THE
ALLITERATION
ANDTERMINAL
RHYME: THE PRIMAL STATE OF INNOCENCEAND
THE FALL
OF MAN
(Stuttgart, 29
March 1923)
Permit me to turn now to a consideration of
something that might be couched in more learned terms –
though then I should need more time. I should like to make a point
about the art of poetry by means of an illustration. It must,
however, be more than an illustration: it should point to the
reality. Everyone whose sense for true knowledge can extend to the
artistic will grasp what I mean.
We refer to the Fall of Man. We speak of how man
broke away from those regions he inhabited while still under the
direct influence of the Godhead, where the Godhead still held sway
in his will. It is true that we speak of the Fall of Man as a
necessary preparatory stage of freedom: but we also speak of the
Fall in such a way that, to the extent that he became man forsaken
by God, man lost that divinely inwoven strength in the interweaving
of his words. We refer to the Fall of Man because we feel that
there is something in our present thoughts that was not there for
the humanity of primordial times. At that period there was still to
be found in the weaving and undulating of human thoughts the
presence of a divine-spiritual potency. In thinking, man still felt
that God was thinking in him. With the attainment of human
independence, especially in its preparatory stages, came about what
we call the Fall of Man. But humanity was forever longing to return
to its primal innocent state. Particularly when man felt himself
raised into the super-sensible, in a sacred, but also in an artistic
experience of exaltation, he felt that this was simultaneously a
reversion to the primal innocent state. And when Homer
says:
Sing, O Muse, of the anger of Peleus’ son
Achilles
this is an invocation of the time when man lived at a
cosmic level, and had immediate access to the world of the gods,
being himself a psychic-spiritual entity. All this corresponded,
indeed, to the reality. And in art man saw a vivid reminiscence of
that primaeval period of innocence. This takes us right into the
details of art – and especially poetry, which is interwoven
so intimately with human experience.
Let us now survey a later time. Let us look, for
example, at the time of our own poets. Their inclinations are
toward rhyme: Why? It is because man, if he were to weave and live
artistically and poetically with the divine-spiritual in the
original state of innocence, would have to adhere to the syllable,
and its quantity, metre and weight. But he cannot do this. Man has
passed from the uttering of syllables in his primal state, to the
fallen condition and the speaking of words, where he is drawn to
the outer physical world of the senses. To create poetry means to
long for a return to primitive innocence. We have still to
“chant and sing” in the time of the Fall, but we have,
so to speak, to do penance. We must go through with the transition
to the word and the prosaic; but we have to do penance, and this we
do in terminal rhyme and organization in stanzas. If we go back to
ancient times, however, when mankind lived in closer proximity to
the primaeval innocent state, things were quite different –
at least as regards many peoples, particularly the Germanic
peoples. They did not at first return to the primaeval state of
innocence with a chanting of end-rhymes and strophic organization,
in penance for the prosaic word. They drew to a halt before the
word and, before the word came into being, they diverted their
sensitivities in the direction of the syllable; they did not return
to the primaeval state of innocence through an atonement, through
an expiation, as it were, but retained a vivid memory of it in
their alliterations.
Alliterative
poetry expresses man’s yearning to stop at the syllable and
not proceed to the word, to hold on to the syllable and, in
uttering it, to achieve the inner harmonies of a poetic mode of
speech. We might say that alliteration and terminal rhyme are
comparable in the sphere of sensibility to the recollection of the
state of innocence that we have in alliteration; and that they
represent an atonement or expiation for the Fall into the word,
through terminal rhyme and stanzaic organization.
It is indeed the
case that art and poetry take to themselves all-embracingly
whatever is universally human. This is why it is so congenial to
return to the age of Nordic poetry. Here we see the poetic urge of
a people wishing to attest man’s recognition of his
divine-spiritual origin through not proceeding from syllable to
word, but holding on to the syllable in
alliteration.
In the nineteenth
century Wilhelm Jordan tried, as you know, to revive alliteration,
when our language had advanced far beyond all possibility of
reverting to the earlier state of innocence. From a certain point
of view it is indeed a praiseworthy undertaking, provided one is
always conscious of the fact that it was an attempt to raise a
sacred treasure at a time when man had been long alienated from the
gods. This attempt by Wilhelm Jordan is still informed by a good
– indeed by the best of aesthetic intentions: an
understanding of how to conduct art to the universally human. I was
myself still able to hear how Jordan
wanted his
alliteration spoken; in particular, I have heard it done by his
brother. All the same, I think it best to speak the alliteration
only in so far as it is still appropriate to our more advanced
language. This was attempted, too, in the field of recitative art
as cultivated over the last decades by Frau Dr. Steiner. She will
therefore endeavour to give
you an example from the poems of Wilhelm Jordan, showing how
alliteration holds its place in the whole field of poetic creation,
and how we must try (in terms of either declamation or recitation)
to interpret the alliterative poet. Though it may seem a trifle
impertinent to say so, we shall not find what is wanted along the
lines followed by Jordan’s
brother. We must defer more to the genius of the language, rather
than to a poetic intention – albeit an extraordinarily
well-meaning one – which does not always accord with the
genius of the language. I refer here, of course, not to the poetry,
but to the brother’s way of reciting. On the other hand it
does show how much strength – how much primaeval strength, as
Johann Gottlieb Fichte once said of the German language –
still remains in the German language today, if one knows how
to handle it. What emerges with particular force in this poem is
just how much of that primaeval strength Wilhelm Jordan could wrest
from the language with his alliteration. And in these hard times,
the still unharnessed strength of the language, notably in Central
Europe, can prove a comfort to us – a comfort in that it
fills our hearts with the conviction that whatever external or
material fate may befall Central Europe, the German spirit will not
wither away; the German spirit still holds its reserves of
original, archaic energy and primordial power in readiness, and
when the right moment comes it will find them.
[Note 31]
In the best sense, I would say, they were sought
by the poet who wished to enter again into the poetic innocence of
former times through a revival of alliteration. Let us now conclude
with a performance of an alliterative poem.
[Note 32]
[Modern English efforts in alliteration
are largely confined to reproducing in contemporary language the
older sagas and poems. This is another version of Beowulf,
and our extract is the climactic episode of the slaying of
Grendel:
From the stretching moors, from the misty
hollows,
Grendel came creeping, accursed of
God,
A murderous ravager minded to snare
Spoil of heroes in high-built hall.
Under clouded heavens he held his way
Till there rose before him the high-roofed
house,
Wine-hall of warriors gleaming with
gold.
Nor was it first of his fierce
assaults
On the home of Hrothgar; but never
before
Had he found worse fate or hardier
hall-thanes!
Storming the building he burst the
portal,
Though fastened of iron, with fiendish
strength;
Forced open the entrance in savage
fury
And rushed in rage o’er the shining
floor.
A baleful glare from his eyes was
gleaming
Most like to a flame. He found in the
fall
Many a warrior sealed in slumber,
A host of kinsmen. His heart
rejoiced;
The savage monster was minded to
sever
Lives from bodies ere break of day,
To feast his fill of the flesh of men. But
he
was not fated to glut his greed
With more of mankind when the night was
ended!
The hardy kinsman of Hygelac waited
To see how the monster would make his
attack.
The demon delayed not, but quickly
clutched
A sleeping thane in his swift
assault,
Tore him in pieces, bit through the
bones,
Gulped the blood, and gobbled the
flesh,
Greedily gorged on the lifeless
corpse,
The hands and the feet. Then the
fiend stepped nearer,
Sprang on the Sea-Geat lying
outstretched,
Clasping him close with his monstrous
claw.
But Beowulf grappled and gripped him
hard,
Struggled up on his elbow; the shepherd of
sins
Soon found that never before had he
felt
In any man other in all the
earth
A mightier hand-grip; his mood was
humbled,
His courage fled; but he found no
escape!
He was fain to be gone; he would
glee to the darkness,
The fellowship of devils. Far
different his fate
From that which befell him in former
days!
The hardy hero, Hygelac’s
kinsman
Remembered the boast he had made at the
banquet;
He sprang to his feet, clutched Grendel
fast,
Though fingers were cracking, the
fiend pulling free.
The earl pressed after; the monster
was minded
To win his freedom and flee to the
fens.
He knew that his fingers were fast in the
grip
Of a savage foe. Sorry the venture,
The raid that the ravager made on
the hall.
There was din in Heorot. For all the
Danes,
The City-dwellers, the stalwart
Scyldings,
That was a bitter spilling of
beer!
The walls resounded, the fight was
fierce,
Savage the strife as the warriors
struggled.
The wonder was that the lofty
wine-hall
Withstood the struggle, nor crashed to
earth,
The house so fair; it was firmly
fastened
Within and without with iron
bands
Cunningly smithied; though men have
said
That many a mead-bench gleaming with
gold
Sprang from its sill as the warriors
strove.
The Scylding wise men had never
weened
That any ravage could wreck the
building,
Firmly fashioned and finished with
bone,
Or any cunning compass its fall,
Till the time when the swelter and surge of
fire
Should swallow it up in a swirl of
flame.
Continuous tumult filled the hall;
A terror fell on the Danish
folk
As they heard through the wall the
horrible wailing,
The groans of Grendel, the foe of
God
Howling his hideous hymn of
pain,
The hell-thane shrieking in sore
defeat.
He was fast in the grip of the man
who was greatest
Of mortal men in the strength of
his might,
Who would never rest while the wretch was
living,
Counting his life-days a menace to
man.
Many an earl of Beowulf brandished
His ancient iron to guard his lord,
To shelter safely the peerless
prince.
They had no knowledge, those daring
thanes,
When they drew their weapons to hack and
hew,
To thrust to the heart, that the
sharpest sword,
The choicest iron in all the
world,
Could work no harm to the hideous
foe.
On every sword he had laid a spell,
On every blade; but a bitter death
Was to be his fate; far was the
journey
The monster made to the home of
fiends.
Then he who had wrought such wrong
to men,
With grim
delight as he warred with God,
Soon found his strength was feeble
and failing
In the crushing hold of
Hygelac’s thane.
Each loathed the other while life
should last!
There Grendel suffered a grievous
hurt,
A wound in the shoulder, gaping and
wide;
Sinews snapped and bone-joints broke,
And Beowulf gained the glory of
battle.
Grendel, fated, fled to the fens,
To his joyless dwelling, sick unto
death.
He knew in his heart that his hours
were numbered,
His days at an end. For all the
Danes
Their wish was fulfilled in the fall of
Grendel.
The stranger from far, the stalwart and
strong,
Had purged of evil the hall of
Hrothgar,
And cleansed of crime; the heart of
the Nero
Joyed in the deed his daring had
done.
Trans. C. W.
Kennedy.