The Origin and Development of Eurythmy 1918–1920

GA 277b — 5 November 1919, Bern

29. Eurythmy Performance

First public performance in Bern at the Kursaal Schänzli. The program was the same as that of the performance in Zurich on October 31, 1919, see p.194.

Dear attendees, Among the endeavors in the field of spiritual science, as outwardly represented by the Goetheanum, which is being built as a Free University for Spiritual Science in Dornach near Basel, there are also scientific and artistic endeavors in a wide variety of fields. Among the artistic endeavors, I would say that the endeavor that I call eurythmic art endeavor occupies a very specific place. This eurythmic art endeavor can very easily be confused with all kinds of neighboring arts, but actually should not be confused with them. We know very well that everything that appears today as spatial movement arts, dance arts or the like is sometimes so highly developed that what we are able to offer here would not want to compete with it. But here we are dealing with something quite different: it is a completely new artistic endeavour. And because we do not really have more to offer at present than a beginning, which certainly wants to be perfected but is still just a beginning, I would like to say a few words about the test that we want to offer you today – for the first time in this city – of our eurythmic art. Everything that we present as the eurythmic art has been thought out and worked out from the Goethean worldview and the Goethean spirit of art. It is self-evident that every art must work for immediate perception and aesthetic impression through itself, and that every interpretation, every explanation, every theoretical discussion is superfluous when it comes to art. This also applies to the art of eurythmy, of course. But because it is an art that is in its infancy, it will be necessary to say something about the sources from which this new art movement draws.

And here I may – not in order to present a theoretical discussion, but to make understandable the form of expression in which eurythmy appears – I may recall a few simple facts from Goethe's world view, namely from Goethe's theory of metamorphosis, from that theory of metamorphosis , which, despite being quite old, is still not fully appreciated, as it will be when we try to replace the science of the dead, the inanimate, which is all we really have, with a science of the living.

What is presented as the basic principle of Goethe's metamorphosis theory looks very simple and primitive today. Goethe thought that the whole plant - even if it were a complicated tree - is nothing more than an upturned single leaf, in all its complexity. And in turn, the leaf in its simplicity is an upturned whole plant. If one sees spiritually, as Goethe put it, or in terms of ideas, if one sees sensually and supernaturally, as he also said, then one sees in a single leaf a whole plant, in the whole plant only one more intricately endowed leaf - and in turn in every organ of any living being only the transformation of every other organ.

What Goethe thought about the form of living things can also be thought about the activity of living things. And if we apply this to the activity of the most highly developed living being, the human being, and to that which is a particular expression of human perfection – language and the speech organs – then we arrive at what we call the eurythmic arts.

When we listen to a person speaking, we first turn our attention from the sense of hearing to the audible. But while a person is speaking, the larynx and its neighboring organs are in mysterious motion. One could even depict it physically by saying: While I am speaking here, the air is in a perpetual motion, which is only an impression of the motion of the larynx and its neighboring organs. In our ordinary lives, we pay attention to what we hear, not to the movements that are only an imprint of the movements of the larynx and its neighboring organs. In our ordinary lives, we pay attention to what we hear, not to the movements that are only an imprint of the movements of the larynx and its neighboring organs, but to what we hear. But if one has the gift of supersensible vision, of seeing the invisible movements that underlie the audible, then one can project the movements of the larynx and its neighboring organs, which do not come to external manifestation, onto the human being as a whole. And in a sense, each limb of the human being can be moved in such a way that the movement is an imprint of the movement patterns that the larynx and its neighboring organs undergo when any sounds come to be revealed in speech.

If one then penetrates that which one lets one's limbs perform in terms of movement, just as artistically as it is penetrated in poetic language or song, that which the larynx accomplishes - in terms of rhythm, meter and so on - then an artistic instrument of the very first order arises in the moving human being himself.

And so what you are seeing this evening, dear audience, I would say the whole human being as a larynx moving, visible language, performed the linguistic sounds in motion by the whole person. This brings out of the human being that which is contained in his or her deeper nature.

We do justice to an artistic view such as Goethe's by creating such a new form of art from within the human being itself. Goethe says so beautifully, in expressing his view of art: When nature begins to reveal her secrets to someone, that person feels the greatest yearning for her most worthy interpreter: art. And the human being is indeed an imprint of the whole universe; he has the deepest secrets within him. If you try to get them out of him through special artistic design, by making the whole human being the expression of the moving larynx, just as the whole plant is a perfect, a complicated expression of the individual leaf, then the secrets of the world are expressed that would otherwise remain hidden.

But this also brings art closer to the real penetration of the secrets of the world, as it is in Goethe's sense when he says: Art is based on mysterious natural laws, on the essence of things, insofar as it allows us to represent this essence of things in tangible or visible forms. So that what the individual person presents on the stage is language that has become visible.

But in language, especially in artistic language and in song, in the musical, everything that our soul experiences as warmth, everything that our soul experiences as joy and suffering, is also effective. What the poet brings into language by shaping it into rhyme and rhythm can all be expressed in the spatial-movement art of eurythmy. We find that people initially work together in groups, expressing warmth of soul, joy and love. But what moves in the individual person is only a translation of the individual parts of the larynx movements into movements of the whole person.

In this way an art comes into being that is imitative, I might say, but endowed with its own inner laws, the inner laws of music itself. Just as in music it is not tone painting that is the actual artistry, so in the eurythmic art it is never mimicry, pantomime, the mere facial expression that is artistic. If you see pantomime, mimicry or mime in the so-called 'humorous' part of the performance, it is only because of the imperfection of our eurythmic art. This will gradually disappear. It is not that we are seeking some momentary connection between a movement, a gesture, and what passes in the soul, but rather, all this is inwardly lawful. And in the moving gesture, as in the moving tones, lies the connection, the lawful connection of the musical, in the succession of tones.

What is presented on stage through eurythmy is accompanied, on the one hand, by music, which is just another form of expression for the same thing that is expressed through the art of eurythmy, and on the other hand, by recitation and declamation. But here attention must be drawn to the fact that the art of recitation will in turn have to return to its old, good channels if it is to accompany eurythmy, which reveals the same thing as poetry but in a different form. For it must be emphasized that the art of recitation is in many cases decadent in the present day. We need only remember that today the most perfect art of recitation is considered to be that which emphasizes the prosaic, the literal content of the poem, I would say the novellistic, not the truly artistic aspect.

But what is in the background as rhythm, as the musicality of language, is the main thing in art, not the literal content. I need only remind you that Goethe, for example, rehearsed his “Iphigenia”, which is a dramatic poem, with a baton. This shows that it is the lawful progression that is important, not the emphasis of the prose content. Schiller did not have the literal content of the best of his poems in his mind at first, but rather something melodious, a kind of melody. And it was only by developing this that he found the literal content. It is the shaping of the content of the language that matters. We must go back to this with today's recitation and the art of declamation. For with today's art of recitation and declamation, it will not be possible to accompany what is to be expressed in the art of eurythmy. - So we will try to present to you on the one hand on stage a certain musical or poetic side, which will, however, be accompanied by the art of recitation and declamation, as it could be described here.

With these words I wanted to characterize the underlying sources. What is presented must make an impact through the aesthetic impression itself. For only that which leads not in some easy way but into the secrets of the existence of the world, without this leading to ideas or external concepts, is art.

If one attempts to approach human beings and their deeper secrets with such art, one fulfills what Goethe meant when he said, “When man is placed on the summit of nature, he beholds himself as a whole nature, but one that is in itself the source of all phenomena.” To repeat what he said, because everything we do want to do is supposed to be Goetheanism. —, one attains precisely all that he means when he says: When man is placed at the summit of nature, he sees himself again as a whole nature, which in turn has to produce a summit. To do this, he improves himself by permeating himself with all perfections and virtues, invoking choice, order, harmony and meaning, and finally elevating himself to the production of a work of art. He will be all the more uplifted when producing the work of art if he makes his own organism, with its inner possibilities of movement, into an instrument. This is the one side, the actual artistic side, that is most important to us in our eurythmy.

But we are also concerned with the pedagogical side, and we are convinced that what we call the pedagogical side of eurythmy will gradually find its way into schools when people begin to see the value of such things. What is presented today as gymnastics is more or less something that is significant in the physiological realm for outer physicality, outer corporeality. What is presented here as the art of movement is the human being's lived and spiritualized movement, and it will be able to stand alongside pedagogical gymnastics in the same way as it will be able to stand alongside other fully-fledged art forms. I would ask you to be lenient in this regard.

We are the strictest judges of ourselves, but we know very well that this eurythmic art is developing. And we ourselves will continue to develop it - if not through us, then through others, when our contemporaries turn their attention to this eurythmic art out of a certain culturally progressive interest. However much it is still in its infancy today, we believe, dear attendees, that it is so capable of perfection that it will one day be able to establish itself as a fully-fledged art alongside other fully-fledged arts. From this point of view, I ask you to take today's presentation with indulgence.

[ After the break, for the second part of the public eurythmy performance]

Dear attendees!

We will now attempt to perform two short scenes from the second part of Goethe's “Faust”. In these representations of the second part of Goethe's “Faust” – we have already tried a whole series of these in other places – it has become clear to us how eurythmy can serve in the presentation of such dramatic creations as those in the second part of “Faust”. I believe that the esteemed audience will be aware of the major obstacles that arise when the second part of “Faust” is to be staged. Perhaps one recalls various attempts at staging this second part of “Faust” using a wide range of directorial skills. One need only think of the charming direction and staging by Wilbrandt or the mystery play staging by Devrient with Lassen's music and numerous other stagings, and one will always find that these performances do not bring out anything of what is in Goethe's “Faust”.

Nevertheless, one should still have the feeling that this poetry expresses precisely that which reveals itself as so powerful in the whole rich development of Goethe's life. - After all, one is dealing here with all phases of human artistry, from the age of youth to the highest maturity of old age. And anyone who is not prejudiced in any way will follow the development of this rich Goethean artistic life with great inner satisfaction.

Of course, even during his lifetime, Goethe had to experience some things that annoyed him, one might say. The first part of Faust, which is certainly easier to understand than the second part, in which Goethe, in his own words, has hidden much - much of what he has recognized and experienced through a rich life - the first part of Faust found a large audience even in Goethe's time. And Goethe himself thought that with his Iphigenia, his Tasso and later, as he believed, with his Natural Daughter, he had come far beyond the art form that he had carried out in the first part of Faust. Because in the second part, which was only published after Goethe's death, he certainly reached a very special level. But what annoyed him during his lifetime was that people kept saying: Yes, Goethe has grown old. In his “Tasso”, you no longer see the same bubbling youthful energy that is expressed in his youthful works – and so on. He became annoyed about it. And he would certainly have thought many a thing if he had been able to live to see that not only the common philistine, but, as they also say, higher daughters, higher philistines, were upset about the fact that the second part of “Faust” would only represent a decline in Goethe's art. For example, the Swabian Vischer, the so-called V-Vischer, not only felt compelled to write a large number

of treatises on the failed second part of “Faust”, he even tried to write something better, to write a second part of “Faust”. He also became ill afterwards. He repeatedly emphasized that the second part of Goethe's “Faust” was a cobbled-together, glued-together work of old age.

As I said, Goethe took artistic revenge, and not only on the second part of “Faust” but also on many other works that were still incomplete. One can say that he took revenge quite severely. There is a beautiful quatrain in his estate. He wrote it down precisely with such things in mind. It reads:

They praise my Faust,
And what else

— he means the “Faust” of the first part, which was finished.

They praise my Faust,
and what else
In my writings roars
in their favor. The old Mick and Mack,
that is very pleased;
The pack of ragamuffins thinks:
They would no longer be!

Goethe would undoubtedly have said the same if he had been able to experience what great aesthetes like V-Vischer have said about the second part of his “Faust”. There is a great deal in the second part of 'Faust' where Goethe rises to truly transcendental, spiritual experiences of the human soul. And precisely those scenes in which Goethe has so much of what only he could experience in his rich life, that was presented to us in such a way that it can be extracted from the poem with the help of the art of eurythmy.

And so this evening we would also like to give you a small sample – the scene around 'midnight' – where the four forces that gnaw at human life appear before 'Faust': want, need, worry, guilt, and where 'Faust' experiences everything that one can feel, live and learn in the face of these four forces, which here call themselves worry, need and so on. What Goethe has put into the poem through the way it is presented is revealed precisely through this moving language, through this silent language, expressive language, through the possibilities of movement of the whole human being; it comes out precisely through this.

So perhaps a performance of this kind, where eurythmy is used, can be seen as a kind of experiment. What is human and everyday is, of course, presented in the ordinary sense; but what rises into the supersensible world should be presented with the help of eurythmy. In this way, something like this can be considered an experiment, and we believe that by using eurythmy to help us present something that cannot be presented by any kind of stage direction, we are able to present something in a narrower field that could not otherwise have been brought out.