The Origin and Development of Eurythmy 1918–1920

GA 277b — 29 August 1920, Dornach

77. Eurythmy Performance

Saying from the soul calendar (22nd) by Rudolf Steiner
Saying from the soul calendar (23rd) by Rudolf Steiner
“Children's Song“ by Max Schuurman
“Blissful” by Christian Morgenstern
“Cheerfulness” by F. Hiller
“Zwei Segel“ by C. F. Meyer (two children)
“Die Spröde” by J. W. v. Goethe
“Die Bekehrte“ by J. W. v. Goethe
“Andante grazioso” by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Saying from the soul calendar (24th) by Rudolf Steiner
“Primal Words, Orphic“ by J. W. v. Goethe with music by Leopold van der Pals
“IV. Primal Instinct” by Fercher von Steinwand
Children's performances: “Pious Hopes” by Graben-Hoffmann; “A Little Story” and “From the Sketchbook” by Christian Morgenstern; “Dance Song” by Jan Stuten
Humorous prelude with music by Jan Stuten
Humoresques by Christian Morgenstern: “Physiognomisches”; “Die Nähe”; “Palmström”; “Das böhmische Dorf”
Satirical prelude by Leopold van der Pals
“Bildhauerisches” by Christian Morgenstern

Dear attendees!

As always before these eurythmy performances, I would like to say a few words in advance. I do this not to explain the performance, which would be inartistic, but to say something about the source - the particular forms of expression that come into play in our eurythmic art. It is, after all, a new attempt. This eurythmy is an attempt to create art through a particular formal language, which is not invented but drawn from human nature, from the human being itself. Eurythmy, as conceived here, is a visible language, performed through movements that the human being produces through his organization, through his limbs, or that individual human beings produce through movements in space or groups of people through movements in space or through mutual relationships.

At first glance, all this could be seen as a collection of gestures, and eurythmy as a whole could be confused with something related to pantomime or facial expressions and the like. But eurythmy is the opposite of all that. If I may use this Goethean expression: in order to bring eurythmy about, it is through sensory-supersensory observation – Goethe often used this expression out of his artistic ethos, out of his artistic out of his artistic outlook, it is through sensuous-supersensuous observation that we try to recognize what inner movement tendencies the human larynx and the other speech organs have within them when the audible speech sound comes about.

What is meant here are not the movements that come about when the human speech organ first moves the air and then these vibrations propagate in space, penetrating the ear and thereby mediating the hearing of sounds, the hearing of the sound. What is meant are not these movements, but rather movements that are observed through sensory-supersensible seeing, or better said, inner movement tendencies. Because the larynx and the other speech organs are directly related to the external air, the movement tendencies are transferred to the external air and speech comes about. But that which lies in speech is, in a sense, the expression of the whole human being. And it is from this insight that eurythmy, as an artistic observation, proceeds. The same movement tendencies are brought forth from the whole human being that otherwise come only from the larynx and the speech organ. The whole human being is set in motion as otherwise only the larynx and its neighboring organs are. But only naturally, when the whole human being is taken into account and set in motion, the movements are not transmitted in the same way silently to the outer air, but they are first transmitted to the human movement organs themselves, to the muscle system. And so it comes about that not an audible but a silent, visible language is created, in which the whole human being can reveal himself in relation to his soul and spiritual life. Therefore, what is expressed in music and what one otherwise hears when a person speaks can be translated into the visible language of eurythmy. One could say that the whole human being becomes a speech organ, becomes a larynx.

What we see on the stage is what we otherwise hear when people speak. We see it when people or groups of people move. But all of this is in accordance with an inner law of the human organism. So we cannot ask: what is the momentary connection between a particular movement and what is recited in a poem that is being read in parallel? Rather, as in music, where one sees the actual artistic element in the continuous stream of the sound structure, one must see the artistic element in eurythmy in the way one movement arises out of another. It is not the content, the prosaic content of the poetry, that should be expressed in this movement, but precisely the artistic element.

Those of you who have seen some of this eurythmy before will have noticed that we have been trying to make progress in this eurythmic art, especially in recent months. You will have seen how we have been trying to get rid of all pantomime and mime – teething troubles in eurythmy, we are still in the early stages of this but these are the kind of problems that arise in eurythmy if it happens at all. All of this can be increasingly stripped away to reveal only what is expressed in the poetry in terms of inner rhythm, inner beat, the formation of thoughts and the like, rather than the prose content. In our so unartistic time, some artistic aspects can now be added again. For it has become fashionable today, for example, in reciting, to simply reproduce the prose content of a poem in a somehow “soulful” or similar way, as it is so beautifully called - in eurythmy recitation today an impossibility. That is what could not accompany the eurythmy. In recitation, the main emphasis must be placed on the actual artistic quality of the poetry. Today, it is the case that 99% of all poems that are written would be better left unwritten, because basically they are just prose set to verse. It is the inner form that the real poet gives to the content of the prose, either musically or plastically, that is what should actually come to the fore in eurythmy, and what must come to the fore above all in the visible language of eurythmy.

Schiller – I always have to remind people of this – had, like other great poets, in mind, in his soul, before he sought the prose content for a poem, an indeterminate melodious form; only then did he seek the prose content. If you go back to certain primeval times of human feeling, you will find everywhere, I would say, a primeval eurythmy. It is not recited as it is recited today, but is often recited in a kind of moving accompaniment. I can still see this primitive eurythmy when the reciter is moving around, although this has increasingly been abandoned in recent decades.

If what we think of as eurythmy really does fit in with the artistic aspirations of the time in the future, then it will help to create a certain upturn in the actual artistic feeling that arises from it. For the more language is cultivated, the more it becomes, on the one hand, the expression of the conventional that prevails in human intercourse, which of course completely excludes the artistic, or it becomes the expression of thoughts, of logically formed thoughts, which in turn excludes the artistic. All intellectualism is, of course, inartistic. In speech based on sounds, however, it is self-evident, and the more cultivated it is, the more the intellectual, the thinking element, and the will and feeling element merge. Thus speech based on sounds is, I would say, only half suited to truly expressing something artistic. Eurythmy leaves out what the thought element is. Everything that is translated into movement comes from the feeling, from the will element, and is translated into will form, into movement. That is why the whole person is expressed in this eurythmic form of movement. What is revealed is, as it were, pushed back into the human being, but in doing so it is also made more artistic in essence. Of course, I do not want to claim that eurythmy is now something that can be seen as a model in the face of the many artistic endeavors that already exist today. We see how the old artistic endeavor is worthy of destruction, and how a new artistic element is truly demanded by the times. But in a certain sense, this eurythmy will be able to have a particularly fruitful effect on this longing, which is present to such a high degree in artistic natures in the present day, especially in the direction that this eurythmy, so to speak, elevates the human being above that which, I would say, is culturally devastating in today's world. We live in a time in which the most important matters of the world are followed by the vast majority of people with a kind of sleeping soul; and in many respects, when we hear about mysticism, theosophy and the like today, we are actually hearing about something that increases the state of sleep that so many revere and that has caused so much catastrophe in recent times. We must consider how eurythmy actually works in this respect.

Let us take the opposite pole of eurythmy, human dreaming. What does it actually consist of? The time of day of the human being, I would say the state of the human organism during the day, is tuned down; the human being lives, while dreaming, only in thoughts. When he performs movements in thought, they are not movements in which his organism participates, but rather movements that are thought. Man can be motionless; he can be in a state separate from external reality, in the dream element. This dream element, which weakens the human will so much, which makes people so sleepy in terms of culture, is precisely what is completely overcome by eurythmy. We no longer have to struggle with anything when it comes to emerging eurythmists, who always want to fall back into all kinds of mystical dreams - even when it comes to the opposite - than with this falling back into any kind of dreamlike states. In eurythmy, it is about the opposite pole. Precisely [gap in the text] the thought life as an element is suppressed, [one] suppresses what predominates in dreams and what lies still in dreams, the moving human being, the human being completely permeated and fired by will, is made an object of art itself.

Precisely for this reason, this eurythmy essentially becomes, in addition to the actual artistic element of eurythmy, which I would like to mention in the second place, an important pedagogical-didactic element in our time. I would like to say: it becomes an element that really belongs in schools - as we have also introduced this eurythmy as a compulsory subject in the Stuttgart Waldorf School.

Times that will think more calmly and objectively about these things than we do will know that while gymnastics is very healthy in terms of the external physical body, the soul is neglected in gymnastics, as it is conceived as arising from the physiological nature of the body. What eurythmy can give to the child – and you will find the test of children's ideas presented in eurythmy today – is that every movement that is carried out is not carried out without soul, is not merely dictated by physiology, but is carried out with soul, that the whole body is in soul-filled movement. But this is something that has an effect on the will, that has an effect above all on that which is a main requirement for education in our present and the near future, without which we cannot make progress in education: the will element, the inner soul initiative, is fostered when this eurythmy is used as a teaching method.

To speak of a third element, the hygienic-therapeutic element, in this eurythmy would be going too far today.

What we can offer will of course have to be taken with a grain of salt in many respects, because we are still at the very beginning with this eurythmic art. It has to be said that we ourselves are our harshest critics. We know how much we still have to learn, but we have tried hard to develop the art, especially in the design of the spatial forms, which are integrated into the poetry. We are trying more and more to enter into the eurythmic element where the attempt to shape poetically, itself already proceeds in the eurythmic, as for example in my 'Wochensprüchen' (weekly verses), where thoughts are indeed at the basis, but not the thought element, as it usually is based on the thought element, but rather where the main thing is the flowing sequence of thoughts through the interweaving of thoughts, the occurrence of a thought at a certain point - where it is not irrelevant whether a thought is in the third or fourth line. This following of the poetic form, of the poetic element in eurythmy — that is where we are trying to go further and further.

But eurythmy is still in its infancy. It will need to be perfected. Whether this can be done by ourselves or — as is more likely — by others, But anyone who has grasped the essence of eurythmy in his or her innermost being will be convinced that one day, when what we can only present today as a first attempt has reached a higher degree of perfection , eurythmy, as a younger sister art, will be able to present itself alongside the older and therefore still more perfect sister arts as a complete art, as the older sister arts were.