The Origin and Development of Eurythmy 1918–1920

GA 277b — 22 November 1919, Dornach

33. Eurythmy Performance

The art of eurythmy, of which we would like to show you another example, is still in its infancy, and I would ask you to bear this in mind as we demonstrate it. It is the expression of the anthroposophical movement, born out of Goethe's world view. And so this narrow circle, for that is what it is in our overall work, has been brought out of the Goethean worldview and Goethean artistic ethos. This has made it possible to turn the human being himself, with his inner possibilities of movement, into a kind of artistic instrument. What you will see on stage is an attempt at a visible, seen language. The human limbs are used to express in the same way what is expressed by the human larynx in phonetic language, in the same way as a person otherwise expresses himself in his movements through gestures.

However, the fact that the human body produces these movements does not mean that they are in any arbitrary connection with what the human soul feels, or with what the human soul would otherwise express in words. Rather, that through a kind of sensory-supersensory seeing, the larynx and its neighboring organs have truly overheard the possibility of movement that becomes reality in them, revealing itself when they are spoken, when the sound is formed into speech. What we pay attention to when a person speaks is the audible. But the audible is based on an inner movement of the larynx and its neighboring organs, which is transmitted into the outer air, which we also set in vibrations, in wave-like movements. Those who, through a kind of seeing, are able to form an image of these movements that underlie spoken language can translate, in a lawful way, what would otherwise only express itself in audible sound, into the silent language that is eurythmy. This enables us to separate out everything in language that is based only on convention, only on the nature of human interaction, and which is therefore the inartistic part of language.

When we speak to one another as human beings, the formation of the sound and the content of the sound are based on the needs of human interaction. This is how prose enters our language. We must now study how language is actually based on two elements: soul and, as the soul expresses itself in the physical, body and physicality. When we speak, the expression of our thoughts, our ideas, first enters into speech. This expression connects with the expression of the will as we speak. The expression of the thought comes from the head, as we grasp the matter physically. But the expression of the will comes from the whole human being. When we speak, we actually draw out of our whole being that which then concentrates in the organs of will, which produce the audible sound.

Now this supersensible observation of the possibilities of movement of the larynx and its neighboring organs allows one to truly translate into that which is otherwise held back from the human being when speaking: the possibility of movement of the whole body, that which is otherwise heard. So for the eurythmic presentation, we start by leaving out what is the conceptual part of speech and only take up what comes from the human will element, but now take it up in the movements of the whole human being.

You see: in this way eurythmy, which is such a mute language, becomes the expression of something much more inward in the human being than can be revealed through speech. Through speech we transfer, as it were, what we experience inwardly more to the surface of the human body, indeed to the surface of the human being. Through the fact that we allow the whole human being to carry out the same movements, the same lawful movements that underlie spoken language, we involve the whole human being in what is otherwise the content of speech. And if you have a feeling for what is expressed and revealed through the inner possibilities of movement of the human body, you can truly present a silent but no less eloquent language as eurythmy.

This kind of soul science can certainly be derived from Goethe's world view. The whole human being becomes, as it were, a larynx and its neighboring organs on the stage in front of you. And what otherwise glows through speech as the soul's enthusiasm, as joy and suffering, as joy and pain, is expressed in the movement of the human being in space, in the movement of groups that relate to each other in such a way that the individual human being inner possibilities of movement, which are modeled on the movements of the larynx; while that which is presented to one in the group, or is revealed in the movements of the individual human being in space, expresses more the real soul content.

But nothing is a mere gesture or a mere pantomime. Anything that is mere pantomime, anything that is merely gestural is excluded. What you see is based on an inner, lawful sequence of movements. When two people or groups of people in different places express one and the same thing through the silent language of eurythmy, there is no more personality in it than there is in the personal interpretation when two pianists in two different places play one and the same Beethoven sonata. Just as in music the truly artistic element lies in the conformity to law of the succession of notes, so here the truly artistic element lies in the conformity to law of the eurythmic movements. It may be said that the artistic element always excludes the directly imaginative through ideas, which otherwise play their great part in knowledge. Where concepts are involved, there is no artistic element.

You see, here we consciously exclude the imagination and bring out what - like a secret of the human organs themselves - can be guessed in a mute language, I would say, directly in looking at it. To penetrate into the secrets of existence in direct observation without the mediation of concepts is a true art. That which can be expressed musically from the soul life of the human being on the one hand, and that which poetic speech brings forth artistically from speech sounds, is expressed in a different way through the mute speech of eurythmy, which has been developed into an art form. Therefore, on stage today you will see on the one hand the mute eurythmic language, or that which can be expressed musically; on the other hand you will hear certain contents recited, although you will have to bear in mind that with the emergence of a new art such as eurythmy, which is a different kind of language, it places demands that recitation should also be returned to the old, good way of reciting.

Today, in the art of recitation, more attention is paid to the prose element, to the purely content-related element of language; to bring out, by reciting, from the content of a poem that which corresponds more to the prose content of the poem. That is not the truly artistic element. What is truly artistic is the underlying meter, rhythm, rhyme, and so on. These, in turn, must be sought out and brought out. And so, the art of recitation must be led back to its good, old forms, away from the wrong path it has taken today. Goethe, who knew a great deal about these good old forms, took a conductor's baton and rehearsed his “Iphigenia” with the actors himself, in order to show how the real rhythm was at the core, not what is actually the prose in the artistic elements within.

Today we will present you with a piece from the first part of Goethe's “Faust”, the study scene. You may know how hard people have tried to bring Goethe's “Faust” to the stage, and what directing skills and the like have been used to create a worthy performance of Goethe's “Faust”. When one thinks of a stage production of Goethe's Faust, there are two things to be considered above all: first, that Goethe, in writing his Faust (he worked on the poem for sixty years), first wanted to express through this world poem the deepest things that can take place in the soul of a striving human being. Goethe wanted to express the experiences of the human breast, from the most oppressive, tied to ordinary life on earth, to the highest spiritual striving. All this, as Goethe felt it at times in his younger years – often still immaturely – he put into the first parts; what he felt later, he put into the later parts of the first part of “Faust”. He then put the most mature into the second part.

How little Goethe himself initially thought of presenting “Faust” as a stage play can be seen from the following. When at the end of the 1820s a deputation headed by the actor La Roche went to see Goethe after they had decided to stage the first part of “Faust” in its entirety - parts had, however, already been performed earlier - Goethe himself thought it was somewhat impossible. And yet, with a number of esteemed gentlemen standing before him, he leapt from his seat after the matter had been explained to him, shouting angrily: “You fools!” Thus he had spoken to those who wanted to undertake the first part of his “Faust” on the stage. He saw best the difficulties that arise when one wants to present on the stage not what is sensual, earthly-physical in nature, but what is spiritual in nature. But the presentation of Faust has been recognized, and rightly so, as something that, one might say, meets the deepest artistic needs. And so a wide variety of approaches have been used to bring Faust to the stage, from Devrient's mystery plays to Wilbrandt's charming direction. But certain parts, which rise directly from the earthly into the supernatural, can, in our opinion, only be presented if the silent language of eurythmy is used. And so, in this little piece of “Faust” that we are presenting to you, we have called upon the eurythmic art for those parts where the spiritual world enters into the human.

After the break, we will also present a number of Goethe's poems, and it will be shown that where Goethe, in his magnificent “Cloud Poems”, describes wonderful cloud formations with wonderful natural intimacy, following the instructions of Howard, can be perceived in nature itself in accordance with his artistic and ideological view, can also be poetically realized, so that one can naturally feel what is otherwise shown by the transformation of cloud forms in nature itself in the forms that are performed, which are very similar to those in the poem. This inner transformative power, which Goethe describes as the metamorphosis of natural phenomena, which he observed in all living things, was revealed to him by observing the formation of clouds. And in these transformations of cloud formations, he saw something artistic, something that works like the power that the ancient Indian worldview perceived in the cosmos and called Kama Rupa. That is what he wanted to express in his beautiful cloud poems, which can best be recreated in the silent language of eurythmy.

With this, I wanted to show you the sources from which the forms actually arise that you will see as eurythmy. Once again, I would like to emphasize that everything that is intended with eurythmy is actually only just beginning and that further development will take place, either through ourselves or through others, if it meets with the interest of our contemporaries. However, we are thoroughly convinced that if this art can continue to develop, it will one day be able to establish itself as a fully-fledged art form alongside other art forms.