The Origin and Development of Eurythmy 1920–1922

GA 277c — 4 October 1920, Dornach

3. Question and Answer Session

The question was raised as to the causes of speech disorders (stammering) and how to treat them.

But then, little by little, we shall also recognize what a significant remedy we have in eurythmy for such and similar defects in the human organism. This eurythmy can, I would say, be pursued in two directions. One is the one I always draw attention to in the introductions I give to the performances. There I show how, through sensory-supersensory observation of today's human being, the speech organism becomes conscious with its movement tendencies, which are then transferred to the whole human organism.

But the reverse path is also important. You see, in what Dr. Treichler has presented to you so well today from a different point of view: in the development of speech, a primeval eurythmy of human beings undoubtedly and certainly plays a very significant role. Things do not have the sound within them, as it were, in the sense that the bim-bam theory asserts, but there is a relationship between all things, between the whole macrocosm and the human organization, this microcosm, and basically everything that happens externally in the world can also be reproduced in a certain way in movement by the human organization in a gestural way. And so, basically, we constantly tend to recreate all phenomena through our own organism. We do this not only with the physical organism, but also with the etheric organism. The etheric organism is in a state of perpetual eurythmy.

The original human being was much more mobile than the human being of today. You know, this development from mobility to stillness is still reflected in the fact that in certain circles it is considered a sign of education to behave as phlegmatically as possible when speaking, with as few gestures as possible to accompany one's speech. Certain speakers are said to always keep their hands in their trouser pockets so as not to make any gestures with their arms, because standing still like a block is considered an expression of particularly good speech delivery. But what is caricatured here only corresponds to humanity's progress from mobility to rest.

And we have to recognize a transition from a gestural language, from a kind of eurythmy to speech sounds, at the very basis of human development in primeval times. That which has come to rest in the organism has specialized in the speech organs, and of course the speech organs have actually developed first: Just as the eye is formed by light, so is the speech organ formed by an initially soundless language. And if we know all these connections, then, little by little, we will be able to use eurythmy very well to counteract anything that could interfere with speech.

And in this direction, if there is even a little leisure time, it will be a very attractive task to develop our current, more artistic and pedagogically trained eurythmy more and more to develop a kind of eurythmy therapy that will then extend in particular to such therapeutic demands as the one we have been talking about here. I don't know if what I have said is already exhaustive, but I just wanted to say a few words about it.

Of course, the more questions that accumulate in the same progression, the more the detail of the answers will have to be reduced.

Question: There is a question here about how the movement of eurythmy is related to the ether body, whether it has the same form as the body in spiritual scientific research. Is the etheric body localized in the larynx? Did the Hungarians, who were recently observed by Dr. Steiner playing cards in a Hungarian border town, themselves fall under the tables, or only their etheric bodies? Was this a process that could only be observed in the etheric body?

Rudolf Steiner: Please understand me correctly: eurythmy is such that it can be performed in the physical body and through the physical body, which today only the etheric body of the human being performs. The fact that a person as a eurythmist performs the movements studied in the ether body with his physical body does not mean that the person who is standing there doing eurythmy, when he has just, I mean any abominable thought, does not perform this abominable thought with his ether body. He can therefore perform the most beautiful movements with his outer physical body, and then the etheric body, following his emotions, may dance in a rather caricature-like manner.

But the people I characterized as playing cards on the Hungarian border were, of course, only characterized by me in terms of their physical behavior. I only said that one could study the passions within them that led them to carry out such things above and below the table and then to scratch and tear each other apart, that one could study this passion in a spiritual-mental way.

I would like to add the following: it is generally the case, when you look at a person at rest, that the etheric body, which is somewhat larger than the physical body, is calm. But this is only achieved because, schematically speaking, the physical body has a dilating effect on the etheric body of the human being in all directions. The etheric body, if it were not held in its form by the physical body, if it were not banished from the physical body, would be a very mobile being. The etheric body has the inherent possibility of moving in all directions, and in addition, in the waking state, it is under the constant influence of the mobile astral, which now follows all soul activity.

So the etheric body itself is something completely mobile. And as a painter, for example, you have the difficulty when you want to paint something ethereal that you have to paint, I would say, as if you could paint lightning. You have to translate the movement into rest. So in the moment when you step out of the physical world, in that moment, distance is also given to the concept. And all these things, which actually only relate to stationary space, all of that ceases, and a completely different kind of imagining begins. A form of imagining begins that can actually only be characterized by saying that it relates to the ordinary imagining of spatial things as a suction effect relates to a pressure effect. You are drawn into the matter instead of touching it, and so on, and so on. Such is the relationship between the etheric body and the physical body.