it under control, so to speak. We then bring into this life of volition something which has entered that poetry in which the element of will in particular streams out from man’s inner being – that part of man’s nature with which the Nordic races were especially endowed, and which they brought to expression when they gave themselves over to the creation of poetry. When they were unable to live themselves out in external deeds, these Nordic-Germanic peoples arrested the impulse, the urge and impetus to external deeds, and expressed the movement poetically on the waves of the out-flowing impulses of will. This lives in the incessantly repeated consonants of alliteration: in this the will, which streams through the breath and the whole body, has life. In the movement of alliteration it is just this will element that is active, just as in assonance, in the repetition of the vowels, there is laid into the innermost nature of the words that inhaled breath which fails to become representation, and expresses itself, wave-like, in the movement of assonance.

We would like to demonstrate assonance with a second example, the “Chor der Urtriebe” by Fercher von Steinwand. And then the element of alliteration, illustrated by a reading from Jordan’s Nibelunge. Now it was Jordan’s particular endeavour to bring out once more the real nature of alliteration. Of course it is natural that the modern German language did not quite achieve this: for this reason, a faint breath of coquetry hovers over Jordan’s poetry. This, however, is not important. It is better, for our purposes, to make use of a revival of alliteration, rather than trying to revive the old and far too difficult alliteration, which in fact no longer appeals to the modern soul.

From “Chor der Urtriebe”:

 Ist’s ein Schwellen, ist’s ein Wogen, 

 Was aus allen Gürteln bricht? 

 Wo wir liebend eingezogen, 

 Dort ist Richtung, dort Gewicht. 

 Hätt’ uns Will’ und Wunsch betrogen? 

 Sind wir Mächte, sind wir’s nicht? 

 Was es sei, wir heischen Licht – 

 Und es kommt in schönen Bogen! 

 Jeglichem Streite 

 Licht zum Geleite! 

 Schleunigen Schwingungen 

 Zarter Erregung, 

 Weiten Verschlingungen 

 Tiefer Bewegung 

 Muß es gelingen, 

 Bald durch die hangenden, 

 Schmerzlich befangenden 

 Nächte zu dringen. 

 Über den Gründen, 

 Über den milden 

 Schwebegebilden 

 Muß sich’s verkünden, 

 Geister entzünden, 

 Herzen entwilden. 

 Hat es getroffen, 

 Find’ es euch offen! 

 Seht ihr die erste 

 Welle der Helle? 

 Grüßt sie die hehrste, 

 Heiligste Quelle! 

 Schnelle, nur schnelle! 

 Hellen Gesichtes 

 Huldigt dem Scheine, 

 Hütet das makellos ewiglich-eine 

 Wesen des Lichtes! 

 Mag es, sein wechselndes Streben zu feiern, 

 Farben entschleiern! 

 Wecken wir lieblichen Krieg, daß sich trunken 

 Lösen die Funken! 

 Laßt uns die Tiefen, die schaffend erschäumen, 

 Laßt uns das Edle, was streitend gesunken, 

 Laßt und die Kreise, die Fruchtendes träumen, 

 Strahlend besäumen! 

 Fercher von Steinwand (1828-1902) 

[Two examples may help clarify the characteristic effects of assonance in English poetry. The first is a passage from Swinburne’s “Tristram of Lyonesse – Prelude: Tristram and Iseult”.

These are the signs wherethrough the year sees move,
Full of the sun, the sun-god which is love,
A fiery body blood-red from the heart
Outward, with fire-white wings made wide apart,
That close not and unclose not, but upright
Steered without wind by their own light and might
Sweep through the flameless fire of air that rings
From heaven to heaven with thunder of wheels and wings
And antiphones of motion-moulded rhyme
Through spaces out of space and timeless time.
So shine above dead chance and conquered change
The spherèd signs, and leave without their range
Doubt and desire, and hope with fear for wife,
Pale pains, and pleasures long worn out of life.
Yea, even the shadows of them spiritless,
Through the dim door of sleep that seem to press,
Forms without form, a piteous people and blind,
Men and no men, whose lamentable kind
The shadow of death and shadow of life compel
Through semblances of heaven and false-faced hell,
Through dreams of light and dreams of darkness tost
On waves innavigable, are these so lost?
Shapes that wax pale and shift in swift strange wise,
Void faces with unspeculative eyes,
Dim things that gaze and glare, dead mouths that move,
Featureless heads discrowned of hate and love,
Mockeries and masks of motion and mute breath,
Leavings of life, the superflux of death—
If these things and no more than these things be

Left when man ends or changes, who can see?

Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909)

And secondly:

THE WINDHOVER
To Christ our Lord

I CAUGHT this morning morning’s minion, king-

dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding

Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding

High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing

In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,

As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding

Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding

Stirred for a bird,—the achieve of; the mastery of the thing!

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here

Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion

Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

¤ ¤

No wonder of it: sheer plod makes plough down sillion

Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,

Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889).] [Note 9]

From Die Nibelunge: Sigfrid-Sage, Canto 20:

Als die sinkende Sonne den Strom der Sage,

Den smaragdenen Rhein, errötend im Scheiden,

Mit Geschmeiden umgoss von geschmolzenem Golde,

Da glitten bei Worms durch die glänzenden Wellen

Hinauf und hinabwärts zahlreiche Nachen

Und führten das Volk vom Festspiel heimwärts.

Dem geregelten Rauschen und Pochen der Ruder

Am Borde der Boote melodisch verbunden,

Erklangen im Takt auch die klaren Töne

Menschlicher Kehlen: in mehreren Kähnen,

Die nah aneinander hinunter schwammen,

Sangen die Leute das Lied von der Sehnsucht,

Die hinunter ins Nachtreich auch Nanna getrieben,

Als die Mistel gemordet ihren Gemahl.

Lauschend im Fenster des Fürstenpalastes

Lag Krimhilde und harrte des Gatten.

In banger Befürchtung bittersten Vorwurfs

Verlangte nun doch nach dem fernen Geliebten

Ihre sorgende Seele voll Sehnsucht und Schmerz.

Sie fühlte sich schuldig und ahnte des Schicksals

Nahenden Schritt. So vernahm sie, erschrocken

Und trüben Sinnes, den Trauergesang.

Während der Wohllaut der uralten Weise

Vom Rhein heraufklang, regten sich leise

Ihre Lippen und liessen die Worte des Liedes,

Welche sie kannte seit frühester Kindheit,

Also hören ihr eigenes Ohr:

‘O Balder, mein Buhle,

Wo bist du verborgen?

Vernimm doch, wie Nanna

Sich namenlos bangt.

Erscheine, du Schöner,

Und neige zu Nanna,

Liebkosend und küssend,

Den minnigen Mund.’

Da klingen von Klage

Die flammenden Fluren,

Von seufzenden Stimmen

Und Sterbegesang:

Die Blume verblühet,

Erblassend, enblättert;

Der Sommer entseelt sie

Mit sengendem Strahl.

Beim Leichenbegängnis

Des göttlichen Lenzes

Zerfallt sie und folgt ihm

In feurigen Tod.

‘O Balder, mein Buhle,

Verlangende Liebe,

Unsägliche Sehnsucht

Verbrennt mir die Brust.’

Da tönt aus der Tiefe

Der Laut des Geliebten:

‘Die Lichtwelt verliess ich,

Du suchst mich umsonst.’

‘O Balder, mein Buhle,

Wo bist du verborgen?

Gib Nachricht, wie Nanna

Dich liebend erlöst?’

‘Nicht rufst du zurück mich

Aus Tiefen des Todes.

Was du liebst, musst du lassen,

Und das Leid nur ist lang.’

‘O Balder, mein Buhle,

Dich deckt nun das Dunkel;

So nimm denn auch Nanna

Hinab in die Nacht.’

Wilhelm Jordan (1819-1904).

[A revival of alliteration seems never to have appealed to English poets in modern times. There are, however, a number of good translations of the Old English alliterative poem Beowulf; part of it is translated in this example:

Sorrowful sat in the Hall of the Hart, the Dane King Hrodgar

Mourning the brave one fallen, the dear friend dead.

Bowed was the hoary head and his heart was heavy,

Speechless a while, Then speedily sent he and bade them bring

Beowulf hither, the Grendel slayer, Agatheon’s son,

Straightway the Aethling answered his summons, strode thro’ the Hall,

First mid his followers all and the flooring strained at their feet,

Came to the King. With kindly custom he greeted him,

Questioning courteous if quiet the night.

Then answer made Hrodgar, strength of the skylding

Ask not of rest nor of night! renewed is the anguish

Doomed to the Danesmen. Aeskere is dead –

Aeskere, Irmenlow’s brother, of Aethlings the best.

Trusty in council was he and of comrades truest.

Foremost still at my side in the stress of the battle,

When man came breast against man and the boar tusks meet.

Here in the Hall of the Hart is he felly murdered

By a fiend most foul – which one I wot not.

Some there be of my fellows who warden the marshlands

Tell how twain there be such at times in the twilight

Ghostly figures haunting the homestead and vastly tall.

One was in woman’s shape and what stalked beside her

With menacing mien man’s form wore.

Yet huger them thinketh than human fashion.

Grendel they term him, the old ground tillers

Since times of yore – and his sire none guesseth

Nor knoweth none if brethren he boasteth

Nor kindred claimeth ’mongst grimly ghosts.

Bleak their abode and barren; holes where the wolf howls.

Trans. E. Bowen-Wedgwood.]

We see how in the first poem with its assonances, there lives the representational element, checked on the way to becoming a concept and held fast in enjoyment; and how in the second, which is built up on alliteration, on the repetition of consonants, there lives the element of will, checked on its way outwards and realizing itself in inner movement on the waves of the words, on the waves of a will-impulse that has been grasped conceptually.

You will see that in bringing the impulse of spiritual science to bear on aesthetic considerations there is no temptation to introduce those abstractions which so easily find their way into intellectually-derived studies of art. It will be evident from such studies as we have pursued here, even though we have only been able to indicate certain guidelines – how an understanding is brought to art, yet an understanding that is also a perceptive power, and which thus becomes a knowledge of things. Art and knowledge are gradually interwoven into a living spiritual perception, which makes itself felt and demands to be put to the test in that very sphere where man himself becomes an instrument of artistic expression. Knowledge such as this does not observe art from without, but is gained from an inner participation in art – and knowledge such as this can become the bridge that leads to the practice of art.

Especially when learning the art of recitation, you will find in such knowledge a support quite different from anything deriving from all those techniques of respiration based on external, materialistic and mechanistic observation of the human body, which result in voice-production that is purely external and mechanical. An inner awareness in the learning of an artform becomes possible. And now, in conclusion, I will just draw attention to a few instances of things which have to be learnt in recitation. What is at stake, for instance, is not how the voice or the tone can be sustained by some kind of external method of manipulating the breath, or placing the voice, in the way taught by some bad singing-teachers. The essential thing is that what should stay in the unconscious must still remain there when we are learning a subject such as this – a man should not just be wrenched out of everything unconscious through clumsy treatment of the body. Rather, through proper artistic formation and artistic treatment we can train our breathing so that the whole process remains in a certain sphere of the unconscious, and yet is drawn up into the soul-element which gives it artistic expression. We can then, for instance, develop a sustained tone by practising this where it is particularly preponderant: in the recitation of something of a sublime and exalted nature. If we try, when reciting such noble verse, to develop the sustained tone on a foundation of actual feeling, the poise of the voice and the breathing will develop of themselves, out of a true feeling for what is actually being recited.

We can develop correct intonation, and bring out the tone, by reciting examples of the ridiculous or comical; the required strengthening of the tone that we need in the rise and fall of speech for declamation or recitation we can achieve by practising the tragic; and we can learn to attenuate and mollify the tone by practising the joyful. We discover how it is really the soul-element which we grasp, and which must come to expression in recitation and declamation, and how, when we grasp it rightly, we draw the physical and corporeal after. We do not first adjust the physical with clumsy techniques that will rein our handling of these matters and lead, not to the development of a real art, but to mere routine. We enter upon a quite genuine, and yet straightforward practise and study of art. But this will only be obtained if there is in our knowledge so much of aesthetic sensibility, that with it we can approach art; and only if, on the other hand, our perception of man is so far evolved that in those arts which make use of man as an instrument, we can see man himself revealed – a revelation of art pierced through by the pulsating, pervading spirit of man.

Through these few guiding principles, scanty as they are, I hope to have shown you at least the direction in which an art-form as subtle and intimate as recitation and declamation leads: but this path can only be followed when the attempt is earnestly made to find the bridge between art and science. When I drew attention to this as one aspect, at the outset of the course, it was no mere empty phrase. The intention was to show you, taking the art of recitation and declamation as an example, that we do not merely set before ourselves the abstract ideal of unifying religion, art and science; but in pursuing true spiritual perception, leading to real spiritual knowledge, we do actually achieve something in the way of bringing knowledge to art and illumining artistic creation through knowledge. Thus will man be able to enter more and more consciously into art, and will be able to bring forth more and more consciously what he needs from art in the course of his evolution towards an absolutely free and truly human consciousness.

The art of recitation and declamation, of which we are going to say something this evening, is not at present accorded its full status as an art-form. In our approach to this art we often give too little consideration to exactly what is presented by the poet and to the medium in which the reciter or declaimer has to be artistically active. This moves us to consider the essentials of the art of recitation and declamation – when, as you have seen demonstrated many times, it presents itself as an accompanying art to eurythmy. We then become deeply aware that recitation and declamation must go beyond the prose content of a poem, which is actually the poem’s thought-component. For to stress the prose content turns the recitation and declamation of the poem into something inartistic. When in reciting, as happens at the present day, importance is attached to a prosaic stress on the meaning, this is an indication of our having abandoned the domain of the truly artistic. Let us be clear that a poet – if he is a true poet – will certainly have had in his imagination (in the full sense of the word) something which ultimately becomes apparent in the recitation and declamation. A poet who only had in his soul the thought-content, or the word-for-word content of feeling, and not the inwardly heard sound- and word-movement of the poem, would simply not be a poet at all. But it must also be made clear that what is put before the reciter is, in the end, only a kind of score or music-script – and that the art of recitation and declamation must go beyond the script in the same way as a pianist or other practising musician has to do. The re-creation is a new creating and the new creation is a re-creating. A musician who composes a piano work will, of course, also have in his imagination the whole pattern of sound: and whoever wishes to re-create his composition must make himself familiar above all with the instrument itself and with its characteristic sound-pattern and tone – of the piano in this instance. He must comprehend the art of handling both the instrument and its medium. And likewise the reciter must understand the art of handling speech. His instrument is bound up much more closely with his own being than are the external instruments of the musician, and in deploying his particular instrument he will also have to develop his own special characteristics. But he will have to start with the handling of speech, the material by means of which he can give expression to what reaches him from the poet only as a sort of score. As regards the handling of speech, it will be just as necessary to begin with the fundamentals as in the art of piano-playing, though the study must in many respects be pursued more intensively than in the case of learning the piano.

We must also take into consideration that we are now living in a time when much of what has hitherto lived instinctively within the soul of man must be raised into consciousness. There is still today in wide circles, and not least among artists, a certain fear of this consciousness when it is brought to bear on artistic, creative work. They think that by introducing this sort of consciousness they will injure instinctive, imaginative creation and cripple it; many believe, too, that by becoming conscious of what really goes on in the soul in artistic creation they will lose that spontaneity essential to the creation of art.

There is certainly some truth in all this. But, on the other hand, we must realise that what we are striving for in the sphere of anthroposophical perception is a matter of exceptional importance for our time and our civilisation. The slow struggle toward the experience of what in our spiritual stream is called Imagination weaves and lives in an element quite other than the intellectual, so that artistic feeling need in no way be lost when it is confronted with Imaginative experience. Indeed, if we are dealing with genuine Imaginations it cannot be lost. For what is disclosed in an Imagination with a view to knowledge is objectively (not subjectively but objectively) different from the Imagination manifested when the soul gives it an artistic form.

If I may refer for a moment to something personal: I would like to say that to me it was always extremely distasteful if someone or other came along and tried to interpret my Mystery Plays in a symbolic way and imported into them all sorts of intellectual notions. For what lives in these Mystery Plays is experienced Imaginatively – down to every single sound. The picture stands there as a picture and has always stood there as a picture. It would never have occurred to me to begin with an intellectual idea and then fashion it into a picture.

In that way I was able to discover by experience how, when one is attempting to impart artistic form, the Imaginative comes to be something objectively quite different to the form assumed by an Imagination that is directed toward cognition. Hence this prejudice, that spontaneity and instinctive imagining will be impaired if one raises artistic activity into consciousness, will have to be overcome. Our times require that this prejudice should be overcome. We may then perhaps be guided to the true foundations of declamation and recitation, as it is in this direction that they will have to be developed in the near future.

We cannot put recitation and declamation into practice unless we fathom the fundamental differences presented in poetry by, on the one side, lyric; on the second side, epic; and on the third, the dramatic. [Note 10] Today we shall only be able to present something of the lyric and the dramatic. We shall then continue with something that might be called a ‘prose-poem’. There were reasons for this choice. The epic will be considered separately later on – indeed the epic can perhaps best illustrate the art of recitation when once we have advanced beyond the elementary stages of the art.

In order to penetrate to a real declamatory and recitative art involving the lyric, dramatic and epic, the following must be observed. Whoever aims at this kind of vocal production must, for instance, develop a distinct feeling for the connection between lyric and the constituents of speech – and this he will achieve through a living experience of the vowels. A feeling for the vowels, for the intimacy of the vowels, must be sought if the lyrical is to be embodied and brought to expression. For it is in the vowel sounds that man’s essentially inward experience is expressed. In the single vowel-sounds – when penetrated by a sensitive understanding, a discerning sensibility – lies the whole spectrum of human inner experience. In vocalisation (the sounding of the vowels) lives everything which we might describe as coming from musical experience and which is projected into the lyric. Lyrical experience can definitely be traced back to musical experience. But in musical experience we find inwardness being unfolded in the movement of sound. In the lyric, we find inwardness absorbed into the very substance of the vowel itself. Yet whoever wishes to approach recitation from this point of view must avoid a certain error – and no greater error in the art of recitation is conceivable. For when we are learning how to handle the materials and elements of speech, we might be tempted to commence by introducing an element of feeling, to put subjective feeling into the vowel; and this is just what would actually make it prosaic. This is the opposite approach to that of recitation. Anyone who wishes to recite lyrical poetry must have a sensitivity to the vowel itself. He must begin by experiencing the vowel as such. Just as Goethe, for instance, recognises different shades of feeling in the various shades of colour, so we shall not only experience in the vowels different shades of feeling, but utterly different conditions of soul, different soul-contents. We shall feel every gradation, from sorrow and bitterness to joy and jubilation, in our sensing of the vowels and experience of what might be termed the vowel-scale.

It will be readily admitted that much of what I am saying is often felt instinctively by the reciter when he comes to apply his art in individual poems. But he will be able to enhance his art significantly if he brings such a feeling to conscious awareness. Through vocalisation something capable of further development will be disclosed to him: he will discover how a vowel sounding earlier on still sounds in the later vowels – or a later vowel-sound modifies the earlier ones, etc. However, these things must not be practised in the mechanical and materialistic way often adopted nowadays, when various postures are assumed, along with artificial breath-control. Everything the body has to learn in this domain must derive purely from what is learnt in working with speech itself. Just as a painter can learn most when, instructed by an accomplished artist, he paints directly onto the canvas and only touches his work up here and there, – so too will the reciter best learn to recite by acquiring his grasp of speech from speech itself: from actual speaking, from handling the speech-movement. Afterwards, his attention can be drawn to any particular detail relating to external, bodily control. It is a curious tendency of our materialistic times first to move away from the poem and adjust the instrument of speech and only then return to artistic speaking. This aberration might almost be called nonsense; it certainly does not derive from true artistic feeling.

Furthermore, if it is with the help of the vowel-sounds that we come to experience the lyric it is through the consonants that we shall begin to get a feeling for the epic. Truly to enter into the consonants is to experience over again, within ourselves, what is going on outside us. And if we feel in the consonantal element this peculiar imitation within us of the outside world, we shall be led artistically from these elementary constituents to an inner re-experiencing of what is also to be found in the images of a far-ranging epos. I can only touch upon this today; at another opportunity it can be referred to again.

In this way it will be possible to develop what ought to lie at the foundation of recitation and declamation into a true art-form, down to its handling of the constituents of speech. And it will necessarily become clear to us, if we see the essential feature of this art in the way it handles actual speech, that the nuances of the art will show up in its response to the different languages – each language having its own special recitative or declamatory requirements. A language which is essentially mimetic, one which takes its departure from the intellect and classification and has developed language in the sphere of the intellect, a language which has abstracted itself from what can be experienced in the outer world, – such a language will have to tackle recitation and declamation quite differently to one in which the sounds (vowels and consonants) themselves express their relationship to inwardness or to externality.

Now, in the first part of what Frau Dr. Steiner is going to declaim, you will hear to begin with something lyrical. From this you should actually be able to hear how lyrical poems come to expression with varying nuances, depending on the language in which they are presented. That will be the first part of our programme – a performance of essentially lyrical poems.

Three poems of Goethe’s youth.

BEHERZIGUNG

Ach, was soll der Mensch verlangen?

Ist es besser, ruhig bleiben?

Klammernd fest sich anzuhangen?

Ist es besser, sich zu treiben?

Soll er sich ein Häuschen bauen?

Soll er unter Zelten leben?

Soll er auf die Felsen trauen?

Selbst die festen Felsen beben.

Eines schickt sich nicht für alle!

Sehe jeder wie er’s treibe,

Sehe jeder wo er bleibe,

Und wer steht, dass er nicht falle!

MEERES STILLE

Tiefe Stille herrscht im Wasser,

Ohne Regung ruht das Meer,

Und bekümmert sieht der Schiffer

Glatte Fläche rings umher.

Keine Luft von keiner Seite!

Todesstille fürchterlich!

In der ungeheuern Weite

Reget keine Welle sich.

MIT EINEM GEMALTEN BAND

Kleine Blumen, kleine Blätter

Streuen mir mit leichter Hand

Gute junge Frühlingsgötter

Tändelnd auf ein luftig Band.

Zephyr, nimm’s auf deine Flügel,

Schling’s um meiner Liebsten Kleid!

Und so tritt sie vor den Spiegel

All in ihrer Munterkeit.

Sieht mit Rosen sich umgeben,

Selbst wie eine Rose jung:

Einen Blick, geliebtes Leben!

Und ich bin belohnt genung.

Fühle, was dies Herz empfindet,

Reiche frei mir deine Hand,

Und das Band, das uns verbindet,

Sei kein schwaches Rosenband!

A little English lyric:

SONG

April, April,

Laugh thy girlish laughter;

Then, the moment after,

Weep thy girlish tears!

April, that mine ears

Like a lover greetest,

If I tell thee, sweetest,

All my hopes and fears,

April, April,

Laugh thy golden laughter,

But, the moment after,

Weep thy golden tears!

William Watson (1858-1935).

THE BELLS OF ST. PETERSBURGH

Those evening bells! those evening bells!

How many a tale their music tells,

Of youth, and home, and that sweet time,

When last I heard their soothing chime!

Those joyous hours are past away!

And many a heart, that then was gay,

Within the tomb now darkly dwells,

And hears no more those evening bells!

And so ’twill be when I am gone;

That tuneful peal will still ring on,

While other bards shall walk these dells,

And sing your praise, sweet evening bells!

Thomas Moore (1799-1852).

An example of Russian lyric:

NILE DELTA

Lucid gold and emerald,

and black earth’s thick fecundity:

landscape aloof, your wealth witheld

from ease, in mute profundity…

Bosom laden with your fruit, –

how many slumberous shapes repose

secure in you, most lowly root,

or fertile corpses decompose?

Yet not for all slow dissipation:

not those that yearly upward flame,

like ghosts at magic conjuration,

and vernal life from death proclaim;

not Isis, crowned with flowers supernal,

lush companions of the spring –

the Touch-me-not, the Maid eternal,

the Rainbow’s incandescent ring!

Vladimir Soloviov (1853-1900).

Trans. Neil Thompson and A.J.W. [Note 11]

[Of considerable interest too is the beautiful German translation used in the original programme:

NILDELTA

Goldenglänzendes, smaragdenes,

Tief schwarzerdenes Gefild,

Deines Kraftens reicher Segen

Aus der Scholle quillt.

Dieser Schoss, der keimetragende,

Tote bergend in den Ton,

Er litt stumm, der allergebene,

Die jahrtausend lange Fron.

Doch nicht alles so Empfangene

Trugst empor du jedes Jahr.

Das vom alten Tod Gezeichnete

Sieht des Lenzes sich noch bar.

Isis nicht, die Kronen tragende,

Wird dir bringen jenen Kranz,

Doch die unberührte, ewige

Magd im Regenbogenglanz.

Trans. Marie Steiner.]

WANDRERS STURMLIED

Wen du nicht verlässest, Genius,

Nicht der Regen, nicht der Sturm

Haucht ihm Schauer übers Herz.

Wen du nicht verlässest, Genius,

Wird dem Regengewölk,

Wird dem Schlossensturm

Entgegen singen,

Wie die Lerche,

Du da droben.

Den du nicht verlässest, Genius,

Wirst ihn heben übern Schlammpfad

Mit den Feuerflügeln;

Wandeln wird er

Wie mit Blumenfüssen

Über Deukalions Flutschlamm,

Python tötend, leicht, gross,

Pythius Apollo.

Den du nicht verlässest, Genius,

Wirst die wollnen Flügel unterspreiten,

Wenn er auf dem Felsen schläft,

Wirst mit Hüterfittichen ihn decken

In des Haines Mitternacht.

Wen du nicht verlässest, Genius,

Wirst im Schneegestöber

Wärmumhüllen;

Nach der Wärme ziehn sich Musen,

Nach der Wärme Charitinnen.

Umschwebet mich ihr Musen,

Ihr Charitinnen:

Das ist Wasser, das ist Erde,

Und der Sohn des Wassers und der Erde,

Über den ich wandle

Göttergleich.

Ihr seid rein, wie das Herz der Wasser,

Ihr seid rein, wie das Mark der Erde,

Ihr umschwebt mich und ich schwebe

Über Wasser, über Erde,

Göttergleich.

Soll der zurückkehren,

Der kleine, schwarze, feurige Bauer?

Soll der zurückkehren, erwartend

Nur deine Gaben, Vater Bromius,

Und helleuchtend umwärmend Feuer?

Der kehren mutig?

Und ich, den ihr begleitet,

Musen und Charitinnen alle,

Den alles erwartet, was ihr,

Musen und Charitinnen,

Umkränzende Seligkeit

Rings ums Leben verherrlicht habt,

Soll mutlos kehren?

Vater Bromius!

Du bist Genius,

Jahrhunderts Genius,

Bist, was innre Glut

Pindarn war,

Was der Welt

Phöbus Apoll ist.

Weh! Weh! Innre Wärme,

Seelenwärme,

Mittelpunkt:

Glüh’ entgegen

Phöb’ Apollen;

Kalt wird sonst

Sein Fürstenblick

Über dich vorübergleiten,

Neidgetroffen

Auf der Ceder Kraft verweilen,

Die zu grünen

Sein nicht harrt.

Warum nennt mein Lied dich zuletzt?

Dich, von dem es begann,

Dich, in dem es endet,

Dich, aus dem es quillt,

Jupiter Pluvius!

Dich, dich strömt mein Lied,

Und kastalischer Quell

Rinnt ein Nebenbach,

Rinnet Müssigen,

Sterblich Glücklichen

Abseits von dir,

Der du mich fassend deckst,

Jupiter Pluvius!

Nicht am Ulmenbaum

Hast du ihn besucht,

Mit dem Taubenpaar

In dem zärtlichen Arm,

Mit der freundlichen Ros’ umkränzt,

Tändelnden ihn, blumenglücklichen

Anakreon,

Sturmatmende Gottheit!

Nicht im Pappelwald

An des Sybaris Strand,

An des Gebirges

Sonnebeglänzter Stirn nicht

Fasstest du ihn,

Den bienensingenden,

Honig-lallenden,

Freundlich winkenden

Theokrit.

Wenn die Räder rasselten,

Rad an Rad rasch ums Ziel weg,

Hoch flog

Siegdurchglühter

Jünglinge Peitschenknall,

Und sich Staub wälzt’,

Wie vom Gebirg herab

Kieselwetter ins Tal,—

Glühte deine Seel’ Gefahren, Pindar

Mut.—Glühte?—

Armes Herz!

Dort auf dem Hügel,

Himmlische Macht!

Nur so viel Glut,

Dort meine Hütte,

Dorthin zu waten!

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

[For such lyrical intensity and power in English this famous ode remains unsurpassed:

ODE TO THE WEST WIND

I

O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being,

Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead

Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,

Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,

Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou,

Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed

The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,

Each like a corpse within its grave, until

Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow

Her clarion o’er the dreaming earth, and fill

(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)

With living hues and odours plain and hill:

Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;

Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh, hear!

II

Thou on whose stream, ’mid the steep sky’s commotion,

Loose clouds like earth’s decaying leaves are shed,

Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean,

Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread

On the blue surface of thine aery surge,

Like the bright hair uplifted from the head

Of some fierce Maenad, even from the dim verge

Of the horizon to the zenith’s height,

The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge

Of the dying year, to which this closing night

Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre,

Vaulted with all thy congregated might

Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere

Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst: oh, hear!

III

Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams

The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,

Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams,

Beside a pumice isle in Baiae’s bay,

And saw in sleep old palaces and towers

Quivering within the wave’s intenser day,

All overgrown with azure moss and flowers

So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou

For whose path the Atlantic’s level powers

Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below

The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear

The sapless foliage of the ocean, know

Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear,

And tremble and despoil themselves: oh, hear!

IV

If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;

If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;

A wave to pant beneath thy power, and spare

The impulse of thy strength, only less free

Than thou, O uncontrollable! If even

I were as in my boyhood, and could be

The comrade of thy wanderings over Heaven,

As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed

Scarce seemed a vision; I would ne’er have striven

As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.

Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!

I fall upon the thorns of life: I bleed!

A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed

One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.

V

Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:

What if my leaves are falling like its own!

The tumult of thy mighty harmonies

Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,

Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,

My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!

Drive my dead thoughts over the universe

Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!

And, by the incantation of this verse,

Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth

Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!

Be through my lips to unawakened earth

The trumpet of a prophecy! O, Wind,

If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822).]

When studying poetry with a view to artistic declamation, it is of primary importance to lose nothing of what wells up in the words from the poet’s soul, or is contained in what is given to us by him. Recitation, as well as poetry itself, will only become artistic when everything that the soul expresses in the prose content is recast into form, into something formed. In the lyric it must go more into the musical. In the epic and particularly in the dramatic, more into imagery, into what has been given a definite form. The lyrical, as I said, inclines toward the vowel-sounds; but we must not forget that every consonant also has in it a vowel-element. In every consonant there lies a disposition toward a vowel and every vowel has a tendency toward a consonant. Consequently through art, just as in other spheres where something similar is effected, the opposition between subjective and objective will be completely overcome. The whole inner being of man will be able to live in the outer world and the outer world will be brought to expression in its full strength through the inner being of man.

Speaking about the art of reciting in our course last autumn, I drew your attention to the universal, cosmic rhythm which is expressed in the rhythmic system of man. Furthermore, I showed how this comes to find expression in poetry – and thence, of course, in recitation as the manifestation of poetic art. We may say that an element with a more spiritual tendency (since the spirit manifests itself in everything physical) unfolds in the tempo of the human pulse-beat; while something more psychic, we may also say, something that takes its course in the soul, unfolds in the rhythm of breathing. A greater part of what is expressed in poetic form depends on the interplay between the rhythms of the pulse and breathing and the ratio of one to the other. And it is in the hexameter that the primary and most self-evident ratio between pulse-rhythm and breathing-rhythm is displayed. Fundamentally the hexameter involves two breaths, with four pulse-beats to each breath and this, of course, is the natural ratio between human breathing and the pulse.

In this way, what wells up in poetry comes to actual corporeal utterance. And conversely, the poetic must come to expression through recitation and declamation out of the human being as a whole. It is as if the pulse-rhythm were playing upon the breathing-rhythm – rhythm on rhythm. And what lives in rhythm is expressed again in the musicality of speech, in lyrical poetry. All the prose content of a poem must be led back to this inner rhythmic treatment of metre and tempo. Everything that lies in the what of the content must also lie in the how of the performance, so that in discovering the one in the other there is really an experience of the whole. [Note 12] If, in poetry or reciting, we find ourselves having to exert our intellect to grasp the merely word-for-word content, then the artistic is at that point disrupted.

This should really be ever-present in our mind when in any field of art we have to struggle through from inartistic content to genuine artistic form or to what has been permeated by the element of music. The latter is especially evident in reciting or declaiming a poem that is lyrical in origin.

In the case of dramatic art, too, its own artistic forms must be represented when it is expressed in speech-formation. In fact we can say: Recitation as an independent art must take account of the way that it evolves the dramatic rather differently from how it is evolved in a fully staged production. Yet the essence of the stage-production must appear in the way the speech is handled – in the recitative-declamatory treatment of the drama.

What do we actually have before us when we consider poetic drama? It is essentially something that only comes into existence through the characters on stage – or, if we do not see the drama with our eyes and hear it with our ears, through what our imagination has picked up from the poetic language and set in its totality before our souls. Everything must flow in moving form. But although the drama is only complete when presented on stage, we must realise all the same that everything standing before us, the persons on the stage, everything we hear, is fundamentally the expression of a soul-quality. The soul-quality which evolves as drama, in the separate characters and in their interaction – this is really the essential content of the drama.

At this point it becomes necessary to take note of what actually goes on in the soul. What goes on there, especially in the re-creation of a drama, is something imaginative; and this is so even when it is only with the poetry that we are concerned. On the stage the presentation must be pictorial. But here, too, what is spoken is a pictorial representation of what lives in the poet’s soul. What is presented on the stage is effective, not through its reality, but through what derives from the ’fair seeming’: [Note 13] it is imaginative despite its reality. And when the dramatic forms come before our souls as images – that too is imaginative, albeit in a special sense. Imagination is not experienced in its true being, but as a projection into our souls in image-form. In the same way a shadow thrown onto the wall by a three-dimensional object is related to the object itself, though in no way containing what lives in the object; as a good two-dimensional portrayal contains everything its three-dimensional subject has: so what is represented in our imaginings contains the shadow thrown there by imagination. The stage presentation is fundamentally nothing but an external, corporeal representation of what lives in these images and for this reason we feel an aversion (if we have any healthy feeling for such things) whenever in the drama external reality is merely imitated naturalistically. Dramatic art can no more tolerate realistic imitation than can the other arts of speech – though these are less liable to such difficulties. And when, as in our times, the tendency toward realism has so often emerged in drama productions, and we have seen Schiller’s characters shown on stage with their hands in their pockets! When an attempt has been made to produce a realistic imitation of external, physical nature, this only shows that we have strayed from a genuinely aesthetic perception, and little by little in the general course of civilisation lost the truly artistic.

It is possible to adopt a materialistic world-conception, and in a certain sense this is appropriate for the external organic world. In outer life it is possible to be realistic, but it is not so in art. For what we then produce is no longer in the domain of art at all – and this can be seen both in the drama itself and in the way speech is handled in these dramatic productions.

It is really a matter of putting everything an artistic speech-formation can achieve into the treatment of the language. This comprises the most varied elements. I should only like to point out a few details – our limited time does not allow more. There may exist, for example, in what is presented through speech-formation, a sort of average tempo. We feel this and starting from this average tempo we can effect a transition to a quicker one, to a more rapid delivery of the words, or to a slower one. The first, the more rapid delivery, always expresses a kind of going-out of the human “I” – a going out from oneself and widely extending oneself. Naturally one can feel this in different ways: as a separation, for example, from some thing one longs to reach. A slowing-down of the words, notably in dramatic speech, will present a kind of being-within-oneself. Everything expressed in a self-collected contemplation, a resting within oneself, will be connected with a slowing-down of the tempo.

Another formative principle lies in the raising or lowering of the pitch. The first is connected with the spiritualisation of an inner experience, with an ascending of the “I” above itself. Going out of oneself in wide extension is connected with the tempo: and ascending above oneself is associated with a rising in pitch. Everything in the content which strives toward spiritualisation (even if only a spiritualisation in which the human intellect is overpowered by the will, by ardour, by enthusiasm) will bring itself to formative expression in raising the pitch. And when a human being sinks below the level of his ordinary life, whether in sorrow or in inwardness, this will be connected with a fall in pitch. All this will find particular expression in dramatic art and everything dramatic speech-formation demands will have to flow into the element of form – so that everything must be grasped, not by the sheer power of intellect, but as an expression of this formative treatment of speech – and of course, if it is a matter of stage production, through the gestures. It will all flow into this special way of speaking, so that in the very speech we can feel what the content is. It will not be very easy to bring certain things in dramatic art to perfection, because (as Aristotle already knew) drama has to do with causal connections in life; and for this reason what may be called the dramatic score, in the sense we spoke of earlier as that which has to be realised, is very largely based on an implicit understanding and discernment. It must be transformed into something that can be attained through the speech-formation itself: through tempo, metre, rhythm, the rise and fall of the pitch, etc. It is from the speech-formation that the images which arise before the soul must flow.

We must enter into such intimacies of human life if we wish to find the truly artistic. Dramatic art itself, because it is lifted out of physical experience through imagination (even if only a reflection, a shadowy image of true imagination) can only become effective if it shows itself in the style, in the handling of the speech.

Hence in dramatic art, even down to the treatment of speech, it is for dramatic style that one will have to cultivate a special sense. Style, not realism, must be all-important. Hence we can say that what has been developed in the way of dramatic style in the French theatre and has been imitated in other languages, what culminated in the classical French presentation of tragedy can stand before us like a model from which to learn the formation of a dramatic style. From the style in which the French classics were, until quite recently, presented on the French stage (and after them the non-classical drama too), we shall be able to obtain a good idea of how a uniquely dramatic mode stands out against naturalistic speech, such as depends on intellectual understanding rather than the element of form.

Two passages, taken from the German and the French, will exemplify what I have roughly tried to indicate as regards dramatic style and the dramatic treatment of speech.

Recitation by Marie Steiner.

From Schiller’s Wilhelm Tell, Act IV, Scene 5:

TELL (enters with his crossbow):

Durch diese hohle Gasse muss er kommen;

Es führt kein andrer Weg nach Küssnacht – Hier

Vollend’ ich’s. – Die Gelegenheit ist günstig.

Dort der Holunderstrauch verbirgt mich ihm,

Von dort herab kann ihn mein Pfeil erlangen;

Des Weges Enge wehret den Verfolgern.

Mach deine Rechnung mit dem Himmel, Vogt,

Fort musst du, deine Uhr ist abgelaufen.

Ich lebte still und harmlos – Das Geschoss

War auf des Waldes Tiere nur gerichtet,

Meine Gedanken waren rein von Mord –

Du hast aus meinem Frieden mich heraus

Geschreckt, in gärend Drachengift hast du

Die Milch der frommen Denkart mir verwandelt,

Zum Ungeheuren hast du mich gewöhnt –

Wer sich des Kindes Haupt zum Ziele setzte,

Der kann auch treffen in das Herz des Feinds.

Die armen Kindlein, die unschuldigen,

Das treue Weib muss ich vor deiner Wut

Beschützen, Landvogt! – Da, als ich den Bogenstrang

Anzog – als mir die Hand erzitterte –

Als du mit grausam teufelischer Lust

Mich zwangst, aufs Haupt des Kindes anzulegen –

Als ich ohnmächtig flehend rang vor dir,

Damals gelobt’ ich mir in meinem Innern

Mit furchtbarm Eidschwur, den nur Gott gehört,

Dass meines nächsten Schusses erstes Ziel

Dein Herz sein sollte. – Was ich mir gelobt

In jenes Augenblickes Höllenqualen,

Ist eine heil’ge Schuld – ich will sie zahlen.

Du bist mein Herr und meines Kaisers Vogt;

Doch nicht der Kaiser hätte sich erlaubt,

Was du. – Er sandte dich in diese Lande,

Um Hecht zu sprechen – strenges, denn er zürnet –

Doch nicht um mit der mörderischen Lust

Dich jedes Greuels straflos zu erfrechen;

Es lebt ein Gott, zu strafen und zu rächen.

Komm du hervor, du Bringer bittrer Schmerzen,

Mein teures Kleinod jetzt, mein höchster Schatz –

Ein Ziel will ich dir geben, das bis jetzt

Der frommen Bitte undurchdringlich war –

Doch dir soll es nicht widerstehn. – Und du,

Vertraute Bogensehne, die so oft

Mir treu gedient hat in der Freude Spielen,

Verlass mich nicht im fürchterlichen Ernst:

Nur jetzt noch halte fest, du treuer Strang,

Der mir so oft den herben Pfeil beflügelt –

Entränn’ er jetzo kraftlos meinen Händen,

Ich habe keinen zweiten zu versenden.

(Wanderers pass over the stage.)

Auf dieser Bank von Stein will ich mich setzen,

Dem Wanderer zur kurzen Ruh bereitet –

Denn hier ist keine Heimat. – Jeder treibt

Sich an dem andern rasch und fremd vorüber

Und fraget nicht nach seinem Schmerz. – Hier geht

Der sorgenvolle Kaufmann und der leicht

Geschürzte Pilger – der andächtige Mönch,

Der düstre Räuber und der heitre Spielmann,

Der Säumer mit dem schwerbeladnen Ross,

Der ferne herkommt von der Menschen Ländern,

Denn jede Strasse führt ans End’ der Welt.

Sie alle ziehen ihres Weges fort

An ihr Geschäft – und meines ist der Mord’. (Sits down)

– Sonst, wenn der Vater auszog, liebe Kinder,

Da war ein Freuen, wenn er wiederkam;

Denn niemals kehrt’ er heim, er bracht’ euch etwas,

Warts eine schöne Alpenblume, war’s

Ein seltner Vogel oder Ammonshorn,

Wie es der Wandrer findet auf den Bergen –

Jetzt geht er einem andern Weidwerk nach,

Am wilden Weg sitzt er mit Mordgedanken;

Des Feindes Leben ist’s, worauf er lauert.

– Und doch an euch nur denkt er, liebe Kinder,

Auch jetzt – euch zu verteidigen, eure holde Unschuld

Zu schützen vor der Rache des Tyrannen,

Will er zum Morde jetzt den Bogen spannen. (Stands up).

Ich laure auf ein edles Wild. – Lässt sich’s

Der Jäger nicht verdriessen, tagelang

Umher zu streifen in des Winters Strenge,

Von Fels zu Fels den Wagesprung zu tun,

Hinan zu klimmen an den glatten Wänden,

Wo er sich anleimt mit dem eignen Blut,

– Um ein armselig Grattier zu erjagen. Hier

gilt es einen köstlicheren Preis, Das Herz des

Todfeinds, der mich will verderben.

(Gay music in the distance coming nearer.)

Mein ganzes Lebelang hab’ ich den Bogen

Gehandhabt, mich geübt nach Schützenregel;

Ich habe oft geschossen in das Schwarze

Und manchen schönen Preis mir heimgebracht

Vom Freudenschiessen. – Aber heute will ich

Den Meisterschuss tun und das beste mir

Im ganzen Umkreis des Gebirgs gewinnen.

Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805).

[A speech from Dryden’s All for Love: or, The World Well Lost (his “imitation” of Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra) may stand here as a sample of the Neoclassical drama in England. It comprises Act I, Scene i, 237ff:

ANTONY (having thrown himself down) :

Lye there, thou shadow of an Emperor;

The place thou pressest on thy Mother-earth

Is all thy Empire now: now it contains thee;

Some few days hence, and then ’twill be too large,

When thou’rt contracted in thy narrow Urn,

Shrunk to a few cold Ashes; then Octavia,

(For Cleopatra will not live to see it)

Octavia then will have thee all her own,

And bear thee in her Widow’d hand to Caesar;

Caesar will weep, the Crocodile will weep,

To see his Rival of the Universe

Lie still and peaceful there. I’le think no more on’t.

Give me some Musick; look that it be sad:

I’le sooth my Melancholy till I swell,

And burst my self with sighing—Soft Musick

‘Tis somewhat to my humor. Stay, I fancy

I’m now turn’d wild, a Commoner of Nature;

Of all forsaken, and forsaking all;

Live in a shady Forest’s Sylvan Scene,

Stretch’d at my length beneath some blasted Oke;

I lean my head upon the Mossy Bark,

And look just of a piece, as I grew from it:

My uncomb’d Locks, matted like Misleto,

Hang o’re my hoary Face; a mirm’ring Brook

Runs at my foot…

The Herd come jumping by me,

And fearless, quench their thirst, while I look on,

And take me for their fellow-Citizen,

More of this Image, more; it lulls my thoughts.

(Soft Musick again)

John Dryden (1631-1700).]

From Le Cid, Act III, Scene 4:

CHIMÈNE: Ah! Rodrigue, il est vrai, quoique ton ennemie,

Je ne puis te blâmer d’avoir fui l’infamie;

Et, de quelque façon qu’éclatent mes douleurs,

Je ne t’accuse point, je pleure mes malheurs.

Je sais ce que l’honneur, aprés un tel outrage,

Demandait à 1’ardeur d’un généreux courage:

Tu n’as fait le devoir que d’un homme de bien;

Mais aussi, le faisant, tu m’as appris le mien.

Ta funeste valeur m’instruit par ta victoire;

Elle a vengé ton père et soutenu ta gloire:

Même soin me regarde, et j’ai, pour m’affliger,

Ma gloire à soutenir, et mon père à venger.

Hélas! ton intérêt ici me désespère:

Si quelque autre malheur m’avait ravi mon père,

Mon âme aurait trouvé dans le bien de te voir

L’unique allégement qu’elle eût pu recevoir;

Et contre ma douleur j’aurais senti des charmes

Quand une main si chére eût essuyé mes larmes.

Mais il me faut te perdre après l’avoir perdu;

Cet effort sur ma flamme a mon honneur est dû;

Et cet affreux devoir, dont l’ordre m’assassine,

Me force à travailler moi-même à ta ruine.

Car enfin n’attends pas de mon affection

De lâches sentiments pour ta punition.

De quoi qu’en ta faveur notre amour m’entretienne,

Ma générosité doit répondre à la tienne:

Tu t’es, en m’offensant, montré digne de moi;

Je me dois, par ta mort, montrer digne de toi.

RODRIGUE: Ne diffère donc plus ce que l’honneur t’ordonne:

demande ma tête, et je te l’abandonne;

Fais-en un sacrifice a ce noble intérêt;

Le coup m’en sera doux, aussi bien que l’arrêt.

Attendre après mon crime une lente justice,

C’est reculer ta gloire autant que mon supplice.

Je mourrai trop heureux, mourant d’un coup si beau.

CHIMÈNE: Va, je suis ta partie, et non pas ton bourreau.

Si tu m’offres ta tête, est-ce à moi de la prendre?

Je la dois attaquer, mais tu dois la défendre:

C’est d’un autre que toi qu’il me faut l’obtenir

Et je dois te poursuivre, et non pas te punir.

RODRIGUE: De quoi qu’en ma faveur notre amour t’entretienne.

Ta générosité doit répondre à la mienne;

Et, pour venger un père, emprunter d’autres bras

Ma Chimène, crois-moi, c’est n’y répondre pas.

Ma main seule du mien a su venger l’offense,

Ta main seule du tien doit prendre la vengeance.

CHIMÈNE: Cruel! à quel propos sur ce point t’obstiner?

Tu t’es vengé sans aide, et tu m’en veux donner!

Je suivrai ton exemple, et j’ai trop de courage

Pour souffrir qu’avec toi ma gloire se partage.

Mon père et mon honneur ne veulent rien devoir

Aux traits de ton amour ni de ton désespoir.

RODRIGUE: Rigoureux point d’honneur. Hélas! quoi que je fasse.

Ne pourrai-je à la fin obtenir cette grâce?

Au nom d’un père mort, ou de notre amitié

Punis-moi par vengeance, ou du moins par pitié.

Ton malheureux amant aura bien moins de peine

A mourir par ta main qu’à vivre avec ta haine.

CHIMÈNE: Va, je ne te hais point.

RODRIGUE: Tu le dois.

CHIMÈNE: Je ne puis.

Pierre Corneille (1606-1684).

We shall continue now with something about the prose-poem. Here it is a matter of something in the artist’s soul which he experiences as poetry, but which cannot be expressed in any of the art-forms generally employed. Although put into prose, it is nonetheless a genuinely poetic art that is brought to expression in this form. But anything cast in the form of a prose-poem will need special treatment when it is expressed in speech-formation. It is almost universally – though quite erroneously – assumed that the recitation or declamation of prose-poems is something easy to accomplish. In reality, the recitative-declamatory speaking of prose-poetry is the most difficult, as it represents the most intimate form of the art. Everything that comes to light in lyric, dramatic or epic speech-formation, whether of a more delicate or more profound nature, must form a synthesis whenever a prose-poem is to be presented in oral production. In recitation of this kind everything that is to be found in verse, or any form of poetic art, will sound forth – but with a more delicate shading.

In this way, merely touching upon what otherwise appears in the recitation and declamation with stronger emphasis, with more marked contours – by giving this only gentle emphasis – the recital will become essentially suffused with soul. Suffused with soul!

The artistic recital of prose-poetry must become much more soul-filled: it must occasion our going beyond the conceptual understanding of the words toward something imaginative. The energetic impetus that underlies logical inference, for example, leads toward an image-forming experience; [Note 14] and at the same time there sounds through softly, as something musical, the octave. The image-forming treatment of speech in a prose-poem, when presented in recitation or declamation, is like a continually flowing stream with its even waves. And, as if from the depths, other waves arise, bringing variation into its even flow – this is the delicate musical element which should become perceptible in this kind of recitation. In speaking a prose-poem with poetic sensibility, the more intimate features of a language will come to light and the raising of what looks like a prose production into a poetical work, into the realm of art and poetry, is something of a triumph which man can give to his language. What we may call the soul of a language finds a very adequate embodiment there.

We will now take an example – from The Apprentices of Sais by Novalis. In this novel, which remained unfinished, there is a wonderful little passage of prose in which all that I have tried to indicate about the recitation and declamation of prose-poems comes into prominence. The essential thing is that everything which otherwise comes to light in the reciting of poetry is transformed, through acquiring a more intimate character, into a particular mood or feeling. Everything, on the other hand, that serves to differentiate the mood will be taken up into the totality of the mood as a whole. Something like this can be attempted in an outstanding piece of prose like the fairy-tale in Novalis’ The Apprentices of Sais. In this wonderful fairy-tale, as in so much that has come to us from Novalis, is revealed the whole depth of his soul.

The handsome youth Hyacinth loves the maiden Rosepetal. It is a love cherished in secret – only the flowers and the animals of the forest know of the love of the handsome youth for the maiden Rosepetal. And then there appears a man with a long beard, who makes a wondrous impression and tells marvellous stories, in which the handsome youth Hyacinth becomes completely immersed. He is seized with a great longing for the veiled Virgin, for the veiled image of Truth. His soul trembles with longing, which also enlarges his vision so that he becomes estranged from his immediate surroundings, and his heart yearns for the image of the veiled Virgin. He forsakes Rosepetal, who remains behind weeping. He wanders through all sorts of unknown regions, and comes to know many things on his way; and at last he arrives at the Temple of Isis. Everything seems familiar to him, and yet different from what he had experienced before – it seems so much more splendid. And behold! he ventures to lift the veil! and Rosepetal falls into his arms.

It would be hard to represent with more intimate feeling the expansion of the soul out of her subjectivity into the wide universe; it would be hard to represent more intimately the longing of man for truth – hard to link more closely what man can experience when he rises to the highest spheres of truth with what he lives through in his most direct, intimate day-to-day experiences. All that is needed is sufficient intimacy of soul. What is expressed in this prose fairy-tale can only be brought to light by a soul such as that of Novalis, who really felt everyday life in such a way that it was for him a direct expression of the eternal. Novalis, after his first love had died, was able in inward truth of soul to live with her and to feel the direct presence of one who was in the other world as if she were in this world. Novalis’ soul was truly able to experience the super-sensible in the sensible and so raise what belongs to the sense-world to assume the character of the super-sensible. Everything flowed together in Novalis: striving after truth, striving after beauty and religious ardour. Only if we understand his comprehensiveness do we understand Novalis. Hence there could arise the remarkable feeling which resounds through The Apprentices of Sais, and wrests itself from Novalis’s soul: man has felt that in the image of Isis truth is veiled; “I am the past, the present and the future, no mortal as yet has lifted my veil” – that is the pronouncement of the veiled Isis and Novalis was sensible of it. Confronted with “No mortal as yet has lifted my veil”, Novalis responded with “Then we must become immortal”. Novalis never despaired of the soul’s ability to lift the veil of truth: but the soul must first become immediately aware of her own immortality. A man who experiences his immortality in himself may, in the sense of Novalis, lift the veil of truth. It is a powerful saying – “Then we must become immortal”.

What lives in this feeling in a far-reaching way meets us again in an intimate mood when the handsome youth Hyacinth comes to the Temple of Isisafter long dream-wanderings through unknown regions, which are nonetheless familiar to him, though now appearing more splendid than he had once known. He comes to the Temple of Isis, lifts the veil and what he knows and loves – Rosepetal – comes to meet him. Yet, as we can envisage and feel intimately in this prose fairy-tale, she has become through this experience of eternity much more splendid than she once was.

Truly it is a prose-poem conceived in a mood where the highest to which man can aspire takes the form of the most intimate – one of the fairest flowers of poetic prose, demonstrating that, in what is apparently prose, true poetry can be expressed.

From Die Lehrlinge zu Sais:

DAS MÄRCHEN VON HYAZINTH UND ROSENBLÜTE

Vor langen Zeiten lebte weit gegen Abend ein blutjunger Mensch. Er war sehr gut, aber auch über die Massen wunderlich. Er grämte sich unaufhorlich um nichts und wieder nichts, ging immer still für sich hin, setzte sich einsam, wenn die andern spielten und fröhlich waren, und hing seltsamen Dingen nach. Höhlen und Wälder waren sein liebster Aufenthalt, und dann sprach er immerfort mit Tieren und Vögeln, mit Bäumen und Felsen, natürlich kein vernünftiges Wort, lauter närrisches Zeug zum Totlachen.

Er blieb aber immer mürrisch und ernsthaft, ungeachtet sich das Eichhörnchen, die Meerkatze, der Papagei und der Gimpel alle Mühe gaben, ihn zu zerstreuen und ihn auf den richtigen Weg zu weisen. Die Gans erzählte Märchen, der Bach klimperte eine Ballade dazwischen, ein grosser dicker Stein machte lächerliche Bockssprünge, die Rose schlich sich freundlich hinter ihm herum, kroch durch seine Locken, und der Efeu streichelte ihm die sorgenvolle Stirn.—Allein der Missmut und Ernst waren hartnäckig. Seine Eltern waren sehr betrübt, sie wussten nicht, was sie anfangen sollten. Er war gesund und ass, nie hatten sie ihn beleidigt, er war auch bis vor wenig Jahren fröhlich und lustig gewesen, wie keiner; bei allen Spielen voran, von allen Mädchen gern gesehn. Er war recht bildschön, sah aus wie gemalt, tanzte wie ein Schatz.

Unter den Mädchen war eine, ein köstliches, bildschönes Kind, sah aus wie Wachs, Haare wie goldne Seide, kirschrote Lippen, wie ein Püppchen gewachsen, brandrabenschwarze Augen. Wer sie sah, hätte mögen vergehn, so lieblich war sie.

Damals war Rosenblüte, so hiess sie, dem bildschönen Hyazinth, so hiess er, von Herzen gut, und er hatte sie lieb zum Sterben. Die andern Kinder wussten’s nicht. Ein Veilchen hatte es ihnen zuerst gesagt, die Hauskätzchen hatten es wohl gemerkt, die Häuser ihrer Eltern lagen nahe beisammen. Wenn nun Hyazinth die Nacht an seinem Fenster stand und Rosenblüte an ihrem, und die Kätzchen auf den Mäusefang da vorbeiliefen, da sahen sie die beiden stehn und lachten und kicherten oft so laut, dass sie es hörten und böse wurden. Das Veilchen hatte es der Erdbeere im Vertrauen gesagt, die sagte es ihrer Freundin, der Stachelbeere, die liess nun das Sticheln nicht, wenn Hyazinth gegangen kam; so erfuhr’s denn bald der ganze Garten und der Wald, und wenn Hyazinth ausging, so rief’s von allen Seiten: Rosenblütchen ist mein Schätzchen! Nun ärgerte sich Hyazinth und musste doch auch wieder aus Herzensgrunde lachen, wenn das Eidechschen geschlüpft kam, sich auf einen warmen Stein setzte, mit dem Schwänzchen wedelte und sang:

Rosenblütchen, das gute Kind,

Ist geworden auf einmal blind,

Denkt, die Mutter sei Hyazinth,

Fällt ihm um den Hals geschwind;

Merkt sie aber das fremde Gesicht,

Denkt nur an, da erschrickt sie nicht,

Fährt, als merkte sie kein Wort,

Immer nur mit Küssen fort.

Ach! wie bald war die Herrlichkeit vorbei. Es kam ein Mann aus fremden Landen gegangen, der war erstaunlich weit gereist, hatte einen langen Bart, tiefe Augen, entsetzliche Augenbrauen, ein wunderliches Kleid mit vielen Falten und seltsamen Figuren hineingewebt. Er setzte sich vor das Haus, das Hyazinths Eltern gehörte. Nun war Hyazinth sehr neugierig und setzte sich zu ihm und holte ihm Brot und Wein. Da tat er seinen weissen Bart voneinander und erzählte bis tief in die Nacht, und Hyazinth wich und wankte nicht und wurde auch nicht müde zuzuhören. So viel man nachher vernahm, so hat er viel von fremden Ländern, unbekannten Gegenden, von erstaunlich wunderbaren Sachen erzählt und ist drei Tage dageblieben und mit Hyazinth in tiefe Schachten hinuntergekrochen. Rosenblütchen hat genug den alten Hexenmeister verwünscht, denn Hyazinth ist ganz versessen auf seine Gespräche gewesen und hat sich um nichts bekümmert; kaum dass er ein wenig Speise zu sich genommen. Endlich hat jener sich fortgemacht, doch dem Hyazinth ein Büchelchen dagelassen, das kein Mensch lesen konnte. Dieser hat ihm noch Früchte, Brot und Wein mitgegeben und ihn weit weg begleitet. Und dann ist er tiefsinnig zurückgekommen und hat einen ganz neuen Lebenswandel begonnen. Rosenblütchen hat recht zum Erbarmen um ihn getan, denn von der Zeit an hat er sich wenig aus ihr gemacht und ist immer für sich geblieben.

Nun begab sich’s, dass er einmal nach Hause kam und war wie neu geboren. Er fiel seinen Eltern um den Hals und weinte. ‘Ich muss fort in fremde Lande’, sagte er, ‘die alte wunderliche Frau im Walde hat mir erzählt, wie ich gesund werden müsste, das Buch hat sie ins Feuer geworfen und hat mich getrieben, zu euch zu gehn und euch um euren Segen zu bitten. Vielleicht komme ich bald, vielleicht nie wieder. Grüsst Rosenblütchen. Ich hätte sie gern gesprochen, ich weiss nicht, wie mir ist, es drängt mich fort; wenn ich an die alten Zeiten zurückdenken will, so kommen gleich mächtigere Gedanken dazwischen, die Ruhe ist fort, Herz und Liebe mit, ich muss sie suchen gehn. Ich wollt euch gern sagen, wohin, ich weiss selbst nicht, dahin wo die Mutter der Dinge wohnt, die verschleierte Jungfrau. Nach der ist mein Gemüt entzundet. Lebt wohl.’

Er riss sich los und ging fort. Seine Eltern wehklagten und vergossen Tränen, Rosenblütchen blieb in ihrer Kammer und weinte bitterlich. Hyazinth lief nun, was er konnte, durch Täler und Wildnisse, über Berge und Ströme, dem geheimnisvollen Lande zu. Er fragte überall nach der heiligen Göttin, Menschen und Tiere, Felsen und Bäume. Manche lachten, manche schwiegen, nirgends erhielt er Bescheid. Im Anfange kam er durch rauhes, wildes Land, Nebel und Wolken warfen sich ihm in den Weg, es stürmte immerfort; dann fand er unabsehliche Sandwüsten, glühenden Staub, und wie er wandelte, so veränderte sich auch sein Gemüt, die Zeit wurde ihm lang, und die innre Unruhe legte sich, er wurde sanfter und das gewaltige Treiben in ihm allgemach zu einem leisen, aber starken Zuge, in den sein ganzes Gemüt sich auflöste. Es lag wie viele Jahre hinter ihm. Nun wurde die Gegend auch wieder reicher und mannigfaltiger, die Luft lau und blau, der Weg ebener, grüne Büsche lockten ihn mit anmutigen Schatten, aber er verstand ihre Sprache nicht, sie schienen auch nicht zu sprechen, und doch erfüllten sie auch sein Herz mit grünen Farben und kühlem, stillem Wesen. Immer höher wuchs jene süsse Sehnsucht in ihm, und immer breiter und saftiger wurden die Blätter, immer lauter und lustiger die Vögel und Tiere, balsamischer die Früchte, dunkler der Himmel, wärmer die Luft, und heisser seine Liebe, die Zeit ging immer schneller, als sähe sie sich nahe am Ziele.

Eines Tages begegnete er einem kristallnen Quell und einer Menge Blumen, die kamen in ein Tal herunter zwischen schwarzen himmelhohen Säulen. Sie grüssten ihn freundlich mit bekannten Worten. ‘Liebe Landsleute’, sagte er, ‘wo find’ ich wohl den geheiligten Wohnsitz der Isis? Hier herum muss er sein, und ihr seid vielleicht hier bekannter als ich.’ ‘Wir gehn auch nur hier durch’, antworteten die Blumen; ‘eine Geisterfamilie ist auf der Reise, und wir bereiten ihr Weg und Quartier, indes sind wir vor kurzem durch eine Gegend gekommen, da hörten wir ihren Namen nennen. Gehe nur aufwärts, wo wir herkommen, so wirst du schon mehr erfahren.’ Die Blumen und die Quelle lächelten, wie sie das sagten, boten ihm einen frischen Trunk und gingen weiter. Hyazinth folgte ihrem Rat, frug und frug und kam endlich zu jener längst gesuchten Wohnung, die unter Palmen und andern köstlichen Gewächsen versteckt lag. Sein Herz klopfte in unendlicher Sehnsucht, und die süsseste Bangigkeit durchdrang ihn in dieser Behausung der ewigen Jahreszeiten. Unter himmlischen Wohlgedüften entschlummerte er, weil ihn nur der Traum in das Allerheiligste führen durfte.

Wunderlich führte ihn der Traum durch unendliche Gemächer voll seltsamer Sachen auf lauter reizenden Klängen und in abwechselnden Akkorden. Es dünkte ihm alles so bekannt und doch in niegesehener Herrlichkeit, da schwand auch der letzte irdische Anflug, wie in Luft verzehrt, und er stand vor der himmlischen Jungfrau. Da hob er den leichten, glänzenden Schleier, und Rosenblütchen sank in seine Arme. Eine ferne Musik umgab die Geheimnisse des liebenden Wiedersehns, die Ergiessungen der Sehnsucht, und schloss alles Fremde von diesem entzückenden Orte aus.

Hyazinth lebte nachher noch lange mit Rosenblütchen unter seinen frohen Eltern und Gespielen, und unzählige Enkel dankten der alten wunderlichen Frau für ihren Rat und ihr Feuer; denn damals bekamen die Menschen so viel Kinder, als sie wollten.—

Novalis (1772-1801).

[The prose-poem is a relatively rare beast in English literature; but one of its descendants is the lyrical novel, as practised by (among others) Joyce. [Note 15] This is one of the formal poetic “epiphanies” from his A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, ch. 4:

Her image had passed into his soul for ever and no word had broken the holy silence of his ecstasy. Her eyes had called him and his soul had leaped at the call. To live, to err, to fall, to triumph, to recreate life out of life: A wild angel had appeared to him, the angel of mortal youth and beauty, an envoy from the fair courts of life, to throw open before him in an instant of ecstasy the gates of all the ways of error and glory. On and on and on and on.

He halted suddenly and heard his heart in the silence. How far had he walked? What hour was it?

There was no human figure near him nor any sound borne to him over the air. But the tide was near the turn and already the day was on the wane. He turned landward and ran towards the shore and, running up the sloping beach, reckless of the sharp shingle, found a sandy nook amid a ring of tufted sandknolls and lay down there that the peace and silence of the evening might still the riot of his blood.

He felt above him the vast indifferent dome and the calm processes of the heavenly bodies; and the earth beneath him, the earth that had borne him, had taken him to her breast.

He closed his eyes in the languor of sleep. His eyelids trembled as if they felt the vast cyclic movement of the earth and her watcher, trembled as if they felt the strange light of some new world. His soul was swooning into some new world, fantastic, dim, uncertain as under sea, traversed by cloudy shapes and beings. A world, a glimmer or a flower? Glimmering and trembling, trembling and unfolding, a breaking light, an opening flower, it spread in endless succession to itself, breaking in full crimson and unfolding and fading to palest rose, leaf by leaf and wave of light by wave of light, flooding all the heavens with its soft flushes, every flush deeper than the other.

Evening had fallen when he woke and the sand and arid grasses of his bed glowed no longer. He rose slowly and, recalling the rapture of his sleep, sighed at its joy.

He climbed to the crest of the sandhill and gazed about him. Evening had fallen. A rim of the young moon cleft the pale waste of skyline, the rim of a silver hoop embedded in grey sand; and the tide was flowing in fast to the land with a low whisper of her waves, islanding a few last figures in distant pools.

James Joyce (1882-1941).]

My dear Friends,

This course has a little history attached to it, and it is perhaps good that I should weave this little history into the introductory words that I propose to give today. For that is all we shall attempt in this first lecture—a general introduction to the whole subject. The proper work of the course will begin tomorrow and will be apportioned in the following way. I shall give the lectures; and then as far as demonstration is concerned, that will be taken by Frau Dr. Steiner. The course will thus be given by us both, working together.

The arrangement of the course will be, roughly speaking, as follows. Part I will be devoted to the Forming of Speech, and Part II to the Art of the Theatre—dramatic stagecraft, production and so on. Then, in Part III, we shall consider the art of the drama in relation to what it meets with in the world outside, whether in the way of simple enjoyment or of criticism and the like. We may call this third part: The Stage and the Rest of Mankind. We shall have to discuss together certain demands that our age makes upon the art of the drama, and see how we can enable it to take its right place in the life of man as it is lived today.

I said the course had a little history behind it. It began in the following way. A number of persons closely connected with the stage approached Frau Dr. Steiner and myself independently, in the conviction that anthroposophy, ready as one expects it to be to give new impulses today in every sphere of life—in religion, in art, in science—must also be able to furnish new impulses for the art of the drama. And that is most assuredly so. Several courses on speech have already been given here by Frau Dr. Steiner; and at one of them, where I also was contributing, I added some considerations that bore directly on the work of the stage. These had a stimulating effect on many of those who attended the course, some of whom have since been introducing new features into their work on the stage, that can be traced to suggestions or indications given by us. Groups of actors have made their appearance before the public as actors who acknowledge that, for them at least, the Goetheanum is a place where new impulses can be received.

And then there is also the fact that the art which has been among us since 1912, the art of eurhythmy, comes very near indeed to the art of the stage. This follows from the very conditions eurhythmy requires for its presentation. Dramatic art will, in fact, in future have to consider eurhythmy as something with which it is intimately connected.

This art of eurhythmy, when it was originally given by me, was at first thought of within quite narrow limits. I should perhaps not say ‘thought of’, for it was with eurhythmy as it is with everything within the Anthroposophical Movement that comes about in the right way: one responds to a demand of karma, and gives just so much as opportunity allows. No other way of working is possible in the Anthroposophical Movement. You will not find with us an inclination to plan ‘reforms’ or to put out some great ‘idea’ into the world. No, we take our guidance from karma. And at that time a need had arisen—it was in a quite small circle of people—to provide for some kind of vocation. It all came about in the most natural manner, but in a manner that was in absolute conformity with karma; and to begin with, what I gave went only so far as was necessary to meet this karma.

Then one could again see the working of karma in the fact that about two years later Frau Dr. Steiner, whose own domain was of course very closely affected, began to interest herself in the art of eurhythmy All that eurhythmy has since become is really due to her. Obviously therefore this present course as well, the impulse for which goes right back to the years 1913–14, must take its place in the Section for the Arts of Speech and Music, of which Frau Dr. Steiner is the leader.¹ For now, as a direct culmination of these events, the idea has arisen of doing something here for the development of the arts of speech and drama. Making a beginning, that is; for what we do would naturally only attain its full significance if the audience were limited to professional actors and those who, having the necessary qualifications, are hoping to become such. We should then probably have been a comparatively small circle; and we should have been able, working through the course in its three Parts (as I have explained is my intention), to carry our study far enough to allow of the participants forming themselves afterwards into a working group. They could then have gone out from Dornach as a touring company and proved the value, wherever they went, of the study we had carried through together here. For the deeper meaning of such things as I intend to put before you in this course will obviously only emerge when they are put into practice on the stage. This therefore would have been the normal outcome of a course of lectures on Speech and Drama.

That not all of you assembled here desire a course on this basis is perfectly evident. Nor would it be possible to carry it through with the present audience. Obviously, that is not feasible—although perhaps it would not, after all, be such a terrible disaster for the world if in some of our theatres the present actors could be replaced from here! But I see a few friends sitting in the audience of whom I know very well that they have no such ambition!

And so it turns out that there are two reasons why the course could not take on this orientation towards a practical end. For, in the first place, unfortunately neither those on whom it would have devolved to carry out the plan, nor we who were to give the impulse for it, have any money. Money is the very thing we are perpetually feeling the lack of. In itself the plan would have been perfectly possible, but there is no money for it; and unless it were properly financed, it could naturally not be put into effect. The only possibility would be that some of you who feel stimulated to do so should go ahead and undertake something at your own personal risk.

Secondly, such a keen interest was aroused in the course that one had to begin to consider who else might perhaps be allowed to attend. At first, we were rather strict; but the circle having been once broken into, all control goes to the winds—and that has most emphatically been our experience on this occasion.

Our course, then, will set out to present the art of the stage, with all that pertains to it, and we shall find that the art of the stage has to reach out, as it were, in many directions for whatever can contribute to its right development and orientation. Today, I want to speak in a general introductory way of what I have in mind as the essential content of our work together.

The first thing that calls for attention is that if speech is to come in any way into the service of art, it must itself be regarded as an art. This is not sufficiently realised today. In the matter of speech you will often find people adopting an attitude such as they adopt also, for example, to the writing of poetry. It would hardly occur to anyone who had not mastered the preliminaries of piano-playing to come into a company of people and sit down at the piano and play. There is, however, a tendency to imagine that anyone can write poetry, and that anyone can speak or recite. The fact is, the inadequacy and poverty of stage speaking as it is at present will never be rectified, nor will the general dissatisfaction that is felt on the matter among the performers themselves be dispelled, until we are ready to admit that there are necessary preliminaries to the art of speech just as much as there are to any performance in the sphere of music.

I was once present at an anthroposophical gathering which was arranged in connection with a course of lectures I had to give. It was a sort of ‘afternoon tea’ occasion, and something of an artistic programme was to be included. I do not want to enter here into a description of the whole affair, but there was one item on the programme of which I would like to tell you. (I myself had no share in the arrangements; these were made by a local committee.) The principal person concerned came up to me and I asked him about the programme. He said he was going to recite himself. I had then to call to my aid a technique that is often necessary in such circumstances, a technique that enables one to be absolutely horror-struck and not show it. It is a faculty that has to be learned, but I think on this occasion I succeeded pretty well, to begin with, in the exercise of this little artifice. I asked him then what he was going to recite. He said he would begin with a poem by the tutor of Frederick William IV, a poem about Kepler. I happened to know it—a beautiful poem, but terribly long, covering many pages. I said: ‘But won't it be rather long?’ He merely replied that he intended following it up with Goethe's Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily; and that if all went well, he would then go on to recite Goethe's poem Die Geheimnisse. I can assure you that with all the skill I could muster it was now far from easy to conceal my dismay.

Well, he began. The room was only of moderate size, but there were quite a number of people present. First one went out, then another, then another; and presently a group of people left the room together. Finally, one very kind-hearted lady was left sitting all alone in the middle of the room—his solitary listener! At this point the reciter said: ‘It will perhaps be rather too long.’ So ended the scene.

It is, as you see, not only outside the Anthroposophical Society but even within it that such a point of view in regard to speech may be met with. I have taken a grotesque example, but the same sort of thing is constantly occurring in milder form, and it is imperative that we make an end of it, if our performances in this domain are to find approval with those who understand art and are moved by genuine artistic feeling. There must be no doubt left in our minds that the forming of speech has to be an art, down to each single sound that is uttered, just as music has to be an art, down to each single note that is played.

Only when this is realised will any measure of satisfaction be possible; and, what is still more important, only then will the way open for style to come again into the arts of speech and drama. For the truth is, people have ceased troubling about style altogether in this domain; and no art is possible without style.

But now, if we are to speak together here of these things, the need inevitably arises that I should at the same time draw your attention to the way that speech and drama are related to the occult—the occult that is ever there behind. And that brings us to the question: Whence in man does speech really come? Where does it originate?

Speech proceeds, not directly from the I or ego of man, but from the astral organism. The animal has also its astral organism, but does not normally bring it to speech. How is this? The explanation lies in the fact that the members of the human being, and also of the animal, are not there merely on their own; each single member is interpenetrated by all the others, and its character modified accordingly.

It is never really quite correct to say: Man consists of physical body, etheric body, astral body and I; for the statement may easily give the impression that these members of the human being are quite distinct from one another, and that we are justified in forming a conception of man which places them side by side. Such a conception is, however, quite untrue. In waking consciousness, the several members interpenetrate. We ought rather to say: Man has not just a physical body as such (the physical body would look quite different if it simply followed its own laws), but a physical body that is modified by an etheric body and again by an astral body, and then again by an I or ego. In each single member, the three other members are present. And so, if we are considering the astral body, we must not forget that every other member of man's nature is also present in it. It is the same with the animal: in the astral body of the animal the physical body is present, and the etheric body too. But man has, in addition, the I, which also modifies the astral body; and it is from this astral body, modified by the I, that the impulse for speech proceeds. It is important to recognise this if we want to carry our study of the art of speech right into the single sounds. For, while in ordinary everyday speech the single sounds are formed in entire unconsciousness, the activity of forming them has to be lifted up into consciousness if speech is to be raised to the level of art.

How then did speech begin? Speech did not originate in the speaking we use in ordinary life, any more than writing originated in the writing of today. Compare with the latter the picture-writing of ancient Egypt; that will give you some idea of how writing first came about. And it is just as useless to look for the origin of speech in the ordinary talking of today, which contains all manner of acquired qualities—the conventional, the intellectual, and so on. No, speech has its source in the artistic life. And if we want in our study of speech to find our way through to what is truly artistic, we must at least have begun to perceive that speech originates in the artistic side of man's nature—not in the intellectual, not in man's life of knowledge, as knowledge is understood today.

Time was when men were simply incapable of speaking without rhythm, when they felt a need always, whenever they spoke, to speak in rhythm. And if a man were saying something to which he wanted to give point or emphasis, then he would attain this by the way he formed and shaped his language. Take a simple example. Suppose you wanted to say—speaking right out of the primeval impulses of speech—that someone keeps stumbling as he walks It would suffice to say: He stumbles over sticks. For there were certainly sticks of wood lying about in primeval times. There were also plenty of stones, and you could just as well say: He stumbles over stones. You would not, however, say either. You would say: He stumbles über Stock and Stein (over stick and stone). For, whether or no the words exactly describe what the speaker sees, we have in ‘stick and stone’ an inner artistic forming of speech. Or again, in order to make our statement more telling, we do not merely say that a ship is sinking together with the men in it. We add what is perhaps far from welcome on a ship; we add the mice. If we are really forming our speech out of what was the original impulse behind all speaking, we say: The ship is going down mit Mann and Maus (with man and mouse).²

Today, the original impulse for speech is present in mankind only in the very smallest degree. There is ample reason for the fact. Unhappily, speech as an art has no place now in education.³ Our schools, and the schools of other nations too, have lost touch with art altogether; and that is why in our Waldorf School we have to make such a strong stand for the artistic in education.’ The schools of our time have been founded and established on science and learning—that is, on what counts as such in the present day, and it is inartistic. Yes, that is what has happened; this modern kind of science and learning has for a long time been steadily seeping down into the education given in our schools. Gradually, in the course of the last four or five centuries, these have been changing, until now, for anyone who enters one of them with artistic feeling, these schools of ours give the impression of something quite barbaric.

But if art is absent in our schools—and don't forget that the children have to speak in class; good speaking is part of the instruction given at school—if the artistic side of education is completely absent, it need not surprise us if art is lacking in grown men and women. There is, in fact, among mankind today a sad dearth of artistic feeling; one can therefore hardly expect to find recognition of the need to form speech artistically.

We do not often have it said to us: ‘You didn't say that beautifully’, but very often, ‘You are not speaking correctly’. The pedantic grammarian pulls us up, but it is seldom we are reproved for our speech on artistic grounds. It seems to be generally accepted as a matter of course that speech has no need of art.

Now, the astral body is mainly in the unconscious part of man's nature. But the artist in speech must learn to control what in ordinary speaking takes its course there unconsciously. In recent times people have begun to appreciate this. Hence the various methods that have been put forward—not only for singing, but also for recitation, declamation, etc. These methods, however, generally set to work in a very peculiar way.

Suppose you wanted to teach someone to plough, and never took any trouble to see what the plough was like, or the field, did not even stop to consider what the ploughing is for, but instead began enquiring: ‘If here is the person's arm, at what angle should he hold it at the elbow? What will be its natural position for ploughing?’ (How constantly one hears this word ‘natural’!) ‘And what movement should he be making with his leg while he holds his arm in this position?’ Suppose, that is, you were to take not the slightest interest in what has to be done to the field by the plough, but were merely to ask: ‘What method must I use to bring the pupil into a certain train of movements?’ It sounds absurd, but modern methods of speech training are of this very kind. No regard whatever is paid to the objective comprehension of what speech is.

If you want to teach a man to plough, the first thing will be to make sure that you yourself know how to handle a plough and can plough well and accurately; and then you will have to watch your pupil and see that he does not make mistakes. It is no different with speech. All these modern methods that are constructed in the most dilettante fashion (I mean these methods of breath technique, diaphragm technique, nasal resonance and the rest) omit to take into consideration what is, after all, the heart and core of the matter. They set out to instruct as though speech itself were not there at all! For they take their start, not from speech, but from anatomy.

What is important before all else is a thorough knowledge of the organism of speech, of the living structure of speech as such. This organism of speech has been produced, has come forth, out of man himself in the course of his evolution. Consequently, if rightly understood, it will not be found to contradict, in its inherent nature, the organisation of man as a whole. Where it seems to do so, we must look into the speech itself in detail to see where the fault lies; it will not be possible to put the matter right by means of methods that have as little to do with speech as gymnastics has to do with ploughing—unless a plough should ever be included among the gymnastic equipment, which up to now I have never known to be the case. Not that I should consider it stupid or ridiculous to include a plough in the apparatus of a gymnasium; it might perhaps be a very good idea. It has only, so far as I know, never yet been attempted.

The first thing to do then is to acquire a thorough knowledge of the speech organism, this speech organism of ours that has, in the course of mankind's evolution, broken loose, as it were, from the astral body, come straight forth from the ego-modified configuration of man's astral body. For that is where speech comes from.

We must, however, not omit to take into account that the astral body impinges downwards on the etheric body and upwards on the ego—that is, when man is awake; and in sleep we normally do not speak.

Consider first what happens through the fact that the astral body comes up against the etheric body. It meets there processes of which man knows very little in ordinary life. For what are the functions of the ether-body? The ether-body receives the nourishment which is taken in by the mouth, and gradually transforms it to suit the needs of the human organism—or rather, I should say, to meet its need of the force contained in the nourishment. Then again it is the etheric organism that looks after growth, from childhood upwards until man is full grown. And the ether-body has also a share in the activities of the soul; it takes care, for instance, of memory. Man has, however, very little conscious knowledge of the various functions discharged by the ether- body. He knows their results. He knows, for example, when he is hungry; but he can scarcely be said to know how this condition of hunger is brought about. The activity of the ether-body remains largely unconscious.

Now it is the production of the vowel element in speech that takes place between astral body and ether body. When the impulse of speech passes over from the astral body, where it originates, to the ether body, we have the vowel. The vowel is thus something which comes into operation -deep within the inner being of man; it is formed more unconsciously than is speech in general. In the vowel sounds we are dealing with intensely intimate aspects of speech; what comes to expression in them is something that belongs to the very essence of man's being. This is then the result when the speech impetus impinges on the ether-body: it gives rise to the vowel element in speech.

In the other direction, the astral body impinges on the I, the ego. The I, in the form in which we have it in Earthman, is something everyone knows and recognises. For it is by means of the I that we have our sense perceptions. We owe it also essentially to the I that we are able to think. All conscious activity belongs in the sphere of the I or ego. What goes on in speech, however, since there the astral body is also concerned, cannot be performed entirely consciously, like some fully conscious activity of will. A fragment of consciousness does, nevertheless, definitely enter into the consonantal element in ordinary speech; for the speaking of consonants takes place between astral body and ego.

We have thus traced back to their source the forming of consonants and the forming of vowels. But we can go further. We can ask: What is it in the totality of man's nature that speech brings to revelation? We shall be able to answer this question when we have first dealt with the further question: How was it with the primeval speech of man? What was speech like in its beginnings?

The speech of primitive man was verily a wonderful thing. Apart from the fact that man felt instinctively obliged from the first to speak in rhythm and in measure, even to speak in assonance and alliteration—apart from this, in those early times, man felt in speech and thought in speech.

Looking first into his life of feeling, we find it was not like ours today. In comparison with it, our feelings tend to remain in the abstract. Primeval man, in the very moment of feeling, were it even a feeling of the most intimate kind, would at once express it in speech. He would not have found it possible, for instance, to have a tender feeling for a little child without being prompted in his soul to bring that feeling to expression in the form of his speech. Merely to say: ‘I love him tenderly’, would have had no meaning for him; what would have had meaning would have been to say perhaps: ‘I love this little child so very ei-ei-ei!’[5] There was always the need to permeate one's whole feeling with artistically formed speech.

Neither in those olden times did men have abstract thoughts as we do today. Abstract thoughts without speech were unknown. As soon as man thought something, the thought immediately became in him word and sentence. He spoke it inwardly. It is therefore not surprising that at the beginning of the Gospel of St. John we do not find it said: ‘In the beginning was the Thought’, but : ‘In the beginning was the Word’—the verbum, the Word. today we think within, thinking our abstract thoughts; primeval man spoke within, talked within.

Such then was the character of primeval speech. It contained feeling within it, and thought. It was, so to say, the treasure-casket in man for feeling and thought. Thought has now shifted, it has slipped up more into the ego; speech has remained in the astral body; feeling has slid down into the ether body.

The poetry of primeval times was one, was single; it expressed in speech what man could feel and think about things The original poetry was one. When, later on, speech threw back feeling inwards, into man's inner nature, that gave rise to the lyric mood of speech. The kind of poetry that has remained most of all like the primeval, the kind of poetry that, more than any other, is inherent in speech itself is the epic. It is, in fact, impossible to speak epic poetry without first reviving something of the original primal feeling in regard to speech. Finally, drama drives speech outwards and stands, in so far as Earth-man is concerned, in relation with the external world.

The artist who is taking part in drama, unless of course he is speaking a monologue, confronts another person. And this fact, that he is face to face with another person, enters into his speaking just as surely as what he experiences in himself.

The artist who has to speak a lyric is not confronting another person. He faces himself alone. His speech must accordingly be so formed that it may become the pure expression of his inner being. The lyric of today can therefore not be spoken in any other way than by letting even the consonants lean over a little in the direction of vowels. (We shall go into this in more detail later.) To speak lyrical poetry aright, you need to know that every consonant carries in it a vowel nuance. L, for example, carries in it an i (ee), which you can see for yourselves from the fact that in many languages where at some time in their development an I occurs in a certain word, in other forms of that word we find an i.⁴ As a matter of fact, all consonants have within them something of the quality of a vowel. And for speaking lyrics it is of the first importance that we should learn to perceive the vowel in each single consonant.

The epic requires a different feeling. (All that I am saying in this connection has reference to recitation or declamation before an audience.) The speaker must feel: When I come to a vowel, I am coming near to man himself; but directly I come to a consonant, it is things I am catching at, things that are outside. If the artist once has this feeling, then it will be possible for the epic to be truly present in his speaking. Epic has to do, not with man's inner life alone, but with the inner life and an imagined outer object. For the theme of the epic is not there; it is only imagined. If we are relating something, it must belong to the past, or in any case cannot be there in front of us; otherwise, there would be no occasion to relate it. The speaker of epic is thus concerned with the human being and the object or theme that exists only in thought.

For the speaker of drama, the ‘object’ of his speaking is present in its full reality, the person he addresses is standing there in front of him.

There then you have the distinguishing characteristics of lyric, epic and drama. They need to be well and carefully noted. I have already in past years spoken of them here and there from different points of view, and have sought to evolve a suitable terminology for distinguishing the different ways of speaking them. What I have given on those earlier occasions—I mean it to be experienced, I mean it to be felt. You must have a clear and accurate feeling for what each kind of poetry demands. Thus, you should feel that to speak lyrical poetry means to speak right out of one's inner being.

The inner being of man is here revealing itself. When man's soul within him is so powerfully affected that it ‘must out’—and this is how it is with the lyric—then what was, to begin with, mere feeling, passes over into a calling aloud; and we have, from the point of view of speech, declamation. One domain, then, of the art of speech is declamation, and it is especially adapted for lyrical poetry. The lyrical element is present of course in every form of poetry; while we are speaking epic or drama, we can often find ourselves in the situation of having to make the transition here and there to the lyrical.

With the speaker of epic, the essential point is that he has before him an object that is not seen but thought, and by means of the magic that lies in his speech he is continually ‘citing’ this object. The artist of the epic is pre-eminently a ‘re-citer’. So here we have recitation. The speaker of the lyric expresses himself, reveals himself; he is a declaimer. The speaker who cites his object, making it present to his audience by the magic of his speech—he is a reciter.

And now in this course of lectures we have opportunity to go further and complete our classification. We come then to the speaker who has before him, not his imagined object that he cites, but present before him in bodily form the object to whom he speaks, with whom he is conversing. And so we reach the third form of speech: conversation.

It is through these three kinds of speech-formation that speaking becomes an art. The last is the one that is most misunderstood. Conversation, as we know all too well, has been dragged right away from the realm of art, and today you will find persons looked up to as past masters in conversation who are less at home in art than they are—shall I say—in diplomacy, or perhaps in the ‘afternoon-tea’ attitude to life. The feeling that conversation is a thing capable of highly artistic development has been completely lost.

Sometimes of course acting ceases to be conversation and becomes monologue. When this happens, drama reaches over into the other domains, into declamation and recitation.

To draw distinctions in this way between different forms of poetry may perhaps seem a little pedantic, but it will help to show that we do really have to create for the teaching of speech something similar to what we have, for example, in the teaching of music. When, for instance, a dialogue is to be put on the stage, it will be necessary to form that dialogue in a way that is right and appropriate to it as ‘conversation’.

I would like now to show you how within speech itself, if we see it truly for what it is, the need for artistic forming emerges. We use in our speaking some thirty-two sounds. Suppose you had learned the sounds, but were not yet able to put them together in words. If you were then to take up Goethe's Faust, the whole book would consist for you of just these thirty-two sounds. For it contains nothing more! And yet, in their combination, these thirty-two sounds make Goethe's Faust.

A great deal is implied in this statement. We have simply these thirty-two sounds; and through the forming and shaping of them, sound by sound, the whole measureless wealth of speech is called into being. But the forming is already there within the sounds themselves, within this whole system of sounds. Let us take an example.

We speak the sound a (ah). What is this sound? A is released from the soul, when the soul is overflowing with wonder. That is how it was to begin with. Wonder, astonishment, liberated from the soul the sound a. Every word that has the sound a has originated in a desire to express wonder; take any word you will, you will never be altogether out, nor need you ever be afraid of being dilettante, if you assume this Take, for instance, the word Band (a band or ribbon). In some way it happened that what the man of an earlier time called Band filled him with wonder, and that is why he brought the a sound into the word. (That the same thing has in another language quite a different name is of no consequence. It means only that the people who spoke that language felt differently related to the object.) Whenever man is particularly astonished, then if he has still some understanding of what it is to be thus filled with wonder (as was the case when language began to be formed), he will bring that wonder or astonishment to expression by means of the sound a. One has only to understand where wonder is in place. You can, for instance, marvel at someone's luxurious Haarwuchs (growth of hair) You can also marvel at the Kahlkopf (bald head) of someone who has lost his Haar. Or again, you can be astounded at the effect of a Haarwasser (hair lotion) which makes the hair grow again. In fact, everything connected with hair can evoke profound admiration and astonishment—so much so that we do not simply write Har, we write the a twice—Haar!

Wherever you meet the sound a, look for the starting- point of the word in an experience of wonder, and you will be carried back to the early days of evolution, when man was first shaping and forming his words. And this forming of words was an activity that worked with far greater power than present-day theories would lead us to suppose.

But now, what does this mean? It means that when a man is filled with wonder at some object or event, he gives himself up to that object or event, he lets himself go. For how is the sound a made? What does it consist in? A requires the whole organism of speech to be opened wide, beginning from the mouth. Man lets his astral body flow out. When he says a, he is really on the point of falling asleep. Only, he stops himself in time. But how often will the feeling of fatigue find expression at once in the sound a! Whenever we utter a, we are letting our astral body out, or beginning to do so. The act of opening out wide—that is what you have in a.

The absolute opposite of a is u (oo). When you say u, then beginning from the mouth you contract the speech organs, wherever possible, before you let the sound go through. The whole speech organism is more closed with u than with any other vowel sound. There then you have the two contrasting opposites: a u. Between a and u lies o. O actually includes within it, in rightly formed speech, the processes of a and the processes of u; o holds together in a kind of harmony the processes of opening out and the processes of closing up.

U signifies that we are in process of waking up, that we are becoming continually more awake than we were. When you say u, it shows that you are feeling moved to wake up in respect of some object that you perceive. When the owl makes himself heard at night, you instinctively exclaim: ‘Uhu!’⁵ You could not find stronger expression for the desire to wake up. The owl makes you want to wake up and be alive to the fact of its presence. And if someone were to fling a little sand at you—we don't of course have sand on our desks now, we use blotting paper—but suppose you were being pelted with sand, then, if you were to give way to your feelings without restraint, you would say ‘uff’. For it is the same whether something or other wakes you up, or you yourself are wanting to wake up. In either case u comes out. The astral is here uniting itself more closely with the etheric and physical bodies. The a is thus more consonantal and the u more vocalic

In some of the German dialects, one can often not discern whether people are saying a or r, for the r becomes with them vocalic and the a consonantal. In the Styrian dialect, for example, it is impossible to know whether someone is saying ‘Bur’ or ‘Bua’.

All the other vowels lie between a and u. Roughly speaking, the o is in the middle, but not quite; it occupies the same position between a and u as in music the fourth does in the octave.

Suppose now we want to express what is contained in O. In O we have the confluence of A and U; it is where waking up and falling asleep meet. O is thus the moment either of falling asleep or of awaking. When the Oriental teacher wanted his pupils to be neither asleep nor awake, but to make for that boundary between sleeping and waking where so much can be experienced, he would direct them to speak the syllable OM. In this way he led them to the life that is between waking and sleeping.

For, anyone who keeps repeating continually the syllable OM will experience what it means to be between the condition of being awake and the condition of being asleep. A teaching like this comes from a time when the speech organism was still understood.

And now let us see how it was when a teacher in the Mysteries wanted to take his pupils further. He would say to himself: The O arises through the U wanting to go to the A and the A at the same time wanting to go to the U. So, after I have taught the pupil how to stand between sleeping and waking in the OM, if I want now to lead him on a step further, then instead of getting him to speak the 0 straight out, I must let the 0 arise in him through his speaking AOUM. Instead of OM, he is now to say AOUM. In this way the pupil creates the OM, brings it to being. He has reached a higher stage. OM with the O separated into A and U gives the required stillness to the more advanced pupil. Whereas the less advanced pupil has to be taken straight to the boundary condition between sleep and waking, the more advanced has to pass from A (falling asleep) to U (waking up), building the transition for himself. Being then between the two, he has within him the moment of experience that holds both.

If we are able to feel how such modes of instruction came about, we can have some idea of what it means to say that in olden times it was by way of art that man came to an instinctive apprehension of the nature of speech. For down into the time of the ancient Greeks, men still had knowledge of how every activity and experience had its place in the world, where it intrinsically belonged.

Think of the Greek gymnastics,—those marvellous gymnastics that were really a complete language in themselves! What are they? How did they evolve? To begin with, there was the realisation that the will lives in the limbs. And the very first thing the will does is to bring man into connection with the earth, so that a relationship of force develops between man's limbs and the earth, and you have: Running In running, man is in connection with the earth. If he now goes a little way into himself, and to the dynamics into which running brings him and the mechanics that establishes a balance between him and the earth's gravitation, adds an inner dynamic, then he goes over into: Leaping. For in leaping we have to develop a mechanics in the legs themselves.

And now suppose to this mechanics that has been developed in the legs, man adds a mechanics that is brought about, not this time merely by letting the earth be active and establishing a balance with it, but by coming also to a state of balance in the horizontal,—the balance already established being in the vertical. Then you have: Wrestling.

Running
Leaping
Wrestling.

In Running, you have Man and Earth; in Leaping, Man and Earth, but with a variation in the part played by man; in Wrestling, Man and the other object.

If now you bring the object still more closely to man, if you give it into his hand, then you have: Throwing the Discus. Observe the progression in dynamics And if then to the dynamics of the heavy body (which is what you have in discus-throwing), you add also the dynamics of direction, you have: Throwing the Spear.

Running
Leaping
Wrestling
Discus-throwing
Spear-throwing.

Such then are these five main exercises of Greek gymnastics; and they are perfectly adapted to the conditions of the cosmos. That was the feeling the Greeks had about a gymnastics that revealed the human being in his entirety.

But men had the very same feeling in those earlier times about the revelation of the human being in speech. Mankind has changed since then; consequently, the use and handling of speech has inevitably also changed.

In the Seventh Scene of my first Mystery Play, where Maria appears with Philia, Astrid and Luna, I have made a first attempt to use language entirely and purely in the way that is right for our time and civilisation. Thought, which is generally lifted out of speech, abstracted from it, is there brought down again into speech.

We will accordingly take tomorrow part of this scene for demonstration, and so make a beginning with the practical side of our work. Frau Dr. Steiner will read from the scene; and then, following on today’s introductory remarks, we will proceed with the First Part of the course—the study of the Forming of Speech.

• 1. The courses of study and training given at the Goetheanum were grouped by Dr. Steiner under various `Sections’, each with its Leader.
• 2. English parallels will readily occur to the reader, such as 'might and main', 'safe and sound', etc., and our use of 'stocks and stones' in another connection.
• 3. The Waldorf School in Stuttgart, founded in 1919 by Emil Molt, was the first of the now numerous Rudolf Steiner Schools where the teaching and education are carried on in accordance with his indications. Dr. Steiner was a constant visitor to the school from the beginning, giving help and advice in every detail of management and method up to the time of his last illness in the winter of 1924-5.
• 4. For example, in German-speaking countries, a boy named Hans may be called ' for short ' either Hansi or Hansl.
• 5. The commoner German word for owl is Eule, but Uhu, the specific name for the eagle-owl, is also used.

My dear Friends,

You will have seen from what was given in yesterday's lecture that when we are considering how we shall form our speech for recitation, we have to make a clear distinction between lyric, epic and drama. For we were able to observe that the vowel element in speech has a special relation to lyrical poetry, and the consonantal to narrative and drama. At the same time we must, as I said, not allow ourselves to forget that every consonant has in it something of the vowel element. It is, in fact, impossible to utter a consonant by itself; there must always be a vowel sounding with it to give it tone, and each consonant has its own individual inclination in this respect. The converse is moreover also true, that in every vowel an accompanying consonantal element may be heard. This will be familiar ground to you; we have spoken of it already.

I want now to draw your attention to an important fact concerning our present-day speech. It is a fact that you will need to keep well in mind if the practical demonstration that Frau Dr. Steiner will presently give is to be really helpful to you in connection with what I shall have to say in the lectures. I mean the following.

We belong, do we not, to the civilised peoples of mankind, and are moreover living in a highly advanced epoch of civilisation. But in this highly advanced epoch of ours, speech has lost connection with its beginnings, with its true origin. The languages of Europe today—with the possible exception of Russian and a few languages less widely spoken, which have not as yet come quite so far away as the rest—the European languages generally are by this time very far removed from their origin, and they are spoken in such a way that the words and even the intonation of the sounds have become nothing more than an external sign for the experiences that originally gave rise to them. I say expressly: a mere external sign. People are not, as a matter of fact, conscious of the ‘sign’ character of their speaking, for they have no idea that speech can ever be anything else than it is in the ordinary speaking of the modern European languages. But if an understanding is to arise again for speech as an art, if the artistic is to be once again alive and active in speech, there must first be the conscious realisation that speech has come away from its true character and nature and needs to be restored to it.

And this it is that I have endeavoured to achieve in my Mystery Plays. In certain passages at any rate, the immediate human experience that is finding its expression in speech has been brought back again into the sounds. The ordinary speaking of today has no longer any connection with the experience to which the speaking refers. But in parts of my Mystery Plays, the attempt has been made to lead back into sound the rhythmic, musical, plastic qualities which are generally found today only in the thought.

There are naturally many different ways in which this can be done; it depends on the task one has in hand. But I would like you now to listen to a part of the Seventh Scene in my first Mystery Play, where the scene is laid in the realm of the spirit. For I have tried there to bring right into the sound what has to be expressed, so that the very sound, if one goes no further, can direct one to the spiritual, can reveal the spiritual. And that is how it was with the old original languages.

The first thing to be borne in mind in regard to this scene was that one had here to do with happenings that are remote from the physical world and reach out towards the realm of the spirit. Hence the keynote of the scene suggests inwardness, takes us to the purely spiritual; this meant that the language had to be vocalic in character. And then there are the clearly marked transitions between the three soul forces,

Philia, Astrid and Luna; these transitions had to be given their place in the treatment of the scene. Philia lives purely in the vocalic-spiritual element; the consonantal appears in her only so far as to remind us that we are concerned with speech and not with song. Astrid builds the bridge between Philia and Luna. In Luna we encounter weight; we feel in her the direction towards the physical plane. Luna's language therefore, while still vocalic, begins to be consonantal.

We have then in this scene a good subject for artistic treatment. A hint of the consonantal element has had to be introduced, but the whole scene lives pre-eminently in the vocalic which leads one away from the physical world and takes one into the realm of the spirit. A situation of this kind can be most valuable for one who wants to find his way to a true forming of speech.

(Frau Dr. Steiner then read from the Seventh Scene of Die Pforte der Einweihung.)

(Das Gebiet des Geistes)

MARIA

Ihr, meine Schwestern, die ihr
So oft mir Helferinnen wart,
Seid mir es auch in dieser Stunde,
Dass ich den Weltenäther
In sich erbeben lasse.
Er soll harmonisch klingen
Und klingend eine Seele
Durchdringen mit Erkenntnis.
Ich kann die Zeichen schauen,
Die uns zur Arbeit lenken.
Es soll sich euer Werk
Mit meinem Werke einen.
Johannes, der Strebende,
Er soll durch unser Schaffen
Zum wahren Sein erhoben werden.
Die Brüder in dem Tempel
Sie hielten Rat,
Wie sie ihn aus den Tiefen
In lichte Höhen führen sollen.
Von uns erwarten sie,
Dass wir in seiner Seele heben
Die Kraft zum Höhenfluge.
Du, meine Philia, so sauge
Des Lichtes klares Wesen
Aus Raumesweiten,
Erfülle dich mit Klangesreiz
Aus schaffender Seelenmacht,
Dass du mir reichen kannst
Die Gaben, die du sammelst
Aus Geistesgründen.
Ich kann sie weben dann
In den erregenden Sphärenreigen.
Und du auch Astrid, meines Geistes
Geliebtes Spiegelbild,
Erzeuge Dunkelkraft
Im fliessenden Licht,
Dass es in Farben scheine.—
Und gliedre Klangeswesenheit;
Dass webender Weltenstoff
Ertönend lebe.
So kann ich Geistesfühlen
Vertrauen suchendem Menschensinn.
Und du, o starke Luna,
Die du befestigt im Innern bist,
Dem Lebensmarke gleich,
Das in des Baumes Mitte wächst,
Vereine mit der Schwestern Gaben
Das Abbild deiner Eigenheit,
Dass Wissens Sicherheit
Dem Seelensucher werde.

PHILIA

Ich will erfüllen mich
Mit klarstemLichtessein
Aus Weltenweiten.
Ich will eratmen mir
Belebenden Klangesstoff
Aus Aetherfernen,
Dass dir, geliebte Schwester,
Das Werk gelingen kann.

ASTRID

Ich will verweben
Erstrahlend Licht
Mit dämpfender Finsternis,
Ich will verdichten
Das Klangesleben.
Es soll erglitzernd klingen
Es soll erklingend glitzern,
Dass du, geliebte Schwester,
Die Seelenstrahlen lenken kannst.

LUNA

Ich will erwärmen Seelenstoff
Und will erhärten Lebensäther.
Sie sollen sich verdichten,
Sie sollen sich erfühlen,
Und in sich selber seiend
Sich schaffend halten,
Dass du, geliebte Schwester,
Der suchenden Menschenseele
Des Wissens Sicherheit erzeugen kannst.

MARIA

Aus Philia's Bereichen
Soll strömen Freudesinn;
Und Nixen Wechselkräfte,
Sie mögen öffnen
Der Seele Reizbarkeit,
Dass der Erweckte
Erleben kann
Der Welten Lust,
Der Welten Weh.—
Aus Astrids Weben
Soll werden Liebelust;
Der Sylphen wehend Leben,
Es soll erregen
Der Seele Opfertrieb,
Dass der Geweihte
Erquicken kann
Die Leidbeladenen,
Die Glück Erflehenden.—
Aus Lunas Kraft
Soll strömen Festigkeit.
Der Feuerwesen Macht,
Sie kann erschaffen
Der Seele Sicherheit;
Auf dass der Wissende
Sich finden kann
Im Seelenweben,
Im Weltenleben.

PHILIA

Ich will erbitten von Weltengeistern,
Dass ihres Wesens Licht
Entzücke Seelensinn,
Und ihrer Worte Klang
Beglücke Geistgehör;
Auf dass sich hebe Der
zu Erweckende Auf Seelenwegen
In Himmelshöhen.

ASTRID

Ich will die Liebesströme,
Die Welt erwarmenden,
Zu Herzen leiten
Dem Geweihten;
Auf dass er bringen
kann Des Himmels Güte
Dem Erdenwirken,
Und Weihestimmung
Den Menschenkindern.

LUNA

Ich will von Urgewalten
Erflehen Mut und Kraft,
Und sie dem Suchenden
In Herzenstiefen legen;
Auf dass Vertrauen
Zum eignen Selbst
Ihn durch das Leben
Geleiten kann.
Er soll sich sicher
In sich dann selber fühlen.
Er soll von Augenblicken
Die reifen Früchte pflücken,
Und Saaten ihnen entlocken
Für Ewigkeiten.

MARIA

Mit euch, ihr Schwestern,
Vereint zu edlem Werk,
Wird mir gelingen,
Was ich ersehne.
Es dringt der Ruf
Des schwer Geprüften
In unsre Lichteswelt.

THE PORTAL OF INITIATION
Seventh Scene
(In the Spirit Realm.)

MARIA

My sisters, who to me
so oft have helpers been,
now at this hour be so once again;
that I may move the cosmic ether
to tremble inwardly,
that it shall music make
and let its harmonies ring forth
to fill a human soul
with knowledge.
I can discern the signs
that point us to the task.
Your work shall now with mine
unite.
Johannes, the earnest seeker,
shall by our deed
be lifted to true being.
The Brothers in the Temple
have counsel held
how they shall bring him
out of the depths
and lead him to the heights.
And they await from us
that we call up within his soul
the power to soar aloft.

Do thou, my Philia, drink in
from widths of space
the essence clear of light.
Fill thee with music's stirring harmonies,
out of the soul's creative power born,
and so reach out to me
the gifts that thou dost gather
from spirit-depths.
These then can I enweave
into the rhythm of the dancing Spheres.

And thou too, Astrid,
of my spirit
beloved reflex,—
in flowing light
let darkness be engendered,
that colours may shine forth.
And member thou the being of sound,
that so the woven texture of the worlds
may become living tones.
Then can I grant
unto the seeking human mind
that he shall feel the spirit.

And thou, strong Luna,
sure and firm within,
as the vigour of life itself,
as the pith in the heart of the tree,—
join to thy sisters’ gifts
the stamp of thine own being,
that certainty of knowledge
may accrue to the seeking soul.

PHILIA

From the wide spaces of the worlds
I will enfill me
with purest being of light.
From ether distances
I will inbreathe
the life-giving power of sound;
that so thy work, dear sister,
may be fulfilled.

ASTRID

The radiant light
will I enweave
with darkening shade.
The flowing life of sound
will I congeal,
till its music flash and sparkle
as the play of glancing light;
that thou, beloved sister,
the rays of soul mayst guide.

LUNA

Soul-substance will I warm.
Life-ether will I forge.
They shall grow fast and firm
and, inly all aware,
be poised in silent being
to work creatively;
that thou, beloved sister,
beget in the seeking soul
the certainty of knowledge.

MARIA

From Philia's realm
shall pour a stream of joy;
the changing play of water-sprites
shall stir the soul
of the awakened one;
that it be quick to feel
the joy of worlds,
the woe of worlds.

From Astrid's weaving shall
the bliss of love be born.
The wafting life of sylphs
shall waken in the soul
the urge to sacrifice;
that, being dedicate,
he quicken may to life
those who are sorrow-laden
and yearning for relief.

Strong Luna's power
firm steadfastness shall give.
The might of fire-beings—
it can beget
assurance in the soul;
that, having knowledge,
he may find himself
in the weaving of human souls,
in the life of worlds.

PHILIA

I will entreat the Spirits of the World
that the light of their being
rejoice the seeing soul,
that the music of their Words
gladden the listening spirit;
that so the awakened one
may rise on paths of soul
to heavenly heights.

ASTRID

The rivers of love
that warm the world,
will I lead to the heart
of the dedicated one;
that he may bring
the bounty of heaven
to earth activity,
the mood of dedication
to the children of men.

LUNA

From ancient Powers primeval
courage and strength will I crave,
and plant them deep in the heart
of the seeking soul;
that self-reliance
his guide may be through life.
From moments of time shall he pluck
the ripened fruits,
and draw from them seeds
for all eternity.

MARIA

United, my sisters, with you
in the noble work,
I shall achieve
my heart's desire.
Into our world of light
resounds e'en now the call
of him who trials severe
hath undergone.¹

(Dr. Steiner): If we want to form speech in such a way that it can be plastic and at the same time also musical, then the first thing necessary is to know how to bring gesture into speech. In the actual voice itself slight indications of gesture can still be heard, but gesture as such has disappeared from speech in more modern times. In dramatic speaking we still use it, but there alone; you will at the most be able to observe little hints of it in other kinds of speaking. There is in fact today quite a chaos of uncertainty regarding the relation of word to gesture. We shall receive striking evidence of this when we pass on from our study of speech formation, and come to consider the art of the stage.

It will help you to a better understanding of this question of gesture if you recall what I said about the gymnastics of the Greeks, at the end of yesterday's lecture. I showed you how their five main gymnastic exercises—Running, Leaping, Wrestling, Discus-throwing, Spear-throwing—are founded upon the connection of man with the cosmos. Starting from this relationship he has to the cosmos, man is in these exercises perpetually forming as it were another relationship, a relationship of gesture; and in gesture the force, the dynamic of the human being himself is present.

Now we shall find that in the fundamental mime movements of the stage we have faint reflections of what came to revelation in these exercises. If therefore we set out to study these reflections of the five exercises of Greek gymnastics, we shall be on the right path for discovering how gesture can come to the help of the word in dramatic art; for there is, in fact, no justifiable gesture for the stage that is not a kind of shadow-picture of some one of the five exercises of Greek gymnastics. That is, however, the other pole. The one pole is speech itself, the forming of speech.

The very word ‘forming’ takes us at once to the plastic quality of speech. The actual visible form has of course disappeared from view, we can no longer see it in the word. It should nevertheless still be there, it should be present in the word intensively. We must therefore begin with the word. And our first question will be: What can speech do? What should it be able to do, when it is raised to the level of art, when it is ‘formed’ ?

Now, there are certain definite capacities, certain definite faculties that speech can and should have. Beginning from the most external aspect of the matter, speech can be effective. We do not as a rule speak merely for the purpose of opening our mouth and emitting a sound; we speak in order that our speaking may accomplish something. Thus we have for our first capacity of speech: it can produce some result, it can be effective.

Then there is also the fact that in sound and word and sentence inner processes of the soul can find their revelation. And so we have what I may call the thoughtful aspect of speech. Besides being effective, speech can be thoughtful, reflective.

1. Effective²
2. Thoughtful

It is easy enough today to study the effectiveness of speech. You have only to go to a political meeting, and you will find people making capital, quite instinctively, out of the effectiveness of speech. On the other hand, the study of thoughtfulness in speech presents considerable difficulty, since for the most part people talk for the sake of talking, not in order to express thoughts at all. It's the proper thing to do; of course we must talk! We are even brought up to regard this kind of talking as part of our equipment for social life. It is nevertheless essential, if you want to develop a right forming of speech, to recognise that speech can be thoughtful,—I should rather say, can reveal the thoughtful in man.

A further thing that speech can express is what we might call placing oneself tentatively into connection with the external world—proving, feeling, touching. It comes to expression in the question,—sometimes also in the wish. We lead our soul out into the world that is around us, but are all the time a little uncertain how we are going to enter it. This is a mood that can manifest in speech; one could call it a feeling forward, a cautious groping forward in face of whatever hindrances may be in the way.

3. A cautious feeling forward in face of hindrances.

The fourth thing to be observed is that speech can reveal antipathy to that which is approaching us. We experience a relation of antipathy to what is confronting us, and we bring the resultant feeling to expression in speech, either for the simple purpose of showing our antipathy, or with intent to criticise, or even perhaps in order to make a scene. And that gives a special nuance to the forming of our speech. So I will call the fourth capacity of speech: giving vent to antipathy.

4. Giving vent to antipathy.

Again, speech can declare or affirm sympathy, the opposite of the fourth.

5. Expressing sympathy.

And there is still a sixth thing that speech can reveal—namely, that we are drawing back into ourselves, withdrawing from our environment.

6. Drawing back on to one's own ground.

These are the six revelations of speech, which were known in the Greek Mysteries as the six shades or variations in the forming of speech, and were in those times the basis of all instruction in speech. Besides these, there are no others. Everything man can reveal in speech can be classed under e of these six. And if we want to raise our speaking to consciousness, we should try to study how these shades of feeling come to expression in speech.

It will, however, answer our purpose best if we do not at once proceed to a study of the spoken word, but first prepare the ground by a study of gesture, and then afterwards link the word on to the gesture. Proceeding in this way, we shall acquire a right feeling for the forming of speech, whereas by the reverse method, conclusions of an arbitrary nature would be constantly suggesting themselves—supposing, I mean, we were to start with the word (where the gesture has only now disappeared from view), with the idea of passing on thence to gesture. If, however, having recognised that the genius of speech works in these six ways, we then go on to study this genius of speech in gesture, we shall find that the way lies clear before us to go back afterwards to the word.

Suppose now we want to feel the ‘effective’ word in its right nuance. We can best express the feeling with a gesture of pointing. We have thus, first of all, the pointing gesture.

1. Effective: Pointing.

An interesting study can be made of the pointing gesture, by observing its use among the different peoples. England will be no place for such a study, for there no one cares to use gesture—not this gesture anyway; in England people speak with their hands in their pockets. Italy is the very best place in all Europe to study the pointing gesture in its connection with the word.

The ‘thoughtful’ quality in speech will find expression in e gesture or other of holding on to oneself, touching oneself. A man who is engaged in deep concentration will, for example, do this (finger on forehead), or perhaps this (finger on nose). Any such gesture will belong to a speaking that reveals thoughtfulness or reflection. You will even sometimes find this position (arms akimbo), and in some countries—I have come across it before now—when a person is contemplating giving another fellow a box on the ear, he will hold firmly on to himself like this (arms pressed against the side). And so we may say: Holding on to oneself is here the corresponding gesture.³

2. Thoughtful: Holding on to oneself.

The ‘feeling forward in face of hindrances’ is something that can be experienced at once in gesture. You have only to ask yourself: What do I find myself doing, when I want to feel my way amid hindrances? I grope forward with my arms and hands in a sort of wavy, rolling movement.

3. Cautiously feeling one's way in face of hindrances: A rolling movement forward with arms and hands.

‘Antipathy’—no difficulty in feeling at once the gesture for this: a movement of rejection, flinging something away, ‘shaking the dust off one's feet’. If one is already a half-civilised human being, one makes the gesture so (slight movement of rejection with the hand); if one is uncivilised, then so (powerful movement with hand and foot).

4. Antipathy: Flinging out a limb.

To express ‘sympathy’ we make, or at least begin to make, a gesture that intimates we would like to touch or gently stroke the object of our sympathy. A hint of this at any rate must be implicit in the gesture. Thus, to assure another person of our sympathy, we reach out with our arm to touch him.

5. Sympathy: Putting out a hand or arm to touch the object of our sympathy.

And now for the ‘drawing back on to one's own ground', the withdrawal into oneself. This comes to expression in gesture when, for instance, we hold our arm first close to our body, and then thrust it out a little,—not quite in a horizontal direction, but slanting a little forward.

6. Drawing back on to one's own ground: Slanting a limb away from the body.

You will find it a good exercise to take what I have written here in the first column (see page 60), and feel each separate attribute of speech in the corresponding gesture that is given in the second column. For there is a natural and elementary connection between them. And to feel these connections is far more important for a right forming of speech than to undertake a systematic study of the holding of the breath, the position of the diaphragm, nasal resonance, and so on; that will all come of itself if we but live in the speech, beginning our study of it with a study of gesture in all its variations. If you once see clearly for yourselves that any particular one of these gestures in the second column has inherent within it the corresponding capacity of speech in the first column, then you will be rightly prepared for passing on to the artistic forming of the word, or of the sentence. And so now, having studied in each gesture the special nuance of soul that comes to expression in it, we must go on to consider how gesture can be led back again to the word.

If we have experienced how the gesture of ‘pointing’ reveals a condition of consciously directed activity in the soul, then that leads us on to perceive the connection between this pointing gesture and what I may call the incisive word, the forcible, decided way of speaking, of which we are aware that it is being powerfully impelled forward into the outgoing breath and the speaker's inner force is being driven into penetrating the word with a kind of metallic quality.

1. Incisive.

If, on the other hand, our word is to express what is inherent in the gesture of ‘holding on to oneself’, touching oneself, the gesture that reveals thoughtfulness, then it will have to be spoken with full tone. No question here of the word being thrust out and given a sharp, metallic ring! Rather shall we have to give to each vowel and each consonant the fullest tone of which it is capable: Und es wallet and woget and brauset and zischt.⁴ There you have in each single vowel and consonant just as much tone as it can receive. When the sounds are uttered in this way to the full, then that always imbues the speaking with a reflective, thoughtful quality, giving it a mood that can be studied in all its variety in the gesture of holding on to oneself.

2. Full-toned.

The ‘cautious feeling forward in face of hindrances’, that is inherent in the gesture of a rolling, undulating movement with arms and hands—especially so (with the hands raised, palm-upwards)—comes to expression in speech when the voice trembles, or vibrates. It is helpful for the speaker if the poet uses here words that have as many r sounds as possible; for with r, the voice does naturally tremble.

So we have now three ways of forming speech: we can form it so that it becomes sharp, decided, or we can give fulness of tone to the sounds, or we can form it so that the sounds vibrate.

3. Trembling, or vibrating.

‘You tell me, I must reach that goal. But can I do it ?’ (the ‘can’ vibrating a little). ‘Can I do it ?’ You will feel the connection at once.

And now, when we come to antipathy, repudiation, where the gesture consists in flinging out the limbs, the word has to become hard. We must be able to feel its hardness. ‘I am busy. I don't want you here. Go away!’ There you have the word that is hard, spoken also in immediate connection with the flinging out of the hand.

4. Hard.

On account of this intimate connection between word and gesture, it is an excellent plan, if one wants to prepare oneself for recitation or for dramatic speaking, to begin by making a study of the whole scene in gesture alone, going right through it silently, while it is recited by someone else.

And now for the gesture of reaching out to touch the person or object. This gesture need not always be a declaration of sympathy; we can use it on the stage when we are describing something and are anxious to picture it accurately to the other person. It is thus also the gesture for description. And with this gesture, even if no human relationship is concerned, but all the more if a human relationship does enter in, the voice becomes soft and gentle. ‘And so you are bringing me this little child! I am always glad to see him. Come

5. Gentle.

Lastly, ‘drawing back on to one's own ground’, with the gesture of thrusting an arm or leg away from the body. If this gesture becomes real to us, we see at once that the corresponding word will be abrupt. ‘You think I ought to do my work; I want to go for a walk.’

6. Abrupt.

In the time of the ancient Mysteries, when men could still discern what was of real importance in life, this division of speech into its six modes or capacities was recognised. Later, when in every sphere of life people looked more to externalities, a further one was inserted after the second. The addition was somewhat arbitrary, for it was not altogether new, being really already contained in the ‘thoughtfulness’. We might describe it as the expression of a kind of ‘inability to come to a decision’—a particular nuance, as you see, of thoughtfulness or reflection. The gesture is that of holding the limbs quite still. And the corresponding formation of the word is that the words are spoken slowly. ‘Things have come to a bad pass; what am I to do?’—the ‘what am I to do?’ pronounced deliberately, with the words long drawn out. That gives the right nuance.

What I am anxious to impress upon you particularly is that if we are setting out to study the forming of words and sentences, we must take our start from gesture, and then go back to speech and see what qualities—fulness, vibration, and so forth—rightly belong to the speaking of word and sentence.

For it is essential that we should get to know speech objectively, that we should make ourselves acquainted with the activity of the genius of speech. We can only do this by looking first at gesture and then following gesture right into the intoning of the single sounds; but this will come more easily if we have accustomed ourselves first to following up gesture into the intonation of the words, in the way I have been showing you. The manner of intoning the word must of necessity be found in the moment of speaking; the intoning of single sounds has to become a matter of habit. When, for example, a pupil is preparing a particular scene in a play, he should not really have to concern himself with the single sounds. The intoning of sounds must be taken as a separate study by itself. And one can literally follow the gesture and see it slip into the sound and disappear within.

Think of the musical intoning that is produced by wind instruments. Say you blow a trumpet. The air is set moving and you feel quite clearly : There is gesture in that moving air! You have only to imagine that the moving air inside the trumpet were to freeze a little, first becoming fluid and then solid, and you would see a beautiful gesture drawn there for you in the frozen air. Wonderful gestures would come to view. When we are listening to wind instruments, we are hearing gestures; we hear them quite plainly. In other words, we perceive how the gesture slips into the blowing of the instrument.

But now we have among our consonants some that can most decidedly be described as ‘blown’ or ‘breath’ sounds, which goes to show that the human voice is in principle a trumpet, although Nature has mercifully mitigated its force a little,—for when the human organ emits a deep sound like a trumpet, it begins to be rather unpleasant. We have nevertheless sounds which point unmistakably to the trumpet ature, the wind instrument nature, of the human voice. These are the sounds: h, ch (as in ‘loch'), j (as y ‘yacht'), sch (sh), s, f, w (v). And they are all of them sounds in which, as one listens to them, one can still hear the gesture.

On the other hand, there are sounds where the gesture disappears into the tone in such a way that one feels a need, not merely to hear but to see what the sound would convey. A good example is d, where you want also to see that the finger is there, pointing.⁵ These are the ‘impact’ or ‘thrust’ sounds; and with them you want, as it were, to get away from hearing, and fancy that you can see the sound. Well-defined sounds of impact are: d, t, b, p, g, k, m, n.

Then we have a sound where we can hardly say the gesture has ‘disappeared’ in the sound, for it is still perceptible. I mean r, the vibrating sound.

Again, we have a sound which gives you the feeling: how lovely it would be to become that sound! This is l, the wave sound. You swim in the element of life when you have the true, genuine feeling of l.

The disappearance of the gesture into these sounds is a thing that can definitely be felt. Take first the ‘blown' sounds. The experience one has with these is essentially an experience of tone. Listen to them. The gesture has completely disappeared within the sound, but you can hear it; yes, you hear the gesture. With the sounds of impact, one would somehow like to fancy one can see them. And in a sense that is so; in one's imagination one sees these sounds.

The vibrating sound r is felt; and a keenly sensitive person will feel the r in his arms and hands. If, while someone is pronouncing r and giving it its full value, you are obliged to hold your hands and arms quite still, it will be enough to make them itch. An itching of this kind is nothing else than the normal reaction of a sensitive person to the utterance—and especially to the frequently repeated utterance—of the sound r. R, then, is felt, in arms and hands.

L on the other hand will normally be felt in the legs. It is an actual fact that when someone is saying l, you feel it in your legs. Thus, l too is felt, but now in legs and feet.

Blown Sounds: h, ch, j, sch, s, f, w: We hear the intoning of the sound.
Impact Sounds: d, t, b, p, g, k, m, n: We see the sound. Vibrating Sound: r: We feel the sound in arms and hands
Wave Sound: l: We feel the sound in legs and feet.

As we saw, in the case of the ‘blown’ sounds, which more than any others become objective for man, the gesture has so completely disappeared within, that we want only to hear the sound. Test this for yourselves with some poet who has a fine feeling for sound. When he wants to express something that is entirely detached from man, you will find these sounds constantly occurring; quite instinctively, he makes:use of blown or breath sounds. But suppose he wants to describe how man is taking part in it all—butting in, perhaps defending himself, beating, laying about him. Then you will find the sounds of impact frequently turning up. Or again, if some passage in the poem is intended to stir your feelings, if in the very hearing of it you are to be deeply moved, then at the appropriate place you will find r or l. Thus, in the case of all sounds other than blown sounds we are referred perforce to man and his gestures. With the blown sounds there is no need for your attention to be drawn to man as he is in gesture, since the gesture has here completely disappeared into the sound, it is there within. Studying in this way the various kinds of sounds, we see again how gesture disappears into speech.

We have all this time been approaching a profound truth that we can receive from the Mysteries concerning speech, and that we shall do well to inscribe in our hearts. It has not been handed down as a tradition, for it was never explicitly stated; it comes to us none the less as a heritage from the time of the Mysteries. It is a truth upon which we should meditate deeply and often, if we are seriously wanting to practise the art of speech,—and then meditate also upon all that will reveal itself further as a result of the meditation. In gesture lives the human being; there, in the gesture, is man himself. The gesture disappears into the speaking. When the word is intoned, then in the word man appears again, gesture-making man. When man speaks, we find in his speaking the whole human being—that is, if he knows how to form his speaking. Let us then receive, as a heritage from those times when speech was still part of the content of the Mysteries, this truth: Man who has disappeared in the gesture, rises again in the spoken word.

The art of the stage, that employs gesture, does not let man altogether disappear from the gesture. Neither does it let him wholly ‘rise again’ in the word. And this is what makes a dramatic performance so fascinating. For since man does not altogether disappear in the gesture (for the actor stands there before you as man in the gesture), nor yet fully rise again in the word, a possibility is created for the onlooker to take a share in the experience. He has to add in his fancy, in his own enjoyment of the drama, what is not yet fully present in the word that is spoken on the stage. So there you have—as it were, ready to hand—a situation that constitutes an essential element in the art of drama.

To-morrow, at the same hour, we will continue.

• 1. An apology is perhaps due for giving here a new rendering instead of that in the published translation. In cases where translation presents peculiar difficulties, alternative renderings may sometimes be helpful. The student will realise from what is said in the lecture that the advice given in the Translator's Note in regard to German Readings applies here a fortiori.
• 2. Where words are indented in this way in the center of the page, it is to indicate that they were written by the lecturer on the blackboard.
• 3. ‘I sat me down on a stone, put knee over knee and set my elbow thereon. Chin and cheek I nestled in my palm and narrowly I considered in what wise a man should live in this world.’ From Songs and Sayings of Walther von der Vogelweide, Minnesaenger, englished by Frank Betts.
• 4. Dr. Steiner explains elsewhere that when using this line from Schiller's Der Taucher with a therapeutic or educational end in view, he purposely changes ‘siedet’ into ‘woget’.
• 5. See Lectures II and III in Eurhythmy as Visible Speech.

My dear Friends,

We have learned to see how speech comes originally from the artistic in man—the primitive artistic, but by no means on that account inferior in quality—and that from the beginning there has lived in speech both a musical and a plastic element. We have moreover seen how man's thought life and man's life of feeling lived in his speaking. Bearing this in mind, it will now be our task to try to form a true idea of the art of speech as it is today. Let us then ask ourselves: How do we speak? Assuming we are interested in artistically formed speech, what do we take as our standard?

As a matter of fact, life as it is lived today provides us with no true standard; it is indeed sadly lacking altogether in artistic standards. Are there not many people today who enjoy poetry very much and yet have no knowledge of what a poem is? They take their poetry as if it were prose, looking at the content and having often not the remotest understanding for its artistic form. For them, the artistic quality in the poetry might simply not be there at all. And so, since in the matter of speech we must needs take our start from what can be known and experienced by people at large—after all it is they for whom art is in the first place produced—we shall have to take our start from prose. For notwithstanding the advanced age of civilisation in which we live, it is in accordance with the standards of prose that speech is adjudged, even when people profess to be judging it from an artistic point of view. And these standards have not arisen out of artistic feeling; they have gradually taken shape and simply been accepted as conventions.

How often one hears people complain today if someone, out of artistic necessity, reads or recites in accordance with the verse, and not in accordance with the syntax! Following the orthodox prose standards, he should carry right on from one line of verse into the next, and objection is raised if he does not do this, but obeys the verse instead of the grammar. In this connection a curious anomaly has crept into the literature of today. The younger poets have an overpowering desire by some means or other to get back to style; and right in the middle of a sentence which runs on, necessarily and naturally, into the following lines, they will introduce a rhyme in such a way that the rhyme breaks rudely into the grammatical sequence of the sentence. Now, this is certainly not quite the way to achieve style! Nevertheless, where the spiritual life has become what it is today and all feeling for style has been lost, one can well understand how these poets feel impelled purposely to insert rhyme just where it can strike a rude blow at the grammar And then the poor reciter is obliged not to swallow the rhyme but to give it its place and value in his recitation, and in doing so he too of course has to play havoc with the composition of the sentence. There is, in fact, a regular battle being waged in our day between art and taste, and we must be ready to bear our part in it, particularly in the realm of speech.

In a time when men still had a feeling for art and for style, there was even for prose what, at all events, resembled art, namely rhetoric—or, as it was often called, eloquence. It has survived, along with many another antiquated curiosity, in some of our universities. The universities, at any rate the older ones, have still continued to appoint Professors of Eloquence. There was one, for example, in Berlin, who was quite a famous man. He was appointed to teach eloquence. The public, however, and consequently the University, had no use for lectures on eloquence. In their view, all that is necessary is for people to open their mouths and speak, just as it comes; no need of any teaching! And so it came about that most people were quite unaware that they had in the University a highly distinguished Professor of Eloquence. He lectured on Grecian Archaeology, and he gave excellent lectures. He had not, however, been appointed for that at all, he had been appointed Professor of Eloquence, for which there was no demand, so sadly out of tune with the age is anything that has to do with the real forming of speech.

The proper aim and purpose of prose is to bring back thought into speech. For thought has become quite detached from speech.

Now the thoughts men have today are, without exception, thoughts that have to do with the head. For to what do they refer? Solely to things that are material. The religious bodies, having no desire to be connected with material things, have for a long time, and especially the Protestants, been making great efforts to exclude thought altogether, in theory anyway, and instead to fall back on feeling—to have, that is, what they call faith, which amounts for them to the same thing. We have no occasion to go further into that now, but it is important for us to realise that the thoughts that are in the world today are material as regards their content. Even men who believe they recognise and acknowledge the spiritual—unless they take their stand right within the life of the spirit, their thoughts too are concerned with what is material and are the product of the head alone.

And now you must allow me at this point to make use of a picture, although the picture is meant to be taken seriously and even quite exactly. In a lecture on natural science it would not of course be permissible to describe the human being in the way I shall now be doing.

Man's head is round, at all events in its inherent tendency; and in its roundness it forms a picture of the universe, the universe, that is, as it presents itself to immediate observation in its material aspect. Thoughts that are spiritual can never originate in the head; they can only spring from the whole human being. And man as a whole is not round; for in man as a whole the roundness has been metamorphosed so that he has an altogether different form. The moment it is a question of leaving the purely material, as for example in the forming of speech, we have to look in the direction of that in man which is not round. We did this yesterday, when we gave our attention to gesture, which is something that least of all can be carried out by the head. For it is only a few people who can, for example, move their ears at will; and such gestures as these do not anyway come into consideration here. The head is indeed, and with good reason, gestureless; only in look and in play of countenance may it be said to have a last relic, an indication merely, of gesture.

We were speaking yesterday of many things that need to be brought into speech, and these all have their origin, not in the head, but in the whole of the rest of man. So it comes to this: what man experiences in the rest of his being must flow up into the head. This is what I meant when I said that after we have studied a passage in gesture, studied it first, that is, in gesture alone, the gesture has then to flow into the word, has to be lifted up into the spoken word.

Prose, however, having been restricted to the head, has almost entirely lost gesture; prose can be declaimed with complete absence of gesture. Or rather, not declaimed; one merely talks prose—prosaically.

What does this imply? That in prose, as we have it today, there is a tendency to lose style altogether and replace it with a mere pointing of certain words. For it is the business of prose to state or tell something quite precisely. And since what has to be told has been acquired by means of the head, that is to say, by means of the roundness that imitates the apparent roundness of the universe, it has in itself no form. Our thoughts, in so far as they move in prose, are chaotically jumbled together. If it were not so, we would not have in our time the deplorable spectacle of the sciences working alongside one another but unconnected, and of the specialisation that goes on in each separate branch of knowledge. Why, today one can be reputed a great anatomist and have no understanding whatever for the soul. In reality that is simply not possible. In reality one can neither know the soul without some understanding of anatomy, nor know anatomy without some understanding of the soul. And yet it would appear that in our day such a thing is possible! This has come about because the generally accepted form of expression for prose consists in placing thoughts side by side and giving to each its own particular point and emphasis. Style, however, requires continuity of thought. Anyone setting out to write an essay and to write it in style, ought already to have his last sentence within the first. He should in fact pay even more attention to the last than to the first. And while he is writing his second sentence, he should have in mind the last but one. Only when he comes to the middle of his essay can he allow himself to concentrate on one sentence alone. If an author has a true feeling for style in prose, he will have the whole essay before him as he writes.

Ask a present-day botanist whether he knows, when he begins to write, what his last sentence is going to be! All feeling for style in the formulation of ideas has completely disappeared. The prose writing of today is based on emphasis and pointed expression, not at all on a feeling for style. And so, if prose is taken as the model upon which people form their estimation of speech, it means that the objections put forward against the stylists are made—and even consciously made—without any feeling for style.

What unbelievable expressions one hears used today! I have repeatedly heard some quite cultured person say, for example, in praise of a beautiful pear: ‘It looks like wax!’ Yes, my dear friends, that single remark can show you what a complete lack there is today, not merely of any feeling for art in speech, but a complete lack even of any possibility of acquiring such a thing. Anyone who has the smallest feeling for style will know of course that it is possible for a wax pear to be beautiful through its resemblance to the real pear, but not vice versa. You have, however, an example of the very same fallacy when you find people comparing what is spoken in verse with something expressed in prose. In dealing with the modern sort of prose we are often painfully compelled to dispense with style entirely—the only alternative being to create a prose of our own.

This is a matter that calls for serious attention. Prose exists for communication; and we have the task to see how prose can still fulfil its purpose when we have consciously restored style to those elements in it that are tending to lose style altogether.

What is it must enter into our speaking when we are telling something? The reason our prose has become styleless is of course that it sets out merely to tell and nothing more. That has been the tendency all through. Prose has always tended to get away from art; it is a cultural activity of the head—which is as much as to say, a cultural activity totally lacking in art. What then must narration try to do, in what direction must it turn if it wants still to fulfil its part as narration, and at the same time evince an artistic quality?

For narrating we make use of the senses and the understanding, which belong to the head. Consequently prose has perforce to express itself in such form as the head can provide. It should, however, also be continually making the effort to reach out with what has been perceived by the head and let it take hold of the arms, and more especially of the legs. Then in the rendering of epic (and epic exists to tell and narrate), the sort of pointed style that belongs to the head becomes modified by the attempt to seize hold of the legs—no occasion of course to do so literally, with brute force!

And this is exactly what has happened in the hexameter,¹ and with marvellous success. For what is the hexameter? The distinguishing feature of it is that, having set out to be the verse for communication and narrative, it seizes upon the legs and brings their rhythm into the verse. Not without reason do we speak of the `feet’ in a line of verse. And you will have no true experience of the hexameter until you can feel that besides speaking it, you can also step it. For you can certainly do so. You set out to narrate something; that is, you want to express, to reveal in your speech what I named yesterday the `thoughtful’. First of all, you must see to it that you do really start from this thoughtful element in speech. You stand still, resting your weight on one foot, and while you are standing there you speak—slowly, and with full tone. You take two steps, and glide rapidly over the speaking in these two steps. Then the time has come round again to stand still, because the narrative requires to be thought. Then once more you take two steps.

It can, you see, be easily done; and when you have carried it out for a whole line of verse, you have walked the hexameter. It is there in your stepping in its true form: plant the foot down, o, two steps, e, e; o, e, e; o, e, e; o, e, e. You have taken your stepping into your speaking; the form of your stepping is in your speaking.

Take the line:

Singe, unsterbliche Seele, der sÃündigen Menschen Erlösung.
(Sing, O immortal soul, of sinful mankind the redemption.)

or again, this one:

Singe, O Muse, vom Zome mir des Peleiden Achilleus.
(Sing now to me, O Muse, of the wrath of the godlike Achilles.)

and so on.

As you can see, the whole man goes over into what is produced by the head.

When Goethe came to feel the force of this metre in the epics of Homer, he was moved to revive the use of it for narrative poetry. And he did so in his Hermann and Dorothea, where he was wanting to write an epic. He soon began to feel, however, while at work on the poem, that the hexameter does not really lend itself to the expression of modern themes, since these have become quite prosaic. And so Goethe did not after all entirely succeed in clothing the rather provincial contemporary epic—for that is what Hermann and Dorothea is in respect of its theme—in such noble forms as should lift it on to quite another level, while at the same time satisfying the taste of an uncultured public. Yet he did give them in this poem a genuine epic, even while treating the theme in such a way as to delight their Philistine hearts. In truth, a task which none but a great poet could achieve!

Goethe also tried employing the hexameter for a theme that had in the very shaping of its content a spiritual quality. This was in his Achilleis. And that is why the poem, though no more than a fragment, rings true, artistically true, ‘style’ true. We will now listen to the recitation of a passage from Goethe's Achilleis.

(Frau Dr. Steiner): Achilleis, Book I. Achilles is standing before his tent, watching the slow collapse of the funeral pyre upon which the remains of Hector have been consumed. He begins a conversation with his friend Antilochos, in course of which he prophesies his own approaching death.

Hoch zu Flammen entbrannte die mächtige Lohe noch einmal,
Strebend gegen den Himmel, und Ilios' Mauern erschienen
Rot durch die finstere Nacht; der aufgeschichteten Waldung
Ungeheures Gerüst, zusammenstürzend, erregte
Mächtige Glut zuletzt. Da senkten sich Hektors Gebeine
Nieder, und Asche lag der edelste Troer am Boden.

Nun erhob sich Achilleus vom Sitz vor seinem Gezelte,
Wo er die Stunden durchwachte, die nächtlichen, schaute der Flammen
Fernes schreckliches Spiel und des wechselnden Feuers Bewegung,
Ohne die Augen zu wenden von Pergamos' rötlicher Feste.
Tief im Herzen empfand er den Hass noch gegen den Toten,
Der ihm den Freund erschlug und der nun bestattet dahinsank.

Aber als nun die Wut nachliess des fressenden Feuers
Allgemach, und zugleich mit Rosenfingern die Göttin
Schmückete Land und Meer, dass der Flammen Schrecknisse bleichten,
Wandte sich tief bewegt und sanft der grosse Pelide
Gegen Antilochos hin und sprach die gewichtigen Worte:
‘So wird kommen der Tag, da bald von Ilios’ Trümmern
Rauch und Qualm sich erhebt, von thrakischen Lüftengetrieben,
Idas langes Gebirg und Gargaros' Höhe verdunkelt:
Aber ich werd' ihn nicht sehen. Die Völkerweckerin Eos
Fand mich Patroklos' Gebein zusammenlesend; sie findet
Hektors Brüder anjetzt in gleichem frommen Geschäfte:
Und dich mag sie auch bald, mein trauter Antilochos, finden,
Dass du den leichten Rest des Freundes jammernd bestattest.
Soll dies also nun sein, wie mir es die Götter entbieten,
Sei es ! Gedenken wir nur des Nötigen, was noch zu tun ist.
Denn mich soll, vereint mit meinem Freunde Patroklos,
Ehren ein herrlicher Hügel, am hohen Gestade des Meeres
Aufgerichtet, den Völkern und künftigen Zeiten ein Denkmal.
Fleissig haben mir schon die rüstigen Myrmidonen
Rings umgraben den Raum, die Erde warfen sie einwärts,
Gleichsam schützenden Wall aufführend gegen des Feindes
Andrang. Also umgrenzten den weiten Raum sie geschäftig.
Aber wachsen soll mir das Werk! Ich eile, die Scharen
Aufzurufen, die mir noch Erde mit Erde zu häufen
Willig sind, und so vielleicht befördr' ich die Hälfte.
Euer sei die Vollendung, wenn bald mich die Urne gefassthat!’

Also sprach er und ging und schritt durch die Reihe der Zelte,
Winkend jenem und diesem und rufend andre zusammen.
Alle, sogleich nun erregt, ergriffen das starke Geräte,
Schaufel und Hacke, mit Lust, dass der Klang des Erzes ertönte,
Auch den gewaltigen Pfahl, den steinbewegenden Hebel.
Und so zogen sie fort, gedrängt aus dem Lager ergossen,
Aufwärts den sanften Pfad, und schweigend eilte die Menge.
Wie wenn, zum Ueberfall gerüstet, nächtlich die Auswahl
Stille ziehet des Heers, mit leisen Tritten die Reihe
Wandelt und jeder die Schritte misst und jeder den Atem
Anhält, in feindliche Stadt, die schlechtbewachte, zu dringen:
Also zogen auch sie, und aller tätige Stille
Ehrte das ernste Geschäft und ihres Königes Schmerzen.

Als sie aber den Rücken des wellenbespületen Hügels
Bald erreichten und nun des Meeres Weite sich auftat,
Blickte freundlich Eos sie an aus der heiligen Frühe
Fernem Nebelgewölk, und jedem erquickte das Herz sie.
Alle stürzten sogleich dem Graben zu, gierig der Arbeit,
Rissen in Schollen auf den lange betretenen Boden,
Warfen schaufelnd ihn fort; ihn trugen andre mit Körben
Aufwärts; in Helm und Schild einfüllen sah man die einen,
Und der Zipfel des Kleids war anderen statt des Gefässes.

Jetzt eröffneten heftig des Himmels Pforte die Horen,
Und das wilde Gespann des Helios, brausend erhob sich's.
Rasch erleuchtet' er gleich die frommen Aethiopen,
Welche die äussersten wohnen von allen Völkern der Erde.
Schüttelnd bald die glühenden Locken, entstieg er des Ida
Wäldern, um klagenden Troern, um rüst'gen Achaiern zu leuchten.

Aber die Horen indes, zum Aether strebend, erreichten
Zeus Kronions heiliges Haus, das sie ewig begrüssen.
Und sie traten hinein; da begegnete ihnen Hephaistos,
Eilig hinkend, und sprach auffordernde Worte zu ihnen:
‘Trügliche! Glücklichen schnelle, den Harrenden langsame, hört mich!
Diesen Saal erbaut' ich, dem Willen des Vaters gehorsam,
Nach dem göttlichen Mass des herrlichsten Musengesanges;
Sparte nicht Gold und Silber noch Erz, und bleiches Metall nicht.
Und so wie ich's vollendet, vollkommen stehet das Werk noch,
Ungekränkt von der Zeit; denn hier ergreift es der Rost nicht,
Noch erreicht es der Staub, des irdischen Wandrers Gefährte.
Alles hab' ich getan, was irgend schaffende Kunst kann.
Unerschütterlich ruht die hohe Decke des Hauses,
Und zum Schritte ladet der glatte Boden den Fuss ein.
Jedem Herrscher folget sein Thron, wohin er gebietet,
Wie dem Jäger der Hund, und goldene wandelnde Knaben
Schuf ich, welche Kronion, den kommenden, unterstützen,
Wie ich mir eherne Mädchen erschuf. Doch alles ist leblos!
Euch allein ist gegeben, den Charitinnen und euch nur,
Ueber das tote Gebild des Lebens Reize zu streuen.
Auf denn! sparet mir nichts und giesst aus dem heiligen Salbhorn
Liebreiz herrlich umher, damit ich mich freue des Werkes,
Und die Götter entzückt so fort mich preisen wie anfangs!’
Und sie lächelten sanft, die beweglichen, nickten dem Alten
Freundlich und gossen umher verschwenderisch Leben und Licht aus...

ACHILLEID

by Goethe

High into flames burst forth once more the great conflagration,
Ere it heavenwards died, and through the gathering darkness
Red loomed Ilios' walls. Of wood from the forest, the scaffold,
Piled up in mighty heaps, excited, crashing together,
Glow of the fiercest at last. Then sank down the body of Hector,
And as mere ash on the ground there lay the noblest of Trojans.

Then from his seat Achilles rose before the encampment,
Where through the nightly hours he watched, and looked at the distant,
Terrible play of the flames and the fire's continual changes,
Not once turning his eyes from Pergamos' reddening fortress.
Deep in his heart tow'rds the dead still raged the bitterest hatred,
Him who had smitten his friend, and there at last was disposed of.
When, however, the rage of the flames devouring diminished,
Growing less by degrees, and the rose-fingered goddess, adorning
Land and sea, arose, of the flames thus paling the terrors,
Deeply moved and softened, then turned the great son of Peleus
To Antilochos round, and spoke words of weighty expression:
' Soon will arrive the day when thus from Ilios' ruins
Smoke and vapour shall rise, and, driven by Thracian breezes,
Ida's long mountain range and Gargaros' summit shall darken.
Yet shall I not see it. For Eos, who wakens the nations,
Found me collecting Patroclos' remains, as now she is finding
Hector's brothers engaged in similar pious employment,
And may soon as well, my trusted Antilochos, find thee,
Deep immersed in grief, of thy friend the light relics interring.
Must, then, this be now, as already the gods have directed,
Then let it be! But now, let us think what to do may be needful.
For there shall for me, with my friend Patroclos united,
Rise to honour a mound, on the highest bank of the seashore,
Grandly built, a memento for all future people and ages.
Busily have already the active Myrmidons dug me
Round all the space a trench, and thrown the earth from it inwards,
Forming against the attack of our foes at the same time a rampart:
Thus have they the wide space with diligent labour encircled.
Yet must, however, the work increase. I hasten to summon
Hither the crowds, who earth on earth to heap up are willing:
Thus, perchance, the half of the mound to build I may manage:
Thine must be its completion, when soon the urn shall inclose me.’²

(From the translation by Alexander Rogers.)

(Dr. Steiner): When we listen to the hexameter we know at once that some event is being narrated; and narrative presupposes that under its stimulus we see what it is telling us. We listen: foot firmly planted on the ground. We receive from the narrative all the feelings that arise in us : the feeling of life, of movement—the feeling of the stepping feet whereby we free ourselves from the earth's gravity. If we feel all this as we listen, that means that we understand the hexameter.

Let us now study the reverse process. For we can equally well start from the feeling, from the soul within, and then, after having lived in unclear feeling, lift ourselves up to the point of full inner clarity, where the feeling is constant, stands still. Then we would say: to begin with, two uncertain steps (we are in the unstable equilibrium of feeling); and now, put the foot down firm and sure (we make the feeling steadfast).

Du bĕschēnkst mich
Mĭt dĕn Gaben
Dĕr Gĕschwīster. ³

There you have the exact opposite of the hexameter. Although the words have the form of a communication, we cannot speak them in the way of making a communication. For the speaker is not prompted by a desire to tell what he says; the other knows it already—he has himself done the ‘presenting’. The content of the verse shows us at once that we have here to do with an expression of feeling, that is then brought to rest. If you have something to communicate—well, that is something stable and settled; the feeling, where you tend to come into mobility, into unstable equilibrium, follows after. So you have:

—⌣ ⌣—⌣ ⌣

But where it is a question, first of all, of feeling, and then from the feeling you ascend to stability, you will have:

⌣ ⌣—⌣ ⌣—

In Greek poetry, you will find the right use of dactyl and anapaest strictly adhered to, for the Greeks were sensitive to style. today we have consciously to learn these things; and that can be done only by calling on the whole human being to take part in the resurrection of style in the forming of the word and right into the actual speaking itself. It will then be obvious that we have to learn narrative speaking by speaking hexameters. All recitation of epic poetry will thus have to be learned from the speaking of hexameters. On the other hand, the speaking of lyric poetry can be learned best by speaking in anapaests.

In fine, we have to take our start, not from manipulation of the various parts of the human bodily organism, but from what is to be found in speech itself. The dactyl is in speech, the anapaest is in speech; from dactyl we learn to speak epic, from anapaest lyric. Nasal resonance and the rest can come later; we shall see how they come in. First in importance is to know where we are to begin when we set out to form our speech.

The objection may here be raised that the dactyl and the anapaest can hardly be said to survive in the language of today except in theory, and that if we want to experience the hexameter in its natural fluency we shall have to venture, as Goethe did, to choose an ancient theme. As we have seen, Goethe only once attempted to use it in a poem with a modern theme, when, under the influence of Voss's translation of Homer, he composed his Hermann and Dorothea; and I think when he was in the thick of it, positively sweating at the forging of his hexameters, he must many a time have heartily regretted his decision to call in the metre for such a theme. This does not, however, alter the fact that we can learn a great deal from speaking in hexameters; both anapaest and hexameter are particularly helpful for learning to give full tone to the separate sounds.

If you practise speaking hexameters—speaking, that is, in dactyls—for a considerable time, you will acquire, simply through speaking the metre, the right manipulation of tongue, palate, lips and teeth. In other words, the recitation of hexameters will teach you to form your consonants. There is, in fact, no better way to develop your instruments of speech for the proper speaking of consonants than the repeated recitation of hexameters. The tongue grows wonderfully supple, the lips become mobile, and above all you learn to control the palate, which very few people have under proper control when speaking. The right speaking of consonants is not to be learned by following all manner of instructions concerning the various speech organs, how to bring each of them into operation, etc., but simply by reciting hexameters. And then you can learn to say vowels, you can learn how to rest on the vowel, by speaking in anapaests. For when you speak in anapaests, you are instinctively impelled to form the vowel, to give your main attention to a proper development of the vowel. And this will mean that you learn to manipulate throat, lungs and diaphragm, just as by speaking hexameters you learn how to manage tongue, palate, lips and teeth.

In learning to speak hexameters one learns also at the same time how to speak the trochaic metre, and in learning to speak anapaests the iambic. For what does it mean, to speak in trochees ? It means again, you have to render the verse in such a style as to give the consonants their full value; whilst to speak iambics means to adopt a style that, like speaking in anapaests, gives the vowels their full value.

Where will you find today in any introduction to the study of speech this fundamental principle for the whole art of recitation? This is what I mean when I say that the art of recitation must be led back again to speech. We have misplaced it, locating it in anatomy and physiology, and all because we have no longer any understanding for the genius of speech.

For the creation of a drama that has style, we shall aim at using the iambic metre, since this kind of drama tends to have a more inward character. If on the other hand we are composing a drama of conversation, we shall try to make use of the trochee or else of downright prose. For poetry goes backwards ! It goes from anapaest through iambic to prose, and from dactyl through trochee to prose. And now you can see why a sensitive poet chooses the iambic metre for drama; witness Goethe's dramas in iambic. But if anyone wants to learn, let us say, how to read fairy tales, he will do well to prepare himself by reading trochees. For that will help him to develop a fine sensitiveness for his consonants; and it is upon the right sounding of the consonants that everything depends in the reading of fairy tales, or indeed in the reading of any poetical kind of prose.

Read a fairy tale with special attention to the vowels, and you will feel at once there is something unnatural about it. Read a fairy tale, pointing and delicately chiselling the consonants, and you will have the impression, not indeed of something natural, but of something that is gently suggestive of the eerie, the ghostly. And this is how it should be with a fairy tale. The vowel intonation being allowed to subside, the vowels slip away into the consonants, and as a result the whole thing is lifted a little out of reality. We are no longer in immediate reality, we receive the impression of something a little uncanny. The fairy tale, you see, treats what belongs to the sense world as if it were supersensible, and only when it is told or read in the way I have described can our human feeling be reconciled to it.

Suppose, however, it is real life you want to take for your theme. You want to achieve a poetical treatment of real life. Then you will have to educate yourself in iambics. For when you practise in iambics, you do not come right away from the consonants, and yet you draw near to the vowels. The speaking that comes about in this way is the only kind of speaking that is adapted to express realism poetically. Hence for the actor, the study of iambics will be the very best thing to help him on his way. This will apply even if he is preparing for a drama in trochees, but particularly for the prose drama. For through studying iambics he will gain the requisite mastery of tongue and palate so that they are supple (as they need to be for speaking consonants), yet at the same time not obtrusive, not getting in the way of the full development of the vowels.

These are, then, the lines on which we must learn to think if we would set out to develop our speaking. They lead us at once to the recognition that there must be art in our speaking, and that the forming of speech has accordingly to be learned, just as much as one has to learn to sing, or to play a musical instrument, or to follow any other art. The Greeks were fully alive to this necessity; the whole style of their dramatic art leaves us in no doubt on this point.

And there is something else besides that you would have found on the Greek stage. A true feeling for poetry survived there. Only a few days ago I was vividly reminded of how this feeling for style was still present in the Greeks and showed itself in their dramatic performances. When we were in London, we were taken to a theatre and witnessed the performance, not of a Greek drama, but of an Oriental singing drama.³ It was absolutely charming, really very good indeed; and the secret of its charm lay in the fact that the actors had masks, some of them even animal masks. They did not present to us their own human countenances; they stood before us as coming from a civilisation in which it was known that in gesture the countenance comes least of all into consideration, that as far as the countenance goes, gesture is best left stiffened into a mask. The Greek actors wore masks. The Oriental actors do so still. It was quite delightful for once to have before one the human being as such, the really interesting human being, wearing a human or animal mask—sometimes even one that a man of present-day civilisation would find distinctly unaesthetic! For when you have before you the human being wearing a mask, the impression he himself makes upon you is due solely and entirely to the gesturing he performs with the rest of the body; and there's nothing to prevent you from letting the mask complete the beauty of gesture above. One could not help feeling : Thank God, I have once again before me a human form, where up above arms and legs and body, which can express so beautifully what has to be expressed, sits not the dull human head, but the artistically fashioned mask, which with a kind of spirituality hides for the nonce, the insipidity of the human countenance.

I have, I know, been expressing myself rather strongly, nut I think it will have helped to make my point clear. Naturally, I don't mean that I never want to see a human face! You will, I feel sure, understand me; and it is my belief that this kind of thing needs to be understood if we are ever to get back to the artistic in our forming of speech. For what is worst of all in speaking? Worst of all is when you see the movements of the speaker's mouth, or when you see the uninteresting human face exhibiting all its physiognomy and play of countenance. But you have an impression of something quite beautiful when, without being confused or led astray by the countenance, you behold on the stage the gesticulation of the rest of the human being, whilst the speaking or singing, which is all that the countenance should be required to contribute, supplies the appropriate inner complement of what gesture is able so grandly to reveal.

Speech as ‘formed gesture’—that is the highest of all; since gesture has then been spiritualised, has been taken up into the realm of the spirit. Speech that is not formed gesture is like something that has no ground to stand upon.

• 1. It may be helpful to remind the student of the following:
  Iambus ⌣—
  Anapaest ⌣ ⌣—
  Trochee—⌣
  Dactyl—⌣ ⌣
  Spondee——
  The hexameter is a verse of six feet, generally five dactyls followed by a spondee (or trochee). A familiar example in English is Longfellow's Evangeline.
• 2. The Readings having been given as an illustration of verse in hexameter, the above rendering of a part of it will perhaps suffice.
• 3. Thou presentest me
  With the treasures
  Of my bretheren.
• 3. This was at the British Empire Wembley Exhibition, and in all probability a performance by a Burmese company

My dear Friends,

It is our concern in these lectures to find the way to the artistic forming of speech and also of dramatic action—taking our start always from the speech organism itself. To this end, it is of vital importance that we should not be content with theoretical expositions, but accompany these throughout with practical demonstration. Thus, you had opportunity yesterday to see how the iambic and the trochaic metre has each its particular part to play in the development of the art of speech. And now today we will begin by showing how it is possible, in domains of speech where the path of development is sought, not in an entirely inward but in a rather more external way—how it is possible even there to go over from prose into poetic form, into the artistic, into style.

We have seen that the significance of the iambic metre lies in the fact that it helps to promote in the whole organism of speech this transition to poetic form and style, even sometimes to the genuinely lyrical. The trochaic and dactylic metres, on the other hand, whilst they too have the tendency to work in this direction, taking us away from prose, can also help the student who practises them to speak prose itself artistically. I am here merely recalling what we considered together yesterday.

Today we propose to demonstrate for you the rendering in speech of a kind of verse where there is the wish to maintain poetic form throughout, but where the poet comes up against a certain difficulty. He wants, for example, to sustain a particular description or narration for a longer period, perhaps throughout many lines of verse; but owing to the nature of the language, he is unable to keep it going entirely in the iambic metre, or entirely in the trochaic. Hence we find a tendency to compromise between prose and poetic form. And it is this compromise that we have in the Alexandrine, which has properly six iambics, but which, since it is not very easy to maintain such a metre for any considerable time, constantly interposes passages where the iambic is not strictly adhered to. Thus, a kind of compromise is effected. But wherever the language becomes rhetorical (rhetorical language has, you know, a slight flavour of decadence about it), a tendency immediately becomes evident to form the verse iambically throughout, keeping it strictly within the limits of the original rhythm.

All this we may find in the Alexandrine. Consequently, when used as an exercise for speech, the Alexandrine can work in the opposite way to the hexameter. Speaking in hexameters leads, as we have seen, to good prose speaking; the Alexandrine, on the other hand, is an excellent preparation for speaking poetry.

This we will now illustrate for you in the rendering Frau Dr. Steiner will give of some French Alexandrines. Alexandrines are at their best in French. When they are used in the German language, they always seem rather like an imitation; they seem out of place there. Alexandrines are not, in fact, a natural product of the German language. It will accordingly be best to take a French example for demonstration.

There are a number of passages in Faust where Goethe deviated from other metres into the Alexandrine; and in each single instance the occasion for it can be clearly discerned. Goethe has recourse, namely, to the Alexandrine when he begins to find difficulty in being poetical in any other way. Where he has a scene in which it is difficult to be inwardly poetical, he resorts to being poetical outwardly. And so we find in Faust, wherever this dilemma occurs, the transition to the Alexandrine.1

(Frau Dr. Steiner): The example I am giving is taken from a dramatic poem by Lecomte de Lisle: Hypatie.

The cultured young adherent of the ancient wisdom, who will shortly be torn in pieces by the infuriated mob in the streets of Alexandria, is admonished by Bishop Cyril to be converted and so escape violent death. She on her part points to the everlasting disputes that go on within the Church, a Church that has become not only terribly dogmatic, but brutally savage, and affirms her unswerving adherence to the ancient esoteric wisdom.

HYPATIE

Ne le crois pas, Cyrille! Ils vivent dans mon coeur,
Non tels que tu les vois, vêtus de formes vaines,
Subissant dans le Ciel les passions humaines,
Adorés du vulgaire et dignes de mépris;
Mais tels que les ont vus de sublimes esprits:
Dans l'espace étoilé n'ayant point de demeures,
Forces de l'univers, Vertus intérieures,
De la terre et du ciel concours harmonieux
Qui charme la pensee et l'oreille et les yeux,
Et qui donne, idéal aux sages accessible,
A la beauté de l'âme une splendeur visible.
Tels sont mes Dieux! Qu'un sièle ingrat s'écarte d'eux,
Je ne les puis trahir puisqu'ils sont malheureux.
Je le sens, je le sais: voici les heures sombres,
Les jours marqués dans l'ordre impérieux des Nombres.
Aveugle à notre gloire et prodigue d'affronts,
Le temps injurieux découronne nos fronts;
Et, dans l'orgueil récent de sa haute fortune,
L'Avenir n'entend plus la voix qui l'importune,
O Rois harmonieux, chefs de l'Esprit humain,
Vous qui portiez la lyre et la balance en main,
Il est venu, Celui qu'annongaient vos présages,
Celui que contenaient les visions des sages,
L'Expiateur promis dont Eschyle a parlé!
Au sortir du sepulcre et de sang maculé,
L'arbre de son supplice à lépaule, il se l'ève;
Il offre à l'univers ou sa croix ou le glaive,
Il venge le Barbare écarté des autels,
Et jonche vos parvis de membres immortels!
Mais je garantirai des atteintes grossières
Jusqu'au dernier soupir vos pieuses poussières,
Heureuse si, planant sur les jours à venir,
Votre immortalité sauve mon souvenir.
Salut, O Rois d'Hellas!—Adieu, noble Cyrille!

CYRILLE

Abjure tes erreurs, o malheureuse fille,
Le Dieu jaloux t'écoute! O triste aveuglement!
Je m'indigne et gemis en un même moment.
Mais puisque to ne veux ni croire ni comprendre
Et refuses la main que je venais te tendre,
Que ton coeur s'endurcit dans un esprit mauvais,
C'en est assez! j'ai fait plus que je ne devais.
Un dernier mot encore:—n'enfreins pas ma défense!
Une ombre de salut te reste:—le silence.
Dieu seul te jugera, s'il ne l'a déjà fait;
Sa colère est sur toi; n'en hâte point l'effet.

HYPATIE

Je ne puis oublier, en un silence lâche,
Le coin de mon honneur et ma suprême tâche,
Celle de confesser librement sous les cieux
Le beau, le vrai, le bien, qu'ont révélés les
Dieux. Depuis deux jours déjà, comme une écume vile,
Les moines du désert abondent dans la vile,
Pieds nus, la barbe inculte et les cheveux souillés,
Tout maigris par le jeüne, et du soleil brûles.
On prétend qu'un projet sinistre et fanatique
Amene parmi nous cette horde extatique.
C'est bien. Je sais mourir, et suis fière du choix
Dont m'honorent les Dieux une dernière fois.
Cependant je rends gràce à to solicitude
Et n'attends plus de toi qu'un peu de solitude.
(CYRILLE et l'acolyte sortent.)

LA NOURRICE

Mon enfant, tu le vois, toi-même en fais l'aveu:
Tu vas mourir!

HYPATIE

Je vais être immortelle. Adieu.

---

From HYPATIA¹
by Lecomte de Lisle

HYPATIA

Believe it not O Cyril, for They live
Within my heart, not such as you perceive
Clothed in vain forms and in the heav'ns
Subject to passions that men have on earth,
Deserving scorn, worshipped by vulgar hordes;
But such as lofty spirits contemplate:

Having no dwelling there amid the stars;
Virtues inherent and the strength of worlds,
Binding in harmony the earth and skies,
Charming the thoughts of men, their eyes, their ears,
And for the wise, as tangible ideal,
Giving a shining splendour to the soul.
Such are my Gods! And let ingratitude
Of a base century approach them not;
Betray them can I ne'er, for they are doomed.
I feel, I recognise, these darkened hours,
Days marked by Numbers ruling deeds of men.
Blind to our fame and with harsh insult free
These cruel times take from our brows their crown;
And in the pride of recent victories
The future shuts its ear to those who call.
O Kings of concord—of man's spirit Lords,
Bearing your symbols of the lyre and scales!
He has appeared whom you have heralded,
The Saviour Aeschylus has promised men!
Stained with his blood he issues from the tomb;
Bearing his tree of torture see him rise,
Off'ring the world his cross or else a sword;
Avenging heathen from his altars chased
He strews your groves with your immortal limbs.
To my last living breath I will preserve
Your pious ashes from all rude attack,
Happy if hov'ring o'er the days to come
Your immortality my memory holds.
Hail, Kings of Greece! Great Cyril, fare you well!

CYRIL

Unhappy child, I beg you to recant.
He hears—the jealous God! O tragic, blind,
You anger me and yet you make me grieve.
But since you will not understand nor trust,
And scorn the hand I offer for your aid,
And since unrighteousness makes hard your heart,
It is enough! More than I should I've done.
But one word still—transgress not my command!
There is one final hope of safety—silence.
Your only judge is God, and even now
His sentence may be passed. Haste not to bring
Fulfilment of His anger on your head.

HYPATIA

In coward silence can I not forget
What to myself is due, my task supreme—
Beneath the heavens what the Gods reveal
Of beauty, truth and goodness to confess.
For two long days, like to a scum impure
The desert monks have swarmed into the town;
Bare-footed, beards unkempt and hair unclean,
Burnt by the sun, wasted by constant fast.
Men say a plan fanatical and dread
Brings this ecstatic horde into mir midst.
'Tis well—for instant death I am prepared,
Proud that for this last time the puissant Gods
Have deemed me worthy to endure that fate.
Yet your concern fills me with gratitude;
Now, solitude is all I beg of you.
(Exeunt CYRIL and the acolyte.)

THE NURSE

My child, you see, you recognise yourself
That you will have to die!

HYPATIA

But dying go
To immortality. O fare you well!
(Translation by V. E. W.)

(In the second edition of the original, the following example of Alexandrines from Faust, Part II, was added.)

Vor dem Palaste des Menelas zu Sparta.

HELENA

Bewundert viel und viel gescholten, Helena,
Vom Strande komm' ich, wo wir erst gelandet sind,
Noch immer trunken von des Gewoges regsamem
Geschaukel, das vom Phryg'schen Blachgefild uns her
Auf sträubig-hohem Rücken, durch Poseidons Gunst
Und Euros' Kraft, in vaterländ'sche Buchten trug.
Dort unten freuet nun der König Menelas
Der Rückkehr samt den tapfersten seiner Krieger sich.
Du aber heisse mich willkommen, hohes Haus,
Das Tyndareus, mein Vater, nah dem Hange sich,
Von Pallas' Hügel wiederkehrend, aufgebaut,
Und als ich hier mit Klytämnestren schwesterlich,
Mit Kastor auch und Pollux fröhlich spielend wuchs,
Vor allen Häusern Spartas herrlich ausgeschmückt.
Gegrüsset seid mir, der ehrnen Pforte Flügel ihr!
Durch euer gastlich ladendes Weiteröffnen einst
Geschah's, dass mir, erwählt aus vielen, Menelas
In Bräutigamsgestalt entgegenleuchtete.
Eröffnet mir sie wieder, dass ich ein Eilgebot
Des Königs treu erfülle, wie der Gattin ziemt.
Lasst mich hinein, und alles bleibe hinter mir,
Was mich -umstürmte bis hierher verhängnisvoll!
Denn seit ich diese Stelle sorgenlos verliess,
Cytherens Tempel besuchend, heil'ger Pflicht gemäss,
Mich aber dort ein Räuber griff, der phrygische,
Ist viel geschehen, was die Menschen weit und breit
So gern erzählen, aber der nicht gerne hört,
Von dem die Sage wachsend sich zum Märchen spann.

---

FAUST, Part II
Act III, Scene 1

Before the Palace of Menelaus in Sparta.
(Enter HELENA, with a chorus of captive Trojan women.)

HELENA

The much admired and much upbraided Helena,
From yonder strand I come, where erst we disembark'd,
Still giddy from the roll of ocean's billowy surge,
Which, through Poseidon's favour and through Euros' might,
On lofty crested backs hither hath wafted us,
From Phrygia's open field, to our ancestral bays.
Yonder King Menelaus, glad of his return,
With his brave men of war, rejoices on the beach.
But oh, thou lofty mansion, bid me welcome home,
Thou, near the steep decline, which Tyndareus, my sire,
From Pallas' hill returning, here hath builded up;
Which also was adorned beyond all Sparta's homes,
What time with Clytemnestra, sister-like, I grew,
With Castor, Pollux, too, playing in joyous sport.
Wings of yon brazen portals, you I also hail!
Through you, ye guest-inviting, hospitable gates,
Hath Menelaus once, from many princes chosen,
Shone radiant on my sight, in nuptial sort arrayed.
Expand to me once more, that I the king's behest
May faithfully discharge, as doth the spouse beseem.
Let me within, and all henceforth behind remain,
That, charged with doom, till now darkly hath round me stormed!
For since, by care untroubled, I these sites forsook,
Seeking Cythera's fane, as sacred wont enjoined,
And by the spoiler there was seized, the Phrygian,
Happened have many things, whereof men far and wide
Are fain to tell, but which not fain to hear is he
Of whom the tale, expanding, hath to fable grown.
(From the translation by Anna Swanwick.)

(Dr. Steiner): And now we must go on to consider how we may find, in speech, ways that lead over from one realm of poetic creation to another. For they are there to be found in the very use and forming of speech.

Narrative comes to expression just as well in the trochaic metre as in the dactylic. Let us take an example of narrative in trochees and see what it can reveal. To present narrative in trochaic metre accords quite simply with man's original instinctive feeling; and you will discover moreover that the tone of voice required for narrative can most easily be found when speaking in trochees. On this account the trochaic metre is a good preparation also for the art of speaking prose, an art which has to penetrate more instinctively into the instruments of speech and into the heart.

Now in narrative, in epic poetry, as I said in the first lecture, the reciter has the object standing there before him in thought. His thought of it may, however, become so vivid that he surrenders himself to be an instrument for what the object speaks and does. When this happens, narrative goes over into drama. We have thus found here a way to pass from narrative that contains a dramatic element to the art of drama itself. Not every narrative, not every epic does this, but all are capable of it. And that, my dear friends, is your right and true way of approach to drama.

If we begin straight away with the practice of dramatic art, we externalise it instead of giving it the requisite quality of intimacy and inwardness. If, however, we take our start from some narrative that makes considerable demand upon the imagination, until we really cannot help transposing ourselves into the person of whom the narrative tells (for he is of course not there at all, we are obliged to ‘act’ him), then we shall be taking the right and natural road to drama. For to produce a well-presented drama, it will hardly do for the actors to be content to study simply the speaking of their own parts! The distribution of parts in such a way that each actor receives the text only of what he himself has to speak is quite wrong; nor can this fault be compensated for by a reading’ rehearsal. The one and only right way is for each actor to approach his own part in the play in the firm conviction that he must enter also into a full experience of everything his fellow actor or actors have to say. And whereas in ordinary life it is our duty to listen as quietly as possible, the actor has to speak with the other actors as much as ever he can, though not of course outwardly; he must share their experience, he must speak—inwardly, as it were in echo—what his fellow actors are speaking around him.

I would like now to show you a path—for in all these matters I can do no more than indicate paths for you to follow—I would like to suggest a path that a young student of the drama could take in order to speak dialogue (or trialogue) in such a way as to give it the right intimacy and inwardness. I choose for the purpose an eminently trochaic poem that contains also a powerful dramatic element—calls it up, as the poem proceeds: Der Cid of Herder. The poem begins in true epic style; then it leads over, with no uncertainty, into the dramatic. And the poem is marvellously built up, right through, on the trochaic metre. I am here merely putting into words for you what a student would have to say to himself in preparation for working with this poem.

Let us be quite clear about the situation. The ancient House of Don Diego has suffered the disgrace of being brought to ruin by an enemy House. Don Diego's son Rodrigo, who was afterwards called the Cid, feels the disgrace deeply. The poem begins by picturing for us the mood of the old Don Diego, in face of the ignominy that has befallen his House.

Trauernd tief sass Don Diego,
Wohl war keiner je so traurig;
Gramvoll dacht er Tag und Nächte
Nur an seines Hauses Schmach,

An die Schmach des edlen alten,
Tapfren Hauses der von Lainez,
Das die Inigos an Ruhme,
Die Abarkos übertraf.

Tief gekränket, schwach vor Alter,
Fühlt er nahe sich dem Grabe,
Da indes sein Feind Don Gormaz
Ohne Gegner triumphiert.

Sonder Schlaf und sonder Speise,
Schläget er die Augen nieder,
Tritt nicht über seine Schwelle,
Spricht mit seinen Freunden nicht,

Höret nicht der Freunde Zuspruch,
Wenn sie kommen, ihn zu trösten;
Denn der Atem des Entehrten,
Glaubt er, schände seinen Freund.

Endlich schüttelt er die Bürde
Los, des grausam stummen Grames,
Lässet kommen seine Söhne,
Aber spricht zu ihnen nicht.

---

From THE CID
by Herder

Deep in grief sat Don Diego,
Was there ever man so wretched?
Day and night he brooded only
On the shame upon his house,

On the shame upon the noble,
Brave and ancient house of Lainez,
Which in honour far exceeded
Inigos and Abarcos.

Weak with age and deeply injured,
Feels he at the point of dying,
While his enemy, Don Gormaz,
Sits in triumph unopposed.

Without food and without sleeping,
From the ground his eyes not raising,
Goes he not beyond his threshold
And says nothing to his friends,

Does not listen to the greeting
Of the folk who come to comfort,
Thinking that his breath, dishonoured,
May contaminate his friends.

Till at last he casts his burden,
Shakes him free from grievous sorrow,
Suffers that his sons approach him
Though he speaks to them no word.

And now Don Diego has his sons bound with cords. And they suffer themselves to be bound, all but the youngest, Don Rodrigo, who came to be known later on as the Cid. He alone resists. The father, although it is he himself who has bound them, is sad and troubled that his sons submit; it rejoices his heart that the youngest will not endure it.

We will pass over the verses that tell how Rodrigo resolves upon the deed that he believes it his duty to perform, and go at once to the moment in the poem where we have the transition from epic to drama.

Auf dem Platze des Palastes
Traf Rodrigo auf Don Gormaz.
Einzeln, niemand war zugegen,
Redet er den Grafen an:

‘Kanntet Ihr, O edler Gormaz,
Mich, den Sohn des Don Diego,
Als Ihr Eure Hand ausstrecktet
Auf sein ehrenwert Gesicht?

Wusstet Ihr, dass Don Diego
Ab von Layn Calvo stamme?
Dass nichts reiner und nichts edler
Als sein Blut ist und sein Schild?

Wusstet Ihr, dass weil ich lebe,
Ich sein Sohn, kein Mensch auf Erden,
Kaum der mächtge Herr des Himmels
Dies ihm täte ungestraft?’—

`Weisst du’, sprach der stolze Gormaz,
‘Was wohl sei des Lebens Hälfte,
Jüngling?’—‘Ja’, sprach Don Rodrigo,
‘Und ich weiss es sehr genau.

Eine Hälfte ist, dem Edlen
Ehr' erzeigen; und die andre,
Den Hochmütigen zu strafen,
Mit dem letzten Tropfen Bluts.

Abzutun die angetane
Schande.' Als er dies gesagt,
Sah er an den stolzen Grafen,
Der ihm diese Worte sprach:

‘Nun, was willst du, rascher Jüngling?’?
‘Deinen Kopf will ich, Graf Gormaz
Sprach der Cid, ‘Ich hab's gelobet!’
‘Streiche willst du, gutes Kind’,

Sprach Don Gormaz, ‘eines Pagen
Streiche hättest du verdient.’
O ihr Heiligen des Himmels,
Wie ward Cid auf dieses Wort!

---

Tränen rannen, stille Tränen
Rannen auf des Greises Wangen,
Der, an seiner Tafel sitzend,
Alles um sich her vergass,

Denkend an die Schmach des Hauses,
Denkend an des Sohnes Jugend,
Denkend an des Sohns Gefahren
Und an seines Feindes Macht.

Den Entehrten flieht die Freude,
Flieht die Zuversicht und Hoffnung;
Alle kehren mit der Ehre
Froh und jugendlich zurück.

Noch versenkt in tiefer Sorge,
Sieht er nicht Rodrigo kommen,
Der, den Degen unterm Arme
Und die Händ' auf seiner Brust,

Lang' ansieht den guten Vater,
Mitleid tief im Herzen fühlend,
Bis er zutritt, ihm die Rechte
Schüttelnd: ‘Iss, o guter Greis!’

Spricht er, weisend auf die Tafel.
Reicher flossen nun Diego
Seine Tränen: ‘Du, Rodrigo,
Sprachst du, sprichst du mir dies Wort?’—

‘Ja, mein Vater! und erhebet
Euer edles, wertes Antlitz.’—
‘Ist gerettet unsre Ehre?’—
‘Edler Vater, er ist tot!’—

‘Setze dich, mein Sohn Rodrigo,
Gerne will ich mit dir speisen.
Wer den Mann erlegen konnte,
Ist der erste seines Stamms.'

Weinend knieete Rodrigo,
Küssend seines Vaters Hände;
Weinend küsste Don Diego
Seines Sohnes Angesicht.

---

'Cross the square before the palace
To Don Gormaz strides Rodrigo.
All alone, with no man present,
Speaks he then unto the Count:

‘Did you recognise, great Gormaz,
Me, the son of Don Diego,
When that hand of yours was lifted’
Gainst his honourable face?

‘Did you know that Don Diego
From Lain Calvo is descended?
And that nothing purer, nobler
Than his blood and shield exists?

‘Did you know while I am living—
I, his son—that no man breathing,
Scarce the mighty Lord of Heaven
Should unpunished dare this deed?’—

‘Know'st thou’ spake the haughty Gormaz
‘What the half of life comprises,
Stripling?’—‘Yes’ spake Don Rodrigo,
‘And indeed I know it well.

‘One half is the showing honour
To the noble; and the other
Punishing the overbearing
With the last drop of one's blood,

‘So to wipe out all dishonour
That's inflicted.' Having spoken,
Looks he to the proud Count Gormaz
Who gives answer in these words:

‘Now, what would'st thou, hasty stripling?’?
‘'Tis your head I'll have, Count Gormaz,’
Spake the Cid, ‘and I have vowed it!’?
‘Whipping, would'st thou, my good child,’

Spake the Count, ‘what thou dost merit
Is the rod we give to pages.’
At these words, Ye Saints in Heaven,
What did Don Rodrigo feel!

---

Tears were running, tears in silence,
Down the cheeks of Don Diego,
Who, before his table sitting,
Heeded nothing all around,

Thinking on his house dishonoured,
Thinking on his son so youthful,
Thinking of that son in peril,
And his enemy's great strength.

All joy flees from the dishonoured,
Confidence and hope will flee them;
But with the return of honour
Back comes joy, and youth's renewed.

Still engrossed by deepest sorrow,
Sees he not Rodrigo coming,
With beneath his arm a dagger
And his hands upon his breast.

Long he gazes on his Father
Feeling full of deep compassion,
Then approaching takes his right hand
Saying ‘O good Father, eat!’

Speaking points he to the table.
And the tears of Don Diego
Flow profusely: ‘What, Rodrigo,
Did'st thou speak those words to me?’?

‘Raise up now, my worthy Father,
This your countenance so noble,’?
‘Is it then retrieved—our honour?’
‘Noble Father, he is dead.’?

‘Sit thee down, my son Rodrigo,
I will eat with thee most gladly,
He who could lay low Don Gormaz
Is the foremost of his race.'

Down kneels Don Rodrigo, weeping,
As his Father's hands he kisses;
And with tears does Don Diego
Kiss his son Rodrigo's face.

(Translation by V. E. W.)

There you have drama coming to birth within the epic. I wanted to read you this passage from Herder's Cid, because it can afford a good example of how speech training has to proceed from the speech organism itself. Everything that I say has a directly practical application, and is intended to be so taken.

When, by continual repetition of an exercise of this kind, we gradually approach nearer and nearer to an articulation that comes naturally, without conscious effort, when we have in this way educated ourselves for drama (starting, that is to say, from epic), then it will be good to take some passage that is on the verge of the dramatic, or rather has already passed over into it, and yet has about it still a touch of the epic—although this epic touch has virtually disappeared in the dramatic in the same way as gesture has disappeared in the word.

We shall find particularly useful in this connection one of the scenes that Lessing wrote for his projected Faust. He composed, as you know, only a very few scenes, although he left also a plan for the whole work. In the scene I refer to, we are really very little removed from the epic. Seven spirits appear, and the human character in the scene has to call upon his imagination in order to apprehend these spirits, just as in epic the writer or speaker has to create in imagination the being whom he presents. For in a dialogue with spirits, the being of the spirit, which can only be there at all in the degree to which the human being is able to form a right conception of it, must be still more powerfully present to that human being than would be necessary if he were having a dialogue with another human being.

If we succeed in placing ourselves fully into the mood that can arise in the soul when we stand over against a spirit and are at the same time under necessity to express the experience in dramatic form—then that will mean we have found the transition from epic to drama.

I want here merely to point out the path that leads from epic to drama, not to give you a recitation (that I leave to Frau Dr. Steiner). So we will omit the dialogue with the first five spirits and for the moment only give our attention to the sixth and seventh.

FAUST. (zum SECHSTEN GEIST) Sage du, wie schnell bist du?

DER SECHSTE GEIST. So schnell als die Rache des Rächers. FAUST. Des Rächers? Welches Rächers?

DER SECHSTE GEIST. Des Gewaltigen, des Schrecklichen, der sich allein die Rache vorbehielt, weil ihn die Rache vergnügte.

FAUST. Teufel! du lästerst; denn ich sehe, du zitterst.—Schnell, sagst du, wie die Rache des—bald hätte ich ihn genannt! Nein, er werde nicht unter uns genannt!—Schnell wäre seine Rache? Schnell?—Und ich lebe noch? Und ich sündige noch?

DER SECHSTE GEIST. Dass er dich noch sündigen lässt, ist schon Rache!

FAUST. Und dass ein Teufel mich dieses lehren muss!—Aber doch erst heute! Nein, seine Rache ist nicht schnell, und wenn du nicht schneller bist als seine Rache, so geh nur!—

(Der siebente Geist kommt.)

(Zum siebenten Geiste) Wie schnell bist du?

DER SIEBENTE GEIST. Unzuvergnügender Sterblicher, wo auch ich dir nicht schnell genug bin

FAUST. So sage, wie schnell?

DER SIEBENTE GEIST. Nicht mehr und nicht weniger als der Uebergang vom Guten zum Bösen.

FAUST. Ha! Du bist mein Teufel! So schnell als der Uebergang vom Guten zum Bösen!—Ja, der ist schnell; schneller ist nichts als der!—Weg von hier, ihr Schnecken des Orkus! Weg! Als der Uebergang vom Guten zum Bösen! Ich habe es erfahren, wie schnell er ist! Ich habe es erfahren!

DR. FAUST
(A Fragment) by Lessing

Part of Scene 3 of Act II.
(FAUST and seven SPIRITS.)

FAUST. (to the SIXTH SPIRIT) Tell me, how swift art thou?

SIXTH SPIRIT. As swift as the vengeance of the Avenger.

FAUST. Of the avenger? Of what avenger?

SIXTH SPIRIT. Of the mighty and terrible One who keeps vengeance in His own hands, because He delights in it.

FAUST. Devil, thou blasphemest! I can see, thou art trembling. Swift, sayest thou, as the vengeance of—I nearly named Him! No, let Him not be named among us! Is His vengeance then so swift? And I left still alive? Still continuing in sin?

SIXTH SPIRIT. That He suffers thee to continue still in sin—that is His vengeance!

FAUST. And that I should have to learn this from a devil! Yet not until today! No, His vengeance is not swift; and if thou be not swifter than His vengeance, begone!

(The SEVENTH SPIRIT comes.)

(to the SEVENTH SPIRIT) How swift art thou?

SEVENTH SPIRIT. O mortal, hard indeed to please if not even I be swift enough for thee

FAUST. Tell me then, how swift?

SEVENTH SPIRIT. As swift—neither more nor less—as the change-over from good to bad.

FAUST. Ha! Thou art the devil for me! As swift as the change-over from good to bad! Ay, that is swift indeed; nothing swifter! Avaunt, ye snails of hell, begone! As the change-over from good to bad! I have learned how swift that is! I know it well!

You see how marvellously Lessing has succeeded here in bringing into the language used by Faust an absolutely living perception of these spirits, a vivid imaginative picture of them. This will come home to you as you form his words. You will never learn to form your speaking by having it said to you: Form this sound in this way, that syllable in that way, this sentence again in such and such a way. The true forming of speech is acquired by practising the transition from epic, through the drama of the spirit, to the drama of the actual and material. As we continue to practise these transitions, the Genius of Speech himself will receive us as his pupils, inasmuch as we shall then be walking in his paths. And upon that everything depends.

It is, you know, rather remarkable that we should turn to Lessing to find our example; for the plays that Lessing brought to completion, and that have become so famous, are none of them on the same level. In the few scenes he wrote for a Faust, however, he transcends himself. With the possible exception of the scenes where Major Tellheim figures,¹ there is nothing in all his dramas to equal it.

You can see here how Lessing is guided in the forming of his scene by the theme itself, by the material he has at hand. And that will help to convince you that it must be with poetry as it was, for example, with a sculptor like Michelangelo, who used to go himself into the quarries to look for the marble for his statues. He would walk round, looking at one piece after another, until he found the only right one for an intended sculpture. Thus he let Nature through her forms set him his task in the forms of art. We must, if we would be artists in any sphere, develop a feeling for our material; that Lessing understood this is evident in the scene we are considering.

This means also that the actor or reciter needs to acquire a keen perception for the extent to which the material of the particular play or poem has found its corresponding artistic expression. Lessing was remarkably successful with his material in this instance—it was a theme that lay very near his heart—and one can only regret deeply that he did not go on with his Faust. Since, however, in this Fragment he surpasses the Lessing we know elsewhere, it would have been too difficult for him to bring the work to completion. Only at certain moments was he able to develop the artistic power that he manifests here and that is brought home to us very forcibly in the little scene that Lessing composed out of his own experience.

It has been said of Lessing, and not without justification, that he was a man who never dreamed, that he was too dry and prosaic ever to have dreams. It is quite true, and his poetry bears it out. (I am not referring now to Lessing's prose works, but to his poems.) For all that, I am ready to assert—and please do not take what I say in the sense of a poetic picture, but as a statement of fact—I am ready to assert that this other little scene that Lessing composed for his Faust has its origin in an experience that was, in no small measure, a genuine ‘waking vision’. Waking vision definitely played a part in Lessing's own individual conditions of life,—and a great deal that we find in his work is to be traced to this source.

When Faust has let pass over him, as it were in reminiscence, all the events and experiences of the past that he has been compelled to recall in this way, then his strong urge to reach the spiritual world brings him at last to the point of approaching it. Having completed this deep and intense study of the spiritual history of mankind, he eventually experiences in very truth that ‘waking suggestion’ which Lessing himself knew and to which he here gives artistic form.

The situation is as follows. A spirit with a long beard rises up out of the ground, wrapped in a mantle.

GEIST. Wer beunruhiget mich? Wo bin ich? Ist das nicht Licht, was ich empfinde?

FAUST. (erschrickt, fasset sich aber und redet den Geist an)

Wer bist du? Woher kommst du? Auf wessen Befehl erscheinst du?

GEIST. Ich lag und schlummerte und `träumte, mir wär' nicht wohl, nicht übel; da rauschte, so träumte ich, von weitem eine Stimme daher; sie kam näher und näher; Bahall! Bahall! hörte ich, und mit dem dritten Bahall stehe ich hier!

FAUST. Aber wer bist du?

GEIST. Wer ich bin? Lass mich besinnen! Ich bin—ich bin nur erst kürzlich, was ich bin. Dieses Körpers, dieser Glieder war ich mir dunkel bewusst; itzt (etc.).

FAUST. Aber wer warst du?

GEIST. Warst du?

FAUST. Ja, wer warst du sonst, ehedem?

GEIST. Sonst? ehedem?

FAUST. Erinnerst du dich keiner Vorstellungen, die diesem gegenwärtigen und jenem deinem hinbrütenden Stande vorhergegangen?

GEIST. Was sagst du mir? Ja, nun schiesst es mir ein.—Ich habe schon einmal ähnliche Vorstellungen gehabt. Warte, warte, ob ich den Faden zurückfinden kann.

FAUST. Ich will dir zu helfen suchen. Wie hiessest du?

GEIST. Ich hiess—Aristoteles. Ja, so hiess ich. Wie ist mir?

---

From Scene 2 of Act I.

(FAUST. A SPIRITwith a long beard and wrapped in a mantle rises up out of the ground.)

SPIRIT. Who is it disturbs me? Where am I? Is that not light I feel around me?

FAUST. (is terrified, but masters his fear and addresses the SPIRIT) Who art thou? Whence comest thou? At whose command dost thou show thyself here ?

SPIRIT. I lay and slumbered and dreamed it was not well with me, neither was it ill. And lo, in my dream, a voice came rushing towards me from afar. It came nearer and nearer. Bahall!’ I heard, Bohan’, and with the third

‘Bahall’ I stand before thee.

FAUST. But who art thou?

SPIRIT. Who am I? Let me think! I am—I have only just now become what I am. This body, these limbs—I was ere now only dimly aware of them, and now...

FAUST. But who wert thou?

SPIRIT. ‘Wert thou’?

FAUST. Yes, who wert thou earlier, before?

SPIRIT. ‘Earlier’? ‘Before’?

FAUST. Canst thou recall no thoughts or ideas that preceded thy present state, preceded too the dim brooding condition from which thou hast been aroused?

SPIRIT. What sayest thou? ... Yes, now it's coming back to me. I did, once before, have thoughts and ideas. Wait a little, wait! If I could only find the thread again!

FAUST. Let me try to help thee. What is thy name?

SPIRIT. I am called—ARISTOTLE! Yes, that is my name. Oh, what is happening with me?

This is as far as Lessing carried the scene. But it will, I think, be obvious at once that Lessing did not make this scene, he saw it. What we have here is a representation in art of the living human spirit. And anyone who takes the trouble to work with this passage and render it in well-formed speech will find for himself the path that leads to dramatic dialogue. It is of course perfectly right that the student of speech should have a correct and thorough knowledge of the various speech organs of which he makes use; but when it comes to educating oneself for a true forming of speech, then these several organs should be left alone, and the speech organism as such, the objective extra-human speech organism, be given full play.

To this end it will certainly be essential that we regain some measure of perception for what is genuinely artistic in poetry. Such a perception will, however, in our day have to spring from the depths of the heart, since the powers of discrimination and judgement that man had in earlier times are no longer there in the same degree today, nor can we expect to find them so for some time to come.

You should really try to picture to yourselves what it meant in past epochs of culture when Mass was celebrated, not in the language of the country but in the Latin language; when, for example, one heard resound the words:

Pater noster, qui es in coelis: sanctificetur nomen tuum.
Adveniat regnum tuum.
Fiat voluntas tua, sicut in coelo, et in terra.
Panem nostrum supersubstantialem da nobis hodie.
Et dimitte nobis debita nostra, sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris.
Et ne nos inducas in tentationem.
Sed libera nos a malo. Amen.

To listen to the sounding forth of these words gave man a true feeling for the forming of speech. They could not be spoken save with rightly formed speech. In the ancient Mysteries there was understanding for these things. Those who took part in the ancient Mysteries were conscious that when they spoke they were holding intercourse with the Gods. Man must evoke once again from the depths of his heart the power to perceive such realities. He must be able once again, not merely to think within, but to speak within.

Take such a scene as that read to you by Frau Dr. Steiner in the course of the second lecture, the seventh scene of my first Mystery Play. This scene, I can truly say, was not formed out of thoughts. Never once was there any question as to the choice of a word. The scene was heard as it is, simply heard. There were no thoughts at all, there were only words. It was a case of writing down on paper the words that were heard in the spirit. The scene was experienced, from the first, as formed word—not as thought.

I can say the same of many of the scenes in this Mystery Play. And we must find the way to develop again a feeling for such things. We must learn to have a sensitive perception for what is spiritually alive in the word. Then, and only then, shall we be able again to discern for ourselves where poetry is genuinely artistic. And the reciter, as well as the actor, should be able to do this. He should be able to say to himself: This is poetry, that is not. We must, of course, realise that such things cannot all at once, so soon as we have knowledge of them, be put into practice in our work on the stage. For, besides actors, there are Managing Directors, and among them some whose connection with the stage has certainly not brought them any knowledge of this kind; no understanding to be found there of what is poetry and what is not!

The only way for things to improve in this respect is for popular taste to improve. When we begin to see signs that the general public are developing discrimination, then we can hope for better days. As things are now, people have no taste, no judgement as to what is or is not artistic. Owing to this lack of taste, discussions about how this or that character was to be played began, in the nineties, to take quite a comic turn. It was, for instance, at one time debated, and debated even as a question of first importance, whether one should play Ferdinand in Schiller's Kabale and Liebe with hands in one's pockets, or whether, on the other hand, one should play him as a ‘ladies' man'. Discussions of this nature actually did take place, and contributed very much to the deterioration of dramatic art. The ‘intellectuals’ then came forward and undertook to reform the art of the stage. It is, of course, a very good asset in life to be able to think; but if the utmost one can do is to think like Otto Brahm,² who took, as you probably know, a notable part in the projected reforms, then it is emphatically not one's vocation to decide upon questions of dramatic art.

In face of such developments, we are driven to perceive with all the more certainty that for dramatic art, intellectualism is the very last thing needed, and sensitive artistic perception the first. Wolter was a really great actress.³ Those of you who are younger will not have seen her on the stage. Judged from University standards, Wolter was the most unintelligent person there could possibly be. It is but due to her to say this, for it redounds to her fame; it does not disparage her in the very least. She did actually at long last show some sparks of intellect, after Graf Sullivan had put himself to great trouble with her. But by nature she was absolutely without intellect. And yet there is no denying it: in her time and generation she was an outstandingly great actress in certain directions, especially when she was able to keep her coquetries off the stage.

I refer to things of this sort in order to make plain to you the mood and attitude of mind from which we must start if we would learn once more how to cultivate the arts of recitation and drama.

• 1. p. 84. In the English rendering of this Reading the Alexandrine has not been retained. The metre is, as a matter of fact, very rarely to be found continuously in English poetry. A familiar and peculiarly happy instance of its use is in the ninth—and last—line of the Spenserian stanza. We take an example from Canto III of the First Book of the Faerie Queene, where the poet is beginning to teil the adventure of Una and the Lion.
  One day, nigh wearie of the yrkesome way, From her unhastie beast she did alight; And on the grasse her däinty limbs did lay In secrete shadow, far from all mens sight: From her fayre head her fillet she undight, And layd her stole aside. Her angels face, As the great eye of heaven, shyned bright, And made a sunshine in the shadie place; Did never mortali eye behold such heavenly grace.
• 1. In Minna von Barnhelm.
• 2. Otto Brahm (1856–1912) was one of the founders in 1889 of the ‘Freie Bühne’ in Berlin. He helped to introduce naturalism on to the stage. See also the reference to him near the end of Lecture 14.
• 3. Charlotte Wolter (1834–1897). She performed at the Burgtheater in Vienna. Graf Sullivan was her husband.