ON
THE ART OF LECTURING
by RUDOLF STEINER
Lyrical speaking for spiritual life; dramatic
speaking for rights-relationships; epic speaking for economic
conditions. About economic life within the social organism. The
formulation of key sentences. Speech exercises.
LECTURE V
I have tried to
characterize how one can formulate a lecture on the threefold
order from out of one thought, and then arrange it in
sections. What one can generally say concerning the whole
social organism, as well as references to what can occur in
the first two realms — namely that of the spiritual life
and that of the judicial, the body politic was contained in
what I said.
[Note 1]
You will have understood from that, how preparing oneself for
the content of such a lecture, one can proceed.
Now, one can
also prepare oneself for the form of delivery by immersing
oneself into the thoughts and feelings. We shall perhaps
understand each other best if I say that the preparation
should be such that we try hard first to sense and then to
utter what is related to the spiritual life in a more lyrical
language (without, of course, resorting to singing,
recitation, or some such thing), — in a lyrical manner
of speech, with quiet enthusiasm, so that one demonstrates
through the way of delivering the matters that everything one
has to say concerning the spiritual life comes from out of
oneself. One should by all means call forth the impression
that one is enthusiastic about what one envisions for the
spiritual part of the social organism. Naturally, it must not
be false, mystical, sentimental enthusiasm; a made-up
enthusiasm. We achieve the right impression if we prepare
ourselves first in imagination, in inner experience —
even so far as to modulation — how, approximately,
something like that could be said. I say specifically,
“how, approximately, something like that could be
said,” for the reason that we should never commit
ourselves word for word; rather what we prepare is, in a
sense, a speech taking its course only in inward thoughts;
and we are certainly ready to re-formulate what we finally
come out and say.
But when we
speak about rights-relationships, we should make the attempt
to speak dramatically. That implies: when we lecture about
the equality of men, discussing it by means of examples, we
should try as much as possible to put ourselves into the
other person's position with our thinking. For instance, we
should call to mind the image of how a person who seeks work,
asserts his right to work in the sense of Kernpunkte der
sozialen Frage (the threefold social order). By making it
evident that on one hand we are speaking from the other
person's position, from out of his assertion of rights, we
should then make it evident how through a slight change in
the tone of voice we pass on to the topic of how one ought to
meet such an assertion out of general humanitarian reasons.
So it is dramatic speaking, very strongly modulated, dramatic
lecturing, that calls forth the impression in listeners that
one could think one's way into the souls of other persons;
that is the manner we should employ in speaking about the
rights-relationships.
When lecturing
on economic conditions, the main point is that we speak
directly from experience. If, in the spirit of the threefold
social organism, one speaks about economic relationships, one
should not permit the belief to arise that there even could
be such a thing as a theoretical political economy. Instead,
one should limit the main discussion to describing cases
taken from the economic life itself; either cases that one
repeats, or cases that one construes as to how they should be
or could be. But with the latter cases — saying how
they should or could be — one must never neglect to
speak out of economic experience. Actually, when lecturing on
the economic life, one should speak in an epic style.
Particularly, when presenting what is written in the
Kernpunkte, one should speak as if one had no preconceived
ideas at all concerning the economic life, and had no notions
that this should be thus and so; instead, one should speak as
if one were informed on all and everything by the facts
themselves.
One can evoke a
certain feeling, for example, that it is correct to permit
the transfer of the administration of monetary funds from one
who is not involved in it himself anymore, to somebody who
once again can participate in it. But one can only speak
about something like that if one presents it to people by
means of descriptions of what takes place if there are
legacies merely due to blood-relationships, or what can take
place when such a transfer is occasioned in the way it is
described in the Kernpunkte. Only by placing such a
matter before people in a living way, as if one were copying
reality, can one speak in such a way that the speech truly
stands within the economic life. And just in this way, one
can make the idea of “associations”
[Note 2]
comprehensible and plausible. One will
make it plausible that an individual person really knows
nothing about the economic life; that if he wants to arrive
at a judgement as to what must be done in the life of the
economy, he is basically completely dependent on
communicating with others. A sound economic view can only
emerge from groups of people and one is therefore dependent
on associations.
Then, one will
perhaps meet with comprehension if one calls attention to the
fact that much of what exists today actually came out of
ancient, instinctive associations. Just consider for a moment
how today's abstract market brings things together, whose
combination and redistribution to the consumer cannot be
surveyed at all. But how has one arrived at this
market-relationship in the first place? Basically, from the
instinctive association of a number of villages located
around a larger township, at a distance that one could travel
back and forth on foot in one day, where people exchanged
their products. One did not call that an association. One did
not coin any word for it, but in reality it was an
instinctive association. Those people who here came together
for the market were associated with all of those who lived in
the surrounding villages. They could count on a set
circulation of goods that resulted from experience. Therefore
they could regulate production according to consumption in
truly alive relationships. There certainly existed such
associative conditions in such primitive economies; they just
didn't call themselves that.
All this has
become impossible to over-see, with the enlargement of the
economic territories. In particular, it has become senseless
in regard to the world economy. The world economy which has
come into being only in the last third of the 19th century,
has reduced everything into an abstract realm; that is, it
has reduced everything in the economic life to the turn-over
of money or its monetary value, until this reduction has
proven its own absurdity.
Indeed, when
Japan fought a war with China and Japan won the war, one
could very simply pay the war reparations by way of the
Chinese Minister's handing a check to the Japanese Delegate,
which the latter then deposited in a bank in Japan. This is
an actual course of events. There were values contained in
this check, which is money and has monetary value. It
represented values. If you imagine how at that time
everything should have been transported from one territory
into the other this would have been a difficult process under
modern-day conditions. But owing to the manner in which Japan
and China were placed within the whole world economy, it
could be done this way. However, all this has led itself to a
point of absurdity. In the dealings between Germany and
France, it has proven itself to be impossible.
[Note 3]
I am therefore of the opinion that the
state of affairs can best be explained out of the economic
relationships themselves, and then one can explain the
necessity for the associative principle.
Once again, one
should have to divide this subject matter regarding the
economic life in a certain way, and one would have to pass on
to several concluding sentences of which I have already said
that they again should be conceived verbatim or at least
almost word for word.
So, how will
the preparation for a speech appear, in fact? Well, one
should try one's best to get into the situation or the
subject that the audience is prepared for, by formulating the
opening sentences in a way one considers necessary. One will
have greater difficulty in the case of completely unprepared
listeners; less difficulty, if one addresses a group that one
finds already involved in the matter, at least possessing the
corresponding feelings concerning the assertions one makes.
Then, one will neither write down the rest of the speech nor
jot down mere catch-words. Experience shows that neither the
verbatim composition nor the mere noting down of catch-words
leads to a good speech. The reason for not writing down the
speech is because it ties one down and easily causes
embarrassment when the memory falters; this is most
frequently the case when the speech is written down word for
word. Catch-words easily mislead one to formulate the whole
preparation too abstractly. On the other hand, if one needs
to have such a support, what one should best write down and
bring along as notes are a number of correctly formulated
sentences that serve as catch-phrases. They do not make the
claim that one delivers them in the same way as a part of the
speech; instead, they indicate: first, second, third, fourth,
and so on; they are extracts, so to speak, so that from one
sentence perhaps ten or eight or twelve will result. But one
should write such sentences down. One should therefore not
write down, “spiritual life conceived as
independent”; instead, “the spiritual life can
only thrive if it freely works independently out of
itself.” (Catch-phrases, with other words.) If you do
something like this, you will then have the experience
yourself that owing to such catch-phrases, you can in a
relatively short time most readily attain to a certain
facility of speaking freely, a speaking that only contains
the ladder of catch-phrases.
Concerning the
conclusion, it is often very good if, in a certain sense, at
least gently, one leads back to the beginning; if therefore
the end, in a sense, contains something that, as a theme, was
also contained in the beginning.
And then, such
catch-phrases readily give one the opportunity to really
prepare oneself in the way indicated above by having noted
these sentences down on one's piece of paper. So, let us say,
one ponders the following: what you have to say for the
spiritual life must have a sort of lyrical nature within you;
what you have to say concerning the rights-relationships must
have a kind of dramatic character in your mind; and what
concerns the economic life must live in your mind in a
narrative, epic form; a quiet, narrative, epic character.
Then, the desire, as well as the skill, to word the catch-
phrases in the formulation that I have indicated, will indeed
begin to arise instinctively. The preparation will result
quite instinctively in such a way that the manner in which
one speaks merges indeed into what one has to say concerning
the subject. For this it is, however, necessary to have
brought one's command of language to the level of instinct,
so that one indeed experiences the speech-organs the way one
would, for instance, feel the hammer, if one wanted to use
the hammer for something. That can be achieved, if one
practices a little speech-gymnastics.
It's true,
isn't it, when one practices gymnastics, those are not
movements that are later executed in real life; but they are
movements that make one flexible and dextrous. Similarly, one
should make the speech-organs pliable and adroit; but making
the latter pliable and dextrous is something that must be
accomplished so that it goes together with the inner soul
life, and so that one learns to be aware of the sound in
speaking. In the seminar courses that I held over two years
ago in Stuttgart for the Waldorf school teachers, I put
together a number of such speech exercises that I now want to
pass on to you. They are mostly of a kind that, by their
content, does not prevent one from learning to merge oneself
purely into the element of speech; they are only designed for
practicing speech-gymnastics. If one tries again and again to
say these sentences aloud, but in such a way that one always
probes: how does one best use his tongue, how does one best
use his lips so as to produce this particular sequence of
sounds? — then one makes oneself independent of speaking
and, instead, places that much more value on mental
preparation for lecturing.
I shall now
read you a number of such sentences whose content is often
senseless, but they are designed to make the speech-organs
pliable and fit for public speaking.
[Note 4]
Dass er dir log, uns darf es nicht
loben.
(That he told lies, 't'is not to be
lauded.)
is the easiest one.
Something a bit more complicated:
Nimm nicht Nonnen in nimmermuede
Muehlen.
(Take not nuns in never-tired
mills.)
One should increasingly try, along with
the sequence of sounds, to make the organs of speech pliable;
to bend, to hollow, to take possession of them
[Note 5]
Another example:
Rate mir mehrere Raetsel nur
richtig.
It is naturally not enough to say
something like this once, or ten times; but again and again
and again, because even if the speech-organs are already
pliable, they can become still more so.
An example that
I consider to be particularly useful is the following:
Redlich ratsam
Ruestet ruehmlich
Riesig raechend
Ruhig rollend
Reuige Rosse
With this, one has the opportunity to
regulate the breath in the pauses, something one has to pay
attention to and that can be particularly well done through
such an exercise.
In a similar
way, not all the letters, nor all the sounds, have the same
value for this practicing. You make progress if you take the
following, for example:
Protzig preist
Baeder bruenstig
Polternd putzig
Bieder bastelnd
Puder patzend
Bergig bruestend
If you succeed in finding your way into
this sequence of sounds, you gain much from it.
When one has
done such exercises, then one can also try to do those
exercises that cannot but result in bringing a mood into the
speaking of the sounds. I have tried to give an example of
how the sounds can pour into the mood in the following:
Erfuellung geht
|
(Fulfillment goes)
|
Durch Hoffnung
|
(Through hope)
|
Geht durch Sehnen
|
(Goes through longing)
|
Durch Wollen
|
(Through willing)
|
and now it passes more into the sounds,
through which, here in particular, the mood in the sound
itself is held fast:
Wollen weht
|
(Willing wafts)
|
Im Webenden
|
(In weaving)
|
Weht im Bebenden
|
(Wafts in billowing)
|
Webt bebend
|
(Weaves billowing)
|
Webend bindend
|
(Weaves binding)
|
Im Finden
|
(In finding)
|
Findend windend
|
(Finding winding)
|
Kuendend
|
(Calling)
|
You will always discover, when you do
these exercises in particular, how you are able, without
letting the breath disturb you, to regulate the breathing by
simply holding yourself onto the sounds. In recent times, one
has thought up all kinds of more or less clever methods for
breathing and for all kinds of accompanying aspects of
speaking and singing, but actually, all of those are no good,
because speech with everything that belongs with it, with the
breath, too, should by all means be learned through actual
speaking. This implies that one should learn to speak in such
a way that, within the boundaries that result from the sound
sequence and the word relationships, the breath also
regulates itself as a matter of course. In other words, one
should only learn breathing during speech — in speaking
itself. Therefore, the exercises of speech should be so
designed that, in correctly feeling them regarding their
sounds, one is obliged — not by the content but by the
sounds — to formulate the breath correctly because he
experiences the sound correctly.
What the verse
below represents, points once again to the content of the
mood. It has four lines; these four lines are arranged so
that they are an ascent, as it were. Each line causes an
expectation, and the fifth line is the conclusion and brings
fulfilment. Now one should really make an effort to execute
this speech movement that I have just characterized. The
verse goes like this:
In den unermesslich weiten
Raeumen,
In den endenlosen Zeiten,
In der Menschenseele Tiefen,
In der Weltenoffenbarung:
Suche des grossen Raetsels Loesung.
(In the immeasurably wide realms,
in the never-ending ages,
in the human soul's depths
in the world's revelation:
seek the great riddle's answer.)
There you have the fifth line representing
the fulfillment of that escalating expectation that is evoked
in the first four lines.
* * *
Speech exercises and speech gymnastics; the
effect of coffee and tea upon the speaker; respect for the
audience through proper preparation.
One can also
attempt to, well, let me say, bring the mood of the situation
into the sounds, into the mode of speaking, the how
of speech. And for that I have formulated the following
exercise. One should picture a sizable green frog that sits
in front of him with its mouth open. In other words, one
should imagine that one confronts a giant frog with an open
mouth. And now, one should picture what sort of reactions,
effects, one can have regarding this frog. There will be
humor in the emotion as well as all that should be evoked in
the soul in a lively manner. Then, one should address this
frog in the following way:
Lalle Lieder lieblich
Lipplicher Laffe
Lappiger lumpiger
Laichiger Lurch
Picture to yourself: that a horse is
walking across a field. The content does not matter.
Naturally, you must now imagine that horses whistle! Now you
express the fact that you have here in the following
manner:
Pfiffig pfeifen
Pfaeffische Pferde
Pflegend Pfluege
Pferchend Pfirsiche
and then you vary that by saying it this
way:
Pfiffig pfeifen aus Naepfen
Pfaeffische Pferde schluepfend
Pflegend Pfluege huepfend
Pferchend Pfirsiche knuepfend
And then — but please, do learn it
by heart, so that you can fluently repeat the one version
after the other — there is a third version. Learn all
three by heart, and try to say them so fluently that during
the speaking of one version you will not be confused by the
other. That is what counts. Take as the third form:
Kopfpfiffig pfeifen aus Naepfen
Napfpfaeffische Pferde schluepfend
Wipfend pflegend Pfluege huepfend
Tipfend pferchend Pfirsiche knuepfend
Learn one after the other, so that you can
do the three versions by heart, and that one never interferes
when you say the other.
Something
similar can be done with the following two verses:
Ketzer petzten jetzt klaeglich
Letztlich leicht skeptisch
and now the other version:
Ketzerkraechzer petzten jetzt
klaeglich
Letztlich ploetzlich leicht skeptisch
Again, learn it by heart and say one after
the other!
One can achieve
smooth speech if one practices something like the
following:
Nur renn nimmer reuig
Gierig grinsend
Knoten knipsend
Pfaender knuepfend
One has to accustom oneself to say this
sound sequence, ‘Nur renn ...’. You
will see what you gain for your tongue, your organs of
speech, if you do such exercises.
Now, such an
exercise that lasts a bit longer, through which this
flexibility of speech can be attained — I believe
actors have already discovered afterwards that this was the
best way to make their speech pliable:
Zuwider zwingen zwar
Zweizweckige Zwacker zu wenig
Zwanzig Zwerge
Die sehnige Krebse
Maher suchend schmausen
Dass schmatzende Schrnachter
Schmiegsam schnellstens
Schnurrig schnalzen
And then: one occasionally requires
presence of mind in direct speech. One can acquire it by
something like the following:
Klipp plapp plick glick
Klingt Klapperrichtig
Knatternd trappend
Rossegetrippel
Then, for further acquisition of presence
of mind in speaking, the following two examples can be placed
together:
Schlinge Schlange geschwinde
Gewundene Fundewecken weg
The ‘Wecken weg’ is
in there, too, but as a sound-motif, thus:
Gewundene Fundewecken
Geschwinde schlinge Schlange weg
The following example is useful for
putting some muscle into speech, so that one is in a
position, in speaking, to slap somebody down in a discussion
sometimes (something that is quite necessary in
speaking!):
Marsch schmachtender
Klappriger Racker
Krackle plappernd linkisch
Kink von vorne fort
Then, for somebody who stutters a little,
the following two examples should still be mentioned:
Nimm mir nimmer
Was sich waesserig
Mit Teilen mitteilt
For everyone who stutters, this example is
good. When stuttering, one can also say it in the way
below:
Nimmer nimm mir
Waesserige Wickel
Was sich schlecht mitteilt
Mit Teilen deiner Rede
The point is, of course, that the person
who stutters must make a real effort.
One should by
no means believe that what I want to call speech-gymnastics,
can or should only be practiced with sentences that are
meaningful for the intellect. Because in those sentences that
contain sense for the intellect, the attentiveness for the
meaning instinctively outweighs anything else too much, so
that we do not rely correctly on the sounds, the saying. And
it is really necessary that, in a certain sense, we tear
speaking loose from ourselves, actually manage to separate it
from ourselves. In the same way as one can separate writing
from one's self, one can also tear speaking loose from
oneself.
There are two
ways to write for the human being. One way consists of man's
writing egotistically; he has the forms of the letters in his
limbs, as it were, and lets them flow out of his limbs. One
emphasized such a style of writing for a certain length of
time — it is probably still the same today — when
one gave lessons in penmanship for those who were to be
employed in business offices or people like that. I have, for
example, observed at one time how such a lesson in writing
was conducted for employees of commercial establishments so
that the persons in question had to develop every letter out
of a kind of curve. They had to learn swinging motions with
the hand; then they had to put these motions down on paper;
this way, everything is in the hand, in the limbs; and one is
not really present with anything but the hand in writing.
Another form of writing is the one that is not egotistical;
it is the unselfish style of writing. It consists of not
really writing with the hand, as it were, but with the eye;
one always looks at it and basically draws the letter. Thus,
what is in the formation of the hand is of importance to a
lesser degree: one really acts like one does when sketching,
where one is not the slave of a handwriting. Instead, after a
while, one has difficulty in even writing one's name the same
way one has written it just the time before. For most people
it is so terribly easy to write their name the way they have
always written it. It flows out of their hand. But those
persons who place something artistic into the script, they
write with the eye. They follow the style of the lines with
the eye. And there, the script indeed separates itself from
the person. Then — while it is in a certain respect not
desirable to practice that — a person can imitate
scripts, vary scripts in different ways. I do not say that
one should practice that especially, but I mean that it
results as an extreme when one paints one's script, as it
were. This is the more unselfish writing. Writing out of the
limbs, on the other hand, is the more selfish, the egotistic
way.
Speech is also
selfish, in most people. It simply emerges out of the
speech-organs. But you can gradually accustom yourselves to
experience your speech in such a way that it seems as if it
floated around you, as if the words flew around you. You can
really have a sort of experience of your words. Then,
speaking separates itself from the person. It becomes
objective. Man hears himself speak quite instinctively. In
speaking, his head becomes enlarged, as it were, and one
feels the weaving of sounds and the words in one's
surroundings. One gradually learns to listen to the sounds,
the words. And one can achieve that particularly through such
exercises. That way, there is in fact not just yelling into a
room anymore — by yelling, I do not mean shouting out
loud only; one can yell in whispering, too, if one actually
speaks only for one's own sake, the way it emerges out of the
speech-organs — instead one really lives, in speaking,
with space. One feels the resonance in space, as it were.
This has become a fumbling mischief in certain
speech-theories — theories of speech-teaching or
speech-study, if you will — of recent times. One has
made people speak with body-resonance, with abdominal
resonances, with nasal resonances, and so forth. But all
these inner resonances are a vice. A true resonance can only
be an experienced one. One experiences such a resonance not
by the impact of the sound against the interior of the nose;
instead one feels it only in front of the nose, outside.
Thus, language in fact attains to abundance. And of course,
the language of a speaker should be abundant. A speaker
should swallow as little as possible.
Do not believe
that this is unimportant for the speaker; it is rather of
great significance for the speaker. Whether we present
something in a correct way to people depends most certainly
on what position we are able to take in regard to speech
itself. One doesn't have to go quite so far as a certain
actor who was acquainted with me, who never said
“Freundrl” [Austrian dialect for
“Friend” — note by translator] but always
“Freunderl”, because he wanted to place
himself into every syllable. He did that to the extreme. But
one should develop the instinctive talent not to swallow
syllables, syllable-forms, and syllable-formations. One can
accomplish that if one tries to find one's way into rhythmic
speech in such a way that, placing one's self into the whole
sound-modulation, one recites to oneself:
Und es wallet und siedet und
brauset und zischt,
Wie wenn Wasser mit Feuer sich mengt ...
(Quote
from Schiller's The Diver)
So: it is a matter of placing one's self
not only into the sound as such but into the
sound-modulation, into this “growing round” and
the angularity of sound.
If somebody
believes that he could become a speaker without putting any
value on this, then he labors under the same misconception as
a human soul that has arrived at the point between death and
a new birth, when it once again will descend to the earth,
and does not want to embody itself because it does not want
to enter into the moulding of the stomach, the lungs, the
kidney, and so forth. It is really a matter of having to draw
on everything that makes a speech complete.
One should at
least put some value on the organism of speech and the genius
of language as well. One should not forget that valuing the
organism of speech, the genius of language, is creative, in
the sense of creating imagination. He who cannot occupy
himself with language, listening inwardly, will not receive
images, will not be the recipient of thoughts; he will remain
clumsy in thinking, he will become one who is abstract in
speaking, if not a pedant. Particularly, in experiencing the
sounds, the imagery in speech-formation, in this itself lies
something that entices the thoughts out of our souls that we
need to carry before the listeners. In experiencing the word,
something creative is implied in regard to the inner
organization of the human being. This should never be
forgotten. It is extremely important. In all cases, the
feeling should pervade us how the word, the sequence of
words, the word-formation, the sentence-construction, how
these are related to our whole organism. Just as one can
figure out a person from the physiognomy, one can even more
readily — I don't mean from what he says but from the
how of the speech — one can figure out the whole human
being from his manner of speech.
But this
how of his speech emerges out of the whole human
being. And it is by all means a matter of focusing —
delicately of course, not by treating ourselves like we were
the patient — on the physical body. It is, for example,
beneficial for somebody who, through education or perhaps
even heredity, is predisposed to speaking pedantically; to
try, with stimulating tea that he partakes of every so often,
to wean himself from pedantry. As I have said, these things
must be done with care. For one person, this tea is right;
for another, the other tea is good. Ordinary tea, as I have
repeatedly mentioned, is a very good diet for diplomats:
diplomats have to be witty, which means having to chat at
random about one thing after another, none of which must be
pedantic, but instead has to exhibit the ease of switching
from one sentence to another. This is why tea is indeed the
drink of diplomats. Coffee, on the other hand, makes one
logical. This is why, normally not being very logical by
nature, reporters write their articles most frequently in
coffee-houses. Now, since the advent of the typewriter,
matters are a little different, but in earlier days, one
could meet whole groups of journalists in coffee-houses,
chewing on their pen and drinking coffee so that at last, one
thought could align itself with the next one. Therefore, if
one discovers that one has too much of what is of the
tea-quality, then coffee is something that can have an
equalizing effect. But, as was mentioned before, all this is
not altogether meant, as a prescription, but pointing in that
direction. And if somebody, for example, is predisposed to
mix some annoying sound into his speech — let's say if
somebody says, “he,” after every third syllable,
or something like that — then I advise him to drink
some weak senna-leaf-tea twice a week in the evening, and he
will see what a beneficial effect that will have.
It is indeed
so: since the matters that come to expression in a lecture,
in a speech, must come out of the whole person, diet must by
no means be overlooked. This is not only the case in an
obvious sense. Of course, one can hear by the speech whether
it comes from a person who has let endless amounts of beer
flow down his gullet, or something like that. This is an
obvious case. He who has an ear for speech knows very well
whether a given speaker is a tea-drinker or a
coffee-drinker, whether he suffers from constipation or its
opposite. In speech, everything is expressed with absolute
certainty, and all of that has to be taken into
consideration. One will gradually develop an instinct for
these matters if one becomes sensitive to language in one's
surroundings the way I have described it.
However, the
various languages lend themselves in different ways, and in
varying degrees, to being heard in the surroundings. A
language such as the Latin tongue is particularly suitable
for the above purpose. The same with the Italian. I mean by
this, to be heard objectively by the one who is speaking
himself. The English language, for example, is little suited
for this, because this language is very similar to the script
that flows out of the limbs. The more abstract the languages
are, the less suitable they are to be heard inwardly and to
become objective. Oh, how in former times the German
Nibelungen-song sounded:
Uns
ist in alten maeren
von heleden lobebaeren,
von freude unt hôchgezîten,
von küener recken strîten
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Wunders
vil geseit
von grôzer arebeit;
von weinen unde klagen,
müget ir nu wunder hoeren sagen.
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Ez
wuohs in Buregonden
daz in allen landen
Kriemhilt geheizen;
Dar umbe muosen degene
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ein
vil edel magedîn,
niht schoeners mohte sîn,
diu wart ein schoene wîp,
vil Verliesen dën lîp.
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That hears itself while one is speaking!
Through such things one must learn to experience language.
Naturally, languages become abstract in the course of their
development. Then one must bring the concrete substance into
it from within, permeate it with the obvious. Abstractly
placed side by side, what a difference:
Uns
ist in alten maeren
Uns wird in alten Märchen
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wunders
vil geseit
Wunderbares viel erzählt
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and so forth!
But if one
becomes accustomed to listening, this can certainly also be
brought into the more modern language, and there, much can be
done in speech towards the latter's becoming something that
has its own genius. But for that, such exercises are
required, so that listening in the spirit and speaking out of
the spirit fit into one another. And so, I want to repeat the
verse one more time:
Erfuellung geht
Durch Hoffnung
Geht durch Sehnen
Durch Wollen
Wollen weht
Im Webenden
Weht im Bebenden
Webend bindend
Im Finden
Findend windend
Kuendend.
Only by placing
the sound into various relationships, does one arrive at an
experiencing of the sound, the metamorphosis of the sound,
and the looking at the word, the seeing of the word.
Then, when
something like what I have described today as creating a
disposition through catch-sentences, as our inner
soul-preparation, is united with what we can in the above way
gain out of the language, then it all works toward public
speaking.
One more thing
is required besides all the others I have already mentioned:
responsibility! This implies that one should be aware that
one does not have the right to set all of one's ill-mannered
speech-habits before an audience. One should learn to feel
that for a public appearance one does require education of
speech, a going-out of one's self, and plasticity in regard
to speech. Responsibility towards speech! It is very
comfortable to remain standing and to speak the way one
normally does, and to swallow as much as one is used to
swallow; to swallow (verschlucken), to squeeze
(quetschen), and to bend (biegen) and break
(brechen), and to pull (dehnen) at the
words just the way it suits one. But one may not remain with
this squeezing (Quetschen) and pushing
(Druecken) and pulling (Dehnen) and
cornering (Ecken) and similar speech-mannerisms.
Instead, one must try to come to the aid of one's speaking
even in regard to the form. If one supports one's speaking in
this manner, one is quite simply also led to the point where
one addresses an audience with a certain respect. One
approaches public speaking with a certain reserve and speaks
to an audience with respect. And this is absolutely
necessary. One can accomplish this if, on the one side, one
perfects the soul-aspect; and, on the other side, formulates
the physical in the way I have demonstrated in the second
part of the lecture. Even if one only has to give occasional
talks, such matters still play an important part.
Say, for
example, that one has to give discussions on the building,
the Goetheanum. Since one naturally cannot make a separate
preparation for each discussion, one should basically, in
that case, properly prepare oneself, the way I have explained
it, at least twice a week for the talk in question. One
should actually only extemporize, if one practices the
preparation, as it were, as a constant exercise.
Then one will
also discover how, I should like to say, the outer form
unites itself with the substance. And we shall have to speak
about this point in particular one more time tomorrow: about
the union of the form-technique with the soul-technique.
The course is
brief, unfortunately; one can barely get past the
introduction. But I would find it irresponsible not to have
said what I did say in particular in the course of these
lectures.
Notes:
Note 1. The
threefold social organism, as depicted by Rudolf Steiner,
is composed of three parts: the two mentioned above and
the economic realm.
Note 2. (See
The Threefold Social Order for details on
“Associations.”)
Note 3. Rudolf
Steiner refers here to the war-reparations
demanded of Germany by France.
Note 4. The
speech-exercises are rendered in the original German,
since the emphasis is on their sound, primarily; a
translation is often useless as well as extremely
difficult.
Note 5. In
trying to illustrate how one must take hold of one's
speech-organs via the exercises. Rudolf Steiner modifies
the four words in a manner that is highly original and
unusual, and untranslatable as well. But they thus
indicate a living working, an active doing.
“Gesehmeithgen,” to make pliable;
“zu biegen,” to bend; “zu
hohlen,” to make hollow; “zu
erhabenen,” to have or possess by effort.
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