The Origin and Development of Eurythmy 1918–1920
GA 277b — 16 August 1919, Dornach
19. Eurythmy Performance
Dear attendees!
The eurythmic art that we are presenting to you today is an art form that strives to make use of new means of expression, means of expression that are inherent in the human limbs themselves. The development of this eurythmic art is based entirely on the Goethean world view, on which, after all, everything that you see realized here in this building is based. And in fact, an attempt has been made to artistically shape in a particular, limited area that which, in Goethe's great world view, has still not been fully appreciated today, and is still awaiting its full appreciation. I do not want to precede the eurythmic presentation with long-winded theoretical discussions, but what Goethe gave as the results of his observations in his world view is never one-sidedly scientific. It is always imbued with artistic spirit. And it is this Goethean artistic spirit that we would like to see permeate this art of spatial movement that we call eurythmy.
In his understanding of the living world, Goethe goes far beyond what science already recognizes today. And it is to be hoped that precisely that which Goethe himself describes as his metamorphic view will acquire great significance for the future of humanity.
If I am to present the simplest of Goethe's worldviews to you, it is that for Goethe, every single plant leaf is a whole plant – only in terms of its structure – and the whole plant is in turn a complex leaf. All the individual organs of the plant are only transformed leaves, and are therefore basically one and the same. The outer form repeats the essential in the most diverse ways. What Goethe wrote down in his magnificent essay on plants in 1790 can be applied to understanding all living things in nature. It can be applied in particular to understanding the human being.
But we can go further. We can also look at the human being in terms of Goethe's world view by interpreting the expression of a single organ as the movement of the whole person, or vice versa. The movements that the whole person can carry out, can make, appear as the repetition, the more complicated repetition, of that which an organ of the human body carries out.
For us, my dear audience, what comes into consideration here is what the human larynx and its neighboring organs carry out when a person speaks. In ordinary life and in that revelation of human nature that is expressed in poetry or the art of recitation, people's attention is drawn to what can be heard through the activity of the larynx and its neighboring organs. But if we have the opportunity to see with supersensible vision what is at work in the human larynx and its neighboring organs, if we have the opportunity to see through the tendencies and impulses of movement that are active while we speak, then we can, so to speak, form a visible language out of it, which the whole human being performs.
You need only imagine, my dear audience, that as we speak, the air is continually moving in waves through the larynx and its neighboring organs. And the manifestation of these undulating movements is, after all, the heard word. These undulations, when seen in their essence, can be transferred to the whole human being. And so, when you watch the characters on the stage, you will, in a sense, see the whole human being as a large larynx, which, in its individual parts, performs that which is performed invisibly when you listen to the speech.
These are the new means of expression for this eurythmic art of movement. According to Goethe's artistic philosophy, all art is based on a mysterious revelation of nature, on the revelation of natural laws that would never be recognized without art. For Goethe, that which can be artistically shaped moves into the sphere of knowledge. He says: Art is based on a mysterious recognition, insofar as it allows us to penetrate the essence of things visibly and tangibly.
And it is particularly interesting to penetrate that which is present in the whole human being as a possibility of movement. So you will see a visible language in eurythmy. And that which is otherwise expressed in our language, namely that which is expressed in artistically and poetically shaped language, can also be expressed through our eurythmic art.
When you see an individual in a standing position, the movements they perform are a transformed, enlarged larynx. But when the individual human being or groups of people carry out their movements in space here on the stage, these movements reveal everything that warms our language from the soul, everything that can penetrate our language as enthusiasm, everything that can also penetrate our language as pain and suffering. All these nuances of the soul that pass through language can be expressed through this spatial-movement art.
Nothing in this art is arbitrary. Just as music itself is based on — and is very similar to — the eurythmic art, or rather the eurythmic art is similar to music. Just as the musical art regularly and lawfully follows its tones in the melodious element, and how it combines tones in the harmonic element, so too is everything in the eurythmic art inwardly lawful. You must not think that it is a mere art of gesturing, a mere mimic art. It is not a peculiar attunement of what lives in the human being with the outer movement that is striven for here, but the connection between what wants to express itself in the soul and the movement that is made is a very inner, lawful one. And the sequence of movements is as internally lawful as in music.
Therefore, the art of eurythmy can be accompanied by music. On the one hand, it parallels the musical arts. On the other hand, it parallels the art of recitation. So you will hear one and the same motif of the human soul musically, see it presented in eurythmy and hear it in recitation.
One cannot recite to the eurythmic art as one likes to recite today. The eurythmic art in particular forces one to lead the art of recitation back to its actual artistic element. Today one actually recites prosaically. The highest value is placed on expressing the content of the poetry in the recitation. But for the truly artistically perceptive person, this is not the main thing. The rhythmic element, which is also expressed here in the movements of the people and groups of people in space, the rhythmic element, the whole inner shaping of the supporting element, is what is most important to the poet.
I need only remind you that a poet like Schiller never first had the content, or at least often did not first have the content of a poem in his soul; but before he knew what he was writing about, what the content of the poem should be, an indeterminate melodious tone formation went through his soul and he formed the poem according to this tone formation. Therefore, the art of recitation that must accompany our eurythmy today will still be misunderstood in many ways, because we have to go back to older forms of recitation.
I would also like to remind you that in his time, Goethe still wanted to express the formative, actually artistic aspect of the language form. When he rehearsed his “Iphigenia”, he had a baton in his hand so that the language would not be spoken prosaically, but so that the iambs, the rhythm of the language, would really be expressed. which today would be perceived as unnatural, because in our materialistic time the actual artistic feeling has declined and one also wants to emphasize the special content in recitation, in the art of lecturing.
If you do notice elements of pantomime in our eurythmic performances, I would ask you to bear in mind that we are still at the very beginning of our artistic development. This is why there are still some imperfections. But all pantomime and random gestures are actually still imperfections. If two performers, two completely different performers, were to perform the same thing eurythmically at different times and in different places, they would do so in the same way because eurythmy has an inner lawfulness, so that the individual differences would only be as great as when two pianists play one and the same Beethoven sonata according to their individual peculiarities. So this inner lawfulness is, of course, what we strive for. Everything that is striven for with the means you have just characterized for the art of eurythmy must flow into the spatial movement in such a way that the immediate view has an aesthetic, artistic effect.
But this is also the basis of Goethe's philosophy: in all art, we perceive the inner laws and harmony of nature directly, by excluding the intellect. Goethe once expressed this very beautifully when he said: “Man, placed at the summit of nature, beholds himself in turn as a whole of nature, taking in order, measure, meaning, and harmony, in order to finally rise to the production of a work of art.”
It is particularly appealing to elevate that which is inherent in man himself to a work of art. This inward disposition of the human being, conceived as a work of art, conceived as a work of art in accordance with the nature of the moving human being: that is eurythmy, the same eurythmy that vibrates invisibly in our sequence of sounds when we speak, when we name, when we repeat poetic and artistic utterances. Nevertheless, I would ask you to be lenient in your judgment of what we will present to you today. We ourselves are the harshest critics of what we are already able to do with this eurythmic art. We know that everything is still in the process of becoming, that everything is still imperfect. But we hope that we ourselves, or if not ourselves, then others, will bring it to perfection. And when what is only intended today is fully expressed as the eurythmic art, then this eurythmic art will be able to stand alongside other arts as a fully significant art. However, we do not want to compete with neighboring arts, such as the now so popular dance arts. Eurythmy should be something completely different. It should express what the human being has within himself as a movement disposition: soulful movement.
And so we also believe that eurythmy will one day play a major role in teaching and education, in that mere physical movement in gymnastics will then be imbued with soul, in that eurythmy will take the place of mere physical gymnastics. This will probably enable eurythmy to be integrated into the overall culture of the human spirit, on the one hand as an art form and on the other as something that plays a major role in the overall education of the human being.
We do indeed know that all of this is still in its infancy today, and so I ask you to bear with us as we perform. Regarding the program before the intermission, I would like to add that the Nietzsche poem 'My Happiness' will be inserted after 'Stroll'. So the program before the intermission has been extended by two numbers.