8. The Myth of Heracles
GA 87/1901-12-28/p017
·1901-12-28
·
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: «Auch wenn die Mitschrift noch nicht die später übliche Genauigkeit aufweist» (Even though the transcript does not yet have the accuracy usual later). The publisher's description of the volume, as mirrored on AnthroWiki (GA 87), which calls the cycle the earliest of which a listener's transcript exists. The translation is the maintainer's, not a published one.
The nature of these labors proves that the twelve labors of Heracles are nothing other than tests that man has to undergo in the course of the initiation process. It might seem to us that these labors have been juxtaposed by poetry as the overcoming of twelve monsters. 'But if you compare them, you will find that they are not tests of strength by a strong man, but meaningful symbolic things.
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