Colloquium on English - Research Institute for Waldorf Education

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on the musical and rhythmic quality of the language, the image-creating
power of the words and the artistic composition of the sentences. These
aspects make up the real nourishment which children relish. Perhaps, to
some degree, one has to become a child again to feel wonder at the musical
quality of poetically formed language and to feel its healthy, uplifting power.
Then one feels what it means to be in the realm of creative and formative
life-forces, where the child is at home in its entire being.
Words Create Images Building the Soul-life
These life-forces however, transform themselves into something
higher, following a principal common to all development. When their work
on the physical organisation of the body is complete and the most important
functions have developed, the magical effect of speech on the body of
the child slowly declines, and instead we see speech now working formatively
in the realm of fantasy and inner imagination. Just as the single sound
selflessly becomes part of the word and in a way disappears within it, so
does the moulding quality of the sound recede behind the emotional experience
of the image that is conjured up from the linked sounds of the word.
This begins to occur from the third or fourth year of life onwards. The
moulding quality still acts in the background as demonstrated by the joy
children continue to display in rhymes, rhythmic sound games, word tricks
and verses, continuing into the first school years. However the image that
arises out of the sound composition comes more and more to the fore, and
this image is more alive for the children the more it arises out of the sounds
themselves. Two examples should make this clear.
In the fairy tale “The Bremen Town Musicians” the donkey says to
the run-away dog: “Why do you gasp so, Packan?” Even if the children
have never heard the word “gasp” they understand it from the onomatopoeic
sounds and see with their inner eye the dog with his tongue hanging
out and panting for air. The sharp teeth become a concrete image through
the onomatopoeic quality of the dog’s name “Packan” (English: “get him!”),
which makes the sharp bite of the animal audible through the P and K. In
this way it is possible for the sounds to create very concrete, almost sensually
comprehensible images in the soul of the child. As rich as sensory reality
are the possibilities of language to name every thing and every being
with its own appropriate name. And so the donkey talks in a very different
way to the pitiful looking cat. He greets her with the words: “What has
crossed your path old Muzzle-wiper?” where the consonant sequence (M-
W) characterises the elegant aesthetics of the cat wiping her snout with her
velvety paws and licking them with her tongue. Children are delighted
when the image arises out of the sounds.
This image however has a completely different quality than the
television image. It is of utmost importance for adults to recognise that one
is shot on the retina as a prefabricated image from outside while the other
is formed by the child from the image-creating powers of its own soul and
is therefore an active, creative achievement. The technically produced and