The Origin and Development of Eurythmy 1912–1918

GA 277a — 29 August 1915, Dornach

Eurythmy Address

My dear friends!

I would just like to say a few words in advance about how one should see the connection in everything we attempt, in everything that emerges from our attempts. On the one hand, there is certainly a strong longing in our time to gain a connection between material life and spiritual life. On the other hand, however, the possibilities for doing so are not so easy to find. For, as I have emphasized in another context, very few people in Europe today have a clear sense of the search for the essential in the other worlds that underlie and are connected with our world. If you study the teachings given today on poetry and art, you will often notice how everything artistic today leads back to something higher, but how difficult it is for people today to truly feel the connection with this higher realm. And so we can only hope that the growing popularity of eurythmy, as we are trying to practice it, will promote, from a very human perspective, what is needed to find the connection between human beings and the spiritual worlds.

RSt, Drei Gedichte, Berlin 1916, pp. 6-12. How often, my dear friends, will you have heard from this or that movement calling itself theosophical that an essential part of the life of the soul is based on becoming one with the great universal being that fills space and permeates time. But even though this desire to feel at one with the universe is sometimes emphasized with such great enthusiasm and fervor in theosophy, people are not very inclined to grasp its reality. Many today emphasize the form in which, in the middle of the Middle Ages, for example through Meister Eckhart and Johannes Tauler, the “becoming one,” as it was called, was sought, the feeling of oneness with the divinely permeated universe. But today we are in a period of time when this must be striven for in concrete, real terms, when something must really be done to affirm the great truth that human beings, in their actions and in their being, can resonate with the actions and being of the world. And something like this is attempted in what our friends will now learn about from the ladies who are initially practicing it, in the second chapter of our eurythmy. I would just like to briefly draw your attention to a few things that can be deduced from today's presentation.

In the second performance, you saw how, in a sense, a moving stillness that exists in the universe is reproduced: the twelvefold nature that exists in the universe as the zodiac, the sevenfold nature that exists in the universe as the sequence of planets. You have also seen how the stillness of the zodiac images in relation to the movement of planetary being emerged from the performance of the figures. Such things, my dear friends, are of course only possible if this spirit of feeling at one with the universe is present in the whole. And so an attempt is made to create something in which there is a very intimate harmony between the spoken word — and not only the spoken word, but also the feelings that are revealed — and each individual movement. Gradually, one will understand that in the whole of this presentation, the spoken word will only be an aid. Gradually, one will understand that when the movement is made in its fullness, one will be able to discern what is being said from the movement, just as one can read the meaning when one has the letters in front of one. One needs nothing more than to have learned to read, then, little by little, when the whole system has been developed, one will also be able to read what is presented. But one will not only be able to read according to the letters, according to the sounds, but also according to the meaning.

To do this, however, it is necessary to have a concept of the inner experience of meaning. As an earthly human being, since he wanders around in the abyss of the earth with the beings who have been cast into the abyss, he must of course, as a rule, also err with his thoughts and feelings during his earthly existence. But they can rise above this errant thinking and feeling to what is then regularly firm thinking and feeling for them from the calm movement. For, you see, the cosmos, as it first appears to us as our solar system, is only a special case. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God, and the Word was divine.” And in the cosmos we see, as it were, the Word frozen, the Word in its rest and the Word in its movement. But one must feel it in the cosmos. I do not want what is presented here to be confused with the confused mysticism of the present day. This is not about imitating the methods of modern astrologers, for example, who surpass all materialism in their methods and who add ignorant superstition to materialistic ignorance, but about entering into the lawful connections of a spiritual world that reveals itself in human beings as well as in the cosmos. True spiritual science does not seek human laws from star constellations, but rather both human laws and natural laws from the spiritual realm. Although this spiritual science is repeatedly lumped together with the nonsensical mystical endeavors of modern times, it has nothing to do with them. Here, where certain human expressions use analogies with cosmic conditions as a basis for expression, it must be particularly emphasized that spiritual science wants nothing to do with the dilettantism of modern astrologers and their crude revelations.

And so an attempt was made to create a sequence of feeling, sensing, and speaking which, as it is presented, gives rise to a different case, a case of inner soul feeling, as it were, as opposed to what has flowed out into the movement of our solar system. The structure of twelve stanzas, each consisting of seven lines, corresponds, I would say, to the outer skeleton. But if you take this twelve-seven-part poem, you will see that everything that wants to reveal itself is captured in every detail. If you take the mood — I will mention it as an example — the mood in Cancer, where, after the ascent is complete, the descent takes place again, where one has the feeling, as it were, that the sun stands still for a moment — to use only this image, many images could be used —, you will feel something in the way the words lie in the relevant, if we want to say, “Cancer stanza.”

You resting light,
Generate the warmth of life
Warm the life of the soul
For vigorous self-proving,
For spiritual self-penetration,
In calm light-bringing.
You shining light, grow stronger!

And compare this, for my sake, with the verse of the scorpion:

Being consumes the essence,
Yet being remains in the essence.
In action, becoming disappears,
In becoming, action remains.
In punishing worldly rule,
In foreboding self-formation.
The essence preserves the essences.

Each stanza captures precisely the mood that corresponds to the planet in question in the sky. But that is not all it attempts to do. Whenever you take certain stanzas, you will be able to feel something else as well. I will pick out one line from each stanza, the line of Mars:

In Aries: Shine forth, awakening being.
In Taurus: In essential worldliness.
In Gemini: To powerful life forces.
In Cancer: To vigorous self-proving.
In Leo: To willing decisions of being.
In Virgo: Work from life forces.
In Libra: And being brings forth being.
In Scorpio: In becoming, action remains.
In Sagittarius: In the ruling power of the will to live.
In Capricorn: In inner resistance to life.
In Aquarius: Let it rise in the stream.
In Pisces: And preserve itself in preservation.

Nevertheless, the general mood of the stanza is captured in each individual line, and in each of these lines, in the sequence of the seven lines, always corresponding to Mars, you can hear the Mars mood in the line. So that the ideal is actually that if someone could be awakened from sleep and a line were read to them: “In becoming, action persists” — they would have to say: “Well, Mars in Scorpio!”; with the other line: “Jupiter in Libra” and so on. You see, this is the opposite of any subjective arbitrariness. It is really taking oneness with the laws of the universe seriously. It is not merely declaimed: One should be one with the universe! Rather, it is this oneness; at least an attempt is made to carry out this oneness in concrete terms. You will also have noticed that, for example, the gesture is held in certain cases, you will have noticed how, as the sun moves around, the Libra mood was also beautifully captured in the gesture, without this being sought, but simply because the letter in question is there. You have seen in the Libra mood expressed here: the worlds receive worlds.

In being, being experiences itself. In being, being encompasses itself. And being brings about being To become action, In tranquil world enjoyment. O worlds, bear worlds!

— everywhere the balance of the scales! It happened naturally that the Libra attitude was captured right there. Things happen quite naturally when they are done right.

What is actually attempted with something like this? Truly, it is something quite different from a game! It is an attempt to hold on to what has been accomplished cosmically by the creation of our solar system in a real inner grasp. One really tries to live into it, to live into the mood, into the doing, and into everything. And one would like to say: What you have seen playing out here gives you the opportunity to create a mobility and moving concepts of what can be called:

“The word surges through the world,
And the formation of worlds holds the word fast.”

In the first performance [“Planetary Dance”], an attempt is also made, but in a slightly different way, to depict a world context. You will have seen that the movements precisely captured the fact that we are dealing with stanzas of four lines each and that the sun made its twelve movements on an outer circle. There are also twelve verses. Only there, on the outer circle, the sun was presented as passing through the zodiac.

The two ladies standing in the middle circle expressed the planetary, and the lady standing in the very center expressed the lunar, the moon. So here you had: the sun, the planets, and the moon. And so was the inner connection of the lines and also the relationship between the last line and the first line: the first line is always the solar, the last always the lunar. Just as sunlight is reflected back from the moon, so the last line will always be a reflection.

And so an attempt was made to derive from the mystery of the universe a form that can be both spoken and expressed eurythmically in movement. So when the time comes when people learn to read these things, having seen something like this performed, they will know, know clearly, what such a whole system of movement expresses.

Of course, one can take the view that there is no need to do such a thing, but, you see, people can have different opinions. One can also take the view that human beings could be mute and did not need to speak. And if all human beings in the world were mute and only one couple began to speak, the rest would consider speaking to be highly superfluous. So these are very relative views, aren't they? One only needs to engage with the relativity of these views to realize that true progress in the development of humanity can only be achieved if one engages with truly bringing out all the possibilities that are inherent in human nature.

Once the ladies are able to teach what is now the second chapter of eurythmy, you will see that what appears before your eyes in the macrocosm, and which still needs to be developed, requires musical accompaniment for the upbeats we did at the beginning; today it was only a silent upbeat. Later on, you will see that the macrocosmic is joined by the microcosmic and that there will be performances in which something will be expressed just as regularly as in human speech itself. Later you will see compositions of eurythmy in which you will notice that a lip sound arises at exactly the right place, a tooth sound at another right place, and that what really happens is what arises in a different way in human speech, so that human beings get to know themselves in what takes place in eurythmy. You will also have noticed today that the ladies will gradually be able to teach that different things in words, different things in meanings and in sense are expressed in different ways. You will have noticed today that a concrete word was danced in a completely different way than an abstract word, that a verb indicating an activity was danced in a different way than a verb indicating a state of suffering, than a verb indicating duration, and so on. You will also find this connection, I would say between the brain and the speech organism, represented in eurythmy.

Program for the performance on August 28, 1915, Dornach

Exact repeat of the performance on August 15, 1915 (J. W. Goethe, Faust, Mountain Gorges “Ascension”). The following ladies were absent: Claussen, Hotz I + II, and Ottilie Schneider. They were replaced by the following ladies: Helene Nierl, Edith Röhrle, Gudrun Matschinsky, and Eckart

Program for the performance on August 29, 1915, 3 p.m., Dornach

I Andante by W. A. Mozart.
II Eurythmic performances:
Serious prelude (ether wave) performed without words or music by nine ladies
Rudolf Steiner: Planetary dance
Serious prelude
Rudolf Steiner: The Twelve Moods
Everyone was dressed in white. All eurythmic performances were repeated in exactly the same order. Dr. Steiner recited the words for all eurythmic performances. The full Pentecost decorations were used. (The entire carpentry workshop was decorated with green branches. The stage decoration was made of light purple crepe. All the fabric was attached to white lining. Flowers cut out of another fabric were sewn onto it – on the backdrop, the eurythmy podium, and the children's podium. There were no flowers on the two side wings, on the fabric covering of the lectern, or on the podium.)

Performance diary, GOE B.08.011.001_Heft_1_023