The Origin and Development of Eurythmy 1918–1920

GA 277b — 16 September 1919, Berlin

22. Eurythmy Performance

Goethe attempts to penetrate from the knowledge and awareness of the dead to the knowledge and awareness of the living. He asserts the power of observation over theory. The individual leaf is the whole plant, the plant is only the complicated elaboration of the individual limb. This can be applied again to the human being, who is only one limb of the whole world. We produce speech through our larynx, and it is received through the ear. But it is also possible to observe these movements with supersensible organs. These are artistic movements that can be seen when speaking. And these movements can be transferred to the whole human being, to the whole moving human being, who reveals the movements that otherwise underlie the larynx and its neighboring organs: speech that has become visible. The joy, suffering, etc. that resonates through the soul when speaking can be transferred to groups and expressed there.

In eurythmy, it is the sequence of movements that is important – just as it is the sequence of tones in music.

If one and the same poem were to be presented in two different ways, it would only be presented in an individually different way to the extent that a Beethoven sonata is performed differently by a particular player in two different places. There is nothing arbitrary about this art of movement; everything follows laws, rhythm, harmony and so on. The content of the poem is only one opportunity, like rhythm, to bring out the artistic side. With Schiller, for example, it was not the content of a poem that came first, but in his play something musical, rhythmic trembled, and only then did it become poetry. Goethe rehearsed 'Iphigenia' with the baton with the performing artists.

It is particularly appealing when a person not only creates works of art but also turns themselves into a work of art. This is how eurythmy is to be understood.