Richard Wagner and Mysticism
GA 92/1907-12-02/p032
·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.
And now let us consider the time of transition from the old phase of evolution to the new.—Again let it be repeated, however, that Richard Wagner's achievement was not the outcome of any conscious realisation on his part.—The old Atlanteans were possessed of a consciousness of brotherhood in the truest sense of the word. This was followed by the transition to Ego-consciousness. And now think of the beginning of the Rhinegold. Is not the coming of this Ego-consciousness expressed in the opening notes themselves, in the long E flat on the organ? Do we not feel here that individual consciousness is emerging from the ocean of consciousness universal? In motif after motif we find Richard Wagner expressing in the tones of music a world that stands behind the physical world, using the instruments verily as if they were the primal organs of Nature.
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