The Art Of Recitation And Declamation

GA 281 — 24 November 1913, Stuttgart

Speech for Christian Morgenstern I

You will allow me to precede the recitation of poems by our most esteemed and beloved member Christian Morgenstern with a few words. On such an occasion, I would like to speak differently than I usually have to speak before you. Otherwise, when I speak, I feel obliged not to touch on personal matters and to let our spiritual-scientific worldview speak. This time, however, I may speak to you as I need to speak when I am not bound by such an obligation. I may speak to you very personally on such an occasion.

I would like to see the souls of our dear friends in a kind of festive adornment on such an occasion, because it seems to me that this is an occasion when we can and may feel something directly human about the value and truth of this our spiritual movement in a certain respect. But we can also know something of the value and truth of our spiritual movement through the fact that we give the reasons and the good evidence for this spiritual-scientific world view. But these are things that everyone must do for themselves, if we understand each other correctly, quite regardless of whether they agree with this or that point of view in our world view or not. But there are other proofs. There are proofs that can speak to our hearts. Let me say it plainly and simply: that this evidence of our worldview can exist quite well. But this plain speaking is meant very warmly. It is the word that gives our worldview some of its inner truth by saying: poets also come to us. And he will understand me best at this moment who, as deeply as it can be felt towards Christian Morgenstern, feels the word: Poets also come to us - especially with regard to the inner truth and the clarification of that which may be the core of our spiritual-scientific worldview.

There are experiences of the human heart that, as far as one looks around in all the worlds of the natural, human and divine, are only right when they are experienced at the side of the soul of the poet. And to feel this is to truly experience what the poet is to earthly life. And there are moments when the poet can give the human soul something everlasting.

As I said, I would like to speak only of a few symptomatic, very personal things, just because in this way we may prepare ourselves for that adornment of the soul that I would so much like to see, when something like Christian Morgenstern's poetry descends on the soul in the leisurely moments that one has. Then one feels something of what I have just hinted at.

For me personally, there has been something very special in connection with these poems in the last few days. I read a few pages that our dear member Christian Morgenstern wrote, and I may confess – perhaps Christian Morgenstern himself will not be offended if I take a few minutes to do so before reciting – , that reading some of the unpretentious, simple words that appeared as “Autobiographical Notes” in the publishing house almanac Piper, Munich, is one of those moments of rare joy, of very inner joy. I may speak personally. One feels, precisely through the touches of Christian Morgenstern's love-awakening community soul with another, immersed in regions where, with this soul, one finds oneself alone but surrounded by the world's powers when reading something like the opening words to the autobiographical note. You feel as if you were being blown towards something strange and mysterious when someone says something like that. Perhaps it will seem strange to some that I am saying this here, but it is so.

“The year 1901 saw me through Paul de Lagarde's ‘German Writings’. He seemed to me – Wagner was estranged from me then through Nietzsche – as the second decisive German of the last decades, to which it might also agree that his entire nation had gone its way without him.”

If you are prepared to take on board an independent characteristic of the poet, then you will be able to draw a lot from such beautiful, seemingly unassuming words.

I would like to suggest this in order to be able to say that in Christian Morgenstern's poetry, something can be felt that I think leads to regions that a human soul can only enter in two ways: either as a creator, or at the side of the soul of a creator. Otherwise, these regions of human feeling and experience, which can be found where poems like “The Star” or many wonderfully beautiful landscape pictures in Christian Morgenstern's work were created, are closed to one. Otherwise, the path to this region is closed.

And the second word that I would like to express, where we get a deeper impression of life, is the word that truly reveals to us what each person is as an individual. There is something in the world for each of us that stands before us as a poet-individual, which is a sanctuary that no other person but only he himself can enter. For the gods have created for each such soul a lonely, isolated place in the vast universe, from which the others are excluded if the person in question does not approach them in such a way that he leads them to his sanctuary, if he does not take them by the hand spiritually and lead them there. That one can feel something of creation, of the inner soul creation that the poet wants to bring into the world, that is what I would like to have expressed to you with these words.

It is not for me to speak about the poems themselves, some of which date from earlier times and some of which were created in recent times, because there is a feeling that tells us: when it comes to poems, in some respects it is not permitted to approach them with words, but only with those depths of the soul, where words no longer speak. These are such depths of the soul. That is something of what I would like to see felt.

And since I am speaking to you personally in these minutes, please allow me to make this comment as well. I have often had the feeling that within our movement there are those who, for one reason or another, have the impulse to please someone. It will always give me personal pleasure when many souls, who have delved into our movement through what our movement can achieve in this area, are able to turn to the right, true, beautiful reception of Morgenstern's poetry. And if I am to speak of a joy that one or the other of you personally wants to give me, then he can actually give it to me best by finding himself ready to penetrate with understanding into something of the kind that we would now like to give you some good samples of. These are the things that allow one to feel personally connected to our movement, and to step out of character for a moment, so to speak, and speak intimately and personally of one's joy, including the fact that among the greatest of these joys is that we have poets like Christian Morgenstern among us, in our midst. The best I can give you is not an introduction to someone who can speak for himself. But what I would like is for joy, much joy, to flow from my soul into yours, my dear friends, so that many of you will feel with me what I myself feel so gladly and will always feel. May our dear friend Christian Morgenstern bestow upon us many, many of the poetic creations that accumulate in his soul. We wish with all our hearts that we may experience much of what he still has to give us, and that we may always find the mood to receive much of it.

With that, I wanted to greet you with a few words about what is to be given to you in the recitation.

The recitation by Marie Steiner followed. The order is not known.