# The Origin and Development of Eurythmy 1920–1922

## GA 277c — 24 July 1921, Dornach

### 43. Eurythmy Performance

*The first part of the performance took place in the domed room of the Goetheanum, the second part in the provisional hall of the carpentry workshop.*

> 1. Part (Goetheanumbau)
> “Göttermahl” by C. F. Meyer with music by Leopold van der Pals  
> “L'Art et le Peuple“ by Victor Hugo  
> Saying from the Calendar of the Soul (16) by Rudolf Steiner  
> “Meisenglück” by Friedrich Hebbel  
> Saying from the Calendar of the Soul (17) by Rudolf Steiner  
> Saying from the soul calendar (18) by Rudolf Steiner  
> “La Priere du Mort“ by J. M. Heredia  
> “Prologue in Heaven” from “Faust I” by J. W. v. Goethe
> II. Part (carpentry)
> “The New Year” by J. W. v. Goethe  
> “Röve“ by Victor Hugo  
> “Open Table” by J. W. v. Goethe  
> Humoresques by Christian Morgenstern: “The Prayer”; “The Lion”; “The E. P. V.”  
> “Valet“ by J. W. v. Goethe  
> “The Critic” by J. W. v. Goethe  
> “Among Magicians” by Christian Morgenstern

Dear Guests!

Allow me to begin with a few words, as I usually do before these eurythmy performances. This is not to defend or explain the artistic aspect, which would be, of course, something inartistic, and everything that aspires to be art must speak for itself, through its own impression. But what we are dealing with here in the art of eurythmy draws on artistic sources that have been unfamiliar until now and makes use of an equally unfamiliar artistic formal language. And a few words about these two, about the sources and about the formal language, may well be said so that what we are trying to develop here as eurythmy - which, however, is still more or less in the early stages of its development today - is not confused with something it does not want to be: dance or pantomime, facial expressions or the like.

What underlies this presentation, which occurs through the agency of the moving human being or groups of moving human beings, is a truly visible language, and specifically a language that, as such, emerges from the human organization just as regularly and fundamentally as spoken language or song. For it is possible to observe, through sensory-supersensory vision, the movements of the larynx and other speech organs of the human being when speaking or singing. These are not the movements that are performed last and then become air movements through which sound and tone are conveyed, but rather the movement tendencies that are held back at the moment of origin because it is not the movement that is to become visible, but the sound that is to arise. remain latent in the human organism when speaking or singing. The following can be said: in the human organism, there is, on the one hand, an element of imagination and, on the other, an element of will that seeks expression through speaking and also through singing. That which is imaginative struggles to free itself from the human cerebral organization. What is volitional in our speaking and singing comes from the whole nature of the human being, from the full human being.

Now everything that is mental, that is, conceptual, is unartistic. Man experiences the conceptual only through his soul when it is, as it were, intellectually assimilated inwardly. Thus something unartistic intrudes into the soul experience when the soul is confronted with the conceptual and has to wrestle with the unartistic element of the thought. This is always the case with the art of poetry. The poet always tries to go back as far as possible from the conceptual element to the volitional element that comes from the whole human being. This volitional element, which comes from the whole human being, is, as it were, what lies in the movement tendencies of the larynx and its neighboring organs and what is, as it were, dulled by the conceptual element. The poet attempts to bring into his poetry the artistic element that underlies language in a deeper way by means of an inner eurhythmy of speech, by shaping speech, by means of the musical and phonetic, by means of formally shaped speech, by means of the rhythmic, by means of the musical, thematic element that he lays at the basis of speech and for which the literal content is only a ladder by which the artistic element can ascend. underlying artistic element in language into his poetry. What lives in the speech organs as, I would say, the hidden, full personality of the human being, can now be brought to revelation through the eurythmically visible language.

We proceed here from the principle of Goethe's theory of metamorphosis, which is the view that what is revealed in a single organ system of an organism is the same - only in a simpler way - as what is revealed through the whole organism. The individual plant leaf is, so to speak, in idea, a whole plant, only more simply formed for external sensory perception; and the whole plant is only a more complicated leaf. One can study the nature of the individual leaf in the whole plant. Thus, when this morphology, as conceived by Goethe, is artistically developed, what can be seen in the artistic in the supersensible can be transferred to the organs of movement of the whole human being, to arms and hands - which come into consideration because they are the most expressive parts of the whole human being - or to movements and postures of groups of people. In a truly visible way, one can express the same thing that the poet seeks to achieve by bringing the will element into the language. Then it must be emphasized again and again: the literal content is not the essential thing – that is only the prosaic. The essential thing is the musical-thematic, which underlies language, or the imaginative-pictorial, which underlies language, the pictorial. Especially in a pictorial language, what otherwise, I would like to say, only lies hidden in man, can be presented to the outward eye in a truly artistic sense. Therefore, anyone who has a real feeling for this expansion of artistic possibilities will be able to enjoy eurythmy and not fight it.

But it should be emphasized that poetry can be accompanied with this visible language as well as with music and singing. And what is actually poetic, the artistic, can be brought to the fore in a special way. When a poem is recited or declaimed and then performed in eurythmy, as you will see on stage here, we must go back to the actual artistic element of reciting and declaiming, because we live in an unartistic age in which the art of recitation and declamation has also become unartistic And this artistic element does not lie in what impotence seeks today, in the emphasis of the purely prosaic. If one prefers this emphasis on the purely prosaic, one will criticize what is being attempted here, as has indeed happened so often in recent times. However, in the case of the last campaign against the eurythmic art, this criticism has come not from any artistic background but from a rabble-rousing party background.

What is being sought here is a real return to the art of declamation and recitation, which cannot be based on emphasizing the prosodic structure, but must be based on the artistic, musical, thematic, rhythmic, and metrical shaping of the language treated by the poet, or on the imaginative and pictorial elements that underlie poetry which a poet like Goethe has based on, to the purely prosaic, in order to express the actual [poetic] of the poem. One can say that the actual essence of poetry never lies in the words and in what is to be conveyed in the words, but in the treatment of the thoughts, in the way the words or thoughts are formed. This can be particularly emphasized by the artistic presentation of eurythmy, but it must also come to the fore in declamation or recitation.

Today, in addition to the other performances, we will present the “Prologue in Heaven”, which precedes the dramatic presentation of Goethe's “Faust”, in eurythmy. It may be said on such an occasion that the eurythmic presentation proves particularly useful for the dramatic as well, if this drama - as is the case with Goethe's “Faust” in many places, for example in this “Prologue in Heaven” - distinguishes itself from the naturally outwardly obvious, when it rises to that which can only be given in the soul's view . When the spiritual experience is elevated to the supersensible, the naturalistic and intellectualistic aspects of the art of the stage are no longer sufficient; the presentation demands a different form.

For in the same measure in which these elements appear on the stage – the naturalistic and the intellectualistic do indeed belong together – in the same measure it becomes impossible to depict the supersensible. This is particularly evident in scenes such as the 'Prologue in Heaven' or other scenes in Goethe's 'Faust' that play in the supersensible, where there is this peculiar artistic stylization, this lifting of the content, the prosaic content, out of the naturalistic into an element where one can no longer be naturalistic because it has to be seen spiritually. That is what makes it possible to do justice to scenes that make these demands: to go out into the supersensible, so that it can also be grasped by the supersensible of the human soul. Therefore, I may believe that such poetry as “Faust” can only come into its own in eurythmic performance on the stage.

I have already said something about the artistic aspect of eurythmy. There are two other sides to this eurythmy: a therapeutic-hygienic one – there is also a form of eurythmy therapy that is now being developed, at least in its initial stages. Because eurythmic movement is an entirely channelled expression of the inner laws of the human organism, the mobility that it engenders in the human being, for example the movement of breathing, can also be used for therapeutic and hygienic purposes through the eurythmic element. I can only hint at this here.

A third element is the pedagogical-didactic one. We have introduced eurythmy as a compulsory subject in the Free Waldorf School in Stuttgart, which was founded by Emil Molt and is headed by me. Children from the first year of primary school up to the highest year groups find that, because not only the physical body is set in motion as in ordinary gymnastics, but because every movement of the body is imbued with soul and spiritualized, as this soul-spiritual gymnastics - for that is what eurythmy is in a pedagogical-didactic sense - really puts the whole person in such an inner soul state that he feels in his element as a full human being. The child feels this, and that is why eurythmy is such a significant educational tool in so many different ways. I would just like to mention one thing: it is also an important [means of educating the will initiative], which can never be achieved through ordinary gymnastics, but which is so necessary for our generation and probably also for the following generations in the near future.

With regard to the artistic aspect, it may also be said that eurythmy is something that uses the human being as a tool. And if Goethe says on the one hand: “When nature begins to reveal its secrets to someone, they feel a deep longing for its most worthy interpreter, art,” on the other hand, we can say: “When the secrets of the highest naturalness, the secrets of human nature itself, are revealed to someone, they long to raise everything that lies in the human being as possibilities for movement and formation through his or her own organization into the realm of art.

On the other hand, when Goethe says: When man has reached the summit of nature, he perceives himself as complete nature, takes in harmony, order, measure and meaning, and finally rises to the production of the work of art, so one may say: This production of the work of art reaches a peak, so to speak, when man does not use external tools, but his own organism as a tool. This human organism is a small world, containing the laws of the universe in a concentrated form. If it seeks harmony, moderation and meaning in its sphere, in order to rise to the sphere of consciousness, something good must follow.

Even if one needs to ask the esteemed audience for indulgence, and I do so today, because eurythmy is only just beginning, one still knows what developmental possibilities lie in it and that one day - if not through us, but probably through others - it can be led to stages of development through which it can establish itself as a worthy supreme art alongside the older, fully entitled sister arts by making use of man himself as an artistic tool, by making use of what man can extract from his own organization, from this world in miniature.