48. Albert Steffen: The Quadruped

There is no moment when one is not in the most excited suspense while reading Albert Steffen's drama “The Quadruped”. The tension has its nuances, but it is always there.

For those who approach drama artistically, the tension does not arise from the external plot in the naturalistic sense. It comes from a higher spirituality that permeates the entire drama. It touches on the unfolding of the secrets of the human soul, which cuts deep into the heart of anyone to whom they are presented in the way Albert Steffen does.

Albert Steffen is the most earnest artistic seeker of these secrets. But he is also their born connoisseur. He shapes them as an artist by allowing his own essence to prevail in the dramatic action that life gives him, an essence that does not live where the action takes place, but in a more spiritual world, which, however, is directly adjacent to the ordinary world everywhere. In this more spiritual world, people are rooted with their souls. If you do not see this world of “soul roots,” then what people accomplish in the life between birth and death basically remains an incomprehensible activity.

When people meet Albert Steffen, they get the impression that it is second nature to his soul to look into this hidden world when they meet him. He does not just take what people say at face value. For him, everything spoken is, in addition to “expressing” something, still a gesture of the soul, a movement of the spirit. If a person expresses what he thinks, feels and wills through what he says, then his speech reveals what he is, as a being that is spiritually inspired and filled with spirit. And Albert Steffen understands not only human speech in this way, but everything through which a person reveals himself.

And so what the characters in the drama do appears against the background of a spiritual world in which this action has its roots. It remains incomprehensible to the ordinary mind; and it is raised into a world in which the question of such comprehensibility loses all meaning, because in this world one does not “understand” but “behold”.

It is against this background that the “four-legged creature” appears. The being into which ancient dream-knowledge has placed the origin of man. The bull, which in its organization is close to the forces of the earth. Not to the actually earthly forces, but to those which the earth, as part of the cosmos, lays claim to for itself. — The lion, which is less earthy in its organization. In its entire structure, it is emancipated from the earthly, like the human soul itself. It is in the flesh what the soul is in a soul-like way. - The eagle, which represents the human “I” in its corporeality. What is spiritually revealed in the “I” is material in the eagle. But because the spirituality in its nature cannot be directly represented materially, the physicality appears dried up and horny in the formation of the head, plumage, feet and so on. These three beings, seen as spirit forms, work together and yet are independent again in a spiritual world that directly borders on the physical world of man. Their interaction conveys a fourth entity, which is to be understood as a kind of angel.

When the spiritual gaze turns to this “Quadruped”, it simultaneously sees the world's time before there were humans and before there were animals in their present form. There were beings of the same kind as the “Quadruped”. They had no physical existence; they lived in a spiritual-ethereal form of existence. From this form of existence, man developed upwards, the animal downwards. They look over from the most distant past, the Quadruped animals. They were there before man and physical animals came into being. But they are still there. They have not yet died out. They have only changed their inner form. They have become even more spiritual than they were. This has made them very far removed from the animal world. All the closer to the human. Behind this is the 'Quadruped'. Through the course of the world, the physical body has attained its present form. It has reached human stature. It cannot be essentially changed by misconduct or aberration. But the soul can. It can be seized at any time by the “Quadruped” and transformed into something subhuman. Then the person develops instinctual impulses that are inferior to those of animals because they are borne by the higher humanity that has been cultivated.

This “Quadruped”, magnificent, as a sphinx, created by the unerring ancient dream-knowledge; it stands again as a truth before the scientific demands of today's researcher of the spiritual world. But it also stands before the artistic human being who really gets life into the creative imagination. Albert Steffen is this artistic person, with a fantasy that, radiating brightness of its own, finds the reflection of true spirituality in poetic creation and brings it to life.

In his drama, the “Quadruped” is just as much an “active person” as the others who live in the physical body; but it does not appear as a “symbolic entity”, as a “spirit” or the like. You cannot see it in the physical world because it does not have the conditions to be seen there. But it is always there when the state of mind of the “acting persons” takes on a form through which the supersensible world, immediately adjacent to the ordinary one, can be perceived.

And in the perception of the state of mind of his dramatic persons in this direction, Albert Steffen is a master. He feels with absolute certainty for a person: now there is a feeling, a passion, a will in him that breaks through the thin walls of the spiritual world and causes spiritual events to appear behind the physical.

Thus the “Quadruped”, in the usual sense “invisible”, is nevertheless, in keeping with the nature of its own activity, an active person in Steffens' drama.

The two main characters are: Großmann, a human monster, and Christine, an angel of good will, but justified only in relation to the spiritual world. For her will must break at the conditions of the physical world.

Behind Großmann rules the “Quadruped”. Intellectually, he is a well-educated person. But everything that lives in his soul and can be experienced by him is subhuman. Christine, under the influence of the “Quadruped”, falls in love with this subhuman. Brutality is almost the first thing he shows towards her ever tender love. This does not prevent her in her love. Yes, it strengthens her in it. When she recognizes him as “evil”, she wants to release him from “evil” through the power of her love. Just as he seems to have fallen prey to “evil” for this physical world, so she is incapable of being dragged into “evil” by the nature of her soul. For in her lives just as much as the “Quadruped” from one side, so does “Christ” from the other. And Christ is the essence that transforms the influence of the “four-beast” so that it is not something subhuman that comes into effect in the human being, but something that lifts the soul above what the human being can otherwise reveal through physical descent, education, social context, etc.

Christine's father, Professor Sibelius, lives off the fortune that actually belongs to Christine. Her mother had a marriage with the professor that was arranged by fate but did not bring her happiness, and she left her physical existence mentally destroyed. Christine feels fully justified in leading her father to give Großmann part of the fortune that actually belongs to her, so that the man she wants to redeem in love can do something business-related with his great talent. Then, she feels, the rest will fall into place in the right way. Through the influence of her Christ-devoted heart, Großmann will be led up the path of genuine humanity.

It is achieved that Großmann can have an interview with Sibelius. Despite the fact that Sibelius has the strongest antipathy towards his daughter's fiancé, despite the fact that he must consider him to be a very bad person based on what he has heard about Großmann from others, it comes about that he gives him money at the end of the interview.

But the further consequence is that during this first visit, Grossmann prepares for the second visit, which takes place that same evening, during which he shoots the father in order to take possession of Christine's entire fortune.

In the man whom Christine wants to lead up the paths of good humanity through her love, she must see the murderer of her father. She only feels that he must experience this case in the inner life of a murderer; and his soul would rise precisely through this from the deep ruin in which it is interwoven.

Großmann, through his subhuman impulses, has such an effect on the police officers pursuing him that, instead of arresting him as the murderer, they apologize to him for the disturbance they caused by appearing at his home after the murder.

And Großmann has already managed, while this is happening, to divert all suspicion of the murder onto Christine herself. She is arrested as the murderer on his say-so.

Christine has also been following her Christ-devoted path since the murder. The depth of her experience leads her mind, which has become clairvoyant, in spirit to the place on earth where Christ's grave is still today, and where Christ still “rises” today for everyone who, by taking him into their heart, performs Christ's deeds in the world.

This is where Christina's soul comes together; this is also where the soul of the murdered Sibelius comes together. Through the resurrected Christ, the power to transform Großmann's soul is to be found.

What Albert Steffen presents here in the most vivid drama is of unspeakable depth. The ascent of the father's soul in understanding the spiritual world; the terrible struggle of what the beast with four legs can do in the human being, with the true, thoroughly Christianized humanity before the soul's eye of Christina; all of this breathes true spirituality and allows one to touchingly feel the connection of humanity with this spirituality.

And while Christine is doing her best to save Großmann's soul, which she can no longer save as an earthly man, Großmann's bicycle whizzes by. He is making off with everything he has brought with him. Sitting behind on the bike is the chambermaid from the hotel where Großmann was staying, who he persuaded to go with him after he had already brought her there, to help him divert the police's suspicions away from him.

Christine now has to go through everything that a daughter can face who is suspected of being her father's murderer and who, moreover, makes an incomprehensible impression on the doctor, prison director and prison chaplain due to her particular state of mind and her connection to the spiritual world.

The plot is resolved in terms of life on earth by Grossmann's descent into the realm of subhumanity. His jealousy of the hotel chambermaid has led him to maltreat her in the truest sense of the word. She is delivered to the hospital with the skin peeled off at the front of her head, and is dying. Christine is also in the hospital, since it is likely that her mental state will be determined.

Now Großmann stands revealed in all his wickedness; he has reached the pinnacle of what a person can achieve when driven into subhumanity by the demonic power of the beast, whose secret essence is profound. For whatever radiates from him can make a man a devil; it can also, spiritualized by the light of truth, lead him up to the noblest heights of humanity.

Grossmann hangs himself in his prison cell. He wants nothing to do with the salvation of his soul. He wants this soul to dissolve into the nothingness of the universe through his will, which has been seized by the devilish.

Once again we find ourselves before the earthly place where Christ rises for the hearts that seek him in the right truth, but where the Quadruped also manifests its devastating power. “From the cruciform crack emerges the primeval beast: from the beam on the right a lion's head, from the beam on the left a bull's head, from the upper beam an eagle's face. From the trunk a dragon body.” – The dragon body is seen when the ‘beast’ turns into the path of destruction; otherwise, when it walks the paths of humanity, one has the angelic form before one.

The soul of Großmann is sought by the “Quadruped” with great thirst. The soul of Christine's father appears again. She is asked to “judge”. But Christine, asked by her father to judge, says: “Not I, but Christ in me.” Then the lion's head disappears from the full form of the Quadruped. And the father continues to ask to “heal”. Christine calls the Christ in her heart again. The bull's head disappears. And so the eagle's face disappears as Christine calls upon the Christ to “liberate”, and so the dragon's body when she does the same, as the Father's spirit speaks of “love”.

Christ Himself is spiritually present where the spiritual battle is finally brought to a decision. And when the news comes that Grossmann has hanged himself in his cell, then as the last word of the drama, Christine, through whose invincible power of soul in the good the Christ is present, says: “He (Grossmann) has risen in my heart.”

I have often had to think about what Ibsen was trying to achieve in some of his plays. A number of his characters are surrounded by an undefined, ghostly presence. This is deeply moving in “When We Dead Awaken”. But there it all remains in an incomprehensible “mysticism”. Ibsen does not find the moment in the human soul when vision breaks through into the real spiritual world. Therefore, the spiritual in his dramas does not arise dramatically.

Albert Steffen has found this moment in his “Viergetier”. He has thus brought the drama back to where it once was when it had just escaped the mystery story.

Steffen's very spiritually concrete imagination has achieved this. No matter how much one may penetrate into spiritual worlds through spiritual vision, nothing comes before one's soul like Steffen's “Viergetier”; one becomes aware that there are still places in the universe where the imagination, born of pure spirit, can penetrate. For it is from such places that the earth-human figures that Steffen forms come. What is full of light in these places, that is what Albert Steffen shapes. But from such places also come the real spiritual beings that move so realistically between the earthly beings in Steffen's drama. What Ibsen reached for with his mind, but grasped at nothingness; Albert Steffen's imagination and spiritualized artistic sense has grasped it. And in the face of this feeling, anything that wants to criticize the imperfections of this work of literature must remain silent. What stands before us is so full of life in intention and design that Albert Steffen's dramatic creation appears in such perfection in the reader's imagination, which is responsive to the poet, that all other things, such as critical judgment, are brought to a self-evident silence. Where such merits are present, the opposite faults weigh as lightly as a feather. For these merits fill the soul completely. — And everything that I receive as an impression while reading will emerge in a particularly vivid way in the stage production. For the drama carries the substance of reality within it, which proves its truth in the stage setting. —