| 281. Poetry and the Art of Speech: Lecture VII
29 Mar 1923, Stuttgart Translated by Julia Wedgwood, Andrew Welburn Rudolf Steiner |
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| Southward and east they steer with reckless force, shifting in constellations, pairs and groups... and over all the smoke – so pale, like blood. |
| 281. Poetry and the Art of Speech: Lecture VII
29 Mar 1923, Stuttgart Translated by Julia Wedgwood, Andrew Welburn Rudolf Steiner |
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I hope you will permit me to insert into today’s proceedings at this Pedagogical and Artistic Congress an example taken from the art of recitation and declamation, and to make some observations of an interpolated nature. Art is always a particularly difficult theme on which to speak, in that art is conveyed through immediate sensation – through immediate perception. It must be received as a direct impression. We are thus in a quite special position in speaking about art at a Congress where our aim is a clarification that is reached both through knowledge and through a whole style of education and teaching-practice. Certainly all the lectures that have been held here have stressed the necessity, in the case of Waldorf education, of introducing an artistic quality into the art of education and teaching in general. But when confronting art itself, one would prefer, as I hinted in a former lecture, to preserve a chaste silence. Now every argument, every show of feeling, every human volition ultimately passes over to form the ongoing stream of human civilisation. They are contained in the three greatest impulses behind all human evolution and all historical events: the ideals of religion, art and knowledge. And in our day an attempt is quite justifiably made to make art the bearer of our ideal of knowledge, so that some possibility may once more be found of our rising upward with our understanding from the realm of substance, of matter, into the spiritual. I have tried to show how art is the way to gain a true knowledge of man, in that artistic creativity and sensitivity are the organs for a genuine knowledge of man. Nature herself becomes a true artist the moment she ascends from the multiplicity of facts and beings of the universe to bring about man. This is not said merely as a metaphor, but as a deeper knowledge of the universe and of man. And again, confronted with art, it may be said that it is an intrusion when we want to speak artistically about art. To speak about art is to lead what is spoken back to a sort of religious perception. Thereby religion is grasped in its widest sense, in which it does not only embrace what we today rightly regard as explicitly religious – the quality of reverence in man – but also includes humour, as understood in the highest sense. [Note 29] A sort of religious feeling must always prepare the mood for art. For when we speak about art we must speak out of the spirit. How can we find words for works of art of the sublimest kind, such as Dante's Commedia, if our language does not embody moments of religious insight? This was indeed felt, and rightly felt, when art came into being. Art originated at a time when science still formed a unity, a common whole along with religion and art. At the beginning of certain great works of art we hear words which, I would say, seem like a confirmation of these comments from world-history. It is truly out of a cosmic awareness that Homer begins his poem with the words:
Sing, O Muse, of the anger of Peleus’ son Achilles.
Homer himself does not sing: Homer is conscious that he must raise his soul to the superhuman, the super-sensible; that he must place his words as a sacrificial gift before the higher powers he serves, if he is to become a truly artistic poet. (Of course, the question of Homer’s identity has nothing to do with this.) And if we survey a longer period, and come to one of the modern poets, we hear how Klopstock begins his Messiah with words that are indeed different, but formally sound quite similar:
Sing, immortal soul, of sinful man’s redemption, Which the Messiah on earth in human form accomplished.
When we begin from the one poem and progress to the other, we pass through the period in which man traversed the great, immeasurable distance from complete surrender to the divine spiritual powers, whose earthly sheath he felt himself to be, to the point where man in his freedom started to feel himself a sheath only of his own soul. But there too, at the beginning of the great epoch of German poetry, Klopstock appealed to the invisible – as Goethe constantly did, even if he did not overtly say so. Thus among poets themselves we can observe the consciousness of a sort of translation into the super-sensible. The super-sensible, however, does not speak in words. Words are in every instance prose. Words are in every instance components of a discourse, components of a psychic act which submits to the conditions of logic. Logic exists in order that we may become aware of external beings and occurrences in their external sense-reality; logic must not, therefore, intrude upon spiritual reality. The moment we arrive by means of logic at a prose sentence we must feel the solid earth under our feet. For the spiritual does not speak in human words. The spiritual world goes only as far as the syllable, not as far as the word. Thus we can say that the poet is in a curious position. The poet has to make use of words, since these are after all the instruments of human speech: but in making use of words he necessarily deserts his proper artistic domain. He can only achieve his aim if he leads the word back to syllable-formation. In the quantities, metres and weight of syllable-formation – this is the region where the word has not yet become word, but still submits to the musical, imaginative and plastic, to a speech-transcendent spirituality – there the poet holds sway. And when the poet has to make use of words, he feels inwardly how he has to lead word-formations back to the region that he left under the necessity of passing from syllable to word. He feels that through rhyme, through the entire configuration of the verse, he must again make good what is lost when the word abandons the concrete quantities and weight that belong to the syllable, and round it out artistically, imparting form and harmony. Here we are vouchsafed a glimpse into the intimacies of the poet’s soul. This disposition is truly felt by a real poet. Platen is not alone in having left us some remarkable comments on what I have just attempted to describe:
Only to rambling dilettantes Are formal strictures ‘senseless’. Necessity: That is thy sacrificial gift, O Genius.
Platen invokes Genius, observing that it is inherent in Genius to fashion the syllables in accordance with quantity, metre and weight. Rambling off into prose is merely the foolishness of the half-talented. (Although, as I have mentioned, these make up ninety-nine per cent of our versifiers.) And not only Platen, but Schiller, too, puts it rather beautifully when he says:
It is the peculiar property of an untainted and purely quantitative verse that it serves as the sensible presentation of an inner necessity of thought; and conversely, any licence in the treatment of syllable quantities makes itself felt in a certain arbitrariness. From this perspective it is of particular importance, and touches upon the most intimate laws of art.
It is to the necessity inherent in syllable-quantities that Schiller refers in this pronouncement. The declaimer or reciter, as the interpreter of the poet’s art, must give special attention to what I have just described. He has to conduct what comes before him as a poetical composition, which obviously communicates through words, back to quantity, metre and the weight of the syllables. What then flows out into the words has to be consciously rounded out so as to accord with the verse-structure and rhyme. In our own age, with its lack of artistic feeling, there has arisen a curious kind of declamatory-recitative art – a prosaic emphasis on the prose-sense, something quite unartistic. The real poet always goes back from the prosaic or literal to the musical or plastic. Before he committed the words of a poem to paper, Schiller always experienced a wordless, indeterminate melody, a soul-experience of melody. As yet without words, it flowed along melodically like a musical theme, onto which he then threaded the words. One might conjecture that Schiller could have conjured the most varied poems, as regards verbal content, out of the same musical theme. And to rehearse his iambic verse-dramas, Goethe stood in front of his actors with a baton, like a conductor, considering the formation of sound, the balance of the syllables, the musical rhythm and time-signature to be the essential, rather than the literal meaning. For this reason it has become necessary for our own spiritual stream to return to a true art of recitation and declamation, where what has been debased through the means of expression imposed upon the poet to the level of mere prose can once again be raised, so as to regain the level of a super-sensible formative and musical experience. This work was taken in hand by Frau Dr. Steiner, who over the last decades has tried to develop an art of recitation and declamation in which something that transcends prose to become inwardly eurythmic, the imaginative and musical configuration of syllable-quantities, the imaginative quality of the sound, whether plastic or musical – in which all this is once more made apparent. This comes out differently in lyric, epic and drama – I shall deal with that presently. But we would first like to show how what is indicated here can in general be derived from poetry that is truly artistic. As a first example you will hear “Ostern”, by Anastasius Grün, a poem particularly suited to such a passing-beyond-the-content and approach to the aesthetic form. It is a somewhat old-fashioned poem that is (in a rather narrow sense) topical, in being a poem dedicated to Easter. On the other hand it is not topical, in the sense that it dates back to the first half of the nineteenth century, an age when the poet still felt bound to acknowledge the necessity of plastic and rhythmical formative power. Let us accept the poem as it is – though it will nowadays be found tedious by those who attend to the prose content alone, as being rather antiquated in its imagery. Even allowing for its tediousness as prose, however, a genuine poet has here attempted to comply with the inner aesthetic necessity of the poem. We shall then continue with a modern poet, with “An Eine Rose”, a sonnet by Albert Steffen. It is precisely in the sonnet that, with good will, we can discern how the verbal presentation is compensated by the strictly bounded form – this atones for the sin committed with regard to the words, and the whole is then rounded out and rendered euphonious. In the case of a poet like Albert Steffen, whose explorations extend into the hidden depths of his view of the world, it is interesting to observe how he simultaneously feels the necessity of transmuting what comes to light as a way of knowledge into the strictest aesthetic forms. In the “Terzinen” of Christian Morgenstern we shall see how a peculiar poetic form – free terzetti – subsists on the basis of a feeling for continuity, for openness of form, in contrast to the sonnet which is based on a rounding-off of feeling. We shall see how the terzetti, albeit towards the end of the poem, have a quality of openness, while yet constituting a bounded whole from what flows into the words. And then perhaps I may adduce three poems of my own: “Frühling”, “Herbst”, and “Weltenseelengeister”, in which I have tried to bring into strict forms the most inward experiences of the human soul – not the forms of conventional prosody or metrics, but forms which stem from the actual emotion, while at the same time they try to contain the amorphous, fluctuating, glittering life within the soul in internally strict forms. Frau Dr. Steiner will now demonstrate these six, more lyrical poems. (“Ostern” is, of course, a long poem of which we will present only Part V.) OSTERN
Und Ostern wird es einst, der Herr sieht nieder Vom Ölberg in das Tal, das klingt und blüht; Rings Glanz und Fühl’ und Wonn’ und Wonne wieder, So weit sein Aug’ – ein Gottesauge – sieht!
Ein Ostern, wie’s der Dichtergeist sieht blühen, Dem’s schon zu schaun, zu pflücken jetzt erlaubt Die Blütenkränze, die als Kron’ einst glühen Um der noch ungebornen Tage Haupt!
Ein Ostern, wie’s das Dichteraug’ sieht tagen, Das überm Nebel, der das Jetzt umzieht, Die morgenroten Gletscherhäupter ragen Der werdenden Jahrtausende schon sieht!
Ein Ostern, Auferstehungsfest, das wieder Des Frühlings Hauch auf Blumengräber sät; Ein Ostern der Verjüngung, das hernieder Ins Menschenherz der Gottheit Atem weht!
Sieh, welche Wandlung blüht auf Zions Bahnen! Längst hält ja Lenz sein Siegeslager hier; Auf Bergen wehn der Palmen grüne Fahnen, Im Tale prangt sein Zelt in Blütenzier!
Längst wogt ja über all’ den alten Trümmern Ein weites Saatenmeer in goldner Flut, Wie fern im Nord, wo weisse Wellen schimmern, Versunken tief im Meer Vineta ruht.
Geworfen frischer Triften grünes Kleid, Gleichwie ein stilles, freundliches Vergessen Sich senkt auf dunkler Tag’ uraltes Leid.
Längst stehn die Höhn umfahn von Rebgewinden, Längst blüht ein Rosenhag auf Golgatha. Will jetzt ein Mund den Preis der Rose künden, Nennt er gepaart Schiras und Golgatha.
Längst alles Land weitum ein sonn’ger Garten; Es ragt kein Halbmond mehr, kein Kreuz mehr da! Was sollten auch des blut’gen Kampfs Standarten? Längst ist es Frieden, ew’ger Frieden ja!
Der Kedron blieb. Er quillt vor meinen Blicken Ins Bett von gelben Ähren eingeengt, Wohl noch als Träne, doch die dem Entzücken Sich durch die blonden, goldnen Wimpern drängt!
Das ist ein Blühen rings, ein Duften, Klingen, Das um die Wette spriesst und rauscht und keimt, Als gält’ es jetzt, geschäftig einzubringen, Was starr im Schlaf Jahrtausende versäumt,
Das ist ein Glänzen rings, ein Funkeln, Schimmern Der Städt’ im Tal, der Häuser auf den Höhn; Kein Ahnen, dass ihr Fundament auf Trümmern, Kein leiser Traum des Grabs, auf dem sie stehn!
Die Flur durchjauchzt, des Segens freud’ger Deuter, Ein Volk, vom Glück geküsst, an Tugend reich, Gleich den Gestirnen ernst zugleich und heiter, Wie Rosen schön, wie Cedern stark zugleich
Begraben längst in des Vergessens Meere, Seeungetümen gleich in tiefer Flut, Die alten Greu’l, die blut’ge Schergenehre, Der Krieg und Knechtsinn und des Luges Brut.
Auf Golgatha, in eines Gärtchens Mitte, Da wohnt ein Pärlein, Glück und Lieb’ im Blick; Weit schaut ins Land, gleich ihrem Aug’ die Hütte, Es labt ja Glück sich gern an fremdem Glück!
Einst, da begab sich’s, dass im Feld die Kinder Ausgruben gar ein formlos, eisern Ding; Als Sichel däuchtis zu grad und schwer die Finder, Als Pflugschar fast zu schlank und zu gering.
Sie schleppen’s mühsam heim, gleich seltnem Funde, Die Eltern sehn es, – doch sie kennen’s nicht, Sie rufen rings die Nachbarn in der Runde, Die Nachbarn sehn es, – doch sie kennen’s nicht.
Da ist ein Greis, der in der Jetztwelt Tage Mit weissem Bart und fahlem Angesicht Hereinragt, selbst wie eine alte Sage; Sie zeigen’s ihm, – er aber kennt es nicht.
Wohl ihnen allen, dass sie’s nimmer kennen! Der Ahnen Torheit, längst vom Grab verzehrt, Müsst’ ihnen noch im Aug’ als Träne brennen. Denn was sie nimmer kannten, war ein Schwert!
Als Pflugschar soll’s fortan durch Schollen ringen, Dem Saatkorn nur noch weist’s den Weg zur Gruft; Des Schwertes neue Heldentaten singen Der Lerchen Epopeein in sonn’ger Luft!
Einst wieder sich’s begab, dass, als er pflügte, Der Ackersmann wie an ein Felsstück stiess, Und, als sein Spaten rings die Hüll’ entfügte, Ein wundersam Gebild aus Stein sich wies.
Er ruft herbei die Nachbarn in der Runde, Sie sehn sich’s an, – jedoch sie kennen’s nicht! – Uralter, weiser Greis, du gibst wohl Kunde? Der Greis besieht’s, jedoch er kennt es nicht.
Ob sie’s auch kennen nicht, doch steht’s voll Segen Aufrecht in ihrer Brust, in ewigem Reiz, Es blüht sein Same rings auf allen Wegen; Denn was sie nimmer kannten, war ein Kreuz!
Sie sahn den Kampf nicht und sein blutig Zeichen, Sie sehn den Sieg allein und seinen Kranz! Sie sahn den Sturm nicht mit den Wetterstreichen, Sie sehn nur seines Regenbogens Glanz!
Das Kreuz von Stein, sie stellen’s auf im Garten, Ein rätselhaft, ehrwürdig Altertum, Dran Rosen rings und Blumen aller Arten Empor sich ranken, kletternd um und um.
So steht das Kreuz inmitten Glanz und Fülle Auf Golgatha, glorreich, bedeutungsschwer: Verdeckt ist’s ganz von seiner Rosen Hülle, Längst sieht vor Rosen man das Kreuz nicht mehr. Anastasius Grün.
[In a similar way, Vaughan here transmutes a religious meditation into haunting poetry:
THE NIGHT (John, ii.)
Through that pure Virgin-shrine, That sacred vail drawn o’r thy glorious noon That men might look and live as Glo-worms shine, And face the Moon: Wise Nicodemus saw such light As made him know his God by night.
Most blest believer he! Who in that land of darkness and blinde eyes Thy long expected healing wings could see, When thou didst rise, And what can never more be done, Did at mid-night speak with the Sun:
O who will tell me, where He found thee at that dead and silent hour: What hallow’d solitary ground did bear So rare a flower, Within whose sacred leafs did lie The fulness of the Deity.
No mercy-seat of gold, No dead and dusty Cherub, nor carv’d stone, But his own living works did my Lord hold And Lodge alone; Where trees and Kerbs did watch and peep And wonder, while the Jews did sleep. Dear night! this worlds defeat; The stop to busie fools; cares check and curb; The day of Spirits; my souls calm retreat Which none disturb! Christ’s progress, and his prayer time; The hours to which high Heaven doth chime.
Gods silent, searching flight: When my Lords head is fill’d with dew, and all His locks are wet with the clear drops of night; His still, soft call; His knocking time; The souls dumb watch, When Spirits their fair kindred catch.
Were all my loud, evil days Calm and unhaunted as is thy dark Tent, Whose peace but by some Angels wing or voice Is seldom rent; Then I in Heaven all the long year Would keep, and never wander here.
But living where the Sun Doth all things wake, and where all mix and tyre Themselves and others, I consent and run To ev’ry myre, And by this worlds ill-guiding light, Erre more than I can do by night.
There is in God (some say) A deep, but dazzling darkness; As men here Say it is late and dusky, because they See not all clear O for that night! where I in him Might live invisible and dim. Henry Vaughan.] Sonnet:
AN EINE ROSE
Ich schaue mich in dir und dich in mir: Wo ich die Schlange bin, bist du die Blume, wir assen beide von der irdischen Krume, in dir ass Gott, in mir ass noch das Tier.
Die Erde ward für dich zum Heiligtume, du wurzelst fest, du willst nicht fort von ihr. Ich aber sehne mich, ich darbe hier, ich such im All nach meinem Eigentume.
Du überwächst den Tod mit deinen Farben und saugst dir ewiges Leben aus dem Boden. Ich kehre immer wieder, um zu sterben.
Denn ach: Nur durch mein Suchen, Sehnen, Darben, nur durch die Wiederkehr von vielen Toden, darf ich um dich, O rote Rose, werben.
Albert Steffen (1884-1963). TO A ROSE
I see myself in thee, and thee in me: But where I am the serpent, thou’rt the flower – In both consumes and grows by earthly power A god in thee, alas! mere beast in me.
To thee the Earth was given for thy shrine, Thou clungst to her, nor wouldst uprooted be. But I, I yearn, I hanker to be free, And seek in the great All to grow divine.
Thou with thy shooting hues outleapst corruption, Drawing eternal life from out of the soil, Whilst I fall back, fall even to death’s repose.
Yet still I seek and I yearn – and after disruption, And only through manifold deaths’ laborious toll Dare court your deathless beauty, rose, red rose! Trans. A.J.W. Terzetti:
Was ist das? Gibt es Krieg? Den Abendhimmel verfinstern Raben gleich geschwungnen Brauen des Unheils und mit gierigem Gekrächz. Südöstlich rudern sie mit wilder Kraft, und immer neue Paare, Gruppen, Völker... Und drüber raucht’s im Blassen wie von Blut.
Wie Sankt Franciscus schweb ich in der Luft mit beiden Füssen, fühle nicht den Grund der Erde mehr, weiss nicht mehr, was das ist. Seid still! Nein, – redet, singt, jedweder Mund! Sonst wird die Ewigkeit ganz meine Gruft und nimmt mich auf wie einst den tiefen Christ.
Dies ist das Wunderbarste, dieses feste, so scheint es, ehern feste Vorwärtsschreiten – und alles ist zuletzt nur tiefer Traum. Von tausend Türmen strotzt die Burg der Zeiten (so scheint’s) aus Erz und Marmor, doch am Saum Der Ewigkeit ist all das nur noch Geste.
Dämmrig Blaun im Mondenschimmer Berge...gleich Erinnerungen ihrer selbst; selbst Berge nimmer. Träume bloss noch, hinterlassen von vergangnen Felsenmassen: So wie Glocken, die verklungen, noch die Luft als Zittern fassen. Christian Morgenstern What is that – is it war? The evening skies are dark with ravens, like a congested brewing of evil, and gasping horrible, envious croaks.
Southward and east they steer with reckless force, shifting in constellations, pairs and groups... and over all the smoke – so pale, like blood.
I, like St. Francis, rise upon airy wave, and feel beneath my feet earth’s solid ground no more, no longer knowing what that is...
Be still! – No, rather let each voice resound! lest all Eternity, become my grave, enclose me like the depth that in Christ is.
Most wonderful is this: the fast‑ as-iron (it seems to me) forward advance – and yet, all is a dream in which we sink.
Time prides herself (apparently) on all her forts of stone and iron – yet, from the brink of Endlessness, mere gestures all at last!
Dusky, blue, in moonlight quiver mountains...self-remembrances themselves, as they were mountains never.
Mere dreams! the last, abandoned fragment of some primeval, vast escarpment: like stopped bells, whose resonances in the vibrant air augment. Trans. A.J.W. after V. Jacobs. [Stevens has made extensive use of this form, as in his “Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction”. This example comes from the section “It Must Give Pleasure,” part VIII: What am I to believe? If the angel in his cloud, Serenely gazing at the violent abyss, Plucks on his strings to pluck abysmal glory,
Leaps downward through evening’s revelations, and On his spredden wings, needs nothing but deep space, Forgets the gold centre, the golden destiny,
Grows warm in the motionless motion of his flight, Am I that imagine this angel less-satisfied? Are the wings his, the lapis-haunted air?
Is it he or is it I that experience this? Is it I then that keep saying there is an hour Filled with expressible bliss, in which I have
No need, am happy, forget need’s golden hand, Am satisfied without solacing majesty, And if there is an hour there is a day,
There is a month, a year, there is a time In which majesty is a mirror of the self: I have not but I am and as I am, I am.
These external regions, what do we fill them with Except reflections, the escapades of death, Cinderella fulfilling herself beneath the roof?
Wallace Stevens (1879-1955).] Lyric poems by Rudolf Steiner. FRÜHLING
Der Sonnenstrahl, Der lichterfunkelnde, Er schwebt heran.
Die Blütenbraut, Die farberregende, Sie grüsst ihn froh.
Vertrauensvoll Der Erdentochter Erzählt der Strahl,
Wie Sonnenkräfte, Die geistentsprossenen, Im Götterheim Dem Weltentone lauschen;
Die Blütenbraut, Die farberglitzernde, Sie höret sinnend Des Lichtes Feuerton. HERBST
Der Erdenleib, Der Geistersehnende, Er lebt im Welken.
Die Samengeister, Die Stoffgedrängten, Erkraften sich.
Und Wärmefrüchte Aus Raumesweiten Durchkraften Erdensein.
Und Erdensinne, Die Tiefenseher, Sie schauen Künft’ges Im Formenschaffen.
Die Raumesgeister, Die ewig-atmenden, Sie blicken ruhevoll Ins Erdenweben. SPRING
The Sun’s bright beam – a gash of light, he soars above.
His blossom-bride showered with colour, greets him with joy.
And trustfully the beam instructs the daughter of earth
how solar powers (the spirit’s progeny!) in the heavenly spheres eavesdrop on their harmonies;
the blossom-bride – sprinkled and bright with colour – she hears the light’s cadence of flame! AUTUMN
The world’s body – its life for spirit yearns amidst the shrivelling.
The germinal sprites, crushed with matter, gather their power.
And fruits of warmth from far expanses saturate earthly being.
And worldly senses (ah, deeply seeing!) behold the future in forming power.
The daemons of space – eternal breathings! – they gaze reposefully at the world’s unceasing weft.
Trans. A.J.W. WELTENSEELENGEISTER
Im Lichte wir schalten, Im Schauen wir walten, Im Sinnen wir weben.
Aus Herzen wir heben Das Geistesringen Durch Seelenschwingen.
Dem Menschen wir singen Das Göttererleben Im Weltengestalten. SPIRITS OF THE ANIMA MUNDI
In light is our being, and human seeing, sensations weaving;
from deep hearts upheaving through soul’s wide wending the spirit’s contending;
our song to men sending of gods’ true perceiving, world-forms decreeing. Trans. A.J.W. |
| 281. Poetry and the Art of Speech: Lecture VI
07 Jun 1922, Vienna Translated by Julia Wedgwood, Andrew Welburn Rudolf Steiner |
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| He celebrates not Nature, but the spirits (the Sons of Los) in Nature in these extracts from his Milton pl. 27,66 – 28,12; pl. 31, 4 – 22: Thou seest the Constellations in the deep & wondrous Night: They rise in order and continue their immortal courses Upon the mountains & in vales with harp & heavenly song, With flute & clarion, with cups & measures fill’d with foaming wine. |
| 281. Poetry and the Art of Speech: Lecture VI
07 Jun 1922, Vienna Translated by Julia Wedgwood, Andrew Welburn Rudolf Steiner |
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It is through declamation and recitation that the art of poetry is accorded its true value. So I shall allow myself – not, however, out of allegiance to any abstract principle or any wish to claim that a world-view which springs from the needs of our time must cast its reforming light in some way or other over everything – I shall allow myself on quite other grounds to say a little about recitation and declamation from the vantage-point of the life- and world-conception represented at this Congress. We shall only recapture an inner, a genuine soul-understanding of poetry when we are in a position to find our way to the real homeland of poetic art. And this real homeland of poetic art is in fact the spiritual world – though it is not that intellectual, that conceptual or ideational factor in the spiritual world particularly cultivated in our own time. For this more than anything else has a paralysing effect on poetry. We shall see most clearly what is meant by this when we are reminded that one of the most significant products of this art resounds to us out of the revolutions of time along with a particular avowal on the part of its creator, or perhaps creators. The Homeric epics invariably begin with the words “Sing, O Muse...” Nowadays we are only too inclined to treat such a phrase as more or less a cliché. But when it was first coined it was no cliché – it was an inner experience of the soul: whoever it was that conceived the poem out of the spirit, whence this phrase was also drawn, knew how he was immersed through his poetic faculty in a region of human existence and experience different to that in which we stand in immediate When Klopstock, drawing upon the German spiritual life, wished to sing of the great deed of the Messiah, as Homer had sung the past events of Hellas, he did not say “Sing, O Muse...”, but “Sing, immortal soul, of sinful man’s redemption.” Here something of greater intensity is indicated, something connected directly with the human and its self-reliance. Here man has come to himself in his individual personality. Yet we can add: if the mode of consciousness which lives in our modern world of ideas and observations were the sole criterion, we should lose poetry and art altogether. All the same, it is necessary that here, too, what was suitable for mankind at one time should now assume other forms. But these new forms can only arise if the way into the spiritual world is rediscovered; for such a path alone makes it possible for the human “I” to be laid hold of again by the spiritual world – not as in former times, in an unconscious, dreamy fashion, but in accordance with the needs of the present day: in full consciousness. That this need not be bound up with a crippling of imaginative activity – this is not generally recognized today. It will come to be understood, however, as the world and life-conception put forward here gains more and more ground. If we enter into the spiritual world with circumspection – in full consciousness and with a developed feeling of personality – it will exert no crippling effect on our direct perception or on the vital participation in things and beings so necessary to poetry and art in general. If, however, we abstract ourselves from things in ideas, standing aside from them in purely intellectual concepts, our knowledge will yield nothing that can become a direct artistic creation. But if we plunge down into what pervades the world as a vibrant spiritual essence we will find again, along this spiritual path what poetry and art as a whole were fundamentally seeking all along. From such a spiritual approach the poet will have before his soul what recitation and declamation must re-create for his audience. The poet must submerge himself in the element of speech. This experience of submersion was still to be found among the Greeks, and even in earlier forms of Central European spiritual life, such as the Germanic. In primaeval ages of humanity, if one wished to receive the divine-spiritual and bring it to expression as it spoke in the soul, one dived down not only into the element of speech, but also into what flowed within speech, like the waves of the sea – into the breath. And in earlier times, when the ancient spiritual life was still valued above science, art or religion in isolation, in the period when that spiritual life came into being, poetry, too, was not isolated. It grew isolated at the stage when the felt vitality of the breath (as manifestation of the efficacy of man’s innermost will) was taken up into more exalted regions of organic life: into the element of speech. In due course today we have arrived at the element of thought. And from the thought-element we can experience only a sort of “upthrust” of the breath. What held sway in ancient times in Central Europe in the form of an unconscious feeling whenever man felt the poetic urge was the pulsating of the blood. Taking hold with the will, this formed the breathstream from within, into tone; whereas when the man of Greek or Graeco-Roman times waxed poetic he lived more in what flowed from the breathing-rhythm in the way of a picture or conception, and in what musically formed the sound, tone and line through metre, number and syllable. Goethe’s whole being, his essential soul-nature, was born from the spirit of Central Europe. The writings of his youth derived their imaginative, pictorial form from an experience, an instinctive feeling of how human breathing pushes up, through the will-pulsating waves of the blood, into the formation of tone and sound – and so into the expressivity of the human soul. In this way he attained the qualities we admire so much in his youth, even when he appears to be speaking in prose. We have the prose-poems of Goethe’s youth, like the marvellous Hymn to Nature, where the ruling principle is that where we feel the language permeated by a kind of breathing which pulsates on the waves of the blood. It was from some such sense that the young Goethe initially composed his Iphigeneia. In this composition we feel how something from the Nibelungenlied, or the Gudrunlied, still lives and weaves in the prose, welling up and working in its high and low intonations. It calls attention to the upward thrust of the will into what comes to be man’s head-experience. This rhythm, thrown upward into configurations of thought, is what we can admire in the poems of Goethe’s youth, including the first version of his Iphigeneia. But Goethe longed to get away to Italy. A time came when he could no longer come to terms with himself without undertaking a journey to Italy, which he did in the ’eighties. What was it that he longed for in his innermost being at that time? He longed to enter more deeply into human individuality – to enter into the whole human being with what lived in the high and low tones, creating in speech-formation an effect like the forms of a Gothic cathedral. He wanted to blend this with the even-measured flow he was seeking and believed was accessible only in the south, in Italy, in the wake of what had lived in Greek culture. Out of this, stemming from his feeling for such art as was still to be seen, came an understanding of Greek art He understood that the Greeks created their art in accordance with the same laws that govern the productions of nature; and of this he believed himself to have uncovered the clue. He believed, too, that he had traced these laws in speech-formation. He brought speech into a deeper connection with the breath. Then, in Rome, he refashioned his Iphigeneia accordingly. We must distinguish sharply between the northern Iphigeneia as first conceived and what came about when he refashioned it in Rome – even though the difference between the original and the Roman verse-Iphigeneia is really quite slight. It turned it into a poem that no longer lives simply in high and low tones; it became a work where in quite a different way – and not in any trivial sense, but as regards the whole of its speech-formation - the psychical experience of the blood-rhythm, the circulation with its deeper rhythm, plays over into the tranquil metre of the breathing-rhythm and the element of thought. In this way, what represented a declamatory form in the Nordic Iphigeneia is transformed in the Roman version into recitation. By juxtaposing the one Iphigeneia with the other in this way, we can clearly discern the difference between declamation and recitation. Recitation leads us more deeply into human nature, and creates, too, more from its depths, seizing upon the whole blood-circulation as well as the breathing. But because in declamation the will (as it surges in the depths) is caught up into the highest part of man’s spiritual and soul-being, into the breath, it appears to us as the more forceful – living as it does in high and low tones. It does not only engage the flow of rhyme and verse, but evokes something which goes out into the world – perhaps even with a certain belligerence – as alliteration. In this there is a beauty that is peculiar to the north. We do not wish today to give theoretical explanations, but to make known what should be present in an artistic sensibility. We will therefore firstly present the declamatory, in Goethe’s Nordic Iphigeneia; and then contrastingly the recitative, in the Roman composition. [Note 25] [The magnificent language of the Authorized Version puts it on a different level to any other translation in English. There can be no doubt of its own high literary qualities, and it furnishes us with fine examples of poetry for declamation, as in this version of the ninetieth Psalm: Lord, thou hast bene our dwelling place in all generations.
Before the mountaines were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world: even from everlasting to everlasting thou art God.
Thou turnest man to destruction: and sayest, Returne yee children of men.
For a thousand yeeres in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past: and as a watch in the night.
Thou carriest them away as with a flood, they are as a sleepe: in the morning they are like grasse which groweth up.
In the morning it flourisheth, and groweth up: in the evening it is cut downe, and withereth.
For we are consumed by thine anger: and by thy wrath are we troubled.
Thou hast set our iniquities before thee: our secret sinnes in the light of thy countenance.
For all our dayes are passed away in thy wrath: we spend our yeeres as a tale that is told.
and if by reason of strength they be fourescore yeeres, yet is their strength labour and sorrow: for it is soone cut off, and we flie away.
Who knoweth the power of thine anger? even according to thy feare, so is thy wrath.
So teach us to number our daies: that wee may apply our hearts unto wisedome.
Returne (O LORD) how long? and let it repent thee concerning thy servants.
O satisfie us early with thy mercie: that we may rejoyce, and be glad all our dayes.
Make us glad according to the dayes wherein thou hast afflicted us: and the yeeres wherein we have seene evil.
Let thy worke appeare unto thy servants: and thy glory unto their children.
And let the beautie of the LORD our God be upon us, and establish thou the worke of our hands upon us: yea, the work of our hands establish thou it. Metrical translations of the Psalms are numerous; but many of them have no aims beyond fitting the verses to a tune. The version begun by Sir Philip Sidney and completed by his sister, the Countess of Pembroke, however, brought all the literary resources of the classical tradition in Renaissance poetry to bear on the problem of making an authentically poetic translation. The result is that the ninetieth Psalm is here drastically transformed into a recitative vein: DOMINE REFUGIUM
Thou’our refuge, thou our dwelling, O Lord, hast byn from time to time: Long er Mountaines, proudly swelling, Above the lowly dales did clime: Long er the Earth, embowl’d by thee, Bare the forme it now doth beare: Yea, thou art God for ever, free From all touch of age and yeare.
O, but man by thee created, As he at first of earth arose, When thy word his end hath dated, In equall state to earth he goes. Thou saist, and saying makst it soe: Be noe more, O Adams heyre; From whence ye came, dispatch to goe, Dust againe, as dust you were.
To mortall men of life and light: What is that to thee compared? One day, one quarter of a night. When death upon them storm-like falls, Like unto a dreame they grow: Which goes and comes as fancy calls, Nought in substance all in show.
As the hearb that early groweth, Which leaved greene and flowred faire Ev’ning change with ruine moweth, And laies to roast in withering aire: Soe in thy wrath we fade away, With thy fury overthrowne When thou in sight our faultes dost lay, Looking on our synns unknown.
Therefore in thy angry fuming, Our life of daies his measure spends: All our yeares in death consuming, Right like a sound that, sounded, ends. Our daies of life make seaventy yeares, Eighty, if one stronger be: Whose cropp is laboures, dollors, feares, Then away in poast we flee.
Yet who notes thy angry power As he should feare, soe fearing thee? Make us count each vitall hower Make thou us wise, we wise shall be. Turne Lord: shall these things thus goe still? Lett thy servantes peace obtaine: Us with thy joyfull bounty fill, Endlesse joyes in us shall raigne.
Glad us now, as erst we greeved: Send yeares of good for yeares of ill: When thy hand hath us releeved, Show us and ours thy glory still. Both them and us, not one exempt, With thy beauty beautify: Supply with aid what we attempt, Our attempts with aid supply. Mary Herbert, Countess of Pembroke (1561-1621).]
Goethe followed up his incursion into the new poetic sphere of his remodelled Iphigeneia with works like his “Achilleis”, from which a passage will now be recited. Here in Goethe we find something that shows us how poetry springs from the whole man, how it should emerge from the whole man and take shape as recitation and declamation. I might seem, at first glance, to be propounding a mechanical interpretation of reciting and declaiming, if I were to point to something in the nature of man as the origin of recitation and declamation: this something is to be found, however, precisely along the spiritual path. As an art, poetry has the task of enlarging again what prose has atomized and contracted into the single word. The harmony of sounds, the melodious flow of sound in the picture-formation of speech, of mundane speech, is in this way “canopied over,” as we might say, by a second, spiritual speech. The prose-speaker clothes in words those thoughts he wants to convey, along with whatever of individual experience he can. The poet draws back from such rhetoric, to a much more profoundly inward human experience. [Note 26] He reverts to a level at which (as I have already indicated) the rhythms of breathing and the circulatory system become perceptible, as they vibrate through the language of poetry. We shall only get to the bottom of rhyme, metre, the pictorial and the melodic in speech, by comprehending human nature spiritually, even down to the physical. We have, then, as one pole of the rhythmical in man, the breathing; and as the other pole, circulation. In the interaction of breathing and circulation is expressed something which is first given, in its simplest ratio, when we attend to the resonance of breathing and circulation in the flow of human speech. In breathing, we draw a particular number of breaths every minute – between sixteen and eighteen. And over the same period we have, an average, about four times as many pulse‑beats. Circulation and breathing interact, so that the circulation plays into the breath, and the breath in turn weaves into the circulation its slower rhythm. It is an apprehension of such an harmonious interchange between pulse-beat and breathing that echoes on in speech. Formed and transformed in various ways, it produces the after-effect of a pictorial or a musical speech-formation, which is then brought to expression by the poet. I said – and the point has actually been raised – that the fundamental law of poetry, the interaction of breathing and circulation that I have elicited from human morphology might be considered mechanical and materialistic. But the spiritual life that holds sway and works in the world can only be grasped if we trace that life right into its material formations; only if the life of man’s spirit and soul is pursued to those depths where it lives out its expression in corporeal functions. These bodily workings will then act as a firm wall to hurl back, like an echo, what derives from the laws of a profounder spirituality – a spirituality of direct experience pouring itself out into speech. Goethe sensed how in earlier stages of human culture man stood in a deeper relation, as it were, to his own nature. He too sought to enter into an earlier epoch’s feeling for poetic forms and revivify them. It is actually of deep significance that at the highest point in the development of German poetry, Goethe pointed away from the crude, prosaic stress popularly taken for recitation and declamation, to a special kind of what can be called – and deservingly – a real speech-formation. To rehearse the iambics of his Iphigeneia, Goethe stood in front of the actors with his baton. He knew that what had to be revealed was, above all, the imagery he wanted to incorporate, while the prose-content was there merely as a ladder by which to scale the heights of the full, spiritual sense – the sound and the picture-quality of speech that must evolve from it. We must pierce through the given prose-content of a poem into the truly poetic. Schiller’s experience in his best creations, of an initially indefinable melody, a musicality onto which he then threaded the prose-content, was not a personal peculiarity. As regards the words, some of Schiller’s poems could even have had a different content to the one they currently possess. In a true poet there is everywhere, in the background of the rhetorical speech, a quality that must simply be felt. And only when it does justice to the musical in speech-formation will true poetry stand revealed. If we turn to what is often taught today as recitation and declamation, it is with a keen sense of something having, in these uncultured times, gone amiss. The voice itself is strengthened, and great value is attached to technical adjustment of the organism: this is because no-one is any longer able to live in a direct relationship with recitation and declamation (not to mention singing), and we transfer to material tampering with the body what should be experienced on a quite different plane. The important thing in teaching recitation and declamation is that the pupil should on no account be made to do anything but live with speech-formation as such and the soul-resonance of living with speech-formation, in such a way as to bring him to listen properly. For anyone who is capable of listening correctly to what may come over in poetry, the appropriate breathing, proper disposition of the body, etc., will come about of their own accord – as a response to proper listening. It is important to let the pupil live in the actual element of declamation and recitation, and leave all the rest to him. He must become absorbed in the objective realities of tone, in “musical pictoriality” and in authentically poetic formations. In this way alone, paradoxical as it may sound, can we get the pupil to develop an ear for what he hears declaimed to him and thereby sensitivity to what moves spiritually over the waves of sound he hears. Only when he experiences something in his surroundings, we might say, and not in himself – and even though to begin with this experience is illusory, it must be cultivated – only then will he be able to refer back to himself what he feels vibrant in the world around him. It is only through the recital of certain aesthetically fashioned word-sequences, which have a special relation to human morphology, that we ought to learn breath-control or anything else connected with the adjusting of the voice. In this way we shall best meet the requirements of Goethe’s artistic perception and the sensitivity we value so greatly. By way of illustration – not of any theory, but of the foregoing remarks there will now be recited a passage from Goethe’s “Achilleis”. [Note 27] [Since the hexameter in its true, classical form can only occasionally be reproduced successfully in English, C. Day Lewis performed the service of devising a metre which sounds convincingly like it. He used it to evoke the heroic and epic associations of classical poetry in relating, for example, an episode from the Spanish Civil War in “The Nabara”. This extract is from “Phase One”:
Freedom is more than a word, more than the base coinage Of statesmen, the tyrant’s dishonoured cheque, or the dreamer’s mad Inflated currency. She is mortal, we know, and made In the image of simple men who have no taste for carnage But sooner kill and are killed than see that image betrayed. Mortal she is, yet rising always refreshed from her ashes: She is bound to earth, yet she flies as high as a passage bird To home wherever man’s heart with seasonal warmth is stirred: Innocent is her touch as the dawn’s, but still it unleashes The ravisher shades of envy. Freedom is more than a word.
I see man’s heart two-edged, keen both for death and creation. As a sculptor rejoices, stabbing and mutilating the stone Into a shapelier life, and the two joys make one – So man is wrought in his hour of agony and elation To efface the flesh to reveal the crying need of his bone. Burning the issue was beyond their mild forecasting For those I tell of – men used to the tolerable joy and hurt Of simple lives: they coveted never an epic part; But history’s hand was upon them and hewed an everlasting Image of freedom out of their rude and stubborn heart. C. Day Lewis (1904-1972) An earlier solution to the problem was a rather more radical departure from the hexameter for a five-foot line, and the blank-verse pentameter remains the natural epic metre in English. Milton employed it in recreating many of the features of classical epic in Paradise Lost, as may be illustrated from the following passage (Book VI, 189-214):
So saying, a noble stroke he lifted high, Which hung not, but so swift with tempest fell On the proud Crest of Satan, that no sight, Nor motion of swift thought, less could his Shield Such ruin intercept: ten paces huge He back recoild; the tenth on bended knee His massie Spear upstayd; as if on Earth Winds under ground or waters forcing way Sidelong, had push’t a Mountain from his seat Half sunk with all his Pines. Amazement seiz’d The Rebel Thrones, but greater rage to see Thus foil’d their mightiest, ours joy find, and shout, Presage of Victorie and fierce desire Of Battel: whereat Michaël bid sound Th’ Arch-angel trumpet; through the vast of Heav’n It sounded, and the faithful Armies rung Hosanna to the Highest: nor stood at gaze The adverse Legions, nor less hideous join’d The horrid shock: now storming furie rose, And clamor such as heard in Heav’n till now Was never, Arms on Armour clashing bray’d Horrible discord, and the madding Wheeles Of brazen Chariots rag’d; dire was the noise Of conflict; over head the dismal hiss Of fiery Darts in flaming vollies flew, And flying vaulted either Host with fire. John Milton.] And now, to illustrate declamation, Goethe’s “Hymnus an die Natur” (abridged, as occasion demanded, for a Eurythmy performance).
Natur! Wir sind von ihr umgeben und umschlungen – unvermögend aus ihr herauszutreten, und unvermögend, tiefer in sie hinein zu kommen. Ungebeten und ungewarnt nimmt sie uns in den Kreislauf ihres Tanzes auf und treibt sich mit uns fort, bis wir ermüdet sind und ihrem Arm entfallen.
Sie schafft ewig neue Gestalten; alles ist neu, und doch immer das Alte. Sie baut immer und zerstört immer. Sie lebt in lauter Kindern; und die Mutter, wo ist sie? – Sie ist die einzige Künstlerin; sie spielt ein Schauspiel; es ist ein ewiges Leben, Werden und Bewegen in ihr. Sie verwandelt sich ewig, und ist kein Moment Stillestehen in ihr.
Ihr Tritt ist gemessen, ihre Ausnahmen selten, ihre Gesetze unwandelbar. Gedacht hat sie und sinnt beständig.
Die Menschen sind alle in ihr, und sie in allen. Auch das Unnatürlichste ist Natur, auch die plumpste Philisterei hat etwas von ihrem Genie.
Sie liebt sich selber; sie freut sich an der Illusion. Ihre Kinder sind ohne Zahl.
Sie spritzt ihre Geschöpfe aus dem Nichts hervor. Leben ist ihre schönste Erfindung, und der Tod – ihr Kunstgriff, viel Leben zu haben.
Sie hüllt den Menschen in Dumpfheit ein und spornt ihn ewig zum Lichte. Man gehorcht ihren Gesetzen, auch wenn man ihnen widerstrebt; man wirkt mit ihr, auch wenn man gegen sie wirken will. Sie macht alles, was sie gibt, zur Wohltat.
Sie hat keine Sprache noch Rede, aber sie schafft Zungen und Herzen, durch die sie fühlt und spricht. Ihre Krone ist die Liebe.
Sie macht Klüfte zwischen allen Wesen, und alles will sie verschlingen. Sie hat alles isoliert, um alles zusammenzuziehen.
Sie ist alles. Sie belohnt sich selbst und bestraft sich selbst, erfreut und quält sich selbst. Vergangenheit und Zukunft kennt sie nicht. Gegenwart ist ihr Ewigkeit. Sie ist gütig, sie ist weise und still. Sie ist ganz, und doch immer unvollendet.
Jedem erscheint sie in einer eignen Gestalt. Sie verbirgt sich in tausend Namen und ist immer dieselbe.
Sie hat mich hereingestellt, sie wird mich auch herausführen. Ich vertraue mich ihr. Alles hat sie gesprochen. Alles ist ihre Schuld, alles ist ihr Verdienst! [Perhaps the nearest parallel in English is the unrestricted and freely expansive rhythm of Blake. He celebrates not Nature, but the spirits (the Sons of Los) in Nature in these extracts from his Milton pl. 27,66 – 28,12; pl. 31, 4 – 22:
Thou seest the Constellations in the deep & wondrous Night: They rise in order and continue their immortal courses Upon the mountains & in vales with harp & heavenly song, With flute & clarion, with cups & measures fill’d with foaming wine.
Glitt’ring the streams reflect the Vision of beatitude, And the calm Ocean joys beneath & smooths his awful waves: These are the Sons of Los, & these the Labourers of the Vintage. Thou seest the gorgeous clothed Flies that dance & sport in summer
Upon the sunny brooks & meadows: every one the dance Knows in its intricate mazes of delight artful to weave: Each one to sound his instruments of music in the dance, To touch each other & recede, to cross & change & return: These are the Children of Los; thou seest the Trees on mountains, The wind blows heavy, loud they thunder thro’ the darksom sky, Uttering prophecies & speaking instructive words to the sons Of men: These are the Sons of Los: These are the Visions of Eternity, But we see only as it were the hem of their garments When with our vegetable eyes we view these wondrous Visions.
The Sky is an immortal Tent built by the Sons of Los: And every Space that a Man views around his dwelling-place Standing on his own roof or in his garden on a mount Of twenty-five cubits in height, such space is his Universe: To meet the flat Earth &the Sea in such an order’d Space: The Starry heavens reach no further, but here bend and set On all sides, & the two Poles turn on their valves of gold; And if he move his dwelling-place, his heavens also move Where’er he goes, & all his neighbourhood bewail his loss. Such are the Spaces called Earth & such its dimension. As to that false appearance which appears to the reasoner As of a Globe rolling thro’ Voidness, it is a delusion of Ulro. The Microscope knows not of this nor the Telescope: they alter The ratio of the Spectator’s Organs, but leave Objects untouch’d. For every Space larger than a red Globule of Man’s blood Is visionary, and is created by the Hammer of Los: And every Space smaller than a Globule of Man’s blood opens Into Eternity of which this vegetable Earth is but a shadow. William Blake.]
And now we will adduce some examples of the lyric – to be precise, from two poets, both Austrian: Robert Hamerling and Anastasius Grün. The lyric diverges from epic and dramatic poetry in that, as far as speech-formation is concerned, its aesthetic quality must be experienced directly. In a way, all lyric strives to obliterate the immediate content of consciousness – at any rate to some degree. It would restore to man’s being a sense of universal participation. One might say that in lyric there is always a damping down of conscious experience. With a poet like Hamerling, a once widely influential poet who compared with then is now largely forgotten, we can indeed observe how personal experience passes over into a lyrical experience. Here we have a personality whose soul wants to share inwardly with every fibre of its being in the entire life of the world. He wants to share in the life of colour that meets him from the world. And thus the unconscious elements of human life come to play a part in him. We can still see the after-effects of this colourful experience in him when he tries to give it shape by casting it in antique forms. Particularly in Hamerling’s lyric poetry we can feel the true Austro-German lyricism. He is in a sense perhaps the most representative of Austro-German poets. The German spoken in Austria, deriving as it does from several dialects to become the common parlance and also the so-called “literary language” of Austrian poetry – this language has something which marks it off from the other forms of German language, fine discriminations which are of special interest to poetry and speech-formation. Compared with other varieties of German we might say that Austrian German has a subdued quality: yet in this quality there lingers a delicate sense of humour; this language became that of Austrian poetry. This soft humorous sound and intimate soul-quality that comes across in Austrian speech is not readily found in other forms of German – except possibly dialects. And here we have something which brings us, so to speak, close to antiquity. It is at any rate remarkable that so outstanding a poet as Joseph Misson should have resorted to Austrian dialect for his “Da Naz, a niederösterreichischer Bauerbui geht in d’Fremd”, and that he arrived at a type of hexameter in which he felt artistically at home. We might add that the idealism of thought natural to someone who lives with Austrian German imparts an idealistic tinge to all the German inner feeling in this little piece of Central Europe. We encounter this even in the formation of speech in Hamerling’s lyrics, which convey the feeling as if on the wings of a bird, while continually catching the bird again in powerfully moulded forms. This is really possible only with the soft humour of Austrian German. If we recapture this in declamation by taking what lives in Hamerling’s lyrical poetry and allow it to be heard elsewhere, it strikes a German from a different region as being cornpletely German and yet he feels what is German in the language to have been idealized. This is what gives Hamerling’s lyricism its nobility and what makes his verve and colour genuinely artistic as well as spontaneous. How differently this appears in our other poet, Anastasius Grün! In accordance with the unique character of the Austrian disposition, he had a real feeling for what ought to mediate between East and West – for the mutual understanding of people all over the earth. The mood of 1848 finds expression most nobly and beautifully in Anastasius Grün’s poem Schutt – and in other of his poems too. It is this prologue to Schutt that will be recited. So, on the one hand we have, in Hamerling, a poet who really created more for declamation, yet found for it a metrical form and in Anastasius Grün a poet who takes over a recitative principle straight from the language. We would now like to demonstrate this in a poem by Anastasius Grün which, from its contents, might be entitled “West und Ost”; and in two poems by Robert Hamerling: “Nächtliche Regung” and “Vor einer Genziane”. WEST UND OST
Aug’ in Auge lächelnd schlangen Arm in Arm einst West und Ost; Zwillingspaar, das liebumfangen Noch in einer Wiege kost’!
Ahriman ersah’s, der Schlimme, Ihn erbaut der Anblick nicht, Schwingt den Zauberstab im Grimme, Draus manch roter Blitzstrahl bricht.
Wirft als Riesenschlang’ ins Bette, Ringelnd, bäumend, zwischen sie Jener Berg’ urew’ge Kette, Die nie bricht und endet nie.
Lässt der Lüfte Vorhang rollend Undurchdringlich niederziehn, Spannt des Meers Sahara grollend Endlos zwischen beiden hin.
Lächlend ob dem schlechten Schwank, Winkt mit seiner Zauberrute, Sternefunkelnd, goldesblank.
Sieh, auf Taubenfitt’chen, fächelnd, Von der fernsten Luft geküsst, Schifft die Liebe, kundig lächelnd; Wie sich Ost and Westen grüsst!
Blütenduft und Tau und Segen Saugt im Osten Menschengeist, Steigt als Wolke, die als Regen Mild auf Westens Flur dann fleusst!
Und die Brücke hat gezogen, Die vom Ost zum West sich schwingt, Phantasie als Regenbogen, Der die Berge überspringt.
Durch die weiten Meereswüsten, Steuernd, wie ein Silberschwan, Zwischen Osts und Westens Küsten Wogt des Lieds melod’scher Kahn.
Anastasius Grün (1806-1876). [The poem that follows demonstrates the English sense of delicacy and restraint, and the subtle humour to which the language was in its own way particularly suited – perhaps especially around Marvell’s time: ON A DROP OF DEW
See how the Orient Dew, Shed from the Bosom of the Morn Into the blowing Roses, Yet careless of its Mansion new; For the clear Region where ’twas born Round in its self incloses: And in its little Globes Extent, Frames as it can its native Element. How it the purple flow’r does slight, Scarce touching where it lyes, But gazing back upon the Skies, Shines with a mournful Light; Like its own Tear, Because so long divided from the Sphear. Restless it roules and unsecure, Trembling lest it grow impure; Till the warm Sun pitty it’s Pain, And to the Skies exhales it back again. So the Soul, that Drop, that Ray Of the clear Fountain of Eternal Day, Could it within the humane flow’r be seen, Remembring still its former height, Shuns the sweat leaves and blossoms green; And, recollecting its own Light,
The greater Heaven in an Heaven less. In how coy a Figure wound, Every way it turns away; So the World excluding round, Yet receiving in the Day. Dark beneath, but bright above: Here disdaining, there in Love. How loose and easie hence to go: How girt and ready to ascend. Moving but on a point below, It all about does upwards bend. Such did the Manna’s sacred Dew destil; White, and intire, though congeal’d and chill. Congeal’d on Earth: but does, dissolving, run Into the Glories of th’ Almighty Sun.
Andrew Marvell (1621-1678).] NÄCHTLICHE REGUNG
Horch, der Tanne Wipfel Schlummertrunken bebt, Wie von Geisterschwingen Rauschend überschwebt. Göttliches Orakel In der Krone saust, Doch die Tanne selber Weiss nicht, was sie braust.
Mir auch durch die Seele Leise Melodien, Unbegriffne Schauer, Allgewaltig ziehn: Ist es Freudemahnung Oder Schmerzgebot? Sich allein verständlich Spricht in uns der Gott.
VOR EINER GENZIANE Einsam erblüht tief unten in kühler Waldschlucht. O wie sie durchs Föhrengestrüpp Heraufschimmerte mit den blauen, prächtigen Glocken: Gewohnten Waldespfad Komm’ ich nun Tag um Tag Gewandelt und steige hinab in die Schlucht Und blicke der schönen Blume tief ins Aug’...
Schöne Blume, was schwankst du doch Vor mir in unbewegten Lüften so scheu, So ängstlich? Ist denn ein Menschenaue nicht wert Zu blicken in ein Blumenantlitz? Trübt Menschenmundes Hauch Den heiligen Gottesfrieden dir, In dem du atmest?
Ach, immer wohl drückt Schuld, Drückt nagende Selbstanklage Die sterbliche Brust und du, Blume, du wiegst In himmlischer Lebensunschuld Die wunderbaren Kronen: Doch blicke nicht allzu vorwurfsvoll mich an! Sieh, hab’ ich doch Eines voraus vor dir: Ich habe gelebt: Ich habe gestrebt, ich habe gerungen, Ich habe geweint, Ich habe geliebt, ich habe gehasst, Ich habe gehofft, ich habe geschaudert; Der Stachel der Qual, des Entzückens hat In meinem Fleische gewühlt; Alle Schauer des Lebens und des Todes sind Durch meine Sinne geflutet, Ich habe mit Engelchören gespielt, ich habe Gerungen mit Dämonen.
Du ruhst, ein träumendes Kind, Am Mantelsaum des Höchsten, ich aber; Ich habe mich emporgekämpft Zu seinem Herzen, Ich habe gezernt an seinen Schleiern, Ich habe ihn beim Namen gerufen, Emporgeklettert Bin ich auf einer Leiter von Seufzern, Und hab’ ihm ins Ohr gerufen: ‘Erbarmung!’ O Blume, heilig bist du, Selig und rein; Doch heiligt, was er berührt, nicht auch Der zündende Schicksalsblitz? O, blicke nicht allzu vorwurfsvoll mich an, Du stille Träumerin; Ich habe gelebt, ich habe gelitten!
Robert Hamerling (1830-1889).
[Something of the same fusion of lyric flight and precision of form can be felt in the following poem: THE MORNING-WATCH
O Joyes! Infinite sweetnes! with what flowres, And shoots of glory, my soul breakes, and buds! All the long houres Of night, and Rest Through the still shrouds Of Sleep, and Clouds, This Dew fell on my Breast; O how it Blouds, And Spirits all my Earth! heark! In what Rings, And Hymning Circulations the quick world Awakes, and sings; The rising winds, ‘And falling springs, Birds, beasts, all things Adore him in their kinds. Thus all is hurl’d In sacred Hymnes, and Order, The great Chime And Symphony of nature. Prayer is The world in tune, A spirit-voyce, And vocall joyes Whose Eccho is heav’ns blisse. O let me climbe When I lye down! The Pious soul by night Is like a clouded starre, whose beames though said To shed their light Under some Cloud Yet are above, And shine, and move Beyond that mistie shrowd So in my Bed That Curtain’d grave, though sleep, like ashes, hide My lamp, and life, both shall in thee abide.
Henry Vaughan (1621-1695).] And to close, we shall introduce part of the Seventh Scene from my Mystery Play, The Portal of Initiation. One is in a unique position when trying to give poetic form to the life of the super-sensible. For, to begin with, one seems to be withdrawing far from the solid ground of external reality. One is thus exposed to the additional danger, that anyone not readily familiar and quick with spiritual matters takes our intention to be allegorical or symbolic. Neither symbol nor allegory has any place in the aesthetic viewpoint arising from the sort of perception we advocate here. It is assuredly no more the abstractions of symbolism than it is a straw-stuffed allegory that we attempt, but a living portrayal of perceptions actually more distinct than our ordinary sense-perceptions, because apprehended by the soul directly, unmediated by bodily organs. Only for someone unable to rouse these perceptions to life in himself do they seem abstract or hollow. I hope to limit my remarks on this subject to a few words, for it does not do to dwell over much on one’s own accomplishments. These Mystery Plays concern the spiritual and soul development of Johannes Thomasius, who is to be brought little by little to a direct super-sensible experience of the spiritual world. This has to a certain extent been achieved when once he has succeeded in overcoming a range of inner obstacles, and made various advances. There then comes a moment at which he finds, in what has hitherto been known to him as the external world of the senses and the intellect (which infiltrates the senses only as the thinnest and most abstract spirituality), he comes upon a pervading activity of concrete spiritual beings and concrete spiritual events. The occurrences in a human soul who reaches this stage of initiation are complex. Everything so far experienced in light or sound, or in the other elements of the external world, figures for the higher mode of experience in a different guise. It is actually like a transformation in which the world is experienced as a drawing together and struggling up of the soul-forces of thinking, feeling and willing to another form of existence. As to how these soul-forces share in such a transformation of man, and how this participation stands in intimate relation to the entire cosmos – that is what is presented in the scene from the Mystery Drama. One of the characters – Maria – who has raised her life up into the spiritual, describes first how those forces come together which are to inspire the soul’s individual forces. Philia, Astrid and Luna are seen as the powers of the soul which hold sway in real, living people, and play a part in inspiring the man Johannes Thomasius. What the human soul may come to be, out of the whole world, out of the totality of the world what it can become in the moment that true understanding of spiritual life arises there: that is the subject of this representation. While one apparently withdraws in such a representation more than ever from the ground of reality, yet (as who should know better than their creator?) the characters formed in this way actually stand before the soul no less concretely than any external thing. Many people, of course, will not be drawn into such matters: they call everything allegorical that leads beyond sense-perception. In defence, Hamerling asked in his Ahasver: Can anyone help me out of this predicament – that Nero stands here and symbolizes cruelty? We introduce symbolism only to the extent that reality itself is a kind of symbol. It is exactly when we come to shape spiritual forms that we feel how every detail, down to the minuter shades, has been directly experienced. And we perceive a spiritual entity of this kind not in concepts, but in words, in nuances of sound. No-one, I believe, could create out of the energies of the spirit and attain to that degree of life who cannot himself enter vitally into language. He may then employ the spirit of language, with its wonderful inner wisdom, its wonderful formation of feeling and its impulses of will, to that end – so as to grasp things in their particularity. If he cannot put to use those unconscious spiritual pulsations which proceed from everyday life, he will not be able to avail himself of the language to present the spiritual world. We need not grow less poetic because our presentations take us into the spiritual world. For there we enter the native country of poetry and art. All poetry has originated from the soul and spirit. Since, therefore, man finds himself confronted by the spiritual essences of things, the lyric flight, the epic power and the dramatic form that live in him can never be lost. These cannot be destroyed if the art of poetry returns, as to its own proper home, to the realm of the spirit. From The Soul’s Probation, Scene 2: [Note 28] MARIA: Ihr, meine Schwestern, die ich In Wesenstiefen finde, Wenn meine Seele sich erweitet, Und in die Weltenfernen Sich selbst geleitet, Entbindet mir die Seherkräfte Aus Aetherhöhen, Und führet sie auf Erdenpfade; Dass ich im Zeitensein Mich selbst ergründe, Und die Richtung mir geben kann Aus alten Lebensweisen Zu neuen Willenskreisen.
PHILIA: Ich will erfüllen mich Mit strebendem Seelenlicht Aus Herzenstiefen; Ich will eratmen mir Belebende Willensmacht Aus Geistestrieben; Dass du, geliebte Schwester, In alten Lebenskreisen Das Licht erfühlen kannst.
ASTRID: Ich will verweben Sich fühlende Eigenheit Mit ergebenem Liebewillen; Ich will entbinden Die keimenden Willensmächte Aus Wunschesfesseln Und dir das lähmende Sehnen Verwandeln in findendes Geistesfühlen; Dass du, geliebte Schwester, In fernen Erdenpfaden Dich selbst ergriinden kannst.
LUNA: Ich will berufen entsagende Herzensmächte, Und will erfestigen tragende Seelenruhe; Sie sollen sich vermählen Und kraftendes Geistesleuchten Aus Seelengründen heben; Sie sollen sich durchdringen, Und lauschendem Geistgehör Die Erdenfernen zwingen; Dass du, geliebte Schwester, In weitem Zeitensein Die Lebensspuren finden kannst.
MARIA (after a pause): Wenn ich mich entreissen kann Verwirrendem Selbstgefühl, Und mich euch geben darf: Dass ihr mein Seelensein Mir spiegelt aus Weltenfernen: Vermag ich zu lösen mich Aus diesem Lebenskreise Und kann ergründen mich In andrer Daseinsweise.
(a longer pause and then the following)
In euch, ihr Schwestern, schau’ ich Geisteswesen, Die Seelen aus dem Weltenall beleben. Ihr könnt die Kräfte, die in Ewigkeiten keimen Im Menschen selbst zur Reife bringen. Durch meiner Seele Tore dürft’ ich oft Den Weg in eure Reiche finden, Und Erdendaseins Urgestalten Mit Seelenaugen schauen. Bedürftig bin ich eurer Hilfe jetzt, Da mir obliegt, den Weg zu finden Von meiner gegenwärtigen Erdenfahrt In langvergangne Menschheitstage. Entbindet mir das Seelensein vom Selbstgefühl In seinem Zeitenleben. Erschliesset mir den Pflichtenkreis Aus meiner Vorzeit Lebensbahnen.
From The Soul’s Probation, Scene 2: MARIA: You, my sisters, I find when in the depths of being my soul, expanding, guides itself into the reaches of the universe. Release for me the powers of seeing out of etheric heights and lead them down to earthly paths so that I may explore and find myself in course of time and give direction to myself to change old ways of life into new spheres of will.
PHILIA: I will imbue myself with striving light of soul out of the heart’s own depths; I will breathe in enlivening power of will out of the spirit’s urging; that you, beloved sister, within old spheres of life may feel and sense the light.
ASTRID: I will weave into one a selfhood’s feeling of itself with love’s forebearing will; I will release the burgeoning powers of will from fetters of desire, transform your languid yearning to certainty of spirit sensing; that you, beloved sister, on paths of earth far distant explore and find your Self.
LUNA: I will call forth renouncing strength of heart and will confirm enduring soul-repose. These shall unite and raise empowering spirit light out of the depths of soul; they shall pervade each other and shall subdue far distances of earth to the listening spirit ear; that you, beloved sister, in time’s wide ranges may find the traces of your life.
MARIA (after a pause): When I can tear myself away from the bewildering sense of Self and give myself to you so that you reflect to me my soul from world-wide distances: then I can free myself out of this sphere of life and can explore and find myself in other states of being.
(a long pause, then the following)
In you, my sisters, I see spirit beings that quicken souls out of the cosmos’ life. You bring to full maturity in man himself Through portals of my soul I often could find my way into your realm and could behold with inner eyes the archetypes of earth existence. I now must ask your help: it has become my duty to find the way that leads from present life on earth to long past ages of mankind. Release my soul-life from its sense of self in time-enclosed existence. Open for me the sphere of duty, brought from my life journey in ancient days.
Trans. R. and H. Pusch. |
the forces germinating in eternities.