A growing plant presents us with many different phases of development, each with its own appearance: first the new shoot, then leafy stem, sepals, flowers, fruit, seeds. Despite such changes, we can recognize in every plant the kind of plant it is. Running through, or lying behind, the entire sequence of images is an inner unity which we can think of as the idea or characteristic way of being of this particular species. It is the integral, coherent identity, the forming power, the hidden reality that expresses itself through the continually metamorphosing appearances, making of them a single, recognizable "kind." Such expressive being can come to life in our understanding only through an active, imaginative, aesthetically sensitive thinking and feeling.

Something similar, as Rudolf Steiner has pointed out, is true of the sequence of images constituting the great ancient myths of mankind. Each myth has its own organic unity, a unity that expresses itself in a particular succession of images. Just as the botanist tries to recognize the unified creative powers that uniquely sculpt the successive forms of a particular species of plant, so, too, the interpreter of myths must discover the unconscious expressive powers at work in the sequence of images constituting a myth. The aim is no more to deny the significance of the images than it is to deny the significance of the outer forms of the plant; rather, it is to understand the images by penetrating to their generative source. This effort carries us to deep, feeling-laden experiences of the soul -- experiences powerful enough and wise enough to shape myths in which even today we can recognize some of the greatest "literature" of all time.

But myth is not the only work of the human spirit we can approach in this way. Fairy tales, too, demand that we seek the underlying gestures of consciousness, and likewise poems -- and, indeed, all great literature yields to this inquiry. There are, then, two opposite movements. The poet somehow finds inspiration -- he experiences different levels of reality -- and his task is to find a way to embody his experience in the written word, giving it communicable form. The reader must move in the opposite direction: starting with the poem's verbal form, he must find his way to the experience from which the words arose. This is not merely a matter of historical or philological or literary analysis in the usual sense; it's a matter of rediscovering the soul of the work -- the inspiration behind it.

Different sorts of literature make somewhat different demands upon us. In myths, fairy tales, and legends, we have a double task. The first is to distinguish the essential from the incidental, so as not to be derailed by the latter. Some images will speak forcefully, others less so -- and some may be quite incidental, merely providing an outer garment for the essential narrative. Then, in the second place, we need to discern the central expressive unity of the whole. In poems and the more tightly woven prose, by contrast, virtually everything is meaningful and essential; this is the result of the artistic process, which always drives toward the essential. We can say that the essential content and the artistic form are one. Here the reader needs only (!) to find the inner connections that weave all the parts together. The dense unity of the artistic creation explains why some artists, when asked to say what their work is about, reply that they could answer the question only by creating the work anew.

In trying to grasp the wholeness and unity of a poem or other verbal creation, we have to overcome the separateness of the words. The only way we can do this is by allowing the words to become as thoroughly meaning-soaked as possible -- which is to say, we have to receive their full gestural or image-like force as carriers of the world's qualities. And then we have to attend to the extremely subtle, many-faceted structure of the poem. Only through the fine threads connecting word to word, line to line, verse to verse do we approach the inner movement or process that governs the whole.

To read imaginally is to think, not about the images, but rather to think by means of the images. We need to develop the ability to work with images in the way we work with reality -- because reality itself is imaginal. When we think imaginally, we have an experience of the creative powers that shape the world.

And one more remark. The poet creates an artistic work through intuition. Subsequently his creation speaks and lives independently of him. Intuition, while it can speak through consciousness, lies deeper than normal consciousness, and therefore the attentive reader may discover revelations in a poem that the poet was not conscious of. We could say that intuitive creation and conscious, imaginative reading are two different processes that add to and complete each other. Thus we read in Genesis that God first created the world and then contemplated what he did, pronouncing it good. Only these two activities together, creation and contemplation, are able fully to realize the work of art.