The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Anthroposophy and Poetry I

[ 1 ] Within the anthroposophical worldview, it must be emphasized time and again how it gives rise to an awareness of the unified source of art, religion, and science. It is often emphasized within this anthroposophical worldview that in earlier periods of human development, religion, art, and science did not exist separately at all, but rather as a unity of all three. This unity of all three was cultivated in the Mysteries. The Mysteries were, in fact, a union of what we today call school, church, and art institution. For what was presented in the Mysteries was not conveyed solely through the spoken word. The word—which, when spoken by the initiate, was perceived as a word of insight, experienced as a revelation from the Spirit itself—was accompanied by the demonstration of ritual acts and consecration rites that, through powerful imagery before the listeners and spectators, revealed what was to be proclaimed through the word.

[ 2 ] And so, alongside what was proclaimed through earthly knowledge, there was the development of religious rituals, through which what was sensed—and perhaps even seen—as the events and realities of the supersensible worlds was reflected in the images before the eyes of the listeners and spectators. Religion and knowledge functioned as a unity. But beauty and artistry had also been woven into this representation—this visual depiction of the supersensible—so that the ritual act and the ritual image were at the same time artistic expression and artistic revelation. In the mysteries, people felt the artistic and the beautiful. Their will was stirred by the religious impulses conveyed in the ritual acts, and they were inwardly enlightened by the word that accompanied the beautiful, artistic ritual. They were inwardly enlightened in their understanding. An awareness of this—I would say—fraternal unity of religion, science, and art must always be present in every true anthroposophical view of the world and exploration of the world. And this does not arise merely in an artificial way, but rather in a completely natural and self-evident manner.

[ 3 ] When one devotes oneself to knowledge in the spirit of today’s intellectualistic-materialistic science, one attempts to grasp the world through thought. Ultimately, one ends up with a collection of thoughts that represent natural phenomena and natural beings in the mind through concepts and mental images. One articulates the laws of nature in thought. Now, it was precisely within the last—the truly intellectualistic-materialistic—age that a distinctive feature of those who devoted themselves to knowledge was that they became more or less alienated inwardly from artistic sensibility. When one devotes oneself to the science commonly practiced today, one devotes oneself to dead thoughts, and one also seeks out these dead thoughts in natural phenomena. Everything we refer to as natural history—and what we today call the pride of our science—consists of dead thoughts; thoughts that are the corpses of what our soul was before it descended from the supersensible realm into the sensory world.

[ 4 ] You see, my esteemed audience, when we look at a human corpse, we know from its form that it could not have been brought into this form by mere natural laws as we know them, but rather that the person first died. The person was first alive, then died, and thereby became a corpse. The truly discerning person knows that the thoughts within him are the corpses of that living soul-being in which he lived before descending to Earth. Our earthly thoughts are the corpses of our pre-earthly soul life. This is what accounts for the abstract nature of thoughts—that they are, in fact, corpses. And as these abstract thoughts have become increasingly cherished over the past few centuries—and have also taken root in all of practical life—people have become more and more like their abstract thoughts. In particular, those with a scientific or scholarly education have come to resemble their abstract thoughts in their entire soul life—especially in their higher soul life. But this alienates one from art. The more one becomes absorbed in purely abstract thoughts, the more alienated one becomes from art, for art seeks the living, and thoughts are dead.

[ 5 ] The opposite state arises for the soul when one truly immerses oneself in the kind of knowledge that is anthroposophical. Whereas in abstract intellectual cognition, after a certain time, the need arises to understand everything purely logically and to explain the artistic itself logically, in anthroposophical cognition the need for art arises at a certain moment. For this anthroposophical cognition, if it is genuine, leads at a certain point to one saying to oneself: “Yes, what you grasp with your thoughts is not the whole of living reality; you need something else.”—And so, because the entire life of the soul remains alive in anthroposophical cognition—not being killed by dead thoughts—one flows over into the need to perceive the world artistically and to experience the world artistically. When one lives in abstract, dead thoughts, art becomes a kind of luxury that people create out of their illusions and dreams as an addition to life. When one perceives things anthroposophically, one eventually says to oneself: Oh, your thoughts are not images of a living reality at all; your thoughts are like gestures. You merely point to living reality with your thoughts. Your thoughts are dead gestures.”—And at a certain point, one feels: “Now I must begin to create artistically; otherwise, I have no reality at all.” So the anthroposophist feels, at a certain point in his insight, that he must turn to art. And then the realization truly dawns on him that one cannot fully convey the world through ideas alone, but that one must add the artistic to one’s understanding of the world in the first place.

[ 6 ] Anthroposophy is a true source of inspiration for the soul when it comes to artistic sensibility and artistic creation. Abstract thoughts stifle artistic imagination. People become more and more logical, stifling artistic imagination, and then offer commentary on works of art. This is the terrible thing that has occurred in the materialistic age: that scholars have offered commentary on works of art—scholarly explanations. These scholarly explanations—these commentaries on Faust and Hamlet, these scholarly descriptions of the art of Leonardo, Raphael, and Michelangelo—are the coffins, the death coffins for true artistic sensibility. They kill what is living art. And when you pick up a commentary on Faust, you actually have the feeling that you are now picking up the corpse of Faust; or, in the case of a commentary on Hamlet, the corpse of Hamlet—for there, abstract thoughts have killed the work of art.

[ 7 ] Through anthroposophical insight, one attempts to approach the essence of a work of art from the living spirit, as I did in the case of Goethe’s “Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily,” where the aim is not to write a commentary but to allow something living to lead one into what is immediately alive. In an unartistic age, the many schools of aesthetics—the scholarly reflections on art—have arisen. Aesthetics are, in fact, something unartistic. But now that all this has been said—and people are aware of it—the truly learned might sit there and say: “Yes, but to grasp the world artistically leads away from reality; it is not scientific to perceive the world artistically.” And then the so-called true scientists will declaim: “One must suppress the imagination; one must shut off the imagination if one wishes to grasp reality, and must limit oneself to the purely logical.” — Yes, one can make such declarations; one can make such demands. But just think for a moment: if reality—if nature itself—is an artist, then it is of no use to demand of human beings that they always understand everything logically. Then one simply cannot come to terms with nature through mere logical understanding if nature itself is an artist. And nature is an artist. This is precisely what one discovers through anthroposophical knowledge at a certain point in that knowledge. One must stop living in ideas. One must begin to think in images oneself in order to comprehend nature, especially the highest aspect of nature: the physical human being in its forms. No anatomy, no physiology can comprehend the physical human being in its forms. Only living insight, inspired by artistic sensibility, can do so.

[ 8 ] And so it was only natural that this insight spilled over into artistic creation, as when, for example, the idea arose to build a Goetheanum. There, what anthroposophy otherwise produced in ideas had to be expressed in artistic forms. It was the same thing, only revealed in a different way. But this is how art—true art—has always developed in the world. And Goethe, who was truly capable of artistic feeling, spoke these beautiful words: “Art is a manifestation of secret laws of nature that would never become apparent without it.” — He sensed precisely what anthroposophy must sense. Once one has worked one’s way through to a cognitive grasp of the world, this vivid need arises—no longer to form ideas, but to create artistically, whether in sculpture, painting, music, or poetry. At that point, however, something sometimes happens—forgive me for using such a harsh word—that is quite terrible. For example, one tries—as I myself have done—to express in “mystery dramas” what cannot be articulated in ideas about the essence of the human being, as I did in my four mystery dramas. Then there are well-meaning but not fully discerning people who proceed to explain these mystery dramas in terms of ideas and even write a kind of commentary on them. Yes, it is something terrible, something dreadful, when this happens, but it happens precisely because even within the anthroposophical movement, the destructive power of abstract thought is often brought in. In reality, the anthroposophical movement should be characterized by the constant enlivening of abstract thoughts. This then leads to the ability to experience what can no longer be experienced in thought—through living figures, such as those that appear in the dramatic scene—to have them before one’s eyes, to look at them, and to truly allow the figures of the dramas to take effect upon oneself, rather than explaining them in an abstract manner. True anthroposophy leads, at a certain point, into true art, because true anthroposophy does not stifle thought but rather inspires it and causes the artistic wellspring within the human soul to gush forth.

[ 9 ] One is then not tempted to shape ideas symbolically or even to recreate them allegorically, but rather to let all ideas flow toward a specific point and to follow purely the artistic form. Thus, the Goetheanum, as a piece of architecture—if I may use such a strong expression—came into being entirely without preconceived ideas, simply by feeling the forms, but feeling them from the spirit. And that is how one should view the Goetheanum, not explain it. Whenever I had the honor of guiding guests who came to the Goetheanum, I would usually begin the remarks I had to make to these guests by saying: “You have, of course, come so that I may now explain the Goetheanum to you as I accompany you, but actually, I find this a terribly unpleasant task.” For the next half hour, as I guide you, I’ll have to do something quite unpleasant, because the Goetheanum is meant to be seen, not explained.” — That is what I have always emphasized again and again, because what was there should live in images, not in abstract, stifling thoughts. Of course, explanations were necessary, but I also tried to give them in such a way that they weren’t actually abstract explanations, but rather—I would say—that the tour helped foster a sense of the forms, the images, and the colors. For one can be spiritual not only in words, but also in forms, colors, tones, and so on. Only through this can the truly artistic be experienced. For the artistic is always the manifestation of the supersensible here in our sensory world. And we can perceive this in all the arts when these arts are presented to us in forms from which they have genuinely sprung from human nature.

[ 10 ] First, consider the art form that today serves external practicality the most: architecture.

[ 11 ] To truly understand architecture in its forms through feeling, one must artistically perceive the human being itself—the human form. And when one artistically perceives the human form, a strong sense arises within that feeling that the human being has, in fact, left behind the worlds to which it belongs. When I look at a bear in its fur, I have the sense that the universe has richly endowed it, for it has clothed it in fur. And I perceive a whole when I perceive the bear with its fur or the dog with its coat; I perceive a whole. When I look at a human being from an artistic perspective, something is missing in that person if I view them solely through the senses. They have not received from the universe what the bear or the dog possess in their fur or coat. In a sense, in terms of their sensory appearance, human beings stand naked in the world. This gives rise to the need—for the physical, yet in place of the physical—to have around them, purely in artistic perception, a pictorial, spiritual quality that envelops them.

[ 12 ] Today, this purely artistic sensibility in architecture is somewhat obscured; it is not clearly evident. But consider that starting point in architecture where architecture achieved its height above all by creating enclosures for those who have passed away, for the dead. Let us consider how the tombs and burial dwellings erected over the graves make sense at the starting point of architecture. Since the human being has, so to speak, left his earthly prison—his physical body—and is now a naked soul, a primal, instinctive clairvoyance dictates that this naked soul should not be allowed to go out into the cosmos without being enveloped by the very forms into which it wishes to be received. One cannot—so it was said—simply let the soul out into the chaotic air currents, into the chaotic, intermingling weather currents. That would tear the soul apart. Once it has left the body, the soul wishes to expand into the world through regular spatial forms. It is clothed in the architecture of the tomb, for there it finds its way. It does not find its way in the storms that surge toward it, in the wind currents that meet it; but it does find its way in the artistic forms with which the architect shapes the tomb above the burial site. There, paths form for the soul to journey out into the vastness of the world. This is the shell, the covering, given by the supersensible nature of the soul, whereas human beings, unlike animals or plants, do not receive a shell or a covering through the sensory, natural elements.

[ 13 ] And so one might say: Architecture originally expresses the way in which human beings wish to be embraced by the vastness of the cosmos. — When I am in a house, my artistic sensibility should reflect this as well. I look at the surfaces; I look at the lines. Why are they there? To show me that the soul wishes to gaze out in the direction of these lines into the vastness of space. But the soul also wishes to be protected from the light rushing in. And when one considers the relationship of the soul to the universe—to the spatial universe all around—one learns to truly recognize how the spatial universe receives the human soul in the right way; then one discovers the artistic form of architecture.

[ 14 ] Architecture, however, has an artistic counterpart. When a person steps out of the world, he leaves his physical body behind. As a soul, he expands into the form of space. Everything architectural seeks to reveal this relationship of the human being to the visible world-space, to the visible cosmos. When a human being enters physical existence through birth, he unconsciously retains the memory of his pre-earthly existence. Then he immerses himself with his soul into the physical body. In the consciousness of modern human beings in particular, there is no trace of this immersion. But in the subconscious, in the depths of the soul’s feeling—especially where this feeling becomes a naive artistic sensibility—the soul knows, as it immerses itself in the body: “Before you were immersed in a body, you were different.” And so it does not want to be as it is in the body; it wants to be as it was before it immersed itself in the body.

[ 15 ] This sensation is revealed in a remarkable way among primitive peoples. They feel artistically—in the sense of how they truly wish to be in their bodies—and so they begin first to adorn themselves and then to clothe themselves. The colors of their clothing exist because human beings wish to express their inner lives through their physicality. Their physicality, into which they are immersed, is not enough for them; they want to present themselves to the world in color, just as they feel themselves to be in their inner lives. Anyone who, with an artistic sensibility, observes the colorful clothing of primitive peoples sees the soul surging out into space, just as one sees the soul surging into space in architectural forms. If the soul wishes to disperse into the vastness of the world, it follows architectural forms. If the soul wishes to unfold spatially from its deepest inner center, it develops the art of clothing.

[ 16 ] These artistic expressions of dress then become part of the broader artistic life. And it is significant that in eras when people were much more artistically sensitive than today—take, for example, the paintings of the Italian Renaissance—a Magdalene will always be depicted wearing a very specific, distinct dress from that of a Mary. Compare the yellow that appears very frequently in the clothing of Mary Magdalene with the color composed of blue and red that appears in the clothing of Mary, and you will see the full range of spiritual differences in the way the painter—who is still fully immersed in the artistic element—creates clothing in his paintings from the depths of his soul.

[ 17 ] We, who prefer to dress in shades of gray, simply present to the outside world a lifeless reflection of our soul. We dress abstractly; in our present age, we do not merely think abstractly. And—I should just mention this in passing—if we do not dress abstractly, then we often reveal, precisely through our choice of colors, how little remains of the living thought we experience before we descend to Earth. If we stop dressing abstractly today, we begin to dress tastelessly. We must be clear that it is precisely the artistic element that needs to be revitalized in our entire civilization, that human beings must once again be placed in the world in a living, artistic way. But then we must also be able to view all cosmic beings and cosmic life artistically once more. One must not merely go into research institutes and set up the familiar gallows-like apparatus to test the angle of view and measure racial characteristics as abstractly as possible; rather, one must—I would say—be able to perceive form through a qualitative deepening into the human being.

[ 18 ] One will then recognize, in a wondrous way, in the human head—in the curve of the forehead and the curve of the crown—not merely as an allegorical comparison, but as an inner reality, the reflection of the vault of heaven arching above us; even though it is not physically there, it arches dynamically, with power. The forehead and the top of the head form the image of the entire universe, and the image of what we experience as we orbit the sun—as we revolve in a horizontal circular motion around the star with our planet—this participation in a cosmic movement is artistically sensed in the formation of the nose and eyes. Consider this: the stillness of the fixed-star sky in the tranquil curve of the forehead and the top of the head; the movement of orbiting in the cosmos in the mobile gaze of the eye; and in all that is inwardly experienced through the nose and the sense of smell. And if we understand how to study the human mouth and chin in a truly artistic way, then we have there a reflection of that which leads deep into the very core of the human being. The mouth and chin embody the whole human being, as the soul lives within the body. The entire world is present there artistically. In the forehead and the curve of the crown of the head lies the tranquil roundness of the universe; in the eye, nose, and upper lip, the movement through the cosmos; in the mouth and chin, the resting within oneself.

[ 19 ] This—not as an abstract thought, but vividly perceived in the image—simply won’t stay in one’s mind. When you truly feel what I have just described in relation to the human head, you begin to realize: You used to be a reasonably intelligent person; you had such lovely ideas. Now your head suddenly goes blank. You can’t think of a thing. You can feel quite clearly your forehead, the curve of your head, your eyes, nose, upper lip, mouth, and lower lip. But you can no longer think there. Your thoughts abandon you. — And the rest of your body begins to stir; specifically, your arms and fingers start to become tools of thought, except that here the thoughts live in forms. And you become a sculptor.

[ 20 ] But if you want to become a sculptor, your mind must stop thinking. The worst thing a sculptor can do is think with his head. That’s nonsense. You can’t do that. It’s completely impossible. The mind must be able to rest, to be empty, and the arms and hands must begin to truly shape images and forms, to be able to recreate the world. Especially when you want to shape the human figure, the human form must flow from your own fingers. That is when one also begins to sense why the Greeks, who had a deeply artistic sensibility, shaped the upper part of Athena’s head in such a remarkable way—even placing a helmet on her, which forms part of her head—in order to evoke the formative essence of resting space, of cosmic space. The Greeks expressed this even in the headgear. And when one observes this distinctive shaping of the nose—how it connects to the forehead—especially in Greek profiles, one senses within it how the Greeks perceived the turning point, the movement, and how they expressed, in the structure of the nose, their alignment with the movement of the universe.

[ 21 ] Oh, it is wonderful to sense, in an artistic depiction of a Greek head, how the Greek became a sculptor. And, you see, it is this spiritual sensing and spiritual contemplation of the world—by no means mere intellectual thinking—that leads to art and is inspired precisely by the anthroposophical perspective, because at a certain point one arrives at this realization and says to oneself: There is something in the world that you cannot grasp with your thoughts; you must begin to become an artist in order to enter into it at all. — And then materialistic-intellectual scholarship appears to one like a person who walks around things superficially and always describes them logically, but nevertheless only walks around them superficially, whereas anthroposophical knowledge calls upon us everywhere to immerse ourselves in the things themselves, to recreate what has been created by the cosmos, through living creative power.

[ 22 ] Gradually, it becomes clear: If, as an anthroposophist, you cultivate a true understanding of the physical body—which emerges from the cosmic forms of space and becomes a corpse—and if you cultivate an understanding of how the soul, after leaving the physical body, seeks to be received by the forms of space, then you become an architect. If you understand what the soul desires—namely, to place itself within space along with the unconscious memories from its pre-earthly existence—then you become—forgive me for using this expression, it is no longer really common in our time, because people have completely turned away from such things; along with the awareness of pre-earthly existence, they have also lost this impulse to which I was referring—you become a fashion designer. That is the other pole of architecture.

[ 23 ] And one becomes a sculptor when one truly immerses oneself in the human form, as it is brought forth and shaped from the world. If one learns to understand the physical body from every angle, one becomes an architect in the artistic sense. If one truly comes to know the etheric body—or the body of formative forces, as I call it in anthroposophy—in its inner vitality, in its actual life and activity; how this etheric body arches the brow, shapes the nose, and causes the mouth to recede— —for these are all the formative forces—then, out of a genuine grasp of the etheric body, one becomes a sculptor. The sculptor does nothing other than imitate the form of the etheric body.

[ 24 ] If one looks at the spiritual aspect of all growth and life, then the diverse, colorful world of colors becomes a world in its own right. One gradually becomes part of what I would like to call an astral apprehension or grasping of the world. What reveals itself in color becomes, everywhere, a revelation of the spiritual in the world. Let us look at the plant as it turns green. When the plant turns green, we cannot view the green merely as something subjective and imagine vibrations within the plant, as the physicist does. We no longer have the plant if we create mental images of these vibrations in the trees—vibrations that are supposed to produce the colors. These are abstractions. In truth, we cannot create mental images of plants as living without the green when we picture them as living. The plant creates the green from within itself. Yes, but how? Well, the dead earth elements are incorporated into the plant. But these dead earth elements are thoroughly enlivened. The plant contains iron, carbon, silica, and so on; plants contain all manner of earth elements that we also find in the mineral kingdom. But all of this is permeated and interwoven with life within the plant. And as we observe how life forces its way through the inanimate, creating an image—namely, the image of the plant—through the inanimate, we perceive the green as the inanimate image of life. Everywhere we look, we see our green surroundings. We know that the substances of the earth—the inanimate substances of the earth—live within the plants. We do not perceive life itself. It is because the plants contain these dead substances that we perceive them. And that is why they are green. The green is the dead image of life that reigns on Earth. Now we look at the green in this way, finding in it, as it were, a kind of world-word that tells us how life dwells and weaves within the plant.

[ 25 ] And then let’s look at human beings. When we look out into nature, we find that the fresh peach blossoms in spring most closely resemble the healthy human complexion. There is no other color in nature that resembles the human complexion—the “incarnate” color—as closely. But we also sense that this peach-like incarnate color expresses the inner health of the human being. Through the incarnate color, we learn to grasp the living health of the human being, truly endowed by the soul. And we sense that when the incarnate color turns greenish, the person is sickly; the soul does not know how to find the right connection to the physical body. Conversely, when the soul selfishly claims the physical body too strongly—for example, in the case of a miser—the person becomes pale. Or when the soul claims the physical body too strongly out of fear, the person becomes pale, almost whitish. Between the whitish and the greenish lies the healthy, living color of the incarnate being, with its peach-blossom-like hue. And just as we perceive the green of the plant as the dead image of life, so too do we perceive in the incarnate being—in the distinctive peach-blossom color of a healthy person—the living image of the soul. You see, now the world comes alive in colors. The living takes shape through the dead into the image of green. The soul shapes the human skin into the image of the peach blossom, into the incarnate.

[ 26 ] Let’s continue. We perceive the sun as whitish. We feel that this whitishness is closely related to light. When we wake up at night in pitch darkness, we sense that this is not the human environment in which we can fully experience our sense of self. We need light between ourselves and objects in order to fully experience our sense of self. In a sense, we need light between us and the wall so that the wall can have an effect on us from a distance. That is when our sense of self is kindled. When we wake up in the light—that is, in what is akin to white—we perceive our sense of self. When we wake up in darkness—that is, in what is akin to black—we feel alienated from the world. I say: light. I could also use other sensory perceptions. And you will discover an apparent contradiction, because someone born blind never sees light. But what matters is not whether one sees the light directly, but how one is constituted. Even if born blind, a human being is constituted for light, and the inhibition of the “I” energy present in the blind person exists precisely because of the absence of light. White is related to light. When we sense white—that is, the light-like quality—in such a way that we perceive how the “I” in space is kindled by the white to its inner strength, then we can say, by bringing this thought to life rather than treating it abstractly: White is the soul-level manifestation of the spirit. — That is why, wherever we encounter white in pictures, we feel: Yes, that is what is meant by the spirit.

[ 27 ] Take black, on the other hand. When you see black, when we place black somewhere, it can most easily be used as the mental image of the dead, just as we ourselves feel dead and paralyzed when we must place our awakening spirit into the black darkness. And so one can perceive black as the mental image of the dead.

[ 28 ] Think about how one can now live within colors. One experiences the world as color and light when one experiences green as the dead image of life; peach blossoms and human flesh tones as the living image of the soul; white as the soul’s image of the spirit; black as the spirit’s image of the dead. I have truly entered into a cycle by saying this. For notice how I had to describe it: Green = dead image of the living. I stopped at the living. Peach blossoms and flesh tones = living image of the soul. I stopped at the soul. White = the soul’s image of the spirit. I stopped at the soul and ascended to the spirit. Black = the spirit’s image of the dead. I stopped at the spiritual, ascended to the dead, but returned again, since green was the dead image of the living. I have returned once more to the dead. I have closed the circle. If I could sketch this out for you on a blackboard, I could illustrate the concept schematically, and you would see that through this, this living interweaving in color—we will also speak of blue in the next lecture—becomes a true artistic re-experiencing of the astral in the world. Once one has this artistic experience—in which death, life, soul, and spirit present themselves as in the wheel of life, as one returns from the dead to the dead through the life of the soul and spirit, and in which death, life, soul, and spirit present themselves through light and color, just as I have described—then one knows that one cannot remain within space; one must step out of space, move from space to the plane. There, on the plane, one must solve the riddle of space; one loses the concept of space. Just as a sculptor has lost the thinking of the head, so now one loses the concept of space. Everything surges into one through light and color; one becomes a painter. The source of the pictorial is opened up of its own accord through such a vision. One experiences the great, inner joy of applying this or that color, of placing another color beside it, for the colors then become a living revelation of the living, the dead, the spiritual, and the soulful. Thus, when one overcomes dead thought, one truly reaches the point where one feels immediately driven no longer to speak in words, no longer to think in ideas, nor even to shape in forms, but to render life and death, spirit and soul—as they come into being and live in the world—through color and light.

[ 29 ] You see, in this way artistic creation is in fact inwardly stimulated by what anthroposophical knowledge is, for it gives one back to life and does not take one away from life, as abstract, idealistic-empirical knowledge does. But feel how, with this, we have for the time being remained entirely outside of the human being. We have reached the surface of the human being—his healthy color, the peach blossom hue; or, when he sends too much spirit into the physical body, the pale, white hue; or, when he cannot fill the physical body with his soul—and is thus unhealthy—the greenish hue; but we have always remained on the surface of the human being.

[ 30 ] If we now look into the inner being of the human being, we come to that which, within the human being, stands in opposition to the external structure of the world. We come to that marvelous harmony between the rhythm of breathing and the rhythm of the blood. The rhythm of breathing is transmitted to the nervous movements of the human being. You see, this is something that physiology knows so little about: that the respiratory rhythm—eighteen breaths per minute in a normal person—is transmitted to the nervous system. It is subtly embedded in the nervous system on a soul-spiritual level. The blood rhythm originates in the metabolic system. In a normal adult, it is four times faster than the respiratory rhythm. Four heartbeats correspond to one respiratory rhythm = seventy-two heartbeats per minute. You see, it is such that what lives in the blood—and in the blood lives the “I”-like, the solar aspect of the human being—acts upon the respiratory system and, through it, upon the nervous system.

[ 31 ] Enter into the human being in some way; enter, for example, into the eye, where the blood vessels branch out—they branch out in such a way that they become extraordinarily fine. The pulsation of the blood encounters the nerve currents of the optic nerve, which spreads throughout the eye. It is a wonderfully artistic process that takes place within the bloodstream as it interacts with the optic nerve. The optic nerve moves more slowly—four times slower—a wonderfully artistic interplay between blood circulation and the optic nerve.

[ 32 ] But look at the whole human being; look at the spinal cord, with nerves branching out in all directions; follow the veins, the blood vessels—there is an inner interplay of the entire circulatory system, which is actually implanted in the human being by the sun, upon the nervous system that is given to the human being by the earth. The Greeks perceived this in their uniquely artistic way. They regarded the solar aspect within the human being—that blood-like artistic interplay upon the nervous system—as the god Apollo, and the spinal cord with its wonderfully radiating strings, upon which the circulatory system, the solar aspect, plays, as Apollo’s lyre.

[ 33 ] Just as we encounter the architectural, the sculptural, the artistic in clothing, and the painterly when we approach the human being from the outside world, so too do we encounter the musical, the rhythmic, and the metered when we approach the inner human being and observe the wondrous artistic shaping and activity between the circulatory system and the nervous system.

[ 34 ] Compared to all external music, the music that takes place within the human organism—between the circulatory and nervous systems—is something far, far more sublime. And when the musical then resonates upward into the poetic, we feel how this inner music—which plays out between the blood and the nerves—is in turn released outward through the word. And then we feel, for example, in the hexameter—the Greek verse with its three long syllables followed by a caesura—how the breath moves across the half-hexameter to the caesura, takes in the caesura, and how the blood plays within the breath, inserting the four long syllables. The pulse sets the four syllable lengths within the breath; there you have the half-hexameter. And when we recite the half-hexameter correctly, it is precisely in the recitation of the hexameter that we indicate the measure with which our blood impacts our nervous system.

[ 35 ] When we begin to declaim and recite, we seek to unravel the inner, divine artist within the human being from the outside. I would like to speak about this in more detail in the next lecture. But as you can see, when we penetrate from the outside—from architecture, sculpture, and painting—into the inner being of the human being and arrive at the musical, poetic, and artistic, a living grasp of the world and humanity transforms everywhere into an artistic sensibility and into the inspiration for artistic creation.

[ 36 ] When a person feels that they have been placed in the world and do not fulfill within the earthly realm what is contained in this archetype—your archetype is actually contained in the heavens—this, when perceived artistically, gives rise to the need to create an outward image of this archetype. You see, then the human being himself becomes the instrument that expresses, through himself, the relationship of the human being to the world. The human being becomes a eurythmist. The eurythmist actually says: Everything for which I use the movements of the human limbs here on earth does not fully satisfy the dynamic archetype of the human being. I must have an ideal archetype of the human being, but I must first learn to attune myself to the movements of the ideal human archetype. This movement, in which the human being seeks, as it were, to reproduce spatially the movement of his heavenly archetype, finds expression in eurythmy. Therefore, eurythmy can be neither a mere art of gesture nor a mere dance. It stands midway between dance and the art of gesture—the art of mime—right in the middle. Mimic art, in a sense, exists only to support the spoken word. When a person has something to express in a given context for which words alone are insufficient, they seek to support the word with gesture; this is where mimic art comes in—it expresses the inadequacy of the mere word. Therefore, mimic art is a suggestive gesture.

[ 37 ] The art of dance emerges when words can no longer be considered at all, when the will expresses itself so powerfully that the soul steps outside itself and follows its body, which dictates its movements. That is the exuberant gesture that is the art of dance.

[ 38 ] Thus we can say: facial expressions, the art of facial expression = suggestive gesture; the art of dance = expansive gesture. In between lies the true, visible language of eurythmy, which is neither merely suggestive nor expansive gesture, but expressive gesture—just as the word itself is an expressive gesture, for the word is, after all, merely a gesture of air. When we form a word, we press the air out in a certain gesture. Anyone who can perceive, both sensually and supersensually, what is taking shape as it emerges from the human mouth sees in the air the gestures that are being made—these are the words. If one imitates them, one arrives at eurythmy, which is just as much an expressive, visible gesture as the air gesture in speech is an invisible gesture into which the thought enters, creating ripples within the gesture, and through which the whole can be heard. Eurythmy is the transformation of the air gesture into a visible, expressive gesture of the limbs.

[ 39 ] However, I will have to address these matters—as a supplement to the topic “Anthroposophy and Art”—in my next lecture on “Anthroposophy and Poetry.” All of this will be covered when we discuss anthroposophy and poetry in particular. My main aim today was to suggest how anthroposophical knowledge—in contrast to intellectualistic-materialistic knowledge—does not kill one’s imagination, turning one into a mere commentator on art and thereby burying art, but rather how anthroposophical knowledge causes the imaginative artistic wellspring to gush forth. It transforms the human being into either an artistic connoisseur or an artistic creator, thus truly confirming even today what must be emphasized time and again: that art, religion, and science were once sisters who have merely become estranged, but who, if human beings wish to perceive and feel themselves as whole human beings, must come together again in their sisterly relationship—so that the scholar does not haughtily acknowledge a work of art only when he can comment on it, but otherwise turns away from it dryly—but rather that the scholar says to himself: “That which I can interpret through the gestures of thought leads precisely to the vital need to give it artistic, architectural, sculptural, painterly, musical, or poetic form.”

[ 40 ] Goethe’s words ring true: Art is a form of knowledge—because other forms of knowledge do not provide a complete understanding of the world. Art must first be added to abstract knowledge if a true understanding of the world is to be achieved. It remains true, however, that when such knowledge arises—knowledge that penetrates to the point of creation—it also penetrates so deeply into the human soul that this union of art and science also gives rise to a religious mood. Precisely because this was the aim at the Goetheanum, it was not German friends but rather friends from outside Germany who made the request to name the building in Dornach the “Goetheanum,” for Goethe himself said:

Whoever possesses science and art,
Also possesses religion;
Whoever does not possess those two,
Let him have religion.

[ 41 ] For when true science and true art come together in a living way, they give rise to religious life. Just as religious life need not deny either science or art, but rather strives toward both with all its energy and all the reality of life.