The History of the Anthroposophical Society 1913–1922

GA 251 — 3 August 1922, Dornach

42. From Thinking to Artistic Experience

The First Goetheanum in the History of Architecture

It is, of course, a matter of the fact that when one looks at something artistically, a great many intuitions or imaginations run in a region that is too sharply contoured when one attempts to describe the unconscious processes — or intuitive tive and imaginative processes — that are, when you realize something, aren't they, exactly the same; the subconscious processes and the imaginative and intuitive processes are the same for the result, for the production, for that which arises. And it is always dangerous to bring these things too much into consciousness through intellectual considerations, because it is very easy to lose sight of the actual field of interest.

I would say: this reflection would have been extraordinarily beautiful if it were a matter of showing how, in a certain sense, certain formations of the human being in different fields go hand in hand in the development of humanity. Let me give an example: the archetypally significant thing for the content of this examination of the cross is that, from the perspective of world history, analytical geometry first considers the coordinates, that is, the transformation of the old Euclidean geometry, which worked directly with intuition, into constructions with the cross: we have to trace it back to a very specific developmental force in human development. In the time of Descartes, this tendency to introduce the cross into mathematics arose through Descartes himself. Now we can – and this is what you also wanted to say – not, in fact, parallelize the emergence of the cross shape [...] in architecture. I think this parallelism is what you wanted to point out?

Isn't it true that if we now understand this in such a way that in the course of human development certain links or elements, let us say, within human nature are detached from the whole of human nature, then such parallel phenomena are extraordinarily significant.

We can say: If we go far back in human development, we find man more as a whole and he also feels more as a whole. The further we come up, the more we find that individual elements of human nature are at work as what man then feels within himself. Then the purest feelings can arise, which then together make up the human being.

If we have to assume that the invention of analytical geometry is based on a very specific use in our physical nervous system, the use of organs in our physical nervous system that were not used separately before, then the emergence of this analytical geometry, built on the cross, is an external symptom, proof that man has grasped certain inner parts of his being. Then he can just as well grasp others at the same time, and a specialization arises in what he will bring forth.

In this way we come to what is probably ever more interesting and ever more interesting. And that is what the lecture offered: the prospect of an interesting and ever more interesting psychology, historical psychology in the development of the human soul. Such things, grasping the matter much less inwardly, are also taken up by Spengler in his book, for example. It is certainly right that we can view the development of the human soul in this way.

On the other hand, with regard to the actual study of art, art history, we are too distracted from the artistic grasp when we bring up the other parallel phenomena. In this respect, one thing was extraordinarily interesting about the lecture: the explanation of the relationship between the shape of the cross and the two-dome shape, namely to the intersection of the two circles here at the Goetheanum. That is something that can actually be said. But then it is perhaps necessary to lead back into the artistic again.

Because in fact, it seems to me – I don't want to talk in a very abstract and intellectual way here, because one doesn't like to do that when one has done something artistically – but it seems to me that when we go up from older times, say Egyptian, especially also Near Eastern , that we then pass from an eminently artistic form — even if we still take the Greek —, from an eminently artistic form through a less artistic one, when we come up to the Gothic and to the forms that go hand in hand with the use of the cross shape in mathematics. We come to something less artistic because, basically, we are entering into something more mathematical.

If you take the intersection of these two lines and then the intersection of the circles, mathematically, in one direction, that is basically what falls under one and the same category. Because, taken synthetically, the straight line is a structure that does not have two ends, but a single endpoint. Whether I go here or here (right, left), I always come to the same endpoint. So I can say that if I follow the line here, I have a closed line, because it closes, the line; only the closing is stretched out to infinity. This line closes just as well. And in reality, in the shape of the cross, I still have the intersection of two circles, correctly the intersection of two circles, only these two circles have been distorted into the abstract, namely into straight lines – the straight line is flattening out compared to the round – these two circles have been distorted into flattening. The whole formation, understood artistically, has been blown up into the boundless. But by fading into the boundless, the artistic is driven out to a certain degree.

You can therefore use these two intersecting straight lines as an axis of coordinates (arrow). If you use them as an axis of coordinates, you get coordinates that give a curve. That is, from the abstract of the coordinate axis system you get the concrete, the vivid, the immediately vivid of the curve, where you can begin to feel the matter.

Here you have to think, and it is not at all easy for you to understand that a straight line – to put it synthetically – only has one end point, not two. With a curve, you will feel that a circle has a different equation in the coordinate system than an ellipse. The ellipse has a different equation than a hyperbola, and the hyperbola has a different equation than a parabola. And you will now feel when you are shown that – let us say here a hyperbola branch is on a design, then this has developed in the artistic from an essentially abstract one, which has passed over to the concrete. Art is thus, as it were, led to the concrete as if by an inner compulsion. Everywhere we see that if we are to feel something, we must be pushed towards the concrete.

Now, if you think that I look at these two circles that intersect as a coordinate axis and construct the corresponding coordinates for myself, then I would already get in the coordinates what I have to treat in any case, as I am already treating in the coordinates, that is, I allow the same treatment to occur that I allow to occur when I come to the figure. So I have coordinate figures. Here, for example, I have circles – I could just as easily have ellipses if I wanted something different – so I have figures that have already been transformed into concrete figures. So I am already starting from what is there as concrete figures, and let that be my starting point. What will be next? What will be the result if I relate to my figures in the same way as to a coordinate axis – if you expand the word axis, you can of course only do that – if I relate to the figures as a coordinate axis in the same way as I relate to the cross as a coordinate axis here. What will come out of that?

With the cross I get a figural coordinate axis – a figural cross, that is, a figural coordinate. If you follow it further, it leads directly into spiritual life itself. So if you follow this argument consistently, in the same sense that we go from the cross extending into infinity to the merely figural, which recreates life, you must absolutely go further and enter into life itself. That is to say, what is being striven for above all at the Goetheanum is that which, through Gothic and Baroque and Rococo, strove out into the more indeterminate, into the more intangible, that this in turn is summarized in the directly experienceable, that everything is summarized in the experienceable. And with that one can then come across into the qualitative.

And when you get into the qualitative, then of course you have to conclude exactly as the esteemed previous speaker had to conclude. You can then become aware that in the further development of architecture, it must actually be a matter of overcoming the crucifix, Christ on the cross, the dead Christ, through the Risen Christ, through the Christ who has been led back to life. And if we can accomplish this in architecture, then the mission of humanity in the future is actually the one that truly encompasses the whole meaning of the earth: to come from the crucifix, from the dead Christ, to the resurrected one, that is, to the one who appears again as revived or as revived reappearing - better said, to the one who has risen. We can only do that if we, like the speaker, have the experience that arises from total feeling, but we can only have this experience in architecture if we have the total feeling.

Now, however, you could describe the wide stream, I would say. The facts are much more concrete than the esteemed speaker suggested. Perhaps some of you here today remember a lecture I gave here a long time ago, in which I pointed out how certain Near Eastern pre-Greek buildings can only be understood if they are seen as representing people lying on the ground and raising themselves up with their heads – naturally translated into the architectural – certain Near Eastern buildings.

If we then go further up, as man stands up more and more, as he rises, stands up from lying - that which actually comes to the fore in the architectural form that has been particularly characterized today - we have not yet fully , the human being who has not yet fully risen, but who also asserts himself outwardly, as is still the case in particular with the Rococo and Baroque, where one does not merely show the human being's forms, but almost as if he were wearing clothes. This is just a little more artistically conceived. Now, my point is this: if we look at the Orient, we can see everywhere how the idea of building has actually emerged from an intuitive understanding of the human form.

Now, however, imagine, when you look at such forms – parallel forms, hyperbolic forms, elliptical forms – the building forms from the period that has been characterized today, then you must have the feeling: you are looking at them, it is a figure that you are looking at, traceable to the cross-shaped figure that you are looking at. Here the cross is, or rather, it is not there. Mathematically speaking, it is more correct to say: it is not there. The ellipse is there, and to the ellipse I then add the cross and then find the equation of the EIl here. So the ellipse is what matters. I have to add the cross. What I look at is the figurative, the reproduction of the living.

Now please follow me in the next step: cross, reproduction of the living, figurative; I have to look at it. Figurative has meaning only when I look at it. If I then want to think it, I can trace it back to the cross. But now think: instead of the cross, I have the two intersecting circles. These are now my complicated coordinate axes. If I now want to move on to what corresponds to the figurative, what is that?

You can only imagine this in concrete terms, just as you can imagine the mathematical process of drawing up a coordinate system and making a figure here, looking at the figure and thinking in terms of the coordinate system – in the same way, you can go over to the construction site, imagine yourself as a living person in this coordinate system, and the figure is yourself.

What arises is you with your feelings, you with your soul. There is the most intimate interpenetration of what is built and what can be experienced. Now you have complete possibility, the congruence between forms of world view and what you experience inside, as with the human body and the human soul. The human body is also configured in all its parts to the soul, just as a coordinate system is configured to the figures. And so it is there with the coordinate system and the human being. So that you have here, in a very lively presentation, achieved that which otherwise has to be constructed must be experienced. And when it is experienced, then the human being stands in this coordinate system with what he experiences in it. In short, the one who stands in this Goetheanum, together with the Goetheanum, represents soul and body, very organically within, without having to interpret it or anything like that.

If you continue your meditation, you can go back to the Gothic style. I have often said that a Gothic cathedral is not complete when it is empty. It is only complete when the community is inside it – just as a Greek temple is only complete when the god is inside it, or at least an image of the god.

The Gothic cathedral, which has the shape of a cross – and Gothic cathedrals always tend to take the shape of a cross; you have that inside the Gothic cathedral – it is the cross, the shape of a cross; the cathedral itself is built on that. The congregation is inside it. The cross extends into infinity on all sides, into the immeasurable. It corresponds to that time in which the idea of God led into the immeasurable, where one wanted to seek God only in the expanses.

Now we bring God into a house where he can really live so vividly that man can partake of him. So at the same time, you can also carry out the internalization of the idea of God in this progression of architecture.

Now, I don't attach any importance to the individual contents that I have said, but more to the way in which I have now presented them: The whole matter, again, transferred from the constructive, more intellectual, to the artistically rounded, where one must point out that in the transition to the artistic, everything always leads directly into life, and one constantly wants to move from the concept - I would say - into drawing and painting itself. Even when talking, one would much rather not talk, and above all not think, but one would like to draw and paint and point to the living.

So that is what I actually meant. It is extremely interesting when one starts from such considerations.

Now, I believe that not only in a historical sense was it very beautiful, as the lecturer pointed out, that architecture must see a certain perspective before it, but it is also important that we train our thoughts, which follow the development of humanity, more and more in such a way that they turn from thoughts into living spirit, so that we get beyond abstract thinking to the living spirit within us. For we as humanity have now thought long enough. We must learn to experience spiritually again.

It shouldn't be just any criticism, but only a small addition.