59. Eurythmy Performance

There will now be a short break. After the break, the program will include Goethe's “Hymn to Nature.” Goethe's prose hymn “To Nature” is like a prefiguration of his worldview. One could say that Goethe conceived of it around the beginning of the 1780s. And it came about in the following way – I tried to describe the entire genesis in the seventh volume of the journal of the Goethe Society many years ago – it came about in the following way: Goethe did not write it down immediately, but he had the thoughts in his soul and discussed them with the Swiss Tobler, who was then living in Weimar. Apparently, while walking with Tobler in the open air, Goethe spoke this prose hymn, and it can be found in Tobler's writing in the Tiefurter Journal in Weimar, which still exists today. Tobler then wrote it down directly from the conversation. I tried to prove that this is the genesis. As I said, you will find a discussion of it in the seventh volume of the writings of the Goethe Society. And I could not be shaken in this recognition of the genesis by anything, not even by what has been written here recently. Goethe himself acknowledged that he proceeded from what he wrote in this prose hymn by then developing everything that is contained in his metamorphosis and so on. And he called everything that came later a kind of comparative of his world view, in contrast to the positive. So we can say that this prose hymn contains everything that is then met by us in the most highly metamorphosed form as the Goethean world view.