The Origin and Development of Eurythmy 1912–1918
GA 277a — 18 September 1912, Bottmingen
The Dionysian Course III
How often in later years did I regret that Miss von Sivers, later Mrs. Marie Steiner, only began attending the afternoon sessions, which started at 4:30 p.m. and usually lasted until 6 p.m., Dr. Steiner's favorite meal time, the “Jause,” on this third day, which I am about to describe.
On that day, Dr. Steiner brought a book with him, Brevier der Tanzkunst (Breviary of Dance Art). I was to read it up to a point marked with energetic pencil strokes and, if possible, copy it out. But really only up to that point, because after that the czardas was described, which I was not to read or copy out, “because there the soul is taken from the body and played into the hands of Lucifer.” In the “permitted” part, there is also the aforementioned image of the “Corybant dance,” in which Rudolf Steiner not only explained the B-gesture of the arms holding the shields once again, but also showed how and where the recognition of the threefold division of the human being into body, soul, and spirit, which was required as a conviction at the very beginning, could be read and shaped in the human form itself. “And once you have learned about head postures, you should be able to read from them who will be the victor in this struggle.” Unfortunately, he did not discuss the figure of the left satyr in the second picture, which he said was a particularly interesting position that he would return to later.
Relationship / to the whole / world
Relationships / between / people
Relationship / to / the earth / quiet / inner / rebellion
(Czerwinski: Brevier der Tanzkunst, RSB Th 4a, p. 15) RSt, NZ.6264Bacchus procession
(Czerwinski: Brevier der Tanzkunst, RSB Th 4a, p. 21)
After a short pause, he picked up his pencil again and said something like the following: "It is not only possible to form the sounds you are already familiar with using your arms and hands, you must also learn to feel them in spatial movements. And there is a straight line pointing in any direction, like an i, like a “stretch,” and a second line moving at an angle to it, like an e—just extend both lines beyond the angle and you will see it with your own eyes. And the third line, which completes the equilateral triangle by returning to the starting point, can be felt like a u. Every backward movement is something like turning upward. And so you should carry this equilateral triangle i e u within you as an archetype."
When I had tried in recent months to fulfill the task of searching classical literature for descriptions and, if possible, instructions for practicing Greek dance, the yield had been very meager. It is true that Homer, Hesiod, Plato, and many others, writers and poets, repeatedly praise the art of dance in the most eloquent terms, but I have found no hints anywhere about how they danced, and certainly nothing about arm movements, even though it is said: Those who have soft arms should dance! Nor is there anything about their temple dances, which Dr. Steiner had mentioned. Certain insights were provided by the short work On the Pantomime of Lucian, a late Greek, in which even the word ‘eurythmy’ can be found. He reports not only on the origin of dance, the ‘round dance of the stars and the intricate movement of the planets to the fixed stars and their rhythmic union and orderly harmony’. He also describes in detail the extremely varied and high demands placed on a dancer, who, in addition to dialectics, had to master all branches of education at that time and carry the present, future, and past in his memory. In Lucian, I also found these words: “that one cannot find a single ancient consecration that does not involve dance” – and “that it is usually said of those who divulged the mysteries: they dance them among the people.” It is understandable that this statement marked a rather energetic conclusion to my further search for temple dances.
But Rudolf Steiner went on to say: “If you had been in Greece shortly before the men had to go into battle and had passed a temple dedicated to Dionysus, you would have heard a strange cry coming from inside the temple.”
i / u / eee / Passing by
And now, for the first time, we heard this haunting call on the Dionysian sounds i e u: i i I, i i I, e e E — and then three semitones higher u u U, u u U — emphasizing the rhythm even more intensely by tapping with his pencil. "But if you had gone into the temple, you would have seen the priest of Dionysus leading these same men in solemn procession into the temple courtyard for a specific ritual dance. Each carried a thyrsus staff, which he planted deep into the ground at a signal from the priest, as a goal to strive for. But the archetypal, harmoniously balanced triangle that lived within them had, as it was, no relation to the goal that had been set. The equilateral triangle had to be transformed into a powerfully striving, acute-angled one. Not only did the goal represented by the staff provide the impetus, but the Dionysus priest standing in the center also fired them up with his rhythmic, ever-increasing cry: i i I, i i I, e e E, u u U, u u U, urging them to use all their strength ever more quickly and powerfully. And so they were enabled to go into battle “victoriously” and “return as victors.”
The second call could have been heard after the battle to appease and pacify the souls agitated by the fighting. And these victors, still excited, still filled with aggression, immediately gathered again in the temple, exchanged their weapons for the thyrsus staff, and were again led by the priest in a solemn, strictly formed and orderly procession into a circle inside the temple. Again, at the priest's signal, they planted their staffs in the ground, but this time a little further away, where the e-line would have run in the equilateral triangle. And now the staff stands there, and once again a metamorphosis of the archetype that lives within them must be found, and this requires consideration for the staff and the desire to pass it carefully and cautiously, just as the priest's metamorphosed call now prompted them to form a broad, obtuse-angled triangle: i i I, i i I, e e E, u u U.
But we, who were privileged to hear these explanations, experienced something astonishing: there is still a place, yet another place, that can speak directly to us today about Greek temple dances.
Rudolf Steiner called the first one the “energy dance” and said that even today it could give people the strength to work together, for example children and teachers, if it were performed together before the start of school. And through the second, the “peace dance,” even the most quarrelsome children would get along peacefully and happily again, and the most difficult young people could become the “gentlest spouses.” “If only we could get them to do it!”
I would like to mention a small incident that occurred that day, because I believe it was not unintentional! In order to clearly show the rhythm in which these various Dionysian triangles were to be danced, Dr. Steiner tapped the beat very energetically and emphatically on the tabletop with his pencil: i i I. But during the long note, the I, the cap flew off the pencil and fell under the table. It was very cramped in the small room, especially under the table, and it was not so easy to find the sleeve again and give it back to Dr. Steiner. But it flew down a second and third time during his energetic i i I. When I reappeared for the third time, I thought vividly of the famous boundary stone that Dr. Steiner liked to talk about. In his homeland, it was always a very solemn occasion when a new boundary stone was set or an old one was moved. The whole village—the pastor, teacher, pharmacist, mayor, in short, all the authorities, but also all the children—would gather, and at the moment when the stone was solemnly placed in its position, the teacher would give one of the boys a very strong slap. This was so that he could know and testify to everyone else, to himself, his children, and his children's children: here, in this place, and nowhere else, must it stand. And so I also know for many children and children's children: it must be an anapaest and nothing else!
After Rudolf Steiner had finished his wonderful explanation of the energy and peace dance, he suddenly asked, almost a little suspiciously, whether I knew what this rhythm – short, short, long – was called; he also inquired about my preliminary work. Fortunately, this question gave me the opportunity to tell him that in my search for literature on Greek dance, I had come across a book by a German philologist, Christian Kirchhoff, Dramatische Orchestik der Hellenen (Dramatic Orchestration of the Hellenes). Kirchhoff had come to the conclusion that the Greeks had no need to write down dance instructions because they read all their movements from the text. He demonstrates this thoroughly and in detail, but only for the movements of the feet; he talks about the different metrical rhythms, especially rising and falling meters, about short syllables preceding rising rhythms and long syllables following falling rhythms, and also shows that each god was invoked in his own rhythm, and so on. “That's all very good, and you can definitely adopt it,” said Dr. Steiner. Greek meters are about long and short syllables, whereas in German it is more about stressed and unstressed syllables or high and low tones. Nevertheless, we should retain this long-short pattern in our feet, but accompany the steps with arm movements. "The essential thing about a rising rhythm – and the iamb is the rising rhythm par excellence – is really that the iamb can be traced back to the javelin throw. This means that it reaches its goal – clearly outlined in front of it in the outside world – by the shortest route. The iamb can be perceived as a leap into life. And the falling rhythm, the trochee? They really called it the step of Mercury. He, the messenger of the gods, comes down to earth from heaven to the people, but behind him stands the fullness of divine wisdom and grace. And from this abundance he brings them joys and sorrows, tasks and disappointments, as the gods have decreed. And driven by this abundance, he plunges from heaven to earth with such vehemence that he has to “slow down.” And so this powerful length and the brevity that catches the excessive momentum are created. The Greeks often even depicted Mercury as limping. Demonstrate both to your students later. Take a stick for the iambus, show how it pushes forward purposefully, and show, perhaps by jumping from a chair into the room, that you need this fading and lingering brevity. Feel it for yourself and try to teach your students to feel how the iambus leads them brightly and courageously out into the outside world, but that the trochee drives them forward through a fateful impulse acting behind them from the spiritual world.
Some time later, when I was already working with children, the need arose to introduce these rhythms to the children in musical form. At that time, there were no improvisational accompanists (in fact, there were none at all!), so I asked a well-known, very musical lady to compose a iambic and a trochaic for me. I told her how Dr. Steiner had spoken about both rhythms, and so together we chose major for the iamb and minor for the trochee. We were able to play the music to Dr. Steiner, and he said: "That's quite right if you want to use it for adults, but for children it should be the other way around. For a child, it is still a painful decision to venture into the outside world, but where it comes from, it still lives carefree and happy." Only then was I able to make sense of the often painfully urgent iambs and the almost dance-like lightness of the trochees and gain a deeper understanding of the nature of these rhythms.
But now back to that third day in Bottmingen. Dr. Steiner continued talking about “tactics” and also gave arm and hand movements. "Remember that meter means measure, and that language deals with a short and a long measure. Now you can also find this shortness and length in the human form, the shortness in the shoulder width, the length in the torso length. So draw your shortness and your length—and every person has their own shortness and length—freely in front of you in the room, starting from the point that corresponds to the outside shoulder height and width. Bring both hands together from this point, drawing lightly, not tensely, but consciously, to the sternum and then back again, completely relaxed, as if floating, so that you can now guide the length downwards even more consciously and decisively and then back again, loosely and lightly, to the starting point. Do not press down, but draw this length freely in space.“ If you really try to do it this way, I mean to feel it this way, then it is an infinitely soothing and harmonious oscillation and experience of your own dimensions, and you can be deeply moved and shaken by the infinite wisdom and love of humanity of the person who has prescribed such a ”purely technical" exercise. The second instruction comes from a sound experience, namely breathing between an i-movement for length and a slight o-movement for shortness, i.e., stretching and rounding.
“Once you have become accustomed to the sounds, you will experience something o-like in every shortness and something i-like in every length as a physical sensation.” This second type could already be performed by an accompanying choir in an artistic performance. — I should perhaps apologize for having described this seemingly “insignificant matter” in such detail. However, it should be shown that there is no arbitrary movement in eurythmy, that even the seemingly “most insignificant” has been drawn out of the forces and measures of the human organization.
Rudolf Steiner's preparatory notes for this lesson
Feet = relationship to the earth / hands - soul / head - spirit
u i e / Peace dance / u i e with long i and u gives strength for working together—