The Origin and Development of Eurythmy 1918–1920

GA 277b — 22 August 1920, Dornach

76. Eurythmy Performance

Dear attendees!

I have not chosen these few introductory words to precede our eurythmy because I want to explain what will be seen from the stage later on, but because this eurythmic art attempts to achieve something from particular artistic sources and in a particular artistic formal language.

Eurythmy should be a kind of visible language, a language performed by movements in a single person, by a person in space or by groups of people. But these movements that are performed should not just represent pantomime or mime, especially in relation to what is to be expressed. We will see how the recitation runs parallel to this eurythmy when the content of a word or a poem is to be expressed in the visible language of eurythmy. Musical content can also be expressed in eurythmic forms in the way that it can be expressed through tones.

However, it is not just about expressing content; it is also about ensuring that this eurythmy has been developed from a careful study of the basis of our audible language, our phonetic language. In this phonetic language, it is not just the movements that are carried out by the larynx and other speech organs that are transmitted to the air, so that they then impinge on the organ of hearing as a result of this transmission and thus convey the sound and tone, but rather, movement tendencies come into question. These inner movement tendencies of the larynx and its neighboring organs, when transformed, can be studied as if through sensory-supersensory vision. They can then be transferred from certain individual organs of speech to the whole person: then the whole person performs the same movements that are also performed by the speech organs, but in the speech organs these movements are immediately transformed into air vibrations and thus convey the sound. They are not transformed into vibrations, but proceed in the way that otherwise only the movement tendencies of the speech organs proceed. By placing the whole person or even groups of people on the stage as a living, moving larynx, you see what you would otherwise hear.

This makes it possible to go back to deeper artistic sources in the human being than is possible with mere spoken language, especially since, with a more developed spoken language – and all civilized spoken languages today are already developed – the conventional and the conceptual come into play. We have to infuse our words with that which thoughts have as a thought content or conventional content, which is necessary for people to understand each other. Both are elements that destroy the artistic. In particular, the fact that the content of thought - all thought as such is unartistic - is pushed into the sounds, thereby giving spoken language a particularly unartistic element.

And the poet has to struggle to create art in poetry despite the fact that phonetic language actually goes against the artistic. This is also the reason why in the most difficult art of all, in poetry, everyone believes they are a poet if they can just make verses, while what is essential is to see how, in true the literal is not the main thing at all, but rather that which is formal about poetry, the beat, the rhythm, the musical, entirely pictorial, that which underlies it, not the literal.

But what underlies poetry as a kind of eurythmy is then poured into visibly moving forms when one moves on to eurythmy. In this way one arrives at a kind of language that, in the immediate impression, already strings together images in front of the unspoiled aesthetic sense of the human being who is not prejudiced. Today, however, what appears in eurythmy as a law is not what is important, saying that the individual of the form expresses that, the individual of the movement expresses this, but where it depends on the succession of movements, as the organism also allows the succession of tones to have an effect on it in the musical. It is still often thought today that the human being does not feel what is to be presented in this moving music or speech of eurythmy. But then eurythmy is only at the beginning of its development and will find its way into the general realm of art.

What needs to be considered, however, is that the content of thought is indeed receding and that the content of will, that which is also artistic in poetry, the inward content of the soul, is expressed through that which is moving speech. So that, to a certain extent, in audible speech, when the content of thought is pushed back a little, the means of expression of the artistic formal language in eurythmy, and all the more so the eurythmic, artistic element, that which cannot be produced by mere phonetic speech, comes to the fore. That is one element [of eurythmics], that a visible language is attempted, and this visible language is then treated artistically.

You will see – especially if there are revered spectators and listeners among you who have been here before – how, especially in the last few months, we have worked to suppress the mere pantomime or mime in all of our work – something that can, of course, work with it if you don't want to), and how it is attempted to express precisely that which the poet first expresses in rhythm, in the inner harmonious and melodious connection of the words, to express that in the forms, that is, to take the actual artistic element and not the prose content of a poem.

Today it is difficult to distinguish between the actual artistry and the prose content of a poem, because in recitation, too, one strives to bring forth the content of the poem purely emotionally. But that is not the point. Rather, one can only accompany the eurythmic art in a recitative if one sees perfection in the recitation as emphasizing the underlying melody, harmony, rhythm, meter or imagery of the poetry, not the prose content.

It must be mentioned again and again that Schiller did not first have the prose content in mind's eye when writing his most significant poems, but rather some indeterminate melody, something musical. Only then, when this musical element had worked inwardly in him, did he invest this melodious element with a content that is basically indifferent to what was melodiously produced. Many examples could be given, especially from the great poets, of how to shape the content out of the form.

Therefore, we must also consider finding a form of recitation for this eurythmy that already contains the eurythmic element. Then you will ensure that precisely through this eurythmy, what otherwise – namely in such poems that have already been conceived in eurythmy, such as my sayings, for example, which are already thoroughly predisposed in the imagination in these eurythmic forms from the outset – that precisely there the eurythmic can come out when what is to be achieved is achieved: that in this way, eurythmy, as a matter-of-course means of expression, gives expression better, one might say, than prose words can give expression. That is the artistic side.

Eurythmy also has an important therapeutic and hygienic side, but to discuss this further would take us too far afield. I would like to speak instead about the significant didactic and pedagogical side of eurythmy, which has already been used in the Freie Waldorfschule in Stuttgart, where it has been introduced as a compulsory subject alongside gymnastics. In the future, people will think differently about these things than they do today.

You will find some examples of children's work, but it is all still in its infancy. The world will one day judge thus: physical education is certainly a very fine thing, but it will not be overestimated, physical education, the purely physiological physical education that studies the forms of movement from the physical body. People will know that we can achieve strong muscles, but what can we do to achieve the strength of the soul's initiative? That is what is important and what can be achieved through eurythmy as inspired gymnastics, when not only physiological movements are performed, but soul lives in every movement, as is the case in eurythmy, that is, inspired gymnastics.

Furthermore, it is not only a special kind of art form, but also has a special pedagogical-didactic side that is important for strengthening the will and developing inner initiative in children. Anyone who observes the present time with an alert soul rather than a dormant one will recognize the extent to which we are led to develop the energy of the soul. For this is something that we truly lack and that is fundamentally connected with our social issues in the most acute way.

It is self-evident that what can be offered in one direction or another is still in its very early stages. We are our own harshest critics and I therefore ask you to be lenient with what we have conceived artistically. Eurythmy is still in its infancy, but it will perfect itself, perhaps through us, but more likely through others. And then it will be able to stand as a young art alongside the older arts, which have already become part of people's habits, tastes and prejudices. It will be able to stand as a young art, as a fully fledged young art, alongside its older sister arts.