| 281. Poetry and the Art of Speech: Lecture VI
07 Jun 1922, Vienna Translated by Julia Wedgwood, Andrew Welburn Rudolf Steiner |
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| The poet knew that his inner being was seized by an objective spiritual force. That human consciousness has indeed undergone a change in this respect in the course of evolution has, I would say, been documented historically. |
| A time came when he could no longer come to terms with himself without undertaking a journey to Italy, which he did in the ’eighties. What was it that he longed for in his innermost being at that time? |
| Out of this, stemming from his feeling for such art as was still to be seen, came an understanding of Greek art He understood that the Greeks created their art in accordance with the same laws that govern the productions of nature; and of this he believed himself to have uncovered the clue. |
| 281. Poetry and the Art of Speech: Lecture VI
07 Jun 1922, Vienna Translated by Julia Wedgwood, Andrew Welburn Rudolf Steiner |
|---|
It is through declamation and recitation that the art of poetry is accorded its true value. So I shall allow myself – not, however, out of allegiance to any abstract principle or any wish to claim that a world-view which springs from the needs of our time must cast its reforming light in some way or other over everything – I shall allow myself on quite other grounds to say a little about recitation and declamation from the vantage-point of the life- and world-conception represented at this Congress. We shall only recapture an inner, a genuine soul-understanding of poetry when we are in a position to find our way to the real homeland of poetic art. And this real homeland of poetic art is in fact the spiritual world – though it is not that intellectual, that conceptual or ideational factor in the spiritual world particularly cultivated in our own time. For this more than anything else has a paralysing effect on poetry. We shall see most clearly what is meant by this when we are reminded that one of the most significant products of this art resounds to us out of the revolutions of time along with a particular avowal on the part of its creator, or perhaps creators. The Homeric epics invariably begin with the words “Sing, O Muse...” Nowadays we are only too inclined to treat such a phrase as more or less a cliché. But when it was first coined it was no cliché – it was an inner experience of the soul: whoever it was that conceived the poem out of the spirit, whence this phrase was also drawn, knew how he was immersed through his poetic faculty in a region of human existence and experience different to that in which we stand in immediate When Klopstock, drawing upon the German spiritual life, wished to sing of the great deed of the Messiah, as Homer had sung the past events of Hellas, he did not say “Sing, O Muse...”, but “Sing, immortal soul, of sinful man’s redemption.” Here something of greater intensity is indicated, something connected directly with the human and its self-reliance. Here man has come to himself in his individual personality. Yet we can add: if the mode of consciousness which lives in our modern world of ideas and observations were the sole criterion, we should lose poetry and art altogether. All the same, it is necessary that here, too, what was suitable for mankind at one time should now assume other forms. But these new forms can only arise if the way into the spiritual world is rediscovered; for such a path alone makes it possible for the human “I” to be laid hold of again by the spiritual world – not as in former times, in an unconscious, dreamy fashion, but in accordance with the needs of the present day: in full consciousness. That this need not be bound up with a crippling of imaginative activity – this is not generally recognized today. It will come to be understood, however, as the world and life-conception put forward here gains more and more ground. If we enter into the spiritual world with circumspection – in full consciousness and with a developed feeling of personality – it will exert no crippling effect on our direct perception or on the vital participation in things and beings so necessary to poetry and art in general. If, however, we abstract ourselves from things in ideas, standing aside from them in purely intellectual concepts, our knowledge will yield nothing that can become a direct artistic creation. But if we plunge down into what pervades the world as a vibrant spiritual essence we will find again, along this spiritual path what poetry and art as a whole were fundamentally seeking all along. From such a spiritual approach the poet will have before his soul what recitation and declamation must re-create for his audience. The poet must submerge himself in the element of speech. This experience of submersion was still to be found among the Greeks, and even in earlier forms of Central European spiritual life, such as the Germanic. In primaeval ages of humanity, if one wished to receive the divine-spiritual and bring it to expression as it spoke in the soul, one dived down not only into the element of speech, but also into what flowed within speech, like the waves of the sea – into the breath. And in earlier times, when the ancient spiritual life was still valued above science, art or religion in isolation, in the period when that spiritual life came into being, poetry, too, was not isolated. It grew isolated at the stage when the felt vitality of the breath (as manifestation of the efficacy of man’s innermost will) was taken up into more exalted regions of organic life: into the element of speech. In due course today we have arrived at the element of thought. And from the thought-element we can experience only a sort of “upthrust” of the breath. What held sway in ancient times in Central Europe in the form of an unconscious feeling whenever man felt the poetic urge was the pulsating of the blood. Taking hold with the will, this formed the breathstream from within, into tone; whereas when the man of Greek or Graeco-Roman times waxed poetic he lived more in what flowed from the breathing-rhythm in the way of a picture or conception, and in what musically formed the sound, tone and line through metre, number and syllable. Goethe’s whole being, his essential soul-nature, was born from the spirit of Central Europe. The writings of his youth derived their imaginative, pictorial form from an experience, an instinctive feeling of how human breathing pushes up, through the will-pulsating waves of the blood, into the formation of tone and sound – and so into the expressivity of the human soul. In this way he attained the qualities we admire so much in his youth, even when he appears to be speaking in prose. We have the prose-poems of Goethe’s youth, like the marvellous Hymn to Nature, where the ruling principle is that where we feel the language permeated by a kind of breathing which pulsates on the waves of the blood. It was from some such sense that the young Goethe initially composed his Iphigeneia. In this composition we feel how something from the Nibelungenlied, or the Gudrunlied, still lives and weaves in the prose, welling up and working in its high and low intonations. It calls attention to the upward thrust of the will into what comes to be man’s head-experience. This rhythm, thrown upward into configurations of thought, is what we can admire in the poems of Goethe’s youth, including the first version of his Iphigeneia. But Goethe longed to get away to Italy. A time came when he could no longer come to terms with himself without undertaking a journey to Italy, which he did in the ’eighties. What was it that he longed for in his innermost being at that time? He longed to enter more deeply into human individuality – to enter into the whole human being with what lived in the high and low tones, creating in speech-formation an effect like the forms of a Gothic cathedral. He wanted to blend this with the even-measured flow he was seeking and believed was accessible only in the south, in Italy, in the wake of what had lived in Greek culture. Out of this, stemming from his feeling for such art as was still to be seen, came an understanding of Greek art He understood that the Greeks created their art in accordance with the same laws that govern the productions of nature; and of this he believed himself to have uncovered the clue. He believed, too, that he had traced these laws in speech-formation. He brought speech into a deeper connection with the breath. Then, in Rome, he refashioned his Iphigeneia accordingly. We must distinguish sharply between the northern Iphigeneia as first conceived and what came about when he refashioned it in Rome – even though the difference between the original and the Roman verse-Iphigeneia is really quite slight. It turned it into a poem that no longer lives simply in high and low tones; it became a work where in quite a different way – and not in any trivial sense, but as regards the whole of its speech-formation - the psychical experience of the blood-rhythm, the circulation with its deeper rhythm, plays over into the tranquil metre of the breathing-rhythm and the element of thought. In this way, what represented a declamatory form in the Nordic Iphigeneia is transformed in the Roman version into recitation. By juxtaposing the one Iphigeneia with the other in this way, we can clearly discern the difference between declamation and recitation. Recitation leads us more deeply into human nature, and creates, too, more from its depths, seizing upon the whole blood-circulation as well as the breathing. But because in declamation the will (as it surges in the depths) is caught up into the highest part of man’s spiritual and soul-being, into the breath, it appears to us as the more forceful – living as it does in high and low tones. It does not only engage the flow of rhyme and verse, but evokes something which goes out into the world – perhaps even with a certain belligerence – as alliteration. In this there is a beauty that is peculiar to the north. We do not wish today to give theoretical explanations, but to make known what should be present in an artistic sensibility. We will therefore firstly present the declamatory, in Goethe’s Nordic Iphigeneia; and then contrastingly the recitative, in the Roman composition. [Note 25] [The magnificent language of the Authorized Version puts it on a different level to any other translation in English. There can be no doubt of its own high literary qualities, and it furnishes us with fine examples of poetry for declamation, as in this version of the ninetieth Psalm: Lord, thou hast bene our dwelling place in all generations.
Before the mountaines were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world: even from everlasting to everlasting thou art God.
Thou turnest man to destruction: and sayest, Returne yee children of men.
For a thousand yeeres in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past: and as a watch in the night.
Thou carriest them away as with a flood, they are as a sleepe: in the morning they are like grasse which groweth up.
In the morning it flourisheth, and groweth up: in the evening it is cut downe, and withereth.
For we are consumed by thine anger: and by thy wrath are we troubled.
Thou hast set our iniquities before thee: our secret sinnes in the light of thy countenance.
For all our dayes are passed away in thy wrath: we spend our yeeres as a tale that is told.
and if by reason of strength they be fourescore yeeres, yet is their strength labour and sorrow: for it is soone cut off, and we flie away.
Who knoweth the power of thine anger? even according to thy feare, so is thy wrath.
So teach us to number our daies: that wee may apply our hearts unto wisedome.
Returne (O LORD) how long? and let it repent thee concerning thy servants.
O satisfie us early with thy mercie: that we may rejoyce, and be glad all our dayes.
Make us glad according to the dayes wherein thou hast afflicted us: and the yeeres wherein we have seene evil.
Let thy worke appeare unto thy servants: and thy glory unto their children.
And let the beautie of the LORD our God be upon us, and establish thou the worke of our hands upon us: yea, the work of our hands establish thou it. Metrical translations of the Psalms are numerous; but many of them have no aims beyond fitting the verses to a tune. The version begun by Sir Philip Sidney and completed by his sister, the Countess of Pembroke, however, brought all the literary resources of the classical tradition in Renaissance poetry to bear on the problem of making an authentically poetic translation. The result is that the ninetieth Psalm is here drastically transformed into a recitative vein: DOMINE REFUGIUM
Thou’our refuge, thou our dwelling, O Lord, hast byn from time to time: Long er Mountaines, proudly swelling, Above the lowly dales did clime: Long er the Earth, embowl’d by thee, Bare the forme it now doth beare: Yea, thou art God for ever, free From all touch of age and yeare.
O, but man by thee created, As he at first of earth arose, When thy word his end hath dated, In equall state to earth he goes. Thou saist, and saying makst it soe: Be noe more, O Adams heyre; From whence ye came, dispatch to goe, Dust againe, as dust you were.
To mortall men of life and light: What is that to thee compared? One day, one quarter of a night. When death upon them storm-like falls, Like unto a dreame they grow: Which goes and comes as fancy calls, Nought in substance all in show.
As the hearb that early groweth, Which leaved greene and flowred faire Ev’ning change with ruine moweth, And laies to roast in withering aire: Soe in thy wrath we fade away, With thy fury overthrowne When thou in sight our faultes dost lay, Looking on our synns unknown.
Therefore in thy angry fuming, Our life of daies his measure spends: All our yeares in death consuming, Right like a sound that, sounded, ends. Our daies of life make seaventy yeares, Eighty, if one stronger be: Whose cropp is laboures, dollors, feares, Then away in poast we flee.
Yet who notes thy angry power As he should feare, soe fearing thee? Make us count each vitall hower Make thou us wise, we wise shall be. Turne Lord: shall these things thus goe still? Lett thy servantes peace obtaine: Us with thy joyfull bounty fill, Endlesse joyes in us shall raigne.
Glad us now, as erst we greeved: Send yeares of good for yeares of ill: When thy hand hath us releeved, Show us and ours thy glory still. Both them and us, not one exempt, With thy beauty beautify: Supply with aid what we attempt, Our attempts with aid supply. Mary Herbert, Countess of Pembroke (1561-1621).]
Goethe followed up his incursion into the new poetic sphere of his remodelled Iphigeneia with works like his “Achilleis”, from which a passage will now be recited. Here in Goethe we find something that shows us how poetry springs from the whole man, how it should emerge from the whole man and take shape as recitation and declamation. I might seem, at first glance, to be propounding a mechanical interpretation of reciting and declaiming, if I were to point to something in the nature of man as the origin of recitation and declamation: this something is to be found, however, precisely along the spiritual path. As an art, poetry has the task of enlarging again what prose has atomized and contracted into the single word. The harmony of sounds, the melodious flow of sound in the picture-formation of speech, of mundane speech, is in this way “canopied over,” as we might say, by a second, spiritual speech. The prose-speaker clothes in words those thoughts he wants to convey, along with whatever of individual experience he can. The poet draws back from such rhetoric, to a much more profoundly inward human experience. [Note 26] He reverts to a level at which (as I have already indicated) the rhythms of breathing and the circulatory system become perceptible, as they vibrate through the language of poetry. We shall only get to the bottom of rhyme, metre, the pictorial and the melodic in speech, by comprehending human nature spiritually, even down to the physical. We have, then, as one pole of the rhythmical in man, the breathing; and as the other pole, circulation. In the interaction of breathing and circulation is expressed something which is first given, in its simplest ratio, when we attend to the resonance of breathing and circulation in the flow of human speech. In breathing, we draw a particular number of breaths every minute – between sixteen and eighteen. And over the same period we have, an average, about four times as many pulse‑beats. Circulation and breathing interact, so that the circulation plays into the breath, and the breath in turn weaves into the circulation its slower rhythm. It is an apprehension of such an harmonious interchange between pulse-beat and breathing that echoes on in speech. Formed and transformed in various ways, it produces the after-effect of a pictorial or a musical speech-formation, which is then brought to expression by the poet. I said – and the point has actually been raised – that the fundamental law of poetry, the interaction of breathing and circulation that I have elicited from human morphology might be considered mechanical and materialistic. But the spiritual life that holds sway and works in the world can only be grasped if we trace that life right into its material formations; only if the life of man’s spirit and soul is pursued to those depths where it lives out its expression in corporeal functions. These bodily workings will then act as a firm wall to hurl back, like an echo, what derives from the laws of a profounder spirituality – a spirituality of direct experience pouring itself out into speech. Goethe sensed how in earlier stages of human culture man stood in a deeper relation, as it were, to his own nature. He too sought to enter into an earlier epoch’s feeling for poetic forms and revivify them. It is actually of deep significance that at the highest point in the development of German poetry, Goethe pointed away from the crude, prosaic stress popularly taken for recitation and declamation, to a special kind of what can be called – and deservingly – a real speech-formation. To rehearse the iambics of his Iphigeneia, Goethe stood in front of the actors with his baton. He knew that what had to be revealed was, above all, the imagery he wanted to incorporate, while the prose-content was there merely as a ladder by which to scale the heights of the full, spiritual sense – the sound and the picture-quality of speech that must evolve from it. We must pierce through the given prose-content of a poem into the truly poetic. Schiller’s experience in his best creations, of an initially indefinable melody, a musicality onto which he then threaded the prose-content, was not a personal peculiarity. As regards the words, some of Schiller’s poems could even have had a different content to the one they currently possess. In a true poet there is everywhere, in the background of the rhetorical speech, a quality that must simply be felt. And only when it does justice to the musical in speech-formation will true poetry stand revealed. If we turn to what is often taught today as recitation and declamation, it is with a keen sense of something having, in these uncultured times, gone amiss. The voice itself is strengthened, and great value is attached to technical adjustment of the organism: this is because no-one is any longer able to live in a direct relationship with recitation and declamation (not to mention singing), and we transfer to material tampering with the body what should be experienced on a quite different plane. The important thing in teaching recitation and declamation is that the pupil should on no account be made to do anything but live with speech-formation as such and the soul-resonance of living with speech-formation, in such a way as to bring him to listen properly. For anyone who is capable of listening correctly to what may come over in poetry, the appropriate breathing, proper disposition of the body, etc., will come about of their own accord – as a response to proper listening. It is important to let the pupil live in the actual element of declamation and recitation, and leave all the rest to him. He must become absorbed in the objective realities of tone, in “musical pictoriality” and in authentically poetic formations. In this way alone, paradoxical as it may sound, can we get the pupil to develop an ear for what he hears declaimed to him and thereby sensitivity to what moves spiritually over the waves of sound he hears. Only when he experiences something in his surroundings, we might say, and not in himself – and even though to begin with this experience is illusory, it must be cultivated – only then will he be able to refer back to himself what he feels vibrant in the world around him. It is only through the recital of certain aesthetically fashioned word-sequences, which have a special relation to human morphology, that we ought to learn breath-control or anything else connected with the adjusting of the voice. In this way we shall best meet the requirements of Goethe’s artistic perception and the sensitivity we value so greatly. By way of illustration – not of any theory, but of the foregoing remarks there will now be recited a passage from Goethe’s “Achilleis”. [Note 27] [Since the hexameter in its true, classical form can only occasionally be reproduced successfully in English, C. Day Lewis performed the service of devising a metre which sounds convincingly like it. He used it to evoke the heroic and epic associations of classical poetry in relating, for example, an episode from the Spanish Civil War in “The Nabara”. This extract is from “Phase One”:
Freedom is more than a word, more than the base coinage Of statesmen, the tyrant’s dishonoured cheque, or the dreamer’s mad Inflated currency. She is mortal, we know, and made In the image of simple men who have no taste for carnage But sooner kill and are killed than see that image betrayed. Mortal she is, yet rising always refreshed from her ashes: She is bound to earth, yet she flies as high as a passage bird To home wherever man’s heart with seasonal warmth is stirred: Innocent is her touch as the dawn’s, but still it unleashes The ravisher shades of envy. Freedom is more than a word.
I see man’s heart two-edged, keen both for death and creation. As a sculptor rejoices, stabbing and mutilating the stone Into a shapelier life, and the two joys make one – So man is wrought in his hour of agony and elation To efface the flesh to reveal the crying need of his bone. Burning the issue was beyond their mild forecasting For those I tell of – men used to the tolerable joy and hurt Of simple lives: they coveted never an epic part; But history’s hand was upon them and hewed an everlasting Image of freedom out of their rude and stubborn heart. C. Day Lewis (1904-1972) An earlier solution to the problem was a rather more radical departure from the hexameter for a five-foot line, and the blank-verse pentameter remains the natural epic metre in English. Milton employed it in recreating many of the features of classical epic in Paradise Lost, as may be illustrated from the following passage (Book VI, 189-214):
So saying, a noble stroke he lifted high, Which hung not, but so swift with tempest fell On the proud Crest of Satan, that no sight, Nor motion of swift thought, less could his Shield Such ruin intercept: ten paces huge He back recoild; the tenth on bended knee His massie Spear upstayd; as if on Earth Winds under ground or waters forcing way Sidelong, had push’t a Mountain from his seat Half sunk with all his Pines. Amazement seiz’d The Rebel Thrones, but greater rage to see Thus foil’d their mightiest, ours joy find, and shout, Presage of Victorie and fierce desire Of Battel: whereat Michaël bid sound Th’ Arch-angel trumpet; through the vast of Heav’n It sounded, and the faithful Armies rung Hosanna to the Highest: nor stood at gaze The adverse Legions, nor less hideous join’d The horrid shock: now storming furie rose, And clamor such as heard in Heav’n till now Was never, Arms on Armour clashing bray’d Horrible discord, and the madding Wheeles Of brazen Chariots rag’d; dire was the noise Of conflict; over head the dismal hiss Of fiery Darts in flaming vollies flew, And flying vaulted either Host with fire. John Milton.] And now, to illustrate declamation, Goethe’s “Hymnus an die Natur” (abridged, as occasion demanded, for a Eurythmy performance).
Natur! Wir sind von ihr umgeben und umschlungen – unvermögend aus ihr herauszutreten, und unvermögend, tiefer in sie hinein zu kommen. Ungebeten und ungewarnt nimmt sie uns in den Kreislauf ihres Tanzes auf und treibt sich mit uns fort, bis wir ermüdet sind und ihrem Arm entfallen.
Sie schafft ewig neue Gestalten; alles ist neu, und doch immer das Alte. Sie baut immer und zerstört immer. Sie lebt in lauter Kindern; und die Mutter, wo ist sie? – Sie ist die einzige Künstlerin; sie spielt ein Schauspiel; es ist ein ewiges Leben, Werden und Bewegen in ihr. Sie verwandelt sich ewig, und ist kein Moment Stillestehen in ihr.
Ihr Tritt ist gemessen, ihre Ausnahmen selten, ihre Gesetze unwandelbar. Gedacht hat sie und sinnt beständig.
Die Menschen sind alle in ihr, und sie in allen. Auch das Unnatürlichste ist Natur, auch die plumpste Philisterei hat etwas von ihrem Genie.
Sie liebt sich selber; sie freut sich an der Illusion. Ihre Kinder sind ohne Zahl.
Sie spritzt ihre Geschöpfe aus dem Nichts hervor. Leben ist ihre schönste Erfindung, und der Tod – ihr Kunstgriff, viel Leben zu haben.
Sie hüllt den Menschen in Dumpfheit ein und spornt ihn ewig zum Lichte. Man gehorcht ihren Gesetzen, auch wenn man ihnen widerstrebt; man wirkt mit ihr, auch wenn man gegen sie wirken will. Sie macht alles, was sie gibt, zur Wohltat.
Sie hat keine Sprache noch Rede, aber sie schafft Zungen und Herzen, durch die sie fühlt und spricht. Ihre Krone ist die Liebe.
Sie macht Klüfte zwischen allen Wesen, und alles will sie verschlingen. Sie hat alles isoliert, um alles zusammenzuziehen.
Sie ist alles. Sie belohnt sich selbst und bestraft sich selbst, erfreut und quält sich selbst. Vergangenheit und Zukunft kennt sie nicht. Gegenwart ist ihr Ewigkeit. Sie ist gütig, sie ist weise und still. Sie ist ganz, und doch immer unvollendet.
Jedem erscheint sie in einer eignen Gestalt. Sie verbirgt sich in tausend Namen und ist immer dieselbe.
Sie hat mich hereingestellt, sie wird mich auch herausführen. Ich vertraue mich ihr. Alles hat sie gesprochen. Alles ist ihre Schuld, alles ist ihr Verdienst! [Perhaps the nearest parallel in English is the unrestricted and freely expansive rhythm of Blake. He celebrates not Nature, but the spirits (the Sons of Los) in Nature in these extracts from his Milton pl. 27,66 – 28,12; pl. 31, 4 – 22:
Thou seest the Constellations in the deep & wondrous Night: They rise in order and continue their immortal courses Upon the mountains & in vales with harp & heavenly song, With flute & clarion, with cups & measures fill’d with foaming wine.
Glitt’ring the streams reflect the Vision of beatitude, And the calm Ocean joys beneath & smooths his awful waves: These are the Sons of Los, & these the Labourers of the Vintage. Thou seest the gorgeous clothed Flies that dance & sport in summer
Upon the sunny brooks & meadows: every one the dance Knows in its intricate mazes of delight artful to weave: Each one to sound his instruments of music in the dance, To touch each other & recede, to cross & change & return: These are the Children of Los; thou seest the Trees on mountains, The wind blows heavy, loud they thunder thro’ the darksom sky, Uttering prophecies & speaking instructive words to the sons Of men: These are the Sons of Los: These are the Visions of Eternity, But we see only as it were the hem of their garments When with our vegetable eyes we view these wondrous Visions.
The Sky is an immortal Tent built by the Sons of Los: And every Space that a Man views around his dwelling-place Standing on his own roof or in his garden on a mount Of twenty-five cubits in height, such space is his Universe: To meet the flat Earth &the Sea in such an order’d Space: The Starry heavens reach no further, but here bend and set On all sides, & the two Poles turn on their valves of gold; And if he move his dwelling-place, his heavens also move Where’er he goes, & all his neighbourhood bewail his loss. Such are the Spaces called Earth & such its dimension. As to that false appearance which appears to the reasoner As of a Globe rolling thro’ Voidness, it is a delusion of Ulro. The Microscope knows not of this nor the Telescope: they alter The ratio of the Spectator’s Organs, but leave Objects untouch’d. For every Space larger than a red Globule of Man’s blood Is visionary, and is created by the Hammer of Los: And every Space smaller than a Globule of Man’s blood opens Into Eternity of which this vegetable Earth is but a shadow. William Blake.]
And now we will adduce some examples of the lyric – to be precise, from two poets, both Austrian: Robert Hamerling and Anastasius Grün. The lyric diverges from epic and dramatic poetry in that, as far as speech-formation is concerned, its aesthetic quality must be experienced directly. In a way, all lyric strives to obliterate the immediate content of consciousness – at any rate to some degree. It would restore to man’s being a sense of universal participation. One might say that in lyric there is always a damping down of conscious experience. With a poet like Hamerling, a once widely influential poet who compared with then is now largely forgotten, we can indeed observe how personal experience passes over into a lyrical experience. Here we have a personality whose soul wants to share inwardly with every fibre of its being in the entire life of the world. He wants to share in the life of colour that meets him from the world. And thus the unconscious elements of human life come to play a part in him. We can still see the after-effects of this colourful experience in him when he tries to give it shape by casting it in antique forms. Particularly in Hamerling’s lyric poetry we can feel the true Austro-German lyricism. He is in a sense perhaps the most representative of Austro-German poets. The German spoken in Austria, deriving as it does from several dialects to become the common parlance and also the so-called “literary language” of Austrian poetry – this language has something which marks it off from the other forms of German language, fine discriminations which are of special interest to poetry and speech-formation. Compared with other varieties of German we might say that Austrian German has a subdued quality: yet in this quality there lingers a delicate sense of humour; this language became that of Austrian poetry. This soft humorous sound and intimate soul-quality that comes across in Austrian speech is not readily found in other forms of German – except possibly dialects. And here we have something which brings us, so to speak, close to antiquity. It is at any rate remarkable that so outstanding a poet as Joseph Misson should have resorted to Austrian dialect for his “Da Naz, a niederösterreichischer Bauerbui geht in d’Fremd”, and that he arrived at a type of hexameter in which he felt artistically at home. We might add that the idealism of thought natural to someone who lives with Austrian German imparts an idealistic tinge to all the German inner feeling in this little piece of Central Europe. We encounter this even in the formation of speech in Hamerling’s lyrics, which convey the feeling as if on the wings of a bird, while continually catching the bird again in powerfully moulded forms. This is really possible only with the soft humour of Austrian German. If we recapture this in declamation by taking what lives in Hamerling’s lyrical poetry and allow it to be heard elsewhere, it strikes a German from a different region as being cornpletely German and yet he feels what is German in the language to have been idealized. This is what gives Hamerling’s lyricism its nobility and what makes his verve and colour genuinely artistic as well as spontaneous. How differently this appears in our other poet, Anastasius Grün! In accordance with the unique character of the Austrian disposition, he had a real feeling for what ought to mediate between East and West – for the mutual understanding of people all over the earth. The mood of 1848 finds expression most nobly and beautifully in Anastasius Grün’s poem Schutt – and in other of his poems too. It is this prologue to Schutt that will be recited. So, on the one hand we have, in Hamerling, a poet who really created more for declamation, yet found for it a metrical form and in Anastasius Grün a poet who takes over a recitative principle straight from the language. We would now like to demonstrate this in a poem by Anastasius Grün which, from its contents, might be entitled “West und Ost”; and in two poems by Robert Hamerling: “Nächtliche Regung” and “Vor einer Genziane”. WEST UND OST
Aug’ in Auge lächelnd schlangen Arm in Arm einst West und Ost; Zwillingspaar, das liebumfangen Noch in einer Wiege kost’!
Ahriman ersah’s, der Schlimme, Ihn erbaut der Anblick nicht, Schwingt den Zauberstab im Grimme, Draus manch roter Blitzstrahl bricht.
Wirft als Riesenschlang’ ins Bette, Ringelnd, bäumend, zwischen sie Jener Berg’ urew’ge Kette, Die nie bricht und endet nie.
Lässt der Lüfte Vorhang rollend Undurchdringlich niederziehn, Spannt des Meers Sahara grollend Endlos zwischen beiden hin.
Lächlend ob dem schlechten Schwank, Winkt mit seiner Zauberrute, Sternefunkelnd, goldesblank.
Sieh, auf Taubenfitt’chen, fächelnd, Von der fernsten Luft geküsst, Schifft die Liebe, kundig lächelnd; Wie sich Ost and Westen grüsst!
Blütenduft und Tau und Segen Saugt im Osten Menschengeist, Steigt als Wolke, die als Regen Mild auf Westens Flur dann fleusst!
Und die Brücke hat gezogen, Die vom Ost zum West sich schwingt, Phantasie als Regenbogen, Der die Berge überspringt.
Durch die weiten Meereswüsten, Steuernd, wie ein Silberschwan, Zwischen Osts und Westens Küsten Wogt des Lieds melod’scher Kahn.
Anastasius Grün (1806-1876). [The poem that follows demonstrates the English sense of delicacy and restraint, and the subtle humour to which the language was in its own way particularly suited – perhaps especially around Marvell’s time: ON A DROP OF DEW
See how the Orient Dew, Shed from the Bosom of the Morn Into the blowing Roses, Yet careless of its Mansion new; For the clear Region where ’twas born Round in its self incloses: And in its little Globes Extent, Frames as it can its native Element. How it the purple flow’r does slight, Scarce touching where it lyes, But gazing back upon the Skies, Shines with a mournful Light; Like its own Tear, Because so long divided from the Sphear. Restless it roules and unsecure, Trembling lest it grow impure; Till the warm Sun pitty it’s Pain, And to the Skies exhales it back again. So the Soul, that Drop, that Ray Of the clear Fountain of Eternal Day, Could it within the humane flow’r be seen, Remembring still its former height, Shuns the sweat leaves and blossoms green; And, recollecting its own Light,
The greater Heaven in an Heaven less. In how coy a Figure wound, Every way it turns away; So the World excluding round, Yet receiving in the Day. Dark beneath, but bright above: Here disdaining, there in Love. How loose and easie hence to go: How girt and ready to ascend. Moving but on a point below, It all about does upwards bend. Such did the Manna’s sacred Dew destil; White, and intire, though congeal’d and chill. Congeal’d on Earth: but does, dissolving, run Into the Glories of th’ Almighty Sun.
Andrew Marvell (1621-1678).] NÄCHTLICHE REGUNG
Horch, der Tanne Wipfel Schlummertrunken bebt, Wie von Geisterschwingen Rauschend überschwebt. Göttliches Orakel In der Krone saust, Doch die Tanne selber Weiss nicht, was sie braust.
Mir auch durch die Seele Leise Melodien, Unbegriffne Schauer, Allgewaltig ziehn: Ist es Freudemahnung Oder Schmerzgebot? Sich allein verständlich Spricht in uns der Gott.
VOR EINER GENZIANE Einsam erblüht tief unten in kühler Waldschlucht. O wie sie durchs Föhrengestrüpp Heraufschimmerte mit den blauen, prächtigen Glocken: Gewohnten Waldespfad Komm’ ich nun Tag um Tag Gewandelt und steige hinab in die Schlucht Und blicke der schönen Blume tief ins Aug’...
Schöne Blume, was schwankst du doch Vor mir in unbewegten Lüften so scheu, So ängstlich? Ist denn ein Menschenaue nicht wert Zu blicken in ein Blumenantlitz? Trübt Menschenmundes Hauch Den heiligen Gottesfrieden dir, In dem du atmest?
Ach, immer wohl drückt Schuld, Drückt nagende Selbstanklage Die sterbliche Brust und du, Blume, du wiegst In himmlischer Lebensunschuld Die wunderbaren Kronen: Doch blicke nicht allzu vorwurfsvoll mich an! Sieh, hab’ ich doch Eines voraus vor dir: Ich habe gelebt: Ich habe gestrebt, ich habe gerungen, Ich habe geweint, Ich habe geliebt, ich habe gehasst, Ich habe gehofft, ich habe geschaudert; Der Stachel der Qual, des Entzückens hat In meinem Fleische gewühlt; Alle Schauer des Lebens und des Todes sind Durch meine Sinne geflutet, Ich habe mit Engelchören gespielt, ich habe Gerungen mit Dämonen.
Du ruhst, ein träumendes Kind, Am Mantelsaum des Höchsten, ich aber; Ich habe mich emporgekämpft Zu seinem Herzen, Ich habe gezernt an seinen Schleiern, Ich habe ihn beim Namen gerufen, Emporgeklettert Bin ich auf einer Leiter von Seufzern, Und hab’ ihm ins Ohr gerufen: ‘Erbarmung!’ O Blume, heilig bist du, Selig und rein; Doch heiligt, was er berührt, nicht auch Der zündende Schicksalsblitz? O, blicke nicht allzu vorwurfsvoll mich an, Du stille Träumerin; Ich habe gelebt, ich habe gelitten!
Robert Hamerling (1830-1889).
[Something of the same fusion of lyric flight and precision of form can be felt in the following poem: THE MORNING-WATCH
O Joyes! Infinite sweetnes! with what flowres, And shoots of glory, my soul breakes, and buds! All the long houres Of night, and Rest Through the still shrouds Of Sleep, and Clouds, This Dew fell on my Breast; O how it Blouds, And Spirits all my Earth! heark! In what Rings, And Hymning Circulations the quick world Awakes, and sings; The rising winds, ‘And falling springs, Birds, beasts, all things Adore him in their kinds. Thus all is hurl’d In sacred Hymnes, and Order, The great Chime And Symphony of nature. Prayer is The world in tune, A spirit-voyce, And vocall joyes Whose Eccho is heav’ns blisse. O let me climbe When I lye down! The Pious soul by night Is like a clouded starre, whose beames though said To shed their light Under some Cloud Yet are above, And shine, and move Beyond that mistie shrowd So in my Bed That Curtain’d grave, though sleep, like ashes, hide My lamp, and life, both shall in thee abide.
Henry Vaughan (1621-1695).] And to close, we shall introduce part of the Seventh Scene from my Mystery Play, The Portal of Initiation. One is in a unique position when trying to give poetic form to the life of the super-sensible. For, to begin with, one seems to be withdrawing far from the solid ground of external reality. One is thus exposed to the additional danger, that anyone not readily familiar and quick with spiritual matters takes our intention to be allegorical or symbolic. Neither symbol nor allegory has any place in the aesthetic viewpoint arising from the sort of perception we advocate here. It is assuredly no more the abstractions of symbolism than it is a straw-stuffed allegory that we attempt, but a living portrayal of perceptions actually more distinct than our ordinary sense-perceptions, because apprehended by the soul directly, unmediated by bodily organs. Only for someone unable to rouse these perceptions to life in himself do they seem abstract or hollow. I hope to limit my remarks on this subject to a few words, for it does not do to dwell over much on one’s own accomplishments. These Mystery Plays concern the spiritual and soul development of Johannes Thomasius, who is to be brought little by little to a direct super-sensible experience of the spiritual world. This has to a certain extent been achieved when once he has succeeded in overcoming a range of inner obstacles, and made various advances. There then comes a moment at which he finds, in what has hitherto been known to him as the external world of the senses and the intellect (which infiltrates the senses only as the thinnest and most abstract spirituality), he comes upon a pervading activity of concrete spiritual beings and concrete spiritual events. The occurrences in a human soul who reaches this stage of initiation are complex. Everything so far experienced in light or sound, or in the other elements of the external world, figures for the higher mode of experience in a different guise. It is actually like a transformation in which the world is experienced as a drawing together and struggling up of the soul-forces of thinking, feeling and willing to another form of existence. As to how these soul-forces share in such a transformation of man, and how this participation stands in intimate relation to the entire cosmos – that is what is presented in the scene from the Mystery Drama. One of the characters – Maria – who has raised her life up into the spiritual, describes first how those forces come together which are to inspire the soul’s individual forces. Philia, Astrid and Luna are seen as the powers of the soul which hold sway in real, living people, and play a part in inspiring the man Johannes Thomasius. What the human soul may come to be, out of the whole world, out of the totality of the world what it can become in the moment that true understanding of spiritual life arises there: that is the subject of this representation. While one apparently withdraws in such a representation more than ever from the ground of reality, yet (as who should know better than their creator?) the characters formed in this way actually stand before the soul no less concretely than any external thing. Many people, of course, will not be drawn into such matters: they call everything allegorical that leads beyond sense-perception. In defence, Hamerling asked in his Ahasver: Can anyone help me out of this predicament – that Nero stands here and symbolizes cruelty? We introduce symbolism only to the extent that reality itself is a kind of symbol. It is exactly when we come to shape spiritual forms that we feel how every detail, down to the minuter shades, has been directly experienced. And we perceive a spiritual entity of this kind not in concepts, but in words, in nuances of sound. No-one, I believe, could create out of the energies of the spirit and attain to that degree of life who cannot himself enter vitally into language. He may then employ the spirit of language, with its wonderful inner wisdom, its wonderful formation of feeling and its impulses of will, to that end – so as to grasp things in their particularity. If he cannot put to use those unconscious spiritual pulsations which proceed from everyday life, he will not be able to avail himself of the language to present the spiritual world. We need not grow less poetic because our presentations take us into the spiritual world. For there we enter the native country of poetry and art. All poetry has originated from the soul and spirit. Since, therefore, man finds himself confronted by the spiritual essences of things, the lyric flight, the epic power and the dramatic form that live in him can never be lost. These cannot be destroyed if the art of poetry returns, as to its own proper home, to the realm of the spirit. From The Soul’s Probation, Scene 2: [Note 28] MARIA: Ihr, meine Schwestern, die ich In Wesenstiefen finde, Wenn meine Seele sich erweitet, Und in die Weltenfernen Sich selbst geleitet, Entbindet mir die Seherkräfte Aus Aetherhöhen, Und führet sie auf Erdenpfade; Dass ich im Zeitensein Mich selbst ergründe, Und die Richtung mir geben kann Aus alten Lebensweisen Zu neuen Willenskreisen.
PHILIA: Ich will erfüllen mich Mit strebendem Seelenlicht Aus Herzenstiefen; Ich will eratmen mir Belebende Willensmacht Aus Geistestrieben; Dass du, geliebte Schwester, In alten Lebenskreisen Das Licht erfühlen kannst.
ASTRID: Ich will verweben Sich fühlende Eigenheit Mit ergebenem Liebewillen; Ich will entbinden Die keimenden Willensmächte Aus Wunschesfesseln Und dir das lähmende Sehnen Verwandeln in findendes Geistesfühlen; Dass du, geliebte Schwester, In fernen Erdenpfaden Dich selbst ergriinden kannst.
LUNA: Ich will berufen entsagende Herzensmächte, Und will erfestigen tragende Seelenruhe; Sie sollen sich vermählen Und kraftendes Geistesleuchten Aus Seelengründen heben; Sie sollen sich durchdringen, Und lauschendem Geistgehör Die Erdenfernen zwingen; Dass du, geliebte Schwester, In weitem Zeitensein Die Lebensspuren finden kannst.
MARIA (after a pause): Wenn ich mich entreissen kann Verwirrendem Selbstgefühl, Und mich euch geben darf: Dass ihr mein Seelensein Mir spiegelt aus Weltenfernen: Vermag ich zu lösen mich Aus diesem Lebenskreise Und kann ergründen mich In andrer Daseinsweise.
(a longer pause and then the following)
In euch, ihr Schwestern, schau’ ich Geisteswesen, Die Seelen aus dem Weltenall beleben. Ihr könnt die Kräfte, die in Ewigkeiten keimen Im Menschen selbst zur Reife bringen. Durch meiner Seele Tore dürft’ ich oft Den Weg in eure Reiche finden, Und Erdendaseins Urgestalten Mit Seelenaugen schauen. Bedürftig bin ich eurer Hilfe jetzt, Da mir obliegt, den Weg zu finden Von meiner gegenwärtigen Erdenfahrt In langvergangne Menschheitstage. Entbindet mir das Seelensein vom Selbstgefühl In seinem Zeitenleben. Erschliesset mir den Pflichtenkreis Aus meiner Vorzeit Lebensbahnen.
From The Soul’s Probation, Scene 2: MARIA: You, my sisters, I find when in the depths of being my soul, expanding, guides itself into the reaches of the universe. Release for me the powers of seeing out of etheric heights and lead them down to earthly paths so that I may explore and find myself in course of time and give direction to myself to change old ways of life into new spheres of will.
PHILIA: I will imbue myself with striving light of soul out of the heart’s own depths; I will breathe in enlivening power of will out of the spirit’s urging; that you, beloved sister, within old spheres of life may feel and sense the light.
ASTRID: I will weave into one a selfhood’s feeling of itself with love’s forebearing will; I will release the burgeoning powers of will from fetters of desire, transform your languid yearning to certainty of spirit sensing; that you, beloved sister, on paths of earth far distant explore and find your Self.
LUNA: I will call forth renouncing strength of heart and will confirm enduring soul-repose. These shall unite and raise empowering spirit light out of the depths of soul; they shall pervade each other and shall subdue far distances of earth to the listening spirit ear; that you, beloved sister, in time’s wide ranges may find the traces of your life.
MARIA (after a pause): When I can tear myself away from the bewildering sense of Self and give myself to you so that you reflect to me my soul from world-wide distances: then I can free myself out of this sphere of life and can explore and find myself in other states of being.
(a long pause, then the following)
In you, my sisters, I see spirit beings that quicken souls out of the cosmos’ life. You bring to full maturity in man himself Through portals of my soul I often could find my way into your realm and could behold with inner eyes the archetypes of earth existence. I now must ask your help: it has become my duty to find the way that leads from present life on earth to long past ages of mankind. Release my soul-life from its sense of self in time-enclosed existence. Open for me the sphere of duty, brought from my life journey in ancient days.
Trans. R. and H. Pusch. |
the forces germinating in eternities.| 281. Poetry and the Art of Speech: Lecture VII
29 Mar 1923, Stuttgart Translated by Julia Wedgwood, Andrew Welburn Rudolf Steiner |
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| And in our day an attempt is quite justifiably made to make art the bearer of our ideal of knowledge, so that some possibility may once more be found of our rising upward with our understanding from the realm of substance, of matter, into the spiritual. I have tried to show how art is the way to gain a true knowledge of man, in that artistic creativity and sensitivity are the organs for a genuine knowledge of man. |
| Thereby religion is grasped in its widest sense, in which it does not only embrace what we today rightly regard as explicitly religious – the quality of reverence in man – but also includes humour, as understood in the highest sense. [Note 29] A sort of religious feeling must always prepare the mood for art. |
| The moment we arrive by means of logic at a prose sentence we must feel the solid earth under our feet. For the spiritual does not speak in human words. The spiritual world goes only as far as the syllable, not as far as the word. |
| 281. Poetry and the Art of Speech: Lecture VII
29 Mar 1923, Stuttgart Translated by Julia Wedgwood, Andrew Welburn Rudolf Steiner |
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I hope you will permit me to insert into today’s proceedings at this Pedagogical and Artistic Congress an example taken from the art of recitation and declamation, and to make some observations of an interpolated nature. Art is always a particularly difficult theme on which to speak, in that art is conveyed through immediate sensation – through immediate perception. It must be received as a direct impression. We are thus in a quite special position in speaking about art at a Congress where our aim is a clarification that is reached both through knowledge and through a whole style of education and teaching-practice. Certainly all the lectures that have been held here have stressed the necessity, in the case of Waldorf education, of introducing an artistic quality into the art of education and teaching in general. But when confronting art itself, one would prefer, as I hinted in a former lecture, to preserve a chaste silence. Now every argument, every show of feeling, every human volition ultimately passes over to form the ongoing stream of human civilisation. They are contained in the three greatest impulses behind all human evolution and all historical events: the ideals of religion, art and knowledge. And in our day an attempt is quite justifiably made to make art the bearer of our ideal of knowledge, so that some possibility may once more be found of our rising upward with our understanding from the realm of substance, of matter, into the spiritual. I have tried to show how art is the way to gain a true knowledge of man, in that artistic creativity and sensitivity are the organs for a genuine knowledge of man. Nature herself becomes a true artist the moment she ascends from the multiplicity of facts and beings of the universe to bring about man. This is not said merely as a metaphor, but as a deeper knowledge of the universe and of man. And again, confronted with art, it may be said that it is an intrusion when we want to speak artistically about art. To speak about art is to lead what is spoken back to a sort of religious perception. Thereby religion is grasped in its widest sense, in which it does not only embrace what we today rightly regard as explicitly religious – the quality of reverence in man – but also includes humour, as understood in the highest sense. [Note 29] A sort of religious feeling must always prepare the mood for art. For when we speak about art we must speak out of the spirit. How can we find words for works of art of the sublimest kind, such as Dante's Commedia, if our language does not embody moments of religious insight? This was indeed felt, and rightly felt, when art came into being. Art originated at a time when science still formed a unity, a common whole along with religion and art. At the beginning of certain great works of art we hear words which, I would say, seem like a confirmation of these comments from world-history. It is truly out of a cosmic awareness that Homer begins his poem with the words:
Sing, O Muse, of the anger of Peleus’ son Achilles.
Homer himself does not sing: Homer is conscious that he must raise his soul to the superhuman, the super-sensible; that he must place his words as a sacrificial gift before the higher powers he serves, if he is to become a truly artistic poet. (Of course, the question of Homer’s identity has nothing to do with this.) And if we survey a longer period, and come to one of the modern poets, we hear how Klopstock begins his Messiah with words that are indeed different, but formally sound quite similar:
Sing, immortal soul, of sinful man’s redemption, Which the Messiah on earth in human form accomplished.
When we begin from the one poem and progress to the other, we pass through the period in which man traversed the great, immeasurable distance from complete surrender to the divine spiritual powers, whose earthly sheath he felt himself to be, to the point where man in his freedom started to feel himself a sheath only of his own soul. But there too, at the beginning of the great epoch of German poetry, Klopstock appealed to the invisible – as Goethe constantly did, even if he did not overtly say so. Thus among poets themselves we can observe the consciousness of a sort of translation into the super-sensible. The super-sensible, however, does not speak in words. Words are in every instance prose. Words are in every instance components of a discourse, components of a psychic act which submits to the conditions of logic. Logic exists in order that we may become aware of external beings and occurrences in their external sense-reality; logic must not, therefore, intrude upon spiritual reality. The moment we arrive by means of logic at a prose sentence we must feel the solid earth under our feet. For the spiritual does not speak in human words. The spiritual world goes only as far as the syllable, not as far as the word. Thus we can say that the poet is in a curious position. The poet has to make use of words, since these are after all the instruments of human speech: but in making use of words he necessarily deserts his proper artistic domain. He can only achieve his aim if he leads the word back to syllable-formation. In the quantities, metres and weight of syllable-formation – this is the region where the word has not yet become word, but still submits to the musical, imaginative and plastic, to a speech-transcendent spirituality – there the poet holds sway. And when the poet has to make use of words, he feels inwardly how he has to lead word-formations back to the region that he left under the necessity of passing from syllable to word. He feels that through rhyme, through the entire configuration of the verse, he must again make good what is lost when the word abandons the concrete quantities and weight that belong to the syllable, and round it out artistically, imparting form and harmony. Here we are vouchsafed a glimpse into the intimacies of the poet’s soul. This disposition is truly felt by a real poet. Platen is not alone in having left us some remarkable comments on what I have just attempted to describe:
Only to rambling dilettantes Are formal strictures ‘senseless’. Necessity: That is thy sacrificial gift, O Genius.
Platen invokes Genius, observing that it is inherent in Genius to fashion the syllables in accordance with quantity, metre and weight. Rambling off into prose is merely the foolishness of the half-talented. (Although, as I have mentioned, these make up ninety-nine per cent of our versifiers.) And not only Platen, but Schiller, too, puts it rather beautifully when he says:
It is the peculiar property of an untainted and purely quantitative verse that it serves as the sensible presentation of an inner necessity of thought; and conversely, any licence in the treatment of syllable quantities makes itself felt in a certain arbitrariness. From this perspective it is of particular importance, and touches upon the most intimate laws of art.
It is to the necessity inherent in syllable-quantities that Schiller refers in this pronouncement. The declaimer or reciter, as the interpreter of the poet’s art, must give special attention to what I have just described. He has to conduct what comes before him as a poetical composition, which obviously communicates through words, back to quantity, metre and the weight of the syllables. What then flows out into the words has to be consciously rounded out so as to accord with the verse-structure and rhyme. In our own age, with its lack of artistic feeling, there has arisen a curious kind of declamatory-recitative art – a prosaic emphasis on the prose-sense, something quite unartistic. The real poet always goes back from the prosaic or literal to the musical or plastic. Before he committed the words of a poem to paper, Schiller always experienced a wordless, indeterminate melody, a soul-experience of melody. As yet without words, it flowed along melodically like a musical theme, onto which he then threaded the words. One might conjecture that Schiller could have conjured the most varied poems, as regards verbal content, out of the same musical theme. And to rehearse his iambic verse-dramas, Goethe stood in front of his actors with a baton, like a conductor, considering the formation of sound, the balance of the syllables, the musical rhythm and time-signature to be the essential, rather than the literal meaning. For this reason it has become necessary for our own spiritual stream to return to a true art of recitation and declamation, where what has been debased through the means of expression imposed upon the poet to the level of mere prose can once again be raised, so as to regain the level of a super-sensible formative and musical experience. This work was taken in hand by Frau Dr. Steiner, who over the last decades has tried to develop an art of recitation and declamation in which something that transcends prose to become inwardly eurythmic, the imaginative and musical configuration of syllable-quantities, the imaginative quality of the sound, whether plastic or musical – in which all this is once more made apparent. This comes out differently in lyric, epic and drama – I shall deal with that presently. But we would first like to show how what is indicated here can in general be derived from poetry that is truly artistic. As a first example you will hear “Ostern”, by Anastasius Grün, a poem particularly suited to such a passing-beyond-the-content and approach to the aesthetic form. It is a somewhat old-fashioned poem that is (in a rather narrow sense) topical, in being a poem dedicated to Easter. On the other hand it is not topical, in the sense that it dates back to the first half of the nineteenth century, an age when the poet still felt bound to acknowledge the necessity of plastic and rhythmical formative power. Let us accept the poem as it is – though it will nowadays be found tedious by those who attend to the prose content alone, as being rather antiquated in its imagery. Even allowing for its tediousness as prose, however, a genuine poet has here attempted to comply with the inner aesthetic necessity of the poem. We shall then continue with a modern poet, with “An Eine Rose”, a sonnet by Albert Steffen. It is precisely in the sonnet that, with good will, we can discern how the verbal presentation is compensated by the strictly bounded form – this atones for the sin committed with regard to the words, and the whole is then rounded out and rendered euphonious. In the case of a poet like Albert Steffen, whose explorations extend into the hidden depths of his view of the world, it is interesting to observe how he simultaneously feels the necessity of transmuting what comes to light as a way of knowledge into the strictest aesthetic forms. In the “Terzinen” of Christian Morgenstern we shall see how a peculiar poetic form – free terzetti – subsists on the basis of a feeling for continuity, for openness of form, in contrast to the sonnet which is based on a rounding-off of feeling. We shall see how the terzetti, albeit towards the end of the poem, have a quality of openness, while yet constituting a bounded whole from what flows into the words. And then perhaps I may adduce three poems of my own: “Frühling”, “Herbst”, and “Weltenseelengeister”, in which I have tried to bring into strict forms the most inward experiences of the human soul – not the forms of conventional prosody or metrics, but forms which stem from the actual emotion, while at the same time they try to contain the amorphous, fluctuating, glittering life within the soul in internally strict forms. Frau Dr. Steiner will now demonstrate these six, more lyrical poems. (“Ostern” is, of course, a long poem of which we will present only Part V.) OSTERN
Und Ostern wird es einst, der Herr sieht nieder Vom Ölberg in das Tal, das klingt und blüht; Rings Glanz und Fühl’ und Wonn’ und Wonne wieder, So weit sein Aug’ – ein Gottesauge – sieht!
Ein Ostern, wie’s der Dichtergeist sieht blühen, Dem’s schon zu schaun, zu pflücken jetzt erlaubt Die Blütenkränze, die als Kron’ einst glühen Um der noch ungebornen Tage Haupt!
Ein Ostern, wie’s das Dichteraug’ sieht tagen, Das überm Nebel, der das Jetzt umzieht, Die morgenroten Gletscherhäupter ragen Der werdenden Jahrtausende schon sieht!
Ein Ostern, Auferstehungsfest, das wieder Des Frühlings Hauch auf Blumengräber sät; Ein Ostern der Verjüngung, das hernieder Ins Menschenherz der Gottheit Atem weht!
Sieh, welche Wandlung blüht auf Zions Bahnen! Längst hält ja Lenz sein Siegeslager hier; Auf Bergen wehn der Palmen grüne Fahnen, Im Tale prangt sein Zelt in Blütenzier!
Längst wogt ja über all’ den alten Trümmern Ein weites Saatenmeer in goldner Flut, Wie fern im Nord, wo weisse Wellen schimmern, Versunken tief im Meer Vineta ruht.
Geworfen frischer Triften grünes Kleid, Gleichwie ein stilles, freundliches Vergessen Sich senkt auf dunkler Tag’ uraltes Leid.
Längst stehn die Höhn umfahn von Rebgewinden, Längst blüht ein Rosenhag auf Golgatha. Will jetzt ein Mund den Preis der Rose künden, Nennt er gepaart Schiras und Golgatha.
Längst alles Land weitum ein sonn’ger Garten; Es ragt kein Halbmond mehr, kein Kreuz mehr da! Was sollten auch des blut’gen Kampfs Standarten? Längst ist es Frieden, ew’ger Frieden ja!
Der Kedron blieb. Er quillt vor meinen Blicken Ins Bett von gelben Ähren eingeengt, Wohl noch als Träne, doch die dem Entzücken Sich durch die blonden, goldnen Wimpern drängt!
Das ist ein Blühen rings, ein Duften, Klingen, Das um die Wette spriesst und rauscht und keimt, Als gält’ es jetzt, geschäftig einzubringen, Was starr im Schlaf Jahrtausende versäumt,
Das ist ein Glänzen rings, ein Funkeln, Schimmern Der Städt’ im Tal, der Häuser auf den Höhn; Kein Ahnen, dass ihr Fundament auf Trümmern, Kein leiser Traum des Grabs, auf dem sie stehn!
Die Flur durchjauchzt, des Segens freud’ger Deuter, Ein Volk, vom Glück geküsst, an Tugend reich, Gleich den Gestirnen ernst zugleich und heiter, Wie Rosen schön, wie Cedern stark zugleich
Begraben längst in des Vergessens Meere, Seeungetümen gleich in tiefer Flut, Die alten Greu’l, die blut’ge Schergenehre, Der Krieg und Knechtsinn und des Luges Brut.
Auf Golgatha, in eines Gärtchens Mitte, Da wohnt ein Pärlein, Glück und Lieb’ im Blick; Weit schaut ins Land, gleich ihrem Aug’ die Hütte, Es labt ja Glück sich gern an fremdem Glück!
Einst, da begab sich’s, dass im Feld die Kinder Ausgruben gar ein formlos, eisern Ding; Als Sichel däuchtis zu grad und schwer die Finder, Als Pflugschar fast zu schlank und zu gering.
Sie schleppen’s mühsam heim, gleich seltnem Funde, Die Eltern sehn es, – doch sie kennen’s nicht, Sie rufen rings die Nachbarn in der Runde, Die Nachbarn sehn es, – doch sie kennen’s nicht.
Da ist ein Greis, der in der Jetztwelt Tage Mit weissem Bart und fahlem Angesicht Hereinragt, selbst wie eine alte Sage; Sie zeigen’s ihm, – er aber kennt es nicht.
Wohl ihnen allen, dass sie’s nimmer kennen! Der Ahnen Torheit, längst vom Grab verzehrt, Müsst’ ihnen noch im Aug’ als Träne brennen. Denn was sie nimmer kannten, war ein Schwert!
Als Pflugschar soll’s fortan durch Schollen ringen, Dem Saatkorn nur noch weist’s den Weg zur Gruft; Des Schwertes neue Heldentaten singen Der Lerchen Epopeein in sonn’ger Luft!
Einst wieder sich’s begab, dass, als er pflügte, Der Ackersmann wie an ein Felsstück stiess, Und, als sein Spaten rings die Hüll’ entfügte, Ein wundersam Gebild aus Stein sich wies.
Er ruft herbei die Nachbarn in der Runde, Sie sehn sich’s an, – jedoch sie kennen’s nicht! – Uralter, weiser Greis, du gibst wohl Kunde? Der Greis besieht’s, jedoch er kennt es nicht.
Ob sie’s auch kennen nicht, doch steht’s voll Segen Aufrecht in ihrer Brust, in ewigem Reiz, Es blüht sein Same rings auf allen Wegen; Denn was sie nimmer kannten, war ein Kreuz!
Sie sahn den Kampf nicht und sein blutig Zeichen, Sie sehn den Sieg allein und seinen Kranz! Sie sahn den Sturm nicht mit den Wetterstreichen, Sie sehn nur seines Regenbogens Glanz!
Das Kreuz von Stein, sie stellen’s auf im Garten, Ein rätselhaft, ehrwürdig Altertum, Dran Rosen rings und Blumen aller Arten Empor sich ranken, kletternd um und um.
So steht das Kreuz inmitten Glanz und Fülle Auf Golgatha, glorreich, bedeutungsschwer: Verdeckt ist’s ganz von seiner Rosen Hülle, Längst sieht vor Rosen man das Kreuz nicht mehr. Anastasius Grün.
[In a similar way, Vaughan here transmutes a religious meditation into haunting poetry:
THE NIGHT (John, ii.)
Through that pure Virgin-shrine, That sacred vail drawn o’r thy glorious noon That men might look and live as Glo-worms shine, And face the Moon: Wise Nicodemus saw such light As made him know his God by night.
Most blest believer he! Who in that land of darkness and blinde eyes Thy long expected healing wings could see, When thou didst rise, And what can never more be done, Did at mid-night speak with the Sun:
O who will tell me, where He found thee at that dead and silent hour: What hallow’d solitary ground did bear So rare a flower, Within whose sacred leafs did lie The fulness of the Deity.
No mercy-seat of gold, No dead and dusty Cherub, nor carv’d stone, But his own living works did my Lord hold And Lodge alone; Where trees and Kerbs did watch and peep And wonder, while the Jews did sleep. Dear night! this worlds defeat; The stop to busie fools; cares check and curb; The day of Spirits; my souls calm retreat Which none disturb! Christ’s progress, and his prayer time; The hours to which high Heaven doth chime.
Gods silent, searching flight: When my Lords head is fill’d with dew, and all His locks are wet with the clear drops of night; His still, soft call; His knocking time; The souls dumb watch, When Spirits their fair kindred catch.
Were all my loud, evil days Calm and unhaunted as is thy dark Tent, Whose peace but by some Angels wing or voice Is seldom rent; Then I in Heaven all the long year Would keep, and never wander here.
But living where the Sun Doth all things wake, and where all mix and tyre Themselves and others, I consent and run To ev’ry myre, And by this worlds ill-guiding light, Erre more than I can do by night.
There is in God (some say) A deep, but dazzling darkness; As men here Say it is late and dusky, because they See not all clear O for that night! where I in him Might live invisible and dim. Henry Vaughan.] Sonnet:
AN EINE ROSE
Ich schaue mich in dir und dich in mir: Wo ich die Schlange bin, bist du die Blume, wir assen beide von der irdischen Krume, in dir ass Gott, in mir ass noch das Tier.
Die Erde ward für dich zum Heiligtume, du wurzelst fest, du willst nicht fort von ihr. Ich aber sehne mich, ich darbe hier, ich such im All nach meinem Eigentume.
Du überwächst den Tod mit deinen Farben und saugst dir ewiges Leben aus dem Boden. Ich kehre immer wieder, um zu sterben.
Denn ach: Nur durch mein Suchen, Sehnen, Darben, nur durch die Wiederkehr von vielen Toden, darf ich um dich, O rote Rose, werben.
Albert Steffen (1884-1963). TO A ROSE
I see myself in thee, and thee in me: But where I am the serpent, thou’rt the flower – In both consumes and grows by earthly power A god in thee, alas! mere beast in me.
To thee the Earth was given for thy shrine, Thou clungst to her, nor wouldst uprooted be. But I, I yearn, I hanker to be free, And seek in the great All to grow divine.
Thou with thy shooting hues outleapst corruption, Drawing eternal life from out of the soil, Whilst I fall back, fall even to death’s repose.
Yet still I seek and I yearn – and after disruption, And only through manifold deaths’ laborious toll Dare court your deathless beauty, rose, red rose! Trans. A.J.W. Terzetti:
Was ist das? Gibt es Krieg? Den Abendhimmel verfinstern Raben gleich geschwungnen Brauen des Unheils und mit gierigem Gekrächz. Südöstlich rudern sie mit wilder Kraft, und immer neue Paare, Gruppen, Völker... Und drüber raucht’s im Blassen wie von Blut.
Wie Sankt Franciscus schweb ich in der Luft mit beiden Füssen, fühle nicht den Grund der Erde mehr, weiss nicht mehr, was das ist. Seid still! Nein, – redet, singt, jedweder Mund! Sonst wird die Ewigkeit ganz meine Gruft und nimmt mich auf wie einst den tiefen Christ.
Dies ist das Wunderbarste, dieses feste, so scheint es, ehern feste Vorwärtsschreiten – und alles ist zuletzt nur tiefer Traum. Von tausend Türmen strotzt die Burg der Zeiten (so scheint’s) aus Erz und Marmor, doch am Saum Der Ewigkeit ist all das nur noch Geste.
Dämmrig Blaun im Mondenschimmer Berge...gleich Erinnerungen ihrer selbst; selbst Berge nimmer. Träume bloss noch, hinterlassen von vergangnen Felsenmassen: So wie Glocken, die verklungen, noch die Luft als Zittern fassen. Christian Morgenstern What is that – is it war? The evening skies are dark with ravens, like a congested brewing of evil, and gasping horrible, envious croaks.
Southward and east they steer with reckless force, shifting in constellations, pairs and groups... and over all the smoke – so pale, like blood.
I, like St. Francis, rise upon airy wave, and feel beneath my feet earth’s solid ground no more, no longer knowing what that is...
Be still! – No, rather let each voice resound! lest all Eternity, become my grave, enclose me like the depth that in Christ is.
Most wonderful is this: the fast‑ as-iron (it seems to me) forward advance – and yet, all is a dream in which we sink.
Time prides herself (apparently) on all her forts of stone and iron – yet, from the brink of Endlessness, mere gestures all at last!
Dusky, blue, in moonlight quiver mountains...self-remembrances themselves, as they were mountains never.
Mere dreams! the last, abandoned fragment of some primeval, vast escarpment: like stopped bells, whose resonances in the vibrant air augment. Trans. A.J.W. after V. Jacobs. [Stevens has made extensive use of this form, as in his “Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction”. This example comes from the section “It Must Give Pleasure,” part VIII: What am I to believe? If the angel in his cloud, Serenely gazing at the violent abyss, Plucks on his strings to pluck abysmal glory,
Leaps downward through evening’s revelations, and On his spredden wings, needs nothing but deep space, Forgets the gold centre, the golden destiny,
Grows warm in the motionless motion of his flight, Am I that imagine this angel less-satisfied? Are the wings his, the lapis-haunted air?
Is it he or is it I that experience this? Is it I then that keep saying there is an hour Filled with expressible bliss, in which I have
No need, am happy, forget need’s golden hand, Am satisfied without solacing majesty, And if there is an hour there is a day,
There is a month, a year, there is a time In which majesty is a mirror of the self: I have not but I am and as I am, I am.
These external regions, what do we fill them with Except reflections, the escapades of death, Cinderella fulfilling herself beneath the roof?
Wallace Stevens (1879-1955).] Lyric poems by Rudolf Steiner. FRÜHLING
Der Sonnenstrahl, Der lichterfunkelnde, Er schwebt heran.
Die Blütenbraut, Die farberregende, Sie grüsst ihn froh.
Vertrauensvoll Der Erdentochter Erzählt der Strahl,
Wie Sonnenkräfte, Die geistentsprossenen, Im Götterheim Dem Weltentone lauschen;
Die Blütenbraut, Die farberglitzernde, Sie höret sinnend Des Lichtes Feuerton. HERBST
Der Erdenleib, Der Geistersehnende, Er lebt im Welken.
Die Samengeister, Die Stoffgedrängten, Erkraften sich.
Und Wärmefrüchte Aus Raumesweiten Durchkraften Erdensein.
Und Erdensinne, Die Tiefenseher, Sie schauen Künft’ges Im Formenschaffen.
Die Raumesgeister, Die ewig-atmenden, Sie blicken ruhevoll Ins Erdenweben. SPRING
The Sun’s bright beam – a gash of light, he soars above.
His blossom-bride showered with colour, greets him with joy.
And trustfully the beam instructs the daughter of earth
how solar powers (the spirit’s progeny!) in the heavenly spheres eavesdrop on their harmonies;
the blossom-bride – sprinkled and bright with colour – she hears the light’s cadence of flame! AUTUMN
The world’s body – its life for spirit yearns amidst the shrivelling.
The germinal sprites, crushed with matter, gather their power.
And fruits of warmth from far expanses saturate earthly being.
And worldly senses (ah, deeply seeing!) behold the future in forming power.
The daemons of space – eternal breathings! – they gaze reposefully at the world’s unceasing weft.
Trans. A.J.W. WELTENSEELENGEISTER
Im Lichte wir schalten, Im Schauen wir walten, Im Sinnen wir weben.
Aus Herzen wir heben Das Geistesringen Durch Seelenschwingen.
Dem Menschen wir singen Das Göttererleben Im Weltengestalten. SPIRITS OF THE ANIMA MUNDI
In light is our being, and human seeing, sensations weaving;
from deep hearts upheaving through soul’s wide wending the spirit’s contending;
our song to men sending of gods’ true perceiving, world-forms decreeing. Trans. A.J.W. |
| Poetry and the Art of Speech: Lecture VIII
Translated by Julia Wedgwood, Andrew Welburn Rudolf Steiner |
|---|
| The only conceivable possibility is that the psychic and spiritual stand as abstract as can be in well-worn conceptual forms over against the solid material facts (to adopt an expression from the German classical period) – and those include the human organs and their functions in the human being. A true understanding of the close collaboration between the spiritual-super-sensible and the physical-perceptible is reached, however, only by one who everywhere sees spiritual events still vibrating on in material events. |
| This, however, underlies particularly the art of poetry. |
| Poetry and the Art of Speech: Lecture VIII
Translated by Julia Wedgwood, Andrew Welburn Rudolf Steiner |
|---|
Before we essay the second part of our programme, I shall permit myself to point briefly to the genesis of poetry – in man’s inner nature. For what ought to lie at the foundation of a knowledge of man is the following perception: in the first instance, the world, the universe, the cosmos is artistically active in man; but man then brings forth from himself again what the aesthetic activity of the cosmos has inlaid in him, as art. Two elements must collaborate in a man, working through the powers of his spirit and soul, in order for poetry (in the general way of things) to be engendered and given form. It is not thought – even in the most intellectual poetry it is not thought as such – that is shaped by the artist. It is the collaboration, the wonderful interaction between breathing and blood-circulation. In breathing, the human being is entirely conjoined with the cosmos. The air which I have just breathed in was formerly an ingredient in the cosmos, and it will afterwards become an ingredient in the cosmos once more. In breathing I absorb into myself the substantiality of the cosmos, and then release to the cosmos once more what was briefly within me. Anyone who experiences this – anyone with a real feeling for this breathing-process – will find in it one of the most marvellous mysteries of the whole formation of the world. And this interchange between man and the world finds its inner formation in something closely bound up with the breathing-rhythm: the rhythm of blood-circulation. In a mature man the ratio expressed in the relation between respiration and pulse beat is an average one to four: eighteen breaths (or thereabouts) and seventy-two pulse-beats per minute. Between the two is generated that inner harmony which constitutes man’s entire inner life of plastic and musical creativity. The following remarks are not advanced as exact knowledge, but by way of a picture. We see engendered before us a spirit of light who, on the waves of the air, plays into man through his breathing. The breath takes hold of the blood-circulation, as of the occult workings of the human organism. We see Apollo, the god of light, carried on the billows of air in the breathing-process, and in his lyre the actual functioning of the blood-circulation. Every poetic act, every forming act of poetry ultimately rests on this ratio between breathing, as inwardly experienced, and the inner experience of the circulation of the blood. Subconsciously our breath counts the pulse-beats; and subconsciously the pulse-beats count the breaths dividing and combining, combining and dividing to mark out the metre and the syllable-quantities. It is not that the manifestations of poetry in speech adapt themselves so as to conform either to respiration or to the circulation of the blood: but rather the ratio between the two. The configuration of syllables may be quite irregular, but in poetry they stand in a certain ratio to one another, essentially similar to that between breathing and circulation. We can see this in the case where poetry first comes before us, in what is perhaps the most congenial and readily comprehensible form – the hexameter. Here we can see how the first three verse-feet and the caesura stand in a mutual ratio of four to one. The hexameter repeats this ratio of blood‑circulation to breathing a second time. Man receives the spiritual into his own inner processes and inner activities when he creates poetry out of what he is at every moment of his earthly life: a product of breathing and blood-circulation. He articulates this artistically through the syllables in quantity and metre. And we approach intensification and relaxation, tension and release, in a properly artistic way when we allow fewer or more syllables to the unit of breath. And these will then balance each other out in accordance with their inherent natural proportions. In other words, we must adjust the timing of the verse in the right way. If we let the verse proceed according to the proportion ordained by the cosmos itself, which subsists between breathing and blood-circulation, we arrive at epic. If we ascend towards an assertion of our own inner nature; i.e., let the breathing recede, refrain from activating the life of the breath, do not allow it to count up the pulse-beats on the ‘lyre’ of the blood-circulation – when we recede with our breathing into ourselves and make the pulsation of the blood the essential thing, reckoning up the notches (so to speak) scored onto the blood-stream, we arrive at an alternative form of metrical verse. If we are concerned with the breathing, which calculates, as it were, the blood-circulation, we have recitation: recitation flows in conformity with the breathing-process. If the pulsation of the blood is our criterion, so that the blood engraves its strength, weakness, passion, emotion, tension and relaxation onto the flux of the breath – then declamation arises: declamation pays more attention to the force or lightness, strength or weakness of emphasis given to the syllables, with a high or low intonation. Recitation, in accordance with the quietly flowing breath-stream, reckons only the blood-circulation, and this is communication in poetry – whereas declamation is poetry as description. And in fact everyone who practises speech-formation must ask himself when confronted with a poem: Have I to recite here or declaim? They are two fundamentally different nuances of this art-form. We realise this when we see how the poet himself differentiates in a wonderful way between declamation and recitation. Compare in this respect the Iphigeneia Goethe composed in Weimar, before he became acquainted in Italy with the Greek style. Observe the Iphigeneia he wrote at that time: it is entirely declamatory. Then he comes to Italy and grows absorbed in his own way in what he terms Greek art (it was not really still Greek art, but he does feel in it an after-effect of Greek art): he rewrites his Iphigeneia in the recitative mode. And while declamation, as stemming from the blood, passes over into recitation, which stems from the breathing, here that inwardly more Nordic, that Germanic disposition of feeling comes to adopt an outward artistic form that works through quantities and metre in this play which Hermann Grimm has aptly christened the “Roman Iphigeneia”. For someone with artistic sensibility there is the greatest conceivable difference between Goethe's German and his Roman Iphigeneia. We do not wish today to manifest a special sympathy or antipathy for one version or the other, but to indicate the tremendous difference, which should be apparent upon hearing a passage from the Iphigeneia either in recitation or declamation. Examples from both versions are now to be presented. As for the hexameter, we shall encounter this in Schiller’s “Der Tanz”. A correct, regular metre – not necessarily the hexameter – we will come upon this in some poems by Mörike, a lyricist who inclines toward the ballad-form. If we survey the aesthetic evolution of mankind, we may experience decisively how in ancient Greece everything became recitative and man lived altogether more in his natural surroundings. The life of recitation lies in the breathing-process, in quantitative metres. The declamatory emerges out of the northern sense of inwardness, the depths of feeling we find in the soul and spiritual life of Central Europe. It relies more upon weight and metre. And if, in his process of creation, the Divinity holds sway over the world through quantity, weight and proportion, then the poet is seeking through his declamatory and recitative art to hearken to the regency of the Divine – to do so in a poetic intimacy, through observing the laws of quantity and metre in recitation, and through an intimate feeling for metre and weight in the high and low tones of declamation. In this context we will now present Schiller’s “Tanz” to exemplify the hexameter; then Mörike’s “Schön – Rohtraut” and “Geister am Mummelsee”, which are in a ballad-style; and lastly a short passage from Goethe’s German and Roman Iphigeneia. [Note 30]
DER TANZ Siehe, wie schwebenden Schritts im Wellenschwung sich die Paare Drehen! Den Boden berührt kaum der geflügelte Fuss. Seh ich flüchtige Schatten, befreit von der Schwere des Leibes? Schlingen im Mondlicht dort Elfen den luftigen Reihn? Wie, vom Zephyr gewiegt, der leichte Rauch in die Luft fliesst, Wie sich leise der Kahn schaukelt auf silberner Flut, Hüpft der gelehrige Fuss auf des Takts melodischer Woge, Säuselndes Saitengetön hebt den ätherischen Leib. Jetzt als wollt es mit Macht durchreissen die Kette des Tanzes, Schwingt sich ein mutiges Paar dort in den dichtesten Reihn. Schnell vor ihm her entsteht ihm die Bahn, die hinter ihm schwindet, Wie durch magische Hand öffnet und schliesst sich der Weg. Sieh! jetzt schwand es dem Blick; in wildem Gewirr durcheinander Stürzt der zierliche Bau dieser beweglichen Welt. Nein, dort schwebt es frohlockend herauf; der Knoten entwirrt sich; Nur mit verändertem Reiz stellet die Regel sich her. Ewig zerstört, es erzeugt sich ewig die drehende Schöpfung, Und ein stilles Gesetz lenkt der Verwandlungen Spiel. Sprich, wie geschiehts, dass rastlos erneut die Bildungen schwanken, Und die Ruhe besteht in der bewegten Gestalt? Jeder ein Herrscher, frei, nur dem eigenen Herzen gehorchet Und im eilenden Lauf findet die einzige Bahn? Willst du es wissen? Es ist des Wohllauts mächtige Gottheit, Die zum geselligen Tanz ordnet den tobenden Sprung, Die, der Nemesis gleich, an des Rhythmus goldenem Zügel Lenkt die brausende Lust und die verwilderte zähmt. Und dir rauschen umsonst die Harmonien des Weltalls? Dich ergreift nicht der Strom dieses erhabnen Gesangs? Nicht der begeisternde Takt, den alle Wesen dir schlagen? Nicht der wirbelnde Tanz, der durch den ewigen Raum Leuchtende Sonnen schwingt in Kühn gewundenen Bahnen? Das du im Spiele doch ehrst, fliehst du im Handeln, das Mass.
Friedrich Schiller. [Though by different means, Sir John Davies also managed to devise a highly-polished, regular metre to reproduce in English the classical .stateliness of a courtly dance. The following section treats of “The Antiquitte of Dancing,” and is taken from his “Orchestra, or A Poeme of Dauncing”:
Dauncing (bright Lady) then began to be, When the first seedes whereof the world did spring, The Fire, Ayre, Earth and Water did agree, By Loves perswasion, Natures mighty King, To leave their first disorder’d combating; And in a daunce such measure to observe, As all the world their motion should preserve.
Since when they still are carried in a round, And changing come one in anothers place, Yet doe they neyther mingle nor confound, But every one doth keepe the bounded space Wherein the daunce doth bid it turne or trace: This wondrous myracle did Love devise, For Dauncing is Loves proper exercise.
Like this, he fram’d the Gods eternall bower, And of a shapelesse and confused masse By his through-piercing and digesting power The turning vault of heaven formed was: Whose starrie wheeles he hath so made to passe, As that their movings doe a musick frame, And they themselves, still daunce unto the same.
(As idle Morpheus some sicke braines hath taught) Of undevided Motes compacted bee, How was this goodly Architecture wrought? Or by what meanes were they together brought? They erre that say they did concur by chaunce, Love made them meete in a well-ordered daunce.
As when Amphion with his charming Lire Begot so sweet a Syren of the ayre, That with her Rethorike made the stones conspire The ruines of a Citty to repayre, (A worke of wit and reasons wise affayre) So Loves smooth tongue, the motes such measure taught That they joyn’d hands, and so the world was wrought. Sir John Davies (1569-1626).] Two Ballads: SCHÖN-ROHTRAUT
Wie heisst König Ringangs Töchterlein? Rohtraut, Schön-Rohtraut. Was tut sie denn den ganzen Tag, Da sie wohl nicht spinnen und nähen mag? Tut fischen und jagen. O dass ich doch ihr Jäger wär’! Fischen und Jagen freute mich sehr. – – Schweig stille, mein Herze!
Und über eine kleine Weil’, Rohtraut, Schön-Rohtraut, So dient der Knab’ auf Ringangs Schloss In Jägertracht und hat ein Ross, Mit Rohtraut zu jagen. O dass ich doch ein Königssohn wär’! Rohtraut, Schön-Rohtraut lieb’ ich so sehr. – Schweig stille, mein Herze!
Einstmals sie ruhten am Eichenbaum, Da lacht Schön-Rohtraut: ‘Was siehst mich an so wunniglich? Wenn du das Herz hast, küsse mich!’ Ach erschrak der Knabe! Doch denket er: mir ist’s vergunnt, Und küsset Schön-Rohtraut auf den Mund. – Schweig stille, mein Herze!
Darauf sie ritten schweigend heim, Rohtraut, Schön-Rohtraut; Es jauchzt der Knab’ in seinem Sinn: Und würdst du heute Kaiserin, Mich sollt’s nicht kränken: Ihr tausend Blätter im Walde wisst, Ich hab’ Schön-Rohtrauts Mund geküsst! – Schweig stille, mein Herze! DIE GEISTER AM MUMMELSEE
Vom Berge was kommt dort um Mitternacht spät Mit Fackeln so prächtig herunter? Ob das wohl zum Tanze, zum Feste noch geht? Mir klingen die Lieder so munter. O nein! So sage, was mag es wohl sein?
Das, was du da siehest, ist Totengeleit, Und was du da hörest, sind Klagen. Dem König, dem Zauberer, gilt es zuleid, Sie bringen ihn wieder getragen. O weh! So sind es die Geister vom See!
Sie schweben herunter ins Mummelseetal, Sie haben den See schon betreten, Sie rühren und netzen den Fuss nicht einmal, Sie schwirren in leisen Gebeten – O schau! Am Sarge die glänzende Frau!
Jetzt öffnet der See das grünspiegelnde Tor; Gib acht, nun tauchen sie nieder! Es schwankt eine lebende Treppe hervor, Und – drunten schon summen die Lieder. Hörst du? Sie singen ihn unten zur Ruh.
Die Wasser, wie lieblich sie brennen und glühn! Sie spielen in grünendem Feuer; Es geisten die Nebel am Ufer dahin, Zum Meere verzieht sich der Weiher. – Nur still! Ob dort sich nichts rühren will?
Es zuckt in der Mitten – O Himmel ach hilf! Nun kommen sie wieder, sie kommen! Es orgelt im Rohr und es klirret im Schilf; Nur hurtig, die Flucht nur genommen! Davon! Sie wittern, sie haschen mich schon!
Eduard Mörike (1804-1875). [For something similar in English we need look no further than the authors of the celebrated Lyrical Ballads: LUCY GRAY;
Oft I had heard of Lucy Gray: And, when I crossed the wild, I chanced to see at break of day The solitary child.
No mate, no comrade Lucy knew; She dwelt on a wide moor, – The sweetest thing that ever grew Beside a human door!
You yet may spy the fawn at play, The bare upon the green; But the sweet face of Lucy Gray Will never more be seen.
‘To-night will be a stormy night – You to the town must go; And take a lantern, Child, to light Your mother through the snow.’
‘That, Father! will I gladly do: ’Tis scarcely afternoon – The minster-clock has just struck two, And yonder is the moon!’
At this the Father raised his hook, And snapped a faggot-band; He plied his work; – and Lucy took The lantern in her hand.
Not blither is the mountain roe: With many a wanton stroke Her feet disperse the powdery snow, That rises up like smoke.
The storm came on before its time: She wandered up and down; And many a hill did Lucy climb: But never reached the town.
The wretched parents all that night Went shouting far and wide; But there was neither sound nor sight To serve them for a guide.
At day-break on a hill they stood That overlooked the moor; And thence they saw the bridge of wood, A furlong from their door.
They wept – and, turning homeward, cried, ‘In heaven we all shall meet;’ – When in the snow the mother spied The print of Lucy’s feet.
Then downwards from the steep hill’s edge They tracked the footmarks small; And through the broken hawthorn hedge, And by the long stone-wall;
And then an open field they crossed: The marks were still the same; They tracked them on, nor ever lost; And to the bridge they came.
They followed from the snowy bank Those footmarks, one by one, Into the middle of the plank; And further there were none!
– Yet some maintain that to this day She is a living child; That you may see sweet Lucy Gray Upon the lonesome wild.
O’er rough and smooth she traps along, And never looks behind; And sings a solitary song That whistles in the wind.
William Wordsworth (1770-1850). From “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”, Part V:
And soon I heard a roaring wind: lt did not come anear; But with its sound it shook the sails, That were so thin and sere.
The upper air burst into life! And a hundred fire-flags sheen, To and fro they were hurried about! And to and fro, and in and out, The wan stars danced between.
And the coming wind did roar more loud, And the sails did sigh like sedge; And the rain poured down from one black cloud; The Moon was at its edge.
The thick black cloud was cleft, and still The Moon was at its side: Like waters shot from some high crag, The lightning fell with never a jag, A river steep and wide.
The loud wind never reached the ship, Yet now the ship moved on! Beneath the lightning and the Moon The dead men gave a groan.
They groaned, they stirred, they all uprose, Nor spake, nor moved their eyes; It had been strange, even in a dream, To have seen those dead men rise.
The helmsman steered, the ship moved on; Yet never a breeze up-blew; The mariners all ’gan work the ropes, Where they were wont to do; They raised their limbs like lifeless tools – We were a ghastly crew.
The body of my brother’s son Stood by me, knee to knee: The body and I pulled at one rope, But he said nought to me.
‘I fear thee, ancient Mariner!’ Be calm, thou Wedding-Guest! ’Twas not those souls that fled in pain, Which to their corses came again, But a troop of spirits blest:
For when it dawned – they dropped their arms, – And clustered round the mast; Sweet sounds rose slowly through their mouths, And from their bodies passed.
Around, around, flew each sweet sound, Then darted to the Sun; Slowly the sounds came back again, Now mixed, now one by one.
Sometimes a-dropping from the sky I heard the sky-lark sing; Sometimes all little birds that are, How they seemed to fill the sea and air With their sweet jargoning!
And now ’twas like all instruments, Now like a lonely flute; And now it is an angel’s song, That makes the heavens be mute.
It ceased; yet still the sails made on A pleasant noise till noon, A noise like of a hidden brook In the leafy month of June, That to the sleeping woods all night Singeth a quiet tune. Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834). In a further attempt to make clear the distinction between a recitative and declamatory treatment of the same subject matter in English, we present an additional example of a Psalm in the Authorized Version and the Countess of Pembroke’s translation – in this instance the ninety-eighth Psalm: O Sing unto the LORD a New song, for hee hath done marvellous things: his right hand, and his holy arme hath gotten him the victorie. The LORD hath made knowen his salvation: his righteousnesse hath hee openly shewed in the sight of the heathen. Hee hath remembred his mercie and his trueth toward the house of Israel: all the ends of the earth have seene the salvation of our God. Make a joyfull noise unto the LORD, all the earth: make a lowd noise, and rejoyce, and sing praise. Sing unto the LORD with the harpe: with the harpe, and the voice of a Psalme. With trumpets and sound of cornet: make a joyfull noise before the LORD, the King. Let the sea roare, and the fulnesse thereof: the world, and they that dwell therein. Let the floods clap their handes: let the hills be joyfull together Before the LORD, for he commeth to judge the earth: with righteousnesse shall hee judge the world, and the people with equitie.
CANTATE DOMINO
O sing Jehova, he hath wonders wrought, A song of praise that newnesse may commend: His hand, his holy arme alone hath brought Conquest on all that durst with him contend. He that salvation doth his ellect attend, Long hid, at length hath sett in open view: And now the unbeleeving Nations taught His heavinly justice, yelding each their due.
His bounty and his truth the motives were, Promis’d of yore to Jacob and his race Which ev’ry Margine of this earthy spheare Now sees performed in his saving grace. Then earth, and all possessing earthy place, O sing, O shout, O triumph, O rejoyce: Make lute a part with vocall musique beare, And entertaine this king with trumpet’s noise.
Hore, Sea, all that trace the bryny sands: Thou totall globe and all that thee enjoy: You streamy rivers clapp your swymming hands: You Mountaines echo each at others joy, See on the Lord this service you imploy, Who comes of earth the crowne and rule to take: And shall with upright justice judg the lands, And equall lawes among the dwellers make. Mary Herbert, Countess of Pembroke.] It was once remarked by someone who had listened very superficially to what we have tried to demonstrate here – of how the art of poetry must be traced back to an interplay, exalted and interfused with super-sensible forces, between the spirit of breathing and the spirit of blood-circulation – it was once remarked: Well, the art of poetry will be mechanised! will be reduced to a purely mechanical system: A materialistically-minded verdict typical of our age! The only conceivable possibility is that the psychic and spiritual stand as abstract as can be in well-worn conceptual forms over against the solid material facts (to adopt an expression from the German classical period) – and those include the human organs and their functions in the human being. A true understanding of the close collaboration between the spiritual-super-sensible and the physical-perceptible is reached, however, only by one who everywhere sees spiritual events still vibrating on in material events. Anyone who follows the example of that critic who spoke against our intimations of the truly musical and imaginative qualities of poetry is really saying something – and very paradoxical it sounds – like this: There are theologians who affirm that God’s creative power is there to create the solid material world. But God’s creative power is materialised, if one says that God does not refrain from creating the solid material world. It is quite as clever to say that we materialise the art of poetry if we represent the super-sensible spirit as sufficiently powerful, not only to penetrate into materiality, but even into a rhythmical-artistic moulding of the breathing-process and circulatory-process – like Apollo playing on his lyre. The bodily-corporeal nature of man is again made one with the psychic-spiritual. This does not generate super-sensible abstractions in a Cloudcuckooland, but rather a genuine Anthroposophy, and an anthroposophical art sustained by Anthroposophy. We see how the spiritual holds sway and weaves within corporeal man, and how artistic creation means making rhythmical, harmonious and plastic that which is spiritual in the bodily-physical functions. The age-old, intuitive saying is once more seen to be true: the heart is more than this physiological organ situated in the breast, as known to external sight; the heart is connected with man’s entire soul-life, as being the centre of the blood-circulation. It must be felt anew that just as the heart is connected with the soul, so the essence of breathing is connected with the spiritual. There was a time when man felt this and still saw in the last departing breath the soul abandoning the body. For a clever, enlightened age which disregards such matters, a science of abstractions that is cut off from reality and inwardly dead may have a certain validity. But for a knowledge that is at the same time (in the sense of a Goethean perception) the foundation of true art – it must be said that this knowledge not only has to win through to the unity of the psychic-spiritual and physical corporeality in man, but has also to bring it to life artistically. A dead, abstract science can indeed be grounded on the dichotomy of matter and spirit. On this path it is not possible to create life-giving art. Hence our science, however appropriate it may be in all technical matters, however well-qualified to form the groundwork for everything technological, is eminently inartistic. Hence it is so alien to man; for Nature herself becomes an artist at the point where she produces man. This, however, underlies particularly the art of poetry. |
| Poetry and the Art of Speech: Lecture IX
Translated by Julia Wedgwood, Andrew Welburn Rudolf Steiner |
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| We speak of how man broke away from those regions he inhabited while still under the direct influence of the Godhead, where the Godhead still held sway in his will. It is true that we speak of the Fall of Man as a necessary preparatory stage of freedom: but we also speak of the Fall in such a way that, to the extent that he became man forsaken by God, man lost that divinely inwoven strength in the interweaving of his words. |
| From a certain point of view it is indeed a praiseworthy undertaking, provided one is always conscious of the fact that it was an attempt to raise a sacred treasure at a time when man had been long alienated from the gods. |
| Under clouded heavens he held his way Till there rose before him the high-roofed house, Wine-hall of warriors gleaming with gold. |
| Poetry and the Art of Speech: Lecture IX
Translated by Julia Wedgwood, Andrew Welburn Rudolf Steiner |
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Permit me to turn now to a consideration of something that might be couched in more learned terms – though then I should need more time. I should like to make a point about the art of poetry by means of an illustration. It must, however, be more than an illustration: it should point to the reality. Everyone whose sense for true knowledge can extend to the artistic will grasp what I mean. We refer to the Fall of Man. We speak of how man broke away from those regions he inhabited while still under the direct influence of the Godhead, where the Godhead still held sway in his will. It is true that we speak of the Fall of Man as a necessary preparatory stage of freedom: but we also speak of the Fall in such a way that, to the extent that he became man forsaken by God, man lost that divinely inwoven strength in the interweaving of his words. We refer to the Fall of Man because we feel that there is something in our present thoughts that was not there for the humanity of primordial times. At that period there was still to be found in the weaving and undulating of human thoughts the presence of a divine-spiritual potency. In thinking, man still felt that God was thinking in him. With the attainment of human independence, especially in its preparatory stages, came about what we call the Fall of Man. But humanity was forever longing to return to its primal innocent state. Particularly when man felt himself raised into the super-sensible, in a sacred, but also in an artistic experience of exaltation, he felt that this was simultaneously a reversion to the primal innocent state. And when Homer says:
Sing, O Muse, of the anger of Peleus’ son Achilles
this is an invocation of the time when man lived at a cosmic level, and had immediate access to the world of the gods, being himself a psychic-spiritual entity. All this corresponded, indeed, to the reality. And in art man saw a vivid reminiscence of that primaeval period of innocence. This takes us right into the details of art – and especially poetry, which is interwoven so intimately with human experience. Let us now survey a later time. Let us look, for example, at the time of our own poets. Their inclinations are toward rhyme: Why? It is because man, if he were to weave and live artistically and poetically with the divine-spiritual in the original state of innocence, would have to adhere to the syllable, and its quantity, metre and weight. But he cannot do this. Man has passed from the uttering of syllables in his primal state, to the fallen condition and the speaking of words, where he is drawn to the outer physical world of the senses. To create poetry means to long for a return to primitive innocence. We have still to “chant and sing” in the time of the Fall, but we have, so to speak, to do penance. We must go through with the transition to the word and the prosaic; but we have to do penance, and this we do in terminal rhyme and organization in stanzas. If we go back to ancient times, however, when mankind lived in closer proximity to the primaeval innocent state, things were quite different – at least as regards many peoples, particularly the Germanic peoples. They did not at first return to the primaeval state of innocence with a chanting of end-rhymes and strophic organization, in penance for the prosaic word. They drew to a halt before the word and, before the word came into being, they diverted their sensitivities in the direction of the syllable; they did not return to the primaeval state of innocence through an atonement, through an expiation, as it were, but retained a vivid memory of it in their alliterations. Alliterative poetry expresses man’s yearning to stop at the syllable and not proceed to the word, to hold on to the syllable and, in uttering it, to achieve the inner harmonies of a poetic mode of speech. We might say that alliteration and terminal rhyme are comparable in the sphere of sensibility to the recollection of the state of innocence that we have in alliteration; and that they represent an atonement or expiation for the Fall into the word, through terminal rhyme and stanzaic organization. It is indeed the case that art and poetry take to themselves all-embracingly whatever is universally human. This is why it is so congenial to return to the age of Nordic poetry. Here we see the poetic urge of a people wishing to attest man’s recognition of his divine-spiritual origin through not proceeding from syllable to word, but holding on to the syllable in alliteration. In the nineteenth century Wilhelm Jordan tried, as you know, to revive alliteration, when our language had advanced far beyond all possibility of reverting to the earlier state of innocence. From a certain point of view it is indeed a praiseworthy undertaking, provided one is always conscious of the fact that it was an attempt to raise a sacred treasure at a time when man had been long alienated from the gods. This attempt by Wilhelm Jordan is still informed by a good – indeed by the best of aesthetic intentions: an understanding of how to conduct art to the universally human. I was myself still able to hear how Jordan wanted his alliteration spoken; in particular, I have heard it done by his brother. All the same, I think it best to speak the alliteration only in so far as it is still appropriate to our more advanced language. This was attempted, too, in the field of recitative art as cultivated over the last decades by Frau Dr. Steiner. She will therefore endeavour to give you an example from the poems of Wilhelm Jordan, showing how alliteration holds its place in the whole field of poetic creation, and how we must try (in terms of either declamation or recitation) to interpret the alliterative poet. Though it may seem a trifle impertinent to say so, we shall not find what is wanted along the lines followed by Jordan’s brother. We must defer more to the genius of the language, rather than to a poetic intention – albeit an extraordinarily well-meaning one – which does not always accord with the genius of the language. I refer here, of course, not to the poetry, but to the brother’s way of reciting. On the other hand it does show how much strength – how much primaeval strength, as Johann Gottlieb Fichte once said of the German language – still remains in the German language today, if one knows how to handle it. What emerges with particular force in this poem is just how much of that primaeval strength Wilhelm Jordan could wrest from the language with his alliteration. And in these hard times, the still unharnessed strength of the language, notably in Central Europe, can prove a comfort to us – a comfort in that it fills our hearts with the conviction that whatever external or material fate may befall Central Europe, the German spirit will not wither away; the German spirit still holds its reserves of original, archaic energy and primordial power in readiness, and when the right moment comes it will find them. [Note 31] In the best sense, I would say, they were sought by the poet who wished to enter again into the poetic innocence of former times through a revival of alliteration. Let us now conclude with a performance of an alliterative poem. [Note 32] [Modern English efforts in alliteration are largely confined to reproducing in contemporary language the older sagas and poems. This is another version of Beowulf, and our extract is the climactic episode of the slaying of Grendel:
From the stretching moors, from the misty hollows, Grendel came creeping, accursed of God, A murderous ravager minded to snare Spoil of heroes in high-built hall. Under clouded heavens he held his way Till there rose before him the high-roofed house, Wine-hall of warriors gleaming with gold. Nor was it first of his fierce assaults On the home of Hrothgar; but never before Had he found worse fate or hardier hall-thanes! Storming the building he burst the portal, Though fastened of iron, with fiendish strength; Forced open the entrance in savage fury And rushed in rage o’er the shining floor. A baleful glare from his eyes was gleaming Most like to a flame. He found in the fall Many a warrior sealed in slumber, A host of kinsmen. His heart rejoiced; The savage monster was minded to sever Lives from bodies ere break of day, To feast his fill of the flesh of men. But he was not fated to glut his greed With more of mankind when the night was ended!
The hardy kinsman of Hygelac waited To see how the monster would make his attack. The demon delayed not, but quickly clutched A sleeping thane in his swift assault, Tore him in pieces, bit through the bones, Gulped the blood, and gobbled the flesh, Greedily gorged on the lifeless corpse, The hands and the feet. Then the fiend stepped nearer, Sprang on the Sea-Geat lying outstretched, Clasping him close with his monstrous claw. But Beowulf grappled and gripped him hard, Struggled up on his elbow; the shepherd of sins Soon found that never before had he felt In any man other in all the earth A mightier hand-grip; his mood was humbled, His courage fled; but he found no escape! He was fain to be gone; he would glee to the darkness, The fellowship of devils. Far different his fate From that which befell him in former days! The hardy hero, Hygelac’s kinsman Remembered the boast he had made at the banquet; He sprang to his feet, clutched Grendel fast, Though fingers were cracking, the fiend pulling free. The earl pressed after; the monster was minded To win his freedom and flee to the fens. He knew that his fingers were fast in the grip Of a savage foe. Sorry the venture, The raid that the ravager made on the hall.
There was din in Heorot. For all the Danes, The City-dwellers, the stalwart Scyldings, That was a bitter spilling of beer! The walls resounded, the fight was fierce, Savage the strife as the warriors struggled. The wonder was that the lofty wine-hall Withstood the struggle, nor crashed to earth, The house so fair; it was firmly fastened Within and without with iron bands Cunningly smithied; though men have said That many a mead-bench gleaming with gold Sprang from its sill as the warriors strove. The Scylding wise men had never weened That any ravage could wreck the building, Firmly fashioned and finished with bone, Or any cunning compass its fall, Till the time when the swelter and surge of fire Should swallow it up in a swirl of flame.
Continuous tumult filled the hall; A terror fell on the Danish folk As they heard through the wall the horrible wailing, The groans of Grendel, the foe of God Howling his hideous hymn of pain, The hell-thane shrieking in sore defeat. He was fast in the grip of the man who was greatest Of mortal men in the strength of his might, Who would never rest while the wretch was living, Counting his life-days a menace to man.
Many an earl of Beowulf brandished His ancient iron to guard his lord, To shelter safely the peerless prince. They had no knowledge, those daring thanes, When they drew their weapons to hack and hew, To thrust to the heart, that the sharpest sword, The choicest iron in all the world, Could work no harm to the hideous foe. On every sword he had laid a spell, On every blade; but a bitter death Was to be his fate; far was the journey The monster made to the home of fiends.
With grim delight as he warred with God, Soon found his strength was feeble and failing In the crushing hold of Hygelac’s thane. Each loathed the other while life should last! There Grendel suffered a grievous hurt, A wound in the shoulder, gaping and wide; Sinews snapped and bone-joints broke, And Beowulf gained the glory of battle. Grendel, fated, fled to the fens, To his joyless dwelling, sick unto death. He knew in his heart that his hours were numbered, His days at an end. For all the Danes Their wish was fulfilled in the fall of Grendel. The stranger from far, the stalwart and strong, Had purged of evil the hall of Hrothgar, And cleansed of crime; the heart of the Nero Joyed in the deed his daring had done. Trans. C. W. Kennedy. |
| 282. Speech and Drama: The Forming of Speech is an Art
05 Sep 1924, Dornach Translated by Mary Adams Rudolf Steiner |
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| 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. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 282. Speech and Drama: The Forming of Speech is an Art
05 Sep 1924, Dornach Translated by Mary Adams Rudolf Steiner |
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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.
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.
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.
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