Steiner's doctrine that the three poetic genres each demand a distinct mode of speech formation: plastic for epic, musical for lyric, a synthesis for dramatic.
Epic, Lyric and Dramatic Styles of Speaking in Anthroposophy is Rudolf Steiner's threefold doctrine, set out in the 1922 speech and drama courses gathered in GA 280 (Methodology and Nature of Speech Formation), that the three poetic genres each demand their own mode of speech formation, Sprachgestaltung. In the epic style the will is held back so the word becomes plastic and pictorial, carried on the palatal sounds and measured as recitation. In the lyric style the will streams within the word so that speech turns musical, carried on the labial sounds and shaped as declamation. The dramatic style is a synthesis of both, carried on the lingual sounds and switching between recitation and declamation as the character speaks. Practising speech artists in the lineage of Marie Steiner-von Sivers still train these three styles through the same organ-based scheme today.
In Steiner's Own Words
In this way you will have to seek out for yourselves: a lip-rich speech for the preparation of the lyrical mood, a tongue-rich speech for the preparation of the dramatic mood, a palate-rich speech for the preparation of the epic mood. It is really so that the lips drive the innermost of the human being, but quite consciously, out of itself; the astral body hovers upon the lips, and only thus is it bearable when the innermost is uttered at all. The tongue, by contrast, is a soul-like organ of touch, and even physiologically the following is correct: When we converse with two or three people, we feel it in the tongue whether the person concerned is scolding us or praising us or reproaching us, and we want at once to say something in reply, and this is what belongs in the dramatic mood.
What it Means Today
The clearest living bridge to this doctrine is the discipline that grew directly from the courses it comes from. The 1922 lectures gathered in GA 280 were transcribed by Marie Steiner-von Sivers (1867 to 1948), the reciter and actress who had trained in recitation and elocution before she met Steiner, and who carried the work of artistic speech into a teachable form. With her help Steiner conducted several speech and drama courses, and the discipline she shaped, anthroposophical speech formation, still trains performers in the threefold scheme he set out: lip-rich speech for the lyric, tongue-rich speech for the dramatic, palate-rich speech for the epic.
What makes the doctrine usable rather than merely poetic is that it is anatomical. A speaker does not guess at a mood; she works a specific region of the mouth until the genre announces itself. Steiner's own example holds the test: stress the labial sounds in a flat philosophical sentence and it takes on a lyrical character; underline the lingual sounds in a dull report and it turns dramatic. The contrast runs through to the breath, where the epic style keeps measure and the lyric style is carried on the stream of feeling.
Thalira synthesis: Steiner's three styles are not three subjects but one gesture seen at three depths, the will withdrawn to make a picture, the will poured out to make a song, and the will turning on itself to make a person speak.
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