The Arts and Their Mission

CONTENTS AND SYNOPSES:

Introduction by Virginia Moore

PART I. The Genius of Language: The World of Self-revealing Shining Appearance

1. DORNACH, MAY 27, 1923: The changing soul constitution of the post-Atlantean cultural epochs. A true understanding of the past goes back only to Roman times. The experience of one’s own being as cosmic-divine I during the ancient Indian epoch. In that ancient time, human beings experienced the divine in the course of the year through the astral body. In the Egyptian-Chaldean epoch, the central experience was living in the thought world through the etheric body. In the Greco-Roman epoch, the delight in taking hold of the physical body. In the fifth cultural epoch, we again became strangers to the physical body. The task of anthroposophy: to become aware of the spiritual, at first independent of its physical manifestation, so that one can find it again in the sensory-physical.

2. DORNACH, JUNE 1, 1923: The need for artistic activity arises from the human being’s relationship to the spiritual world. If we were purely natural beings, we would have no need for art. Naturalism in art is a consequence of the weak relationship of human beings to the spiritual world in our time. The origin of architecture is the tomb, in which human beings created the spatial forms needed by the soul in the transition from the spatial world to the spiritual world after death. In the art of costuming, man surrounds himself with color, which is an image of the astral world from which he is born. The human head as an image of the cosmos: Asgard (castle of the gods); Midgard (humanity’s earthly home); Jotunheim (home of the giants); an image of the tripartite human form and its metamorphosis, which reveals itself to the artistic sense trained by anthroposophy.

3. DORNACH, JUNE 2, 1923: Architecture points to the soul’s departure from the physical body, the art of costuming to the soul’s entrance into the body, whereas in sculpture one sees the human being spiritually, how he is placed into the present. Painting leads from space to the plane. Spatial perspective must be replaced by color perspective. The perception of colors in nature does not merely belong to the present moment; it is a seeing into the perspective of time, into the original creation of the gods. Music is one-dimensional; the human being experiences it in the stream of time as his own present soul content. In epic poetry, the upper divine world speaks through the human being; in drama, the gods of the depths, of the will, reveal themselves; in lyric poetry, the human being experiences, through feeling, the circumference of the earth.

4. DORNACH, JUNE 3, 1923: Art as a path to the earthly revelation of something supersensible in forms, colors, words, and sounds. Artistic creation is a struggle for harmony between the divine-spiritual and the physical-earthly. Goethe as a proponent of classicism, Schiller as a stimulator of romantic poetry. Ludwig Tieck as a mirror of Goethe’s artistic aspirations. Franz Sternbalds Wanderungen [Franz Sternbald’s journeys] and other works by Tieck. Goethe’s search for an encounter with antiquity in Italy. His book about Winkelmann. Goethe’s conception of art as the evening glow of the old spirituality; the necessity of a new path to spiritual life.

5. DORNACH, JUNE 9, 1923: Spirit and lack of spirit in painting. The content of painting is not the naturalistically depicted object but the play of color and light on the surface, the light-dark relationship from which the forms are born. In Titian, still out of tradition, there was a feeling for life in color: The Assumption of the Virgin. The genius of language: the beautiful is the appearance of the spiritual in the earthly, the ugly, what hides its essence and is therefore hated as untrue. Wisdom, beauty, and virtue. The tragic arises where the human being is in contact with the divine-spiritual. As human beings become free in thought and deed, the old form of tragedy passes away, but tragedy arises anew from karma. Genuine art needs to be placed in the context of the world.

PART II: Anthroposophy and Art—Anthroposophy and Poetry

1. OSLO, MAY 18, 1923: In the ancient mysteries, the word of wisdom led to ritual acts, which were at the same time a revelation of art. Modern humanity seeks knowledge only in abstract thoughts and thereby alienates himself from art. Anthroposophy awakens the need to bring knowledge to life through art. Architecture—the human being’s relationship to space through the physical body. The art of costuming—the inner soul unfolding in space. Sculpture—artistic cognition flows into the limbs and forms the plastic image from the forces of the etheric body. Painting: overcoming of the spatial world through the soul’s grasp of the world of color. Music: the play between the blood system and the nervous system. The spinal cord with the branching nerves—the lyre of Apollo. Poetry manifests the inner music in an outward direction. Eurythmy imitates the movement of the human archetype and stands between mime (indicative gesture) and dance (ecstatic gesture).

2. OSLO, MAY 20, 1923: The experience of the different qualities of image/shadow colors and luster colors. The artist must develop his feeling for the medium. Music is experienced completely inwardly. In Atlantis, the connection to the divine through the experience of the seventh, later in the fifth-experience of the spiritual at the boundary of the physical body. With the third, music moves completely into the inner being of man. New spiritualization of music—the depth-dimension of the individual tone expands into melody and harmony. The source of poetry is the imagination—the growth forces of childhood metamorphosed into soul forces. In Greek drama: the human being, permeated by the gods of the depths. In the epic: the goddesses of the heights speak through the poet. Speech formation; in the North, declamation—the weight of syllables has an effect; in the South, recitation—the measure of syllables has an effect. An art of the stage that overcomes naturalism must know what every movement on the stage means spiritually for the whole picture.

Rudolf Steiner

Rudolf Steiner (b. Rudolf Joseph Lorenz Steiner, 1861–1925) was born in the small village of Kraljevec, Austro-Hungarian Empire (now in Croatia), where he grew up. As a young man, he lived in Weimar and Berlin, where he became a well-published scientific, literary, and philosophical scholar, known especially for his work with Goethe’s scientific writings. At the beginning of the twentieth century, he began to develop his early philosophical principles into an approach to systematic research into psychological and spiritual phenomena. Formally beginning his spiritual teaching career under the auspices of the Theosophical Society, Steiner came to use the term Anthroposophy (and spiritual science) for his philosophy, spiritual research, and findings. The influence of Steiner’s multifaceted genius has led to innovative and holistic approaches in medicine, various therapies, philosophy, religious renewal, Waldorf education, education for special needs, threefold economics, biodynamic agriculture, Goethean science, architecture, and the arts of drama, speech, and eurythmy. In 1924, Rudolf Steiner founded the General Anthroposophical Society, which today has branches throughout the world. He died in Dornach, Switzerland.

READ LECTURE ONE