The Origin and Development of Eurythmy 1912–1918

GA 277a

Reports on Early Eurythmy Work

Tatiana Kisseleff: “What fate has bestowed upon us in the art of eurythmy”

We owe the invaluable gift of eurythmy, which shaped our lives and became destiny for many of us, to Dr. Steiner and Marie Steiner-von Sivers, who brought the youngest sister of the arts into being through their joint efforts. By fate, I had the good fortune to experience from the very beginning, in the most intense way, how the sacred art of movement, revived in a new form and named eurythmy at the suggestion of Dr. Steiner, developed step by step in Dornach from 1914 onwards, parallel to the construction of the Goetheanum.

In writing down the communications and reflections contained in this report, I had in mind mainly those readers who did not know Dr. Steiner and his wife, but also those who did not work under their guidance in the field of eurythmy. I have shared various things about the preliminary stage of this Dornach period in my book Eurythmie. Memories from the Early Years 1912-27 and described my personal experiences related to this stage in Munich, Düsseldorf (Haus Meer), and Berlin. The further development of the art of eurythmy was determined by the fact that, in the fall of 1913, Dr. Steiner began work on the construction of the first Goetheanum building on the Dornach hill near Basel, and Dr. and Mrs. Steiner moved their permanent residence to Dornach, making this place the center of the Anthroposophical Society. Rudolf Steiner points out that the eurythmic forms arose in parallel with what he experienced in creating the forms of the Goetheanum building, which resulted in their full harmony. He said that they "arose from a similar artistic impulse. Eurythmy would probably not have been discovered without the work on the building. Before the idea of building, it was only in its infancy." The first phase of eurythmic development in Dornach until 1918-19, when we received the first so-called standard forms from Dr. Steiner, which were then created in ever-increasing numbers, was, so to speak, an interim period lasting a few years, during which we were, in a sense, dependent on ourselves with regard to the forms of movement in space. This was the necessary preparation time for what was to come in the next stage. “If anything is to be achieved, it must be prepared,” said Dr. Steiner. However, reaching a further stage requires a prior increase in strength, which is achieved through searching and striving. “Test yourself, student, practice with effort!” An example from Dr. Steiner for the sound ö: amazement with joy, he wrote in my eurythmy notebook. We were ready for this and made a sincere effort. However, all this would not have been enough to accomplish the task ahead of us if Dr. Steiner had not taken over the leadership of the work. During that time, which also included the eurythmy course in late summer 1915, the so-called Apollonian eurythmy, which had to be worked out, Dr. Steiner devoted her main energy to the art of eurythmy, and for a while this became one of her most important activities in the Anthroposophical Society. She put her outstanding talent and consummate skill in the field of artistic speech, her enthusiasm for the art of speech and eurythmy, and her whole being, which radiated life and world-healing impulses, at the service of the emerging art. During the seemingly endless rehearsals, she recited for us, never sparing herself, a wide variety of texts in German and other languages: poems, fairy tales, the Norwegian dream song of Olaf Åsteson, scenes from Faust: the Romantic and Classical Walpurgis Night, the Ariel scene, and so on. Carried by her wonderful artistry with language, we moved on the carpentry stage, later on the uniquely beautiful stage of the First Goetheanum, sometimes elated—as if winged—sometimes in a serious, tragic manner. Through her advice, corrections, valuable comments, and conversations, she brought about the development of our artistic powers and rejoiced in our progress in agility and growing, lively expressiveness. She devoted herself to promoting us, ready to make sacrifices, because from our joint work in the fall of 1914 at Villa Hansi, I know how much she herself would have liked to devote herself to eurythmy as a performing artist.

Every day she worked eagerly on eurythmy; in 1915 she also attempted to have the same person recite and perform eurythmy at the same time, She tried this herself during rehearsals for the Earth Spirit in Faust I and Frau Felicia in a fairy tale from Steiner's Mystery Dramas, but immediately recognized it as an incorrect solution to this problem and divided these artistic activities between two artists, the speaker and the eurythmist, in order to take over the recitation herself and refrain from practicing the art of eurythmic movement. For the newly created art needed genuine artistic speech to accompany it in order to grow and develop further; it demanded a new, much livelier, more animated language to carry it. No one but her could have accomplished this. Dr. Steiner sought this new, supportive form of speech and then created it; she accomplished this with a spirit of sacrifice. Through this renunciation, the transition period became a highly productive time, infinitely rich in artistic and purely human experiences. By encouraging us to awaken in ourselves a sense of genuine artistry, but also of high, pure humanity and morality in the broadest sense, she prepared the ground, as it were, that was suitable for receiving and nurturing the seeds of the spirit that were then sown in this soil.

These seeds were the new information, the wonderful new forms that Dr. Steiner was now able to impart in ever greater abundance, having seen in some performances—such as the very moving Lamienszene in the Classical Walpurgisnacht—that we had made progress in artistic expression and agility, and perhaps also a little in general human relations: Had we not always had a shining example of devotion, holy zeal, joy in sacrifice, and incomparable modesty before us during our many years of working with Dr. Steiner? We could learn great and important things from her. Did we really learn them?

During the last eurythmy lessons in Dornach in June 1924, Dr. Steiner made a deeply meaningful statement regarding Marie Steiner's work in the service of eurythmy: When he gave the very first lessons in eurythmy, he could not have known what eurythmy would become under Dr. Steiner's hands. Marie Groddeck, who reports this, adds: “Here was someone who had worked with Rudolf Steiner's instructions in such a way that the results of the work far exceeded his expectations.” Marie Steiner was the only person who could fully and unconditionally understand Rudolf Steiner's lofty intentions and also realize them. [...] We have seen that Marie Steiner also realized for eurythmy what Dr. Steiner had in mind, what lived in him as his intention in this regard, and that here the result even far exceeded his expectations. We owe eurythmy in its genuine, pure form to her, alongside Rudolf Steiner. I would like to conclude my brief review of that infinitely significant, unforgettable time by expressing my deep gratitude for this incomparable spiritual gift: the creation of the art of eurythmy, which provides spiritual substance and brings healing and blessing, accomplished through the joint efforts of these two great helpers of humanity for spiritual advancement.

Erna van Deventer: “Review and Preview: The Meaning and Purpose of the 1915 Course”

What is the significance of the “Apollonian Course” that Rudolf Steiner gave in Dornach in 1915, to which he himself gave the motto in Dornach: “Art and beauty in eurythmy arise when regularity enters into it.”

One might think that the Apollonian element was not present in eurythmy before 1915. This is indeed the case and can also be understood. In the years 1912 to 1915, eurythmists were more attuned to the Dionysian element, which Rudolf Steiner once described as “the fire,” while he called the Apollonian element “the formative” element: “Dionysus = the fire; Apollo = the form.” (Annemarie Dubach-Donath)

If one considers the development of eurythmy in its early years, one will soon notice a common thread running through these first years of eurythmy: everything that is given for the sounds, the rhythms, the forms are primordial elements of human speech that are not explained, but which awaken enthusiasm and excitement in the practitioner when they are practiced! And this practice awakened in us a sense of the values that lay dormant in such instructions and exercises and were certainly present as elements, but had to be awakened in the practicing student by themselves. Those who witnessed these early years of eurythmy's development will remember how enthusiasm for eurythmy arose not from understanding its laws, but from experiencing its primordial elements. For example, when studying and practicing many times, what possibilities live in an a-movement as opposed to a -movement; who felt how an iambic meter propels a person forward, how a trochaic meter holds them back; how the rounded forms of the will have a completely different effect than the straight lines of the forms of thought; how sinking deep into the knees in “I look up” allowed one to experience something completely different than the jumps to the right and left in the exercise “I am here”; - experienced through the movements and the will that had to be activated by the person themselves in these movements (our arms and legs do not move eurythmically by themselves, but our ego must give them the “command”) like a fiery awakening in one's own being!

And through this enthusiasm, those who worked with these elements of eurythmy had the courage to “create” poems, psalms, and music, while we were still almost completely unfamiliar with the creative forces that constitute the essence of the Apollonian! That is why it was possible before 1915 to give eurythmy performances that were actually far too ambitious, but which on the other hand perhaps also showed Rudolf Steiner what these first years of eurythmy had developed in terms of forces, and that it was now “time” in 1915 for Rudolf Steiner to help us further!

But how was this new eurythmy course, which did not yet have a name, prepared or communicated to the four teachers concerned? A program for a conference, as is done today, an invitation? No, it was quite different, again in keeping with the age and preconditions that these four young people brought with them or did not bring with them. The so-called Apollonian course began in August while these four teachers were in Dornach – by chance? Not that either, because the facts were as follows: On August 15, 1915, on Assumption Day, Rudolf Steiner wanted to have the final scenes of Faust II performed. One of the four teachers received a letter from Dr. Steiner in July asking her to come to Dornach to take part in the rehearsals and asking if she would like to play Gretchen. Of course, the teacher in question came with great joy. And when she entered the carpentry workshop, Dr. Steiner greeted her with the words: “Here she comes, E. Look, she already has the braids,” because the teacher in question had been wearing what was then called a “Kranz” in Germany for years: her hair braided around her head. There was great laughter among the staff... But the other three teachers, who were also to take part in the “Apollonian Course” in the White Hall a month later, were given the roles of the three penitents: none of the four young people had any idea about the Apollonian Course itself! But in this way, these four teachers spent a month together in intensive eurythmic work. And not only that: during these weeks they lived together in Dornach, at the site of the First Goetheanum, and were even allowed to help with the woodwork, even though none of the four girls had any artistic training for such work.

They were able to experience how the dome was formed during construction, how Dr. Steiner himself stood on top of the scaffolding, painting and correcting, pointing out the laws of space or teaching their meaning. All of this was already a training, unbeknownst to the four teachers at the time, to learn something about the laws of space in the building under construction, which was, after all, an image of cosmic laws. And a month later, Rudolf Steiner taught them and a few others who joined the course later how cosmic laws are reflected in human speech, in syntax, in Apollonian spatial movements – wasn't this previous month the best preparation for these people to absorb the wisdom of human language and human speech?

And after working together for weeks, one day they heard that Rudolf Steiner wanted to give a eurythmy course to four teachers in the White Hall of the Goetheanum. Rudolf Steiner begins this course with the words: “Until now, we have actually been spelling out eurythmy, but now we want to add what internalizes the matter; we want to move from depicting the word to depicting the meaning in eurythmy, so that each individual word is given its meaning in a specific form.” This is where the organizing element, the Apollonian element, comes in, in which the entire syntax is now classified into all types and characteristics of words in the constructions of sentence structure. None of the four teachers had ever thought of the possibility of a meaningful grammar before. It was Rudolf Steiner himself who coined the name “meaning forms” for the spatial forms of the parts of speech. The young people were so unprepared for such a precise formulation of the parts of speech – they had once learned them at high school and quickly forgotten them as “dry and boring” – that they were almost startled when Dr. Steiner unexpectedly began to talk about copulas, prepositions, and interjections. So it is understandable that one of the teachers, for example, had one of the Waldorf teachers, Dr. T., who happened to be in Dornach that same evening, write all the Latin names in her notebook and then quickly memorized them... they are still in the old notebook from 1915!

If you take a broad overview of the course, which consisted of eighteen lessons of often one to two hours each, given by Rudolf Steiner, it may seem as if the various lessons bring new forms, poems, and explanations in a random order. But if we allow this sequence to sink in and calmly consider the structure of the lessons, letting the images pass through our minds with the question: Why did Dr. Steiner first give the word forms, then the mood introductions, “cheerful and elegiac,” in between seemingly unmotivated tone eurythmy, then the cosmic introductions—why? And if you allow yourself to be led on to the very strictly formulated rhythms, then into geometry, then around the middle of the course you encounter the microcosmic word on the three podiums and, after applying these laws, you find the scene from the mystery drama, until you finally find the most remarkable form of Tiaoait – is this sequence coincidental? Or can one also find a conscious culmination in this?

Everything that is artistic can, of course, be viewed from different perspectives, and those who take this course in 1963 and later will experience something different from those who were there in 1915 and witnessed the construction of the building itself at the same time. The fact remains, however, that Rudolf Steiner often referred to the Goetheanum as “the house of the word” – on the one hand, and on the other hand, that the human form is the microcosmic reflection of the macrocosm and that one can find a human being within a human being in the human head, including the speech organs. It should also be remembered that when Rudolf Steiner gave the “Tiaoait” at that time, he said literally: “these movements in the Tiaoait are these sounds,” and Tiaoait is to be applied to cosmic poems, whereby the Apollonian laws of the text are to be incorporated into the forms. And now let us place the drawing of the Tiaoait [...] next to [...] and next to that let us place [...] the [... ] floor plan of the Goetheanum [...], the “House of the Word.”

Can this Tiaoait perhaps be seen as the culmination of the entire Apollonian course? Anyone who has had the privilege of working with Rudolf Steiner for many years knows that there are no coincidences in his important arrangements, just as in his lecture cycles the first lecture could never take the place of the last, or the fifth could never take the place of the first.

In 1915, the young people of that time certainly had no awareness of the meaningful structure of this course. They were simply told and experienced that this art originated in the Greek mysteries and that now, in 1915, it was time to learn about the Apollonian element that lives in language and human movement in its lawfulness. Rudolf Steiner called it “moving from spelling in eurythmy to depicting the meaning of words”: "[...] ‘the word once encompassed the whole human being as an etheric creation in an original human conception’. Rudolf Steiner begins the course with the laws inherent in words – he concludes with the cosmic form in which the movements are woven into the cosmic forms. Will a new generation of eurythmy practitioners succeed in clarifying in their minds what we experienced as images of the Goetheanum on the one hand and the human form on the other? The last stanza of the poem “Es leuchtet die Sonne” (The sun shines), given to the practitioners in 1915, could be a guide for the future of eurythmy: “It senses the burning thirst of the spirit / In worlds the beings, / In beings the worlds.”

Alice Fels: Excerpts from: “On the Development of Eurythmy”

In August of that year (1915), Rudolf Steiner gave the first eurythmy teachers daily eurythmy instruction. These lessons, which took place in the white south hall of the burned Goetheanum and in which only eight people besides Marie Steiner participated, brought such an inexhaustible wealth of new information and tasks that eurythmy entered a new phase of its development. This was exactly three years after the first attempt described during the Munich festival season.

The comprehensive field of language and poetry, the entire world of poetic forms, was now transferred to the human organism of movement and the architecture of space in motion and, from various points of view, to multi-level movement choirs and groups.

The stanzaic structure of a poem (such as the eight-line stanza, the tercet), the rhymes, the assonance, the alliteration, the sonnet, the ritornello, and the ghazal found their visible reflection in moving spatial forms. While initially the typical features of a form, the crystallized stanzaic structure, so to speak, were reflected in the pictorial nature of the space, Rudolf Steiner gradually moved on to shaping the inner soulfulness expressed in the form, like a three-part type of poem that begins with a question about fate or a natural phenomenon, then leads to an internalization, which can also take place silently between the stanzas, in order to end in an elegiac, tragic, or liberating solution, whereby the respective eurythmic form is transformed, which has to cling like a garment of poetry. In an even later phase of eurythmy, the unique, soul-moving element of a poem that shapes it from within, the melody of life and movement of a stanza, so to speak, was reproduced through movement in space. By placing the sounds and rhythms, the forms and colors of a poem in space through human figures, it becomes, as it were, a living, visible being, but only if it is itself a living, linguistically condensed spiritual creation, truly a “poem.” Eurythmy sets a strict criterion for this.

This also applies to things that are not directly expressed in words: moods of joy, sorrow, tension and expectation, resolution and fulfillment, love and hate, longing and insight, as well as for everything linguistic that is only hinted at through the intonation and nuance of speech, such as the communicative, questioning, or exclamatory coloring of a sentence, for the past and the future, a visible expression was now created through the differentiation of sound and through gestures of the upper body, the head, the hands, and the feet.

The whole human being, as well as every single limb of the human form, was thus enabled to become an artistic means of expression for a language of movement in which every subtle nuance of language received an adequate, visible counterpart.

Humans learned to experience themselves as instruments through which the world expresses itself.

In this way, it was possible to practice experiencing the stretching and bending of one's own limbs as an auric brightening and darkening and to transfer this to the degrees of brightness in a poem. This sensation is supported by intensifying the experience of brightening with a stick or a flowering branch held in an outstretched arm, or by intensifying the experience of darkening by carrying a bud in the hand with the arm bent (Mercury and Mars motif; Rudolf Steiner said, when he gave this exercise in the midst of the darkness of war, that every experience of joy brightens the auric sheaths of human beings and that all joy experienced on earth will one day become light on Jupiter). The color received its actual movement correlate in the soulful play of the hands and wrists.

In order to become receptive to the nuanced colorfulness of a poem, it is good to pay attention to how the moods radiating from a person, or a city, or a room one enters, can be felt and experienced in color.

The teachings were aimed at awakening and enlivening inner abilities; never at abstract, mechanical, or purely technical practice. This made it possible to develop a spiritually inspired technique that is not an end in itself but can be continually enlivened from within. Rudolf Steiner described the sensory, moral, and educational effects of each individual exercise and, where relevant, also pointed out the physiological effects. Since eurythmy exercises are based on an understanding of the total human being and its connection to the universe, they represent, in their entirety, a harmonizing counterbalance to the damage caused by modern civilization. Rudolf Steiner was therefore justified in saying that all the consequences of the Taylor system for workers would be offset if workers could practice eurythmy for one hour every day.

In one of the spatial forms he gave at the end of these lessons, he added that children and young people who practiced this long enough would be protected from confused thinking for their entire lives. This moving form builds the sounds TIAO in space in such a way that they form a rich and clearly structured cross and, like harmonizing music, clarify and flow through the practitioner. The ancient mystery word TAO shines with the I, the sound of the egoistic, internalized self-consciousness.

At that time, Rudolf Steiner also gave the first eurythmic instruction, specifying gestures for the major and minor scales, already taking into account the intervals, and pointing to a spiraling, ascending structure that would make it possible to visualize the different octaves rising spatially.

In connection with the eurythmic performance of the seventh picture of the Portal of Initiation, for which he divided the language into different movement choirs according to phonetic criteria and the three zones – corresponding to the threefold human form , Rudolf Steiner said that in this way it would also be possible to represent choirs from other dramatic poems, such as in The Bride of Messina.

An essential element that was now added to the previous forms of movement was the Apollonian form element, which was developed from the word formation and sentence structure of the German language, from what is called, in a word that sounds so dry and prosaic to today's people, “grammar and syntax.”

The words Dionysian and Apollonian were now used in Nietzsche's sense. Rudolf Steiner also wrote in My Life that Nietzsche started from the contemplation of the spirit in mythical form. Apollo and Dionysus were spiritual figures that he experienced. The course of human spiritual history appeared to him as a cooperation or even a struggle between Apollo and Dionysus.

The abstract became vividly pictorial when Rudolf Steiner said, for example, that the comprehensive sentence must encompass the subordinate ones through greater spatial and gestural design, “like the hen with her chicks.”

The inner movement that had become frozen in the verbal, in the nouns, in the conjunctions and relational words, was liberated and brought into visible spatial movements. These word movements can become a means of artistic expression for the eurythmist, just as color is for the painter and sound is for the musician. It is not those who understand a poem solely through the words and sentences of language who understand it, but those who perceive it with a “soulful sense of balance” and a “soulful sense of movement.” Grammar, which has become completely unmusical today, has thus been returned to the realm of the muses, from which it had been increasingly banished over the centuries, until it finally became a sour-looking, bespectacled governess.

Through the world of eurythmic forms, grammar can regain its spiritual and emotional richness and beauty and be imbued with a musical and poetic element through the ebb and flow, the acceleration and deceleration of movements. [...]

The course in the summer of 1915 culminated in the poems “Twelve Moods” and “Planetary Dance,” written for eurythmy at that time, which in their rhythmic structure, sound design, and form represent direct linguistic images of cosmic archetypes. The strict architecture of the stanza structure is musically interspersed with swelling and subsiding movements (as the word “mood” already suggests musical relationships). A swelling and subsiding resounds throughout the entire poem in a curve that encompasses the entire poem, while the “Planet Dance” is permeated by a fourfold inner wave of movement from love through longing to call - fulfillment, which plays back and forth in questions and answers as a mysterious poetic dialogue between man and the world. The starry words of each individual line resound through the twelve stanzas in a powerful celestial symphony. This could be experienced when Rudolf Steiner read the “Twelve Moods” for the first time in the white South Hall of the Goetheanum, whose walls and ceiling, panelled with maple and birch wood, formed a unique acoustic resonance chamber; the delicate spring mood of the beginning: “Arise, O light” gradually increased to the powerful crescendo climax of the “Lion Stanza,” only to then submerge into the internalized calm of the “Jungfrau,” which spreads throughout nature when the sprouting, budding, deafeningly buzzing life of midsummer turns into the calm, peaceful autumn mood in which the human soul finds itself again after having devoted itself to the environment in summer. “Behold the worlds, soul!” [...]

Since each line of the poem “Twelve Moods” represents a concrete world situation – in the harmony of a planet with a fixed star word – and the verses as a whole contain a language of the stars that includes all possible constellations projected into human life situations, it becomes understandable what Rudolf Steiner added at the time: one could also depict biographies through this poem, for example by beginning with Leo or Scorpio, depending on whether a person's life was predominantly successful or tragic. [...]

The presentation of the two star poems was framed by the so-called “Cosmic Overture,” whose initially circular and then spiraling, rippling movements correspond to an ether wave that frequently occurs in the cosmic ether, as do the forms of the eurythmic overtures composed by Leopold van der Pals, which were intended to introduce a poem “like the overture to an opera,” were often modeled on forms of the cosmic ether. The polar connection between rest and movement, which reflects a universal law and is revealed in the starry sky in the relationship between the stationary zodiac and the changing stars, is reflected in the eurythmic forms of this period, where “fixed points” are almost always found alongside moving figures.

Thus, the art of movement had once again become a reflection of the dance of the stars, as the cult dances had once been [...].

During the following years, the newly received knowledge was processed, and both the art of eurythmy and the eurythmic artists developed as a result of this work. [...]

During these years, it was again Marie Steiner who worked with the budding artists in Dornach and during their months-long stay in Berlin during the following three winters of the war. Through this work and through her recitations during the exercises and performances, which now took place in small circles in Berlin and Munich as well as in Dornach, made it possible for eurythmy to take its first steps into public life and the wider world when the armistice came. This marked the beginning of a new phase in its development.