The Rudolf Steiner Archive

25. Traditional Walpurgis Night – Address on Eurythmy I

[ 1 ] Ladies and gentlemen, before we begin the presentation, allow me, on behalf of those who have organized this event, to extend a warm welcome to all of you who have graced us with your presence here today.

[ 2 ] It will be a source of great satisfaction for us to have you among us, especially during the performance of a scene from Faust—a scene from a work of literature that undoubtedly ranks among the greatest, most significant, and most unique creations in the intellectual history of humanity. And if I may say a few words about the goals and intentions of our spiritual science, as it is to be cultivated here, it is this: that this spiritual science seeks to be intimately connected precisely with Goethe’s entire worldview and outlook on life. This is precisely what the name given to our building—which is to serve the purpose of spiritual science here—is meant to express: the name “Goetheanum.”

[ 3 ] The scene we shall present to you today from the second part of Goethe’s Faust—it may be said that, particularly from our humanities perspective, this scene undoubtedly most significantly expresses Goethe’s mindset as it had developed during the ripest years of his intellectual pursuits and creative work. If I may characterize in a few words—I would say—the place of this scene within the whole of Faust, I would like to do so by first drawing attention to the fact that the greatness of Goethe’s Faust poem actually rests entirely on the fact that here, for once, quite unlike in other works of poetry, the most profound mysteries of knowledge converge with, at the same time, a harmonious, true, and brilliant artistic expression. Rarely do these two elements unite in such harmony as they do in Goethe’s Faust. Art usually disrupts everything that is meant to be conveyed to humanity in the form of knowledge. One also becomes suspicious when knowledge is presented in the form of art, because of the necessary imaginative embellishment. Or else, what is presented—if it leans more toward knowledge—becomes a didactic poem. In Goethe’s Faust, both of these are avoided. We are dealing neither with a didactic poem nor with a mere external artistic form. Rather, we are dealing with something that—despite being the purest, most genuine art—is born from the deepest insights of the human soul, born in such a way that one can say: When one allows Goethe’s Faust to take effect upon oneself, one catches a glimpse into the deepest aspirations of a human being, into the deepest aspirations of one of the greatest human beings.

[ 4 ] And how does this quest manifest itself? On the one hand, Faust shows us how dissatisfied he is with everything that might be called false mysticism. This, in fact, is the very basis of the first part: that, in a sense, Faust feels repelled by everything that false mystics wish to recognize as their pursuit; but on the other hand, the mere, dry, sober view of nature is equally incapable of satisfying Faust. That is on the one hand.

[ 5 ] On the other hand, ladies and gentlemen, it is clear from the entire “Faust” that Goethe does not seek a self-contained, otherworldly insight as that which is beneficial to humanity, but rather an insight that directly brings life—immediate, real life, with its pains, its happiness, its sin, and its redemption—close to humanity. This is precisely what the first part of Goethe’s Faust demonstrates. It also shows how the forces that otherwise approach human beings as abstract entities, comprehensible only in concepts, become real matters of life. We see this in the figure of Mephisto, who is, in a sense, created from the spiritual world and yet is an immediate, individual reality.

[ 6 ] All that Goethe sought to portray in his Faust was that one can reach a place where one can truly fathom the innermost essence of the human being—and where the human being can then step into existence, equal to life’s tasks and the forces of life—neither through the path of dark, most obscurantist mysticism nor through the path of dry natural observation.

[ 7 ] The fact that Goethe, in posing this problem artistically to his soul, was in fact deeply convinced that one cannot gain true knowledge of human nature without rising from the ordinary faculties of cognition to higher, spiritual, and supersensory faculties of cognition—he demonstrates this precisely in this scene, which we intend to present to you, and which forms the conclusion of the second act of the second part, the conclusion of the so-called “Classical Walpurgis Night” , which immediately precedes those scenes in which Faust seeks to marry himself to reality by seeking that sense of reality which he cannot find in modern times, as he plunges into the world of ancient Greece; of ancient Greece, where he allows himself to be absorbed, so that, having penetrated the unique humanity of Greek culture, he may then be ready for the most modern awakening of the immediate present. That, by making use of the ordinary senses—and also of the intellect bound to the brain— one cannot reach the place where humanity must go if it is to avoid falling into self-contradiction, into an unfulfilled longing for and hope in life; that one cannot remain confined to the forces given to humanity in everyday life and ordinary science when seeking to grasp the true nature of the human being—this is precisely what Goethe demonstrates, as he conceived it, in this scene, in this scene, in which—one might say—Goethe truly presents to us the human being as he becomes, in his spiritual and soul-life, independent of all that insight into life which can be attained only through the instrument of the senses and the intellect bound to the brain.

[ 8 ] Goethe has his Faust go through various experiences that demonstrate how, in the struggle of life and the quest for knowledge, a person can gradually rise to self-discovery and self-knowledge—and that is what Goethe actually places within Faust’s soul. And so we see how, after Faust has passed through other spheres of life, he is to be guided toward human self-knowledge as what this actually is—what a human being can perceive as his true nature with his ordinary intellect—unfolds before the eye of his soul. It was certainly not to incorporate old, obscure alchemy and mysticism into his poetry that Goethe woven this curious product of medieval striving—this homunculus—into his Faust; this homunculus through which the medieval alchemist sought to artificially create a human being in the laboratory. Goethe used this homunculus merely as a symbol to express something far more important to him—namely, what a human being encounters when he seeks to penetrate to his own essence, to the human essence, through the path of ordinary cognition, not spiritual knowledge. Goethe meant to say: By this path—which relies solely on ordinary intellect bound to the brain and on the ordinary senses—one does not arrive at an understanding of the human being, nor at a vision of the real human being, but only at the homunculus, which is not a real human being. If, on the other hand, one wishes to recognize the real human being, then one must enter into an entirely different realm of knowledge; then the soul must become free of the body, becoming as it always is in sleep. But whereas it is unconscious in sleep, it is conscious in this state of knowledge. Only then do images appear—images such as those that appeared to the Greeks in an even more imperfect form in their depictions of the gods, such as they appeared to them when, lured by those voices in the human soul that constantly lead people out into real knowledge in another world, they sought to penetrate that world.

[ 9 ] But Goethe wants to show how one does not arrive at an overly imaginative conception of the world; how, as it were, from what is otherwise merely imagination, one can penetrate to a true understanding of humanity; how one can penetrate to that conception that applies only to the homunculus—to the conception of Homo, of the real human being. But if one enters the world in this way—the world into which voices such as those Goethe has the Sirens utter lure one—one enters an indeterminate world of images. What are otherwise natural forces do indeed become natural forms; but one must understand them in a deeper sense if one wishes to go beyond the imagination.

[ 10 ] Therefore, Goethe draws upon this entire pantheon of Greek gods—which is associated with the sea, that very element from which all solid earthly matter must ultimately have emerged—and he brings these figures onto the scene in order, so to speak, to extract truth from them. And so, after the Sirens have lured us into the supernatural realm, figures such as the Nereids and Tritons—half-human, half-animal beings—appear. And we find them on their way to the divine Cabiri, who were worshipped on Samothrace in ancient Greece.

[ 11 ] Scholars have debated these Cabiri at length. When one attempts to penetrate the entire sensibility and thinking of the ancient Greeks through the methods of the humanities, one finds that the Kabiri were viewed as those nature gods associated with the entire process of human becoming—that process of human becoming which shapes the human being out of the all-encompassing forces of nature. Thus, by penetrating to the images that lie behind sensory perception, human beings are to gain insight into how the human being can come into being—how, in fact, the homunculus that otherwise resides within our perception (when we limit ourselves solely to this intellectual cognition) can become the Homo.

[ 12 ] And so other figures appear. Finally, accompanied by Thales, the ancient natural philosopher, Homunculus himself appears—one might say: the human embryonic being that has not yet become human, that only aspires to become human, that being which we grasp solely through the intellect. But the natural philosopher Thales cannot provide any information on how this abstract, purely intellectual human being can actually transform into a human being in our perception. Reference is made to a sea demon, to Nereus. But Nereus has merely heightened to a slightly greater degree the power that is otherwise inherent in the human intellect. Nor can he provide the insight that might teach how the homunculus can truly become human. Rather, he refers to his daughter, to the Venus of the sea, to Galatea, whom he awaits. In her, Goethe sees embodied the very power that leads human beings from spiritual heights into life through birth—the same power that also leads us, for example, when we wake up in the morning from the state in which we are unconscious from the moment we fall asleep until we awaken, back into physical human existence for the day’s work. It is the same force that carries us over from all that is spiritual into the physical; the same force that must therefore carry us over when we truly wish to penetrate the spiritual world toward higher states of human existence. It is the innermost life force that appears in Galatea. But then Proteus also appears—one might say, the master of natural transformation.

[ 13 ] Oh, Goethe knew exactly what is symbolized by Proteus! In his theory of metamorphosis, he sought to study how individual forms of nature transform. He was a Darwinian before Darwin, but one who understood all of this in spiritual, rather than materialistic, terms. Goethe knew what could be achieved for human understanding by showing how the individual, imperfect beings of nature gradually transform and ascend to the level of the human being. But even Proteus cannot solve the mystery of the human being. On the contrary. He appears in various forms—as a turtle, then as a real human being, then as a dolphin. The forms stand side by side. Goethe knew how difficult it is—even when one gains insight through the doctrine of metamorphosis into the fact that forms transform—he knew how difficult it actually is, despite all earnest human striving, to form a conception of what the essence of humanity actually is.

[ 14 ] Then we see, for example, the Telchines of Rhodes. They are the ones who forged the trident for the ancient sea god Neptune; they are, one might say, artists who work with bronze. Proteus rejects what these Telchines are capable of. After all, they are only capable of bringing dead human beings into being from dead, artificial material. They are incapable of anything concerning life.

[ 15 ] Goethe himself sought to advance toward an understanding of humanity through art. While he was in Italy, he said that, in contemplating Italian works of art, he believed he could discern how the Greeks had followed the same laws in creating their works of art as those by which nature itself operates. However, when it came to the highest questions of knowledge—the very mystery of human existence—Goethe knew that even what art has to offer is not enough.

[ 16 ] And so we see that everything that develops there ultimately manifests itself in such a way that, in his ripest years, Goethe stands, as it were, in a position where he says: We can, in a sense, penetrate behind the scenes of life to see in images what the human being is. But we must be able to transport ourselves into the supersensible realm. For the moment we attempt to bring what we are able to grasp in the supersensible into human existence—which makes use of the sensory intellect and the senses in general—our supersensible insights shatter.

[ 17 ] It is a powerful scene, the final scene to be performed today, which, in a sense, depicts: If a person has truly beheld the spiritual world in magnificent visions beyond earthly consciousness—as he would see it if he could become conscious while outside his body during sleep—then, when he returns to his body, when he awakens once more to ordinary earthly existence, how then what they have seen as the highest and most significant aspect of their own being shatters.

[ 18 ] And it is significant in the most dramatic sense that Goethe says: Take this product of human scholarship, this homunculus; try to carry it up into the world of the spirit, and there, in powerful images, much will reveal itself about how this purely abstract human being could be grasped as a real human being, as a genuine, noble human being capable of facing life. Yes, but then the human being once again seeks, in the body and with the ordinary senses, to grasp what has dawned upon him there in higher, supersensible knowledge. And it shatters, shatters against Galatea’s shell chariot, shatters against the very force that is the true power of love.

[ 19 ] In a figurative, artistic sense, one could hardly portray the enigma of knowledge more vividly than Goethe has done in this very scene; for this scene reveals that knowledge is truly not that abstract matter that scholarship and dry natural science are so eager to make it out to be, but rather that knowledge is something connected to the innermost happiness, to the very core of the human being. Goethe shows what one can feel when one believes one has grasped—and rightly so—the human being in its ascent into the supersensible, and then, since it is the human being’s task to return once more to the earthly realm, where all of this fades away again, as if shattered by the elements—air, water, earth, fire—among which one exists—this real life is shattered; it is not there to allow a person to come to know their own being. Yet in this real world lies precisely that in which a person must act through their highest supersensible being. We see exactly how the supersensible and the sensible collide in this very scene.

[ 20 ] It is indeed true that one can see deep into Goethe’s heart when one watches this scene unfold before one’s eyes. And at the same time, this fulfills what Goethe said specifically about this scene—the scene from the second act of the second part—namely, that he had woven into it many things that were matters of his innermost heart and insight, yet he nevertheless believed he had presented everything on stage in an artistic manner such that, even without first having to unravel it, it could have a powerful impact as an image in terms of [a] dramatic presentation. He hoped that these things could have an immediate impact even upon direct, untrained observation.

[ 21 ] And so I believe that it is precisely by immersing oneself in this scene that one sees how Goethe shaped what he had been developing for six decades—he began his Faust in his earliest youth—what he had carried within himself for six decades, what he brought to the height of maturity in his twilight years, and how it took shape within him. One sees Goethe in his innermost striving by observing how he wrestles in his twilight years—for this scene was written just a few years before his death as a precious legacy to humanity—how, in his twilight years, still a man in constant struggle, he attempts to reshape the questions that had pressed upon him in his youth, and how a person can be a man in constant struggle throughout his entire life, and yet remain humble in that regard, never considering himself to have arrived at a final conclusion—this is what one sees most clearly in a poem such as the one we shall take the liberty of presenting to you.

[ 22 ] And so, with all its artistry—with everything that can move the human heart, mind, spirit, and soul—it is precisely such a Goethean scene that touches us deeply. We believe that what Goethe drew from such spiritual heights can perhaps best be expressed through the art of eurythmy, by means of which we are attempting here to internalize what has, to a greater or lesser extent, been manifested in outward form as the art of gesture. Our art of eurythmy is intended to be a direct rendering of such human gestures that are not contrived, but are drawn from the human organism and thus from the mystery of the world itself. In the performance, perhaps the very innermost essence of this mighty cosmic poem may find expression in some of the most important of these scenes.