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Albert
Steffen’s biography, including his poetry and drama, is exemplary
of the path of the therapeutic artist, writing to heal. For
more texts and translations, please email info@exploringtheword.com.au or call Katherine Rudolph on 03-9729
8819.
A Glimpse at
Steffen’s Life and Work:
The Source
and Force of His Ideas (Part 1)
Albert Steffen was born on December 10, 1884 in Murgenthal,
Canton Bern, Switzerland. His father was the village
doctor. At an early age his senses were especially attuned to
the herbs and flowers. He was already perceiving the world of
nature in poetic imagery: “As a child it always seemed
to me as though a human countenance peeped forth from every
blossom. From the tulip, that of a Turkish maiden; from the
chrysanthemum, that of a Japanese dancer; from the sunflower of
Inca King; from the geranium a Moorish boy.”2
By age 14 he had intuitively ‘understood’ that the human soul
goes through the process of reincarnation.3
After he finished high school Steffen went to Lausanne to study
natural sciences. In 1906 at age 21 he moved to Berlin, and
two years later, to Munich. There he became a freelance
writer and published his first novel, ‘Ott, Alois and Werelsche’ in
1907.
In Berlin, 1906, Steffen first heard a lecture by Rudolf
Steiner. He writes: “I recognized immediately the
leader of humanity: the wisdom on his brow, the love
pervading his eye, the conscience in his word.”4
“This experience created such an impression that he gave up his
studies and only resumed them later, he says, when he saw the
possibility of fructifying school knowledge through spiritual
science.”5
In 1914, the beginning of World War I, Steffen was 29. At
that time he was making frequent visits to Dornach. Of his
experience there, he wrote: “Harmony reigned through a
single man’s God-founded spirit,”6 and “Carving
the Goetheanum capitals and architraves furthered me as a shaper of
words.”…”Content should be consumed by form, whether in the vault
of the cupola or writing a verse, through shaping the vowels and
consonants.”7 In 1920, at the age of 35 Steffen moved to
Dornach. In 1921 he was asked by Rudolf Steiner to be editor
of the newly founded ‘Das Goetheanum’ weekly periodical.
Writers contributed from the realms of art and spiritual
science. About his aims for it Steffen wrote, “We must
characterize the spiritual forces at work in Europe and demonstrate
that ‘Das Goetheanum’ can bring about, in spiritual freedom, a
synthesis of the form that prevails in the West and the life that
streams in the East.”8
At New Year’s 1923 Steffen witnessed the destruction by fire of
the First Goetheanum, despite all efforts to save it. Here,
an attitude was developed which might sustain his later striving –
whatever the odds – against the forces of destruction and
chaos. To the question: It is not pointless to make
efforts to fight a fire that is obviously out of control? – Rudolf
Steiner replied: “Even if the effort is fruitless, one
still dwells in the midst of helping forces, and these may
perchance prevent a future misfortune even if it is no longer
possible here.”9
At the Christmas Conference of 1923 Rudolf Steiner named Steffen
to head the Section for Belles Lettres in the newly constituted
Anthroposophical Society and named him Deputy Chairman. Of
Albert Steffen he said: “ The members of Vorstand are, I
believe, chosen in the right way. Albert Steffen has already
been an anthroposophist before his was born; this must be
recognized with regard to him” (p. 47 of Die
Weihnachtstagung – The Christmas Conference). In an
article which appeared in Das Goetheanum of February
22nd, 1923, he wrote about Steffen: “Within the
Anthroposophical Movement, he spirit of such a poet, if rightly
felt, should be experienced as the bringer of a message from the
spiritual sphere.” “That he wishes to work in this
Movement, should be felt as a good destiny.”10 F W
Zeylmans van Emmichoven, a Dutch Anthroposophist, wrote that Rudolf
Steiner wanted the members of the Vorstand (the directing body of
the Anthroposophical Society) to recognize themselves and each
other against the background of the spiritual streams to which they
belonged, “to cultivate fraternal feeling even between strongly
contrasting personalities.”11
Rudolf Steiner died in 1925; Steffen was with him in his last
days. He expressed his reverence and thankfulness for this
man’s being and gift to humanity, recreating a ‘memory picture’ for
the reader – ‘In Memoriam, Rudolf Steiner’. After
Steiner’s death, in accordance with his wishes, Albert Steffen
became Chairman of the Society. Although he never sought this
task, its importance in shaping his life was undeniable.
Indeed he must have grown to understand the experience “Know
thyself in striving for balance”12, which stands
symbolically behind Steiner’s sculpture of the Representative of
Man. As Chairman he found himself serving to keep a centre
point of balance amidst contrasting personalities and divergent
streams.
The universality of his aims can be experienced in the lines at
the end of Adonis Spiel / Eine Herbstfeier,
published in 1935:
Let this be for us our cosmic goal: -
To paint a living picture for the soul
which the claws of death cannot despoil,
which lights the darkest dungeon deep below –
take a new earth with us when we go,
which no evil shadow e’er can soil,
no tide nor flood can ever wash away,
no wind that blows can ever bleach or blight,
will never yield to acid’s poisoned bite,
will never melt in fire’s burning ray,
that’s brighter than the sun’s own visage is –
but only Christ himself can give us this!
- (Translated by
A M E)
The trials involved in serving as Chairman after Rudolf
Steiner’s death are difficult to imagine: the practice of
‘moral technique’. On the subject of his conduct as to
ethical and spiritual responsibility he is described as being
“straightforward and not to be put off”.13
Particularly concerning his leadership of the Society a quality of
‘reticent, protective watchfulness and artistry”14 is
spoken of.
In 1946, writes Henry Barnes, “the Swiss Federal Parliament
accepted Steffen’s proposal that Switzerland offer herself as a
pilot oasis of humanity and declare herself ready to accept
refugees from all nations, under international
guarantee.”15 This act affected the destiny of
numbers of people.
Indeed, Steffen strove to be alive to the turns of destiny in
many ways. He was writing and presenting his works
continuously during the years in Dornach. In dramas such as
Lin or Voyage to Another Land it becomes apparent
that Steffen “called on mankind to awaken to its dangers and take
its destiny in hand.”16
In contrast to Steffen’s public and artistic roles, one can
picture his family and the kind of care and responsibility he took
on in this sphere. He married Frau Elizabeth Stückgold, the
widow of the Parisian painter. She had felt a strong
commitment to Anthroposophy, met Rudolf Steiner through Albert
Steffen, and moved to Dornach, with her child Felicitas.
Elizabeth and Albert Steffen were both devoted to the
child. As Dr Hermann Poppelbaum says: “Felicitas became for
Albert Steffen what the pupil and student in Vienna (mentioned in
‘The Story of my Life’) became for Rudolf Steiner! An
occasion to listen to one of destiny’s requirements and to unfold
active help.”17 Felicitas had been incapacitated
since birth and suffered from epileptic attacks. She was
especially gifted in music. Frau Steffen virtually dedicated
her life to help and care for Felicitas. The child in fact
lived longer than was ever expected. There is a volume of
poetry, ‘Passiflora, A Requiem’, which Steffen dedicated to
Felicitas and published in 1939. Elizabeth Steffen was, as I
understand, a steadfast partner and inspiration to her
husband. She died on her birthday, on March 3rd,
1961, after a painful illness.
Two years later, on July 13th, 1963, after having
foretold his departure on the day before, Albert Steffen passed
over. As Friedrich Hiebel describes, his last words “Now I
wish to be alone” were uttered in the noblest sense, as a monachos,
an ego-man, who had gained the certainty that luminous light shines
out of earthly death.18
About reading a seer’s work (when speaking of Rudolf Steiner),
Steffen says that readers must take into account not only what he
says but “how he says it”.19 This kind of approach
might be attempted here, in trying to perceive how the subject of
this biography describes himself.
Steffen wrote a short autobiographical sketch for the spring
1943 issue of ‘The Forerunner’. The way he wrote
indicated certain qualities of his character and themes living in
his consciousness. The universality of his ideas might appeal
to and be understood by people of diverse experience, because he
himself understands and speaks of his experience truthfully and
simply, with a sense for artistic unity. (Steffen was about
60 at the time of this writing):
“The greater part of my boyhood I passed on the banks of the
Aare, swimming, boating and catching perch, between times eating
crab-apples which I and my comrades fished out of the river.
Trees I experienced with the knees of a climber, the grass and the
earth with bare feet. When we rose out of the waves, the
violet colours of the Jura Mountains seemed to be most
beautiful. The elements loved us. We felt in dreamy
bliss the joy of growth with which they formed our bodies.
Therefore we danced up and down on the river bank.”
A kind of joyous wisdom pervades him here; Steffen looks back
and relives in consciousness the feelings of his early childhood,
vividly, so that the reader can experience them along with
him. The joy he felt growing up in those idyllic
surroundings, was a shaping force in his destiny; indeed, the
beginning of a connection with nature which would grow and reveal
its depths later in his poetry. Steffen speaks often of
taking spiritual nourishment from nature.
“If you take a morning swim in the stream, you go about the
whole day breathing more deeply and standing straighter with a
greater scope in your thoughts and deeds, for you took up something
of the river’s mighty sweep and flow as you broke through its
waves.”20
“If you feel melancholy and dejected you need only look at
the sky, and as soon as you conceive this immensity again, the
primal force within the soul reappears. This cheerful
serenity is the most enduring and deepest thing in me. It is
the background of all my thoughts and feelings, as the blue of the
sky is the background of all the happenings in
nature.”21
Nature, we can see, was healing for Steffen. In contrast
to the harmonious beginning of the 1943 sketch of his life, he
speaks directly of how the forces of death came to meet him early,
in the experience of the sick people who came to his father for
medical care. His mother must indeed have had insight
herself, when she explained to him how the various ailments of the
townspeople were connected with their occupations. His
initial disgust at the physical symptoms was transformed to
reflection, which brought understanding. To study occupations
later became a matter of interest to Steffen.
He next speaks of the painful experience of his high school
examination. (He was later to express the intensity of this
early soul trial in his autobiographical novel, ‘From George
Archibald’s Life Story and Post-Humous Papers’). In the 1943
sketch he relates how “being taciturn, rough, hardly capable of
expressing himself except in dialect, he failed”. At this
time he had to leave his family home and be placed in the lowest
class in the school of Bern. Here again was an experience
which was initially contrary to his will.
However, alongside this, interest began to awaken in him for the
stream of people which he watched from his gable room in the
hotel. He describes “the view from my garret grew
wider.” Observation was to become an indispensable tool for
Steffen, laying the foundation for all the realms of his artistic
work and life circumstances.
In the loneliness of his adolescent years Steffen turned for
comfort to the poet-philosophers. He was for a time an
advocate of direct experience, in that he tries to carry out the
‘Return to Nature’ of Rosseau, “becoming a brother to the elements,
spending the night on the bare earth, etc.” before realising that
his urge was forward into self-development, not return to the
primal state.
Then, his decision to devote himself to the study of Nietzsche
and Dostoyevski “because none had suffered as they” is an
indication of a deep perceptive quality. He knew he could
learn from those who had suffered. But he says, “Both make
one squander oneself – Nietzsche, on the form; Dostoyevski, on
life.” Because Steffen understands fully the effects of these
two philosophies when applied to life experience, he can direct his
own path independently.
After having immersed himself in the elements of Nature, Steffen
was drawn to life, like his beloved poets, in the strife of a large
city. His inclination was to investigate the polarities of a
given subject, to view both sides of the coin. Later he was
to learn from spiritual science: “In life one should never rest
before finding the polarity of any given process. Only then
is balance achieved.”22 He says (when further
describing his experiences) that having investigated the slums of
Berlin he was interested in studying the wealthy quarters.
From there he goes on to describe insightful discoveries that he
observed there, read from people’s gestures.
But it was back in the Berlin slums, I believe, that Steffen had
an experience of deepest significance for his destiny: his room
looked on a dirty court into which the doors of the dismal taverns
opened. Night after night the howls of revelry “as though a
beast were crying out” robbed him of sleep. He writes:
One night, in waking consciousness, I had an experience which
shows me that there is another vision besides the one which eyes
give us. What was going on in the depths came to meet my
imagination. A being rose up out of the abyss compounded of
lust, the passion for destruction, and impotency. It rose
threateningly before me. I shrank back, horror-struck.
It disappeared. The memory remained, dark enough to rob
me of all the joy of living. I had seen how death works in
man, and believed I would go to pieces under the weight of this
insight.”
He had seen not only an appalling, nightmarish, deathly image,
but, in his words, “a cry for help”. In its deathly sigh
Steffen recognized a desperate plea. The intensity of this
event certainly played a part in calling forth the impulse for
healing which lived in Steffen. In various other places he
writes expressly of this experience. And consider what
Steffen relates in ‘Meetings with Rudolf Steiner’, that after
telling a friend of this experience, he was first directed to
Rudolf Steiner. The unexpressed question which presented
itself in that first meeting was “How can I serve mankind
better?”
One can see his search for ways to surmount the suffering in the
midst of which he finds himself. This is the poet who will
learn to wield an antidote from the wellsprings of the Word.
In the 1943 sketch Steffen goes on to describe three men that he
met, and how they represented for him the archetypes of goodness,
beauty and truth. In the preceding paragraph of the sketch
the fallen aspect of humanity had been experienced. Now the
highest ideals which can be expressed are spoken of. Again a
balance is brought about.
As Steffen tells of nature “taking on a changed aspect for him”
in Munich 1908, one senses that nature was now able to speak to his
consciousness and provide an answer, to his earlier strivings to
comprehend her. Before, he had become “a brother of the
elements”, now he was meeting the spiritual realities behind
natural phenomena.
He writes: “When I saw a tree, an incorruptible
strength, untouched by the perishable, permeated me through and
through. I could live outside the mortal, in a realm of the
eternal.” This thought-filled observation through sense
consciousness reveals the ideal reality of tree! Steffen
interprets Nature – “The moment is at hand-“, says he, “when
the things themselves will be man’s teachers, when a colour may
reveal as much to him as a fine, responsive feeling. He will
measure the transparency and depth of his feelings by the colours
of the sunset, and so become more aware of his inner development
and of his progress in the appreciation of
Nature.”23
In the last paragraph of the 1943 sketch Steffen writes of
Rudolf Steiner:
“As a characteristic of the way of thinking of this
extraordinary man, to whom I am indebted beyond all others, I found
that in regard to the knowledge which he revels, in every instance
he indicated the way in which it can be found; that is to say, he
demands that the truth be tested, not merely accepted on
faith. He disavows dogma. What I had sensed, I found
proved. Thus I was doubly able to affirm my experience of the
eternal. As I experienced the victory of the forces of
becoming over the forces of death, I returned again to the
beginning, to childhood, to the cosmic wholeness of life, but now
consciously, no longer dreaming as formerly. I know now that
these forces of growth spring from a state that was before birth
and will be after death. The circle is completed – it is
necessary to say this, for it determines my whole art as a
poet.”
One can notice he speaks almost triumphantly of Steiner’s
disavowal of dogma. Undue searching for authority does indeed
deaden creative faculties. In a strong poetic statement,
Steffen says: “No mandate has been given me, not by Gods nor my
men; no doctrine – no matter whose – has been laid upon me.”
At the end of this poem he reveals a self-chosen task, “sanctioned
by the free and the loving”, conveyed to the soul through the
stars. “Know yourself, destined for freedom, working as
one in communion with all.”24
Albert Steffen is concerned with how the forces of growth and
becoming are to be victorious. He writes:
“Everywhere Christ emerges from the elements. With the
lifting power with which he rolled the stone from the grave,
support your body, with the light forces with which he permeates
the plants, renew your life! With the air of heaven with
which he sends you thoughts, like butterflies, fill your
words. Guide your ego from rock to forest to the clouds,
right up to the sun, by shaping, condensing, transforming and
purifying it. Gaze upon your destiny from above, with starry
eyes.”25
Steffen’s work is grounded in a living experience of the
eternal. Thus it conveys a quality which helps transform our
consciousness of the earth, helping to redeem and heal.
‘Friend’ – (from the Anglo-Saxon root: freon – to love) is
defined as ‘one disposed to promote the good of another’. – Steffen
describes how he aspires to view others: “The developed person does
not judge others and thus set them back, but lets them stand and
understands them.”26 “When I notice that a
simple flower all at once leaves me unmoved, I shall always find,
among the people about me, someone whom I have
disdained.”27 He fell asleep with the question of
how he could help a man and woke up with a longing to deepen his
friendship. “This meant, however”, he said, “to correct
my own faults.” Many people will, I believe, understand this
attitude as the impulse which Steffen brought for the social
sphere.
One of Steffen’s friends was the American poet-dramatist Percy
MacKaye. Although they used different tongues, they spoke a
similar inner language and conversed together through poetry.
Arvia MacKaye Ege, once related to me how she sat at the table with
the two poets and helped to convey meaning to an inter-translated
volume of poetry they published in 1937, entitled ‘In Another
Land’. (Only a small part of Steffen’s more than 70 published
works of poetry, drama, essay, sketch and novel have been
translated.) Percy MacKaye in an essay, ‘The Excellence of
Albert Steffen’, seeks to describe his friend. “How
shall I sketch his portrait for the reader? The solemnity of
Savonarola, illumined by the radiance of Shelly, the staunch piety
of William Penn (in black quakerish hat), all twinkled over and
merrified by the arch smile and skipping gait of the marble faun
himself – on a holiday, the athleticism of an alpine skier, subdued
to the tender solitude of St Francis feeding the birds.” He
sees these paradoxical qualities…”Naiveté imbued with subtlety;
modesty with tough courage; executiveness with sensitive human
feeling; lyricism with epic grandeur.”28
His autobiographical novel From George Archibald’s Life Story
and Post-humous Papers (published in 1950; Steffen was 65)
might be called a tremendously open hearted and sensitive account
of spiritual growth and aspiration. In the novel George, a
poet, appeals to a literary historian friend of his, who believes
in reincarnation, to help set his life account in order before he
dies. This enables Steffen to look at himself from the
vantage point of a ‘stranger’. The professor speaks of George
with compassion and insight which reveal to the reader the wisdom
which George gleans from his experiences.
In Pilgrimage to the Tree of Life Steffen speaks, in the
words of a poet and a priest, of his experience of himself in
relation to the world of nature. A devotional understanding
of nature is evoked. One feels that he delivers a sermon in
the true sense. But, as he asks elsewhere: “Wherein does the
angel of the poet differ from that of the theologian? Therein
that he not only possesses pinions upon his shoulders, but also
wings on his feet.”29 Poems appear in his
Pilgrimage. He writes: “A gardener takes
pleasure in his calling only when he feels, present and active
within himself, the same life force through which all grows and
becomes; when he strives to enhance it. This can only be done
by increase of loving care. He must feel deeply within
himself that he helps to carry out the Creator’s will. With
the poet it is the same, he praises nature when an inner
experience has enlarged his vision and made him
better.”30 This attitude of poetic
consciousness offers a service to the impulse of Spiritual Science
in the present age of Michael. Rudolf Steiner writes in his
review of Pilgrimage to the Tree of Life: “Anthroposophy
searches for all aspects of the Tree of Life; the poetic genius of
Albert Steffen searches for the same. It is no doubt for this
reason that both have found one another.”31
Composing verse is for Steffen the most intensive kind of
living. In From a Notebook, he writes “Every
incarnation is a poem of the higher ego in accordance with the
experience of former earthly lives.” He plunges deeply
into the heart and expresses the wisdom gleaned, with profound
simplicity. The succinctness of his thinking is often
curative in effect. Experiences become transformed into
insightful imagery. He researches for spiritual cognition of
cosmic and karmic law; he seeks to bring to consciousness what is
living reality in man and nature. This effort must have
constantly developed and purified his faculties.
Arvia MacKaye Ege calls Steffen “dramatist of cosmic
deeds”.32 In mystery dramas such as Hiram and
Salomon, Christ or Barrabas and The Death Experience
of Manes, Steffen focuses his imaginative faculties on scenes
from human history which are particularly significant for the
spiritual growth of the Earth.
Friedrich Hiebel writes that Steffen often affirmed his
innermost striving was to restore the long-lost myth to
humanity. In mythology deep themes of human truth can be
symbolically understood, often in the form of perilous battles.
In Steffen’s dramas one can discover interweaving themes.
One is that of the victory of the spirit reborn in Christ over
physical death and the forces of destruction and chaos. This
is an aspect of the struggle for transformation of evil into good,
a teaching of Manes who lived in the third century after
Christ.33 Strength is called forth to release
worn-out thought forms in order to grasp a deeper clarity; this
leads to acts of sacrifice, inspired through love. Their
example has a transforming effect, both on the people within the
play and in the audience.
The concepts that Steffen chooses to present live in his
dialogues, in his stage directions and sets. The stage is
related not only to material space but also to inner space,
representing perceptions of a spiritual nature, for which eurhythmy
sometimes appears.
One experiences catharsis and human transformation through the
Christ impulse. In several instances the feminine role
carries a spiritualising quality which helps this
transformation.
Many aspects of human striving for progress and transformation,
despite all adversity, are to be traced throughout Steffen’s work
as a poet. Arvia MacKaye Ege has created a living picture of
him in the following verse:
“Quiet Giant of the Word,
Gentle tender of the herd,
Minstrel of the God forsaken
Wielding cadences of light
To fashion evil into seeing
Sculpture beauty out of night.
Toiling on the brink of being
You mould destiny through art,
Revealing where the dead awaken
‘Til hell itself is warmed and shaken
And freedom steals into man’s stricken heart.”34
- Katherine
Rudolph, Arlesheim
22.
Meetings…op.cit.
23.
Pilgrimage p. 23
24.
Translation of the Poem from: ‘From a Round Table Conversation,’ by
Albert Steffen, Anthroposophic News Sheet, 7th
July, 1957.
25.
Meetings…p. 170
26.
do. P.65
27.
Pilgrimage… p.15
28.
The Forerunner, Spring 1943. ‘The Excellence of
Albert Steffen; p. 9-10
29.
From A Notebook 1937
30.
Pilgrimage…p.9
31.
Das Goetheanum 8th March 1925. Rudolf
Steiner on Steffen’s Pilgrimage…
32.
Anthroposophic News Sheet 25th Aug. 1963 p.
138. Arvia MacKaye Ege ‘For Albert Steffen’
33.
Journal for Anthroposophy Autumn, 1971 ‘Albert Steffen
Retrospect’, Henry and Christy Barnes p. 53
34.
cf. 32.
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