The Origin and Development of Eurythmy 1920–1922

GA 277c — 3 April 1921, Dornach

28. Eurythmy Address

From April 3 to 10, 1921, the second Anthroposophical University Course took place at the Goetheanum, during which several eurythmy performances were also given.

“Melody” by Ludwig Jacobowski with musical accompaniment by Leopold van der Pals
Saying from the Calendar of the Soul (52.) by Rudolf Steiner
“Little Bird” by Edward Grieg ‘Forest Concerts’ by Christian Morgenstern
“Merlin“ by Nikolaus Lenau
Saying from the soul calendar (1.) by Rudolf Steiner
Opening ‘Fateful Question’ with music by Leopold van der Pals
“Lonely” by Friedrich Nietzsche
“The Drunken Song“ by Friedrich Nietzsche
“The Three Gypsies” by Nikolaus Lenau with music by Jan Stuten
Humoresques by Christian Morgenstern: “St. Expeditus”; “The Unicorn”; “The Shoes”

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen.

Allow me to say a few words before our eurythmy performance, not to explain it (artistic work must explain itself), but to say a few words about the sources and the special forms of expression in which this art moves and from which it flows. What we call eurythmy here is by no means — although it expresses itself through the moving human being or through the movement of groups of people — it is not just any kind of gestural art, not just anything mimic or pantomime. Nor should it be confused with what is called the art of dance and the like.

Nowhere is an attempt made to find a gestural expression for any content of the soul in an instant, as one might say, but rather the aim is a real visible language. So that every single movement and the sequence of movements, the conformity of the movements to natural law corresponds to the inner soul experience, just as the individual sound of the spoken or sung word and the sequence of sounds and tones in speech and song correspond to the inner soul experience. If I may use the expression, it has been investigated through sensuous-supersensuous observation in which movement tendency the larynx and the other speech organs find themselves when speech or song is produced. And that which is only present in the potential when speaking or singing, in the potential for movement, is metamorphosed into the movements of the whole person or even of groups of people.

It can certainly be said that the whole person is brought onto the stage in such a way as if it were a moved larynx as a whole. And only someone who, at heart, does not have the right joy and the right feeling for the artistic can object to such an expansion of the artistic. It is precisely this that makes it possible for what is expressed on the one hand through poetry and on the other through music to be revealed in this moving language or in moving song. In this way, that which, I would say, in music and in language is what transforms the two human contents into artistic form, becomes particularly expressible in this visible language or in this visible song.

What lies in the poetry, purely artistically, is, I would like to say, hidden song, hidden musicality or also hidden plastic imagery. What is merely the literal content of a poem is basically only the outer work of the real artistic element. What constitutes the artistic element is already eurythmic in poetry and song.

On the one hand, the human being expresses his or her nature through thought. It is undeniable that in the activity of thinking, in the formation of thoughts, lies that through which man first experiences himself as the most perfect creature within the visible creation in which he finds himself. But when man merely moves thought within himself, he moves in a prosaic way. To move towards the artistic, towards the poetic, it is necessary that the element of thought passes into the creation of form. And it is remarkable how we can see that through the most significant forms of the poetic – through the epic element, through the lyrical element, through the dramatic element – thought seeks to lose itself as thought, to give up its unartistic element and merge into the form.

Take the epic. We see how, let us say, in one of the most exquisite epic creations, in Homer, we see how the conceptual element even in the telling of the story passes over into the shaping: the fleet-footed Achilles or the hero with the billowing helmet. Thought will always attempt to lose itself and metamorphosically transform into form. When we follow it, we only really have a drama before us when we do not limit ourselves to its literal content, but when we recreate in our imagination what the literal content only indicates, I might say like a musical score. We see the life that has been shaped. And perhaps this is just as true for lyric poetry. All lyric poetry that is divorced from the human being always has something uncomfortable about it for the artistic sense. What really goes to our hearts in lyric poetry is that there can be soul in the artistic, but it is presented, shaped, and placed before our mind's eye only individually and uniquely. The more we are gripped by the feeling, the sensing, the experiencing of a person in a song, the more genuinely, originally, and elementarily we also feel the lyric. And so we can say: in that thought wants to become artistic – even in the purely intellectual element of poetry – it strives out of its element of thought, it strives to transition into form.

And anyone who has an understanding of this will be able to feel how, if one wants to approach the human being with comprehension and understanding, how, in the sense of our present-day science of man, one can think, how one can unravel what is before us in the human being. We then cannot manage. If we want to retain the thought and yet understand the human being, we actually fall into an absurdity. When we stand before the human being, we must penetrate to the artistic in order to understand the thoughts. We must penetrate so far that the thought loses itself in the contemplation of the human being, that the inner soul life becomes artistic and the thought passes over into the intuitive apprehension of the human form. This is a stimulating inner task. And it is precisely in this task that we see how, in the end, every genuine true knowledge in the Goethean sense leads to an artistic understanding of the outer world.

On the one hand, it is thought that leads to form and ultimately to the human form. A second element that we perceive in human experience is movement, movement that goes back to the will. You don't have to be a Schopenhauerian to feel that the human essence seeks to pass through the striving will to its purest image, to the musical and song-like. In the musical-singing element, one can already feel that into which the will also wants to flow, just as the form of the thought wants to flow into the thinking. And then one has the second element, that which, as movement, belongs to the human being. But when one stands face to face with the complete human being, one will feel the belonging together, the flowing into one another of form and movement in the human being. We cannot help but, when we look at the details of the human being – let us say the hand or the arm with the hand, for example – we look at the shape, we cannot help but, when we look at the shape, we see in the shape, I would say, the movement that has come to rest. We cannot help but imagine in the shape of the hand that which is directly connected with the movement, with the mobility of the hand.

And so we can only fully grasp everything that is revealed in man if we understand it in its transition into movement, if we approach and understand man as his form arises from movement, from movement that has come to rest, and how, on the other hand, form everywhere wants to transition, expand, flow into movement. Then one has before one that which expresses in the whole human being the same thing that lives in speech and song in terms of inner sound, I would say in terms of possibility, in terms of ideality, to speak in the Goethean sense. And so the same thing can be represented through the moving human being as through speech and song.

One can see how the basis of true poetry can come to light through this eurythmy, precisely because the declamatory, recitative accompaniment gives rise to demands that do not correspond to the purely prosaic demands on recitation or declamation that exist so prominently in our time. Today, the prose content of a poem is particularly emphasized, and this is considered appealing. Attention is paid to the fact that this or that nuance of prose, this or that nuance of content is expressed in this or that way when reciting or declaiming. The actual artistic element is overlooked, which consists in the rhythmic, in the metrical, or also in the pictorialization that underlies the poetry. And it remains an important psychological fact that true great poets such as Schiller, for example, first had an indefinite melody in their soul, on which he then strung the words; or that Goethe had an image in his inner vision, as is the case in the second part of Goethe's “Faust”, in order to then shape the poetic in such a way that he strung together the plastic, pictorial image of what the previous content is.

These things come to light particularly through the art of eurythmy. But since we have music to accompany the eurythmy on the one hand and the recitation of the poetry on the other, it will become clear during recitation and declamation that one cannot simply recite and declaim prosaically, but must always seek in recitation and declamation for the underlying rhythm and beat - or perhaps also for the underlying rhythmic form and emphasize it in particular, that in other words, in eurythmy one is compelled to go back to the actual artistic in the poetic.

With that, dear attendees, I have briefly touched on the essence and formal language of eurythmy. There is also a second side to eurythmy, which I will only mention here: the medical and therapeutic side. Since what is inherent in the human form, in the human organization, is conjured up by the eurythmic movements, these movements, which are carried out, must also be shaped in such a way that they appear as healing movements for the human organism, so that one can develop a hygienic-therapeutic side to this eurythmy. But that should only be mentioned in passing.

I would like to point out a third element that this eurythmy contains: the didactic-pedagogical element. At the Waldorf School in Stuttgart, which was founded by Emil Molt and is run by me, we have made eurythmy a compulsory subject alongside gymnastics. In this sense, eurythmy is a form of animated gymnastics. It does not merely create what gymnastics already does, namely, movement of the human being based on physiological observation. Rather, it creates something that brings to light the body, soul and spirit of the human being in unified movement. And that this can really be felt, that one might say that which lies in the human being passes over into his natural movement, is shown by the successes that have been achieved in Waldorf schools, especially with eurythmy. From the earliest school age, children perceive this soul-inspired movement as something natural, because what they carry out in movement does not merely follow from the physical, but from the whole, from the full human being. We shall see how, in particular, the will initiative can be developed in the child through this element of eurythmy and how many other aspects of the child's soul, spirit and physical life can be fostered if this teaching can be developed more and more. In this way, eurythmy can also provide a fruitful element for pedagogy and didactics.

That, ladies and gentlemen, was the intention of this eurythmy. One can only say, as Goethe once said, that in relation to his entire environment, man stands in art, that this eurythmy adheres entirely to these Goethean intentions. Goethe says so beautifully: When nature begins to reveal its manifest secret to someone, they feel a deep yearning for its most worthy interpreter, art. The deepest secrets of nature are hidden in the human being itself; they reside in the human form. When this form moves, nature reveals its manifest secret. So that one does not have to grasp it in an inartistic way with thought, but can look at it in a directly sensual way, the secret of nature.

But that is precisely how life is created in the artistic. And eurythmy uses the human being itself as its tool. It does not work with external tools and means of expression, but with that which lies within the human being. Goethe says so beautifully: When man is placed at the summit of nature, he in turn perceives himself as a summit, takes in measure, order, harmony and meaning, and rises to the production of the work of art. Should we not be able to rise to the production of a work of art in the most beautiful way, when we make the human organism itself, which is a small world, appear in its own right, in accordance with its own laws, like an excerpt from the whole great world, a tool and means of expression for what we artistically intend?

However, it must be said again and again: we are our own harshest critics, even in relation to what we are already able to do today. But we have tried in a certain way to advance what was originally intended with eurythmy to a certain extent. Today you will see how we bring to life what resonates in the mood of a poem in forms that are accompanied neither by music nor by poetry, so that the mere moving person or group of people can strike the mood of the poem, or that in such mute forms the poem can end in its mood or the music in its mood.

You will also see how we endeavor, if you have the patience, to compare what is achieved in more serious poetry with what is attempted in humorous and picturesque poetry. You will see how eurythmy follows the style forms, how, on the one hand, Fercher von Steinwand's extraordinarily convoluted poetic images, which follow the secrets of the world and mysterious cosmic forces, want to be expressed through forms; on the other hand, you will see how Christian Morgenstern's humoresques have been attempted in the second part, also through special forms, to be captured in eurythmy in the style . What Morgenstern wanted to achieve – which was led to his humorous poems, the “Galgenlieder”, the “Palmström-Lieder” and so on – through what he experienced in the depths of his soul, I would say through humorously experiencing and suffering at the hands of philistinism – can be followed in the eurythmic forms , without resorting to mime or pantomime. Christian Morgenstern felt very strongly what philistinism, which is spreading all around us in our prosaic times, lives out. I would like to say that the narrow-mindedness, the spears that philistinism sends out in all directions, hurt a sensitive nature like Christian Morgenstern's everywhere, and that is how his thoughts came to dance. They were repulsed everywhere by the spears of philistinism, especially by that philistinism which today wants to appear ingenious, which, precisely because it wants to appear ingenious, behaves so ingeniously. This quivering back, this dancing of Christian Morgenstern's thoughts through the spears of philistinism, that is what, I would like to say, in turn challenges a particular sub-form of eurythmy.

In all of this, however, what we can already offer today remains a beginning. We must ask for forbearance in this regard. We are our own harshest critics, but we believe that, after what we have taken as our starting point for this eurythmic art and after the forms in which we develop it, which are thoroughly grounded in the human being, that this younger sister art will one day be able to stand alongside the older, fully-fledged sister arts, provided it continues to be developed.