42. Blood is a Very Special Fluid
GA 68b/1906-11-30/p003
·1906-11-30
·
English
HighHigh alignmentThis translation's paragraph count matches the German original — the locus maps cleanly to the same paragraph in DE.
Record: listeners' notes. Written from listeners' notes, summaries, or memory rather than a shorthand transcript. The wording is the note-taker's as much as Steiner's: weigh a single striking phrase here far more cautiously than the same phrase in a stenographic volume, and do not rest an argument on one word. Evidence: «Da keine professionellen Stenogramme vorliegen, handelt es sich oftmals um notizenhaft festgehaltene Zusammenfassungen oder Berichte.» (Since no professional shorthand transcripts exist, these are often summaries or reports kept in the form of notes.). The publisher's description of the volume, as mirrored on AnthroWiki (GA 68b). The translation is the maintainer's, not a published one.
As you know, the saying that serves as the leitmotif of this lecture can be found in Goethe's “Faust”. This, his greatest work, has given rise to so many explanations that a whole library could be filled with them. The sentence spoken by Mephistopheles is sometimes explained in very peculiar ways. It is not possible to discuss them all here, but I would like to refer you to Professor Minor, who wrote a three-volume commentary on Faust. He gives the following explanation: Mephistopheles says mockingly, “Blood is a very special juice,” because he does not like blood and therefore demands a signature that is written in blood.
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