In our time together here I would like to put before you, at least in outline, certain matters relating to the art of recitation and declamation. We will begin by adopting the standpoint of recitation and declamation itself: so that we have, on the one hand the practice, and on the other, considerations of this practice. Our starting-point today will provide us with a foundation for the considerations to occupy us later. We will begin with the Seventh Scene from my first Mystery Play, The Portal of Initiation. This scene takes place, we might say, in the spiritual world. Basically, it presents to us that view on the interconnection of the spiritual, the psychic and the physical world which is revealed by anthroposophically orientated spiritual science. In a certain sense, the Seventh Scene takes place in the spiritual world, but the persons represented there belong as such to the physical world, and are not meant to be symbolic or allegorical figures. They are intended to stand before us in living reality. The four characters – Maria, Philia, Astrid, Luna – represent personalities belonging to the physical world. Yet, as will manifest itself from several points of view in my coming lectures, the consciousness of personalities in the physical world may take such a form that the human being as he is through his ordinary sense-consciousness of objects (the sort of consciousness with which he stands in the physical world) may also stand, with a more highly-awakened consciousness, in the spiritual world.
Human life in its depths is able to bring forth from itself not only the forces of instinct or common intelligence, but also those forces that are inwardly impelled from the soul- and spirit-worlds. And when you aim at a drama that does not just present man one-sidedly as a sense-being, but depicts his full nature, where he demonstrates himself a being who is animated by impulses springing from the world of soul and spirit, you are constrained to add things to the course of the action as played out in the physical world – things which lift the whole action from the physical into the spiritual world. What is portrayed inthe Seventh Scene of my Mystery Play must thus be looked upon absolutely as a representation of spiritual impulses working through the physical human beings. If you present such things, not out of any kind of fantastic or nebulous mysticism, or symbolically, or allegorically, or some similar way, but from genuine experiences of the spiritual world, you have to resort to representations quite different to those you would otherwise have applied in the physical world. In physical life those representations that have to do with the ethical and religious life, possessing a more formless character, an abstract, unrepresentational character, stand apart from those which relate to nature. These other representations have a visual character which gives them clearly-defined contours, etc. If, when you listen, you feel how the contoured word stands out against the more formless, more musically-felt word, you will everywhere notice the transition from the inwardly plastic to the inwardly musical word.
If, however, you need to lead the action up into the spiritual world, you must achieve some degree of synthesis. You must find a way of dissolving the plasticity of the word – yet not so as to lose its plastic qualities; you must bring it so far that at the same time there arises a musical quality. A “plastically-musical” mode of speech must arise. For here the ethical and religious are not divorced from the natural and physical: rather, you have to do with a series of constituents which coincide in a synthesis. And you will hear in this scene, now to be recited, that the presentation derives from a life of inner representation completely different from the one of everyday life or conventional drama. It will be spoken and presented from a life of representation which holds in one both the elemental powers of nature and that which (through the elemental nature-forces) simultaneously possesses a moral, ethical significance. The physical becomes at the same time ethical; and the ethical is brought down into physical pictoriality. In this sphere we cannot differentiate between what takes place physically and what takes place ethically. The ethical takes place in the sphere of physical form, and the physical event takes place in the moral domain. And this requires a very special treatment of speech. In any artistic representation such as this the handling of speech must not derive in the least – and this cannot he otherwise – from thought.
Perhaps I may refer to my own experience in fashioning my Mystery Play. I can say that no thought lives in it; everything you will now hear recited and declaimed was heard, albeit spiritually, exactly as it sounds here. It is not a matter of grasping a thought and then putting it into words, but of beholding what will now be presented to you – and of beholding it in the way it is presented, as inwardly sounding and taking form. In the delineation of such a scene one has nothing to do but write down externally what one has experienced inwardly as a perception.
Thereby results a very special approach to characterising the shaping of the various roles, and you will observe how the four figures, Maria, Philia, Astrid and Luna, differ from one another. The names of the respective characters should not be appended only to show that the contents are to be recited by them. Something quite unique can be heard in what found expression, for example, in Maria, who felt herself in higher perception and an exalted consciousness to be in the midst of ethically-acting forces of nature: and through her feeling of these ethically-acting forces of nature, she was inspired to express this in the way she speaks. It is something which represents an all-awareness of nature, so to speak, insofar as it is ethical – and of ethics insofar as it is already nature.
In Philia we have a personality which, in a certain sense, is irradiated by the powers of love – and yet as a completely human figure. She shows herself a human character, quite simply in that if one is alive to it, one feels pulsating within her all that a personality pervaded by love would say and do when confronted with the feelings, representations, phenomena and images that are realized through Maria. And again: Astrid represents a personality filled with what we might call inner human wisdom – in such a way that inner human wisdom unites itself through inwardness of vision with cosmic activity. And Luna represents what is manifested in a steadfast consciousness as efficacy of will.
These three personalities are not presented as symbols or allegories, any more than Nero is a symbolic representation of cruelty. These three personalities are human beings of flesh and blood, and differ from one another just as human beings in real life differ, for instance, according to their temperaments. They differ so that one personality is wholly vibrant with love, another wholly with wisdom, and another wholly with firmness. And through what reveals itself in the collaboration of the plastic and musical, where a feeling of the ethical-natural and the natural-ethical harmonizes with the human personality, borne by love, illuminated by wisdom and warmed by steadfast strength, there comes into being what can here be presented as a true picture of the spiritual world. Perhaps we may begin with this scene, because in that way it can be shown how, when one creates out of the element of recitation and declamation rather than out of thought, an art of declamation results in a quite direct and elemental kind of way. [Note 1] In this way poetry becomes at once declamation and recitation. And an art of recitation and declamation comes into being through inner perception which one can equally believe to be poetry. This is what we shall consider further when we enter into declamation and recitation.
Frau Dr. Steiner will now recite the Seventh Scene from The Portal of Initiation:
MARIA: Ihr, meine Schwestern, die ihr
So oft mir Helferinnen wart,
Seid mir es auch in dieser Stunde,
Dass ich den Weltenäther
In sich erbeben lasse.
Er soll harmonisch klingen
Und klingend eine Seele
Durchdringen mit Erkenntnis.
Ich kann die Zeichen schauen,
Die uns zur Arbeit lenken.
Es soll sich euer Werk
Mit meinem Werke einen.
Johannes, der Strebende,
Er soll durch unser Schaffen
Zum wahren Sein erhoben werden.
Die Brüder in dem Tempel,
Sie hielten Rat,
Wie sie ihn aus den Tiefen
In lichte Höhen führen sollen.
Von uns erwarten sie,
Dass wir in seiner Seele heben
Die Kraft zum Höhenfluge.
Du, meine Philia, so sauge
Des Lichtes klares Wesen
Aus Raumesweiten,
Erfülle dich mit Klangesreiz
Aus schaffender Seelenmacht,
Dass du mir reichen kannst
Die Gaben, die du sammelst
Aus Geistesgründen.
Ich kann sie weben dann
In den erregenden Sphärenreigen.
Und du auch, Astrid, meines Geistes
Geliebtes Spiegelbild,
Erzeuge Dunkelkraft
Im fliessenden Licht,
Dass es in Farben scheine,
Und gliedre Klangeswesenheit,
Dass webender Weltenstoff
Ertönend lebe.
So kann ich Geistesfühlen
Vertrauen suchendem Menschensinn.
Und du, o starke Luna,
Die du gefestigt im Innern bist,
Dem Lebensmarke gleich,
Das in des Baumes Mitte wächst,
Vereine mit der Schwestern Gaben
Das Abbild deiner Eigenheit,
Dass Wissens Sicherheit
Dem Seelensucher werde.
PHILIA: Ich will erfüllen mich
Mit klarstem Lichtessein
Aus Weltenweiten,
Ich will eratmen mir
Belebenden Klangesstoff
Aus Ätherfernen,
Dass dir, geliebte Schwester,
Das Werk gelingen kann.
ASTRID: Ich will verweben
Erstrahlend Licht
Mit dämpfender Finsternis,
Ich will verdichten
Das Klangesleben.
Es soll erglitzernd klingen,
Es soll erklingend glitzern,
Dass du, geliebte Schwester,
Die Seelenstrahlen lenken kannst.
LUNA: Ich will erwärmen Seelenstoff
Und will erhärten Lebensäther.
Sie sollen sich verdichten,
Sie sollen sich erfühlen,
Und in sich selber seiend
Sich schaffend halten,
Dass du, geliebte Schwester,
Der suchenden Menschenseele
Des Wissens Sicherheit erzeugen kannst.
MARIA: Aus Philias Bereichen
Soll strömen Freudesinn;
Und Nixen Wechselkräfte
Sie mögen öffnen
Der Seele Reizbarkeit,
Dass der Erweckte
Erleben kann
Der Welten Lust,
Der Welten Weh,–
Aus Astrids Weben
Soll werden Liebelust;
Der Sylphen wehend Leben,
Es soll erregen
Der Seele Opfertrieb,
Dass der Geweihte
Erquicken kann
Die Leidbeladenen,
Die Glück Erflehenden.–
Aus Lunas Kraft
Soll strömen Festigkeit.
Der Feuerwesen Macht,
Sie kann erschaffen
Der Seele Sicherheit;
Auf dass der Wissende
Sich finden kann
Im Seelenweben,
Im Weltenleben.
PHILIA: Ich will erbitten von Weltengeistern,
Dass ihres Wesens Licht
Entzücke Seelensinn,
Und ihrer Worte Klang
Beglücke Geistgehör;
Auf dass sich hebe
Der zu Erweckende
Auf Seelenwegen
In Himmelshöhen.
ASTRID: Ich will die Liebesströme,
Die Welt erwarmenden,
Zu Herzen leiten
Dem Geweihten;
Auf dass er bringen kann
Des Himmels Güte
Dem Erdenwirken
Und Weihestimmung
Den Menschenkindern.
LUNA: Ich will von Urgewalten
Erflehen Mut und Kraft
Und sie dem Suchenden
In Herzenstiefen legen;
Auf dass Vertrauen
Zum eignen Selbst
Ihn durch das Leben
Geleiten kann.
Er soll sich sicher
In sich dann selber fühlen.
Er soll von Augenblicken
Die reifen Früchte pflücken
Und Saaten ihnen entlocken
Für Ewigkeiten.
MARIA: Mit euch, ihr Schwestern,
Vereint zu edlem Werk,
Wird mir gelingen,
Was ich ersehne.
Es dringt der Ruf
Des schwer Geprüften
In unsre Lichteswelt.
From The Portal of Initiation, Scene 7:
MARIA: Now, my sisters, at this hour
come once more to me
So have you often done. –
Then I may bid the cosmic ether stir
and ring within itself,
harmoniously resounding,
and sounding, all his soul
pervade and pierce with knowing.
I can discern the signs:
they urge us to our task.
Then let your work
make one with mine:
Johannes – as he strives
shall our creating lift him up
to Being’s truth.
bThe Brethren of the Temple
have conferred
how they might raise him up
from his abyss to light-filled eminence:
and they demand of us
to rouse his laboring soul
to strength and soaring flight.
Ah then, my Philia, come inhale
translucent essences of light from sprawling space:
Be filled with all-alluring sound
from shaping-powers of soul:
Reach to me
the gifts you cull
from the deep spirit’s ground!
And I shall weave them in
amid the stirring dancing of the spheres.
You, Astrid, too –
loved image of my spirit!
you must beget dark’s power
within light’s hurrying flux
till it blaze bright with colour;
articulate sound’s essences
till all the weaving substance of the World
lives to resound.
Then can I trust to groping human sense
the spirit’s felt perception.
You, ah steadfast Luna: you
who rooted far within stand firm
as does the vital tract
hid deep and growing in the tree
conjoin now with your sisters’ gifts
your imprint, your incomparable mark, –
let knowing’s certitude
spring up within this questing soul!
PHILIA: I will be filled with light’s
clear-bright essentiality
from wide world-space;
I will inhale
Sound-substances’ vitality,
ethereally remote:
that you, beloved sister,
may realize the task.
ASTRID: I will be weaving
the rays of light
with dampening, muting dark;
I will thicken
the living sound,
till glistering, how shall it ring,
and ringing, how shall it glister!
that you, beloved sister,
the rays of soul may direct.
LUNA: I will warm the stuff of souls,
the vital-ether densify.
Themselves they shall coagulate,
themselves they shall experience,
and in themselves abiding
guard their shaping-power:
that you, beloved sister,
within man’s questing soul
may foster knowing’s certitude.
MARIA: Philia’s broad horizons
shall brim with joyfulness;
and nymphs’ shape-shifting powers
shall stir the soul
to fluid sensitivity –
so may the sleeper
wake to feel
the world’s rapture,
the world’s recoil.
From Astrid’s weft
shall issue joys of love;
the sighing life of sylphs
shall rouse the soul
to make self-sacrifice –
so may the hallowed
bring to life
all those whom sorrows burden,
all those who joy implore.
Luna’s strength
