The Origin and Development of Eurythmy 1912–1918

GA 277a — 13 February 1918, Nuremberg

Address on Eurythmy

Ms. Smits expressed the opinion that we too could cultivate something that is the art of dance. What we cultivate should have something to do with spiritual life. On the other hand, we must remember the origins of art and the arts in general. They arose when the whole of human nature was much more unified. In very early times, there was no separation between science, religion, and art; they were united in one great whole. Science served to explain religious cult and what it presented. Thus, the arts served to shower inner devotion, evoked by cult, with beauty. Beauty served the divine. Beauty expressed what was also religious worship. The three separated, and within art, the individual arts separated again. Today, one cannot begin a completely religious dance; that would violate all the laws of humanity, but one can create an approximation of religious dance. Richard Wagner already brought two arts together.

How did certain forms of dance come about? It turned out that human beings, who have a body capable of forming images, basically always perform movements such as those demonstrated in eurythmy. Every organ and every organ system is, in a certain sense, a whole human being. The same applies to what is connected with speech and word formation. The tongue, larynx, and lungs are, in an ethereal sense, a whole human being and perform certain movements. What vibrates in the larynx and other organs is a weakening of what happens in a magnificent way when humans speak and think. You can observe this in the larynx, tongue, and palate. Eurythmy is an expression of the whole human being, whereas speech, for example, sets only part of the human organism in motion. In eurythmy, the whole human being is set in motion; instead of speaking through the larynx alone, the whole body is used. Human feelings are also involved in human speech. What comes in through rhyme and through music is also expressed through eurythmy.

What the etheric body expresses can be formed into movements that are only latent in ordinary speech and singing, but not expressed; for example, we hold back a forward movement with the larynx. In eurythmy, on the other hand, this movement is carried out, this timbre of feeling is revealed, and virtual energy is transformed into potential energy.

This gives only a hint that we want something real with eurythmy. What otherwise passes into the gesture of the air and into the neighboring organs is carried out in eurythmy and becomes an image. Through every visualization, however, one comes closer to the spiritual. In a sense, what is subjective becomes objective; the human being becomes an imprint of something superpersonal, an image of something spiritual. This, however, takes eurythmy out of what is otherwise usually cultivated as the art of dance, which is otherwise an expression of the personal. The mimicry of personality is more or less suppressed. The aim is to achieve the regularity that underlies music. Eurythmy creates this, which makes it an art form for which it is particularly well suited.

More recent art forms are Impressionism and Expressionism. When a painter places dots of color next to each other in such a way that, from a certain distance, the eye perceives an impression similar to that created by light, matter, and cast shadows, this intermingling of colors is produced by Impressionism. In Expressionism, nothing is given, but only what is experienced in the artist's soul in a kind of clairvoyant way. This is achieved through certain color combinations. Expressionism is the exact opposite of Impressionism. One only needs to like what the artist has experienced in his soul. Poetry is an extremely impressionistic art, while dance is an expressionistic art. It is precisely through the expressive forms of dance that the soul of a person is expressed. In recent years, poetry has worked together with eurythmy. As a result, the impressionistic works together with the expressionistic, and this has become a demand. At first, it was believed that recitation should take a back seat. However, the fact that both are expressed creates two streams of feeling in the human soul. One stream is that of a quiet fear and the other that of a quiet sense of shame. The fact that the two swing like opposite pendulum swings, that one always swings back and forth between the two feelings, is precisely what should happen. The peculiar harmonious interaction comes about as a result, with one sounding out one moment and the other the next. We hope that something will come out of eurythmy that we cannot yet imagine, but which can then be exposed and seen publicly. All kinds of dancing have become popular, causing humanity to suffer from spiritual indigestion. Terpsichoritis is also one of the things that has afflicted humanity in recent years. When eurythmy is performed, one participates with the etheric body – should one do that? What the poem does not say, the eurythmic interpretation can sometimes point to backgrounds that otherwise remain hidden; it can reveal what works through the poet and what cannot be conveyed through words. What would otherwise remain hidden is thus revealed through the work of art.

The poet Conrad Ferdinand Meyer can gain a lot from eurythmic performance. In his poems, he lets it shine through everywhere in a quiet, vibrating way, as if the spiritual world were approaching in a semi-conscious manner. He forgets his connection to the physical world and begins to dream. In a particularly haunting, albeit quiet way, a dark spiritual tone speaks along with him. This is true of all his poems. It is connected with the tragedy of the artist; he had to spend part of his middle age in a sanatorium. His connection with the spiritual world weakened him and led to a serious mental disorder. He tragically sacrificed his health to the muse, and one can hear this resonating softly. In a particularly peculiar way, Meyer's poems are suited to presenting before our eyes, before our souls, the movement or deliberate movement, that which the spirit works through human language.

The following poems were recited and performed eurythmically: “The Scourged Psyche,” “The Song of the Sea,” “The Song of the Fates,” “Michelangelo and His Statues,” and “The Ghost Horse.”