The genius of language
Halfway throught the first year of the first Waldorf School, Rudolf Steiner agreed to give a science course for teachers, called the Light Course. Arriving, he was asked to "improvise" a course on language. This book is the result.
Out of the evolution of consciousness and using concrete examples, Steiner demonstrates how history and psychology combine to form different languages and how ideas, images, and vocabulary travel throught time in different cultural streams. He speaks of how the language-forming power has dwindled, but how the inmost kernel of language - the penetration of sens into sound - is still recoverable today. More radically, he explains how consonants imitate outer, while vowels convey more inwatd events. He deals, too, with differentiations of language according to geographical conditions, as well as with the folk soul element and the possibility of wordless thinking. Relating the musical element to feeling, he explains how language as a capacity to transform us and must become part of our - and our children's - spiritual lives.
This in not only a course on language, of interest to all who love words. It is also, as Steiner revealed in the end, a demonstration of "teaching methods" and f great pedagogical value.
142 pages.
