# The Origin and Development of Eurythmy 1918–1920

## GA 277b — 23 November 1919, Dornach

### 34. Eurythmy Performance

Dear attendees!

We will attempt to give you a sample of our eurythmic art. Please allow me to precede this presentation with a few words about what our eurythmic art actually seeks to achieve. It is, after all, only at the beginning of its development, and we can only hope that, when what is inherent in this eurythmic art has been developed, it will be able to stand alongside the other art forms as something that is truly drawn from the highest artistic sources. But I would ask you always to bear in mind that we are only at the beginning of this artistic development.

Like everything that is done here as an anthroposophical movement, and of which this building, when it is finished, is intended to be the representative, the representation, so too, even if in a very limited area, this eurythmic art is drawn from a spiritual teaching based on Goethe's world view and his view of art. What Goethe's world view is, what Goethe's attitude towards art is, has not yet been sufficiently appreciated, and it will probably play a much greater role in the future spiritual development of humanity than today's humanity can even dream of.

What is being attempted here can invoke a beautiful saying of Goethe's, used by Goethe when he begins to glorify the great, art-loving Winckelmann, to bring him to full recognition. Goethe says: When man is placed at the summit of nature, he feels himself in turn as a whole nature, and he brings together in his own soul life measure, harmony, meaning, in order to rise to the production of the work of art. - If one now tries to make the whole human being, with his inner possibilities of movement, into an instrument of the work of art, then something like a summary of the secrets of the world must indeed come out of such art. For in the human being himself, as in a great context, all the secrets of the world are expressed.

What we want to try through eurythmy, my dear audience, is to help the whole person to express a silent language, a language that arises from making the whole person a larynx, so to speak. You know that when we listen to a person speaking, we first of all exercise our sense of hearing. We turn our attention to what can be heard. But the one who – to use this Goethean expression – can see, sensually and super-sensually, what is hidden as the actual essential secrets behind the outer appearances of nature and the human being, knows that in the larynx and its neighboring organs, while the sound reaches our ear, movements are constantly taking place or at least movement systems are active.

We can also imagine the same thing physically by saying: when I speak here, for example, my speech organ sets the air in regular motion. These movements are basically the outward expression of the movement systems present in the larynx and its neighboring organs. If you observe this, learn to recognize it, in contrast to the way you tend to ignore it in your daily life, then you can transfer it to the movement of the arms and the movement of other limbs of the human organism, and then you can create a mute language in which the whole person brings to full expression, to full revelation, that which is otherwise hidden as movement patterns in the larynx and its neighboring organs.

The same thing can also be expressed differently. We can say: when we speak, two elements of the human being flow together. From the head, more visibly speaking, what we have in our thoughts flows into our speech. But combined with these thoughts is what comes from the human will. We can feel it if we have a predisposition for such feeling, that actually, when someone speaks, especially when we listen to artistic language, to poetry, our whole human being comes into a kind of inner resonance, a kind of inner coexistence, in a sense into a dancing movement. In ordinary life, we suppress this dancing movement. Only someone who is familiar with our speech organism knows that something is actually always resonating in our larynx and neighboring organs when we listen to another person.

This is something that science is now beginning to recognize: that more delicate vibrations and movements also take place in the speech organs of the person listening. There is something mysterious in the whole human being, especially when listening, but also when speaking. We only try to keep the human being himself calm and [gap in the text], that is, movements of the will and those organs that are connected with the larynx and its neighboring organs when we speak in ordinary life.

What is otherwise brought to rest by the will in ordinary life is particularly brought to expression in eurythmy. So that the whole human being expresses that which otherwise, I would say, is only expressed more on the surface of the body, at the larynx and its neighboring organs. In doing so, we suppress our thinking and imagining life of our own accord. We shut out ideas completely. So that a mute language is expressed through the whole human being, who, as it were, moves on the stage as an enlarged larynx,

If we create such a language, we must be clear about the fact that it must be different from what is otherwise effective as pantomime, as mimicry, as representations by any gestures. Everything that is arbitrary movement, mere facial expression, mere pantomime, must actually be excluded in this eurythmic art. Just as the actual artistic quality of musical art does not lie in tone painting, but in the lawful succession of melody [and other elements], so too in eurythmy everything rests on the lawful succession of those movements that the whole human being expresses. Everything arbitrary is eliminated. Everything that is based on the laws of eurythmy can be seen in the movements of the human speech organism itself.

Therefore, when two people or two groups of people in different places present the same thing, there is no greater scope for personal interpretation than when two pianists in different places play the same Beethoven sonata in their own way and with their own personal interpretation.

On one side you see the actors, and with them what is taking place on the stage, for certain parts of it the musical element – for the musical element is only another way of expressing what lives in the soul than eurythmy – and again other parts you will find accompanied by recitation, by the artistically formed language of poetry. What is expressed audibly in poetry and recitation is made visible in eurythmy, albeit silently. But the recitation must be taken back to its good old forms. Today recitation has gone astray. In modern life, it is actually the prosaic element that underlies poetry that is given special consideration, not the metrical, rhythmic, or artistic-formal element that underlies the actual poetry. It would not be possible to accompany eurythmy with today's art of recitation.

This is only possible if one goes back to the true art of recitation, as Goethe, for example, also had in mind when he did not rehearse his “Iphigenia” - that is, even a a dramatic work - with his actors: He rehearsed it with the baton in his hand like a conductor, in order to place the main emphasis on the rhythmic, on the actual artistic design. Today, we do not have a very clear idea of how Goethe actually wanted a drama to be staged. But if we look into the soul of the poet, then, ladies and gentlemen, we will also find that the actual artistry of the poetry does not lie in the literal content. Schiller did not initially have the literal content in mind for many of his best poems, but rather a melodious element. At first, the meaning of the poem was unimportant to him; the melodious content was what mattered to him, and only then did he seek out the literal content to go with it. As a companion to eurythmy, we too must lead the art of recitation back to the truly artistic.

In eurythmy itself, you will see everything that is otherwise expressed in spoken language through the laws of spoken language, in the silent language of eurythmy itself. But you will find everything that otherwise glows through speech with inner warmth of soul, with joy and suffering, with delight and pain, represented in the movements of the eurythmists in space, in the relative movements of the groups in relation to each other. Everything that can be represented by spoken language can also be represented by eurythmic silent language.

In the second part, after the break, we will now give a sample of how poetry can be presented through eurythmy. However, we are convinced, my dear attendees, that we can also bring spiritual sources of expression to the dramatic arts, especially to a dramatic art that rises from the merely realistic human, from the mere physical earthly existence to the supersensible spiritual existence, through eurythmy. This is particularly the case in Goethe's “Faust” poetry.

Goethe has his Faust, namely [in] the first part – you know, Goethe worked on his “Faust” for 60 years – he has secreted into this “Faust” all the inner experiences of a sensual and supersensory nature that he has experienced in his long life. In its first part, he did not even consider shaping the “Faust” poem in such a way that it should be staged. As he himself says, when he was a youth and was working on the first part of his Faust, Goethe had only the secret of what lived in his soul in mind when he was working on this great poem. It was far from his mind to think of any theatrical representation.

Individual parts were indeed soon presented, with or without music. But Goethe was never quite in agreement – my dear audience, you know that the second part, which he then conceived in a completely theatrical way, was only published after his death – Goethe was never in agreement when the first part was to be brought to the stage. And how little he was inclined to bring what he had only in his mind's eye to the stage, is evident from a fact that is truly characteristic of this matter.

One of the greatest German actors, Laroche, was a contemporary of Goethe and a friend of Goethe's in Weimar. I myself knew a good acquaintance of Laroche through my old teacher, Karl Julius Schröer. And Laroche told old Schröer how he, Laroche, as a respected actor, went with a deputation of respected gentlemen in Weimar to Goethe to present the plan of bringing “Faust” to the stage to Goethe - relatively late, at the end of the twenties. At that time, since only the first part was available, it could only be a matter of staging the first part. And Laroche described how he still had the old Goethe before him, as present, in his anger. Goethe's anger was so strong that they thought of staging the “Faust” play that was never intended for the stage, that in his anger, despite having a number of respected gentlemen in front of him, he hissed at them: “You fools!” This is how Goethe met the first deputation that wanted to stage his “Faust”.

Now, of course, no one would dream of excluding Faust from the stage. However, those who deal with such things know how difficult it is in the art of directing to really present this Faust in such a way that everything that lived in Goethe's soul comes out.

Now, with regard to those scenes in which, as is always the case in Goethe's “Faust”, supersensible processes intermingle with purely earthly processes – processes that reach into the spiritual world with regard to the life of the human soul – we have tried various things to make use of eurythmy. And so, in the first part before the break, we will show you the scene where Faust translates the Bible, sits in his study and meets Mephisto. We will show you this scene, where the supersensible world actually plays a part in Faust's life, where you have to look for ways to express in outwardly visible forms what plays a part there as the supersensible world.

This and other scenes have shown us how to present something that is not possible with other stage techniques with the help of eurythmy. So in the first part before the break, we will present you with a Goethean scene, a scene from Goethe's “Faust”, which will of course be presented in its other parts in the usual dramatic way. But where the plot takes a turn towards the supersensible, eurythmy is used to help with the presentation. We will therefore see a rehearsal of how eurythmy can be a great help in the theatrical presentation of poetry and dramatic poetry when they take on a supernatural element.

After the break, we will present poems that have been eurythmized from beginning to end. Before we begin with such performances, I would like to ask you to bear with us, as what I said at the beginning is meant seriously: we are only at the first attempt at this eurythmic art. We are, however, convinced that if our contemporaries show an interest in these attempts, eurythmy will develop to ever greater perfection, either through us or probably through others, the results of which will be presented today as a beginning, so that eurythmy can establish itself alongside other art forms as a fully-fledged new art form.