The Art Of Recitation And Declamation

GA 281 — 31 December 1913, Leipzig

Speech for Christian Morgenstern II

Today, as one year ends its cycle and a new one begins, before I move on to my lecture, we want to reflect on something that, when I follow the feelings of my own heart, I can say is suitable for putting us in the right, loving festive mood.

During the last lecture cycle in Stuttgart, we were able to introduce a number of our friends to the poetry of Christian Morgenstern, who is with us today, to our great satisfaction. And today, Miss von Sivers will present some of the new poems by our esteemed friend, some of the poems that have not yet been printed, but whose publication we are looking forward to with deep satisfaction in the near future.

If I may first express in a few words what I myself feel about these poems, I would like to say to you that the fact that we are able to get to know Christian Morgenstern's poems as those of one of our dear members is one of the very special joys and satisfactions that I find in the field of our work for a spiritual worldview of the present day. I would like to say that one of the highest proofs of the inner core of truth and the truth value of what we seek with our soul is that we see, springing from the spiritual soil we are trying to enter, the poems of Christian Morgenstern, which are of such depth of heart and height of mind.

I have sometimes heard it said by this person or that, and also by some close friends, that life in the kind of ideas through which we seek access to the spiritual worlds can have a cooling and paralyzing effect on the development of poetic power and poetic imagination. And sometimes I could detect something like fear in those who do not want their poetic power to be damaged by a connection with the spiritual life that we seek with our souls. That the most beautiful, most delicate, noblest, truest poetry can be of the same mind and the same driving force as what we seek ourselves, is evidenced by the poetry of Christian Morgenstern. However, for poetry, true poetry, genuine artistic spirit to prevail in the spheres of intellectual life that we are trying to penetrate, it is necessary that the warmth of the heart, which is imbued with the intimacy of the intellectual life, as it could pulsate through our time, rises to that creative imagination that wants to be illuminated by the power of the intellectual life. And this is, in my feeling, in my feeling, the case with the poetry of Christian Morgenstern. Especially when I let such poetry, as you will hear it later, take effect on my soul, then I cannot help but put into words what I experience through it, which I would like to express in anthroposophical form.

When I let such a poem work on my soul in peace, I have something else in addition to this poem, something that every true, real art has as well. I would like to say the word: these poems have an aura! They are imbued with a spirit that permeates and interweaves with them, that radiates from them, that gives them their innermost power, and that can radiate from them into our own soul. And allowing me to express my own spiritual situation in relation to these poems, I would like to say: We often hear the saying, which is certainly true: If you want to understand the poet, you must go to the poet's country! Today, in relation to the poems of our friend, I would like to turn this saying around in a certain way: If you want to understand a country properly, you must have an ear for its poets! For no other country do I find this more necessary than for the spiritual country. When poets speak in the spiritual country, let us listen to them. Only when we allow not only the more or less scientific content of the spiritual country to penetrate our hearts, but when we understand the poet in the spiritual country, only then have we prepared our soul for the spiritual country. This is the mood in which I would like your souls to receive these poems, just as the mood in which I was privileged to receive Christian Morgenstern's poems was something blissful for me in the face of the inner strength of the soul that leads to the spiritual realms.

And in this context, I would like to express two hopes today: the first is that many of you may be inspired to get to know the true poetic soul in his various works, of which we will hear a few samples afterwards. It will always be a satisfying realization for me to know that many of our friends are drawn to Christian Morgenstern's poetry.

The other wish is that our friend may continue to be as creatively active as he was in the poems we are expecting to see published, and from which we will now hear a few samples, for our profound satisfaction and artistic uplift.

This was followed by Marie Steiner's recitation. The order is not known.