The Origin and Development of Eurythmy 1918–1920

GA 277b — 10 April 1920, Dornach

57. Eurythmy Performance

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen.

Allow me to begin today, as I always do before these eurythmy performances, with a few words about the significance of the eurythmic art. We have here an attempt at this eurythmic art, a beginning, one might say, of an attempt at a kind of silent language. You will see this silent language performed on stage in movements that are carried out by the human limbs - also through movements of the whole person in space - or through the alternating movements, through the alternating positions of personalities in groups and the like.

All of this could initially be seen as a mere art of gestures, where an attempt is made to express a poetic content, which is the underlying basis and is also recited during the performance, or to express a musical piece, which can also be the basis of the presentation and which is played or sung at the same time – it could look as if movement is used to add gestures or a certain facial expression to the poetic, literal or musical content that forms the leitmotif. It is not so, but with this eurythmic art, we are in fact trying to open up a new source of art and also to bring very special means of artistic expression. Here, the source is the human being itself. And the source opens up through a special training of what one can call in the sense of Goetheanism: the striving for the sensual-supernatural element in art.

We see, my dear attendees, today the most diverse efforts to get out of the old traditional art forms, to get out of the old artistic language, and to find something new as a means of artistic expression. We see this in the fields of sculpture, painting, and also in the field of poetry; in the field of music it has been noticeable for a long time and so on.

It is always the case, when a certain period of time has been fulfilled, that the forms for the art of this time become too intellectual. What is still intuitive and instinctive at the beginning of an artistic epoch, what arises from the most elementary emotions of the human being, is studied in the course of time, analyzed by the human intellect, and becomes artistic technique, but one that is imbued with intellect. And then it increasingly appears as imitation art, as something that a young generation will then use [reject].

Today, we see attempts to arrive at a new artistic formal language, particularly in Impressionism and Expressionism. However, despite the fact that nothing should be said against some extraordinarily significant beginnings in this direction, it must also be said that the most serious artists and connoisseurs in this field are somewhat dissatisfied. Take the field of painting, for example. It is not possible to merely conjure up certain elementary experiences - I would say half-servants of human nature, which are to be brought onto the canvas - and really express them properly in colors and lines. The special difficulty that exists in every art is that the intellectual element has a deadening, diluting effect on everything artistic to the extent that thoughts, ideas, and the intellectual in general enter into the artistic. The artistic is killed. This is why Goethe believed that the expression 'sensual-supersensory' is particularly appropriate for the artistic. There must be something immediate that can serve as a means of expression in the external world. But the moment any idea is impressed upon this means of expression, artistic enjoyment ceases. And I have the feeling that it is easiest to achieve something sensual and supersensual when one uses the human being himself as a tool for artistic expression.

But for this to happen, human speech must also be studied in a sensual and supersensible way. When a person makes himself audible, not only in poetry but also, for example, in song, through his vocal organs, through his speech organs, then the expression of these speech organs is always based on movements whose tendencies can be examined if one has the opportunity to rise above mere sensory observation through hearing and penetrate into that which is not directly heard but which underlies it as a movement, a movement of the larynx, a movement of the other organs involved in speaking or singing. The soul of human speech is based on the fact that the human being localizes his muscular system on the larynx and can use it to produce movements that then become speech simply through their peculiarity. These movements can be studied sensually and supersensibly. One must study the large course of what is organized by the larynx and the other speech organs into vibrations in the air, or, I should say, into the separation of many small vibrating movements. One must intuitively grasp the underlying tendencies of the movements.

Then what can be studied, what underlies speech in a completely lawful way, can be transferred to the whole human being, to the movement of all his limbs. So that in eurythmy, through such a transference, you can, as it were, make the whole human being function on the stage like a human larynx, I would say. One could say: if the movements that are performed for vowels, consonants, sentence contexts, for the inner character, for the structure of the sentence, to which these movements correspond, were not the whole human being, but if what one sees were to be placed directly into the larynx, then nothing else would be expressed in the larynx than what you hear as the accompanying recitation.

However, this does not make the art of eurythmy something arbitrary, but something as internally lawful as the melodic or harmonic element in music is internally lawful. If something is initially based on gestures or facial expressions, then it is something that has not yet been overcome, [because] something as lawful as in music itself lives in eurythmy. And in what is heard at the same time, there is something like a harmonic element in music. [But this is only possible if] one also goes back to what is actually poetic in poetry. Poetry is not an art through its literal content, in a sense through the prosaic that underlies it, but poetry is poetry through rhythm, through beat, through everything that is incorporated into the literal content as form.

This is what is expressed through eurythmy. But it must also be expressed in the recitation that accompanies the eurythmy. Therefore, in order to be able to accompany the eurythmy with recitation, we must go back to the good old forms of recitation, which are avoided today precisely where one believes one is reciting well: to the rhythmic, to the not on the emphasis of the prose content, on which so much emphasis is placed today in what, especially in our very unartistic time, is called good recitation. Here too, it must be borne in mind that this recourse to eurythmy for a new artistic element makes very special demands on the art of recitation. Through the fact that this eurythmy attempts to impress upon the human being himself that which is otherwise impressed upon him through hearing in speech, the human being himself becomes the means of sensory expression of art. And because the movements are not intellectually shaped into gestures, but because the movements unfold in such a way that they are natural to the human being, like the movements of the larynx itself, the mere abstract thought, the intellectual, is bypassed and one sees directly for the artistic impression on the stage in the silent language of eurythmy something sensual and supersensory: the soul-filled movements of the human being.

You will therefore see that this eurythmic art is particularly suitable for the experiment I have tried to carry out in my 'mystery dramas', where the spiritual itself is to be expressed in many places. What is actually meant here will, of course, be misunderstood for a long time yet, because people do not yet realize that nature and thus man, through his intellect, is being forced into abstract natural laws. We will just have to learn to understand nature in line with what Goethe means when he says: When man is placed at the summit of nature, he sees himself again as a whole nature, which in turn has to produce a summit. To do this, he rises to the challenge by permeating himself with all perfections and virtues, invoking number, order, harmony and meaning, and finally rising to the production of the work of art. Thus man creates within himself a new, significant summit and then rises to produce the work of art.

What must this work of art be like? We can only imagine it as an ideal. Perhaps we may say that when the human being regards himself with his whole organism as a tool, as the instrument for producing this work of art, it is indeed the case that, through the fact that this eurythmy appears in this particular form, something is present that perhaps – I am not saying that it is already this ideal art – but that it provides something from which one can see how one must create forms in order to arrive at the sensual-supersensible.

That is the essential thing: neither the sensual nor the supersensible alone, but the sensual-supersensible – the sensual-supersensible that appears to us as if the forms of the idea or of the ideational had already lived in us, and that appears to us with such vividness that we find the idea itself as something taking place in the sensory world. To bring the idea to the sensual, or to present the sensual world in the form of the idea: this is what can be brought about most vividly, precisely through this particular art form of eurythmy.

But I also ask you today to be lenient with what we can bring to you today, because, as I said, we are only just beginning. Those of you who have attended our performances more often may have noticed how we have been trying to make progress recently, but it must continue to happen more and more. Either we or others will be able to develop what is in its infancy today to a greater perfection. Be assured, my dear audience, that with eurythmy a beginning has been made to something that will surely one day be able to stand alongside other, older art forms as a complete art.