Speak the speech, I pray you
I strove with none, for none was worth my strife:
Nature I loved, and, next to Nature, Art:
I warm’d both hands before the fire of Life;
It sinks; and I am ready to depart.
—Walter Savage Landor, "Dying Speech of an Old Philosopher"
Featured Titles
The Art of Lecturing
Rudolf Steiner
These lectures form the “Swiss Orientation Course,” or “The Speakers' Course.” They address the art of effective speaking, clarifying thought content, knowing one’s audience, verbal formulation, ethics of speaking, the effects of lecturers on their listeners, lyrical speaking, speech exercises, repetition, and full immersion in one’s topic so that the speaker will be listened to and heard.
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Speech - Invisible Creation in the Air
Vortices and the Enigma of Speech Sounds
Serge Maintier
This fascinating book explores the mystery of spoken language sounds. Johanna Zinke, following Rudolf Steiner's suggestions, captured air sound forms on photographic plates in 1962, revealing a connection to modern flow and chaos research. Serge Maintier expands on this work, concluding that speaking goes far beyond production of acoustic waves; it arises through precise modulations of breath. It is an “art of movement.”
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Anthroposophical Therapeutic Speech
Barbara Denjean-von Stryk and Dietrich von Bonin
Written for speech therapists and doctors, this book gives a precise, practical summary of anthroposophic therapeutic speech. Speech formation, or creative speech, is based on the ancient art of recitation and drama, and was revived and fundamentally redeveloped by Rudolf and Marie Steiner in the early 1920s. Such therapeutic work is based on speech exercises and Rudolf Steiner's indications about how to use them.
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See more in the series: Anthroposophic Medicine & Therapy Guides
From the Collected Works of Rudolf Steiner
Communicating Anthroposophy
The Course for Speakers to Promote the Idea of Threefolding
12 lectures and a Q&A session, Stuttgart, Jan. 1–2,
and Feb. 12–17, 1921 (CW 338)
Particularly when you find yourself in a position like the one in which you will be during the next few weeks, one thing seems important: that you live actively within the material that you intend to present; that you actually always struggle with it to a certain extent while speaking; that you allow your preparation to be such that the intentions, thoughts, and subject come before your soul, but not the specific wording, because you must always struggle to arrive at the right words only once you are standing before the audience. Therefore, it is good not to prepare the specific wording you will use, except certain key sentences, at most, depending on how you are individually—you might be the sort of person who writes down key sentences. But not mere slogans! As a rule, slogans will only lead you astray. . . .
—Rudolf Steiner, from a lecture of February 14, 1921, in Communicating Anthroposophy: The Course for Speakers to Promote the Idea of Threefolding (CW 338)