Spiritual Scientific Notes on Goethe's Faust, Vol. II
GA 273
18 January 1919, Dornach
11. The Vision of Reality in the Greek Myths (After a Performance of the Classical Walpurgis-Night
Yesterday I spoke to you of the scene from Part II of Goethe's Faust that had just been performed, and I should like to run over again the main thoughts then under consideration. For in this scene we are dealing with one of the most significant of Goethe's creation, with a scene he added to his Faust after having wrestled with the problem of Faust for about sixty years. Moreover, we have to do here with a scene through which we can look deep into Goethe's soul, in so far as it was dominated by the urge for knowledge—dominated above all by the great seriousness of this urge. While grasping all the knowledge in this poem of Faust we must never forget, however, that everything revealed in it with such lofty wisdom in no way prejudices—as is frequently the case with lesser poets who attempt anything of the same kind—in no way prejudices the purely artistic force of its construction. I have drawn your attention before to what Goethe stressed to Eckermann, namely, that there is much concealed in his Faust, many riddles of man to be recognised by Initiates, but that he had taken trouble to put it all into a form that, regarded merely from the theatrical standpoint, can with its pictorial quality impress even the simplest natured minds. Now let us bring again before our souls just the main points of what was said yesterday about all that is thus concealed, and afterwards go on to what we could not then touch upon. I mean, the conclusion of the scene.
I said yesterday that this scene shows clearly how Goethe was following up the problem of man's self-knowledge, man's comprehension of himself. For Goethe, knowledge was never something merely abstract and theoretical; to grasp the truth was for him a scientific urge. Also, for him—as it will increasingly be for future human evolution—what he sought in his soul as knowledge was something that has to be an impulse to experience life in all its fullness, to experience all that life can bring to man in the way of fortune and misfortune, of joy and sorrow, of blows of fate and opportunities of development. But, in addition to this, the urge for knowledge must be related to all the claims life makes on a man, as regards his behaviour towards society as a whole, as regards what he does and creates. Faust is not meant to be represented merely as a man striving after the highest knowledge, but as one bound up in his innermost being with all that life demands and brings. To this end, Goethe seeks knowledge for his Faust, that is, knowledge of man, comprehension of the self, comprehension of the forces at present latent in mankind. But Goethe sees clearly that ordinary knowledge, dependent on the senses and conditioned by the understanding, cannot lead to this self-knowledge. For this reason he introduces into the Classical Walpurgis-Night Homunculus, the product that was supposed to be, for mediaeval research, the copy of a human being that, within external nature, the physical understanding was able to put together out of natural forces and natural laws. All this comes into the idea of Homunculus. Yesterday I went more deeply into what Goethe meant to convey in his Homunculus, apart from any superstition connected with him; but now let us consider his more obvious meaning. In his Homunculus-idea he wished to represent what a man, here in the physical world, can recognise in himself. Whoever makes use only of the knowledge offered him by science, or by the study of physical life, can never gain knowledge and comprehension of man in accordance with Goethe's conception. He will never know Homo, the human being; he will be able to picture in his soul only Homunculus, an elemental spirit who has come to a standstill on the path to becoming man. Goethe wrestles with this as with a problem of knowledge: How can the idea of Homo grow out of the idea of Homunculus?
The whole mood and tenor, the whole artistic structure of the Classical Walpurgis-Night shows how clearly Goethe saw that the problem of human nature con only be solved by a knowledge based on investigation pursued, outside the body, by man's soul and spirit.What he wishes to ray forth from his Faust is his conviction that information concerning man can be given only by those who admit the validity of knowledge acquired outside the instrument of the physical body. Hence, true Spiritual Science, true Anthroposophy, alone can lead to the knowledge of man, of Homo; while all the other knowledge dealing with the physical world, can only lead to the idea of Homunculus. As far as possible, during the whole of his life, Goethe was ceaselessly occupied in striving towards this supersensible knowledge. He sought it on various paths, and those paths that opened out to him he endeavoured to portray artistically in his Faust. Faust was to represent for him a man who at last arrives at a real knowledge and comprehension of mankind.
Now, in Goethe's time Anthroposophy was not yet, and could not have been, in existence. Hence Goethe tried to associate himself with his contemporary culture, in which thee were still echoes of atavistic spiritual vision. And after showing all that is in the Romantic Walpurgis-Night of the first part of Faust to be inadequate for knowledge of man, his great desire was then to take refute in the Imaginations of the Grecian myths. We have so often spoken of Goethe that we can easily see what lay beneath this idea of his.—Goethe felt and experienced that man is not to be grasped through the concepts of physical understanding. But he had no wish, as yet, to supersede these by his own Imaginations; therefore he sought to give a new form to those of ancient Greece. Thus, if we wish to give a more exact description of the scene just presented, we may say: Goethe wanted to show how a man, Faust, has been approached (from outside, but that is of no importance) by the idea of Homunculus, the only idea to be obtained in this respect in the physical world. He wanted to show how such a man, by his state of consciousness undergoing a change through his leaving the body, will then behave differently. He will behave like a man who, asleep at night outside his body, becomes able to perceive what is around him, all that surrounds him of a soul and spirit nature. Then, if he goes to sleep consciously, as it were, retaining his consciousness in sleep, if, sleeping on, he can take with him into his sleep-knowledge the idea of Homunculus acquired in his physical life, he can so transform it that it seizes hold of human reality. This is what Goethe wished to represent; and to help in the task, he took the pictures of the Grecian myths. He shows often in this scent how far in his feeling he was removed at least form the superstition of the pedant, who sees nothing more in such myths than poetic fiction and creations of fantasy. And I have often told you that, as a result of this superstition, it is claimed that legends, traditions, myths, persisting among simple peoples, are conceptions of nature transformed by fantasy. These superstitious pedants have really no idea how small a part fantasy plays in the creations of simple minds, not how prevalent among them is a certain atavistic power of beholding reality in dreams.
Now in the myths developed by the Greek spirit, there is not merely poetry, there is a true vision of reality. And the element Goethe first presented was the one in which all ancient peoples have seen the impulse in the soul that brings about its separation from the body. Connection with the outside world was much closer for the men of old than for the present-day abstract rationalistic man. In olden days when men climbed a mountain, for instance, they did not merely experience a physical, barely perceptible difference in the breathing, a densification of the atmosphere, or a change to the eye in perspective; for them it was a passing from one condition of the soul to another. For a man of those days the ascent of a mountain was a far more living experience than for modern man who has become so abstract. They felt with special vividness, what some sea-farers still experience today in a primitive, less delicate way, that, to a certain degree, soul and spirit actually free themselves from their instrument, the body. The more sensitive sea-faring folk still have this experience. But the men of old felt as a matter of course: “When I sail out on the open sea, and am no longer connected with the solid earth and its definite forms, then my soul frees itself from the body, and I see more of the supersensible than when I am surrounded by earth's rigid outlines.”—This is why, when Homunculus is to be changed into Homo, Goethe introduces a gay festival of the sea, and it is Thales, the man of natural philosophy, who conducts Homunculus thither.
And we see the Sirens. I spoke of this yesterday so today I shall not dwell upon the dramatic an pictorial way in which everything here is put into external form. I will, however, point out that the deeper mystery that Goethe would also have us see, the mystery of the Sirens' song, lies in these demonic beings belonging on the one side to the sea, but being able to become living, as demonic beings of the sea, only when the moon shines upon it. The moonlit sea lures forth the Sirens who, in their turn, lure forth man's soul from within him. The state of consciousness in which the supersensible world can be perceived in Imaginations, in pictures, is therefore brought about by the Sirens. Above all they practise their wiles on the Nereids and Tritons, who are on their way to Samothrace, to the sacred Mysteries of the Kabiri.
Precisely why does Goethe introduce the Kabiri? This is because his Homunculus is to become Homo, to become man, and because the Initiates of the holy Mysteries of the Kabiri in Samothrace were above all destined to learn the secret of man's becoming. It was this secret that was represented in the Kabiri. Here in the physical world is accomplished physical becoming, but this has its counterpart in the sphere of spirit and soul, a counterpart only to be seen outside the body in Imaginations. Unless the abstract idea of Homunculus is brought into connection with what can be seen here, Homunculus can never become Homo. Thus Goethe believes in all that the Greek felt when thinking of his Kabiri in Samothrace; he believed something was to be found there over and above the abstract idea of Homunculus, through which it might grow to the idea of Homo.
Let us without prejudice speak of what this really involves. In what man can experience of himself through ordinary knowledge, that amounts only to what he is as Homunculus, Goethe saw something to be compared with the unfertilised human germ-cell. Considering the unfertilised germ-cell in the human mother, we recognise it as something from which no physical human being can arise. It must first be fertilised; only then can there be a physical human being. And when we think with physical understanding alone, in these thoughts the inner being of man can never be lit up, for this is only what can be produced one-sidedly, and may be compared with what can be produced by the woman one-sidedly. All it is possible to grasp with out physical understanding, must be fertilised by knowledge gained outside the physical body. Half the riddle on man is hidden from the mere physical power of understanding. The atavistic clairvoyance adapted to ancient times wished to point, in the Mystery of the Kabiri, to what, in the spiritual connection of nature, is the other half of man's becoming which in its turn points to the immortal in man. That is why Goethe thought that possible through the impulse of the Kabiri the developing of Homunculus into Homo might be represented.
But Goethe, as one who sought knowledge, was not only to a high degree a serious seeker, but, at the same time, something which, my dear friends, is very much rarer in the sphere of knowledge than one might think—a deeply honest soul. He wished to test how far he would get by breathing new life into such a mystery as that of the Kabiri. Those who seek knowledge with less honesty make a few antiquarian studies, perhaps adding a few fantasies founded upon these, and then consider they know something of what is expressed in the Kabiri Mystery. Yes, my dear friends, the honest seeker after knowledge never knows as much as the seeker who is less honest, for he always considers himself more stupid than those who light-heartedly piece together information from here and there, which, easily acquired, is then said to be absolutely complete. Goethe was not one of those who took knowledge thus light-heartedly. He knew that, even if he had striven for it from the year 1749 to the year 1829, in which he wrote this scene just witnessed (a scene written in the most difficult circumstances about two years before his death) even if he has grown old in this striving and has never relaxed, nevertheless, for the honest searcher after knowledge there is always a remaining sting. Perhaps in some direction one ought to have done better.—This is what worked so intensively out of Goethe's very nature—this absolute honesty. This made him recognise, where the riddle of the Kabiri is concerned: As a modern man who can no longer call upon clairvoyance, I cannot know what the Greeks thought about the Kabiri—I cannot know this for certain!—But perhaps that is not of most importance, for Goethe had the feeling that there was a kind of knowledge of the Kabiri Mystery within him, which, however, he could not wholly grasp. It was like a dream that not only immediately fades, but of which one knows that, although it passes away so quickly, it contains something most profound; it hovers so lightly that the understanding, the intellect, does not suffice, the soul-forces do not suffice to give it clear and definite outline. It is precisely in this intimate inner development that there lies the significance of this scene. We do not understand it at all if we wish to explain every detail. For Goethe has called up pictures for the very purpose of showing—“Here I am close to my goal yet cannot reach it.”
Thus, he introduces the Kabiri to show how, perhaps not he but someone who fully grasps the Kabiri Mystery, may find the bridge for Homunculus, with the help of that Mystery, to come to Homo. He himself cannot yet succeed in this, and has therefore chosen other paths in the imaginative world. That is why he makes the philosopher Thales conduct Homunculus into the presence of Nereus. Now Goethe thought very highly of Thales, though not to the point of giving him credit for being able to show Homunculus how to become Homo. This Nereus has a great gift of human understanding and knows how to transform the divine into the demonic, thus foreseeing the future, so that it may be supposed he knows something about changing Homunculus into Homo. But here again Goethe wishes to show that this is not the path. For on this path we come to a one-sided development, raising the human critical understanding to a demonic height that not only runs to dull criticism but to actual prophetic criticism holding in mind the good side of human criticism. Nereus, however, a kind of priest among the demons, is not in a position, either, to approach the Homunculus-problem. He does not even want to do so. Goethe has the feeling that, should human understanding be developed to the demonic, should the critical faculty of investigation possessed by man be—shall we say—demonised, he would then lose all interest in this most profound human problem of raising Homunculus to man. Thus nothing is to be gained from Nereus. But he does at least draw attention to the imminent approach of his daughters, the Dorides, sisters of the Nereids, and among them, the most outstanding of them all, Galatea. Yesterday I tried to indicate what is represented in this picture of Galatea.
You see, my dear friends, the modern man of research sees everything telescoped into a single moment of life. In the Greek world-conception—by no means confined to what is generally known as classical Philology—what live in the human being was still closely connected with all that lives in the whole of external nature. All that contributes to the becoming of man exists in another form, weaving and pulsing through every process of nature. But we have to be able to discover it. Our present capacity for knowledge is not sensitive enough to penetrate into the regions through which we participate in external nature, in the experiences of the great universe. These experiences are, indeed, concealed in man, in his development from the human germ-cell, from conception, fertilisation, to birth and his appearing as a human being. The same processes that then take place, in concealment within the human being, are going on continuously all around us. It was precisely this which, in the Kabiri Mystery was disclosed to the candidate for initiation—how in nature conception and birth are living. We see the moon rise and set, we see the sun rise and set, feel the warmth the sun sheds around, receive the light it radiates; we see the clouds moving, look upon their changing forms. Within all this weaving and pulsing through the world lies the impulse of becoming. But modern man no longer perceives this; he will perceive it, however, if he develops himself further through Spiritual Science. And formerly he perceived it with an atavistic sense of cognition, with the atavistic perception and conception of olden times.
Here we must have recourse to that finer capacity for perception still existing in days of yore. It might be said that what happens when, instead of direct sunlight, moonlight is on the sea, moonlight is reflected on the waves, is experienced half consciously as dreamy presentiment, as the foreshadowing of a dream. Man today looks at the way moonlight is reflected on the waves; and all the physicist can say is that moonlight is polarised light. That is an abstraction that says very little; and the physicist experiences nothing of what is actually happening. We experience it today if someone burns us with red-hot tongs; our capacity for sensitive feeling takes us that far. But in the Greek world-conception it was recognised that something of soul and spirit lives in the rays of the sun, something similar, yet distinct, is living in the rays of the moon, and that something actually happens when the moonlight—that borrowed sunlight—is wedded to the waves of the sea. It knew what was surging there when the pulse of the moonlight throbbed in tune with the waves of the sea. When the moon was thus wedded to the waves, the Greeks perceived in this light-enchanted weaving the impulse surging, pulsing, through the external world which, from conception the birth, pulses and surges in man. Outside in nature the Greek perceived in another form what is present in man when, in the physical sense, the mystery of human becoming is being accomplished.
Goethe, by putting into new and artistic form what intimately and delicately the Greeks might have felt, shows clearly how it echoed in his own feeling. He expresses all this by making Thales point to the retinue of the moon approaching on little clouds, accompanying Galatea's shell-chariot. This shell-chariot is the generating force in external nature pulsing through the sea. Goethe associates it with Luna, the Moon-force, the Moon-impulse. Thus, once again he evokes a significant Imagination from the Greek world-conception, in order to draw nearer the process by which, in man's conception, the abstract Homunculus-idea can become that of the Homo. Only when we can with feeling experience the intimate details weaving and surging in Goethe's wonderful pictures, do we really enter into what in this scene was living in Goethe's soul. We shall never go deep into all this scene contains if we try to grasp it with our bald, abstract concepts, and without arousing in ourselves an intimate sympathy with what Goethe was able to experience.
Thus, if I may express myself in dull, theoretical fashion, we shall come nearer the solution of the Homunculus-Homo problem if this idea, seen from outside the physical body, is planted into the generative impulse weaving, throbbing, through nature. Even before he brought Homunculus into contact with this generative impulse, Goethe had called in Proteus, the demonic being whose inner bent of soul Goethe regarded as most closely allied to his theory of metamorphosis. He has endeavored in this theory of metamorphosis, to follow up the changes in the living form, from the lowest order of beings up to man, hoping in this way to come nearer the riddle of man's becoming, the riddle of Homunculus-Homo. We know that Goethe had far to go before being able to arrive at the solution. He thought to recognise that the foliage leaf changes into the petal of the flower that, in its turn, becomes the stamen and pistil of the flower. He also believed that the bones of the spinal column are transformed into the skull bones. There he stopped, for he could not press on to the crown of this metamorphosis-idea, that appears for us when we know that a metamorphosis takes place in the forces which, from one incarnation, from one earth-life to another, permeate the human body. What today is my head has its form through the metamorphosis of the rest of the body of the previous incarnation; and what is my present body will be, with the exception of the head, transformed till, in the next incarnation, it becomes my next head. This is the crown of Metamorphosis. But Goethe could only give us the elementary stages of the idea of metamorphosis which flows on into Spiritual Science. He came nearer its further stages when trying to grasp and put into poetic form the problem of Homunculus-Homo.
And he set forth with honest doubt all that could be reached through Proteus as the representative of the metamorphosis-idea. Proteus appears in his various forms that exist, however, side by side. Everything that can lead to the birth, the supersensible birth, of the Homunculus-idea is here brought in by Goethe. Now he again comes to a standstill. Then fresh light flashes in. In contrast to all that is demonic, the elemental beings of a spiritual nature, Nereids, Tritons, Dorides, Nereus, Proteus, and so forth, in contrast to all these, there appear the Telchines. These, the oldest artists, as it were, of the earthly world during the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, remind us that Goethe was trying to approach the riddle of man, not only by the path of physical science, but also by another path of the senses—the path of art. As man, Goethe was neither one-sidedly a scientist, nor one-sidedly an artist; in him scientist and artist were consciously combined. Hence, as he stood before works of art in Italy, he said that he saw something there suggesting that the Greeks, in creating their works of art, worked in accordance with the laws nature applied, the same laws that he himself was tracking down. And if you let Goethe's book on Winckelmann work upon you, you will see how Goethe sought to come nearer knowledge of the riddle of man by way of art, how he sought to follow the course of natural phenomena to the point where, as he so beautifully expresses it in this book, nature becomes conscious of herself in man. What can be done here by the artistic conception of nature—seen from the other side, from the standpoint of supersensible knowledge—is made evident to us with the appearance of the Telchines, those ancient artists who first depicted Gods in human form.
Goethe intimates that, whereas he generally leads the human consciousness away from the physical to the superphysical, here he is making one look back from the superphysical to the physical; the Telchines are in the superphysical, but what they mean, what they stand for, passes over into the physical. They are portrayed as being in contrast with all the other figures—those dedicated wholly to Luna, to the Moon, and referred to by the Sirens as follows:
“Helios' initiated
Ye to bright day consecrated
Greet us in this stirring hour,
When we worship Luna's power.”
Thus they actually belong to the Sun. On the island of Rhodes they erected statue after statue to Apollo. The attempt has been made to solve the Homunculus-Homo problem by looking across to the supersensible world; but that too has been unsuccessful. And Proteus himself energetically denies that anything is to be gained from the Telchines for the transformation of Homunculus into Homo.
And what happens next? There now appear the Psylli and the Marsi, kinds of snake-demons, who bring with them the previously described shell-chariots of Galatea. The Psylli and Marsi are demonic snakes, who draw into the spiritual the souls of human beings; at the same time they are servants in the world man inters on leaving his physical body. In that world there is no separation between the purely animal and the purely human, the animal from passes over, merges, into the human.
Now after being shown by means of the sailor boys, and the Dorides who represent that world, how difficult it is to put before man the relation of the spiritual world to the world of the senses, we then see the shattering of Homunculus against the shell-chariot of Galatea. There is deep meaning in the Dorides thus ushering in the sailor lads in this scene. The Dorides are demonic beings of the sea, the sailors, human beings. Goethe is wishing to show how man is abel to approach spiritual beings from the other side of existence, and how destiny (we are distinctly told the sailor lads have been saved by the Dorides) brings man into connection with the Gods. But here in physical life this relation is immediately broken down; there is no continuous connection when the superphysical and physical wish to unite—the Gods will not suffer it.
Then at the end of this scene we ar confronted by this wonderful picture. After everything ha been tried through majestic Imaginations to turn Homunculus into Homo, there follows, as the highest, nearest, most significant approach to the solution of the riddle of man, the actual plunging of Homunculus into the generative force of nature in so far as it shows itself through the moonlit, moon-enchanted ocean waves. Into these waves Homunculus now plunges. And what do we see at the end of the scene? A flashing-up, a flaming forth, a manifestation of all the elements—earth, water, fire, air, all these elements overpower what is here taking place. And it almost seems to us that sunk with our cognition into sleep, we ourselves learn to know the Imaginations which, in the other side of existence, can alone interpret the riddle of humanity—it seems then, that through the rolling on of the generative forces we are called back into the life we must live out in the body. I told you yesterday that the force underlying impregnation, conception, pregnancy, embryonic life and birth, is only a more extended, more intensive form of the same force as that which lures us back from our nightly sleep, or from the sleep of cognition, to physical waking existence. These forces are identical. Every morning when we wake, the force that wakes us is, though different in intensity, the same as that by which a human being is conceived, carried as embryo, and born. One only of these is seen here on earth, and that merely in its external, not in its deeply mysterious, inner aspect. The other passes over us unperceived. The holy mystery of waking is unperceived in its passing. We sink down into a spiritual world, we are submerged in a spiritual world; we wake up, take possession of our body, and are in the physical world of the senses.
There are, nevertheless, even among those who are not clairvoyant, some men who when they are asleep know quite well what is actually living above, and through their sleep dreamily experience the spiritual world in its reality. Then they wake through the same force as the one living in Galatea's shell-chariot—the generative force of nature with which Homo-Homunculus unites himself on his way to becoming man. Some men know this even when not clairvoyant. There is, however, in clairvoyance, a knowledge that is perfectly clear concerning this waking. It may be understood in imagination only as a diving out of the spiritual world, down into the physical world of the senses, the world that lives in the elements of fire, water, earth, air. And on returning to this reality, all we think to have gained above in the other world, towards making a Homo of Homunculus, is dashed to pieces.
Faust is to plunge into the reality of ancient Greece; he is to meet Helen in person. And when you turn the page from the mighty finale of this scene where it runs:
“Hail the ocean! Hail the surge!
Girt with holy fire its verge,
Hail the water! Hail the fire!
Hail the chance that all admire!
Hail the breeze that softly swelleth!
Hail the grot where mystery dwelleth!
All we festally adore
Hail ye elements, all four!”
When you turn the page, you come to the third act:
“Admired much and much reviled Helena,
Leaving the shore where we but now did land, I come
Still drunken with the unrestful hallows' tumultuous
Commotion, that from Phrygian lowlands ...” and so on,
Faust is to enter Greek reality, he is to be wakened out of spiritual perception, highest spiritual perception, of the Homunculus-Homo problem, wakened into the Greek world. He is to wake there consciously, as Goethe wished to do; the moment of waking has to be brought about so as to show that what has been perceived in the spiritual world, in the supersensible, concerning the riddle of man, is shattered when the descent is made again into the external, physical reality of the body. That is an external process in nature, when the moon disappears and dawn breaks. But man today experiences this relation at best as something allegorical, symbolic or poetic. The reality underlying it is little recognised. We meet it here in something that is at the same time an embodiment of the problem of knowledge and also of true poetry. Goethe has indeed succeeded in leading Faust into the supersensible world in a noble way, and in making him wake to life in Greek reality.
We might remind ourselves here that it was during the eighties of the eighteenth century that Goethe took flight to Italy—for it was indeed a flight. Having studied nature in the north, he then wished to discover, for the benefit of his conception of the riddle of the world, what he believed that art of the south alone could give him. He gained much for we know what Goethe had become by the nineties of the eighteenth century. By then he had grown older, and that means younger in soul, for as a man outwardly ages, in his soul he grows young—youngest of all when he comes to dying. The life of the soul runs backward.—And so we come to about the year 1829. We may trace and experience what Goethe may then have felt: If, when I had the opportunity of really penetrating the art of the south, of making the spirit of Greece alive before my soul, if at that time I had only been able to take the plunge into the spiritual world that I now merely divine, how much richer, more intensive, all my experience would have been.—The characteristic mood of this second part of Goethe's Faust depends on our recognising in it an artistic representation of what has been experienced in life by a soul grown young again, a soul who in thus growing young has been enriched to a very high degree. That is why no philistine will be able to make much of this second part of Faust. And I can perfectly understand it when Schwaben-Vischer, the so-called V-Vischer, in many ways so spiritually minded, and who has said so much that is good about Goethe's Faust, has found that this kind of thing is tedious—the cobbled together patchwork of an old man. But philistinism, my dear friends, however learned and intelligent, can never penetrate into all the poetry, the lofty poetry, of the second part of Faust. No one can enter into this who does not allow his poetic sense to be warmed through, fired, by what spiritual vision gives.
Tomorrow, after the performance, we will say more about this scene, in connection with Goethe shown there concerning his own impulses.
Das Wirklichkeitsschauen in den Griechischen Mythen
nach einer Darstellung der «Klassischen Walpurgisnacht»
Gestern habe ich versucht, über die eben zur Aufführung gekommene Szene aus dem zweiten Teil des «Faust» zu Ihnen zu sprechen. Ich möchte die Hauptgedanken kurz wiederholen, die gestern hier zur Geltung gebracht worden sind, denn wir haben es mit dieser Szene in der Tat als mit einer der bedeutsamsten Schöpfungen Goethes zu tun, mit einer Szene, die Goethe seinem «Faust» eingefügt hat, nachdem er etwa sechzig Jahre mit dem Faust-Problem gerungen hatte. Wir haben es außerdem zu tun mit einer Szene, durch die man wirklich in intensivster Weise hineinschauen kann in Goethes Seele, insofern in dieser Seele waltet Erkenntnisdrang und vor allen Dingen Ernst des Erkenntnisdranges, Größe des Erkenntnisdranges. Nur muß man niemals, wenn man «Faust» gewissermaßen als Erkenntnisdichtung auffaßt, aus dem Auge verlieren, daß alles, was in höchster Weisheit sich durch den «Faust» offenbart, nirgends, wie das bei geringeren Dichtern, die derlei versuchen, so häufig der Fall ist, die künstlerische Gestaltungskraft, das rein Künstlerische, beeinträchtigt. Ich habe darauf aufmerksam gemacht, daß Goethe selbst zu Eckermann betont hat, daß er in seinen «Faust» vieles hineingeheimnißt hat, und daß der Eingeweihte viele Menschenrätsel darinnen finden werde, daß er aber sich bemüht hat, dabei alles so zu gestalten, daß rein von der Bühne aus das Bildmäßige angeschaut, auch dem naiven Gemüte ein Eindruck werden kann.
Nun wollen wir die Hauptgedanken des gestern Mitgeteilten über das Hineingeheimnißte noch einmal vor unsere Seele führen, um dann übergehen zu können zu dem, was gestern noch nicht berührt werden konnte, zu dem Schlusse dieser Szene. Ich sagte gestern, daß diese Szene so recht beweist, wie Goethe nachging dem Problem der menschlichen Selbsterkenntnis und der menschlichen Selbsterfassung. Denn niemals war für Goethe das Erkennen — das Ergreifen der Wahrheit war für Goethe wissenschaftlicher Drang - etwa nur etwas Abgezogenes, Theoretisches, sondern stets war, wie es beim Vollmenschen immer mehr und mehr werden muß in der zukünftigen Menschheitsentwickelung, für Goethe dasjenige, was er als Erkenntnis in seiner Seele suchte, etwas, was Impuls werden mußte zum vollen Sich-Hineinstellen in das Leben, zum Erfühlen alles desjenigen, was das Leben an Glück und Unglück, an Freuden und Schmerzen, an Schicksalsschlägen und Entwickelungsmöglichkeiten den Menschen bringen kann. Aber auch zu alledem soll der Erkenntnisdrang Bezug haben, was sich als Forderungen stellt durch das Leben an den Menschen mit Bezug auf sein Verhalten zum sozialen Ganzen, mit Bezug auf sein Tun und Schaffen. Faust soll nicht bloß als ein nach höchster Erkenntnis Strebender dargestellt werden, sondern als ein Mensch, der mit allem, was das Leben vom Menschen fordert und dem Menschen bringt, in innigster Weise verbunden ist. Dazu sucht Goethe für seinen Faust Selbsterkenntnis, also Menschheitserkenntnis und Selbsterfassung, Erfassung der Kräfte, die im Menschen zur Tat schlummern. Aber ebenso klar ist sich Goethe, daß das gewöhnliche, an die Sinne gebundene, vom Verstand bedingte Erkennen zu solcher Selbsterkenntnis nicht führen kann. Deshalb läßt Goethe auftreten in der «Klassischen Walpurgisnacht» den Homunkulus, jenes Produkt, welches dem mittelalterlichen Forscher eine Nachbildung des Menschen sein sollte aus den Naturkräften und den Naturgesetzen heraus, welche der physische Verstand innerhalb der äußeren Natur fassen kann. Fassen wir jetzt alles das in der Homunkulus-Idee — ich habe gestern genauer darüber gesprochen, was Goethe mit seinem Homunkulus gemeint hat, abgesehen von allem Aberglauben, der mit dem Homunkulus verbunden war -, fassen wir ins Auge, was Goethe damit meint. Goethe wollte in seiner Homunkulus-Idee dasjenige vom Menschen darstellen, was der Mensch hier in der physischen Welt von sich selbst durchschauen kann. Derjenige, der sich nur jener Erkenntnisse bedient, die physische Naturwissenschaft oder physische Lebenserkenntnis liefern können, gelangt niemals nach Goethes Anschauung zur Menschheitserkenntnis und zur Menschheitserfassung. Er wird niemals den Homo, den Menschen erkennen, er wird nur einen Homunkulus, einen auf dem Wege zur Menschwerdung stehengebliebenen, elementaren Geist sich vor die Seele stellen können.
Damit rang nun Goethe als mit einem Erkenntnisproblem. Wie kann aus diesem Gedanken des Homunkulus der Gedanke des Homo werden? Da war sich Goethe klar, das zeigt die ganze Haltung, die ganze Stimmung, die künstlerische Gestaltung der «Klassischen Walpurgisnacht», daß nur in einer solchen Erkenntnis die Frage nach dem Menschen wesen beantwortet werden kann, die hergenommen ist aus der Forschung, die das Geistig-Seelische des Menschen vollführt außerhalb des physischen Menschenleibes. Das wollte Goethe durchaus als sein Bekenntnis aus dem «Faust» herausleuchten lassen, daß über den Menschen jemand nur Auskunft geben kann, der Erkenntnisse gelten läßt, die außerhalb der physischen Leibeswerkzeuge gewonnen werden. Also nur wirkliche Geisteswissenschaft oder, wie wir es auffassen, Anthroposophie kann zur Erkenntnis des Menschen, des Homo führen, während alle übrige in der physischen Welt sich betätigende Erkenntnis bloß zum Gedanken des Homunkulus führen kann. Goethe war auch sein ganzes Leben hindurch unablässig bemüht, soweit es ihm möglich war, aufzusteigen zu solch übersinnlicher Erkenntnis. Er suchte sie auf verschiedenen Wegen. Die Wege, die sich ihm dargeboten haben, versuchte er künstlerisch auszugestalten in seinem «Faust». Faust sollte ihm sein der Repräsentant eines Menschen, der nun zu wirklicher Menschenerkenntnis und Menschenerfassung kommt.
Nun war zu Goethes Zeiten anthroposophisch orientierte Geisteswissenschaft noch nicht vorhanden, konnte nicht vorhanden sein. Goethe versuchte deshalb anzuknüpfen an jene Zeitkulturen, in denen noch die Nachklänge atavistischer Geistanschauung vorhanden waren. Und ihm lag es nahe, nachdem er gezeigt hat alles Ungenügende für die Menschenerkenntnis in der «Romantischen Walpurgisnacht» des ersten Teiles des «Faust» — wir haben öfter über Goethe gesprochen und können deshalb ermessen, von welchen Untergründen aus ihm das nahelag -, zu den Imaginationen der griechischen Mythe seine Zuflucht zu nehmen. Das fühlte, das empfand Goethe, mit den Begriffen des physischen Verstandes ist Menschheitserfassung nicht zu gewinnen. Zu eigenen Imaginationen wollte er noch nicht übergehen. Er versuchte daher wieder zu gestalten griechische Imaginationen. So.daß, wenn wir genauer sprechen, wir gerade die Szene, die sich vor unseren Augen eben abgespielt hat, so ansprechen können: Goethe wollte darstellen, wie ein Mensch, Faust, dem nahegetreten ist — es ist ihm von außen nahegetreten, das tut aber nichts -— die Idee des Homunkulus, die einzig und allein in der physischen Welt zu gewinnen ist, wie ein solcher Mensch dadurch, daß sein Bewußtseinszustand sich umändert, daß er aus seinem Leibe herausgeht, sich anders nun verhält, daß der Mensch sich so verhält, wie wenn er des Nachts, wenn er schläft, außerhalb des Leibes in die Möglichkeit versetzt würde, wahrzunehmen, was dann geistig-seelisch um ihn herum ist. Und dann, wenn er gewissermaßen bewußt einschläft und bewußt weiter sich verhält im Schlafe, wie ein solcher Mensch, wenn er mitnimmt in den Erkenntnisschlaf hinein die im physischen Leben gewonnene Homunkulus-Idee, sie so umgestalten kann, daß sie menschliche Wirklichkeit ergreift. Das wollte Goethe darstellen, und dazu nahm er zu Hilfe die Bilder der griechischen Mythe. Er war in seiner Empfindung wenigstens weit hinaus über jenen Gelehrtenaberglauben - er hat es gerade in dieser Szene mehrfach angedeutet -, daß in solchen Mythen wie der griechischen Mythe nur vorhanden seien Dichtungen, Phantasiegeschöpfe. Sie wissen, ich habe es oftmals besprochen, daß Gelehrtenaberglaube sogar zustande gebracht hat, zu sagen, daß die Legenden, die Sagen, die Mythen, die im einfachen Volke leben, durch die Phantasie umgewandelte Naturanschauungen seien. Solcher Gelehrtenaberglaube hat nämlich keine Ahnung, wie wenig die Phantasie im naiven Gemüte Anteil hat an dem, was geschaffen wird, wie aber Anteil hat ein gewisses atavistisches Wirklichkeitssehen, das im Traume stattfindet. Nun, in den Mythen, die der griechische Geist ausgebildet hat, ist nicht bloß Dichtung, ist Wirklichkeitsanschauen.
Goethe führte erstens dasjenige Element vor, in dem alle alten Völker gesehen haben den Impuls, der auf die Seele so wirkt, daß sie sich vom Leibe trennt. Der Zusammenhang mit der Welt war für die Menschen der alten Zeit ein viel intensiverer, als er für den heutigen abstrakten, rationalistischen Menschen ist. Wenn der Mensch der alten Zeit auf den Berg hinaufstieg, so war das nicht bloß ein physisches, kaum bemerkbares Verändern der Dichtigkeit der Atmungsluft oder eine Veränderung der Perspektive, die das Auge übersieht, sondern es war für ihn der Übergang aus einem Seelenzustande in einen andern Seelenzustand.
Viel lebendiger erlebten bei einem Aufstieg auf den Berg die alten Leute als der neuere, abstrakt gewordene Mensch. Und insbesondere erlebten diese Leute intensiv dasjenige, was grob und ins Barbarische umgesetzt heute noch einige Seeleute auch erleben, daß sich ein gewisses Herausbegeben des Geistig-Seelischen aus dem Leibeswerkzeuge wirklich vollzieht. Tiefer angelegte Seefahrernaturen kennen die Sache noch. Aber für die alten Menschen war das etwas ganz Selbstverständliches, daß sie empfanden, wenn ich hinausschiffe in das weite Meer und nicht mehr meinen Zusammenhang mit der festen Erde habe, die alles mit festen Konturen versieht, dann löst sich die Seele vom Leibe, und man sieht mehr vom Übersinnlichen, als man, wenn man fest verknüpft ist mit den festen Konturen des Irdischen, von diesem Übersinnlichen ahnt. Daher läßt Goethe da, wo der Homunkulus in den Homo umgewandelt werden soll, ein heiteres Meeresfest spielen. Thales, der Naturphilosoph, führt den Homunkulus in dieses heitere Meeresfest ein.
Die Sirenen sehen wir. Ich will heute nicht wiederholen - gestern habe ich es getan —, wie das alles äußerlich, bühnenmäßig, bildhaft gestaltet ist. Ich will aber aufmerksam machen auf das tiefere Geheimnis, das Goethe doch auch darinnen gesehen haben will, das tiefere Geheimnis des Gesanges der Sirenen, dieser dämonischen Wesenheiten, die auf der einen Seite Meeresdämonen sind, aber als Meeresdämonen nur lebendig werden, wenn der Mond das Meer bescheint. Das mondbeglänzte Meer lockt hervor die Sirenen, und die Sirenen locken wiederum des Menschen Seele aus seinem Inneren hervor. Das Aufrufen also zu einem solchen Bewußtseinszustand, in dem die übersinnliche Welt wahrgenommen werden kann in Imaginationen, in Bildern, das führen die Sirenen herbei. Zunächst werden herbeigelockt die Nereiden und Tritonen. Sie sind auf dem Wege nach Samothrake zu den heiligen Mysterien der Kabiren.
Warum läßt Goethe gerade die Kabiren auftreten? Weil sein Homunkulus Homo werden soll, Mensch werden soll, und weil in den heiligen Mysterien der Kabiren in Samothrake vor allen Dingen die in diese Mysterien Einzuweihenden bekanntgemacht werden sollten mit dem Geheimnis der Menschwerdung. Dasjenige, was in den Kabiren sich darstellte, war das Geheimnis der Menschwerdung. Hier in der physischen Welt vollzieht sich das physische Menschwerden, aber dieses physische Menschwerden hat ein geistig-seelisches Gegenbild, und dieses geistig-seelische Gegenbild kann nur außerhalb des Leibes geschaut werden in Imaginationen. Ohne daß die abstrakte Idee des Homunkulus in Zusammenhang gebracht wird mit dem, was da geschaut werden kann, kann aus. dem Homunkulus kein Homo werden. So glaubte Goethe, in alledem, was der Grieche gefühlt hat, wenn er an seine Kabiren in Samothrake dachte, darinnen etwas zu finden, was hinzukommen könne zu dem abstrakten Homunkulusgedanken, damit dieser Homunkulusgedanke zum Homogedanken werde. Sprechen wir einmal unbefangen aus, um was es sich dabei eigentlich handelt.
Goethe sah in dem, was der Mensch durch gewöhnliches Wissen über sich selbst erfahren kann, was also nur ein Homunkulus ist, mit Bezug auf die Erkenntnis etwas, was sich vergleichen läßt mit einem unbefruchteten Menschenkeim. Wenn man nur an den unbefruchteten Menschenkeim in der menschlichen Frau denkt, so kann daraus niemals ein physischer Mensch werden. Der Keim muß befruchtet werden. Dann wird erst ein physischer Mensch. Wenn der Mensch bloß mit dem physischen Verstande nachdenkt, so kann in seinen Gedanken niemals das innere Wesen des Menschen aufleuchten, sondern nur dasjenige, was einseitig hervorgebracht werden kann und etwa sich vergleichen läßt mit dem, was einseitig die Frau hervorrufen kann. Dasjenige, was der physische Verstand vom Menschenwesen erfassen kann, muß befruchtet werden im Erkennen außerhalb des physischen Leibes. Die Hälfte des Menschenrätsels verbirgt sich für das bloße physische Erfassen. Das alte atavistische Hellsehen hat in einer der alten Zeit angemessenen Weise gerade mit dem Kabirengeheimnis auf dasjenige im geistigen Naturzusammenhang hinweisen wollen, was die andere Hälfte des Menschenwerdens ist, die dann hinweist auf des Menschen Unsterbliches. Deshalb meinte Goethe: Vielleicht läßt sich das Homo-Werden aus dem Homunkulus mit Hilfe des Kabiren-Impulses darstellen.
Aber Goethe war als Erkennender nicht nur ein im intensivsten Maße Ringender, sondern er war zu gleicher Zeit das, was auf dem Gebiete des Erkennens viel, viel seltener ist, als man eigentlich glaubt, eine intensiv ehrliche Seele. Er wollte gewissermaßen probieren, wie weit er kommt, wenn er solche Geheimnisse belebt, wie das Kabirengeheimnis eines ist. Weniger ehrliche Erkenner machen einige antiquarische Studien, machen sich vielleicht auch einige Phantasien auf Grundlage ihrer antiquarischen Studien und wissen dann nach ihrer Meinung dasjenige, was etwa durch die Kabiren ausgedrückt ist. Der ehrliche Erkenner weiß immer weniger als diejenigen, die nicht ehrliche Erkenner sind. Der ehrliche Erkenner hält sich eigentlich immer für viel dümmer, als sich diejenigen halten, die leichten Herzens aus dem oder jenem sich eine sogenannte möglichst vollständige, den Menschen erreichbare Erkenntnis zusammenzimmern. Goethe war nicht von denen, die so leichten Herzens das Erkennen nehmen. Goethe wußte, daß auch, wenn man als erkennender Mensch gestrebt hat vom Jahre 1749 bis zum Jahre 1829, in welchem er wohl die Szene, die jetzt vor unseren Augen sich abgespielt hat, geschrieben hat - etwa zwei Jahre vor seinem Tode im strengsten Falle ist diese Szene geschrieben -, er wußte, wenn man auch im Erkenntnisstreben alt geworden ist und niemals nachgelassen hat, dann bleibt immer gerade dem ehrlichen Erkenntnisstreber ein Stachel übrig: Vielleicht mußt du doch noch weiter gehen da oder dort! -— Das ist gerade, was so intensiv aus Goethes Natur heraus wirkt, diese absolute Ehrlichkeit. Diese anerkennt zum Beispiel auch gegenüber dem Kabirenrätsel: Ja, ich kann aber als moderner Mensch, dem nicht mehr das alte atavistische Hellsehen zur Verfügung steht, nicht wissen, was die Griechen bei den Kabiren gedacht haben, ich kann es nicht ganz wissen! Aber vielleicht ist das nicht einmal das Wichtigste, sondern Goethe hatte die Empfindung, in ihm lebe eine Art Wissen von dem Kabirengeheimnis, aber er könne es selbst nicht erfassen, was in ihm lebt. Es ist wie ein Traum, der nicht nur gleich erlischt, sondern wie ein Traum, von dem man weiß, es huscht etwas vorüber, was ein Allertiefstes enthält, aber es huscht so schwach vorüber, daß der Verstand, der Intellekt nicht ausreicht, daß die Seelenkräfte nicht ausreichen, um es zur Deutlichkeit, zu deutlichen Konturen zu bringen. Gerade in diesem intimen inneren Entwickeln liegt das Bedeutsame dieser Szene. Man versteht diese Szene nicht, wenn man alles letzten Endes erklären will. Denn Goethe hat geradezu Bilder aufgerufen, um an seinen Bildern zu zeigen: Da bin ich ganz nahe an dem Orte, zu dem ich hin will, aber es geht nun doch nicht.
Und so führt er die Kabiren vor, um zu zeigen, vielleicht nicht er, aber jemand, der das Kabirengeheimnis voll erfaßt, wird den Übergang des Homunkulus zum Homo durch das Kabirengeheimnis ergründen. Für ihn geht es noch nicht. Daher werden auch andere Wege in der imaginativen Welt gewählt; daher läßt er den Naturphilosophen Thales, deri Goethe sehr schätzte, dem er aber doch nicht zumutete, daß er selber Auskunft darüber geben könne, wie aus dem Homunkulus der Homo wird, als Führer des Homunkulus vor den Nereus treten. Der Nereus hat eine scharfe, eine so scharfe menschliche Auffassungsgabe, das Göttliche ins Dämonische umzusetzen und daher prophetisch die Zukunft vorauszusehen, daß man ihm vielleicht zumuten könne, er wisse etwas darüber, wie aus dem Homunkulus der Homo wird. Aber da will Goethe wiederum zeigen: Nein, auf diesem Weg geht es auch nicht. — Denn wird es auf diesem Wege versucht, so kommt man zu einer einseitigen Ausbildung, zu einer ins Dämonische hinaufgehobenen Ausbildung des kritischen menschlichen Verstandes, der nicht nur ins stumpf Kritische ausläuft, sondern sogar ins prophetisch Kritische ausläuft, also die gute Seite der menschlichen Kritik ins Auge faßt. Aber Nereus, der gewissermaßen unter den Dämonen der Priester ist, ist auch nicht imstande, irgendwie an das Homunkulusproblem heranzutreten. Er will es auch gar nicht. Goethe hat die Empfindung, wenn’ man dasjenige, was nur Menschenverstand ist, bis ins Dämonische hinein ausbildet, wenn es sich sogar, ich möchte sagen dämonisiert, was der Mensch an kritischem, forschendem Verstande schon hat, dann verliert man das Interesse an diesem tiefsten Menschheitsproblem des Homunkulus zum Homo hin. Und so wird denn vom Nereus nichts gewonnen. Aber Nereus macht wenigstens darauf aufmerksam, daß er gerade in diesem Augenblicke erwarte das Herannahen seiner Töchter, der Doriden, die Schwestern der Nereiden sind, und ihrer ausgezeichnetsten, der Galatee. Ich habe schon gestern versucht, etwas darauf hinzuweisen, wovon nun diese Galatee das Bild ist.
Heute sieht der Mensch, der forscht, alles so eingeschachtelt in einzelne Momente des Lebens. In der griechischen Weltanschauung, die durchaus nicht in dem enthalten ist, was man gewöhnlich innerhalb der klassischen Philologie lernt, war das, was im Menschen lebte, noch durchaus in einer Verbindung mit dem, was in der ganzen Natur draußen lebt. Dasjenige, was den Menschen werden läßt, existiert in anderer Form als durchwellend und durchwebend alle Naturvorgänge. Aber man muß es auffinden können. Des Menschen gegenwärtiges Erkenntnisvermögen ist zu grob, um in diejenigen Regionen einzudringen, durch die man draußen in der Natur dieselben Erlebnisse in der großen Welt mitmacht, die sich auch beim Menschen verbergen, wenn er aus dem Menschenkeim von der Konzeption, von der Befruchtung bis zu der Geburt hin sich entwickelt und dann als Mensch erscheint. Dieselben Vorgänge, die sich da in dem Menschen selbst verhüllt abspielen, spielen sich fortwährend um uns herum ab. Es war gerade das, was im Kabirengeheimnis auch den Einzuweihenden enthüllt worden ist, wie in der Natur Empfängnis und Gebärung lebt. Der Mensch sieht den Mond aufgehen und untergehen, sieht die Sonne aufgehen und untergehen, fühlt die Wärme, die die Sonne verbreitet, nimmt das Licht wahr, das die Sonne verbreitet, er sieht die Wolken ziehen, er hört die Meereswelle brausen, sieht sie ihre Form annehmen. In alledem liegt darinnen der die Welt durchwallende und durchwogende Werdeimpuls. Aber nicht mehr nimmt ihn der moderne Mensch wahr. Er wird ihn wahrnehmen, wenn er sich geisteswissenschaftlich weiterentwickelt, und es hat ihn wahrgenommen der atavistische Erkenntnissinn, der atavistische Wahrnehmungs- und Anschauungssinn der alten Zeiten.
Da muß man sich schon einlassen auf jenes feinere Wahrnehmungsvermögen, das in alten Zeiten noch vorhanden war. Heute ist es, man möchte sagen, höchstens noch ahnend erträumt, träumend geahnt, aber nicht ins volle Bewußtsein heraufgehoben, was geschieht, wenn statt des tätigen Sonnenlichtes das Mondenlicht das Meer bescheint, auf den Meereswogen sich das Mondenlicht spiegelt. Der Mensch schaut das heute an, wie sich in den Meereswogen das Mondenlicht spiegelt. Der Physiker sagt höchstens: Mondenlicht ist polarisiertes Licht. — Das ist eine Abstraktion, da ist nicht viel damit gesagt. Er erlebt nicht dasjenige, was da eigentlich geschieht. Wir erleben es heute, wenn man uns mit einer feurigen Zange brennt. Dazu reicht noch die Feinheit unseres Empfindungsvermögens aus. Daß aber etwas lebt in den Sonnenstrahlen, das geistig-seelisch ist, daß etwas Ähnliches lebt, aber doch wieder etwas anderes, in den Mondenstrahlen, daß etwas geschieht, wenn sich das Mondenlicht, dieses erborgte Sonnenlicht, mit dem Meere, mit dem Wogenmeere vermählt, das wußte die griechische Weltanschauung. Sie wußte, was heranwogt, wenn mit der Meereswoge zugleich das sich damit vermählende Mondenlicht heranwogt. Wenn es so herankam, mit der Woge sich vermählend, da nahm in dieser lichtdurchzauberten Welle der Grieche wahr den Impuls draußen wogend, wellend in der Welt, welcher im Menschen wellt und wogt von der Konzeption bis zu der Geburt. Draußen in der Natur in anderer Form dasselbe, was im Menschen vorhanden ist, wenn sich das Mysterium des Menschwerdens im physischen Sinne vollzieht.
Goethe drückt deutlich aus, wie er nachempfindet und künstlerisch nachgestaltet diese feine, intime Empfindung, die der Grieche haben konnte. Goethe drückt es aus, indem er den Thales hinweisen läßt zu dem Mondenhof auf die Wölkchen, die heranziehen und den Muschelwagen der Galatee begleiten. Der Muschelwagen der Galatee, der ist die durch das Meer wallende Gebärungskraft der äußeren Natur, die Goethe mit Luna, mit der Mondenkraft, mit dem Mond-Impuls zusammenbringt. So wird wiederum eine bedeutungsvolle Imagination der griechischen Weltanschauung von Goethe aufgerufen, um nahezukommen jenem Prozeß, durch den die abstrakte Homunkulus-Idee zur Homo-Idee in der menschlichen Anschauung werden kann. Nur dann, wenn man die Intimitäten gefühlsmäßig empfindet bei dem, was da wellt und wogt in Goethes wunderbaren Bildern dieser Szene, dann geht man mit dem mit, was wirklich in Goethes Seele gelebt hat bei dieser Szene. Sobald man versucht, in unsere groben, abstrakten Begriffe diese Szene zu fassen, so daß man nicht sich stimmt auf ein intimes Miterleben desjenigen, was Goethe empfunden haben kann, bleibt man dem Eindringen in diese Szene ferne.
So kann das Problem Homunkulus-Homo gewissermaßen, wenn ich mich trocken und theoretisch ausdrücken darf, seiner Lösung nahegebracht werden, indem diese Idee, die hinausgetragen ist in das leibfreie Anschauen, eingesenkt wird in den Gebärungsimpuls, der durch die Natur wallt und webt. Goethe hat schon vorher, bevor er den Homunkulus zusammenbringt mit diesem Gebärungsimpuls, den Proteus heranrufen lassen, Proteus, derjenige Dämon, dessen innerem Seelengefüge Goethe am nächsten gekommen zu sein glaubte in seiner Metamorphosenlehre, in der er versucht hat, die Umgestaltung der lebendigen Form zu verfolgen von den untergeordneten Wesen bis hinauf zum Menschen, um dadurch dem Rätsel des Menschenwerdens, dem Rätsel Homunkulus-Homo näherzukommen. Wir wissen, Goethe hat das nur auf längeren Wegen sich lösen können. Er glaubte zu erkennen, wie das Laubblatt sich in das Blütenblatt und dieses wiederum sich in das Staubgefäß und in den Stempel der Pflanze verwandelt; er glaubte auch zu erkennen, wie die Knochen des Rückgratskeletts sich verwandeln in die Knochen des Schädels. Er blieb dabei stehen, denn er konnte nicht durchdringen zu der Krönung dieser Metamorphosen-Idee, die dadurch vorhanden ist, daß wir wissen, eine Metamorphose findet statt auch für die Kräfte, die den menschlichen Leib durchziehen von der einen Inkarnation, von dem einen Erdenleben bis zum andern Erdenleben. Was heute mein Haupt ist, das ist der metamorphosierte übrige Leib aus der vorhergehenden Inkarnation, und was heute mein Leib außerhalb des Hauptes ist, wird sich umgestalten bis zur nächsten Inkarnation zu der Gestalt meines Hauptes in der nächsten Inkarnation. Das ist die Krönung der Metamorphose. Aber Goethe konnte erst die elementare Stufe dieser in anthroposophisch orientierte Geisteswissenschaft hineinmündenden Metamorphosen-Idee geben. Sie trat ihm nahe, als er das Problem Homunkulus-Homo zu erfassen versuchte und es dichterisch zu gestalten bestrebt war.
Auch da stellt er, ich möchte sagen ehrlich-skeptisch alles dasjenige hin, was der die Metamorphosen-Idee repräsentierende Proteus vermag. Proteus tritt auf in seinen verschiedenen Gestaltungen. Allein, sie stehen nebeneinander. Alles wird herbeigezogen, möchte ich sagen, von Goethe, was wirklich zu der Geburt, zu der übersinnlichen Geburt der Homunkulus-Idee führen kann. Goethe verzagt dann wiederum. Da blitzt herein, möchte ich sagen, ein anderer Strahl. Gegenüber all den Dämonen, den geistigen Wesenheiten elementarer Art, Nereiden, Tritonen und Doriden, dem Nereus. dem Proteus und so weiter, gegenüber all denen treten die Telchinen auf. Diese, gewissermaßen die ältesten Künstler der vierten nachatlantischen Erdenwelt, erinnern uns daran, daß Goethe nicht nur auf dem Wege über sinnliche Wissenschaft, sondern auf einem andern sinnlichen Wege sich dem Menschenrätsel zu nähern versuchte: auf dem Wege der Kunst. Goethe war in der Tat nicht einseitig erkennender Mensch oder einseitig künstlerischer Mensch, sondern in ihm verband sich der Künstler bewußt mit dem Erkenner. Daher sagte er, alser vor den Kunstwerken in Italien stand, in ihnen vernehme er etwas, wie wenn er erkennen würde, daß die Griechen beim Schaffen ihrer Kunstwerke nach denselben Gesetzen verfahren seien, nach denen die Natur selbst verfährt und denen er auf der Spur ist. Und wenn man Goethes Buch über «Winckelmann» auf sich wirken läßt, so wird man sehen, wie Goethe auf dem Wege der Kunst versuchte, gewissermaßen das menschliche Erkenntnisrätsel sich nahezubringen, zu verfolgen den Wandel der Naturerscheinungen bis da herauf, wo die Natur im Menschen ihrer selbst bewußt wird, wie er das im Buche über «Winckelmann» so schön ausdrückt. Was da die Naturanschauung, die künstlerische Naturanschauung vermag, angeschaut von der andern Seite, vom übersinnlichen Erkennen aus, das wird uns nahegebracht durch das Auftreten der Telchinen, die alte Künstler sind, die Götter zuerst menschlich gestaltet haben.
Goethe zeigt uns an, daß, während er sonst immer gewissermaßen hinüberleitet das menschliche Bewußtsein aus dem Sinnlichen ins Übersinnliche, er da wiederum zurückschauen läßt aus dem Übersinnlichen ins Sinnliche. Die Telchinen sind im Übersinnlichen, aber ihr Sinn geh' gewissermaßen wiederum ins Sinnliche herüber; sie sind im Gegensatze gezeichnet zu all den andern Gestalten, welche rein geweiht sind dem Monde, der Luna, sie sind diejenigen, welche von den Sirenen angesprochen werden:
Euch, dem Helios Geweihten,
Heiteren Tags Gebenedeiten,
Gruß zur Stunde, die bewegt
Lunas Hochverehrung regt!
Sie gehören also eigentlich der Sonne. Sie haben auf Rhodus dem Gotte Apollon Statue über Statue errichtet. Es wird gewissermaßen gesucht, durch Hinüberschauen in die übersinnliche Welt dem HomoHomunkulus-Problem nahezukommen. Aber auch das geht nicht. Und Proteus selbst weist energisch ab, daß etwas gewonnen ist für den Übergang des Homunkulus zum Homo durch die Telchinen. Was geschieht? Nun, die Psylilen und Marsen, eine Art Schlangendämonen kommen heran, und sie bringen den Muschelwagen mit der Galatee, die wir vorhin charakterisiert haben. Die Psyllen und Marsen sind Schlangendämonen, Dämonen, welche gewissermaßen das Seelische aus dem Menschen herausführen ins Geistige hinein und zu gleicher Zeit Diener sind in derjenigen Welt, die dann der Mensch betritt, wenn er seinen physischen Leib verläßt. Da ist keine Trennung zwischen reinem Tier und reinem Menschen; da geht die Tiergestalt in die menschliche über.
Nun wird, nachdem noch gezeigt worden ist, wie schwierig es wird, das Verhältnis der geistigen Welt zu der sinnlichen Welt dem Menschen vorzuführen an den Doriden und den Schifferknaben, die sie bringen, das Zerschellen des Homunkulus am Muschelwagen der Galatee gezeigt. Auch das ist eine Intimität in dieser Szene, daß die Doriden die Schifferknaben heranbringen. Die Doriiden sind Dämonen, Meereswesen; die Schifferknaben Menschenwesen. Goethe will anzeigen, daß der Mensch nahekommen kann den geistigen Wesen von der andern Seite des Daseins, daß das Schicksal — wir werden ja deutlich hingewiesen: gerettet worden sind durch die Doriden die Schifferknaben -, daß das Schicksal den Menschen mit den Göttern zusammenbringt. Allein hier im physischen Leben löst sich das Verhältnis alsbald wieder auf; es kann nicht festgehalten werden, wenn sich Übersinnliches mit Sinnlichem verbinden will:
Die Götter wollen’s nicht leiden.
Und dann tritt uns am Schlusse dieser Szene in einer ganz wunderbaren Weise entgegen, wie, nachdem all das versucht worden ist in grandiosen Imaginationen, was den Homunkulus zum Homo machen kann, gewissermaßen als höchste, als bedeutsamste, intensivste Annäherung an die Lösung dieses Menschenrätsels das eintritt, daß wirklich Homunkulus untertaucht in die Gebärungskraft der Natur, insoferne sie sich durch die mondbeglänzte und mondeslichtdurchzauberte Meereswelle kundgibt. Da taucht Homunkulus ein. Was sehen wir am Schlusse der Szene? Ein Aufblitzen, Aufflammen. Alle Elemente machen sich geltend: Erde, Wasser, Feuer, Luft, alle Elemente — überwältigend gewissermaßen dasjenige, was da geschieht. Und es steht vor uns etwa so, wie wenn wir nun selbst uns eingesenkt hätten in den Erkenntnisschlaf, uns mit den Imaginationen, die allein über das Menschenrätsel in der andern Seite des Daseins aufklären können, uns bekanntgemacht hätten, und dann durch das Fortrollen der Gebärungskraft wieder zurückgerufen werden in das Leben, das wir im Leibe vollbringen. Ich habe Ihnen schon gestern gesagt: Die Kraft, welche der Konzeption, der Empfängnis, dem Embryonalen, der Geburt zugrunde liegt, ist nur eine ausgebreitetere, intensivere Kraft, aber sie ist gleicher Art, ist ganz dieselbe Kraft eigentlich wie diejenige, die uns aus dem nächtlichen Schlafe oder auch aus dem Erkenntnisschlafe zurückzaubert in das körperliche Wachsein. Jeden Morgen, wenn wir aufwachen, wachen wir auf durch dieselbe Kraft, die nur in anderer Intensität da ist, durch die ein Mensch empfangen, getragen, geboren wird. Nur wird das eine hier, aber auch nur seiner Außenseite nach, nicht seiner tief geheimnisvollen Innenseite nach, auf der Erde geschaut; das andere geht ganz unvermerkt vorüber. Dieses heilige Mysterium des Aufwachens, es geht unvermerkt vorüber. — Wir sind eingesenkt in eine geistige Welt, wir sind untergetaucht in eine geistige Welt; wir wachen auf, beziehen unseren Leib, sind in der physisch-sinnlichen Welt.
Es gibt immerhin auch unter den nicht hellsehenden Menschen einige, welche ganz gut wissen, was eigentlich lebt, wenn sie drüben sind im schlafenden Zustande und durch den Schlaf mehr als Traumhaftes, traumhaft wogend die geistige Wirklichkeit empfinden und dann aufwachen, aufwachen durch dieselbe Kraft, die im Muschelwagen der Galatee lebt: die Gebärungskraft der Natur, mit der sich der HomoHomunkulus verbindet zur Menschwerdung. Einige Menschen wissen es, auch wenn sie nicht Hellseher sind. Die Wissenschaft des Hellsehens gibt es aber vollständig klar bei diesem Aufwachen: es ist ein Untertauchen aus der geistigen Welt heraus, die nur in Imaginationen zu erfassen ist, in die physisch-sinnliche Welt, die in den Elementen: Feuer, Wasser, Erde, Luft, lebt. Da zerschellt wiederum dasjenige, was wir glauben, schon gewonnen zu haben für das Homo-Werden des Homun kulus drüben in der andern Welt, da zerschellt es, wenn er wiederum in die Wirklichkeit zurückgeht. Faust soll in die Wirklichkeit des alten Griechentums untertauchen, Faust soll die Helena persönlich in seine Nähe bekommen. Wenn Sie nur umblättern von jenem gewaltigen Schlusse dieser Szene, wo es heißt:
Heil dem Meere! Heil den Wogen!
Von dem heiligen Feuer umzogen;
Heil dem Wasser! Heil dem Feuer!
Heil dem selt’'nen Abenteuer!Heil den mildgewogenen Lüften!
Heil geheimnisreichen Grüften!
Hochgefeiert seid allhier,
Element!’ ihr alle vier!
— wenn Sie nur umblättern, so haben Sie den dritten Akt:
Bewundert viel und viel gescholten, Helena,
Vom Strande komm’ ich, wo wir erst gelandet sind,
Noch immer trunken von des Gewoges regsamem
Geschaukel, das vom phrygischen Blachgefild uns her...
und so weiter.
Faust soll sein in der griechischen Wirklichkeit, Faust soll sein aufgewacht aus der Wahrnehmung höchster Geistigkeit für das Homunkulus-Homo-Rätsel, in der griechischen Welt. Da soll er bewußt aufwachen, wie Goethe es wollte. Da mußte sich der Moment des Aufwachens so vollziehen, daß gewissermaßen gezeigt wird, wie das im Geistig-Übersinnlichen über das Menschenrätsel Wahrgenommene zerschellt, indem man in die äußere physische Wirklichkeit, in seinen Leib, wieder untertaucht. Das ist ein Vorgang draußen in der Natur, wenn der Mond erlischt und die Morgenröte wird. Aber diesen Zusammenhang empfindet der Mensch heute höchstens allegorisch, symbolisch oder dichterisch. Die Realität, die dem zugrunde liegt, ist wenig bekannt. Hier tritt sie auf in etwas, was zu gleicher Zeit Verkörperung des Erkenntnisrätsels, aber wahre Dichtung ist. Es ist Goethe wirklich gelungen, in grandioser Weise Faust einzuführen in die übersinnliche Welt und aufwachen zu lassen für das Zusammenleben mit der griechischen Wirklichkeit.
Man möchte sich sagen: Es war in den achtziger Jahren des 18. Jahrhunderts, Goethe trat seine Flucht nach Italien an, denn eine Flucht war es. Er wollte kennenlernen, nachdem er sich in der nordischen Natur umgetan hatte, dasjenige, was er glaubte, für die Anschauung der Weltenrätsel nur durch die Anschauung der südlichen Kunst gewinnen zu können. — Er hatte viel gewonnen, denn wir wissen, was dann geworden ist aus Goethe in den neunziger Jahren des 18. Jahrhunderts. Dann war er wieder älter geworden, das heißt, jünger in der Seele. Während der Mensch äußerlich alt wird, wird er jung in der Seele; wenn er stirbt, ist er in der Seele am allerjüngsten. Das seelische Leben ist rückgängig. Nun war so etwas wie das Jahr 1829 herangerückt. Man spürt, man empfindet, wie Goethe da etwa in sich selber fühlte: Wie hätte ich erst, als ich die Möglichkeit hatte, unterzutauchen in die Welt der südlichen Kunstwerke, das Griechentum vor meiner Seele aufzuerwecken, wie hätte ich das alles erleben können viel reicher, viel intensiver, als ich es erlebt habe, wenn ich dazumal schon hätte so in die geistige Welt untertauchen können, wie ich es jetzt ahnend erlebe. - Das macht die eigentümliche Stimmung in diesem zweiten Teil von Goethes «Faust» aus, daß man die jung gewordene, aber in der Verjüngung reich gewordene Seele in einem erhöhten Maße noch einmal das sich künstlerisch vorführen sieht, was das Leben hindurch erfahren worden ist. Philister werden daher den zweiten Teil von Goethes «Faust» niemals irgendwie sich nahebringen können. Und ich kann es vollständig verstehen, wenn der in vieler Beziehung so geistreiche Schwaben -Vischer, der sogenannte V-Vischer, der manches recht Gute über Goethes «Faust» gesagt hat, gefunden hat, so etwas ist ledern, das ist zusammengeschustertes, zusammengeleimtes Machwerk des Alters. Aber Philisterei, wenn sie noch so gelehrt, noch so gescheit, noch so intelligent ist, wird auch in das Poetische, gerade in das höchst Poetische, das der zweite Teil von Goethes «Faust» hat, nicht eindringen können. Man wird nur eindringen können, wenn man seinen poetischen Sinn durchglühen, befeuern läßt von demjenigen, was geistige Anschauung gibt.:
Wir wollen dann noch morgen nach der Vorstellung dieser Szene einiges im Zusammenhange mit dieser Darstellung Goethescher Impulse sagen.
The View of Reality in Greek Myths
based on a depiction of the “Classical Walpurgis Night”
Yesterday, I attempted to speak to you about the scene from the second part of “Faust” that has just been performed. I would like to briefly repeat the main ideas that were brought to bear here yesterday, because this scene is indeed one of Goethe's most significant creations, a scene that Goethe inserted into his “Faust” after wrestling with the Faust problem for some sixty years. We are also dealing with a scene that allows us to look deeply into Goethe's soul, insofar as this soul is ruled by a thirst for knowledge and, above all, by the seriousness and greatness of this thirst for knowledge. However, when interpreting Faust as a work of poetry based on knowledge, one must never lose sight of the fact that everything revealed in Faust with the utmost wisdom does not detract from the artistic creativity, the purely artistic, as is so often the case with lesser poets who attempt such things. I have pointed out that Goethe himself emphasized to Eckermann that he had hidden many things in his Faust, and that the initiated would find many human mysteries in it, but that he had endeavored to shape everything in such a way that, viewed purely from the stage, the imagery could also make an impression on the naive mind.
Now let us once again bring to mind the main ideas of what was communicated yesterday about what was hidden within, so that we can then move on to what could not be touched upon yesterday, to the conclusion of this scene. Yesterday I said that this scene clearly demonstrates how Goethe pursued the problem of human self-knowledge and human self-understanding. For Goethe, knowledge—the grasping of truth was a scientific urge—was never something abstract or theoretical, but always, as it must become more and more so for the complete human being in the future development of humanity, For Goethe, it was what he sought as knowledge in his soul, something that had to become an impulse to fully immerse oneself in life, to feel everything that life can bring to human beings in terms of happiness and misfortune, joys and sorrows, strokes of fate and opportunities for development. But the thirst for knowledge should also relate to all that life demands of people in terms of their behavior toward the social whole, in terms of their actions and creations. Faust should not be portrayed merely as someone striving for the highest knowledge, but as a person who is intimately connected with everything that life demands of people and brings to them. To this end, Goethe seeks self-knowledge for his Faust, that is, knowledge of humanity and self-awareness, awareness of the powers that lie dormant in humans. But Goethe is equally clear that ordinary knowledge, bound to the senses and conditioned by the intellect, cannot lead to such self-knowledge. That is why Goethe introduces the homunculus in “Walpurgis Night,” that product which medieval researchers believed to be a replica of man, created from the forces and laws of nature that the physical mind can comprehend within the external world. Let us now take all this in the idea of the homunculus — yesterday I spoke in more detail about what Goethe meant by his homunculus, apart from all the superstition associated with it — let us consider what Goethe means by it. In his idea of the homunculus, Goethe wanted to represent that part of the human being which the human being can see for itself here in the physical world. According to Goethe's view, those who make use only of the insights that physical science or physical knowledge of life can provide will never attain knowledge of humanity and an understanding of humanity. They will never recognize Homo, the human being; they will only be able to place before their soul a homunculus, an elementary spirit that has stopped on the path to becoming human.
Goethe now wrestled with this as a problem of knowledge. How can this idea of the homunculus become the idea of homo? Goethe was clear that, as shown by the whole attitude, the whole mood, and the artistic design of “Classical Walpurgis Night,” the question of the nature of man can only be answered by knowledge taken from research that examines the spiritual and mental aspects of man outside the physical human body. Goethe wanted to make it clear in Faust that only someone who accepts knowledge gained outside the physical body can provide information about human beings. Thus, only true spiritual science or, as we understand it, anthroposophy can lead to knowledge of the human being, of Homo, while all other knowledge active in the physical world can only lead to the idea of the homunculus. Throughout his life, Goethe also made incessant efforts, as far as he was able, to ascend to such supersensible knowledge. He sought it in various ways. He attempted to artistically embody the paths that presented themselves to him in his “Faust.” Faust was to be his representative of a human being who now comes to true knowledge and understanding of humanity.
Now, in Goethe's time, anthroposophically oriented spiritual science did not yet exist, could not exist. Goethe therefore tried to connect with those cultures of the time in which the echoes of atavistic spiritual views were still present. And it was natural for him, after he had shown everything that was insufficient for human knowledge in the “Romantic Walpurgis Night” of the first part of Faust — we have often spoken about Goethe and can therefore appreciate the background that made this natural for him — to take refuge in the imaginations of Greek mythology. Goethe felt and sensed that humanity cannot be understood with the concepts of the physical mind. He did not yet want to move on to his own imaginations. He therefore tried to recreate Greek imaginations. So that, to be more precise, we can refer to the scene that has just played out before our eyes: Goethe wanted to depict how a human being, Faust, who has been approached — it has been approached from outside, but that doesn't matter — the idea of the homunculus, which can only be gained in the physical world, how such a human being, through a change in his state of consciousness, by leaving his body, behaves differently, that the person behaves as if, at night, when he is asleep, he were placed outside his body in a position to perceive what is then spiritually and psychologically around him. And then, when he falls asleep consciously, so to speak, and continues to behave consciously in his sleep, such a person, if he takes with him into the sleep of knowledge the idea of the homunculus gained in physical life, can transform it in such a way that it takes hold of human reality. Goethe wanted to portray this, and to do so he drew on the images of Greek mythology. In his perception, he was far beyond the superstition of scholars — he hinted at this several times in this scene — that myths such as the Greek myths contained only poetry and creatures of the imagination. You know, I have often discussed how scholarly superstition has even led to the claim that the legends, sagas, and myths that live among the common people are views of nature transformed by the imagination. Such scholarly superstition has no idea how little the imagination plays a part in the naive mind in what is created, but how much a certain atavistic view of reality, which takes place in dreams, plays a part. Now, in the myths that the Greek spirit has developed, there is not only fiction, there is a view of reality.
Goethe first presented the element in which all ancient peoples saw the impulse that affects the soul in such a way that it separates from the body. The connection with the world was much more intense for the people of ancient times than it is for today's abstract, rationalistic human beings. When people of ancient times climbed a mountain, it was not merely a physical, barely noticeable change in the density of the air or a change in perspective that the eye overlooks, but for them it was a transition from one state of mind to another.The people of old experienced climbing a mountain much more vividly than modern humans, who have become abstract. In particular, these people intensely experienced what some sailors still experience today, albeit in a crude and barbaric form, namely that a certain spiritual-soulic emergence from the physical body actually takes place. Deep-seated seafaring types still know this. But for the ancient people, it was something completely natural that they felt that when they sailed out into the wide sea and no longer had their connection to the solid earth, which provides everything with firm contours, the soul detached itself from the body, and one saw more of the supersensible than one could guess at when one was firmly connected to the solid contours of the earthly. That is why Goethe has a cheerful sea festival take place where the homunculus is to be transformed into a homo. Thales, the natural philosopher, introduces the homunculus to this cheerful sea festival.
We see the sirens. I do not want to repeat today — I did so yesterday — how all this is staged, pictorially, in terms of the external. But I want to draw attention to the deeper mystery that Goethe also wants us to see in it, the deeper mystery of the song of the sirens, these demonic beings who are, on the one hand, sea demons, but who only come to life as sea demons when the moon shines on the sea. The moonlit sea lures out the sirens, and the sirens in turn lure the human soul out of its inner being. The sirens bring about a state of consciousness in which the supersensible world can be perceived in imaginations and images. First, the Nereids and Tritons are lured out. They are on their way to Samothrace to the sacred mysteries of the Cabiri.
Why does Goethe have the Cabiri appear? Because his homunculus is to become homo, to become human, and because in the sacred mysteries of the Cabiri in Samothrace, above all, those to be initiated into these mysteries were to be made acquainted with the secret of becoming human. What was represented in the Cabiri was the secret of becoming human. Here in the physical world, physical human becoming takes place, but this physical human becoming has a spiritual-soul counterpart, and this spiritual-soul counterpart can only be seen outside the body in imaginations. Without the abstract idea of the homunculus being connected with what can be seen there, the homunculus cannot become homo. Goethe believed that in everything the Greeks felt when they thought of their Cabiri in Samothrace, he could find something that could be added to the abstract idea of the homunculus, so that this idea of the homunculus could become the idea of the homo. Let us speak openly about what this actually means.Goethe saw in what humans can learn about themselves through ordinary knowledge, which is only a homunculus, something comparable to an unfertilized human germ in terms of knowledge. If one thinks only of the unfertilized human germ in a human woman, it can never become a physical human being. The germ must be fertilized. Only then does it become a physical human being. If a person thinks only with their physical mind, the inner essence of the human being can never shine forth in their thoughts, but only that which can be produced one-sidedly and can be compared, for example, to what a woman can produce one-sidedly. That which the physical mind can grasp of the human being must be fertilized in recognition outside the physical body. Half of the human mystery is hidden from mere physical perception. In a manner appropriate to ancient times, the old atavistic clairvoyance sought to point out, precisely through the Kabir secret, that which is the other half of becoming human in the spiritual context of nature, which then points to the immortal nature of human beings. That is why Goethe said: Perhaps becoming human can be represented from the homunculus with the help of the Kabir impulse.
But Goethe, as a seeker of knowledge, was not only an intensely struggling person, he was at the same time something that is much, much rarer in the field of knowledge than one might think: an intensely honest soul. He wanted, in a sense, to see how far he could go by bringing such mysteries to life, such as the Kabir mystery. Less honest seekers of knowledge do some antiquarian studies, perhaps also indulge in some fantasies based on their antiquarian studies, and then think they know what is expressed by the Kabirs, for example. The honest seeker of knowledge always knows less than those who are not honest seekers of knowledge. The honest seeker of knowledge always considers himself much more stupid than those who lightheartedly cobble together from this or that a so-called knowledge that is as complete as possible and attainable by human beings. Goethe was not one of those who take knowledge so lightly. Goethe knew that even if one had striven as a knowledgeable person from 1749 to 1829, in which he probably wrote the scene that has now played out before our eyes — this scene was written about two years before his death, in the strictest case — he knew that even if one had grown old in the pursuit of knowledge and never slackened, there would always remain a thorn in the side of the honest seeker of knowledge: perhaps you still have to go further here or there! — That is precisely what comes across so intensely in Goethe's nature, this absolute honesty. This is also evident, for example, in his response to the Cabiri riddle: Yes, but as a modern person who no longer has the old atavistic clairvoyance at his disposal, I cannot know what the Greeks thought about the Cabiri; I cannot know it completely! But perhaps that is not even the most important thing. Goethe had the feeling that a kind of knowledge of the Cabiri mystery lived within him, but he himself could not grasp what lived within him. It is like a dream that not only fades away immediately, but like a dream in which one knows that something is flitting by that contains something very profound, but it flits by so faintly that the mind, the intellect, is not sufficient, that the powers of the soul are not sufficient to bring it into clarity, into clear contours. It is precisely in this intimate inner development that the significance of this scene lies. One cannot understand this scene if one wants to explain everything in the end. For Goethe has evoked images in order to show with his images: I am very close to the place I want to go, but now it is not possible after all.
And so he introduces the Cabiri to show that perhaps not he, but someone who fully comprehends the Cabiri secret, will fathom the transition from homunculus to homo through the Cabiri secret. For him, it is not yet possible. Therefore, other paths are chosen in the imaginative world; therefore, he has the natural philosopher Thales, whom Goethe greatly admired but did not expect to be able to provide information about how the homunculus becomes homo, appear before Nereus as the guide of the homunculus. Nereus has such a sharp, such a keen human faculty for understanding that he can transform the divine into the demonic and thus prophetically foresee the future, so that one might expect him to know something about how the homunculus becomes homo. But here Goethe wants to show again: No, this path does not work either. For if one tries this path, one arrives at a one-sided education, at an education of the critical human mind elevated to the demonic, which not only ends in blunt criticism, but even ends in prophetic criticism, that is, it focuses on the good side of human criticism. But Nereus, who is, so to speak, among the demons of the priests, is also incapable of approaching the homunculus problem in any way. He does not even want to. Goethe has the feeling that if one develops what is only human understanding into the demonic, if one even, I would say, demonizes what humans already have in terms of critical, inquiring understanding, then one loses interest in this deepest human problem of the homunculus to homo. And so nothing is gained from Nereus. But Nereus at least draws attention to the fact that at this very moment he is expecting the arrival of his daughters, the Dorides, who are the sisters of the Nereids, and their most distinguished sister, Galatea. I already tried yesterday to point out something of which Galatea is now the image.
Today, the person who researches sees everything as boxed up into individual moments of life. In the Greek worldview, which is by no means contained in what is usually taught in classical philology, what lived in human beings was still very much connected with what lives in the whole of nature outside. That which makes human beings what they are exists in a different form, permeating and interweaving all natural processes. But one must be able to find it. Human beings' present capacity for knowledge is too crude to penetrate those regions through which one experiences in nature the same things that are hidden in human beings when they develop from the human germ, from conception and fertilization to birth, and then appear as human beings. The same processes that take place hidden within the human being are constantly taking place around us. It was precisely this that was revealed to the initiates in the Kabir secret, how conception and birth live in nature. Human beings see the moon rise and set, see the sun rise and set, feel the warmth that the sun spreads, perceive the light that the sun spreads, see the clouds drift by, hear the ocean waves roar, see them take shape. In all of this lies the impulse of becoming that permeates and pervades the world. But modern man no longer perceives it. He will perceive it when he develops further in spiritual science, and it was perceived by the atavistic sense of knowledge, the atavistic sense of perception and intuition of ancient times.One must engage with that finer faculty of perception that was still present in ancient times. Today, one might say, it is at most still sensed in dreams, dreamed of in dreams, but not raised to full consciousness, what happens when, instead of the active sunlight, the moonlight shines on the sea, reflecting on the waves. People today look at how the moonlight is reflected in the waves. The physicist says at most: Moonlight is polarized light. — That is an abstraction; it does not say much. He does not experience what is actually happening there. We experience it today when we are burned with fiery tongs. Our sensitivity is still sufficient for this. But the Greek worldview knew that something lives in the sun's rays, something spiritual and soulful, that something similar lives in the moon's rays, but something different, that something happens when the moonlight, this borrowed sunlight, marries the sea, the sea of waves. It knew what was coming when the moonlight, marrying itself to the waves of the sea, came with them. When it came like this, marrying itself to the waves, the Greeks perceived in this wave, enchanted by light, the impulse swaying and undulating outside in the world, which undulates and sways in human beings from conception to birth. Outside in nature, in a different form, the same thing that is present in humans when the mystery of becoming human takes place in the physical sense.
Goethe clearly expresses how he empathizes with and artistically recreates this subtle, intimate feeling that the Greeks could have had. Goethe expresses it by having Thales point to the moon's court, to the little clouds that are approaching and accompanying Galatea's shell chariot. Galatea's shell chariot is the birth force of outer nature surging through the sea, which Goethe brings together with Luna, with the power of the moon, with the moon impulse. Thus, Goethe again invokes a meaningful image from the Greek worldview in order to approach the process through which the abstract idea of the homunculus can become the idea of homo in human perception. Only when one feels the intimacies emotionally in what surges and swells in Goethe's wonderful images of this scene does one go along with what really lived in Goethe's soul in this scene. As soon as one tries to grasp this scene in our crude, abstract concepts, so that one does not attune oneself to an intimate experience of what Goethe may have felt, one remains distant from penetrating this scene.
So the problem of homunculus-homo can, in a sense, if I may express myself dryly and theoretically, be brought closer to its solution by sinking this idea, which is carried out into body-free contemplation, into the impulse of birth that surges and weaves through nature. Even before bringing the homunculus together with this impulse to give birth, Goethe had Proteus appear, Proteus, the demon whose inner soul structure Goethe believed he had come closest to in his theory of metamorphosis, in which he attempted to trace the transformation of living form from subordinate beings up to humans in order to thereby come closer to the mystery of becoming human, the mystery of homunculus-homo. We know that Goethe was only able to resolve this over a long period of time. He believed he could see how the leaf transforms into the petal and this in turn into the stamen and pistil of the plant; he also believed he could see how the bones of the spinal skeleton transform into the bones of the skull. He stopped there, because he could not penetrate to the culmination of this idea of metamorphosis, which is present in the fact that we know that a metamorphosis also takes place for the forces that permeate the human body from one incarnation, from one earthly life to another. What is my head today is the metamorphosed remainder of the body from the previous incarnation, and what is my body outside the head today will be transformed until the next incarnation into the form of my head in the next incarnation. That is the culmination of metamorphosis. But Goethe was only able to provide the elementary stage of this idea of metamorphosis, which leads into anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. It came to him when he was trying to grasp the problem of the homunculus-homo and was striving to give it poetic form.
Here, too, he presents, I would say with honest skepticism, everything that Proteus, representing the idea of metamorphosis, is capable of. Proteus appears in his various forms. But they stand side by side. Everything is brought in, I would say, by Goethe, that can really lead to the birth, to the supersensible birth of the homunculus idea. Goethe then desponds again. Then, I would say, another ray flashes in. Opposite all the demons, the spiritual beings of an elemental nature, Nereids, Tritons, and Dorids, Nereus, Proteus, and so on, opposite all of them, the Telchines appear. These, in a sense the oldest artists of the fourth post-Atlantean earth world, remind us that Goethe attempted to approach the mystery of man not only through sensory science, but also through another sensory path: the path of art. Goethe was in fact not a one-sidedly cognitive person or a one-sidedly artistic person, but rather the artist consciously combined with the cognizer within him. That is why, when he stood before the works of art in Italy, he said that he perceived something in them, as if he recognized that the Greeks had followed the same laws in creating their works of art as nature itself follows and which he is trying to trace. And if one allows Goethe's book on “Winckelmann” to sink in, one will see how Goethe attempted, through art, to approach the mystery of human cognition, to trace the transformation of natural phenomena up to the point where nature becomes conscious of itself in man, as he so beautifully expresses it in his book on “Winckelmann.” What the view of nature, the artistic view of nature, is capable of, seen from the other side, from supernatural cognition, is brought home to us by the appearance of the Telchines, who are ancient artists who first gave human form to the gods.
Goethe shows us that, while he otherwise always leads human consciousness from the sensual to the supersensible, he here again allows us to look back from the supersensible to the sensual. The Telchines are in the supersensible, but their meaning, in a sense, crosses over into the sensual; they are depicted in contrast to all the other figures, who are purely consecrated to the moon, to Luna; they are the ones who are addressed by the sirens:
To you, consecrated to Helios,
Blessed ones of cheerful days,
Greetings to the hour that stirs
Luna's high reverence!
So they actually belong to the sun. They have erected statue after statue to the god Apollo on Rhodes. In a sense, they are seeking to approach the homo homunculus problem by looking into the supernatural world. But that doesn't work either. And Proteus himself emphatically rejects the idea that anything has been gained for the transition of the homunculus to homo by the Telchines. What happens? Well, the Psyllenes and Marsenses, a kind of snake demons, approach, and they bring the shell chariot with Galatea, whom we characterized earlier. The Psyllen and Marsen are serpent demons, demons who, in a sense, lead the soul out of man into the spiritual world and at the same time are servants in the world that man enters when he leaves his physical body. There is no separation between pure animal and pure human; the animal form merges into the human form.
Now, after showing how difficult it is to demonstrate the relationship between the spiritual world and the sensory world to humans, the Dorids and the boat boys who bring them are shown shattering the homunculus on Galatea's shell chariot. There is also an intimacy in this scene in that the Dorids bring the boat boys. The Dorids are demons, sea creatures; the boatmen are human beings. Goethe wants to show that humans can come close to the spiritual beings from the other side of existence, that fate—we are clearly told that the boatmen have been saved by the Dorids—brings humans together with the gods. But here in physical life, the relationship quickly dissolves again; it cannot be sustained when the supernatural wants to connect with the sensual:
The gods will not tolerate it.
And then, at the end of this scene, we are confronted in a quite wonderful way with how, after all that has been attempted in grandiose imaginations to make the homunculus into a homo, the highest, most significant, most intense approach to the solution of this human riddle occurs, namely that the homunculus truly submerges into the creative power of nature, insofar as it manifests itself through the moonlit and moonlight-enchanted ocean waves. There the homunculus submerges. What do we see at the end of the scene? A flash, a blaze. All the elements assert themselves: earth, water, fire, air, all the elements — overwhelming, in a sense, what is happening there. And it stands before us as if we ourselves had sunk into the sleep of knowledge, had become acquainted with the imaginations that alone can enlighten us about the mystery of man on the other side of existence, and then, through the rolling on of the creative power, were called back to the life we accomplish in the body. I already told you yesterday: the power that underlies conception, pregnancy, the embryonic stage, and birth is only a more expansive, more intense power, but it is of the same kind, it is actually the very same power that conjures us back from nighttime sleep or even from the sleep of knowledge into physical wakefulness. Every morning when we wake up, we wake up through the same force that is present in a different intensity, through which a human being is conceived, carried, and born. Only one of these is seen on earth, but only its outer side, not its deeply mysterious inner side; the other passes by completely unnoticed. This sacred mystery of waking up passes by unnoticed. — We are immersed in a spiritual world; we wake up, enter our bodies, and are in the physical, sensory world.
Even among people who are not clairvoyant, there are some who know very well what actually lives when they are in a sleeping state and, through sleep, experience spiritual reality in a more than dreamlike, dreamlike way, and then wake up, wake up through the same power that lives in Galatea's shell carriage: the creative power of nature, with which the homo homunculus connects to become human. Some people know this, even if they are not clairvoyant. However, the science of clairvoyance is completely clear in this awakening: it is a submerging from the spiritual world, which can only be grasped in imagination, into the physical-sensory world, which lives in the elements: fire, water, earth, air. There, what we believe we have already gained for the homo-becoming of the homunculus over in the other world is shattered again; it is shattered when he returns to reality. Faust is to immerse himself in the reality of ancient Greece; Faust is to bring Helena herself into his presence. If you just turn the page from that powerful conclusion to this scene, where it says:
Hail to the sea! Hail to the waves!
Surrounded by the sacred fire;
Hail to the water! Hail to the fire!
Hail to the strange adventure!Hail to the gentle winds!
Hail to the mysterious tombs!
You are all celebrated here,
Element!' all four of you!
— if you just turn the page, you will find the third act:
Much admired and much reviled, Helena,
I come from the beach where we first landed,
Still drunk from the waves' lively
rocking of the waves, which brought us from the Phrygian plain...
and so on.
Faust is supposed to be in Greek reality, Faust is supposed to have awakened from the perception of the highest spirituality for the homunculus-homo mystery in the Greek world. There he is supposed to wake up consciously, as Goethe wanted. The moment of awakening had to take place in such a way that it showed, as it were, how what is perceived in the spiritual-supersensible realm about the human mystery is shattered by re-immersing oneself in external physical reality, in one's body. This is a process that takes place outside in nature when the moon fades and dawn breaks. But today, people perceive this connection at most allegorically, symbolically, or poetically. The reality underlying it is little known. Here it appears in something that is at once the embodiment of the mystery of knowledge and true poetry. Goethe truly succeeded in introducing Faust to the supersensible world in a grandiose manner and awakening him to coexistence with Greek reality.
One might say: It was in the 1780s that Goethe began his flight to Italy, for it was indeed a flight. After immersing himself in Nordic nature, he wanted to learn what he believed could only be gained through the contemplation of southern art in order to understand the mysteries of the world. — He had gained a great deal, for we know what became of Goethe in the 1890s. Then he had grown older again, that is, younger in spirit. While a person grows old outwardly, he grows young in spirit; when he dies, he is youngest in spirit. Spiritual life is reversible. Now something like the year 1829 had approached. One senses, one feels, how Goethe felt within himself: How could I, when I had the opportunity to immerse myself in the world of southern art, to awaken Greek culture in my soul, how could I have experienced all this much more richly, much more intensely than I did, if I had been able to immerse myself in the spiritual world at that time as I now experience it intuitively. This is what creates the peculiar mood in this second part of Goethe's “Faust,” that one sees the soul, which has become young but has grown rich in its rejuvenation, once again artistically presenting what has been experienced throughout life to a heightened degree. Philistines will therefore never be able to relate to the second part of Goethe's “Faust” in any way. And I can completely understand why the in many respects so witty Swabian Vischer, the so-called V-Vischer, who has said many good things about Goethe's “Faust,” found it to be something leathery, a cobbled-together, glued-together piece of work of old age. But philistinism, no matter how learned, how clever, how intelligent it may be, will never be able to penetrate the poetic, especially the highly poetic, nature of the second part of Goethe's “Faust.” One can only penetrate it if one allows one's poetic sense to be inflamed, fired up by that which gives spiritual insight.
Tomorrow, after the performance of this scene, we will say a few words in connection with this portrayal of Goethe's impulses.