The Origin and Development of Eurythmy 1918–1920

GA 277b — 11 August 1919, Dornach

18. Eurythmy Performance

Holiday children from Munich spent a few weeks in Dornach, receiving eurythmy lessons from Tatiana Kisseleff and performing some staff exercises.

A group of German children on holiday: Balen and Spreiden with musical accompaniment by Max Schuurman
Stabübungen: up-down-right-left and spiral with musical accompaniment by L.eopold van der Pals and Qui-Qui with musical accompaniment by Max Schuurman
Alliterations and vowels
We, we...
The Cloud Illuminator
“The Herdsman” by Fercher von Steinwand Eurythmy group: TIAOAIT with a musical prelude by Max Schuurman “Hope” by Friedrich Schiller
Saying from the Calendar of the Soul by Rudolf Steiner “Calm Sea” and “Happy Voyage” by J. W. v. Goethe
Opening “Look around you, look within” with music by Leopold van der Pals
“In the tree, you dear little bird there“ by Christian Morgenstern
“The walk” by Martin Opitz with music by Max Schuurman, with singing
“Selige Leichtigkeit“ by Christian Morgenstern
“The birth of the pearl” by Fercher von Steinwand with the start of the waves with music by Leopold van der Pals
EVOE (eurythmy without words) with music by Max Schuurman
“A dream experience“ with music by Louise van Blommestein (with vocals and two violins)
“The Worm's Confession” by Christian Morgenstern with music by Max Schuurman for vocals, sound and lute eurythmy
Opening with music by Jan Stuten Satirical opening with music by L.eopold van der Pals
Humoresques by Christian Morgenstern: “The picket fence”; “The walking man”; “Moon things”; “The aesthetic weasel”

Of the following

address there are two transcripts – one by Helene Finckh, one in an unknown hand – which, due to their differences – especially in the first part – are both documented here.

First version of the address

So, dear children, you have been allowed to come here from your homeland, you have been allowed to see the beautiful mountains, the beautiful fields, the meadows, and you have been allowed to get to know the friendly people who have taken you in, you have been able to enjoy this friendly welcome that you have received here in beautiful, dear Switzerland. And now, yesterday and today, we also wanted to show you what we have to show here. You have seen many things up here. When you reflect later and remember what you have seen, and when you understand the word eurythmy, then hopefully this will be a beautiful memory, a beautiful thought.

You know that man has the beautiful gift, the beautiful gift of God, of language. But one usually speaks with the mouth. What you have seen here in eurythmy is also a language, a speaking, only the whole person speaks. And one day you will all know what it is in the human being that you call the soul. You do not yet know, you cannot yet know what is in the human being, what is in you and what you will one day call the soul. But what you have seen here, the movements made with the arms, the movements made in the circle and elsewhere, all that is spoken, spoken not to be heard but to be seen. And it is not the mouth that speaks, but the whole person, it is the soul in the person. And if you should ask later: What dwells in my breast? – the soul lives there – then remember that yesterday and today you learned how the soul speaks through the human being, through his limbs.

And now I would like to say a few words to the adults above your heads about what you see and what you will understand better later.

How what we call a eurythmic experiment, how this our eurythmy is an embodiment, one might say, of Goethe's world view and Goethe's view of art, how we have to think of it in the first third of the 20th century, not in Goethe's time itself. Goethe, as a human being, looked more deeply into the living essence of nature than any of his contemporaries and especially than any of the generations that followed him. The depth of Goethe's world view has still not been fully appreciated today.

What can be gained from Goethe's world view in a narrowly defined area is to be presented through our eurythmy. Goethe sees the whole plant only as a more complicated leaf. For Goethe, every leaf is a window through which he can see the whole plant with his supersensible eye. And this view, which is far from being fully developed, can be artistically perfected further and further in accordance with this world view. Here it is applied in a specific, concrete area.

Those who can intuitively see what is actually going on in the whole person when speaking, especially when speaking artistically and poetically, know that these movements and activities carried out by the larynx and neighboring organs are related to the whole person in the same way that Goethe believed that the leaf is related to the whole plant. The leaf is a metamorphosis of the whole plant. For us here, what is expressed in human speech by the larynx and its neighboring organs is a metamorphosis of what the whole human being holds back, what he actually wants to express by listening. And those who can see supersensibly know that it is not just a theory to imagine that we set the air in motion through our speech organs; so that speech carries within it an invisible movement.

That is what we attempt in eurythmy: to make the whole human being an extended larynx in movement, to visualize everything that otherwise remains invisible in speech because we otherwise take it for granted that our attention is directed towards hearing. To make visible the visualization of speech through the whole human being, that is what we strive for in eurythmy. There is nothing arbitrary about it. Not everything has been achieved yet. The art of eurythmy is only just beginning, it is only the attempt at a beginning. All pantomime and all arbitrariness are excluded. Just as music itself is structured in accordance with the laws of harmony, with each note following naturally from the one that precedes it, so too is the structure of major and minor keys in music. When two people or two groups of people perform the same thing in eurythmy at two different places, there must not be more individual differences in the performance than there are when two different pianists play the same Beethoven sonata with their own personal interpretation. It is always structured according to the law.

That is what we are striving for and by which we want to try to achieve something artistic on the one hand, but on the other hand also to achieve something pedagogically hygienic. Artistically, I would like to say, this great Goethean principle of art should be expressed, which he expresses, for example, when he says: Man is placed at the summit of nature and feels again as a whole nature. He takes order, measure, harmony and meaning together and finally rises to the production of the work of art. Here the whole human being becomes a work of art through those possibilities of movement that lie in the whole human being as they do in the larynx, where they remain invisible. These should come to light. The inner soul-feeling that glows in speech, the inner warmth of soul that comes from the enthusiasm of our personality, and what the poet brings forth in rhyme and rhythm, all this comes to the fore in the group movements and movements of people in outer space. There is nothing more arbitrary about the inner lawfulness than is necessary to present it artistically when two different performers present one and the same thing.

Of course, the fact that I am saying these few introductory words does not prejudice the artistic aspect. After all, art is based on the fact that it can be enjoyed directly. But the supersensible sources of all artistic creation in Goethe's sense should be pointed out. It seems necessary to me to create a new art form in this area, which we want to create in addition to everything else that we would like to create for our building.

Eurythmy will be accompanied on the one hand by recitation and on the other by music. The same thing that is heard in recitation, the same thing that is heard in music, the same thing should be represented in eurythmy through the forms of eurythmy. I would just like to mention that the art of recitation must return to the old, good forms. Those people who are here today have actually, at heart, [kcome to know a true art of recitation; this basically ended in the 1870s.

I recall that Goethe was so imbued with this art of recitation that he rehearsed his “Iphigenia” with his actors, baton in hand like a conductor. This is entirely justified, because what matters is not that the prosaic recitation – as is the case today, out of a certain materialistic tendency – particularly emphasizes the literal content, but rather that the artistic, the rhythmic, that which is not the prose content but the artistic form is expressed in the recitation. Then, in the parallel recitation and eurythmy, one sees how the whole human being is actually structured, to move inwardly in this way when the poet creates something artistic, when anything artistic is created at all.

I would just like to remind you that before Schiller visualized the content of a poem in his mind, he did not have the literal concept in his imagination, but rather an indeterminate melodiousness, a musicality in his soul. Schiller created entirely from the musically moved soul. The rhythmic impulse, the inward movement, which is then transferred to the prose content, was present in the most important of Schiller's poems. In turn, we want to let the emphasis of the prose content of a poem recede to a certain extent and express the actual poetry in the recitation, which should go hand in hand with the eurythmy.

You will, of course, have to be lenient: we are only just beginning with our eurythmy. Above all, it should be noted that the pantomime, the mimicry, the momentary gesture, that all will come later when the eurythmy is more perfected. We are our own harshest critics and we know that we are still at an imperfect stage with the art of eurythmy today. But we believe that when the whole human being is called upon in the sense of Goethe, so that one feels that higher natural laws shine through what is presented externally to the senses, then, on the basis of this Goethean world view, a new, genuine art, which is something nobler than the art of dance that one otherwise has, will also be able to emerge.

And what is basically only physiological in gymnastics, what only trains the body, the outer body, should be imbued with soul in eurythmy, so that it becomes apparent that the soul vibrates and speaks everywhere, so that we also want to incorporate an element of pedagogy into our eurythmic art. I believe I may commend to your forbearance, above all, what we are now able to present in a still imperfect way. But we hope that if our contemporaries show some interest in this attempt, then we will be able to bring this eurythmic art in particular to such perfection – perhaps no longer through us, but through others who will follow – that it will be able to establish itself as a new art, fully entitled to stand alongside the other older arts.

I wanted to say these few words, dear attendees, to introduce our eurythmy performance.

Second version of the address:

It's great that you dear children have come up to visit us again before you have to leave dear Switzerland, where you have received so much love. Haven't you? You've had a good time? And then you were also able to learn a lot, and those who took part in the eurythmy will probably also have fond memories of it in later life. Something should be expressed through eurythmy, as if you want to say something. When we speak, this only happens with the larynx and its neighboring organs; the layers of air are set in motion and waves form in the air. We usually do not see this because we do not focus on it, but listen to what is being spoken. In the same way, eurythmy, like the larynx, seeks to express something through the whole body. Eurythmy is a word that one sees, not hears. What the soul bears within it is made manifest through the eurythmic presentation.

You are not yet able to understand what it means to have a soul. But when something stirs in your breast later in life, you will also experience that you have a soul. And then what has been lying dormant in your memory may also speak to you of what you were allowed to see and partly learn up here. And now, looking down at the heads of the children (they were sitting at the front), I would like to say a few words to the adults who have come to watch our eurythmy performances.

The art of eurythmy is based on Goethe's world view. Just as Goethe saw the whole plant in the green leaf, we assume that the larynx, which produces the word, with its ancillary organs, is a metamorphosis of the whole human organism. Goethe called the leaf a metamorphosis of the plant because the whole essence of the plant is hidden in the leaf. The whole plant develops step by step out of the leaf; it metamorphoses into a calyx, a flower, and a fruit leaf. Therefore, the leaf can be seen as a representative of the whole plant. And so it is with the human larynx. What the word reveals about the soul lives in the whole human organism, and the whole organism can bear witness to this.

An attempt to do this is to be the eurythmy. There is nothing arbitrary movement, but everything in the sense meant that otherwise speaks through the word. And if different people do the same, and it seems a difference in the presentation is noticeable, so that is no different than when two different people play the same Beethoven sonata. What eurythmy wants to say is the same for everyone and is perfectly adapted to what is to be expressed. Every movement and every measure of time has its meaning. It is the musical-rhythmic element that also comes into its own in the spoken word of poetry. Schiller felt this very strongly; for him, the musical-rhythmic element of the form was always the first thing in the conception of his poetry. Before he formulated the content and material, before he even formulated a single thought, he was concerned with the rhythmic theme, the musical harmony, as it stirred in his soul.

Nowadays, our poetry has sunk to a state of complete disregard for this meaningfulness. Poetry, like prose, is read only for its content, and few people still know how to read poetry. It was only in the 1870s that people were still concerned with this – and those who lived at that time could still hear something about what rhythm means in poetry.

In the past, this was something essential, and it is said that Goethe practised his “Iphigenia” with a baton on the Weimar stage. Our eurythmic performances should also be in the spirit of Goethe. And I think that despite many imperfections - especially in the pantomimes - you will find something better in them than in what ordinary dance art has to offer. The first performances by the children are by those who have only taken part in an initial course of twelve hours, without any further preliminary training. Therefore, we ask for your indulgence. Your indulgence will also have to be sought again for everything else, because, as I said, it is an art that is only just beginning to emerge and is therefore far from being able to present anything complete.