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The Genius of Language
GA 299

2 January 1920, Stuttgart

Language and the Sense for Reality or Its Lack

On the basis of what I have given you in these lectures and in order to reaffirm it strongly, I want to start out today with this remark: It is notably in philology that the consequences of a materialistic approach are the saddest, but perhaps also the most obvious. We can say that materialistic methods probably do more harm, for instance, in physics, because there it is less obvious—but it is most saddening in connection with language. Just here this could have been most easily avoided; just here it would have been possible to see how spirit and soul are actually at work in the language-forming genius. Now with this insight, our task will be to approach the earlier periods of language-forming by observing first of all what happens in later times. It is easier to survey the more recent happenings; you can follow language changes by noting how they shine through the accompanying changes in the feelings and perceptions of the folk soul. The language of the German people around the time of the Minnesingers—historians call it the age of chivalry—lies relatively far back but not so far that one can't trace literary matters easily enough to clarify this or that shift of meaning. By that time you don' find as many uncomplimentary phrases and epithets as in Homer, whose heroes applied names to each other that we would call insulting. Today we would hardly call each other ‘goat stomachs’ or ‘donkeys’. In those ancient times, however, a donkey was held in such esteem that a hero could be called a donkey. Animals then, it is evident from the Homeric epics, were by no means the object of such nuances of feeling as they are today.

We can come to some understanding of these things if we look for characteristic examples from a time close to ours. In the Middle Ages we find the figure of speech: Sie klebten wie ein Pech an ihrer Feinde Scharen ‘“They stuck like pitch to the ranks of the enemy’. It sounds laughable today to say of a person who perseveres bravely in battle, ‘He sticks like pitch’, but this expression was definitely used in the age of the Minnesingers.

In Wolfram von Eschenbach1Wolfram von Eschenbach (1170–1220), German epic poet and knight. Most famous work: Parzival. you will find a characteristic figure of speech, showing us first of all what was considered important at the time: description through vivid images, and secondly, various nuances of feeling for things or processes that would today seem rather contemptuous. When von Eschenbach describes in a serious manner a duchess coming toward a gentleman, he says, Her appearance penetrated his eye and entered his heart, wie eine Nieswurz durch die Nase ‘like a sneezewort through the nose’. This is a vivid metaphor, for the scent of sneezewort penetrates one’s nose in a very lively way, one could even say ruchbar ‘smellable’ (see lecture 2, page 30), but we would certainly not use the phrase today. It shows how the world of feeling has changed, and this change in the world of feeling must be studied in order to get at the science of language in a nonmaterialistic way.

A more recent poet,2Ludwig Uhland (1787-1862) in “Des Sangers Fluch.” as you know, was still able to say of a dignified woman, Sie blickte wie ein Vollmond drein ‘Her glance was like the full moon'’. But this figure of speech, quite usual in the Middle Ages, would be inexcusable today. If you were prompted by a similar emotion to exclaim in this way to a lady, it would hardly be polite. In the Middle Ages, however, the loveliness and gentleness of the moon were transcendent in the hearts of the people. It was from this point of view that the association came about of the full moon with the beloved qualities of a lady’s glance and countenance.

Gottfried von Strassburg speaks in his Tristan3Tristan and Isolde, ca. AD. 1210. quite seriously about geleimte Liebe ‘glued love’ as something that had come apart and then found its way together again. He spoke too about klebenbleiben ‘staying glued down' of wounded men on the battlefield. This would sound insulting today. When people in the Middle Ages described the kaiserlichen Beine ‘imperial legs’ of a person in order to express his stateliness, or die kaiserliche Magd Maria ‘the imperial maid Mary’, it points up essential aspects of change within the world of feeling.

In bringing you these examples, I want you to become observant as to how these subtle changes of feeling show up in obscure areas. For instance, one could speak in those early ages of krankem Schilfrohr ‘sick reeds’. What are sick reeds? Krank, ‘sick’, is here only a descriptive adjective for an exceedingly long, thin reed, and it is not at all far back in time when krank had no other meaning than ‘slim’. In those days when you called a person krank, you would have meant that he was ‘tall and slim’, certainly not that he was ‘ill’, in the present sense of the word. Had you wished to express sick, you would have used the term süchtig, von einer Sucht befallen, in modern usage, ‘chronically ill' or ‘addicted’. To be krank was to be ‘thin'—just think what has happened to this word! Gradually the feeling developed that it is ‘not quite human'’ to be ‘thin’. The notion has been adopted that a normal human being should be a little more substantial. With this detour came about the linking of the sound-connection Arank with the meaning ‘sick’ and the idea of a not-quite normal organism. We see how a word with one distinct shade of meaning can take on a clearly different one.

Not very long ago an innkeeper could do a good business by advertising elenden ‘miserable’ wine. He could trumpet forth in his village: “In my inn you get elenden wine!” It is exactly the same word that means ‘miserable’ today. Now, however, only in a dialect will you still find an echo of the old shade of meaning, where certain villages lying far out toward the border of the land are called the Elend villages. Even in my time in Styria in southern Austria, someone saying Der Mann ist aus dem Elend (the man is from the Elend) meant that he came from a village on the border. Certain villages have kept the name Elend up to the present day. This term has actually moved in from farther away, for elender wine meant ausländischer wine ‘foreign’, ‘outlandish’; Elend is the Ausland ‘foreign country’. So the innkeeper would have done good business, at least up to 1914, by advertising, say, French wines as elender wine. We see a shift of meaning similar to the one in Krank.

The poet Geiler von Kaisersberg4Geiler von Kaisersberg (1445-1510), famous preacher. speaks most peculiarly of a hübschen ‘pretty’ God. We couldn't say this today, but if you look it up in his works, you will find it more understandable. He meant with this a ‘benevolent’ God. Hübsch at that time carried the same shade of feeling as ‘kind’. [An English example: when James II (1633-1701) first saw St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, he called it amusing, awful, and artificial. He meant that it was ‘pleasing to look at’; ‘meriting awe’; and ‘full of skilful artifice’.] You will still find occasionally today surviving figures of speech, such as the phrase ein ungehobelter Mensch ‘an uncouth person’, literally ‘unplaned’ surface not smoothed with a Hobel, a carpenter’s plane. You will understand this word on meeting it in Martin Luther’s writing, that people are gehobelt ‘planed smooth’ by the prophets, that is, they are being put to rights, put in order, straightened up by the prophets. We find there the visual imagery of the act of planing with the ‘making straight’ in a moral sense.

After these examples from so far back in time, we can look at something closer to us. Lessing5Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729-1781), critic and dramatist. The quotation is from his play Emilia Galotti, Act 1, Scene 4. who lived more recently, wanted to describe the many things for which we rightfully develop great sympathy but which nevertheless cannot be called beautiful or be thought of as objects of art. By the way he phrased this, it can easily be misunderstood today: “Much of the Anzüglichsten, (‘offensive, suggestive, lewd’ in today's meaning) cannot be an object of art.” [Modern German uses another form of the verb anziehen, ‘to draw or pull’: anziehend = ‘attractive’.] Lessing means that many things of the most attractive nature cannot rightfully be called objects of art; in this word we have a real change on how the word is felt. We use the term nowadays for something essentially different.

It is interesting to trace the complicated way such shifts of meaning take place. Consider how the word krank, meaning ‘slim’ at an earlier time, might also be applied to a reed. A reed is krank when it is slim, less useful than a short, thick one. This shade of meaning gradually changed then to its present sense of ‘sick’, though somewhat modified once again. Adelung,6Johann Christoph Adelung, (1732-1806), German philologist and grammarian. Court librarian at Dresden. living halfway between that time and ours, speaks about gekränkte ships that need repair [gekränkte, the past participle of the verb kränken, introduces still another shade of meaning. Today it is used to mean ‘hurt’, in the sense of hurt feelings.] It strikes us as a little comic or at least it characterizes the speaker as a joker when someone talks about a ‘hurt clock’, but in those years the sense of the word was perfectly clear, with its changed meaning, when applied to inorganic objects. Krank originally referred to the shape or form; the present meaning ‘sick’ crept in only gradually. While the earlier meaning ‘sim’ was cast aside altogether and the totally new one took over, we are still reminded of the original meaning by the term ‘hurt ships’. The immediate sensing of the emotional, perceptive quality within words disappeared more and more.

Even Goethe still had a clear feeling about words; he found feelings in words that nowadays leave us cold, for in many respects he went back to the power of the language-forming genius. The word bitter ‘bitter’, for instance, has become for us a purely subjective tasting experience; usually we don't connect it in our feeling with what in earlier times was clearly visualized as beissen ‘to bite’, from which it originates. The relationship is there: whatever tastes bitter really ‘bites us’. Goethe still felt this and writes about “the bitter scissors of the Fates"7In his poem “Harzreise im Winter ”(Winter Journey in the Harz).—they are the biting scissors of the Fates! People nowadays are such abstract creatures that they think this is “mere poetic license.” But it is not poetic license at all; it arose directly out of inner experience. True, Goethe did not yet live in a time when ninety-nine percent of poetic writing is superfluous. We should keep in mind while reading his work how within language he felt a much greater aliveness, a more inward life, than we are able to feel today as products of modern education. You can sense this, too, from Goethe’s words, Ein Ecce Homo gefiel mir wegen seiner erbarmlichen Darstellung, ‘An Ecce Homo painting pleased me particularly because of its miserable portrayal’. No one today seems to feel that there is anything more in Goethe’s phrase than the meaning of a poor sort of representation. But Goethe wants to suggest that our deepest pity is aroused through this particular portrayal. We would say, “Ein Ecce Homo gefiel mir wegen seiner Erbarmen heransfordernden Darstellung” ‘An Ecce Homo painting pleased me particularly because the portrayal aroused compassion’. Goethe was still able to put it ‘... because of its miserable portrayal’.

Not so very long ago it was possible to say of a person who liked to speak with children or poor people on the street, who was not snobbish or conceited, for whom one wished to show one’s approval, “Du bist ein niederträchtiger Mensch!” Present meaning: ‘You are a low-thinking person, low-minded, vile'. This was possible until the middle of the eighteenth century. Ein niederträchtiger Mensch was until that time an ‘affable, amiable’ person. He was being praised, given the highest praise from a certain point of view. Again, I do not believe that many people can still derive the right meaning from reading in eighteenth century literature about an ungefährliche Zahl a ‘harmless number’; ungefähr now means ‘approximate’ not ‘undangerous’. We would say today: ‘a number that is approximately correct’. An ungefährliche number was simply an ‘approximate’ one.

Further, what would modern minds connect with the common eighteenth century expression, unartige Pflaumen ‘naughty plums’. Un = ‘not’; Art = ‘type, sort, variety'. Unartige plums are those that do not show the specially typical marks of their kind, because they are an unusual variation.

Only when we acquire a feeling for the fact that such changes take place will we understand other changes that are not so obvious. For instance, our word schwierjg ‘difficult—you know the shade of feeling with which it is spoken. It was formerly used only with the conscious intention of expressing full of Schwären, full of Geschwüre ‘swellings, abscesses’. Therefore if you found something schwierig you wished to express the feeling that this would ‘result in abscesses’. A very pictorial, vigorous expression to connect with our word schwierig.

Such things fall totally outside our modern nuances of feeling; they prove how wrong it is to judge language in a pedantic way without recognizing the reality of language metamorphosis, something also evident in dialects. Today, when offering a guest a meal with many courses, you might tell him not to eat too much of this or that because other dishes are coming for which he should save some appetite; you might say, “Please don' eat too much—there’s a good dessert coming.” But in one region of the German-speaking lands, it is possible to put it, “Iss von dieser Speise nicht zuviel, es gibt noch etwas hintenauf’ ‘Don't eat too much of this; there’s still something coming in the rear’. [Etwas hintenauf in modern German carries the connotation that a ‘spanking is in the offing’.]

In another dialect it is possible to say, “Oh, these are good children; die schlachten sich” ‘they slaughter each other’. This meant that they take after their good parents, are cast in the same mold [vom gleichen Schlag sein). 1t is exactly this kind of example that points up the living interchange between inner sensitivity and the external image in our feeling for language.

Sometimes this shows up in extremely important matters. For instance, you will find a statement of Goethe, made in his later years, characterizing his work on Faust. It has played a most significant role with the Faust commentators. In Goethe’s last letter [March 17, 1832] addressed to Wilhelm von Humboldt, he characterized his work on Faust as remarkable wenn seit über 60 Jahren die Konzeption des “Faust” bei ihm jugendlich von vorne herein klar, die ganze Reihenfolge hin weniger ausführlich vorlag (... when for more than sixty years the conception of Faust has been clear to me from the beginning, first as a young person; the whole sequence, however, less fully developed). Many Faust commentators concluded from this that Goethe already as a young man had a plan for the complete Faust that he had conceived clearly from the beginning (von vorn herein) and that the later work was merely a kind of working out the details. And much that is unnecessary and untrue in their characterization of his work on Faust has originated from this interpretation of the passage, for only since Fresenius8August Fresenius (b. 1850). See Rudolf Steiner, The Course of My Life (Hudson, NY: Anthroposophic Press, 1951), pp. 221-223 . published his findings about the significance for Goethe of the phrase von vorne herein ‘in from the front’, that is, ‘at the outset’ has it been possible to understand Goethe’s words. All this had special meaning for me because I worked with Fresenius.9From 1890 to 1897 in the Goethe-Schiller Archives in Weimar as editor of Goethe’s Scientific Writings. When he had found something of importance, it often took decades before he did anything about it. Therefore I pressed him to publish this, for what he had to say was extremely important. You can put together all the passages of Goethe using the phrase von vorne herein and you will find that he never uses it in any but a spatial sense. If he said he had read a book von vorne herein, he meant that he had read only the beginning pages. It can be clearly shown that he had in his youth a clear conception of the first scenes of Faust Here then simply a correct understanding of word usage explains Goethe’s work; from this phrase you can see that what he could visualize spatially has for us become abstract. Von vorne herein he always used visually, spatially. Much of Goethe’s charm and attraction for us is founded on his going back to the original qualities of the language-creating genius. You can start out from Goethe’s language and from there search your way into Goethe’s soul, instead of proceeding only materialistically as modern investigators do, and you will find there important criteria for freeing philology from rationalistic materialism. It is good to look for help from such sources also.

In many ways there no longer exists such language that expresses a combination of shades of feeling and sound. We can still find this sometimes in dialects, which also have it in themselves to bring the visual to expression. For instance, you will find here and there in dialect—more often than in educated speech—the phrase unter den Arm greifen ‘to help someone’; literally ‘to reach under his arm’. This simply means to come to the aid of a person who needs help. Why? Because a young person in offering a hand to someone elderly, who can't get about so easily any more, reaches under the other’s arm to give support. This active image was transferred then to any helpful act. Exactly as it was with the expression (Lecture 2) “to wipe the night-sleep out of our eyes,” so it is with the act of giving help, a single specific procedure chosen to express visually a more abstract generality. Sometimes the genius of language was no longer able to retain the visual element; then also from time to time imagery was retained in one instance, cast off in the other.

There still exists today the word lauschen ‘listen with inner attentiveness’ for a certain kind of listening. The Austrian dialect also has a word related to lauschen: losen. We not only say in Austria when we want to make a person listen, Hör einmal ‘listen’, but also Los amol! ‘harken!’. Losen is a weaker but still active listening. Educated colloquial German has retained lauschen. Losen is a cognate with the feeling of a somewhat weak activity, even with a certain sneakiness, pointing to a secret kind of listening. In a sense losen has taken on the meaning of forbidden listening. For instance, when a person puts his ear to the keyhole or listens in when two are discussing something not meant for his hearing, then the word losen is used ‘harken'.

Only after becoming sensitive to the feeling element in such sound sequences can one proceed to develop a sense for the basic sounds, the vowels and consonants. In the Austrian dialect there is a word Ahnl for grandmother. Do you perhaps know the word Ahnl? A more general term is Ahnfrau (der Ahn, die Ahne, male and female grandparents/progenitors). In Ahnl you have Ahne combined with an /l/. If you want to understand what is happening there in the realm of speech, you must swing up to a heightened feeling of /l/ as a consonant. Feel the /l/ in the suffix -lich (‘-ly’, as in friendly See lecture 2 and lecture 4), in which I have explained that it originated from leik. It is somehow related to the feeling that something is moving about, that this moving about has to be imitated in the language. An Ahnl is a person who is clearly old but who makes the impression of being lively and mobile; you hardly notice the wrinkles in her face! You see the character of /l/ as it is used here.

Take the word schwinden ‘dwindle, fade: to go away, to make a thing go away so that it can't be seen any more. Now figure that I don't really want to make it go away, but I want to cheat a little in seeming to make it go away. I want to effect something that is not a true, honest disappearance—but I would also feel a moving around, an /l/ as in the Ahnl—and there is the word schwindeln ‘to swindle’. The /I/ makes the difference. You can feel exactly the subtly nuanced value of /I/ by going from schwinden to schwindeln. [Parallels in English would be tramp-trample, side-sidle, tread-treadle.]

If you dwell on these thoughts, eurythmy10See Rudolf Steiner, Eurythmy as Visible Speech, GA 279, lecture 4 (New York: Anthroposophic Press, 1931). will become completely natural. You will feel that eurythmy springs from our ancient, original relationship to the sound elements of words, which without the sound elements only movement can bring to expression. If you can feel such a thing, then you will be able to sense precisely how, for instance, in the vowel /u/ (ooh) there is an element of moving close together, snuggling close together. Look at how you do the /u/ in eurythmy [Arms and hands are brought close and parallel to each other, as in the written letter]. You have the moving together, the closeness of the gesture, so that you can say, in the word Mutter ‘mother—someone you usually come close to—it would be impossible to have an /a/ (ah) or /e/ (ay) as the strong vowel in the word. [The /o/ of ‘mother’ is a gesture of affection.] You can't imagine saying Metter or Matter. Mater shows that the language in which it occurs, Latin, was already a weakened one; the original word was Mutter.

I have shown you, with all this, the path of the genius of language, a path on which a barrier was erected, I have said, between the sound element of a word and its meaning. They were originally closely united with each other in subjective human perception. They have separated. The sound-content descends into the subconscious; the mental picture ascends into our consciousness [see lecture 4, page 59, 60]. Much has been cast off that can be perceived just there where human beings originally lived closely connected with the things and activities around them. When we go back to earlier times in language development, we find the altogether remarkable fact that the original forms of language take us completely out into factual reality, that there exists on the primitive levels of language formation a fine sense for actual facts, and that the people who live at this level live closely connected with things and with everything that goes on with things. The moment this living connection is broken, the sense for reality becomes hazy and people live in an unreality that expresses itself in abstract language.

In the original Indo-European language there were three genders, as in Latin. We still have three genders in German. You can feel three different qualities expressed as masculine, feminine, and neuter. In French there are only two genders left, in English only one. This shows us that the English language has divested itself with a grand gesture, one could say, of the sense for reality, that it now merely hovers over things but no longer lives in actualities. On that early step of human development when the gender of words was being formed, there still existed a primitive clairvoyance; a living, spiritual quality was perceived within things. Der Sonne ‘sun’, masculine and die Mond ‘moon’, feminine which later were reversed to die Sonne and der Mond [in modern German sun is feminine, moon is masculine] could never have come about in the older IndoEuropean languages had the elemental beings living in the sun and moon not been experienced as brothers and sisters. In antiquity the sun was felt to be the brother, the moon the sister. Today in German it has been turned around. The day was perceived as the son and the night as the daughter of the giant Norwi. This definitely originates from primitive clairvoyant vision. The feeling for the earth at that time was very different from the geologists' perception of it today, when they would actually have good reason to use the neuter gender and speak of das Erde [the correct form in modern German is die Erde feminine]. People nowadays no longer sense that the earth in fact is Gaia, for whom the masculine god is Uranos. People still had a perception of this in the areas where the Germanic language was originally formed.

In any case there were shades of feeling arising out of the close connection with the world outside and these were the source for determining gender, for deciding characteristic gender. The elephant (der Elefant) was considered strong, the mouse (die Maus) weak. Since a man was perceived as strong and a woman weak, the elephant was given the masculine gender, the mouse the feminine. The trees of the forest are usually feminine because for the original perception, they were the dwelling places of female divinities. Of immense importance because it points to a deep aspect of the language genius is the fact that alongside the masculine and feminine genders there exists a neuter gender. We say der Mann ‘the man', die Frau ‘the woman', das Kind ‘the child’. The child’s gender or sex [the German language uses the same word Geschlecht for both] is not yet articulated, has not yet reached complete definition, is in the process of becoming. When the neuter gender arose, it came up out of a certain mood in the folk-genius, a feeling that anything given a neuter gender would only later become what it was to be. Gold does not yet have the special characteristic it will have someday. It is still young in the cosmos; it is not yet what it is destined to be. Hence it is not der Gold or die Gold but das Gold.

On the other hand we can look at what comes about when the visualizing power that could characterize gender disappears. We say today die Mitgift (dowry, literally ‘with-gift’), which shows a clear connection to an earlier word die Gift. We also say today der Abscheu (‘aversion’, literally ‘away-shyness’) which is clear evidence of an earlier word der Scheu. Both these deductions are correct. Der Scheu and die Gift have gone through a subtle change in connotation. Die Gift in early times simply meant ‘the non-committal act of giving’. But because of what some people have given and what was, also in Faust’s opinion, harmful to others, the word has changed its meaning and has been applied to gifts that are objectionable, losing the connection with the original gender characteristic. The result is das Gift ‘poison’, neuter gender. When a person once was called scheu, he was considered as having strong feelings, as being firm in himself. When the word became weak, it became die Scheu ‘shyness’, feminine.

That our language has become more abstract, that it has released itself from its interweaving with outer reality, can best be understood from the fact that the ancient Indo-European languages had eight cases: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, vocative, ablative, locative, and instrumental [German has retained the first four. English has one case form for nouns, except for possessives—usually adding /s/—and two forms you, your or three forms they, them, their for pronouns]. This means that not only was the position of a thing expressed as it is done today with the first four cases, but people were also able to follow other relationships with their feelings. For instance, to do a thing at a certain time, we can express as diesen Tag ‘on this day’, accusative, or dieses Tages ‘of this day’, genitive. No longer do we experience the active helpfulness of the day, of the time of day, or of a special day in particular. No longer do we have the experience that whatever is done on the second of January, 1920, for instance, could not be accomplished later, that time is a helpful element, that time is involved in something that helps us. There existed a sense for all this in earlier ages when the instrumental case was used, hiu tagu. We would have to say something like durch diesen Tag ‘through this day’, vermittelst dieses Tages ‘by means of this day’. Hiu tagu has become the word heute ‘today’; the old instrumental case is buried in the word, just as hiu jaru has become heuer ‘this year’. But German has retained only four cases and cast off the others. You will understand from this how continuously language becomes more and more abstract, and how the capacity for abstract thought with its definite lack of a sense for reality has been taking the place of an earlier connection with the real world. This is what language reveals.

Fünfter Vortrag

Nun möchte ich auf Grund dessen, was ich schon ausgeführt habe, und um zum Teil auch noch dieselben Tatsachen zu bekräftigen, heute davon ausgehen, zu bemerken, daß gerade in der Sprachwissenschaft sich die Folgen materialistischer Betrachtungsweise am traurigsten, aber vielleicht auch am augenfälligsten zeigen. Man kann zwar nicht sagen, daß diese materialistische Betrachtungsweise zum Beispiel in der Physik nicht noch schädlicher wirkt, weil sie weniger bemerkt wird; aber am traurigsten wirkt sie in der Sprachwissenschaft, aus dem Grunde, weil sie da am allerleichtesten hätte vermieden werden können, und weil man da hätte sehen können, wie Geist und Seele im sprachbildenden Genius eigentlich wirken. Nun handelt es sich darum, mit dieser Einsicht, die ich damit andeute, sich noch älteren Zeiten der Sprachbildung dadurch zu nähern, daß man sie zunächst an jüngeren Zeiten beobachten lernt; an jüngeren Zeiten, die noch mehr überschaubar sind, an denen man den Sprachwandel noch so verfolgen kann, daß deutlich durch den Sprachwandel und seine Metamorphosen der Wandel in den Empfindungen und in den Gefühlen der Volksseele hindurchscheint. Verhältnismäßig weit zurück liegt ja schon die Sprache des deutschen Volkes zur Zeit etwa des Minnesanges, also der Zeit, die man historisch die Ritterzeit nennt; aber sie liegt ja doch nur so weit zurück, daß man gewisse Dinge noch leicht literarisch verfolgen und so über manchen Bedeutungswandel sich aufklären kann. Allerdings, so viel sieht man da nicht mehr, als wenn man den Homer liest, wo jene für uns heute als Schimpfworte wirkenden Bezeichnungen auftreten, mit denen sich da die griechischen Helden belegen. Denn das halten wir heute nicht mehr aus, daß wir uns gegenseitig Ziegenmägen oder Esel nennen. Das weist auf eine Zeit zurück, wo ein Esel durchaus noch in solchem Ansehen stand, daß ein Held ein Esel genannt werden konnte. Die Tiere — das geht aus den homerischen Dichtungen klar hervor — waren in jener Zeit durchaus noch nicht so mit Empfindungsnuancen belegt wie heute.

Nun, ein wenig können wir uns zum Verständnis dieser Dinge erheben, wenn wir eben noch weniger weit zurückliegende charakteristische Beispiele aufsuchen, So wenn wir im Mittelalter die Redensart finden: Sie klebten wie ein Pech in ihrer Feinde Scharen. Es kommt uns heute komisch vor, wenn man von jemand, der tapfer im Kampfe aushält, sagt: Er klebte wie ein Pech, aber dieses Wie-ein-Pech-Kleben, das war durchaus eine mögliche Ausdrucksweise in der Zeit des Minnesanges.

Und bei Wolfram von Eschenbach finden Sie eine charakteristische Redensart, die Ihnen zeigt, wie man damals erstens noch viel auf das Anschauliche gesehen hat, zweitens aber gewisse Empfindungsnuancen für gewisse Vorgänge und Dinge hatte, die heute solche Vorgänge und Dinge verächtlich machen. Wenn also Wolfram von Eschenbach in seriöser Art das Auftreten einer Herzogin vor einer männlichen Persönlichkeit schildert, so sagt er: ihre Erscheinung drang in das Auge dieser Persönlichkeit und durch das Auge in das Herz wie eine Nieswurz durch die Nase. Es ist anschaulich, denn der Geruch der Nieswurz strömt sehr anschaulich, man könnte sagen, sehr ruchbar durch die Nase; aber wir würden es heute nicht sagen. Daraus sehen Sie, wie die Gefühlswelt sich verwandelt hat, und diese Verwandlung der Gefühlswelt sollte man studieren, wenn man nicht materialistischeSprachwissenschaft treiben will.

Einem neueren Dichter, wie Sie wissen, war es noch gegönnt, von einer würdigen weiblichen Persönlichkeit zu sagen: Sie blickte wie ein Vollmond drein. Aber man würde im weitesten Umfange diese im Mittelalter ganz gebräuchliche Redensart heute nicht mehr verzeihen. Wenn Sie aus einer ähnlichen Empfindung heraus einer Dame sagen würden: Sie blicken mich wie ein Vollmond an, so würde das heute nicht mehr zu einer möglichen Umgangssprache gehören; im Mittelalter aber war das Liebliche des Mondes, die Milde des Mondes das Vorherrschende im Volksgemüte. Und man hat von diesem aus gerade dasjenige, was man am Damenblick, an der Damenmiene liebte, verglichen mit dem Vollmond.

Gottfried von Straßburg redet in seinem «Tristan» ganz seriös von geleimter Liebe. Geleimte Liebe ist das, was auseinandergegangen war, aber sich wieder zusammengeschlossen hat. Er redet vom Klebenbleiben der Verwundeten auf dem Schlachtfelde. Das würde heute beleidigend wirken. Und wenn gar das Mittelalter sagt: Die kaiserlichen Beine eines Menschen, um seine würdige Beinhaltung auszudrücken, oder wenn er sagt: Die kaiserliche Magd Maria, so zeigt Ihnen das als Wesentliches die Wandlung der Gefühlswelt.

Ich führe Ihnen diese Beispiele aus dem Grunde an, damit Sie aufmerksam werden, wie dieser Wandel der Gefühlsnuancen sich auf weniger bemerkbaren Gebieten geltend macht. So wenn im Mittelalter noch gesprochen wurde von krankem Schilfrohr. Was ist krankes Schilfrobr? Krank ist da nur das schmückende Beiwort für ein recht langgestrecktes Schilfrohr. Und die Zeit liegt gar nicht weit zurück, wo krank, wenn man es ausgesprochen hat, überhaupt nichts anderes bedeutete als schlank. Wenn man in der damaligen Zeit jemanden krank genannt hätte, so hätte man gemeint, er ist ein großer, schlanker Mensch. Nicht meinte man im heutigen Sinn, er sei krank. Wenn man das sagen wollte, so hätte man sagen müssen, er sei sächtig, von einer Sucht befallen. Damals war Kranksein gleich Schlanksein. Nun denken Sie sich, was da vorgegangen ist! Man hat allmählich die Empfindung bekommen, daß es etwas Unmenschliches am Menschen sei, wenn er schlank sei. Man hat sich die Empfindung angeeignet, daß normal beim Menschen ist, ein bißchen nichtschlank zu sein. Auf diesem Umwege ist entstanden die Verkoppelung des Lautzusammenhanges krank mit süchtigsein, mit Nicht-normal-organisiert-Sein. Also, es nimmt ein Wort eine gewisse Empfindungsnuance in Anspruch, das früher einer ganz anderen Empfindungsnuance zugehört hat.

Es liegt aber die Zeit noch gar nicht weit zurück, da konnte ein Wirt gute Geschäfte machen, wenn er elenden Wein anpries. Also ein Wirt konnte sagen und verkündigen lassen im Dorf: bei mir ist elender Wein zu finden. Elend ist hier ganz dasselbe Wort wie unser Elend. Sie finden einen Anklang an die alte Empfindungsnuance von Elend nur noch im Dialekt, wo gewisse Dörfer, die weit an der Grenze draußen sind, das Elend genannt werden, die Elenddörfer. Man sagte zum Beispiel noch in Steiermark zu meiner Zeit: der Mann ist aus dem Elend und meinte damit, er ist aus einem Grenzorte. — Und es haben sich gewisse Dörfer bis jetzt den Namen Elend erhalten. Diese Bezeichnung ist nur von weiter draußen hereingerückt; denn elender Wein hieß ausländischer Wein, und das Elend ist das Ausland, so daß also der Wirt wenigstens bis zum Jahre 1914 —, wenn er zum Beispiel französische Weine anpries, gute Geschäfte gemacht haben würde, wenn er elende Weine angepriesen hätte. Da haben wir also einen Bedeutungswandel, der schon bei krank vorhanden ist.

Der Dichter Geiler von Kaisersberg spricht kurioserweise — wenn Sie es bei ihm aufsuchen, wird es mehr durchsichtig sein — von einem hübschen Gott. Das können wir heute nicht mehr gut sagen. Er meinte damit einen wohlwollenden Gott. In häbsch finden wir damals die Gefühlsnuance, die wir heute mit dem Worte wohlwollend verbinden. Sie finden heute zuweilen noch die Redensart — denn solche Dinge haben sich als Reste erhalten -: ein ungebobelter Mensch. Sie werden dieses Wort verstehen, wenn Sie bei Luther lesen, daß die Menschen durch die Propheten gehobelt werden. Menschen werden durch die Propheten gehobelt, das heißt, sie werden zurecht gemacht. Da haben wir also noch die sinnliche Anschauung des Hobelns verbunden mit dem Wieder-Zurechtmachen.

Mit diesen Beispielen sind wir nun etwas weiter zurückgegangen. Aber sehen wir noch auf etwas Näheres. Lessing, der also nicht sehr weit zurückliegt, will einmal ausdrücken — was man heute schon durch seine Wortprägung mißverstehen kann —, daß es vieles gibt, wofür man gerechterweise Sympathie entwickelt, was aber doch nicht zum Charakter des Schönen, daher nicht zum Gegenstand der Kunst erhoben werden kann. Und diese Wahrheit drückt er so aus, daß er sagt: Vieles von dem Anzüglichsten kann nicht Gegenstand der Kunst sein. Wenn wir das heute lesen, so werden wir unmittelbar glauben, anzüglich sei bei Lessing so gemeint, wie es heute gemeint ist; aber der Zusammenhang ergibt, daß wir nur dasselbe wie er meinen würden, wenn wir sagen würden: Vieles von dem Anziehendsten kann nicht Gegenstand der Kunst sein. - Also, Sie haben hier die Wandlung der Empfindungsnuance, so daß, was Sie heute als das Anziehendste bezeichnen, Lessing noch als das Anzüglichste bezeichnet hat. Wir bezeichnen damit heute etwas wesentlich anderes.

Nun ist interessant zu verfolgen, auf wie komplizierte Weise solch ein Bedeutungswandel sich eigentlich vollzieht. Nehmen Sie einmal an: das Wort krank, das früher schlank bedeutet hat, konnte also auch angewendet werden auf das Schilfrohr; ein krankes Schilfrohr ist ein Schilfrohr, das schlank ist, das daher weniger gut zu gebrauchen ist als ein kurzes, dickes Schilfrohr. Nun hat sich das allmählich gewandelt in der Empfindungsnuance, so daß es allmählich die heutige Bedeutung von krank empfing; aber heute ist schon wiederum etwas abgestreift. Denn Adelung, der in der Mitte zwischen jener Zeit und uns lebt, Adelung sagt zum Beispiel, man müsse gekränkte Schiffe ausbessern. Es wirkt heute ein bißchen komisch, oder wenigstens so, daß man weiß, daß der Betreffende ein Spaßvogel ist, wenn er von einer gekränkten Uhr zum Beispiel spricht; aber damals war das etwas Selbstverständliches, wenn man das mittlerweile gewandelte Wort krank auch auf Unorganisches angewendet hat. Sie sehen daraus, daß krank ursprünglich etwas mit der Gestalt zu tun hatte, und daß sich dann erst allmählich die Bedeutung von heute einschlich. Dann aber wurde das, was früher da war, ganz weggeworfen, und es bekam eine ganz neue Bedeutung, während wir bei den gekränkten Schiffen noch an die frühere Bedeutung denken können. Immer mehr und mehr ist das unmittelbare Erfühlen des Empfindungsgemäßen in den Worten abgestreift worden. Selbst bei Goethe — und zwar bei ihm, weil er in vieler Beziehung zurückgegangen ist auf das Walten des sprachbildenden Genius - findet sich noch ein deutliches Fühlen bei Worten, bei welchen wir nicht mehr deutlich fühlen. Zum Beispiel, nehmen Sie das Wort bitter. Bei uns ist es heute eine Bezeichnung für ein rein subjektives Erlebnis, für ein Geschmackserlebnis geworden. Und mit dem, was in alter Zeit anschaulich war und wovon das Wort bitter abgeleitet ist, bringen wir es heute in unserer Empfindung gewöhnlich nicht mehr zusammen: mit beißen. Es hängt aber zusammen mit beißen: was bitter schmeckt, beißt uns eigentlich. Goethe fühlt das noch und spricht von der bitteren Schere der Parze: die beißende Schere der Parze ist das! Die Menschen sind heute schon solche Abstraktlinge, daß sie sagen: Dichterische Freiheit -, wenn sie auf ein solches Wort stoßen. Aber es ist keine dichterische Freiheit, sondern es ist gerade aus dem vollen inneren Erlebnis hervorgegangen. Goethe lebte auch noch nicht in der Zeit, wo neunundneunzig Prozent dessen, was gedichtet wird, zuviel ist. Er fühlte der Sprache gegenüber — und das muß man sich bei vielen seiner Werke vor Augen halten - noch viel innerlich lebendiger, als das heute irgendein Mensch kann, wenn er einfach in der äußeren Bildung darinnensteht. Das können Sie wiederum fühlen, wenn Sie bei Goethe das Wort finden: Ein Ecce homo gefiel mir wegen seiner erbärmlichen Darstellung. Kein Mensch scheint das heute anders zu empfinden, wenn er so redet, als daß das eine schlechte Darstellung ist. Goethe aber will andeuten, daß unser tiefstes Erbarmen hervorgerufen wird durch diese Darstellung. Wir müßten also ganz abstrakt sagen: Ein Ecce homo gefiel mir wegen seiner Erbarmen herausfordernden Darstellung. Goethe aber sagte noch: Ein Ecce homo gefiel mir wegen seiner erbärmlichen Darstellung.

Selbst noch vor verhältnismäßig gar nicht ferner Zeit konnte man einen Menschen, der auf der Straße ging und gerne Kinder, gern arme Leute ansprach und mit ihnen redete, nicht hochfahrend war, sich nicht hoch trug, wenn man ihm Anerkennung zollen wollte, benennen: Du bist ein niederträchtiger Mensch. Das war möglich bis in die Mitte des 18. Jahrhunderts. Ein niederträchtiger Mensch, das war für die damalige Zeit ein leutseliger Mensch: man lobte ihn, man zollte ihm von einem gewissen Gesichtspunkte aus das höchste Lob. — Ich glaube nicht, daß heute noch viele Menschen einen gründlichen Sinn damit verbinden, wenn sie in Schriften des 18. Ja hrhunderts lesen von einer ungefährlichen Zahl. Wir würden heute nur sagen: Eine Zahl, die ungefähr das Richtige sagt. Eine approximative Zahl, die nannte man eine ungefährliche Zahl. - Und was würden sich die meisten Menschen heute denken, wenn sie den im 18. Jahrhundert noch gang und gäbe gewesenen Ausdruck finden: unartige Pflaumen? Unartige Pflaumen sind diejenigen Pflaumen, die nicht die ganz typischen Merkmale der Art zeigen, die etwas Besonderes sind, die aus der Art herausfallen; das sind unartige Pflaumen. Erst wenn wir uns ein Gefühl aneignen, daß solche Wandlungen stattfinden, dann verstehen wir anderes, was seine Wandlung nicht so auffällig an der Stirne trägt. Zum Beispiel unser heutiges Wort schwierig. Sie wissen, mit welcher Empfindungsnuance man es gebraucht. Früher gebrauchte man es nur, wenn man sich bewußt war, daß man sagen wollte: voller Schwären, voller Geschwüre. Also, wenn man eine Sache schwierig fand, so wollte man damit die Empfindung ausdrücken: dieses Verrichten bewirkt Geschwüre. Sehr anschaulich und lebendig drückt man das aus, und dies hängt zusammen mit dem Ausdruck schwierig.

Solche Dinge, die ganz aus der gegenwärtigen Empfindungsnuance herausgefallen sind und die beweisen, wie unrecht man hat, wenn man als Pedant an die Sprachbeurteilung herangeht und ableiten will, ohne daß man die Tatsachen der Sprachmetamorphosen kennt, die können sich auch in der Mundart zeigen. Wenn man jemandem ein Mittagsmahl vorsetzt, das viele Gänge hat, so kann man ihm heute sagen: er solle von dieser Speise nicht zuviel essen, denn es gäbe noch andere Speisen, für die er sich Appetit bewahren soll. Man kann heute sagen: Bitte, essen Sie nicht zuviel, es kommt noch anderes Gutes nach. — Es gibt aber noch eine gewisse Gegend des deutschen Sprachgebietes, wo gesagt werden kann: /ß von dieser Speise nicht zuviel, es gibt noch etwas hintenauf. Eine andere Mundart hat die Möglichkeit, zu sagen: Ach, das sind gute, liebe Kinder, die schlachten sich. Das heißt: sie sind nicht aus der Art geschlagen, sie sind gutartig, sie schlachten sich. Gerade solch ein Beispiel, wie: das sind gutartige Kinder, die schlachten sich, das weist uns auf das lebendige Zusammenleben zwischen Empfindung und äußerer Anschauung im Sprachgefühl.

Das tritt einem manchmal als etwas außerordentlich Wichtiges entgegen. Sie haben bei Goethe eine Stelle im Gespräch, die er in späteren Jahren zur Charakterisierung seiner Arbeit am «Faust» gebraucht hat. Diese Stelle hat bei den «Faust»-Kommentatoren eine außerordentlich große Rolle gespielt. Goethe sagt einmal als ganz alter Mann, um die Arbeit an seinem Faust zu charakterisieren, es sei doch etwas, wenn seit über sechzig Jahren die Konzeption des «Faust» bei ihm jugendlich von vorne herein klar, die ganze Reihenfolge hin weniger ausführlich vorlag. Viele «Faust»-Kommentatoren haben daraus geschlossen, daß Goethe schon als junger Mensch einen «Faust»-Plan hatte, daß ihm die Konzeption zu einem «Faust» von vornherein klar war, und daß das Spätere nur eine Art Ausführung sei. Und vieles Unnötige und Unwahre mit Bezug auf die Charakteristik seiner Arbeit am «Faust» ist aus der Interpretation dieser Stelle gekommen. Diese Stelle kann erst richtig verstanden werden, seit Fresenius veröffentlicht hat, welche Bedeutung bei Goethe der Silbenzusammenhang von vorne herein hat. Mir trat dies besonders nahe, weil ich mit Fresenius arbeitete. Der kam, wenn er irgend etwas hatte, Jahrzehnte nicht zur Verarbeitung dieser Sache, Daher drängte ich ihn, daß er das veröffentliche, weil das sehr wichtig sei, was er da zu sagen hatte. Man kann die Stellen, an denen Goethe das Wort von vorne herein gebraucht hat, zusammennehmen: er gebraucht es nie anders als räumlich. Wenn er sagt, er habe ein Buch von vorne herein gelesen, so bedeutet das nichts anderes, als daß er nur die ersten Seiten des Buches gelesen hat. Und so kann man klar nachweisen, daß er nur die ersten Szenen des «Faust» in der Jugend klar konzipiert hat. Also hier deutet einfach das richtige Verständnis des Wortgebrauches auf die Arbeit Goethes hin, und Sie sehen gerade bei diesem Wortgebrauch, daß bei uns abstrakt geworden ist, was bei ihm räumlich angeschaut ist. Den Ausdruck von vorne herein gebraucht er immer anschaulich, räumlich. So beruht sogar ein großer Teil desjenigen, was Goethe so anziehend macht, auf diesem seinem Zurückgehen zu den Qualitäten des ursprünglich sprachschöpferischen Genius. Und man kann, wenn man von Goethes Sprache aus in Goethes Seele vorzudringen sucht — während heute die Forscher das nur materialistisch machen -, auch da wichtige Anhaltspunkte für eine Entmaterialisierung der Sprachwissenschaft finden. Es ist gut, wenn man sich bei solchen Dingen auch Rat holt.

Wir haben für vieles nicht mehr jene Sprachzusammenhänge, die das ursprüngliche Zusammengehören von Empfindungsnuancen und Lautbeständen zum Ausdruck bringen. Die Dialekte haben es noch manchmal; sie haben auch das, wodurch das Anschauliche zum Ausdruck kommt. So zum Beispiel finden Sie, weniger schon in der Schriftsprache, aber oft im Dialekt da oder dort den Ausdruck: unter den Arm greifen. Das heißt einfach, jemandem, der hilflos ist, helfen. Warum? Weil die jüngeren Leute den älteren, die nicht mehr so flott gehen können, die Hand boten, ihnen unter den Arm griffen und sie stützten. Dieser ganz anschauliche Vorgang ist übertragen worden auf Hilfeleistung überhaupt. Geradeso wie man gesagt hat, man wischt sich den Nachtschlaf aus den Augen, so hat man für das Helfen einen einzelnen konkreten Vorgang gewählt, durch den man das Abstraktere anschaulich ausdrückte. Manchmal war dann der Sprachgenius nicht mehr in der Lage, am Anschaulichen festzuhalten; dann hat er zuweilen auf der einen Seite das Anschauliche festgehalten, auf der anderen es abgeworfen. — Sie haben heute noch das Wort lauschen für eine gewisse Art des Zuhörens. Der österreichische Dialekt hat auch für das bloße Hören ein Wort, das noch mit diesem Lauschen verwandt ist: losen, und man sagt in Österreich nicht bloß zu jemandem, von dem man will, daß er zuhört: hör einmal, sondern los amol! Das Losen ist ein schwaches aktives Lauschen. Die gebildete Umgangssprache hat lauschen beibehalten. Losen ist das Verwandte, das mit der Empfindungsnuance einer schwächeren Aktivität darauf deutet. Im losen kann man noch das Schleichende spüren, das im verborgenen Zuhören sich äußert; und in gewisser Weise ist sogar das Losen schon übergegangen auf ein unerlaubtes Zuhören. Wenn zum Beispiel einer durchs Schlüsselloch etwas erlauscht, oder wenn einer zuhört bei etwas, wo zwei sich unterhalten, was nicht für ihn bestimmt ist, dann sagt man, er habe gelost.

Erst wenn man eine Empfindung hat für das Empfindungsgemäße solcher Lautbestände, kann man allmählich übergehen, die Empfindung für die elementaren Laute, die Vokale und Konsonanten, zu entwickeln. So gibt es im österreichischen Dialekt ein Wort, das heißt: Ahnl; es ist die Großmutter, die Ahnl. Sie kennen es doch wohl? Die Ahnfrau ist etwas allgemeiner. Die Ahnl, da haben Sie die Ahne mit einem l verbunden. Es ist einfach der Ahn mit einem l verbunden. Um das zu verstehen, was da eigentlich sprachlich vorliegt, muß man sich sprachlich aufschwingen, dieses ! als Konsonant zu fühlen. Sie fühlen es, wenn Sie die Nachsilbe lich fühlen, von der ich gesagt habe, daß sie aus leik entstanden ist. Es hat etwas zu tun mit dem Gefühl, daß sich etwas herumbewegt, daß man in der Sprache nachzuahmen hat das sich Herumbewegende. Eine Ahnl ist eine Person, die man anschaut als eine Alte, die aber den Eindruck macht einer beweglichen Alten: man muß so im Gesicht herumschauen, damit man die Falten sieht. So sehen Sie, wie charakteristisch das ! angewandt ist.

Nehmen Sie das Wort schwinden. Schwinden, hingehen, so daß es nicht mehr gesehen wird; etwas hingehen machen, indem es nicht mehr gesehen wird. Nehmen Sie nun einmal nicht ein Hingehen machen, daß es nicht mehr gesehen wird, sondern: Ich will so ein bißchen mogeln beim Hingehen machen; ich will etwas bilden, das doch wieder dableibt, was also nicht ausdrückt das wahre, wirkliche Schwinden: dann fühle ich das Sich-Herumbewegen - hier ein l -, und es wird schwindeln daraus. Das hat das l gemacht, und Sie können genau fühlen, welchen Empfindungswert ein solches / hat, wenn Sie von schwinden auf schwindeln übergehen. Sie werden die Eurythmie als etwas Selbstverständliches fühlen, wenn Sie sich in solche Dinge vertiefen. Sie werden fühlen, wie in der Eurythmie zurückgegangen wird auf ein ursprüngliches Verwandtsein des Menschen mit dem, was in den Lautbeständen enthalten ist, das ohne den Lautbestand, eben nur durch die Bewegung, zum Ausdruck gebracht werden soll. Sie werden, wenn Sie so etwas fühlen, auch genau empfinden können, wie zum Beispiel in einem Vokal wie # etwas Zusammenschmiegendes, Zusammenschließendes enthalten ist. Sehen Sie sich das # der Eurythmie an, dann haben Sie dieses Zusammenschmiegende, Zusammenschließende, und dann werden Sie sagen: in Mutter, mit der man sich gewöhnlich zusammenschließt, kann an erster Stelle unmöglich ein a stehen oder e stehen. Man könnte sich nicht denken, daß man da Metter oder Matter sagt. Mater bezeugt eben, daß es eine schon abgeschwächte Sprache ist, in der das vorkommt; ursprünglich heißt es Mutter.

Ich habe Sie durch das alles auf den Weg des sprachlichen Genius gewiesen, der, wie ich schon einmal sagte, eine Kluft aufrichtete zwischen dem Lautbestand und der Vorstellung. Beide sind ursprünglich im subjektiven menschlichen Erleben innig miteinander verbunden; sie trennen sich. Der Lautbestand geht hinunter ins Unterbewußte; der Vorstellungsbestand geht hinauf ins Bewußte. Und viele Dinge, die noch empfunden werden da, wo man ursprünglich mit den äußeren Tatsachen zusammenlebt, werden damit abgeworfen. Und gehen wir zurück in der Sprachentwickelung, dann finden wir überhaupt das Merkwürdige, daß uns die ursprünglichen Formen der Sprachentwickelung ganz hinausführen in das Tatsächliche; daß ein feiner Tatsachen- und Wirklichkeitssinn auf den primitiven Stufen der Sprachbildung vorhanden ist; daß die Leute, die auf dieser Stufe leben, mit dem, was in den Dingen ist und vorgeht, innig zusammenleben. In dem Augenblick, wo dieses innere Zusammenleben aufhört, vernebelt sich gewissermaßen der Wirklichkeitssinn, und die Leute leben in einem Unwirklichen, was in der Sprache zum Ausdruck kommt. In der ursprünglichen indogermanischen Sprache haben Sie, wie im Lateinischen, drei Geschlechter, wie auch wir im Deutschen noch drei Geschlechter haben. Man empfindet sie als etwas Verschiedenes: männlich, weiblich, sächlich. Im Französischen haben Sie nur noch zwei Geschlechter, im Englischen haben Sie nur noch ein einziges Geschlecht, was bezeugt, daß das eine Sprache ist, die als Sprache den Wirklichkeitssinn, man möchte sagen, grandios abgestreift hat, die nur mehr über den Dingen schwebt, aber nicht in den Tatsachen darinnen lebt. Es war noch etwas elementar Hellseherisches auf derjenigen Stufe der Menschheitsentwickelung, auf der die Geschlechter für das Wort gebildet wurden; man empfand da noch etwas Lebendig-Geistiges in den Dingen drinnen. So hätte niemals in den älteren Sprachformen der indogermanischen Sprachen der Sonne und die Mond entstehen können — was später nur umgewendet worden ist in die Sonne und der Mond -, wenn man nicht die elementarischen Wesenheiten, die in Sonne und Mond leben, empfunden hätte wie Bruder und Schwester. Im Altertum hat man empfunden: die Sonne ist der Bruder, der Mond die Schwester -— heute ist es an der Zeit, wo man umgekehrt verfährt -; man hat den Tag als den Sohn und die Nacht als die Tochter des Riesen Norwi empfunden. Das beruhte durchaus auf primitiver hellseherischer Anschauung. Die Erde hat man nicht so empfunden, wie die heutigen Geologen sie empfinden; die haben natürlich alle Veranlassung, ein Neutrum zu gebrauchen: das Erde müßten sie eigentlich sagen. Der heutige Mensch empfindet nicht mehr, wie die Erde tatsächlich die Gäa ist, zu der das Männliche der Uranos ist. Das aber empfand man auch noch in den Gegenden, in denen die germanische Sprache ursprünglich sprachbildend aufgetreten ist. — Sonst waren es wenigstens Empfindungsnuancen, die aus dem Zusammenleben in der Außenwelt sich ergaben, die zu der Geschlechtsbezeichnung, zu der Geschlechtscharakteristik den Anlaß gaben. So empfand man den Elefanten als stark, die Maus als schwach. Weil man den Mann als stark und das Weib als schwach empfunden hat, hat der Elefant das männliche Geschlecht bekommen und die Maus das weibliche Geschlecht. Die Bäume des Waldes sind zumeist weiblich, weil sie für das ursprüngliche Empfinden die Häuser, die Sitze für weibliche Gottheiten waren. Daß ein sächliches Geschlecht neben dem männlichen und weiblichen vorhanden ist, das ist eigentlich von ungeheurer Bedeutung, weil es auf etwas sehr Tiefes im Sprachgenius verweist. Wir sagen: der Mann, die Fran, das Kind. Das Kind, bei dem das Geschlecht noch nicht ausgesprochen ist, was noch nicht sein Endgültiges ist, was erst wird. Als das sächliche Geschlecht gegeben worden ist, ging es aus jener Stimmung beim Volksgenius hervor, wo man empfand, daß alles, was man als sächlich bezeichnet, erst etwas wird. Das Gold hat heute noch nicht das Charakteristikum, das ihm einstmals eigen sein wird. Es ist im Kosmos noch jung; es wird erst das sein, wozu es bestimmt ist. Daher sagt man nicht der Gold, nicht die Gold, sondern das Gold. - Man kann nun wiederum studieren, wie es sich damit verhält, wenn die Anschauung, aus der die Geschlechtscharakteristik hervorgegangen ist, schwindet. Wir sagen heute: die Mitgift, was deutlich beweist, daß es zusammenhängt mit einem früheren Wort, wie es auch der Fall ist: die Gift. Wir sagen heute der Abscheu, was deutlich beweist, wie es auch der Fall ist, daß es zurückführt auf ein Wort: der Scheu. Der Scheu, die Gift, diese Worte haben ihre Empfindungsnuance gewandelt. Die Gift wurde früher einfach so bezeichnet, daß man mehr meinte: das Gleichgültige des Gebens. Aber weil vorzugsweise das, was gewisse Leute gegeben haben und was nach Fausts Anschauung vielen Leuten schädlich war, in seiner Bedeutung, die sich gewandelt hat, angewendet worden ist auf eine Gabe, die anrüchig ist, verlor man den Zusammenhang mit der ursprünglichen Geschlechtscharakteristik, und es wurde das Gift. Und als das ursprüngliche starke Empfinden, das einer hatte, den man scheu nannte, das In-sich-Gefestigte, als das schwach wurde, da durfte das Wort die Scheu werden.

Wie die Sprache abstrakter geworden ist, wie die Sprache sich herausgelöst hat aus dem Verwobensein mit der äußeren Wirklichkeit, das kann man am besten daran sehen, daß doch die indogermanischen Sprachen, also die alten Sprachen, acht Fälle hatten: Nominativ, Genitiv, Dativ, Akkusativ, Vokativ, Ablativ, Lokativ, Instrumentalis. Das heißt, man drückte nicht nur die Stellung aus, die ein Ding hatte und die man heute empfindet, wenn man es im ersten, zweiten, dritten, vierten Fall ausdrückt, sondern man wußte auch andere Zusammenhänge mit der Empfindung zu verfolgen. So zum Beispiel: irgend etwas tun zu einer bestimmten Zeit — kann man so ausdrücken wie heute; man sagt, man tut es diesen Tag oder dieses Tages, man kann den Genitiv oder Akkusativ gebrauchen. Doch man empfindet nicht mehr das Helfende des Tages dabei, der Tageszeit und gerade dieses bestimmten Tages; man empfindet nicht mehr, daß, was man zum Beispiel am 2. Januar 1920 tut, man nicht mehr später tun könnte, daß einem die Zeit etwas Helfendes ist, daß die Zeit in etwas drinnensteckt, was einem hilft. Das empfand man in alten Zeiten, und man gebrauchte den instrumentalen Fall hi» tagu. Man müßte sagen etwa durch diesen Tag, vermittelst dieses Tages. Es ist zum Worte heute geworden. Heute, da steckt also ein alter Instrumentalis drinnen. Ebenso hiu jaru: es ist zum heutigen heuer geworden. Aber die Sprache hat nach und nach diese anderen vier Fälle abgeworfen und hat nur noch vier Fälle zurückbehalten. Daraus sehen Sie auch, wie das Abstrahierungsvermögen der Sprache fortschreitet, und wie wir, wenn wir uns diese Beispiele vor Augen führen, eben deutlich sehen können, wie allmählich sich das abstrakte Denkvermögen und damit ein gewisser Unwirklichkeitssinn herausgestaltet aus dem alten Wirklichkeitssinn, der in der Sprache zum Ausdruck kommt.

Fifth Lecture

Based on what I have already explained, and in part to reinforce the same facts, I would like to start today by noting that it is precisely in linguistics that the consequences of a materialistic approach are most saddening, but perhaps also most obvious. It cannot be said that this materialistic approach is not even more harmful in physics, for example, because it is less noticeable; but it has the saddest effect in linguistics, for the reason that it could have been most easily avoided there, and because there one could have seen how spirit and soul actually work in the genius of language formation. Now it is a matter of using this insight, which I am hinting at, to approach even older times of language formation by first learning to observe them in more recent times; in more recent times, which are even more manageable, in which linguistic change can still be traced in such a way that the change in the sensibilities and feelings of the national soul shines through clearly in the linguistic change and its metamorphoses. The language of the German people at the time of the Minnesang, for example, the period historically known as the age of chivalry, is already relatively far back; but it is only so far back that certain things can still be easily traced in literature and thus shed light on some changes in meaning. However, we no longer see as much there as when we read Homer, where we encounter terms that we today consider to be insults, with which the Greek heroes accuse each other. For today we can no longer tolerate calling each other goat stomachs or donkeys. This points back to a time when a donkey was still held in such high esteem that a hero could be called a donkey. Animals — as is clear from Homer's poems — were not yet imbued with the nuances of feeling that they are today.

Well, we can raise our understanding of these things a little by looking at more recent characteristic examples. For example, in the Middle Ages we find the saying: They stuck like glue to their enemies' ranks. Today, it seems strange to us when someone who fights bravely in battle is said to have stuck like glue, but this “sticking like glue” was a perfectly acceptable expression in the age of minnesang.

And in Wolfram von Eschenbach you will find a characteristic saying that shows you how, firstly, people at that time still placed great importance on the vivid, but secondly, they had certain nuances of feeling for certain processes and things that today make such processes and things contemptible. So when Wolfram von Eschenbach seriously describes the appearance of a duchess in front of a male personality, he says: her appearance penetrated the eye of this personality and through the eye into the heart like hellebore through the nose. It is vivid, because the smell of hellebore is very vivid, one might say very noticeable through the nose; but we would not say that today. From this you can see how the world of feelings has changed, and this transformation of the world of feelings should be studied if one does not want to pursue materialistic linguistics.

As you know, a more recent poet was still allowed to say of a dignified female personality: She looked like a full moon. But today, this idiom, which was quite common in the Middle Ages, would no longer be tolerated in the broadest sense. If, out of a similar feeling, you were to say to a lady: “You look at me like a full moon,” this would no longer be part of everyday language today; but in the Middle Ages, the loveliness of the moon, the gentleness of the moon, was predominant in the popular imagination. And it was precisely this that people loved about a lady's gaze, a lady's expression, compared to the full moon.

In his “Tristan,” Gottfried von Straßburg speaks quite seriously of glued love. Glued love is that which had fallen apart but has come back together again. He speaks of the wounded sticking to the battlefield. Today, that would be considered offensive. And when the Middle Ages say: the imperial legs of a person, to express his dignified posture, or when he says: the imperial maid Maria, this shows you the essential change in the emotional world.

I give you these examples so that you may become aware of how this change in emotional nuances manifests itself in less noticeable areas. For example, in the Middle Ages, people still spoke of sick reeds. What are sick reeds? Sick is only the decorative epithet for a very long reed. And the time is not so long ago when sick, when spoken, meant nothing other than slender. If someone had been called sick in those days, it would have meant that they were a tall, slender person. It did not mean, in today's sense, that they were ill. If one wanted to say that, one would have had to say that they were addicted, afflicted by an addiction. At that time, being sick was the same as being slim. Now think about what has happened! People gradually began to feel that there was something inhuman about a person who was slim. They acquired the feeling that it was normal for people to be a little overweight. In this roundabout way, the word “sick” became associated with being addicted, with not being normally organized. So, a word takes on a certain nuance of meaning that used to belong to a completely different nuance of meaning.

But it was not so long ago that an innkeeper could do good business by promoting poor wine. An innkeeper could say and proclaim in the village: you can find poor wine here. Elend is the same word as our Elend (misery). You can only find echoes of the old nuance of Elend in dialect, where certain villages far out on the border are called Elend, the Elend villages. In Styria, for example, people still said in my day: der Mann ist aus dem Elend (the man is from Elend), meaning that he is from a border town. — And certain villages have retained the name Elend to this day. This designation has only moved in from further afield; for elender wine meant foreign wine, and Elend is the foreign country, so that at least until 1914 — when, for example, he praised French wines — the innkeeper would have done good business if he had praised elender wines. So we have a change in meaning that is already present in krank.

Curiously, the poet Geiler von Kaisersberg speaks — if you look it up, it will be more transparent — of a pretty god. We can no longer say that today. He meant a benevolent god. In häbsch we find the emotional nuance that we associate with the word benevolent today. You still find the expression today — because such things have survived as remnants —: an unpolished person. You will understand this word when you read in Luther that people are polished by the prophets. People are planed by the prophets, that is, they are made right. So here we still have the sensory perception of planing combined with making right again.

With these examples, we have now gone back a little further. But let us look at something more specific. Lessing, who is not so far back in time, once wanted to express—which can be misunderstood today due to his choice of words—that there are many things for which one can justifiably develop sympathy, but which cannot be elevated to the character of beauty and therefore cannot be elevated to the subject of art. And he expresses this truth by saying: Much of what is most suggestive cannot be the subject of art. When we read this today, we immediately believe that Lessing meant suggestive in the same way that we mean it today; but the context shows that we would only mean the same thing as he did if we were to say: Much of what is most attractive cannot be the subject of art. So, you have here a change in the nuance of feeling, so that what you today call the most attractive, Lessing still called the most suggestive. Today, we use the term to mean something quite different.

Now it is interesting to trace the complicated way in which such a change in meaning actually takes place. Suppose, for example, that the word krank, which used to mean slender, could also be applied to reeds; a krank reed is a reed that is slender and therefore less useful than a short, thick reed. Now, the nuance of meaning has gradually changed, so that it has gradually taken on the modern meaning of “sick”; but today, something has been lost again. Adelung, who lived halfway between that time and ours, says, for example, that damaged ships must be repaired. Today, it seems a little strange, or at least we know that the person in question is a joker when he speaks of a damaged clock, for example; but at that time, it was something natural to apply the word krank, which has since changed, to inorganic objects as well. You can see from this that krank originally had something to do with form, and that the meaning we use today only gradually crept in. But then what had been there before was completely discarded, and it took on a whole new meaning, whereas with offended ships we can still think of the earlier meaning. More and more, the immediate feeling of what is appropriate in words has been stripped away. Even in Goethe — and in his case, because he reverted in many respects to the rule of the language-forming genius — there is still a clear feeling in words that we no longer feel clearly. Take the word bitter, for example. For us today, it has become a term for a purely subjective experience, for a taste experience. And we no longer usually associate it with what was vivid in ancient times and from which the word bitter is derived: with biting. But it is related to biting: what tastes bitter actually bites us. Goethe still feels this and speaks of the bitter scissors of the Fates: the biting scissors of the Fates are what it is! People today are already so abstract that they say “poetic license” when they encounter such a word. But it is not poetic license; it has emerged precisely from a full inner experience. Goethe did not yet live in a time when ninety-nine percent of what is written in poetry is too much. He felt much more alive to language—and this must be borne in mind in many of his works—than anyone today can, simply standing there in their external education. You can feel this again when you find the words in Goethe: “I liked Ecce homo because of its pitiful portrayal.” No one today seems to feel differently when they say this, except that it is a poor portrayal. But Goethe wants to suggest that this portrayal evokes our deepest compassion. So we would have to say, quite abstractly: I liked Ecce homo because of its portrayal that evokes compassion. But Goethe also said: I liked Ecce homo because of its pitiful portrayal.

Even in the relatively recent past, a person who walked down the street and enjoyed talking to children and poor people, who was not arrogant and did not act superior when people showed him respect, could be called a despicable person. That was possible until the middle of the 18th century. A despicable person, at that time, was an affable person: people praised him, they paid him the highest praise from a certain point of view. — I don't think many people today still attach any real meaning to the term “harmless number” when they read about it in 18th-century writings. Today, we would simply say: a number that is approximately correct. An approximate number, that's what they called a harmless number. And what would most people think today when they come across the expression “naughty plums,” which was still common in the 18th century? Naughty plums are those plums that do not display the typical characteristics of the species, that are something special, that stand out from the rest; those are naughty plums. Only when we acquire a feeling that such changes take place do we understand other things whose change is not so obvious. For example, our modern word “difficult.” You know the nuance of feeling with which it is used. In the past, it was only used when one was aware that one wanted to say: full of sores, full of ulcers. So, if one found something difficult, one wanted to express the feeling that this task causes ulcers. This is expressed very vividly and vividly, and this is related to the expression difficult.

Such things, which have completely fallen out of the current nuance of feeling and which prove how wrong one is when one approaches language assessment pedantically and wants to make inferences without knowing the facts of language metamorphoses, can also appear in dialect. If you serve someone a lunch with many courses, you can say to them today: you shouldn't eat too much of this dish, because there are other dishes for which you should save your appetite. Today you can say: Please don't eat too much, there are other good things to come. — However, there is still a certain area of the German-speaking region where one can say: /ß not too much of this dish, there is still something to come. Another dialect has the possibility of saying: Oh, they are good, dear children, they are fighting. This means: they are not out of the ordinary, they are good-natured, they are fighting. It is precisely such an example, such as: these are good-natured children who slaughter themselves, that points to the lively coexistence of feeling and external perception in linguistic intuition.

This sometimes strikes one as something extremely important. In Goethe, there is a passage in a conversation that he used in later years to characterize his work on “Faust.” This passage has played an extremely important role for Faust commentators. As a very old man, Goethe once said, to characterize his work on Faust, that it was something special that for over sixty years the concept of Faust had been clear to him from the outset in its youthfulness, although the entire sequence was less detailed. Many Faust commentators have concluded from this that Goethe already had a plan for Faust as a young man, that the concept of Faust was clear to him from the outset, and that what came later was merely a kind of execution. And much that is unnecessary and untrue with regard to the characteristics of his work on Faust has come from the interpretation of this passage. This passage can only be properly understood since Fresenius published Goethe's understanding of the significance of syllable structure from the outset. This was particularly close to my heart because I worked with Fresenius. When he had something, he didn't get around to processing it for decades, so I urged him to publish it because what he had to say was very important. One can compile the passages in which Goethe uses the word from the outset: he never uses it in any other sense than spatially. When he says that he has read a book from the outset, this means nothing other than that he has only read the first few pages of the book. And so one can clearly demonstrate that he only clearly conceived the first scenes of Faust in his youth. So here, simply understanding the correct use of the word points to Goethe's work, and you can see, particularly in this use of the word, that what has become abstract for us is viewed spatially by him. He always uses the expression “from the outset” in a vivid, spatial way. Thus, a large part of what makes Goethe so appealing is based on his return to the qualities of the original linguistic genius. And if one tries to penetrate Goethe's soul through his language — whereas today's researchers only do this in a materialistic way — one can also find important clues for a dematerialization of linguistics. It is good to seek advice on such matters.

For many things, we no longer have the linguistic contexts that express the original connection between nuances of feeling and sound structures. Dialects sometimes still have this; they also have what expresses the vivid. For example, you will find the expression “unter den Arm greifen” (to take someone under the arm) less often in written language, but often in dialect here and there. It simply means to help someone who is helpless. Why? Because younger people used to offer their hand to older people who could no longer walk so well, took them under the arm and supported them. This very vivid process has been transferred to helping in general. Just as one says that one wipes the sleep from one's eyes, so one has chosen a single concrete action for helping, through which one expresses the more abstract concept in a vivid way. Sometimes the linguistic genius was no longer able to hold on to the vivid image; then he sometimes retained the vivid image on the one hand and discarded it on the other. — Today, you still have the word lauschen for a certain kind of listening. The Austrian dialect also has a word for mere hearing that is still related to this lauschen: losen, and in Austria you don't just say to someone you want to listen: hör einmal, but los amol! Losen is a weak active listening. Educated colloquial language has retained lauschen. Losen is the related word, which indicates a weaker activity with a nuance of feeling. In losen, one can still sense the stealthiness that is expressed in hidden listening; and in a certain way, even losen has already transitioned to unauthorized listening. For example, if someone eavesdrops through a keyhole, or if someone listens in on a conversation between two people that is not intended for them, then one says that they have losen.

Only when one has a feeling for the emotional nature of such sound structures can one gradually move on to developing a feeling for the elementary sounds, the vowels and consonants. In the Austrian dialect, for example, there is a word that means grandmother: Ahnl. You know it, don't you? Ahnfrau is somewhat more general. The Ahnl is the Ahne with an l added. It is simply the Ahn with an l added. In order to understand what is actually happening linguistically here, one must raise oneself linguistically to feel this ! as a consonant. You feel it when you feel the suffix lich, which I said originated from leik. It has something to do with the feeling that something is moving around, that you have to imitate the movement in language. An Ahnl is a person who is seen as an old woman, but who gives the impression of being a mobile old woman: you have to look around her face to see the wrinkles. So you see how characteristic the ! is used.

Take the word “disappear.” To disappear, to go away, so that it is no longer seen; to make something go away by no longer seeing it. Now, don't take it to mean making something go away so that it is no longer seen, but rather: I want to cheat a little when I make it go away; I want to create something that remains, which does not express true, real disappearance: then I feel the movement around – here an l – and it becomes schwindeln (to feel dizzy). The l has done that, and you can feel exactly what kind of feeling value such an / has when you move from schwinden to schwindeln. You will feel eurythmy as something self-evident when you immerse yourself in such things. You will feel how eurythmy goes back to a primal kinship of the human being with what is contained in the sound inventory, which is to be expressed without the sound inventory, precisely through movement alone. When you feel something like this, you will also be able to sense precisely how, for example, a vowel such as # contains something snuggling, something connecting. Look at the # in eurythmy, and you will see this snuggling, this connecting, and then you will say: in Mutter (mother), with which one usually connects, it is impossible for an a or an e to come first. One could not imagine saying Metter or Matter. Mater testifies that it is already a weakened language in which this occurs; originally it meant mother.

Through all this, I have pointed you to the path of linguistic genius, which, as I said before, created a gap between the sound inventory and the mental image. Both are originally intimately connected in subjective human experience; they separate. The sound inventory descends into the subconscious; the conceptual inventory ascends into the conscious. And many things that are still felt where one originally lives with external facts are thus discarded. And if we go back in the development of language, we find it remarkable that the original forms of language development lead us completely into the factual; that a fine sense of fact and reality is present in the primitive stages of language formation; that people living at this stage live intimately with what is in things and what is going on. The moment this inner coexistence ceases, the sense of reality becomes clouded, so to speak, and people live in an unreality, which is expressed in language. In the original Indo-European language, as in Latin, there are three genders, just as we still have three genders in German. They are perceived as something different: masculine, feminine, neuter. In French, there are only two genders, and in English, there is only one gender, which testifies to the fact that this is a language that has, so to speak, magnificently stripped itself of its sense of reality, that now only hovers above things but no longer lives in the facts. There was still something elementally clairvoyant at the stage of human development when the genders were formed for the word; there was still a sense of something living and spiritual within things. Thus, in the older forms of the Indo-European languages, the sun and the moon could never have come into being — which was later only reversed into the sun and the moon — if the elemental beings living in the sun and moon had not been felt as brother and sister. In ancient times, people felt that the sun was the brother and the moon the sister — today it is time to do the opposite — they felt that the day was the son and the night the daughter of the giant Norwi. This was based entirely on primitive clairvoyant perception. The earth was not perceived as geologists perceive it today; they naturally have every reason to use a neuter form: they should actually say “the earth.” People today no longer perceive how the earth is actually Gaia, to whom Uranus is the male counterpart. But this was still felt in the regions where the Germanic language originally emerged as a language. Otherwise, it was at least nuances of feeling that arose from living together in the outside world that gave rise to gender designation and gender characteristics. For example, the elephant was perceived as strong and the mouse as weak. Because men were perceived as strong and women as weak, the elephant was assigned the male gender and the mouse the female gender. The trees of the forest are mostly female because, in the original perception, they were the homes and seats of female deities. The fact that there is a neuter gender alongside the masculine and feminine is actually of enormous significance because it points to something very profound in the genius of language. We say: the man, the woman, the child. The child, whose gender is not yet pronounced, which is not yet final, which is only becoming. When the neuter gender was given, it arose from that mood in the folk genius where it was felt that everything that is described as neuter is only becoming something. Gold today does not yet have the characteristics that will one day be its own. It is still young in the cosmos; it will only become what it is destined to be. That is why we do not say “der Gold” or “die Gold,” but “das Gold.” We can now study what happens when the view from which gender characteristics emerged disappears. Today we say “die Mitgift” (the dowry), which clearly shows that it is related to an earlier word, as is also the case with “die Gift” (the poison). Today we say “der Abscheu” (the abomination), which clearly shows, as is also the case, that it goes back to a word: “der Scheu” (the shyness). The words ‘Scheu’ and “Gift” have changed their emotional nuance. Poison used to be referred to simply as meaning the indifference of giving. But because what certain people gave, and what Faust considered harmful to many people, was applied in its changed meaning to a gift that was disreputable, the connection with the original gender characteristic was lost, and it became poison. And when the original strong feeling that someone had, which was called shyness, the inner strength, became weak, the word was allowed to become shyness.

How language has become more abstract, how language has detached itself from its interweaving with external reality, can best be seen in the fact that the Indo-European languages, i.e., the ancient languages, had eight cases: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, vocative, ablative, locative, instrumental. This means that not only was the position of a thing expressed, as we do today when we express it in the first, second, third, or fourth case, but other connections with the sensation could also be pursued. For example: doing something at a certain time — this can be expressed in the same way as today; one says that one is doing it on this day or this day, one can use the genitive or accusative. But one no longer feels the helpfulness of the day, the time of day, and precisely this particular day; one no longer feels that what one does, for example, on January 2, 1920, could not be done later, that time is something helpful, that time is contained in something that helps one. This was felt in ancient times, and the instrumental case hi» tagu was used. One would have to say, for example, through this day, by means of this day. It has become the word today. Today, there is an old instrumental case in it. Similarly, hiu jaru: it has become today's this year. But the language has gradually discarded these other four cases and retained only four cases. From this you can also see how the capacity for abstraction in language progresses, and how, when we consider these examples, we can clearly see how abstract thinking and with it a certain sense of unreality gradually developed from the old sense of reality that is expressed in language.