The Origin and Development of Eurythmy 1920–1922

GA 277c — 1 May 1921, Dornach

32. Eurythmy Address

The first part of the performance took place in the Goetheanumban, the second, more cheerful part in the carpentry.

Part I (Goetheanum) Second scene from the mystery drama “The Awakening of the Soul” by Rudolf Steiner “The Nile Delta” by Wladimir Solowjow (Russian) ‘Mighty Surprise’ by J. W. v. Goethe Quote from the soul calendar (4.) by Rudolf Steiner “The little bird” by Edward Grieg Quote from the soul calendar (5.) by Rudolf Steiner “Forest Concerts” by Christian Morgenstern with music by Max Schuurman Part II (joinery)
Music played by Louise van Blommestein
“The Castle by the Sea“ by Ludwig Uhland
“Erlking” by J. W. v. Goethe with “Elven Prelude”
“Poems are painted window panes” by J. W. v. Goethe
Humoresques by Christian Morgenstern: ‘Among times’; ‘The priestess’; ‘The dog's grave’; ‘Moon things’

Dear attendees!

The eurythmic art, of which we would like to give you a sample, is based on a kind of visible language. You will see the movement of the individual human being in his limbs, namely in those limbs that can most actively and expressively reveal the soul, movements of the arms and hands. Or also: you will see movements of the whole human being in space or of groups of people and so on.

All that which presents itself as a kind of visible language could be understood as pantomime, mime art or even as dance art and the like, but should not actually be confused with these neighboring arts. For what underlies this eurythmic language is observed – to use this Goethean expression – through sensual-supersensory observation of everything that, as movement tendencies, as movement intentions, underlies, so to speak, the emergence of phonetic language and song. Song and phonetic language emerge from the human speech organ. It is not so much about what comes out with the movements of the air, but rather about what it is about, to observe what movement patterns prevail in the larynx and the other speech organs. These movement patterns are not directly expressed as such, but are transformed and converted into what can then reveal itself as speech sounds. But if one observes this system, one comes to the conclusion that, in relation to what a person reveals when speaking, one can recognize and artistically apply the principle of Goethe's theory of metamorphosis.

Goethe sees in the individual plant leaf a simpler whole plant that simply grows on the rest of the plant, and in turn he sees in the whole plant a more complicated plant leaf. What Goethe applied to the formation of plant life, he later wanted to extend to all living things. This is an extraordinarily fruitful direction and maxim for observation, and it can also be applied to the method of observing living beings. In this way, we come to the conclusion that, when a person speaks, when he causes his speech organs to reveal something by speaking or singing, then what is being expressed in a partial part of the human organization is actually the whole. And just as one can see a more complicated leaf in the shape of the whole plant, so one can now extend to the whole human being that which lives there as a tendency to move in a partial part of the human organization, so that one can thus allow the whole human being to express himself - now for visible observation - as for the soul observation invisibly the possibilities of movement underlie the sound language and the singing .

In this way, one has a means of expression that is based on an inner lawfulness of the human organism - just as speech itself is not made by arbitrarily inventing some gesture or facial movement and making it an expression of something of the soul. Rather, what the human organism is in its essence is actually brought out of it.

And we can say something like the following: That which the human being is as a gestalt reveals itself to the senses and the supersenses in such a way that it always seeks to become movement, to become a gesture. We need only observe a human hand. Of course, we can consider the gestalt. But the shape of the human hand has no meaning if it is not thought of as the motion of the fingers and the rest of the hand coming to rest. How one grasps with the hand, how one can touch with the hand, and how, in other words, one can move the hand, is expressed in the hand that has come to rest. And so one can observe the whole human organism, the whole human form. One can find the lawful starting point for setting the organism in motion in this form, and one then makes the discovery, which can indeed be extraordinarily striking: that by revealing something of the soul and spiritual life through movements derived from this form, one has something like a self-evident, visible language that can be transformed, artistically shaped, giving rise to the art of eurythmy. This visible language can be used to express poetry or music in the same way as spoken or sung language. Therefore, here too you will find what appears as the eurythmic art for the eye, from recitation and from the musical.

Both are just another revelation of the same thing, which comes through the visible language of eurythmy to revelation. When poems, which are the expression of the soul, are recited or declaimed, we see that the declamation or recitation must be guided by the artistic element in the poem. In our unartistic times, there is a tendency to prefer the prosaic, to focus on the literal content of the poetic. And today, when reciting, people particularly appreciate the pointization, the highlighting of the word, the literal, and thus actually the prosaic in poetry. But such an art of recitation actually leaves the special artistic field. The essence lies in the shaping that the poet does with the language. The true poet already has a eurythmy, sometimes a vividly designed one in pictures, as is the case with Goethe, or an expression through the language of a musical element, as is the case with Schiller, so that in Schiller there is already a eurythmic element in the language itself and so on, in Goethe in the creation of images, which must then also be brought out in the recitation that eurythmic art.

So you will see that what is performed on the one hand musically is expressed, I would say, through the moving human being. Just as one can sing audibly with the speech and singing organs, one can also sing with the eurythmic movement. And just as you can find a revelation in what is revealed in a poem, you can find a revelation in what is expressed by a person or group of people in motion.

One can present lyric, epic, dramatic works in this way; in doing so, the style must be particularly adapted to the poetic art. And you will see, especially those of the honored spectators who have been here more often, that we are indeed trying to make progress in the development of the forms, that we have been working on the development of such forms in recent months. For example, we are trying – which has not been done before – to introduce certain moods of a poem or a piece of music through silent forms, that is, forms that are not accompanied by music or poetry, so that the moods are prepared in the pure spatial formation of the movements, which are then expressed in the poem. Or we try to allow this mood to fade away by following a poem with such silent forms.

This makes it particularly clear how, in fact, this is a language with an inner, inherent movement, the peculiarities of which cannot be grasped by thinking, for example, about what this gesture means or that gesture. Such thinking does not lead to the essence of the eurythmic art. Just as one does not have to relate the individual note to something in music, but only to the lawful sequence or harmony of the notes, so too in the eurythmic art one has to consider the lawful sequence of movements or the harmony of the movements as they are performed by the individual people in a group and the like.

What actually constitutes the eurythmic art lies in this lawful sequence of movements, not in the individual arbitrary facial expressions. In particular, when the eurhythmic is already present in the conception of the poetry, one can see how this eurhythmic art can become, I would say, a natural expression of what is experienced when a piece of poetry comes into being. Thus it turns out, for example, that those parts of a dramatic poem that lead from the sensual-physical life into the supersensible realm become particularly theatrical through the application of the eurythmic art. We have tried this in the case of those scenes from Goethe's 'Faust' in other performances that go beyond ordinary realistic experience, that embody soul states through forms and so on. Wherever the dramatic is led out into the supersensible, the application of the art of eurythmy makes the stage-like element an artistic revelation. It is to be hoped — although I have not yet succeeded — that the underlying principles of other dramatic poetry, that is, of realism in drama, will also be able to find their eurythmic expression.

Today you will be shown a rehearsal, a scene from my mystery drama “The Awakening of the Soul”. The aim is to bring to dramatic expression that which plays into the human soul from the life of the world. It is necessary to see how abstractly that which we usually call the laws of the world actually affects the real observer.

You see, dear attendees, the thing is that today we say: natural laws, that is, that which should also play a role in human life, must be grasped according to the rules of abstract logic. Yes, but if the matter were such that the law of the world simply does not reveal itself when one applies only abstract logic to it, namely human life. It is impossible to understand it if one wants to stick to abstract laws, for example abstract historical laws, if one does not move on to a pictorial understanding of what plays a role in human life. All manner of arts are being applied today that actually arise from a dilettantism of the time; psychoanalytic arts and the like are used to get to the soul life. These arts are dilettantish for the reason that they basically have no insight into the fact that only in images can the full extent, the whole saturation of life, reveal itself to one.

And so, in one of the scenes of my drama “The Awakening of the Soul”, an attempt is made to reveal, on the one hand, certain forces that emerge from the whole of the world and are presented as figures that are not intended as symbols but as realities that emerge from the whole of the world, so that they express certain aspects of the world that approach the human being and then play into his soul , so that they make it present in the soul.

Likewise, an attempt is made to illustrate human life, soul and spiritual life in its course through the human life cycle by choosing, for example, that which always stands before the reasonably discerning human being: childhood that has become objective, youth that has become objective. We look back on our youth when we have reached a certain age. And it is often the case with sensitive self-reflection that one says to oneself: this youth, it actually stands before the soul like a foreign human life; but it is in the soul again. This cannot be portrayed with abstractions, nor with the means of ordinary drama; one must try to move on to sensual-supersensory images, as I have tried to portray the 'spirit of Johannes' youth'. Johannes is the hero of these 'mystery dramas', including this one, from which today's scene is taken from 'The Awakening of the Soul'. So I have tried to imagine this Johannes, how he has already objectified his youth to a certain extent, how this youth, this childhood stands before this dramatic hero Johannes. When we look back on our youth in this way, it is something that now, in turn, works within us, that belongs to us, but has been alienated to a certain extent. What plays into our entire soul life, this strange feeling of being both a stranger and ourselves, is what makes us feel as if what we have lived ourselves has been given over to foreign powers.

Thus one sees in this juxtaposition the old Johannes, the spirit of Johannes' childhood, to whom is even spoken by another personality, by the real personality of Theodora. But one also sees the influence of the spirit, how spirits play an objective role in the laws of the world – I have summarized them here and called them Lucifer – how they work and how these forces can come into a concrete spiritual-soul vision, artistically shaped, of the human being and his relationship to the world.

Such things can best be grasped if, I would like to say, one can transfer ordinary language into the theatrical language of drama, which appears in eurythmy, which, more than is usually the case with ordinary language, where thought predominates in speaking, brings more of the will, the whole, the full human being to revelation. In this language, one can adequately present that which looks more deeply into the whole surging and undulating concrete soul life of the human being. It is therefore almost natural to turn to eurythmy in such a dramatic undertaking. The will, the spiritual will in the human being, can be expressed much more fully and intensely in eurythmy than in ordinary spoken language.

That is the one, the artistic side of our eurythmy. But this eurythmy, which derives these natural, self-evident movements from the human form, from the whole inner laws of the human organism, also has a therapeutic-hygienic side. This hygienic-therapeutic side should also be developed within our anthroposophical spiritual science by bringing out those movements from the human organization that can have a particularly healthy effect in this or that direction.

A third aspect is what I must call the pedagogical-didactic aspect. In the Waldorf School in Stuttgart, which was founded by Emil Molt and is run by me, eurythmy has been introduced as a compulsory subject since its foundation. We begin teaching the children as soon as they enter the school at the age of seven, and continue throughout their school years.

And it really does show how this soulful gymnastics - one could say - this spiritualized gymnastics affects children. Firstly, a certain spirit of truthfulness is cultivated in them. Of course, in spoken language – since convention has already taken hold today – one can say phrases and lies, but one cannot lie in eurythmic movements. Thus, when used as a pedagogical-didactic teaching tool, this eurythmic art is truly an education for children in truthfulness, but then also in will initiative. Gymnastics, ordinary gymnastics, is basically only based on physical laws. Eurythmy gymnastics, on the other hand, is something that works with the whole, full human being, with body, soul and spirit. And the child feels this as something thoroughly natural. That is why children accept this teaching, because they feel that here they are being led into a living element that allows them to live their whole being. It is a teaching method of an extraordinary and significant kind and will certainly be judged differently in the future, when people will be able to judge these things more impartially, than it is by many sides today.

With regard to the artistic aspect, which is what really matters, I would just like to say how Goethe was thoroughly imbued with the view – he, who always worked according to the relationship, according to the organic relationship between knowledge and artistic design – how he was imbued with the view that art must penetrate into the true, real basis of existence and that it is from there that it must be created. When nature begins to reveal her secrets, one feels the deepest yearning for her most worthy interpreter, art – thus speaks Goethe. And in another place, he speaks of how it is actually man who shapes nature into art, saying: When man is placed at the summit of nature, he feels himself again as a whole nature, he repeats nature in a spiritual-secluded way, as it were, taking order, harmony, measure and meaning together and rising to create the work of art.

Eurythmy has certainly not yet reached the point of fully realizing its ideal, but ideally it can be envisaged that the human being not only places himself at the pinnacle of nature in his art, but also regards his own organism as a tool for this art, as the tool that contains all the details of natural secrets as a microcosm, which are otherwise spread throughout the wide cosmos . It is to be hoped that this eurythmy will develop into an art that, precisely because the human being uses himself as a tool and does not use external tools or instruments, will be able to develop into a means of expressing the deepest secrets of the world.

We are certainly our own harshest critics and know that we are only at the beginning with this eurythmic art and that it must be further developed. Therefore, I would like to ask you, as I usually do at the end of these introductions, to take this presentation with a grain of salt. For we are indeed at the beginning, but we are also convinced that this eurythmic art holds possibilities for development which, once fully realized in the distant future, will establish eurythmy as a more recent art form that can stand alongside the older art forms with dignity.

We will perform the first part here in this domed building today, then there will be a break, and the second part will be performed in the temporary hall where the performances usually take place.