The Origin and Development of Eurythmy 1918–1920

GA 277b — 1 February 1920, Dornach

45. Eurythmy Performance

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen:

Not so much to explain what we are about to attempt on stage before you, but rather to point to the sources of the art of eurythmy, I would like to say a few words to introduce our attempt at a eurythmic performance. For it goes without saying that an artistic endeavor would not be truly artistic if what is presented first requires explanation. Art must speak for itself through direct perception. What is at issue here is that this eurythmic art, I may say, draws from new artistic sources and that it also makes use of the special tools of the human being in a way that has not yet been done in art. Just as everything for which this building, the Goetheanum, represents a kind of representation, ultimately leads back to Goethe's world view, so our eurythmy also leads back to Goethe's view of art, Goethe's artistic and in such a way that the view of the living world that Goethe made his own and which is truly still far from being sufficiently understood and appreciated, is taken as the basis for the training of a special art of movement.

This art of movement or eurythmy cannot be confused – or at least should not be confused – with all kinds of similar things such as dance, sign language, facial expressions and the like. Because everything that is sign language and facial expressions is basically avoided in our eurythmy. This eurythmy is a real silent language as a form of expression.

The poetic arts, they initially use the spoken language. But the spoken language is a confluence of two elements: from the side of the intellect, what flows into the spoken language is what is conceptual and imaginative. But anyone who is able to follow the linguistic, especially when it is poetically or artistically shaped, in terms of feeling, will become aware that language is permeated by a will element from within the whole human being, so that the element of imagination and the element of will come to expression in spoken language even when the poetic art makes use of this spoken language.

Now, however, one can say: artistically, it is not that which is grasped by the imagination, by the idea, by the thoughts of man. Artistic impression arises only from the fact that we immerse ourselves, so to speak, in the creative weaving of the world, to the exclusion of the abstract, the intellectual element, so that we have, in the language that art in particular must use, so to speak, the necessity not to appear entirely artistic. The truly artistic person therefore also feels that there can only be so much that is truly artistic in language if, on the one hand, a musical element flows into it and, on the other, a plastic, formative element flows into it.

One could say that our age is not a very artistic age, that our age also perceives poetry in a prosaic way, in terms of content. Other ages, which, through a certain naivety of the people, are more involved in the artistic conception, did not see the literal content in poetry, but rather the rhythmic, the metrical, the melodious element, which underlies the literal content, as the essential - or also the plastic, the formative element.

In eurythmy, an attempt has been made to study – through what could be called, in the Goethean sense, a sensory-supersensory observation – everything that is present in the human larynx and its neighboring organs in the way of movement patterns when a person utters speech sounds. In the case of spoken language, however, it is the case that the human being directly communicates to the air waves what he can reveal from the movement systems of the larynx and its neighboring organs. But if one studies the real organization of the human being through spiritual science, then one comes to the conclusion that the larynx and what surrounds it for the development of speech is, in principle, a repetition on a small scale of the whole human organism. And if we can work out which movement patterns flow into the movement of the air – which is present when we make use of phonetic language – then we can express not the movement itself, but the movement patterns through the whole human being. And so you will see – without there being anything arbitrary about it – the whole human being or groups of people on the stage before you, so to speak, become the larynx, so that in what the human being expresses through his limbs or in what the groups express through their positions, through their movements in relation to one another, the same thing is struck that otherwise radiates from the larynx into the air vibrations.

For those who have an understanding of such things, I would like to say: just as light, as a small vibration, relates to the larger, more widespread vibrations of vibrating electricity, which underlies wireless telegraphy, so that which takes place in the larynx relates to that which is developed for the whole human mobility in eurythmy. It is not, therefore, a case of trying to express something by random gestures or some kind of mere mimicry, but rather, in the same way that sound follows sound in the human spoken language, movement follows movement in the silent language of eurythmy. But because the element of thought is excluded, because only the will element is set in motion, the perception of what is being presented eurythmically is artistic from the outset. The thought element, the ideal element, is excluded. And by using the human being himself as an instrument for the eurythmic performance, one can see how all the riddles of the world can be seen in this human being, in his possibilities of movement. That is the important thing, that the riddles of the world can be seen in the movements that are performed here in eurythmy.

Therefore, however, it is really the case that either musical elements, which you will hear on one side, can be accompanied, illustrated, I would say, by the eurythmic elements, or that you can receive the poetry recited in the accompaniment of the eurythmic presentation at the same time as the recitation. Through the recitation, the poetry comes to life in the spoken language. But poetry is already based on the plastic or musical element – if the art of recitation is not practised as it is often practised in the present day, where it is not at its height, but in such a way that it achieves artistic results from the outset. Not in the way that recitation is practised, where attention is paid to the literal content, but to the melodious, rhythmic element. This is the basis of eurythmy, and this must be brought to bear in the recitation that accompanies the sequence of sounds. Just as the sequence of tones is accompanied by the musical element, so the silent art of eurythmy must be accompanied by the art of recitation of what is heard on the other side as poetry.

All that eurythmy can offer today is actually only a beginning, and in this regard I ask you to be lenient with the presentation, because we know full well that of what we have in mind as a eurythmic art, today we can only offer a beginning. It will be seen particularly when the things that are poetically shaped are rendered through eurythmy that this eurythmic rendering is particularly suitable for those poems - such as, for example, the 'Quellenwunder' which you will see today – which are not formed from the outset on the basis of the literal content, but on the basis of the rhythm, on the rhythm of the thoughts that follow one another, on the rhythm in relation to the meaning. This lends itself particularly well to eurythmy expression, which is, so to speak, eurythmy felt in that it is written down.

And so you will see how, by using the human being as an instrument for this silent eurythmic language, Goethe's artistic spirit is truly fulfilled. This artistic spirit is particularly beautifully expressed when Goethe says in his book on Winckelmann: “When man's healthy nature works as a whole , when he feels himself to be part of a great, beautiful, dignified and valuable whole, when a sense of harmony gives him pure, free delight – then the universe, if it could feel itself, would exult in having reached its goal and would admire the summit of its own becoming and being.” In fact, this is what is attempted in eurythmy: to overcome all subjective arbitrariness, which of course must permeate our speech, so that what is expressed is expressed with an inner necessity, as if the human being were an expression of the whole of nature itself, in which he is interwoven.

That is why, when performing eurythmically, one feels something particularly strongly, as we will try to express after the break in the second part of the program. There we will try to reproduce in eurythmy what we call a choir of gnomes and sylphs. Today it is believed that the truth of nature is revealed only in abstract thoughts and in abstract laws of nature. The time will come when we will know that nature in itself, creating nature, is much richer, much more inwardly meaningful than what abstract thought and abstract natural law can give, and that there is indeed a deep truth in a saying such as Goethe's: “When nature begins to reveal her secrets to someone, that person feels an irresistible longing for her most worthy interpreter, art.” This cannot come merely from abstract thought, from experiment, from natural law. What is needed to understand nature is something that must be felt gradually: one's understanding of nature must develop from mere abstract thought to real comprehension, to artistic comprehension, to artistic insight into the riddles and secrets of nature. Then one finds oneself in that dialogue between man and nature, as I have tried to express it in the choir of gnomes and sylphs.

But as everything that is presented here through this work is actually a matter for the future, I would like to emphasize once again that I ask you to take our presentation with indulgence. For we know full well that today we can only make a beginning, perhaps only an attempt at a beginning of our eurythmic art. But we are also convinced that if what underlies this desire for eurythmic art is further developed, then, especially if contemporaries take an interest in the matter, either either we ourselves or probably others will develop these eurythmy attempts into a complete art, which can then be presented alongside the other art forms as something truly justified and equal.