8. The Myth of Heracles

GA 87/1901-12-28/p024 ·1901-12-28 · English High

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.

[Fourthly:] Having gained strength in this way, he sets about another task, [namely capturing the "Erymanthian boar alive]. He brings it bound to Mycenae. This is warlike work. This tells us that, having overcome his warlike longing, he must descend again and can now go on to more meaningful work. We see that he now - as if by chance - accomplishes something else: he wounds the Centaur Chiron, who has to fulfill the important task of standing up for Prometheus. We see how the Prometheus legend is linked here with the Heracles legend. We see how the element of will is linked here with the actual course of Heracles' development. We see how Heracles creates and orders the being that is to deliver Prometheus from his torments. Thus we see how Heracles at this stage, after he has overcome himself and desisted from the struggle, after he has gone through the renewed conflict, is now called to do something for striving humanity. This is the meaning behind the connection between the Heracles myth and the Prometheus myth.

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Cite: GA 87/1901-12-28/p024 · edition English