SPEECH-FORMATION
AND
POETIC
FORM
(Darmstadt, 30
July 1921)
Today, seeing that from a living
grasp of the anthroposophical world-conception there results
something for the whole human being, for man in his totality, we
would like to put forward something taken from the art of
recitation. As I have mentioned already, there is a certain fear in
artistic circles, especially among poets, reciters and so on, that
everything approaching the conceptual, everything which takes a
“scientific” form, is really foreign to art – and
actually inimical to the original and vital in it, choking
instinctive and intuitive art. And as regards that intellectuality
which has arisen in the course of recent centuries of human
development this is absolutely the case. Yet this very
intellectuality is also connected with an inclination toward what
is present in external, physical reality: our very languages have
gradually adopted a certain form – what might be called a
tendency towards materialism. In our words and their meaning lies
something which points directly to the external sense-world. Hence
this intellectuality, which possesses only picture-being and is all
the more authentic the less it contains of life and reality from
man’s inner nature – this intellectuality will indeed
have little in common with the primordial vitality that must lie at
the root of all art. But the reinvigoration of spiritual life to
which Anthroposophy aspires means precisely the reimmersing of
intellect in the primordial forces of man’s soul life. The
artistic will not then appear in the so-much-dreaded gloom of
intellectual pallor; imagination will not be drawn down through
Anthroposophy into logic and materialism, but will on the contrary
be made to bear fruit. From living together with the spiritual it
will be nourished and bear fruit. An enhancement of art is to be
hoped for just through its being pervaded by Anthroposophy and the
anthroposophical way of thinking – the whole bearing and
demeanour of Anthroposophy.
What applies to the arts as a whole
we will show today with reference to recitation and declamation.
Over the last decades recitation and declamation have been steered
more and more into a predilection for endowing with form the
meaning-content of the words. A stress on the word-for-word content
has become increasingly conspicuous. Our times have little
understanding for such a treatment of the spoken word as was
characteristic of Goethe, who used to rehearse the actors in his
plays with special regard for the formation of speech, standing in
front of them like a musical conductor with his baton. The
speech-formation, the element of form that underlies the
word-for-word content – it is really this which inspires the
true poet as an artist. The point must be emphasized: Schiller,
when he felt drawn by inner necessity to compose a poem, to begin
with had something in the way of an indeterminate melody, something
of a melodic nature as the content of his soul; something musical
floated through his soul and only afterwards came the word-for-word
content, which had really only to receive what was for the poet, as
an artist, the essential thing – the musical element of his
soul. So we have on the one hand something musical, which as such
would remain pure music; and on the other, the pictorial, painterly
element to which in declamatory-recitative art we must return. To
say something merely as an expression of the prose-content –
it is not for this that true poetry exists. But to mould the
prose-content, to re-cast it into measure and rhythm into unfolding
melody – into what really lies behind the prose-content
– for all this the art of poetry exists. We would surely not
be favoured with such a mixed bag of poetry if we did not live in
unartistic times when in neither painting nor sculpture,
nor poetry nor its
recitative-declamatory rendering, is true artistry to be
found.
If we look at the means by which
poetry is brought to expression, which in our case is recitation
and declamation, then we must naturally refer to speech. Now speech
bears within it a thought- and a will-element. The thought tends
toward the prosaic. It comes to express a conviction; it comes to
express what is demanded within the framework of conventions of a
social community. And with the progress of civilization language
comes to be permeated more and more with expressions of conviction,
with conventional social expression and to that extent becomes less
and less poetic and artistic. The poet will therefore first have to
struggle with the language to give it an artistic form, to make it
into sornething which is really speech-formation.
In my anthroposophical writings I
have drawn attention to the character of the vowels in language.
This character man experiences in the main through his inner being:
what we live through inwardly from our experience in the outer
world finds expression in the vowel-sounds. Occurrences that we
portray objectively, the essential forms of the external
world, come to expression in the consonants of a language.
Naturally, the vocalic and consonantal nature of
language varies from language to language. Indeed from the way in
which a language deploys its consonants and vowels can be seen the
extent to which it has developed into a more or less artistic
language. Some modern languages, in the course of their
development, have gradually acquired an inartistic
character and are falling into decadence. When a poet sets out to
give form to such a language, he is called upon to repeat at a
higher level the original speech-creative process.
[Note 17]
In the construction his
verses, in the treatment of rhyme and alliteration (we shall hear
and discuss examples of these later) he touches upon something
related to the speech-creative process. Where it is a
matter of bringing inner being to expression, the poet will be
drawn, by virtue of his intuitive and instinctive ability, to the
vowels. The result will be an accumulation of vowels. And when the
poet needs to give form to outward things or events, he will be
drawn to the consonants. One or the other will be accumulated,
depending an whether something inward or something external is
being expressed. The reciter or declaimer must take this up, for he
will then be able to re-establish the rhythm between inner being
and the outer world. On this kind of speech-formation, on the
bringing out of what lies within the artistic handling of speech,
the formation of a new recitative and declamatory art-form will
largely depend.
We will now introduce a few shorter
poems to show how recitation and declamation must be guided by
speech-formation.
A
Sonnet by Goethe.
MÄCHTIGES
ÜBERRASCHEN
Ein Strom
entrauscht umwölktem Felsensaale,
Dem Ozean
sich eilig zu verbinden:
Was auch
sich spiegeln mag von Grund zu Gründen,
Er wandelt
unaufhaltsam fort zu Tale.
Dämonisch aber stürzt mit einem Male
–
Ihr
folgten Berg und Wald in Wirbelwinden –
Sich
Oreas, Behagen dort zu finden,
Und hemmt
den Lauf, begrenzt die weite Schale.
Die Welle
sprüht und staunt zurück und weichet
Und
schwillt bergan, sich immer selbst zu trinken:
Gehemmt
ist nun zum Vater hin das Streben.
Sie
schwankt und ruht, zum See zurückgedeichet;
Gestirne,
spiegelnd sich, beschaun das Blinken
Des
Wellenschlags am Fels, ein neues Leben.
[We encounter a
similar movement and transition in style in the course of this
English sonnet:
Devouring time blunt thou the Lyons pawes,
And
make the earth devoure her owne sweet brood,
Plucke
the keeneteeth
from the fierce Tygers jawes,
And
burne the long liv’d Phoenix
in her blood,
Make
glad and sorry seasons as thou fleet’st,
And do
what ere thou wilt swift-footed time
To the
wide world and all her fading sweets:
But I
forbid thee one most hainous crime,
O carve
not with thy howers my loves faire brow,
Nor
draw noe lines there with thine antique pen,
Him in
thy course untainted doe allow,
For
beauties patterne to succeding men.
Yet doe thy
worst ould Time dispight thy wrong,
My
love shall in my verse ever live young.
William Shakespeare (1564-1616).]
A Ritornello by Christian
Morgenstern.
Das Tier, die Pflanze, diese Wesen
hatten
noch die un-menschliche Geduld der Erde;
da war ein Jahr, was heut nur noch
Sekunde.
Jetzt geht ihr nichts mehr rasch
genug von statten.
Der Mensch begann sein ungeduldig
Werde.
Sie spürt: ‘Jetzt
endlich kam die grosse Stunde:
auf die ich mich gezüchtet
Jahrmillionen!
Jetzt brauch ich meinen Leib nicht
mehr zu schonen,
jetzt häng ich bald als Geist
an Gottes Munde.’
[A series of
three-line stanzas with recurring rhymes is a comparatively simple
representative of a poetic form that is capable of being extended
almost indefinitely. Our first poem is a relatively uncomplicated
example; a second shows something of what can be achieved by a poet
working within very strict limitations.
THE COVENANT
The
covenant of god and animal,
The
frieze of fabulous creatures winged and crowned,
And in
the midst the woman and the man –
Lost
long ago in fields beyond the Fall –
Keep
faith in sleep-walled night and there are found
On our
long journey back where we began.
Then
the heraldic crest or nature lost
Shines
out again until the weariless wave
Roofs
with its sliding horror all that realm.
What
jealousy, what rage could overwhelm
The
golden lion and lamb and vault a grave
For
innocence, innocence past defence or cost?
Edwin Muir (1887-1959).
The highly-developed, courtly poetry of the late
Middle Ages provides many examples of this type of elaborate and
difficult structure. This Balade is a moderately ambitious and very
beautiful instance:
TO
ROSEMOUNDE
Madame, ye ben of al beaute shryne
As fer as bercled is the
mappemounde;
For as the cristal glorious ye
shyne,
And lyke ruby ben your chekes
rounde.
Therwith ye ben so mery and so
jocounde,
That at a revel whan that I see you
daunce,
It is an oynement unto my wounde,
Thogh ye to me ne do no daliaunce.
For thogh I wepe of teres ful a
tyne,
Yet may that wo myn herte nat
confounde;
Your seemly voys that ye so smal
outtwyne
Maketh my thoght in joye and blis
habounde.
So curteisly I go, with love bounde,
That to my-self I sey, in my
penaunce,
Suffyseth me to love you,
Rosemounde,
Thogh ye to me ne do no
daliaunce.
Nas never pyk walwed in galauntyne
As I in love am walwed and y-wounde;
For which ful ofte I of my-self
divyne
That I am trewe Tristam the
secounde.
My love may not refreyd be nor
afounde;
I brenne ay in an amorous
plesaunce.
Do what you list, I wil your thral be
founde,
Thogh ye to me ne do no daliaunce.
Geoffrey
Chaucer (c. 1340-1400).]
Poem in form of a Rondeau by Rudolf
Steiner.
WELTENSEELENGEISTER
Im Lichte wir
schalten,
Im Schauen wir
walten,
Im Sinnen wir
weben.
Aus Herzen
wir heben
Das
Geistesringen
Durch
Seelenschwingen.
Dem Menschen wir
singen
Das
Göttererleben
Im
Weltengestalten.
A scene will next
be presented from my first Mystery Play, The Portal of
Initiation. What we have here is a representation of
experiences connected with the spiritual world. One might be
tempted to look upon something like this as contrived by the
intellect, as though we were going after some sort of
“symbolic” art – but that would not really be art
at all. What will be spoken here, despite the psychic-spiritual
nature of the events, was actually seen, in concrete form.
Everything was there, down to the very sound of the words. Nothing
had to be manufactured, or put together, or elaborated
allegorically: it was simply there. We have attempted to give form
to man’s manifold experiences in relation to the spiritual
worlds; we have tried simply to give form to soul-forces, to what
man can experience inwardly as differentiated soul-forces.
Something results from this quite spontaneously, that is not shaped
by any intellectual activity. As it is here a matter of purely
spiritual contents, it is especially important to realize that it
is not a matter of giving information or the prosaic word-for-word
content, but of giving form to the actual spiritual contents. On
the one hand a musical element will be perceptible – at the
very point where one might suspect an intellectualising tendency
– and on the other we will have a pictorial element, which
must be particularly brought out whenever we are giving form to
some kind of event.
[Note 18]
From The Portal of Initiation, Scene
7.
MARIA:
You, my sisters, at this hour
be once
again my helpers,
as you
have often been before, –
that I
may make world-ether
resound
within itself.
It shall
ring out in harmony
and,
ringing, permeate
a soul
with knowledge.
I can
behold the signs
that
lead us to our task.
So shall
your work
unite
itself with mine.
Johannes, in his striving,
shall
through creative deeds of ours
be
raised to true existence.
The
brothers in the temple
held
council
how they
could lead him
out of
the depths to light-filled heights.
And they
expect of us
that we
arouse within his soul
the
strength for soaring flight.
And so,
my Philia, breathe in
clean
essence of the light
from
wide-flung spaces;
be
filled with tones, enticing,
from
souls’ creative power,
that you
can hand to me
the
gifts you gather
from
spirit grounds.
Then I
can weave them
into the
stirring dances of the spheres.
And you,
too, Astrid,
beloved
mirror-image of my spirit,
create
the power of darkness
in
streaming light,
that
colours may shine forth.
Bring
harmony to tonal being
so that
world-substance, weaving,
can live
and sound.
I can
entrust then spirit feeling
to
seeking human senses.
And you,
O sturdy Luna,
you are
as firm within
as is
the living heart
that
grows within the tree;
join
with your sisters’ gifts
the
image of your own uniqueness,
that
certainty of knowledge
be
granted to the seeker.
PHILIA:
I will imbue myself
with
clearest essence of the light
from
worldwide spaces.
I will
breathe in sound-substance,
life-bestowing,
from far
ethereal regions,
that you, beloved sister, with your
work
may reach your
goal.
ASTRID:
And I will weave
into the
radiant light
the
clouding darkness.
I will
condense
the life
of sound,
that
glistening it may ring
and
ringing it may glisten,
that
you, beloved sister,
may
guide the rays of soul.
LUNA: I
will enwarm soul-substance
and will
make firm life-ether.
They
shall condense themselves,
they
shall perceive themselves,
and in
themselves residing
guard
their creative forces,
that
you, beloved sister,
within
the seeking soul
may quicken certainty of
knowledge.
MARIA:
From Philia’s horizons
shall
stream forth joyfulness.
The
undines’ power
of
ever-changefulness shall rouse
a
sensitivity of soul,
that the
awakened one
can then
experience
the
world’s delight,
the
world’s despair.
From
Astrid’s weaving
shall
spring forth love’s desire.
The airy
life of sylphs
shall
stir up in the soul
the urge
for sacrifice,
that he,
the consecrated one,
revive
and quicken
those
who are sorrow-laden,
those
who are joy-entreating.
From
Luna’s strength
shall
stream forth firmness;
the
power of fire-beings
can
actively create
soul-certainty,
so that
the knowing one
can find
himself
in
soul-life-weaving,
in
world-life-breathing.
PHILIA:
I will entreat the spirits of the worlds
that
they, with light of being,
enchant
soul feeling,
that
they, with tone of words,
charm
spirit hearing,
that he
whom we must waken
may
rise
upon
soul paths
to heavenly
heights.
ASTRID:
I will guide streams of love,
that
fill the world with warmth,
into the
heart
of him,
the consecrated one,
that he
can bring
the
grace of heaven
to
earthly work
and mood
of consecration
to sons of men.
LUNA: I
will from primal powers
beseech
both strength and courage,
and will
imbed them deep
within
the seeker’s heart,
that
confidence
in his
own self
may be
with him
throughout his life.
He shall
then feel himself
secure
within himself.
And he
shall pluck
each
moment’s ripened fruit,
to draw
from them their seeds
for all eternity.
MARIA:
With you, my sisters,
united
for this earnest work,
I shall
succeed
in what
I long to do.
There
penetrates the cry
of him,
who’s been so sorely tested,
into our
world of light.
Trans. Ruth and Hans
Pusch.
When we come to the sonnet it is,
of course, to be taken for granted that a sonnet does not arise
from the intention to compose a sonnet, but by necessity from the
working out of inner experiences. It is evident that the sonnet
tends toward something visual or pictorial that lives in the
language – we have an experience which is in some way
twofold. Such an experience presents itself, and we wish to give it
a form, such as appears in the first two strophes. But we are then
thrown into a contradiction of inner experience. The second strophe
confronts the first wave, so to speak, like a counter-wave. And in
the last two strophes we feel the contradictions that govern the
universe. The human heart and the human mind strive for a unison, a
harmonious association, so that they may resolve in harmony what
found expression in discord and overcome the material dissonance
through the spirituality of harmony. This is manifested even in the
rhyme-scheme of the first two strophes and in the linked rhymes of
the concluding strophes. In as far as there is not such a necessity
of inner experience, a sonnet cannot arise; for it must manifest
itself even down to the rhyme-scheme as a picture-form. And now,
the musical element infiltrates this pictorial form: a musicality
that depends principally on vowel sounds, and on what enters the
vowel from the consonant – for every consonant has its
vowel-element. This gives what one might call musical substance to
the primarily pictorial form taken by the sonnet. What is present
within the sonnet, shaping it, is metrical and, in the art of
speaking, metre is brought to expression specifically through
recitation: something the Greeks managed to bring to a certain
eminence. The Greeks lived in the metre; that is to say, in the
plastic element of the language. If, on the other hand, we look at
what comes to us from the Nordic or Central European, Germanic
tradition, we see how into the plasticity of speech there enters
something musical from within. Here we have something which streams
out more from the will, more from the personality whereas with the
Greeks everything flows from metrical clarity of vision. With the
Greeks it was primarily the art of recitation that attained a
certain peak, whereas among the Germanic peoples it was declamatory
art, drawing on the musical principle and flowing into themes and
rhythms and cadences, which stirred into activity. And whereas in
recitation we have to do with something in speech that in one sound
broadens, in another makes ‘pointed’, forming it
pictorially – in musicality we have what endows language with
a melodic quality. It is in fact something like this that we can
see in the sonnet and its treatment in the several regions
of Europe. We can see how the declamatory
united with the recitative, how the Germanic later united with the
Greek feeling for measure.
[Note 19]
It is of some importance for us to
realise the musical as well as the plastic quality inherent in
speech-formation, for us to learn to introduce into
declamation and recitation something which
essentially leads us from what has significance for the senses to
what is moved by the spirit. For this, it is once again necessary
to have a feeling for poetic form as such – the form of a
ritornello or a rondeau, for instance. This does not in truth make
for a poetry wanting in thought; it simply expresses thought, not
through abstractions, but through its productive creativity. If it
is to adapt itself to forms created in
this way, the art of speaking must be restored to a life in the
actual waves of speech – the recitative with its pure
formation; and the high or low intonations, the melodic forms of
declamation. And if a dramatic touch has to be added, as in the
scene you have just heard, which dealt with purely spiritual
experiences, the intellectual significance or literal meaning must
be completely overcome, completely transformed from a literal
communication of prose fact into actual speech-formation. We thus
have in immediate presentation the same experience as when in a
prose piece we pass from prosaic understanding to a vision of what
is represented in the prosaic. The pleasure of the prosaic is
indirect: we must first understand, and through understanding we
are then led to visualisation. This entails from the first
something inartistic, for the aesthetic quality lies in immediacy.
The art of speech-formation must have direct expression. What is
actually presented (and not an intellectual imitation of it) must
show itself and be given form. In our times we often see so-called
poets working up intellectual imitations, rather than those
immediate responses which make themselvesfelt in speech-formation.
Goethe, who expresses so beautifully a living apprehension of
tranquillity – a tranquillity preceding that of sleep –
gives it utterance in these lines:
Über allen
Gipfeln
Ist Ruh;
In allen Wipfeln
Spürest du
Kaum einen Hauch;
Die Vögelein schweigen im
Walde.
Warte nur, balde
Ruhest du auch.
[Compare Shelley, “Evening. Ponte a
Mare, Pisa.”
The sun is set; the swallows are
asleep;
The bats are flitting fast in the grey
air;
The slow soft toads out of damp corners
creep,
And evening’s breath, wandering here and
there
Over the quivering surface of the
stream,
Wakes not one ripple from its summer dream.
]
There is complete accord between the feeling for
the summits and the tree-tops and what goes on in our own heart. A
harmony lies in the sounds, in the very word-formation, so that
what is mediated to us through the outer world sounds again –
especially if we really listen to the poem – in the word- and
speech-formation. All our experience of the outer world has passed
over into the speech-formation itself. That would be the ideal of
true poetry: to be able to present an experience received from
outside in the very treatment of the language. The mere repetition
of external experience, simply trying to express external
experience in words – this is not poetry. The art of poetry
only arises when something experienced in the outer world is
reconstituted out of the life of the human soul in terms of pure
speech-formation.
[Note 20]
We can observe this in a truly artistic poet
like Goethe, when he feels the need to recreate an identical
prose-content out of a different mood and feeling. From living with
the Gothic and the mood it transmitted to him, from the feeling let
us say for the pointed arches striving upwards, which he felt most
deeply in his appreciation of Strasbourg Cathedral, Goethe had
gained at the beginning of his time in Weimar a sensibility which,
when given poetic form, became something like inner declamation.
Thought and feeling took such a form in him that we can experience
directly in speech-formation something also to be found in
contemplating a Gothic cathedral. We can see something striving
upwards, something unfinished, in a Gothic cathedral; and this was
Goethe’s mood in Weimar
when he conceived his Iphigeneia. Driven
by a deep longing for the fulfilment of his poetic disposition,
Goethe set out, but in the course of his journey south he was
gradually overcome by another mood – by a longing for
measure. Faced with the Italian art that confronted him there, he
felt a kind of echo of Greek art. He writes to his
Weimar friends:
“I suspect that the Greeks created their works of
art in accordance with the very laws by which nature
proceeds.” Looking at the Saint Cecilia, at
Raphael’s works, the essence of metre became clear to him;
and this became an inner recitation. He no longer felt the form of
his first Iphigeneia to be a personal truth: he forged his
play anew, so that we now have a Nordic and a southern
Iphigeneia. Any consideration of the Nordic
Iphigeneia must treat of it in terms of declamatory art,
where it is preeminently the vowels that hold sway and that give
form in the sounding of speech. In the Roman Iphigeneia
recitation must predominate: what is relevant here is the
plastically formed presentation of experience in a speech-formation
comparable to the presentation in Raphael’s work. In two
short passages we shall now compare the two versions of
Iphigeneia and have before us what goes on in a poet when he
really lives in aesthetic form and has to recreate his artistic
forms out of inner necessity. Recitation and declamation must
strive to follow poetry such as this.
In the first instance, therefore, we will
present the Gothic-German Iphigeneia as Goethe originally
conceived it – the Weimar
Iphigeneia.
[Note 21]
[Blake’s earlier poetry was strongly
influenced by Romantic interest in northern “Bardic”
verse, and something of its powerful declamatory nature can still
be felt in this “Introduction” to Songs of
Experience:
Hear
the voice of the Bard!
Who Present, Past, & Future,
sees;
Whose ears have heard
The Holy Word
That walk’d among the ancient
trees,
Calling
the lapsed Soul,
And weeping in the evening dew;
That might controll
The starry pole,
And
fallen, fallen light renew!
‘O Earth, O Earth, return!
Arise from out the dewy grass;
Night is worn,
And the morn
Rises
from the slumberous mass.
Turn
away no more;
Why wilt thou turn
away?
The starry floor,
The wat’ry shore,
Is giv’n thee till the break of
day.’
William
Blake (1757-1827.]
And now Goethe wished to introduce
into these verses something fundamentally alien to the north. These
verses express what I have just claimed as emerging straight from
the whole mood living in Goethe. It can be said, of course, that
anyone who does not enter into the genuinely aesthetic will lack
the deep sense of necessity that Goethe felt in
Italyof forging his favourite
subject, Iphigeneia, anew. Not only was he subject
in Italyto impressions of what he regarded
as Greek art, but the sun there has a different effect. A
differently coloured heaven arches over us, and the plants struggle
up from the earth in a different way.
All this made its mark on Goethe, and we can trace how in every
line he is again compelled to rewrite and adapt the substance of
his Iphigeneia to a quite different mood. It was Hermann
Grimm who first showed a really sensitive understanding for these
matters. In his lectures on Goethe he stressed the radical
difference between the German and the Roman Iphigeneia,
demonstrating how Goethe transformed what at first lived in the
dimension of depth, so to speak – where there is a tendency
to make the tone too full, too bright, or too dull, in order to
achieve a spiritual expression of the literal prose content; he
showed how Goethe transformed this into something that lives in the
plane of speech, as it were, in the metre, and how he tried to
introduce into his Iphigeneia the symmetry he believed
himself to have found in Greek art.
In order to characterise what
Goethe experienced in artistic speech, therefore, it becomes
necessary to work from the declamatory into the recitative when
producing his Roman Iphigeneia – the recitative which, as we
have said, the Greeks brought to perfection.
[Note 22]
[To a much greater extent than Goethe, Blake
consistently reworked his poetry into ever different forms as he
matured and changed as a poet. By the time he came to write
“Night the Ninth” of The Four Zoas he had
extended his range to include a classically derived pastoral verse
with a much more recitative quality. The visionary scene from the
earlier “Introduction” appears again there –
though after a more thorough metamorphosis than was the case with
Goethe’s play. This is The Four Zoas ix,
386-409:
And thus their ancient golden age renew’d;
for Luvah spoke
With voice mild from his golden Cloud upon the
breath of morning:
‘Come forth, O Vala, from the grass &
from the silent dew,
Rise from the dews of death, for the Eternal Man
is Risen.’
She rises among flowers & looks toward the
Eastern clearness,
She walks yea runs, her feet are wing’d,
on the tops of the bending grass,
Her garments rejoice in the vocal wind & her
hair glistens with dew.
She answer’d thus: ‘Whose voice is
this, in the voice of the nourishing air,
In the spirit of the morning, awaking the Soul
from its grassy bed?
Where dost thou dwell? for it is thee I seek,
& but for thee
I must have slept Eternally, nor have felt the
dew of thy morning.
Look how the opening dawn advances with vocal
harmony!
Look how the beams foreshew the rising of some
glorious power!
The sun is thine, he goeth forth in
his majestic brightness.
O thou creating voice that callest!
& who shall answer thee?’
‘Where dost thou flee, O fair
one? where doth thou seek thy happy place?’
‘To yonder brightness, there
I haste, for sure I came from thence
Or I must have slept eternally, nor
have felt the dew of morning.’
‘Eternally thou must have
slept, not have felt the morning dew,
But for yon nourishing sun;
’tis that by which thou art arisen.
The birds adore the sun: the beasts
rise up & play in his beams
And every
flower & every leaf rejoices in his light.
Then, O thou fair one, sit thee down, for thou
art as the grass,
Thou risest in the dew of morning
& at night art folded up.’
William Blake.]
It may be that in the case of an artist like Goethe, we
shall find what it is that flows over into form only if we can
understand with full intensity how, when he himself spoke his
Iphigeneia, tears would roll down his cheeks. Goethe found
his way from the Dionysian – to use the Nietzschean
expression – into the Apollonian, into metrical form. Because
the Greeks in their soul-life stirred the will
to this metrical formation, they achieved something in this
Apollonian realm, and of this Nietzsche felt that here art is
exalted above outer sense-reality. He felt that art could elevate
us above the pessimism of a humanity confronting the tragic in the
immediate reality of physical perception. What holds sway here as
the inner, the essentially human – though conforming to
measure and the Apollonian principle – this was what
particularly attracted Goethe once he had entered this element, and
induced him to attempt the creation of something in Greek metre, in
an inwardly recitative-declamatory style rather than his former
purely declamatory one.
We will now give an example, from Goethe’s
“Achilleis”, of the aesthetic form that Goethe
conceived after he had sunk himself in the metrical, inwardly
recitative style of the Greeks.
[Note 23]
[In their attempts to recapture the feeling of
the original Greek some translators have been driven to adopt a
hexameter verse, as in this rendering of Odyssey VI,
85ff:
Now when at last they arrived at the beautiful
stream of the river,
Here the perennial basins they found where
waters abundant
Welled up brightly enough for the cleansing of
dirtiest raiment.
So their mules they unloosened from
under the yoke of the waggon,
Letting them wander at will on the
bank of the eddying river,
Browsing on clover as sweet as the
honey, and then from the carriage
Bearing within their arms to the
deep dark water the garments
Cast them in trenches and trod them
in rivalry one with another.
So, when the raiment was washed and
was thoroughly cleansed of the dirt-stains,
All on the shore of the ocean in
order they spread on the shingle
Where it is washed by the tides of
the sea as they sweep to the dry land.
There did they bathe and anointing
themselves with the oil of the olive
Set them
adown to the midday meal on the bank of the
river,
Leaving
the garments to dry on the beach in the glare of the sunlight,
Now when in food they had fully
delighted, both she and her maidensj
Casting aside their scarfs with a
ball they betook them to playing,
White-armed Nausicaa with the
choral melody leading.
E’en as descending a height moves Artemis,
darter of arrows,
Either on Taygetus long-ridged or on huge
Erymanthus,
Taking delight in the chase of the
boar and of timorous roe-deer,
Whilst all around her the daughters
of Zeus, who beareth the aegis,
Nymphs of the woodland, play – and Leto
sees it rejoicing;
Even as over the rest uplifting her brows and
her forehead
Easily known in her beauty she stands, though
fair be the others,
Thus shone forth in her beauty the
maiden amidst her attendants.
Now when at last it was come to the moment of
homeward returning,
After the mules were yoked and
folded the beautiful garments,
Other was then the device of the
grey-eyed goddess Athene,
E’en that Odysseus awaking
and seeing the fair-faced maiden
Her might follow as guide and reach
Phaeacia’s city.
Seizing the Ball, at the maiden
among her attendants the princess
Flung it, but missing the maiden it
fell in a bottomless eddy.
Piercingly all of them shrieked;
and godlike Odysseus, awakened,
Sat straight up and pondered
thereon in his heart and his spirit:
‘Ah me! what is the folk
whose country I now am arrived at?
Dwell here savages wanton and wild,
despisers of justice?
Have they a love for the stranger
and hearts that revere the immortals?
Lo, how piercing a cry as of maidens ringeth
around me,
Nymphs peradventure that dwell on precipitous
summits of mountains,
Or by the fountain
springs of the rivers and leas of the lowlands;
Else, maybe, I am
near to a folk of articulate language.
Nay, go to, I will
test for myself this matter and view it.’
Trans. H.B.
Cotterill.]
With such poetry Goethe tried to
find his way back to Hellenism. He believed himself, as he felt at
a certain period of his life, nearer to the original source of
poetry than he could ever have been had he not gone back to the
Greeks. We have to look at Goethe’s instinctive artistic
life, when he sought Greek metre and what the Greeks had formed
plastically in inner recitation. As with the other art-forms, true
poetry was to be sought where the fountain-head of art sprang more
abundantly – in primitive humanity, in unaccommodated man and
his inner experience, not yet shrouded by the thick veil of
materialistic civilisation. In Greek, we can observe the measured
flow of the hexameter; we observe how the dactyls are formed. What
do we really have in this verse-measure? Now we must remember,
speaking more theoretically, how something lives
in man
which strives inwardly toward a certain rhythm or harmony of
rhythms.
Let us take, on the one hand, the
breathing-rhythm: in a normal person of average age, about 18
breaths per minute; while in the same space of time we have 72
pulse-beats, four beats coinciding with each breath. This is an
inner harmonising of rhythms in human nature. Let us picture the
four pulse-beats taking place in each breath and consider their
ratio, their harmony with the breath. Let us bring the first two
pulse-beats together into one long syllable, and the remaining two
pulsebeats into two short syllables. We then have the verse-measure
underlying the hexameter. We can also produce the hexameter for
ourselves by examining the harmony of the four and the one: the
first three feet and, as the fourth, the caesura – all being
related to the one breath. What is formed in this way we derive
from man’s own being: we create out of man’s being,
embodying in speech an expression of human rhythms. Now the
fourfold rhythm of the blood can, of course, struggle with the
unitary breathing-rhythm, separating and
reuniting as they strive toward harmony. They separate in this or
that direction, and then flow together again. In this way are
revealed the several forms of verse and prosody. But each time it
is an overflowing of what lives in man himself into speech. In the
formation of Greek metres man unfolds his own being; something of
man’s most intimate morphology comes to his lips and forms
itself into speech. Here then lies the mystery: the Greeks strove
for vocal expression of the most intimate, even organic life of
man’s rhythmic system.
Goethe felt this. The Greeks by their very
nature (and let us not misunderstand this) were striving after
thought. Not for mere abstract thought, but something that led them
away, through thought, into concrete speech-formation – the
pictorial that is active in man. For what occurs in
man through the confluence of the blood- and breathing-rhythms is
transmitted to the brain and transformed into thought-content. The
process is even vaguely recognisable in prose. This is really
thought that has been stripped of everything that lay hidden in
Greek recitative metre. The Greeks spoke of the music of
Apollo’s lyre, meaning man himself as a work of art: a
rhythmic being in the harmony of his breathing- and blood-rhythms.
Here are uttered unfathomable cosmic mysteries which tell us more
than any prose language can.
Into all this sounds the will. As we turn to the
north we meet once more with the declamatory. The general
inclination of Nordic language, Nordic
speech-formation, is to make the will predominant. It is mainly
breathing which lives in Greek rhythm (being closer to thought than
the blood-circulation), but the experience of blood-circulation was
rightly regarded by ancient spiritual researchers as the immediate
expression of human personality, the human ego. And this is what
lives in the Nordic treatment of speech. Here we see how the
blood-rhythm strikes in and the breathing rhythm recedes. We see in
addition how the blood-rhythm is connected with the mobility of the
entire man. Looking back, we see how in the Nibelungenlied
Nordic man could sense the wave-beat of his blood, instigated by a
will-impulse and then subsiding into thought: in this way
alliteration comes into being. We begin with a will-impulse, which
then strikes up against the form, like a wave building up and then
subsiding again into the repose of rhythm. This was felt as
something constituting the whole man. Whereas the Greeks wanted to
penetrate inwards into the breathing-system, Nordic man was
inclined towards depth of personality and the life of the
blood-rhythm. Nordic-Germanic poetry is spiritualised human blood.
Here the will lives and gives itself form. We must imagine the
will-working of Wotan, moving on waves of air or welling up in man
as blood and forming the human personality.
[Note 24]
The primal element of will, the human being as a
whole, finds expression in Nordic-Germanic poetry. We can see this
welling-up and surging in the epic Nibelungenlied. And even
in more recent times, Wilhelm Jordan has tried to imitate the
alliterative style, such as lived in Nordic declamation, and has
tried in the speech-formation of his own epic to restore to life
the things I have described. What lives in Jordan’s Nibelunge,
therefore, we must not simply declaim by extracting and stressing
the prose content. Rather, there must sound forth that wave-motion
drawn from the inner nature of man. In Wilhelm Jordan’s
alliteration, these Wotan-waves must sound forth as they did when
he himself recited them. This he actually did; those who were still
able to hear him will know how he tried, through a declamatory
verse-technique, to draw out what is latent in
alliteration.
We shall conclude by giving an example from the
beginning of the Nibelungenlied, where the Nordic element
(as opposed to Greek metre) is in evidence. This will strike a
contrast to what Goethe, particularly in his later years, received
from Greek culture. From there he derived the finest quality
that lived in him, while yet wishing to unite it, together with the
Nordic, into a single whole.
And finally, a short passage of alliterative
verse from Wilhelm Jordan’s Nibelunge – his
attempt at a re-creation of ancient German poetry.
From The
Nibelungenlied.
I. Äventiurde
Uns ist in alten
maeren
wunders vil geseit
von heleden
lobebaeren,
von grôzer arebeit;
von freude und
hôchgezîten,
von weinen unde klagen,
von küener recken
strîten
möget ir nu wunder hoeren sagen
Ëz wuohs in
Buregonden
ein vil edel magedîn,
daz in allen
Landen
niht schoeners mohte sîn,
Kriemhilt
geheizen,
diu wart ein schoene wîp;
dar umbe muosen
dëgene
vil verliesen dën lîp
Der minneclîchen
meide
trüejen wol gezam:
ir moutten küene
recken,
niemen was ir gram.
âne
mâzen
schoene
sô was ir edel
lîp:
der
juncfrouwen
tugende
zierten anderiu
wîp.
Ir pflâgen drî
künige
edel unde rîch,
Gunther unde
Gêrnôt
die recken
lobelîch,
unt Gîselher dër
junge,
ein
waetlîcher dëgen;
diu frouwe was ir
swëster,
die helden hetens in ir pflëgen.
Ein rîchiu
küneginne
frou Uote ir muoter hiez;
ir vater
dër hiez
Dancrât,
dër in diu erbe liez
sît
nâch sîme
lëbene,
ein ellens rîcher man,
dër ouch in sîner
jugende
grôzer êren vil gewan.
Die hërren wâren
milte,
von arde hôhe erborn,
mit kraft unmâzen
küene
die recken ûzerkorn.
dâ zën
Burgonden
sô was ir lant genannt.
si frümten
starkiu
wunder
sît in Etzelen lant.
Ze Wormze bî dëm
Rîne
si wonten mit ir kraft;
in dienten von
ir
landen
vil stolziu ritterschaft
mit
lobelîchen
êren
unz an ir endes zît.
si sturben
jaemerlîche
sît von zweier frouwen nît.
Die drî künige
wâren,
als ich gesaget hân,
von vil hôhem
ellen;
in wâren undertân
ouch die besten
recken,
von dën man hât gesaget,
starc unt viel
küene,
in scharpfen strîten unverzaget.
Daz was von
Tronege
Hagene,
unt ouch dër bruoder sîn
Dancwart
dër
snëlle,
von Metzen Ortwîn,
Die zwêne
marcgrâven,
Gêre unt
Eckewart,
Volkêr von
Alzeie,
mit ganzem ellen wol bewart,
Rûmolt dër
küchenmeister,
ein ûzerwelter dëgen,
Sindolt unde
Hûnolt;
dise hërren muosen pflëgen
dës hoves unt dër
êren,
dër drîer künige
man.
si heten noch manigen
recken,
dës ich genennen nienen kan.
Dancwart dër was
marschalc;
dô was dër nëve sîn
truhsetze dës
küniniges
von Metzen
Ortwîn.
Sindolt dër was
schenke,
ein waetlîcher dëgen;
Hûnolt
was
kameraere:
si kunden, hôher êren pflëgen.
Von dës hoves
êre
unt von ir wîten kraft,
von ir vil hôhen
wërdekeit
unt von ir ritterschaft,
dër die hërren
pflâgen
mit freuden al ir lëben,
dësn künde iu ze
wâre
niemen gar ein ende gëben.
In disen hôhen
êren
troumte Kriemhilde,
wie si züge einen
valken
starc, schoene unt wilde,
dën ir zwên’ arn
erkrummen;
daz sie daz muoste sëhen,
irn kunde in dirre
wërlde
leider nimmer geschëhen.
Dën troum si dô
sagete
ir muoter Uoten.
sine kundes niht
bescheiden
baz dër guoten
‘dër valke, den du
ziuhest,
daz ist ein edel man;
in enwëlle got
behüeten,
du muost in schiere vloren
hân.’
‘Waz saget ir mir von
manne,
vil liebiu
muoter mîn?
âne recken
minne
sô wil ich immer sîn;
sus schoene ich wil
belîben
unz an mînen tôt,
daz ich von recken
minn
sol gewinnen nimmer nôt.’
‘Nune versprich ëz niht
ze
sêre,’
sprach ir muoter dô.
‘soltu
immer
hërzenlîche
zër wërlde wërden vrô,
daz kümt von mannes
minne;
du wirst ein schoene wîp,
ob dir got
gefüeget
eins rëhte guoten ritters lîp.’
‘Die rede lât
belîben,
vil liebiu frouwe
mîn;
ëz ist
an manigen
wîben
vil dicke worden
schîn,
wie liebe mit
leide
ze jungest lônen
kan;
ich sol sie mîden
beide,
sone kan mir nimmer
missegân.’
Kriemhilt in ir
muote
sich minne gar bewac.
sît lëbete diu vil
guote
vil manigen lieben tac,
daz sine wësse
niemen,
dën
minnen wolde ir lîp
sît wart si mit
êren
eins vil wërden recken wîp.
Dër was dër sëlbe
valke,
dën si in ir troume sach,
dën ir beschiet ir
muoter.
wie sêre siu daz rach
An ir naehsten
mâgen,
die in sluogen,
sint!
durch sîn eines
stërben
starp vil maniger muoter
kint.
[Langland’s Piers Plowman is among the
masterpieces of the English “Alliterative Revival” of
the fourteenth century. This extract is from the C-text version,
Passus IX, 152-191:
A Brytonere com
braggynge a-bosted Peers
al-so;
‘Wolle thow, ne wolle
thow
we wolleth habbe oure wil,
Bothe thy flour and thy flessh
fecchen when ous lyketh,
And make ous myrye
ther-myd
maugre ho bygruccheth!’
Peers the plouhman
tho
pleynede to the knyght,
To kepe hym and hus
catel
as covenent was bytwyne hem:
‘Awreke me of these
wastours
that maken thys worlde dere;
Thei counte nat of
cursing
ne holy kirke dreden;
Ther worth no plente,’ quath
Peers
‘and the plouh ligge.’
Curtesliche the knyght
then as
hus kynde wolde,
Warned Wastour and wissed hym betere,
‘Other ich shal bete thy by the
lawe
and brynge the in stockes.’
‘Ich was nat woned to
wirche,’ quath
Wastour
and ich wolle nat now
bygynne,’
And let lyght of the
lawe
and lasse of the knyght,
And sette Peers at a
pese pleyne
hym wher he wolde.
‘Now, by Crist,’ quath
Peers ‘y shal
apeyre yow alle!’
And hopede after
Hunger that herde him at the
ferste.
‘Ich praye the,’ quath Peers
tho
‘pur charite, sire Honger,
Awreke me of these
wastours for the knyght wol
nat.’
Honger hente in
haste
Wastour by the mawe,
And wrang hum by the
wombe that al waterede
hus eyen.
He buffated the
Brutener
a-boute the chekes,
That he loked lyk a
lanterne
al hus lyf after.
He bet hem so
bothe be barst neih hure
guttes,
Ne hadde Peers with a
peese-lof prayede hym
by-leve.
Honger, have mercy
of hem,’ quath Peers and let me
yeve hem
benes;
And that was bake
for bayarde may be here
bote.’
Tho were faitours
a-fered
and flowen to Peersses bernes,
And flapten on
with
flailes
fro morwe til evene,
That Honger was
nat hardy on hem for to
loke,
For a potful of
potage that Peersses wyf
made.
An hep of
eremites henten hem
spades,
Spitten and
spradde donge in despit
of Hunger.
Thei corven here
copes and courtepies hem
made,
And wenten as
workmen to weden and mowen;
Al for drede of
here deth such dyntes
yaf Hunger.
Blynd and
brokeleggede he botnede a
thousande,
And lame men he
lechede with longen of
bestes.
Preestes and other
peple
to Peers thei drowen,
And freres of alle
fyve
orders
al for fere of Hunger.
William Langland (c.1331- ?).]
From Die Nibelungen.
“Hildebrand’s Homecoming”, Canto
17:
Schon drängten sich draussen mit
dröhnenden Tritten
Zu jedem der Tore der Krieger tausend;
Schon hob sein
Hifthorn der Hunnenkönig,
Um Sturm zu
blasen. Doch stumm noch blieb es.
Ob sein Herz auch
zermalmt war, er musste horchen,
Und gramvoll
beseufzte die grosse Seele
Verloren Grund
begrabener Hoffnung
In des stolzen
Germanen Sterbegesang:
‘Erwacht! In den Wolken
Ist Waffengerassel.
Erwacht, es gewittert,
‘Als wieherten Rosse.
Walkürien kommen
Zum Kampf geflogen
In glänzenden Brünnen,
Von Brautlust glühend.
Sie lenken herunter
Die luftigen Renner,
Um Tapfer zu kiesen
Mit tötendem Kuss.
Erwachet! Es warten
Die Wodanswölfe,
Es rufen die Raben
Ihr Mahl zu rüsten.
Um der Seele die Pforte
Zum Sonnenpfade
Weit aufzuschliessen,
Ist Eisen geschliffen.
Das Leben ist Schlaf nur,
Erlösung der Schlachttod.
Erwachet zum Sterben,
Und Sterbend
erwacht.
Erwachet! Es winken
Von Walhalls Schwelle
Die erkorenen Gäste
Des Götterkönigs.
Da lebt ihr in
Leibern
Aus Licht
gewoben;
Da ist Kampf nur
Kurzweil
Und Wunde
Wollust.
Da labt das Gedenken
Erduldeter Leiden,
Da schildert ihr scherzend
Der Niblunge Not.’
Wilhelm Jordan
[In the absence of
any modern English attempt to restore alliteration in its
full-blooded form, there may be a certain interest here in the
following piece. The chiming effect of the alliterations serves in
this instance rather to embellish and lend spice to the recitative
flow of the verse, not aspiring to become the ordering principle of
the poem:
EUROPA AND
THE BULL
Naked
they came, a niggling core of girls
Maggoting gaily in the curling wool
Of
morning mist, and careless as the lark
That
gargled overhead. They were the root
Of all
that writhing air, the frothing rock
Of that
grey sea in whose vacuity
Footless they stood, nor knew if it or they
Were
moving now. Yet, even as they gazed,
Cave
after cave of light calved out of gloom,
As on
they glided through the muddling veils
Roof
rose on roof, laugh laddered into laugh
Into
the motionless meadow, clear as stone,
Interminably domed.
Nothing
supernal here; only cow-parsley:
Any
place was convenient velvet,
And
everwhere was peace, pin-drizzled by
Bird-song; the bay bare lake a gong
Unbruised. Easy at the sea’s edge the
rocks
Breathed up and down.
The
Inland hills stood still
Like
hoardings to be stared at. Happy place!
And
happy happy day! How giddily then
They
sleeked along the sand with smoking heels.
Some
frayed off with fountain-fling of arms
To play
and plunge, staccatoing the water
And
some more slowly followed, picking the deep flowers
Out of
the fume and underdrone of bees: green-kneed
They
rose and fell in waves delightedly: new sights
Consumed them; new mites and motes of smell
Held
and incensed them: crumbs of booty glowed
In
every foot-dent, eiderdowntrodden.
And all among
them moved the moon-like cows
Grazing light
tracks across the long night-grass.
But
look! the Bull! indubitably bull,
Elbowing slowly through the obeisant herd,
Blazing
and bellowing. His massy head,
Laden
like a dahlia, dallied and swung,
And his
vast eye slid to and fro as sharp
And
glaucous as sea-holly, salting all
Their thoughts
with suddenness. They hardly knew
What
most to admire; but most his hub of power
And
circumambience of gentleness
Delighted them.
Arms curved and craved to stroke
His
milky sides, insidiously veined
With
watery blues and bloody ivyings.
But how
describe him? words can only add
To
lightning the thunder’s redundancy.
He was most
godlike and most temperate.
Slow,
slow, slow, with bubble-pause and slide
He
paced before Europa there, and she
As if
with shivering drew her shoulders now
Shyly
about her, yet she shivered still.
Never
did shadow so shimmer with midges
As she
with switherings. Should she go?
Or no?
Body and soul see-sawed in her.
As
slowly the swan comes forward, in advance
Bearing its
bellying tray of effusive plumes,
Yet
backward rears its head and huffs its glance
As if
it fended off its offering that presumes:
Swollen
with slowness and undertowed by longing
It
grows on the water, close, thundery, and thronging,
Till
suddenly beside us, without fuss,
Immense it
blossoms like a cumulus –
So slowly rose
Europa, slowly she
Opened her
fan-like self and mounted him
And spread her
valances.
O how
his reticence reined and trounced him then,
Lifting
his feet into flounces of flight
And ratchet-edges
of agitation,
Chawing
each gentle step. To have and to hold –
How he
would love to have but feared to hold
Her who as
srnooth as metal sat and smiled.
And how his
silver slaverings flowed, and now
His chattering
hooves danced under him like stones....
W. R. Rodgers]
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