2025 Section Conference / Keynote Lectures

“Enso” by Paul Reps

Lectures By

Bruce Donehower & Christiane Haid

2025 Conference Location

Keynote Lecture One

“The Unmapped Land”

by Bruce Donehower

Dear Friends,

Good morning! Welcome!

I won’t do my conference announcements now. I’ll do those at the end of my short talk.

But before I begin, I invite everyone who is here this morning in the Swedenborgian Church Sanctuary to take a few minutes to breathe and settle. These are troubling times, and the trail to this Section conference has been fraught with challenges. Nevertheless, here we are! We made it. So, take a moment to appreciate this beautiful space and the grace of being together. Let’s breathe and settle for just a moment . . .

All right. Thank you.

I’ll read two verses to start our conference.

This first is a fragment by Novalis that we find in a collection of jottings that Novalis called The General Stewpot. It’s been a motto for our North American Section work. Here it is.

ARS LITTERARIA. The Literary Arts.
Everything that a scholar does, says, speaks, suffers, and hears, etc. must be an artistic, technical, and scientific product, or some such operation. He speaks in epigrams; she acts in a play; he is a dialogist; she lectures on treatises and sciences—he relates anecdotes, stories, fairytales, novels; she perceives poetically. If he draws, he draws sometimes as an artist, sometimes as a musician.

Her life is a novel and that’s why she sees, hears, and reads everything precisely in this manner. In short, the true scholar is the completely developed human being who bestows on whatever they touch and do, a scientific, idealistic, and syncretistic form.

And then, for contrast and balance, and because we’re meeting in San Francisco and calling this event “Return to the Mountain,” I’ll read a quote that I first encountered in my teens on a rainy night camping on the summit of Mt. Marcy in New York State. It’s a jotting by Gary Snyder, one of my poetry teachers. It was written at Sourdough Mountain Lookout, July 25, 1953. You can find it in this book Earth House Hold.

Last night: thunderstorm. A soft piling of cumulus over the Little Beaver in late afternoon—a gradual thickening and darkening. A brief shower of hail that passed over & went up Thunder Creek valley: long gray shreds of it slowly falling and bent in the wind—while directly above Ruby Creek sunlight is streaming through. Velvety navy blue . . . with the sun going down behind Mt. Terror and brilliant reds and pinks on the under-clouds . . . This morning a sudden heavy shower of rain and a thick fog. A buck scared: ran off with stiff springy jumps down the snowfield. Throwing sprays of snow with every leap: head held stiffly high.

Finding Our Red Thread

We have a very full conference program for the next three days . . . from an encounter with a Big Sur coyote/poet Jaime de Angulo, to an inquiry into the question “Who is Rudolf Steiner . . . for Our 21st Century?”, to a celebration of the early romantic masterpiece Hymns to the Night by another coyote / poet of the 18th century, Novalis — to a questioning of Beauty Truth and Goodness as presiding goddesses for our Section work, and some playful time on Mt. Tamalpais . . . not to mention Bach, Bartok, Sheila Silver, and Sofia Gubaidalina whose music started our conference last night when Emmanuel Vukovich performed.

Indeed, with all those themes, you might ask: where is the red thread that weaves us together?

Well, as I said last year when we met here in the Sanctuary on day-one of our 2024 eight-day conference, I think we can all agree that we are individuals with an abiding enthusiasm for literature and poetry, and for the humanistic life-affirming disciplines that nourish this enthusiasm.

Many here today self-identify as poets, writers, and scholar meditants; we are lovers of language and words and the spirit-music of narratives.

Perhaps you are a writer, a poet, a novelist, or a scholar in the humanities. Perhaps, as a reader or listener, a certain poem, or novel, or a course in the humanities was a peak experience for you. Perhaps a certain story sang to you, struck you to the core very deeply and wounded you at just the right moment of your life and determined your destiny.

Or perhaps you are on a quest to magically transform your life into a meaningful story, novel, poem—or fairytale, as Novalis liked to say—to become a singer / poet—to transform your life-story through the alchemy of imagination – storytelling and language.

That is the red thread that binds us together, I think – and it’s what our Section and this conference is all about, in my opinion.

In the ongoing Section meetings that have been occurring regularly in Northern California for fifteen years, I like to say that we are the shepherds of stories. And this conference is an attempt to speak about stories and the mystery of what is undeniably for many persons—who play with language and who shepherd stories—a spiritual or . . . dare I say? . . . a deeply mystical experience.

The Importance of Our Pacific Rim

Last September at the conference here I spoke about the uniqueness of the Pacific Rim and the challenges and opportunities that the Pacific Rim presents for someone in our Section for the Literary Arts and Humanities.

My friends, it is not easy to do this dance! From a literary perspective, it is very challenging to be a North American anthroposophist on the Pacific Rim.

Aside from knowing what Rudolf Steiner wrote and said and did and knowing about the history of the anthroposophical movement and its antecedents, you also need familiarity with the literature that influenced and inspired Rudolf Steiner.

I know I upset some people when I remind them that anthroposophy is a distinctly German affair—that Rudolf Steiner’s anthroposophy is literature—and that it has its roots firmly planted in German literature—that it prioritizes a German Central-European cultural attitude and world outlook—and that it roots itself very solidly in the literature of the time of Novalis—who is one of our red threads. But from a literary perspective, this is the truth.

But in addition to at least some familiarity with that distant literary ecology and how Rudolf Steiner did walkabouts in that remarkable landscape—you also need, I think, most importantly, to be a citizen of our globalized 21st century, and you need to have opened yourself to all the disparate and often contradictory and often confusing literary and spiritual and cultural influences, past, present, and forthcoming – many of which on our Pacific Rim flow to us from Asia and elder times and from ancient wisdom traditions.

As I said last year and I’ll emphasize it again: Northern California, the Pacific Rim, the Ring of Fire in an extended sense, is an ideal place for a 21st century Anthroposophist, in my opinion. There are few places more diverse, more eclectic, more confusing and nuanced in the range of voices and poetic themes and in conflict of traditions, old and new. The windows are wide open in many directions, north, south, east, west. This is a vast landscape which, despite all attempts to silence it and pave it over, still sings in the bones and whispers to the soul. It is a place that has always attracted literary pioneers from all parts of this continent and the world. Many of those wanderers were eccentrics, oddballs, or what we Californians call disrupters—and when they got here, they often felt they had pushed as far as they could go. They were transformative, and often annoying and iconoclastic—and this Ring of Fire was for them a kind of alchemical crucible, in a literary sense.

And keep in mind that the pen name Novalis means pioneer.

Novalis is a pen name, and it means a person who takes initiative—a liminal person — a person who oversteps boundaries, trespasses, strikes off into landscapes that maybe nobody wants to explore—or into places they’ve been told to avoid. It means a person of imagination who finds a clearing in the light.

Understood in such a way, there are many Novalises in this Sanctuary this morning. Are there not?

You are all Novalises! Unless, of course, you decide you are not.

Why did Rudolf Steiner emphasize Novalis? “Why should I care?”

As you know, Rudolf Steiner placed great emphasis on Novalis, the herald of anthroposophy. He pointed to Novalis in his Last Address, and he suggested that Novalis would be very important for our 21st century.

Well, here we are today, one quarter of the way done with this century, and more than one hundred years after Rudolf Steiner’s death.

Why did Rudolf Steiner talk about Novalis as much as he did?

Personally, I think it has a lot to do with magical idealism. And that’s a red thread that I’d like to follow this morning.

I want to talk about magical idealism by entering the world of fairytale—aka old-time stories—which is how Novalis came to an understanding of the term.

The word that Novalis uses in German for fairytale is Märchen—and this is a word that does not translate well into the English notion “fairytale”—which comes to us in English burdened with all kinds of sentimental, kitchy, and often patronizing connotations that we inherit from a nineteenth-century reading public—readers who liked to treat fairytales as literary pastries or moral parables for simple-minded children or day-dreamy adults.

But Novalis did not understand the term fairytale in that way. Nor did Rudolf Steiner.

The Fairytale is Mightier than Philosophy

Novalis placed a great deal of importance on fairytales as portals to magical idealism and poetry, and he saw fairytale as the highest form of literary art.

Let me repeat that. Novalis saw fairytale as the highest form of literary art.

If you think about that statement, it’s kind of shocking.

Much of what Novalis says about the spiritual importance of fairytale is echoed by Rudolf Steiner as he constructs his anthroposophy one hundred years after Novalis’ death. Here is a representative quote.

There is a great difference in whether one has as a child grown up with fairytales. The soul-stirring nature of fairytale pictures becomes evident only later. If fairytales have not been given, this shows itself in later years in weariness of life . . . Indeed, it even comes to expression physically: fairy tales can help counter illnesses. What is absorbed little by little by means of fairy tales emerges subsequently as joy in life, in the meaning of life—it comes to light in the ability to cope with life, even into old age . . . Whoever is not capable of living with ideas that have no reality for the physical plane, “dies” for the spiritual world

Those are very strong words, my friends, are they not? And if you’re a parent or a grandparent, like me, well, they might make you run to the bedroom to read a fairytale to your youngster.

But wait a minute!

One of the most liberating insights of Novalis (and/or Rudolf Steiner) is that the fairytale is not just for children.

Every adult needs to hear a true fairytale! We hear so many bad and mangled fairytales these days! Do we not? We wallow in them!

But every adult has an angel-child inside or on the shoulders—an angel-child who needs to hear a true fairytale in the right way, at the right time.

But maybe the adult doesn’t allow the angel-child to hear such stories. Maybe the adult would rather explain the deep hidden meaning of childish fairytales and say wise things and teach lessons about the psyche or the spirit or the deeper philosophical meanings hidden behind silly words.

Take a moment right now to check in with your angel-child. I’m talking about that angel-child daemon that’s always on your shoulder.

How’s that angel-child feeling these days? Is the angel-child happy? Sad? Frightened? Worried? Angry? Sick? Is your angel-child in a bad mood? Does it have the ha ha’s? Is the angel-child afraid of the world and terrified because all it hears is frightening stories about doomsday or conspiracy theories?

A Precious Gift from A Literary Mentor

Here’s a bit of wisdom that Rudolf Steiner received at age twenty-one from his mentor, a professor of literature who set the course for Rudolf Steiner’s life when he gave his young student-disciple Rudolf Steiner a copy of Goethe’s Fairytale of the Green Snake and Beautiful Lily. Rudolf Steiner’s mentor borrowed this expression from one of the Brothers Grimm, and his young student Rudolf received it gratefully, and he paraphrased it when he began his early work with theosophy.

“Fairy tales and sagas are comparable to a good angel, granted human beings as a companion from birth on their life’s wanderings, to be a trustworthy comrade throughout—offering comradeship, and making life inwardly into a truly ensouled fairy tale!”

I just want to linger for a moment on that closing phrase . . .

“Life as a truly ensouled fairytale”

There is I think hardly a better definition of magical idealism.

In the old days, when I talked about magical idealism, I always put on my impressive scholarly hat and cloak and took out my PhD and Master degrees from the University of California, and I talked about highfalutin German philosophy. I did this because Novalis took that approach in his life. He studied Fichte and Kant and German idealist philosophy quite intensely, even obsessively.

But when Novalis became Novalis, he stopped chewing on philosophy and said: “Well, now I’m finished with it. I have left philosophy on the bookshelves. May she rest in peace.”

What did he mean?

Well, for one thing, he meant that he had gone as far on the trail called philosophy that the trail could take him. And when the trail petered out and ended in a dark forest and when he found himself without a map, he became a poet, and he began to say that the fairytale was the highest form of literature.

Now, before we get all excited and put on our literary-critical debating shorts, let’s look at what Novalis means by Poet.

It’s a rather special meaning, but it’s rather ordinary at the same time.

What is Poetic Intelligence?

For Novalis, a poet is not someone who writes clever verses or publishes poems in literary magazines or teaches creative writing or wins prestigious awards.

Poet, for Novalis, means what we are all presumably striving to become by virtue of our being-here-now as human beings: free and ethical, spiritually awake individuals, persons who are creatively active and lovingly imaginative . . . hopelessly-hopefully embodied and intertwined with a mad mad crazy world . . .

For Novalis, we all of us are poets intrinsically. It’s a feature of our human beingness; whether we know it or not—whether we want to know it or not.

The place where Novalis most clearly develops his ideas about poetry or magical idealism is in the novel Heinrich von Ofterdingen . . .
and here is a quote from that novel that I read last year and which I spoke about in two lectures in Dornach last fall. These are words spoken by the master poet Klingsohr.

“It is really quite unfortunate,” said Klingsohr, “that poetry has a high brow reputation and that poets are set apart as special types. There is nothing so very mysterious about it. Poetry happens as a natural function of the human mind. Does not every human being strive and poeticize at every moment?”

Let me repeat that last sentence again.

Does not every human being strive and poeticize at every moment?

Novalis, through his mouthpiece Klingsohr, is telling us that to become magical idealists—or poets—we must exercise our innately human poetic skills.

It is by means of our free and ethical poetic attention that the human being interprets and creates her life world and finds her way “home.”

Rudolf Steiner, by the way, following Novalis, made this same point repeatedly throughout his twenty-five years as a teacher of the wisdom tradition we know as anthroposophy. We find this sentiment everywhere in his teachings—for example in that early publication from the theosophical years, Knowledge of Higher Worlds, where we find these words in a section concerning the seven conditions for esoteric schooling:

“The student must work her way upward to the realization that thoughts and feelings are as important for the world as actions.”

A poet could spend many lifetimes in a practice of those words. Do you not agree?

A Magical Idealist “Philosophy of Freedom”: The Fairytale Hyacinth and Rosebud

The fairytale Hyacinth and Rosebud by Novalis is a helpful example for us today. And I’ll share it with you. I think it’s a good way to begin our three-day conference, and it’s a Novalis fairytale that the Section fairytale group has studied and performed. You can find the Section performance of Hyacinth and Rosebud on YouTube or the Section website if you’re interested, and I’ve made it available in a fresh translation.

The fairytale Hyacinth and Rosebud by Novalis is found almost right in the middle of the novel The Apprentices at Sais. This is a book filled with brainy insights and conversations about nature and the relationship of the human being to nature and about what it all means to human beings.

That is why the fairytale Hyacinth and Rosebud begins with these words:

“Poor child, who has not yet loved! With the first kiss, a new world opens to you. And with it, life enters your enraptured heart in manifold radiance.

I want to tell you a fairytale. Listen!”

The hero of the fairytale, Hyacinth, is a good illustration of our problem. Hyacinth is melancholic. He worries about this little nothing and that little nothing, Novalis says.

Of course, these “little nothings” appear quite big to him! They always do! In fact, they often seem overwhelming! Apocalyptic!

And so, when a mysterious stranger, a Grand Master of occult lore and esoteric wisdom and deep insights arrives in town, Hyacinth immediately is besotted and fascinated. “Tell me the deep secrets of creation, Master! Give me the key to all mythologies! I am unworthy! Teach me! I need your help!”

So naturally, the mysterious stranger takes Hyacinth under his wing and initiates him into all sorts of secrets.

He even gives the young man a special book!

It is the most special book ever written! It is so special and so deeply cool, and it contains such deep wisdom that . . . well, no human being can read it, Novalis tells us.

Of course, Hyacinth is head over heels. He spends all his time with the Teacher, and they go on long walks and have lectures and deep conversations long into the night.

But at the same time, Hyacinth becomes more and more miserable. In fact, he becomes so miserable that he loses interest in life. He becomes a sourpuss and turns his back on his sweetheart Rosebud and on his loving parents, and he suffers and grows depressed and becomes more and more estranged from the world.

Then, Novalis tells us, in a stroke of good luck, merit, or happy karma, Hyacinth meets an old woman in the forest who says: “Huh! Show me that stranger’s Special Book!”

So, Hyacinth shows it to her, and what does the old woman do? She burns the book! Right there in front of him! She burns the Book!

“Oh no!” cries Hyacinth.

But the old woman, Novalis tells us, gives Hyacinth a good dose of enlightenment right on the spot, and the lad is forever changed.

In other words, she frees Hyacinth for his individual magical idealist quest.

Of course, Hyacinth goes from one extreme to the other. He’s young – he bangs about. Hyacinth runs home and tells his devoted parents he is leaving. He tells his devoted girlfriend Rosebud he is leaving. “Adios!”

So, you see, although he is freed from the glamor of the stranger’s book (which he thought he could substitute for lived experience), he is still in delusion about many things . . . and most of all about himself. But that is the nature of enlightenment, is it not? It zigs and zags. Just when you think you have it figured out. Oh no! Back to the beginning. Back to Once Upon a Time . . .

Hyacinth leaves home and begins a quest for the Mother, the Goddess Isis, Novalis tells us . . . the veiled goddess who guards the true secret – the open secret – of life and nature and human being.

He wanders about in the so-called wilderness like a Parzival, if you know that fairytale.

Hyacinth’s most important moments of learning and initiation occur when he keeps quiet and listens and remains all alone with himself in nature. During those special moments of stillness and silence, he sits down and shuts up.

He is not like a Faust in that regard. Faust hardly ever sits down and shuts up. Faust is always restless. He bangs about. He must bang about! That’s what his pact with the devil means. If Faust were to make the inward turn and sit down and keep quiet and achieve some meditative contentment—uh oh! the devil’s got him!

But hey. No big deal. Any beginner who tries to meditate has that experience in no time flat.

However, Hyacinth is not a Faust. Hyacinth does learn to sit down and keep quiet, and when he does, he gradually finds that deep primordial still point of the questioning that guides the quest – which writes the story—the story that changes self and world.

He listens to flowers. He talks to birds and clouds. He hovers attentively with the universe, such as it is. He becomes like that third brother or sister in fairytales—the Dumbkin whose prospects look very dull, whom no one takes seriously. They call him a fool . . . a silly poet.

Hyacinth learns the art of wise foolishness. He learns to sit and breathe and pay attention to the inner world that is the outer world, and to the outer world that is the inner world.

Like a Parzival dropping the reins of his horse and allowing the horse to find its way without interference over a long period of time, Hyacinth slowly becomes quiet enough and receptive enough and childlike wise enough to listen his way to the Grail.

In this case, the Grail is the veiled goddess, Isis, Novalis tells us.

Hyacinth arrives at the still point of the turning wheel. And what does he discover?

A Key to All Mythologies?

Well, I hope I have piqued your curiosity and that you will take the next step of Hyacinth’s journey on your own.

Since you are all Novalises, you can finish this fairytale by yourself.

Novalis had confidence that we could all become poets, or magical idealists—because we are all poets already — we always already have been. It is baked into the IOS, as they say down the 101.

Novalis had confidence that we could wake up to our human-spirit reality as poets, and that if we did wake up, we would discover that:

The spiritual world is in fact already open to us—it is always open—If we were to suddenly become so flexible to perceive it, we would perceive ourselves in the midst of the spiritual world.

So, maybe that’s one reason Rudolf Steiner emphasized Novalis as much as he did. Even with his dying worlds!

But he left us on our own to figure out what he meant.

Coyote Poets Howling

I must confess that when I was younger, I worried about this a lot.

My friends, for a long time, I could not connect with Novalis. Novalis was just a name on a page. And when I read him in English in college, I said “Yuck!”

I had to go searching for Novalis, like the hero in the fairytale Hyacinth and Rosebud. I had to go on my own solo foolish coyote walkabout, as we say in Alta California. We’ll hear more about coyotes this afternoon, when poet, scholar, translator Andrew Schelling talks to us about the Big Sur coyote poet, Jaime de Angulo, another Novalis.

But the way to connect with Novalis is right there spelled out for us in the fairytale Hyacinth and Rosebud that I presented this morning.

And it raises an interesting question that I’ll pose for you as I close this talk.

Can one be inspired by Anthroposophia without being a student of Rudolf Steiner? Does Rudolf Steiner = Anthroposophia? Is Rudolf Steiner our only point of access to Anthroposophia?

Or is Rudolf Steiner one voice and one viewpoint in a greater, more encompassing wisdom tradition, variously known, variously explored, variously beckoning, and singing in various ways? . . . and in a certain embodied, poetic, magical idealist sense: always already present and at hand?

Hymns to the Night

I’ll close this morning’s welcome with another fragment by the 18th century poet Novalis. Here it is in this book that I prepared for our conference and for tonight’s performance of Hymns to the Night.

This is a fragment from one of the Novalis notebooks called the Fichte Studies. And this is a notebook that Novalis kept during the time he was courting Sophie. He had not yet named himself Novalis. He thought he was just a Fritz. And, like a young Hyacinth, Fritz was fascinated with philosophy. But as you can hear in this fragment, young Fritz or Hyacinth had already begun to intuit his identity as a poet. And soon he reached the endpoint of philosophy, the end of the trail . . . he got there when Sophie died.

We’ll explore that moment of arrival this evening, when Emmanuel Vukovich and I perform Hymns to the Night. I hope you can make it.

But for now . . . shortly after Fritz wrote this fragment that I am going to read to you, Hardenberg became Novalis. He became what he always was and would always become: a poet. Same as you. And when he understood his always already present poetic human beingness, he began to say that the fairytale was mightier than philosophy, and he began to explore what I like to call the last unknown country. He had found the unmapped land.

Here’s the fragment in my translation.

What do I do when I philosophize?
I speculate homeward.
All philosophy ends in this place of beginning.
When this place is not found—
For it always already eludes us—
Then the need to philosophize
Becomes a call to endless activity.
This eternal longing that leads me homeward
Cannot be satisfied in the context of my present earthly existence;
Its goal can only be approximated endlessly—
But therein lies my freedom.

===

2025 Section Conference, San Francisco

Keynote Lecture Two

“The Crucial Importance of Art and Beauty

to the Practice of Anthroposophy”

by Christiane Haid

(Translated & Edited by Claudia Fontana / Performing Arts Section)

Dear Friends,

We will pursue the questions of the significance of art and secondly, the significance of beauty in the practical application of Anthroposophy as an essential life practice in layers. To begin with we can ask: what is the significance of art in itself? Today it is not self-evident that the value of art and beauty in their significance for the human being are acknowledged any more.

In the meantime, when art is mentioned, we have reached the point that it has become a necessity to defend art, when claims are made that AI can produce art. When this assertion is made, the impression is implied that the human being is not needed for the creation of art. Newspapers have informed us that the machine has “superseded” the human being. But here it is forgotten that the AI manufactured “art” is made by human beings. It is a digitalized collection of data simply put together anew. This has nothing to do with a genuine creative act of which the human being is capable. It is an adding together of facts programmed by human beings. Therefore, the knowledge and the essence of the mission of art in its significance for the human being is of utmost importance.

In pursuing the question of beauty in a further step, we will discover that beauty can only be recognized in its deepest essence when we perceive Beauty as one of the three pillars together with Truth and Goodness. They create a unity in which we will discover a mysterious relationship to the human being. In a third step it will become evident how both art and beauty in the practical Anthroposophical life create the foundation for all fields of work. A radically innovative, future oriented realization can be found.

What is the significance of art and wherein lies the essence of its being?

True art surprises, challenges us to move, leads us to the boundary of the familiar and demands that we change. Art brings us to the level of the human middle, the realm of sensations, of feelings. Art speaks to the heart. The artistic element lies between thinking and willing, between the sensual bodily nature and the supersensible spiritual. This middle region is the space of instability, of the pursuit of balance and metamorphosis.

The reason that the essence of art makes up this dynamic middle is, it appears as a riddle to thinking. The being of art makes itself known in the region of feelings and experiences. It is not easily deciphered with thinking. To gain clarity about the poles of thinking and willing, of research and practical doing, is already difficult, but what lies in the in-between region is initially totally removed from thinking.

Historical development reveals that aesthetics as a new science does not appear until the 18^th century with Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten’s “Aesthetica.” In Rudolf Steiner’s designated “consciousness soul time” (1414 – 3500), which began with the Renaissance, it becomes possible to begin to understand the unique position of art. So that in the 18^th century art then appears as a science. What we do not penetrate with our thinking loses its position in life and in culture.

The artistic activity lifts the sensual to the supersensible in that it creates a space in which the spirit , is “enchanted” in the material world, is enclosed in the material world. It can reveal itself completely transformed in the material element, in the emerging work of art. Therein lies the task of transformation for the future. Through the human being, through the artist, each work of art is a transformed piece of world.

Art and Freedom

Art makes a new entry into life possible without any outer purpose, but is purely dedicated to the artistic medium and to the process of creating or observing. In the artistic process the ordinary daily tasks of life with their intentions and goals as in the workforce, are not essential for the realization of a work of art.

Quite the contrary! If artists were only to realize their pre-conceived ideas, then no true art would appear in accordance with Rudolf Steiner’s sensibility. Then we would only have products which already exist in the artist’s intention. What is challenging and exceptional in the artistic process is the confrontation with the void. What the artist creates, in so far as the artist surrenders him/herself, is not only determined by the artist’s personal intention, but through a dialogue with uncertainty over which one does not have jurisdiction.

For example, as a visual artist my first step is to place a color on my canvas-, then the question arises: does an answer come toward me? Can something not willingly available to me connect with my impulse? The answer comes or does not come. One must wait till it comes. The uncertainty cannot be forced. It does not subject itself to my own intentions and power but might appear at the most unexpected or unpredictable moment.

So the creation of art and immersion into art is often marked with boundary experiences. It is a life on the threshold sometimes accompanied by extreme inner experiences and difficult illnesses. To be an artist is therefore a form of existence. Precisely, these boundary and threshold experiences, experiences of death are pre-requisites for something to emerge. The sphere of the spirit is wrested by the artistically working individual and it finds its reflection in the transformation of matter. At the same time, threshold experiences give strength to endure primal human experiences, illness, age and death, to grow through them and to mature inwardly. The freedom lies in being able to let go of one’s own perceptions, intentions, and everything which has already existed in the form of an image or task. To surrender yourself to the open sea of uncertainty, the unforeseeable, and the unpredictable, allows space for the sphere of a new reality to emerge. The threshold experience prepares me for death and resurrection. I must affirm them for their taking place.

Art and Organization

In the 20^th and 21^st centuries artistic creation occurs under the specific conditions of scientific thinking and above all, technology. Practically unnoticed, mechanical thought forms emanate from science and technology, influencing all of life and forming it anew to correspond to mechanical and technological structures. The Hungarian writer Imre Kertesz (1929 – 2016), imprisoned at the age of 14 in the concentration camps of Auschwitz and Buchenwald, made a diary entry in 1963. In it he drew attention to the situation of the creatively working artist and how objects confront him with new considerations. Kertesz describes how the human being with the beginning of the 20^th century, subjects himself to the tightly drawn organizational forms of social life, regardless of the determining factor in an ideology.

They are “closed communities of life, interest and spirit in which the life of the modern person revolves in a well isolated bubble” [1]

A life determined through the confines of an outer order is a terrorization of the human spirit. Kertesz describes this as an essential development, similar to a challenge under which the conditions of humanity are to be defended and preserved:

The organized human being is not one that suffers but a sovereign one because this perception is imposed upon him and certain indications point to it: He has the power of the state, he seemingly reorganizes society and nature , he is the absolute master of material goods he never had, his technology is mightier than any present god and after Earth he will eventually take possession of the cosmos. It seems as if human progress was basically nothing else than technological development of technical science plus governmental organization. This is a great fallacy and we will not speak of it now. [2]

The prize is the individuality and destiny. They will be given up in favor of material wealth, equal rights, security and the “affirmation of an unthreatened life” as well as giving up a certain life -span predictability. The alleged power of the human being hides the imprisonment of his own self-made cage. He had cast off, so to speak, everything transcendent, divine and spiritual. Science became the substitute for religion. Technology and organization increasingly determined life, erasing everything living and unforeseen. All life processes must become predictable, calculable and controllable. Kortesz had already foreseen Orwell’s Brave New World. Indeed, in the concentration camps he had experienced the consequences of mechanical and inhuman thinking firsthand.

Kertesz points to the consequences that lie in the loss of reality and sensual life. When the human being is less responsible for his material and moral existence, not having to worry about it, he loses his independence and self-assertiveness.

With that, primal human experiences such as illness, death and love are eliminated. A single life is worth nothing more than a symbol, a symbol of a fixed uniform existence without any variations, aberrations or possibilities for adventure, in other words, without one’s destiny on which one could work.

Precisely, it is this human suffering and struggling with the unknown in tragic situations and the ensuing self-confrontations, these alone can be the subject matter of true art. Otherwise art only serves the self-realization of an estranged, standardized individual , distancing itself from its spiritual task. Kertesz concludes:

Maybe one has to live through the difficult irresponsibility for the sake of social responsibility in favor of a tormented bad conscience of a new humanity which rests on nothing else, other than a deep self-knowledge. This bitter task art is obliged to bear because science has turned to technology and with that toward power. [3]

From what source does art nourish itself? What is its essence and what is its task regarding the human being?

But What Guides Art?

Before we turn to Rudolf Steiner, I would like to take a sidestep and mention the Swiss artist Paul Klee (1879 – 1940) who heard at least one lecture of Rudolf Steiner’s art lectures in Munich. He belonged to the artistic avantgarde “The Blue Rider” at the beginning of the 20^th century. Although Klee’s wife was an Anthroposophist, he did not pursue Anthroposophy any further. In his creative confession which one could also call his art-credo, he takes into account the mission of art and its connection to creation. In it he outlines an inner form-giving order.

“I. Art does not reproduce the visible, rather, it makes visible […]

Art takes on a similar stance to the act of creation. Each time it is an example, similar to how the terrestrial is a cosmic example. The liberation of the elements, their groupings into subdivisions, their dissections and reconstruction back into a whole on numerous sides simultaneously is a polyphony, a creation of rest through the balance of movement. All these are lofty questions of form, crucial to formal wisdom but not yet art in its highest orbit. The ultimate secret lies behind the ambiguity, behind the possibility of many examples, and the light of the intellect fades pitifully.” [4]

Here Klee describes the buildup of an order which finally flows into ambiguity in which the intellect capitulates. In the last sentences of his manifesto, he summons his listeners to let themselves be lifted into this undefinable world and escape the drudgery daily life:

Onwards human being! Value the summer air, change your point of view as you change the air and see yourself transported into another world which offers distracting strength for the inevitable return to the grey workday. Even more, may it assist you in unwrapping your own layers, imagining moments of nearness to God. [5]

Here the observer is challenged to apply his own activity, to assist himself with the aid of art, lifting himself above the daily drudge, becoming refreshed and enlivened.

Through Klee’s depiction we see how art strives to attain another transcendent, yes, divine perspective; a possibility of challenging us into a sphere where the light of the intellect , one could also say the banal everyday thinking does not penetrate. If we understand Klee correctly here, his manifesto assigns to art the possibility of lifting the human being beyond daily life, beyond Earth’s gravity to the possibility of sensing the Divine.

This point of view corresponds to a description from one of Rudolf Steiner’s lectures on “Art and Technology” where he assigns to art a new mission in the age of technology and even leads on to some further steps. Art should not, as in the art of bygone days, work through color and form, but should challenge the observer to inner activity:

Art is that which the soul experiences when the soul follows its forms actively. [6]

This is what Rudolf Steiner called the “Gugelhupf principle.”

The Gugelhupf is a baking mold made of clay or tin. It gives form to a batter that is poured into it. The new art should assume a similar function as the Gugelhupf. It provides the occasion for the artistic life to awaken in the soul. The focus is not the finished cake as an end product, but on the soul being shaped by the artistic forms it actively experiences. The process itself becomes a true work of art. An Rudolf Steiner mentioned in relation to the first Goetheanum: And in our building, what matters is what the soul experiences in its deepest foundations when spending time in the building, when it reaches the boundary of the forms in the building. The artwork is not the mural or the sculptural form itself, but the inner experience that arises in the soul. Here, art transforms from an external manifestation into an inner soul process.”[7]

This is a concept also found in modern art, in the avant garde to which Steiner belonged.

In a similar vein, during an address for the opening of an artist’s studio, Steiner spoke of the sculptural forms of the walls as not having meaning in themselves but serve as organs through which the Gods speak to us.

The Earth’s surface is alive and brings forth its creations. So too must our relief (sculpted walls)be. We must believe in the vibrancy of the walls as we believe in the Earth bringing forth the plant world from its womb. […] Our building should speak through its forms, but it should speak the language of the Gods[…] If we listen to the organs of the Gods, which they themselves created, which they as Elohim of the Earth gave to human beings, if we listen to the etheric forms of plants and replicate them in the forms of our walls, then we create like nature created the larynx for speaking, then we create the larynxes through which the Gods can speak to us; if we listen to the forms on the walls which are the larynxes of the Gods, then we seek the way back to Paradise. [8]

Isn’t this a wonderful description? The form as form is not the determining factor, it is the messenger of the language of the Gods! The walls of the Goetheanum were created in such a way that they were in a position to receive the language of the Gods and to relay this language. Here art becomes a mediator. This is naturally a high ideal for artistic creating and it brings a perspective with it connecting to prior times yet framed within modern conditions. The human being of the consciousness -soul age can through a freely, self-chosen soul-spiritual training connect with the spiritual world and the cosmos. Not as in earlier times mediated through religious authorities, but now from within, in free responsibility.

For Rudolf Steiner the sphere of inspiration is a divine-spiritual one, it is cosmic. In very concise terms Rudolf Steiner relayed a thought in connection with the seasonal imaginations which belongs to my most cherished sentences: “True art is that which the human being experiences with the physical-soul-spiritual cosmos, which reveals itself in grandiose imaginations.”[9] What is he saying with this? Steiner is pointing to the fact that the cosmos can be experienced on three levels – the physical, the soul and spiritual levels. For the self-schooling human being it can be experienced in the “grand imaginations.”

The Task of Beauty

In ancient Greece the connection to the cosmos and to the old art had a great significance and was intensely experienced and cultivated. In the sense of the above quote, for the Greeks the cosmos represented the order of the heavens, the actual beholding of beauty. The German philosopher Hans Georg Gadamer writes:

“In the regular order of the heavens we have one of the greatest illustrations of order in existence. The periods of the year, the month and the alternation of day and night, form the reliable constants of an experience of order in our lives.”[10]

Gadamer references Plato’s Phaidrus as the source of the quote and continues summarizing: “What we learn from history is that the true essence of beauty does not consist in being opposed to and contrasted with reality. Rather that beauty, however unexpectedly it may be encountered is like a guarantee, that in all the disorder of reality, in all its imperfections, meanness, one-sidedness and terrorizing confusions – we can meet it, it is not somewhere unattainable in the distance. It is the ontological function of the beautiful to close the abyss between the ideal and the real. Thus, the adjective applied to art, to be ‘beautiful art’ gives us another hint for our reflection.”[11]

Let us consider our own encounters with beauty. We meet it in our lives almost daily. Observing a sunset, as the descending sun intensifies its red the nearer it draws to the Earth, coloring the clouds, and then, after it has set, watching the magnificent display of colors slowly fade – we remain touched in our souls. In the morning, the delicate pink of dawn announcing the sunrise, often accompanied by a soft grayish-blue, appearing intensely only for a short time, can also be perceived with inner movement. Devotion, astonishment, admiration fill our soul when we allow ourselves to be touched by them. We can be absorbed in these natural moods and moved by them.

During this past Easter I spent eight days in the Tunisian desert, trekking on foot and with dromedaries. One often imagines the desert as an endless expanse of sand, but I was profoundly impressed by the varied landscapes and the exquisite forms sculpted by the wind in the sand: convex and concave shapes, curves, undulating lines, some with sharp edges, others with rippled surfaces. It felt like wandering through a sea of wave-like movements, both grand and subtle. The sight of this flowing, wave-like terrain mirrored itself in me as a living, weaving quality, enriching me with its mobile forms. This dynamic landscape was dotted with bushes , small flowering perennials and grasses. Against the golden sand , the bright yellow and reddish-violet flowers shone like stars. I was deeply struck by the moving beauty of this landscape; in its very barrenness, it radiated an immense beauty. It is the face of the Earth, animated by the elements and allowing us to partake in its divine regality.

However, when we seek similarly touching and sublime impressions of beauty in our everyday lives, we may find that the holistic experience of beauty does not manifest as readily as it does in nature. The chasm between the ideal and the real, between the inner and the outer is often not experienced as a unity. Instead, it can appear as fractured , even deceptive and alluring. The smooth, sleek surface of a smartphone, the glittering body of a sports car, the brightly designed perfume bottle , or the attractive packaging of cosmetics are not necessarily in harmony with the inside. The surface may appear dazzlingly beautiful but the inside does not always reveal what the outside promises. It belongs to the essence of beauty that the inside and the outside reveal a total harmony. Beauty is therefore simultaneously a physical and spiritual phenomenon.

As we have already sketched above, appearances can deceive. We encounter an irritating relationship when beauty becomes an attribute, a packaging, yes, a promise without guarantee. It is commercialized , instrumentalized and torn from its true purpose. It is used to persuade, seduce, and to charm us into buying the product. With such usage it is alienated from its original purpose; one may even say it is abused.

The Beautiful is a Binding Element.

This leads the Korean philosopher Byung-Chul Han (living in Berlin) to speak of the crisis of the beautiful: “Today we are in a crisis of the beautiful insofar as the beautiful has become an object of pleasure, of the ‘like’, of the arbitrary and the comfortable. The salvation of the beautiful is the salvation of that which binds.”[12]

It is precisely this “binding” quality, this essential connection that is explored in the fairytale “The Water of Life, originating from Alexander Nikolayevitch Afanasyev’s collection of beautiful Russian fairytales. I will give a brief synopsis:

A Brief Synopsis of the Fairytale “The Water of Life”

In a kingdom lived a king who had three sons. Two of them were clever but the third was a simpleton. The king dreamed that behind three times nine lands in the three times tenth kingdom there lived a beautiful maiden from whose hands and feet flowed the water of life. Whoever drinks of this water will become 30 years younger. Since the king was weak and old he asked who could interpret this dream. His advisors knew nothing but the oldest son offered to ride into all four directions of heaven and find the maiden. The king provided the son with money and soldiers. So, the oldest son, Demetrius was on his way with 100,000 warriors. After a long ride he came to a mountain where he found an ancient grey old man who knew the answer. The way to the mountain was blocked through insurmountable obstacles. Three broad steams, three ferries with dangerous warriors who would chop off his head, hand and leg allowed no further search. So the oldest son returned home with unachieved intentions and insisted that no one knew the beautiful maiden.

Now the middle son asked to be allowed to seek the maiden. He was also equipped with 100,000 warriors. On his vast travels he finally found a Baba Yaga with little bony legs, a witch who knew the answer. It befell the second son as the first. The Baba Yaga spoke of the same obstacles and the second son returned home with unachieved intentions. He reported as his brother did, that no one knew anything of the maiden and that was a complete lie!

Now the youngest son, Johannes, requested the blessing of his father before making his way. He proceeds differently, he refuses the money and warriors, only asks for a good horse and a hero’s sword made of pure steel. After a long ride he came to a swamp into which his horse almost sunk. There appeared before him the little house of the Baba Jaga with little hen’s feet. He entered, greeted and asked about the maiden. The Baba Jaga affirmed that this maiden existed, but she also said that she was not to be reached. But the king’s son did not let himself be deterred and said mischievously: “One head less does not make me poor. I ride as God gives it.” In spite of further warnings, he rides on and comes to the three streams and the ferrymen. A flaming battle ensues in which he kills all the ferrymen. On his further journey he overcomes a giant, a magic plant and a gnarly ball which leads him to the maiden. The beautiful maiden with her entourage had the habit of being awake for 9 days on the green meadows and then she slept a hero’s sleep for 9 nights. Johannes observed the Queen from a distance and on the 10^th day , as everyone was sleeping, he entered the castle. The maiden slept the hero’s sleep on a downy bed. From her hands and feet trickled healing water. Johannes filled two little flasks with water and could not help himself but to touch her. Then he left the castle, mounted his horse and rode homewards. After 9 days the maiden awakened and was so angry when she noticed that someone was there. She swung onto her horse, caught up with the intruder, swung her sword and hit the youth in the heart. Soulless he sinks to the ground and is dead. The beautiful maiden looks at him and is overcome with pity and realizes that such a beautiful lad is nowhere else to be found on the entire Earth. Profound goodness had taken hold of her soul. Then she laid her hand on his wound and sprinkled healing water over it. The wound heals itself and the lad awakens healed and unscathed. “Will you take me as your wife” she asks him and Johannes answers: “I will take you, beautiful maiden.”

But he has to wait three years. They were terrible years because the two older brothers sought to destroy him with their jealousy and the father did not love him anymore. He withstood all slander. At last the truth was revealed and the wedding was celebrated. His two older brothers were chased from the court.

Beauty and the quality of binding are a unity. As we have already seen from Gadamer, beauty has a binding task joining the ideal with reality. No obstacle was too great for the king’ s son. He pursued his goal to the end, taking everything into account. Notable is that he begins his journey with a renunciation. He does not accept the 100,000 warriors . A horse and a good sword suffice him, beginning his journey happily. When he hears of the insurmountable obstacles, he continues on his way courageously, trusting that he will pass the trials as his goal stands strongly before him. As the brothers retreat from their intentions and lie to their father, he remains true to his goal. He wants to win the maiden. He wins the battle with the ferrymen, he deceives the mighty giant and finds his way to the maiden in the castle.

Even upon his return home where the brothers jeopardize his life with jealousy and the father with draws his love, he remains hopeful to endure the three trial years. So the simpleton from whom no one expected anything and toward whom all odds were stacked, at the end he wins the maiden. One can ask, what virtues helped him? It was his love for the truth, his sense for beauty and his striving for the maiden and the water of life through which he was enlivened when gazing upon her. Lastly, his friendliness and goodness toward everyone whom he encountered helped him overcome the obstacles on his journey.

Let us mention a quote here from an esoteric lesson of 1906 in which Rudolf Steiner does not only describe beauty but also her two inseparable sisters in support of the esoteric traditions in their world significance: Truth/Wisdom and Goodness/Strength.

What will the Earth be one day? A structure that the human being will complete. And the duty of every human being is to collaborate in this building. Into this temple three forces must be incorporated, otherwise chaos will ensue. The pillars on which this temple rests are Wisdom, Beauty and Strength. Wisdom when he ennobles his spirit; Beauty when his heart is ennobled and Strength when he ennobles his will. Therefore these three pillars are the foundation of all activity. [13]

The three forces Wisdom, Beauty and Strength are the building blocks of a future World such are the three ideals depicted from the tradition of the Free-Masons. In connection to these three virtues already recognized by Greek philosophers, Rudolf Steiner speaks about these three and brings them into a relationship to the three members of the human being. In a lecture on Truth, Beauty and Goodness Rudolf Steiner mention:

Truth as a constituent virtue in one’s own body is connected with the realization that the physical body is connected to the spirit ( In the fairytale we can see how the lying brothers lose their right to live)

Beauty is connected to the etheric body. When we develop the right feeling for beauty we are immersed in the right way in our etheric, in our etheric body. Rudolf Steiner mentions expressly in this lecture: “To have a sense for beauty means: to recognize the etheric body. To have no sense for beauty means: to disregard and to not acknowledge the etheric body.”[14]

(In the fairytale beauty is represented by the maiden from whose hands and feet the water of life, one could also say, the etheric drips down. She, together with the beautiful youth, represents the vibrant life forces.)

Goodness – “a good person is one who can transmit his own soul substance into that of another. …and that is connected with morality. To emphasize with the furrows of sorrow in the face of another…”[15] Goodness lives in the astral body of the human being. Here the astral body comes into action.

(When the maiden kills the youth in anger, her heart is moved when she sees the beauty of the youth and she awakens him to life.)

In Summarizing, Rudolf Steiner Says:

“Being truthful for the human being means to be rightly connected with one’s spiritual past. For the human being to have a sense for beauty means not to deny the connection of the physical world in its connection with the spiritual world. For the human being to be good means, to develop a germinating force for a spiritual world in the future.”[16]

Here it is not difficult to become aware of how art and beauty are connected with Truth and Goodness. They are the central virtues for the inner cultivation of the human being. The human being is not only of a bodily nature, but is also an etheric and astral being, necessitating the three virtues in its deepest essence. They create the foundation for the effectiveness of the ego, which uses these three members as its instrument. Beauty holds such a central role because of its significant placement between the body and spirit.

When Rudolf Steiner challenges us to let all realms of life become art, then we can recognize the striving in joining the human being into a unity with the cosmos, with the spiritual world.

The English writer Kathleen Raine postulates in her very recommendable essay On Man, that the human being, in so far as he only recognizes a material world, will finally end in a mechanism, will end as a machine in which he will only represent himself as a little wheel. Here we see how essential art and beauty are real as forces of the future, for the realization of the actual humanity of the human being as a soul-spiritual and physical being which can make Anthroposophy visible and accessible.

Endnotes / Christiane Haid’s Lecture

[1] Imre Kertesz, Heimweh nach dem Tod. Arbeitstagebuch zur Entstehung des «Romans eines Schicksallosen», München 2022, S. 108

[2] Ebenda S. 115

[3] Ebenda P., 119

[4] Paul Klee: Das bildnerische Denken, Schriften zur Form- und Gestaltungslehre, herausgegeben von Jürg Spiller, Basel/Stuttgart 1956, S. 79.

[5] Ebd. P., 79

[6] Rudolf Steiner: Kunst im Lichte der Mysterienweisheit, GA 275, S. 37

[7] Ebd., P. 37

[8] Rudolf Steiner: Wege zu einem neuen Baustil, GA 286, 17. 6. 1914, Basel 2020, S. 69 f.

[9] Rudolf Steiner: Das Miterleben des Jahreslaufs in vier kosmischen Imaginationen, GA 229, Dornach 1999, S. 40

[10] Hans Georg Gadamer: Die Aktualität des Schönen. Kunst als Spiel, Symbol und Fest, Reclam, Stuttgart, 2012, S. 23

[11] Ebenda, S. 25