The Origin and Development of Eurythmy 1920–1922

GA 277c — 9 April 1921, Dornach

29. Eurythmy Address

The performance of April 9, 1921 took place in the carpentry workshop, and the closing ceremony of the Second Anthroposophical College Course as a “performance of eurhythmic art and musical performances” took place on April 10, 1921 in the Goetheanum building, with the “Ariel Scene” from “Faust” eurythmically presented with music by Max Schuurman and Henry Zagwijn.

Second scene from the mystery drama “The Awakening of the Soul” by Rudolf Steiner

Prelude “Planetary Dance”

“World Soul” by J. W. v. Goethe with music by Max Schuurman

“Proem” by J. W. v. Goethe

Saying from the Calendar of the Soul (1.) by Rudolf Steiner

“Mount Olympus” by J. W. von Goethe

Saying from the Calendar of the Soul (2.) by Rudolf Steiner

“Good Night” by Engelbert Humperdinck (children's group)

“The Beech's Guests” by Rudolf Baumbach with music by Jan Stuten (children's group)

“Beim Anblick einer Gans” by J. Fercher von Steinwand

Humoresques by Christian Morgenstern: “Der Schnupfen”; “Der Aromat”; “Die Geruchsorgel”; “Das Butterbrotpapier”; “Mondendinge”

Distinguished ladies and gentlemen.

As on previous occasions when these eurythmy exercises were performed, I would like to introduce them with a few words today, in which I will speak about the particular artistic means, the formal language, in which this eurythmic art moves. The point is that on the stage we see a language that is truly inaudible but visible, a language that is performed through movements of the individual human being, through movements of groups of people and so on. What the human being performs is then accompanied either by music or by the recitation of poetry. And what occurs in the movements of the individual human being or the group of people should be the same revelation through a visible language or through a visible song, as on the other hand the same motifs are revealed musically or poetically, through recitation.

But it is not a matter of some kind of mime or pantomime or other kind of gestural art being the basis here; nor is it a matter of what is called dance in ordinary life being the basis here. Rather, it has been developed into a language of the human form and human movement that is just as essentially fixed as the language of sound and song itself, in which the human form lives, only in a different way. This has come about through the fact that, through sensual and supersensory observation, the movement tendencies that underlie the audible sound, the word formations and so on, and also the sentence formations, have been overheard in the human larynx and the other speech organs. In this way, something has come about that is as internally logical in the sequence of sounds as musicality, for example.

If you want to see what this eurythmic art is actually about, then it is useful to consider some of human development. Human development proceeds in such a way that [it is clear –] although it is not visible more clearly in historical times, but only in prehistoric times – how certain expressions of human life, let us say, for example, his ability to move, his ability to speak, have developed.

For our purpose here, I would like to point out one thing. There is an interesting fact, already known to ordinary science today, that points to an element of development in the human race: it is the fact that in the older languages, the primitive languages, for the human movement that then became dance, for the rhythmic movement that, as I said, later transformed into the movements performed during the dance, that for these “primal ic” movements, and for singing, there was only one word. They did not distinguish between what they were convinced belonged together: singing and rhythmic movement of the human body. In a sense, primitive man felt compelled, whenever possible, not to make sounds with still limbs, but to always accompany them with some movement of his limbs. He then also behaved in such a way that, when it was possible, the work he performed and in which he moved his limbs, when it was possible, he performed this work in such a way that his limbs could move in a certain rhythm, a certain regularity that arose instinctively in him.

This, which was characteristic of man in very early times, then became differentiated. As man advanced in civilization, the movements that arose from the will, so to speak, separated to a certain independence; they adapted more and more to the outer life. Only the leg movements did not retain a certain freer mobility, but the arm movements did. But even in these, I would say that in the leg movements, which were emancipating themselves from the tonal, the singing, that which was possible in such movements when they did not serve mere utility was still held back. These movements were, as it were, relegated to the instinctive will, to all that which the human being then placed in the indeterminate, unconscious will as his own humanity. In this way, the movements that had previously always been linked to song became differentiated into ritual dances. And even what in older times were called “love dances” had in a sense become differentiated. But it differentiated in such a way that in the case of cult dances, the movements, which used to be more closely related to the [gap in the text] and the emotional, were led down into the nobler unconscious, while in the case of love dances, they were led down into the instinctive unconscious will-like movements, which were also felt as one with singing, with the sounding word.

On the one hand, the movement that comes from the will differentiated and separated itself. On the other hand, what lay in the sound, in the word, differentiated itself, in that the movement increasingly passed over into the useful and the playful, and also into the cult-like in certain peoples. So that the word became the word of knowledge, into which, as it were, everything that can be expressed thoughtfully through the word was pressed from the intellect. So that, while the lower movements differentiated themselves into the useful, the words differentiated themselves into the means of knowledge and into the external conventional means of communication.

By advancing to a spiritualization of that which is given for human knowledge, the word is again imbued with the spirit, which in turn can then connect with the will. But, my dear attendees, if you want to achieve something artistic, you have to overcome the intellectual and the conceptual wherever possible. The intellectual and conceptual is paralyzing for art. But that which lives as spirit in the intellectual and conceptual can in turn be united with movement.

Now, what was once, I would say, a unified human revelation in the art of song and movement, for which there was only one name, is intimately connected with the human breathing rhythm. And the peculiar thing is that one can say that what actually plays from the innermost part of the human being, from this interplay of the spiritual-soul, physical-bodily, as it is expressed so finely in the breathing rhythm and the pulse, is more than in what is human rhythm in general. On the one hand, we can see how what is, so to speak, in the head becomes the intellectual in the word, and how, even if only in a slight way, arrhythmia occurs in the rhythmic being of the human being. And in the same way, arrhythmia occurs when the human being's mobility develops only in terms of what is useful.

If we now try to discern through sensory and supersensory observation what has now differentiated itself as a single group of organs in the activity of speaking, then we can see particularly well how this speaking is connected to breathing, how the breathing movements, so to speak, interact with speaking in one, but how the interplay of the thought and intellectuality causes arrhythmia. And we find arrhythmia in, I would say, an overly developed intellectual speech. But we also find arrhythmia in a speech that is too strongly based on the mere principle of utility.

By now trying to go back to the inner essence of man, to that inner essence that expresses itself, if I may put it this way, in the purely human rhythm and thus also coming back to how the sound adapts to this pure human rhythm, we find on the one hand that the true poet unconsciously arranges his speech in such a way that he lutes and words and in the whole sentence structure of the language in such a way that it connects to the pure human breathing rhythm or at least stands in a very specific relationship to this pure human breathing rhythm.

But as our civilization is today, if one were to start from the intellectual and rational, much that is arrhythmic would still enter into the human being. On the other hand, if we start from what develops out of the full human being in the will, we can already work back into the [movements of human limbs, especially the movement of the arms,] so that the soul-spiritual can also be expressed in the arm movement, as it was once developed out of human nature. In this way, and in exactly the same way, only in a different direction, in the movements of the human limbs, especially the arms, something similar is achieved to that which is present in the shaping of the air movements that are released from the rhythmic breathing process. One then expresses in a visible language the same thing that is formed in the air when the word is sounded. And one thereby gains the possibility of translating into the visible what is musically at the basis of song, what is poetically at the basis of formative language.

So here we do not have ordinary poetry, or a gestural art or a mimetic art, but a real expression of the human soul and spirit in the physical body, in the most beautiful harmony, in the same way as in those speech formations that are not borrowed from the principle of external utility, but that reveal themselves out of human nature itself. All that is striven for through eurythmy actually reveals what underlies a poem, what underlies a song, on the one hand from the musical side, and on the other from the pictorial side, from the plastic-creative side. And that which has lived in the poet as a fully human being comes visibly to the outside for revelation.

You can also see that, for example, all the bad habits of recitation and declamation, which are developing particularly abundantly today in an unartistic time, must be avoided. All the insertion of the prosaic content and the literal element into recitation and declamation, where one has particularly the emotional, inner emphasis – which is not intended to be a harsh judgment on the emotional, but it must merge into rhythm, tact [or into that which is plastic, image-like]. All the aspects that are particularly emphasized in prose recitation and declamation cannot be used for the declamation and recitation that should accompany the visible speech presented in eurythmy. For it is precisely that which is genuinely and truly artistic that is drawn from the realm of poetry. And in poetry it is not the literal meaning, but rather the underlying meter and rhythm, which is then expressed in the shaping of the language.

Therefore, even today, some people who are perhaps already sufficiently shocked by the eurythmic art itself are particularly shocked when they hear the special way of declaiming and reciting as an accompanying art, as it is required for this eurythmy.

This is something that is still widely misunderstood today: what this eurythmy is striving for, this visible language. Critics appear, such as “something is being shaped automatically” - one can predict - that our eurythmists showed too few facial movements, and yet the face would be the most expressive, and so on. For someone who really engages with the connection between the human soul and spirit and the visible language that appears here in eurythmy, it is as if someone were tempted to accompany what they say with continuous unnatural grimaces. That is why it is important that what is expressed should be expressed through a special language of form, through a special language of movement – and not through what otherwise also accompanies our ordinary speaking, for example, as random gestures or random facial expressions.

This is what I would like to say today about the one side of our eurythmic art: the artistic side.

I would just like to mention that this eurythmy also has a second element, an important hygienic-therapeutic one. Since the movements are taken from the human being itself, they can also be shaped in such a way that they have a direct healing effect. And movements can be found that must then proceed in a somewhat different way than those formed purely for artistic purposes, which can then also play a significant role in therapy, in hygiene. I just wanted to mention that.

The third element I would like to mention is the didactic-pedagogical aspect of our eurythmic art. At the Waldorf School in Stuttgart, which was founded by Emil Molt and is under my direction, we have had the opportunity to introduce this eurythmy as a compulsory subject. And it can be seen that from the moment the child enters primary school, they already feel it as a matter of course to live in these eurythmic movements. They feel how what is being developed here as a movement emerges from the whole being of the human being. This has already been clearly demonstrated in the practice of the Waldorf school. And so we have this eurythmy as a soul-inspired gymnastics, while in ordinary gymnastics there are only physiological processes. So that what affects the human body is taken into account, as we do in eurythmic didactics and pedagogy, that spirit and soul work together with the body, that the whole person is engaged in the activity. And here we can see for ourselves – our time, in which the Waldorf school exists, has been quite enough for that – how the eurythmic element is a training of the will initiative, how the impulses that are unleashed and released within the human being are in fact deep impulses of the will. If we consider how much our time needs the training of the will initiative, we will admit that it is indeed important that such bescelte gymnastics be practiced in our schools.

These are the various aspects of our eurythmic art, as far as they can be developed at present. That this eurythmic art is justified may already be seen from the fact that it is used to make use of that which is, as it were, an extract, an imprint of the whole great world, that is to say, a small world: the human organism itself, as an instrument for artistic activity. And if, on the one hand, Goethe says: “When nature begins to reveal her secrets to someone, that person feels an irresistible yearning for her most worthy interpreter, art,” then it must be said that human nature will reveal itself most beautifully through art when the human being uses his own organism as the tool for this art.

And when, on the other hand, Goethe says: “By being placed at the summit of nature, man beholds himself as a complete nature, which must bring forth a summit within itself. To do so, 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.He can also rise to the production of the work of art if he not only places himself at the summit of nature in order to take measure, harmony, order and meaning from the external nature, but if he seeks measure, harmony, order and meaning in his own being, sets these in motion, makes himself the expression of the secrets of the world and makes visible in speech that which mysteriously moves through the human soul.

And when art is most beautiful when what the eyes see externally frees the spirit at the same time, and when everything that wants to give spirit becomes an external expression of the senses at the same time, then one can say: eurythmy fulfills these requirements. For that which the human being experiences inwardly in soul and spirit, by reliving the most beautiful products of language, the poems: that also comes to expression outwardly in the senses, visibly for the eye. Thus, in this eurythmic art, we have, quite obviously, the outer visible and the inner soul-spiritual of the human being working together, which, when they work together, give the most noble, the most beautiful expression of art.

We still have to apologize for some things because we are still in the early stages of this eurythmic art. And yet, the distinguished guests who are here often will have seen how we have been working, especially in the development of introductory silent forms, silent endings and the like, where we can show that in the eurythmic forms, even when nothing is spoken or recited, there is something linguistic, something visibly linguistic. But after all, this eurythmy is only at its beginning. Perhaps it will also be seen that when the poetic is already directly conceived rhythmically, when everything is looked at down to the last word — and that is the case in my “mystery dramas” — I would like to say that then the eurythmic expression arises by itself. This will be the case with the first part that we will perform today before the break, which is intended to provide a eurythmic rendition of a scene from one of my “mystery dramas”. After the break, there will be eurythmic renditions of other poems.

As I said, we must apologize. We ourselves are the strictest critics of what eurythmy can do today, but we are also in the midst of its developmental possibilities - they will perhaps first be developed by others, not by ourselves. But these possibilities for development are such that one can indulge in the hope that this youngest sister among the arts will one day be able to stand worthily beside her older sister forms, which are already fully entitled today.