The Origin and Development of Eurythmy 1920–1922

GA 277c — 2 October 1920, Dornach

1. Eurythmy Address

All the eurythmy performances from October 2 to 17, 1920, took place as part of the First College Course at the Goetheanum. As stated in the program, this course consisted of numerous lectures, primarily on the “scientific conscience of the present” through “demonstrations of positive spiritual scientific knowledge” in many fields. The aim was to show how the “reconciliation of science, art and religion” could be possible. The performances took place in the provisional hall of the carpentry workshop - with the exception of the opening ceremony on September 26, 1920, which was the first event at the Goetheanum itself.

Program for the performance in Dornach, October 2 and 3, 1920.

The “Fairytale of the Spring Miracle” was performed only on October 2, 1920.

“The Fairy Tale of the Spring Miracle” by R. Steiner from The Testing of the Soul, with music by Leopold van der Pals
“The Treasure Digger“ by J. W. v. Goethe
EVOE (Eurythmy without Words) with music by Max Schuurman
“To the Cicada” by J. W. v. Goethe
A saying from the Calendar of the Soul (26th) by Rudolf Steiner
“Children's Song“ by Max Schuurman
A saying from the Calendar of the Soul (27th) by Rudolf Steiner
“Little Dance” by J. S. Bach
“Hymn to Nature” by J. W. v. Goethe
Satirical Prelude with music by Leopold van der Pals
“Explanation of an Antique Gem“ by J. W. v. Goethe
From the ‘West-östlichen Divan’ by J. W. v. Goethe
“Korfs Uhr” by Christian Morgenstern
“Palmströms Uhr” by Christian Morgenstern
“Den Originalen“ by J. W. v. Goethe
“Séance” by J. W. v. Goethe

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen.

Allow me to say a few words in advance of our attempts at a eurythmic presentation. This is not done for the sake of explaining the presentation. That would be an inartistic beginning, because everything artistic must work through itself and must make its impression in immediacy. But since the aim here is to inaugurate an artistic movement that comes from special artistic sources that have not actually been tapped into until today and, on the other hand, draws on a special artistic formal language, some of these two, of the sources, of the special formal language, may be sent ahead of the experiment.

What you will see on the stage, ladies and gentlemen, will be an artistic performance using a non-verbal language that speaks through movement. The human body, through its limbs, is in relation to the individual or groups of people, in movements that express a non-verbal language. It is not a facial expression or a gesticulation that becomes the individual expression of the soul; nor is the individual emotional state expressed through an arbitrary gesture or facial expression. Rather, what you will see in the movements of the individual human being or groups of people is something that has been drawn from the human organization itself, and specifically through a process that I would call — borrowing a Goethean expression — a sensory-supersensory seeing.

When we communicate with one another or express our soul life, we use the speech sound language. This speech sound language has as its tools the larynx and the other speech organs. What initially demands our attention is the sound that is produced by the larynx and its neighboring organs. But one can also discern through sensory-supersensory observation the movement tendencies that are present in the larynx and its neighboring organs when a sound is formed. And one has to distinguish between what is conceived as a tendency to move and the actual movements, the vibrational movements that the air carries out and which, by being carried out, mediate between the speaker and the listener. It is not these movements that are initially thought, but the tendencies towards these movements, which are not even noticed in ordinary speech. These tendencies of movement, which, as I said, can be studied through sensory-supersensory observation, can be transferred to the human being as a whole; I would say: they can be transferred according to the principle of Goethe's metamorphosis teaching. This Goethean theory of metamorphosis is something that is still far from being recognized in its deep essence, but which, once it is recognized in its depth, will shine deeply into the laws of life, of the origin of life, of becoming alive, and so on. To put it in the simplest terms, Goethe says: the whole plant is basically nothing more than a complicated leaf. And every single leaf is a whole plant, only simply and primitively executed. According to the idea, the individual leaf is a whole plant, and according to the external physical, sensory reality, a concrete manifestation of the individual leaf is the whole plant.

If we study what Goethe applied to the formation of living things – he also extended it to the formation of animals – if we really study it through sensory and supersensory observation in the human being itself and then transfer it into artistic sensation, if we translate what we have heard in the dormant form of Goethe into then one can transfer that which a single organ – corresponding to the leaf of Goethe's Metamorphosis – that which a single organ or a group of organs – the larynx and its neighboring organs – expresses, one can transfer it to movements of the limbs of the whole human being or to movements of groups of people. And in this way one can create a soundless language that is just as inwardly lawful as the sounding language.

It is this language that eurythmy makes use of. This language presents the whole human being or groups of people as a kind of ensouled larynx or other speech organs. And just as one can feel the meaning of what is spoken through language without thinking about it in detail, one can also become aware of what speaks from this soundless language in an immediate aesthetic sense. And just as sounding language can be processed and artistically shaped, so too can this moving language be artistically shaped. And in this way one acquires a very special ability in artistic expression. For one may say: the more civilized our speech becomes, the less artistic it actually becomes. And a time that will feel more artistic than ours will see how a civilized language is actually less and less suitable as a means of expression for poetic representation. For on the one hand, language is developing in such a way that it becomes an expression of thought. But where the thought emerges, there, in essence, the direct artistic feeling ceases. All that lives in our expressions, in our revelations as a direct thought, is actually inartistic. The artistic must work in direct impression, must take hold only of the senses at the very foundation.

In ordinary speech, thought and everything that comes from the whole human being as a volitional impulse flow together. It is as if thought and volitional impulses are in harmony, and this is what is revealed in speech.

By now moving down into the whole human body, by letting it move that which is otherwise expressed in sounding language, we can achieve that the actual revelation, the linguistic, is moved down after the will element. In a sense, thought is excluded. The human being's soul-spiritual comes to direct perception through movement. By stripping away what is attached to language as a means of expressing thoughts and makes it unstructured (?), or what is attached to it, since educated language is becoming more and more conventional, one goes back to a primal element of the artistic precisely in the form of eurythmic expression.

Of course, what is first eurythmized is not yet artistic. But it is possible, through the qualities that I have just emphasized, to express the artistic in a very special way through eurythmy - including the poetic and the musical. And so, in parallel with what you will see on stage through soundless speech, you will hear the recitation or you will hear music. Basically, what is expressed in recitation is just another form, another manifestation of the same thing that is expressed in our eurythmy; so that we have the recitation accompanying the eurythmy, and on the other hand we have music. In the same way that music is a lawful progression of tones and it is in the lawful connections between tones that the true artistry lies, so it is in the succession of movements in eurythmy.

One can see that in a sense eurhythmy goes back to the original elements of artistry when one realizes that eurhythmy cannot be recited in the unformed way of today's recitation. Here, too, one must go back to the eurhythmic in poetry. For basically only that which lives beyond the content of prose, that which lives beyond the literal, is truly artistic. Again and again we must point out that basically the art of poetry is only an art to the extent that what is presented is related to music on the one hand or pictorial sculpture on the other. Schiller, before he developed any kind of poetry – at least in the case of his most important poetry, one can say – had an indeterminate melody living in his soul. And he could just as easily have added the prose content, the content in general, of either poem to this melody.

Here we have the musical element that comes to expression in poetry and that we can bring out through eurythmy. On the other hand, with a poet like Goethe we always have the pictorial element, which is also pictorially represented in language. This is what is actually artistic. The recitation that goes hand in hand with eurythmy must go back to this artistic element, to that which has little to do with the content but everything to do with the artistic presentation. Therefore, we must overcome what is currently considered to be the most meaningful aspect of recitation: One wants, so to speak, to find means of expression for the content. One is not aware that in doing so one actually goes beyond the artistic, that one actually turns the poem into a piece of prose. Whereas it is precisely in the movement of the sound, in the movement of the thought, that which constitutes the actual artistic element of poetry. And so we can hope that through eurythmy our largely unartistic age can be led back to something artistic.

That is one thing. That is the artistic aspect of our eurythmic endeavors. The other is a hygienic-therapeutic side. I will not speak of this here. And the third is a didactic-pedagogical element. You will see our children's eurythmy again, and you will see how easily children find their way into eurythmic performances. One can say that this eurythmy is a soul-filled form of gymnastics for the child. Certainly, future times will think more objectively about this than we do today. I certainly do not want to go as far as a well-known modern physiologist recently went, who said to me here in this hall after a eurythmy performance that gymnastics is actually not an educational tool but a barbarism. As I said, I do not want to go that far, but I do want to at least point out that ordinary gymnastics, however much it has been emphasized in a materialistic age, is only about the physical development of the body according to physiological laws.

Of course, gymnastics has its good sides and is very useful; but for the child, when it has to put soul into every movement, when no movement is performed other than that the child connects meaning and soul with it, something very special comes into education, into teaching, through soulful gymnastics, through children's eurythmy. It brings in what I believe our time, our sleepy time, particularly needs: soul initiative, will initiative. We will see that when eurythmy is taken up on a broader scale in education - as we have done at the Stuttgart Waldorf School, where eurythmy is a compulsory subject - it can help to instill in people precisely what they need so urgently if a more active age than ours is to arise for the next generation: initiative of the soul.

I only wanted to say a few words about what our eurythmy actually aspires to be. We have been striving for some time to make this eurythmy more and more perfect. Nevertheless, I would like to emphasize that for the time being we are only dealing with a beginning, perhaps even with an attempt at a beginning. We ourselves are the strictest critics of what we can find in this direction today. But those who have been there often and have seen how we strive, especially in the formation of the eurythmic, to achieve that we give the style and artistic execution of the poem, that we learn more and more to overcome pantomime and all mimicry and to see the essential in moving music. Those who have been here often will also notice how we endeavor to distinguish the humorous and the comical from the serious, how we endeavor to enter into the inner rhythm of thought, which you will see in the first piece here, into the artistic shaping of the thought. In the poetic arts today, people cannot even distinguish the rhythm of the thought from the content of the thought. Anyone who notices all this will say to themselves, if they come here often, how we try to progress with our eurythmy.

Nevertheless, I ask for your forbearance, because we know we are at the beginning. But we also carry within us the conviction that if we continue with this eurythmic art in the same spirit in which we have begun, it will become ever more perfect. And it will - probably no longer through us, but through others - one day become something that can stand as a fully-fledged art form alongside the other, older, legitimate art forms.