The Rudolf Steiner Archive

26. Traditional Walpurgis Night – Address on Eurythmy II

[ 1 ] Before we begin the performance, on behalf of those organizing this event, I would like to warmly welcome our distinguished guests, who have shown their interest in this performance, and thank you for graciously honoring us with your presence. Allow me to say just a few words to introduce the performance.

[ 2 ] We will attempt to stage the final scene of the second act of Goethe’s Faust, the “Classical Walpurgis Night,” in the manner we deem appropriate based on our general approach to productions. This scene is, I believe, particularly well-suited to offering a deep insight into the entire constitution, the very essence of Goethe’s soul—especially his quest for knowledge, his pursuit of human self-knowledge and self-understanding. Precisely when one is faced with a scene such as this, one must not forget that Goethe spent sixty years of his life working on this “world poem”—a term that truly fits it—and that he wrestled for six decades with the great questions of humanity, to which he sought to give artistic expression in this poem. And—what seems to me to be of the utmost importance—it is precisely in a scene such as this, which he wrote down just a few years before his death, that Goethe’s infinitely honest striving becomes evident. Precisely in the realm of the quest for truth, precisely in the realm of the drive for knowledge, there prevails—far more than people realize—a deep-seated dishonesty that is usually entirely unconscious and internally unacknowledged. Goethe was one of the most honest seekers of knowledge. However, in saying this, I do not wish to give the impression that, for this reason, Goethe’s great epic of life has become a kind of didactic poem. No, what is significant is precisely that what Goethe said to his friend Eckermann in his old age—specifically regarding the second part of his Faust—is true: it is entirely correct when Goethe said that he had woven much into his Faust—much of the mysteries pertaining to the innermost essence of humanity and the world. Yet he believed that, precisely in this second part of his Faust, he had crafted everything in such a way that, even if one were to remain unaware of [be]—what the initiated reader finds within regarding human enigmas and solutions, or attempts to resolve the questions of human existence—that even those who merely allow the dramatic images unfolding on stage to take effect upon them in an outward, artistic sense will still have a fully rounded dramatic experience.

[ 3 ] On the other hand, however, we must not entirely overlook the artistic outcome to which this Faustian quest for knowledge led in Goethe. And this is most intensely evident in a scene that we will take the liberty of presenting to you. Goethe inserted this scene at the point in the second part of Faust that is intended to serve as the transition to Faust’s entry into the reality of ancient Greece. This was thus meant to lead Faust into a heightened state of effectiveness, so that Faust might continue to undergo what Goethe intended him to undergo.

[ 4 ] In Faust, Goethe certainly wanted to portray a human being struggling for the highest knowledge, but not one who engages in abstract, theoretical scholarship or strives for impractical truth; rather, he wanted to portray a person who, in devotion to his drive for knowledge, seeks to achieve something that would establish him firmly and powerfully in life; so that, standing firmly in life, he can experience in an intense way, on the one hand, the exhilarating, fateful exaltation of life, and on the other hand, the painful blows of fate that deeply entangle human beings in sin and injustice. But Goethe’s drive for knowledge was meant to guide Faust through life not only in terms of experience but also in terms of action. It was meant to make him a human being, a personality who knows how to engage with life, so that what he does has far-reaching effects on the social fabric of humanity. Thus, Goethe sought to portray a sage of life and, at the same time, a man of action. In Goethe’s view, such a person had to develop self-knowledge and self-understanding within himself.

[ 5 ] Goethe—as this scene in particular [and] other scenes in the second part demonstrate —through scenes such as the one about to be presented, has sought to show that the knowledge and self-understanding a person can attain by relying solely on ordinary sensory perception and ordinary intellect—which is bound to the brain—cannot provide what true self-knowledge is, which answers the question: What am I, actually, in the world? And what am I capable of in the world? This requires a kind of knowledge that springs from the infinite, immortal part of human nature, which, through a special inner power, is able to detach itself in its understanding from that which is bound solely to the body.

[ 6 ] Goethe was—and this is something that anyone who has studied Goethe for decades can truly affirm—Goethe was on the path toward what we here call anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. That is why, with full awareness and out of a sense of kinship with what Goethe sought, we have recently given this building of ours the name “Goetheanum.” We wish to express that what we are actually striving for is a continuation of what might be called Goetheanism as a worldview.

[ 7 ] Goethe, however, was not yet able in his time to follow the paths that, in our more advanced age, can now lead us into the mystery of the human being through spiritual research. But Goethe did want to show explicitly that one must ascend to a higher, supersensible knowledge if one wishes to move from what a person can know and grasp about themselves through ordinary sensory understanding to a true understanding of human nature. Goethe sought to achieve this by, in a sense, pointing the way that leads from the homunculus to the Homo.

[ 8 ] Homunculus, the little human, the abstract little human! We need not take offense at the fact that Goethe drew on medieval alchemy. He did not intend to spout the usual nonsense, but merely to use an image to convey what he wanted to express. And what he wanted to express was that human beings, with their ordinary sensory intellect, cannot grasp humanity itself, but only an unfinished, abstract product: the homunculus. And then he wanted to show the paths the human soul can take to lead what appears to the ordinary intellect as merely the homunculus to the Homo.

[ 9 ] Yes, ladies and gentlemen, what conventional science—bound to the material world—teaches today about human beings is not a teaching about the real human being in the sense of Goetheanism; it is merely a teaching about the homunculus. One might say: Today’s science knows nothing at all about the human being other than the homunculus. Goethe, however, poses the great question: How can one move from the homunculus to the human being? — Alongside Thales, he presents the homunculus as an artificial construct, as just any kind of artificial construct. Thales—the natural philosopher whom Goethe held in high esteem—is unable to provide any guidance on what must be done to transform the abstract idea of the homunculus into the real, life-filled idea of the human being, the Homo idea.

[ 10 ] Goethe refrained from forming his own imaginings—the kind that arise when one starts from abstract concepts, which can provide only superficial insight but go no further than the homunculus—in order to advance toward an understanding of the human being, the whole human being. He then, because he wished to refrain from his own imaginings—from his own images of knowledge drawn from the reality of life—for he knew full well that this metamorphosis is not merely what contemporary perception calls a metamorphosis; he knew that life in these three significant images is at the same time a life of knowledge in a higher reality than that found in the images of the external sensory world. And indeed, within the world he presents in this scene, he brings forth the most significant Greek world of demons, to which Greek thought turned in seeking to answer the question: How does a human being actually come into being? What actually happens in the process of becoming human?

[ 11 ] Then it is demonstrated how Thales, the natural philosopher—who himself is unable to provide any explanation for the development of the homunculus into Homo—leads the homunculus, the “glowing little dwarf” of man, to whom the sensory intellect alone can arrive, to the sea-old man Nereus. This Nereus has developed the human critical intellect to the highest degree; even in a somewhat grumpy rebuke, it turns away from immediate reality. He offers no explanation of how one might become a human being from a little human; rather, he points out that he is awaiting a mighty cosmic event—the approach of Galatea. What is he waiting for?

[ 12 ] Well, the Greeks knew—they did not have such abstract, theoretical, and unrealistic views as people today, especially today’s scientists— he knew that what acts as a force of nature in human growth and birth—that which permeates all of nature—is also connected to everything that blows in the wind, that lives in the warmth across the entire earth, that weaves in the light, and that lives in the alternation of the sun and moon, which is drawing near. When what lives out there in nature enters into human beings, when they must undergo the mystery of becoming within their own human existence, all of this draws near in the wondrous shell chariot of Nereus’s daughter, Galatea, who is accompanied by her sisters, the Dorides. Nereus himself cannot provide any information.

[ 13 ] It is clear from this that Goethe wanted to suggest how naturally one must first rely on supersensible knowledge in order to ascend from the homunculus to the homo, from the little human to the human being. He refers to Proteus. In the ancient Greek worldview, Proteus is the god of the transformation of natural forms and natural creations. In keeping with his own outlook on life and the world, Goethe was very much in tune with Proteus’s ideas. In his theory of metamorphosis, Goethe had sought to show how one natural form transforms into another. That is why he introduces Proteus—who is himself a being in a state of transformation, appearing now as a turtle, now as a human, now as a dolphin—and brings him onto the stage in these various forms. Proteus is meant to demonstrate—in his peculiar manner, which strongly resonates with the spiritual yet also touches upon the human—how the idea of the homunculus, or “little human,” might perhaps become the idea of a human being. But even he does not achieve this.

[ 14 ] Goethe wants to show everyone through this that the sincere seeker of knowledge does not stop at petty truths and insights, but strives to go further and further. This is precisely what is great about the spirit of the people: this ceaseless, sincere striving, which Goethe himself possessed right up to his very old age.

[ 15 ] Then the Nereids and the Tritons return, bringing the Cabiri, who then take on a tangible form. And finally, we see how Goethe attempts to show that the supernatural constantly intermingles and blends with the sensual: the Dorids bring forward shipwrecked young sailors whom they have rescued. We see the demonic-divine beings of the Dorids temporally linked to those beings who exist in the sensory realm—the young sailors. In a beautiful way, Goethe has indicated here how the supersensible, spiritual world constantly seeks to touch, blend with, and enter into a relationship with the sensible, physical world—but how this relationship dissolves again and again: “The gods will not tolerate it” that the servants of the immortals, the Dorids, should unite with mortal humans. Through this, Goethe specifically sought to suggest how human beings strive to ascend to the supersensible, how they can even grasp it, but how this supersensible is characterized precisely by the fact that it eludes them time and again, and how it does not imprint itself on existence in the same way as any sensory truth.

[ 16 ] And finally, in the magnificent conclusion to this scene, Goethe depicts what one might feel if one were to describe how, in an experience of knowledge that is not dreamlike but real—one that would occur only when one is in a state akin to sleep—one were to awaken, bodiless, seeing supersensually, having before one, alive, that which one can never see through the physical eyes: the real human being. One can see only the image in the physical world. One cannot grasp the human being with the physical intellect, but only the little human, the homunculus. But if one could grasp, in supersensible perception, this Homo, this real human being, and then return once more, one could experience how what one has beheld supersensibly—if one were to try to see it again with the eyes that perceive the outer physical sunlight, to hear it with the sense of hearing with which we hear outer physical sounds, to feel it with the sense of touch that perceives outer physical objects— [how] what one has perceived supersensually shatters! Just as something bursts into flames in a flash of lightning, so too does the supersensual that one has grasped shatter against ordinary sensory perception. Goethe seeks to illustrate this vividly in a magnificent image at the end of this scene, by showing how the homunculus shatters against Galathea’s shell chariot. This is truly what one might experience if, just before waking from a dream—which would, however, be reality—one experienced what it means to be human, then woke up, found oneself back in one’s body, and can now perceive in the sensory world only what one had perceived in the supersensory world—shattering, dissolving—just as, here at the end, the homunculus dissolves into the elements: air, fire, water, and earth.

[ 17 ] To me, the sequence of images seems grand, as does the dramatic composition of this particular scene—which Goethe wrote in his twilight years, having reached the pinnacle of his creative maturity—and what he portrays here strikes me as magnificent when viewed as a reflection of Goethe’s character and his worldview itself. But it also strikes me as significant for characterizing the entire modern culture, the entire modern intellectual life. That which contains within itself such power, such striving, as is expressed in this scene—that is something which can at the same time believe directly in the higher destiny, in the spirit within humanity.

[ 18 ] It seems to me, then, that immersing oneself in a scene such as this one can truly not be insignificant for human beings. And, as I said at the beginning, we have endeavored, in our own way, to stage this scene, which is otherwise never performed in its entirety anywhere else. We have attempted, through our art of eurythmy as such—which, as a certain form of gestural expression, arises not from human arbitrariness but from inner lawfulness, just as musical lawfulness itself does, through which we seek to express that which cannot be expressed merely through words but springs from the innermost secrets of growth—to bring this, I might say, to a higher level of drama than is possible with the ordinary means of expression at our disposal.

[ 19 ] It is with great pleasure that we present to you this beautiful scene—a scene from the second part of Faust, the conclusion of the “Classical Walpurgis Night,” which so powerfully testifies to Goethe’s greatness.