The Origin and Development of Eurythmy 1918–1920

GA 277b — 15 February 1920, Dornach

49. Eurythmy Performance

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,

All of you here today will have seen the sometimes extraordinarily dubious but, from a certain point of view, not uninteresting attempts by a younger generation of artists to express something new. Sometimes something comes out that a person who does not want to listen to the deeper vibrations of the times may see as something quite paradoxical, perhaps even crazy. And often it is. But today, especially among younger artists, there is something extraordinarily justified behind all this. There is the striving to get closer to the sources of human artistic creation than was the case in the immediately preceding period.

You are aware of the attempts at so-called Impressionism that were made for a time, which were aimed at something that a wider circle could accept. You also know how in the newer attempts, which manifested themselves in all kinds of strange naming, but above all in the expressionistic attempts, it can be seen how in these newer attempts - which also showed certain successes - it was striven to achieve something with new artistic means of expression.

Now, the eurythmy that we want to show you today is about striving in a healthy way for that which is being striven for in a morbid way with inadequate means and from many sides, even in the present day. What we are trying to do is create a new means of expression for art and a new instrument, a new tool. Our eurythmy is a new means of expression in that it is a real language, albeit a mute one. On the stage you will see a wide variety of movements of the arms and other limbs of the human body. You will see how the individual personalities, arranged in groups in relation to each other, move towards and around each other and so on. These are not random gestures. All this has been brought into such a law-governed order after careful observation of the human organization, as it is present, for example, in the harmonic and melodious elements of music itself as a law-governed order.

If we have to make use of spoken language in poetry, then something is entering into the art of poetry today that, when it enters into any art in abundance, actually disintegrates and paralyzes it: that is the element of thought. Our spoken language is the confluence of that which comes from the human mind, the thought element, and that which comes from the whole being of the human being – we like to say: from the heart as its summary: the will element. But in spoken language, the will element has to submit to the thought element. The thoughts swim, as it were, on the moving will element. This can be observed in a profound sense in human speech.

If we start from what should be the starting point for everything that this Goetheanum building represents, then, proceeding from the Goethean artistic ethos and artistic view of the world, we can draw from the possibilities of movement in the human organism something that is truly a eurythmic, mute language, that is not a random gesture, but something that is necessarily derived from the entire organization of the human organism, as phonetic language is derived from the larynx and its neighboring organs.

But when we apply what I would like to call, in Goethe's sense, sensory-supersensory observation, and of course also higher striving, we encounter a remarkable feature of the human body as a whole and of the human speech mechanism in particular. The human speech organs, the larynx and its neighboring organs, are arranged in such a way that the movement patterns that develop into actual movements directly encounter the external air and, by absorbing the thought element, cause air movements. When I speak here, the air moves in a regular way. But because the larynx and its neighboring organs come into direct contact with the external air, their energies and forces give rise to fine, oscillating movements that are perceived not as movements but as sounds.

Now, with the help of eurythmy, we try to switch off the thought element altogether and, drawing on poetry and music, bring forth only that which is the will element. Where the will does not act on the air through the mediation of the larynx, but where the will directly impacts the muscular system, there is resistance. The air does not encounter such resistance from the movements of the larynx and its neighboring organs. This is how the small, delicate vibrations that can be heard come about. But when we allow the other expressions of the human being within us to have a direct effect on us, the organism offers resistance; and then, instead of the rapid, small movements, slow and full movements come about, which, however, express the same same thing – only it is easier to use in an artistic sense – [like] today's spoken language, which in the civilized world has essentially become something conventional, that is, unartistic.

That which is elementary and original in man and which in poetry works as rhythm, as beat, as melodious element, as plastic element, can be brought out of poetry through this mute language of eurythmy. But this makes the eurythmic art something that accommodates the dark, awkward, sometimes paradoxical striving of some artists in the present day. The artistic is based on the fact that on the one hand one can immerse oneself in nature in order to find artistic inspiration, but in such a way that one completely eliminates the abstract element of thought in this observation of nature, which underlies the artistic, that one grasps nature, so to speak, without first thinking about it. The moment you start thinking about nature, you lose art. You have to grasp nature in direct observation. You have to grasp it in images.

In more recent times, when, as I have indicated, one was looking for new means of artistic expression, one tried to achieve this to the highest degree in Impressionism, by tried to capture the immediate impression in a painterly, pictorial way, so to speak, the impression that nature makes, or the impression that the processes at work in it make, [the] colors, effects of air. And so quickly in relation to the act of observation that, in view of the speed of observation, one does not even think of processing the things intellectually first. Impression and its reproduction in painting or other art should be something that, with the exclusion of thought, brings about a revelation in an artistic sense. But when observing nature, it is very easy for the means to fall short of such ideals. For if we try to observe nature to the exclusion of thought, nature has too strong an effect on our lower human faculties. Nature itself makes it necessary, so to speak, if we want to face it humanly, that we do not exclude thought. That is why Impressionist art, which wanted to be based on the observation of nature and the immediate impression, was increasingly forced to powerlessness.

On the other hand, that which is artistic can be brought forth from the depths of the human being, from the experience of the inner human being. But even then, thought must be excluded. That is what contemporary expressionists are trying to do. But by using all kinds of means of expression, such as drawing and colors, they show that they have not yet been able to turn artistic means of expression and artistic technique into a means of expressing what is experienced inwardly. For this inner experience must be such that it has not yet developed into a clear, abstract thought, that it is still an experience devoid of thought. For the intellectual kills the artistic.

We are trying in the most diverse fields – and those of the esteemed listeners who have often seen this building in its individual parts will have seen it in the design, in the sculpture, in the painting – we are trying to achieve what is otherwise perhaps attempted out of a certain powerlessness by those who are striving for the best in the present day. But what is being attempted here with eurythmy will one day be able to develop into something that truly combines the expressionist element of art with the impressionist element of art in a healthy way. For only in this combination will we truly achieve what we are seeking to attain by setting the whole human body, the whole human organism, in motion in this silent language of eurythmy in such a way that it is not the thought that is active in speech sounds but only the human will. All that remains is still free from the thought.

But we call forth what we draw from the human soul life in a completely lawful manner from the organism, we place it in direct view. We place the person or the group of people themselves in such a way that the movements that are carried out do not involve the mental element, but at the same time, the direct impression of an inner human experience that is not permeated by thought does arise. This is what nature cannot give — thoughtless impressions. These are evoked by the fact that we place the inner human experience directly before our eyes in a silent language, visible language. The fact that the moving human being stands before us gives the impression that one seeks in vain in nature. And the fact that the human being

with the differentiated inner experience, at the same time, expression is given to present the inner experience as an external view.

I do not wish to imply, esteemed attendees, that this is the final word for the existing ideals of those who today, often out of such artistic impotence, are striving. But these examples can show you that if only this eurythmic art can develop further and proceed as one can proceed in other arts, some of it can be achieved. Of course, what we have to show today is only a beginning, in terms of the forms we have here at the Goetheanum and what its individual aspects are, and what has been achieved. And I ask you to take the artistic performances in such a way that we can now truly move on to new artistic sources, when we can present our attempts in this silent language of eurythmy here.

I would ask you, first of all, to bear in mind that everything we are trying to achieve with our eurythmy is still in its infancy. Those of you who have been to our performances before will have seen how we are trying to improve from month to month. But there is much potential for development in this eurythmy, and even though we definitely feel that we have come a lot further in the last five to six months, in that we have progressed to a composition of forms that we could not have mastered before, we know – we are our own harshest critics – that eurythmy is in its infancy and is therefore open to many misunderstandings.

Many misunderstandings will certainly arise. On the one hand, you will have accompanied this eurythmy with music, which then means a different form of expression for this silent language. But you will also get to see – or mainly hear – the poetic recitation and declamation that recitation and declamation that cannot be done in the way it is becoming popular today in an unartistic time, which is why our eurythmic art must be accompanied by a new form of recitation and declamation. There is only so much real art in the poetic element if the prosaic, literal element is not taken into account. Today, however, people want to emphasize the literal element in recitation. Instead, they take into account the underlying musical , rhythmic, and metrical, the melodious or the spiritual, that which, through the listening to the poetic word, conjures up the image before our inner eye. And so the recitation must also be carried out in such a way that the main emphasis is not placed on the particularly important word or a logical sentence structure, [that] the outward form with which one speaks today, which is actually is not emphasized, but rather that recitation is seen as a companion to eurythmy, taking into account the actual artistic element in poetry. So it is not the literal meaning that is emphasized here; rather, the main emphasis is on the formal element in the poetic art.

You will see in particular that those poems can be easily translated into the silent language of eurythmy that are conceived eurythmically from the outset, from the very inner feeling from which they originated. You will see this, esteemed attendees, in the attempt I have made to reproduce certain inner natural connections, certain inner world connections in a dramatic scene from one of my mystery plays. You will see that the eurythmic art can be an expression of what has already been thought in such movements.

Likewise, in the scenes that follow the intermission in the second part – the images of the gnome and sylph scene with what belongs to them – I have tried to convey something that is of this nature and is still widely misunderstood today. For in this age of intellectual culture, people do not realize that nature is so rich inwardly that it cannot be exhausted by the abstractions that lead to the laws of nature that can be conceived. It may still sound paradoxical to some today, perhaps more than you care to admit, when you are told: To fully grasp the secrets of nature, something will be needed that moves from abstract thought to a certain artistic form, to a rounding out, to a deepening of mere abstract thought, but where thoughts are then completely excluded. Something new must emerge. We will have to take help from elsewhere if we want to unravel the basis of the workings of nature, irony and humor.

In today's natural science, there is not much irony or humor in the contrasting of natural forces with what is being spoken of. That is why it is, I would say, an abstract web that is revealed to us today as knowledge of nature, as a view of nature. So if you want to understand nature completely – and Goethe wanted that – you will have to progress in the art of interpreting the real and therefore beautiful words: When nature begins to reveal its secrets to you, you feel the deepest longing for its most worthy interpreter, art. For Goethe, art is something that helps to unravel nature.

And in view of all this, I ask you to be very indulgent. We know that we are at the beginning. But we believe that in this art, which uses man as an instrument, as a tool, and which at the same time uses man as a compendium of the entire works of nature, that something will be developed in this art to an ever greater degree of perfection than is already possible today, either by us or probably by others. If there is even the slightest possibility that our contemporaries will show some interest in this art, then there is no doubt that something significant can be achieved through this art in time. And so I ask for your interest, but also for your forbearance. For we are thoroughly convinced that, even if it takes a long time, there is something in this eurythmic art, which, as I said, is now in its infancy, that can be perfected so that this eurythmic art will one day be able to stand alongside the older established arts as a fully recognized art.