Richard Wagner and Mysticism
GA 92/1907-12-02/p014
·1907-12-02
·
English
MediumMedium alignmentSome paragraph re-numbering between this translation and the German original — the locus may slip by a paragraph or two.
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: «Sechzehn Vorträge, gehalten in Berlin, Köln und Nürnberg in den Jahren 1904, 1905 und 1907 (Hörernotizen)» (Sixteen lectures, given in Berlin, Cologne and Nuremberg in 1904, 1905 and 1907 (listeners' notes)). The volume's subtitle as given in the publisher's description, mirrored on AnthroWiki (GA 92); the 2022 catalogue's subtitle omits it. The translation is the maintainer's, not a published one.
Now what does Mysticism tell us with regard to the relation of one human being to another? To outer eyes, men stand there, side by side; in the physical world they work upon each other when they speak together or when one becomes dependent on another. But there are also much deeper relationships between them. The soul living in the one man has a deep, inner relationship with the soul living in the other. The laws manifested on the surface of things are the most unimportant of all. The deep laws which underlie the soul are spun from the one man to the other. Spiritual Science reveals these laws, and, as an artist, Richard Wagner recognised and knew of their existence. Therefore he uses themes in which he is able to show that laws far deeper than the outer eye can perceive are working between one character and another.
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