The Origin and Development of Eurythmy 1918–1920

GA 277b — 25 January 1920, Dornach

43. Eurythmy Performance

Allow me, dear assembled guests, to say a few words to introduce today's attempt at a eurythmy performance, since it cannot be assumed that all the honored guests and listeners here today have also been to some of the earlier events. And I always send these few words ahead, for the reason that this is about the exploration of a new source of art, and not about what is presented. After all, all art should not require explanation, but should work through direct observation, for direct impression. But here, for the first time, and unlike certain neighboring arts with which it can easily be confused but should not be, here for the first time the human being himself is used as an instrument. The human being places himself at the service of the artistic as a means of expression.

On the stage you will see the human being in motion, movements of the individual limbs as such, movements of people, of personalities arranged in groups in relation to one another, and much more. None of these movements are arbitrary, not even to the extent that they might be reproductions of gestures that people also make when accompanying speech with movements, but rather all of the movements what you see here in the movements is really a mute language, it is taken from the movement patterns that are in the whole human organism, just as the movement patterns in the human larynx and its neighboring organs are.

With a certain sensory-supersensory gaze – to use this Goethean expression – we try to recognize the underlying movement patterns of spoken language. We then try to bring these same movement patterns to external manifestation in this silent language of eurythmy. This is entirely in line with Goethe's view and attitude towards art. And compared to what can be achieved, for example, through the poetic arts with the help of ordinary spoken language, something far more artistic will be achieved in this eurythmy because in spoken language there is always a mixture - otherwise it would not be the servile link in our communication that it must be - there is always a mixture of the mental and the ideal element. But the intellectual, the ideal element is the death of the artistic.

Therefore, poetry that uses ordinary speech is only artistic to the extent that two elements resonate in the poetic language, one of which actually lies below the ordinary life of the soul – I would say a layer deeper than the ordinary life of the soul – and another element lies a layer higher. When the poet shapes what he experiences in his soul, two elements are added to ordinary language: firstly, a musical element and, secondly, a formative aesthetic element. Schiller is more of a musical artist, Goethe more of a plastic artist than a poet.

One can say: the less one listens to the literal content in the artistic sense of poetry, the more one tunes into the musicality that carries and accompanies language in the rhythm, the beat, and also the melody and resonates, the more one can tune in to the other side – if it is present – to the plastic, formative aspect of language, the more one comes to the actual artistry of the poetry. For the literal content is not the artistic content of poetry. The artistic content of poetry is the musical or plastic-forming element of language, which must accompany the literal element, so to speak, like an accompanying element.

Just as in music itself the mere movement is extracted, but translated into the [internalization] of the sound, so in eurythmy everything is extracted from language that is connected with the full development of the human will, so that the whole human being becomes, as it were, the larynx, and groups of people reveal themselves as speech organs on stage. And in this way something is achieved that can truly be integrated into our cultural development as a new artistic element. Perhaps it can best be indicated by saying: our language contains something, the origin of which is best pointed out by drawing attention to when human beings learn language. Just consider, my dear audience, that spoken language is learned by the human being as a child, when the human being has not yet fully awakened to the existence of the soul, when the human being is still dreaming their way into life.

And in fact there is something of dreaming into life in the linguistic element. We also think just as little, by developing the meaning of speech sounds and their composition, about how this is connected with reality, as we ultimately think about the connection with reality when dreaming. This dreamy element is indeed one side of the human soul life. It is, so to speak, an element of the soul below. The more a person develops their sense of ego, the more they also dream their way into ordinary life. And in today's world, it is by no means appropriate to work towards this dream-like quality in the arts.

This dream-like element is a dismissed element of the artistic. In eurythmy, we strive towards something that is an artistic element of the future of our culture. If one can say that the more we train the actual sound-thought element in speech, the more we enter into the realm of the dreamlike, the more our consciousness is attuned, then one must say that eurythmy is what encompasses the opposite of everything dreamlike. Eurythmy is precisely that which is achieved by the fact that the human being awakens more than he does in ordinary life. It is a more intense waking than that which is present in ordinary life as a state of consciousness. In a sense, doing eurythmy is the opposite of dreaming. Dreaming is a lulling of the human being, whereas doing eurythmy is a waking up, a being awakened of the whole human nature. In a dream, if the dream is a healthy one, we do not move, we lie still; and the movements that a person makes in a dream are only apparent. By contrast, the pictorial element, the element of imagination, is predominant in a dream.

Here in eurythmy the opposite is the case: everything dream-like is suppressed, whereas the will element comes to the fore, that which remains unconscious in dreams but is brought out here. But this makes it possible for the human being to strip away all selfishness and to perform movements that, so to speak, harmoniously enter into the whole enigmatic world of law.

And one can imagine, my dear audience, that when you look at the moving human being with this silent eurythmic language, you feel an inkling of the unraveling of natural secrets that cannot be revealed in any other way , also taking into account that Goethean artistic attitude that is so beautifully expressed in those Goethean words: When nature begins to reveal its secret to someone, they feel the deepest longing for its most worthy interpreter: art. If we now consider the whole human being as an element that speaks the silent language of eurythmy, in order to express through its inherent movements what underlies the laws of the whole world – for the human being is a compendium of the whole world, a microcosm – we achieve the highest artistic level.

Therefore, everything arbitrary, everything merely pantomime or mimic is banned in eurythmy. What comes to light here is a general human quality. In a sense, it is not the individual human being who speaks out of his or her ordinary feelings - as in ordinary sign language or dance art - but rather what is in nature itself. The aim is to achieve what Goethe says so beautifully in his book on Winckelmann - where he expresses the highest of his artistic revelation: When the healthy nature of man works as a whole, when he feels himself to be in a great, dignified and valuable whole, then the universe, having reached its goal, wants to exult and admire the summit of its own being and becoming.

The universe itself can speak through the human being. Therefore, there is nothing arbitrary about the movements of eurythmy. They are evoked by sensuous-supersensuous beholding from the movement dispositions of the whole human organism. When two people or two groups of people in completely different places, for example, perform the same motif in eurythmy, there is no more subjectivity, no more individual arbitrariness in it than when two pianists play the same piece of music in their own way. If you still find pantomime in the things, it is because we are still in the early stages of eurythmy. This will be overcome in time.

So you will see, for example, how motifs are presented eurythmically on the one hand, and how these motifs are accompanied musically; because the musical in its continuous regularity is only another expression of what is achieved plastically and flexibly through eurythmy. But you will also see that this same motif, which is expressed through the silent language of eurythmy, can be accompanied in recitation and declamation as a poetic motif. In doing so, you will notice that it is precisely this art of recitation, in imitation of eurythmy, that must in turn go back to the good old forms of recitation and declamation.

Therefore, the art of recitation is not developed here in the way it is today. This can easily lead to misunderstandings and misjudgment in the present day. In the present day, recitation as practised here is perceived as thoroughly unartistic, because the essence of recitation is seen as being to bring out the literal content, that is, the prose content of the poetry. Recitation and declamation are quite different here, for otherwise one could not accompany the eurythmy with declamation or recitation. The musical element, the beat, the rhythm, the melody, that is, what is already eurythmic in the treatment of speech, in speech formation, becomes the essence of the art of recitation when the musical element is most intensely permeated by speech. Therefore, just as eurythmy itself is still being challenged today, so too will the way of reciting – which must be as it is here, if it is to accompany eurythmy – still be challenged.

This is our intention, and so we are trying to present through eurythmy, to achieve through these eurythmic presentations, that which can only be attained outside of thought: the unraveling of the secrets of the world. For the secrets of the world ultimately reveal themselves only through that which human beings can reveal from within themselves. Goethe so beautifully expressed: What would all the millions of suns, stars and planets be worth, if not for the human soul that ultimately absorbs it all? and takes delight in it, enjoys it? If one can say: that which weaves and works in the world can be represented through human creativity, then many of the secrets of the world are revealed without the detour of thought. And that is precisely what eurythmy is intended to achieve.

Now, you will see that the poems we are presenting today, some of which have already been felt in eurythmy in the poetic disposition, can easily be presented in a eurythmic way, for example, by imagining nature as in the “Quellenwunder”, which is presented here.

I would like to say that our eurythmy has three aspects: firstly, as an art it should present itself to the world. Secondly, however, it also has an essentially hygienic element, a health element. If eurythmy becomes more popular in the widest circles, it will be found that by placing the human being in the whole of the laws of the world in a non-selfish way, as is the case in eurythmy, a healing element is brought into play in the human being. And thirdly, it has a pedagogical side.

Ordinary gymnastics – which should not be done away with, but rather supplemented by eurythmy – is focused one-sidedly on the body, taking into account only the physiology, only the physical form. Eurythmy, on the other hand, takes into account the whole human being and aims to express in movement that which works through body, soul and spirit. Thus, in contrast to mere physiological gymnastics, which works on the body, what is expressed through eurythmy is a spiritualized form of gymnastics, alongside the artistic aspect of eurythmy.

In this way eurythmy can truly become a fruitful element in the development of our time. But don't think that we are being immodest when we speak of what we can already do in eurythmy today. We are our own harshest critics and judges. We know that we still have to ask for leniency for our beginnings. We know that it can perhaps only be called an attempt at a beginning. But we are also firmly convinced that if eurythmy is met with interest from our contemporaries, it has an undreamt-of potential for development and that, if it further developed by us, but probably by others, [that] eurythmy will be able to establish itself as a fully-fledged younger art alongside its fully-fledged older sister arts.