The Origin and Development of Eurythmy 1920–1922

GA 277c — 8 May 1921, Dornach

34. Eurythmy Performance

The first part of the performance took place in the domed room of the Goetheanum, the second, more light-hearted part in the “provisional hall” of the carpentry workshop.

Part I (Goetheanum building):
Mercury prelude with music by Leopold van der Pals
Seventh image from the Portal of Initiation by Rudolf Steiner
“Evening Feeling” by Friedrich Hebbel
“L'aurore s'allume“ by Victor Hugo
“Prooemion” by J. W. v. Goethe
Saying from the Calendar of the Soul (6.) by Rudolf Steiner
“Spring“ by Rudolf Steiner
“Forest Concerts” by Christian Morgenstern Part II (Joinery) Evoe “Kennst du das Land“ (Mignon I) by J. W. v. Goethe “Erlkönig” by J. W. v. Goethe with “Elven prelude” Prelude “Look around you” “The posy” by J. W. v. Goethe Cheerful prelude with music by Leopold van der Pals Humoresques by Christian Morgenstern: ‘The prayer: The little deer’; ‘The leopard’; ‘From the suburbs’ Humorous prelude with music by Jan Stuten

Dear attendees!

The eurythmy art, of which we want to present a sample to you here today, is not to be confused with related art forms that make use of the human being itself and [work with all kinds of artistic means of expression –] such as sign languages, mimic arts and the like. It is least confused with any form of dance art, although it is a kind of spatial movement art, whereby movements are performed by the human being themselves, by their limbs, especially the hands and arms, which allow the soul to be revealed best; but also through movements of groups of people in space, in the positional relationship of groups of people in space and the like

This eurythmic art attempts to arrive at a completely different way of shaping human movement than a mere art of gesture or mimic art. And it is precisely through this that it will be able to move away from all that is inauthentic in these related artistic attempts and arrive at an artistic form of expression. For it may be said that what is usually attempted through the human being and his movement forms is, when considered in relation to the original culture, something that is actually, fundamentally, originally and essentially human. In older epochs, one always had an accompanying gesture for that which was to work as a kind of song or, better said, as a kind of recitative in the human being as an artistic form. The older languages even had a single word for this accompanying gesture and for that which came about through the sound, through the tone, a single word that indiscriminately designated both. In the course of human development, what was expressed as belonging together was then split, as it were, by the sound gesture, gesture-sounds: into speech without gestures or singing without gestures and into everything that has passed over into mime, into pantomime, into gestures.

Eurythmy wants nothing to do with the latter, in that it really wants to be a kind of visible speech, drawn out of the human organization according to the same laws as speech and song are drawn out of this human organization.

Perhaps the nature of this eurythmic art is best understood by looking at what this eurythmic art seeks to achieve as a form of movement, in contrast to what our spoken language has gradually become. Of course, we accompany our speech with gestures and facial expressions, especially when we are full of enthusiasm or liveliness. But basically our speech is actually nothing more than a kind of invisible gesture, in that the outwardly visible gesture has gradually receded and what the person has experienced in this visible gesture has receded into the particular nuance, into the interpenetration with feeling and so on, which he gives to speech. In earlier times, the fact that the older, more monotonous, more consonantal language was based on and supported by the gesture, gave the gesture its special nuance. We have, as it were, taken this back into the sound in the course of human development. Those who have a sense for such things can certainly feel and sense the gestural quality that underlies language, even if that language is not accompanied by gestures.

We can say that our language has become an audible gesture, and we can clearly feel the remnants of the old gestures in what we hear. If we now move [back to the gesture] today - without turning the art of eurythmy into a mimic, a gestural expression, as sometimes happens - then we have the gesture, which is a further development of the natural gesture that a person uses when they speak particularly vividly or when they want to put something special into their language. But what kind of gesture is that? But what kind of gesture is this? We will not be able to use a gesture [in the usual sense] in eurythmy, because this is added retrospectively to what has gradually split off in our language.

The human being of prehistoric times had a living sense of the interior of the sound itself. He developed a feeling, a sense, in the a, in the i, in the f, in the r, in the s; he had thus brought his humanity into connection with the sounds. That was also what was expressed in the primal gestures, what the human being experienced in the sound. But the sound is developed through language – and that is the case, insofar as language belongs more and more to civilized cultures. But the gesture has gradually lost its connection with the development of sound through the development of language. Language itself has developed from a revelation of the sound, of the tone, in which one has one's inner joy, one's inner experience, into that which now lives more abstractly, more logically in the context of sounds, in the context of words, of sentences. In this way, language has discarded the original sound that it had, in which its true artistic quality lay, and has become meaningful.

And so if we were to try today to accompany language in eurythmic art with gestures and facial expressions, we would have gestures of meaning that are actually connected to what a person experiences inwardly in thought, in feeling, in will, but that are no longer connected to what a person can experience in sound. Eurythmy, on the other hand, goes back to the inner essence of the sound and the tone itself. And it seeks the gesture that comes naturally when one feels and experiences the inner essence of the sound and the tone, so that eurythmy, in contrast to meaningful gestures, consists of gestures of sound. A visible language, a visible singing, is thus created.

Therefore, what is attained in this way through sensual and supersensory observation can certainly be regarded as an independent artistic accompaniment and revelation of what, for example, a poem presents to us. In shaping language in today's civilization, the poet goes back to the actual artistic element of language in phonetic speech itself and its formation through rhythm, meter, rhyme, and so on. Schiller, for example, always had a kind of rhythmic melody alive in his soul before he grasped the literal meaning of the poem in its fullness. And so the poet must either go back to the musicality of language or to the plastic and pictorial, as was more the case with Goethe. But he must, I would say, go back one layer further in the shaping of language, so that the artistic may enter into language beyond the merely meaningful.

But in poetry it still remains hidden. I would like to say that in people there is the temptation to place too much value on the meaningful, the thought-like. And the analogous, the conceptual, is actually death, the paralysis of every truly artistic activity. What is artistic is basically language – which is composed of the conceptual element and the will element in the human being. What is artistic in language is only to the extent that it comes not from the human head, but from the full human being, from the will nature of the human being. In [eurythmy], the possibility is created of making this visible eurythmic language an expression of the fully human, of the will, by going back to the experience of the sound, to the gestural experience of the sound and the tone. In this way, the whole human being reveals himself, so to speak, not just a single organ or organ system in language, but the whole human being reveals himself as a whole human being.

If we accompany our eurythmic performance with recitation or declamation, these performances of appropriate poetry, which are to be revealed through eurythmy, then the declamation and recitation must also be different from the way we are accustomed to today. We need only remember that people who have really lived in art, like Goethe, placed such great value on form and on the shaping of language that Goethe himself rehearsed his iambs with his actors very dramatically, like a conductor, using a baton. So he placed the greatest value on the treatment of language. Today, it is considered particularly praiseworthy when, when reading, when there is a recitative form, the sense of verse, rhyme and meter is completely suppressed. This is inartistic. And in an age that will be more artistic than ours, it will be recognized as unartistic to place the greatest value on the prosaic and the literal.

This could not be done if one accompanies the [poems] with eurythmy. One has to go back to the actual artistry, to the artistic design of the poem, to the rhyme, rhythm, and beat, to the inner, melodious and pictorial element. Just as one can now accompany the poem with eurythmy, one can also do so with music. Since eurythmy is a truly visible language, it can be sung through in the same way as through the human speech organs. And you will also be able to see rehearsals where the eurythmy accompanies the music, as this eurythmy is a possible art in itself.

Apart from the other thing, which I do not want to mention today, it can be seen from this that in certain cases one must resort to this eurythmy, I would like to say as a matter of course, if one wants to do full justice to the dramatic. For example, in Goethe's “Faust” there are scenes where the drama arises from the mere realistic representation of the phenomena. One need only recall the moment in Faust when the drama rises to depict something of the supersensible world that plays into the human soul. For example, if one considers the Arielle scene at the beginning of the second part of Faust, which represents something that does not take place in the real, outer, sensory world, but plays into the human soul from a spiritual reality human soul. If you want to depict that, you cannot get by with the usual realistic stage settings. But the moment you move on to what the eurythmic art gives not in terms of meaning but in terms of sound, when you introduce a special language that is not the language of ordinary contemporary life, you move beyond the very ordinary drama into the drama that can also be presented supersensibly.

And so you will be able to see in a scene from one of my “mystery dramas” that is being performed today that what is intended is thoroughly supersensible, but intended dramatically and not symbolically, as can be represented by the art of eurythmy alone. In this case, it is about the development of a human being, about the kind of development that does not, I would say, proceed in the usual way in which human life develops in everyday life, but rather one that brings about real transformations in the human being, where he really becomes a different person inwardly, in his soul, where he experiences something in his soul that can be compared to the great transitional points in outer growth. If you want to depict something like this, which is absolutely real but does not take place before the outer senses – as here, where John is standing before us, undergoing an inner soul development – then you have to do so pictorially, not symbolically, but pictorially, to make accessible to the sensual and supersensible gaze what is passing through the human soul.

And this is precisely what is to be shown in this scene, as we present it: that what takes place in the human being, but takes place in him in such a way that he has a purely spiritual world around him – as otherwise through the eye and ear a sensual world – that this is represented through the outer form by the three soul forces, as it is expressed through Mary, the ruler of these three soul forces . However, this cannot be realistically portrayed on stage if one wants to reveal it in a meaningful way. Instead, one must resort to eurythmy.

You will also see how eurythmy can work on its own. For in recent times we have moved towards creating forms that, so to speak, indicate the mood from the mere visible language of eurythmy, which is then continued and developed in a corresponding musical [performance] or in an artistic poem. Even the fading away of a mood can be captured in such a silent form.

In addition, eurythmy also has a hygienic-therapeutic side, which, however, basically draws what is expressed in this eurythmy from the inner laws of the human organism itself. Thus, the movements, which on the one hand are an artistic revelation, can also be shaped in such a way that they have a healing effect on certain pathological formations in the human organism. I just wanted to mention that.

The third thing that eurythmy offers is the didactic-pedagogical side. At the Waldorf School in Stuttgart, which was founded by Emil Molt and is now under my direction, we have introduced eurythmy as a kind of soul-filled gymnastics, one after another, as a compulsory subject alongside other gymnastics. And it has already been shown how children, from as early as compulsory school age, find their way into these movements with great ease, movements that are thoroughly rooted in the human organism. Ordinary gymnastics – in the future, people will judge these things more impartially – are based solely on the physiological laws of the human organism. But what appears here as inspired gymnastics is based on the whole human being, on the human being as body, soul and spirit. Every movement is inspired. The child takes this for granted as it performs these movements. This is why these movements have such a life-giving and developmental effect on the child. It is an important educational tool in many other respects as well, for it contains a special power of the will. Above all, this eurythmy exercise fosters the initiative of the will and, in children, even a sense of truthfulness. In ordinary speech we can say things that become hardened into lies. But we cannot lie in these speech sounds, for when the whole human being is expressing himself, he cannot lie or indulge in empty phrases. What is given in this way means a development towards truthfulness for the child.

These are only isolated aspects. Much could be said about this theme. If we consider that the human being uses himself as an instrument, but in such a way that the forces at work within him are brought out, and the form itself is transformed into movement, then we can say that this eurythmy really does embody an ideal.

Then, before each performance, I must again ask for your forbearance. We are our own harshest critics, we know that we are at the beginning of our art form; it must develop further, but it has the potential to develop. These possibilities for development can be convincing when one considers what is gained by man using himself as a tool, as an instrument for his artistic formation, not just any external instrument, but himself. When Goethe says: 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 this end, he improves 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. One must add that he rises most significantly to the production of the work of art when he seeks choice, order, harmony and meaning from this own organization and transforms it into movement, into living sculpture. So that one can indeed entertain the hope that eurythmy, which is now at the beginning of its development, will continue to perfect itself more and more, so that one day it will be able to stand alongside the other fully-fledged art forms as a fully-fledged art form in its own right.

The first part of the performance will take place here in the building; the second part in the carpentry workshop.