The Origin and Development of Eurythmy 1918–1920

GA 277b — 1 May 1920, Dornach

63. Eurythmy Performance

Saying from the Calendar of the Soul (3.) by Rudolf Steiner
“Antepirrhema“ by J. W. v. Goethe
Saying from the Calendar of the Soul (4.) by Rudolf Steiner
Saying from the Calendar of the Soul (5.) by Rudolf Steiner
“To the New Year” by Eduard Mörike
Musical prelude with music by Leopold van der Pals
“The Journey through the Harz in Winter“ by J. W. v. Goethe
Music from the 4th symphony by Anton Bruckner
“Primeval Words, Orphic” by J. W. v. Goethe
Elegiac prelude with music by Leopold van der Pals
“Flames“ silent prelude
“Napoleon in the Kremlin” by C. F. Meyer
“The Divine“ by J. W. v. Goethe
“Mailied” by J. W. v. Goethe
“Like and Like“ by J. W. v. Goethe
“Five Things” by J. W. v. Goethe
“Five Things“ by J. W. v. Goethe
“Five Other Things” by J. W. v. Goethe
Humorous prelude with music by Leopold van der Pals
Humoresques by Christian Morgenstern: “The Problem”; “The Guineafowl”; “To the Originals”; “A Modern Fairy Tale”

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen.

Allow me to say a few words today, as always, before these eurythmy performances. It is not done to explain the content of the performances themselves, because artistic work must of course be effective through direct impression and sending an explanation in advance would actually be somewhat inartistic. However, an attempt is being made with what we call eurythmy here to find new possibilities for artistic work, new possibilities for movements, [namely] that eurythmy strives for a kind of real mute language. On the stage you will see movements of the individual human being and of groups of people in relation to one another. What is expressed by the individual human being or by groups of people is not meant to be a play of gestures or pantomime or anything else of a mimic nature, which has been found by chance to express the poetry or music that is accompanying it. Rather, what is presented here as movement is derived from the whole organization of the human being as logically as speech sounds are derived. Just as the individual sound cannot be interpreted through mimicry, so too the individual gestures that appear in eurythmy cannot be interpreted through mimicry or dance. Rather, the aim is to use sensory-supersensory observation, to use a Goethean expression, to discover the laws of phonetic language, so to speak.

When I speak to you here, the movement is transmitted through the air. These movements are, however, initially small tremors. They are only the continuation of the movements that speech sounds produce in the larynx and the other speech organs. But these initial real movements of the larynx and the other speech organs are based on movement tendencies.

We can summarize, as it were, the movements that underlie phonetic language in terms of movement tendencies, in the same way that we can summarize the coils of a helix, by taking the axis of the helix as a movement tendency.

And these movement tendencies can be transferred to the whole human being according to Goethe's principle of metamorphosis; so that, as it were, the whole human being or groups of people appear before you like a living larynx, a mute larynx.

This is the unique feature of eurythmy: it has not grown out of some random flights of fancy, but out of a lawfulness that contains just as much inner necessity as the lawfulness of speech or song itself. So when we hear eurythmy accompanied by recitation and the spoken language expresses the recitation, the poem – or something musical is expressed through the instrument or also through singing, the eurythmic presentation is just another form, just another language. But it is a language that can be said to bring about, in many respects, those artistic aspirations that are sought by a large proportion of those who are artistically striving today.

Today, all kinds of artistic endeavors are being explored. Many of them are quite insignificant, because even today, as a painter or sculptor, one is not yet able to discover the forms from colors and shapes that can approach the elementary sources from which art flows for people in a new way.

In eurythmy, we have the strange fact that we use the human being himself as the tool through which it is expressed. And just as the human being appears to the world as a whole as a microcosm, as a small world, so when we use the limbs, which otherwise arise out of the satisfaction of the egoistic or social will, as a means of means of expression for what the human soul experiences, for example through poetry, through music, then the fact that the human being himself is a means of expression in this representation, in which one focuses one's gaze on the human being himself, one obtains a sensual image.

And this sensuous image is through and through, because it is formed by the human being himself, is inspired, spiritualized. Indeed, a sense-perceptible and supersensible reality appears immediately: a physical reality – the human being in motion – at the same time in such a way that we know that what is depicted in space is animated by soul and spirit. This makes it possible to unfold the sensual and the supersensible before us. And the sensual and the supersensible must indeed be the content of all true art. When art is saturated with ideas, with thoughts, it becomes inartistic. The more the element of thought is present in art, the less artistic the art is.

Therefore, language, spoken language, precisely because it is developing more and more, is becoming less and less suitable for poetry. And much of what one feels today about poetry is actually only the feeling of the literal content of prose. The time is already behind us when, in the early 19th century, in certain Romantic circles people found pleasure in listening to poetry that they did not understand literally, but only delighted in the rhythm and meter, in what is actually artistic in poetry.

We must even, by allowing the eurythmic to accompany the recitation, lead the recitation back to its good old forms. Today, people see perfection in recitation when the content is delivered in the right way, as they say, quite inwardly, from within the person. Goethe himself still rehearsed his “Iphigenia” with his actors with a baton like a conductor, placing much more emphasis on the iambic meter and verse than on the literal content. Today, we have more or less abandoned this purely artistic approach.

Now, you see, you feel this too if you want to let the individual human being work. You feel it in language when you are to pour that which is the content of the will into the word forms. Perhaps it seems paradoxical to many of the honored listeners, but it is nevertheless the case: for those who have a certain fine empathy for what one can feel today at an advanced stage of human development, what one can experience inwardly when one wants to express it in conventional language, then it is as if what one experiences more or less gets stuck in one's throat. Only people who have a certain talent for merging into the conventional, even if they are poets, find satisfaction in the phonetic language as a whole. One can say: this spoken language compels us to become inartistic everywhere, because it enters into the thought element, which becomes more and more conventional as civilization advances, because it favors the thought element. This conceptual element is only present in the accompanying recitation, but this must also go back to the artistic element, otherwise it would not be able to keep pace with the eurythmic performance. In contrast, in the eurythmic performance, we have the human will of a poem or a musical element, and we have the possibility to express the purely artistic.

Therefore, eurythmy, which is initially a mute language, has the very possibility of becoming artistic in the most direct of representations, in that what is represented is completely sensual and at the same time completely spiritual. This is the requirement for something that is to be truly artistic.

Thus we believe that our eurythmy is particularly helpful in an area that has been sought after in a wide variety of artistic fields for some time now. Through eurythmy, we can go back to the deepest human feelings, which cannot be expressed through language but can be expressed very individually through the silent language of eurythmy.

One might say: When a person dreams, they are, to a certain extent, in a sub-human consciousness. When a person dreams, they are at peace as a whole human being. They do not carry out movements. Only images fill the dream, and we only imagine movements in our dreams. Eurythmy play is the opposite pole to dreaming; it is a stronger awakening of the human being. Just as in dreams movements are suppressed and only the imagined shoots into the picture, so in eurythmy play the imagined recedes and the movement comes out. This is a stronger awakening, an elevation of consciousness. This is something our time must strive for. It is truly not right in a serious spiritual movement to lull people into a mystical dream. That is an aberration. All dream-like mysticism is an aberration from what must be willed today out of the true tasks of the time. And it is precisely out of the true tasks of the time that this art form of eurythmy has been brought forth. It is not a muffling, not a damping down of human consciousness into dreaming, it is an upward development of human consciousness into a strong waking. Therefore, it will have a significance for education.

This eurythmy, as children's eurythmy, of which you will also see samples today, has a direct educational effect on the initiative of the human will, which is not the case with ordinary, purely physiological gymnastics. And so, in the future, this didactic moment will be judged differently in relation to eurythmy than it is today.

But we are our own harshest critics, and today, as always, I ask for your forbearance. We are only at the beginning of a development and we know full well that there is still much to be done. Those of our esteemed listeners who were here months ago and saw our performances will be able to see how we have progressed, particularly in the development and artistic design of the forms. Little by little, all mimicry will disappear and the artistic will come to the fore. Nothing symbolic must remain, as it may have happened in the beginning and may not have disappeared completely even today. But we will find a way to eliminate symbolism and allegory altogether and to express the creative awareness that is the moving language of eurythmy artistically. Then it will be seen that, although this eurythmy is still in its infancy, as those in the audience who were there earlier will see, it has already progressed, and that we are convinced that what is still imperfect today is capable of greater perfection. So that eurythmy as an art will one day stand in such a way – perhaps it will no longer be developed by us, but by others in this way – that eurythmy will be able to present itself as a complete art alongside its older, fully-fledged sister arts.