The Origin and Development of Eurythmy 1920–1922
GA 277c — 10 July 1921, Dornach
41. Eurythmy Performance
The first part of the performance took place in the Goetheanum building, the second part in the carpentry workshop.
- Part (Goetheanumbau)
“Symbolum“ by J. W. v. Goethe with music by Leopold van der Pals
“Weltenseelengeister” by Rudolf Steiner
Saying from the Calendar of the Soul (13) by Rudolf Steiner
“Spring” by Rudolf Steiner with music by Leopold van der Pals
Saying from the soul calendar (14) by Rudolf Steiner
“Heeding“ by J. W. v. Goethe
Saying from the soul calendar (14) by Rudolf Steiner
“Autumn” by Friedrich Nietzsche
“World Soul” by J. W. v. Goethe with music by Max Schuurman
Part II (carpentry)
Music by Leopold van der Pals
“The Fisherman“ by J. W. v. Goethe
“Erlkönig” by J. W. v. Goethe with “Elven Prelude”
“Papillons” by Jean-Philippe Rameau
“Ländliches Lied“ by Robert Schumann
“Offne Tafel” by J. W. v. Goethe
A cheerful prelude with music by Leopold van der Pals
“Häschen“ by Christian Morgenstern
“Frohsinn” by Ferdinand Hiller
Dear guests, dear friends!
Allow me to introduce myself with a few words as usual in these eurythmic attempts. Such introductions are not intended to explain the artistic aspect in any way, that would be inartistic; art must speak for itself. But they are done because this eurythmy attempts to reveal itself from artistic sources that are still unfamiliar and in an artistic formal language that is also still unfamiliar. And allow me to say a few words about this source and this formal language.
What will appear on stage is the human being in motion, the human being moving in his limbs, namely in his arms and hands, the human being moving in space, and also groups of people moving in space. But none of this should be understood as dance or pantomime; rather, it is a real, visible language that has come about in such a way that, through sensual and supersensory observation – I deliberately use this Goethean expression – the movement tendencies of the larynx and other speech organs when a person sings or speaks have been researched.
I say: movement tendencies. For in the actual speech and singing organism these movement tendencies do not come to real expression, but are transferred to air movements, and these convey them to the hearing of the sound and the tone. It is not actual air movements that are transmitted to the human speech and song organism, but the movement tendencies that are, as it were, captured in the process of their formation, but which, precisely as an expression of human will, underlie speaking and singing. And these movement tendencies are transmitted to the whole person according to the principle of Goethe's theory of metamorphosis. So that what you see on the stage as individual people or groups of people is, in a sense, a moving larynx, language made visible.
Goethe's theory of metamorphosis is something that, according to the current state of our scientific views, cannot yet be fully appreciated today. In the future, it will certainly be seen in a much more positive light than it is today. In the simplest terms, we can express Goethe's theory of metamorphosis in such a way that, in everything, the individual organ – for example, a leaf in the case of a plant – is the transformation of the other organ. All organs are, in a sense, ideally one, only outwardly shaped differently. And again, the whole plant is only a more intricately shaped leaf.
If we apply this theory of metamorphosis, which Goethe, I would like to say, intuitively applied scientifically to the whole plant, if we apply it to the movement tendencies of the human speech and singing organs, then we can say: that which exists in a single, separate organ complex when speaking or singing as movement tendencies, as an expression of the human will, can be transferred to the whole person or even groups of people. However, the sound is only slightly lost as a result. You see the movements, which are then not held in their creation, but are actually performed; you see them in front of you and they reveal themselves as a real visible language.
So it is not about pantomime, not about facial expressions, not about dance. It is about the artistic design of a real language. It must be said: precisely because of this, one is able to bring out what underlies a poem, for example, the artistic quality of the poem, to a very special degree, even beyond human language.
However, one must really take into account what is artistic in a poem, for example. The literal, the prosaic in a poem is not the artistic. Schiller, before he even approached the literal side of his poetry, first had an indeterminate melody in his soul. Goethe rehearsed his iambic dramas with his actors as a conductor would with a baton. Both these examples show that the poet, the real poet, is not concerned with the prosaic and literal, but with what actually lies behind the words: the rhythm, the beat, the musical theme that underlies the words or the way they are formulated. Or, as is more the case with Goethe, the pictorial element that lies behind it. This can now be brought out by, as it were, translating it through the tool of the human being himself into a moving sculpture.
It can be said that when a person moves in the ordinary course of life, his movements are adapted, firstly, to his worldly purposes and, secondly, to what is expressed in the form of facial expressions and pantomime. The fact that a person is in motion also expresses something that a person experiences in his motion when he is simply involved in moving and still life. This is, I would say, the one pole: pure purposeful, appropriate motion.
The other pole is language, which is also purely functional and serves human communication or the imparting of knowledge. While through his movements, which primarily serve a useful purpose, man expresses himself outwardly like a member of outer space or at least of necessary life, through language he expresses himself inwardly. The inner self reveals itself. If one wants to shape language poetically, one seeks what should lie behind language. In ordinary spoken language, as well as in scientific language, one aims at what should be expressed through thinking. But thought is something that should never actually play a special role. Because thought as such, as we have it, in ordinary life or in scientific communication, is eminently inartistic. That is why everything that is allegorical or symbolic in art is actually inartistic. The real poet as an artist therefore goes back to the musicality of language or the pictoriality of language in the way he forms language, which is actually already movement behind language.
And indirectly, if poetry is to be expressed through language, one must try to have movement, rhythm, and tact in what is heard. What one tries to develop indirectly by bringing movement into speech in the formation of sounds and tones, what one tries to develop indirectly, the musical element, can now come to fruition in the movement of the human being, which one draws from the cosmos. So that the soul of a poem can actually be expressed through the moving human being, as one can also add to the musical, instead of a song, I would like to say song through the movement of the human being. One can express the musical element through this visible language in the movements of eurythmy just as one can express the musical element through song, through tones. In this way one is indeed able to push back the conceptual element in the poetry, which the poet only needs to use in order to, I would say, string together the actual artistic element.
And the other element contained in every form of poetry, the will element, which comes from the whole human being, not just from the human head, is more fully revealed through the visible language of eurythmy.
Those who have a truly artistic feeling will therefore have no objection to such an expansion of the artistic as it wants to occur in eurythmy, because they will rejoice in every expansion of the artistic. And whoever says, for example, that Goethean poems should not be presented in eurythmy, what would Goethe himself say about that? - would be missing the point entirely. For it is precisely that which is truly significant in poetry that arises from the whole human being, not merely from what can be expressed in words. And it is precisely this fully human aspect that can be expressed through eurythmy. So that much of what, I would say, lies in the deep secrets of poetry can be brought to the surface, can be looked at, precisely through this visible language of eurythmy. And it is on looking, after all, that everything that really constitutes the artistic impression is based.
You will therefore see these eurythmic performances accompanied on the one hand by recitation and declamation – the formed speech sounds are, I would say, only another expression of what is to come to the surface in eurythmy in the human soul – or you will also see them accompanied by music.
With regard to recitation, it must be said that it is particularly necessary to go back to what is actually hidden in the mystery of poetry. And in the future, accompaniment through recitation and declamation must also enter into and return to a better form of recitation and declamation, and return to conditions that no longer exist in our so unartistic time. Today, people particularly love the pointed, and consider that which brings something to light from the surging depths of the soul to be particularly effective, while the truly artistic is based on form, rhythmic composition, and the treatment of language. And it is basically the present-day form of declamation, which really only wants to emphasize the prosaic, the literal, that has emerged from an unartistic point of view and from an inability to appreciate the truly artistic. This is probably why, when a position has been taken in a non-objective way towards eurythmy in recent times – which cannot even be called negative, because one can see its non-objective way – when a position is taken against it, as here, again, with complete reliance on emphasizing the artistic that lies in the musical, pictorial, imaginative, must be [recited]: First of all, there is the artistic element, which is the main thing here.
But there are two other sides to eurythmy: a hygienic and therapeutic side, which is already being developed in training. The movements that are sought in eurythmy arise from the whole organization of the human being in a way that is elementary and natural. So one might say that the movements a person makes when doing eurythmy are movements that the human form, including the inner form, the whole human organization itself, calls for. Therefore, one cannot work directly, as in the art form, which you will see here, but in a metamorphosed, transformed form, one can achieve healing and hygienic effects through these forms. Doctors have already taken up the cause, and this second aspect will therefore also be cultivated.
The third aspect of eurythmy, its educational and didactic side, has already been introduced into the Waldorf School in Stuttgart as a compulsory subject alongside gymnastics. Ordinary gymnastics — one day it will be judged more objectively than today. It is based on human physiology and is founded on the idea that the physical body of the human being should be trained in particular. I fully recognize its legitimacy, but I would not go as far as a physiologist who is very famous in the present day, who once told me that I had not gone far enough for him, because he regarded banal gymnastics, ordinary gymnastics, not as a teaching tool but as barbaric; as a physiologist, he saw eurythmy for children as having to stand alongside ordinary gymnastics, not as a teaching tool, but as barbarism.
I myself would like to recognize it, so that one can see that [one] will think in a different way about not just physiological gymnastics, which only focuses on the physical body. So gymnastics should not be abolished by us, but alongside this purely external gymnastics there should be an inspired gymnastics that goes not only to the body but to the body, soul and spirit of the human being. And in the lessons, which have been taught in the Waldorf School for two years now, you can see how children from the age of entering primary school until the age of fourteen or fifteen really feel their way into the movements that come from the body, soul and spirit - not just from the body - how they find something else that is fully appropriate to human nature in eurythmy and take part in this feeling with the most heartfelt joy, because they can reveal their whole human being there. With this feeling, this inner joy, the children devote themselves to these exercises, which I would like to call, from a pedagogical-didactic point of view, soulful, spiritualized gymnastics.
Now, my dear attendees, this pedagogical-didactic side of eurythmy also has the effect, not only, I would like to say, of strengthening muscles and the like in children, but also of developing willpower as a soul element. Therefore, it is a pedagogical tool first and foremost, in that it strengthens the will, the will initiative in the child, which is so necessary in our age.
Thus, eurythmy is a tool that uses the human being as a tool, not external tools, but the tool that lies within the human organization itself. And if Goethe uses the expression: “To whom nature begins to reveal its manifest secret, longs for its most worthy revealer, art” – then one might say: “In the human organism, what is otherwise spread out as secrets of nature, of the world in general, is also united in the cosmos. Therefore, anyone who feels the human organization with all its secrets, with all its laws in a natural way, will also feel the deepest longing for the most worthy interpreter, namely for the artistic interpretation of what is inherent in the human organism itself.
Goethe says very beautifully at another point: When man is placed at the summit of nature, he in turn produces a summit within himself, takes order, harmony, measure and meaning together and ultimately rises to the production of the work of art. If we do not use external instruments, but the human being himself with the secrets of this organization, if we bring order, harmony, meaning of the human being himself and thus rise to the perfect, to the creator of the work of art, then we may say that something artistic in the most comprehensive sense must come about as a result.
Therefore, this eurythmy - although I always apologize to the esteemed audience because we are only at the beginning of the development of this art and many things still need to be perfected - may say that it works from artistic sources and in an artistic formal language that is so capable of perfection - perhaps still through us, or more likely through others - that this eurythmic art will one day be able to present itself as a youngest, alongside the other fully-fledged art forms.
I have only to add that the first part of the performances will take place here in this hall.