The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Fifth Lecture

[ 1 ] Based on what I have already explained, and in part to reinforce those same facts, I would like to begin today by noting that it is precisely in linguistics that the consequences of a materialistic approach are most disheartening—but perhaps also most evident. It cannot be said, of course, that this materialistic approach does not have an even more harmful effect in physics, for example, simply because it goes more unnoticed; but its effects are most disheartening in linguistics, for the reason that it could have been most easily avoided there, and because one could have seen there how the mind and soul actually operate in the genius that shapes language. The task now is to use this insight, which I am hinting at, to approach even earlier periods of language formation by first learning to observe them in more recent times; more recent times, which are even more manageable, in which one can still trace linguistic change in such a way that the transformation in the sensibilities and emotions of the Folk-souls clearly shines through the linguistic change and its metamorphoses. The language of the German people at the time of the minnesang—that is, the period historically known as the Age of Chivalry—is, after all, relatively far in the past; but it is, after all, not so far in the past that one cannot still easily trace certain things through literature and thus gain insight into many shifts in meaning. Admittedly, one does not see much more there than when reading Homer, where those terms—which today strike us as insults—appear, with which the Greek heroes address one another. For we can no longer tolerate calling one another “goat’s stomachs” or “donkeys” today. This points back to a time when a donkey was still held in such high regard that a hero could be called a donkey. The animals—as is clear from the Homeric poems—were by no means imbued with the same emotional nuances in those days as they are today.

[ 2 ] Well, we can gain a little insight into these matters if we look for characteristic examples from a slightly more recent past. For instance, in the Middle Ages we find the saying: “They clung like pitch to their enemies’ ranks.” It seems strange to us today to say of someone who bravely holds his ground in battle, “He clung like pitch,” but this “clinging like pitch” was certainly a valid way of expressing oneself in the era of courtly love.

[ 3 ] And in Wolfram von Eschenbach you will find a characteristic turn of phrase that shows you, first, how much importance was still placed on the visual aspect in those days, and second, how certain subtle nuances of feeling existed for certain events and things—nuances that today make such events and things seem contemptible. So when Wolfram von Eschenbach seriously describes a duchess’s appearance before a male figure, he says: her appearance penetrated the eyes of this figure and, through the eyes, into the heart, like a hellebore through the nose. It is vivid, for the scent of the hellebore flows very vividly—one might say, very noticeably—through the nose; but we would not say that today. From this you can see how the world of feeling has changed, and this transformation of the world of feeling is something one should study if one does not wish to engage in materialistic linguistics.

[ 4 ] As you know, a more recent poet was still able to say of a dignified woman: “She gazed at me like a full moon.” But today, such a figure of speech—which was quite common in the Middle Ages—would no longer be tolerated, even in the broadest sense. If, moved by a similar sentiment, you were to say to a lady, “You look at me like a full moon,” that would no longer be part of acceptable colloquial speech today; in the Middle Ages, however, the moon’s loveliness and gentleness were the dominant themes in the popular imagination. And it was precisely from this perspective that people compared what they loved about a lady’s gaze and expression to the full moon.

[ 5 ] In his Tristan, Gottfried of Strasbourg speaks quite seriously of “glued-together love.” Glued-together love is that which had come apart but has come back together again. He speaks of the wounded clinging to the battlefield. That would seem offensive today. And when even the Middle Ages speak of “a person’s imperial legs” to express dignified posture, or refer to “the imperial maiden Mary,” this essentially reveals to you the transformation of the emotional world.

[ 6 ] I am citing these examples to draw your attention to how this shift in emotional nuances manifests itself in less obvious areas. For instance, in the Middle Ages, people still spoke of a “sick reed.” What is a “sick” reed? Here, “sick” is merely a descriptive adjective for a rather long reed. And it was not so long ago that the word “sick,” when used, meant nothing other than “slender.” If someone had been called “sick” back then, it would have meant that they were a tall, slender person. It did not mean, in today’s sense, that they were ill. If one had wanted to say that, one would have had to say they were “sächtig”—afflicted by an addiction. Back then, being “krank” was synonymous with being “schlank.” Now just imagine what happened! People gradually came to feel that there was something inhuman about a person if they were slender. People have come to believe that it is normal for a person to be a little less than slender. Through this roundabout path, the association between the word “sick” and “being addicted,” or “being abnormally organized,” has emerged. Thus, a word has come to carry a certain emotional nuance that previously belonged to an entirely different emotional nuance.

[ 7 ] But it wasn’t all that long ago that an innkeeper could do good business by touting “miserable” wine. An innkeeper could say—and have it announced throughout the village—“You can find miserable wine here.” “Elend” here is exactly the same word as our “Elend.” You can still find echoes of the old connotation of “Elend” only in the dialect, where certain villages located far out on the border are called “Elend”—the “Elend villages.” For example, in Styria in my day, people would say, “That man is from Elend,” meaning he was from a border town. — And certain villages have retained the name “Elend” to this day. This term has simply moved in from further out; for “elender Wein” meant foreign wine, and “Elend” is the foreign country, so that at least until 1914—when, for example, an innkeeper touted French wines—he would have done good business if he had touted “elende” wines. So here we have a shift in meaning that is already present in the word “krank.”

[ 8 ] Curiously enough, the poet Geiler von Kaisersberg speaks—and if you look it up in his work, it will become clearer—of a “handsome God.” We can no longer really say that today. By this he meant a benevolent God. In the word “häbsch,” we find the emotional nuance from that time that we associate today with the word “benevolent.” You still occasionally come across the expression today—for such things have survived as remnants—: “an unplaned person.” You will understand this phrase when you read in Luther that people are “planed” by the prophets. People are “planed” by the prophets—that is, they are set straight. So here we still have the sensory image of planing combined with the act of setting things right.

[ 9 ] With these examples, we have now gone back a bit further. But let us look at something more specific. Lessing, who is not that far in the past, wanted to express—something that can already be misunderstood today due to his choice of words—that there are many things for which one justifiably develops sympathy, but which cannot be elevated to the realm of the beautiful, and therefore cannot be the subject of art. And he expresses this truth by saying: Much of what is most alluring cannot be the subject of art. When we read this today, we immediately assume that Lessing meant “alluring” in the same way it is understood today; but the context reveals that we would only mean the same thing as he did if we were to say: Much of what is most attractive cannot be the subject of art. - So, here you have a shift in the nuance of feeling, such that what you today describe as “the most attractive” Lessing still described as “the most alluring.” Today, we use that term to refer to something fundamentally different.

[ 10 ] It is interesting to observe the complex ways in which such a shift in meaning actually takes place. Suppose, for example, that the word krank, which used to mean “slender,” could also be applied to a reed; a krank reed is a slender reed, which is therefore less useful than a short, thick reed. Now, the nuance of the word has gradually shifted, so that it gradually took on the modern meaning of “krank”; but today, some of that meaning has already been shed again. For Adelung, who lives halfway between that time and our own, says, for example, that one must repair “kränkte” ships. It seems a bit odd today—or at least makes one realize that the person in question is a joker—when he speaks of a “damaged clock,” for example; but back then, it was perfectly natural to apply the word “krank,” which has since changed in meaning, to inorganic objects as well. You can see from this that “krank” originally had something to do with form, and that only gradually did the modern meaning creep in. But then what had been there before was completely discarded, and the word took on an entirely new meaning, whereas with “kränkten Schiffe” we can still recall the earlier meaning. More and more, the immediate sense of what the words convey has been stripped away. Even in Goethe—and particularly in him, because in many respects he returned to the influence of the language-forming genius—one still finds a clear sense of feeling in words where we no longer clearly sense it. For example, take the word “bitter.” For us today, it has become a term for a purely subjective experience, for a taste sensation. And we no longer usually associate it in our perception with what was vivid in ancient times and from which the word “bitter” is derived: biting. Yet it is connected to biting: what tastes bitter actually bites us. Goethe still senses this and speaks of the “bitter shears of the Fates”—that is precisely the biting shears of the Fates! People today have become so abstract-minded that they say, “Poetic license”—when they come across such a word. But it is not poetic license; rather, it has emerged directly from a full inner experience. Goethe also did not yet live in an age where ninety-nine percent of what is written in verse is superfluous. He felt language—and this is something one must bear in mind when considering many of his works—in a far more inwardly vivid way than any person today can, when they are simply steeped in external education. You can sense this again when you come across Goethe’s words: “I liked Ecce homo because of its pitiful portrayal.” No one today seems to feel otherwise when they speak in such a way as to imply that this is a poor portrayal. Goethe, however, wants to suggest that this portrayal evokes our deepest compassion. We would therefore have to say, quite abstractly: “I liked Ecce Homo because of its portrayal that calls forth compassion.” But Goethe went further and said: “I liked Ecce Homo because of its pitiable portrayal.”

[ 11 ] Even in the not-too-distant past, a person who walked down the street and enjoyed approaching children and poor people to talk with them—someone who was not arrogant and did not put on airs when others sought to show him respect—could be called a despicable person. That was possible right up until the middle of the 18th century. A “vile person”—by the standards of that time—was an affable person: people praised him; from a certain point of view, they bestowed the highest praise upon him. — I do not believe that many people today still attach any real meaning to it when they read in 18th-century writings about a “harmless number.” Today we would simply say: a number that is roughly correct. An approximate number—that’s what was called a “roughly correct number.” —And what would most people think today if they came across the expression “unruly plums,” which was still commonplace in the 18th century? Unruly plums are those plums that do not exhibit the typical characteristics of the species, that are somewhat unusual, that fall outside the norm; those are unruly plums. Only when we develop a sense that such transformations take place do we understand other things whose transformation isn’t so conspicuously written on their foreheads. For example, our modern word “difficult.” You know the nuance of feeling with which it’s used. In the past, it was used only when one was conscious of wanting to say: “full of sores, full of ulcers.” So, when one found something “difficult,” one intended to express the sensation that performing this task causes sores. This is expressed very vividly and vividly, and it is connected to the expression “difficult.”

[ 12 ] Such things—which have fallen completely outside the current nuances of perception and which prove how wrong one is when one approaches language evaluation as a pedant and attempts to draw conclusions without knowing the facts of linguistic metamorphoses—can also manifest themselves in dialect. If you serve someone a multi-course lunch, you might say to them today: “Don’t eat too much of this dish, because there are other dishes coming, and you should save your appetite for them.” Today you might say: “Please, don’t eat too much; there are other good things to come.” — However, there is still a certain region within the German-speaking world where one might say: “Don’t eat too much of this dish; there’s still something to come.” Another dialect offers the possibility of saying: “Oh, those are good, dear children who are at each other’s throats.” This means: they are not out of character; they are good-natured; they are just playfully bickering. It is precisely such an example—as in “those are good-natured children who are fighting”—that points to the vibrant interplay between feeling and external perception in linguistic sensibility.

[ 13 ] This sometimes strikes one as something extraordinarily important. In Goethe’s works, there is a passage in a conversation that he used in later years to characterize his work on Faust. This passage has played an extraordinarily significant role among Faust commentators. Goethe once said, as a very old man, to characterize his work on Faust, that it was indeed something special that for over sixty years the conception of Faust had been clear to him from the very beginning with the youthful clarity of a young man, even if the entire sequence was not yet fully elaborated. Many Faust commentators have concluded from this that Goethe already had a plan for Faust as a young man, that the conception of Faust was clear to him from the very beginning, and that what came later was merely a kind of execution. And much that is unnecessary and untrue regarding the characterization of his work on Faust has stemmed from the interpretation of this passage. This passage can only be properly understood since Fresenius published his findings on the significance Goethe attached to syllabic coherence from the very beginning. This was particularly close to my heart because I worked with Fresenius. Whenever he had something to share, it would take him decades to process it; therefore, I urged him to publish it, because what he had to say on the matter was very important. One can compile the passages in which Goethe used the phrase “from the very beginning”: he never uses it in any sense other than spatially. When he says he read a book “from the very beginning,” it means nothing other than that he read only the first few pages of the book. And so one can clearly demonstrate that he had clearly conceived only the first scenes of Faust during his youth. So here, a correct understanding of the usage of the word simply points to Goethe’s work, and you can see precisely in this usage that what has become abstract for us was viewed spatially by him. He always uses the expression “from the very beginning” in a vivid, spatial way. Thus, a large part of what makes Goethe so appealing is based on his return to the qualities of the original, language-creating genius. And if one seeks to penetrate Goethe’s soul through his language—whereas today’s researchers do so only in a materialistic way—one can also find important clues there for a dematerialization of linguistics. It is good to seek advice on such matters as well.

[ 14 ] For many things, we no longer have the linguistic contexts that express the original connection between nuances of feeling and sound patterns. Dialects still have this sometimes; they also possess the elements that give expression to vivid imagery. For example, you’ll find—less so in written language, but often here and there in dialect—the expression: “to reach under someone’s arm.” This simply means to help someone who is helpless. Why? Because younger people would offer their hand to older people who could no longer walk so briskly, reach under their arm, and support them. This very vivid action has been extended to mean providing help in general. Just as people used to say “wipe the night’s sleep from one’s eyes,” a single concrete action was chosen to represent the act of helping, thereby vividly expressing the more abstract concept. Sometimes, however, the linguistic genius was no longer able to hold on to the concrete image; in such cases, he would occasionally retain the concrete image on the one hand while discarding it on the other. — Even today, you still have the word lauschen for a certain kind of listening. The Austrian dialect also has a word for mere hearing that is still related to this lauschen: losen, and in Austria, you don’t just say to someone you want to listen: “Hör einmal,” but rather “Los amol!” Losen is a weak, active form of lauschen. Educated colloquial speech has retained “lauschen.” “Losen” is the related term that, with its nuanced connotation, indicates a weaker form of activity. In “losen,” one can still sense the stealthiness that manifests itself in hidden listening; and in a certain sense, even “losen” has already crossed over into unauthorized eavesdropping. For example, if someone overhears something through a keyhole, or if someone listens in on a conversation between two people that is not intended for them, then one says that they have “gelost.”

[ 15 ] Only when one has a sense of the emotional quality of such sound systems can one gradually begin to develop a sense for the elementary sounds—the vowels and consonants. For example, in the Austrian dialect there is a word called “Ahnl”; it refers to the grandmother, the “Ahnl.” You’re surely familiar with it, aren’t you? “Ahnfrau” is a somewhat more general term. “Ahnl”—there you have “Ahne” combined with an “l.” It is simply “Ahn” combined with an “l.” To understand what is actually happening linguistically here, you have to elevate your linguistic awareness to perceive this “!” as a consonant. You feel it when you sense the suffix “lich,” which, as I mentioned, originated from “leik.” It has something to do with the sensation that something is moving about—that in language, one must imitate this movement. An “Ahnl” is a person whom one regards as an old woman, but who gives the impression of being an agile old woman: one has to look closely at her face to see the wrinkles. This shows you how characteristically the “!” is used.

[ 16 ] Take the word “fade.” To fade, to disappear so that it is no longer seen; to make something disappear so that it is no longer seen. Now, instead of simply making something disappear so that it is no longer seen, let’s say: I want to cheat a little bit when making it disappear; I want to create something that actually remains, which therefore does not express true, real fading: then I feel the movement—here an “l”—and it becomes “schwindeln.” The “l” has done that, and you can feel exactly what sensory value such an “/” has when you shift from “schwinden” to “schwindeln.” You will come to regard eurythmy as something self-evident when you immerse yourself in such matters. You will feel how eurythmy returns to a primal kinship between the human being and what is contained in the sound system—a kinship that is to be expressed without the sound system, through movement alone. When you feel something like this, you will also be able to sense precisely how, for example, a vowel like # contains something that draws together and unites. Look at the # in eurythmy, and you will see this drawing-together and uniting quality, and then you will say: in “mother” (Mutter), with whom one usually unites, an “a” or an “e” cannot possibly come first. One could not imagine saying “Metter” or “Matter” there. “Mater” simply attests to the fact that it occurs in a language that has already been weakened; originally, it was “Mutter.”

[ 17 ] Through all of this, I have guided you toward the path of linguistic genius, which, as I have said before, created a divide between the sound system and the mental image. Originally, both are intimately connected within subjective human experience; they become separated. The sound realm descends into the subconscious; the realm of ideas ascends into the conscious. And many things that are still perceived where one originally lives in harmony with external facts are thereby cast aside. And if we look back at the development of language, we find the remarkable fact that the original forms of linguistic development lead us entirely into the realm of the factual; that a subtle sense of fact and reality is present at the primitive stages of language formation; that people living at this stage live in intimate communion with what is in things and what takes place within them. The moment this inner connection ceases, the sense of reality becomes clouded, as it were, and people live in an unreal world, which is expressed in language. In the original Indo-European language, as in Latin, there are three genders, just as we still have three genders in German. They are perceived as distinct: masculine, feminine, and neuter. In French, there are only two genders left; in English, there is only a single gender, which testifies to the fact that this is a language that, as a language, has—one might say—magnificently shed its sense of reality, a language that now merely hovers above things but no longer lives within the facts themselves. There was still something elementarily clairvoyant at that stage of human development when the genders were formed for the word; people still sensed something living and spiritual within things. Thus, the forms “the Sun” and “the Moon” could never have arisen in the older forms of the Indo-European languages—which were later merely reversed to “the Sun” and “the Moon”—if one had not perceived the elemental beings living in the Sun and the Moon as brother and sister. In ancient times, people perceived the sun as the brother and the moon as the sister—today, however, the situation has been reversed; the day was perceived as the son and the night as the daughter of the giant Norwi. This was based entirely on a primitive clairvoyant perception. People did not perceive the Earth as today’s geologists do; they, of course, have every reason to use a neuter gender: they should actually say “the Earth.” Modern people no longer sense how the Earth is in fact Gaia, to whom the masculine Uranus is paired. But this perception was still held in the regions where the Germanic language originally emerged as a language-forming force. — Otherwise, it was at least nuances of perception arising from coexistence in the external world that gave rise to gender designations and gender characteristics. Thus, the elephant was perceived as strong, and the mouse as weak. Because men were perceived as strong and women as weak, the elephant was assigned the masculine gender and the mouse the feminine gender. The trees of the forest are mostly feminine because, in the original perception, they were the dwellings and seats of female deities. The fact that a neuter gender exists alongside the masculine and feminine is actually of immense significance, because it points to something very profound in the genius of language. We say: the man, the woman, the child. The child, whose gender is not yet defined—which is not yet final, but is only just becoming. When the neuter gender was established, it arose from that mood within the national genius where people felt that everything designated as neuter is only just becoming something. Gold today does not yet possess the characteristic that will one day be its own. It is still young in the cosmos; it will only become what it is destined to be. That is why we do not say “der Gold” or “die Gold,” but “das Gold.”—One can now, in turn, examine how this plays out when the perspective from which the gender characteristic arose begins to fade. Today we say “die Mitgift,” which clearly proves that it is connected to an earlier word, as is indeed the case: “die Gift.” Today we say “der Abscheu,” which clearly proves—as is indeed the case—that it traces back to a word: “der Scheu.” “Der Scheu,” “die Gift”—these words have changed their emotional nuance. “Gift” was formerly used simply to mean something more like “the indifference of giving.” But because the term—whose meaning had shifted—was applied primarily to what certain people had given and what, in Faust’s view, was harmful to many people, specifically to a gift that was disreputable, the connection to the original gender characteristic was lost, and it became “poison.” And when the original strong feeling that one had—which was called “shyness”—that sense of being grounded within oneself—began to weaken, the word was allowed to become “shyness.”

[ 18 ] The fact that language has become more abstract—that it has become detached from its intertwining with external reality—is best illustrated by the fact that the Indo-European languages, that is, the ancient languages, had eight cases: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, vocative, ablative, locative, and instrumental. This means that one did not merely express the position a thing occupied—as we do today when we use the first, second, third, or fourth case—but was also able to trace other connections to one’s perception. For example: doing something at a specific time—this can be expressed as it is today; one says one does it on this day or on that day, using either the genitive or the accusative. But one no longer perceives the supportive role of the day itself, the time of day, and this particular day; one no longer perceives that what one does, for example, on January 2, 1920, one could not do later—that time is something that supports one, that time is embedded in something that helps one. People felt this in ancient times, and they used the instrumental case hi’ tagu. One would have to say, for example, “through this day,” “by means of this day.” It has become the word today. Today—there is an old instrumental case embedded in it. Similarly, hiu jaru: it has become this year. But the language has gradually shed these other four cases and has retained only four cases. From this you can also see how the language’s capacity for abstraction progresses, and how, when we consider these examples, we can clearly see how abstract thinking—and with it a certain sense of unreality—gradually emerges from the old sense of reality expressed in language.