The Origin and Development of Eurythmy 1918–1920
GA 277b — 24 January 1920, Dornach
42. Eurythmy Performance
Das Märchen vom Quellenwunder by R. Steiner with music by Leopold van der Pals
“The Fisherman“ by J. W. v. Goethe, followed by ‘Poissons d'or’ by C. Debussy
“The Forgotten Thunder” by Christian Morgenstern
“Swallows” by Christian Morgenstern
Saying from the Calendar of the Soul (41st) by Rudolf Steiner
Saying from the Calendar of the Soul (42nd) by Rudolf Steiner
Saying from the Calendar of the Soul (43rd) by Rudolf Steiner
“Mahomet's Song“ by J. W. v. Goethe
“World Soul” by J. W. v. Goethe with music by Max Schuurman Prelude “Planetary Dance”
Dear ladies and gentlemen.
Allow me to say a few words today, as always, before these eurythmy performances. There are two reasons for this: Firstly, because a new art form that is really only at the beginning of its work needs a certain justification, and secondly, because it is necessary to say something about the sources of artistic creation that underlie this completely new art form. I will not use the words that I want to say beforehand in the sense that they should be an explanation of what is to be presented. That would not be appropriate for artistic matters, because artistic matters should not require any explanation but should work through direct vision and direct impression. These words are only prefaced in order to speak about the sources of what appears here as the eurythmic art.
Like everything we want to do here at the Goetheanum to incorporate it into modern spiritual life, we can also call what we are trying to do with the art of eurythmy Goetheanism, in the sense that it is drawn from a truly Goethean conception and ethos of art. What is being attempted could be described, if one wanted to characterize it in general terms, as a kind of silent language. It is a language that is not produced by the larynx and its neighboring organs, as is the case with ordinary, heard language, but rather by the whole human organism, by the movement systems present in the human being, which are simply brought out of the organism. But this does not happen in an arbitrary way, not in the way that those random gestures and facial expressions that human beings so often reveal are used. Rather, an attempt is made to draw a new kind of language from the being of the human being himself – indeed, from the being of the whole human being – a language that can be elevated by its special nature to the artistic.
We know, of course, that in poetry, language, the heard language, initially serves as a means of expression. However, if our present age did not feel so unartistic, one would feel that, with all the magnificent things that poetry can create through language, language as such – which has completely different tasks in life than realizing artistic things – language as such actually impairs the directly artistic.
Languages, especially our cultured, literary languages, are often riddled with conventional elements; they are also riddled with expressions that stem purely from human selfishness. That which we want to convey to others or receive from others, and which is always at the same time a means of expression for an egoistic, for an immediately egoistic, human impulse, is just as much of the artistic essence that is taken away from the actual motif that the poet wants to express through language. Those who feel directly artistically can actually say the following. He can say to himself: In all poetry there is really only as much that is truly artistic as on the one hand resonates through the language in a musical way and on the other hand is shaped and plastic and thus also resonates through the language. For the artistic is never actually to be found in the realm where thoughts operate, and our conventional language is basically an expression of thoughts. Therefore, the more the poetic element leans towards the musical pole, the more the musical, rhythmic, melodious resonates through the language, so that the actual content of the language actually demands less interest than what pulses through the content of the language as a musical wave. On the other hand, in the case of poetically gifted individuals such as Goethe, the plastic element of language is more strongly expressed: that which gives form, that which we seek to bring out in eurythmy.
All artistic activity, ladies and gentlemen, goes fundamentally beyond the ordinary experience of the soul. One might say that there is a layer above the usual soul experience or a layer below the usual soul experience. What is expressed in the art of eurythmy relates to the usual, everyday soul experience – if I may use a comparison – in roughly the opposite way that a dream relates to this usual soul experience.
Take the dream, I mean the healthy dream, where you do not rage, where you do not move your limbs, but where you live in the ideas, in the images. Everything that moves in a dream is only an appearance, is only pictorial, is not there in reality. The person is at complete rest, and only the moving life is imagined. I would like to say: everything is filtered out of ordinary life in dreams and transferred into the realm of imagination, into the pictorial. Thus, the dream life lies beneath the higher soul life as if in an underlayer. Man is not completely at his human height when he dreams. He is least at his human height when he daydreams in the waking life. But the more egotistical he becomes, the more of a dreamer he becomes – as paradoxical as that may sound. Certain sophisticated egotisms in human nature, in particular, delight in transforming life into a kind of dream, in dreaming through life. And false mystical directions see something special in being able to introduce the dream into life. They have no idea that in so doing they are pushing the human being down into the subhuman: the dream, and also dreaming in ordinary waking life, is a down-tuning of life.
The opposite takes place in eurythmy: Instead of falling asleep and dreaming, a stronger waking up takes place. There, precisely that which reaches its highest flowering in dreams, the naming of sounds, is suppressed and the awakening movement, through which the human being, without asserting his subjectivity, without his egoism, places himself in life and participates in that which holds one together with all of this. In this awakening movement, which in dreams is only an image, it is precisely the eurythmic that is sought. Therefore, one can say that while the dream life and everything dream-like is a lowering of life into the subhuman, the human being is raised up into a more living, more vital element: he is brought together with the whole weaving and driving of the cosmos when he lives into the eurythmic.
This is why the art of eurythmy has yet another side: first of all, it has a significant hygienic-therapeutic side. The eurythmic movements are such that they can be directly read from the harmony of the human being with the universe. They therefore place the human being harmoniously in the universe and are therefore healing movements, provided they are not exaggerated. But they also have the effect of directing and orienting the whole human being. This does not mean that ordinary gymnastics – and this is the pedagogical side of eurythmy – should be suppressed by eurythmy. Rather, it is hoped that eurythmy will prove a fruitful addition to ordinary gymnastics. In ordinary gymnastics, we are concerned only with the physiology of human nature. The main focus is on what can be done physiologically from the physical. In eurythmy, the aim is to bring the human organism, which is used as an artistic instrument, into movement in such a way that the whole human being is in harmony with the physical in mind and soul.
All that I have said now is expressed precisely in the practice of the eurythmic art. For those who want to develop the eurythmic art themselves, everything that is asleep in the human being must always be overcome, everything that is selfish in the human being must be brought out of life. And those who want to do eurythmy must awaken their life force, they must work to overcome selfishness and harmonize themselves with the whole universe. Thus eurythmy is something that can be hoped for. As I said, we think very modestly about what we can achieve today, but we can hope that it will develop into something ever higher and higher, because it regards the human being, the most perfect means of expression in the whole universe, as its instrument.
And so you will see how that which otherwise can only be expressed through audible language – but which can only rise to the artistic level when it becomes musical or plastic – how that which otherwise comes to expression through audible language is expressed here on the stage before you by the whole human being, who has become the larynx, in a mute language. On the one hand, this will be accompanied by music, which is, after all, only another form of artistry. The peculiarity of music is that it suppresses everything that is formative and brings it to expression in the internalization of the sound. The peculiarity of eurythmy is that it suppresses the sound and allows everything to be absorbed in the form.
On the other hand, you will find support in the form of recitation of what is being newly presented in eurythmy. But recitation will also be obliged to fall back on the earlier good art forms of recitation. Today, in an unartistic period, the special value of recitation lies in emphasizing what the prose content of the poem is. Here, where poetry must be recited to accompany eurythmy, it is necessary to develop the art of recitation in a special way, so that the musical and plastic, the rhythmic, the metrical, and the melodious are emphasized above all else. As a result, our art of recitation, as it appears here as a companion to eurythmy, is of course still subject to misunderstandings.
But people will come to see, firstly, the artistic side, secondly the hygienic-therapeutic side, and thirdly the educational side of what is presented here as the eurythmic art. And then we will see that a kind of artistic summit and educational summit can really be achieved through what is only just beginning here today, but which can be developed to ever greater perfection. It is the Goethean attitude to art that really inspires you when you are developing this eurythmy.
Those who place their own human organism at the service of this art will notice how everything that is expressed by the individual human being in spoken language must fall away, and how they must give themselves over to that which, in essence, nature expresses through the particular human organization itself. So that one can say: When an individual speaks or sings phonetically, when an individual moves to mimic and gesture, there is always something of the individual human subjectivity in it, of human egoism. Here in eurythmy, we are really striving for what Goethe considers to be the highest summit of artistic revelation, when he says: When the healthy nature of man works as a whole, when man feels himself in the world as a great and dignified totality, when harmonious pleasure gives him free delight, he will regard nature as having reached its goal and admire the summit of its becoming and being. This is not the language of the individual human being, revealed through the movements of eurythmy; it is the language of nature itself, which can emerge when we use the human being as its instrument.
And so, for those with artistic sensitivity, what emerges through eurythmy can truly seem like an unravelling of the mysteries of the world. This cannot be expressed at all in our spoken language. What can be expressed in the moving forms of eurythmy, what the individual human being performs by moving his limbs, by setting them in motion or bringing them into relation to one another, is something that has been clearly discerned from the laws of nature.
If one and the same group or two people were to perform the same thing in eurythmy in two different places, there would be no more arbitrariness in it than there is in the individual arbitrariness of two pianists in two different places playing one and the same sonata differently, reproducing it according to their own interpretation. The eurythmic is based on the law, just as the melodic element of music is based on it. And mere gesturing and mimicry are just as much banished from it as the corresponding musical language or the like is banished from the musical element. Thus one can hope that something thoroughly beneficial can also develop for further artistic education through this eurythmic element. However, I would ask that we be allowed to offer you what we can. Today, we mainly have some nature imaginations, some of which are designed in such a way, namely the 'miracle of the springs', that the poetry itself is already felt in eurythmy. For if the poetry is not based on the literal content but on what lies in the eurythmic itself, then the eurythmy appears as a natural expression of what the poetry gives.
But in all this, I ask you to please take into account what I have said many times: we ourselves are still thinking, with all modesty, about what we can offer today. We are at the beginning; but we also believe that if time is kind to us, what we want to achieve with the eurythmic art – either through ourselves or probably through others – will be developed over time. This eurythmic art will become something that can stand alongside the other, older art forms as a fully-fledged art form in its own right.