Albert Steffen's “Pilgrimage to the Tree of Life”

I

Albert Steffen's “Four Beasts” has been felt by many to be a “pilgrimage” into the world of ideas of anthroposophy. Such a feeling cannot arise if the soul with its experience really penetrates into the drama. For in this drama, events flow from the external, sensory reality into the spiritual sphere through the deeper knowledge of the human being, which is inherent in the poet as the inner essence of his spirit. This poetical spirit, with the persons of his drama, rises in the right moments into a spiritual world, for this it does not need to rely on theory. It does not need to learn the path to the spiritual world from anthroposophy. But anthroposophy can help him to learn about the living “pilgrimage” to the spiritual world that is inherent in the life of the soul.

Such a poetical spirit must, if it is properly felt, be felt within the anthroposophical movement as the bearer of a message from the spiritual sphere. It must be felt as a good fate that he wants to work within this movement.

He adds to the proofs that Anthroposophy can give of its truth, the proof that in a creative personality, as a living spirit-bearer, he works like the light of this truth itself.

The appearance of a little book by Albert Steffen coincides with the public formation of an opinion about the “Four-Beast”: “ Pilgrimage to the Tree of Life.” (Verlag Seldwyla, Zurich).

A little book that lives. For when the reading soul unites with what speaks from the wonderful sentences, everything that one has before one is transformed. The impression spiritualizes; a person stands before the soul who sees through the intimate secrets of earthly nature, who is able to point to nature in such a way that it reflects its mysteries in his light.

Thus Albert Steffen's poetic spirit is behind the little book and appears spiritual when one feels the light that radiates from it.

"I like to receive my visitors in the garden. Each person who comes teaches me to look at the plants in a new way. The way a person strolls through the grounds with me, casting their eyes around, soon reveals to me whether they are a naturalist, painter, musician, farmer, and so on. Lovers show themselves in their most glorious bloom. Those in love with themselves remain dry and bare, even when standing next to an apple tree covered in blossoms.

Thus speaks he whose soul draws its life forces from the vastness of the stars; for what it receives in this way, it reveals when it looks at the creatures that surround man, so that through them he may receive life anew from the depths of his being in every moment.

And so the “Pilgrimage to the Tree of Life” becomes a spiritual refreshing drink for the poetically receptive soul, and the mediator of an acquaintance with a poet spirit, who is able to reveal nature in its spirit-word.

What do words like these express: “If only we knew what goes on in a boy's mind when he picks up the first hay apple of the season, tests it with his thumb, bites into it with a crunch and, before eating it, looks at the seeds in the husk, which are still white or at most have a yellowish tinge! He feels it with a kind of natural conscience: Only when the seeds are dark brown have the sun and moon completed their work on the apple, making it suitable for my tummy. Before that, it is wrong to break it. And if the twig on which the apple hangs does not want to let go of it and has to be bent, the boy feels remorse. (Not so much for robbing the farmer...) Adults lose the ability to appreciate the divine alchemy. Why? Because they harden in their self-confidence.

But true poetic spirits are there in life to repeatedly introduce the hardened self-confidence to the divine alchemy.

My gaze is drawn back from this “Pilgrimage to the Tree of Life” to Albert Steffen's debut work, “Ott, Alois und Werelsche”, with which he greeted the world in 1907. (S. Fischer Verlag, Berlin.)

For it is first and foremost as a greeting to the world that I perceive the book. It is the greeting of a human soul that has embarked on a pilgrimage after a full life of its own kind and that, filled with the impressions it receives, must speak to other people as one speaks when one extends a hearty greeting to another.

The poet of this novel has lived intimately with nature and human life. His soul had received the gift of being not only within himself, but above all in that which loving observation can bring to the life of the soul. But it is the secret of the human soul that the more it is absorbed in the external world through devoted experience, the more it sinks into its own interior.

Whether his work would become a “novel” was not yet of any concern to the young observer of the world. He is not yet “composing”; he is bringing the poetic light into the world that he himself has received.

You have to pause and savor every moment when you read “Ott, Alois und Werelsche”. For from the lines this poetic light rises as mild sparks. They are love that shines through the existence of a human heart. And “shining love” is indeed the revealer of true life.

Even nature does not “compose”; it presents its creations to the world. And spirit-nature is what the young Albert Steffen connected himself with; it led him further on the “pilgrimage to the tree of life”. Anyone who looks at life in the same way as the poet of “Ott, Alois and Werelsche” does, will, on this “pilgrimage”, come to the point where the creative world spirit radiates into the observed world of nature and people.

The poet of “Ott, Alois and Werelsche” sees what is revealed of the secrets of existence in the simple human gestures, in the everyday actions as a symptom. A symptomatology of the most beautiful kind is Steffen's debut work. But the symptoms, which still have to be interpreted emotionally – even if unconsciously – if the spirit is to become manifest through them, become transparent – and on the other side of reality appears what presents itself to the eye of the spirit in the “Viergetier”, without interpretation, speaking for itself. - - The soul's gaze must be able to rest lovingly on the spirit-interpreting symptoms of the Tree of Life, as did the young Albert Steffen's gaze; it must be able to penetrate the soul so fully of light if it is to grow into that feeling gaze that brings the “Tree of Life” to full revelation in the “four-legged creature”. II III

Anthroposophy seeks the all-encompassing nature of the Tree of Life; and it seeks Albert Steffen's poetic spirit. That is why the two have come together.

It was only in 1912 that Albert Steffen sent his second novel out into the world: “The Destiny of Crudity”. (S. Fischer's Verlag, Berlin.) Anyone who reads it and looks back at the one published five years earlier will feel as if they have had to search for this poet's soul on a journey into deep spiritual worlds in the meantime.

Albert Steffen's words speak from “Ott, Alois and Werelsche”, like the words of a soul to which the world has much to say, because it wants to listen with loving devotion to many things. How many small events, but which in their smallness speak of the greatness of the world, are revealed in Albert Steffen's luminous, soul-warm first work. But one has the impression that the world is speaking through a soul that, in the fullness of its impressions, abandons itself to the paths by which it is led by existence.

Now the same soul speaks in the novel “The Destiny of the Rough”. But something has broken into this soul. Precisely the impressions of a journey into deep spiritual worlds. A journey in which the human being becomes a mystery to spiritually inclined souls. But a mystery to which the powers of the seeing spirit can draw understanding and light.

The impressions of such wanderings of the poet's spirit are intimate. It would be indelicate to want to follow him on such a journey. For he only follows himself in a very specific way. In such a way that the impressions are not torn from the fullness of their revelation by the intellect.

Albert Steffen's soul knocked on many spiritual doors during its journey and found entry. There it learned to ask for the secrets of existence in hidden places.

The booklet 'Pilgrimage to the Tree of Life' has two parts. The first part is titled 'Preparation' and was written in 1910. Albert Steffen speaks from the heart during his soul's journey.

I see this poetical spirit at the beginning of his twenties, when “Ott, Alois and Werelsche” was created. Eyes that long to absorb everything beautiful in the world. Gestures that long to follow the gestures with which life speaks to man.

I see him again as he writes “the destiny of rawness”. Eyes from which the secrets of the world speak. Gestures in which the world gives its revelations through the whole person. But in between, the poet speaks in “Pilgrimage to the Tree of Life”: “There is really no other way out: if we want to feel the infinity of space, we must feel an inexhaustible wealth within us. If the infinity of the spheres is not to fill us with awe and diffidence, we must know or believe that we can educate ourselves to similar power and greatness. We must acquire ideas that include an eternity and subordinate the ephemeral to them.

On his journey, the poet within has brought the second person to speak. The person who can ignite within himself the language of eternal becoming.

Thus standing in the world, Albert Steffen's soul must look at the riddle of “man and woman”. The poet feels how far apart what is experienced in the subconscious of woman and man as the human sense lies. Nowhere in the world does another contrast reveal itself among the many that are there, a greater one.

And at the same time this poetical spirit feels that a supreme event in the world's history must be able to take place in the physical existence on earth between “man and woman”. A supreme event because something of the kind is always being raised anew, not through concepts, but through the world's history itself, but also always brought to a tragic or happy solution.

Albert Steffen observes that there is something unconsciously provocative in the male essence, which is released in some form of coarseness in intercourse with the female. He may otherwise be of a delicate nature; there are moments when the man acts and speaks in such a way that the dignity of the woman seems crushed beside him.

But Albert Steffen also notes what effect this encounter with coarseness has on the woman. She experiences the man's coarseness as a kind of self-discovery, a strengthening of her consciousness.

Anyone who wants to enter such realms of life with the poet's genius must be able to absorb into his language something that removes the words from everyday life. He must be able to speak in such a way that the words he says stand there, but that something essential can live in the intuitive soul of the reader. Speaking in these matters as one speaks in everyday life is something that offends a person with a proper sense of feeling.

In Albert Steffen's novel, language takes on a different quality in places where this main enigma comes to light, where it moves away from the mode of expression of everyday life. In such places, the style becomes as if the poet's genius wanted to reveal itself to the reader in a confidential, subdued and suggestive language.

And this stylistic nuance is again stylishly distinguished from the style in the presentation of the novel's characters. Here is the portrayal of a soul that, on its journey into true life, has looked deeply into the weaving of the human being.

The personalities stand there after the spiritual and physical being. The sensitive reader must be able to give an answer when asked about traits of the outer and the soul. The characters in the novel emerge so vividly. One has the feeling that one can discuss even the most diverse things, which are far removed from Steffens' portrayal, with these people.

This stylistic nuance between vivid revelation, in which everything that is inside flows out, and the subdued speaking of soul secrets that people cannot fully come to consciousness of, is what makes the novel “The Destiny of the Rough” so irresistibly appealing.

The poet-genius occupies such a position in life, experiencing the moment in full, most honest inner perception, when he may say: “If the infinity of the spheres does not fill us with awe and humility, then we must know or at least believe that we have something in us that is equal to or even conquers it, that we can educate ourselves to similar power and greatness.”

In Albert Steffen's “The Nature of Brute Force,” a poet-genius speaks, for whom brute force reveals the important mystery that has otherwise occupied the age so intensely and that many perceive as the “battle of the sexes”.

Steffen, on the other hand, when he perceives the contrast between man and woman, immediately seeks to lead the soul out of the world of matter and into the world of spirit. From the spirit, light is to be shed on this riddle of life. — In the case of others, the problem is dragged down into the sphere where the soul turns to the material. But in doing so, it is transferred into the region of triviality.

As a result, Albert Steffen's poetic genius stands out so brilliantly in his time that he takes those who approach his art with understanding to regions of existence that he himself first enters in his own deeply serious human soul-searching.

But this is hardly what is expected of a poet today. He is supposed to descend into the regions where the trivial concepts of everyday life prevail, where everything that is not approved by a scientific way of thinking may be relegated to the realm of fantasy. — In this region, however, there is no understanding for the “Viergetier”.

In the “Determination of Crudity,” Albert Steffen's original path into the secrets of the human world is revealed in a significant way. — In this novel, too, the narrative does not follow the thread of a novel's composition. Small episodic novellas are woven into the plot, which is introduced from the beginning, and which, viewed purely externally, could also have a different content. And at the end, the reader is surprised by an attached story that appears in the novel as something completely new. Steffen introduces this story as follows: “The story of a person with whom Aladar came together is now to be told, so that from it one can sense how his whole being was raised to a high level by his new friend.”

Aladar is a character who deeply engages the reader from the very beginning: a main character of the novel. The new friend only appears at the end.

Albert Steffen's spiritualization of art can now be felt particularly in such a kind of “composition”. One feels immediately, when reading the “attached” story, the artistic necessity of this poetic genius out of its special nature.

For Albert Steffen, in 'Determining Crudity', the processes depicted are like the artistic means by which a spiritual world can be seen behind these processes. However, the interpretation is not a symbolic one, but one that unfolds in the same way as the colors of the plants, as the shine of the stones in relation to the spirit.

And from the world that one beholds when one allows the beauty of the image to take effect, the people emerge and stand before us in the art of Albert Steffen.

Steffen's style thus becomes that which is able to unfold a representation artistically like a physical ground, which the personalities that appear enter from the spiritual world.

This is what one already senses as the luminous originality of Albert Steffen in The Defining of Crudity

One year after the publication of “The Determination of Crudity” in 1913, Albert Steffen's next novel “The Renewal of the Covenant” was published (S. Fischer, Verlag, Berlin 1913). The poet's genius now penetrates into human life, as the soul strengthens the visionary power of the imagination both in breadth and depth. Into the expanse, by drawing into its realm the destinies of many people who are connected by their lives. Into the depths, by seeking to explore the powers at work in these destinies, where human life wells up from the spiritual sources of existence.

The imagination takes a legend as its starting point. A man and his sons had once migrated from the far north to lower-lying regions. The circumstances of the settlement led to a situation in which, after some time, some of the man's descendants lived in a bright, friendly area; others lived nearby, but in a miserable area of the earth where souls become desolate, spirits are humiliated and morals fall prey to the mire.

The poet presents a luminous image of where these people of common descent are led, some to circumstances in which life can flourish, and others to those in which it must perish. One of the descendants climbed higher and higher day after day, where he was able to absorb sunlight into his soul. He was thus far removed from the area where his relatives fell into the misery of life. But the ascent was dangerous. The miasma of the marshy region, which devoured life, spread upwards, and in the enjoyment of the sun the sea of fog penetrated, bringing death. During one of the ascents to the heights, the sun seeker's wife died. But dying, she left him a vision: herself with a child in her arms. And dying she said to him: paint us and set up the picture “under the lime tree”. So a friendly human settlement arose around the place, which was given strength by the picture. The mists of the neighboring moor avoided the area where the power of the picture was at work. The sun prevailed where this effect was present.

The poet's spirit wonderfully evokes how human intimacy pulses through nature's effects in deep-lying forces at the beginning of his creation.

This poet genius has found nature in the spirit-imbued search of his senses; he has found the divine-spiritual in the spirit-filled search of the soul through nature.

An ancient historian has the depicted saga in his collection. He is a member of the family to which the saga refers. It is his own ancestors who came from the north, who then developed in their further life in such a way that one part can have a dignified existence in a beautiful area, but the other part is condemned to a life in the moral swamp.

Thus neighboring groups of people find themselves in juxtaposition. Their living conditions have given them completely opposite characteristics in terms of body, soul and spirit. But life brings them into contact. Connections arise between the two groups of people. The poet observes what is experienced there and, with his broad outlook and deep, observant imagination, he presents it in such a way that, as a reader, one follows a performer who, where nature reveals itself in what it receives from the starry regions, takes in the spiritual in a lively and active way into the realm of his observation.

A picture of rare clarity presents itself. Marriage is described between a man who has sprung from an evil environment and a woman who comes from a good environment. This marriage unfolds in the most enigmatic transformations of character in both man and woman. With a penetrating gaze at what works its way up from the depths of being into human life, the poet's spirit pursues these enigmatic transformations, and what he finds in the souls of human beings from the sensuality of his observation of nature and from the intensity of his observation of the spirit is itself life that solves enigmas.

Marriage leads to the point where the woman becomes “knowing”, where she realizes - especially in the Easter season - how man is a “child of the sun”, how he takes his nature from the sun and only carries it into the earthly realm. The power of the image that the saga tells of becomes a living entity in the woman; such a living entity, when it takes hold of the soul, carries it off into the spiritual world.

A wonderful spiritual magic reigns over this passage in the novel. Novalis' “magical idealism” shines forth as it can shine through a true poet a century after Novalis.

Thus speaks the woman: “In these meadows sleeps a spirit, waiting to enter the hearts of men and become healing love there. How glorious it must be to be united with the beings who conjure up the green blanket of plants in harmony. All people will one day be such friends. Yes, you and I and all have the longing to come together, however much we think we are enemies... Why do we always accuse ourselves that we cannot give anything to anyone! Can the person we love look at the mat with the flower stars without becoming happier? Oh, could I be such a disciple! Is it possible to have any other wish on earth?"

And the poet-genius speaks, revealing the interweaving of his soul with this spirit-nature-language of those who have become knowledgeable, in the “Pilgrimage to the Tree of Life” profound words. He is transported by the most vivid immersion in the weaving of nature. He says: “Now I suddenly understood the primal plant. I saw how the plant germinates, grows, flowers and bears fruit, in order to arise again and again from the seed, through a whole world age, according to natural necessity, and how it connects the earth with heaven in the process. I discovered a multifaceted rhythm in the arrangement of the leaves, in the formation of the flowers, in the rising and evaporating of the water, in the blossoming and fading of the colors: tones, counterpoints and chords, a dance of countless spirits.” Anyone who reads these words in “Pilgrimage to the Tree of Life” and then remembers the passages in the novel will feel, in this poetic spirit, how the light of Novalis' “magical idealism” and Goethe's “contemplative judgment” emerge from the depths of the mind.

The second half of the novel, “The Renewal of the Covenant,” can only be felt as a genuine spiritual pilgrimage of artistic imagination. A boy, who has his origin in the connection between the members of the light and the dark lineages, is portrayed on his educational path. His connection with the spirit gives Albert Steffen deep insights into the heart and soul of this boy. We find him as a gifted boy when he begins his school career. Then a devastating event occurs in the young life. A teacher punishes the boy. The boy sees in his soul the “withered bone hand” of the old schoolmaster. The whole being of the child changes. He absorbs what he has to learn, but when asked, he cannot bring anything out of himself. Albert Steffen was only able to describe the nuances in the transformation of this child's soul as he does because in “Renewal of the Covenant” he reflects the spiritual pilgrimage he was undertaking at the time.

There is Hartmann, the brother of the boy's grandfather. Hartmann is a man before whom destruction goes hand in hand. He does not consciously intend this destruction. A female being who dies because of him, the brother who becomes an untrue man because of him, and much more is tied to his existence and actions. He sees himself as the center of a world of destruction. All this can only be described by a poetic imagination that has clairvoyantly stood in the realm of the spiritual and looked at human hearts from this point of view. Since Albert Steffen's imagination is capable of this, even a character as complicated and extreme as Hartmann, who moves in the most unheard-of extremes of life, seems true inwardly. And he remains true to himself because he locks himself up in his estate like a hermit, in order to devote himself solely to the destruction of the world and life. For his life has led him to believe that the world has reached the point in its development from which it must proceed towards destruction. And since he bears within himself the sum of all human destructive powers, he would like to make himself an instrument of the process of destruction.

And yet again: this hard man can become pious when he is with the boy, whose educational path has been indicated, and the boy's little sister. The spirituality of the child's soul shines brightly in the interaction between Hartmann and the two children of his relative.

A blind man who has been harmed by Hartmann because the latter has closed his property with a dog that bites, and the blind man has entered the dog's range, is to be avenged by a crowd of wildly passionate people. While this crowd is preparing to destroy Hartmann, we hear the words from the blind man's mouth: “I see an army of souls taking flight upwards. I see another one streaming towards it and plunging it into the abyss in a confused mass.” Thus Albert Steffen's imagination introduces man to the spiritual world in order to illuminate his innermost being with the rays of this world. This appears more vividly in ‘Viergetier’; spiritually, one already feels it in full force in this second half of ‘Renewal of the Covenant’.

The novel's conclusion is deeply moving. The “blind man” speaks to another character from the group of depraved people: “Hear what just passed through my soul: the Redeemer hung on the cross; on his right and on his left, the two malefactors. From heaven, darkness descended in great circles on the peoples who were gathered around the rock of Golgotha. They shouted: “If you are the chosen one of God, help yourself.” Then the poet follows the conversation of the two misdeeds with Jesus. - And then the radiant image follows: “At the foot of the rock stood two old men, old friends. It seemed to them as if a being of light descended upon the cross of one of the murderers and gently carried his soul away. At the same time, however, a devilishly curled beast came riding by in a whistling wind and snatched the soul of the other murderer from his convulsing body.” The friends parted. In the days that followed, they underwent experiences that were hard on their souls. And what they now feel is expressed by one of them: “I feel just like you. So let's make a pact. We will vow never to follow the other into the beautiful spiritual lands, but to remain forever with the murderer in the darkness.”

They had realized how people like this murderer could not fall into error if they themselves were different. And while they believed that they had to stay with the murderer as atonement, “a third party” whom they did not know stood beside them and said, “Let me be in your covenant.” Christ was the third. In his kingdom of light, the tested souls are found.

With deep reverence for the powers of existence that prevail in the human being, one lays this novel out of one's hand.

Albert Steffen created it as the image of his spiritual pilgrimage. And what the imagination experiences on this pilgrimage is joyfully experienced by the poetical heart in joy. Spiritual worlds experienced in joyfulness are revelations of beauty. Albert Steffen's novel speaks of beautiful spirituality. For he who experiences the spirit as he does can describe what is beautiful or ugly before the senses. It becomes beautiful in the light he conjures over it.

(I will now conclude this presentation of Albert Steffen's early poetic period. I plan to continue the reflection after a short time, which will then extend to Albert Steffen's later creations.