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The Baby Maybe Needs Something?
Rudolf Steiner’s “First Address” / & Steps Toward a Poetry of Knowing
Liebe Freunde,
Although I wrote this meeting summary post four years ago in 2022 after a Section meeting where we celebrated Shakespeare’s birthday, the information is timely for our Section work recently as we turn our attention in 2026 to the Italian Renaissance, Renaissance Humanism, the secular humanist literary tradition, and Rudolf Steiner’s Art History Lectures (GA 292) that were give 1916-1917. Our Section has a special relationship to the theme of Beauty . . . Goodness and Truth. As I like to point out, if we translate the name of our Section word for word from the German, we are “The Section for the Beautiful Sciences.” In the English-speaking world, we have the less mysterious name “The Section for the Literary Arts & Humanities.” But our “mystery name” (dharma name, if you prefer) is “The Section for the Beautiful Sciences.” That is the name Rudolf Steiner gave us when we came into the world in the Carpentry Shed at the time of the famous Christmas Conference. At that moment of “hello, world!”, Rudolf Steiner called upon all present and future Society and Section friends and members “to re-enliven this branch of human creativity, which has been left in the corner, much to the detriment of civilization.”
But our name poses a great riddle — and it confuses many persons, when first they hear about it . . . and it even makes some folks object: “Why do we need a Section with such an awkward old-fashioned name? What is it even good for?”
But, as with every “mystery,” this riddle of a name leads forward to many insights and discoveries. Perhaps most importantly, it lead us to Raphael-Novalis.
Rudolf Steiner liked to talk about Raphael-Novalis, as we all know. He highlighted Raphael-Novalis in his Last Address, much to the confusion and chagrin of the members in his audience. Taking a cue from the Signs of the Time, this year in our Section meetings we are deepening our knowledge of Raphael-Novalis (and thereby the mystery of our Section name) by taking up the “Raphael” side of Raphael-Novalis. This leads us to the Renaissance. We’ve made many brief forays into the era of the European Renaissance in past meetings, but this might be a longer expedition . . . perhaps long overdue.
As portal to this exploration, we are working with Rudolf Steiner’s art history lectures. This might appear odd or transgressive to those who have become accustomed to our long-standing meeting emphasis on poetry (creative writing) and literary criticism (academic stuff). But art history and “Beauty” are very much the concerns of our Section work. The previous two North American Section Conferences were also contributions to this path of our Section research, which I call “Steps Toward a Poetry of Knowing.”
Click here if you want to hear the Conference Keynote Addresses.
Click here if you prefer to read those Conference Keynote Addresses.
“Artists do not bring the divine to earth by letting it flow into the world; they elevate the worldly to the divine. Beauty is semblance because it conjures before our senses a reality which, as such, appears as an ideal world. Consider the What, but consider more thoroughly the How, because the How is what matters. The What remains bound to the sense-given, but the How reveals the ideal.”
- Rudolf Steiner
“The connection with the spirit breaks if it is not main-tained by Beauty. Beauty binds the ‘I’ to the body.”
- Rudolf Steiner
“. . . the vision of the human being will be directed to these times, to this artistic evolution; for it lets us gaze so deeply into the life and working of Piety, of Wisdom and of Love in the human soul, combined with the artistic fancy, striving to reproduce Nature with a fresh and open mind. It lies not in the mere imitation of Nature, but in the faculty of the human being, with all that he has found in his own soul, to discover again in Nature what is already there in her, akin to the inmost experiences of the human soul.”
— Rudolf Steiner, concluding words of Lecture One in the Art History Lecture Series (GA 292)
“But Is It Wirklich His First Address?”
This title “First Address” refers to a statement by Rudolf Steiner’s biographer Christoph Lindenberg in volume 1 of his two volume biography in which Lindenberg underscored the importance of this first public lecture made available to us by Rudolf Steiner. (“Es ist der erste überhaupt von Steiner überlieferte Vortrag.” Vol 1, pg. 161). Lindenberg contextualizes the importance of this “first lecture” (1888) in respect to the more famous “Last Address” (1924).
Furthermore, if we take Rudolf Steiner at his word that his main mission was to bring a renewed teaching of reincarnation and karma, then this “First Address” of 1888 on the topic of Beauty assumes even greater importance — most especially for a Section that calls itself in German the Section for the “Beautiful Sciences.” Because of that importance, I’ll add a bit more information. I’m quoting Lindenberg :
Nach dem Vortrag [Goethe als Begründer einer neuen Wissenschaft der Ästhetik] trat der Zisterzienser-Professor Neumann an Steiner heran und machte eine Bemerkung, "die nicht anders verstanden werden konnte, als dass der Mann in diesem Augenblick ein volles Verständnis für einen Menschen der Gegenwart und für die Beziehung dieses Menschen der Gegenwart zu seiner früheren Inkarnation hatte. Und was er über die Verbindung zweier irdischer Leben sagte, das war richtig, war nicht falsch." [Wie Steiner später gegenüber [Friedrich] Ritellmeyer berichtete, wurde ihm sein früheres Erdenleben wie von außen her bewusst.
It can therefore be assumed that Rudolf Steiner can be recognized in particular by the main idea of this lecture [Goethe as the Founder of a New Science of Aesthetics]. And in fact, the idea of this lecture, namely that all artistic creations emanate from the real and that this reality is then worked upon in such a way that it appears ideal, is an important life principle of Rudolf Steiner. He lived in the grasp of the tasks that reality brought to him. This principle is particularly encountered in social actions. He always starts from the people he is dealing with in reality. Again and again he starts from the questions that others ask him. He responds to others; whether these are Berlin workers or theosophists is not so important to him. Above all, however, he tries to promote people and group them in such a way that the real finally receives a spiritual splendor and begins to seem ideal. He lifted many of his students above themselves by trusting them and opening up opportunities for work.
- Christoph Lindenberg, aus Rudolf Steiner, Eine Biographie, Bd. 1, S. 161-62
Alternativ könnte man aber auch argumentieren, dass die erste "anthroposophische" Rede eher der Vortrag über Goethes Märchen von den grünen Schlangen und der schönen Lilie that Steiner gave to an audience of theosophists at Michaelmas, 1900. As we know, Steiner called Goethe’s Fairytale the “germinal seed of the anthroposophical movement.”
But, whether one turns to the right or to the left, so to speak, there stands Goethe! And at the end of it all, in the Last Address, there stands Novalis!
And with Novalis, Raphael.
What will we discover with Raphael-Novalis? If causes and conditions prove favorable, let’s find out!
“Who am I?”
"Wir haben das Glück, in der Anthroposophischen Gesellschaft einen großartigen Vertreter der schönen Wissenschaften unter uns zu haben: Albert Steffen. Er ist nicht nur berufen, die Sektion für die schönen Wissenschaften zu leiten, sondern auch diesen Zweig der menschlichen Kreativität wieder zu beleben, der zum Schaden der Zivilisation in die Ecke gestellt worden ist."
- Rudolf Steiner; zitiert von Heinz Matile in "Albert Steffen und die schönen Wissenschaften" im Jahrbuch für Literatur und Geisteswissenschaften 2002
Original April 22, 2002
Revised March 1, 2026