The Rudolf Steiner Archive

37. On Modern Poetry and the Modern Worldview

[ 1 ] The second lecture evening, to which the energetic board of the young Literary Society had invited its members—just before the end of the actual season of social gatherings and soirées—drew a large crowd on Saturday in the Schützenhaussaal, even though the large hall chosen for the occasion was still far from full. The association’s secretary, Mr. Gerschmann, a senior teacher, opened the meeting with an overview of what the leadership had initiated and achieved during the Literary Society’s short existence. […]

[ 2 ] The second evening of the Literary Society consisted of a mix of theoretical discussions and practical demonstrations, and—let’s admit it frankly—it did indeed make a somewhat “mixed” impression on us and, presumably, on the majority of its attendees as well. […] Dr. Steiner’s lecture from Berlin “on modern poetry and the modern worldview” may well have been planned from the outset; but the fact that it already appeared on the program at this stage was surely not the original intention. Theoretical understanding can only follow the facts. The Literary Society should therefore have familiarized its members with the most fundamental facts before it began to develop theories about them. […] The first evening, which featured some lighter examples of modern poetry in excellent renditions—a skirmish to kick off the campaign, as is only right and proper—was indeed a success; the second, with its abstractions and deductions—for which most listeners lacked the substantive foundation—is likely to have been less universally satisfying. After the first interesting reading session, with its easily manageable practice pieces, there followed, without any deeper connection, a dry grammatical lecture—a presentation of the entire theoretical system that was expected to be accepted on good faith. For without a deeper knowledge of the literary works upon which that vast body of teaching is founded, most listeners were unable to follow the speaker’s trains of thought and—as was clearly evident—let their spirits flag after their first failed attempts. Unable to respond to the presentations with either inner agreement or inner dissent, and having long since passed the stage when a student would blindly parrot the teacher out of faith in authority and more or less conscientiously commit even incomprehensible treasures of wisdom to memory, the listeners were unable to engage more deeply with the presentations. We find that this second undertaking of the Literary Society lacks the proper method. […] A careful selection of modern writings, progressing slowly from the easier to the more difficult to understand, should, in our opinion, first awaken and increase interest and understanding. On the foundation of individual knowledge thus established, a comprehensive overview could then be built up and expanded, step by step.

[ 3 ] Admittedly, it would probably have taken a while longer before we got to hear Dr. Steiner’s lecture; but it would then have fallen on more prepared—and therefore more receptive—ground. As it was, it was considered too unpopular for the circumstances of our Literary Society. At best, the second part—the concise overview of modern literary production, of what it aims for and what it has achieved so far—could have had a stimulating effect. Here, the speaker, particularly with his remarks on the plays of Hauptmann, Halbe, and Sudermann, entered territory familiar to all listeners; he should have lingered there longer, rather than tracing the emergence of the “modern worldview” from the year 1832 onward in a far-reaching introduction and conducting subtle analyses calculated more for the connoisseur than the layperson, which were bound to be too abstract for his audience. Here, the board of the Literary Society should have supported the speaker by guiding him toward the ground on which he could stand. We fear that even the names Henckell, Johannes Schlaf, Arno Holz, Detlev v[on] Liliencron, and Maeterlinck were, for the time being, nothing more than “smoke and mirrors” to the majority of those gathered in the Schützenhaus Hall on Saturday. We would like to emphasize, just in passing, that we cannot agree with all of the speaker’s remarks. For instance, we do not share his harshly dismissive opinion of Sudermann’s Johannes. We, too, have already pointed out that the development of this character reveals gaps and that it does not bear the stamp of supreme perfection. However, we cannot concede that it is a complete failure. Likewise, we have highlighted the prominence of the Herod drama and the kinship of Salome with her older modern sisters—Alma, Adah, etc. However, to conclude from these two circumstances that Sudermann is capable only of depicting modern life and cannot psychologically grasp a historical figure—that seems to us to be going too far. Who can say whether the poet might not be able to develop this higher genre of tragedy even further?—Incidentally, the lecture offered many interesting points, even if it seemed somewhat monotonous, with gray on gray, and the speaker’s strong dialectal accent occasionally made it difficult to understand the words. Even those who were able to follow the presentation more closely did not gain a completely clear picture of the differences between the “Christian” and “modern” worldviews. The matter is, after all, not so simple. We have, however, always been of the opinion that these relationships are much more clearly discernible in the visual arts than in poetry, the most complicated of all the arts. By taking the visual arts as a starting point and seeking out and highlighting the differences between older and newer movements within them, we believe one could also shed sharper light on the parallel phenomena in literary production. […]