The Origin and Development of Eurythmy 1920–1922

GA 277c — 20 February 1921, Hilversum

23. Address on Eurythmy

From February 19 to March 3, 1921, Rudolf Steiner went on a lecture tour through the Netherlands, which included public eurythmy performances. The performances took place in Hilversum (February 20), Amsterdam (March 22 and 3), Rotterdam (26) and The Hague (February 27, 1921). Only Rudolf Steiner's eurythmy speeches in Hilversum and The Hague were recorded; in Amsterdam on March 3, Jan Stuten gave the introduction. A program with the German texts was created for the performances.

Dear attendees!

Allow me to say a few introductory words, not to explain the performance, that would be an inartistic undertaking. Eurythmy is intended to be an artistic performance, and that which is art must have an immediate effect, must have an effect by being directly absorbed - and not only through some kind of explanation. If I say this in advance, however, it is because our eurythmic art does make use of certain artistic means and an artistic formal language that one was previously hardly accustomed to.

What we call the eurythmic arts should not be confused with pantomime or mime or any kind of dance. Eurythmy is not any of these. Eurythmy wants to be a real visible language, and the more it resembles mime or pantomime, the less it corresponds to its true essence. Eurythmy is based on the fact that careful study has been made, through what can be called sensory-supersensory observation and observation, of the movement tendencies of the human larynx and the other speech organs when the sound language is heard. The speech organs do not make these movements, they do not carry them out, but they have the disposition for them within them. These tendencies, which are thoroughly grounded in the human organism when speaking and which are realized in the ordinary audible speaking in sounds, in movements in the air, these movements are now transferred to the whole human being according to Goethe's law of metamorphosis.

So you will have the whole human being on stage – if I may express it in such a paradoxical way – like a moving larynx. You will see speech as you are accustomed to hearing it. Therefore, one should not expect the inner movements of the soul, the emotions, passions and so on, which are expressed in poetry or music, to be portrayed by momentary gestures. That is not the case. Some people say, for example, that they do not see the facial expressions in our eurythmy. It would be a misunderstanding to want to see the facial expressions differently than one sees them in ordinary speech. Just as one does not make faces with one's face when speaking normally, one cannot have an unnatural facial expression accompany eurythmy.

In eurythmy, every sound, every combination of sounds, and now that we have come a little further with the eurythmic art, every sentence structure, everything that can be expressed in language, has its specific eurythmic form, just as one always articulated the very same forms in speech, just as one also articulates a sound in speech in one way or another, depending on how it is embedded in the overall context. The laws of eurythmy are the laws of language. In the presentation of eurythmy as an art, these laws go beyond what language can offer in terms of rhythm, beat and so on. This is how the artistic aspect of eurythmy is then developed. This can be seen particularly clearly in the accompaniment of the eurythmic. Since eurythmy is just another form of expression for the audible word, everything that is in the music is expressed in eurythmy. It is, so to speak, just as possible to sing while doing eurythmic movements – to sing not audibly but visibly – as it is to perform a poem in eurythmy.

To make this more understandable, the eurythmy presentation is occasionally accompanied on the one hand by the corresponding music, which is then only a different expression of the eurythmic, or on the other hand by recitation and declamation.

The importance of the eurythmic can be seen from the fact that the eurythmic can only be accompanied in a certain way in declamation and recitation. Today, we live in an unartistic time, and people love to work out the prose content of a poem, especially in declamation. Great and significant artists did not consider this to be the right approach. Rather, they always regarded as truly poetic that which is either pictorial or musical in language. Schiller, for example, always had an indeterminate melody in his soul before he had the literal prose content of the poem; this prose content then merely leaned against this indeterminate melody.

In eurythmy, this rhythmic element must be brought out, because it is the real artistic content of poetry. That is why poetry comes to the fore in this visible language of eurythmy. So don't look for something pantomimic or mimetic in what we present, but look for a visible language. That is all I have to say about the artistic side.

But eurythmy has other meanings as well. For example, it has a very important hygienic and therapeutic significance. It can be developed in a special way for the field of health. I do not want to talk about that now.

We have also developed eurythmy in a pedagogical-didactic sense. We introduced it as a compulsory subject alongside gymnastics in the Free Waldorf School in Stuttgart. This shows how beneficial this soul-filled physical activity is, because it is an art: a soul-filled physical activity in which the human being not only moves as the body requires, but as the body, soul and spirit require. This has an enormously beneficial effect on children. It educates them to be proactive and truthful. For one can fall back on conventional phrases when speaking with words, but not when one places the whole human being in a visible language. Then one cannot present anything conventional, or in the form of empty phrases or lies. Less so with adults, but as a means of education for children, eurythmy is highly effective as an education in truthfulness. We were able to confirm this in the short time that we were able to use it at the Waldorf School.

So we will try to incorporate eurythmy into our cultural life from these aspects - the artistic, the medical-therapeutic and the pedagogical-didactic.

It must be said that the whole human being, with his natural disposition for the most diverse movements of his limbs, is used as an instrument, as a tool, for this eurythmic performance. And what could be a nobler tool for artistic performance than the human being himself, who is an image of the whole universe? This is what we hope for: that people will increasingly understand how art must be stimulated by using not only external tools, but also the human being itself.

Recently, we have tried to express what is directly linguistic through the movements that the human being himself performs with his limbs. What is syntax, rhythm, and meter is represented by the movements in the context of the mutual position of the individual players. You will see solo performances and group performances. In the latter case, the group is a living larynx. Both are artistically designed visible language. And one may well say with Goethe that this eurythmy strives, if not remotely in a perfect way, then at least in the Goethean sense, for what this poet and artist expresses with the words from his art and world view: When man is placed at the summit of nature, he sees himself again as a whole nature, which in turn has to produce a summit within itself. To this end, he rises to the challenge by permeating himself with all perfections and virtues, invoking order, harmony and meaning, and finally rising to the production of the work of art.

If the human being now gives himself as a tool to bring about the presentation of the work of art, then at least a higher level is striven for in art. Nevertheless, I must ask for your indulgence for our presentation. We are still our own harshest critics. Eurythmy is at the beginning of its development. Although we have added a lot to the initial form in recent years, especially in terms of design, we know full well that the eurythmic art floats before us like a lofty ideal. But it should be presented, because it is the secret of artistic work that it can only develop in the right way if understanding is awakened in the broadest circles for the whole process of becoming. We can develop an art by developing understanding for it. And as much as we are fully convinced that we must ask for forbearance, we must also be able to look at how, at some point, this eurythmic art - if no longer by ourselves, but perhaps by others, can be developed into something that, even if it is the youngest art, can still stand alongside its older sister arts as a fully-fledged art.