The Origin and Development of Eurythmy 1920–1922

GA 277c — 27 February 1921, The Hague

24. Address on Eurythmy

Dear attendees,

First of all, I would like to apologize for the fact that neither these introductory words nor the accompanying poems are spoken in Dutch. Since we are using German, you will have to make do with receiving these words and the accompanying poems in German.

If I, dear attendees, say a few words of introduction to our presentation, a performance of eurythmic art, it is not to explain the art of eurythmy itself, which you will see afterwards. To explain art would itself be an inartistic endeavor. And eurythmy is meant to be art first and foremost. I am sending these words ahead for the sole reason that our eurythmic art makes use of particular artistic means of expression that we have not been accustomed to before, and because it also draws from artistic sources that we have not been accustomed to either. It is very easy to confuse what is meant here with pantomime or mime or even with some kind of dance.

Eurythmy does not want to be any of these. You will see a spatial art of movement, individual moving people or moving groups of people. What is presented through the instrumentality of the individual human being or groups of people wants to be a real, visible language, wants to be based on laws of human organization that are just as profound as those of audible speech. If I may use the expression: Through sensual-supersensory vision, careful observation has been made of what is present as movement patterns and movement tendencies in the larynx and the other speech organs when human speech is produced.

So, my dear attendees, we are not dealing with the forms of movement that are then translated into the air to convey the spoken word, but rather with the movement tendencies in the larynx and the other human speech organs that do not come to real manifestation. These have been carefully studied. Then, according to the principle of Goethe's theory of metamorphosis, according to which the whole plant is in the form of a leaf and in this sense everything alive can be understood and represented, then that which otherwise only comes to revelation in one group of human organs - and there in a different way, through spoken language - is transferred to the whole human being, to groups of people.

So you will really hear a visible language coming from the stage. Through this visible language, both the musical and the poetic can be expressed. On the one hand, you will therefore see the eurythmic performances accompanied by the musical: one can sing in this silent, visible language to the musical. One can also present the poetic in eurythmy. Every single sound, every sequence of sounds, the formation of words and sentences: just as they have their corresponding manifestation in the language of sound, they also have this manifestation in this visible language, which will now appear before you. The only difference is that everything that is initially eurythmic speech is realized in artistic forms corresponding to the poetry or music.

Therefore, what you will encounter as accompanying recitation and declamation will have to take on a different character from that which is particularly loved in a somewhat inartistic age in terms of declamation and recitation. The great poets always have, before the literal content of a poem, an artistic form, something melodious, something musical or something imaginative and real, which is at first only a moving rhythm, a moving beat, something like a melodious theme, and so on, to which the literal prose content is then added. This word-for-word recitation and declamation, which we love today, could not accompany eurythmy. Here the recitation and declamation must itself become eurythmy, that is to say: not by particularly emphasizing the prose content of the poem and the like, but by shaping the sound forms and sound laws. Those who no longer experience an inner aesthetic joy in language and its configuration – quite apart from the content of the thoughts – will hardly do justice to the recitation and declamation that eurythmy must accompany.

In this way, eurythmy is truly visible language or visible song. Anything pantomime-like, anything mimetic, anything dance-like is excluded. This is a common misunderstanding. And there is another misunderstanding that is also common. People demand a certain physiognomic expression because they think that eurythmy has something to do with facial expressions or the like, and they miss it here. We deliberately do not give it in the usual form, but only in the form that every movement of the face and head must correspond to the eurythmic. Just as one cannot accompany the sound movements with the face, which would be perceived as grimacing if exaggerated, one cannot accompany the eurythmic speech with what people demand as the “moved countenance” out of misunderstanding.

You will see how – just as in music in a melodious theme – the artistic element is expressed in the lawful sequence of movements when eurythmizing. We are trying more and more to transform the ordinary eurythmic into artistic eurythmic through complicated forms, which in turn have inner simplicity and harmony. You will notice this particularly in some group movements. In the second part, the humorous part, you will see how the eurythmic style, the eurythmic form, can also do justice to this difference in style - the serious on the one hand, the picturesque on the other - in the outer, visible form.

That is the artistic aspect of eurythmy. I would just like to mention in conclusion that this eurythmy also contains other elements, first of all what I only want to hint at, the hygienic-therapeutic aspect. Since the movements involved here are drawn from the whole human being, from the physical-organic foundation as well as from the soul-spiritual, they have an eminently healing effect. If they are developed in a certain way, the result is a hygienic-therapeutic eurythmy from which much can be expected for the future.

And there is a third element that we can study initially in its effect in our Waldorf School in Stuttgart, which was born and established as an independent school out of anthroposophical spiritual science by Emil Molt in Stuttgart and which I run. We have introduced eurythmy as a compulsory subject for children entering primary school until the years when they leave it again. For the children, it is not just an art, but a form of gymnastics that is imbued with soul and spirit. And we have seen how the children take these eurythmic movements, which are born entirely out of the human organization, for granted. Unlike gymnastics, which is born out of physiology, eurythmy is born out of soul and spirit. The children have an intimate joy and feel that their whole being is absorbed in this eurythmizing.

It can also be said that this eurythmy has a particular effect on the development of the will initiative, which we so urgently need in our time. And a third point may be suggested. It is not as applicable to adults who do eurythmy, but for children it is considered to be a particularly important educational tool. When we speak in ordinary language, we can conform to convention and lapse into empty phrases. A phrase is, after all, the less harmful, sometimes also very harmful, sister of the lie. But when we engage our whole being and use it as a means of expression, then we cannot lie, least of all teach lying, through a form of expression such as eurythmy. Therefore, eurythmy in schools proves to be a means of education for truthfulness. And to look for new means of education seems to me to be a particularly important task of the present.

That about the three elements of eurythmy. We are our own harshest critics, and we know that what we can present today is only the beginning, perhaps even an attempt at a beginning. We do not misjudge this, but we also know that Goethe's words are absolutely correct: 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. To do this, he rises by permeating himself with all perfection, invoking order, harmony and meaning, and finally rising to the production of the work of art. When man rises to the production of a work of art in such a way that he does not use external tools, but his own organization, this human organism, which is a small world, a microcosm, containing all the secrets of the world, then, by using his own organism as a tool, man must indeed be able to represent the artistic that is hidden in the world at a particular level.

However, we are still a long way from reaching this level. Therefore, we must always apologize to the honored audience, who are already showing interest in this incipient eurythmic art. We know that we are dealing with a beginning, but we also know — because we know the conditions of origin, the special sources of this eurythmic art, because we have great respect for the most comprehensive tool, the human being — we know that if this beginning of a eurythmic art is perfected, something will certainly arise that will be able to join the older, fully-fledged sister arts as a fully-fledged, younger art. With this in mind, we ask for leniency in your judgment, because we do not want to present more than a beginning with our attempt at a eurythmic art today.