The Origin and Development of Eurythmy 1920–1922

GA 277c — 17 October 1920, Dornach

8. Speech on Eurythmy

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen.

Allow me to say a few words before our eurythmy performance, not to explain the performance. Artistic things must not be preceded by an interpretation or an explanation; they must work through themselves, otherwise they would by no means belong to the field of art. But what we have conceived as eurythmy, especially in its further elaboration, does come from certain artistic sources that humanity has so far made very little use of, and it lies in an artistic formal language that has also hardly been used in the other arts and in artistic life in general. For our eurythmy must not really be compared with anything else that is similar, because the similarity could only be an external one with certain pantomime arts, dance arts and the like. Our eurythmy is not meant to be any of those things, because it makes use of a special means of expression, which consists of a kind of silent language that works through movements.

And so you see on the stage the moving human being, that is, the human being who moves from within — the human being who moves his limbs in a certain way or also groups of people who carry out movements [that] change in their mutual relationships in the spatial relationships, so that movement, lawful movement of groups of people, also arises there. All this has not come about in a haphazard way, one might say, a random gesture with what takes place in the soul, but all the movements that are performed are in fact connected to the human soul and spiritual life in the same way as the tone languages themselves. The movements that are performed by the person doing the eurythmy are created in such a way that, through sensory-supernatural observation, to use this Goethean expression, it is observed which movement tendencies the larynx and the other speech organs of the person have when the person reveals himself through the sound language. There are only movement tendencies present. For as soon as a person is in contact with the outside world when speaking, what actually happens directly in the larynx and in the neighboring organs is transferred to the moving air through which the sound is conveyed, and the actual movement tendency is interrupted as it arises.

If we can recognize these movement tendencies, which are excited by the larynx and all of its speech organs, and observe them through sensory and supersensory observation, then we can also, by elevating the principle of Goethean metamorphosis into the artistic, move the whole person and also groups of people in such a way as they would otherwise, I would like to say, want to move, by into the handling of human functions. According to this principle of Goethe's metamorphosis, one can move the whole person and also groups of people in such a way as the larynx and its neighboring organs would otherwise, I would like to say, want to move in ordinary tonal language.

Goethe pointed out – and this will play a much greater role in the future study of the living than humanity can even dream of today – Goethe asserted that the whole plant is nothing more than a more complicated, developed leaf and that the leaf is a simply formed whole plant. So we can also say that what is present in the larynx and its neighboring organs is actually the whole human being. And we can, in turn, observe what is happening in the speech organs and apply it to the whole human being and to groups of people. This is how we arrive at this moving language, which is presented to you as eurythmy. There is nothing mimic, pantomime, nothing merely dance-like in it, but the succession of movements is as the succession of sounds in human language. And the forms in which we execute the movements are, as it were, to represent the artistic design of the literal, these movements are modeled on the pure creation, the design of the human being, as the poet shapes it out of mere prose language and so on.

This indeed gives us a special kind of art that is very much adapted to the demands of our time. The present time must strive for it, if man is not to descend into barbarism, which many people today already predict and which even Spengler wanted to prove scientifically. if we want to achieve a new ascent and not sink into barbarism, then an inner elevation of the human being, an inner illumination with new forces, new forms and so on must take place.

Now, eurythmy is such an inner strengthening of the human being, and in order to show this, I will have to put this eurythmy in the series of the other arts with a few words. For example, we have sculpture. One understands it only, the sculpture, the art of sculpture, if one understands the shaping of the physical human body from its form. Because basically, everything else we sculpt can only be modeled three-dimensionally if we understand the sculpture of the human body.

Architecture is an art that initially appears to have no real model. It appears as it does, through proportionality, symmetry, through a sensed or perceived balance and equilibrium of the individual architectural elements and so on. We feel no model for architecture because this model is in the outer being of the human being himself. What we experience, for example, as a small child, from the state in which we cannot walk, gradually learning to walk, swinging up to the vertical, what we experience as balance when we learn to move our limbs. In short, everything that we experience within ourselves, can experience as the innermost part of the human body's formation, when this body is alive, we carry it out into the outer world and develop it into architecture.

And by giving ourselves to the outer world itself, to its intense impressions in colors and chiaroscuro, we develop painting. But then, when we live with that which is actually below the surface of things, with what essentially painting deals with, when we live with that which the exterior of nature presents in terms of supersensible uniformity, when we can feel that, we can surrender to nature, not as a mere observer, but go along with the inner secrets of nature, and instead of feeling the balance of our own body, the symmetry, which we already do as a child, if we instead feel the enigmatic, mysterious symmetry of natural things outside, the proportionality and symmetry of spatial things, and if we then develop this within ourselves to a certain extent as an echo, holding up to mute nature the counter-image in the secrets contained in it, then we develop the musical through adapting the organization of our own bodily members to the external relationships of symmetry and proportion in nature.

We carry our sense of symmetry and proportionality into the outside world in the form of architecture. For singing, we take into ourselves that which exists in the outside world in the way of symmetry, and we bring it, through our own body, through a part of our body, to a kind of echo of mute nature. And a branch of this is what we make resound in language, especially in the meter, in the rhythm of language, and so on, in declamation, recitation.

But in all this it is our etheric body that remains, so to speak, at rest in itself, but makes parts of itself - that is, its interior - a resonance of natural events. But in the moment when we let the secrets of nature flow into us more deeply than is the case with singing and declaiming, then we will let them flow through the organs of speech and song, into the whole bodily organization, into that which is in outer nature. Then the person does not feel as if they are holding – as they do when singing or declaiming – what they are making sound as an echo of nature, but they feel as if they are immediately transforming into movement what they have overheard from nature as secrets. So although the human being is the instrument for bringing the moving or symmetrical or proportioned supernature to expression, he immediately passes over into nature. He does not retain what he absorbs from song or music, but passes immediately into outer nature. The human being is completely selfless, physically selfless. He becomes an instrument of that which the secrets of nature itself are when he eurythmizes.

Then the eurythmic art is indeed something for internalization, and it is something truly artistic. For that which becomes internalized is somehow manifested in the movements of the objective, sensual world: the spirit of the world in human movement. One could say that eurythmy works entirely in the sense of Goethe's beautiful words: When man is placed at the summit of nature, he in turn perceives himself as a nature, takes in order, measure, harmony and meaning and rises to the production of the work of art. But he rises most beautifully and nobly to the production of the work of art when he gives himself as a tool. He does this, of course, in song and in declamation, but he does it in such a way that he does not form that which he can develop in his own physical organization, but immediately makes it perceptible to the outside world as a visible language in eurythmy.

Thus this eurythmic art has something that makes it particularly suitable for the modern human being in a very special way. It also has a therapeutic-hygienic side, which I do not want to talk about here, but which also needs to be further developed. But it also has a didactic-pedagogical side. That is why we have included it in the curriculum, as a compulsory subject at our Stuttgart Waldorf School. And it has to be said: one day people will think more objectively and impartially about the things we are considering here than they do today.

It must be said that gymnastics may be a good thing; it is based on an understanding of the physiological laws of the human body, and what it achieves relates only to the training of the human body. But for children, what is brought to them through eurythmy has a very special value. Firstly, when they really get to know it, children love eurythmy very much, as has been shown in lessons in the Waldorf school. But then eurythmy is an inspired form of movement. No movement is performed without spirit and soul being put into it. Every movement of each limb is the expression, the revelation of something spiritual and soul-like. This is something that the child grows into, so that initiative of will and strength of soul will be in him. And this is something that should actually be given to humanity today, because it is this that is most closely connected with our decline, that humanity does not have this soul energy, and terrible phenomena of cultural degeneration would occur if the next generation were brought up in the same way, with sleepy souls and without energy, as was largely the case with the generations that then sailed into the terrible catastrophe of the present.

So, dear audience, we are certainly expecting a great deal from eurythmy. But we must ask for indulgence for everything that we can currently give, because we are only just beginning, and what we can already present today must therefore be seen as a beginning. We are our own harshest critics and we know very well what we are still lacking today. But those of our esteemed audience who have been here before will also have seen how we have progressed again in the last few months, particularly in the shaping of the forms. They will also notice how we have worked to truly express the inner artistic form of a poem in a particularly characteristic way.

During the course, I spoke about 'declamation and recitation', and it is indeed the case that our eurythmy, which is accompanied on the one hand by the musical — which is just another form of expression for what eurythmy also presents — on the other hand by recitation and declamation, which is another form of expression. For in recitation the human being uses only a single organ, whereas in eurythmy he uses his whole body. But what becomes apparent is precisely this: it is in eurythmy that one can recognize how justified the things are that I spoke about in our current course on recitation over at the Bauhaus.

In the present unartistic time, people consider recitation art to be something quite different from what it really is. It is believed that it is important to get the prose content across by emphasizing what is often called “feeling nuances”. No, when reciting and reciting - and this becomes apparent when one has to recite to eurythmy - when reciting and reciting, it is important that the inner eurythmy - rhythm, beat, and the form of the of the literal content, as done by the poet — that this is particularly expressed in the formation of the sound, in the shaping, in the tempo and so on, in the rhythm of the sound. And only by practising this art of recitation, as described above, and by practising the recitation that Dr. Steiner recited during the course over there in the building, can one show how, on the one hand, the content is expressed in the visible language of eurythmy movement and, on the other hand, through the eurythmic formation of the sound in recitation or declamation.

But this is all, of course, in the beginning, and it must be further developed, either by us or, more likely, by others, because it will take a great deal to perfect what is only a beginning today. But when it has been perfected to a certain degree, then it will be seen that this eurythmy, which is formed here out of Goethean artistic sense and artistic attitude — like everything else that comes from here — that this eurythmy will be able to establish itself as a fully-fledged younger art alongside the other sister arts. These sister arts also had to gradually conquer their position in the course of human development. Eurythmy will, when some one-sided prejudices or preconceptions have been cast off, eurythmy will also conquer this position alongside the other arts in the future.