The Art Of Recitation And Declamation

GA 281 — 16 February 1915, Stuttgart

Friedrich Lienhard Matinée

Today we have the great and heartfelt joy of being able to immerse ourselves in the impressions of Friedrich Lienhard's poetic creation. On such a dear occasion for us, it should always be pointed out how we feel most gratefully when the opportunity arises for what the true poet brings up from the spiritual home fields, which are also our home fields, to resonate with the striving that fills our hearts. And we must always emphasize how happy and deeply satisfied we must feel when the true poet brings into our circles what the spiritual power, to which we also profess to belong, as its favorite, inspires in the heart and soul. And we will find ourselves filled with such true inspiration when we turn our spiritual ear to Friedrich Lienhard's creations. We may feel a close kinship with his poetic soul in particular, which draws inspiration from two sources that are so close to us, so very close to us. How many of Lienhard's creations reflect what the most diverse, manifold spirits of the natural world in Alsace whisper, rustle, lisp, and let us hear in the human heart. It may be said that in the course of spiritual development, precisely within this occult current, there will be more and more those who are just a grateful audience for what comes from such a place.

It is a complete misunderstanding to believe that inspiration from the spiritual world, as can be felt by the poet Lienhard, merely pours into the content of the artistic and distracts from the actual artistic form. That is not the case. In truth, one feels much more how the words are carried to spiritual heights and how, in the carrying itself, the most artistic things also unfold in form, when the bearers of the word, when the bearers of the other means of art, are the true masters of spiritual reality. It is this sense of being borne by the true spirit of spiritual reality that is so wonderfully what greets us in Friedrich Lienhard's poetry.

The second source, which is also so close to us, is that the poet has found his way to those sources of spiritual inspiration that flow from the ancient traditions of Germanic prehistory, in which ancient wisdom still resonates and murmurs in such a magnificent way. It is truly as if, at times, something of that mood, of that artistic mood of ancient German times, could be felt in Lienhard's larger poems, which has actually been so thoroughly dispelled that even Wilhelm Jordan's poetry could not conjure it up again. It often seemed to me as if I heard something reverberating from the very poems of Friedrich Lienhard, something that was so vivid in my mind as in the old days when alliterations were still alive, these alliterations that in those times carried the words so that there were words that lived in every soul. The poet then struck up a note, and the congregation echoed in alliteration what the poet had struck up and what the singer brought to a close. When the singer struck up a note, the listeners joined in. This formed the bond of souls for the people. And this is basically echoed in all the congregational singing, which shows a faint echo of what was also done in the mysteries. And so we must be grateful when a poet wants to go back to this source in the most genuine sense possible. A poet who, especially in our time, knew how to emphasize the seriousness of art in such a wonderful way through his connection with the fateful days we are living through.

I would like many of us to read Friedrich Lienhard's writings, his poems, especially “Germany's European Mission,” in which so much warmth lives in relation to the conception of what is , in which so much of the great impulses lives, to which we must rise if we want to live as confessors of spiritual science in the right sense with what pulses through our time. And no less will the soul find uplift when it hears the words of a genuine poet, who has grown together in his heart with Germany's Westmark, in his writing “The German Alsace,” in which he has found such beautiful words about the connection between the German Westmark and the entire German essence.

We will first have the joy of hearing some grateful poems from Friedrich Lienhard himself, taken from the yet-to-be-published collection dedicated to serving our time. We will be able to hear them gratefully, because we will hear a foreshadowing of what may already stand before our souls like a state of the future, a future full of vibrancy. For it may perhaps also be seen as a greeting for what Friedrich Lienhard will now give us when it is mentioned how we feel that in our time there is much, much more poetic material that will emerge, will well up, once a different mood has developed from that tragic mood that must now fill us in view of the fact that for the time being the difficult and often cruel deeds must speak, a different mood will have developed, where the feeling of pain must express artistically much of what now passes by our souls, but which will certainly offer our poets, in a similar way to the poets of the past, much to artistically shape. A picture stands before me, which I believe must contain much inspiration for the future, and which will express more clearly than many other things that are already clearly seen, what lives in the present. Many, many profound impressions could be gained in our time. For me, one impression outweighed many others, an impression that I had in the first days of August. When one looked up at the German Reichstag and its assembled parties with their party leaders – it seems prosaic, but in the midst of the prose the impression is transformed into a poetic image – and then turned one's gaze back to the east, where another assembly was taking place, the Duma assembly. If you don't just take what was going on there, but take the mood that spread like an aura over it, well, it is difficult even today to put this mood into words. Turning our gaze to the German Reichstag: what prevailed like a herald that precedes future deeds? Silence. Silence of the parties. The mood that arises from this silence, truly, in comparison to the other, which arises when we consider in detail what took place almost at the same time as the convocation of the Duma, it must appear to us, because so much, so infinitely much was said from all sides, next to the silent herald - I I say it truly, not with scorn, not with irony, I felt sorrow rising in my heart as I envisioned the image of what took place in the Duma in August - the image that resembles a carnival figure hung with all sorts of tinsel from phrases - which were indeed uttered in a frenzy of enthusiasm. I know I am capable of any objectivity, yet I must present these two images, because they present themselves to my soul. And an art will flourish that knows what it must discuss from these images.

We will gratefully listen to the beginning of the poem, which is intended as a song by Friedrich Lienhard, in which is artistically shaped that which weaves through our time and lives karmically. And then, after we have received this, we will be able to delve further into older, but ever-young creations by this artist, this poet, who wanted to direct his paths to us.

But what we feel, my dear friends, is that there is a particularly grateful audience in the souls that have taken up spiritual science, precisely for the kind of poetry that Friedrich Lienhard brings to humanity.

With these thoughts in mind, we greet Friedrich Lienhard, the poet whom we love so much, whom we hold so dearly in our hearts, and whom we revere as a human being.

Friedrich Lienhard presents his poetry.