The Rudolf Steiner Archive

From the Course on Speech Formation and Dramatic Art at the Goetheanum

[ 1 ] Among the courses held at the Goetheanum in the first half of September is one on “Speech Formation and Dramatic Art.” It aims to respond to a longing that is very much present in many people today: to move away from the styleless naturalism of stage art and return to a style.

[ 2 ] This can only be achieved if we first become aware of how the soul content of human beings is revealed in words that are shaped by life. Modern consciousness approaches speech entirely from the perspective of idea perception, having almost lost its sound and word perception. But in idea perception, the sensually perceptible spirituality that is the essence of all art is also lost.

[ 3 ] This is most noticeable in the performing arts. For they require mimicry, gestures, and movements if they are to bring words to their proper effect. In direct experience, gestures and movements are not sufficiently linked to the perception of ideas, but rather to the perception of sounds and words.

[ 4 ] In intoning the sound A, the soul originally always reveals the experience of admiring something, of being amazed by something. The sound O embodies the feeling of the soul's comprehension of something. If one immerses oneself in language in this way, one will find in vocalization the inner experience of the soul in the outside world, in consonantization the striving of the soul, and in sound formation the audible image of an object or process in the outside world being imitated.

[ 5 ] And this leads to the experience of the word.

[ 6 ] In the B, the soul strives to embrace an object, in the R to imitate the inner excitement, the trembling in a process.

[ 7 ] In the structure of vowels and consonants, the soul lives in the outside world with its life; and the forms and processes of the outside world live in the image in the soul.

[ 8 ] In every word containing the vowel A, there lives something of the soul's wonder or amazement at what is being described. This is mostly completely faded from ordinary consciousness. But in the subconscious, or even semi-conscious, experiences of the human soul, it represents the relationships that the human soul has with words.

[ 9 ] Anyone who wants to reveal themselves artistically through words must bring these relationships to life within themselves. Their soul must live itself into the word; only then can the word be artistically shaped by them.

[ 10 ] A dialogue represents what two people experience in relation to each other. The souls interact. While one speaks, the other listens. Now the second begins to speak. His words must echo what the first experienced in speaking. The first now listens to the second. In his silent listening, it must become clear for the dramatic presentation whether the second satisfies, disappoints, dismays, worries him, and so on. For art must also bring to life everything that is to live in it.

[ 11 ] The behavior of the interlocutors in the dialogue results when each has connected his soul with the sensation of sound and words. Through this connection, the attitude that the actor must adopt becomes an instinctive ability.

[ 12 ] Preparation for stage performance should include training in sound and word perception.

[ 13 ] The perception of ideas cannot provide training in art. For it appeals too strongly to the intellect. But this destroys the artistic. It allows the vivid to disappear into the invisibility of inner soul life. What happens on stage, however, must live in the perceptibility of what is heard and seen; it must not claim to be reconstructed by the intellect of the listener and viewer.

[ 14 ] Aristotle was right, and Lessing was right to follow his thinking, in saying that the tragic action must resonate in the fear and pity of the audience. However, these feelings can only be kept alive by the performer if he can carry his inner life into the way he uses language.

[ 15 ] Life in speech can only be drawn from the experience of language. Today, of course, one does not always have to use words with the U sound when one has something fearful to say. For languages are no longer original. But the U-sound is the revelation of the soul's experience of fear. If one has to say, “Danger is approaching,” the U-sound is not present in this. But the intonation that one has to give to the words in this case can be drawn from the feeling that can be experienced in the U-sound.

[ 16 ] It is the secret of language that in every sound, others resonate inaudibly in the soul. If I speak A in a word that is filled with fear, the U sound resonates in the depths of the soul. The speaker in everyday life has nothing to do with this, of course. They are in the situation of direct experience. They are close to this experience with their feelings. They speak the words “Danger is approaching” out of the fear they have experienced. The stage artist is not in the immediate life situation. They must instinctively carry within themselves the sound sensation that resonates silently in the utterance of something frightening. This sound sensation can give him the color of intonation.

[ 17 ] In dialogue, such a sound sensation will make it possible to respond to the interlocutor in such a way that the audience can perceive the interrelationship of the dialoguing souls. When one of the interlocutors listens while the other speaks in a dialogue, the corresponding sound sensation will resonate within him, and from this he will give his reply the right intonation. A color always looks slightly different when viewed next to blue or next to yellow. A sentence with whatever vowels sounds different depending on whether the fear-born U sound still resonates in it or the joy-filled I sound.

[ 18 ] Marie Steiner and I are running the course together.

Further guiding principles issued by the Goetheanum for the Anthroposophical Society.

[ 19 ] 91. In today's world, the will enters ordinary consciousness only through thought. But this ordinary consciousness can only connect with what is perceptible to the senses. It also grasps only that part of one's own will that enters the world of sensory perception. In this consciousness, human beings know about their impulses of will only through the mental image of themselves, just as they know about the outside world only through observation.

[ 20 ] 92. The karma that acts in the will is a quality that clings to it from previous earthly lives. It cannot therefore be grasped by the mental images of ordinary sensory consciousness, which are oriented only toward the present earthly life.

[ 21 ] 93. Because these mental images cannot grasp karma, they relegate the incomprehensible that confronts them in human impulses of will to the mystical darkness of the constitution of the body, whereas it is the effect of previous earthly lives.

(Continued in the next issue.)