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    The New School of the Imagination: Rudolf Steinerýs Mystery Plays in Literary Tradition
    The New School of the Imagination: Rudolf Steinerýs Mystery Plays in Literary Tradition
    The New School of the Imagination: Rudolf Steinerýs Mystery Plays in Literary Tradition
    Ebook55 pages1 hour

    The New School of the Imagination: Rudolf Steinerýs Mystery Plays in Literary Tradition

    By John O'Meara

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    This essay offers a radical view of the post-Renaissance, Western literary scene inasmuch as Rudolf Steiner's Anthroposophy bears a relation to it, principally through his Mystery Plays. A number of major authors are highlighted as having an intrinsic connection with the Anthroposophical revelation-notably T.S. Eliot, and especially S.T. Coleridge. The prospect of a new cultural poetic for the future is outlined in connection especially with these two major figures of English critical-poetic tradition.

    Other authors that are considered include Wordsworth, Goethe, Lawrence, Yeats; Graves, Hughes; Milton, Swift, and Blake; Strindberg, Hemingway and Beckett.

    Steiner's Plays were never intended as Literature as we know that discipline today, but they provide a singular point of view from which the idea of Literature can be re-evaluated and new directions set forth that represent a transformed prospect for Literature in the future. Some of our most distinguished authors of the past are seen in a new light, as if it had been their struggle to reach out to the possibilities Steiner's Plays bring forth.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisheriUniverse
    Release dateSep 6, 2007
    ISBN9780595909124
    The New School of the Imagination: Rudolf Steinerýs Mystery Plays in Literary Tradition

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      Book preview

      The New School of the Imagination - John O'Meara

      Copyright © 2007 by John O’Meara

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

      iUniverse books may be ordered through booksellers or by contacting:

      iUniverse

      2021 Pine Lake Road, Suite 100

      Lincoln, NE 68512

      1-800-Authors (1-800-288-4677)

      Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any Web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid.

      The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

      ISBN: 978-0-595-46617-7 (pbk)

      ISBN: 978-0-595-90912-4 (ebk)

      Printed in the United States of America

      Contents

      Acknowledgments

      I

      II

      III

      IV

      V

      Suggested Further Reading

      Endnotes

      The author wishes to acknowledge Adam Bittleston, with profound thanks for his superior translation of Rudolf Steiner’s Mystery Plays (Rudolf Steiner Press).

      Cover Illustration: Sculptural Group by Rudolf Steiner, showing the tall figure of Christ with (to His right, above centre) Lucifer and Ahriman (below). The Goetheanum, Dornach, Switzerland.

      Quotations from T.S Eliot’s The Waste Land from the edition by Faber and Faber.

      During the last decades of the nineteenth-century the Austrian-born RUDOLF STEINER (1861-1925) became a respected and well-published scientific, literary, and philosophical scholar, particularly known for his work on Goethe’s scientific writings. After the turn of the century he began to develop his earlier philosophical principles into an approach to methodical research of psychological and spiritual phenomena.

      His multi-faceted genius has led to innovative and holistic approaches in medicine, science, education (the Waldorf schools), special education, philosophy, religion, economics, agriculture (the Bio-dynamic method), architecture, drama, the art of eurythmy, and other fields. In 1924 he founded the General Anthropo-sophical Society, which today has branches throughout the world.

      Between 1910 and 1913, Steiner produced four Mystery Plays: The Portal of Initiation, The Soul’s Probation, The Guardian of the Threshold and The Souls’ Awakening. The Plays, along with the creation of the art of eurythmy, were part of a general effort to infuse fresh life into Western culture, expressing a new Christian-Rosicrucian inspiration in our time on which Steiner was acting.

      Acknowledgments

      Once again, to the students of my Major British Writers course, given when I was at the University of Toronto.

      To Eric Oxford, for his crucial intervention as a reader, which saved this essay from oblivion.

      And to Ted Hughes, for his ground-breaking interpretation of Coleridge’s unique case, without which also this essay could not have been.

      For

      Aline Francoeur my one true thing.

      I

      I begin from the impasse into which Western literature has fallen, indeed fell as along ago as the twenties of the last century. A continuous line of historical change up to that point (and it is thought, by some, beyond that point) will make it difficult to see that a special leap in evolution is involved, unlike anything before in tradition. It is the leap we have been unable to make, and the consequence has been what I would call the modern stasis: a period that has run its course for almost a hundred years now, marked by a mere repetition of the same modes of progressively worldly consciousness, falling away into manifestations of severe dissociation.

      Samuel Beckett took the dramatization of the process of dissociation about as far as

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