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Metamorphoses of the Soul II
GA 59

12 May 1910, Berlin

IX. The Mission of Art

This last lecture of the winter series will be devoted to that realm in the life of the soul which has been enriched by so many of the greatest treasures that spring from man's inner life. We will consider the nature and significance of art in the evolution of mankind. Since the field is so wide, we will confine ourselves to the art of poetry, and you will understand that we have time to consider only the highest achievements of the human spirit in this realm.

Now someone might say: “The lectures this winter have been concerned with various aspects of the human soul, and their central purpose has been to seek for truth and knowledge in relation to the spiritual world—what have these studies to do with the human activities which strive, above all, to give expression to the element of beauty?” And in our time it would be easy to take the view that everything connected with truth and cognition should be kept far, far apart from the aims of artistic work. A widely prevalent belief today is that science in all its branches must be subject to strict rules of logic and experiment, whereas artistic work follows the spontaneous promptings of the heart and the imagination. Many of our contemporaries, accordingly, would say that truth and beauty have nothing in common. And yet, the great leaders in the realm of artistic creation have always felt that true art should flow from the same deep sources in the being of man as do knowledge and cognition.

To take one example, only, we will turn to Goethe, a seeker both for beauty and for truth. As a young man he strove by all possible means to acquire knowledge of the world and to find answers to the great riddles of existence. Before the time of his journey to Italy, which was to take him to a country enshrining longed-for ideals, he had pursued his search for truth, together with his Weimar friends, by studying, for example, the philosopher Spinoza,59Baruch Spinoza, 1632–1677. For Goethe's relationship to Spinoza cf. Goethe's description in Dichtung und Wahrheit, Part III Book 14. who sought to find a uniform substance in all the phenomena of life. Spinoza's dissertations on the idea of God made a deep impression on Goethe. Together with Merck60Johann Heinrich Merck, 1741–1791. Writer. and other friends he believed he could hear in Spinoza something like a voice which spoke through all surrounding phenomena and seemed to give intimations concerning the sources of existence—an idea which could appease in some way his Faustian aspirations. But Goethe's soul was too richly endowed for him to gain from a conceptual analysis of Spinoza's works a satisfying picture of truth and knowledge. What he felt about this, and what his heart longed for, will emerge most clearly if we accompany him on his travels in Italy where he beheld great works of art and caught in them an echo of the art of antiquity. In their presence he experienced the feeling he had hoped in vain to draw from the ideas of Spinoza. Thus he wrote to his friends in Weimar: “One thing is certain: the ancient artists had as much knowledge of Nature, and as sure an idea of what can be represented and of how it should be done, as Homer himself. Unfortunately, works of art of the highest order are all too few. But when one contemplates them, one's only desire is to get to know them rightly and then to depart in peace. These supreme works of art have been created by men as the highest products of Nature in accordance with true natural laws. Everything arbitrary or merely fanciful falls away; there is necessity, there is God.”61See Italienische Reise, Rome, 6th September 1787.

Goethe believed he could discern that the great artists who had created works of art of this high order had drawn them out of their souls in accordance with the same laws that Nature herself had followed. This can mean only that in Goethe's view of the laws of Nature, which operate in the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms, are raised to a new level and gain new strength in the human soul, so that they come to full expression in the soul's creative powers. Goethe felt that in these works of art the laws of Nature were operative again and thus he wrote to his Weimar friends: “Everything arbitrary or merely fanciful falls away; there is necessity, there is God.” At such moments, Goethe's heart is stirred by the recognition that art in its highest manifestations comes from the same sources as do knowledge and cognition, and we realise how deeply Goethe felt this to be true when he declares: “Beauty is a manifestation of Nature's secret laws, which would otherwise remain forever hidden.”62See Goethe, “Sprüche in Prosa”, in: Goethes Naturwissenschaftliche Schriften, ed. Rudolf Steiner, reprint Dornach 1975, vol. V, p. 495. Thus Goethe sees in art a revelation of Nature's laws, which in its own language confirms the findings of cognition in other fields of investigation. If now we turn from Goethe to a modern personality who also sought to invest art with a mission and to bestow on mankind, through art, something related to the sources of existence—if we turn to Richard Wagner, we find in his writings, where he tries to clarify for himself the nature and significance of artistic creation, many similar indications of the inner relationships between truth and beauty, cognition and art. In writing of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, for example, he says that these sounds convey something like a revelation from another world something quite different from anything we can grasp in merely rational or logical terms.63Cf. “Beethoven,” 1870, in vol. XI of Wagner's Gesammelte Schriften und Dichtungen.

Of these revelations through art, one thing at least can be said with certainty. They act upon the soul with convincing power and permeate our feeling with a conviction of their truth, in face of which all merely rational or logical considerations are powerless.

Again, in writing about symphonic music, Wagner says that something resounds from it as though its instruments were an organ for revealing the feelings that went into the primal act of creation, when chaos was ordered and harmonised, long before any human heart was there to echo those feelings. Thus in the revelations of art Wagner saw a mysterious truth that could stand on an equal footing with knowledge gained by the intellect.

Something else may be added here. When we make acquaintance with great works of art in the sense of spiritual science, we feel that they communicate their own revelation concerning man's search for truth, and the spiritual scientist feels himself inwardly related to this message. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that he feels more closely related to it than he does to many of the so-called spiritual revelations that people accept so light-heartedly today.

How is it, then, that truly artistic personalities attribute to art a mission of this kind, while the spiritual scientist feels his heart so strongly drawn to these mysterious revelations of great art? We will approach an answer to this question by bringing together many things that have come before our souls during these winter lectures.

If we are to study the significance and task of art from this point of view, we must not go by human opinions or the quibblings of the intellect. We must consider the development of art in relation to the evolution of man and the world. We will let art itself speak to us of its significance for mankind.

If we wish to trace the beginnings of art, as it first appears among men in the guise of poetry, then according to ordinary ideas we have to go back very far indeed. Here we will go back only as far as the extant documents can take us. We will go back to a figure often regarded as legendary—to Homer, the originator of Greek poetry, whose work has come down to us in the two great epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey.

Whoever was the author—or authors, for we will not go into that question today—of these two poems, the remarkable thing is that both poems begin on a quite impersonal note:

Sing, O Muse, of the wrath of Achilles ...

With those words the Iliad, the first Homeric poem, begins and

Sing, O Muse, of much-travelled man ...

are the opening words of the second Homeric poem, the Odyssey. The author thus wishes to indicate that he is indebted to a higher power for his verses, and we need only a little understanding of Homer to realise that for him this higher power was not a symbol but a real, objective Being. If this invocation to the Muse means nothing to modern readers, this is because they no longer have the experiences from which a poem as impersonal as Homer's could derive. And if we are to understand this impersonal element in early Western poetry, we must ask: What preceded it? Whence did it arise?

In speaking of human evolution, we have often emphasised that in the course of millennia the powers of the human soul have changed. In the far-distant past, beyond the reach of external history but open to spiritual-scientific investigation, human souls were endowed with a primitive dreamy clairvoyance. In times before men were so deeply embedded in material existence as they came to be later on, they perceived the spiritual world as a reality all around them. We have pointed out also that the ancient clairvoyance was different from the trained, conscious clairvoyance that can be attained today, for this is bound up with the existence of a firm centre in the life of the soul, whereby a man takes hold of himself as an ego. This ego-feeling, as we now have it after its gradual development through long ages, was not present in the far-distant past. But for this very reason, because man lacked this inner centre, his spiritual senses were open and with his dreamy, ego-less clairvoyance he looked into the spiritual world from which his true inner being had emerged in the primal past. Powerful pictures, like dream-pictures, of the forces behind our physical existence came before his soul. In this spiritual world he saw his gods, he saw the actions and events that were played out among them. And present-day research is quite wrong in supposing that the sagas of the gods, found in various forms in different countries, were the product merely of popular fantasy. If it is thought that in the remote past the human soul functioned just as it does today, except that it was more prone to imagine things, including the imaginary gods of the sagas that is sheer fantasy and it is those who believe it who are imagining things. For people in that remote past, the events described in their mythologies were realities. Myths, sagas, even fairy-tales and legends, were born from a primeval faculty in the human soul. This is connected with the fact that man had not yet acquired the firm central point in his soul which now enables him to live within himself and in possession of himself. In the far past he could not shut himself up in his ego, within the narrow boundaries of his soul, separated from his environment, as he came to do later on. He lived in his environment, feeling that he belonged to it, whereas a modern man feels that he stands apart from it. And just as man today can feel in his bodily organism the inflow and outflow of the physical strength he needs to sustain his life, so primeval man, with his clairvoyant consciousness, was aware of spiritual forces flowing in and out of him, so that he lived in inward reciprocity with the forces of the great world; and he could say: “When something takes place in my soul, when I think, feel or will, I am not a separate being. I am open to forces from the beings who come before my inward sight. By sending their forces into me, they stimulate me to think and feel and will. “That was the experience of man when he was still embedded in the spiritual world. He felt that spiritual powers were active in his thinking, and that when he accomplished anything, divine-spiritual powers had poured into him their willing and their purpose. In those primeval times, man felt himself to be a vessel through which spiritual powers expressed themselves.

Here we are looking back to a period far away in the past, but this period extended, through all sorts of intermediate stages, right up to the time of Homer. It is not difficult to discern how Homer was giving continued expression to the primeval consciousness of mankind: we need only look at some features of the Iliad. Homer describes a great armed struggle between the Greeks and the Trojans, but how does he do this? What did the struggle signify for the Greeks of that time?

Although Homer may not start out from this aspect, there was more in this struggle than the antagonism generated by the passions, desires and ideas which stem from the human ego. Was it merely the personal and tribal emotions of Trojans and Greeks that clashed in this fighting? No! The legend which provides a connecting link between primeval and Homeric consciousness tells how three goddesses, Hera, Pallas Athene and Aphrodite, competed at a festival for the prize of beauty, and how a human connoisseur of beauty, Paris, son of the king of Troy, was appointed to judge the contest. Paris gave the prize to Aphrodite, who had promised him the most beautiful woman in the world for his wife. The woman was Helen, wife of king Menelaus of Sparta. In order to gain possession of Helen, Paris had to abduct her by force. In revenge for this outrage, the Greeks armed themselves for war against the Trojans, whose country lay on the far side of the Aegean sea, and it was there that the struggle was fought out.

Why did human passions flare up in this way, and why did all the events described by Homer's Muse take place? Were they merely physical events in the human world? No. Through the consciousness of the Greeks we see depicted the antagonism of the goddesses behind the strife of men. A Greek of that time could have said: “I cannot find in the physical world the causes which have brought human beings into violent conflict. I must look up to a higher realm, where the gods and their powers are set against one another.” The divine powers, as they were seen at the time in the images which we have just described, were actively involved in human conflicts. Thus we see the first great work of poetic art, Homer's Iliad, growing out of the primeval consciousness of mankind. In Homer we find presented in metrical form, from the standpoint of a later consciousness, an echo of the clairvoyant vision which came naturally to primeval humanity. And it is precisely in this Homeric period that we must look for the first time when clairvoyant consciousness came to an end for the Greek people, and only an echo of it remained.

A primeval man would have said: “I can see my gods battling in the spiritual world, which lies open to my clairvoyant consciousness.” In Homeric times this was no longer possible, but a living memory of it endured. And just as primeval man had felt inspired by the divine worlds wherein he had his being, so the author of the Homeric epics felt the same divine forces holding sway in his soul. Hence he could say: “The Muse that inspires me inwardly is speaking.” Thus the Homeric poems are directly connected with primeval myths, if these are rightly understood. From this point of view, we can see arising in Homer's poetic imagination something like a substitute for the old clairvoyance. The ruling cosmic powers withdrew direct clairvoyant vision from man, and gave him, instead, something that could live similarly in the soul and could endow it with formative power. Poetic imagination is compensation for the loss of ancient clairvoyance.

Now let us recall something else. In the lecture on Conscience we saw that the withdrawal of the old clairvoyance occurred in quite different ways and at different times in various countries. In the East the old clairvoyance persisted up to a relatively late date. Over towards the West, among the peoples of Europe, clairvoyant faculties were less widely present. In the latter peoples, a strong ego-feeling came to the fore while other soul-powers and faculties were still relatively undeveloped. This ego-feeling emerged in the most varied ways in different parts of Europe—differently between North and West, and notably different in the South. In pre-Christian times it developed most intensively in Sicily and Italy. While in the East men remained for a long time without an ego-feeling, in these regions of Europe there were people in whom the ego-feeling was particularly strong because they had lost the old clairvoyance. In the proportion that the spiritual world withdraws externally from man does his inward ego-feeling light up.

Hence there was bound to be a great difference at certain times between the souls of the Asiatic peoples and the souls living in the parts of Europe we are concerned with here. Over there in Asia we see how the cosmic mysteries still rise before the soul in great dream-pictures, and how man can witness the deeds of the gods as they unroll externally before his spiritual eye. And in that, which such a man can relate, we can discern something like a primeval account of the spiritual facts underlying the world. When the old clairvoyance was succeeded in Asia by the substitute for it, imagination, this gave rise especially to visionary symbols in picture form.

Among the Western peoples, in Italy and Sicily, a different faculty, arising from a firmly-grounded ego, produced a kind of excess of strength, an enthusiasm that broke forth from the soul, unaccompanied by any direct spiritual vision but inspired by a longing to reach up to things unseen. Here, therefore, we find no recounting of the deeds of the gods, for these were no longer evident. But when with ardent devotion, expressed in speech and song, the soul aspired to the heights it could only long for, primitive prayer and chant were born, addressed to powers which could not now be seen after the waning of old clairvoyant consciousness.

In Greece, the intermediate country, the two worlds meet. There we find men who are stimulated from both sides. Pictorial vision comes from the East; from the West comes the enthusiasm which inspires devotional hymns to the unseen divine-spiritual powers. This intermingling of the two streams in Greek culture made possible a continuation from Homeric poetry, which we can locate in the 8th or 9th century B.C., to the works of Aeschylus, three or four hundred years later.

Aeschylus comes before us as a personality who was certainly not open to the full power of Eastern vision, the convincing power we find in Homer as an echo of the old clairvoyant vision of the deeds of the gods and their effect on mankind. This echo was always very weak, and in Aeschylus so weak that he came to feel a kind of unbelief in the pictorial visions of the world of the gods that ancient clairvoyance had brought to men. Homer, we find, knew very well that human consciousness had once been open to these visions of the divine-spiritual powers which stand behind the interplay of human passions and emotions in the physical world. Homer, accordingly, does not describe merely a human conflict. Zeus and Apollo intervene where human passions are involved, and their influence is apparent in the course of events. The gods are a reality which the poet brings into his poem.

How different it all is with Aeschylus. The stream of influence from the West, with its emphasis on the human ego and the inward isolation of the human soul, had a particularly strong effect on him. For this reason he was the first dramatist to portray man as acting from out of his ego and beginning to release his consciousness from the inflow of divine powers. In Aeschylus, in place of the gods we find in Homer, the independent man of action appears, though still at an initial stage. As a dramatist, Aeschylus puts this kind of man at the centre of things. The epic had to emerge under the influence of the pictorial imagination that came from the East, while Western influence, with its emphasis on the personal ego, gave rise to drama, wherein the man of action is the central character.

Let us take, for example, Orestes, who is guilty of matricide and as a consequence sees the Furies. Yes, that is still Homer: things do not pass away so quickly. Aeschylus is still aware that the gods were once visible in picture form, but he is very near to giving up that belief. It is characteristic that Apollo, who in Homer acts with full power, incites Orestes to kill his mother, but after this no longer has right on his side. The human ego begins to stir in Orestes, and we are shown that it gains the upper hand. The verdict goes against Apollo, he is repudiated, and we see that his power over Orestes is no longer complete. Aeschylus was thus the right and proper poet to dramatise the figure of Prometheus, the divine hero who titanically opposes the might of the gods and represents the liberation of mankind from them.

Thus we see how the awakening ego-feeling from the West mingles in the soul of Aeschylus with memories of the pictorial imagination of the East, and how from this conjunction drama was born. And it is decidedly interesting to find that tradition wonderfully confirms the findings derived entirely from spiritual-scientific research.

One remarkable tradition partly acquits Aeschylus of the charge that he had betrayed certain secrets of the Mysteries; he replied that he could not have done so, for he had not been initiated into the Eleusinian Mysteries. It certainly never was his intention to present anything derived from temple secrets, from which Homer's poems had originated. In fact, he stood somewhat apart from the Mysteries. On the other hand, the story goes that at Syracuse, in Sicily, he had gained knowledge of secrets connected with the emergence of the human ego. This emergence took a particular form in regions where the Orphic devotees cultivated the older form of ode, the hymn, addressed to the divine-spiritual worlds that could no more be seen but only aspired to. In this way art took a step forward. We see it emerging naturally from ancient truths and finding its way to the human ego. Inasmuch as man, after living predominantly in the outer world, took possession of his own inner life, the figures in the Homeric poems became the dramatic characters of Aeschylus; and so, side by side with the epic, drama arose.

Thus we see primeval truths living on in another form in art, and the achievements of ancient clairvoyance reproduced by poetic imagination. And whatever was preserved from ancient times by art was applied to the human personality, to the ego becoming aware of itself.

Now we will take an immense step forward in time—on to the 13th and 14th centuries of the Christian era. Here we encounter the great mediaeval personality who leads us so impressively to the region which the human ego can reach when, by its own endeavours, it ascends to the divine-spiritual world. We come to Dante, whose Divine Comedy (1472) was read and re-read by Goethe. It affected him so strongly that when an acquaintance sent him a new translation of it, he wrote his thanks to the sender in verse:

Great gratitude is due to him
Who brings us freshly to this book once more,
The book which in a glorious manner makes us cease
All our searchings and complaints.64Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Zahme Xenien VIII, dated 23rd July 1824.

How did art progress from Aeschylus to Dante? How does Dante bring before us a divine-spiritual world once again? How does Dante lead us through its three stages, Inferno, Purgatory and Heaven—the worlds which lie behind our physical existence?

Here we can see how the fundamental spiritual impulse that guides human evolution has continued to work in the same direction. Aeschylus, quite clearly, is still in touch with spiritual powers. Prometheus is confronted by the gods, Zeus, Hermes and so on, and this applies also to Agamemnon. In all this we can discern an echo of the ancient clairvoyance. With Dante it is quite different. He shows us how, solely through immersing himself in his own soul, developing the forces slumbering there and overcoming all the obstacles to this development, he was able, as he says, in “the middle of life”—which means his thirty-fifth year—to gaze into the spiritual world. Where as men endowed with the old clairvoyance directed their gaze to their spiritual environment, and whereas Aeschylus still reckoned with the old divinities, in Dante we see a poet who goes down into his own soul and remains entirely within his personality and its inner secrets. By pursuing this path of personal development he enters the spiritual world, and is thus able to present it in the powerful pictures we find in the Divine Comedy. Here the soul of Dante is quite alone with his personality; he is not concerned with external revelations. No one can imagine that Dante could have taken over from tradition the findings of the old clairvoyance. Dante relies on the inner development that was possible in the Middle Ages, with the strength of human personality as its only aid; and he brings before us in visionary pictures something often emphasised here—that a man has to master everything that clouds or darkens his clairvoyant sight. Whereas the Greeks still saw realities in the spiritual world, Dante here sees pictures only—pictures of the soul-forces which have to be overcome. Such are those lower forces of the sentient soul, the intellectual soul and the consciousness soul which tend to hold the ego back from higher stages of development. The good, opposite forces were already indicated by Plato: wisdom for the consciousness soul, self-reliant courage for the intellectual soul, moderation for the sentient-soul. When the ego goes through a development which enlists these good forces, it comes gradually to higher soul experience which lead into the spiritual world; but the hindrances must first be overcome.

Moderation works against intemperance and greed, and Dante shows how this shadow-side of the sentient soul can be met and mastered.

He depicts it as a she-wolf. We are then shown how the shadow-side of the intellectual soul, senseless aggression, depicted as a lion, can be overcome by its corresponding virtue, self-reliant courage. Finally we come to wisdom, the virtue of the consciousness soul. Wisdom which fails to strive towards the heights, but applies itself to the world in the form of mere shrewdness and cunning, is pictured as a lynx. The “lynx-eyes” are not the eyes of wisdom, able to gaze into the spiritual world, but eyes focused only on the world of the senses. After Dante has shown how he guards against the forces which hinder inner development, he describes how he ascends into the world which lies behind physical existence.

In Dante we have a man who relies upon himself, searches within himself, and draws from out of himself the forces which lead into the spiritual world. With him, poetry takes closer hold of the human soul and becomes more intimately related to the human ego. Homer's characters are woven into the doings of the divine-spiritual powers, as indeed Homer felt himself to be, so that he says: “Let the Muse sing the story I have to tell.” Dante, alone with his soul, knows that the forces which will lead him into the spiritual world must be drawn from within himself. We can see how it becomes less and less possible for imagination to depend on external influences. A small fact will show that on this point we are concerned not with mere opinions but with forces deeply rooted in the human soul. Gottlieb Friedrich Klopstock65Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock, 1724–1803. He concluded his “Messias” in 1773. was a deeply religious man and a profounder spirit even than Homer. He wished to write a sacred epic poem, with the conscious intention of doing for modern times what Homer did for antiquity. He sought to revive Homer's manner, but without being untrue to himself. Hence he could not say, “Sing for me, O Muse,” but had to open his Messias with the words: “Sing, immortal soul, of the redemption of sinful man.” Thus we see how progress in artistic creation does indeed occur among men.

Now let us take a further giant stride over several centuries, from Dante to another great poet, Shakespeare. Here again we see a remarkable step forward in the sense of a progression. We are not concerned with criticism of Shakespeare or with setting one poet above another, but solely with facts that point to a necessary, legitimate advance.

What was it about Dante that specially impressed us? He stands there by himself, with his own revelations of the spiritual world, and describes the great experience that came to him from within his own soul. Can you imagine that Dante would have given so effective expression to the truth as he saw it if he had described his visions five or six times over in various ways? Do you not feel that the world into which Dante has transposed himself is such that it can be described once only? That is indeed what Dante did. The world he describes is the world of one man at the moment when he feels himself to be at one with what the spiritual world is for him. Hence we must say: Dante immerses himself in the element of human personality, and in such a way that it remains his own. And he sets himself to traverse this human-personal aspect from all sides.

Shakespeare, on the other hand, creates an abundance of all possible characters—a Lear, Hamlet, Cordelia, Desdemona; but we have no direct perception of anything divine behind these characters, when the spiritual eye beholds them in the physical world, with their purely human qualities and impulses. We look only for what comes directly from their souls in the form of thinking, feeling and willing. They are all distinct individuals, but can we recognise Shakespeare himself in them, in the way that Dante is always Dante when he immerses himself in his own personality? No—Shakespeare has taken another step forward. He penetrates still further into the personal element, but not only into one personality but into a wide variety of personalities. Shakespeare denies himself whenever he describes Lear, Hamlet and so on; he is never tempted into presenting his own ideas, for as Shakespeare he is completely blotted out; he lives entirely in the various characters he creates. The experiences described by Dante are those of one person; Shakespeare shows us impulses arising from the inner ego in the widest diversity of characters. Dante's starting-point is human personality; he remains within it and from there he explores the spiritual world. Shakespeare has gone a step further: he, too, starts from his own personality and slips into the individuals he portrays; he is wholly immersed in them. It is not his own soul-life that he dramatises, but the lives of the characters in the outer world that he presents on the stage, and they are all depicted as independent persons with their own motives and aims.

Thus we can see here, again, how the evolution of art proceeds. Having originated in the remote past, when human consciousness was devoid of ego-feeling, with Dante, art reached the stage of embracing individual man, so that the ego itself became a world. With Shakespeare, it expanded so far that other egos became the poet's world. For this step to be possible, art had to leave the spiritual heights from which it had sprung and descend into the actualities of physical existence. And this is just what we can see happening when we pass on from Dante to Shakespeare. Let us try to compare Dante and Shakespeare from this point of view.

Superficial critics may reproach Dante for being a didactic poet. Anyone who understands Dante and can respond to the whole range and richness of his work will feel that his greatness derives precisely from the fact that all the wisdom and philosophy of the Middle Ages speak from his soul. And for the development of such a soul, endowed with Dante's poetic power, the totality of mediaeval wisdom was a necessary foundation. Its influence worked first on Dante's soul and was again evident, later on, in the expansion of his personality into a world. We cannot properly understand or appreciate Dante's poetic creation unless we are familiar with the heights of mediaeval spiritual life. Only then can we come to appreciate the depths and subtleties of his achievement.

Certainly, Dante took one step downwards. He sought to bring the spiritual down to lower levels, and this he did by writing in the vernacular, not in Latin as some of his predecessors had done. He ascends to the loftiest heights of spiritual life, but descends into the physical world as far as the vernacular of his place and time.

Shakespeare descends still further. The origin of his great poetic characters is nowadays the subject of all sorts of fanciful speculation, but if we are to understand this descent of poetry into the everyday world—still often looked down on by the highly placed—we must bear in mind the following facts.

We must picture a small theatre in what was then a suburb of London, where plays were produced by actors who, except for Shakespeare, would not be rated highly today. Who went to this theatre? The lower orders. It was more fashionable in those days to patronise cockfights and other similar spectacles than to go to this theatre, where people ate and drank and threw eggshells to mark their disapproval and overflowed on to the stage itself, so that the players acted in the midst of their audience. Thus it was before a very low-class London public that these plays were first performed, although many people today fondly imagine that from the first they were acclaimed in the highest circles of cultural life. At best, unmarried sons, who allowed themselves to visit certain obscure resorts in disguise, would go now and then to this theatre, but for respectable people it would have been highly improper. Hence we can see that poetry came down into a realm of the most unsophisticated feelings.

Nothing human was alien to the genius who stood behind Shakespeare's plays and the characters in them. So it happened—in respect even of external details—that art, after having been a narrow stream flowing on high levels, descended into the world of ordinary humanity and broadened into a wide stream running through the midst of everyday life. And anyone who looks more deeply into this will see how necessary it was that a lofty spiritual stream should be brought down to lower levels in order that such vital figures as Shakespeare's highly individual characters should appear.

Now we will move on to times nearer our own—to Goethe. We will try to connect him with his own creation—the figure of Faust, in whom were embodied all his ideals, endeavours and renunciations during the sixty years he worked on his masterpiece. Everything he experienced in his innermost soul in the course of his rich life, while he climbed from stage to stage of knowledge in his search for higher answers to the riddles of the world—all this is merged in the figure of Faust that we encounter today. What sort of figure is he in the context of Goethe's poetic drama?

Of Dante we can say that what he describes is portrayed as the fruit of his own vision. Goethe had no such vision: he makes no claim to having had a special revelation at a particularly solemn time, as Dante does with regard to the Divine Comedy. Everywhere in Faust Goethe shows that he has worked inwardly on what he presents. And whereas the experiences that came to Dante could be described only in his own one-sided way, Goethe's experiences were no less individual but they were translated into the objective character of Faust. Dante gives us his most intimate personal experience; Goethe, too, had personal experiences, but the actions and sufferings of Faust are not those of Goethe's life. They are free poetic transformation of what Goethe had experienced in his own soul. While Dante can be identified with his Divine Comedy, it would take almost a literary historian to identify Goethe with Faust. Faust is an individual character, but we cannot imagine that an array of Faust-like figures could have been created, as numerous as the characters created by Shakespeare. The ego depicted by Goethe in his Faust can be created once only. Besides Hamlet, Shakespeare created Lear, Othello, and so on. Goethe, it is true, also wrote Tasso and Iphigenia, but the difference between them and Faust is obvious. Faust is not Goethe; fundamentally he is every-man. He embodies Goethe's deepest longings, but as a poetic figure his is entirely detached from Goethe's own personality. Dante brings before us the vision of one man, himself; Faust is a character who in a certain sense lives in each one of us. This marks a further advance for poetry up to Goethe.

Shakespeare could create characters so individualised that he immersed himself in them and enabled each one of them to speak with a distinctive voice. Goethe creates in Faust an individualised figure, but Faust is not a single individual; he is every-man. Shakespeare entered into the soul-natures of Lear, Othello, Hamlet, Cordelia and so on. Goethe entered into the highest human element in all men. Hence he creates a representative character relevant to all men. And this character detaches himself from Goethe's personality as a poet, and stands before us as a real objective figure in the outer world.

Here is a further advance of art along the path we have outlined. Starting from the direct spiritual perception of a higher world, art takes hold of man's inner life to an ever-increasing degree. It does so most intimately when—as with Dante—a man is dealing with himself alone. In Shakespeare's plays the ego goes out from this inwardness and enters other souls. With Goethe, the ego goes out and immerses itself in the soul-life of every-man, typified by Faust. And because the ego is able to go out from itself and understand other souls only if it develops its own soul-powers and sinks itself in another's spirituality, so it is in line with the continued advance in artistic creation that Goethe should have been led to depict not only physical acts and experiences in the outer world, but also the spiritual events that everyone can experience if he opens his ego to the spiritual world.

Poetry came from the spiritual world and entered the human ego; with Dante it took hold of the ego at the deepest level of the inner life. With Goethe we see the ego going forth from itself again and finding its way to the spiritual world.

The spiritual experiences of ancient humanity are reflected in the Iliad and the Odyssey; and in Goethe's Faust the spiritual world comes forth again and stands before man. That is how we should respond to the great final tableau in Faust, where man, after having descended into the depths, works his way up again by developing his inner forces until the spiritual world stands open to him once more. It is like a chorus of primal tones, but ever-renewed in ever-advancing forms. From the imperishable spiritual world resounds the imagination, bestowed on man as a substitute for spiritual vision and given form in the perishable creations of human genius. Out of the imperishable were born the perishable poetic figures created by Homer and Aeschylus. Once more poetry ascends from the perishable to the imperishable, and in the mystical chorus at the very end of Faust we hear:

Everything transient is but a parable ...66Concluding lines to Goethe's Faust (Faust II, 1. 12, 104ff.).

And so, as Goethe shows us, the power of man's spirit ascends from the physical world into the spiritual world again.

We have seen artistic consciousness advance with great strides through the world and in representative poets. Art emerges from the spiritual, its original source of knowledge. Spiritual vision withdraws more and more in proportion as the sense-world commands ever-wider attention, thereby stimulating the development of the ego. Human consciousness follows the course of world evolution and so has to make the journey from the spiritual world to the world of the ego and the senses. If man were to study the world of the senses only through the eyes of external science, he would come to understand it only intellectually in scientific terms. But in place of clairvoyance, when this passes away, he is granted imagination, which creates for him a kind of shadowy reflection of what he can no longer perceive. Imagination has had to follow the same path as man, entering eventually into his self-awareness, as with Dante. But the threads that link humanity to the spiritual world can never break, not even when art descends into the isolation of the human ego. Man takes imagination with him on his way; and when Faust appears, we see the spiritual world created anew out of imagination.

Thus Goethe's Faust stands at the beginning of an epoch during which man is to re-enter the spiritual world where art originated. And so the mission of art, for all those who cannot reach the spiritual world through higher training, is to spin the threads that will link the spirituality of the far-distant past with the spirituality of the future. Art has indeed already advanced so far that it can give a view of the spiritual world in imagination, as in the second part of Faust. Here we have an intimation that man in his evolution is at the point when he must learn to develop the powers which will enable him to re-enter the spiritual world and to gain conscious knowledge of it. Moreover, having led man towards the spiritual world with the aid of imagination, art has prepared the way for spiritual science, which presupposes clear vision of the spiritual world, based on full ego-consciousness. To point the way towards that world—the world that human beings long for, as we have seen in the examples drawn from the realm of art—that is the task of spiritual science, and it has been the task also of this winter's lectures.

Thus we see how great artists can be justified in feeling that reflections of the spiritual world are what they have to give to mankind. And the mission of art is to mediate these revelations during the time when direct revelations of the spiritual world were no longer possible. So Goethe could say of the works of the old artists: “There is necessity, there is God!” They bring to light the hidden laws of nature which would otherwise never be found. And so could Richard Wagner say that in the music of the Ninth Symphony he could hear revelations of another world—a world which a mainly intellectual consciousness can never reach. The great artists have felt that they are bearers of the spirit, the original source of everything human, from the past, through the present, into the future. And so with deep understanding we can agree with words spoken by a poet who felt himself to be an artist: “The dignity of mankind is given into your hands.”67Friedrich von Schiller in the poem “Die Künstler”.

In this way we have tried to describe the nature and mission of art in the course of human evolution, and to show that art is not as separate from man's sense of truth as people today may lightly suppose. On the contrary, Goethe was right when he refused to speak of the idea of truth and the idea of beauty as separate ideas. There is, he said, one idea, that of the necessary workings of the divine-spiritual in the world, and truth and beauty are two revelations of it.

Everywhere among poets and other artists we find agreement with the thought that the spiritual foundations of human existence find utterance in art: or there are artists with deeper feelings who will tell you that art makes it possible for them to believe that their work carries a message to mankind from the spiritual world. And so, even when artists are most personal in expression, they feel that their art is raised to a universal human level, and that in a true sense they speak for humanity when the characters and revelations of their art give effect to the words spoken by Goethe's Mystical Chorus:

Everything transient is but a parable ...

And on the strength of our spiritual-scientific considerations we may add: Art is called upon to transfuse the transient and the perishable with the light of the eternal, the imperishable. That is the mission of art.

Die Mission der Kunst

Homer, Äschylos, Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe

Die Betrachtungen dieses Winterzyklus über das menschliche Seelenleben sollen abgeschlossen werden und ausklingen mit einigem, was gerade im Zusammenhang mit den vorangegangenen Darstellungen gesagt werden kann über jenes Gebiet menschlichen Seelenlebens, in das sich hineinergießen so reiche, so gewaltige Schätze des menschlichen Innern. Es sollen unsere Betrachtungen ausklingen in einige Anschauungen über das Wesen und die Bedeutung der Kunst in der menschlichen Entwickelung. Und zwar, da das Gebiet der Kunst so umfassend ist, soll unsere Betrachtung angelehnt werden nur an die Entwickelung der Dichtkunst im Laufe der Menschheitsentwickelung, und auch da ist es wohl selbstverständlich, daß wir mit unseren Betrachtungen nur haltmachen können bei den höchsten Gipfeln des geistigen Lebens auf diesem Gebiete.

Man könnte nun sehr leicht die Frage aufwerfen: Was haben denn alle jene Seelenbetrachtungen, die wir im Verlaufe dieses Winters angestellt haben, und die vor allen Dingen darauf hinzielten, Wahrheit und Erkenntnis zu suchen über die geistige Welt, was haben alle diese Betrachtungen zu tun mit dem Gebiet menschlichen Schaffens, das sich vor allen Dingen ausleben will im Elemente der Schönheit? Und in unserer Zeit könnte sehr leicht der Standpunkt vertreten werden, daß alles, was sich durch Wissen und Erkennen auslebt, weit, weit abstehen müsse von dem, was sich auslebt durch die Kunst. In fest umschriebenen Gesetzen der Erfahrung und der Logik - so glaubt man wohl — müsse alles Wissen und alle Wissenschaft wandeln; in mehr willkürlichen Gesetzen des Innern, des Herzens, der Phantasie bewege sich das künstlerische Element. Wahrheit und Schönheit werden gerade im Urteil unserer Zeitgenossen vielleicht weit, weit auseinandergerückt werden. Und dennoch: gerade die großen führenden Persönlichkeiten auf dem Gebiete des künstlerischen Schaffens haben immer gefühlt, daß sie mit wahrer Kunst etwas zum Ausdruck bringen wollen, was herausfließt aus denselben Quellen des Menschendaseins, ja aus den tiefsten Untergründen des Menschendaseins, wie auch Wissen und Erkenntnis.

Um nur einiges anzuführen, sei hingewiesen auf Goethe, der ja nicht nur ein Sucher nach dem Schönen war, sondern auch ein Sucher nach dem Wahren; der in seiner Jugend auf allen möglichen Wegen versuchte, sich Wissen von der Welt, Antwort auf die großen Rätselfragen des Daseins zu erwerben. Bevor Goethe seine italienische Reise angetreten hatte, die ihn zu einem Lande von ersehnten Idealen führen sollte, hatte er in Weimar mit seinen Freunden viel studiert, um seinem Ziel nach Erforschung der Wahrheit näher zu kommen, so zum Beispiel auch den Philosophen Spinoza. Und gewaltige Eindrücke hatten auf seine Seele die Ausführungen Spinozas über die Gottes-Idee gemacht; jene Ausführungen dieses neuzeitlichen Philosophen, der in allen Erscheinungen des Lebens die einheitliche Substanz sucht. Und Goethe glaubte mit Merck und anderen Freunden, aus Spinoza etwas zu vernehmen wie solche Töne, die aus allen uns umgebenden Erscheinungen ankündigen die Quellen des Daseins, die ihm geben könnten etwas wie Befriedigung eines faustischen Strebens. Aber Goethes Geist war zu reich, zu inhaltvoll, um in den begrifflichen Auseinandersetzungen der Werke Spinozas ein ihm genügendes Bild von Wahrheit und Erkenntnis zu gewinnen. Was er da gefühlt hat, und was er eigentlich wollte nach den Sehnsüchten seines Herzens, das wird uns am klarsten, wenn wir ihn verfolgen während der italienischen Reise, wie er die großen Kunstwerke anschaut, die ihm einen Nachklang der Kunst des Altertums geben, und aus ihnen das herausfühlt, was er vergeblich zu fühlen gehofft hatte aus den Begriffen Spinozas. Deshalb schreibt er nach der Betrachtung dieser Kunstwerke an seine weimarischen Freunde: «So viel ist gewiß, die alten Künstler haben ebenso große Kenntnis der Natur und einen ebenso sichern Begriff von dem, was sich vorstellen läßt, und wie es vorgestellt werden muß, gehabt, als Homer. Leider ist die Anzahl der Kunstwerke der ersten Klasse gar zu klein. Wenn man aber auch diese sieht, so hat man nichts zu wünschen, als sie recht zu erkennen und dann in Frieden hinzufahren. Diese hohen Kunstwerke sind zugleich als die höchsten Naturwerke von Menschen nach wahren und natürlichen Gesetzen hervorgebracht worden. Alles Willkürliche, Eingebildete fällt da zusammen; da ist die Notwendigkeit, da ist Gott.» Er glaubte, wie er sagte, zu erkennen, daß die großen Künstler, die solches geschaffen haben, aus ihren Seelen heraus nach denselben Gesetzen verfuhren, nach denen die Natur selber verfährt. Was will das anders sagen, als daß Goethe glaubte zu erkennen, daß die Gesetze der Natur sich hinaufleben in die menschliche Seele und hier Kraft gewinnen, damit das, was sich auf andern Stufen als Gesetze der Natur im mineralischen, pflanzlichen und tierischen Reich auslebt, wenn es seinen Durchgang genommen hat durch die Menschenseele, sich auslebt in den schaffenden Kräften dieser menschlichen Seele. Deshalb fühlte Goethe die wirkende Naturgesetzmäßigkeit wieder in diesen Kunstwerken und schrieb deshalb an seine weimarischen Freunde: «Alles Willkürliche, Eingebildete fällt da zusammen; da ist Notwendigkeit, da ist Gott!» Da sehen wir denn auch in einem solchen Augenblick Goethes Herz bewegt von der Anschauung, daß sich in der Kunst nur dann deren Höchstes offenbart, wenn sie herausquillt aus denselben Grundlagen, aus denen auch alles Wissen und alle Erkenntnis herausquillt. Und wir fühlen dann, wie tief es aus Goethes Seele gesprochen ist, wenn er später einmal den Ausspruch tut: «Das Schöne ist eine Manifestation geheimer Naturgesetze, die uns ohne dessen Erscheinung ewig wären verborgen geblieben!» So sieht Goethe in der Kunst eine Offenbarung von Naturgesetzen, eine Sprache, durch die ausgesprochen wird, was auf andere Weise durch die Erkenntnis erlangt wird in andern Forschungsgebieten.

Und wenn wir von Goethe zu einer neueren Persönlichkeit gehen, die ebenso suchte, eine Mission in die Kunst hineinzulegen und mit der Kunst der Menschheit etwas zu geben, was mit den Quellen des Daseins zusammenhängt — wenn wir zu Richard Wagner kommen, finden wir in seinen Schriften, in denen er sich selber klar zu werden versuchte über Wesen und Bedeutung des künstlerischen Schaffens, manche ähnlichen Andeutungen über die innere Verwandtschaft von Wahrheit und Schönheit, von Erkenntnis und Kunst. So sagt er mit Anlehnung an Beethovens Neunte Symphonie, daß etwas aus diesen Klängen tönt, was wie Offenbarung ist aus einer andern Welt, und was doch so verschieden ist von all dem, was von uns in den bloß vernunftgemäßen oder logischen Formen aufgefaßt würde. Aber für diese Offenbarungen durch die Kunst gelte das eine zum mindesten: daß sie auf unsere Seele mit einer überzeugenden Kraft wirken und unsere Gefühle durchdringen mit einer Empfindung von Wahrheit, gegen welche eigentlich alles logisierende und bloß vernünftige Erkenntnisvermögen nicht aufkommen kann. Und ein andermal sagt Richard Wagner mit Bezug auf die symphonische Musik, daß aus den Instrumenten dieser Musik etwas herausklänge, wie wenn sie Organ wären der Schöpfungsgeheimnisse; denn sie offenbarten etwas wie die Urgefühle der Schöpfung, nach denen sich das Chaos ordnete, und die bei der Harmonisierung des Weltenchaos wirkten, lange bevor wohl ein menschliches Herz vorhanden gewesen sei, um diese Gefühle der Schöpfung zu vernehmen. — Also Wahrheit, eine geheimnisvolle Erkenntnis, eine Offenbarung, die sich dem an die Seite stellen kann, was man sonst Erkenntnis und Wissen nennt, sieht auch Richard Wagner in den Offenbarungen der Kunst.

Eines darf auch noch erwähnt werden: Wer im Sinne der Geisteswissenschaft vor die großen Kunstwerke der Menschheit tritt, der hat das Gefühl, daß aus ihnen etwas spricht, was eine andere Offenbarung ist des Wahrheitssuchens der Menschheit. Und der Geisteswissenschafter fühlt sich verwandt dem, was aus der Kunst spricht. Ja, es ist keine Übertreibung: Er fühlt sich den Offenbarungen des Künstlergeistes verwandter als so manchem, was sonst heute als sogenannte geistige Offenbarung leichten Herzens hingenommen wird.

Woher kommt es, daß wahrhaft künstlerische Persönlichkeiten der Kunst eine solche Mission zuschreiben, daß sich das Herz des Geisteswissenschafters so hingezogen fühlt gerade zu den geheimnisvollen Offenbarungen der großen Kunst?

Wir werden eindringen in das, was Antwort auf diese Fragen geben kann, wenn wir mancherlei von dem zusammenfassen und anwenden, was in den Vorträgen dieses Winterzyklus vor unsere Seele getreten ist.

Wenn wir die Bedeutung und Aufgabe der Kunst erkennen wollen in dem Sinne, mit dem wir es den ganzen Winter hindurch in diesen Vorträgen gehalten haben, daß wir uns Antwort geben - nicht nach menschlichen Meinungen und nach der Willkür unseres klügelnden Verstandes, sondern so, wie uns die Tatsachen der Welt- und der Menschheitsentwickelung selber antworten —, dann müssen wir die Frage, die wir haben, richten an die Entwickelung und Entfaltung der Kunst selber in der Menschheitsentwickelung. Daher wollen wir uns von dem, was die Kunst gewesen ist, was die Kunst geworden ist, einmal sagen lassen ihre Bedeutung für die Menschheit. — Allerdings, wenn wir die Anfänge der Kunst betrachten wollen, wie sie zunächst als Dichtkunst dem Menschen nahetritt, so müssen wir nach gewöhnlichen Begriffen weit zurückgehen. Aber wir wollen zunächst in bezug auf die Dichtkunst nur so weit zurückgehen, als menschliche physische Dokumente uns führen können. Wir wollen zurückgehen bis zu derjenigen, heute für viele legendenhaften Gestalt, mit der sich die Kunst des Abendlandes als Dichtkunst einleitet: zu Homer, von dem die griechische Dichtkunst ihren Ausgangspunkt nimmt, und dessen Schaffen uns erhalten ist in den beiden großen Gesängen, in den beiden großen erzählenden Dichtungen der «Ilias» und der «Odyssee». Merkwürdig ist es gleich, wenn wir die beiden Dichtungen beginnen auf uns wirken zu lassen, daß derjenige oder — da wir heute nicht über die Frage nach der Persönlichkeit uns ergehen wollen — diejenigen, von denen diese Dichtungen stammen, uns gleich im Anfang ein unpersönliches Element ankündigen:

Singe, o Muse, vom Zorn mir des Peleiden Achilleus...

so beginnt die «Ilias», die erste Homerische Dichtung; und wieder: «Singe mir, Muse, den Mann, den vielgereisten...» beginnt die zweite Dichtung, die «Odyssee». Derjenige, von dem diese Verse geflossen sind, will also darauf hinweisen, daß er das, was aus seinem Munde spricht, eigentlich einer höheren Kraft verdankt, daß es ihm irgendwoher kommt, und daß er am besten den Tatbestand seiner Seele bezeichnet, wenn er sich nicht darauf beruft, was diese Seele selber zu sagen hat, sondern was ihr eingegeben wird von einer Macht, welche für sie — das spüren wir, wenn wir Homer nur ein bißchen verstehen — nicht nur ein Symbol war, sondern etwas ganz Gegenständliches und Wesenhaftes. Wenn heute der Mensch wenig dabei fühlt, wenn Homer sagt: «Singe, o Muse...», dann ist das nicht die Schuld des Umstandes, daß Homer nur ein Sinnbild geben will, nur umschreiben will, was in seiner Seele vorgeht, sondern es ist vielmehr die Schuld des modernen Menschen, der in seiner Seele die Erfahrungen nicht mehr hat, aus denen herausgeflossen ist eine so unpersönliche Dichtung wie die des Homer. Verstehen allerdings können wir diese Unpersönlichkeit im Beginne der abendländischen Dichtkunst nur, wenn wir uns fragen: Was mag denn diesem Beginne der abendländischen Dichtkunst vorangegangen sein? Woraus mag_ sie selber geflossen sein?

Da kommen wir, wenn wir im geisteswissenschaftlichen Sinne die Entwickelung der Menschheit betrachten, zu den alten Fragen nach den Formen des menschlichen Bewußtseins überhaupt. Wir haben bei unsern Betrachtungen der Menschheitsentwickelung öfter betont, daß sich die Kräfte der menschlichen Seele im Laufe der Jahrtausende geändert haben, und daß alle unsere Seelenkräfte einmal einen Anfang genommen haben. Wenn wir in die Vergangenheit zurückgehen, kommen wir zu Menschen, deren Seelen mit ganz anderen Kräften ausgestattet sind, als die Seelen der heutigen Menschen. Wir haben betont, daß in urferner Vergangenheit, in die uns allerdings keine äußere Geschichte, sondern allein die geisteswissenschaftliche Forschung zurückführt, das ganze menschliche Bewußtsein anders gewirkt hat, und daß als eine natürliche Kraft der menschlichen Seele ein uraltes, traumhaftes Hellsehen allen Menschen eigen war. Bevor die Menschenseelen in das materielle Leben so weit hinunter gestiegen sind, daß sie die Welt in der heutigen Weise anschauten, war ihnen die geistige Welt etwas durchaus Wirkliches und Wesenhaftes, das sie um sich herum wahrnahmen. Aber wir haben davon gesprochen, daß sie die geistige Welt nicht wahrnahmen in der Art des geschulten hellseherischen Bewußtseins, das verknüpft ist mit einem klar ausgesprochenen Mittelpunkt des menschlichen Seelenlebens, durch den sich der Mensch als ein Ich, als ein Selbst erfaßt. Wenn wir zurückgehen in urferne Vergangenheit, dann ist das Ich-Gefühl, das geworden ist, das sich entwickelt hat durch die Jahrtausende und aber Jahrtausende, noch nicht vorhanden. Dafür aber, daß der Mensch diesen Mittelpunkt in seinem Innern nicht hatte, waren seine geistigen Sinne nach außen aufgeschlossen, und er sah eine geistige Welt wie in einer Art realem Traum, der geistige Wirklichkeiten wiedergab. Aber es war eben doch eine Art traumhaftes, Ich-loses hellseherisches Bewußtsein.

Hineingesehen hat der Mensch in die geistige Welt, aus der sein eigentlicher innerer Mensch gekommen ist in urferner Vergangenheit. Und in gewaltigen Bildern — wie in Traumbildern — standen vor seiner Seele die Kräfte, welche hinter unserem physischen Dasein stehen. In dieser geistigen Welt sah der Urmensch seine Götter, sah er sich abspielen die Tatsachen und Geschehnisse zwischen seinen Götterwesen. Und es ist tatsächlich ein Irrtum, wenn die heutige Forschung glaubt, daß die Göttersagen der verschiedenen Völker nur ein Spiel der «Volksphantasie» seien. Wenn man sich vorstellen will, daß in urferner Vergangenheit die menschliche Seele in ähnlicher Weise wie heute gewirkt hat, nur daß sie sich damals mehr in Phantasie erging als in dem in feste Gesetze eingeschnürten Verstand, und daß sich die Gestalten, die in den Göttersagen erhalten sind, aus der Phantasie heraus geschaffen haben, dann ist das eigentlich eine Phantasie; dann phantasieren diejenigen, die einen solchen Glauben haben. Für den Menschen der Urzeit waren die Vorgänge, welche sich in den Mythologien darstellen, Wirklichkeiten, Realitäten. Mythen, Sagen, selbst Märchen und Legenden sind herausgeboren aus einer ursprünglichen Fähigkeit der menschlichen Seele. Das hängt eben damit zusammen, daß das menschliche Ich in urferner Vergangenheit noch nicht so wirkte wie heute, daß der Mensch noch nicht seinen festen Mittelpunkt hatte, durch den er bei sich und in sich ist. Und weil er diesen Mittelpunkt noch nicht hatte, schloß er sich auch nicht in seinem Ich, in seiner eng umgrenzten Seele ab, trennte sich noch nicht so wie später von der Umgebung. Er lebte in seiner Umgebung darinnen als ein Glied, das dazugehörte, während der heutige Mensch sich als Wesen abgetrennt fühlt von der Außenwelt. Und wie der Mensch heute fühlen kann, daß in seinen physischen Organismus hineinströmt und herausströmt zur Unterhaltung seines Lebens die physische Kraft, so fühlte der Mensch der Urzeit mit seinem hellseherischen Bewußtsein, daß geistige Kräfte in ihm aus- und einziehen. Er fühlte eine innige Wechselwirkung mit den Kräften der großen Welt. Ja, er konnte sagen: Wenn in meiner Seele etwas vorgeht, wenn ich etwas denke, fühle oder will, dann bin ich im Grunde nicht ein eingeschlossenes Wesen, sondern ein Wesen, in das hineinwirken die Kräfte der Wesen, die ich schaue. Und diese Wesen, die ich schaue, die draußen sind, die schicken in mich hinein innere Kräfte, um mich anzuregen, Gedanken zu haben, Empfindungen zu haben, Willensimpulse zum Ausdruck zu bringen. — So fühlte der Mensch im Schoße der geistigen Welt, daß in ihm göttlich-geistige Mächte dachten; er fühlte, wenn seine Gefühle auf und ab wogten, daß darinnen geistige Mächte wirkten; und wenn sein Wille etwas vollbrachte, fühlte er, daß sich hinein ergossen in ihn göttlich-geistige Mächte mit ihrem Wollen, mit ihren Zielen. Der Mensch fühlte sich in den Urzeiten als ein Gefäß, durch das sich geistige Mächte zum Ausdruck brachten.

Damit weisen wir auf eine ferne Urzeit hin, die sich aber durch allerlei Zwischenstufen ausdehnte bis zu den Zeiten Homers. Leicht ist herauszufinden, wie sich Homer nur als eine Art Fortsetzer des Urbewußtseins der Menschheit ausnimmt. Dafür brauchen wir nur einige Züge aus der «Ilias» anzuführen. — Homer stellt darin jenen gewaltigen Kampf der Griechen gegen die Trojaner dar. Aber wie tut er das? Was lag denn nach dem Bewußtsein der Griechen diesem Kampf zugrunde?

Wenn auch Homer nicht davon ausgeht, so lag diesem Kampf doch nicht bloß etwas zugrunde, was in allen jenen Leidenschaften und Begierden, Begriffen und Vorstellungen, die vom menschlichen Ich ausgehen, sich als Gegnerschaft abspielte. Waren es bloß die Leidenschaften der Trojaner als Persönlichkeiten und als Volk gewesen, waren es bloß die Leidenschaften der Griechen als Persönlichkeiten oder Volk gewesen, welche da miteinander kämpften? Waren bloß die Kräfte, die vom menschlichen Ich ausgingen, dort auf dem Kampfplatze? Nein! Die Sage, die uns die Verbindung anzeigt zwischen Urbewußtsein und homerischem Bewußtsein, erzählt uns, daß bei einem Fest der drei Göttinnen Hera, Pallas Athene und Aphrodite sich um den Preis der Schönheit stritten, und daß ein menschlicher Kenner der Schönheit, Paris, der Sohn des trojanischen Königs, zu entscheiden hatte, welche die Schönste sei. Und Paris hatte der Aphrodite den Apfel zugeworfen, den Preis der Schönheit, und sie hatte ihm dafür das schönste Weib auf Erden versprochen: Helena, die Gattin des Königs Menelaos von Sparta. Paris konnte Helena nur durch einen Raub erringen. Und weil die Griechen den Raub rächen wollten, rüsteten sie zum Kampfe gegen das jenseits des Ägäischen Meeres wohnende Volk der Trojaner. Dort spielte sich der Kampf ab.

Weswegen entbrennen die menschlichen Leidenschaften und alles, was Homer von der «Muse» schildern läßt? Sind es nur Dinge, die sich hier in der physischen Welt unter den Menschen abgespielt haben? Nein! Das griechische Bewußtsein zeigt uns, daß hinter dem, was sich unter Menschen zuträgt, der Streit der Göttinnen steht. — Es sucht also der Grieche noch mit seinem damaligen Bewußtsein die Ursachen dessen, was sich in der physischen Welt abspielt, und sagt: Ich kann hier die Kräfte nicht finden, welche die Menschenkräfte aufeinanderplatzen lassen. Ich muß hinaufgehen, dahin, wo Götterkräfte und Göttermächte einander gegenüberstehen. — Die göttlichen Mächte, wie sie damals in Bildern geschaut wurden, wie wir es eben beschrieben haben, spielten hinein in den Kampf der Menschen. Da sehen wir also herauswachsen aus dem Urbewußtsein der Menschheit, was uns als erstes großes Produkt der Dichtkunst entgegentritt: die «Ilias» des Homers. Daher können wir sagen: In Verse gebracht, in menschlicher Weise dargestellt vom Standpunkte eines späteren menschlichen Bewußtseins aus, finden wir bei Homer noch einen Nachklang dessen, was das Urbewußtsein der Menschheit gesehen hat. Und nichts anderes ist da geschehen, als daß wir in der Periode vor Homer zu suchen haben jenen Punkt in der Entwickelung der Menschheit, wo sich für das Volk, das sich dann in der griechischen Welt zum Ausdruck brachte, zugeschlossen hat das hellsichtige Bewußtsein, so daß gleichsam nur ein Nachklang davon zurückgeblieben ist.

Ein Mensch der Urzeit hätte gesagt: Ich sehe meine Götter kämpfen in der geistigen Welt, die meinem hellsichtigen Bewußtsein offenliegt! So hat der Mensch der homerischen Zeit nicht mehr hineinschauen können; aber eine Erinnerung daran war noch lebendig. Und wie sich der Mensch inspiriert fühlte von den Götterwelten, in denen er drinnen war, so fühlte der Dichter der Homerischen Epen noch in seiner Seele fortwalten dieselben göttlichen Kräfte, die früher der Mensch in sich hineinspielen fühlte. Daher spricht er: Die die Seele inspirierende Muse in mir sagt das! So schließt sich direkt die Homerische Dichtung an den richtig verstandenen Mythos der Urzeit an. Wenn wir so Homer verstehen, sehen wir in ihm etwas auftreten, was wie ein Ersatz für die alten hellseherischen Kräfte in der menschlichen Seele wirkte. Die alte Hellseherkraft hatte für das gewöhnliche Menschenbewußtsein durch ihr Zurückgehen das Tor zu den geistigen Welten zugeschlossen. Aber in der Entwickelung der Menschheit ist etwas zurückgeblieben wie ein Ersatz für das alte Hellsehen. Und das ist die dichterische Phantasie bei Homer. So haben die lenkenden Weltenmächte das unmittelbar hellseherische Anschauen dem Menschen entzogen und ihm dafür einen Ersatz gegeben, etwas, was ähnlich wie das alte Hellsehen in der Seele leben und in der Seele eine gestaltende Kraft hervorrufen kann.

Die dichterische Phantasie ist eine Abschlagszahlung der die Menschheit lenkenden Mächte für das Hellsehen in urferner Vergangenheit.

Nun wollen wir uns noch an etwas anderes erinnern. — In dem Vortrage über «Das menschliche Gewissen» war gezeigt worden, wie an den verschiedenen Orten der Erdentwickelung in ganz verschiedener Weise das Zurückgehen der alten hellseherischen Kräfte der Menschen stattgefunden hat. Im Orient finden wir noch verhältnismäßig spät ein altes Hellsehen in den Seelen der Menschen vorhanden. Und wir haben auch betont, daß mehr gegen den Westen hinüber die hellseherischen Fähigkeiten bei den Völkern Europas weniger vorhanden sind. Das ist aber auch deshalb der Fall, weil bei diesen Völkern bei verhältnismäßig noch untergeordneten anderen Seelenkräften und Seelenfähigkeiten ein starkes Ich-Gefühl im Seelenmittelpunkte sich geltend machte. Dieses Hervortreten des Ich-Gefühls in den verschiedenen Gegenden Europas entwickelte sich aber in der verschiedensten Weise, anders im Norden als im Westen, anders aber namentlich in Südeuropa. Besonders in Sizilien und Italien entwickelte sich in den vorchristlichen Zeiten das Ich-Gefühl am allerintensivsten. Als sich im Orient noch lange die Seelenkräfte in einem Außer-sichSein des Menschen, ohne ein Ich-Gefühl, fortgesetzt hatten, waren in den genannten Gegenden Europas Menschen, die ein starkes Ich-Gefühl entwickelten, weil sie nicht mehr teilhaftig waren des alten Hellsehens. In demselben Maße, als sich dem Menschen außen die geistige Welt entzieht, lebt das Innere, das Ich-Gefühl, auf. Und namentlich in den heutigen italienischen und sizilianischen Gegenden entwickelte sich stark das IchGefühl des Menschen. — Wie verschieden mußten daher in gewissen alten Zeiten die Seelen der asiatischen Völker und die Seelen jener Völker, die auf den gekennzeichneten Gebieten gewohnt haben, gewesen sein. Drüben in Asien sehen wir noch, wie in gewaltigen Traumbildern die Weltengeheimnisse sich vor der Seele entrollen, wie der Mensch sein geistiges Auge nach außen richtet und sich vor ihm abrollen die Taten der Götter. Und in dem, was dieser Mensch erzählen kann, haben wir etwas zu sehen, was wir nennen können: die Urerzählung der der Welt zugrunde liegenden geistigen Tatsachen. Als das alte Hellsehen abgelöst wurde durch den späteren Ersatz, durch die Phantasie, da entwickelte sich dort besonders das anschauliche Gleichnis, das Bild. Bei den westlichen Völkern dagegen, in Italien und Sizilien, entwickelte sich etwas, was aus einem in sich gefestigten Ich heraussproß, was eine Überkraft entwikkeln kann. Bei diesen Völkern ist es die Begeisterung, was sich der Seele entringt, ohne daß sie eine unmittelbare geistige Anschauung hat; die Ahnungen der menschlichen Seele sind es, die hinaufgehen zu dem, was die Seele ja nicht sehen kann. Da haben wir denn nicht die Nacherzählungen dessen, was man als Taten der Götter gesehen hat. Aber in dem inbrünstigen Hinlenken der Seele in dem menschlichen Wort oder in dem Gesange zu dem, was man nur ahnen kann, quillt aus der Begeisterung das Urgebet, das Preislied für jene göttlichen Gewalten, die man nicht sehen kann, weil das hellseherische Bewußtsein hier weniger ausgebildet ist. Und in Griechenland, in dem Lande dazwischen, strömen die beiden Welten zusammen. Da finden sich Menschen, welche Anregungen von beiden Seiten her empfangen: Da kommt von Osten her die bildhafte Anschauung, und von Westen kommt herüber die Begeisterung, die im Hymnus sich hingibt an die geahnten göttlich-geistigen Mächte der Welt. Da wurde innerhalb der griechischen Kultur möglich durch das Zusammenfließen der beiden Strömungen der Fortgang der homerischen Dichtung, deren Zeit wir zu suchen haben im 8. bis 9. Jahrhundert vor der christlichen Zeitrechnung, zu dem, was wir dann bei Äschylos finden, drei bis vier Jahrhunderte später in der griechischen Kultur.

Äschylos stellt sich uns so recht dar als eine Persönlichkeit, auf die allerdings nicht mehr gewirkt hat die volle Kraft der bildhaften Anschauung des Ostens, die überzeugende Kraft, die zum Beispiel bei Homer noch als ein Nachklang gegeben war des alten Anschauens der Göttertaten und ihres Hereinwirkens in die Menschheit. Der Nachklang war schon sehr schwach; so schwach, daß in Äschylos’ Seele zunächst gefühlsmäßig etwas auftrat wie eine Art Unglaube an das, was früher in ihrem ursprünglichen hellseherischen Zustande die Menschen in Bildern über die Götterwelt gesehen haben. Bei Homer finden wir es noch, daß er durchaus weiß, wie das menschliche Bewußtsein einst hinaufgekommen ist zu den Gewalten, die als göttlich-geistige Gewalten hinter dem stehen, was menschliche Leidenschaften und Gefühle ausmachen in der physischen Welt. Daher schildert Homer nicht nur einen Kampf, der sich abspielt, sondern wir sehen sogar, wie die Götter eingreifen. Zeus, Apollo greifen ein, wo die menschlichen Leidenschaften wirken, und bringen etwas zum Ausdruck. Die Götter sind eine Realität, die der Dichter hineinwirken läßt in die Dichtung.

Wie ist das anders geworden bei Äschylos! Auf ihn hat schon mit einer besonderen Gewalt gewirkt das andere, was vom Westen herüberkam: das menschliche Ich, die innere Geschlossenheit der menschlichen Seele. Deshalb ist Äschylos zuerst imstande, den Menschen hinzustellen, der aus seinem Ich heraus handelt und sich loszulösen beginnt mit seinem Bewußtsein von den in ihn einströmenden Göttergewalten. An die Stelle der Götter, die wir bei Homer noch finden, tritt bei Äschylos der handelnde Mensch — wenn auch erst in seinem Anfang. Daher wird Äschylos der Dramatiker, der den handelnden Menschen in den Mittelpunkt der Handlung stellt. Während unter dem Einfluß der bildhaften Phantasie des Ostens das Epos entstehen mußte, entwickelte sich unter dem Einfluß des sich im Westen geltend machenden persönlichen Ich das Drama, das den handelnden Menschen in den Mittelpunkt stellt. - Nehmen wir das Beispiel des Orest, der den Muttermord auf sich geladen hat und nun die Furien erblickt. Ja, Homer spielt noch hinein; so schnell vergehen die Dinge nicht. Äschylos ist sich noch bewußt, daß einmal die Götter von den Menschen in den Bildern geschaut worden sind, aber er ist nahe daran, das aufzugeben. Ganz charakteristisch ist es, daß Apollo es ist, der noch in Homers Dichtung mit voller Macht wirkt, der den Orest anstiftet zum Muttermord. Nachher aber behält der Gott nicht mehr recht; nachher regt sich das menschliche Ich, und es erweist sich, daß in Orest sich das menschliche Ich, der innere Mensch geltend macht. Apollo wird sogar geradezu unrecht gegeben; er wird abgewiesen. An dem, was er hereinströmen lassen will, wird gerade gezeigt, daß er nicht mehr die vollständige Gewalt über Orest haben kann. Daher war auch Äschylos der berufene Dichter für eine solche Gestalt wie den «Prometheus», der gerade jener göttliche Held ist, der darstellt die Befreiung des Menschentums von den göttlichen Mächten und sich titanisch gegen sie auflehnt.

So sehen wir mit dem erwachenden Ich-Gefühl, das herübergetragen wird durch die Geheimnisse der Menschheitsentwickelung aus dem Westen, und das sich begegnet in der Seele des Äschylos mit den Erinnerungen der bildhaften Phantasie des Orients, das Drama seinen Anfang nehmen. Und ganz interessant ist es, daß uns die Überlieferung wunderbar bestätigt, was wir jetzt rein aus der geisteswissenschaftlichen Erkenntnis heraus zu gewinnen versuchten.

Da gibt es eine wunderbare Überlieferung, die halb rechtfertigt den Äschylos, daß er keine Mysteriengeheimnisse verraten haben könne — dessen war er angeklagt -, da er gar nicht in den Eleusinischen Mysterien eingeweiht war. Er ist gar nicht darauf ausgegangen, etwas darzustellen, was er hätte aus den Tempelgeheimnissen gewinnen können, und aus dem heraus Homers Dichtungen geflossen sind. Er steht den Mysterien in gewisser Beziehung fern. Dagegen wird erzählt, daß er auf Sizilien, in Syrakus, aufgenommen habe jene Geheimnisse, die sich beziehen auf das Hervorgehen des menschlichen Ich. Dieses Hervorgehen des Ich prägt sich in anderer Weise dort aus, wo wir die Orphiker entfalten sehen die alte Form der Ode, des Hymnus, den die menschliche Seele hinaufschickt zu den nicht mehr gesehenen, zu den nur geahnten göttlich-geistigen Welten. Da hat die Kunst einen Schritt vorwärts gemacht. Da sehen wir, daß sie ganz naturgemäß herausgewachsen ist aus der alten Wahrheit, daß sie aber den Weg gemacht hat zum menschlichen Ich, und daß sie so geworden ist, wie sie ist, weil sie erfassen sollte das denkende, strebende und wollende menschliche Ich. Indem der Mensch von einem Leben in der Außenwelt hineinging in sein eigenes Inneres, wurden aus den Gestalten der Homerischen Dichtung die dramatischen Persönlichkeiten des Äschylos, entstand neben dem Epos das Drama.

So sehen wir fortleben die uralten Wahrheiten in anderer Form in der Kunst, sehen durch die Phantasie wiedergegeben, was das alte Hellsehen hat gewinnen können. Und was sich die Kunst aus den alten Zeiten bewahrt hat, das sehen wir angewendet auf das zu sich selbst gekommene menschliche Ich, auf die menschliche Persönlichkeit.

Und jetzt machen wir einen gewaltigen Schritt vorwärts. Gehen wir um Jahrhunderte weiter, bis ins 13., 14. Jahrhundert der nachchristlichen Zeit zu jener gewaltigen Gestalt, die in der Mitte des Mittelalters uns in so ergreifender Art hinaufführt in die Region, die das menschliche Ich erlangen kann, wenn es sich aus sich heraus hinaufarbeitet zu der Anschauung der göttlichgeistigen Welt: gehen wir zu Dante. Dieser hat uns in seiner «Commedia» ein Werk geschaffen, über das Goethe, nachdem er es wiederholt auf sich hat wirken lassen, da es ihm im Alter wieder in der Übersetzung eines Bekannten vor Augen trat, die Worte niederschrieb, in denen er dem Übersetzer seinen Dank für die Zusendung der Übersetzung ausdrückte:

Welch hoher Dank ist Dem zu sagen,
Der frisch uns an das Buch gebracht,
Das allem Forschen, allen Klagen
Ein grandioses Ende macht!

Welche Schritte ist nun die Kunst gegangen von Äschylos bis zu Dante? Wie stellt uns Dante wieder eine göttlich-geistige Welt dar? Wie führt er uns durch die drei Stufen der geistigen Welt, durch Hölle, Fegefeuer und Himmel, durch die Welten, die hinter dem sinnlichen Dasein des Menschen liegen?

Da sehen wir, wie allerdings in derselben Richtung, man möchte sagen, der Grundgeist der Menschheitsentwickelung weitergearbeitet hat. Bei Äschylos sehen wir noch klar, daß er überall die geistigen Mächte noch hat: ‘es treten dem Prometheus die Götter entgegen, Zeus, Hermes und so weiter; dem Agamemnon treten die Götter entgegen. Da ist noch der Nachklang der alten Schauungen, dessen, was das alte, hellsehende Bewußtsein in uralten Zeiten aus der Welt heraussaugen konnte. Ganz anders Dante. Dante zeigt uns, wie er rein durch Versenkung in die eigene Seele, durch die Entwickelung der in der Seele schlummernden Kräfte und durch die Besiegung alles dessen, was die Entfaltung dieser Kräfte hindert, imstande geworden ist «in des Lebens Mitte», wie er charakteristisch sagt, das heißt im fünfunddreißigsten Jahre, seinen Blick hinzuwenden in die geistige Welt. Während also die Menschen mit dem alten Hellseherbewußtsein den Blick hinausrichteten in die geistige Umgebung, während es bei Äschylos noch so war, daß er wenigstens rechnete mit den alten Göttergestalten, sehen wir in Dante einen Dichter, der hinuntersteigt in die eigene Seele, der ganz in der Persönlichkeit und ihren inneren Geheimnissen verbleibt, und der durch den Weg dieser persönlichen Entwickelung hineinkommt in die geistige Welt, die er in so gewaltigen Bildern in der «Commedia» entwickelt. Da ist die Seele der einzelnen Dante-Persönlichkeit ganz allein. Da nimmt sie nicht Rücksicht darauf, was von außen offenbart ist. Niemand kann sich vorstellen, daß Dante in einer ähnlichen Weise schildern könnte wie Homer oder Äschylos; daß er aus Überlieferungen übernommen hätte die Gestalten des alten Hellsehens; sondern Dante steht auf dem Boden dessen, was im Mittelalter entwickelt werden kann ganz innerhalb der Kraft der menschlichen Persönlichkeit. Und wir haben vor uns, was wir schon öfter betont haben, daß der Mensch dasjenige, was seinen hellseherischen Blick trübt, überwinden muß.

Das stellt uns Dante dar in anschaulichen Bildern der Seele. Wo der Grieche noch Realitäten gesehen hat in der geistigen Welt, da sehen wir bei Dante nur noch Bilder, Bilder derjenigen Seelenkräfte, die überwunden werden müssen. Diejenigen Kräfte, die aus der Empfindungsseele — wie wir dieses Seelenglied zu nennen pflegen — kommen, und die niedere Kräfte sein und das Ich von der Entwickelung zu höheren Stufen abhalten können, müssen überwunden werden. Darauf weist Dante hin; und ebenso müssen überwunden werden diejenigen Kräfte der Verstandesseele und Bewußtseinsseele, welche die höhere Entwickelung des Ich hindern können. Auf die gegenteiligen Kräfte aber, insofern sie gute sind, weist schon Plato hin: Weisheit, die Kraft der Bewußtseinsseele; Starkmut in sich selber, die Kraft, welche der Verstandes- oder Gemütsseele entstammt, und Mäßigkeit, dasjenige, was die Empfindungsseele in ihrer höchsten Entfaltung erreicht. Wenn das Ich durchgeht durch eine Entwickelung, die getragen ist von der Mäßigkeit der Empfindungsseele, von der Starkheit oder inneren Geschlossenheit der Verstandes- oder Gemütsseele, von der Weisheit der Bewußtseinsseele, dann kommt es allmählich zu höheren Seelenerlebnissen, die in die geistige Welt hinaufführen. Aber jene Kräfte müssen erst überwunden werden, welche der Mäßigkeit, der inneren Geschlossenheit und der Weisheit entgegenarbeiten. Der Mäßigkeit wirkt entgegen die Unmäßigkeit, die GefräBigkeit, sie muß überwunden werden. Daß sie bekämpft werden muß, und wie man ihr begegnet, wenn der Mensch durch seine eigenen Seelenkräfte in die geistige Welt eintreten will, das stellt Dante dar. Eine Wölfin ist für Dante das Bild für die Unmäßigkeit, für die Schattenseiten der Empfindungsseele. Dann begegnen uns die Schattenseiten der Verstandesseele als der Entwickelung widerstrebende Kräfte: Was nicht in sich geschlossener Starkmut ist, was sinnlos aggressive Kräfte der Verstandesseele sind, das tritt uns in Dantes Phantasie als ein zu Bekämpfendes in dem Löwen entgegen. Und die Weisheit, die nicht nach den Höhen der Welt hinaufstrebt, die sich nur als Klugheit und Schlauheit auf die Welt richtet, tritt uns in dem dritten Bilde, in dem Luchs, entgegen. Die «Luchs-Augen» sollen darstellen Augen, die nicht Weiisheitsaugen sind, die in die geistige Welt hineinsehen, sondern Augen, die nur auf die Sinnenwelt gerichtet sind. Und nachdem Dante zeigt, wie er sich gegen solche der Entwickelung widerstrebenden Kräfte wehrt, schildert er uns, wie er hinaufkommt in die Welten, die hinter dem sinnlichen Dasein liegen.

Einen Menschen haben wir in Dante vor uns: auf sich selbst gestellt, in sich selber suchend, aus sich selber herausgestaltend die Kräfte, welche in die geistige Welt hineinführen. So ist das, was in dieser Richtung schafft, aus der Außenwelt ganz in das menschliche Innere hineingezogen.

So schildert in Dante ein Dichter, was in dem Innersten der menschlichen Seele erlebt werden kann. Da hat die Dichtung auf ihrem Weiterschreiten das menschliche Innere um ein weiteres Stück ergriffen, ist intimer geworden mit dem Ich, hat sich wiederum mehr hineingezogen in das menschliche Ich. — So standen die Gestalten, die uns Homer geschaffen hat, eingesponnen in das Netz der göttlich-geistigen Gewalten; so fühlte sich Homer selbst noch darinnen eingesponnen, indem er sagt: Die Muse singe das, was ich zu sagen habe! Dante steht vor uns — ein Mensch, allein mit seiner Seele, die jetzt weiß, daß sie aus sich selber die Kräfte entfalten muß, die in die geistige Welt hineinführen sollen. Wir sehen es namentlich immer unmöglicher werden, daß die Phantasie sich anlehnt an das, was von außen hereinspricht. Und wie hier nicht mehr bloß Meinungen wirken, sondern Kräfte, die im Seelenleben des Menschen tief begründet sind, das mag aus einer kleinen Tatsache hervorgehen.

Ein Epiker wollte in der neueren Zeit der Dichter werden einer heiligen Erzählung: Klopstock, ein Mensch tief religiöser Natur, mit sogar tieferen Untergründen wie Homer, und der daher bewußt für die neuere Zeit das sein will, was Homer für das Altertum gewesen ist. Er versuchte, Homers Sinnesart zu erneuern. Aber nun will er wahr gegen sich sein. Da kann er nicht sagen: «Sing mir, o Muse...», sondern er muß seinen «Messias» beginnen: «Singe, unsterbliche Seele, der sündigen Menschen Erlösung...». So sehen wir in der Tat, wie in denjenigen, auf die es ankommt, der Fortschritt im künstlerischen Schaffen in der Menschheit wohl vorhanden ist.

Gehen wir bei unseren Riesenschritten wiederum ein paar Jahrhunderte weiter. Schauen wir hinauf von Dante zu einem großen Dichter des 16. bis 17. Jahrhunderts, zu Shakespeare. Da sehen wir wieder an Shakespeare einen merkwürdigen Fortschritt — Fortschritt jetzt hier im Sinne des «Fortschreitens» gemeint. Wie man Shakespeares Schaffen sonst werten will, das ist Sache des Gefühls, das ist Kritik. Hier handelt es sich nicht um Kritik, sondern um Tatsachen; nicht auf das Höherstellen des einen oder des andern kommt es an, sondern auf das notwendige gesetzmäßige Fortschreiten.

Wir sehen die Menschheitsentwickelung auf unserem Gebiete, indem sie fortschreitet von Dante zu Shakespeare, merkwürdige Richtungen nehmen. Was ist uns bei Dante besonders aufgefallen? Ein Mensch steht mit sich, mit seinen Offenbarungen der geistigen Welt auf seine Art allein; er schildert das, was er als ein großes Erlebnis — aber in seiner Seele — erlebt hat. Können Sie sich vorstellen, daß dieser eine Mensch, Dante, mit derselben Wahrheit wirken würde, wenn er uns fünf- bis sechsmal nacheinander seine Visionen schildern würde, einmal so, das andere Mal so? Oder haben Sie nicht das Gefühl: Wenn ein Dichter wie Dante so etwas schildert, dann ist die Welt, in die sich der Dichter dabei hineinversetzt, eine solche, die man eigentlich nur einmal schildern kann? Das hat Dante daher auch getan. Es ist die Welt eines Menschen, eines Augenblickes aber auch, in dem der Mensch eins wird mit dem, was für ihn die geistige Welt ist. Man müßte daher sagen: Dante lebt sich ein in das Menschlich-Persönliche. Und er tut es so, daß dieses Menschlich-Persönliche sein eigenes ist. Darauf ist er noch angewiesen, dieses eigene Menschlich-Persönliche nach allen Seiten hin zu durchqueren.

Jetzt gehen wir zu Shakespeare. — Shakespeare schafft eine Fülle von Gestalten; er prägt alle möglichen Gestalten: einen Othello, einen Lear, Hamlet, eine Cordeliia, Desdemona. Aber diese Shakespeare-Gestalten sind so geprägt, daß wir hinter ihnen nichts Göttliches unmittelbar sehen, wenn das geistige Auge sie in der physischen Welt sieht mit rein menschlichen Eigenschaften, mit rein menschlichen Impulsen. Dasjenige wird in ihrer Seele gesucht, was unmittelbar entspringt aus der Seele in bezug auf Denken, Fühlen und Wollen. Einzelne menschliche Individualitäten sind es, die Shakespeare schildert. Aber schildert er sie so, daß er in jeder Individualität Shakespeare ist, wie Dante der Mensch allein ist, der sich in seine Persönlichkeit hinein vertieft? Nein, Shakespeare ist wieder einen Schritt weitergegangen; er hat den Schritt gemacht, der noch weiter in das Persönliche hineingeht, nicht nur zu der einen Persönlichkeit, sondern zu den verschiedenen Persönlichkeiten. Shakespeare verleugnet sich jedesmal selbst, wenn er Lear, Hamlet und so weiter schildert, und er ist nie versucht, zu sagen, was er für Vorstellungen hat, sondern er ist als Shakespeare vollständig ausgelöscht und lebt ganz auf in den verschiedenen Gestalten mit seiner Schaffenskraft, in den Persönlichkeiten. Stellt uns Dante in seinen Darstellungen die Erlebnisse einer Persönlichkeit dar, die Erlebnisse dieser einen Persönlichkeit bleiben müssen, so stellt Shakespeare die aus dem inneren menschlichen Ich hervorgehenden Impulse in den verschiedensten Gestaltungen dar. Dante ist von der menschlichen Persönlichkeit ausgegangen; aber dabei bleibt er und durchdringt die geistige Welt. Shakespeare ist in der Art um ein Stück weitergegangen, daß er aus der eigenen Persönlichkeit wieder herausgeht und hineinkriecht in die einzelnen dargestellten Persönlichkeiten; er taucht ganz in sie unter. Er schafft nicht das, was in seiner Seele lebt, sondern was in den beobachteten Persönlichkeiten lebt. So schafft er uns viele Individualitäten, viele einzelne Persönlichkeiten der Außenwelt, aber so, daß er sie alle aus ihrem eigenen Mittelpunkt heraus schafft.

Also auch das sehen wir, wie die Kunstentwickelung weiterschreitet. Nachdem sie ihren Ursprung in urferner Vergangenheit genommen hat von jenem Bewußtsein, in dem ein Ich-Gefühl noch gar nicht vorhanden war, ist sie in Dante dazu gekommen, den einzelnen Menschen zu erfassen, so daß das Ich sich selber zu einer Welt wird. Jetzt ist bei Shakespeare die Kunst so weit, daß die andern Iche die Welt des Dichters sind. Daß dieser Schritt gemacht werden konnte, dazu war notwendig, daß die Kunst auch sozusagen herunterstieg aus den geistigen Höhen, aus denen sie eigentlich entsprungen ist, in die physisch-sinnlichen Realitäten des Daseins. Und diesen Schritt gerade macht die Kunst von Dante auf Shakespeare. Versuchen wir, von dieser Seite her die beiden Gestalten, Dante und Shakespeare, nebeneinander zu stellen:

Mögen leichtherzige Ästhetiker es tadeln und Dante einen «Lehr-Dichter» schelten: wer Dante versteht und ihn mit seinem ganzen Reichtum auf sich wirken lassen kann, der fühlt es gerade als die Größe Dantes, daß alle mittelalterliche Weisheit und Philosophie aus Dantes Seele spricht. Zur Entwickelung einer solchen Seele, welche die Dichtung des Dante schaffen sollte, war notwendig der Unterbau der ganzen mittelalterlichen Weisheit. Diese wirkte zunächst auf die Dante-Seele, und sie ersteht wieder bei jener Erweiterung der DantePersönlichkeit zu einer Welt. Daher aber kann die Dichtung Dantes, zunächst voll verständlich, von ganzer Wirkung nur für diejenigen sein, die in den Höhen dieses mittelalterlichen Geisteslebens drinnen stehen. Da erst sind die Tiefen und Subtilitäten der Dante-Dichtung zu erreichen.

Einen Schritt herunter hat Dante allerdings gemacht. Er versuchte, das Geistige herunterzuführen in die niederen Schichten. Das hat er dadurch erreicht, daß er seine Dichtung nicht wie andere seiner Vorgänger in der lateinischen Sprache abgefaßt hat, sondern in der Volkssprache. Er steigt hinauf bis in die höchsten Höhen des geistigen Lebens, aber er steigt hinunter in die physische Welt bis zu einer einzelnen Volkssprache. - Shakespeare muß noch weiter hinuntersteigen. Über die Art, wie Shakespeares große dichterische Gestalten entstanden sind, geben sich die heutigen Menschen mannigfaltigsten Phantasien hin. Wenn man dieses Heruntersteigen der Dichtung in die alltägliche Welt, die auf den Höhen des Daseins heute noch ziemlich verachtet ist, verstehen will, muß man sich folgendes vor die Seele halten: Man muß sich vorstellen ein kleines Theater in einer Londoner Vorstadt, wo Schauspieler spielten, die man heute wahrhaftig nicht zu besonderen Größen rechnen würde, außer Shakespeare selber. Wer ging in dieses Theater hinein? Diejenigen, die verachtet wurden von den höheren Gesellschaftsklassen Londons! Es war nobler, in London in der Zeit, als Shakespeare seine Dramen aufführte, zu Hahnenkämpfen und ähnlichen Veranstaltungen zu gehen als in dieses Theater, wo man aß und trank und die Schalen der Eier, die man gegessen hatte, auf die Bühne warf, wenn einem das Aufgeführte nicht gefiel; wo man nicht nur im Zuschauerraum saß, sondern auch auf der Bühne selber, und wo die Schauspieler mitten hindurch spielten durch das Publikum. Dort, vor einem Publikum, das zu der untersten Klasse der Londoner Bevölkerung gehörte, wurden zuerst aufgeführt die Stücke, von denen sich heute die Menschen so leicht vorstellen, daß sie gleich in den Höhen des geistigen Lebens gewaltet hätten. Höchstens die unverheirateten Söhne, die sich gestatten durften, an gewisse obskure Orte zu gehen, wenn sie Zivilkleidung trugen, die gingen manchmal da hinaus in dieses Theater, wo Shakespeare-Stücke gegeben wurden. Anständig wäre es nicht gewesen für einen anständigen Menschen, in ein solches Lokal zu gehen. So war zu dem Empfinden, das sozusagen aus den naivsten Impulsen heraus kam, die Dichtung heruntergestiegen.

Kein Menschliches war fremd dem Genius, der hinter den Shakespeareschen Stücken steht, der nun seine Gestalten schuf in dieser Periode der menschlich-künstlerischen Entwickelung. So ist die Kunst heruntergestiegen selbst in bezug auf solche Äußerlichkeiten aus dem, was sich in dem schmalen Strom der menschlichen Führerschaft fühlt, zu dem, was allgemein Menschliches ist, was ganz unten im alltäglichen menschlichen Leben breit dahinströmt. Und wer tiefer sieht, der weiß, daß so etwas notwendig war wie ein Heruntertragen eines Geistesstromes aus den Höhen, um so etwas Lebensfähiges zu schaffen, wie es uns entgegentritt in den ganz individuellen Gestalten Shakespearescher Figuren.

Und jetzt gehen wir in die Zeiten, die der unsrigen schon näher liegen: zu Goethe. Versuchen wir, bei ihm anzuknüpfen an diejenige Gestalt seines dichterischen Schaffens, in welche er hineingelegt hat alle seine Ideale, seine Bestrebungen und Entbehrungen durch sechzig Jahre hindurch, — denn so lange hat er an seinem «Faust» gearbeitet. Alles, was sein reiches Leben erfahren hat im Innersten der Seele und im Verkehr mit der Außenwelt, und um was es gestiegen ist von Erkenntnisstufe zu Erkenntnisstufe zu einer immer höheren Lösung der Weltenrätsel, das ist alles in die Gestalt des Faust hineingesenkt, uns von dort wieder entgegenkommend. Was ist dichterisch der Faust für eine Gestalt?

Bei Dante konnten wir sagen: Was er uns schildert, schildert er als einzelner Mensch aus einer eigenen Vision heraus. Das ist aber bei Goethe in bezug auf den Faust nicht der Fall. Goethe schildert nicht aus einer Vision heraus; er macht gar keinen Anspruch darauf, daß ihm das offenbart worden war in einer besonders festlichen Zeit, wie es für Dante in bezug auf die «Commedia» der Fall ist. Goethe zeigt an jeder Stelle seines Faust, daß die Dinge, die darin dargestellt sind, innerlich erarbeitet sind. Und während Dante genau die Erlebnisse so haben mußte, daß sie in dieser einseitigen Weise dargestellt werden konnten, können wir sagen, daß die Frlebnisse, die Goethe darstellt, zwar individueller Natur sind, aber daß er das, was er innerlich erlebte, wieder umsetzte in die objektive Faust-Natur. Was Dante darstellt, ist sein persönlichstes inneres Erlebnis. Bei Goethe sind es zwar auch persönliche Erlebnisse; aber was die dichterische Figur des Faust tut und leidet in der Dichtung, das ist doch nicht Goethes Leben. Das war in keiner Zeit mit Goethes Leben zusammenfallend. Das ist die freie dichterische Umschöpfung dessen, was Goethe in seiner Seele erlebt hat. Während man Dante identifizieren kann mit seiner «Commedia», müßte man fast einen Literarhistoriker-Verstand haben, wenn man sagen wollte, der Faust ist Goethe! Was Goethe erlebt hat, hat er mit großer Genialität hineingeheimnißt in diese dichterische Figur. Solche Behauptungen: Goethe ist Faust! — Faust ist Goethe! - sind nur ein Spiel mit Worten. Faust ist zwar eine einzelne Gestalt, aber wir könnten uns nicht denken, daß eine Gestalt wie der Faust in so vielen Exemplaren geschaffen würde, wie Shakespeare seine Gestalten geschaffen hat. Das Ich, das Goethe in seinem Faust darstellt, kann nur einmal hingestellt werden. Neben dem Hamlet konnte Shakespeare noch andere Gestalten schaffen: Lear, Othello und so weiter. Man kann zwar neben dem «Faust» einen «Tasso» oder eine «Iphigenie» dichten; aber man ist sich doch des Unterschiedes bewußt, der zwischen diesen Dichtungen besteht. Faust ist nicht Goethe. Faust ist im Grunde jeder Mensch. Was in seinen tiefsten Sehnsuchten lebte, das hat Goethe auch in den Faust hineingearbeitet. Aber er hat wirklich eine Gestalt geschaffen, die sich ganz loslöst als dichterische Persönlichkeit von seiner eigenen Persönlichkeit. Er hat sie so individualisiert, daß wir nicht wie bei Dante - eine individuelle Vision vor uns haben, sondern eine Gestalt, die in jedem von uns in gewisser Weise lebt. Das ist der weitere Fortschritt der Dichtkunst zu Goethe. — Shakespeare konnte Gestalten schaffen bis zu einer solchen Individualisierung, daß er selber untertauchte in die Gestalten und aus ihren Mittelpunkten heraus schuf. - Goethe konnte nicht eine zweite ähnliche Gestalt neben die Faustgestalt hinstellen. Er schafft zwar eine Gestalt, die individualisiert ist; aber es ist nicht ein individualisierter einzelner Mensch. Diese Gestalt ist individualisiert in bezug auf jeden einzelnen Menschen. Shakespeare ist hinuntergestiegen in den seelischen Mittelpunkt des Lear, des Othello, des Hamlet, der Cordelia und so weiter. Goethe ist hinuntergestiegen in das, was in jedem einzelnen Menschen ein höchstes Menschliches ist. Daher aber schafft er eine Gestalt, die für jeden einzelnen Menschen gilt. Und diese Gestalt löst sich wieder los von der dichterischen Persönlichkeit selbst, welche sie schuf, so daß sie als reale, objektive Außengestalt vor uns steht im Faust.

Das ist wieder ein Fortschritt der Kunst auf dem Wege, den wir charakterisieren konnten. Von dem geistigen Anschauen einer höheren Welt geht die Kunst aus und ergreift immer mehr und mehr das menschliche Innere. Sie wirkt am intimsten nur im menschlichen Innern, wo es ein Mensch für sich, mit sich zu tun hat: in Dante. Bei Shakespeare steigt das Ich wieder heraus aus diesem Innern in die andern Seelen hinein. Bei Goethe geht das Ich heraus, taucht in das Seelische jeder Menschenseele unter, aber nun - so ist der Faust eben — als das, was sich in jeder einzelnen individuellen Seele als typisch gleich findet. Ein Herausgehen des Ich haben wir im Faust. Und weil das Ich nur aus sich herausgehen kann und anderes Seelisches verstehen kann, wenn es die Seelenkräfte in sich entfaltet und untertaucht in das andere Geistige, so ist es natürlich, daß beim Fortschritt des künstlerischen Schaffens Goethe dazu geführt wurde, nicht nur die äußeren physischen Taten und Erlebnisse der Menschen zu schildern, sondern das, was jeder Mensch erleben kann als Geistiges, was jeder Mensch findet in der geistigen Welt, wenn er sein eigenes Ich aufschließt dieser geistigen Welt.

Aus der geistigen Welt ist die Dichtung in das menschliche Ich hineingegangen, hat in Dante das menschliche Ich im tiefsten Innern erfaßt. Bei Goethe sehen wir das Ich wieder aus sich herausgehen und in die geistige Welt sich hineinleben. Wir sehen die geistigen Erlebnisse der alten Menschheit hineintauchen in die Ilias und Odyssee, und wir sehen in Goethes Faust die geistige Welt wieder heraussteigen und vor den Menschen hingestellt werden. So lassen wir auf uns wirken das gewaltige geistige Schlußtableau des Faust, wo der Mensch wieder die geistige Welt erreicht, nachdem er untergetaucht ist und sich von innen nach außen entfaltete und durch die Entfaltung der geistigen Kräfte eine geistige Welt vor sich hat. Es ist etwas wie eine ganz erneuerte, aber eben fortgeschrittene Wiederholung eines Chores der Urtöne: Aus dem Unvergänglichen der geistigen Welt tönt heraus das, was die Menschheit als Ersatz für das geistige Schauen erlangt hat, was sie in der Phantasie in der menschlichen Vergangenheit empfangen und in vergänglicher Gestalt hinstellen konnte. Aus dem Unvergänglichen heraus sind die vergänglichen Gestalten von Homers und Äschylos’ Poesie geboren worden. Wieder aus dem Vergänglichen in das Unvergängliche steigt die Dichtung hinauf, indem der mystische Chor am Schlusse des Faust ausklingt in das: «Alles Vergängliche ist nur ein Gleichnis!» Da steigt, wie Goethe gezeigt hat, die menschliche Geisteskraft aus der physischen wieder in die geistige Welt hinauf.

Gewaltige Schritte haben wir das künstlerische Bewußtsein durch die Welt und ihre Persönlichkeiten in der Dichtung gehen sehen. Vom Geistigen, wo sie ihre ursprüngliche Erkenntnisquelle hatte, geht die Kunst aus. Das geistige Anschauen zieht sich immer mehr und mehr zurück, wie sich die äußere Sinnenwelt immer mehr vor dem Menschen ausbreitet, und wie sich damit immer mehr und mehr das menschliche Ich entwickelt. Der Mensch muß bei diesen Schritten der Weltentwickelung diesem Gange von der geistigen Welt zur Sinnenwelt, zur Ich-Welt folgen. Würde er diese Schritte nur äußerlich wissenschaftlich gehen können, so hätte er nur ein verstandesmäßiges Begreifen in der äußeren Wissenschaft. Es wird ihm aber zunächst ein Ersatz gegeben. Was das hellseherische Bewußtsein nicht mehr sehen kann, das schafft -— wie in einem schattenhaften Abglanz — die menschliche Phantasie. Die Phantasie muß nun den Weg der Menschheit mitgehen, bis in das menschliche Selbstgefühl, bis zu Dante. Niemals aber kann der Faden abreißen, der den Menschen an die geistige Welt knüpft, auch nicht wenn die Kunst heruntertaucht bis in die Vereinzelung des menschlichen Ich. Die Phantasie nimmt der Mensch auf seinem Weg mit und schafft in der Zeit, als der Faust entsteht, aus ihr heraus wieder die geistige Welt.

Damit steht der Goethesche Faust am Ausgangspunkt einer Zeit, wo es sich uns deutlich zeigt, wie die Menschheit wieder einmündet in die Welt, aus der ursprünglich auch die Kunst entsprossen ist. $o ist es die Kunst, welche die Mission hat für die Menschen, die in der Zwischenzeit nicht durch höhere Schulung in die geistige Welt hineinkommen können, die Fäden weiter zu spinnen von der Urgeistigkeit zu der Zukunfts-Geistigkeit. Und schon ist die Kunst so weit fortgeschritten, daß sich der Ausblick in die geistige Welt in der Phantasie wieder ergibt; aus jener Phantasie, aus der es der zweite Teil des Goetheschen «Faust» tut. Da heraus mag die Ahnung ergehen, daß die Menschheit vor dem Punkt der Entwikkelung steht, wo sie wieder Erkenntnis aus der geistigen Welt haben muß, wo sie mit ihren Kräften untertauchen muß, erkennend, in die geistige Welt. So hat die Kunst den Faden fortgesponnen, hat den Menschen erahnend mit Hilfe der Phantasie hinaufgeführt in die geistige Welt und vorgearbeitet dem, was wir Geisteswissenschaft nennen, wo mit vollem Ich-Bewußtsein und heller Klarheit der Mensch wieder hineinschauen wird in die geistige Welt, aus der auch die Kunst herausgeflossen ist, und in welche die Kunst hineinfließt, die als eine Zukunfts-Perspektive vor uns steht. Hinzuführen, soweit das heute schon möglich ist, zu dieser Welt, zu der — wie wir das an Beispielen der Kunst gesehen haben - sich alle menschliche Sehnsucht hinentwickelt, das ist die Aufgabe der Geisteswissenschaft, und das ist auch die Aufgabe der Ausführungen gewesen, die dieser Winterzyklus gebracht hat.

So sehen wir, wie in einer gewissen Beziehung diejenigen richtig fühlen, die auch als Künstler fühlen, daß das, was sie der Menschheit zu geben haben, Offenbarungen sind der geistigen Welt. Und die Kunst hat die Mission, in derjenigen Zeit Offenbarungen der geistigen Welt zu geben, in der die unmittelbaren Offenbarungen nicht mehr möglich waren. So durfte Goethe sagen gegenüber den Werken der alten Künstler: Da ist Notwendigkeit, da ist Gott! Sie bieten Offenbarungen geheimer Naturgesetze, die ohne die Kunst nicht gefunden werden können. Und so durfte Richard Wagner sagen: aus den Klängen der Neunten Symphonie höre er die Offenbarungen einer andern Welt, gegen welche niemals das bloß vernünftige Bewußtsein aufkommen kann. — Die großen Künstler fühlten, daß sie den Geist, aus dem alles Menschliche hervorgegangen ist, von der Vergangenheit tragen durch die Gegenwart in die Zukunft. Und so dürfen wir auch solchen Worten aus tiefstem Verstande zustimmen, die ein sich Künstler fühlender Dichter gesprochen hat: «Der Menschheit Würde ist in eure Hand gegeben!»

Damit versuchten wir, das Wesen und die Mission der Kunst im Verlaufe der Menschheitsentwickelung zu schildern und zu zeigen, daß die Kunst nicht so abgesondert stehe dem Wahrheitssinn der Menschen, wie man das heute so leicht glauben könnte, sondern daß vielmehr Goethe recht hatte, wenn er sagte, er lehne es ab, von der Idee der Schönheit und der Wahrheit als von gesonderten Ideen zu sprechen; es gibt eine Idee: die des wirksamen, gesetzmäßigen Göttlich-Geistigen in der Welt, und Wahrheit und Schönheit sind ihm zwei Offenbarungen der einen Idee. — Überall finden wir bei Dichtern und auch bei sonstigen Künstlern anklingen dieses Bewußtsein, daß in der Kunst ein geistiger Urgrund des Menschendaseins spricht. Dagegen sagen uns aus ihren Gefühlen heraus immer wieder tiefere Künstlernaturen, daß ihnen durch die Kunst die Möglichkeit gegeben worden ist, zu fühlen, daß das, was sie aussprechen, zugleich eine Botschaft aus dem geistigen Leben an die Menschheit selber ist. Und dadurch fühlen die Künstler, auch wenn sie Persönlichstes zum Ausdruck bringen, ihre Kunst hinaufgehoben zu dem allgemeinen Menschentum, und daß sie wahre Menschheits-Künstler sind, wenn sie in den Gestalten und Offenbarungen ihrer Kunst verwirklichen das Wort, das Goethe im Chorus mysticus erklingen läßt:

Alles Vergängliche
Ist nur ein Gleichnis!

Und wir können auf Grund der geisteswissenschaftlichen Betrachtungen hinzufügen: Die Kunst ist berufen, das Gleichnis des Vergänglichen zu durchtränken mit der Botschaft von dem Ewigen, von dem Unvergänglichen. Das ist ihre Mission!

The Mission of Art

Homer, Aeschylus, Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe

The reflections of this winter cycle on the human soul are to be concluded and brought to a close with a few words that can be said in connection with the previous presentations about that area of human soul life into which such rich, such mighty treasures of the human inner life pour themselves. Our reflections will conclude with some views on the nature and significance of art in human development. Since the field of art is so broad, our reflection will focus only on the development of poetry in the course of human development, and even then it goes without saying that we can only pause at the highest peaks of spiritual life in this field.

One could now very easily raise the question: What do all those soul reflections that we have made in the course of this winter, and which were aimed above all at seeking truth and knowledge about the spiritual world, what do all these reflections have to do with the field of human creativity, which above all wants to express itself in the element of beauty? And in our time, it would be very easy to take the view that everything that is expressed through knowledge and insight must be far, far removed from what is expressed through art. It is believed that all knowledge and science must be governed by clearly defined laws of experience and logic, while the artistic element moves according to more arbitrary laws of the inner self, the heart, and the imagination. Truth and beauty may be far, far apart in the judgment of our contemporaries. And yet, it is precisely the great leading figures in the field of artistic creation who have always felt that with true art they want to express something that flows from the same sources of human existence, indeed from the deepest foundations of human existence, as knowledge and insight.

To mention just a few examples, consider Goethe, who was not only a seeker of beauty, but also a seeker of truth; who in his youth tried in every possible way to acquire knowledge of the world and answers to the great mysteries of existence. Before Goethe embarked on his Italian journey, which was to lead him to a land of longed-for ideals, he had studied extensively with his friends in Weimar in order to come closer to his goal of exploring the truth, for example, the philosopher Spinoza. Spinoza's explanations of the idea of God had made a powerful impression on his soul; the explanations of this modern philosopher, who sought a unified substance in all manifestations of life. And Goethe believed, along with Merck and other friends, that he heard in Spinoza something like tones that announce the sources of existence from all the phenomena surrounding us, which could give him something like the satisfaction of a Faustian striving. But Goethe's mind was too rich, too full of content, to gain a sufficient picture of truth and knowledge for him in the conceptual debates of Spinoza's works. What he felt there, and what he actually wanted according to the longings of his heart, becomes clearest to us when we follow him during his Italian journey, as he looks at the great works of art that give him an echo of the art of antiquity, and feels from them what he had hoped in vain to feel from Spinoza's concepts. That is why, after viewing these works of art, he writes to his friends in Weimar: "This much is certain: the ancient artists had just as great a knowledge of nature and just as sure a concept of what can be imagined and how it must be imagined as Homer. Unfortunately, the number of first-class works of art is far too small. But when one sees them, one has nothing left to wish for but to recognize them properly and then depart in peace. These great works of art were created by humans according to true and natural laws as the highest works of nature. Everything arbitrary and conceited collapses there; there is necessity, there is God." He believed, as he said, that he recognized that the great artists who created such works proceeded from their souls according to the same laws that nature itself proceeds according to. What else does this mean but that Goethe believed he recognized that the laws of nature live their way up into the human soul and gain strength there, so that what lives out on other levels as laws of nature in the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms, once it has passed through the human soul, lives out in the creative powers of this human soul. That is why Goethe felt the effective laws of nature again in these works of art and wrote to his friends in Weimar: “Everything arbitrary and conceited collapses there; there is necessity, there is God!” At such a moment, we see Goethe's heart moved by the realization that art reveals its highest form only when it springs from the same foundations from which all knowledge and all insight springs. And we then feel how deeply it speaks from Goethe's soul when he later utters the words: “Beauty is a manifestation of secret laws of nature that would have remained hidden from us forever without its appearance!” Thus, Goethe sees in art a revelation of the laws of nature, a language through which is expressed what is otherwise attained through knowledge in other fields of research.

And when we move from Goethe to a more recent personality who likewise sought to imbue art with a mission and to give humanity something through art that is connected with the sources of existence—when we come to Richard Wagner, we find in his writings, in which he attempted to clarify for himself the nature and meaning of artistic creation, many similar hints about the inner relationship between truth and beauty, between knowledge and art. Referring to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, he says that something sounds from these tones that is like a revelation from another world, and yet is so different from everything we would perceive in purely rational or logical forms. But for these revelations through art, one thing at least applies: that they have a convincing power over our souls and permeate our feelings with a sense of truth that cannot be countered by any logical or purely rational faculty of cognition. And on another occasion, Richard Wagner says, with reference to symphonic music, that something resounds from the instruments of this music as if they were organs of the secrets of creation; for they reveal something like the primal feelings of creation, according to which chaos was ordered, and which worked to harmonize the chaos of the world long before a human heart existed to perceive these feelings of creation. — So Richard Wagner also sees truth, a mysterious insight, a revelation that can stand alongside what is otherwise called insight and knowledge, in the revelations of art.

One more thing should be mentioned: anyone who approaches the great works of art of humanity in the spirit of spiritual science has the feeling that something speaks from them that is another revelation of humanity's search for truth. And the spiritual scientist feels a kinship with what speaks from art. Yes, it is no exaggeration to say that he feels more akin to the revelations of the artistic spirit than to many things that are otherwise readily accepted today as so-called spiritual revelations.

Why is it that truly artistic personalities attribute such a mission to art, and why does the heart of the spiritual scientist feel so drawn to the mysterious revelations of great art?

We will delve into what may provide answers to these questions by summarizing and applying some of what has come before our souls in the lectures of this winter cycle.

If we want to recognize the meaning and task of art in the sense that we have maintained throughout these lectures this winter, that we give ourselves answers — not according to human opinions and the arbitrariness of our reasoning minds, but as the facts of world and human development themselves answer us — then we must address the question we have to the development and unfolding of art itself in human evolution. Therefore, let us allow what art has been and what art has become to tell us its significance for humanity. — Of course, if we want to consider the beginnings of art, as it first approached humans in the form of poetry, we must go back a long way in terms of ordinary concepts. But let us first go back only as far as human physical documents can lead us in relation to poetry. We want to go back to the figure, legendary for many today, with whom Western art began as poetry: to Homer, from whom Greek poetry takes its starting point, and whose work has been preserved for us in the two great epics, the two great narrative poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey. It is remarkable, as soon as we begin to let the two poems sink in, that the person or persons—since we do not want to dwell on the question of personality today—from whom these poems originate announce an impersonal element to us right at the beginning:

Sing, O Muse, of the wrath of Peleus' son Achilles...

Thus begins the Iliad, the first Homeric poem; and again: “Sing to me, Muse, of the man of many ways...” begins the second poem, the Odyssey. The person from whom these verses flowed thus wants to point out that what comes out of his mouth is actually due to a higher power, that it comes to him from somewhere else, and that he best describes the state of his soul when he does not refer to what this soul itself has to say, but to what is inspired in it by a power which—as we sense when we understand Homer even a little—was not only a symbol for him, but something quite concrete and essential. If people today feel little when Homer says, “Sing, O Muse...,” it is not because Homer only wants to give a symbol, only wants to describe what is going on in his soul, but rather because modern people no longer have the experiences in their souls from which such impersonal poetry as Homer's flowed. However, we can only understand this impersonality at the beginning of Western poetry if we ask ourselves: What may have preceded this beginning of Western poetry? From what may it itself have flowed?

When we consider the development of humanity from a spiritual-scientific perspective, we arrive at the ancient questions about the forms of human consciousness in general. In our reflections on human development, we have often emphasized that the powers of the human soul have changed over the millennia and that all our soul powers once had a beginning. When we go back into the past, we come to people whose souls are endowed with powers quite different from those of today's human beings. We have emphasized that in the distant past, to which we are led not by external history but solely by spiritual scientific research, the whole of human consciousness functioned differently, and that an ancient, dreamlike clairvoyance was inherent in all human beings as a natural power of the human soul. Before human souls descended so far into material life that they viewed the world in the way we do today, the spiritual world was something quite real and substantial that they perceived around them. But we have said that they did not perceive the spiritual world in the manner of trained clairvoyant consciousness, which is linked to a clearly defined center of human soul life through which the human being perceives itself as an I, as a self. If we go back to the distant past, the sense of self that has developed over thousands and thousands of years did not yet exist. But because human beings did not have this center within themselves, their spiritual senses were open to the outside world, and they saw a spiritual world as if in a kind of real dream that reflected spiritual realities. But it was still a kind of dreamlike, ego-less clairvoyant consciousness.

Human beings looked into the spiritual world from which their true inner being came in the distant past. And in powerful images — like dream images — the forces behind our physical existence stood before their souls. In this spiritual world, primitive man saw his gods, saw the facts and events between his divine beings unfold. And it is indeed a mistake when today's research believes that the myths of the various peoples are only a product of “popular imagination.” If one wants to imagine that in the distant past the human soul functioned in a similar way to today, only that at that time it indulged more in imagination than in the mind constrained by fixed laws, and that the figures preserved in the myths of the gods were created out of imagination, then that is actually a fantasy; then those who have such a belief are fantasizing. For the people of primeval times, the events depicted in mythology were realities. Myths, legends, even fairy tales and legends were born out of an original ability of the human soul. This is connected with the fact that in the distant past, the human ego did not yet function as it does today, that human beings did not yet have their fixed center through which they are themselves and within themselves. And because they did not yet have this center, they did not shut themselves off in their ego, in their narrowly defined soul, and did not separate themselves from their surroundings as they did later. They lived in their surroundings as a member who belonged, whereas today's human beings feel separated from the outside world as beings. And just as human beings today can feel the physical forces flowing into and out of their physical organism to sustain their lives, so the human beings of primeval times felt with their clairvoyant consciousness that spiritual forces were flowing in and out of them. They felt an intimate interaction with the forces of the greater world. Indeed, they could say: When something happens in my soul, when I think, feel, or will something, then I am not really an enclosed being, but a being into whom the forces of the beings I see are working. And these beings I see, who are outside, send inner forces into me to stimulate me to have thoughts, to have feelings, to express impulses of will. — Thus, in the bosom of the spiritual world, human beings felt that divine-spiritual powers were thinking within them; when their feelings ebbed and flowed, they felt that spiritual powers were at work within them; and when their will accomplished something, they felt that divine-spiritual powers were pouring into them with their will and their goals. In primeval times, human beings felt themselves to be vessels through which spiritual powers expressed themselves.

This refers to a distant primeval time, which, however, extended through all kinds of intermediate stages to the time of Homer. It is easy to see how Homer stands out as a kind of continuator of the primordial consciousness of humanity. To do so, we need only cite a few passages from the Iliad. In it, Homer depicts the mighty battle between the Greeks and the Trojans. But how does he do this? What, according to the consciousness of the Greeks, was the basis of this battle?

Even if Homer does not assume it, this battle was not based solely on something that played out as antagonism in all those passions and desires, concepts and ideas that emanate from the human ego. Was it merely the passions of the Trojans as individuals and as a people, was it merely the passions of the Greeks as individuals or as a people that fought each other? Were the forces emanating from the human ego the only ones present on the battlefield? No! The legend that shows us the connection between primordial consciousness and Homeric consciousness tells us that at a festival of the three goddesses Hera, Pallas Athena, and Aphrodite, they quarreled over the prize of beauty, and that a human connoisseur of beauty, Paris, the son of the Trojan king, had to decide which was the most beautiful. And Paris threw the apple, the prize of beauty, to Aphrodite, and she promised him the most beautiful woman on earth in return: Helen, the wife of King Menelaus of Sparta. Paris could only win Helen by abducting her. And because the Greeks wanted to avenge the abduction, they prepared for battle against the Trojans, who lived beyond the Aegean Sea. That is where the battle took place.

Why do human passions flare up and everything that Homer has the “Muse” describe? Are these just things that happened here in the physical world among humans? No! Greek consciousness shows us that behind what happens among humans lies the conflict between the goddesses. — So the Greeks, with their consciousness at that time, still seek the causes of what happens in the physical world and say: I cannot find here the forces that cause human forces to clash. I must go up to where the forces and powers of the gods confront each other. The divine powers, as they were seen in images at that time, as we have just described, played into the struggle of human beings. So we see emerging from the primordial consciousness of humanity what we encounter as the first great product of poetry: Homer's Iliad. Therefore, we can say that in verse, presented in a human way from the standpoint of a later human consciousness, we still find in Homer an echo of what the primordial consciousness of humanity saw. And nothing else has happened except that we have to look for that point in the development of humanity in the period before Homer where the clairvoyant consciousness closed itself off for the people who then expressed themselves in the Greek world, so that only an echo of it remained, as it were.

A person of primeval times would have said: I see my gods fighting in the spiritual world, which is open to my clairvoyant consciousness! The people of Homeric times could no longer see into it, but a memory of it was still alive. And just as man felt inspired by the worlds of the gods in which he was immersed, so the poet of the Homeric epics still felt in his soul the same divine powers that man had previously felt playing within him. That is why he says: The muse inspiring my soul tells me this! Thus, Homeric poetry is directly linked to the correctly understood myth of primeval times. When we understand Homer in this way, we see in him something that acted as a substitute for the ancient clairvoyant powers in the human soul. The decline of the ancient clairvoyant power had closed the gate to the spiritual worlds for ordinary human consciousness. But in the development of humanity, something has remained behind as a substitute for the ancient clairvoyance. And that is the poetic imagination in Homer. Thus, the guiding world powers have taken away man's direct clairvoyant vision and given him a substitute, something that can live in the soul in a similar way to the old clairvoyance and evoke a formative power in the soul.

Poetic imagination is an advance payment from the powers guiding humanity for the clairvoyance of the distant past.

Now let us remember something else. — In the lecture on “The Human Conscience,” it was shown how the decline of the ancient clairvoyant powers of human beings took place in very different ways in different places during the development of the earth. In the Orient, we find ancient clairvoyance still present in the souls of human beings at a relatively late stage. And we also emphasized that, further westward, the clairvoyant abilities of the peoples of Europe are less prevalent. But this is also because, among these peoples, a strong sense of self asserted itself in the center of the soul, while other soul forces and abilities were still relatively subordinate. However, this emergence of the sense of self developed in very different ways in the various regions of Europe, differently in the north than in the west, and differently again in southern Europe. In pre-Christian times, the sense of self developed most intensely in Sicily and Italy in particular. While in the Orient the soul forces continued for a long time in a state of being outside of oneself, without a sense of self, in the aforementioned regions of Europe there were people who developed a strong sense of self because they no longer participated in the old clairvoyance. To the same extent that the spiritual world withdraws from human beings externally, the inner self, the sense of self, comes to life. And it was particularly in the areas of Italy and Sicily that the human sense of self developed strongly. — How different, then, must have been the souls of the Asian peoples and the souls of those peoples who lived in the areas mentioned in certain ancient times. Over in Asia, we still see how the secrets of the world unfold before the soul in powerful dream images, how human beings turn their spiritual eyes outward and the deeds of the gods unfold before them. And in what these people can tell us, we see something we can call the primordial narrative of the spiritual facts underlying the world. When ancient clairvoyance was replaced by its later substitute, the imagination, the vivid parable, the image, developed there in particular. Among the Western peoples, on the other hand, in Italy and Sicily, something developed that sprang from a self that was firmly established within itself, something that can develop a superpower. Among these peoples, it is enthusiasm that springs from the soul without it having any immediate spiritual insight; it is the intuitions of the human soul that ascend to what the soul cannot see. Here, then, we do not have retellings of what were seen as the deeds of the gods. But in the fervent turning of the soul in human speech or song toward what can only be sensed, enthusiasm gives rise to the primal prayer, the song of praise for those divine powers that cannot be seen, because clairvoyant consciousness is less developed here. And in Greece, the land in between, the two worlds converge. There are people who receive inspiration from both sides: from the East comes the pictorial view, and from the West comes the enthusiasm that surrenders itself in hymns to the sensed divine-spiritual powers of the world. Within Greek culture, the confluence of these two currents made possible the development of Homeric poetry, which we must date to the 8th to 9th century BC, into what we then find in Aeschylus three to four centuries later in Greek culture.

Aeschylus presents himself to us as a personality who was no longer influenced by the full power of the pictorial view of the East, the convincing power that was still present in Homer, for example, as an echo of the ancient view of the deeds of the gods and their influence on humanity. The echo was already very faint, so faint that in Aeschylus' soul there arose at first something like a kind of disbelief in what people had once seen in images of the world of the gods in their original clairvoyant state. In Homer, we still find that he knows full well how human consciousness once rose to the powers that stand behind what constitutes human passions and feelings in the physical world as divine spiritual powers. Therefore, Homer not only describes a battle that is taking place, but we even see how the gods intervene. Zeus and Apollo intervene where human passions are at work and express something. The gods are a reality that the poet allows to influence his poetry.

How different this became with Aeschylus! He was already influenced with a special force by the other thing that came over from the West: the human ego, the inner unity of the human soul. That is why Aeschylus is the first to be able to portray the human being who acts out of his ego and begins to detach himself with his consciousness from the divine powers flowing into him. In Aeschylus, the gods we still find in Homer are replaced by the acting human being — albeit only in his beginnings. This is why Aeschylus becomes the dramatist who places the acting human being at the center of the action. While the epic had to arise under the influence of the pictorial imagination of the East, drama, which places the acting human being at the center, developed under the influence of the personal ego that asserted itself in the West. Let us take the example of Orestes, who has committed matricide and now sees the Furies. Yes, Homer still plays a role; things do not change so quickly. Aeschylus is still aware that the gods were once seen by humans in images, but he is close to abandoning this idea. It is quite characteristic that it is Apollo who still wields full power in Homer's poetry, inciting Orestes to murder his mother. Afterwards, however, the god no longer prevails; afterwards, the human ego stirs, and it becomes apparent that in Orestes, the human ego, the inner man, asserts itself. Apollo is even proven wrong; he is rejected. What he wants to bring about shows that he can no longer have complete power over Orestes. That is why Aeschylus was the poet called upon to write about a figure such as Prometheus, who is precisely that divine hero who represents the liberation of humanity from the divine powers and rebels against them in a titanic manner.

Thus, with the awakening sense of self, which is carried over from the mysteries of human development in the West and which encounters the memories of the pictorial imagination of the Orient in the soul of Aeschylus, we see the drama begin. And it is very interesting that tradition wonderfully confirms what we have now attempted to gain purely from spiritual scientific knowledge.

There is a wonderful tradition that half justifies Aeschylus in that he could not have revealed any mystery secrets — of which he was accused — since he was not even initiated into the Eleusinian mysteries. He did not set out to portray anything that he could have gained from the temple secrets, from which Homer's poems flowed. He is, in a certain sense, distant from the mysteries. On the other hand, it is said that in Sicily, in Syracuse, he received those secrets that relate to the emergence of the human ego. This emergence of the ego is expressed in a different way where we see the Orphics developing the ancient form of the ode, the hymn, which the human soul sends up to the divine-spiritual worlds that are no longer seen, only sensed. Here art has taken a step forward. Here we see that it has grown quite naturally out of the ancient truth, but that it has made its way to the human ego, and that it has become what it is because it was meant to grasp the thinking, striving, and willing human ego. As human beings moved from a life in the outer world into their own inner world, the figures of Homeric poetry became the dramatic personalities of Aeschylus, and drama arose alongside epic poetry.

Thus we see the ancient truths living on in a different form in art, seeing through the imagination what ancient clairvoyance was able to gain. And what art has preserved from ancient times, we see applied to the human ego that has come into its own, to the human personality.

And now we take a giant step forward. Let us move forward centuries, to the 13th and 14th centuries AD, to that mighty figure who, in the middle of the Middle Ages, leads us in such a moving way up into the region that the human ego can attain when it works its way up from within itself to the contemplation of the divine-spiritual world: let us go to Dante. In his “Commedia,” he created a work about which Goethe, after repeatedly letting it sink in, as it came back to him in old age in the translation of an acquaintance, wrote the words in which he expressed his gratitude to the translator for sending him the translation:

How grateful we must be to you,
Who brought us the book,
Which puts an end to all searching, all lamenting
In a magnificent way!

What steps has art taken from Aeschylus to Dante? How does Dante present us with a divine spiritual world again? How does he lead us through the three stages of the spiritual world, through hell, purgatory, and heaven, through the worlds that lie beyond the sensual existence of man?

Here we see how, albeit in the same direction, one might say, the fundamental spirit of human development has continued to work. In Aeschylus, we can still clearly see that he still has spiritual powers everywhere: Prometheus is confronted by the gods, Zeus, Hermes, and so on; Agamemnon is confronted by the gods. There is still the echo of the ancient visions, of what the ancient, clairvoyant consciousness was able to extract from the world in primeval times. Dante is quite different. Dante shows us how, purely through immersion in his own soul, through the development of the powers slumbering in the soul, and through the overcoming of everything that hinders the unfolding of these powers, he became able “in the middle of life,” as he characteristically says, that is, at the age of thirty-five, to turn his gaze to the spiritual world. So while people with the old clairvoyant consciousness looked out into the spiritual environment, while Aeschylus still reckoned with the old gods, we see in Dante a poet who descends into his own soul, who remains entirely within his personality and its inner secrets, and who, through the path of this personal development, enters the spiritual world, which he develops in such powerful images in the “Commedia.” There, the soul of the individual Dante personality is all alone. There, it does not take into account what is revealed from outside. No one can imagine that Dante could describe in a similar way to Homer or Aeschylus; that he would have taken the figures of ancient clairvoyance from tradition; but Dante stands on the ground of what can be developed in the Middle Ages entirely within the power of the human personality. And we have before us what we have often emphasized, that man must overcome that which clouds his clairvoyant vision.

Dante presents this to us in vivid images of the soul. Where the Greeks still saw realities in the spiritual world, in Dante we see only images, images of those soul forces that must be overcome. Those forces that come from the sentient soul — as we tend to call this soul member — and which can be lower forces and prevent the ego from developing to higher levels, must be overcome. Dante points this out; and likewise, those forces of the intellectual soul and the conscious soul that can hinder the higher development of the ego must also be overcome. Plato already points to the opposite forces, insofar as they are good: wisdom, the power of the consciousness soul; fortitude in oneself, the power that comes from the intellectual or emotional soul; and moderation, that which the sentient soul achieves in its highest development. When the ego undergoes a development that is supported by the temperance of the sentient soul, by the fortitude or inner unity of the intellectual or emotional soul, and by the wisdom of the conscious soul, it gradually attains higher soul experiences that lead up to the spiritual world. But first, the forces that work against moderation, inner unity, and wisdom must be overcome. Moderation is counteracted by intemperance and gluttony, which must be overcome. Dante shows that these forces must be fought and how to counter them if a person wants to enter the spiritual world through their own soul forces. For Dante, a she-wolf is the image of intemperance, of the dark side of the emotional soul. Then we encounter the dark side of the intellectual soul as forces that resist development: what is not self-contained fortitude, what are senselessly aggressive forces of the intellectual soul, appears to us in Dante's imagination as something to be fought in the lion. And wisdom that does not strive for the heights of the world, that is directed toward the world only as cleverness and cunning, confronts us in the third image, the lynx. The “lynx eyes” are meant to represent eyes that are not eyes of wisdom, looking into the spiritual world, but eyes that are directed only toward the sensory world. And after Dante shows how he defends himself against such forces that resist development, he describes how he ascends into the worlds that lie beyond sensory existence.

In Dante we have a human being before us: left to his own devices, searching within himself, developing from within himself the forces that lead into the spiritual world. Thus, what creates in this direction is drawn entirely from the outside world into the human interior.

In Dante, a poet describes what can be experienced in the innermost depths of the human soul. In its progress, poetry has grasped another part of the human inner life, has become more intimate with the ego, has drawn itself more deeply into the human ego. — Thus the figures created by Homer were entangled in the web of divine spiritual powers; Homer himself still felt entangled in it when he said: Let the Muse sing what I have to say! Dante stands before us — a human being alone with his soul, which now knows that it must develop from within itself the powers that are to lead into the spiritual world. We see it becoming increasingly impossible for the imagination to rely on what comes in from outside. And how it is no longer merely opinions that are at work here, but forces that are deeply rooted in the soul life of human beings, may be seen from a small fact.

In modern times, an epic poet wanted to become the poet of a sacred narrative: Klopstock, a man of deeply religious nature, with even deeper foundations than Homer, and who therefore consciously wanted to be for modern times what Homer had been for antiquity. He attempted to renew Homer's spirit. But now he wants to be true to himself. He cannot say, “Sing to me, O Muse...”, but must begin his ‘Messiah’ with, “Sing, immortal soul, of the redemption of sinful mankind...”. Thus we see, in fact, how progress in artistic creation is indeed present in humanity, in those who matter.

Let us take a few more giant steps forward, a couple of centuries. Let us look up from Dante to a great poet of the 16th and 17th centuries, to Shakespeare. Here we see again in Shakespeare a remarkable progress—progress now meant here in the sense of “advancement.” How one otherwise wants to evaluate Shakespeare's work is a matter of feeling, of criticism. Here we are not dealing with criticism, but with facts; it is not a matter of elevating one or the other, but of the necessary, lawful progression.

We see the development of humanity in our field taking remarkable directions as it progresses from Dante to Shakespeare. What particularly struck us about Dante? A man stands alone with himself, with his revelations of the spiritual world in his own way; he describes what he has experienced as a great experience — but in his soul. Can you imagine that this one person, Dante, would have the same effect if he described his visions to us five or six times in succession, once in one way and then in another? Or don't you feel that when a poet like Dante describes something like this, the world into which the poet transports himself is one that can really only be described once? That is what Dante did. It is the world of a human being, but also of a moment in which the human being becomes one with what is for him the spiritual world. One would therefore have to say: Dante empathizes with the human-personal. And he does so in such a way that this human-personal is his own. He is still dependent on traversing this own human-personal in all directions.

Now let us turn to Shakespeare. — Shakespeare creates a wealth of characters; he shapes all kinds of characters: an Othello, a Lear, Hamlet, a Cordelia, Desdemona. But these Shakespearean characters are shaped in such a way that we see nothing divine behind them when the spiritual eye sees them in the physical world with purely human characteristics, with purely human impulses. What is sought in their souls is that which springs directly from the soul in relation to thinking, feeling, and willing. It is individual human personalities that Shakespeare depicts. But does he depict them in such a way that he is Shakespeare in each personality, just as Dante is the human being alone who delves deeply into his own personality? No, Shakespeare has gone a step further; he has taken the step that goes even further into the personal, not only to the one personality, but to the different personalities. Shakespeare denies himself every time he portrays Lear, Hamlet, and so on, and he is never tempted to say what his ideas are, but he is completely erased as Shakespeare and lives entirely in the different characters with his creative power, in the personalities. Whereas Dante presents us with the experiences of one personality in his depictions, experiences that must remain those of that one personality, Shakespeare presents the impulses arising from the inner human self in a wide variety of forms. Dante started from the human personality, but he remains there and penetrates the spiritual world. Shakespeare went a step further in that he stepped out of his own personality and crept into the individual personalities he portrayed; he immersed himself completely in them. He did not create what lived in his soul, but what lived in the personalities he observed. In this way, he created many individualities, many individual personalities of the outer world, but in such a way that he created them all from their own center.

So we also see how art develops. After taking its origin in the distant past from that consciousness in which a sense of self did not yet exist, it came to Dante to grasp the individual human being, so that the self becomes a world unto itself. Now, in Shakespeare, art has progressed to the point where the other egos are the poet's world. In order for this step to be taken, it was necessary for art to descend, so to speak, from the spiritual heights from which it actually sprang, into the physical and sensual realities of existence. And it is precisely this step that art takes from Dante to Shakespeare. Let us try to juxtapose the two figures, Dante and Shakespeare, from this perspective:

Light-hearted aesthetes may criticize it and scold Dante as a “didactic poet”: those who understand Dante and allow his entire wealth to work on them feel that it is precisely Dante's greatness that all medieval wisdom and philosophy speaks from Dante's soul. The foundation of all medieval wisdom was necessary for the development of such a soul, which Dante's poetry was to create. This first had an effect on Dante's soul, and it arises again in the expansion of Dante's personality into a world. Therefore, however, Dante's poetry, which is initially fully understandable, can only have its full effect on those who stand within the heights of this medieval spiritual life. Only then can the depths and subtleties of Dante's poetry be reached.

However, Dante took a step down. He attempted to bring the spiritual down to the lower strata. He achieved this by writing his poetry not in Latin, like his predecessors, but in the vernacular. He ascends to the highest heights of spiritual life, but he descends into the physical world to a single vernacular. Shakespeare must descend even further. People today indulge in the most varied fantasies about how Shakespeare's great poetic figures came into being. If one wants to understand this descent of poetry into the everyday world, which is still quite despised on the heights of existence today, one must keep the following in mind: one must imagine a small theater in a London suburb, where actors performed who today would certainly not be considered particularly great, except for Shakespeare himself. Who went to this theater? Those who were despised by the higher social classes of London! In the days when Shakespeare performed his plays, it was more fashionable in London to go to cockfights and similar events than to this theater, where people ate and drank and threw the shells of the eggs they had eaten onto the stage if they did not like the performance; where people sat not only in the auditorium, but also on the stage itself, and where the actors performed in the midst of the audience. There, before an audience that belonged to the lowest class of London's population, the plays were first performed that people today so easily imagine would have immediately risen to the heights of intellectual life. At most, the unmarried sons, who were allowed to go to certain obscure places when they wore civilian clothes, sometimes went out to this theater where Shakespeare's plays were performed. It would not have been proper for a decent person to go to such a place. Thus, poetry had descended to the level of feeling that arose, so to speak, from the most naive impulses.

Nothing human was foreign to the genius behind Shakespeare's plays, who now created his characters in this period of human artistic development. Thus, art descended, even in relation to such outward appearances, from what is felt in the narrow stream of human leadership to what is generally human, what flows broadly at the very bottom of everyday human life. And those who see more deeply know that it was necessary to bring down a stream of spirit from the heights in order to create something as viable as what we encounter in the very individual characters of Shakespeare's figures.

And now we move on to times closer to our own: to Goethe. Let us try to connect with that aspect of his poetic work into which he poured all his ideals, his aspirations, and his privations over a period of sixty years—for that is how long he worked on his Faust. Everything that his rich life experienced in the depths of his soul and in his interactions with the outside world, and everything that rose from one level of knowledge to another toward an ever higher solution to the mysteries of the world, is all poured into the character of Faust, coming back to meet us from there. What kind of character is Faust in poetic terms?

In Dante's case, we could say that what he describes to us is described by an individual human being from his own vision. But this is not the case with Goethe in relation to Faust. Goethe does not describe from a vision; he does not claim that it was revealed to him in a particularly festive time, as is the case with Dante in relation to the “Commedia.” Goethe shows at every point in his Faust that the things depicted in it have been worked out internally. And while Dante had to have had the experiences in such a way that they could be depicted in this one-sided manner, we can say that the experiences Goethe depicts are indeed of an individual nature, but that he translated what he experienced internally into the objective nature of Faust. What Dante depicts is his most personal inner experience. In Goethe's case, these are also personal experiences, but what the poetic figure of Faust does and suffers in the poem is not Goethe's life. At no time did this coincide with Goethe's life. It is a free poetic re-creation of what Goethe experienced in his soul. While Dante can be identified with his “Commedia,” one would almost have to have the mind of a literary historian to say that Faust is Goethe! Goethe imbued this poetic figure with his own experiences with great genius. Such assertions as “Goethe is Faust!” — Faust is Goethe! — are just a play on words. Faust is indeed a single character, but we cannot imagine that a character like Faust would be created in as many instances as Shakespeare created his characters. The ego that Goethe portrays in his Faust can only be presented once. In addition to Hamlet, Shakespeare was able to create other characters: Lear, Othello, and so on. It is possible to write a “Tasso” or an ‘Iphigenia’ alongside “Faust,” but one is still aware of the difference between these works. Faust is not Goethe. Faust is basically every human being. Goethe incorporated into Faust what lived in his deepest longings. But he really created a character who is completely detached from his own personality as a poetic personality. He individualized him in such a way that we do not have an individual vision before us, as with Dante, but a character who lives in each of us in a certain way. That is the further progress of poetry to Goethe. Shakespeare was able to create characters to such an extent of individualization that he himself disappeared into the characters and created from their centers. Goethe could not place a second similar character alongside Faust. He does create a character that is individualized, but it is not an individualized single human being. This character is individualized in relation to each individual human being. Shakespeare descended into the spiritual center of Lear, Othello, Hamlet, Cordelia, and so on. Goethe descended into what is most human in each individual human being. Therefore, he creates a character that applies to each individual human being. And this figure detaches itself again from the poetic personality that created it, so that it stands before us as a real, objective external figure in Faust.

This is another step forward for art on the path we have been able to characterize. Art starts from the spiritual contemplation of a higher world and increasingly takes hold of the human inner life. It has its most intimate effect only in the human inner world, where a person has to deal with himself: in Dante. In Shakespeare, the ego emerges again from this inner world into the souls of others. In Goethe, the ego emerges, immerses itself in the soul of every human soul, but now — as is the case with Faust — as that which is typically the same in every individual soul. We have an emergence of the ego in Faust. And because the ego can only emerge from itself and understand other souls when it unfolds the soul forces within itself and submerges into the other spiritual, it is natural that, as his artistic work progressed, Goethe was led not only to describe the external physical deeds and experiences of human beings, but also what every human being can experience as spiritual, what every human being finds in the spiritual world when they open their own ego to this spiritual world.

From the spiritual world, poetry has entered the human ego, grasping the human ego in its deepest innermost being in Dante. In Goethe, we see the ego again stepping out of itself and immersing itself in the spiritual world. We see the spiritual experiences of ancient humanity plunging into the Iliad and the Odyssey, and we see in Goethe's Faust the spiritual world emerging again and being presented before human beings. Thus we allow ourselves to be affected by the powerful spiritual final tableau of Faust, where man reaches the spiritual world again after having submerged himself and unfolded from within to without, and through the unfolding of spiritual forces has a spiritual world before him. It is something like a completely renewed, but precisely advanced repetition of a chorus of primal sounds: From the imperishable spiritual world resounds what humanity has attained as a substitute for spiritual vision, what it has received in its imagination from the human past and has been able to place in transitory form. From the imperishable, the transitory forms of Homer's and Aeschylus' poetry have been born. Poetry ascends again from the transitory to the imperishable when the mystical chorus at the end of Faust concludes with the words: “All that is transitory is only a parable!” Here, as Goethe has shown, human spiritual power ascends from the physical world back into the spiritual world.

We have seen artistic consciousness take enormous steps through the world and its personalities in poetry. Art originates from the spiritual, where it had its original source of knowledge. Spiritual contemplation retreats more and more as the external sensory world spreads out before human beings and the human ego develops more and more. In these steps of world development, man must follow this course from the spiritual world to the sensory world, to the world of the ego. If he could only take these steps externally, scientifically, he would have only an intellectual understanding in external science. But first they are given a substitute. What clairvoyant consciousness can no longer see is created — as in a shadowy reflection — by the human imagination. The imagination must now accompany humanity on its journey, right up to human self-awareness, right up to Dante. But the thread that connects humanity to the spiritual world must never be broken, even when art descends into the isolation of the human ego. Humanity takes the imagination with it on its journey and, at the time when Faust is created, recreates the spiritual world out of it.

Goethe's Faust thus stands at the beginning of a time when it becomes clear to us how humanity is returning to the world from which art originally sprang. It is therefore art that has the mission, for those human beings who in the meantime cannot enter the spiritual world through higher training, to continue spinning the threads from the original spirituality to the spirituality of the future. And art has already progressed so far that the view into the spiritual world is once again revealed in the imagination; from the same imagination that inspired the second part of Goethe's Faust. From this may arise the inkling that humanity is at a point in its development where it must once again gain knowledge from the spiritual world, where it must immerse itself with its powers, recognizing the spiritual world. In this way, art has spun the thread further, has led human beings, with the help of the imagination, into the spiritual world and has paved the way for what we call spiritual science, where, with full self-awareness and bright clarity, human beings will once again look into the spiritual world from which art has also flowed and into which art flows, which stands before us as a future perspective. To lead, as far as is already possible today, to this world, to which — as we have seen in examples of art — all human longing is developing, that is the task of spiritual science, and that has also been the task of the lectures that this winter cycle has brought.

Thus we see how, in a certain sense, those who feel as artists feel correctly that what they have to give to humanity are revelations of the spiritual world. And art has the mission of giving revelations of the spiritual world in a time when direct revelations were no longer possible. Goethe was thus able to say of the works of the ancient artists: There is necessity, there is God! They offer revelations of secret laws of nature that cannot be found without art. And so Richard Wagner was able to say: in the sounds of the Ninth Symphony he hears the revelations of another world, against which mere rational consciousness can never prevail. The great artists felt that they were carrying the spirit from which all that is human has emerged from the past through the present into the future. And so we can also agree from the bottom of our hearts with the words spoken by a poet who felt himself to be an artist: “The dignity of humanity is in your hands!”

In this way, we have attempted to describe the essence and mission of art in the course of human development and to show that art is not as separate from the human sense of truth as one might easily believe today, but that Goethe was right when he said that he refused to speak of the ideas of beauty and truth as separate ideas; there is one idea: that of the effective, lawful divine-spiritual in the world, and truth and beauty are two revelations of this one idea. — Everywhere we find in poets and other artists an echo of this awareness that art speaks of a spiritual foundation of human existence. On the other hand, deeper artistic natures tell us again and again from their feelings that art has given them the opportunity to feel that what they express is at the same time a message from spiritual life to humanity itself. And through this, artists feel that even when they express the most personal things, their art is elevated to the level of universal humanity, and that they are true artists of humanity when they realize in the forms and revelations of their art the words that Goethe lets resound in the Chorus mysticus:

Everything transitory
Is but a parable!

And on the basis of spiritual scientific considerations, we can add: Art is called upon to imbue the parable of the transitory with the message of the eternal, of the imperishable. That is its mission!