The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Chapter XXXIV

[ 1 ] There was hardly any cultivation of artistic interests in the Theosophical Society. From a certain point of view, this was quite understandable at the time, but it could not remain so if the right spiritual attitude was to flourish. The members of such a society have first and foremost no interest in the reality of spiritual life. In the sensual world, man only shows himself in his transient existence, detached from the spirit. Art seems to them to have its activity within this detached existence. Therefore, it seems to stand outside the spiritual reality they seek.

[ 2 ] Because this was the case in the Theosophical Society, artists did not feel at home in it.

[ 3 ] Marie von Sivers and I also wanted to bring the artistic to life in the Society. Spiritual knowledge as an experience gains existence in the whole person. All the powers of the soul are stimulated. The light of spiritual experience shines into the creative imagination when this experience is present.

[ 4 ] But something occurs here that creates inhibitions. The artist has a certain anxious mood towards this shining of the spirit world into the imagination. He wants unconsciousness in relation to the workings of the spiritual world in the soul. He is quite right when it is a question of the "stimulation" of the imagination by that conscious and reflective element which has become the dominant one in cultural life since the beginning of the age of consciousness. This "stimulation" by the intellectual in man has a deadening effect on art.

[ 5 ] But the exact opposite occurs when spiritual content, which is truly observed, illuminates the imagination. There arises again all the pictorial power that has ever led to art in mankind. Marie von Sivers was a master of the art of creating words; she had the most beautiful relationship to dramatic representation. This provided anthroposophical work with a field of art in which the fruitfulness of the spiritual view for art could be tested.

[ 6 ] The "word" is exposed in two directions to the danger that can come from the development of the consciousness soul. It serves the communication in social life, and it serves the communication of the logically-intellectually recognized. In both directions the "word" loses its own validity. It must adapt to the "meaning" it is supposed to express. It must make us forget how there is a reality in the sound, in the sound, and in the sound itself. The beauty, the brilliance of the vowel, the characteristic of the consonant is lost from the language. The vowel becomes soul-less, the consonant spiritless. And so language steps completely out of the sphere from which it originates, out of the sphere of the spiritual. It becomes the servant of intellectual, cognitive and spiritual social life. It is completely torn out of the realm of art.

[ 7 ] True spirituality falls instinctively into the "experience of the word". It learns to feel the soul-borne sounding of the vowel and the spirit-empowered painting of the consonant. It gains an understanding of the secret of the development of language. This secret consists in the fact that once divine-spiritual beings were able to speak to the human soul through the word, whereas now this word only serves communication in the physical world.

[ 8 ] One needs an enthusiasm kindled by this spiritual insight in order to return the word to its sphere. Marie von Sivers developed this enthusiasm. And so her personality gave the anthroposophical movement the opportunity to cultivate the word and word design artistically. The cultivation of the art of recitation and declamation grew in addition to the activity of communicating from the spiritual world, which now increasingly formed a significant part of the events that took place within the anthroposophical work.

[ 9 ] Marie von Sivers' recitation at these events was the starting point for the artistic influence on the anthroposophical movement. For a straight line of development leads from these "recitation additions" to the dramatic representations that then took their place alongside the anthroposophical courses in Munich.

[ 10 ] We grew more and more into the truth of modern spiritual experience through the fact that we were allowed to develop art with the knowledge of the spirit. After all, art grew out of the original dream-like spiritual experience. It had to find its own way during the time when the spirit-experience receded in the development of mankind; it must find its way back together with this experience when it enters into the development of culture in a new form.