Donate books to help fund our work. Learn more→

The Rudolf Steiner Archive

a project of Steiner Online Library, a public charity

Search results 5561 through 5570 of 6552

˂ 1 ... 555 556 557 558 559 ... 656 ˃
311. The Kingdom of Childhood: Lecture Two 13 Aug 1924, Torquay
Translated by Helen Fox

I pointed out yesterday how the child's development undergoes a radical change with the loss of his first teeth. For in truth, what we call heredity or inherited characteristics are only directly active during the first epoch of life.
The remarkable thing is that in his ninth or tenth year he became a splendid Eurythmist and developed a great understanding for Eurythmy. So what he began by “paddling” up to his food as a little child was developed further in his will organs at a later age.
Steiner gave three simultaneous courses of lectures to the teachers two of which have been published in English under the titles ofStudy of Man and Practical Advice to Teachers.4.
292. The History of Art I: Dutch and Flemish Painting 13 Dec 1916, Dornach
Translator Unknown

We can see it, my dear friends, if only we bring to these works of Art an elementary power of understanding—that is to say, if we have to some extent escaped the unhappy fate of being historians of Art after the modern fashion.
Now what does this signify? What is the underlying reason? For the art of oil-painting was then carried to the South. Perspective was carried from the South to the North; oil-painting from the North to the South.
Hence the people of the South are fond of describing themselves as members of such and such a Group. They have little understanding of the individual principle. Such things should be taken into account, for Nations will never understand each other if they take no pains to grasp their several characteristics.
292. The History of Art I: Representations of the Nativity 02 Jan 1917, Dornach
Translator Unknown

The Adoration by the Shepherds—all that is more or less related to this theme—could best be understood (understood, that is to say, by the inner feelings) under the influence of what remained from those Northern Mysteries whose center, as I told you, was in Denmark.
But the appearance of the Three Wise Men of the East cannot really be understood with the same understanding, as the appearance of Jesus to the Shepherds according to St. Luke's Gospel. For the latter is a simple understanding of the heart, of inner feeling; while the understanding which we must bring to bear on all that is connected with the Wise Men from the East must needs be of a “Gnostic” character.
292. The History of Art I: Raphael and the Northern Artists 17 Jan 1917, Dornach
Translator Unknown

In short, you can distinguish what is purely artistic from the underlying subject-matter. Here, however, the artist's power is so magnificent that it draws the subject-matter into its own sphere.
There can be no doubt about it; they confronted many of these things without real understanding. They heard that a thing must be done so, and so; but it did not truly appeal to them, it did not strike home.
Nor had they yet the power to obey the laws of space out of their own understanding. To begin with, I will show you an artist of the first half of the 15th century: Lucas Moser.
292. The History of Art I: Sculpture in Ancient Greece and the Renaissance 24 Jan 1917, Dornach
Translator Unknown

He found that the manifold forms of Nature can be referred to certain typical or fundamental forms, in which is expressed the spiritual Law and Essence that underlies the outer things. He started, as you know, from Botany—the study of the Plant world. He tried to perceive the growth of the plant in this way: A single fundamental organ, whose basic form he recognised in the leaf, undergoes constant metamorphoses.
We must think truly on these matters, to gain some understanding of those noble forms of Humanity which underlay the Golden Age of Grecian Art. It was inevitable in the Fifth Post-Atlantean age, for man to leave behind him his life within the spiritual ...
Brunelleschi thereupon himself undertook to model the Christ. Donatello—for they lived together—had gone out to buy things for their breakfast.
292. The History of Art II: “Disputa” of Raphael — the School of Athens 05 Oct 1917, Dornach
Translator Unknown

Every detail which we can lay our eyes on in order to understand this painting, to really understand it artistically, means every small detail has a certain meaning.
Let us be completely clear: under the papal predecessors before Julius II, Rome was at the time basically completely different than during Julius II's reign.
There they remained. One can really not understand what happens in the becoming of being human beings when one doesn't have a clear understanding of the need to repel spiritual impulses towards the East—to what is connected to Asia and to Russia as a European peninsula—from the 8th and 9th Centuries.
292. The History of Art II: Fourth and Fifth Post-Atlantean Epochs, Medieval Art in the Middle, West, and South of Europe 15 Oct 1917, Dornach
Translator Unknown

Particularly in our present time it is imperative to totally understand the current 5th post-Atlantean epoch in which we stand, with all its peculiarities, in order for us to become ever more and more conscious of how affective we are within it.
The papacy in the time from the 9th century, before the middle of the 9th century where the ruling of Europe was so vigorously taken under control, where all relationships effectively extended, must not be imagined as the same effective papacy in a later century or even today.
This is what we find towards the conclusion of every time period, towards which Rome out of such a deep understanding through the three to four centuries created in the European realm, which wanted to rise out of folklore.
292. The History of Art II: Greek and Early Christian Art, Symbolic Signs, the Mystery of Gold 22 Oct 1917, Dornach
Translator Unknown

If one considers it in this way, then your mind understands the deepest mystery of gold. What did Siegfried's friend tell him? What does the Nibelungenlied say?
Learn once again how humanity experienced not mere air moving over the earth but that there is spirit above the earth, spirit which must be searched for; that beneath the earth there is not only stuff which they could take out with the aid of material tools, but that which was to be unearthed from the sub nature had to be offered up to the super-sensory. To understand mankind again, that is the mystery of gold! Not only spiritual science teaches this but this can also be learnt through the real understanding of the history of art in a spiritual sense. Oh, how terrible it is to see how the present day humanity wait day after day and do not want to understand the necessity to grasp the new; that they make no progress through old, worn-out imaginations.
292. The History of Art II: The Changes in the Conception of Christ During a Certain Period of Time 29 Oct 1917, Dornach
Translator Unknown

I say: the abstracted cosmic element transported over to the West! If you want to understand that then you must above all completely enter into the art of being, into a soul nature which was found in Romanism.
World domination was actually the Roman Empire's ideal. To bring the then total cultural world under Roman rule was the Roman Kaiser's ideal. The content from Hellenism to Romanism was prescribed by the desire to represent the individual.
The Greek influence actually existed in art with little influence from central Europe. Understand, this had to be so, from the second half of the 9th century it went well in Rome. Everyone knew, as I expressed it once, this `Eastern Being' had to be kept back.
293. The Study of Man: Lecture I 21 Aug 1919, Stuttgart
Translated by Daphne Harwood, Helen Fox

Indeed our intentions will only be fully accomplished when we, as humanity, will have reached the stage where parents, too, will understand that special tasks are set for mankind to-day, even for the first years of the child's education.
We must first gain an Anthropological-Anthroposophical understanding of the human being. Thus, the most important measures in education will consist in paying attention to all that rightly organises the breathing process into the nerve-sense process.
The child sleeps his very way into life.” Nevertheless, what inwardly underlies sleeping and waking, this the child cannot yet do. The child experiences all sorts of things on the physical plane.

Results 5561 through 5570 of 6552

˂ 1 ... 555 556 557 558 559 ... 656 ˃