{"corpus":"steiner","locus":"GA 235/1924-03-22/p030","lang":"en","edition":"English","edition_basis":null,"is_original":false,"is_default_edition":true,"text":"We begin to get an impression of Lessing when we observe, shall I say, the driving force with which he hurls his sentences against his opponents. He wages a polemic against the civilisation of Middle Europe—quite a refined and correct polemic, but at every turn hitting straight home. You must here observe a peculiar nuance in Lessing's character if you want to understand the make-up of his life. On the one hand we have the sharpness, often caustic sharpness, in such writings as *The Dramatic Art of Hamburg*, and then we have to find the way over, as it were, to an understanding, for example, of the words used by Lessing when a son had been born to him and had died directly after birth. He writes somewhat as follows in a letter: Yes, he has at once taken leave again of this world of sorrow; he has thereby done the best thing a human being can do. (I cannot cite the passage word for word, but it was to this effect.) In so writing, Lessing is giving expression to his pain in a wonderfully brave way, not for that reason feeling the pain one whit less deeply than someone who can do nothing but bemoan the event. This ability to draw back into himself in pain was characteristic of the man who at the same time knew how to thrust forward with vigour when he was developing his polemics. This is what makes it so affecting to read the letter written when his child had died immediately after birth, leaving the mother seriously ill.","text_trust":"verbatim","quote_safe":true,"title":"Lecture XI","site_heading":"Destiny's Signatures: Preparing Karmic Investigation","site_heading_note":"A heading the site wrote for this unit from a summary of it; not in the edition, and not the words of Rudolf Steiner or of the translator. Cite the unit by its title and locus, never by this heading, and do not quote it.","date":"1924-03-22","location":null,"word_count":265,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/235/1924-03-22/p030","alignment_confidence":"high","alignment_reason":"beads:length","two_voice_volume":false,"translation_credit":{"scope":"unit","status":"established","translator":"George Adams. Revised by M. Cotterell, C. Davy and D.S. Osmond","identified_edition":"RSP1972","book_title":"Karmic Relationships I","publisher":"Rudolf Steiner Press","publisher_inferred":true,"match_score":1.0,"source_url":"https://www.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA235/English/RSP1972/19240322p01.html","evidence":"lecture_page_line","publisher_note":"The publisher is inferred from the edition code in this lecture's source URL, not stated by the source page. The translator IS verified for this lecture: its own source names the translator (evidence: the lecture's page, rsarchive's lecture list, or the cover of the book it was published in), and that page's text was matched against this unit (see match_score and source_url). Cite the translator with confidence; attribute the publisher only as probable."},"edition_coverage":{"de":["original"],"en":["English"]},"available_versions":[{"lang":"de","edition":"original","edition_basis":null,"is_original":true,"is_default_edition":true,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/de/ga/235/1924-03-22/p030"},{"lang":"en","edition":"English","edition_basis":null,"is_original":false,"is_default_edition":true,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/235/1924-03-22/p030","paragraph_aligned":true}],"record":{"record_type":"unknown","scope":"volume","note":"How this text was taken down (shorthand transcript, listeners' notes or manuscript) is not on record here. Unknown is not an assurance of a stenogram: check the edition's own notes before resting an argument on one word.","evidence":null,"evidence_translation":null,"evidence_source":null},"german_anchor":{"de_prefix":"1924-03-22","de_passages":[{"locus":"GA 235/1924-03-22/p035","url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/de/ga/235/1924-03-22/p035"}],"bead_confidence":"high","length_check":{"de_words":256,"en_words":265,"ratio":1.04,"partial":false},"correspondence":"established","note":"English passage numbering is edition-relative, so the same number need not name the same paragraph in the German. The German original passage(s) above are the edition-invariant anchor — fetch them (lang='de') to verify wording before quoting across editions."},"witness_completeness":{"ratio":1.02,"band":"comparable","note":null,"word_count":5641,"original_word_count":5536,"may_be_abridged":false},"witness_quality":{"translator":{"scope":"unit","status":"recorded","translator":"George Adams. Revised by M. Cotterell, C. Davy and D.S. Osmond","identified_edition":"RSP1972","book_title":"Karmic Relationships I","publisher":"Rudolf Steiner Press","publisher_inferred":true,"match_score":1.0,"source_url":"https://www.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA235/English/RSP1972/19240322p01.html","evidence":"lecture_page_line","publisher_note":"The publisher is inferred from the edition code in this lecture's source URL, not stated by the source page. The translator IS verified for this lecture: its own source names the translator (evidence: the lecture's page, rsarchive's lecture list, or the cover of the book it was published in), and that page's text was matched against this unit (see match_score and source_url). Cite the translator with confidence; attribute the publisher only as probable."},"entity_parity":{"status":"ok","checked_against":["GA 235/1924-03-22/p035"],"missing_from_translation":[],"present_only_in_translation":[],"bead_confidence":"high","note":"Every load-bearing name in the German counterpart appears in this English passage. That is a check on NAMES only: a translation can keep every name and still reverse who acts on whom, change a number, or soften a claim. Read the German for anything you intend to rest an argument on."},"note":"quote_safe certifies the bytes of this text. This block is about the translation as a WITNESS: who made it, and whether it carries the same names as the original. See witness_completeness for how much of the original this witness holds."}}