The Origin and Development of Eurythmy 1920–1922

GA 277c — 24 April 1921, Dornach

31. Eurythmy Address

The first part of the performance took place in the Goetheanum auditorium, the second, more cheerful part in the Carpentry.

Part I (Goetheanum)
Mercury prelude with music by Leopold van der Pals
Seventh picture from the Pforte der Einweihung by Rudolf Steiner
“Prooemion” by J. W. v. Goethe
Saying from the Calendar of the Soul (3.) by Rudolf Steiner
“With a painted ribbon” by J. W. v. Goethe
Saying from the Calendar of the Soul (4.) by Rudolf Steiner
From the ‘Chymischen Hochzeit’ by Valentin Andreae with music by Max Schuurman Part II (Joinery)
“The Three Gypsies“ by Nikolaus Lenau
“The Castle by the Sea” by Ludwig Uhland “Erlking” by J. W. v. Goethe with “Elven Prelude” “Good Night” (children's group)
“Guests at the Beech” (children's group)
Humorous poems by Christian Morgenstern: ‘The Sniffles’; ‘Under Times’; ‘The Priestess’; ‘The Dog's Grave’; ‘Moon Things’

Distinguished attendees!

When a person speaks, they leave to the air what is happening in their throat, which they evoke through their speech organs. Certain tendencies of movement lie in these speech organs. These tendencies can be studied by means of sensory and supersensible observation, and in this way we can, as it were, discover the foundations of the human organism when it reveals its soul and spiritual nature through one of its organ systems.

We can now say that the human being is actually concentrated in such an organ system at the moment when the person speaks through it. Perhaps the best way to express what is involved in terms of the human being is to recall Goethe's theory of metamorphosis, that work of Goethe's that is still far too little considered today, but that will one day, when we see these things more impartially, play a great role in our understanding of the living. In the individual plant leaf Goethe sees an entire plant, only simply formed. And in the whole plant he sees a more complicated leaf. What Goethe so fruitfully applied within his view of the living in the plant world can be extended to all living and also to all soulful, spiritualized things, and one gets the following as knowledge for that which can then be of interest here for the human being.

In a language organism, the whole human being is, as it were, concentrated during the activity of speaking – just as the whole plant is in the individual leaf. This can certainly be noticed in the experience of speaking. When we speak, we are, so to speak, immersed in what we are saying with our whole consciousness, with our whole soul life. But just as Goethe sees in the whole plant only a more intricately formed leaf, so too can what we see through sensory-supersensible observation as the actual, essential inner activity of the human speech organs be transferred to the whole human being. One can bring the whole human being into movement in his limbs and his movements, and also in space, so that he becomes, as it were, a speech organ that expresses itself visibly – not audibly, as with the ordinary speech organ.

That, dear attendees, is what has actually happened to shape our eurythmic art. It is not based on some kind of random gestures, or on arbitrary pantomime or facial expressions — or even dance movements — in connection with an experience of the soul. Rather, it is based on the fact that a visible language has been gained through research into what goes on invisibly in the human speech organs when we speak audibly. This has been applied to the human being as a whole. And now you will see, so to speak, a whole human being here on the stage in eurythmy – larynx, other speech organs – and you will hear a real visible language, shaped just as much by inner laws as spoken language.

What appears in recitation, in declamation, and in poetry in general – and our presentation will be accompanied by recitation and poetry – can be portrayed by the visible language of eurythmy, without there being anything arbitrary in the individual movement. as one can arbitrarily utter speech sounds in order to reveal something that is formed by the soul through language. In eurythmy, as in other arts, the main thing is not the individual movement but what emerges when the individual movement accompanies the formed word or sentence, when these movements unfold. Just as one can accompany the spoken word, one can accompany music. Just as one can sing through the speech organs, one can sing with this visible language of eurythmy. It can accompany the musical work just as well as the audible tone itself. So here we have what makes the whole human being an expression of what is experienced spiritually and mentally, like tone and speech or like singing itself.

When we direct our gaze to another person in life – perhaps we do not always notice it in our busy lives, but it is there – when we direct our gaze to another person, when we become aware of this human form: we feel our own inner being in the sight of the other person, and that is, after all, what makes us feel connected to other people. It is something like a glimpse of the self when you see another person. And if the other person expresses what moves his soul through speech, then there is an intimate absorption in the being of the other person.

The same can now be achieved by looking at, perceiving this visible language of eurythmy. It is, so to speak, absolutely that which we can feel in the shaping of the poet, the real artistic poet, in his poetry; there is really something in these lawful movements of eurythmy which, in a different way from our speech sounds, enriches our whole observation and can express poetry and the musical. And anyone who can feel joy at an expansion of the field of art will certainly not oppose the attempt to seek precisely such an expansion of the field of art through a particular artistic medium, which consists in setting the human form itself in motion, and in a particular artistic formal language.

You will then also see, dear attendees, groups of people in motion in their mutual relationships in space. What is expressed is also the inner emotional experience in groups of people in relation to one another, not only in the individual. In a sense, we see ourselves and our own emotional life. This emotional life is actually such that it is also a reflection of the whole external world: what people experience with each other, how people can be in harmony or disharmony with each other, all this is reflected, if I may put it this way, at the bottom of our emotional life. All this can in turn be expressed through poetry and music. And then it is better if we express this inwardly moved soul life, which lives in its relationship to a majority of people, if we want to express that, that we use the human groups. The human group has something more natural in itself for eurythmy. You will see that, without the accompanying speech or music, it is possible to speak or sing, as it were, in introductory and concluding forms, through what has been found as the eurythmic form itself. In the introductory form, we will have to strike the mood of a poem or a piece of music, or we will breathe out the mood in a silent form. This means that there are certain possibilities for developing our eurythmic art that we have so far only exploited to a very limited extent.

Today, you will perhaps be able to see from the first part of our presentation how the eurythmic art can be used for drama, not just for lyric and epic poetry. Admittedly, so far we have only succeeded in expressing in eurythmy the right way that which, so to speak, presents itself in the drama as supersensible, as a revelation of the inner human soul. For example, it is really possible to express those scenes in Goethe's “Faust” where the supersensible is drawn upon by Goethe, where the representation rises from the earthly-sensual to the spiritual-supersensible, to express this intrusion of the supersensible into the sensual in such a way through eurythmic forms that the dramatic progression is particularly enlivened. I do hope, however, that we can also find special forms for the realistic-dramatic, which we still have to present today as if it were ordinary realistic stagecraft, with mere gestures to accompany the words, these things must be presented.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is one aspect of eurythmy. That is one side. There are two others. The first is the therapeutic and hygienic aspect, which I will mention only briefly. The movements that are drawn from the human form are entirely in keeping with the same currents that lie in the human powers of growth and creativity, in which lies everything that is contained in human circulation and human breathing as normal movements, as health-promoting, health-preserving movements. Therefore, by expanding the paths that are artistically expressed here, by further developing the movements, one can also develop a therapeutic-hygienic eurythmy. And it will be developed. There is no doubt that it will be able to enter our lives as a healing factor.

The third aspect is the educational-didactic side. At the Free Waldorf School in Stuttgart, which was founded by Emil Molt and is led by me, we have introduced the art of eurythmy as a compulsory subject. There it is a factor within pedagogy and didactics that can be called an inspired, spiritualized form of gymnastics. One day people will think about these things more impartially than they do today. Gymnastics is purely shaped by physiological rules. It is that which relates to the laws of the human body. In contrast, what is represented in this soulful gymnastics - eurythmy - is a meaningful and natural movement of the whole person, body, soul and spirit. This is why we see – and this is clearly demonstrated by Waldorf school eurythmy lessons – that we see that the child perceives it as something completely natural to live out their entire humanity in these eurythmic movements. Every movement is imbued with meaning, carried by the soul. The child feels this, it knows that it does not need to hold back the soul and spirit as it would in gymnastics.

Above all, one sees that one element in particular is developed in an educational way: this is the initiative of the will, which will be so necessary for our generation and the next. And many other things can be achieved if eurythmy is introduced at the earliest stages of education and teaching. No other educational method can achieve the same degree of inner mobility in the living out of the spiritual, the same skill in the organism, and so on.

The main thing here is, of course, the artistic expression of eurythmy. And in this respect, I would like to say that the fact that the human organism, with its range of movement and its inner laws, is the tool of this eurythmic art justifies it in itself. Goethe says so beautifully: “To whom nature reveals her manifest secret, longs for her deepest interpreter, art.” The deepest secrets of the existence of the world are contained in the human being, this microcosm. But the human form, which expresses so much, so infinitely, does not express the whole, the full human being. When we see a human hand in its resting form, we do not have it in its fullness. We have it only in its fullness when we consider every shape of the individual finger of the arm and so on, and see how the shape is tinged to merge into the movements, how the shape is, so to speak, the main movement that has come to rest, how the movements that are carried out by the hand or arm are driven out again from the particular shape. And so in the whole person. Truly, it is so that in the truly artistic one sees the deepest secrets of nature, which is why, according to Goethe, it is the deepest yearning of man to look at these secrets in the artistic sense.

Then, at another time, Goethe says: When man is placed at the summit of nature, he in turn regards himself as a whole nature, takes in order, harmony, measure and meaning through appearances and rises to the production of the work of art. This work of art will be a truer one if the human being does not use external instrumentation, but uses himself in his inner lawfulness, his inner essence, in such a way that he seeks order, harmony, measure and meaning from his own form and movement and thereby rises to the production of the work of art.

In all this, I must also today, as always, ask my dear audience to consider what we call the eurythmic art in such a way that there is always a beginning. It will be further developed, and we are only just beginning today, but our strictest critics know what possibilities for development lie in it and what can be expressed further and further. What has already been thought in eurythmy in a certain respect – the individual scenes from my mystery drama – will show you that eurythmy arises as if by itself. In all that is really artistically shaped in the poetry itself, it flows as if by itself, as it were, over what is poetry, into the eurythmic movement. Therefore, one cannot recite or declaim in the way that is popular today for this eurythmic performance, but it must be emphasized not only the literal prose - as it is today as audible when reciting - but it must be the voice, the tone when reciting the eurythmic, the pictorial, which is already in the poetry, the rhythmic, the beat-like, the rhythmic, that which is actually artistic and subtle in a real, true poem - not that which is literally prosaic - must be emphasized.

All this must be taken into account, because it is actually a new field that we are entering with this eurythmic art. If we take all this together with what I have said, that we are only at the beginning, but that we will continue to develop the eurythmic art further and further, then we can perhaps also sense what possibilities for development are available and that it is to be hoped that this eurythmic art will be further developed - not so much by us, but by others - so that one day it can establish itself as a fully valid younger art alongside the older sister arts.

Today we will present the first part here – up to what will take place as a “Chymical Wedding” – in this room. Then there will be an intermission, and the second part after the intermission will take place over there in the provisional hall of the carpentry workshop, where the eurythmy performances have usually been held up to now.