The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,

Allow me to say a few words before our eurythmy performance, not to explain it, but to talk about what this eurythmy actually wants from certain art sources and how it would like to make use of a certain artistic formal language. What you will see, dear audience, on the stage, is the human being in motion or groups of people in motion, also mutual positions of groups of people in relation to each other, and so on.

At first glance, all of this could be mistaken for pantomime. However, eurythmy is not meant in this sense. Eurythmy is meant as a truly visible language. And it did not come about by arbitrarily adding some gesture that one thought right at the moment to this or that element that now comes to light in poetry and music that go hand in hand. Rather, eurythmy as we understand it here has come about through careful, sensual and supersensory observation, to use this Goethean expression, observation of what actually underlies the conditions of underlying human speech and singing.

What underlies speech and singing is not openly apparent to the ordinary observer. The inner tendencies of movement transform themselves into what can then be heard. But it is entirely possible to study the basis of the audible sound in terms of the movement tendency and in terms of the way in which this movement tendency emerges from the human organism.

If we look at poetry, on the other hand, we will have to say to ourselves: what the poet brings to revelation through tone and phonetic language contains and encompasses human thought. But human thought is an abstract element, especially in more advanced civilizations. And every such abstract element is actually inartistic. So that poetry as an art must constantly struggle to bring thought back from its abstractness to that which can bring it into a living element that is connected to the full human being.

When we study the thought as it is to fertilize poetry, we find that, if we do not grasp it in the abstract but approach it as artists, it has a certain tendency to take shape. We find this particularly in poetry. We find it quite outstanding in dramatic poetry. We can only truly stand before a drama artistically when we are able to transform what is given to us through language into form. Even if we do not see a drama on stage but only read it, we only have it as a dramatic work of art if we are able to transform in our imagination what is presented to us into form.

In epic poetry, in narrative poetry, we see that precisely where it appears in a certain popular form – we take the example of Homer – it also tends to develop into a form of its own, a visualization of what is sought through the literal. In Homeric poetry, we find [as constant designations: Hector, the hero with the billowing crested helmet, or: the swift-footed Achilles]; if we start from these more distinct, immediately illustrative examples, we nevertheless find the transformation of the abstract, literal element into the figurative everywhere.

And even in lyric poetry: if we have to stop at accepting the bare word content, or even thoughts or feelings of a lyric poem, then we do not have it as a complete work of art. We must be able to present to ourselves the figure of the soul from which the song's underlying idea has emerged, even if it is in this case in a spiritualized form. The one who approaches speech so artistically, in that this speech becomes what the poet can use of it, will see how what underlies the literal as thought tends towards form.

Now, if we look first at form, the human form is what appears to us as the most perfect in the realm of the sensual, physical world. And we can say that if we want to gain an insight into the human form, starting from thought, the powerlessness of thought immediately becomes apparent. In thinking, we are not really artistic. But we cannot help but say to ourselves: the capacity for thought is what puts man at the top of the creatures in whose midst he is initially placed.

And what we then encounter in the human form, we cannot grasp with thought. All scientific comprehension of the human form falls short. We must, so to speak, experience how thought becomes powerless, how it is transformed, in order to grasp the human form. But still, the path from thought to the human form is viable. And we will say to ourselves: the one element that confronts us in human language and also in human song, the mental element, is an element that tends towards form, an element that we can only really grasp if we seek to recognize the form but not to penetrate it with thought.

But what confronts us in the human form as the other, is that we actually only grasp this form as the result of movement. Anyone who is able to truly grasp the form of, say, a human hand or an arm will say to themselves: everything that I see in such a form only makes sense if I see in this form the movement that has come to rest. The movement, in turn, that is expressed in the entire human form is the will. The will is something that, by revealing itself in the human being, is directly connected to movement. One does not need to be a Schopenhauerian when it comes to music, and yet one can still say: by moving from the element of thought to the element of will, we begin to understand the musical element in the human being. And musical art is actually that which shows us movement, hidden in the calm of the seemingly lively movement of the sound mass.

In this way, humanly created things appear to us as the right expression of thought. What the human being brings forth in his movement, what is fundamentally one with his will, appears to us, revealing itself in a certain way, in the musical element. The musical element is pictorially formed, but it is that which basically underlies everything that is expressed in the individual organ groups, the larynx and its neighboring organs, in speech and song. If we study, in the sense of Goethe's theory of metamorphosis, that which is concentrated in the larynx and its neighboring organs as the entire human organization, we ultimately arrive at the human form. And we arrive at the moving human form.

And if one does not just look with the senses, but with the senses and the supersenses, one finds that what lives in the human form can flow directly into movement, and that which lives in movement and is an expression of human will finds its ultimate result in the form of the human being. Therefore, if you look at this wonderful connection between the human form and its overflow into human movement, and on the other hand, movement and its striving towards the human form, artistically, you can extract what you are meant to see here in eurythmy.

It is not arbitrary. It is what can arise naturally from human movement when one uses not only the speech organ but the whole human being as a means of expression, when one tries to add a visible language to the spoken language, which must first be artistically processed so that what eurythmy is as an art can arise.

This eurythmy is preceded by what eurythmy is as language. Then one must realize that such a human language of form, which has come about out of the moving figure or formative movement, can on the one hand accompany poetry, which is then given in recitation and declamation, and on the other hand the musical. One can sing in a visible language just as one can develop it through sound in tone, in song, and one can express that which really underlies the poetry in this visible language just as it is expressed in the poetry itself. Only then one must not look at the literal content, which is actually the prosaic in the poem, but one must look at the tone, rhythm, form of the meter and so on of the poem, which underlies the poem.

Therefore, recitation and declamation for eurythmy cannot be done in the way that is often popular in our unartistic times, namely, by particularly emphasizing the literal, prosaic aspects and regarding the actual art of declamation and recitation as lying in the emphasis of the literal, prosaic aspects. We must go back to older times, to the Goethean and Schillerian concept of recitation and declamation, to the rhythm, meter and thematic content of poetry, if we want to bring out what is actually artistic in eurythmy, if we want to do justice to the poetry when reciting it. For eurythmy brings out of the poem precisely that which the poet has woven into it out of his own secretive nature. So, in essence, poetry is handed over to the whole human being in eurythmy, in that the poet is aware that he will find understanding of his poetry if the opportunity is created to do so from the whole human being, which he would only have to entrust to a part of the human being, namely the speaking human being.

Eurythmy is a means of expression for precisely those things that cannot come out through speech and mere singing, that cannot be brought out through them. And so we can say: it seems from the outset like an unartistic feeling if one wanted to reject such an extension of our art and artistic endeavors just because one is not accustomed to finding this formal language used so far. Those who really have an artistic sense will have to strive for an extension of our art forms and artistic means.

That, dear attendees, is what eurythmy is about for now. You will see – and especially those of you who have been here as spectators before will notice – that we are always trying to move forward.

For example, today we are trying to reproduce the mood of the poem in introductory forms that are not accompanied by recitation or music, in order to lead into the actual poem. Or we try to hold on to the mood for a while in a closing form, so that in such introductory and closing forms we allow the content of the poem to be revealed only through visible language. And one must feel – not speculate about it, not believe that one could grasp it intellectually, which would be inartistic – one must feel what lies in these forms. – You will see, my dear audience, that one can indeed already find the stylistic form of poetry if one is able to enter into the stylistic form of poetry.

What we do here as eurythmy is really still in the early stages of development. But we are striving onwards. We are trying more and more to eliminate all mere mimicry, to overcome all prosaic content, and to create an art in eurythmy in which everything is truly based on the lawful sequence of movements, just as the lawful sequence of tones in music is based on the lawful sequence of movements, so that nothing is arbitrarily gestural. When creating forms, the keynote, the basic mood, must be taken as the basis, that which is the keynote, the basic mood of a poem.

And you will see how we try to distinguish the serious mood of a poem in eurythmy from the mood of a poem that will confront you, for example, in the eurythmic rendition of Morgenstern's Humoresques, some of which you will see today.

It is not so easy to find the basic tone of these Morgenstern humoresques.

Anyone who finds themselves in today's world with completely unbiased senses will find an enormous amount of philistinism in the world. And the philistine element, which admittedly also has its good sides from time to time, is making itself felt in a harmful way in many ways today. After all, for someone like Christian Morgenstern, it is not only what is commonly called philistine in life that is philistine, but much of what is considered very ingenious today is in fact just genius transformed into philistinism. And such metamorphosed genius, which is actually philistinism, then formed all sorts of skewers in a life like the one Christian Morgenstern led.

From all sides, these philistinisms form skewers. And then you realize that you can't really get close to this stuffiness. But life brings you close again. And that is when these thoughts begin, which you have because you keep bumping into these narrow-minded attitudes, to perform all kinds of dances. These are wonderfully graceful dances, which Morgenstern performs, so that real seriousness can laugh and real seriousness becomes profound and meaningful again in laughter. It is wonderful to see here in Christian Morgenstern how logic cannot be used to deal with the illogical philistinism, but how thoughts must be made to dance so that they enter into a kind of negative logic on the other side, which, however, has something extraordinarily convincing about it.

This dance-like quality of Morgenstern's humorous poems, which depict wonderful irony, which really, I would say, offers something convincing to these moods of the times, must be experienced in their style. And then, once you have grasped them, I believe you can also present these dancing thoughts, which arose from the narrow-mindedness of the philistines, in eurythmy. You can show the difference by following the style forms.

This eurythmy has not only an artistic side but also a pedagogical-didactic one. At the Waldorf School in Stuttgart, which was founded by Emil Molt and is now under my direction, we have included eurythmy as a compulsory subject in the curriculum. And you can see how children from a very young age feel completely at home in these movements in an elementary and natural way and are happy to be able to make these movements, happy not just to need to move according to the physiological peculiarities of external gymnastics, but to bring the whole organism into movements that are inspired and spiritualized. So that this child, in this inspired gymnastics, can feel itself so truly as a human being in full naive unconsciousness.

Then there is a hygienic-therapeutic side to this eurythmy, which I only want to point out. The fact that these movements are taken from the healthy form of the human organism means that they can also be used when this organism falls into an unhealthy state, to help it recover.

All in all, I must ask for indulgence today, as I always do before our performances. We are our own harshest critics and know exactly how far we have to go, because we are just beginning with this eurythmy and because what it aims to achieve actually still needs to be perfected. On the other hand, however, one can also point to the almost unlimited possibilities for development: Because the human being, this universe of all the secrets of the world, is used as a tool, not taken as a tool, one can indeed make the confession from inner contemplation that the time will come when eurythmy will be able to stand as a younger sister art beside the older sister arts, which have been fully recognized for some time.

From April 3 to 10, 1921, the second Anthroposophical University Course took place at the Goetheanum, during which several eurythmy performances were also given.

“Melody” by Ludwig Jacobowski with musical accompaniment by Leopold van der Pals
Saying from the Calendar of the Soul (52.) by Rudolf Steiner
“Little Bird” by Edward Grieg ‘Forest Concerts’ by Christian Morgenstern
“Merlin“ by Nikolaus Lenau
Saying from the soul calendar (1.) by Rudolf Steiner
Opening ‘Fateful Question’ with music by Leopold van der Pals
“Lonely” by Friedrich Nietzsche
“The Drunken Song“ by Friedrich Nietzsche
“The Three Gypsies” by Nikolaus Lenau with music by Jan Stuten
Humoresques by Christian Morgenstern: “St. Expeditus”; “The Unicorn”; “The Shoes”

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen.

Allow me to say a few words before our eurythmy performance, not to explain it (artistic work must explain itself), but to say a few words about the sources and the special forms of expression in which this art moves and from which it flows. What we call eurythmy here is by no means — although it expresses itself through the moving human being or through the movement of groups of people — it is not just any kind of gestural art, not just anything mimic or pantomime. Nor should it be confused with what is called the art of dance and the like.

Nowhere is an attempt made to find a gestural expression for any content of the soul in an instant, as one might say, but rather the aim is a real visible language. So that every single movement and the sequence of movements, the conformity of the movements to natural law corresponds to the inner soul experience, just as the individual sound of the spoken or sung word and the sequence of sounds and tones in speech and song correspond to the inner soul experience. If I may use the expression, it has been investigated through sensuous-supersensuous observation in which movement tendency the larynx and the other speech organs find themselves when speech or song is produced. And that which is only present in the potential when speaking or singing, in the potential for movement, is metamorphosed into the movements of the whole person or even of groups of people.

It can certainly be said that the whole person is brought onto the stage in such a way as if it were a moved larynx as a whole. And only someone who, at heart, does not have the right joy and the right feeling for the artistic can object to such an expansion of the artistic. It is precisely this that makes it possible for what is expressed on the one hand through poetry and on the other through music to be revealed in this moving language or in moving song. In this way, that which, I would say, in music and in language is what transforms the two human contents into artistic form, becomes particularly expressible in this visible language or in this visible song.

What lies in the poetry, purely artistically, is, I would like to say, hidden song, hidden musicality or also hidden plastic imagery. What is merely the literal content of a poem is basically only the outer work of the real artistic element. What constitutes the artistic element is already eurythmic in poetry and song.

On the one hand, the human being expresses his or her nature through thought. It is undeniable that in the activity of thinking, in the formation of thoughts, lies that through which man first experiences himself as the most perfect creature within the visible creation in which he finds himself. But when man merely moves thought within himself, he moves in a prosaic way. To move towards the artistic, towards the poetic, it is necessary that the element of thought passes into the creation of form. And it is remarkable how we can see that through the most significant forms of the poetic – through the epic element, through the lyrical element, through the dramatic element – thought seeks to lose itself as thought, to give up its unartistic element and merge into the form.

Take the epic. We see how, let us say, in one of the most exquisite epic creations, in Homer, we see how the conceptual element even in the telling of the story passes over into the shaping: the fleet-footed Achilles or the hero with the billowing helmet. Thought will always attempt to lose itself and metamorphosically transform into form. When we follow it, we only really have a drama before us when we do not limit ourselves to its literal content, but when we recreate in our imagination what the literal content only indicates, I might say like a musical score. We see the life that has been shaped. And perhaps this is just as true for lyric poetry. All lyric poetry that is divorced from the human being always has something uncomfortable about it for the artistic sense. What really goes to our hearts in lyric poetry is that there can be soul in the artistic, but it is presented, shaped, and placed before our mind's eye only individually and uniquely. The more we are gripped by the feeling, the sensing, the experiencing of a person in a song, the more genuinely, originally, and elementarily we also feel the lyric. And so we can say: in that thought wants to become artistic – even in the purely intellectual element of poetry – it strives out of its element of thought, it strives to transition into form.

And anyone who has an understanding of this will be able to feel how, if one wants to approach the human being with comprehension and understanding, how, in the sense of our present-day science of man, one can think, how one can unravel what is before us in the human being. We then cannot manage. If we want to retain the thought and yet understand the human being, we actually fall into an absurdity. When we stand before the human being, we must penetrate to the artistic in order to understand the thoughts. We must penetrate so far that the thought loses itself in the contemplation of the human being, that the inner soul life becomes artistic and the thought passes over into the intuitive apprehension of the human form. This is a stimulating inner task. And it is precisely in this task that we see how, in the end, every genuine true knowledge in the Goethean sense leads to an artistic understanding of the outer world.

On the one hand, it is thought that leads to form and ultimately to the human form. A second element that we perceive in human experience is movement, movement that goes back to the will. You don't have to be a Schopenhauerian to feel that the human essence seeks to pass through the striving will to its purest image, to the musical and song-like. In the musical-singing element, one can already feel that into which the will also wants to flow, just as the form of the thought wants to flow into the thinking. And then one has the second element, that which, as movement, belongs to the human being. But when one stands face to face with the complete human being, one will feel the belonging together, the flowing into one another of form and movement in the human being. We cannot help but, when we look at the details of the human being – let us say the hand or the arm with the hand, for example – we look at the shape, we cannot help but, when we look at the shape, we see in the shape, I would say, the movement that has come to rest. We cannot help but imagine in the shape of the hand that which is directly connected with the movement, with the mobility of the hand.

And so we can only fully grasp everything that is revealed in man if we understand it in its transition into movement, if we approach and understand man as his form arises from movement, from movement that has come to rest, and how, on the other hand, form everywhere wants to transition, expand, flow into movement. Then one has before one that which expresses in the whole human being the same thing that lives in speech and song in terms of inner sound, I would say in terms of possibility, in terms of ideality, to speak in the Goethean sense. And so the same thing can be represented through the moving human being as through speech and song.

One can see how the basis of true poetry can come to light through this eurythmy, precisely because the declamatory, recitative accompaniment gives rise to demands that do not correspond to the purely prosaic demands on recitation or declamation that exist so prominently in our time. Today, the prose content of a poem is particularly emphasized, and this is considered appealing. Attention is paid to the fact that this or that nuance of prose, this or that nuance of content is expressed in this or that way when reciting or declaiming. The actual artistic element is overlooked, which consists in the rhythmic, in the metrical, or also in the pictorialization that underlies the poetry. And it remains an important psychological fact that true great poets such as Schiller, for example, first had an indefinite melody in their soul, on which he then strung the words; or that Goethe had an image in his inner vision, as is the case in the second part of Goethe's “Faust”, in order to then shape the poetic in such a way that he strung together the plastic, pictorial image of what the previous content is.

These things come to light particularly through the art of eurythmy. But since we have music to accompany the eurythmy on the one hand and the recitation of the poetry on the other, it will become clear during recitation and declamation that one cannot simply recite and declaim prosaically, but must always seek in recitation and declamation for the underlying rhythm and beat - or perhaps also for the underlying rhythmic form and emphasize it in particular, that in other words, in eurythmy one is compelled to go back to the actual artistic in the poetic.

With that, dear attendees, I have briefly touched on the essence and formal language of eurythmy. There is also a second side to eurythmy, which I will only mention here: the medical and therapeutic side. Since what is inherent in the human form, in the human organization, is conjured up by the eurythmic movements, these movements, which are carried out, must also be shaped in such a way that they appear as healing movements for the human organism, so that one can develop a hygienic-therapeutic side to this eurythmy. But that should only be mentioned in passing.

I would like to point out a third element that this eurythmy contains: the didactic-pedagogical element. At the Waldorf School in Stuttgart, which was founded by Emil Molt and is run by me, we have made eurythmy a compulsory subject alongside gymnastics. In this sense, eurythmy is a form of animated gymnastics. It does not merely create what gymnastics already does, namely, movement of the human being based on physiological observation. Rather, it creates something that brings to light the body, soul and spirit of the human being in unified movement. And that this can really be felt, that one might say that which lies in the human being passes over into his natural movement, is shown by the successes that have been achieved in Waldorf schools, especially with eurythmy. From the earliest school age, children perceive this soul-inspired movement as something natural, because what they carry out in movement does not merely follow from the physical, but from the whole, from the full human being. We shall see how, in particular, the will initiative can be developed in the child through this element of eurythmy and how many other aspects of the child's soul, spirit and physical life can be fostered if this teaching can be developed more and more. In this way, eurythmy can also provide a fruitful element for pedagogy and didactics.

That, ladies and gentlemen, was the intention of this eurythmy. One can only say, as Goethe once said, that in relation to his entire environment, man stands in art, that this eurythmy adheres entirely to these Goethean intentions. Goethe says so beautifully: When nature begins to reveal its manifest secret to someone, they feel a deep yearning for its most worthy interpreter, art. The deepest secrets of nature are hidden in the human being itself; they reside in the human form. When this form moves, nature reveals its manifest secret. So that one does not have to grasp it in an inartistic way with thought, but can look at it in a directly sensual way, the secret of nature.

But that is precisely how life is created in the artistic. And eurythmy uses the human being itself as its tool. It does not work with external tools and means of expression, but with that which lies within the human being. Goethe says so beautifully: When man is placed at the summit of nature, he in turn perceives himself as a summit, takes in measure, order, harmony and meaning, and rises to the production of the work of art. Should we not be able to rise to the production of a work of art in the most beautiful way, when we make the human organism itself, which is a small world, appear in its own right, in accordance with its own laws, like an excerpt from the whole great world, a tool and means of expression for what we artistically intend?

However, it must be said again and again: we are our own harshest critics, even in relation to what we are already able to do today. But we have tried in a certain way to advance what was originally intended with eurythmy to a certain extent. Today you will see how we bring to life what resonates in the mood of a poem in forms that are accompanied neither by music nor by poetry, so that the mere moving person or group of people can strike the mood of the poem, or that in such mute forms the poem can end in its mood or the music in its mood.

You will also see how we endeavor, if you have the patience, to compare what is achieved in more serious poetry with what is attempted in humorous and picturesque poetry. You will see how eurythmy follows the style forms, how, on the one hand, Fercher von Steinwand's extraordinarily convoluted poetic images, which follow the secrets of the world and mysterious cosmic forces, want to be expressed through forms; on the other hand, you will see how Christian Morgenstern's humoresques have been attempted in the second part, also through special forms, to be captured in eurythmy in the style . What Morgenstern wanted to achieve – which was led to his humorous poems, the “Galgenlieder”, the “Palmström-Lieder” and so on – through what he experienced in the depths of his soul, I would say through humorously experiencing and suffering at the hands of philistinism – can be followed in the eurythmic forms , without resorting to mime or pantomime. Christian Morgenstern felt very strongly what philistinism, which is spreading all around us in our prosaic times, lives out. I would like to say that the narrow-mindedness, the spears that philistinism sends out in all directions, hurt a sensitive nature like Christian Morgenstern's everywhere, and that is how his thoughts came to dance. They were repulsed everywhere by the spears of philistinism, especially by that philistinism which today wants to appear ingenious, which, precisely because it wants to appear ingenious, behaves so ingeniously. This quivering back, this dancing of Christian Morgenstern's thoughts through the spears of philistinism, that is what, I would like to say, in turn challenges a particular sub-form of eurythmy.

In all of this, however, what we can already offer today remains a beginning. We must ask for forbearance in this regard. We are our own harshest critics, but we believe that, after what we have taken as our starting point for this eurythmic art and after the forms in which we develop it, which are thoroughly grounded in the human being, that this younger sister art will one day be able to stand alongside the older, fully-fledged sister arts, provided it continues to be developed.

The performance of April 9, 1921 took place in the carpentry workshop, and the closing ceremony of the Second Anthroposophical College Course as a “performance of eurhythmic art and musical performances” took place on April 10, 1921 in the Goetheanum building, with the “Ariel Scene” from “Faust” eurythmically presented with music by Max Schuurman and Henry Zagwijn.

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

Second scene from the mystery drama “The Awakening of the Soul” by Rudolf Steiner

Prelude “Planetary Dance”

“World Soul” by J. W. v. Goethe with music by Max Schuurman

“Proem” by J. W. v. Goethe

Saying from the Calendar of the Soul (1.) by Rudolf Steiner

“Mount Olympus” by J. W. von Goethe

Saying from the Calendar of the Soul (2.) by Rudolf Steiner

“Good Night” by Engelbert Humperdinck (children's group)

“The Beech's Guests” by Rudolf Baumbach with music by Jan Stuten (children's group)

“Beim Anblick einer Gans” by J. Fercher von Steinwand

Humoresques by Christian Morgenstern: “Der Schnupfen”; “Der Aromat”; “Die Geruchsorgel”; “Das Butterbrotpapier”; “Mondendinge”

Distinguished ladies and gentlemen.

As on previous occasions when these eurythmy exercises were performed, I would like to introduce them with a few words today, in which I will speak about the particular artistic means, the formal language, in which this eurythmic art moves. The point is that on the stage we see a language that is truly inaudible but visible, a language that is performed through movements of the individual human being, through movements of groups of people and so on. What the human being performs is then accompanied either by music or by the recitation of poetry. And what occurs in the movements of the individual human being or the group of people should be the same revelation through a visible language or through a visible song, as on the other hand the same motifs are revealed musically or poetically, through recitation.

But it is not a matter of some kind of mime or pantomime or other kind of gestural art being the basis here; nor is it a matter of what is called dance in ordinary life being the basis here. Rather, it has been developed into a language of the human form and human movement that is just as essentially fixed as the language of sound and song itself, in which the human form lives, only in a different way. This has come about through the fact that, through sensual and supersensory observation, the movement tendencies that underlie the audible sound, the word formations and so on, and also the sentence formations, have been overheard in the human larynx and the other speech organs. In this way, something has come about that is as internally logical in the sequence of sounds as musicality, for example.

If you want to see what this eurythmic art is actually about, then it is useful to consider some of human development. Human development proceeds in such a way that [it is clear –] although it is not visible more clearly in historical times, but only in prehistoric times – how certain expressions of human life, let us say, for example, his ability to move, his ability to speak, have developed.

For our purpose here, I would like to point out one thing. There is an interesting fact, already known to ordinary science today, that points to an element of development in the human race: it is the fact that in the older languages, the primitive languages, for the human movement that then became dance, for the rhythmic movement that, as I said, later transformed into the movements performed during the dance, that for these “primal ic” movements, and for singing, there was only one word. They did not distinguish between what they were convinced belonged together: singing and rhythmic movement of the human body. In a sense, primitive man felt compelled, whenever possible, not to make sounds with still limbs, but to always accompany them with some movement of his limbs. He then also behaved in such a way that, when it was possible, the work he performed and in which he moved his limbs, when it was possible, he performed this work in such a way that his limbs could move in a certain rhythm, a certain regularity that arose instinctively in him.

This, which was characteristic of man in very early times, then became differentiated. As man advanced in civilization, the movements that arose from the will, so to speak, separated to a certain independence; they adapted more and more to the outer life. Only the leg movements did not retain a certain freer mobility, but the arm movements did. But even in these, I would say that in the leg movements, which were emancipating themselves from the tonal, the singing, that which was possible in such movements when they did not serve mere utility was still held back. These movements were, as it were, relegated to the instinctive will, to all that which the human being then placed in the indeterminate, unconscious will as his own humanity. In this way, the movements that had previously always been linked to song became differentiated into ritual dances. And even what in older times were called “love dances” had in a sense become differentiated. But it differentiated in such a way that in the case of cult dances, the movements, which used to be more closely related to the [gap in the text] and the emotional, were led down into the nobler unconscious, while in the case of love dances, they were led down into the instinctive unconscious will-like movements, which were also felt as one with singing, with the sounding word.

On the one hand, the movement that comes from the will differentiated and separated itself. On the other hand, what lay in the sound, in the word, differentiated itself, in that the movement increasingly passed over into the useful and the playful, and also into the cult-like in certain peoples. So that the word became the word of knowledge, into which, as it were, everything that can be expressed thoughtfully through the word was pressed from the intellect. So that, while the lower movements differentiated themselves into the useful, the words differentiated themselves into the means of knowledge and into the external conventional means of communication.

By advancing to a spiritualization of that which is given for human knowledge, the word is again imbued with the spirit, which in turn can then connect with the will. But, my dear attendees, if you want to achieve something artistic, you have to overcome the intellectual and the conceptual wherever possible. The intellectual and conceptual is paralyzing for art. But that which lives as spirit in the intellectual and conceptual can in turn be united with movement.

Now, what was once, I would say, a unified human revelation in the art of song and movement, for which there was only one name, is intimately connected with the human breathing rhythm. And the peculiar thing is that one can say that what actually plays from the innermost part of the human being, from this interplay of the spiritual-soul, physical-bodily, as it is expressed so finely in the breathing rhythm and the pulse, is more than in what is human rhythm in general. On the one hand, we can see how what is, so to speak, in the head becomes the intellectual in the word, and how, even if only in a slight way, arrhythmia occurs in the rhythmic being of the human being. And in the same way, arrhythmia occurs when the human being's mobility develops only in terms of what is useful.

If we now try to discern through sensory and supersensory observation what has now differentiated itself as a single group of organs in the activity of speaking, then we can see particularly well how this speaking is connected to breathing, how the breathing movements, so to speak, interact with speaking in one, but how the interplay of the thought and intellectuality causes arrhythmia. And we find arrhythmia in, I would say, an overly developed intellectual speech. But we also find arrhythmia in a speech that is too strongly based on the mere principle of utility.

By now trying to go back to the inner essence of man, to that inner essence that expresses itself, if I may put it this way, in the purely human rhythm and thus also coming back to how the sound adapts to this pure human rhythm, we find on the one hand that the true poet unconsciously arranges his speech in such a way that he lutes and words and in the whole sentence structure of the language in such a way that it connects to the pure human breathing rhythm or at least stands in a very specific relationship to this pure human breathing rhythm.

But as our civilization is today, if one were to start from the intellectual and rational, much that is arrhythmic would still enter into the human being. On the other hand, if we start from what develops out of the full human being in the will, we can already work back into the [movements of human limbs, especially the movement of the arms,] so that the soul-spiritual can also be expressed in the arm movement, as it was once developed out of human nature. In this way, and in exactly the same way, only in a different direction, in the movements of the human limbs, especially the arms, something similar is achieved to that which is present in the shaping of the air movements that are released from the rhythmic breathing process. One then expresses in a visible language the same thing that is formed in the air when the word is sounded. And one thereby gains the possibility of translating into the visible what is musically at the basis of song, what is poetically at the basis of formative language.

So here we do not have ordinary poetry, or a gestural art or a mimetic art, but a real expression of the human soul and spirit in the physical body, in the most beautiful harmony, in the same way as in those speech formations that are not borrowed from the principle of external utility, but that reveal themselves out of human nature itself. All that is striven for through eurythmy actually reveals what underlies a poem, what underlies a song, on the one hand from the musical side, and on the other from the pictorial side, from the plastic-creative side. And that which has lived in the poet as a fully human being comes visibly to the outside for revelation.

You can also see that, for example, all the bad habits of recitation and declamation, which are developing particularly abundantly today in an unartistic time, must be avoided. All the insertion of the prosaic content and the literal element into recitation and declamation, where one has particularly the emotional, inner emphasis – which is not intended to be a harsh judgment on the emotional, but it must merge into rhythm, tact [or into that which is plastic, image-like]. All the aspects that are particularly emphasized in prose recitation and declamation cannot be used for the declamation and recitation that should accompany the visible speech presented in eurythmy. For it is precisely that which is genuinely and truly artistic that is drawn from the realm of poetry. And in poetry it is not the literal meaning, but rather the underlying meter and rhythm, which is then expressed in the shaping of the language.

Therefore, even today, some people who are perhaps already sufficiently shocked by the eurythmic art itself are particularly shocked when they hear the special way of declaiming and reciting as an accompanying art, as it is required for this eurythmy.

This is something that is still widely misunderstood today: what this eurythmy is striving for, this visible language. Critics appear, such as “something is being shaped automatically” - one can predict - that our eurythmists showed too few facial movements, and yet the face would be the most expressive, and so on. For someone who really engages with the connection between the human soul and spirit and the visible language that appears here in eurythmy, it is as if someone were tempted to accompany what they say with continuous unnatural grimaces. That is why it is important that what is expressed should be expressed through a special language of form, through a special language of movement – and not through what otherwise also accompanies our ordinary speaking, for example, as random gestures or random facial expressions.

This is what I would like to say today about the one side of our eurythmic art: the artistic side.

I would just like to mention that this eurythmy also has a second element, an important hygienic-therapeutic one. Since the movements are taken from the human being itself, they can also be shaped in such a way that they have a direct healing effect. And movements can be found that must then proceed in a somewhat different way than those formed purely for artistic purposes, which can then also play a significant role in therapy, in hygiene. I just wanted to mention that.

The third element I would like to mention is the didactic-pedagogical aspect of our eurythmic art. At the Waldorf School in Stuttgart, which was founded by Emil Molt and is under my direction, we have had the opportunity to introduce this eurythmy as a compulsory subject. And it can be seen that from the moment the child enters primary school, they already feel it as a matter of course to live in these eurythmic movements. They feel how what is being developed here as a movement emerges from the whole being of the human being. This has already been clearly demonstrated in the practice of the Waldorf school. And so we have this eurythmy as a soul-inspired gymnastics, while in ordinary gymnastics there are only physiological processes. So that what affects the human body is taken into account, as we do in eurythmic didactics and pedagogy, that spirit and soul work together with the body, that the whole person is engaged in the activity. And here we can see for ourselves – our time, in which the Waldorf school exists, has been quite enough for that – how the eurythmic element is a training of the will initiative, how the impulses that are unleashed and released within the human being are in fact deep impulses of the will. If we consider how much our time needs the training of the will initiative, we will admit that it is indeed important that such bescelte gymnastics be practiced in our schools.

These are the various aspects of our eurythmic art, as far as they can be developed at present. That this eurythmic art is justified may already be seen from the fact that it is used to make use of that which is, as it were, an extract, an imprint of the whole great world, that is to say, a small world: the human organism itself, as an instrument for artistic activity. And if, on the one hand, Goethe says: “When nature begins to reveal her secrets to someone, that person feels an irresistible yearning for her most worthy interpreter, art,” then it must be said that human nature will reveal itself most beautifully through art when the human being uses his own organism as the tool for this art.

And when, on the other hand, Goethe says: “By being placed at the summit of nature, man beholds himself as a complete nature, which must bring forth a summit within itself. To do so, he elevates himself by permeating himself with all perfections and virtues, invoking choice, order, harmony and meaning, and finally rising to the production of the work of art.He can also rise to the production of the work of art if he not only places himself at the summit of nature in order to take measure, harmony, order and meaning from the external nature, but if he seeks measure, harmony, order and meaning in his own being, sets these in motion, makes himself the expression of the secrets of the world and makes visible in speech that which mysteriously moves through the human soul.

And when art is most beautiful when what the eyes see externally frees the spirit at the same time, and when everything that wants to give spirit becomes an external expression of the senses at the same time, then one can say: eurythmy fulfills these requirements. For that which the human being experiences inwardly in soul and spirit, by reliving the most beautiful products of language, the poems: that also comes to expression outwardly in the senses, visibly for the eye. Thus, in this eurythmic art, we have, quite obviously, the outer visible and the inner soul-spiritual of the human being working together, which, when they work together, give the most noble, the most beautiful expression of art.

We still have to apologize for some things because we are still in the early stages of this eurythmic art. And yet, the distinguished guests who are here often will have seen how we have been working, especially in the development of introductory silent forms, silent endings and the like, where we can show that in the eurythmic forms, even when nothing is spoken or recited, there is something linguistic, something visibly linguistic. But after all, this eurythmy is only at its beginning. Perhaps it will also be seen that when the poetic is already directly conceived rhythmically, when everything is looked at down to the last word — and that is the case in my “mystery dramas” — I would like to say that then the eurythmic expression arises by itself. This will be the case with the first part that we will perform today before the break, which is intended to provide a eurythmic rendition of a scene from one of my “mystery dramas”. After the break, there will be eurythmic renditions of other poems.

As I said, we must apologize. We ourselves are the strictest critics of what eurythmy can do today, but we are also in the midst of its developmental possibilities - they will perhaps first be developed by others, not by ourselves. But these possibilities for development are such that one can indulge in the hope that this youngest sister among the arts will one day be able to stand worthily beside her older sister forms, which are already fully entitled today.

My dear Friends,

The studies we have been pursuing together in these past days have led us to see that two things are necessary if we want to be artists on the stage. In the first place, we must be ready and willing to undertake an intensive study of the elements of the arts of speech and gesture—those first elements of which we have seen that they are rooted and sustained in the life of the spirit. And then secondly, we must give to dramatic art its right place in the whole compass of our life, and in so doing implant in our hearts a mood that is permeated by spirit and never deviates from the paths of spirituality. If we can fulfil these two things required of us, then we shall be able to take our part as actors in the life of mankind in the way that an artist should who is sustained and upheld by the spirit. For such an artist should have it in his power, by means of all that he is and does, to help bring the artistic into that leading role in civilisation to which it is called, and for lack of which civilisation must inevitably wither and perish.

Such was, I know, the earnest aspiration that prompted a number of you to ask for this course of lectures. And we shall need to carry the same earnestness into our further study, as we go on now to consider, for example, how the human form is a revelation of the great world. Approaching the theme from the standpoint of the art of the stage, we shall have to find how in the form and figure of man, taken in its most comprehensive sense, the universe is revealed—significantly, intensively revealed. And the perceptions that light up within us through thus beholding man as a revelation of the universe, will guide us in linking up again the natural and elemental with the divine and spiritual.

We will accordingly begin our lecture today with a consideration once again of the question : How can we see in the forming of word and of sound a revelation of the form and figure of man? If we think of ‘speaking’ man, man revealing himself in speech, then the first part of his form that calls for notice is his lips. It is, to begin with, the lips that do the revealing.

Disregarding altogether for the moment the grouping of the consonants into impact sounds, breath sounds, wave sounds and vibrant sounds, we find that the sounds which are brought to expression by means of the lips are m, b, p. These sounds are revelations that are made entirely by the formative activity of the lips; both lips are engaged.

1. Both lips engaged : m b p

If we try to utter any other sound than these with the lips, we not only interfere with the right forming of speech, we do injury to our organism. And if on the other hand we speak m, b or p without the complete instinctive consciousness that here the lips are the specific agents, then again we harm both our speaking and our organism.

A second activity reveals itself when we begin to look a little way in from the lips—a co-operation, namely, of lower lip with upper teeth. In the muscles of the lower lip we have an intense concentration of our karma, of that karma that is so mysteriously present within us all the time. The forces that work and weave throughout the limbs go streaming through the muscles of the lower lip in a wonderful variety of movement; we may even say that the whole human being, with the exception of the organisation of the head, comes to expression in the activity of the lower lip.

In comparison with those of the lower, the muscles of the upper lip are inactive. Their part is rather to provide opportunity for what is contained in the head organisation to find its way into the muscular system. And whilst the lower lip is positively no less than a complete expression of man as limb-man, all that can be said of the upper lip is that it supplies man in its movement with a means of expression for what is contained in the utterance of m, b and p.

But now, through this co-operation of lower lip and upper teeth we can bring to expression what comes more from the entire man. The upper teeth, like the upper lip, bring the head organisation to expression, and being more at rest and circumscribed, are able to do so even better. In the upper teeth we have a concentration, a consolidation of all that man is ready and willing to receive of the secrets of the universe, those secrets that crave to be taken hold of in this way, to be established and consolidated in man's being. There in the upper teeth they come to rest. And when we let lower lip and upper teeth work together in the right way in f, v (f) and w (v),¹ then what has been received by us from the whole sum of world secrets and is now wanting to come to expression finds that expression.

2. Lower lip and upper teeth: f v w

The South Germans are almost unable to say w; they pronounce it like u and e run together, giving it the character of a vowel. W properly spoken arises from the lower lip meeting the upper teeth in a kind of wavelike movement, whereas in v the lower lip merely closes up to them without this wavelike movement. In f the lower lip pushes with all its force on to the upper teeth.

A further stage is reached when the two rows of teeth work together. This means that the lower and upper organisations of man, the organisations of head and of limbs, are held in balance. The world has, so to speak, been captured by man, he has it there within him; and now he on his part wants to send forth his own being into the world without. This is how it is when we attain to a right interworking of upper and lower teeth in speaking the sounds s, c (ts), z (ts).²

3. Upper and lower teeth working together : s c z

In these sounds, the teeth alone are concerned.

Entering now still farther into man, we come to his inner life, to where his life of feeling seeks to express itself, his life of soul; we have therefore also to go farther back in his bodily being. We come then to the tongue; and we have first the revelation that can come about through tongue and upper teeth working together. Whilst what man has become by virtue of all that he has received from the world, reveals itself in the interplay of lower lip and upper teeth, what man is by virtue of the fact that he has a soul, comes to revelation in the interplay between soul and head—that is, between tongue and upper teeth.

Here, therefore, the tongue begins to work—and behind the upper teeth. Please take special note of the word behind. This gives rise to the sounds: l, n, d, t.

4. Tongue works behind the upper teeth: l n d t

If we are to succeed in producing in our pupils healthy and beautiful speaking, it will be important to arrange in our dramatic school for the practice of exercises expressly designed to avoid lisping. In lisping, the tongue ventures too far forward, pushing itself between the teeth. The students must succeed in having the tongue so completely under control, that the cardinal maxim of all speaking is consciously carried out, namely, that the tongue shall never be allowed to overstep the boundary set by the two rows of teeth.³ During the whole time of speaking, the tongue must stay behind this boundary. When it is allowed to come out beyond the teeth, it is as though the soul were wanting to come forth and expose itself, without body, to immediate contact with Nature.

A person who lisps should accordingly be given the following exercise, and one should begin it with him as young as possible. Get him to practise saying n l d, repeating each sound three times, and each time resolutely pressing the tongue on to the back of the upper teeth: n n n, l l l, d d d. To continue uttering the sounds in this way, one after the other, is difficult, but that is how they should be practised. It is a fatiguing exercise; it may well leave the pupil feeling as though he were seized with cramp. But let me tell you how the first man to draw attention to this exercise used to encourage his patients. He would remind them of the lieutenant who was in the habit of saying to his raw recruits: ‘Of course it is difficult; if a thing isn't difficult, you don't have to learn it!’

The fifth thing we need to consider lies still farther back in the mouth. We have to learn to be fully conscious of the part played in speaking by the root of the tongue. That is then the fifth, the root of the tongue. We shall here have to practise the sounds g, k, r⁴, j⁵, qu (kv), speaking them as far back in the mouth as possible, and consciously feeling, as we utter them, the root of the tongue.

5. Root of the tongue: g k r j qu

It is these sounds—and more especially g, k, r—sounds where we have to take pains to be conscious all the time of the root of the tongue, that must bear the blame for stuttering. Stuttering arises when the instinctive feeling of the proper way to say g, k, r is lacking. We will go into this matter a little further presently, but directly you notice signs of stuttering in a pupil, you will have to take him with g k r and try to get him to speak these sounds to perfection. For r you can administer a physical help. Instead of expecting your pupil to produce r right away by his own inner effort, prepare him beforehand by letting him gargle water sweetened with sugar. Yes, as you see, whenever there is something of this kind that can help a pupil, something quite external, I have no hesitation in calling your attention to it. And for a right speaking of the sound r, gargling with sweetened water can prove very helpful. The sweet water must, however, be properly and thoroughly gargled. Particularly with children the gargling can have excellent results.

And now I want to pass on to something else that should be familiar to everyone who wants to speak properly, and which an intending actor will certainly need to master thoroughly.

I have, as you know, repeatedly pointed out that right speaking is not to be attained by physiological exercises, but that we have to learn it from the speech organism itself. We have in these lectures taken cognisance of many things that can be learned from the speech organism, and we have added to them today. We have seen that from m, b, p we learn the right co-operation of the lips, that from v, w we learn how to use rightly together lower lip and upper teeth, and from s, c, z the two rows of teeth. We have seen also how the tongue must always remain behind the teeth in l, n, d, t and lastly how we are to manipulate the root of the tongue in g, k, r, j, qu.

The sounds themselves are our teachers. It is only a matter of our knowing how to engage their help. If we have once understood this, then that will mean that all the several parts of our organism of throat and mouth have been received as pupils in the school of the sounds. The sounds are verily the Gods from whom we are to learn how to form our speaking.

But now, as I was saying, there is yet another matter to which we must give our attention. It concerns the breathing, and is the one item of guidance to be salvaged from all the tangled mass of instructions given in schools of speech training today. In speaking, we should use up, steadily and quietly, all our available breath. If, while we are speaking, we take a fresh breath before the inbreathed air we have in the lungs is exhausted, then our speaking will invariably be poor and feeble.

We are, as it were, in possession of the secret of well- formed speech when we know that good speaking depends upon the use to the full of the air that we have within us. We must accordingly accustom ourselves to the practice of exercises, once more derived from speech itself, where we have, to begin with, to take a deep full breath.

What does it imply, to take a deep full breath? It means that the diaphragm is pressed down as far as it can be without injury to health. You must be able to feel in the region of the diaphragm that the inbreathing is complete. You will, as teacher, need to lay your hand on your pupil in the region of the diaphragm in order to demonstrate to him the expansion that has to take place there, the change that must necessarily accompany a thorough inbreathing.

Then you will get your pupil to hold this inbreathed air and continue speaking with it until all the air he took in has been breathed out again. It must never happen that he stops to take breath so long as there is still any inbreathed air left in his lungs. It should indeed become for the pupil entirely a matter of instinct: never to pause for breath until the inbreathed air is exhausted.

Having first taken a deep breath and become conscious of what happens in the region of the diaphragm as he in-breathes, conscious too of the whole gradual change that takes place there until the inbreathed air is completely exhausted (for this preparatory stage the sound a can serve), the student may then proceed to the following exercise.

First a sequence of vowels, spoken slowly so that they occupy the time of a complete out-breathing. Let him say a e u, and continue with these sounds until he needs to take a fresh breath. Then the same with consonants. Let him keep on with k l s f m for the whole period of an out-breathing. This exercise, which has for its ultimate aim the full use of the in-taken breath before any more air is inbreathed, provides us also with a remedy, in fact the only right and healthy remedy, for stuttering. The reason why rhythmic exercises can prove so remarkably helpful for stuttering is that a good rhythm necessarily demands right breathing. One is obliged to breathe properly if one has to say:

‘Und es wallet and woget and brauset and zischt (take breath)
Wie wenn Wasser mit Feuer sich mengt.⁶

It is quite possible to hold one's breath throughout each line; in fact, one can hardly help doing so. And that is what you will have to achieve with your stutterer. He must not take breath until the inbreathed air is used up. For his stuttering is due to the fact that an anxiety which makes him gasp for air has become in him organic. What he needs is something that can lure him away from this anxious fear that makes him strain to catch his breath; and we shall exactly meet that need if, when he has begun to stutter, we get him to sing, or to say some poetry. Fear and anxiety are connected also with anger, and you know how an angry

You probably know the story of the apothecary's assistant who was inclined to stutter whenever he was worried or anxious. The apothecary was having tea in a room upstairs with some friends. The assistant burst into the room and all he could say was: Die Apo-, die Apothe-, Apothe-, Apothe- ... The k was there in his way, he couldn't get past it. The apothecary, seeing the poor fellow pale with fear, realised that it was imperative to find out what was the matter. So he said to the assistant: ‘Sing it, man!’ And the man sang quite perfectly: ‘Die Apotheke brennt!’ (The shop is on fire!) Yes, he sang the information without any difficulty. And there was not a moment to be lost; the fire was raging in the cellar quite furiously. It was the singing that did it!

Constant steady practice of exercises can have permanent results; only, the exercises have to be done with the necessary inner energy. When unconsciousness intervenes, the stuttering, since it has become organic, is liable to recur. Let me tell you of a case that I found particularly interesting. A friend of mine who was a poet suffered from a stutter.⁷ He overcame his disability to the point of being able to read aloud his own poems that were in long lines of verse. He would read rhythmically and without the least sign of difficulty; no one listening would have any suspicion that he was a stutterer. My friend was, however, a man who was easily excited and upset, and it would frequently happen that in ordinary conversation his stuttering would show itself again. (He was one who never had the patience to undertake exercises.) One day he was asked by a man, who was, to say the least, not very tactful: ‘Do you always stutter like this?' His reply was: ‘N-n-n-not unless I'm speaking to someone I just can't bear!’

A defect in speaking can thus locate itself in the organs, can become organic. In the case of lisping, we saw that there is a disability, when speaking l, n, d, t, to get tongue and upper teeth to co-operate as they should; the trouble in stuttering and stammering is that the root of the tongue is not under proper control. For it is the root of the tongue that reacts at once to disorder in the breathing A stutterer will therefore do well, as we said, to take g, k and r for his teachers—the r a little sweetened with sweet water.

In the sounds of speech live Divine Beings; and we must approach these Beings with devotion, with prayerful devotion. They will then be the very best teachers we could possibly have. All the many rules that are propounded for the management of the breath—apart from the one I have spoken of: Not until I have no air left in my lungs must I draw breath—all the others lead us astray into the sphere of the intellectual. That one rule, however, must become instinctive knowledge for the speaker. Instinctively he should go on using up the inbreathed air as long as he has any left. No other rules are needed for the gymnastics of the breath, but this one is absolutely indispensable. It has to be learned in the way I have described, and should be taught in every properly constituted school for the stage.

What I would have you understand, my dear friends, is that there are dangers attending all artistic activity, and only if we are able to bring to our own art a mood of religious devotion can we escape these dangers. The artist of the stage is especially exposed to them; they can actually assume for him the form of artistic faculties, but faculties that work with demoralising effect. Veneration, religious veneration for the sounds of speech! The words ring strange to us; but we must have courage to receive them and make them our own. For in these divine teachers of ours, in these sounds of speech, a whole world is contained. If we would become true ‘formers of the word’, we must never forget that the word was ‘in the beginning’. Despite all conflicting interpretations, that is what the opening words of the Gospel of St. John mean. ‘In the beginning was the Word’, the Wisdom-filled Word. A mood of devotion should imbue everything that has to do with the word.

But now, wherein lies the danger that threatens the actor, and no less the producer?

Actor and producer are on the stage, or behind it. This means, they are in a completely different world from the world of the auditorium. But the two worlds have to go together, they have to go absolutely hand in hand. It should never for a moment occur to us as possible that this harmonious co-operation should be lacking in any smallest detail. And yet how unlike, how essentially unlike the two worlds are! When you are on and behind the stage, you have there a reality. This reality, when it is shown to the audience, has to be converted into an illusion. But not on the stage—nor behind it; it can't be illusion there. For the audience who are sitting down below in front, it is an illusion—mysterious, terrible, charming, delightful, perhaps even mystical. But for those who are working on or behind the stage, the illusion changes into trivial reality.

I remember how forcibly this was brought home to me once when I was working with a company and we had to stage Maeterlinck's L'Intruse.⁸ An essential feature in this little drama is the gradual approach of sounds that are at first heard only in the distance. These sounds have to make the impression of something that is full of mystery; they are in reality the harbinger of death, they are bringing death to the one who lies ill in the adjoining room. Thus they will, you see, have to be of such a nature as to awaken in the audience a thoroughly mystical and mysterious mood.

But now in order to achieve this end, you will have to make use of quite trivial devices. Somewhere in the wings you will create a noise like the sharpening of a scythe heard at a distance—a noise that is to give the first indication of something rather mystically terrifying that sounds from far away. Then a little later, you will want a noise that sounds nearer. You will perhaps arrange for a key to be turned slowly in its lock by someone who is coming into the house. Just think what trivialities you resort to ! When you are thinking out contrivances of this nature, you are converting the impression you want to make on the audience into the utmost triviality.

I wanted now to provide for a still further enhancement of the mood. Behind the stage, my dear friends, we treat these things as matters of pure technique, and are delightfully indifferent to all the feelings we are hoping to arouse in the spectator who experiences the illusion. And it occurred to me that at the moment when the key had been turned in the lock and someone had entered the house, someone else might start up quickly like this (chair thrown back on to the floor). The action did, in fact, greatly intensify the illusion in the audience. Following on the mysterious sounds already described, it fairly made their hearts stand still with terror.

On the stage, a chair falling down—that was all it was in dry prose; but among the audience it produced an illusion of dithering fear.

It would, you know, be quite wrong for us to put ourselves forward as reformers and express disapproval of devices of this nature. On the contrary, we must certainly use such methods—the more of them the better! Their use requires, however, that our devotion to the spiritual be all the greater. Our hearts must be so full of devotion to the spiritual that we can endure unscathed all the trivial subterfuges that have to be undertaken behind the stage and in the wings.

The actor's inner life of feeling has to undergo change and development, until he is able to approach the whole of his art in a religious mood. Suppose a poet is writing an ode. If he is genuinely absorbed in the mood of the ode, he won't be thinking that his pen doesn't seem to be writing very smoothly. Similarly, on the stage, you should have developed such instinctive devotion to your work that even, let me say, such a simple action as knocking over a chair, you carry out with no other feeling than that you are doing a spiritual deed.

Not until this mood is attained will it be possible for the art of the stage to be filled and pervaded with the spirit that rightly belongs to it. Indeed its whole future depends upon that. And do not imagine the desired mood can be attained by any sentimental exhortations; no, only by dealing with realities. And we are dealing with realities when the sounds of speech in their mysterious runing become for us Gods—Gods who form within us our speaking. This should be the feeling that inspires all we do; it is also the determining sign of true art. It must even go so far, my dear friends, that never for a moment do we cease to be conscious of the fact that the illusion in the audience has to be created by a truth that is spiritually experienced in the souls of both actor and producer. We need to recognise this and take our guidance from it, even though we must admit that the audiences of today do not give us quite the picture that we on the stage would like to have before us.

You will, however, find that if the mood of which I have been speaking prevails on and behind the stage, it will work in imponderable ways upon the audience. The attitude of mind that one would be so glad to find there will develop more quickly under this influence than by any other method. We shall not help its development by drawing up elaborate plans or by making all kinds of promises at the inauguration of some new dramatic school or theatre. The one and only way to evoke a right attitude in the audience is to make sure that the whole of the work undertaken in connection with the stage is brought under the sway of soul and spirit.

To create the conditions for a harmonious co-operation between stage and critics is quite another matter, and infinitely harder of attainment. Many of the difficulties under which dramatic art labours today are, in fact, directly due to the utterly unnatural condition into which criticism has drifted. What goes by the name is not genuine criticism at all. Men like Kerr or Harden⁹ may be very clever, they may even found schools of criticism, but what they write and teach is built up on a purely negative principle. We must not allow ourselves to be misled and imagine that their criticisms have any sort of connection with art. They have none. These men are utterly indifferent to art, and it is important for the actor to realise that what they say has nothing whatever to do with what he, as an artist, intends and undertakes. It is, in fact, his bounden duty to change Kerr into kehr, and ‘aus-kehr-en’ the critics—‘clear the decks’ of them, once and for all. For at the root of all this spurious criticism lies, as I said, a purely negative attitude.

I once had an interesting experience which let me into the secret of the rise of this kind of criticism. For this kind of criticism is no more than a perfectly natural outcome of a style of journalism which this experience of mine enabled me to catch as it were in the moment of its birth. Many years ago I was present at a rather large gathering of people in Berlin, among whom was Levysohn, chief editor at the time of the Berliner Tageblatt. I had some talk with him and in course of conversation we came to speak of Harden. For it cannot be denied that Harden was among the interesting figures of the early nineties of last century, he showed remarkable pluck and confidence in the way he put himself forward. True, if one looked behind the scenes, one was forced to relinquish many illusions about him. But for all that, he was a person of some note, was Harden; and in my talk with Levysohn I drew attention to some of his good points. By way of reply, Levysohn told me the following. ‘When you have a man like Harden,' he said, ‘you've got to understand him. Harden came originally from the provinces, where he had been an actor in a small way. He threw up his job and came to Berlin, hoping to make a living there. I was at that time arranging to start a Monday morning paper, to which the Berliner Tageblatt partly owes its origin. I wanted to make a really good thing of it. It was the first of its kind in Berlin, and I was determined that people should buy it up eagerly like hot cakes. A plan occurred to me which I myself thought very wily, and it is on account of this plan of mine that I claim credit for starting Harden off in the good style of writing that he has. Yes, Harden has me to thank for it. I engaged some young fellows who were hanging about, waiting for jobs, fellows who, I reckoned, had a bit of talent, though not much. You can get people to do anything if you only set about it in the right way!’ ... There you have the cynicism of a chief editor in the eighties and nineties of last century! Harden was of course one of the young men who were chosen. Levysohn told them: ‘Now look, you will get so and so many marks per month. And all you have to do is to sit all day long in a coffee house and read the papers. One of you will undertake to read all the political articles; another will study the articles dealing with art—or rather, one the articles on painting and another those on drama. Then you have only to sit down on Sunday afternoon and each one of you write an article that is different from those he has been reading all through the week.' ... This suited Harden admirably. ‘Every week,' said Levysohn, ‘he would bring me his article, and each time it was entirely different from my of the articles he had read during the week. And that is ;till Harden's art. There you have the secret of his Zukunft. So I, you see, am responsible,' said Levysohn in conclusion, ‘for Harden's becoming such a good journalist.'

Yes, when you look behind the scenes of this stage—for journalism is also a stage !—you are in for a bit of disillusionment there too. And it will be a harder matter to cure the reading public than to cure the public you have before you in the theatre. The cure cannot indeed ever come about until people wake up to see how slight a connection there is between a criticism that has a merely negative foundation and the ideals we are called upon to cherish for art.

To-morrow I would like to say more on this in a wider connection and consider with you what follows for the actor and his art from his relations with the public and with the critics; and there we shall have to bring this course of lectures to a close.

1. Both lips: m b p
2. Lower lip and upper teeth: f v w
3. Upper and lower teeth: s c z
4. Tongue works behind the upper teeth: l n d t
5. Root of the tongue: g k r j qu

or, using English letters:

1. Both lips: m b p
2. Lower lip and upper teeth: f v
3. Upper and lower teeth: s (‘easy’ or ‘say’) is
4. Tongue works behind upper teeth: l n d t
5. Root of the tongue: g k r (guttural) y (consonantal) kv.

• 1. We have here only two distinct sounds, the difference between f and v consisting simply in the force with which the sound is uttered (see next paragraph).
• 2. The s may be voiced or unvoiced (as in ‘easy’ or as in’ say’). The letter c is rarely met with in modern German
• 3. A forcible reminder that the lectures refer to the German language!
• 4. The German guttural r, a sound which does not occur in English.
• 5. Like our ‘y’ in ‘yacht’, but more consonantal.
• 6. For similar rhythm in English, the opening lines of The Burial of Sir John Moore by Wolfe may be suggested:
  ‘Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note,
  As his corse to the rampart we hurried.’
• 7. p. 386. This was Ludwig Jacobowski. A beautiful account of the poet and of his work in raany fields of cultural activity will be found in Rudolf Steiner's The Course of My Life, pp. 290-2.
• 8. Reference to this performance and to the Introductory Address given by Rudolf Steiner will be found in Chapter XXV of The Course of My Life, where he teils of the part he took for some years in the production of plays, in a theatre in Berlin which would seem to correspond to our Repertory Theatres.
• 9. Alfred Kerr was dramatic critic for the Berliner Tageblatt. His destructive and impertinent style won him many followers. Maximilian Harden was a celebrated political journalist. Reference may be mode here to Rudolf Steiner's own dramatic criticisms and reviews that appeared in various magazines during the years from 1889 to 1900. Many of these have been reprinted in the Frühwerk (collections of his earlier literary work); see especially Vol. XI entitled Theater, Schauspiel und Schauspielkunst.

My dear Friends,

I would like today to say something of how explanations such as I was giving you yesterday, where we saw once more how the art of the forming of speech has to be learned from speech itself, how such explanations (or instructions, if you want to call them so) are to be received, how they are then to be taken over into your practical work.

Now it is a fact that the whole system of speech sounds—if I may designate it with such a pedantic term—the whole system of speech sounds with its manifold gradations in the various languages, expresses how the activities which take their start from the speech organs are related to the entire human organism. You have to picture it in the following way.

We may employ for the purpose a somewhat rough classification of the sounds of speech. Following the lines of yesterday's lecture, we can give our attention, to begin with, to the sounds that originate more or less in the region of the palate. If we consider all that takes place when a speech sound comes to birth in this region, and have the eye to follow it up as it takes its way right through man, then for the sounds that originate in the palate—for throat sounds, too, but more especially for palatal—we find that we can tell from a man's walk whether he utters these sounds resolutely or indolently, whether in fact, he enters fully or not into the speaking of them. This means that when we produce a speech sound by means of the palate, the speaking goes right through us down to our heels and toes; in other words, a palatal sound has connection with the entire human organism. As for the sounds in which the tongue participates, they are especially connected with that part of the human being which comprises first the head as far down as the upper lip (not including the lower lip) and then goes back and extends towards the spine—the region of the back, generally. And when we come to sounds that are uttered with the help of lips and teeth, we find that these are more connected with the breast and, generally speaking, the front parts of the body. So that really the whole man is contained in his speech. We can quite well call speech the creator of the form of man in these three directions.

This being so, it follows that if, for instance, you want to practise stage-walking, you cannot do better than associate it with the speaking of palatal sounds. For speech can help to give ‘form’ to the whole of your acting, even to your very way of walking on the stage.

Stage-walking, as you know very well, has to be different from our usual walking if it is to give the appearance of being true to life. If you were to walk on the stage as you do ordinarily, it could not possibly look like real life. Correct stage-walking is therefore again an end that can be attained best of all by means of speech. It is, however, not possible simply to lay down rules for it, you have to work it out for yourself in practice.

It will, I think, be clear from all this that when I describe the speech sounds as our teachers, you are not to infer that what we learn from them is of value for those particular sounds alone. I am not advising that you should practise merely the utterance of the individual sounds of the alphabet (they will of course all come in the exercises); my intention is to help you find your way altogether to a right and beautiful and smooth-flowing manner of speaking. What you learn, for instance, from the throat sounds will go over into the sounds made with lips or with tongue, and gradually as a result of practising the various exercises, the word will begin to flow in your soul.

There is thus no question of an actor having to watch for a d or a g or a k in order to speak them in a particular way. Rather do I mean that as you begin to do such exercises as I have given, speech becomes for you your teacher, your tutor in the art of acting. It will even render your body more supple. If the exercises are systematically carried out in the way I have explained, the plastic forms of your bodily organs will become more pliant, and your organs on this account be fitter instruments for your art.

This is why I come back again and again to the need of a school of training for dramatic art where exercises of this kind are taught and practised. And it is just through the practice of such exercises that the right mood of approach can be attained. You will remember I was telling you yesterday how all-important is this mood of approach; indeed, without it we can never have art on the stage.

For consider how it is with the spectator in the audience. What does he bring with him 9 He has never had explicitly present to his consciousness all that lives in the single sounds of speech. The meaning conveyed in what is spoken—that is all he is cognisant of. Of the significance of sounds he knows nothing; he knows only what the words hold in the way of ideas. When therefore the actor enters deeply into the feeling of the sounds, this means that an abyss opens between him and the audience. For the actor on his side of the abyss, the play is not merely what it is for the audience; it becomes for him a veritable sacrificial rite, and the sacrifice he offers up enables the spiritual to be carried into the world of the physical.

This will not, however, be so unless the actor has been able so completely to transform his mood of soul that it has come right away from looking merely at the ‘ideal’ significance of words, and vibrates instead in a delicate sensitiveness to all that is contained in their sounds. And it is possible for the actor gradually to progress so far with his experience of individual sounds that syllables also begin to be full of significance for him. I will give you an example to show you what I mean, for this is an important point—that syllables should carry their full significance for the actor.

Take the word betrüblich (distressing, most unfortunate). We use the word in the easy way words are used nowadays. We are faced with some situation in life and call it ‘betrüblich’, without having any particular experience of the word as such. We must not rest content with this. We must go further and experience the feelings and inner perceptions that are inherent in the sounds and that enter then into the syllables, and by way of the syllables into the word.

Let us begin with the last syllable -lich. We have here first of all the wave sound 1. We feel there a flowing, as of surging waves. And then we have ch. In ch we ‘form’ the flow of the waves, we arrest it in a form. The i signifies merely that we want to draw attention to the form that is arising there. Going through it sound by sound in this way, we come to feel that in lich we have the same as we generally experience in the word gleich.¹ In the words menschengleich (man-like) and löwengleich (lion-like) we have to use still the whole word gleich, since the language has here not reached the stage of changing the gleich into lich (for lich is of course merely a metamorphosis of gleich). If the word löwengleich, for example, had already been thoroughly absorbed into the stream of speech, if it had through constant use become an integral member of the language, it would today be no longer löwengleich but löwenlich. Similarly, menschengleich would by now have become menschenlich. For in lich we have simply the expression of the fact that the movement is here understood which is expressive of likeness.

Say, for example, you let the feeling of lich arise in you while you are stroking a velvet cushion. Your hand moves gently over the soft surface, feeling in this way the form of the cushion and receiving the impression into your very being. Then maybe you will say to yourself: I know someone whose character gives me the same experience as I have when I stroke this cushion.

Going on now to trüb (dull, cloudy), we do not perhaps at once sense trüb in betrüblich, and yet the word carries that meaning; the soul that finds a situation betrüblich is overcast, as though by a cloud. We must succeed in making contact with what is directly present in the sounds; that will help us very much to come to a better understanding of what we have to say or speak. That the trüb has an ü in it, we can well appreciate from the feeling that we associated with that sound when we were considering the circle of the vowels. But now what is the significance in general of an umlaut?

An umlaut always indicates dispersal. A single thing or a few become many. We say Bruder (brother). As long as there is only one brother under consideration, we can quite properly denote him as one; if there are more, our attention is diverted from the one and we speak of Brüder (brothers, brethren). Dialects retain the more original forms of language, and in them you will always find the umlaut for the plural, signifying that the application of the word is dispersed. We have therefore in trüb a syllable that can be felt; it suggests that dispersal of water, which gives rise to Trübe (mist) And when you go on to draw the comparison with the soul, and find that your word expresses also how the soul is like the mist, then you will be able to ‘taste’ the word in all its richness of meaning.

For the be- you have only to look round for some analogous words. Think of the word denken (to think) and put be- in front of it. Denken is thinking in general; but when you say you bedenken, you mean you are directing your thinking to a particular point or object.² And a turning of the thinking to something that makes the soul trüb is just what betrüblich expresses.

I have not taken you through this study of a word with the intention that you should proceed to analyse the whole text of some drama on the same plan. What I am concerned for is not that at all, but that during an actor's training considerable time should be devoted to intensive study of the inner substance of words, so that he may become familiar with them in all their concrete reality. If I say: Es ist betrüblich für mich, a suggestion is implied that a cloud is descending upon my soul. And if I am able, whilst saying Es ist betrüblich für mich, to let the feeling of this more concrete paraphrase of the words be present in my soul, then my words will receive the right tone, they will be spoken from the heart. I must warn you, however, that this will not be so if you determine in an arbitrary manner where you will give point or emphasis, but only if you take your guidance from the character of the speech itself.

For speech, my dear friends, in the full swing of its manifold movements, can truly be said to bring to expression in sound and in tone the whole scale of man's sensibilities. The speech organism in its entirety—what is it but man in all the fulness of feeling of his life of soul! You may even go further and call it a host of Divine Beings in all the fulness of feeling of their life of soul. And as we find our way into this deeper understanding of it, speech becomes increasingly objective for us, until at length we have it there before us like a kind of tableau—we can go up and look at it.

And this brings me to something I want particularly to say to you; it was actually the reason why I was anxious to extend this course for one more day. It sounds simple enough when I put it into words, but the recognition of it will help you to give a right orientation to your work.

Man's speaking proceeds from his throat and mouth. He knows not how or why; the mechanism for speech is situated in the mouth, and that is all. There is simply no understanding in modern times of all that has to come into consideration for the artistic forming of speech.

The same lack of perception can be remarked in an altogether different sphere of human activity. When I was a young man, some twenty-four or twenty-five years old, I had occasion to observe how eager people were at that time to take lessons from those who advertised themselves as teachers of handwriting. Hitherto, no special value had been attached to a distinctive handwriting—anyway not in commercial life. Suddenly all that changed. (This was before the days of typewriters; everything had to be written out by hand) The ambition to acquire a beautiful handwriting spread like an infectious complaint. And one became acquainted with those methods that set out to teach writing by conscious development of the mechanism of the hand. There were various methods, but all had for their aim the making supple of hand and arm; for it was accepted as a matter of course that one writes out of the mechanism of hand and arm. In reality it is not so at all, as anyone may prove to his own satisfaction if he will take the trouble to fix a pencil between his big toe and the next, and proceed to write with his foot. He will find he can manage to do it. For it is not the hand that writes; writing does not come about through the mechanism of the hand The mechanism of the hand is set going by the whole man. Try writing with your foot; it will cost you some effort, but you will succeed. And the best of it is, anyone who takes the trouble to write with his foot is rewarded with a wonderful experience. He begins to feel his whole body, and that is a tremendous gain for the soul.

Thus, behind all this instruction in writing that became so popular was, you see, the completely false notion that we should learn to write with our hand and arm, whereas the truth is we should learn to write with our eyes. In order to write well, we want to develop a sensitive perception for the forms of the letters—veritably beholding them in the spirit and then copying them; not constructing them with the mechanism of the hand, but seeing them there before us in spirit and then drawing them in imitation.

If we understand this, we shall perhaps be more ready to understand that whereas in the ordinary way, when he wants to speak, man simply makes use of his instrument of speech, the actor has first to acquire what I might call an intimate kind of hearing that does not hear, an ear that hears silent speech. He must be able to hold the word in his soul, in his spirit, holding it there in its sequence of sounds, hearing in silence whole passages, whole monologues, dialogues, and so forth. In effect, speech has to become for him so objective that when he speaks, his speaking proceeds from what he hears with his soul.

It is not enough for a poet to have in his head the meaning and purport of a poem; the whole of the artistically formed speech must be present to him. Most of the scenes in my Mystery Plays have been first heard and then written. I have not begun with an idea and looked for words to express it; I have simply listened and written down what I heard. And the speaking of the actor on the stage should really come about in the same way; he should first hear, and then let the speaking proceed from the hearing. This will mean that he comes naturally into a true feeling for sound and syllable, and above all is made sensible of the need to live in the words. Furthermore, his whole understanding of life will by this experience be lifted on to a spiritual level, and he will develop a quick and ready sense for what is genuine artistic creation.

We have here come again upon one of the truths concerning dramatic art which do not easily meet with acceptance all at once. An actor who has made such a deep study of speech that he has as it were a second self beside him to whom he is listening will find that the meaning and purport of the drama in which he is taking part lights up within him; he perceives it, instinctively. That is, if it is a good drama. For the good poet—and also the good translator—has a certain feeling all the time for how the words spoken by the different characters ought to sound to the hearers; if therefore the actor hears what he has to speak (we will imagine, for example, he is taking the part of Faust), if he has come to the point of hearing the part in his soul before speaking it, he will much more quickly grasp its inner meaning. And so for an actor who wants to have an artistic understanding of the play and of his own part in it, the advice is once again to take the formed speech for his starting-point.

I said an actor should have an artistic understanding of his part, an understanding, that is, that arises from ‘beholding’ the part. This is something very different from a conceptual understanding of it. One meets at times with grotesque instances of the disparity between the two. I was once present at a delightful social gathering, from which one could learn a great deal. You will remember, we were speaking the other day of Alexander Strakosch. I told you how with all his failings he was, in his own way, a good reciter; as stage reciter he had, in fact, considerable influence. He was not a good producer, and he was no actor; latterly he was too fond of mannerisms, especially on the stage. But in one thing Strakosch was really skilful. He was able, while forming his speech, to enter right into the inner experience of it. He was on the stage of the Burgtheater in Vienna; Laube knew well what he was worth to him. Strakosch would listen to his part and let the character build itself up before him as he listened.

On the occasion in question, several actors were present who had just been performing Hamlet; and what was particularly significant, there were present also university professors and other men of scholarship. The evening was devoted to a discussion on Shakespeare, and all these latter had no doubt made a profound study of his work. Strakosch was also there. We had all of us been at the performance and now we began to listen to the various interpretations of the play that were put forward by these scholarly gentlemen. The interpretations differed somewhat, but each speaker set out to prove the absolute validity of his own, and every one of them spoke at great length.

The actors kept silence, particularly the actor who had played Hamlet. He had nothing to say. He could not, he said, expound or elucidate Hamlet; he had played him

I was interested to see if we could not elicit at least one expression of opinion from the stage, and I said to Strakosch: ‘Tell us now, how do you understand Hamlet?’ ‘Very inwardly!’ That was all he would say. He had heard what Hamlet says, had formed his speaking quite wonderfully to correspond, but could say nothing about the part except that it was deep down within him—the fact being that he had hardly had time to get beyond the hearing of it, no time to develop a thought-out interpretation.

And it is quite true that only when there is this inner hearing of the soul can we know what it means to witness the creation of a part, to see it being created by the artist on the stage. That gives him the intuition that is needed for this.

The creation of a part implies nothing less than that the actor is able to place his whole human being right outside of himself, so that he can perceive it there beside him. And then this self of his that is outside him changes into the character of the role he is playing. For if the actor is an individuality, if he has a true inner instinct for his work, we shall always allow him to form his part in his own way, just as the pianist is after all allowed to play in his own way. We shall also find that the audience will be far more ready to follow with understanding what they see on the stage if the actor, instead of making an intellectual study of his part—poring over the content with deep concentration of thought—first forms it in his soul, lets it take shape there, and then having done so can hear just how he is to form it outwardly, by means of his own person on the stage.

Then we shall not be troubled any more with those precise rulings of how a part is to be played, that are so dear to the hearts of dry-as-dust scholars; instead, we shall have the possibility of many different interpretations of a part, for each one of which good grounds can be adduced. But where an interpretation is justified, the ground for its justification is that the actor hears how to form the part.

I would like at this point to give you a demonstration of what widely different ideas can exist concerning one and the same character in a play. I might show you, for instance, how some actor who has, let us say, a rather intellectual conception of Hamlet will play the part—emphasising the fundamental melancholy of Hamlet's character. As a matter of fact, for one who has genuine knowledge of the human soul it will be impossible to play the part as a thorough melancholic; for Hamlet himself draws attention to his melancholy, and a real melancholic does not do that! Admittedly, however, if we are considering Hamlet from an intellectual point of view, it is possible to regard him as a melancholic. The famous Robert, who was a superb classical actor, held this view. We can then play Hamlet walking across the stage engaged in deep contemplation. We shall, however, often come to moments in the play where we shall find it hard to understand Hamlet if we conceive of him in this way and are obliged to think of him as speaking always with a rather heavy, full-toned voice. There are undoubtedly passages where we can do this—and the German translations are for such passages almost as good as, and often better than, the English original!—but there are other passages where it is out of the question, passages where, if we are determined to be consistent and regard Hamlet all through the play as a profound melancholic, we shall find it impossible to speak the words so that they flow rightly for the listener. And whenever I call to mind performances where Robert took the part of Hamlet, I always find that whereas in certain of the monologues his really excellent speaking was notably in place, it was not so where Hamlet becomes ironical. These passages the actor really cannot speak as a melancholic. And I must admit that it used to come each time as a terrible shock to me when, after the famous monologues which were quite wonderfully rendered by Robert, one had to hear in the very same tone the words: ‘Get thee to a nunnery!’ That doesn't do at all. And there are many other traditional renderings of Hamlet that fall to the ground in a similar way. I would therefore like to suggest yet another possible approach, one where in order to let Hamlet reveal his character in his own way through his speaking, we try to understand him in the situation of the moment. I shall not ‘speak’ the passages, but merely recall them to you, pointing them purposely in a rather exaggerated way to make my meaning clear.

Let us take the moment when Hamlet has got ready the play that is to unmask the king. We have to think of him as full of expectation as to the effect the play will have; and it is really quite difficult to imagine that the Hamlet who has arranged all this should at that moment suddenly change into a profound philosopher. Why ever should he all at once, without rhyme or reason, turn philosopher! As I have said, I am not out to find fault with a particular interpretation of Hamlet, not at all. I want only to suggest that good grounds can also be found for an altogether different interpretation from the one that weighs down the famous monologue ‘To be or not to be’ with an overload of deep contemplation and melancholy. It is quite possible to picture the situation in the following way.

Hamlet comes on to the stage—entering from the direction determined by the producer. Whilst he is still walking, and without his making beforehand any of those slow gestures that denote deep thought, an idea suddenly strikes him.³

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them. To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd.

And now at this point the Hamlet we know so well—the unstable, the wavering—begins to show himself. In the lines that I have read Hamlet was still speaking entirely out of the thought that had flashed into his mind Now he stands there in his true character, for all at once he remembers that sleep is not mere nothingness, it may involve something else.

To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;

Now he changes again, becomes more animated, even passionate—not contemplative.

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns,

These last words show clearly that Hamlet cannot possibly be pondering deeply as he speaks them. For what would he certainly not say if he weighed his words? He would not say:

The undiscovered country from whose bourn
No traveller returns.

Has not the elder Hamlet but just returned thence? We should be able to see that words like this can only proceed from that half-worked out idea that had flashed upon him and that speaks in terms of life's memories and is not the fruit of profound philosophising.

The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry
And lose the name of action. Soft you now!

And now he can go on to speak of the ‘fair Ophelia’ without the words jarring on us.

Let me say again, I have no intention to pull to pieces some other interpretation that has been rather generally accepted. I want only to point out that it will not do to be so fond of the picture of a deeply reflective Hamlet as to allow oneself to speak out of that mood a monologue that reveals disorder and perplexity in Hamlet's thinking, and that certainly does not spring from philosophical depths. We need, my dear friends, to provide ourselves with a rich and ample background if our acting is to come before the world as art.

I had occasion yesterday to call your attention to the lack of readiness on the part of our present-day critics to discern distinctions of this kind. The fact is, as soon as we begin to practise any art, a sense of shame comes over us if before we have judged it from outside; for we realise that one should only ever speak about an art when one can do something in it oneself. That is a right and true feeling. A person who has never handled a paint brush cannot possibly know why this or that is painted in such and such a way. No more can anyone who does not act himself judge of acting—unless he be able by means of spiritual initiation to transplant himself, as it were, into each individual in turn and then speak, not out of himself but out of these other human beings. The critic who is only a critic and has behind him no stage experience of his own is really no more than a caricature. We must have the courage to acknowledge that this is so.

The only kind of criticism that deserves to be respected is that which follows in the footsteps of Lessing and criticises positively, with intention to provide that when a work of art appears before the public it shall meet with understanding. When criticism has this end in view and does really help the general public to understand one or another work of art, it has its justification. But when the critic wants simply to lay it down that some work of art is good or bad, then his criticism can be justified only if he has himself had professional experience in that art and has moreover given signs of good ability in it. I find myself compelled to add this warning for the reason that the work of the stage will only be able to hold its own in the face of criticism if it can be stiff-necked and not allow itself to be swayed this way and that by the critics. For then we can hope to see developing on the stage a certain spirit of independence; and that will mean that the actor will at length be able to take his own right share in the mission for civilisation that the drama is called upon to fulfil.

I have tried, my dear friends, to give you in this course of lectures some indications of how necessary it is above all that first spirit, and then life, shall be restored to the drama of today. Naturally it has not been possible to give more than suggestions. But I have endeavoured to put these before you in such a way that if, for example, they are worked out in a dramatic school that is constituted on the lines I have described, then good results can follow. The establishment of such a school and the application of my suggestions in the work of the school as well as in rehearsals and so on, could achieve much even in our own time.

What I have tried to say has in very truth been spoken out of a deep reverence for the art. Dramatic art—and remember, it can only exist if man takes his place on the stage with real devotion, allowing his own being to merge in the being of his part—dramatic art has great tasks to perform; and if it cannot now work, as in times past, with something of the power of ritual, it can still even today have an uplifting influence, so that by its means man is carried up to spiritual heights.

If we are able to see how the whole being of man places himself in word and gesture at the service of this creation of the spirit—for that is what drama is, a creation of the spirit—if we can perceive this, then that is again a path along which we can find our way to the spirit. That much remains to be done before that ideal can be reached, is due to the fact that in these days of materialism when spiritual paths have been neglected by man, the art of the stage has fallen into a helpless condition and shown an increasing readiness to become a mere copy of real life—and as such it can never under any circumstances have an uplifting effect but always under all circumstances, the reverse.

Whilst true drama raises all that takes place on the stage, lifts it up to a higher level, and in so doing brings what is human nearer to the Divine, naturalism attains nothing but the imitation of what is human. And no imitation can ever be complete. Every imitation leaves out something the original still has, and must have in order to enable it to give a one-sided expression, a one-sided revelation of itself.

When we see plays of this nature we are often left with the impression that we have been witnessing an art that is not a human art at all, but an art of monkeys. For there is really something quite monkeyish about this kind of imitation, tending as it does to suggest comparison with all sorts of animals. Some actor, trying hard to be as naturalistic as possible, will behave on the stage as if he were a tiger or other wild beast, and many ladies as if they were cats—which is perhaps easier for them than for a man to be a tiger.

But now this means nothing else than that the mask of an earlier time has changed and become a soul mask. And that, dramatic art cannot tolerate—that the one-time animal mask which was there in order to provide the right setting for the gesture should turn into a mask of the soul. With the growing tendency, however, to a purely naturalistic imitation, we can see it happening.

It is my hope that the few indications I have been able to give in these lectures may form themselves for you into an impulse, leading you right away from naturalism into a genuine spiritual art of the stage. This, my dear friends, was indeed the aim I had in view for this course; and I shall only be able to consider its purpose fulfilled when, through the activity of those who have understood me, the results begin to show themselves to me from the stage.

With that I would like to conclude this course of lectures, of which I can truly say it has been a labour of love, the art of the stage having always been for me an object of love and reverence. I leave it with those of you who have been able to meet my words with understanding, and will take them to heart and work further with them.

At the close of the lecture, words of thanks were spoken to which Dr. Steiner responded, as follows:

Herr Haas-Berkow: In expressing heartfelt thanks for this course of lectures I am confident that I speak on behalf of all those who are here present and especially of those of us who are actors. We feel responsible to cherish in heart and mind what has been given to us here and to work on with it to the very utmost of our powers, that we may eventually become actors in the new understanding of the word. Speaking personally, I desire to place myself and all my work at Dr. Steiner's disposal.

Herr Albert Steffen: In the name of all who love the cosmic words—that is, of all who love poetry, who love art—I would like to thank you, Dr. Steiner, for these unforgettable days. I am, I know, giving expression to what is livingly present in the audience. For, from my seat here in front, I could see, as I listened to your words, the rapt attentiveness on the faces of your hearers; I could see how their eyes shone and how their hearts were set on fire. Many an old rule or habit of work perished in the flames, but out of its ashes rose up like a phoenix a marvellous new sense of freedom.

We artists live in the world of semblance. But we have here been enabled to see that this semblance, this glory, comes from a light that is at the very foundation of all being—comes from the Word. You have said that it is the Word that forms and creates man; surely then the speech sounds must be the apostles, and speech itself have power to form us through the instrumentality of yourself and your honoured collaborator Frau Dr. Steiner. Whenever I see eurhythmy, I always have to think: there is the new Parnassus, the assembly of the Gods, resurrected before our eyes.

All the lecture-courses to which we have been listening these last days form a unity. Not only have you given us the beautiful word; from the medical lectures the healing word made itself felt, and from the group of the priests there worked across to us—on sub-earthly and super-earthly paths—the holy word.⁴

So that the actor has really become now also priest and physician.

But what has been for me the most astounding of all is that Dr. Steiner has come forward himself as a poet—and a poet such as the earth has not seen before. I refer to those evening lectures where he has been expounding to us the destinies of men who have been with us here in real life,Weininger, Strind berg, Solovioff and many more; destinies that did not lead to any complete conquest of what is chaotic in life and dark and evil, but destinies which clearly showed the need for something new to enter the life of humanity. All of us here, had we not been gripped by this new thing, would have gone under. Dr. Steiner has saved us. And what is more, he would save the artist in us, he would make of us artists, poets, actors.

How can we thank you? Only by taking the Word for what it truly is—the sword of Michael—and then, sword in hand, fighting with all our strength for you, Dr. Steiner, and for the holy work you have begun.

Dr. Steiner: My dear friends, let us resolve—each one for himself in his own way—to look upon this course of lectures as a beginning. It will fulfil its purpose if we regard it as a first Act and try to find in work the following Acts that shall expound the matter further. If we work together in this direction, then in many and various spheres of life, above all in the domain of that art that is so dear to our hearts, a seed can be sown now that will, as it grows and develops, meet the needs of the civilisation of the future. There is abundant possibility to do this—in among all the inartistic developments that we see around us, to plant a new seed for the future.

In this sense, let us then regard our study here together as first steps on a path, and see whether these first steps may not point the way to further steps. I am thankful to perceive that you are all of you resolved to look upon these initial steps that we have taken here together as opening the way to further artistic work and development as we go forward on the path of life.

And so now, speaking out of this understanding of what our work here together should mean, I extend to you my heartfelt gratitude that you have shown yourselves ready and willing to take part with me in this quest.

• 1. The suffix -fish corresponds to our suffix -ly (as in manly); and the word and suffix gleich to our word and suffix like (as in warlike).
• 2. Compare our expression ‘to bethink oneself’.
• 3. The passages from Hamlet were read by Dr. Steiner from the German translation by Schlegel and Tieck.
• 4. . These words refer to two courses of lectures that Rudolf Steiner was giving at the same time with this course on Speech and Drama: one for doctors and the priests of the Christian Community on Pastoral Medicine, and the other for the priests on The Apocalypse. The long series of week-end evening lectures on Karma which was begun early in the year was also continued through these weeks, as well as the occasional morning lectures to the Workmen at the Goetheanum, on subjects of their own choosing. A very few days later, Dr. Steiner's lecturing activity came to an end.

It is the desire and intention of the Anthroposophical Movement founded by Rudolf Steiner to meet man's hunger for the spirit and for freedom from the fetters of a soul-destroying materialism, to guide him also to some solution of the riddles of the great world in which he lives. Among those who have looked to the Movement for help have been actors, who have suffered under the conditions and methods of the modern stage and have not been able to find an answer to the problems that vexed and harassed them in the pursuance of their art and in their endeavours after deeper knowledge and understanding. Some of these came to Rudolf Steiner, and he responded to their call. He gave for them this course of lectures on the Arts of Speech and Drama which is now appearing in a second edition. The actors had to wait a long time for the lectures while still more urgent problems were demanding his attention.

Rudolf Steiner saw in art a redemptive and healing power for man's life of soul, that cannot be too highly valued; and he was untiring in his efforts to plant and foster there seeds for the future. Right through all the activities he undertook for the spiritual and social life of mankind, his work in the field of art was never interrupted; it reached a kind of zenith in his own Mystery Plays. In eurhythmy he gave a new art that has power in it to animate and fructify all the other arts. And in the very last days of his outer activity, full as they were to overflowing, he added also these lectures on the Arts of Speech and Drama. The interest and eagerness with which the announcement of the course was greeted made it impossible to limit the audience to actors alone, as had been at first intended. No sooner, in response to urgent entreaty, had a few exceptions been made, than a whole stream of people began asking to be allowed to take part. Had the original plan been adhered to, the lectures would perhaps have had a different, a rather more professional character. The fact that they were delivered to a wider audience may however have helped to give them a certain large and universal quality and afforded occasion for some of the humorous and topical allusions.

Although the shorthand report of the lectures was imperfect, there was an urgent call for it to appear in print in order that the suggestions contained therein might be taken up and worked out. And publication having once been decided upon, obviously the only thing to do was to retain the spoken word in all the freshness and directness in which it was heard. The reader is asked to remember that the words were spoken right out of the immediate situation, and to make allowance for the quick responses in feeling and the silent questionings that they met with in the hearers. Obviously, the content of the lectures would have been given a different form had it been intended from the first for publication.

Many may be disinclined to enter upon a study of the advice given here, because a particular philosophy lies behind it,—and that for them is taboo! Anthroposophical terminology will even be found to occur in the explanations. Yes, it will certainly mean that one is under the necessity of forming for oneself a picture of man in body, soul and spirit; and for this one will have to undertake study. A plentiful supply of literature exists on the subject. Besides Rudolf Steiner's more general works on Spiritual Science, his many lectures on education will be found particularly helpful. The opinion prevails today, however, that art and a philosophy of life do not go well together. And yet every art, in the time of its full flowering, has had as its content a living philosophy, a living conception of the world. And this is what we need today if the decadent tendencies of a worn-out civilisation are to be overcome. To understand what is offered to us in these lectures on the Arts of Speech and Drama, we must be ready to affirm the cosmic spirituality that lies hidden behind the world of appearances; and if we want to go further and put into practice what we have learned from the lectures, we shall find we need to have real experience of this hidden cosmic substantiality. Prejudice should not be allowed to stand in our way, nor any aversion to the things of the spirit,—which in the last resort is bred of fear. Provided our vision is free and unclouded, we shall be able to recognise in the sounds of speech our divine teachers, and to know the very breath of man as cosmic substance actively at work within him. These are the materials, these are the instruments, for the artist in speech. Through them he can indeed come to know himself anchored in the spirit, and can then follow the spirit on its path into matter and into the course of history. He will see drama coming to birth in long-past times in the original Mystery Play; he will see it shaping the souls of men, inspiring them, stirring them to their very depths, and purifying them. And he will see how drama afterwards loses its way in the low levels of the ebb-tide of civilisation. And then he will come to recognise that it is for him, strengthened as he is in soul, and awakened in his ego-consciousness thanks to the gifts and achievements of long epochs of cultural development—it is for him now to restore to drama its character as of a Mystery. And speech, as it gradually reveals its hidden depths to bis consciousness, will be his guide, will verily show him the way.

Dornach, September 1941.
MARIE STEINER

My dear Friends,

This evening shall be devoted to analysis of questions which have been sent up by a number of dramatic artists, and the reason why I shall answer them this evening is that our arrangements did not allow any other time for the purpose. That is one reason, the other is that I think I may take for granted that at least something of what I am about to say in regard to these questions will be of interest to all here present. The first question is this: “What is the attitude of the spiritual investigator towards the development of consciousness in dramatic art, and what is the necessary mission in this respect of those connected with the stage and dramatic art in general?”

Much that might perhaps be expected in answer to this question will come out more clearly when taken in connection with later questions. I will ask you therefore to take what I have to say in connection with this question more as a whole. I should like to say first of all that dramatic art, in particular, will certainly have to play a part in every development of the stronger consciousness towards which we are bound to progress during this age. From many different sides the fact is emphasized, that the development of consciousness would take away from the man of artistic taste some of his simplicity and instinctive feeling and the like, it would make him less sure. If we approach these things from the point of view indicated by spiritual science we shall see that these fears are quite unjustifiable. Through what is usually called the contemplative capacity, the capacity of unbiased Judgment of one’s own actions and self-contemplation much is lost of ordinary consciousness, instinctive power and purely intellectual activity. It is also just through thoughtful intellectual activity that all that can be cited as partaking of an artistic nature is simply lost. What is artistic can in nowise be regulated by the intellect. This is certainly the truth, on the other hand it is also true that when knowledge such as is sought here, becomes force of consciousness, then the ability to see things as they are, the complete relation to reality will not be interfered with. Therefore we need have no fear that we shall become inartistic through the acquisition of consciousness, of the conscious mastery of the means and so on. Through Anthroposophical spiritual science which aims at the knowledge of man, what is usually summed up in rules, in abstract forms, extends to vision. One gets at last a true view of the physical, psychic and spiritual being of man. As little as a simple vision can prevent our creating something artistic, just as little does this higher vision do so. The mistake which becomes evident here is really due to the following. In the Anthroposophical Society, which actually came into being for reasons explained in the little pamphlet The Antagonism to the Goetheanum, and developed from a membership which formerly included many members of the Theosophical Society: Especially those who had grown out of the old Theosophy and many things have been done, and what might be called a dreary doctrine of symbols, a confused symbolism, grew up. I still think with horror of the year 1909 when we presented Schuré’s drama The Children of Lucifer (in the next number of the “drei” my lecture which followed on this performance will be reprinted). I am still shocked when I think how at that time a member of the Theosophical Society, who indeed still remained within it, enquired: “Is not Cleonis, the sentient soul?” and are not the other characters the Consciousness-soul and Manas”? In this way all was nicely proportioned. Various terms used in Theosophy, were assigned to different persons. I once read an interpretation of Hamlet in which the characters were also labelled with all the terms of the separate members of man’s being. Now, as I have already mentioned I have really endured a great deal through the symbolic interpretations of my own Mystery Plays, and I cannot tell you how pleased I was when for once a really artistic interpretation of the first drama was given by Herr Uehli. It may have been too flattering if taken personally, but the interpretation was really artistic; that is to say he spoke as one must in criticising anything of the nature of art, then symbolising is out of place; we must take as our starting point the immediate impression that is the point in question. This dreary symbolism would frighten one away if one desired consciousness, for such symbolism is not a sign of any increase of consciousness in this talking round the subject. It signifies a complete digression from the content and labelling vignettes on to it. It should therefore penetrate into what is really living from the aspect of spiritual science, then we shall find that this growth of the consciousness is necessary in every form of art if it is to march with the times. It would simply remain behind in evolution if it did not take part in the growth of consciousness. This is a necessity.

On the other hand it is not proposed that we should be on our guard against the growth of consciousness here intended as though it were a blight, though this warning is certainly necessary with respect to the ordinary intellectual aestheticism and symbolism. On the contrary we can observe how dramatic art is itself acquiring a certain growth of consciousness. I may perhaps be allowed to mention something further. You see, we can say that there is an extraordinary amount of mischief done by interpreters or biographers of Goethe in relation to what has been said about his artistic powers. They might really be said to be in advance of their time, and we can only say that those men—literary historians, aestheticists and so on—who always speak of Goethe’s unconscious power, of Goethe’s simplicity, really only convince us that they are themselves absolutely unconscious of the working of Goethe’s soul. They attribute their own lack of consciousness to him.

How did Goethe’s most wonderful lyrical productions come into being? They were inspired by life itself. It is rather dangerous to speak about Goethe’s love affairs for we may easily be misunderstood; but the psychologist must not shrink from this. Goethe’s relationship to the women he loved in his youth as well as those whom he loved in later years, was such that the most beautiful lyrics were the outcome. How could this be possible? Because Goethe had as it were a dual nature. In all his external experiences, even in the most intimate and soul-stirring experiences he was always a sort of dual personality. There was the Goethe who did not love less devotedly than any other man; and there was the Goethe who at other times could rise above this, who in a sense looked on as a third person at the objective Goethe beside him, as he developed these love affairs with some woman or other. Goethe was able in a sense—psychologically real—to withdraw out of and from himself, and contemplate his own experiences Through this, something very special was formed in his soul. One must indeed look intimately into Goethe’s soul if one wishes to examine this. It was formed because in the first place he was not so much engrossed in the reality, as people who pass through such an experience merely instinctively with their passions and impulses, being unable to withdraw their souls from it, but living blindly and unrestrainedly within it. In the outer world, of course this led to the result that his love affairs often became such as did not necessarily lead to the usual conclusions. In the form in which the question has been put I do not assert that misunderstandings are impossible; what I say is only meant as an interpretation of Goethe. On the other hand it leads to the result that what remained behind in Goethe’s soul and which might appear simultaneously with those outer life experiences, was sometimes not mere remembrance but a picture, a definite image. Thus were created in Goethe’s soul the wonderful pictures of Gretchen of Frankfurt, Friedcriche of Sesenheim about whom Frensicheimer has just written his Ahasuerus which has been considered worthy of a place in the history of German literature. Thus was originated those wonderful characters of “Lili of Frankfurt” that wonderful character we find in Werther. To these also belong “Kätchen of Leipzig” and even such characters as Marianer Willemer, Ulrike Lewitzow and so on, created in Goethe’s old age. We may say that the character of Frau von Stein alone does not belong to this category. This is due to the whole complexity of this relationship. For the very reason that these relationships led to the creation of such characters, which survived more as a residuum than mere remembrance, inspired the wonderful lyrical transformation of the pictures which lived within him. The consequence of this may even be that such a poem becomes dramatic, and in one instance indeed sublimely dramatic. I refer to the first part of Faust. You will find there that the designation “Gretchen” and “Margarita” are interchangeable. And this leads to something deeply connected with the whole psychic origin of the history of Faust. Everywhere you will find “Gretchen” as the designation of that character taken from the Gretchen of Frankfurt. You will find the name “Gretchen” wherever you have a finished picture such as “Gretchen at the Well”; “Gretchen at the Spinning Wheel” and so on, where the lyrical has gradually passed into the dramatic. On the other hand you will find “Margarita” wherever the character has been formed from the ordinary development of the drama. Everything that bears the name of “Gretchen” is a complete picture in itself that is poetically conceived and developed into a dramatic form. This shows how the poetic element can become intimately objective, so that it can be used for a dramatic combination. The dramatic is created in this way, for the dramatist can always stand above his conceptions. As soon as an author begins to put himself in the place of a character he can no longer make it dramatic. then Goethe created the first part of his Faust, he completely put himself into the personality of Faust and for that reason the character is vague, not definite not rounded off. Goethe did not make it quite distinct and objective, as he did the other characters. How a result of this objectivity is also that one can really enter into the characters, one can really behold them and become as it were, identical with them. That is indeed a gift which certainly was possessed by the author of the Shakespearean dramas. The power of presenting a character in a pictorial objective way as a personal experience in order to enter into it as it were, to draw out something from the character must in a sense pass over to the actor and it will become, when developed, part of his consciousness. Goethe's special form of consciousness enabled him to do this, to embody these picture images in a lyrical and dramatic fore, and this he did best of all in reproducing the Frankfurt Gretchen.

The actor must develop something similar, and there are instances of this. I will give you one such. I do not know how many of you have seen the actor Lewinski of the Vienna Burgtheater. Judging by his appearance and his voice he was really not in the least fitted to become an actor and when he described his connection in his own particular art he did so in somewhat the following way. He said: “Yes, I should of course not be able to act at all”—he was one of the chief actors for a long time at the Vienna Burgtheater, perhaps one of the most distinguished players of character parts—“I should not be able to do anything at all, if I were to depend on what I appear to be on the stage, the little hunchback with the squeaky voice and the dreadfully ugly face.” He could of course be nothing at all, but he said: “I have to come to my own aid, I am really always three people on the stage, first, I am the little hunchbacked croaking man who is so frightfully ugly; the second one who is quite outside the one who croaks, is a pure idealist, a quite spiritual being, I must always keep him before me; and then, then only am I the third, and, with the second, I play upon the first, the croaking hunchback.” This must of course be quite consciously done, it must be something which I might say, has become for me a question of management. Indeed the threefold division is extraordinarily important for the technique of theatrical art. It is even necessary, though this can be expressed otherwise—for the actor to learn to know his own body well, for his own corporeality is after all for the real actor the real instrument on which he plays. He must learn to know his own body as the violinist his violin; this he must know, he must to a certain extent be in the position of listening to his own voice. This can be done. He can gradually be able to hear his own voice as though it was flowing around him. He must practise this, however, while trying to recite dramatic, or lyrical verses, but living verses very strong in form, rhythm and time, as far as possible while adapting himself to the verse form. He will gradually feel, that the spoken word is entirely separated from the larynx, that it hums around in the air, and he will attain a sensible yet supersensible impression of his own speech. In a similar way one can then get a sensible-supersensible view of one’s own personality. Only one must not become too affected. You see, Lewinski did not give himself airs, he called himself a little hunchback, an extremely ugly man. One must certainly not become a prey to illusions. He who wishes to be always beautiful, who will concede nothing at all in this respect, will not so easily acquire a knowledge of his body as an instrument. This is, however, absolutely necessary for the actor, for he must be conscious of how he comes on to the stage, how he plants his foot, how he uses his hands, and so on. The actor must realise whether he has a soft tread or a quiet step in ordinary life. he must know how he bends his knees how he movers his hands etc. He must indeed make an attempt to look at himself while he is studying his part. That is what I should like to call “Throwing' oneself into the part”. Indirectly the speech will help very considerable here because through listening to one’s own voice, one’s own 'words, the contemplation of the human figure as a whole follows instinctively.

Question: How could we help usefully in the fieLd of our own immediate work by looking up and collecting theories of the dramatic art, historical documents, for spiritual investigation, writing biographies for actors and so on? (Question incomplete)

In this respect a society of actors could certainly accomplished, a very great deal, only it must be done in the right way. Histories and theories of the drama and biographies of actors will not help much, for I certainly believe that some very considerable objections would be raised against this. The actor, at any rate when he is in full work, should really have no time at all for studying histories of the theatre, dramatic art, and still less biographies of actors! On the other hand a great deal can be accomplished in regard to the direct perception of man and hie immediate characteristics. Here I can recommend something which may prove very useful for the actor.

There is a science of physiognomy by Aristotle. You will easily find everything sketched there? even to a red or pointed nose, the meaning of a smooth or hairy hand, or a fat or lean body, all peculiarities showing how the spirit and soul of man express themselves, how one has to look at them and so on—a very useful study which has only recently gone out of date. We cannot now observe people as Aristotle did his Greeks; we should get quite false results if we did. The actor has opportunities of observing such things because he must represent different people, and if he is wise he will never mention names when referring to these traits, he will not injure his career and his personal intercourse nor his social relationships, although he becomes thus observant. Mr or Mrs or Miss So-and-So must never in any way play a part when he makes his interesting communications of his observations, but always only when Mr. A Mrs B and Miss C, and so on. What refers to outer reality must of course be suppressed as much as possible. If you really study life in this way, if you really notice the curious expression of the nostrils when people make a joke and the importance of paying attention to such things—speaking generally of course in this way we can learn a great deal. The important thing is not so much the knowledge but the thinking and observing on these lines to help one to reach this point. If one thinks and observes in this way one is no longer using the ordinary observation of today. Our observation of the world nowadays is such that a man may perhaps have seen another 30 times and yet not even then know what sort of buttons he has on his waistcoat. Such want of observation is quite possible today.

I have even known people who have talked to a lady the whole afternoon and did not know what the colour of her dress was—a quite incomprehensible fact—but it does happen. Of course such people who do not even know the colour of a lady’s dress after a long interview with her, are not very fitted to direct their powers of observation in the way they must if they are to be used in action. I have even had the nice experience of people assuring me that they did not know whether the dress of the lady with whom they had spent the whole afternoon, was red or blue, if I may add something personal to that, I have even had the experience that people expected me in a similar case, not to know the colour of the lady’s dress either, after I had been speaking with her for a long time! One sees from this how little value is attached to many faculties of the soul. What we see before us must stand out clearly in its full contours; and if we see it thus, and not merely—I might say—as a sort of external nebulous covering, such a perception already passes over into the possibility of modelling and shaping.

So above all an actor must be a keen observer, and in this respect he must be distinguished by a certain humour. He must take these things from a humorous point of view. For, you see, if he had the experience of the professor who for some time left the concert because immediately in front of him sat a student whose top waistcoat button was torn off, so that the professor referred to was forced to concentrate on the absent button, that would not be the power of observation but of concentration. But now one day the torn off button was in its place, and behold the professor lost his power of concentration from that moment. This is a conception of the world without humour. The actor must not be like this, he must look at things humorously, he must always stand above them. He will then be able to give them form.

That is what must be thoroughly observed, and if we accustom ourselves to formulate such things, and really see certain inner connections in bodily perception, rising above it with a certain sense of humour so that we can give it fora but not in a sentimental way of course, we shall also develop in the handling of such a thing that lightness, which one must always have when one wishes to characterise in the world of appearances. But one must characterise in the world of Make-believe, otherwise one always remains a more imitative amateur. Thus in conversing with one another in this way upon social physiognomy, those who are engaged in dramatic art may collect a great deal of that which is of more value than dramatic theory; and especially more so than biographies of actors and historic accounts of the theatre, which can certainly be left to others. Out of that which can be observed and brought out in his art by the actor, (this would be a very interesting chapter on the art of observing man) he would be able to develop just that naive, conscious handling of dramatic art, in which that art specially consists.

Question. What value for our time has the representation of past epochs, e. g. the Greek dramas, the dramas of Shakespeare, and of recent authors such as Ibsen, Strindberg etc?

In regard to dramatic conception the man of today will of course have to make use of other forms, than those used in Greek dramatic art, but that does not hinder us from staging Greek dramas today, indeed it would be a sin if we did not do so. We should however, have better translations, than those of the pedantic Wilamowiz, who because of his extremely literal translations, loses the spirit of those dramas. It must be clear to us that we must introduce to the man of today an art which satisfies his eye and other perceptive faculties. For that purpose it is of course necessary, as regards Greek dramas, that one should live more deeply in them. I do not think, speaking paradoxically—that one can live in the Greek dramas of Aeschylus or Sophocles—though this might be easier with Euripides—without approaching them in the sense of Spiritual Science. The characters in the dramas of Aeschylus and Sophocles must really become living in this sense, for in spiritual science alone are the elements to be found which our feeling, and impulses of will can recreate in such a way, that we are able to make something of the personages in these dramas. Then, as soon as one can enter into these dramas through spiritual science, it will be possible to make their form live, for spiritual science reveals in a special way the origin of these dramas in the light of the Mysteries. Of course it would be an anachronism if one wished to present them as the Greeks did. This might be done once as a historical experiment, but one would have to be conscious that it was nothing more. The Greek dramas are really too good for that. They can positively live again in the man of today and it would even be a great gain first to re-create them in the sense of spiritual science, and then to transform them into performances.

On the other hand the man of today is able to enter into the particular style of Shakespeare without any special difficulty. That only needs the human feeling of today and absence of prejudice. The characters in Shakespeare should really be looked upon as Hermann Grimm saw them. lie expressed. a paradox which is however, very true; truer than many historical statements; It is really much more sensible to study Julius Caesar in Shakespeare than in a history book. As a matter of fact Shakespeare's imagination makes it possible to enter positively into the character so that it becomes alive, and is more real than any historical representation. It would of course be a pity if we did not desire to perform the Shakeepearean dramas today. It is a question of having the thing so much at heart that one can simply use the ordinary means one has assimilated in the way of technique etc, in impersonating the characters.

Now there certainly lies an abyss between Shakespeare and the French dramatists, whom Schiller and Goethe still took as their model, and the newest dramatists. In Ibsen we really have to do with problem plays and Ibsen should be performed in such a way that we become aware that his characters are really no characters at all. If one wished to make his characters alive in one’s imagination they would be continually hopping round and treading on their own toes! They are not human beings, but the plays are great problem plays, and the problems are such as will always be experienced by people of the time. It is extraordinarily interesting for the actor to try and model himself on Ibsen’s plays today, for if he should try to study the parts he will have to say to himself, “This is indeed no human being? I must create one.” He will have to proceed in an individual manner; he will have to become aware of the fact that when he represents a character of Ibsen’s it may become quite other than when someone else does so. One can bring very much of one’s own individuality into the characters, for they can stand the individual note and being performed in various ways; whereas in Shakespeare, and also in the Greek dramas one should really always have the feeling that there is only one possible conception and towards that one must strive. Certainly one will not always find it at once, but one must have the feeling that there is only one possible interpretation. In Ibsen or even in Strindberg that is not at all the case. These characters must be treated by bringing an individual note into them. It is difficult to express oneself in such matters but I should like to do so metaphorically, you see, with Shakespeare one has wholly the feeling that he is an artist who looks from all sides, that he can see all round, that he really beholds as a complete man and can see others with his whole being. Ibsen could not do that, he could only see superficially. Hence that remarkably drawn character in one of his plays. The hero plants himself behind a chair by the wall where he was separated from everyone, then he allowed his eyes to wander round in order to take a general view. In this way the stories of the world, the people that he sees, are seen superficially. One must first give them substance, and this rests with the individual actor. This is specially the case with Strindberg. I have nothing to say against his dramatic art, I esteem it, but one must look at everything in its own way. Such a play as the Damascus drama is something quite exceptional, yet we must say that the characters are not human, they are mere shapes crammed full of problems. Yes there one can do much, for one can really put one’s whole being into the part, as actor, one must personally add very much to the individual characters.

Question: How does a real work of art, speaking of dramatic art, appear in its effects when seen from the spiritual world, in contradistinction to other activities of man?

The other activities of man are such that one really never sees them as a complete whole. Really men particularly in our day, are formed in a way by their environment, and milieu. Hermann Bahr described this in a lecture in Berlin in a really striking way for he said: “In the nineties of the 19th century something very particular happened to humanity. If one entered a town, a strange town, and met people coming out of the factory in the evening they all looked exactly alike; so that one felt quite anxious. At last one no longer believed that one really saw so many people all alike, but the same one multiplied many times”. He said: "“Then we pass from the nineties into the 20th century”. He alluded coquetishly to the fact that he was very often invited when he came to any town—he said “When I was invited to dinner I always had a lady on my right and on my left, and the next day another lady on my right and left; but I could not tell whether I had a different one each time or not, I did not know if they were the came ladies as yesterday or not” Thus people are a kind of impression of their milieu. This has become particularly so at the present time.

This need not of course be carried so far, but there is something in it. Man in his ordinary activity stands before one in such a way that he must be judged in connection with his whole environment. What a strong impression we can obtain of a man, by knowing his environment! In dramatic art it is a question of really looking at what one sees as something separate, complete in itself. For this, many of the prejudices which play such a part in our inartistic ago must be overcome. To answer this question frankly I shall have to say something which may actually call forth a kind of horror in the aesthetist and carping critics of today.

When it is an artistic representation of persons, we must gradually study and observe that if we are to express passion, sorrow, cheerfulness, to convince or persuade a man, or to scold him, we always feel that it must be accompanied by a quite definite movement of the limbs, with special regard to rhythm. This is still a long way from Eurhythmy, but a quite definite movement of the limbs, a certain kind o slowness or quickness in speaking, is the result of this study. We acquire a feeling that language and movement are independent of each other, that there would be the same cadence, and measure in words, even if they had no meaning, that they have a separate life of their own. We must have the feeling, that the language would be able to flow even if we put together quite senseless words in a definite cadence or measure. We must also feel that we can express our meaning by definite movements. An actor must be able to see himself in his part, he must feel pleasure in making certain movements of his limbs, movements not made for any purpose but to follow a rhythm; for instance, clasping the left arm with the right hand and so on, and he must feel a certain pleasure and satisfaction in this. Further he must say to himself, in rehearsing; “Now as you say this, it takes a tone, a cadence, the movement must be of two kinds”. It must not be supposed that really artistic work would result by laboriously drawing from the poetical content the correct way of speaking, rather must we have the feeling: “The sort of cadence and measure which is appropriate here, you have known a long tine, as well as the movement of the limbs, all you have to do is to remember the right one.” Perhaps he may not have studied it, this signifies that he can certainly discover what he needs; but he must feel that it must be put together out of what he has already studied and he must attain his objective in another way. That is the point.

Question: What is the task of music in dramatic art?

Well, I think we have given the practical answer to that by the way in which we use music in Eurhythmy. I certainly think that it is not to be hastily rejected; atmosphere may be created—even in pure drama—by music before and after; and if the play offers the possibility of music, it should be used. This question is naturally not easy to answer when it is asked in such a general sense; for it is a question of doing the right thing at the right moment.

Question: Is talent a necessary foundation for an actor, or can the equivalent be developed through spiritual-scientific methods in anyone who has love and artistic feeling for dramatic art?

Well, we had a friend at the Weimar Theatre: There, all sorts of people appeared wishing to be tested in this way. Sometimes such aspirations were not encouraged. My friend, who was himself an actor, would very frequently say when asked: “Do you think that something can be made of that man? Well yes if he acquired talent!” There is a certain truth in that. It is indeed quite admissible, and not only admissible, but a deep truth, that one can learn everything if one applies to oneself what flows from spiritual science into the impulses of man. What can be learnt is something which may appear as talent. There is no denying that. But there is a little hitch; we must first live long enough to go through such a development. When by all sorts of means something like the creation of a talent is really acquired in this way, The following may occur. Someone has created a talent, let us say for playing the youthful hero. he may however have taken so long about it that he is now bald and grey. This which is absolutely possible, makes life very difficult. For this reason it is necessary that in regard to the choice of persons suitable for dramatic art—there should be two persons, the one who wishes to become an actor—(there are many of these) and the other, he who has to decide the question. The Latter must have a tremendously strong feeling of responsibility. He must, for instance, be aware that a superficial judgment in this respect may be very wrong, for it is easy to think that a man has no talent for something. It may only be concealed, and if there is any possibility of its coming out in some way, that which was not recognised, can sometimes be brought out comparatively soon, nevertheless, much will depend for practical purposes—life must indeed remain practical—on acquiring a certain capacity for discovering talent; and first of all we must limit ourselves to using what can be acquired through spiritual science—which must be a good deal—in order to make the talent more living and to develop it more quickly. All this is impossible. In the case of people who sometimes take themselves for great dramatic geniuses, it is often necessary to say, that God in his wrath allowed them to be actors; and one must really have the conscientiousness to tell them, kindly of course and without offending them, not to enter the dramatic profession, which after all is not for everyone, as it requires above all the possibility of an inner activity of soul and spirit so as to transfer that easily into the physical body. This is what has specially to be taken into account in this matter.

With regard to exercises for the development of one’s own sense of movement, these cannot be given so quickly. I will occupy myself however, with the matter, and it will also be possible in this direction gradually to approach those who wish to know something about it. These things, if they are to be of any use, must of course be worked out slowly and objectively, from the basis of spiritual science. In this direction I will note the question for a later answer.

Question. Could fundamental and direct limits be given which would lead more deeply into the comprehension and the way of entering into new parts, than can be worked out by practice and tradition? May we also ask for literature in which we can find answers to these and similar questions?

Well, as regards existing literature, I should not like to rely on it too much, for the reasons I have already pointed out in reference to the observation of mankind. You remember what I said before about the buttons and the lady’s dresses! Personal observation is a good preparation. But then well—I believe it is not necessary to say this to the person who asked the Question—but it is indeed rather necessary in regard to the way in which actors perform today. You see, things are such that one is obliged to say, “People who appear on the stage today do not at all want to study their parts”. They mostly just learn them without having any knowledge at all of the content of the whole play. They simply learn their part. This is really a dreadful thing. When I was on the executive committee of the dramatic Society in Berlin and we had to produce dramas such as Maeterlinck’s etc., we formerly bound the actors to listen first of all to a recital of the play, as well as an interpretation of it at a rehearsal. Otherwise the actors would have had to take their parts home, each one would have learnt only his own part, they would have come to the rehearsals, not one would have known what the others could do—it would have been terrible. And then in various other plays in the Burgensisternwal by Max Borcher and in a drama by Julius Gering, which was called, I think, The Seven Loan or Fat Kine, I took pains to introduce into the society at that time, what I called just now an interpretation of the drama, but an artistic interpretation, in which the character became living. We first of all met at a stage gathering, where we tried by all possible mean to make the characters living, through the actor’s own interpretation. When listening to the reciter, it is much easier than when studying by oneself, and all that must be effective if a company is formed from the beginning—namely, the ensemble. I believe this should be recommended in the study of every dramatic, artistic play; above all it should not only be read to the players but interpreted dramatically and artistically. It is absolutely necessary to develop a certain humour and a certain lightness of touch in such matters. Art nearly always needs humour. It must not become sentimental. The sentimental when it has to be represented, as of course it sometimes musty should be first conceived by the actor with humour; he roust always stand above it with full consciousness and not allow his own personality to slip into the sentimental, If the first stage-sittings are occupied in interpreting the play, people will soon cease to look upon the sittings as instructive; if this is done with a certain humour they will see that the time thus saved, and spent in such a way, is well employed, and they will develop a remarkable talent for imitation in the imaginative characters, which they will have to play. That is what I have to say about these things.

Of course speaking of such matters in this way, may seem rather blunt? but the worst point in theatrical representative art is really the desire for realism. Just consider, how could the actors of former times if they had wished to be realistic have represented rightly, let us say, a Lord Chamberlain, whom they had indeed never seen in his full Court dignity, for their social standing made that impossible. But even the precautionary measures customary in Court theatres are really of no assistance here. The various Princes, Grand Dukes, Kings, had perhaps selected a chief stage-manager, because they thought “the theatre people cannot of course know what is done at Court, so we must make some General or perhaps only a Captain who understands nothing of any sort; of art, Stage Manager” These people from precaution, were given the management of the court theatres and had to teach the people a kind of realistic treatment of things as done in Court Society, so that they should know how to conduct themselves, for the theatre people do not go to Court! All that achieves notice, for everything depends on catching the spirit, on the feeling for the bodily movements, for the cadence. One learns from the thing itself what is in question. Thus we can exercise the observance of what proceeds from inner sympathy with the artistic form, without wishing to imitate the exterior. That is what is to be taken into consideration in these things.

For my part I only hope that these indications will not be misunderstood in any way. It is indeed necessary, if one comes to speak on this topic, that it should be treated in such a way that one must take into account the fact that one is concerned with something which must be referred to the realm of balance. Certainly I must say that I shall never forget the great impression made upon me by the first lecture of my honoured old teacher and friend, Carl Julius Schröer, who said of the “aesthetic conscience” of one of these preliminary sittings—“this aesthetic conscience is a living thing”. It brings one to the recognition of the principle that art is not a mere luxury but a necessary adjunct of any existence worthy of man. When that is taken as the fundamental note, then, building upon this key-note one may develop humour and lightness; one can thus reflect as to how one can treat sentimentality humorously, how one can treat sadness by standing completely above it, and the like. This is what must be; otherwise dramatic art cannot fulfil in a satisfactory way the demands which the present age must some day make on man.

I am far from wanting to preach a sermon today on frivolity, not even on artistic frivolity, but I should like to emphasize again and again, that a humorous delicate manner of handling what one has before one, is indeed something which must play a great part in art, and especially in the handling of the technique of art.

Translated by Luke Fischer; commissioned by Neil Anderson

My much revered attendees!

This evening is meant to be devoted to a discussion of questions that have been addressed to me by a circle of artists, dramatic artists. And I’ve chosen to respond to these questions this evening because within the event of this course no other suitable time was available. All the time was occupied. This is one reason; the other reason is that I may nevertheless assume that at least some of what will be said in connection to these questions can also be of interest to all participants.

The first question that has been posed is the following: How does the evolution of consciousness [or ‘development’ of consciousness] present itself to the spiritual researcher in the area of the art of drama, and what tasks arise from this, in terms of future evolutionary necessity, for the dramatic art and those who work within it?

Much that could already be expected as an answer to this question will better emerge in the context of later questions. I therefore ask of you to take that which I have to say in connection to the questions more as a whole. Here I would firstly like to say that in point of fact the art of drama will have to participate in a unique way in the development towards increased consciousness, which we have to approach in our particular time. Isn’t it so, that from the most diverse perspectives it has been emphasised over and over again that through this evolution of consciousness one wants to take away from artistic people something of their naivety, of their instincts — and suchlike—that one will make them uncertain; but if these matters are approached more closely from the point of view that here is validated on the basis of spiritual science, then one sees that these worries are entirely unjustified.

Much does indeed get lost from the faculty of intuitive perception [anschauliches Vermögen] — including the perceptive faculty with respect to what one does oneself, when one thus grasps oneself in self-perception—through what today is normally called awareness or reflection and occurs in merely intellectual activity; what one can call the artistic quality in general [Künstlerisches überhaupt] is likewise precisely lost through the intellectual activity of thought. With the intellect or understanding [Verstand] one cannot in any way direct what is artistic. But as true as this is, it is also true that the full participation in reality is not at all lost through the kind of knowledge that is striven for here, when this knowledge develops into a power or force of consciousness, the power of intuitive vision [Anschauungskfraft]. One need not, therefore, have any fear that one could become inartistic through that which can be acquired in awareness, in the conscious mastery of tools and suchlike. In that anthroposophically oriented spiritual science is always directed towards knowledge of the human being that which is otherwise only grasped in laws, in abstract forms, expands into an intuitive vision [Anschauung]. One acquires at last a real intuitive vision of the bodily, psychological, and spiritual constitution [Wesen—‘essence’ or ‘being’] of the human being. And as little as an artistic accomplishment can be inhibited by naïve intuition [or perception], just as little can it be inhibited by this intuition. The error that here comes to light actually rests on the following.

In the context of the Anthroposophical Society, which in fact developed out of a membership [or fellowship], (for reasons, which you can now also find, for example, discussed and reiterated in the short text ‘The Agitation against the Goetheanum’,) and which earlier incorporated many members of the Theosophical Society—in the context of this Society indeed all manner of things were done; and particularly among those who grew out of the old Theosophy something took root that I would like to call a barren symbolism, a barren symbolising. I still have to think with horror of the year 1909, when we produced Schuré’s drama The Children of Lucifer (— in the next issue of Die Drei my lecture will be printed, which then connected itself to this production), with horror I have to think of how at that time a member of the Theosophical Society—who then also remained so—asked: Well, Kleonis, that is really – I think – the sentient soul? ... And the other figures were the consciousness soul, manas ... and so everything was neatly divided; the terminology of Theosophy was ascribed to the individual characters. At one time I read a Hamlet interpretation in which the characters of Hamlet were designated with all of the terms for the individual members of human nature. Indeed, I have also encountered a large number of these symbolic explications of my own Mystery Dramas and I cannot express how happy it makes me when in a truly artistic consideration something essential is articulated in a manner that aims to accord with what an artistic work aims to be [this is a rather awkward sentence in the original German, which I’ve aimed to translate more simply]. In doing so, one must not symbolise; rather, one must take one’s point of departure from the quality of the immediate impression, — that is what it’s a matter of. And this barren, sophistical symbolising is something that would have to become antipathetic if one’s concern is to become conscious. Because this symbolising does not imply consciousness, but rather a supremely unconscious circumlocution of the matter. It entails, namely, a complete abstraction [in the sense of ‘drawing away’ or ‘removal’] from the content and a pasting of external vignettes onto the content. One must, therefore, enter into that which in a spiritual-scientific manner can be livingly real; then, on this basis, one will find that this consciousness is, on the one hand, precisely and entirely necessary for every individual artistic direction, if it wants to go along with evolution. Each artistic direction would simply remain behind the evolution of humanity, if it did not want to go along with this process of becoming conscious. This is a necessity.

On the other hand, there is entirely no need to protect oneself from becoming conscious, in the way that it is here intended, as from a blight, which is, however, justified with respect to the usual intellectual aestheticizing and symbolising. In contrast, it can be observed how the art of drama has in actual fact already been involved in a certain process of consciousness. — In this respect, I may, however, appeal to something further back. You see, it can be said: a great deal of nonsense has been thrown about by interpreters and biographers of Goethe in discussions of Goethe’s artistry. Goethe’s artistry is really something that appears like an anticipation of what came later. And one can actually still only say: those literary historians, aestheticians and so on, who always speak of Goethe’s unconsciousness, of his naïvity, evince, in essence, only that they are themselves highly unaware about that which actually took place in Goethe’s soul. They project their own lack of awareness onto Goethe.

Goethe’s most wonderful lyrical works; how did they in fact emerge? They emerged in an immediate way out of his life. There is a danger in speaking about Goethe’s romantic relationships [or ‘love affairs’], because one can easily be misunderstood; but the psychologist may not shy away from such potential misunderstandings. Goethe’s relationship to those female figures, who he loved in his youth especially, but also in his older age, was of such a kind that his most beautiful creations of lyric poetry arose from these relationships. How is this possible? It was made possible through the fact that Goethe always existed in a kind of split within his own being. For the reason that he experienced in an external manner, even in the most intimate, in his most heart-felt experiences, Goethe always existed in a kind of division of his personality. He was at once the Goethe who truly loved no less than any other and the Goethe, who could, in other moments, stand above these matters, who could, as it were, look on as a third person at how the Goethe objectified beside him developed a romantic relationship to a particular female figure. Goethe could in a certain sense — this is intended in a thoroughly real psychological sense — could always exit and withdraw from himself, could relate to his own experience in a particular way that was at once sensitive and contemplative [Steiner uses the hyphenated expression ‘empfindend-kontemplativ’ which reminds me of how he elsewhere speaks of Goethe as having a ‘sensible-supersensible’ vision of things]. Thereby something wholly determinate formed itself in Goethe’s soul. One must indeed look intimately into his soul [ambiguity in the German about whether it is ‘one’s’ soul or ‘Goethe’s’ soul], if one wants to survey this. The determinate form took shape because, to begin with, he was not as seized by reality as people who are merely instinctively absorbed by such an experience, who are absorbed by their drives and instincts, who cannot actually withdraw with their soul from the experience, but rather are blindly given over to it. There is, of course, the added factor that in the external world the relationship often did not need to lead to the usual conclusions that romantic relationships otherwise must lead ... According to the kind of question that is applied in this respect ... I don’t mean to say anything negative—but among much that is asked in this connection, there stands at times ‘Borowsky-Heck’ [allusion to a poem by Christian Morgenstern] ... In saying this, nothing at all should have been expressed that could be exposed to misunderstanding, but rather what I have said is specifically intended as an interpretation of Goethe).¹ But, on the other hand, this led to the fact that what remained for Goethe—this could even occur at the same time as the actual relationship in his life—was not merely a memory, but rather an image, a real image, a formed image. And in this way there arose in Goethe’s soul the wonderful images of Gretchen from Frankfurt, Friederike from Sessenheim (—about whom Froitzheim specifically wrote his work, which has been appreciated by German literary history).² Then there arose that enchanting, wonderful figure of the Frankfurter Lili, and the wonderful character, which we then find in Werther. Also among these figures there belongs already Kätchen from Leipzig, and there belongs, in addition, even in Goethe’s advanced age, such figures as Marianne Willemer, even Ulrike Levetzow and so forth [Steiner uses the term Gestalt a lot in this lecture. Here I have translated it with ‘figure’. However, it also means ‘character’ and ‘form’.]. One can say that it is solely the figure of Frau von Stein that is not a complete image in this way; this has to do with the whole complexity of this personal relationship. But precisely because these personal connections led to these figures, because more remained than a memory, because a surplus in contrast to mere memory was present, this led to the wonderful lyrical transformation of the images that lived within him.³ And this can itself have the consequence that such lyric poetry becomes dramatic, and in one special case this lyrical formation of an image indeed became dramatic in a wholly exceptional way.

I would like to draw your attention to the first part of Faust; you will find in the first part of Faust that there is an alternation between the designations of the personages of Gretchen and Margarethe. And that leads us into something that is deeply connected to the whole, psychological [seelischen] genesis of Faust. Everywhere you will find ‘Gretchen’ written as a designation of the figure who passed over into Faust from the Frankfurter Gretchen. You will find the name of Gretchen written in every instance where there is a rounded image: Gretchen at the fountain; Gretchen at the spinning wheel—and so on, where the lyrical gradually entered into the dramatic. In contrast, you will find ‘Margarethe’ in every instance where, in the normal course of the drama, the figure is simply composed together with the dramatic action. Everything that bears the name of Gretchen is a self-contained image, which emerged lyrically and formed itself into a dramatic structure. This indicates how even in an intimate way the lyrical can entirely objectify itself such that it can become expedient to the dramatic combination. Now, it is in this way that the general conditions are created that always grant the dramatic artist the possibility to stand above his characters. As soon as one begins to take a personal stand for any character, one can no longer shape it dramatically. Goethe had, namely when he created the first part of Faust, wholly stood for the character of Faust; for this reason the personality of Faust is also hazy, incomplete, not rounded. In Goethe the character of Faust did not become entirely separate and thereby objective. In contrast, the other characters did.

Now, this objectivity also has the consequence that one can in turn fully empathise with them, that one can really see the characters, that one can become in a certain sense identical to them. This is indeed a talent with which the writer of Shakespeare’s dramas was most certainly endowed ... this potential to present a character entirely in the manner of something that is pictorially and objectively experienced and thereby to make it precisely possible to slip [unterkriechen—literally ‘crawl under’] into the character. This art of the dramatist thus to bring the character into relief such that he can, thereby, in turn precisely get inside [hineindringen] the character, this capacity of the dramatist must in a certain sense pass over into the actor, and it is the cultivation of this capacity that will enable that which constitutes the awareness or consciousness [Bewußtheit] of the actor [des Schauspielerischen]. It was particular to the Goethean form of consciousness that he was capable of embodying pictorial characters in a lyrical and dramatic way, which he rendered most beautifully in the Frankfurter Gretchen.

But the actor must cultivate something similar, and examples of this can also be given. I will invoke one such example. I don’t know how many of you were able to become familiar with the actor Lewinski from the Vienna Court Theatre [Wiener Burgtheater]. The actor Lewinski was in his outer appearance and his voice actually entirely unsuited to being an actor, and when he depicted his relationship to his own art of acting, he depicted it, more or less, in the following way. He said: Indeed, I would naturally not have been at all capable as an actor (—and he was for a long time one of the top actors in the Vienna Court Theatre, perhaps one of the most significant so-called character-players [Charakterspieler]), I would have been thoroughly incapable (he said), if I had relied on presenting myself in a particular manner on the stage, the small hunchback with a raspy voice and fundamentally ugly face. This man naturally could not amount to anything. But in this regard (he said) I assisted myself; on the stage I am actually always three people: the first is a small hunched, croaking man who is fundamentally ugly; the second is one who is entirely outside of the hunched, croaky man, he is purely ideal, an entirely spiritual entity, and I must always have him in view; and then, only then do I become the third: I creep out of the other two, and with the second I play on the first, play on the croaky hunchback.

This must, of course, be done consciously, it must be something that has, I’d like to say, become operable [Handhabung]! There is in fact something in this threefold division that is extraordinarily important for the handling [Handhabung] of dramatic art. It is precisely necessary—one could also put it otherwise—it is precisely necessary that the actor gets to know his own body well, because his own corporeality is for the real human being who acts, strictly speaking, the instrument on which he plays. He must know his own body as the violin player knows his violin (—he must know it—) he must, as it were, have the ability to listen to his own voice. This is possible. One can gradually bring it about that one always hears one’s own voice, as in cases when the voice reverberates [umwellte]. This must, however, be practiced through, for example, attempting to speak dramatic — it can also be lyrical — verse which possesses a strong and lively form, rhythm and meter, through adapting oneself as much as possible to the verse form. Then one will gradually acquire the feeling that what is spoken has entirely detached from the larynx and is as though astir in the air, and one will acquire a sensible-supersensible perception [Anschauung] of one’s own speech.

In a similar manner one can then acquire a sensible-supersensible perception of one’s own personality. It is only necessary not to regard oneself all too flatteringly. You see, Lewinski did not flatter himself, he called himself a small, hunched, fundamentally ugly man. One must, therefore, be not at all prey to illusions. Someone who always only wants to be beautiful — there may also be those, who then indeed are — but someone, who only wants to be beautiful, who does not want to acknowledge anything at all concerning their corporeality, will not so easily acquire a bodily self-knowledge. But for the actor this knowledge is absolutely essential. The actor must know how he treads with his soles, with his legs, with his heels, and so on. The actor must know whether he treads gently or sharply in normal life, he must know how he bends his knee, how he moves his hands, and so forth. He must, in truth, make the attempt, as he studies his role, to perceive himself [sich selber anzuschauen—or look at himself]. That is what I would like to call immersion [Steiner’s neologism is literally ‘standing-within’, Darinnenstehen]. And for this purpose precisely the detour through language can contribute a great deal, because in listening to one’s own voice, one’s own speech, a subsequent intuitive perception [Anschauung] of the remaining human form can emerge almost of its own accord.

Question: In what way could we also in our field fruitfully involve ourselves in the work—on the basis of extant external documents (dramaturgies, theatre history and biographies of actors)—of identifying and synthesising historical evidence for the findings of spiritual research, such as in the manner that has already been fostered for the specialised sciences in the concrete form of seminars?

In this respect a society of actors can, in particular, accomplish extraordinarily much, but this must be done in the appropriate way. It will not succeed through dramaturgies, theatre history and biographies of actors, because I genuinely believe that a number of very considerable objections can be made against them. An actor, at least when he is fully engaged, should actually have no time at all for theatre histories, dramaturgy or biographies of actors! In contrast, extraordinarily much can be accomplished through a direct observation of human beings (Menschenanschauung), through perceiving the immediate characteristics of people. And in this regard I recommend something to you that for actors especially can be extraordinarily fruitful.

There is a physiognomics of Aristotle — you will locate it easily — in which details down to a red or a pointy nose, hairy and less hairy hand-surfaces, more or less accumulation of fat, and suchlike, all the peculiarities through which the psycho-spiritual constitution of the human being comes to expression, are initially indicated, along with how this psycho-spirituality can be perceived and so forth: an exceptionally useful tool, which now, however, is outdated. Today one cannot observe in the same manner that Aristotle observed his Greek contemporaries, one would thereby arrive at entirely false conclusions. But precisely the actor has the opportunity to see such qualities in human beings through the fact that he must also portray them, and if he observes the judicious rule of never naming a person in the discussion of such matters, then, if he becomes a good observer of human beings along these lines, this will not harm his career and his personal dealings, his social connections. Mr and Mrs or Miss so and so should simply never be invoked, when he communicates his interesting, significant observations, but rather always only Mr X, Mrs Y, and Miss Z and so on; as a matter of course, that which pertains to external reality should be masked as much as possible. Then, however, if one really gets to know life in this way, if one really knows what peculiar expressions people make with their nostrils as they tell this or that joke, and how meaningful it is to give attention to such peculiar nostrils—this is, of course, only intimated in these words—then one can indeed say that extraordinarily much can be attained on this path. What matters is not whether one knows these things—that is not at all what is important—but rather that one thinks and perceives along these lines. Because when one thinks and perceives along these lines, one takes leave of the usual manner of observing things today. Today one indeed observes the world in such manner that a man, who — for all I know—might have seen another 30 times, has not once known what sort of button he has on his front vest. Today this is really entirely possible. I have even known people who have conversed with a lady for the whole afternoon and did not know what colour her dress was—a wholly incomprehensible fact, but this occurs. Of course, such people who have not once recognized the dress-colour of the lady with whom they have conversed are not very suited to developing their perceptual capacity in the particular direction that it must assume, if it is to pass over into action and conduct. I have even experienced the cute situation in which people have assured me that they know nothing about the clothes of a lady with whom they have interacted for the whole afternoon: not even whether they were red or blue. If I may include something personal in this regard, I have even had the experience of people expecting that I would not know the colour of her clothes, if I spent a long time talking with a lady! One can thereby tell how certain soul-dispositions are valued. That which is in front of one must be beheld in its full corporeality. And if one beholds it in its full corporeality, not merely — I want to say — as an outer nebulous cloak of a name, such a manner of perceiving [Anschauen] then also develops into the possibility of forming, of artistically shaping [Gestalten].

Therefore, above all else the actor must be a keen observer, and in this respect he must bear a certain humour. He must take these things humorously. Because, you see, what happened to that professor must not happen to him, that professor who for a while always lost his train of thought because on a bench right in front of him there sat a student whose top button on his vest was torn off: at that moment this particular professor had to collect himself, in that he was peering at the missing button (—in this regard it was not a matter of the will to observe, but the will to concentrate); but one day the student had sown the torn-off button back on, and you see, the professor repeatedly lost the thread of his concentration. This is to take in a perception of the world without any humour ... this must also not happen to the actor; he must observe the matter humorously, always at the same time stand above it: then he will in turn give form to the matter.

This is, therefore, something that needs to be thoroughly observed—and if one habituates oneself to learning to formulate such things, if one really becomes accustomed to see certain inner connections in what is given to embodied perception, — and if one positions oneself above it through a certain humour, so that one can really give it form ... rather than forming it sentimentally, — one must namely not create in a sentimental manner — then in handling such a matter one will also develop that facility or lightness, which one must indeed possess, if one wants to characterise in the world of semblance. But one has to characterise in the world of semblance, otherwise one always remains an imitating bungler in this regard. In short, through actually conversing with one another in this way about — I’d like to say — social physiognomy, those who are active in the art of drama will be able to bring together a great deal that is more valuable than dramaturgy and, in particular, than biographies of actors and theatre history; the latter is anyhow something that can be left to other people. And all human beings would actually have to take an interest in what can in turn be observed and rendered precisely by the art of the actor, because this would also be a highly interesting chapter in the art of human observation, and out of such an art of observation, which is entirely specific to the art of drama, could develop what I’d like to call—to employ a paradox—naïve, conscious handling [Handhabung] of the art of drama.

Question: Of what value to our time is the performance of works of past epochs, for example, the Greek dramas, Shakespeare’s dramas, as well as dramas of the most-recent past, from Ibsen and Strindberg to the modernists?

Now, it is the case, that with respect to the dramatic conception the contemporary person must employ different forms from those that were employed, for example, in the Greek art of drama. But that does not prevent us, —indeed it would even be a sin, if we were not to do this—from presenting Greek dramas on the stage today. We are only in need of better translations—if we translate them into modern language in the manner of those by the philistine Wilamowitz, who precisely through his lexically literal translation fails to capture the true spirit of these dramas. We must, however, also be sure to present a kind of art for modern people, which is precisely appropriate to their eye and their intelligence [Auffassungsvermögen]. With respect to the Greek dramas, it is, of course, also necessary to penetrate them more deeply. And I don’t think—take this as a paradoxical insight—I don’t think that that one can live into the Greek drama of Aeschylus or of Sophocles (with Euripides it may be easier) without approaching the matter in a spiritual-scientific way. The characters in the dramas of Aeschylus and Sophocles must actually come to life in a spiritual-scientific way, because in this spiritual science the elements are first given that can render our sensibility and our will-impulses such that we able to make something out of the characters of these dramas. As soon as one lives into these dramas through that which can be communicated by spiritual science (and you can find the most diverse indications about this in our lecture cycles and so on)—through that which can be communicated by way of spiritual science in that it uncovers in a special manner the origin of these dramas in light of the Mysteries—it becomes possible to bring to life the characters in these dramas. It would naturally be an anachronism to want to produce these dramas in the way in which they were produced by the Greeks. One could, of course, do this one time as a historical experiment; one would have to be aware, though, that this would be nothing more than a historical experiment. However, the Greek dramas are actually too good for this end. They can indeed be brought to life for contemporary human beings,—and it would even be a great service to bring them to life in a spiritual scientific sense, through a spiritual scientific approach, and on this basis to translate them into dramatic portrayals.

In contrast it is possible for the contemporary human being to identify with Shakespeare’s specific creation [Gestaltung] without any particular difficulty. To do so one only needs a contemporary human sensibility and impartiality. And the characters of Shakespeare should actually be regarded in the manner that they were, for example, regarded by Herman Grimm, who expressed the paradox, that is nevertheless very true, truer than many historical claims: It is actually much more enlightening to study Julius Caesar in Shakespeare than to study him in a work of history. In actual fact there lies in Shakespeare’s imagination [phantasy] the capacity to enter into the character in such a manner that the character comes to life within him, that it is truer than any historical representation. Therefore, it would naturally also be a shame, for example, not to want to produce Shakespearean dramas today, —and in producing Shakespearean dramas it is a matter of really being so intimate with the matter that one can simply apply to these characters the general assistance, which one has acquired, of technique and so on.

Now between Shakespeare and the French dramatists—whom Schiller and Goethe then strived to emulate—and the most recent, the modern dramatists, there lies an abyss. In Ibsen we are actually dealing with problem-dramas, and Ibsen should actually be presented in such a manner that one becomes aware that his characters are in fact not characters. If one sought to bring to life in the imagination [Phantasie] his characters as characters, they would constantly hop about, trip over themselves [herumhüpfen, sich selber auf die Füße treten] because they are not human beings. Rather, these dramas are problem-dramas, great problem-dramas, and the problems are such that they should, all the same, be experienced by modern human beings. And in this regard it is exceptionally interesting when an actor today attempts to pursue his training precisely with Ibsen’s plays; because in Ibsen it is the case that when the actor attempts to study the role, he will have to say to himself: that is no human being, out of this I must first make a human being. And in this regard he will have to proceed in an individual manner, he will have to be conscious that when he portrays one of Ibsen’s characters, the character can be entirely different from how another would portray the character. In this respect one can bring a great deal from one’s own individuality into play ... because the character allows that one first bring individuality to them, that one portray the character in entirely different ways; whereas in Shakespeare and also in Greek dramas one should essentially always have the feeling: there is only one possible portrayal, and one must strive towards this. One will of course not always find it the same, but one must have the feeling: there is only one possibility. In Ibsen or first in Strindberg, this is not at all the case; they must be treated in such a way that individuality is first carried into them. It is indeed difficult to express such matters, but I would like to give a pictorial description: You see, in Shakespeare it is such that one has the definite feeling: he is an artist who sees in all directions, who can even see backwards. He genuinely sees as a whole human being and can see other human beings with his entire humanity. Ibsen could not do this, he could see only surfaces... And so the stories of the world [Weltgeschichten—literally ‘world histories], the human beings, which he sees, are seen in the manner of surfaces [flächenhaft] ... One must first give them thickness, and that is precisely possible through taking an individual approach. In Strindberg this is the case to an especial extent. I hold nothing against his dramatic art, I cherish it, but one must see each thing in its own manner. Something such as the Damascus play is wholly extraordinary, but one has to say to oneself: these are actually never human beings, but rather merely human skins, it is always only the skin that is present, and it is filled entirely with problems. Indeed, in this regard one can achieve a great deal, because here it first becomes properly possible to insert one’s whole humanity; here, as an actor, it is precisely a matter of properly giving an individuality to characters.

Question: How does a true work of art appear from the perspective of the spiritual world, especially a dramatic work, with its effect on language, in contrast to other pursuits of the human being?

Above all else the other pursuits of human beings are such that one actually never beholds them as a self-contained totality [or ‘complete’ totality]. It is really the case that human beings, especially in our present time, are formed in a certain manner out of their surroundings, out of their milieu. Hermann Bahr once characterized this quite aptly in a Berlin lecture. He said: In the 90’s of the 19th century something rather peculiar happened to people. When one arrived in a town, in a foreign town, and encountered the people who in the evening came from a factory ... well, each person always looked entirely like another, and one literally reached a state that could fill one with angst: because one finally no longer believed that one was dealing with so many human beings who resembled one another, but rather that it was only one and the same person who now and again multiplied himself. — He (Barr) then said: Then one entered from the 90s into the 20th century (— he also coyly alluded that when he arrived in some town, he had quite often been invited, and then said): whenever he was invited somewhere, he always had a hostess on his right and on his left, —on another day he again had a hostess on his right and on his left, and on the next day a completely different person again on his right and on his left ... but he was unable to discern when it was a completely different person; he thus could not tell: whether this was now the person from yesterday or from today! Human beings are thus indeed a kind of imitation of their milieu. This has particularly become the case in the present. Now, one need not experience this in so grotesque a way; nevertheless, there is something in this that also applies more generally to human beings in their miscellaneous pursuits; they must be understood in relation to their whole surroundings. To a great extent human beings must be understood out of their surroundings, isn’t that so! If one is dealing with the art of drama, then it is a matter of really perceiving what one sees as a self-contained whole, as something rounded in itself. In addition, many of the prejudices that play a particularly strong role in our inartistic times must be overcome, and I now have to say some things—because I want to answer this question in all honesty — which in the contemporary context of aestheticizing and criticizing and so on, can well-nigh call forth a kind of horror.

It is the case that when one is dealing with an artistic portrayal of the human being, in the process of study one must gradually notice: If you speak a sentence, which inclines towards passion, which inclines towards grief, which inclines towards mirth, whereby you want to convince or persuade another, through which you want to berate another, in all these instances you can feel: an a very precise kind of movement of the limbs is correlated, especially with respect to the associated tempo. This is still a long way from arriving at Eurythmy, but a very precise movement of the limbs, a very definite kind of slowness or swiftness of speaking comes out. If one studies this, one gets the feeling that language or movement is something independent, that irrespective of the meaning of the words, the same intonation, the same tempo can be conveyed,—that this is a separate matter, that it takes places of its own accord. One must acquire the feeling that language could still function when one combines entirely senseless words in a particular intonation, in a particular tempo. One must also acquire the feeling: you can, in doing so, make very precise movements. One must be able, as it were, to enter into oneself [mit sich selber hineinstellen], must take a certain joy in making particular movements with one’s legs and arms, which, in the first instance, are not made for any reason other than for the sake of certain tendency or direction; for example, to cross one’s left hand with one’s right and so on. And in these matters one must take a certain aesthetic joy, aesthetic pleasure. And when one studies one must have the feeling: now you are saying this ... oh yes, that catches the tone, the intonation, which you already know, this movement catches this intonation ... this must be twofold! One must not think that what is genuinely artistic would consist in first arduously drawing out of the poetic content the manner in which it should be rendered and said, but rather one must have the feeling: what you suggest in this respect for the intonation, for the tempo, you have long possessed, and the movement of your arms and legs too, it is only a matter of appropriately capturing [einschnappen—‘to catch’ or ‘to snap’] what you have! Perhaps one does not have it at all, but one must nevertheless have the feeling of how one has to capture it objectively in this or that.

You see, when I say: perhaps one does not have it, this rests on the fact that one can nonetheless detect

that, with respect to what one is currently practicing, that which is precisely needed has not yet been found. But one must have the feeling: it must be put together out of that which one already has. Or, in another way one must be able to pass over into objectivity. That is what matters.

Question: What task does music have within the art of drama?

Now, I believe that, in this regard, we have given a practical answer through the manner in which we have made use of music in Eurythmy. This does not mean, however, that I think that in pure drama the suggestion of moods—in advance and subsequently—through music is something that should be rejected, —and if the possibility is presented—of course, the possibility must in the first place be given by the poet—to apply music, then it should be applied. This question is naturally not so easy to answer if it is posed at such a general level, and in this respect it is a matter of doing the appropriate thing in the fitting moment.

Question: Is talent a necessary precondition for the actor or can something of equivalent value be awakened and developed through the spiritual-scientific method in every human being who possesses a love and artistic feeling for the art of drama, but not the special, pre-bestowed talent?

Of course—the question of talent! At one time I had a friend on the Weimar stage ... there, all manner of people made an entry onto the stage, who were permitted to try out ... such aspirants are not always welcomed to make an appearance on the stage! If one spoke to this friend, who himself was an actor there, and said to him: Do you believe that something can come of one of them? then he frequently said: Well, if he acquires talent! —That is something that indeed possesses a certain truth. It should certainly be conceded ... indeed, it is even a deep truth that one can really learn anything, if one applies that which can flow from spiritual science right into the impulses of the human being. And what is learned thereby can at times appear as talent. It cannot be denied that this is so. But there’s a small rub in it, and this consists in the fact that one must firstly live long enough in order to go through such a development, and that, if through diverse means something like the formation of the capacity of talent is thereby brought about, then the following can happen: someone has now been, let’s say, taught the talent for a ‘young hero’, but it required so much time to teach him this that he now has a large bald spot and grey hair ... It is in such matters that life makes what is in principle entirely possible into something extremely difficult. For this reason it is indeed necessary to feel a strong sense of responsibility with respect to the selection of personalities for the art of drama. One can roughly say: There are always two: there is one who wants to become an actor, —the other is the one who in some way has to make a decision about this. The latter would have to possess an immense sense of responsibility. He must, for example, be aware that a superficial judgment of this situation can have extraordinarily negative consequences. Because it is often easy to believe that this person or another has no talent for something, —but there is a talent only deeply buried. And if one is given an opportunity to recognize this talent, then that which is present, but which one previously doubted, can indeed be relatively quickly drawn out of the person. But much depends—because practical life must precisely remain practical—on acquiring a certain capacity to discover talent in people; and one must, at first, only restrict oneself to what spiritual science could offer (this can be a great deal) in service of bringing this talent alive, of developing and drawing it out more quickly. All of this can happen. But concerning people, who sometimes regard themselves as possessing a tremendously great Kainzian [Kainzian is after the Austrian actor Josef Kainz] genius for acting, one will nevertheless often have to say that in wrath God allowed them to become actors. And then one must also really have the conscience (—speaking of course in a well-meaning way so as not to snub them) precisely not to urge them into the vocation of acting, which is indeed not for everyone, but specifically demands that above all else a capacity is present for inner psycho-spiritual mobility. That this can easily pass over into the bodily, the physical; this is what must be especially taken into consideration.

With respect to exercises for the development of the sense of self-movement—well, they cannot be given so quickly. I will, however, consider the matter and ensure that it will also be possible to approach those who would like to know something along these lines. These things must, of course, if they are to achieve something worthwhile, be slowly and objectively worked out and developed from the foundations of spiritual science. With regard to this matter, I will note this question for a later response.

Question: Can fundamental and deeper-leading guidelines be given for the comprehension and penetration of new roles than those that we could acquire out of practical experience and out of already available texts? May we also ask for references to such available literature from which we could draw an answer to these and similar questions?

Now, in connection to literature, also in connection to the available literature, I would not like to overemphasise what I already recommended in my previous discussion of human observation: — you know, the buttons and the clothes worn by ladies! This embodied observation is something that provides a good preparation. Then, however ... at this moment, I believe that it is quite necessary to say the following with respect to dramatic portrayals today: people who appear on the stage today generally do not want to penetrate their roles: because most of the time they actually simply assume and learn their roles when they still have no idea about the content of the whole drama ... they learn their roles. That is actually something terrible. When I was on the board of the former dramatic society and we had to produce, for example, Maeterlinck’s The Intruder (l’intruse) ... we—because otherwise in the rehearsals no one would have known the capacities of the other actors, rather only his own — there we literally forced the people to first listen to a reading of the play as well as an interpretation of the play in the reading rehearsal, —and we then also did this with various other pieces—one of them was the Mayoral Election (Bürgermeisterwahl) by Burckhard, another was The seven lean Cows (die sieben mageren Kühe) by Juliane Déry—I endeavoured at that time in the dramatic society in Berlin to introduce the play, which I called precisely an interpretation of the drama—but an artistic interpretation in which the characters come to life. We would first meet for a director’s session whose aim was by all possible means to bring the portrayal and the characters to life purely for the imagination ... In this context people already listen intently, when one penetrates into a person; this happens much more easily than when one is confined to studying alone ... and there, from the beginning, everything takes shape that must be effective in a troupe: namely the ensemble. This is something that I especially believe must be recommended in the study of every dramatic, artistic matter: that truly at the very beginning in front of the players the subject matter is not merely read, but is also interpreted, but interpreted in a dramatic, artistic way. It is entirely necessary that with regard to such things one cultivates a certain humour and a certain lightness or facility [Leichtigkeit].

Art must actually always possess humour, art should not be allowed to become sentimental. The sentimental, when it must be portrayed, —of course one often finds oneself in a position where one must portray sentimental people—this the actor must above all grasp with humour, must always stand above it in full consciousness, —not permit that he himself slips into the sentimental! Along these lines, when the first directoral sessions are actually made interpretative, one can very quickly disaccustom people from finding this didactic. If one does this with a certain humour, then they will not find it didactic, and one will soon see that the time that one devotes to this has been used well, that in such directoral sessions people will thereby develop a particular talent for the imitation of their characters in their imagination. That is what I have to say about such matters.

Naturally, in speaking about such things the matter appears somewhat— I want to say — awkwardly, but, you see, what is actually the worst in the art of dramatic characterisation is the urge towards naturalism. Consider, however, once: how would the actors of earlier times, if they had wanted to be naturalists, have pulled off a fitting portrayal of, let’s say, a Lord Steward of the Household, whom they could never have seen in his entire dignity as Lord Steward? For that they lacked the social standing. And even that precaution which in court theatres—in those theatres that were sufficiently customised—was always met ... even this precaution did not actually have the desired effect. Isn’t it so, the different Princes, Grand Dukes, Kings, placed in the highest direction of the theatre, if they were ‘court theatres’, someone such as a general, because they must have thought to themselves: well now, the acting-people have naturally no idea about how things take place in the court, there one must naturally appoint some general as the artistic director ... who self-evidently did not have the faintest idea about any art! Sometimes it was merely a captain. Therefore, these people were as a precaution then appointed to the directorship of the court theatre and were meant to teach the actors what was a kind of naturalistic handling of things, e.g. in court society, so that one knew how to comport oneself. But all of that does not cut it; it is rather a matter of capturing [Einschnappen], a matter of sensitivity to bodily movement, to intonation. One discovers what is significant out of the matter itself. And this is what one can namely practice: the observation of that which follows from the inner feeling for artistic form, without wanting to imitate what is external. In such matters this is what is to be kept in mind.

For my part, I only hope that these indications that I have given are not susceptible in any respect to misunderstanding. It is indeed necessary in speaking about this area to treat it in such a way that one does justice to the fact of the matter: one is here dealing with something that must be removed from the realm of gravity. I have to say: I recall over and again the great impression that I had at the first lecture of my revered old teacher and friend, Karl Julius Schröer, who at one point in this first lecture spoke of ‘aesthetic conscience’. This aesthetic conscience is something significant. This aesthetic conscience brings one to the recognition of the principle that art is not a mere luxury, but rather a necessary part of every existence that is worthy of the human being. But then, if one has this fundamental tone, then one may also, building on this undertone, unfold humour, lightness, then one may consider how to treat sentimentality humorously, how to treat sadness in standing entirely above it (Darüberstehen), and suchlike. This is what must be; otherwise the art of drama cannot come to terms in a fruitful way with the challenges that the present age must now present to human beings.

I am far removed from having wanted today to hold, as it were, a sermon on levity, not even on artistic levity; however, I would like to emphasise over and again: a humorous, light manner of proceeding with the task before one; this is nonetheless something that must play a large role in art and especially in the handling of artistic technique.

• 1. See Die Behörde (“The Agency”) by Christian Morgenstern (from Palmström), which was performed in eurythmy at the time.
• 2. J. Froitzheim, senior teacher in Strassburg, Goethe scholar, who considered especially, and in a particularly delicate way, the private life of Friederike Brion.
• 3. See in comparison Dr Steiner’s statements about Karl Julius Schröer’s booklet Goethe and Love in the address “Some Reflections [Einiges] on Wilhelm Meister” from 15 August 1921 (Goetheanum 1935, no. 32).

Through spiritual scientific investigation, we see how the world and all nature surrounding us becomes intelligible. It also becomes increasingly clear to us how the outer facts of our surroundings can have a more-or-less profound significance for the inner being of man. Today we will develop further the theme of why music affects the human soul in such a definite, unique way. In doing this, we will cast light on the very foundations of the soul.

To begin with we must ask how a remarkable hereditary line such as we see in the Bach family, for example, can be explained. Within a period of 250 years, nearly thirty members of this family exhibited marked musical talent. Another case is the Bernoulli family, in which a mathematical gift was inherited in a similar way through several generations, and eight of the family members were mathematicians of some renown. Here are two phenomena that can be understood by heredity, yet they are totally different situations.

To those who have sought to penetrate deeply into the nature of things, music appears to be something quite special. Music has always occupied a special place among the arts. Consider this from Schopenhauer's viewpoint. In his book, The World as Will and Idea, he speaks of art as a kind of knowledge that leads more directly to the divine than is possible for intellectual knowledge. This opinion of Schopenhauer's is connected with his world view, which held that everything surrounding us is only a reflection of the human mental image or idea. This reflection arises only because outer things call forth mental images in the human senses, enabling man to relate to the things themselves. Man can know nothing of that which is unable to make an impression on the senses. Schopenhauer speaks physiologically of specific sense impressions. The eye can receive only light impressions; it can sense only something that is light. Likewise, the ear can sense only tone impressions, and so on. According to Schopenhauer's view, everything observed by man as the world around him reflects itself like a Fata Morgana within him; it is a kind of reflection called forth by the human soul itself.

According to Schopenhauer, there is one possibility of bypassing the mental image. There is one thing perceptible to man for which no outer impression is needed, and this is man himself. All outer things are an eternally changing, eternally shifting Fata Morgana for man. We experience only one thing within ourselves in an immutable manner: ourselves. We experience ourselves in our will, and no detour from outside is required to perceive its effects on us. When we exercise any influence on the outer world, we experience will, we ourselves are this will, and we therefore know what the will is. We know it from our own inner experience, and by analogy we can conclude that this will working within us must exist and be active outside us as well. There must exist forces outside us that are the same as the force active within us, as will. These forces Schopenhauer calls “the world will.”

Now let us pose the question of how art originates. In line with Schopenhauer's reasoning, the answer would be that art originates through a combination of the Fata Morgana outside us and that within us, through a uniting of both. When an artist, a sculptor, for example, wishes to create an ideal figure, say of Zeus, and he searches for an archetype, he does not focus on a single human being in order to find the archetype in him; instead, he looks around among many men. He gathers a little from one man, a little from another, and so on. He takes note of everything that represents strength and is noble and outstanding, and from this he forms an archetypal picture of Zeus that corresponds to the thought of Zeus he carries. This is the idea in man, which can be acquired only if the particulars the world offers us are combined within man's mind.

Let us place Schopenhauer's thought alongside one of Goethe's, which finds expression in the words, “In nature, it is the intentions that are significant.” We find Schopenhauer and Goethe in complete agreement with one another. Both thinkers believe that there are intentions in nature that she can neither bring completely to expression nor attain in her creations, at least not with the details. The creative artist tries to recognize these intentions in nature; he tries to combine them and represent them in a picture. One now comprehends Goethe, who says that art is a revelation of nature's secret intentions and that the creative artist reveals the continuation of nature. The artist takes nature into himself; he causes it to arise in him again and then lets it go forth from him. It is as if nature were not complete and in man found the possibility of guiding her work to an end. In man, nature finds her completion, her fulfillment, and she rejoices, as it were, in man and his works.

In the human heart lies the capability of thinking things through to the end and of pouring forth what has been the intention of nature. Goethe sees nature as the great, creative artist that cannot completely attain her intentions, presenting us with something of a riddle. The artist, however, solves these riddles; he thinks the intentions of nature through to the end and expresses them in his works.

Schopenhauer says that this holds true of all the arts except music. Music stands on a higher level than all the other arts. Why? Schopenhauer finds the answer, saying that in all the other creative arts, such as sculpture and painting, the mental images must be combined before the hidden intentions of nature are discovered. Music, on the other hand, the melodies and harmonies of tones, is nature's direct expression. The musician hears the pulse of the divine will that flows through the world; he hears how this will expresses itself in tones. The musician thus stands closer to the heart of the world than all other artists; in him lives the faculty of representing the world will. Music is the expression of the will of nature, while all the other arts are expressions of the idea of nature. Since music flows nearer the heart of the world and is a direct expression of its surging and swelling, it also directly affects the human soul. It streams into the soul like the divine in its different forms. Hence, it is understandable that the effects of music on the human soul are so direct, so powerful, so elemental.

Let us turn from the standpoint of significant individuals such as Schopenhauer and Goethe concerning the sublime art of music to the standpoint of spiritual science, allowing it to cast its light on this question. If we do this, we find that what man is makes comprehensible why harmonies and melodies affect him. Again, we return to the three states of consciousness that are possible for the human being and to his relationship to the three worlds to which he belongs during any one of these three states of consciousness.

Of these three states of consciousness, there is only one fully known to the ordinary human being, since he is unaware of himself while in either of the other two. From them, he brings no conscious recollection or impression back into his familiar state of consciousness, that is, the one we characterized as waking day-consciousness. The second state of consciousness is familiar to an extent to the ordinary human being. It is dream-filled sleep, which presents simple daily experiences to man in symbols. The third state of consciousness is dreamless sleep, a state of a certain emptiness for the ordinary human being.

Initiation, however, transforms the three states of consciousness. First, man's dream-life changes. It is no longer chaotic, no longer a reproduction of daily experiences often rendered in tangled symbols. Instead, a new world unfolds before man in dream-filled sleep. A world filled with flowing colors and radiant light-beings surrounds him, the astral world. This is no newly created world. It is new only for a person who, until now, had not advanced beyond the lower state of day-consciousness. Actually, this astral world is always present and continuously surrounds the human being. It is a real world, as real as the world surrounding us that appears to us as reality. Once a person has been initiated, has undergone initiation, he becomes acquainted with this wonderful world. He learns to be conscious in it with a consciousness as clear—no even clearer—than his ordinary day-consciousness. He also becomes familiar with his own astral body and learns to live in it consciously. The basic experience in this new world that unfolds before man is one of living and weaving in a world of colors and light. After his initiation, man begins to awaken during his ordinary dream-filled sleep; it is as though he feels himself borne upward on a surging sea of flowing light and colors. This glimmering light and these flowing colors are living beings. This experience of conscious dream-filled sleep then transmits itself into man's entire life in waking day-consciousness, and he learns to see these beings in everyday life as well.

Man attains the third state of consciousness when he is capable of transforming dreamless sleep into a conscious state. This world that man learns to enter shows itself to him at first only partially, but in due time more and more is revealed. Man lives in this world for increasingly longer periods. He is conscious in it and experiences something very significant there.

Man can arrive at perception of the second world, the astral world, only if he undergoes the discipline of so-called “great stillness.” He must become still, utterly still, within himself. The great peace must precede the awakening in the astral world. This deep stillness becomes more and more pronounced when man approaches the third state of consciousness, the state in which he begins to have sensations in dreamless sleep. The colors of the astral world become increasingly transparent, and the light becomes ever clearer and at the same time spiritualized. Man has the sensation that he himself lives in this color and this light, and if they do not surround him but rather he himself is color and light. He feels himself astrally within this astral world, and he feels afloat in a great, deep peace. Gradually, this deep stillness begins to resound spiritually, softly at first, then louder and louder. The world of colors and light is permeated with resounding tones. In this third state of consciousness that man now approaches, the colorful world of the astral realm in which he dwelt up to now becomes suffused with sound. This new dimension that opens to man is Devachan, the so-called mental world, and he enters this wondrous world through the portals of the “great stillness.” Through the great stillness, the tone of this other world rings out to him. This is how the Devachanic world truly appears.

Many theosophical books contain other descriptions of Devachan, but they are not based on personal experiences of the reality of the world. Leadbeater, for example, gives an accurate description of the astral plane and of experiences there, but his description of Devachan is inaccurate. It is merely a construction modeled on the astral plane and is not experienced personally by him. All descriptions that do not describe how a tone rings out from the other side are incorrect and are not based on actual perception. Resounding tone is the particular characteristic of Devachan, at least essentially. Of course, one must not imagine that the Devachanic world does not radiate colors as well. It is penetrated by light emanating from the astral world, for the two worlds are not separated: the astral world penetrates the Devachanic world. The essence of the Devachanic realm, however, lies in tone. That which was light in the great stillness now begins to resound.

On a still higher plane of Devachan, tone becomes something akin to words. All true inspiration originates on this plane, and in this region dwell inspired authors. Here they experience a real permeation with the truths of the higher worlds. This phenomenon is entirely possible.

We must bear in mind that not only the initiate lives in these worlds. The only difference between the ordinary human being and the initiate is that an initiate undergoes these various altered conditions consciously. The states that ordinary man undergoes unconsciously again and again merely change into conscious ones for him. The ordinary human being passes through these three worlds time after time, but he knows nothing about it, because he is conscious neither of himself nor of his experiences there. Nevertheless, he returns with some of the effects that these experiences called forth in him. When he awakens in the morning, not only is he physically rejuvenated by the sleep, but he also brings back art from those worlds. When a painter, for example, goes far beyond the reality of colors in the physical world in his choice of the tones and color harmonies that he paints on his canvas, it is none other than a recollection, albeit an unconscious one, of experiences in the astral world. Where has he seen these tones, these shining colors? Where has he experienced them? They are the after-effects of the astral experiences he has had during the night. Only this flowing ocean of light and colors, of beauty and radiating, glimmering depths, where he has dwelt during sleep, gives him the possibility of using these colors among which he existed. With the dense, earthy colors of our physical world, however, he is unable to reproduce anything close to the ideal that he has experienced and that lives in him. We thus see in painting a shadow-image, a precipitation of the astral world in the physical world, and we see how the effects of the astral realm bear magnificent, marvelous fruits in man.

In great art there are wonderful things that are much more comprehensible to a spiritual scientist, because he discerns their origin. I am thinking, for instance, of two paintings by Leonardo da Vinci that hang in the Louvre in Paris. One portrays Bacchus, the other St. John. Both paintings show the same face; evidently the same model was employed for both. It is not their outward narrative effect, therefore, that makes them totally different from each other. The artistic mysteries of light contained in the paintings are based more purely on their effects of color and light. The painting of Bacchus displays an unusual glistening reddish light that is poured over the body's surface. It speaks of voluptuousness concealed beneath the skin and thus characterizes Bacchus's nature. It is as if the body were imbibing the light and, permeated with its own voluptuous nature, exuded it again. The painting of John, on the other hand, displays a chaste, yellowish hue. It seems as if the color is only playing about the body. The body allows the light only to surround its forms; it does not wish to absorb anything from outside into itself. An utterly unselfish corporeality, fully pure and chaste, addresses the viewer from this painting.

A spiritual scientist understands all this. One must not believe, however, that an artist is always intellectually aware of what is concealed in his work. The precipitations of his astral vision need not penetrate as far as physical consciousness in order to live in his works. Leonardo da Vinci perhaps did not know the occult laws by which he created his paintings—that is not what matters—but he followed them out of his instinctive feeling. We thus see in painting the shadow, the precipitation, of the astral world in our physical realm.

The composer conjures a still higher world; he conjures the Devachanic world into the physical world. The melodies and harmonies that speak to us from the compositions of our great masters are actually faithful copies of the Devachanic world. If we are at all capable of experiencing a foretaste of the spiritual world, this would be found in the melodies and harmonies of music and the effects it has on the human soul.

We return once again to the nature of the human being. We find first of all the physical world, then the etheric body, then the astral body, and finally the “I” of which man first became conscious at the end of the Atlantean age.¹

When man sleeps, the astral body and the sentient soul release themselves from the lower nature of man. Physical man lies in bed connected with his etheric body. All his other members loosen and dwell in the astral and Devachanic worlds. In these worlds, specifically in the Devachanic world, the soul absorbs into itself the world of tones. When he awakens each morning, man actually has passed through an element of music, an ocean of tones. A musical person is one whose physical nature is such that it follows these impressions, though he need not know this. A sense of musical pleasure is based on nothing other than the right accord between the harmonies brought from beyond and the tones and melodies here. We experience musical pleasure when outer tones correspond with those within.

Regarding the musical element, the cooperation of sentient soul and sentient body is of special significance. One must understand that all consciousness arises through a kind of overcoming of the outer world. What comes to consciousness in man as pleasure of joy signifies victory of the spiritual over merely animated corporeality [Körperlich-Lebendige], the victory of the sentient soul over the sentient body. It is possible for one who returns from sleep with the inner vibrations to intensify these tones and to perceive the victory of the sentient soul over the sentient body, so that the soul feels itself stronger than the body. In the effects of a minor key the sentient soul vibrates more intensely and predominates over the sentient body. When the minor third is played, one feels pain in the soul, the predominance of the sentient body, but when the major third resounds, it announces the victory of the soul.

Now we can grasp the basis of the profound significance of music. We understand why music has been elevated throughout the ages to the highest position among the arts by those who know the relationships of the inner life, why even those who do not know these relationships grant music a special place, and why music stirs the deepest strings of our soul, causing them to resound.

Alternating between sleeping and waking, man continuously passes from the physical to the astral and from these worlds to the Devachanic world, a reflection of his overall course of incarnations. When in death he leaves the physical body, he rises through the astral world up into Devachan. There he finds his true home; there he finds his place of rest. This solemn repose is followed by his re-entry into the physical world, and in this way man passes continuously from one world to another.

The human being, however, experiences the elements of the Devachanic world as his own innermost nature, because they are his primeval home. The vibrations flowing through the spiritual world are felt in the innermost depths of his being. In a sense, man experiences the astral and physical as mere sheaths. His primeval home is in Devachan, and the echoes from this homeland, the spiritual world, resound in him in the harmonies and melodies of the physical world. These echoes pervade the lower world with inklings of a glorious and wonderful existence; they churn up man's innermost being and thrill it with vibrations of purest joy and sublime spirituality, something that this world cannot provide. Painting speaks to the astral corporeality, but the world of tone speaks to the innermost being of man. As long as a person is not yet initiated, his homeland, the Devachanic world, is given to him in music. This is why music is held in such high esteem by all who sense such a relationship. Schopenhauer also senses this in a kind of instinctive intuition and expresses it in his philosophical formulations.

Through esoteric knowledge the world, and above all the arts, become comprehensible to us. As it is above so it is below, and as below so above. One who understands this expression in its highest sense learns to recognize increasingly the preciousness in the things of this world, and gradually he experiences as precious recognition the imprints of ever higher and higher worlds. In music, too, he experiences the image of a higher world.

The work of an architect, built in stone to withstand centuries, is something that originates in man's inner being and is then transformed into matter. The same is true of the works of sculptors and painters. These works are present externally and have taken on form.

Musical creations, however, must be generated anew again and again. They flow onward in the surge and swell of their harmonies and melodies, a reflection of the soul, which in its incarnations must always experience itself anew in the onward-flowing stream of time. Just as the human soul is an evolving entity, so its reflection here on earth is a flowing one. The deep effect of music is due to this kinship. Just as the human soul flows downward from its home in Devachan and flows back to it again, so do its shadows, the tones, the harmonies. Hence the intimate effect of music on the soul. Out of music the most primordial kinship speaks to the soul; in the most inwardly deep sense, sounds of home rebound from it. From the soul's primeval home, the spiritual world, the sounds of music are borne across to us and speak comfortingly and encouragingly to us in surging melodies and harmonies.

• 1. A note in the German edition states that a brief description followed here concerning the various members of the human organization but that the transcript was too poor to be reproduced. They were similar to those given in Steiner's Theosophy in the chapter “The Being of Man.” In particular, the separation of the astral body into sentient body and sentient soul was emphasized.

To characterize the theme of today's lecture, we shall begin with an observation already made in the previous lecture. We explained how, in the same way that a man's shadow appears on the wall, a shadow-image of the Devachanic life is given to us on the physical plane in music and generally in the life of tones. We mentioned that twenty-nine more-or-less gifted musicians were born into the Bach family within a period of 250 years and that the mathematical talent was handed down through the generations just as mathematical talent was handed down in the Bernoulli family. Today we shall illuminate these facts from the esoteric standpoint, and from this standpoint we will receive various answers to important questions about karma. Something that lives as a question in many souls is what the relationship of physical heredity is to what we call an ongoing karma.

In the Bach family, the great-great-grandfather of Johann Sebastian was an individuality who lived on earth some fifteen or sixteen hundred years ago, when the human being was constituted quite differently. In Bach's grandfather another individuality was incarnated. The father is yet again a different individuality, and another incarnates itself in the son. These three individualities have absolutely nothing directly to do with the inheritance of musical talent. Musical talent is transmitted purely within physical heredity. The question of physical heredity is superficially resolved when we realize that man's musical gift depends on a special configuration of the ear. All musical talent is meaningless if a person does not have a musical ear; the ear must be specially adapted for this talent. This purely bodily basis for musical talent is handed down from generation to generation. We thus have a musical son, father, and grandfather, all of whom had musical ears. Just as the physical form of the body—of the nose, for instance—is handed down from one generation to another, so are the structural proportions of the ear.

Let us assume we are dealing with a number of individualities who happen to find themselves in the spiritual world and who bring with them from the previous incarnation the predisposition for music that now wishes to come to expression on the physical plane. What significance would the predisposition have if the individuals could not incarnate in bodies possessing a musical ear? These individualities would have to go through life with this faculty remaining mute and undeveloped. Hence, these individualities naturally feel themselves drawn to a family with a musical ear, with a bodily predisposition that will enable them to realize their potential. The family below on the physical plane exerts a power of attraction on the individuality above in Devachan. Even if the individual's spiritual sojourn perhaps has not been completed and he might have remained another 200 years in Devachan, if a suitable physical body is available on the physical plane, he may incarnate now. Chances are that the individuality will make up the 200 years during his next time in Devachan by remaining there that much longer. Such laws lie at the basis of incarnation, which depends not only on the individuality ready for incarnation but also on the force of attraction being exerted from below. When Germany needed a Bismarck, a suitable individual had to incarnate, because the circumstance drew him down to the physical plane. The time in the spiritual world thus can be cut short or extended depending on the circumstances on earth that either do or do not press for reincarnation.

To comprehend how the human being is organized, we must look at the nature of man in more detail. Man has a physical, an etheric, and an astral body. He has the physical body in common with all beings one calls inanimate and the etheric body in common with all plants. Then comes the astral body, in itself quite a complicated entity, and finally the “I.”

When we examine the astral body closely, we have first the so-called sentient body. This man has in common with the entire animal kingdom, so that all higher animals, just like the human being, possess a physical body, an etheric body, and a sentient body below on the physical plane. Man has an individual soul here on earth, whereas the animal has a group soul. Thus, the animals of a particular species share a common group soul, which can be studied only by ascending to the astral plane. In man's case, however, the soul is here on the physical plane. With the human being, the sentient body is only one part of his astral body. The fourth member of man's organization is the “I,” which is active from within.

Let us imagine ourselves back in a distant age, the Lemurian age. Something extremely significant took place during that period. Man's ancestors who existed on earth millions and millions of years ago were completely different from human beings today. On the physical plane of the earth at that time, there was a kind of strangely shaped higher animal, of which nothing remains any longer on the earth today, since it became extinct long ago. The higher animals of today are descendants of those completely differently shaped beings, but they are descendants that have degenerated. Those beings of the ancient past are the ancestors of present-day physical human nature. They possessed only a physical body, an etheric body, and a sentient body. During that age, the “I” gradually united with these beings; it descended from the higher worlds. Animality developed itself upward, while the soul descended.

As a whirling cloud of dust spirals up from the earth and a rain cloud descends to meet it, so did the animal body and the human soul unite. The sentient body of this animal living below on earth—man's ancestor—had developed itself to the point where it could receive the “I.”

This “I” was also composed of various members, namely the sentient soul, the intellectual soul, and the consciousness soul. Imperceptible to the outer senses, this “I”-body [Ich-Leib] descended to meet the upwardly evolving physical body, etheric body, and sentient body.

Had beings possessing a physical body, an etheric body, and a sentient body existed a million years earlier, they would have been able to feel these “I's” hovering above. They would have been forced, however, to say, “A union with such beings is impossible, for the sentient souls hovering above are so delicately spiritual that they are unable to unite themselves with our coarse bodies.” Gradually, however, the soul above became coarser and the sentient body below more refined. A kinship came into being between the two, and now the soul descended. Like a sword fits into a scabbard, so the sentient soul fits into the sentient body. We must understand in this sense the words of the Bible: “God breathed into man the breath of life, and he became a living soul.” In order to understand these words fully, one must know the various states of matter that exist on earth. First, we have the solid state. The esoteric term for it is the “earth.” In using this term, however, the esotericist does not refer to the actual soil of the fields but to its solid condition. All solid components of the physical body—the bones, the muscles, and so forth—are termed “earth.” The second state is fluidity; the esoteric term for it is “water.” Everything fluid—blood, for instance, is called “water.” Third, we have the gaseous state, “air” in esoteric terminology.

The esotericist goes on to consider higher and subtler substances, more delicate states beyond air. In order to understand this better, we must consider, for example, a metal such as lead. In esoteric terminology, lead is “earth.” If subjected to intense heat it melts and becomes “water” in the esoteric sense. When it vaporizes it becomes in the esoteric sense, “air.” Any substance thus can become “air” in its final state. If “air” is more and more diffused, it becomes increasingly delicate and reaches a new state. The esotericist calls it “fire.” It is the first state of ether. “Fire” is related to “air” in the same way that “water” is related to solidity. A still more delicate state than “fire” is called “light ether” by the esotericist. Continuing to a still higher state, we come to what esotericists call “chemical ether,” which is the force that enables oxygen, for example, to link itself with hydrogen. A still more delicate state than “chemical ether” is “life ether.”

We thus have seven different states in esotericism. Life in any substance ultimately can be attributed to the life ether. In esoteric language, what lives in the physical body consists of earth, water and air. What lives in the etheric body consists of fire, light ether, chemical ether, and life ether. While physical body and etheric body are united, they are at the same time separated. The physical body is permeated by the etheric body; similarly the astral body permeates the etheric body. The astral element can descend as far as the state of “fire,” but it can no longer mix with “air,” “water,” and “earth.” The physical, on the other hand, can ascend only as far as “fire.” Let us make it clear that the physical as vapor or esoteric “air” ascends to “fire”; in the vapor we sense the “fire's” diffusing force. The physical ascends to “fire,” the astral descends to “fire,” and the etheric body occupies the central position between the two.

In the Lemurian age, a time long before the seven members of man had united, we find beings existing on the physical plane who had not yet brought the physical body to the state of “fire.” They were as yet incapable of developing warm blood. Only a physical body capable of developing warm blood links a soul to itself. As soon as those beings had evolved to the level of fire ether, the “I” soul [Ich-Seele] was ready to unite itself with the physical body. All the animals that remained behind as stragglers, such as the amphibians, have blood with variable temperatures.

We must keep in mind this point in time from the Lemurian age. It was a moment of the utmost importance, when the being consisting of physical body, etheric body, and sentient body could, through the warm blood, be fructified with a human soul.

Evolution continued from the Lemurian to the Atlantean age. In the Lemurian age, body and soul came in contact with each other only in the element of warmth. At the beginning of the Atlantean age, something new took place. The soul element penetrated more deeply into the physical body, mainly to the level of “air.” In the Lemurian age, it had progressed only as far as “fire”; now it penetrated to “air.” This is very important for human evolution since it marks the beginning of the ability to live in the element of air. Just as there were only cold-blooded creatures at the outset of the Lemurian age, so up to now all creatures had been mute and incapable of uttering sound. They had to master the domain of air before they could emit sounds. Now, the first, most elementary beginnings of singing and speaking took place.

The next stage will bring about the soul's descent into the fluid element. The soul will then be capable of guiding consciously the flow of blood, for example, in the arteries. We will encounter this stage of evolution in the distant future.

One could argue that the cold-blooded insect also “speaks,” but in the sense used here, where speaking is the soul resounding outward from within, this is not the case. The sounds made by the insect are of a physical nature. The chirping of the cricket, the whirring of its wings, are outer sounds; it is not the soul that resounds. We are concerned here with the soul's expression in tone.

At the point in time just described, man became capable of pouring forth his soul in sound. He could not emit from within the same element that reached him from outside. Man came to receive tone from outside through the ear and to return it as such to his surroundings. The ear is thus one of the oldest organs and the larynx one of the youngest. The relationship between ear and larynx is different from that between all other organs. The ear itself reverberates; it is like a kind of piano. There are a number of delicate fibers inside the ear, each of which is tuned to a certain tone. The ear does not alter what comes to it from outside, or at least it does so only a little. All the other sense organs, like the eye, for example, alter the impressions received from the environment. All the other senses must develop in the future to the stage of the ear, for in the ear we have a physical organ that stands at the highest level of development.

The ear is also related to a sense that is still older, the sense of spatial orientation that enables one to experience the three dimensions of space. Man is no longer aware of this sense. It is intimately connected with the ear. Deep in the ear's interior we find three remarkable loops, three semi-circular canals that stand perpendicular, one on top of the other. Science does not know what to make of them. When they are injured, however, man's sense of balance is upset. They are the remnants of the sense of space, which is much older than the sense of hearing. Formerly, man perceived space in the same way he perceives tone today. Now the sense of space has become entirely part of him, and he is no longer conscious of it. The sense of space perceives space; the ear perceives tone, which means that which passes from space into time.

Now one will understand how a certain kinship can exist between music and the mathematical sense, which is tied to these three semi-circular canals. The musical family's distinguishing feature is the musical ear. The mathematical family shows a special development of the three semi-circular canals in the ear to which is linked the talent for grasping spatial relationships. These semi-circular canals were particularly developed in the Bernoulli family and passed from one member to another, just like the musical ear in the Bach family. In order to be able to live fully in their predispositions, individualities descending to incarnation had to seek out the family in which this hereditary trait existed. Such are the intimate relationships between physical heredity on the soul, which seek one another out even after many hundreds and hundreds of years. In this way we see how man's outer nature is connected with his inner being.