The Origin and Development of Eurythmy 1912–1918

GA 277a — 15 June 1915, Dornach

Notes on the Development of Eurythmy

Lory Maier-Smits, Notes 1965

I said that I was able to speak with Rudolf Steiner twice more before the Apollonian course [...]. The other time (Düsseldorf, June 15-17, 1915) was much happier. It was the first time I had been able to speak to him again after the long break, actually since our performance in Berlin in January 1914, and also the first time ever that I was allowed to have a longer conversation with him alone. “Well, what do you have to tell me and ask me?” he said immediately after greeting me. I briefly told him everything worth knowing about home, especially how my mother was doing, and also what news we had from my brother in the field, because he had asked about that when we greeted each other.

But then I was allowed to talk more about my work in eurythmy and the questions that had arisen in the process. I was able to describe how I had tried to achieve a “connection between sound and image” when eurythmizing texts. “Show me an example.” So I showed him three verses by Angelus Silesius. The first, the most essential, consisted at the beginning of nothing but monosyllabic words, with which the poet constantly finds new emotional content and images for his experience of God: “God is my staff, my light, my path, my goal, my play” and so on, but this line was particularly important. I would now have tried to express the solidity and supportiveness of the word ‘staff’ through a very conscious and emphatic “formed a,” which was also justified phonetically – it follows an £. I would have made the short i in light narrow and bright, like a beam of light shining upwards, and tried to form the f more tentatively, above all slightly asymmetrically to the left, but that also seemed to me, perhaps because this a follows a pf, not unfounded; I would have expressed Ziel with an energetically forward-striving long z, stretching from the left foot to the front of the right hand, and finally stretched the relaxed, not “targeted” feeling of playing broadly to the sides. “It's very nice when you try to work out what you call a connection between image and sound in this way.” My youthful wisdom made me ask doubtfully, “But isn't there a danger that it will become too personal?” And the answer? “It would be wonderful if it became as personal as possible!”

From the feeling of being able to speak to Rudolf Steiner more openly and unreservedly than to anyone else, which has been experienced and described by many others, I was now able to continue. "Doctor, I have observed that I usually do things that have to do with the outside world with my right hand, and things that are more internal with my left. Does that have any real significance, or is it irrelevant?“ ”No, it is not irrelevant at all. In fact, it is quite correct, and I am glad that you came to that conclusion on your own.“ ”May I then also teach that?“ ”But of course you may."

Then there was another completely unresolved question: “I always feel a bit guilty towards poets because, for the time being, we don't pay any attention to what is called ‘poetic form’. Neither whether a stanza has three or four lines, nor whether and how the rhymes are. I create my forms according to completely different rules, and I don't pay any attention to anything else, and that's not really right!”

This question prompted Dr. Steiner to divide the last eleven lines of Walther von der Vogelweide's beautiful poem on old age, “O weh, wohin entschwanden alle meine Jahr!” (Oh woe, where have all my years gone?), into willing, thinking, and feeling. At the same time, however, I received a gratifying answer to a question that I had not yet asked, but which had been somewhat troubling me from the beginning. The principle: “Every crooked line, whether in position or in motion, is an expression of will” only became a real experience for me on that day when, after a “non-knight” had described the ideal image of a true crusader in heartfelt tones, he suddenly said: “And now the impulse of will rises” – and with both hands, as if reaching deep into still dormant powers, he lifted them up from deep below and spread them out in a crooked line in the room, filling and enlivening this space in all directions.

I now reproduce the poem with its division and explanatory comments.

He uses beautiful words to stimulate feelings (sensations):

Remember this, knights! It is your task.
You wear the shining helmets and many a hard ring,
along with the sturdy shield and the consecrated sword.

And then the impulse of will arises (wanting)

Would that God would deem me worthy to fight for him!
Then I, a poor man, would earn rich rewards,

Reasonable consideration, whether in position, i.e., at rest, as in the first type of representation of the Luciferic and Ahrimanic beings (thinking):

I do not mean hooves of land, nor the princes' gold:

He expresses his heart's desire (feeling)

I would wear a crown myself in the angelic host,

Sober, logical thinking (thinking)

A soldier may well hunt it down with his spear.

Impulse of will no longer inhibited by thinking (willing):

If I could make the dear journey across the sea,
I would sing forever: Hail! and never again: O woe!
Never again O woe!

Finally, he offered the following suggestion: “Try to arrange your forms, as I have now structured them for you, according to will, thinking, and feeling, but then place them in such a way that you carry the rhyme to where the sound was first struck. As if the rhyme sound still ringing there drew you back to the same, or at least approximately the same, place.”

That is all I have to say about the period leading up to the course that took place in August and September 1915 in the “white hall” of the First Goetheanum, which gave us exhaustive answers to questions that had arisen in and through our work and opened up paths to entirely new, vast areas in the realm of eurythmy.