The Origin and Development of Eurythmy 1918–1920

GA 277b — 30 March 1919, Dornach

10. Eurythmy Performance

Dear attendees! Please allow me to say a few words before our eurythmy performance. I feel this is all the more justified as this performance will be about an experiment, or perhaps I could say: the intention of an experiment. For it is tempting to compare what we will be offering as a movement art with all kinds of neighboring arts, dance arts and the like, and [it is tempting] to think that we want to compete with such neighboring arts. Now we know very well that what is being achieved today in the various neighboring arts is something extraordinarily perfect in its own right. And we would be completely misunderstood if it were thought that we want to compete with it in any way. What we want is something quite different: to create an art of movement in its own right, which is admittedly only at the beginning. And that is what I would particularly like to emphasize: that we think very modestly about this particular stage at which we still stand today with regard to this our special, unique art form, and in this sense I also ask you to accept our presentation today.

What we are attempting has a completely different source from neighboring arts. It comes from the same source from which everything that is done here in this Goetheanum should flow: It comes from Goethe's world view and view of art. Even if we are striving to carry out a 20th-century Goetheanism, that is, one that has been further developed in line with the views of modern times, it is still from the source of Goethe's world and art view that we draw.

Perhaps I can best suggest what needs to be said about our art of movement by pointing to a certain branch of Goethe's vast and comprehensive world view, to his view of nature. Goethe himself sought the sources of his artistic vision in his intense, intuitive view of nature. He coined the beautiful phrase: When nature begins to reveal its secrets to someone, that person feels the most ardent longing for its most worthy interpreter, art. It may seem as though I am taking you on a brief journey to a remote theoretical area of Goethe's work, to the area of Goethe's theory of metamorphosis. For that which was expressed in the comprehensive view of the metamorphosis of living beings can be completely translated into artistic form. Goethe saw in every single plant leaf a whole plant, only in a simple form, developed in the leaf, and he saw in turn in every single part of the plant a transformed leaf. In the colorful blossom, he saw transformed leaves; yes, even in the stamens and pistils, which in their external form look so little like leaves, Goethe saw transformed, metamorphosed plant leaves. And the whole plant was in turn an intricately designed leaf for him. Goethe applied this view to all of nature. And we can only come to terms with living nature if we base our understanding of it on this kind of view, right up to the human being, if we follow how everything consists of living members that are actually only repetitions of the whole, of the whole organism, how the whole organism is only a complicated elaboration, transformation of the individual member. This can also be applied by progressing to the most complicated natural phenomenon, to man, and not only to the forms of his individual limbs, but it can also be applied to the activity of the human organism.

In so far as we have the natural human organization, we carry the larynx and its neighboring organs within us. Through this larynx and its neighboring organs, we produce that which not only functions as speech from person to person, but which can be artistically developed in poetic and artistic language, in song, and in the element of music. If we are able to follow, through intuitive observation, through spiritual observation, the movement patterns that are present in the larynx itself, we can say that what goes on in the movements of this single human limb, in the larynx, when we speak or sing artistically, can be transformed into activity, into movement of the whole human being. The whole human being can become like a visible larynx. We could also say that when we speak, that is, when we add sound to sound or tone to tone in a logical way, the air moves in certain rhythmic movements. These rhythmic movements are not what we can turn our attention to when we listen while speaking. But intuitive insight can form a picture of what is actually going on invisibly in the air movement. And all of this can be transferred to movements of the whole human being.

Dear ladies and gentlemen, our eurythmic art is based on this, which, as I said, is only an experiment today. The whole human being, as he presents himself to you here on the stage, should act like a living larynx. Of course, this must be further expanded. When we speak artistically, when we make language the organ of poetry, when we make it the organ of music, the warmth of inner feeling resonates through the sound, and the lawful sequence of sounds, tones, moods, resonates within. That which resonates in human speech and in poetry in terms of feeling, mood, emotional content, and inner soul movement, in terms of rhyme, rhythm, alliteration, and assonance, should in turn be expressed in the positions and movements of groups of people performing eurythmy.

Thus everything that is otherwise revealed to the human ear in sound is to be expressed through such an art of movement. I am not saying that one must always recognize how something inward is expressed through one or other movement of the person or the group. Of course, once such an artistic source, to which I have just referred, has been found, what can then be represented through it must have an immediate artistic effect on intuitive perception. It will do so if it is developed to a certain degree of artistic perfection. For art – as Goethe says so beautifully – is based on a manifestation, on a revelation of certain natural laws that would never be revealed without it. So the person who discovers secret natural laws through intuitive contemplation and transforms them into something visible is walking the path of how art can truly be brought about. For in the truly artistic, in that which is not merely artistic in a naturalistic or external sense, in the truly artistic one must always have the sensation of looking intensely into an infinite and ever more infinite, into an abyssal depth. This is only possible if what is presented artistically is taken from the inner laws of nature itself. This is what has been attempted here. Therefore, what is presented visually for direct contemplation must also appear artistic. Goethe says so beautifully that art is based on the depths of knowledge, on the essence of things, insofar as we are allowed to express this essence of things in visible or tangible forms.

In this sense, the eurythmy art aspires to achieve something Goethean.

Only then will one understand what is actually intended by it in the right way, if one does not compare it at all, this our eurythmic art, with what is attempted as a dance art or the like in pantomime or through gestures or through a direct, instantaneous connection between movements and inner soul emotions. What is intended in our eurythmy is like the musical element itself. Just as the musical element is based on an inner, objective law in harmony and melody, so what is presented in eurythmy is based on such a law - not on the momentary will of a movement to interact with the inner soul life. Therefore, in this eurythmy too, there is no arbitrariness, no momentary connection sought between a gesture and the inner soul movement. When two people perform something for you in eurythmy, the diversity is no different from the diversity that exists when two pianists perform a Beethoven sonata with a different subjective interpretation. What matters to us is the continuity of the inner lawfulness, not the eliciting of a momentary gesture from the person. Therefore, all pantomime, all mime, all momentary gestures, all that is eliminated. And where they will still be noticed in our performing art, it is only because in the beginning things are still imperfect. It will be eliminated in the course of the development of this particular art form.

Thus, if one enters into what this art is about – as we have once set it up – on the one hand one can see the human larynx embodied in the movements and forms of the whole person and groups of people, and on the other hand one can hear the poetry and the music, so that the two complement each other and unite to form a total work of art. And it should be understood, esteemed attendees, that the recitation that accompanies the eurythmic art must be held differently than what is usually understood by recitation today, precisely because it appears as a special artistic supplement to eurythmy.

Recitation today has actually stepped out of the realm of the truly artistic. Recitation today is actually limited to the presentation of the poetic content. The discovery of an art form such as that on which eurythmy is based will in turn lead to recitation itself being restored to what it once was, something that those who are younger today no longer know. Those who are older today can still remember the reciters of the 70s and 80s, who perhaps already belonged to the decadent, but still offered an echo of what the art of recitation used to be. Few people today know that Goethe rehearsed “Iphigenia” for the stage in Weimar, conducting with a baton like a musical work of art. The aim was to make the rhythmical and the artistic audible. This art of recitation has been lost. Through eurythmy, it will in a sense become necessary again. Today, people no longer want to hear what is actually poetic and artistic: it is the poetic form, not what can be expressed by summarizing the content. Basically, the art of recitation today is nothing more than a particularly sophisticated form of reading prose. And only by taking a detour through eurythmy will we be able to rediscover the art of recitation and declamation. This is not understood today.

So I would like to ask you, dear attendees, to take on board our presentation in the sense in which it has been presented, and above all to bear in mind that we ourselves – as I said at the beginning – think very modestly about what we are already able to achieve. If it is met with understanding, it will be able to develop further. And we are convinced that today we are still at the beginning of its development with this eurythmy. But we ourselves - or perhaps not we ourselves, but others - will be able to bring out of it something that can be placed alongside other art forms as a special new art form.

What will appear particularly important – because artistic creation has been elevated to the level of the human being – is what Goethe directly points out in his beautiful book about Winckelmann, in which he says: When the human being is placed at the summit of nature, he sees himself again as a whole nature and brings forth, takes harmony, proportion, meaning, significance and content together, in order to finally rise to the production of the work of art.

In eurythmy, something should be presented like a work of art that comes directly from what is possible in the human being in terms of movement and inner strength, to external revelation. I ask you to consider that a start has been made on this in our eurythmy. And in this sense, I ask you to take up our presentation and give it your indulgence and attention.

[After the break:]

In the second part, we will present the scene at midnight from Goethe's “Faust II”, the so-called “four gray women”: worry, guilt, lack, need.

It is the case that this scene in particular can be seen as a kind of rehearsal for our eurythmic art. It will be seen that from “Faust”, in which Goethe, as he himself said, so much has been secretly hidden, through eurythmy, something will be able to be brought out that has not yet been brought out by ordinary stage performance, - If one has often seen the representations of the first part of “Faust” - I will say: the representation for example, on the one hand, the [Devrient-Lassen] performance, then one has the feeling that it stylizes what Goethe not only in terms of content but also in terms of style, according to the higher art form, also incorporated into “Faust”, that it comes out in this way [mysteries]; [but] then the thing very easily becomes operatic. On the other hand, if you stick to acting – I remember Wilbrandt's performance, or others – it can easily happen that scenes that shine so deeply into the human soul as this scene of sorrow can remain empty and poor.

The way in which eurythmy expresses what Goethe so stylishly attempted to express in the second part of “Faust”, in this most mature of poems – this kind of eurythmic performance will be best suited to bringing out, perhaps through eurythmy, what Goethe meant. And that is why it will be possible to make just such an attempt at presenting this scene, to show how, with the help of eurythmy, a coherent whole can arise from these arts in addition to the acting.