The Origin and Development of Eurythmy 1920–1922

GA 277c — 19 November 1920, Freiburg

14. Address on Eurythmy

Public performance with presentations by children from the Waldorf School in Stuttgart at the Kasinosaal Freiburg.

Dear attendees!

Allow me to say a few words before our eurythmic presentation begins. This is not intended to explain the eurythmic presentation, which would be inartistic. Art must work through what it is able to reveal in direct contemplation and does not need any explanation. But what we are presenting here as the art of eurythmy is something that makes use of artistic means of expression and an artistic formal language that we have not been accustomed to much until now. I would like to say a few words about these artistic sources that we use in eurythmy and about the special artistic formal language.

Eurythmy as such has nothing to do with any seemingly related arts, such as dance or the like, or mimic arts, and it should not be confused with them. What is at the basis of eurythmy is that it seeks to create a kind of visible language, or I could also say: a kind of visible song. That which is otherwise expressed through the medium of speech in poetry or that which is expressed in song or music through sound, is to be expressed here in eurythmy through movements. Through movements that a person makes with their limbs as an individual, or also through movements of groups of people. These movements, however, are by no means merely mimic, nothing gestural.

Now, I will explain how it came about. Eurythmy was created, to use this Goethean expression, through the sensory and supersensory observation of the underlying movement tendencies of the larynx when singing or even when speaking. I am not saying that the movements that are the basis for eurythmy are those that are expressed in speech or in the sound of air and that convey hearing, but rather that they are the movements to which the larynx merely sets out, so to speak, which it does not actually carry out, which it wants to carry out, so to speak, which can be observed and which can then be transferred to the whole person.

What we do, dear attendees, whether in the field of spiritual science or in other fields, of which this eurythmy is also a single field, from which this eurythmy comes from, we also like to refer to it as 'Goetheanism' to suggest that everything that lives in this spiritual science is fundamentally linked to Goethe's spiritual attitude. And that which lives in eurythmy should be linked to Goethe's view of art and especially to Goethe's artistic attitude.

Perhaps I can best explain what I have to say by briefly recalling what Goethe presented to explain the essence of life. He was of the opinion – and this can be seen in his magnificent essay on the metamorphosis of plants, which he wrote in 1790 – that the idea of an individual organ or the organism of a living being actually contains the whole living being. And so he said: In the single leaf, basically, only in a simpler way, the whole plant is contained. In the whole plant, only in a more complicated way, a single leaf is given. What Goethe has incorporated into his view of science - it will only be fully appreciated in later times - can also be used artistically, and that is what will be done here.

It is not just the shaping in the Goethean sense that is to be utilized metamorphically, but rather what takes place in the human larynx, what leads to sound, to tone, that is to be transferred to the activity of the whole human being or groups of people. So that on the stage, with the eurythmy accompanied by recitation or music, we have a different revelation: that we are actually dealing with a moving larynx that is the whole human being. As paradoxical as this may still seem today, it is something that will gradually be recognized as artistic in the most eminent sense. For what is actually achieved by this? What is achieved is that the spiritual experience of the human being, which the musician as well as the poet wants to represent, comes to light through other means of expression – in such a way that the matter is not detached from the human being, but is still revealed in the human being itself.

When we look at the musical, we find that this musical reveals spiritual experience. We can follow this soul experience particularly in song. But the means of expression are, as it were, detached from the human being. In music, the tone carries the soul life on its wings, one could say, but it is detached from the human being. It becomes detached in song. In spoken language, the thought is actually inserted as an inartistic element into the sound. In contrast to this, in eurythmy the human movement itself is used as a visible language, and to a certain extent also as a visible music. This means that the whole human being stands as a physical expression of the soul. By being a physical expression of the soul, it can be observed in artistic perception - and one has an immediate soul that comes to expression through the external senses.

But what is all art actually if not the sensory representation of something supersensible, something spiritual? When the human being becomes a tool, not a dead instrument, but the human being themselves becomes a tool of art, then the artistic is truly expressed in the highest, most beautiful sense.

In particular, one can notice how music can find its special expression again through eurythmy. I would just like to point out that if you let the movements in eurythmy work on your senses more closely, you will see that what is expressed in a major and what is expressed in a minor mood when musical eurythmy is presented. Then we have movements flowing directly from the human will in this eurythmy. They adhere closely to the human being, so to speak. Now we can always see how we have to present everything that is in a major key in the eurythmy through movements that come from the person, and everything that is in a minor key through movements that approach the person, articulating themselves in the appropriate way. So that what is artistically revealed in music on the wings of sound can become visible through the movements of the human limbs.

Likewise, when that which is presented in poetry through speech is presented eurythmically through movements that are more detached from the human form, these movements are more akin to the pictorial. But all this is, in the realm of the eurythmic presentation of the musical as well as the eurythmic presentation of the poetic, far removed from all facial expressions, far removed from all the art of dance, from all mere gesturing. It is that which is actually artistic. It is either a plastic, but moving plastic effect, or a musical effect.

Therefore, it is also necessary that the recitation, which occurs at the same time, is only a different expression of the same thing that one sees in the eurythmy, which itself already forms eurythmically. What is often seen today as the perfection of recitation or declamation, the prosaic element that should resonate in recitation, is basically not what can accompany eurythmy. For poetry is only truly artistic to the extent that it contains either sculpture or music. Therefore, we must always remember how a true poet – Schiller, for example – worked. Before he had the content in prose, an indeterminate melody lived in his soul. What is rhythmically, what is tactually, what is melodically behind the poetry – and not the prose content, the literal content – that is what is truly artistic about the poetry. And so, in this new means of expression of movements in the human body, we can create a visible language, a visible music, which we will demonstrate in a few examples today.

But this is only one side of eurythmy. The other side will be presented today by the fact that we were able to bring a number of children from our Stuttgart Waldorf School here. We have introduced eurythmy as a compulsory subject at the Stuttgart Waldorf School. And for the children of this independent Waldorf School, which is based on anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, eurythmy is at the same time a form of gymnastics that is imbued with soul. I am not saying that I object to gymnastics as such, but it is only based on physiological and physical laws. I certainly do not want to go as far as a famous contemporary who recently said that gymnastics is not an educational tool, but a barbarism.

I will concede that gymnastics has its significance for the physical development of young people. But it is quite another thing when this inspired gymnastics, this eurythmy, is presented to children, which is an art in its own right. Children love to perform and express what arises artistically out of the whole human organization. When eurythmy is introduced to children, something very special comes about, which does not appear in the same way when older people do eurythmy. Children, in expressing the soul's content in visible language, cannot lapse into empty phrases. In our spoken language, especially in the languages of the more highly developed civilizations, empty phrases and conventionality play such a great role that truth can very gently become untruth. When a child is led back to the original, elementary expression of soul experience, to the movements of its own limbs, it cannot lie or fall into empty phrases. That is why this art of eurythmic education is at the same time something that brings up children in truthfulness, so that one has an important means of education in this eurythmy. The Waldorf school has only existed for a year. It has shown in other areas what the art of education applied there can achieve in all subjects. But it has also shown in particular how eurythmy can work with children as soulful gymnastics.

Today we are only able to show children's group eurythmy, where eurythmy is performed by groups of people, while we will have adults perform solos. Of course, because there are only a few people who can perform eurythmy, we were unable to bring together groups of adults for today's performance and therefore had to limit ourselves to solos. The Waldorf children, however, will perform groups, they will perform both musical and poetic pieces. And it will be shown, at least in a rehearsal, how this soulful gymnastics, this eurythmy, works through the child's organism.

I could also mention a third element that is to be realized in eurythmy: the therapeutic and hygienic element. Because eurythmy is derived from the natural structure of the larynx, it is derived from the whole human being and nature and is therefore a healthy movement in the most eminent sense. It can be used for hygienic and therapeutic purposes, and over time it most certainly will be.

If Goethe – and, as I said, what we practise as eurythmy emerged from Goethe's artistic ethos – if Goethe says: “When nature begins to reveal her secrets to someone, they feel a longing for her most worthy interpreter, art.” It may be said: the secrets of nature are most fully revealed through the artistic means that appear in the human body itself, and so something of the highest must come about in art. And to those who ask: why do we actually need new artistic means when we have music and other arts? – [they can be told:] anyone who truly loves art understands that it strives for new means of expression, for means of expression that present the supersensible and spiritual, which is to be presented sensually through art, in ever new forms.

And when man himself is used as a tool, one may well recall the saying of Goethe, which arose from his artistic attitude: “By placing man at the summit of nature, he sees himself again as a whole nature, which in turn has to produce a summit. To this end, he elevates himself by permeating himself with all perfections and virtues, invoking choice, order, harmony and meaning, and finally rising to the production of the work of art [...]. But in the most beautiful sense, man rises to the production of the work of art when he allows his own nature to become a work of art.

Let me finally mention that we ask for your forbearance for the reason that, despite striving for the highest art, we are still at the beginning and must absolutely rely on the fact that what is a shy beginning will reach perfection. But we are convinced that because this art draws its means of expression from the natural essence of man, this art will perhaps still be further perfected by us, probably by others, and that it will then be able to present itself as a fully fledged young art alongside the older arts.