The Origin and Development of Eurythmy 1918–1920

GA 277b — 16 November 1919, Dornach

32. Eurythmy Performance

Archduke Eugene of Austria, who was staying in Basel at the “Hotel Des Trois Rois” and was affectionately known to the people of Basel as “Erzi”, attended this performance. From time to time he came to Dornach to watch a performance.

Dear attendees!

We would like to take the liberty of presenting a sample of our eurythmic art to you. Since this eurythmic art is still in its infancy and can easily be confused with all kinds of neighboring arts, please allow me to say a few words before the performance.

In what we call the eurythmic art, we do not want to compete with any dance-like arts or the like, which we know to be more perfect in their way than what we can already present as the eurythmic art today. But in this eurythmic art, something is being attempted that can stand on its own alongside all the other arts.

Just as basically everything that is to be connected to this structure, and for which this structure is to be the external representation, is taken from Goethe's world view - and I would like to point out how I would like to point out how this has been done, because it shows the sources from which this eurythmic art actually flows – in this way, this narrow field of eurythmy is also taken from the Goethean world view.

Of course, everything that is intended to have an artistic effect must be perceived directly through the eye or through the senses in general, and any theoretical explanation that is given about an artistic work would not only be superfluous, but it would also have to be fundamentally mistaken. I would therefore like to preface these words not in order to say something about the artistic formalities themselves, but to show the artistic sources from which this eurythmic art draws. And I may begin with a few words – truly not to give a theoretical explanation, but to point out something that is at the same time most eminently artistic and also a form of knowledge within the Goethean world view – I may begin by pointing out in a very elementary way what is known as Goethe's metamorphosis theory. It is something that has not yet been sufficiently appreciated in the present, but which will play a major role in the spiritual life of the future.

We basically only have a science of the dead. That which is grasped by our knowledge is only that which is dead in all world phenomena and world facts. Understanding the truly living will only be reserved for a time when the Goethean worldview will play a greater role than it already does in the present. Today it looks simple, but it is not so simple when one only understands it in its full depth, what Goethe says, for example, about the growth and structure of plants. Goethe is of the opinion that the whole plant - and even if it is the most complicated tree - is only a complicated leaf. And each leaf is in turn a whole plant, only simple and primitively formed. But it is not only so with plants; it is so with all living things. The most important links of each living thing are a repetition of the whole living being.

Goethe initially developed this view only with regard to the formation of living things. He also extended it to humans, but only in terms of form. If we extend what Goethe did for form in his own way to human activity, then we can gain from it what we call the eurythmic art here, when we transfer mere observation into artistic creation. However, one must approach it in such a way that one grasps what would otherwise remain hidden from external impressions, from sensory impressions, in a kind of supersensible vision.

You see, my dear audience, when a person speaks, we listen to him; we listen to him with our ears, we grasp the spoken language. But while the person is speaking, the larynx and its neighboring organs are in a state of constant internal movement, at least by nature. Physically speaking, everyone is aware that when I speak here, I cause the air to vibrate, to move in regular waves. What is being done by the larynx and its neighboring organs is not seen when we listen to a person. But the person who is able to see supersensibly is also able to see what potential movements are present in the human larynx when the person speaks, especially when he speaks artistically or when he sings or when he wants to express something musical at all.

These inner possibilities of movement of the larynx and its neighboring organs can be grasped, imagined and then transferred to the human being as a whole. Just as Goethe imagines that the large plant is only a more intricately designed leaf, so can the movements that otherwise remain invisible be transferred to the movements of the limbs of the whole human being. Thus, on the stage, you will see the human being in motion. And what is revealed in these movements is not arbitrary, it is not something invented, but it is exactly the same as what happens invisibly when a person speaks audible language.

What is presented is a mute language, but a visible one. There is so little arbitrariness in it that one can say: all pantomime, all mere facial expression, all gesturing with the eyes are absent from eurythmy. So that it cannot be compared with any of the now familiar dance arts, for example. Just as what is truly musical does not consist in the mere painting of colors, so our eurythmic does not consist in the mere external expression of what is going on in the soul, but in the lawful succession of movements performed by the human limbs.

I could therefore figuratively say: when you see the human being moving here on the stage, the whole human being has become the visible larynx. It is indeed part of Goethe's world view that the artistic consists in the fact that we do not see the secrets of the world through our ideas, through our concepts, but that we see the secrets of the world without concepts, without representations, through direct observation. Eurythmy seeks to bring the movement possibilities, the secrets of movement possibilities that lie in the human organism, into a visible language.

If two people in different places or two groups were to perform the same thing in eurythmy, they would have to perform exactly the same thing. The individual interpretation is given only as much leeway as when two people in two different places play one and the same Beethoven sonata in their own personal interpretation.

Just as the melodious element in music moves forward in a lawful manner, so the possibilities of movement of the human organism move forward in a lawful manner here. It is a melody of movement that one should actually observe. If what lies in the individual sounds of the word is expressed through the human limbs, through the movement of the individual limbs, then what is expressed through the outer movement in space or through the relationships and mutual movements of the eurythmists united in a group is that which lies in the soul warmth, in what is joy and suffering, joy and enthusiasm.

You will see that the silent language of eurythmy is accompanied on the one hand by the eurythmic through the musical element, which basically expresses the same thing in other words, and on the other hand by the art of recitation and declamation. And it is precisely in this recitation and declamation that it becomes clear how the artistic element of poetry must be expressed through eurythmy.

Today, we are convinced that the most highly regarded and well-liked art of recitation has gone astray. Today, when reciting, the same thing is emphasized that is the literal content, that is, not the truly poetic, but the prosaic. The truly poetic element in poetry lies in the underlying musical elements – in the rhythm, in the beat, in the formal structure, in the rhyme – and all these elements will be expressed here in the eurythmy that parallels the recitation.

That this is the case with real poetry can be seen if we go back to what was regarded in earlier times as the real art of recitation and as the basis of poetry. I would just like to remind you that Schiller, for example, did not first have the literal content in his mind when writing the best of his poems – not at all – but he did have a melodious element in his mind, an indeterminate melody or at least something melodious, and only then did he grasp the literal element, which he then clothed in. Goethe rehearsed his “Iphigenia”, which is a iambic drama, with his actors, with the baton, like a conductor. He did not place the main emphasis on the literal content, but placed the main emphasis on the art of verse, on the form of the poetry.

All of this must be brought out again – what underlies the poetry. It is precisely that which is actually artistic that is actually overlooked today, especially in the art of recitation. Those who still had the opportunity to see primitive recitation of simple folk poems, as they were practiced in villages in Central Europe until the last decades of the 19th century, for example, now increasingly less so, could, I would say, perceive a primitive eurythmy originating from the prehistory of mankind. The recitation was not just about the prose content of the poem, as it is today. Rather, to use a harsh expression, the ballad-monger who always recited his ballad went about gesticulating in very regular movements. So that one can study how the eurhythmic actually emerged from that deep element of the human soul, from which the art of poetry actually also emerged, in the development of mankind.

What underlies this is genuine Goethean psychology, Goethean soul teaching. When a person speaks, especially when they speak artistically, we can study this. Then, in speech, thoughts flow from one side, thoughts pour, so to speak – excuse me for putting it so crudely, but it could also be expressed in a very, very learned, scientific way – thoughts pour onto the larynx, and the will permeates from the whole human being that which lives in thoughts. Speech is the synthesis of what lies in man as will and of what emanates from the brain in thought forms. Both are synthesized in speech by the human mind. The human mind sends its waves through this element of thought, through the human mind. Here, we are attempting to omit that which can be conventional, that which serves to facilitate human communication in the external life, and which thus leads away from the artistic, and to make visible language only that which emerges from the whole human being as the element of will.

But as I said, what is being attempted here is only a beginning, and I therefore ask you to be lenient with this beginning. We are our own harshest critics. We know what this eurythmy art can become, but we also know that we are at the very beginning. And only that which is needed for art, my dear audience, is, I would say, the interest of contemporaries. Further perfection can grow out of the interest of contemporaries. And as much as we are fully convinced that we are now at the beginning of this eurythmic art, we ask for your forbearance. But on the other hand, we are fully convinced that something will develop from this eurythmic art - either through us or probably through others - that will one day be able to stand alongside the old, fully recognized art forms as a fully recognized art form in its own right.