The Origin and Development of Eurythmy 1918–1920

GA 277b — 2 May 1920, Dornach

64. Eurythmy Performance

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen.

We are not attempting to provide an explanation of what is to be presented here in the form of eurythmy rehearsals. That would be unartistic. Art must work through itself in direct impression. It is much more a matter of pointing out the sources and means of expression from which this particular eurythmic art is created.

In fact, the attempt is made to open up the sources of artistic creation in a special way by applying the human being himself as an artistic tool, the sources of artistic creation in a special way through this. If we want an expression for what we should strive for as art, we can use the expression that Goethe himself coined: sensual-supersensible seeing. All artistic activity must be based on sensual-supersensible seeing. This already implies that abstract thought or idea, conception, must not play a significant role in the perception of art. But it would, of course, be completely wrong to believe that the spirit should not play a role in art for that reason, that the supersensible should not be the content of art. Art must simply work in such a way that everything in it arises out of the directly sensed vision. But the sensed vision itself must work as a spiritual reality without the mediation of the idea, without the mediation of the concept.

Now we have poetry, which makes use of the spoken word in order to have a means of expression in this spoken word. But precisely when language advances in the course of civilization, it becomes, I would say, more and more reflective and reflective, language. That which is the content of language becomes more and more dependent on the conventions of human intercourse or it becomes a means of expression for what we have to communicate to each other in science and in other human intercourse. But in this way the phonetic language is increasingly deprived of its possibility to be a real, direct revelation of what can arise artistically out of the human soul.

Now you will see movements, movements on the stage that are performed either by a single person, namely by human arms and hands, but also by the other human limbs. You will see the movements of groups of people, forms of groups of people, formed by their positions in relation to one another, and so on. These are not arbitrary gestures, but a silent, real language that has come about through movement. And it comes about through sensory-suprasensory seeing.

We can discover how the human speech organs, larynx, palate and so on, lips, have movement tendencies while we utter speech sounds. Then, through the sound they produce, through the tone, these movement tendencies, which only come to expression while we speak, can be transmitted to the whole human being. And this does not result in a collection of arbitrary gestures, but in a real language, the only language that - instead of adhering to the movement tendencies of the larynx and its neighboring organs - is transformed into small tremors that are transmitted to the air. This corresponds directly to the will's tendency to move, which a person releases into their limbs by making movements that make these movement tendencies immediately visible. Eurythmy is a visible language. And there is just as little arbitrariness in eurythmy as there is in language itself when two people or two groups of people in different places present poems or musical content in eurythmy. Just as there is no greater difference when two pianists play one and the same Beethoven sonata in two different places according to their subjective interpretation, so too what emerges in eurythmy lies not in the individual sequence of gestures, but in the succession of gestures.

Those of our honored audience who have been here before will see that we are making progress. In our early attempts there was still a lot of pantomime, mimicry. These are the teething troubles, so to speak, of eurythmic performances. On the other hand, in the forms we are now developing, more and more of what the poet or composer brings into the artistic creation, into the rhythmic, rhyming creation of the poetic — that is, into the artistic aspect — or, for the musicians, into the succession of the melody and so on, will come to life in eurythmy.

The point is that we cannot get at the how, through which the poet artistically achieves what makes a prose content a poem, through the ordinary prose content of language, through eurythmy, to express it. In this way we have, firstly, the human being as the artistic tool instead of the violin, instead of the piano, instead of any form of instrument; we have the human being itself. But we have the ensouled human being. The human being in all his movements is directly sensual and descriptive; but no movement is without being ensouled and spiritualized, so to speak, in the greatest immediacy.

However, precisely because this eurythmic art, as I have described it, is being tried out, it will only gradually acquire a larger audience, perhaps very slowly, in our time. Why? Because our time actually loves to passively surrender to everything that is an enjoyment of art, and generally prefers to passively accept everything artistic.

You see, I was once invited to give a lecture on Goethe's “Faust” at a social gathering. People listened to these lectures on Goethe's “Faust” quite willingly. But afterwards some people - they believed themselves to be practical people because they belonged to a so-called practical profession - said: Yes, but Goethe's “Faust” is not actually a stage work! Because a stage work is a comedy, Blumenthal and so on. Or they said something like this: Goethe's “Faust” is a science, you have to think when you listen. You don't want that, you've been thinking all day at work. If you go to the theater in the evening, you don't want to think. You don't want to participate, you just want to enjoy yourself, even if you are already indulging in some intellectual pleasure in the evening. You don't want to be alert, you don't want to think, you just want to see. When you go to lectures, you prefer them to have slides, just don't think. You want to be able to passively watch everything, you don't want to participate inwardly.

However, those people whose ideal is to sit in their chair and passively absorb what is poured out over them from the stage will never be a true audience for eurythmy. This is because eurythmy is like language itself – you have to learn the language. You learn it as a child, and you are more willing to do so than later on. But it must also be clear that eurythmy is not something that can be accepted immediately, like some kind of pantomime. Rather, eurythmy is something that works like a real language. But precisely because it pushes back the element of the intellect, the element of ideas, and comes directly from the whole human being, bringing the whole human being into movement, it is also rooted in the individuality of the human being. And everything artistic comes from that. Through it we are able to bring forth the artistic content of a poem in a much higher sense today through the silent language of eurythmy than through speech.

We are even obliged — because it is still necessary today — to accompany what is presented on stage in eurythmy with recitation on the one hand and with music on the other. But in recitation we are urged to go back to the good old forms of recitation. We could not accompany our eurythmy art with recitation in the way we love to do it today, where the literal content, the prose content, is important. This is because eurythmy is concerned with the artistic content of poetry, with the rhythmic, the metrical, the musical, the plastic, that is found in poetry. This must also be taken into account in the accompanying recitation. One must really understand why Goethe, with the baton, rehearsed “Iphigenia” like a conductor with his actors, paying less attention to the literal content of the prose than to the momentum of the poetry, to the rhythm of the iambic pentameter, everything that makes poetry appear as poetry, as a work of art, by the words flowing or sweeping along on the wings of the beat or rhythm.

This is what should come out through eurythmy: a genuine, true artistic element, as it underlies all genuine artistry. All this, however, means that eurythmy will perhaps only slowly become established. But those who do not approach it with prejudice will realize that when we listen to a poem in spoken language, we can also have a work of art before us. For what kind of art is this language? What artistic configuration of the larynx and the other speech organs does it presuppose?

If we accept what eurythmy unfolds as a second such work of art - not only part of the speech organs, but the whole human being is called upon - if we accept that the whole human being is, in a sense, made into a larynx, into a speech organ, then, if we surrender to it in this way, we will see: what you see before you emerges from the whole human being – everything that lies in a poetry of deeper feelings, everything that today lies in language that has already become highly conventional.

But everything you will see today is basically still in its very early stages. We are our own harshest critics and we know that our performance still needs a lot of work. We have already tried to avoid pantomime in the humorous-satirical piece, for example, which you will see in the second part after the break. This is even more difficult in the humorous-satirical than in the serious. We will see how we try to express not the prose content but that which comes from what the poet does when he builds verses, when he creates symmetry and congruity of feelings and thoughts, [how we try to extract this] from the mere prosaic content of the thought, in eurythmy forms. But all this is in its infancy. And so I must always ask the honored listeners and audience to treat what they see as a first attempt and to be lenient. But at the same time, we are convinced that this eurythmic art, which draws on the most original sources of all art in human feeling and in human soul experience, and at the same time uses the most comprehensive, universal tool, the human being himself, we are convinced that this eurythmic art will gradually be able to establish itself as a new creative art alongside its older, fully-fledged sister arts.