The Origin and Development of Eurythmy 1918–1920

GA 277b — 29 November 1919, Dornach

35. Eurythmy Performance

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen.

Allow me to say a few words in advance of the rehearsal of our eurythmic art that we will present to you.

Human speech, through which we communicate in life and which is used by poetry to express artistic things, is, as is well known, a product of the human larynx and its neighboring organs. Everything that we pay attention to in ordinary life with regard to human speech is the audible. In contrast to ordinary audible speech, eurythmy is conceived as a silent but visible language. But eurythmy is not conceived as a silent but visible language in the same way that ordinary human gestures or pantomime are conceived as a silent language. Rather, what is attempted in eurythmy is derived from the human being himself in a completely lawful way, derived from the human being himself in such a way that it is based on Goethe's world view and artistic attitude.

Just as Goethe tried to gain a lifelike understanding of nature by examining living beings to see how the individual organ expresses the whole organism, and how the whole organism is only a more complicated structure that represents a transformation of the individual organ , then we try to listen to an activity of the person that is produced by an organ system – in this case the larynx and its neighboring organs – in order to then apply it to the possibilities of movement of the whole person.

By means of a certain kind of – to use this Goethean expression – sensual-supersensible seeing, we can see what we do not see in ordinary life when we listen to the person speaking. You only need to remember how it is clear even from physics that, as I speak here, my speaking sets the air in motion, in wave-like motion, so you already have a concept of that movement, which is a concomitant of what we ourselves hear. But one can go further back, precisely through a kind of sensory-supersensory seeing. If one has this ability of sensory-supersensory seeing, one can convince oneself of the movements, and namely the movement structures, that are present in the human larynx and its neighboring organs when a person speaks.

These movement possibilities can then be transferred to the whole person. Just as, in Goethe's sense, the whole plant is only a more complicated leaf, so the whole person can move his limbs in the way that the larynx, tongue, palate and so on move when a person speaks. Visible language is therefore what is attempted through eurythmy.

But this is how you come particularly close to an artistic element. Isn't it true, my dear audience, that the artistic is based on our ability to delve into the essence of things, without abstract concepts and ideas. All that is mere knowledge, all that is developed imagination, disturbs what is actually artistic. We must delve into the riddles of existence, and you can take on the mediation of presentation and concept. It is precisely this that happens unconsciously through the eurythmy on the part of the spectator. It happens quite consciously on the part of those who are performing this eurythmy.

For in our ordinary language, two sides are confused: one is the element of thought that permeates our words from the soul. This is something that is lost from the artistic side of language; it is also something that is more closely aligned with the conventional way in which we communicate in life, and which is how the philistine, everyday, inartistic element of language comes about.

But the other aspect of the soul also works in language: the will element. In ordinary language, the thought element works together with the will element. Now, esteemed attendees, we omit precisely this thought element by bringing the will impulses out of the human being in the silent language of eurythmy. And we express these impulses of will through the entire world of the human limbs. So you see, as it were, the human being himself becoming a mute speech organ on the stage before you. And what he expresses through these movements of form, and also through his movements in space, is the same as what is otherwise expressed through audible speech.

By immersing ourselves in the human being itself, in order to allow ourselves to be revealed what is predisposed in the innermost part of the human being as possibilities of movement, we switch off the very element of language, and thus penetrate deeper into the essence of the human being without concepts and ideas, in direct contemplation. And in this way we achieve something that is fundamentally artistic. You can see that here we are attempting something that avoids mere gesture, pantomime, mimicry, and arbitrary connections – as is often the case in dance – between the content of the soul and the external impression.

In this way, eurythmy is something like the art of music itself. Just as musical art does not achieve its full value when it is merely tone painting, so eurythmic movements do not achieve what we are seeking artistically if they merely express in pantomime what is going on in the soul. They do not do this; but just as in music the essential lies in the lawful succession of the tones, in the melodious element, so here the essential lies not in the direct expression, but in the lawful sequence of the movements. Eurythmy is therefore music that is visible on the outside. And so it is that there is nothing arbitrary about two people or two groups of people in different places eurythmizing or performing the same thing, because the individual possibilities for expression are not allowed to differ any more than when two pianists play the same piece of music according to their personal interpretation.

And all the feelings that otherwise animate our speech, such as passion and sorrow, joy and enthusiasm, and so on, we can also express through the forms and especially through groups – whereby the individual personalities interact through the different movements of these groups. So it is a mute language of people in motion through which eurythmy seeks to work.

Of course, everything aesthetic must have an immediate effect, and I am only saying these few words to you in advance so that you can see the artistic sources from which this eurythmy is drawn. Just as in music there is an inner lawfulness of tones in the sequence of tones, of melody and so on, here we come to the lawfulness of human movement itself.

You will hear the silent language of eurythmy performed before you accompanied, on the one hand, by music, which is essentially just another expression, an expression with different means. You will also hear the recitation on the other hand. What is heard in the recitation becomes visible on the stage through the movements of the people there. The two will run in parallel. A piece of poetry, for example, will be recited, and the art of poetry will be presented in eurythmy at the same time – one and the same.

However, it must be taken into account that the art of recitation, as it is practiced today, is not well suited for eurythmy. For today, in the art of recitation – and it is precisely in this that the greatness of the art of recitation is seen – the prose content of the poems is actually taken into account, not the rhythmic, the metrical, the rhyming that underlies them. But this must be taken into account precisely in the art of recitation that is intended to serve the rhythmic presentation. So we have to go back to the good old forms of recitation – and [in doing so] we want to develop a feeling for the artistic again, a better feeling than our current, somewhat inartistic times. In the artistic, our present humanity also often seeks the prose content of a poem, the literal content in a poem.

One need only recall how Schiller, for example, before he had the literal content of some of his poems in mind, had a melody in mind; and it was only for this melody, which now lived in his soul in a certain way, that he then sought the literal content. This is how the best of Schiller's poems came into being. The real poet needs the formal element that underlies the prose element of life.

Now we will first have to perform a scene from the first part of Goethe's “Faust” for you. There we will, of course, present what are, so to speak, everyday events, in a manner appropriate to the stage. However, anyone who has seen many of the attempts that the directorial art of modern theater has made to bring Goethe's “Faust” to the stage in a dignified manner knows how difficult it is to that Goethe has put into Faust, to really bring it out in the presentation, when Goethe, as is the case in so many places in Faust, allows the supersensible, the spiritual, to play into his poetry. In many places, as you know - also in the first part, but especially in the second part of Faust - the spiritual and the supersensible play a role. One can go through the various directorial skills that have been applied: a great deal was really achieved in the 1880s, even in the 1880s. I myself got to know Wilbrandt in the 1880s, with his amiable directorial skills, who tried to bring the whole of “Faust” to the stage. It was also a kind of deepening for the interpretation of the mystery play that Devrient brought to the stage and so on. Much has been tried; but something unsatisfactory always remains, especially in the scenes where the spiritual and supersensible play a role and should be presented.

So now, while we present the rest of the scenes in a purely theatrical way, we are trying to bring out the “ghost scene” through eurythmy. Before the break, we will present the first scene of the first part of “Faust” in a purely theatrical way, as far as this can be considered. So the scene in the study, the poodle scene, where the poodle disturbs Faust while he is translating the Bible; and then the ghosts enter, and through the silent language of eurythmy we try to bring out what is in this world poem with regard to the ghost scene.

Goethe was aware that he had put so much inwardly human into his “Faust” poetry that he had not actually thought of staging the first part of “Faust” until the 1820s. He was then aware that he had adapted “Faust II” for the stage; but it was not performed until after Goethe's death. But you see, Faust was such a huge piece of world literature that other people came up with the idea of staging Faust, of actually bringing it to the stage. Goethe hadn't thought of that; for him, Faust was simply something portrayed from within, from the human perspective.

My old friend and teacher, Karl Julius Schröer, was very friendly with Laroche, who was still a famous actor at the time of Goethe. Laroche came to Goethe at the head of a deputation with the proposal – it was only at the end of the 1790s – to bring Faust to the stage. Laroche reported to Schröer: “Yes, Goethe gave us a good telling off! He was furious when he heard that we wanted to stage Faust. He said to us, 'You fools!' You see, with Goethe, a good deal of anger was needed – and surprise. Goethe, who had really become a well-mannered gentleman by that time, the “fat privy councillor with the double chin”, was not easily so naughty to such excellent people as, for example, Laroche, when he called them “donkeys”. He must have really believed that it was not possible to stage “Faust”. He also spoke about it more often later on.

But attempts were repeatedly made to bring Faust to the stage, and rightly so. We now believe that for certain scenes, the mystery that Goethe has woven into his Faust can be brought out by means of eurythmy in certain places. Of course, you, esteemed attendees, should consider this as just an experiment; and I would ask you to consider what we are able to present to you today as just the beginning of the art of eurythmy, which will be perfected later.

So, before the intermission, we will present the first part of the first scene from the first part of Faust, and then after the intermission we will present poems, poetry, and music, where we will do everything entirely in eurythmy. In the presentation of the scene from Faust, only a few parts are in eurythmy. But in the second part of our program, we will then present everything to you in full eurythmy. And so I ask you to please take the whole performance as an exercise in forbearance; for we are actually only at the beginning with the eurythmic art that seeks to achieve what I have presented.

However, we believe that if our contemporaries show the right interest in this new art, it can be perfected, either by us or by others – probably the latter – and that the time will come will come when this art, which uses the whole person as an instrument, thus the highest thing we have in existence, will be able to establish itself as a fully-fledged art alongside other older fully-fledged arts.