Happy we who can bask in this warm September sun, which illumines all creatures, as well when they rest as when they toil, not without a feeling of gratitude; whose life is as blameless, how blameworthy soever it may be, on the Lord's Mona-day as on his Suna-day.

~ Henry David Thoreau, American author, poet, philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist, surveyor and historian (1817 – 1862).

 

Red-spotted Purple on an Autumn Joy blossom.

Ambulans Tolle philosophus .

Harmonias abstinentibus crudelitatis primitiva fabulas ,

fanaticorum deliria sacrificia fieri ,

quod communicant in cordibus stupebunt,

skepticism ut paradoxa facit mysteria flectere ,

cum signa contrariam satus super,

coepit benigniorem tuus contemptionem ostendunt ?

Cuius minimum gustum elit ,

Præcipitabit mortem tuam avertis inconcinnus doctrina ?

Finge hæsitationibus tuum sicut INDIFFERENS ora tumescere

indifferentiam intellectualiter periculosum general suus tenuit ,

propter venias ad obediendum GREGARIUS singuli quaerentes ,

jam tenaces philosophizers nolentes audire ,

ridiculum sententia tua pereas verbis subtilius hinc ,

haec TUMOROSUS ones designare obligando cessantibus oculo pietatis ,

Hactenus principia superfluo systematice irridebant values ​​,

derangement temperamenta ornare impatienter profundum abyssi ,

Dubius aures oratione opponit male,

Philosophus de facto indignatus explicationes apparet ,

Satis fucata haec sunt gradus ,

ambulare a repudium monstra furorem scholis ,

quibus animalium non vivere stridor dentium.

Steve.D.Hammond.

 

Whitby UK

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Rudolf Steiner

Steiner um 1905.jpg

BornRudolf Joseph Lorenz Steiner

27 (25?) February 1861

Murakirály, Kingdom of Hungary, Austrian Empire (now Donji Kraljevec, Croatia)

Died30 March 1925 (aged 64)

Dornach, Switzerland

Alma materVienna Institute of Technology

University of Rostock (PhD, 1891)

Spouse(s)

Anna Eunicke (1899–1911)

Marie Steiner-von Sivers (1914–1925)

Era20th-century philosophy

RegionWestern philosophy

SchoolMonism

Holism in science

Goethean science

Anthroposophy

Main interests

Metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of science, esotericism, Christianity

Notable ideas

Anthroposophy, anthroposophical medicine, biodynamic agriculture, eurythmy, spiritual science, Waldorf education, holism in science

Influences[show]

Influenced[show]

Steiner Seven Apocalyptical Seals Transparent.png

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Rudolf Joseph Lorenz Steiner (27 (or 25) February 1861[5] – 30 March 1925) was an Austrian philosopher, social reformer, architect, and esotericist.[6][7] Steiner gained initial recognition at the end of the nineteenth century as a literary critic and published philosophical works including The Philosophy of Freedom. At the beginning of the twentieth century he founded an esoteric spiritual movement, anthroposophy, with roots in German idealist philosophy and theosophy; other influences include Goethean science and Rosicrucianism.[8]

 

In the first, more philosophically oriented phase of this movement, Steiner attempted to find a synthesis between science and spirituality.[9] His philosophical work of these years, which he termed "spiritual science", sought to apply the clarity of thinking characteristic of Western philosophy to spiritual questions,[10]:291 differentiating this approach from what he considered to be vaguer approaches to mysticism. In a second phase, beginning around 1907, he began working collaboratively in a variety of artistic media, including drama, the movement arts (developing a new artistic form, eurythmy) and architecture, culminating in the building of the Goetheanum, a cultural centre to house all the arts.[11] In the third phase of his work, beginning after World War I, Steiner worked to establish various practical endeavors, including Waldorf education, biodynamic agriculture,[12] and anthroposophical medicine.[13]

 

Steiner advocated a form of ethical individualism, to which he later brought a more explicitly spiritual approach. He based his epistemology on Johann Wolfgang Goethe's world view, in which "Thinking… is no more and no less an organ of perception than the eye or ear. Just as the eye perceives colours and the ear sounds, so thinking perceives ideas."[14] A consistent thread that runs from his earliest philosophical phase through his later spiritual orientation is the goal of demonstrating that there are no essential limits to human knowledge.[15]

  

Contents

1Biography

1.1Childhood and education

1.2Early spiritual experiences

1.3Writer and philosopher

1.4Theosophical Society

1.5Anthroposophical Society and its cultural activities

1.6Political engagement and social agenda

1.7Attacks, illness, and death

1.8Spiritual research

1.9Esoteric schools

2Breadth of activity

2.1Education

2.2Biodynamic agriculture

2.3Anthroposophical medicine

2.4Social reform

2.5Architecture and visual arts

2.6Performing arts

3Philosophical ideas

3.1Goethean science

3.2Knowledge and freedom

3.3Spiritual science

3.4Steiner and Christianity

3.4.1Christ and human evolution

3.4.2Divergence from conventional Christian thought

3.4.3The Christian Community

4Reception

4.1Scientism

4.2Race and ethnicity

4.2.1Judaism

5Writings (selection)

6See also

7References

8Further reading

9External links

Biography[edit]

Childhood and education[edit]

 

The house where Rudolf Steiner was born, in present-day Croatia

Steiner's father, Johann(es) Steiner (1829–1910), left a position as a gamekeeper[16] in the service of Count Hoyos in Geras, northeast Lower Austria to marry one of the Hoyos family's housemaids, Franziska Blie (1834 Horn – 1918, Horn), a marriage for which the Count had refused his permission. Johann became a telegraph operator on the Southern Austrian Railway, and at the time of Rudolf's birth was stationed in Murakirály (Kraljevec) in the Muraköz region of the Kingdom of Hungary, Austrian Empire (present-day Donji Kraljevec in the Međimurje region of northernmost Croatia). In the first two years of Rudolf's life, the family moved twice, first to Mödling, near Vienna, and then, through the promotion of his father to stationmaster, to Pottschach, located in the foothills of the eastern Austrian Alps in Lower Austria.[13]

 

Steiner entered the village school, but following a disagreement between his father and the schoolmaster, he was briefly educated at home. In 1869, when Steiner was eight years old, the family moved to the village of Neudörfl and in October 1872 Steiner proceeded from the village school there to the realschule in Wiener Neustadt.[17]:Chap. 2

  

Rudolf Steiner, graduation photo from secondary school

In 1879, the family moved to Inzersdorf to enable Steiner to attend the Vienna Institute of Technology,[18] where he enrolled in courses in mathematics, physics, chemistry, botany, zoology, and mineralogy and audited courses in literature and philosophy, on an academic scholarship from 1879 to 1883, at the end of which time he withdrew from the Institute without graduating.[2]:122,443,446,456,503[19]:29 In 1882, one of Steiner's teachers, Karl Julius Schröer,[17]:Chap. 3 suggested Steiner's name to Joseph Kürschner, chief editor of a new edition of Goethe's works,[20] who asked Steiner to become the edition's natural science editor,[21] a truly astonishing opportunity for a young student without any form of academic credentials or previous publications.[19]:43

 

Before attending the Vienna Institute of Technology, Steiner had studied Kant, Fichte and Schelling.[22]

 

Early spiritual experiences[edit]

 

Rudolf Steiner as 21-year-old student (1882)

When he was nine years old, Steiner believed that he saw the spirit of an aunt who had died in a far-off town asking him to help her at a time when neither he nor his family knew of the woman's death.[23] Steiner later related that as a child he felt "that one must carry the knowledge of the spiritual world within oneself after the fashion of geometry ... [for here] one is permitted to know something which the mind alone, through its own power, experiences. In this feeling I found the justification for the spiritual world that I experienced ... I confirmed for myself by means of geometry the feeling that I must speak of a world 'which is not seen'."[17]

 

Steiner believed that at the age of 15 he had gained a complete understanding of the concept of time, which he considered to be the precondition of spiritual clairvoyance.[22] At 21, on the train between his home village and Vienna, Steiner met an herb gatherer, Felix Kogutzki, who spoke about the spiritual world "as one who had his own experience therein".[17]:39–40[24] Kogutzki conveyed to Steiner a knowledge of nature that was non-academic and spiritual.

 

Writer and philosopher[edit]

In 1888, as a result of his work for the Kürschner edition of Goethe's works, Steiner was invited to work as an editor at the Goethe archives in Weimar. Steiner remained with the archive until 1896. As well as the introductions for and commentaries to four volumes of Goethe's scientific writings, Steiner wrote two books about Goethe's philosophy: The Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World-Conception (1886),[25] which Steiner regarded as the epistemological foundation and justification for his later work,[26] and Goethe's Conception of the World (1897).[27] During this time he also collaborated in complete editions of the works of Arthur Schopenhauer and the writer Jean Paul and wrote numerous articles for various journals.

  

Rudolf Steiner around 1891/92, etching by Otto Fröhlich

In 1891, Steiner received a doctorate in philosophy at the University of Rostock, for his dissertation discussing Fichte's concept of the ego,[10][28] submitted to Heinrich von Stein, whose Seven Books of Platonism Steiner esteemed.[17]:Chap. 14 Steiner's dissertation was later published in expanded form as Truth and Knowledge: Prelude to a Philosophy of Freedom, with a dedication to Eduard von Hartmann.[29] Two years later, he published Die Philosophie der Freiheit (The Philosophy of Freedom or The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity—Steiner's preferred English title) (1894), an exploration of epistemology and ethics that suggested a way for humans to become spiritually free beings. Steiner later spoke of this book as containing implicitly, in philosophical form, the entire content of what he later developed explicitly as anthroposophy.[30]

  

Marie Steiner 1903

In 1896, Steiner declined an offer from Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche to help organize the Nietzsche archive in Naumburg. Her brother by that time was non compos mentis. Förster-Nietzsche introduced Steiner into the presence of the catatonic philosopher; Steiner, deeply moved, subsequently wrote the book Friedrich Nietzsche, Fighter for Freedom.[31] Steiner later related that:

 

My first acquaintance with Nietzsche's writings belongs to the year 1889. Previous to that I had never read a line of his. Upon the substance of my ideas as these find expression in The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity, Nietzsche's thought had not the least influence....Nietzsche's ideas of the 'eternal recurrence' and of 'Übermensch' remained long in my mind. For in these was reflected that which a personality must feel concerning the evolution and essential being of humanity when this personality is kept back from grasping the spiritual world by the restricted thought in the philosophy of nature characterizing the end of the 19th century....What attracted me particularly was that one could read Nietzsche without coming upon anything which strove to make the reader a 'dependent' of Nietzsche's.[17]:Chap. 18

 

In 1897, Steiner left the Weimar archives and moved to Berlin. He became part owner of, chief editor of, and an active contributor to the literary journal Magazin für Literatur, where he hoped to find a readership sympathetic to his philosophy. Many subscribers were alienated by Steiner's unpopular support of Émile Zola in the Dreyfus Affair[32] and the journal lost more subscribers when Steiner published extracts from his correspondence with anarchist John Henry Mackay.[32] Dissatisfaction with his editorial style eventually led to his departure from the magazine.

 

In 1899, Steiner married Anna Eunicke; the couple separated several years later. Anna died in 1911.

 

Theosophical Society[edit]

Main article: Rudolf Steiner and the Theosophical Society

 

Rudolf Steiner in Munich with Annie Besant, leader of the Theosophical Society. Photo from 1907

In 1899, Steiner published an article, "Goethe's Secret Revelation", discussing the esoteric nature of Goethe's fairy tale The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily. This article led to an invitation by the Count and Countess Brockdorff to speak to a gathering of Theosophists on the subject of Nietzsche. Steiner continued speaking regularly to the members of the Theosophical Society, becoming the head of its newly constituted German section in 1902 without ever formally joining the society.[10][33] It was also in connection with this society that Steiner met and worked with Marie von Sivers, who became his second wife in 1914. By 1904, Steiner was appointed by Annie Besant to be leader of the Theosophical Esoteric Society for Germany and Austria. In 1904, Eliza, the wife of Helmuth von Moltke the Younger, became one of his favourite scholars[34]. Through Eliza, Steiner met Helmuth, who served as the Chief of the German General Staff from 1906 to 1914[35].

 

In contrast to mainstream Theosophy, Steiner sought to build a Western approach to spirituality based on the philosophical and mystical traditions of European culture. The German Section of the Theosophical Society grew rapidly under Steiner's leadership as he lectured throughout much of Europe on his spiritual science. During this period, Steiner maintained an original approach, replacing Madame Blavatsky's terminology with his own, and basing his spiritual research and teachings upon the Western esoteric and philosophical tradition. This and other differences, in particular Steiner's vocal rejection of Leadbeater and Besant's claim that Jiddu Krishnamurti was the vehicle of a new Maitreya, or world teacher,[36] led to a formal split in 1912/13,[10] when Steiner and the majority of members of the German section of the Theosophical Society broke off to form a new group, the Anthroposophical Society. Steiner took the name "Anthroposophy" from the title of a work of the Austrian philosopher Robert von Zimmermann, published in Vienna in 1856.[37] Despite his departure from the Theosophical Society, Steiner maintained his interest in Theosophy throughout his life.[8]

 

Anthroposophical Society and its cultural activities[edit]

RudolfSteiner.jpeg

The Anthroposophical Society grew rapidly. Fueled by a need to find an artistic home for their yearly conferences, which included performances of plays written by Edouard Schuré and Steiner, the decision was made to build a theater and organizational center. In 1913, construction began on the first Goetheanum building, in Dornach, Switzerland. The building, designed by Steiner, was built to a significant part by volunteers who offered craftsmanship or simply a will to learn new skills. Once World War I started in 1914, the Goetheanum volunteers could hear the sound of cannon fire beyond the Swiss border, but despite the war, people from all over Europe worked peaceably side by side on the building's construction. Steiner moved from Berlin to Dornach in 1913 and lived there to the end of his life.[38]

 

Steiner's lecture activity expanded enormously with the end of the war. Most importantly, from 1919 on Steiner began to work with other members of the society to found numerous practical institutions and activities, including the first Waldorf school, founded that year in Stuttgart, Germany. At the same time, the Goetheanum developed as a wide-ranging cultural centre. On New Year's Eve, 1922/1923, the building burned to the ground; contemporary police reports indicate arson as the probable cause.[13]:752[39]:796 Steiner immediately began work designing a second Goetheanum building - this time made of concrete instead of wood - which was completed in 1928, three years after his death.

 

At a "Foundation Meeting" for members held at the Dornach center during Christmas, 1923, Steiner spoke of laying a new Foundation Stone for the society in the hearts of his listeners. At the meeting, a new "General Anthroposophical Society" was established with a new executive board. At this meeting, Steiner also founded a School of Spiritual Science, intended as an "organ of initiative" for research and study and as "the 'soul' of the Anthroposophical Society".[40] This School, which was led by Steiner, initially had sections for general anthroposophy, education, medicine, performing arts (eurythmy, speech, drama and music), the literary arts and humanities, mathematics, astronomy, science, and visual arts. Later sections were added for the social sciences, youth and agriculture.[41][42][43] The School of Spiritual Science included meditative exercises given by Steiner.

 

Political engagement and social agenda[edit]

Steiner became a well-known and controversial public figure during and after World War I. In response to the catastrophic situation in post-war Germany, he proposed extensive social reforms through the establishment of a Threefold Social Order in which the cultural, political and economic realms would be largely independent. Steiner argued that a fusion of the three realms had created the inflexibility that had led to catastrophes such as World War I. In connection with this, he promoted a radical solution in the disputed area of Upper Silesia, claimed by both Poland and Germany. His suggestion that this area be granted at least provisional independence led to his being publicly accused of being a traitor to Germany.[44]

 

Steiner opposed Wilson's proposal to create new European nations based around ethnic groups, which he saw as opening the door to rampant nationalism. Steiner proposed as an alternative "'social territories' with democratic institutions that were accessible to all inhabitants of a territory whatever their origin while the needs of the various ethnicities would be met by independent cultural institutions."[45]

 

Attacks, illness, and death[edit]

The National Socialist German Workers Party gained strength in Germany after the First World War. In 1919, a political theorist of this movement, Dietrich Eckart, attacked Steiner and suggested that he was a Jew.[46] In 1921, Adolf Hitler attacked Steiner on many fronts, including accusations that he was a tool of the Jews,[47] while other nationalist extremists in Germany called for a "war against Steiner". That same year, Steiner warned against the disastrous effects it would have for Central Europe if the National Socialists came to power.[46]:8 In 1922 a lecture Steiner was giving in Munich was disrupted when stink bombs were let off and the lights switched out, while people rushed the stage apparently attempting to attack Steiner, who exited safely through a back door.[48][49] Unable to guarantee his safety, Steiner's agents cancelled his next lecture tour.[32]:193[50] The 1923 Beer Hall Putsch in Munich led Steiner to give up his residence in Berlin, saying that if those responsible for the attempted coup [Hitler and others] came to power in Germany, it would no longer be possible for him to enter the country.[51]

 

From 1923 on, Steiner showed signs of increasing frailness and illness. He nonetheless continued to lecture widely, and even to travel; especially towards the end of this time, he was often giving two, three or even four lectures daily for courses taking place concurrently. Many of these lectures focused on practical areas of life such as education.[52]

  

Steiner's gravestone at the Goetheanum

Increasingly ill, he held his last lecture in late September, 1924. He continued work on his autobiography during the last months of his life; he died on 30 March 1925.

 

Spiritual research[edit]

Steiner first began speaking publicly about spiritual experiences and phenomena in his 1899 lectures to the Theosophical Society. By 1901 he had begun to write about spiritual topics, initially in the form of discussions of historical figures such as the mystics of the Middle Ages. By 1904 he was expressing his own understanding of these themes in his essays and books, while continuing to refer to a wide variety of historical sources.

 

"A world of spiritual perception is discussed in a number of writings which I have published since this book appeared. The Philosophy of Freedom forms the philosophical basis for these later writings. For it tries to show that the experience of thinking, rightly understood, is in fact an experience of spirit." (Steiner, Philosophy of Freedom, Consequences of Monism)

 

Steiner aimed to apply his training in mathematics, science, and philosophy to produce rigorous, verifiable presentations of those experiences.[53] He believed that through freely chosen ethical disciplines and meditative training, anyone could develop the ability to experience the spiritual world, including the higher nature of oneself and others.[32] Steiner believed that such discipline and training would help a person to become a more moral, creative and free individual – free in the sense of being capable of actions motivated solely by love.[54] His philosophical ideas were affected by Franz Brentano,[32] with whom he had studied,[55] as well as by Fichte, Hegel, Schelling, and Goethe's phenomenological approach to science.[32][56][57]

 

Steiner followed Wilhelm Dilthey in using the term Geisteswissenschaft, usually translated as "spiritual science".[58] Steiner used the term to describe a discipline treating the spirit as something actual and real, starting from the premise that it is possible for human beings to penetrate behind what is sense-perceptible.[59] He proposed that psychology, history, and the humanities generally were based on the direct grasp of an ideal reality,[60] and required close attention to the particular period and culture which provided the distinctive character of religious qualities in the course of the evolution of consciousness. In contrast to William James' pragmatic approach to religious and psychic experience, which emphasized its idiosyncratic character, Steiner focused on ways such experience can be rendered more intelligible and integrated into human life.[61]

 

Steiner proposed that an understanding of reincarnation and karma was necessary to understand psychology[62] and that the form of external nature would be more comprehensible as a result of insight into the course of karma in the evolution of humanity.[63] Beginning in 1910, he described aspects of karma relating to health, natural phenomena and free will, taking the position that a person is not bound by his or her karma, but can transcend this through actively taking hold of one's own nature and destiny.[64] In an extensive series of lectures from February to September 1924, Steiner presented further research on successive reincarnations of various individuals and described the techniques he used for karma research.[52][65]

 

Esoteric schools[edit]

See also: Rudolf Steiner's exercises for spiritual development

Steiner was founder and leader of the following:

 

His independent Esoteric School of the Theosophical Society, founded in 1904. This school continued after the break with Theosophy but was disbanded at the start of World War I.

A lodge called Mystica Aeterna within the Masonic Order of Memphis and Mizraim, which Steiner led from 1906 until around 1914. Steiner added to the Masonic rite a number of Rosicrucian references.[66]

The School of Spiritual Science of the Anthroposophical Society, founded in 1923 as a further development of his earlier Esoteric School. This was originally constituted with a general section and seven specialized sections for education, literature, performing arts, natural sciences, medicine, visual arts, and astronomy.[41][43][67] Steiner gave members of the School the first Lesson for guidance into the esoteric work in February 1924.[68] Though Steiner intended to develop three "classes" of this school, only the first of these was developed in his lifetime (and continues today). An authentic text of the written records on which the teaching of the First Class was based was published in 1992.[69]

Breadth of activity[edit]

After the First World War, Steiner became active in a wide variety of cultural contexts. He founded a number of schools, the first of which was known as the Waldorf school,[70] which later evolved into a worldwide school network. He also founded a system of organic agriculture, now known as biodynamic agriculture, which was one of the very first forms of, and has contributed significantly to the development of, modern organic farming.[71] His work in medicine led to the development of a broad range of complementary medications and supportive artistic and biographic therapies.[72] Numerous homes for children and adults with developmental disabilities based on his work (including those of the Camphill movement) are found in Africa, Europe, and North America.[73] His paintings and drawings influenced Joseph Beuys and other modern artists. His two Goetheanum buildings have been widely cited as masterpieces of modern architecture,[74][75][76][77][78] and other anthroposophical architects have contributed thousands of buildings to the modern scene.[79] One of the first institutions to practice ethical banking was an anthroposophical bank working out of Steiner's ideas; other anthroposophical social finance institutions have since been founded.

 

Steiner's literary estate is correspondingly broad. Steiner's writings, published in about forty volumes, include books, essays, four plays ('mystery dramas'), mantric verse, and an autobiography. His collected lectures, making up another approximately 300 volumes, discuss an extremely wide range of themes. Steiner's drawings, chiefly illustrations done on blackboards during his lectures, are collected in a separate series of 28 volumes. Many publications have covered his architectural legacy and sculptural work.

 

Education[edit]

 

The Waldorf school in Verrières-le-Buisson (France)

Main article: Waldorf education

As a young man, Steiner was a private tutor and a lecturer on history for the Berlin Arbeiterbildungsschule,[80] an educational initiative for working class adults.[81] Soon thereafter, he began to articulate his ideas on education in public lectures,[82] culminating in a 1907 essay on The Education of the Child in which he described the major phases of child development which formed the foundation of his approach to education.[83] His conception of education was influenced by the Herbartian pedagogy prominent in Europe during the late nineteenth century,[80]:1362, 1390ff[82] though Steiner criticized Herbart for not sufficiently recognizing the importance of educating the will and feelings as well as the intellect.[84]

 

In 1919, Emil Molt invited him to lecture to his workers at the Waldorf-Astoria cigarette factory in Stuttgart. Out of these lectures came a new school, the Waldorf school. In 1922, Steiner presented these ideas at a conference called for this purpose in Oxford by Professor Millicent Mackenzie. He subsequently presented a teacher training course at Torquay in 1924 at an Anthroposophy Summer School organised by Eleanor Merry.[85] The Oxford Conference and the Torquay teacher training led to the founding of the first Waldorf schools in Britain.[86] During Steiner's lifetime, schools based on his educational principles were also founded in Hamburg, Essen, The Hague and London; there are now more than 1000 Waldorf schools worldwide.

 

Biodynamic agriculture[edit]

Main article: Biodynamic agriculture

In 1924, a group of farmers concerned about the future of agriculture requested Steiner's help. Steiner responded with a lecture series on an ecological and sustainable approach to agriculture that increased soil fertility without the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides.[12] Steiner's agricultural ideas promptly spread and were put into practice internationally[87] and biodynamic agriculture is now practiced in Europe,[88] North America, South America[89], Africa[90], Asia[88] and Australasia.[91][92][93]

 

A central aspect of biodynamics is that the farm as a whole is seen as an organism, and therefore should be a largely self-sustaining system, producing its own manure and animal feed. Plant or animal disease is seen as a symptom of problems in the whole organism. Steiner also suggested timing such agricultural activities as sowing, weeding, and harvesting to utilize the influences on plant growth of the moon and planets; and the application of natural materials prepared in specific ways to the soil, compost, and crops, with the intention of engaging non-physical beings and elemental forces. He encouraged his listeners to verify his suggestions empirically, as he had not yet done.[91]

 

Anthroposophical medicine[edit]

Main article: Anthroposophical medicine

From the late 1910s, Steiner was working with doctors to create a new approach to medicine. In 1921, pharmacists and physicians gathered under Steiner's guidance to create a pharmaceutical company called Weleda which now distributes natural medical products worldwide. At around the same time, Dr. Ita Wegman founded a first anthroposophic medical clinic (now the Ita Wegman Clinic) in Arlesheim.

 

Social reform[edit]

Main article: Threefold Social Order

For a period after World War I, Steiner was active as a lecturer on social reform. A petition expressing his basic social ideas was widely circulated and signed by many cultural figures of the day, including Hermann Hesse.

 

In Steiner's chief book on social reform, Toward Social Renewal, he suggested that the cultural, political and economic spheres of society need to work together as consciously cooperating yet independent entities, each with a particular task: political institutions should establish political equality and protect human rights; cultural institutions should nurture the free and unhindered development of science, art, education and religion; and economic institutions should enable producers, distributors and consumers to cooperate to provide efficiently for society's needs.[94] He saw such a division of responsibility, which he called the Threefold Social Order, as a vital task which would take up consciously the historical trend toward the mutual independence of these three realms. Steiner also gave suggestions for many specific social reforms.

 

Steiner proposed what he termed a "fundamental law" of social life:

 

The well-being of a community of people working together will be the greater, the less the individual claims for himself the proceeds of his work, i.e. the more of these proceeds he makes over to his fellow-workers, the more his own needs are satisfied, not out of his own work but out of the work done by others.

 

— Steiner, The Fundamental Social Law[95]

He expressed this in the motto:[95]

 

The healthy social life is found

When in the mirror of each human soul

The whole community finds its reflection,

And when in the community

The virtue of each one is living.

Architecture and visual arts[edit]

 

First Goetheanum

  

Second Goetheanum

  

Detail of The Representative of Humanity

 

English sculptor Edith Maryon belonged to the innermost circle of founders of anthroposophy and was appointed to head the Section of Sculptural Arts at the Goetheanum.

 

Steiner designed 17 buildings, including the First and Second Goetheanums.[96] These two buildings, built in Dornach, Switzerland, were intended to house significant theater spaces as well as a "school for spiritual science".[97] Three of Steiner's buildings have been listed amongst the most significant works of modern architecture.[98]

 

His primary sculptural work is The Representative of Humanity (1922), a nine-meter high wood sculpture executed as a joint project with the sculptor Edith Maryon. This was intended to be placed in the first Goetheanum. It shows a central, free-standing Christ holding a balance between the beings of Lucifer and Ahriman, representing opposing tendencies of expansion and contraction.[99][100][101] It was intended to show, in conscious contrast to Michelangelo's Last Judgment, Christ as mute and impersonal such that the beings that approach him must judge themselves.[102] The sculpture is now on permanent display at the Goetheanum.

 

Steiner's blackboard drawings were unique at the time and almost certainly not originally intended as art works.[103] Josef Beuys' work, itself heavily influenced by Steiner, has led to the modern understanding of Steiner's drawings as artistic objects.[104]

 

Performing arts[edit]

See also: Eurythmy

Steiner wrote four mystery plays between 1909 and 1913: The Portal of Initiation, The Souls' Probation, The Guardian of the Threshold and The Soul's Awakening, modeled on the esoteric dramas of Edouard Schuré, Maurice Maeterlinck, and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.[105] Steiner's plays continue to be performed by anthroposophical groups in various countries, most notably (in the original German) in Dornach, Switzerland and (in English translation) in Spring Valley, New York and in Stroud and Stourbridge in the U.K.

 

In collaboration with Marie von Sivers, Steiner also founded a new approach to acting, storytelling, and the recitation of poetry. His last public lecture course, given in 1924, was on speech and drama. The Russian actor, director, and acting coach Michael Chekhov based significant aspects of his method of acting on Steiner's work.[106][107]

 

Together with Marie von Sivers, Rudolf Steiner also developed the art of eurythmy, sometimes referred to as "visible speech and song". According to the principles of eurythmy, there are archetypal movements or gestures that correspond to every aspect of speech – the sounds (or phonemes), the rhythms, and the grammatical function – to every "soul quality" – joy, despair, tenderness, etc. – and to every aspect of music – tones, intervals, rhythms, and harmonies.

 

Philosophical ideas[edit]

Live through deeds of love, and let others live understanding their unique intentions: this is the fundamental principle of free human beings.

Rudolf Steiner, Philosophy of Freedom. Chapter 9

 

Goethean science[edit]

See also: Goethean science

In his commentaries on Goethe's scientific works, written between 1884 and 1897, Steiner presented Goethe's approach to science as essentially phenomenological in nature, rather than theory- or model-based. He developed this conception further in several books, The Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World-Conception (1886) and Goethe's Conception of the World (1897), particularly emphasizing the transformation in Goethe's approach from the physical sciences, where experiment played the primary role, to plant biology, where both accurate perception and imagination were required to find the biological archetypes (Urpflanze), and postulated that Goethe had sought but been unable to fully find the further transformation in scientific thinking necessary to properly interpret and understand the animal kingdom.[108] Steiner emphasized the role of evolutionary thinking in Goethe's discovery of the intermaxillary bone in human beings; Goethe expected human anatomy to be an evolutionary transformation of animal anatomy.[108] Steiner defended Goethe's qualitative description of color as arising synthetically from the polarity of light and darkness, in contrast to Newton's particle-based and analytic conception.

 

Particular organic forms can be evolved only from universal types, and every organic entity we experience must coincide with some one of these derivative forms of the type. Here the evolutionary method must replace the method of proof. We aim not to show that external conditions act upon one another in a certain way and thereby bring about a definite result, but that a particular form has developed under definite external conditions out of the type. This is the radical difference between inorganic and organic science.

 

— Rudolf Steiner, The Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World Conception, Chapter XVI, "Organic Nature"

Knowledge and freedom[edit]

See also: Philosophy of Freedom

Steiner approached the philosophical questions of knowledge and freedom in two stages. In his dissertation, published in expanded form in 1892 as Truth and Knowledge, Steiner suggests that there is an inconsistency between Kant's philosophy, which posits that all knowledge is a representation of an essential verity inaccessible to human consciousness, and modern science, which assumes that all influences can be found in the sensory and mental world to which we have access. Steiner considered Kant's philosophy of an inaccessible beyond ("Jenseits-Philosophy") a stumbling block in achieving a satisfying philosophical viewpoint.[109]

 

Steiner postulates that the world is essentially an indivisible unity, but that our consciousness divides it into the sense-perceptible appearance, on the one hand, and the formal nature accessible to our thinking, on the other. He sees in thinking itself an element that can be strengthened and deepened sufficiently to penetrate all that our senses do not reveal to us. Steiner thus considered what appears to human experience as a division between the spiritual and natural worlds to be a conditioned result of the structure of our consciousness, which separates perception and thinking. These two faculties give us not two worlds, but two complementary views of the same world; neither has primacy and the two together are necessary and sufficient to arrive at a complete understanding of the world. In thinking about perception (the path of natural science) and perceiving the process of thinking (the path of spiritual training), it is possible to discover a hidden inner unity between the two poles of our experience.[54]:Chapter 4 Truth, for Steiner, is paradoxically both an objective discovery and yet "a free creation of the human spirit, that never would exist at all if we did not generate it ourselves. The task of understanding is not to replicate in conceptual form something that already exists, but rather to create a wholly new realm, that together with the world given to our senses constitutes the fullness of reality."[110]

 

In the Philosophy of Freedom, Steiner further explores potentials within thinking: freedom, he suggests, can only be approached gradually with the aid of the creative activity of thinking. Thinking can be a free deed; in addition, it can liberate our will from its subservience to our instincts and drives. Free deeds, he suggests, are those for which we are fully conscious of the motive for our action; freedom is the spiritual activity of penetrating with consciousness our own nature and that of the world,[111] and the real activity of acting in full consciousness.[54]:133–4 This includes overcoming influences of both heredity and environment: "To be free is to be capable of thinking one's own thoughts – not the thoughts merely of the body, or of society, but thoughts generated by one's deepest, most original, most essential and spiritual self, one's individuality."[10]

 

Steiner affirms Darwin's and Haeckel's evolutionary perspectives but extended this beyond its materialistic consequences; he sees human consciousness, indeed, all human culture, as a product of natural evolution that transcends itself. For Steiner, nature becomes self-conscious in the human being. Steiner's description of the nature of human consciousness thus closely parallels that of Solovyov:[112]

 

Spiritual science[edit]

See also: Anthroposophy and Rudolf Steiner's exercises for spiritual development

 

Rudolf Steiner 1900

In his earliest works, Steiner already spoke of the "natural and spiritual worlds" as a unity.[32] From 1900 on, he began lecturing about concrete details of the spiritual world(s), culminating in the publication in 1904 of the first of several systematic presentations, his Theosophy: An Introduction to the Spiritual Processes in Human Life and in the Cosmos. As a starting point for the book Steiner took a quotation from Goethe, describing the method of natural scientific observation,[113] while in the Preface he made clear that the line of thought taken in this book led to the same goal as that in his earlier work, The Philosophy of Freedom.[114]

 

In the years 1903–1908 Steiner maintained the magazine "Lucifer-Gnosis" and published in it essays on topics such as initiation, reincarnation and karma, and knowledge of the supernatural world.[115] Some of these were later collected and published as books, such as How to Know Higher Worlds (1904/5) and Cosmic Memory. The book An Outline of Esoteric Science was published in 1910. Important themes include:

 

the human being as body, soul and spirit;

the path of spiritual development;

spiritual influences on world-evolution and history; and

reincarnation and karma.

Steiner emphasized that there is an objective natural and spiritual world that can be known, and that perceptions of the spiritual world and incorporeal beings are, under conditions of training comparable to that required for the natural sciences, including self-discipline, replicable by multiple observers. It is on this basis that spiritual science is possible, with radically different epistemological foundations than those of natural science. He believed that natural science was correct in its methods but one-sided for exclusively focusing on sensory phenomena, while mysticism was vague in its methods, though seeking to explore the inner and spiritual life. Anthroposophy was meant to apply the systematic methods of the former to the content of the latter[116][117]

 

For Steiner, the cosmos is permeated and continually transformed by the creative activity of non-physical processes and spiritual beings. For the human being to become conscious of the objective reality of these processes and beings, it is necessary to creatively enact and reenact, within, their creative activity. Thus objective spiritual knowledge always entails creative inner activity.[32] Steiner articulated three stages of any creative deed:[54]:Pt II, Chapter 1

 

Moral intuition: the ability to discover or, preferably, develop valid ethical principles;

Moral imagination: the imaginative transformation of such principles into a concrete intention applicable to the particular situation (situational ethics); and

Moral technique: the realization of the intended transformation, depending on a mastery of practical skills.

Steiner termed his work from this period onwards Anthroposophy. He emphasized that the spiritual path he articulated builds upon and supports individual freedom and independent judgment; for the results of spiritual research to be appropriately presented in a modern context they must be in a form accessible to logical understanding, so that those who do not have access to the spiritual experiences underlying anthroposophical research can make independent evaluations of the latter's results.[54] Spiritual training is to support what Steiner considered the overall purpose of human evolution, the development of the mutually interdependent qualities of love and freedom.[10]

 

Steiner and Christianity[edit]

In 1899 Steiner experienced what he described as a life-transforming inner encounter with the being of Christ; previously he had little or no relation to Christianity in any form. Then and thereafter, his relationship to Christianity remained entirely founded upon personal experience, and thus both non-denominational and strikingly different from conventional religious forms.[10] Steiner was then 38, and the experience of meeting the Christ occurred after a tremendous inner struggle. To use Steiner's own words, the "experience culminated in my standing in the spiritual presence of the Mystery of Golgotha in a most profound and solemn festival of knowledge."[118]

 

Christ and human evolution[edit]

Steiner describes Christ as the unique pivot and meaning of earth's evolutionary processes and human history, redeeming the Fall from Paradise.[119] He understood the Christ as a being that unifies and inspires all religions, not belonging to a particular religious faith. To be "Christian" is, for Steiner, a search for balance between polarizing extremes[119]:102–3 and the ability to manifest love in freedom.[10]

 

Central principles of his understanding include:

 

The being of Christ is central to all religions, though called by different names by each.

Every religion is valid and true for the time and cultural context in which it was born.

Historical forms of Christianity need to be transformed in our times in order to meet the ongoing evolution of humanity.

In Steiner's esoteric cosmology, the spiritual development of humanity is interwoven in and inseparable from the cosmological development of the universe. Continuing the evolution that led to humanity being born out of the natural world, the Christ being brings an impulse enabling human consciousness of the forces that act creatively, but unconsciously, in nature.[120]

 

Divergence from conventional Christian thought[edit]

Steiner's views of Christianity diverge from conventional Christian thought in key places, and include gnostic elements.[108] However, unlike many gnostics, Steiner affirms the unique and actual physical Incarnation of Christ in Jesus at the beginning of the Christian era.

 

One of the central points of divergence with conventional Christian thought is found in Steiner's views on reincarnation and karma.

 

Steiner also posited two different Jesus children involved in the Incarnation of the Christ: one child descended from Solomon, as described in the Gospel of Matthew; the other child from Nathan, as described in the Gospel of Luke.[94] He references in this regard the fact that the genealogies in these two gospels list twenty-six (Luke) to forty-one (Matthew) completely different ancestors for the generations from David to Jesus. See Genealogy of Jesus for alternative explanations of this radical divergence.

 

Steiner's view of the second coming of Christ is also unusual. He suggested that this would not be a physical reappearance, but rather, meant that the Christ being would become manifest in non-physical form, in the "etheric realm" – i.e. visible to spiritual vision and apparent in community life – for increasing numbers of people, beginning around the year 1933. He emphasized that the future would require humanity to recognize this Spirit of Love in all its genuine forms, regardless of how this is named. He also warned that the traditional name, "Christ", might be used, yet the true essence of this Being of Love ignored.[108]

 

The Christian Community[edit]

In the 1920s, Steiner was approached by Friedrich Rittelmeyer, a Lutheran pastor with a congregation in Berlin, who asked if it was possible to create a more modern form of Christianity. Soon others joined Rittelmeyer – mostly Protestant pastors and theology students, but including several Roman Catholic priests. Steiner offered counsel on renewing the spiritual potency of the sacraments while emphasizing freedom of thought and a personal relationship to religious life. He envisioned a new synthesis of Catholic and Protestant approaches to religious life, terming this "modern, Johannine Christianity".[94]

 

The resulting movement for religious renewal became known as "The Christian Community". Its work is based on a free relationship to the Christ, without dogma or policies. Its priesthood, which is open to both men and women, is free to preach out of their own spiritual insights and creativity.

 

Steiner emphasized that the resulting movement for the renewal of Christianity was a personal gesture of help to a movement founded by Rittelmeyer and others independently of his anthroposophical work.[94] The distinction was important to Steiner because he sought with Anthroposophy to create a scientific, not faith-based, spirituality.[119] He recognized that for those who wished to find more traditional forms, however, a renewal of the traditional religions was also a vital need of the times.

 

Reception[edit]

See also: Anthroposophy § Reception

Steiner's work has influenced a broad range of notable personalities. These include philosophers Albert Schweitzer, Owen Barfield and Richard Tarnas;[32] writers Saul Bellow,[121] Andrej Belyj,[122][123][124] Michael Ende,[125] Selma Lagerlöf,[126] Edouard Schuré, David Spangler,[citation needed] and William Irwin Thompson;[32] child psychiatrist Eva Frommer;[127] economist Leonard Read;[128] artists Josef Beuys,[129] Wassily Kandinsky,[130][131] and Murray Griffin;[132] esotericist and educationalist George Trevelyan;[133] actor and acting teacher Michael Chekhov;[134] cinema director Andrei Tarkovsky;[135] composers Jonathan Harvey[136] and Viktor Ullmann;[137] and conductor Bruno Walter.[138] Olav Hammer, though sharply critical of esoteric movements generally, terms Steiner "arguably the most historically and philosophically sophisticated spokesperson of the Esoteric Tradition."[139]

 

Albert Schweitzer wrote that he and Steiner had in common that they had "taken on the life mission of working for the emergence of a true culture enlivened by the ideal of humanity and to encourage people to become truly thinking beings".[140]

 

Anthony Storr stated about Rudolf Steiner's Anthroposophy: "His belief system is so eccentric, so unsupported by evidence, so manifestly bizarre, that rational skeptics are bound to consider it delusional."[141]

 

Robert Todd Carroll has said of Steiner that "Some of his ideas on education – such as educating the handicapped in the mainstream – are worth considering, although his overall plan for developing the spirit and the soul rather than the intellect cannot be admired".[142] Steiner's translators have pointed out that his use of Geist includes both mind and spirit, however,[143] as the German term Geist can be translated equally properly in either way.[144]

 

The 150th anniversary of Rudolf Steiner's birth was marked by the first major retrospective exhibition of his art and work, 'Kosmos - Alchemy of the everyday'. Organized by Vitra Design Museum, the traveling exhibition presented many facets of Steiner's life and achievements, including his influence on architecture, furniture design, dance (Eurythmy), education, and agriculture (Biodynamic agriculture).[145] The exhibition opened in 2011 at the Kunstmuseum in Stuttgart, Germany,[146]

 

Scientism[edit]

See also: Anthroposophy: Scientific basis

Olav Hammer has criticized as scientism Steiner's claim to use scientific methodology to investigate spiritual phenomena that were based upon his claims of clairvoyant experience.[139] Steiner regarded the observations of spiritual research as more dependable (and above all, consistent) than observations of physical reality. However, he did consider spiritual research to be fallible[2]:p. 618 and held the view that anyone capable of thinking logically was in a position to correct errors by spiritual researchers.[147]

 

Race and ethnicity[edit]

Steiner's work includes both universalist, humanist elements and historically influenced racial assumptions.[148] Due to the contrast and even contradictions between these elements, "whether a given reader interprets Anthroposophy as racist or not depends upon that reader's concerns".[149] Steiner considered that by dint of its shared language and culture, each people has a unique essence, which he called its soul or spirit.[139] He saw race as a physical manifestation of humanity's spiritual evolution, and at times discussed race in terms of complex hierarchies that were largely derived from 19th century biology, anthropology, philosophy and theosophy. However, he consistently and explicitly subordinated race, ethnicity, gender, and indeed all hereditary factors, to individual factors in development.[149] For Steiner, human individuality is centered in a person's unique biography, and he believed that an individual's experiences and development are not bound by a single lifetime or the qualities of the physical body.[33] More specifically:

 

Steiner occasionally characterized specific races, nations and ethnicities in ways that have been termed racist by critics.[150] This includes descriptions by him of certain races and ethnic groups as flowering, others as backward, or destined to degenerate or disappear.[149] He presented explicitly hierarchical views of the spiritual evolution of different races,[151] including—at times, and inconsistently—portraying the white race, European culture or Germanic culture as representing the high point of human evolution as of the early 20th century, although he did describe them as destined to be superseded by future cultures.[149]

Throughout his life Steiner consistently emphasized the core spiritual unity of all the world's peoples and sharply criticized racial prejudice. He articulated beliefs that the individual nature of any person stands higher than any racial, ethnic, national or religious affiliation.[13][94] His belief that race and ethnicity are transient and superficial, and not essential aspects of the individual,[149] was partly rooted in his conviction that each individual reincarnates in a variety of different peoples and races over successive lives, and that each of us thus bears within him or herself the heritage of many races and peoples.[149][152] Toward the end of his life, Steiner predicted that race will rapidly lose any remaining significance for future generations.[149] In Steiner's view, culture is universal, and explicitly not ethnically based; he saw Goethe and idealist philosophy in particular as the source of ideas that could be drawn upon by any culture, and he vehemently criticized imperialism.[153]

In the context of his ethical individualism, Steiner considered "race, folk, ethnicity and gender" to be general, describable categories into which individuals may choose to fit, but from which free human beings can and will liberate themselves.[33]

 

Judaism[edit]

During the years when Steiner was best known as a literary critic, he published a series of articles attacking various manifestations of antisemitism[154] and criticizing some of the most prominent anti-Semites of the time as "barbaric" and "enemies of culture".[155] On a number of occasions, however, Steiner suggested that Jewish cultural and social life had lost all contemporary relevance[156] and promoted full assimilation of the Jewish people into the nations in which they lived. This stance has come under severe criticism in recent years.[149]

 

Steiner was a critic of his contemporary Theodor Herzl's goal of a Zionist state, and indeed of any ethnically determined state, as he considered ethnicity to be an outmoded basis for social life and civic identity.[157]

 

Towards the end of Steiner's life and after his death, there were massive defamatory press attacks mounted on him by early National Socialist leaders (including Adolf Hitler) and other right-wing nationalists. These criticized Steiner's thought and anthroposophy as being incompatible with National Socialist racial ideology, and charged him of being influenced by his close connections with Jews and even that he himself was Jewish.[46][155]

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Steiner

www.ghst.de/gehirne-ausstellung

 

Frankfurt, Hauptwache

Disconnected Philosophers.

Besondere Existenz Auflösungen Schmelzen Bewusstsein wesentlichen Grundlagen beschlagnahmt,

nullius recogniciones in libertatem transfigurentur negationes desideria,

formes d'expressions restants unité essences universelles présentés,

προσδιορισμοί παρατηρώντας αντίθεση, κατά συνέπεια, μεταξύ της επίδειξης δράσεων αμοιβαίου,

сознательное неуступчивый судьба состоящий актуальность кратность вещество немедленное,

komplisert forståelse praktisk talt tilbøyeligheter skjule dyder flom,

moralister språk otaliga synonyma värderingarna födda,

megelőzte oktatás féltékeny hitelét növedékek olvas,

faculdades censuráveis ​​ambiciosos fileiras questionáveis ​​diferentes experiências curvo,

enigmas intleachtúil modhanna cur isteach ar instincts paradoxical shines,

epistemologica creationem rerum, videtur quod non fuerit audacia appellationibus,

енергично често пристрасност самоћа закључа енцхаинед најављује будућност,

arddangosiadau agosrwydd wybodaeth reciprocals rhagweladwy am gyfnod amhenodol interposition yn,

rezònman matematik échanj a lokal posibilite dyalèktik inivèsèl montre fo,

fyrst og fremst á móti flókið tilveru undirlag presupposed efni,

調査のプロセスの複雑な相互に無限の動きが提起参照可能科学を破壊.

Steve.D.Hammond.

Created with ChatGPT

 

The Book of Katarina by Adrian Keeley (Feat Kat Verde-Dillingham)

 

THE KEEPER OF MEMORY 1838–1840

 

Among immortals, rumours travelled differently than they did among men.

 

Human gossip sought attention.

 

Immortal gossip sought silence.

 

It crossed centuries instead of borders.

 

It passed from one old mind to another with exquisite caution, altered only by omission, never by enthusiasm. The deadliest rumours were not the loud ones. They were the quiet ones. The ones spoken once beside a fire, then never repeated until years later in another country, by another mouth, to another creature who knew better than to dismiss them.

 

Most rumours vanished.

 

Some became legend.

 

A very few became important.

 

One such rumour reached Marius in the autumn of 1838.

 

It concerned no king.

 

No war.

 

No fledgling.

 

No ancient awakening.

 

It concerned books.

 

More precisely, books that should no longer have existed.

 

The first report came from Venice.

 

A Byzantine manuscript, believed destroyed centuries earlier, had appeared briefly in a private collection before disappearing again. The man who had seen it was unreliable in most matters, but not in books. He knew parchment. He knew ink. He knew the particular stiffness of vellum cured in the old manner.

 

Months later, in Vienna, another impossible item surfaced.

 

Then Prague.

 

Then Florence.

 

Fragments copied from Alexandrian sources believed lost forever.

 

A Roman correspondence thought burned during a provincial uprising.

 

A theological commentary from Antioch.

 

An annotated Greek medical text with marginal notes that predated the oldest known surviving copy by nearly six hundred years.

 

Each appearance was brief.

 

Each transaction discreet.

 

Each object vanished before curiosity hardened into pursuit.

 

Marius found this interesting.

 

Very interesting.

 

He did not investigate immediately.

 

Ancient vampires rarely hurried.

 

Time rewarded patience.

 

Time punished appetite.

 

Instead, Marius watched.

 

For nearly eighteen months he followed the pattern from a distance, never directly enough to alarm whoever stood at its centre. He questioned booksellers, collectors, priests, monks, bankrupt nobles, scholars, smugglers, antiquarians, and thieves.

 

The answers differed.

 

The description did not.

 

A woman.

 

Blonde.

 

Composed.

 

Educated beyond plausibility.

 

Fluent in languages she should not have known.

 

Able to identify manuscripts no living scholar had properly catalogued.

 

She paid fairly when payment was required.

 

She stole only when delay would destroy the object.

 

She gave no explanation.

 

She left no address.

 

Sometimes she used the name Katarina Verde.

 

More often she did not.

 

Marius heard the name only once.

 

It was enough.

 

One evening, alone in a rented house near Padua, he stood before a table covered in copied notes and quietly spoke into the silence.

 

"Who are you?"

 

No one answered.

 

But somewhere beneath the mountains of Europe, Katarina Verde was cataloguing another forgotten collection by candlelight.

 

The message reached Katarina in Ravenna.

 

No seal.

 

No signature.

 

No identifiable hand.

 

Only one sheet of heavy paper delivered through a bookseller who clearly had no idea what he carried.

 

Five words appeared upon it.

 

You preserve what was abandoned.

 

Nothing else.

 

Katarina read the message once.

 

Then again.

 

Lucien stood beside the window, where late evening light lay across the shutters in narrow gold bars.

 

"You know who sent this," she said.

 

"Yes."

 

"Will you tell me?"

 

"No."

 

She folded the note slowly.

 

"You have become irritating."

 

"I have always been irritating."

 

"True."

 

Lucien smiled faintly.

 

For several moments he looked older than usual. Not in face. Never in face. But in some deeper way, as if memory had briefly risen through the mask and shown its weight.

 

"Go," he said.

 

"That's all?"

 

"Yes."

 

"No warnings?"

 

He considered.

 

Then answered quietly.

 

"Listen carefully."

 

They met inside the basilica after midnight.

 

The human world slept.

 

Ravenna lay quiet beneath a pale spring moon. The streets outside were narrow and shadowed, the stones holding the day's warmth badly and the night's damp perfectly. The old basilica stood beyond them, solemn and beautiful, a relic of empire preserved by faith, neglect, and stubborn stone.

 

Within, candlelight touched the mosaics.

 

Gold answered gold.

 

Saints and emperors stared from the walls with faces made of coloured glass and time. Their eyes were flat and eternal. Their gestures formal. Their robes arranged in patterns no living hand could improve.

 

Katarina entered alone.

 

At first she saw no one.

 

Then a figure turned beneath the glittering vault.

 

Marius.

 

She recognised him immediately, though they had never met.

 

Not from description.

 

From presence.

 

Some immortals carried age like exhaustion.

 

Some carried it like cruelty.

 

Marius carried it like civilisation itself.

 

He looked less like a predator than a philosopher who had accidentally become immortal and then spent two thousand years refusing to surrender either beauty or thought.

 

He regarded her with calm curiosity.

 

For several moments neither spoke.

 

Then he smiled.

 

"So."

 

His voice was quiet.

 

"You exist."

 

Katarina returned the smile.

 

"I was about to say the same."

 

They walked through the basilica as if through the memory of an empire.

 

Neither hurried.

 

Neither attempted to impress the other.

 

That alone distinguished the meeting from almost every immortal encounter Katarina had experienced.

 

Marius paused before one of the mosaics and looked up at the gold.

 

"Ravenna remembers better than Rome," he said.

 

"Stone remembers better than men."

 

"That depends upon the men."

 

"No," Katarina said. "It depends upon who writes after they die."

 

He looked at her then, fully.

 

The first test had arrived sooner than expected.

 

"You distrust memory."

 

"I respect it too much to trust it."

 

A faint amusement touched his mouth.

 

"An interesting contradiction."

 

"A necessary one."

 

"Explain."

 

Katarina looked toward the mosaic saints.

 

"The living change what they remember. The dead cannot correct them. A written record is imperfect, but at least it can be compared against another."

 

"And if both are false?"

 

"Then the silence between them becomes evidence."

 

Marius was still for several seconds.

 

Then he laughed softly.

 

"Lucien taught you well."

 

That was the first time he said Lucien's name.

 

Katarina did not react.

 

Not visibly.

 

Marius noticed anyway.

 

They spoke until dawn forced them apart.

 

On the second night they returned to the basilica.

 

On the third, they walked beyond it, through sleeping Ravenna, past old walls and quiet canals, past churches filled with saints and the dust of forgotten patrons.

 

Their subjects widened.

 

Rome.

 

Byzantium.

 

Alexandria.

 

The nature of art.

 

The arrogance of kings.

 

The fragility of libraries.

 

The persistent stupidity of men who burned books believing they had destroyed ideas.

 

Katarina found Marius infuriatingly courteous.

 

Marius found Katarina dangerously precise.

 

Neither disliked the discovery.

 

On the third night, beneath a ruined arch outside the city, Marius finally asked the question she had known was coming.

 

"You have answered every question except one."

 

Katarina looked toward him.

 

"Which one?"

 

"How."

 

The word required no elaboration.

 

How had she found the manuscripts?

 

How had she preserved them?

 

How had a vampire scarcely older than sixty gathered fragments that Marius himself believed lost to war, fire, negligence, and time?

 

Katarina studied him.

 

Then she said, "Walk with me."

 

They left Ravenna before dawn.

 

Not openly.

 

Not together in any human sense.

 

They travelled as immortals travel when they wish to remain unseen.

 

By night.

 

Across country roads, abandoned estates, sleeping villages, forest paths and mountain passes. Marius never asked where they were going after the first night. Katarina never volunteered the answer.

 

The journey lasted nearly three weeks.

 

It changed them.

 

Conversation in a basilica has shape.

 

Conversation upon a road has truth.

 

There were no mosaics to protect them from silence. No sacred gold to dignify every pause. There was only the night, the changing land, and the peculiar intimacy of shared movement.

 

They crossed northern Italy beneath storm clouds.

 

They entered Switzerland under a sky filled with hard stars.

 

They followed the Rhine northward through mist and rain.

 

On the seventh night, Marius spoke of Pandora.

 

Not at length.

 

Not romantically.

 

But with the care one uses when touching an old wound.

 

Katarina listened.

 

On the ninth, Katarina spoke of her mother.

 

Ilona.

 

The woman who had warned her not to love truth more than people.

 

Marius listened.

 

On the twelfth, he asked about Lestat.

 

She did not answer immediately.

 

That told him more than an answer would have.

 

"Ah," he said softly.

 

"Do not say ah."

 

"I said very little."

 

"You implied a great deal."

 

"That is often more efficient."

 

She almost smiled.

 

Almost.

 

Near the end of the journey, they entered a region of dense forest and ruined religious houses. The monastery they approached appeared abandoned, as it was meant to appear. Its outer walls had partially collapsed. Ivy claimed the chapel. The graveyard stones leaned at odd angles. No road led directly to it.

 

A place forgotten by all useful authorities.

 

Marius looked at the ruin and said nothing.

 

Katarina led him through the chapel, beneath a broken altar, down a stair concealed beneath stone.

 

The air changed as they descended.

 

Dry.

 

Cool.

 

Preserved.

 

At the first iron door she produced a key.

 

At the second, she placed her palm against a carved panel and pressed three hidden points in sequence.

 

At the third, she stopped.

 

"This is not the first Archive," she said.

 

Marius looked at her.

 

"Nor the greatest?"

 

"No."

 

"Then why this one?"

 

"Because if you are going to judge me, you should begin with something modest."

 

The corner of his mouth lifted.

 

"Prudent."

 

"Necessary."

 

The final door opened.

 

For the first time since Katarina had known his name, Marius was silent from astonishment.

 

The chamber beyond was vast.

 

Not a room.

 

A buried library.

 

Stone shelves rose in ordered rows beneath arched ceilings supported by pillars older than the monastery above. Lamps burned in niches without smoke. Cedar chests lined the walls. Bronze cabinets held scrolls sealed in treated leather. Manuscripts rested inside fitted cases. Maps lay flat beneath polished glass. Every object was labelled, dated, cross-referenced.

 

Not a hoard.

 

Not a collector's vanity.

 

A system.

 

Memory made architecture.

 

Marius stepped inside slowly.

 

His eyes moved from shelf to shelf.

 

Greek.

 

Latin.

 

Arabic.

 

Hebrew.

 

Syriac.

 

Armenian.

 

Old Persian.

 

Church Slavonic.

 

Languages dead, dying, reborn, miscopied, politicised, sanctified.

 

He touched nothing at first.

 

That restraint told Katarina more than reverence would have.

 

At last he whispered, "Impossible."

 

"No."

 

Her voice was quiet.

 

"Only forgotten."

 

For three nights Marius walked the Archive.

 

He read titles aloud as though naming ghosts.

 

He recognised copies of works he had seen burned.

 

Fragments of treatises debated by men dead before Charlemagne.

 

A Roman inventory from a villa he had visited in mortal life.

 

A theological argument whose author he had once met and disliked.

 

A medical manuscript containing diagrams copied from an Alexandrian source Marius had believed lost forever.

 

Again and again he stopped.

 

Again and again his face changed.

 

Not dramatically.

 

Marius was too old for that.

 

But grief, when refined by centuries, becomes almost invisible.

 

Katarina saw it.

 

She understood it.

 

On the fourth night she brought him a leather-bound journal.

 

"This was copied in the sixth century," she said.

 

"From what?"

 

"We believe from a private Roman record."

 

Marius opened it.

 

The page was written in a careful monastic hand.

 

Then he stopped.

 

His fingers tightened almost imperceptibly on the edge of the book.

 

Katarina waited.

 

He turned one page.

 

Then another.

 

His expression altered.

 

Recognition.

 

Not of the scribe.

 

Of the words.

 

"Mine," he said.

 

"Yes."

 

"A copy."

 

"Yes."

 

He lowered his head over the page.

 

For a long time he read without speaking.

 

Finally he stopped at one passage.

 

His voice, when it came, was almost a whisper.

 

"I had forgotten."

 

Katarina did not ask at once.

 

The silence deserved respect.

 

At last she said, "What?"

 

"The colour."

 

"What colour?"

 

"The evening sky."

 

He smiled, but the expression was painful.

 

"I remembered the fire. The smoke. The screams. I remembered the smell of wet ash on marble."

 

His fingertips rested upon the page.

 

"I had forgotten the sky was violet."

 

Katarina remained still.

 

Nothing needed saying.

 

The manuscript had made her argument for her.

 

Memory fades.

 

Ink endures.

 

Not perfectly.

 

Not purely.

 

But sometimes enough.

 

Later, they sat across from one another at a long oak table beneath the Archive lamps.

 

The copied journal rested between them.

 

Marius looked around at the shelves.

 

"Why?"

 

The question was not accusation.

 

It was wonder.

 

Katarina closed the catalogue before her.

 

"Because people think immortality defeats death."

 

"It does not."

 

"No."

 

She looked toward the rows of preserved lives.

 

"It merely postpones one kind. The second death comes when no one remembers."

 

Marius watched her carefully.

 

"And you appoint yourself enemy of that death?"

 

"No."

 

She almost smiled.

 

"I appoint myself its inconvenience."

 

He laughed then.

 

Fully.

 

The sound startled the room.

 

For perhaps the first time since Ravenna, something like warmth passed easily between them.

 

Before he left, Marius placed a wooden chest upon the table.

 

Katarina had not seen him bring it in.

 

That meant he had chosen the moment deliberately.

 

"What is it?" she asked.

 

"The next two thousand years."

 

She stared at him.

 

He opened the lid.

 

Inside lay copies.

 

Not originals.

 

Never originals.

 

Marius was generous, not reckless.

 

Journals.

 

Travel accounts.

 

Observations.

 

Fragments of correspondence.

 

Notes on art, cities, languages, mortals, immortals, temples, wars, and the endless stupidity of rulers.

 

Katarina looked from the chest to him.

 

"You trust me."

 

Marius considered.

 

"I trust your purpose."

 

There was a difference.

 

She appreciated it.

 

"And the Archive?"

 

He closed the chest gently.

 

"I will not speak of it."

 

"Not even to those you love?"

 

Something moved across his face then.

 

Pandora.

 

Armand.

 

Others.

 

The many beloved dead and living.

 

"No," he said.

 

"Not even to those I love."

 

Lucien appeared only after Marius had gone.

 

He stood at the threshold of the chamber and looked at the chest upon the table.

 

Then at Katarina.

 

"So."

 

"So."

 

"How much did you tell him?"

 

"Very little."

 

"And how much did he understand?"

 

Katarina looked across the Archive, toward the shelf where Marius's copied journal now rested beside histories that had outlived empires.

 

She smiled faintly.

 

"Everything."

 

Lucien nodded.

 

For once, he did not correct her.

 

Years later, when immortals spoke of Marius, they remembered the Roman.

 

The scholar.

 

The painter.

 

The guardian.

 

The one who had preserved Those Who Must Be Kept.

 

Few knew another truth.

 

That somewhere beneath forgotten stone, behind doors no mortal would ever find, Marius had entrusted part of his own memory to a blonde archivist from the Carpathians.

 

Not because she was stronger than he.

 

Not because she was older.

 

But because, after nearly two thousand years of watching beauty perish, he had found someone who understood that memory itself required shelter.

 

And in that recognition, two keepers of time had become friends.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Image Prompt - Ultra-photorealistic IMAX cinematic photograph, 16:9. Deep beneath the earth inside an immense hidden archive of forgotten civilizations, Marius de Romanus and Katarina Verde sit at a massive centuries-old oak table studying an opened sixth-century leather-bound journal. Marius is tall, classically handsome, clean-shaven, with shoulder-length pale golden-blond curls, brilliant blue eyes and noble Roman features, wearing an elegant burgundy velvet frock coat, ivory waistcoat, high-collared white shirt, black cravat and subtle gold watch chain. Katarina wears her lavender-and-black Victorian gown with long golden-blonde curls. The archive is entirely subterranean—no windows, no daylight, no shafts of natural light. Endless vaulted stone chambers disappear into darkness, packed with towering oak shelves holding thousands of ancient manuscripts, scrolls, codices and relics from forgotten empires. Narrow stone aisles, carved arches, iron ladders, chained cabinets, sealed chests, marble busts and weathered globes create the sense of a secret repository spanning centuries. Illumination comes only from oil lamps, candles and wrought-iron wall sconces casting warm amber pools of light against deep shadows. Dust hangs in the still air, leather textures and aged parchment glow softly, cinematic depth, museum-quality historical realism, intimate scholarly atmosphere, razor-sharp detail, no windows, no sunlight, no skylights, no watermark.

 

Pic, Prompt and Story by Adrian

Old Eastern Ave. Bridge, Toronto

portrait of a good friend of mine

 

view on black

THE CLOCK TOWER SECTION

 

Hi guys, finally here we have this MOC that I have been working on during months. This Diorama represents from the left to de right; The Whomping Willow, the Stone Circle entrance that connects to the Wooden Bridge that I have omitted for space reasons in this MOC, and Hagrid’s Hut. In the Back we have the section of Hogwarts that represents the Gryffindor Tower, the Clock Tower and also the North Tower, where the Divination classroom is located.

 

After the completion of my last MOC, I decided that from then on each MOC that made the Hogwarts Castle would be based only on one or two films in order to recreate them as completely as possible. Because the clock tower is a new section in the Azkaban prisoner film, I decided to focus on this film, but when LEGO released the new Harry Potter sets I finally dedicated the castle to the first three Harry Potter films, thus recreating the final scenes of the philosopher's stone and the secret chamber.

 

:: IMG_0018 - Version 3

Can you help in a dermination ? I have strange amazing stones, I think they must be somewhat related to galena, but in a rare form ... limonite goethite pseudomorphs of galena with a path on marcassite pyrite ... is that possible ? some have the same core colour as a marcassite inside, but the outside is crystallised in galena forms ... ! they are find in limestone (old ocean 150 000 000 years old, fossil are commonly found) They are brownish red to black and rarely oxidised pyrite colour when freshly extracted from the broken calcareous stones.

 

 

  

______

 

Took this photo, using a Contax 60mm F/2.8 Carl Zeiss Makro-Planar T* MM C/Y Mount Lens on my K5 (thanks to the Multi-mount PK+MM for Pentax weather sealed DSLR). (pict is processed and cropped.)

 

I use these great Carl Zeiss lenses : Distagon* 35mmF2.8 ; Sonnar* 135mmF2.8 ; a Planar* 50mmF1.4, and Makro-Planar 60mm F/2.8 on my Pentax K-5 thanks to this system !

 

Kyoto, Japan. Shot with Pentax K-5 and 16-50mm ED AL SDM.

Fresco panel depicting a wreath-crowned man holding a scroll in one hand, and ribbons in the other. Both the wreath and ribbons are frequently awarded to winners of competitions of poetry and music, so perhaps he represents a poet or a philosopher. One of several depictions of polychrome statues standing on gilded green columns in the triclinia of this inn, the Villa Moregine on the river Sarno, outside of Pompeii. The inn was perhaps one of the ‘diversoriae tabernae’, built for Nero as rest and enjoyment places while he was traveling along the coasts of Latium and Campania.

 

The inn had multiple triclinia (dining rooms) opening up onto a central garden. Each triclinium was lushly decorated with frescoes, depicting muses and an Apollo with a distinct resemblance to the Emperor. Nero had been traveling along the coast in 64 CE to review the damage caused by the earthquake from 62 CE and to appropriate funds for redevelopment. His wife, Poppaea, had been born in Pompeii, so the trip was likely personal for her.

 

This fresco panel was from triclinium C, which showed a river deity as its centerpiece, probably representing the River Sarno (which was just outside). This probably refers to the aim of Nero’s visit to Pompeii: the public reclamation and development of the river in order to re-launch Pompeii’s economy after the 62 CE earthquake. On the lateral walls two large winged Victories emphasize and celebrate the emperor’s policy and the grandeur of Rome. On the upper part of the wall is a white background section with characters from Tragedy and Comedy referring to Nero’s life episodes: the emperor used to sublime in theatre even the tragic events of the imperial court

 

On display in the Grand Palestra of Pompeii.

 

Neronian age, 54-68 CE.

[12/52]

Harry Potter rocks my socks off!

 

This was quick & effortless. Bleh.

Tezukayama, Sumiyoshi, Osaka, Japan.

Konya Mevlana Museum :

 

The tomb of the great Turkish thinker and mystic philosopher Mevlana Celaleddin Rumi is situated in The Konya Mevlana Dergah (dervish retreat) in Konya. It was turned into a museum in 1927. It contains objects pertaining to Mevlana and the Mevlevi order. Konya Mevlana MuseumThe Mevlana Tomb and Dergah is of Seljuk and Ottoman construction. Mevlevi writings say that the site of the Tomb and Dergah was originally the private garden of the sultan in Seljuk times. It was later presented to Mevlana's father Sultan'ul-Ulema by Sultan Alaeddin Keykubad I. Sultan'ul-Ulema died 42 years before Mevlana was buried in this garden. When Mevlana died on December 17, 1273 his body was brought here. It was buried beside his father. The construction of a tomb began during these years. The architect Tebrizli Bedreddin built the tomb with the financial help of the wife of the Seljuk Emir Suleyman Pervane, Gurcu Hatun, Emir Alameddin Kayser and Mevlana's son Sultan Veled. It was completed in 1274. It is thought that this first building was of cylindrical shape standing on four pillars with a conical dome. In 1396 and again during the time of the Ottoman Sultan Beyazit II repairs and additions were made. The interior was decorated with painted designs. Today the Tomb rests on arches supported by four pillars, and is 25 m. in height. From the outside the body of the tomb is cylindrical in shape with 16 sections. It ends at the top with stone cornices, above which is a 16-sectioned conical spire. The whole tomb including the spire is covered with turquoise colored tiles. The tiles were replaced from time to time. For this reason it was called the Green Dome. On the side of the Dome in dark blue script are inscribed the Besmele and Ayet-ul-Kursi. On the top of the spire is a gold moon and star symbol. Exterior view of Konya Mevlana MuseumOn the west side of the Kulliye of the Mevlana Tomb and Dergah are the Dervish Cells. On the other three sides are walls. On the western side the main Dervishes Gate leads into the Mevlana Museum and Tomb. The gate to the south called "Bab-i Hamusan" leads to the Garden of Souls (Hadikat'ul-ervah), which was once a graveyard. The door to the north near the Celebi Apartments is called the Celebi Gate.

via Instagram www.instagram.com/p/BNiih8BjZ78/

Zagreb Zoo

He took the business of having his picture taken very seriously; such an interesting face.

Guebwiller, France

“Poets are the sense, philosophers­­ the intelligence­­ of humanity.”

― Samuel Beckett

 

seen this today morning while going to office. Didn't had my DSLR with me. hence captured with mobile resulted lower quality.

 

Unemployed Philosopher’s Guild Mathematics Mug

location: Tetsugaku no Michi - The Philosopher's Walk , Kyoto city ,Kyoto prefecture,Japan

京都　哲学の道

 

These whitish cherry blossom in this image are named Somei-Yoshino 染井吉野🌸,and the most popular cherry blossom in Japan.

Especially around here ,the cherry blossoms are called "Kansetsu zakura関雪桜”. The name comes from one of Japanese style painters Kansetsu HASHIMOTO 橋本関雪 who lived nearby ,and his wife donated the nursery trees to Kyoto city during Taisho period.

 

Thank you for your interest and seeing my photo 😊

 

Canon EOS M5 / EF-M28mm f/3.5 MACRO IS STM( This time I tried to use 28mm macro lens)

ƒ/3.5 28.0 mm 1/160sec ISO100/all manual

 

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The Philosopher's Walk (哲学の道 Tetsugaku-no-michi, lit. Path of Philosophy) is a pedestrian path that follows a cherry-tree-lined canal in Kyoto, between Ginkaku-ji and Nanzen-ji. The route is so-named because the influential 20th-century Japanese philosopher and Kyoto University professor Nishida Kitaro is thought to have used it for daily meditation. It passes a number of temples and shrines such as Hōnen-in, Ōtoyo Shrine, and Eikan-dō Zenrin-ji. It takes about 30 minutes to complete the walk, although many people spend more time visiting the sights along the way. On the northern part of the walk, there are good views of the nearby Daimonji. The walk is a popular destination for tourists and locals, especially during hanami.　- Wikipedia

llille flea market

22 jun - Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

24 jun - Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

27 jun - Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

30 jun - Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

5 may - Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

20 may - Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

1 jun - Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

 

re-read the first 6 HPs, and read the 7th for the first time. but it was nice to be reading brand new books this time round, when these books were originally published, my student budget didn't stretch to new books, so they were mostly borrowed copies or even (i am ashamed to say it) pirated ones.

 

amazing how much i disliked Harry himself progressively after the first 3 books (adolescent angst just about covers it), and yet the books kept me fascinated. inspite of all its character flaws and plot holes, Rowling has created an epic that will fascinate generations to come. but once people started to die in the books, they simply weren't kids' books anymore. and its no use thinking that the later books were for older kids - i don't think any kid who has read the first HP, will happily agree not to read the next until one next year.

 

[Spoiler Alert]

hogwarts was my favorite "character" in the books, and the limited role it played in the 7th book was very disappointing.

on the other hand, i had never really given up on snape, and it was wonderful the way he comes around at last.

dudley's behavior was a bit unbelievable throughout. painting a character black through and through seldom rings true, but when an author does that to an entire family, its just plain overkill. a last minute handshake does not change that.

The Philosopher III

 

Over the clouds she recognizes:

This is my Head

 

HKD

 

Der Philosoph auf dem Gipfel

 

Mit seiner Trophäe über den Wolken angekommen

erkennt er: Das ist mein eigener Kopf.

  

HKD

 

Die Beute des Philosophen ist sein eigenes Ego.

Er könnte auch ausrufen: Tat tvam asi

 

Der Gipfel der Selbstkonfrontation und der Selbsterkenntnis zeigt gleichzeitig, wie unbewusst das naive Ego-Bewusstsein ist und war.

 

Ich weiß, dass ich nichts wusste. Ich weiß, dass ich nichts weiß.

(Frei nach Sokrates :-))

    

HKD

  

жж DSC_4580

She's holding a copy of Martin Heidegger's book "Being and Time".

These berries were just so great I needed to use them in a photo. They were delicious!

Andrei Platonovich Platonov was a Soviet Russian novelist, short story writer, philosopher, playwright, and poet. Although Platonov regarded himself as a communist, his principal works remained unpublished in his lifetime because of their skeptical attitude toward collectivization of agriculture (1929–1940) and other Stalinist policies, as well as for their experimental, avant-garde form infused with existentialism. His famous works include the novels Chevengur (1928) and The Foundation Pit (1930).

 

Early life and education

Platonov was born in the settlement of Yamskaya Sloboda on the outskirts of Voronezh in the Chernozem Region of Central Russia. His father was a metal fitter (and amateur inventor) employed in the railroad workshops and his mother was the daughter of a watchmaker. He attended a local parish school and completed his primary education at a four-year city school and began work at age thirteen, with such jobs as an office clerk at a local insurance company, smelter at a pipe factory, assistant machinist, warehouseman, and the railroad. Following the 1917 Revolution, he studied electrical technology at Voronezh Polytechnic Institute. When Civil War broke out in 1918 Platonov assisted his father on trains delivering troops and supplies and clearing snow.

 

Early career

Meanwhile, Platonov had begun to write poems, submitting them to papers in Moscow and elsewhere. He was also a prolific contributor to local periodicals. These included Zheleznyi put ("Railroad"), the paper of the local railway workers' union; the Voronezh Region Communist Party newspapers Krasnaia derevnia ("Red countryside") and Voronezhskaia kommuna ("Voronezh commune"); and Kuznitsa, the nationwide journal of the "Smithy" group of proletarian writers.

 

From 1918 through 1921, his most intensive period as a writer, he published dozens of poems (an anthology appeared in 1922), several stories, and hundreds of articles and essays, adopting in 1920 the pen-name Platonov by which he is best-known. With remarkable energy and intellectual precocity, he wrote confidently across a range of topics including literature, art, cultural life, science, philosophy, religion, education, politics, the civil war, foreign relations, economics, technology, famine and land reclamation, and others. It was not unusual around 1920 to see two or three pieces by Platonov, on quite different subjects, appear daily in the press.

 

He has also been involved with the local Proletcult movement, joined the Union of Communist Journalists in March 1920, and worked as an editor at Krasnaia Derevnia ("Red countryside"), and the paper of the local railway workers' union. in August 1920, Platonov was elected to the interim board of the newly-formed Voronezh Union of Proletarian Writers and attended the First Congress of Proletarian Writers in Moscow in October 1920, organized by the Smithy group. He regularly read his poetry and gave critical talks at various club meetings.

 

In July 1920, Platonov was admitted to the Communist Party as a candidate member on the recommendation of his friend Litvin (Molotov). He attended Party meetings, but was expelled from the Party on 30 October 1921 as an "unstable element". Later, he said the reason was "juvenile". He may have quit the party in dismay of the New Economic Policy (NEP). like a number of other worker writers (many of whom he had met through Kuznitsa and at the 1920 writers' congress). Troubled by the famine of 1921, he openly and controversially criticized the behaviour (and privileges) of local communists. In spring, 1924 Platonov applied for re-admission to the Party, offering reassurance that he had remained a communist and a Marxist, but he was denied then as on the next two occasions.

 

In 1921 Platonov married Maria Aleksandrovna Kashintseva (1903–1983); they had a son, Platon, in 1922, and a daughter, Maria, in 1944.

 

In 1922, in the wake of the devastating drought and famine of 1921, Platonov abandoned writing to work on electrification and land reclamation for the Voronezh Provincial Land Administration and later for the central government. "I could no longer be occupied with a contemplative activity like literature", he recalled later. For the next years, he worked as an engineer and administrator, organizing the digging of ponds and wells, draining of swampland, and building a hydroelectric plant.

 

Chevengur, The Foundation Pit and For Future Use

When he returned to writing prose in 1926, a number of critics and readers noted the appearance of a major and original literary voice. Moving to Moscow in 1927, he became, for the first time, a professional writer, working with a number of leading magazines.

 

Between 1926 and 1930, the period from NEP to the first five-year plan (1928–1932), Platonov produced his two major works, the novels Chevengur and The Foundation Pit. With their implicit criticism of the system, neither was then accepted for publication although one section of Chevengur appeared in a magazine. The two novels were only published in the USSR during the late 1980s.

 

In the 1930s, Platonov worked with the Soviet philosopher Mikhail Lifshitz, who edited The Literary Critic (Literaturny Kritik), a Moscow magazine followed by Marxist philosophers around the world. Another of the magazine's contributors was the theoretician György Lukács and Platonov built upon connections with the two philosophers. A turning point in his life and career as a writer came with the publication in March 1931 of For Future Use (″Vprok″ in Russian), a novella that chronicled the forced collectivisation of agriculture during the First Five Year Plan.

 

According to archival evidence (OGPU informer's report, 11 July 1931), Stalin read For Future Use carefully after its publication, adding marginal comments about the author ("fool, idiot, scoundrel") and his literary style ("this isn't Russian but some incomprehensible nonsense") to his copy of the magazine. In a note to the publishers, the Krasnaya nov monthly, Stalin described Platonov as "an agent of our enemies" and suggested in a postscript that the author and other "numbskulls" (i.e. the editors) should be punished in such a way that the punishment served them "for future use".

 

In 1933, an OGPU official Shivarov wrote a special report on Platonov. Attached were versions of The Sea of Youth, the play "14 Red Huts" and the unfinished "Technical Novel". The report described For Future Use as "a satire on the organizing of collective farms," and commented that Platonov's subsequent work revealed the "deepening anti-Soviet attitudes" of the writer.

 

Official support and censure

In 1934, Maksim Gorky arranged for Platonov to be included in a “writers' brigade” sent to Central Asia with the intention of publishing a collective work in celebration of ten years of Soviet Turkmenistan. (Earlier that year, a collective work by over 30 Soviet writers had been published about the construction of the White Sea Canal.) Platonov’s contribution to the Turkmen volume was a short story titled “Takyr” (or “Salt-flats”) about the liberation of a Persian slave girl. Platonov returned to Turkmenistan in 1935 and this was the basis for his novella Soul (or Dzhan). Dzhan is about a “non-Russian” economist from Central Asia, who leaves Moscow to help his lost, nomadic nation called Dzhan, of rejects and outcasts possessing nothing but their souls. A censored text was first published in 1966; a complete, uncensored text only in 1999.

 

In the mid-1930s Platonov was again invited to contribute to a collective volume, about rail workers. He wrote two stories: "Immortality", which was highly praised, and "Among Animals and Plants", which was severely criticized and eventually published only in a heavily edited and far weaker version.

 

In August 1936, The Literary Critic published "Immortality" with a note explaining the difficulties the author had faced when proposing the story to other periodicals. The following year, this publication came under criticism in Krasnaya Nov, damaging Platonov's reputation.  In 1939, the story was republished in the intended collective volume, Fictional representations of Railway Transport (1939) dedicated to the heroes of the Soviet railroad system.

 

Platonov published eight more books, fiction and essays, between 1937 and his death in 1951.

 

Stalin's ambivalence and Platonov's son

Stalin was ambivalent about Platonov's worth as a writer. The same informer's report in July 1931 claimed that he also referred to the writer as "brilliant, a prophet". For his part, Platonov made hostile remarks about Trotsky, Rykov, and Bukharin but not about Stalin, to whom he wrote letters on several occasions. "Is Platonov here?" asked Stalin at the meeting with Soviet writers held in Moscow at Gorky's villa in October 1932 when the Soviet leader first called writers "engineers of the human soul".

 

In January 1937, Platonov contributed to an issue of Literaturnaya gazeta in which the accused at the second Moscow Show Trial (Radek, Pyatakov and others) were denounced and condemned by 30 well-known writers, including Boris Pasternak. His short text "To overcome evil" is included in his collected works. It has been suggested that it contains coded criticism of the regime.

 

In May 1938, during the Great Terror, Platonov's son was arrested as a "terrorist" and "spy". Aged 15 years old, Platon was sentenced in September 1938 to ten years imprisonment and was sent to a corrective labour camp, where he contracted tuberculosis. Thanks to efforts by Platonov and his acquaintances (including Mikhail Sholokhov), Platon was released and returned home in October 1940, but he was terminally ill and died in January 1943. Platonov himself contracted the disease while nursing his son.

 

During the Great Patriotic War (1941–1945), Platonov served as a war correspondent for the military newspaper The Red Star and published a number of short stories about what he witnessed at the front. The war marked a slight upturn in Platonov's literary fortunes: he was again permitted to publish in major literary journals, and some of these war stories, notwithstanding Platonov's typical idiosyncratic language and metaphysics, were well received. However, towards the end of the war, Platonov's health worsened, and in 1944 he was diagnosed with tuberculosis. In 1946, his last published short story, "The Return," was slammed in Literaturnaya Gazeta as a "slander" against Soviet culture. His last publications were two collections of folklore. After his death in 1951, Vasily Grossman spoke at his funeral.

 

Platonov's influence on later Russian writers is considerable. Some - but not all - of his work was published or republished during the 1960s' Khrushchev Thaw.

 

In journalism, stories, and poetry written during the first post-revolutionary years (1918–1922), Platonov interwove ideas about human mastery over nature with scepticism about triumphant human consciousness and will, and sentimental and even erotic love of physical things with fear and attendant abhorrence of matter. Platonov viewed the world as embodying at the same time the opposing principles of spirit and matter, reason and emotion, nature and machine.

 

He wrote of factories, machines, and technology as both enticing and dreadful. His aim was to turn industry over to machines, in order to "transfer man from the realm of material production to a higher sphere of life." Thus, in Platonov's vision of the coming "golden age" machines are both enemy and savior. Modern technologies, Platonov asserted paradoxically (though echoing a paradox characteristic of Marxism), would enable humanity to be "freed from the oppression of matter."

 

Platonov's writing, it has also been argued,[by whom?] has strong ties to the works of earlier Russian authors like Fyodor Dostoevsky. He also uses much Christian symbolism, including a prominent and discernible influence from a wide range of contemporary and ancient philosophers, including the Russian philosopher Nikolai Fedorov.

 

His Foundation Pit uses a combination of peasant language with ideological and political terms to create a sense of meaninglessness, aided by the abrupt and sometimes fantastic events of the plot. Joseph Brodsky considers the work deeply suspicious of the meaning of language, especially political language. This exploration of meaninglessness is a hallmark of existentialism and absurdism. Brodsky commented, "Woe to the people into whose language Andrei Platonov can be translated."

 

Elif Batuman ranked Soul as one of her four favorite 20th century Russian works. (Batuman is author of The Possessed: Adventures With Russian Books and the People Who Read Them and was Pulitzer Prize finalist for her novel The Idiot.)

 

Novelist Tatyana Tolstaya wrote, "Andrei Platonov is an extraordinary writer, perhaps the most brilliant Russian writer of the twentieth century".

 

Each year in Voronezh the literature exhibition is held in honour of Platonov, during which people read from the stage some of his works.

 

The style and subject matter

One of the most striking distinguishing features of Platonov's work is the original language, which has no analogues in world literature. It is often called "primitive", "ungainly", "homemade".

 

Platonov actively uses the technique of ostraneny, his prose is replete with lexical and grammatical "errors" characteristic of children's speech.

 

Yuri Levin highlights Platonov's characteristic techniques:

 

syntactically incorrect constructions, such as verb+place circumstance. «Think on head», «answered... from his dry mouth», «recognized the desire to live into this fenced-off distance».

redundancy, pleonasm. «Voschev... opened the door to space», «his body was thin inside the clothes».

extremely generalized vocabulary. "Nature", "place", "space" instead of specific landscape descriptions. «Prushevsky looked around the empty area of the nearest nature», «an old tree grew... in bright weather».

active use of subordinate clauses about the cause (“Nastya ... hovered around the rushing men, because she wanted to”), as well as subordinate clauses about purpose (“It's time to eat for the day's work”). Moreover, they are often superfluous or logically unmotivated.

active use of typical Soviet bureaucracies, often in an ironic way (“confiscate her affection”), but rarely.

According to the researcher Levin, with the help of these turns, Platonov forms a "panteleological" space of the text, where "everything is connected with everything", and all events unfold among a single "nature".

 

In the works of Andrey Platonov, form and content form a single, indissoluble whole, that is, the very language of Platonov's works is their content.

 

Among the key motives of Platonov's work is the theme of death and its overcoming. Anatoly Ryasov writes about Platonov's " metaphysics of death». Platonov in his youth came under the influence of Nikolai Fedorov and repeatedly refers to the idea of raising the dead. In the minds of his characters, it is associated with the coming arrival of communism.

 

Tribute

A planet discovered in 1981 by Soviet astronomer L.G. Karachkina was named after Platonov.

 

Works

Novels

Chevengur – 1928 (1972)

The Foundation Pit – 1930 (1969)

Happy Moscow [de] (unfinished) – 1933–1936 (1991)

Short fiction

"The Motherland of Electricity" – 1926

"The Lunar Bomb" – 1926

The Sluices of Epifany (novella) – 1927

"Meadow Craftsmen" – 1928

"The Innermost Man" – 1928

"Makar the Doubtful" – 1929

For Future Use (novella) – 1930 (1931)

The Sea of Youth (novella) – 1934 (1986)

Soul, or Dzhan (novella) – 1934 (1966)

"The Third Son" – 1936

"Fro" (short story) – 1936

"Among Animals and Plants" (short story) – 1936

"The Fierce and Beautiful World" – 1937

The River Potudan (collection of short stories) – 1937

"Immortality" – 1936, 1939

"The Cow" – 1938 (1965)

"Aphrodite" – 1945

"The Return" or "Homecoming"– 1946

Other

Blue Depths[29] (verse) – 1922

The Barrel Organ (play) – 1930

The Hurdy Gurdy (play) – 1930 (1988)

Fourteen Little Red Huts (play) – 1931 (1988)

Father-Mother (screenplay) – 1936 (1967)

 

English translations

The short story collection The Fierce and Beautiful World, which includes his most famous story, "The Potudan River" (1937), was published in 1970 with an introduction by Yevgeny Yevtushenko and became Platonov's first book published in English translation. During 1970s, Ardis published translations of his major works, such as The Foundation Pit and Chevengur. In 2000, the New York Review Books Classics series republished The Fierce and Beautiful World with an introduction by Tatyana Tolstaya. In 2007, New York Review Books published a collection of newer translations of some of these stories, including the novella Soul (1934), "The Return" (1946) and "The River Potudan". This was followed by a new translation of The Foundation Pit in 2009, in 2012 by Happy Moscow, an unfinished novel (not published in Platonov's lifetime), and in 2023 a new translation of Chevengur.

 

The Fierce and Beautiful World: Stories by Andrei Platonov, introduction by Yevgeny Yevtushenko, E. P. Dutton, 1970 (tr. Joseph Barnes)

The Foundation Pit, a bi-langued edition with preface by Joseph Brodsky, Ardis Publishing, 1973 (tr. Mirra Ginsburg)

Chevengur, Ardis Publishing, 1978 (tr. Anthony Olcott)

Collected Works, Ardis Publishing, 1978 (tr. Thomas P. Whitney, Carl R. Proffer, Alexey A. Kiselev, Marion Jordan and Friederike Snyder)

Fierce, Fine World, Raduga Publishers, 1983 (tr. Laura Beraha and Kathleen Cook)

The River Potudan, Bristol Classical Press, 1998 (tr. Marilyn Minto)

The Foundation Pit, Harvill Press, 1996 (tr. Robert Chandler and Geoffrey Smith)

The Return and Other Stories, Harvill Press, 1999 (tr. Robert Chandler and Angela Livingstone)

The Portable Platonov, New Russian Writing, 1999 (tr. Robert Chandler)

Happy Moscow, introduction by Eric Naiman, Harvill Press, 2001 (tr. Robert Chandler and Elizabeth Chandler)

Happy Moscow, introduction by Robert Chandler, New York Review Books, 2012 (tr. Robert Chandler and Elizabeth Chandler)

Happy Moscow, introduction by Robert Chandler, Vintage Classics, 2013 (tr. Robert Chandler and Elizabeth Chandler)

Soul, Harvill Press, 2003 (tr. Robert Chandler and Elizabeth Chandler)

Russian Short Stories from Pushkin to Buida, Penguin Classics, 2005, (tr. Robert Chandler and others). Includes two important stories by Platonov: "The Third Son" and "The Return"

Soul and Other Stories, New York Review Books, 2007 (tr. Robert Chandler with Katia Grigoruk, Angela Livingstone, Olga Meerson, and Eric Naiman).

The Foundation Pit, New York Review Books 2009 (tr. Robert Chandler, Elizabeth Chandler and Olga Meerson).

Russian Magic Tales from Pushkin to Platonov, Penguin Classics, 2012 (tr. Robert Chandler and others). Includes Platonov's subtle adaptations of traditional Russian folk tales.

Fourteen Little Red Huts and Other Plays, Columbia University Press, 2016 (The Russian Library) (ed. by Robert Chandler; tr. by Robert Chandler, Jesse Irwin, and Susan Larsen; with notes by Robert Chandler and Natalya Duzhina)

Chevengur, trans. Elizabeth Chandler and Robert Chandler (New York Review Books, 2023)

09-02-2018ps

Inscribed - "Very truly your friend / Lysander Spooner"

 

Lysander Spooner (January 19, 1808 – May 14, 1887) was an American abolitionist, entrepreneur, lawyer, essayist, natural rights legal theorist, pamphleteer, political philosopher and writer often associated with the Boston anarchist tradition.

 

Spooner was a strong advocate of the labor movement and is politically identified with individualist anarchism. His writings contributed to the development of both left-libertarian and right-libertarian political theory. Spooner's writings include the abolitionist book The Unconstitutionality of Slavery and No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority, which opposed treason charges against secessionists.

 

He is known for establishing the American Letter Mail Company, which competed with the United States Postal Service.

 

Early life - Spooner was born on a farm in Athol, Massachusetts, on January 19, 1808. Spooner's parents were Asa and Dolly Spooner. One of his ancestors, William Spooner, arrived in Plymouth in 1637. Lysander was the second of nine children. His father was a deist and it has been speculated that he purposely named his two older sons Leander and Lysander after Greek mythological and Spartan heroes, respectively.

 

Legal career - Spooner's activism began with his career as a lawyer, which itself violated Massachusetts law. Spooner had studied law under the prominent lawyers, politicians and abolitionists John Davis, later Governor of Massachusetts and Senator; and Charles Allen, state senator and Representative from the Free Soil Party. However, he never attended college. According to the laws of the state, college graduates were required to study with an attorney for three years, while non-graduates like Lysander would be required to do so for five years. With the encouragement from his legal mentors, Spooner set up his practice in Worcester, Massachusetts after only three years, defying the courts. He regarded the three-year privilege for college graduates as a state-sponsored discrimination against the poor (who could not afford to go to college), and viewed it as providing a monopoly income to those who met the requirements. He argued that "no one has yet ever dared advocate, in direct terms, so monstrous a principle as that the rich ought to be protected by law from the competition of the poor". In 1836, the legislature abolished the restriction. He opposed all licensing requirements for lawyers. After a disappointing legal career and a failed career in real estate speculation in Ohio, Spooner returned to his father's farm in 1840.

 

American Letter Mail Company - Being an advocate of self-employment and opponent of government regulation of business, in 1844 Spooner started the American Letter Mail Company, which competed with the United States Post Office, whose rates were very high. It had offices in various cities, including Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York City. Stamps could be purchased and then attached to letters, which could be brought to any of its offices. From here, agents were dispatched who traveled on railroads and steamboats and carried the letters in handbags. Letters were transferred to messengers in the cities along the routes, who then delivered the letters to the addressees. This was a challenge to the Post Office's legal monopoly. As he had done when challenging the rules of the Massachusetts Bar Association, Spooner published a pamphlet titled "The Unconstitutionality of the Laws of Congress Prohibiting Private Mails". Although Spooner had finally found commercial success with his mail company, legal challenges by the government eventually exhausted his financial resources. A law enacted in 1851 that strengthened the federal government's monopoly finally put him out of business. The legacy of Spooner's challenge to the postal service was the reduction in letter postage from 5¢ to 3¢, in response to the competition his company provided.

 

Later life and death - Spooner argued that "almost all fortunes are made out of the capital and labour of other men than those who realize them. Indeed, except by his sponging capital and labour from others". Spooner defended the Millerites, who stopped working because they believed the world would soon end and were arrested for vagrancy. Spooner spent much time in the Boston Athenæum. He died on May 14, 1887, at the age of 79 in his nearby residence at 109 Myrtle Street, Boston. He never married and had no children.

 

LINK to - Lysander Spooner autograph letter signed to Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Boston, 28 November 1858 - www.digitalcommonwealth.org/search/commonwealth:dz011603q

 

LINK to video - America's First Anarchist: The Life of Lysander Spooner - www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHNGHTCOkQI

 

LINK to video - The Most Anti-Slavery Lawyer: Lysander Spooner | Politically Incorrect Guide to Real American Heroes - www.youtube.com/watch?v=kI2rtwY68OI

I met him at the Bluebird coffeeshop in Amsterdam and he immediately begin to talk to me about the meaning of love and 'god' money in the world and so on...

 

It has been a brief encounter with a really interesting person who surely is going to remain in my mind for a long time yet.....

 

Poet, philosopher. Meiron came to Israel from Moscow in the mid 70s.

I met him on the beach and we started to talk.

 

"Do you know what Meiron means?" he asked me?

"Is it Russian?"I wondered.

"No, it means happy water in Hebrew."

"May Ron, oh yes, I see, of course," I said, "it is a beautiful name."

"Like most Jews, I too have two names: Meiron Meir. Meir like my grandfather...

"He had travelled to America long before I was born, but they didn't let him in because of an epidemic which was going on there. He returned to Russia. The people of his old village felt sorry for him and urged him to change his name from Meir to Meiron. It didn't sound Jewish...

So, when I was born, my parents gave me his both names."