The Origin and Development of Eurythmy 1920–1922

GA 277c — 14 August 1921, Dornach

45. 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.

1st part (Goetheanumbau) “The Fairy Tale of the Spring Miracle” from “The Testing of the Soul” by Rudolf Steiner with music by Leopold van der Pals
“Dance Song“ by Friedrich Nietzsche
Saying from the Calendar of the Soul (20) by Rudolf Steiner
“Joy” by J. W. v. Goethe
Saying from the soul calendar (21) by Rudolf Steiner
“Elfe“ by Joseph von Eichendorf
“From old fairy tales” by Heinrich Heine
“The violet“ by J. W. v. Goethe
“The metamorphosis of plants” by J. W. v. Goethe II. Part (joinery) “Trauermarsch” by Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy
From Pierrot Lunaire by Albert Giraud, translated by Ötto Erich Hartleben: “Abend” (Evening), “Gebet” (Prayer), “Harlekin” (Harlequin), “Souper” (Supper)
Humoresques by Christian Morgenstern: “The somersault”; “Label question”; “Toilet arts”; “The horse”

Dear attendees!

Allow me to accompany the performance that we will attempt in eurythmic art with a few introductory words. The reason for this is not to explain the artistic aspect itself - the artistic must work through itself in the immediate view, and an explanation would itself be something unartistic - but what is being attempted here as eurythmic art is based on artistic sources that are still unfamiliar today, and it makes use of an artistic formal language that is also unfamiliar. And it is these artistic sources and this artistic formal language that I would like to say a few words about.

What you will see presented on stage, dear attendees, consists of movements that are mainly performed by individuals and groups of people. All this aspires to be a real visible language, and indeed a language that, as a visible one, can truly be connected to the sound or phonetic language, but which, on the other hand, despite being revealed through human movements, has nothing to do with mere facial expressions, with pantomime and the like.

What the human being experiences in his soul and what is expressed in the most diverse ways through his bodily organization, viewed from a certain point of view, moves entirely between two poles: between the speech or sound language, which passes into the no longer artistic, prosaic speech, and between what the human being attempts to develop out of, I would like to say, equilibrium positions and forms of his organism .

Now, man is on both paths, both towards the use of sounds and towards pantomime, absolutely on an inartistic path, or rather on a path that leads to inartistic goals.

That which man forms out of his soul experiences, whether in music or in speech, could be described, if one feels its essence, as that which man, after having developed it within himself separately from the outside world, in a sense imposes on this outside world. This imposition of the human being's own nature on the outside world is most evident in prose speech. Aesthetically sensed, one might say that the imposition of one's own human being on the outside world actually lies in this prose speech. And in doing so, man proceeds in such a way that he transforms more and more what he develops within himself as soul experiences into the expression of thought, which then either becomes the expression in words for the inner, spiritual experience or for the conventionally communicable.

In both, in the conventionally communicable, to which particularly the languages of culture must develop, and in that which is expressed in inner soul experiences, the aesthetic conscience is lost, one would like to say, and logical reflection takes its place. To the same extent that logical reflection encroaches on oral expression, to the same extent the aesthetic conscience is lost, what is actually artistic is lost. On the other hand, in the mimetic arts, man must behave in such a way that he either uses his organism in such a way that he shapes this organism; then he is dependent on the natural laws that govern the organism. Or he sets himself in motion in space, so that pantomime becomes dance-like.

In this movement, which encompasses the soul, the opposite happens to the human being. He hands himself over to nature, as it were. He hands himself over to the outside world. He integrates himself into the outside world.

So while man imposes himself in the language of sound and also in the musical language - [in eurythmy] he transforms that which he experiences within himself into air again; he hands over that which is his inner experience to outer objectivity. While this is not the case with speech, with the tonal, on the one hand, the human being integrates himself, selflessly surrendering to the laws of nature when he meaningfully sets his own organism in motion.

But just as man loses himself in the spiritual when speaking or singing, so he loses himself in the natural when he passes over into pantomime and dance. Here too the aesthetic conscience ceases. And something occurs that ultimately, when pantomime is worked out more and more to one side [to a certain perfection], makes it appear as if the person is being pulled by wires, thus being incorporated into an inhuman or extra-human system.

When he moves into dance, he comes close to ecstasy and thus to something inartistic. Eurythmy, as a visible language, is situated between these two extremes, without straying into either. It has come into being through the careful study of the movement tendencies in which human beings live, which are then taken up in the larynx and the other speech organs, as it were, in the process of their formation, in order to be translated into air movements. This is what is studied. And just as Goethe sees something in the whole plant that contains all the secrets of the green leaf in a complicated way, so what is otherwise the basis of movement tendencies for speech can be transferred to the movement of arms and hands for singing, but this will only be true if the person speaks or sings. And this can become as lawful as in language and singing, an inner lawfulness can be carried out by the outer movement of a person or a group of people. So that one does not have an arbitrary pantomime, not a coincidence of one form with another, but one has a real, coherent linguistic expression of what is going on in the human soul.

When a language that is actually visible is formed in this way, it can become the expression of what, on the one hand, a person experiences musically as that which he transmits from himself, from his own being, to the outside world, and what he experiences on the linguistic side. This can be transferred into movements through which the human being, as it were, integrates himself into the outer world, integrating himself into the pictoriality of this outer world. Therefore, those things that have arisen in poetry as truly artistic, which are also contained in the musical-tonal, but are accessible to pictoriality, come to the fore particularly through this moving plastic art, eurythmy.

In the case of poetry, if it is truly poetic, one can say that the poet is actually fighting a battle. Language tends towards prose content, that is, towards that which allows logic to shine through. Here the aesthetic conscience is suppressed. The poet, in his desire to express himself linguistically, is seized, as it were, by this aesthetic conscience, and he in turn pushes back what is effective in prose language. Through rhythm, meter, rhyme, and thematic motifs, he pushes it back into the language form, so that what has flowed into the spirit in prose language is led back into the soul.

In eurythmy, the soul is not led into appearance as it is in pantomime, where one does not so much feel that the person is expressing poetry or poetic forces, but rather the soul is kept entirely inward, only to be directly transferred into the organic movement. Therefore, the very possibilities that the poet strives for in speech formation, which express the truly artistic in poetry, can be brought out through this visible language of eurythmy, through what is thought eurythmically in speech formation from the outset. I would like to draw your attention to the way in which the “Fairytale of the Miracle of the Spring” comes about in eurythmy: in this way it is self-evident how it flows into the outer eurythmic movement sculpture.

On the one hand, we can find the eurythmic accompanied by music; for one can sing in this visible language, in this visible sound-weave of eurythmy, I would say, just as one can sing through the sound. And on the other hand, what is performed eurythmically on the stage will be accompanied by the corresponding poetic, literal, but artistically shaped expression of the soul experience.

But here it becomes clear how eurythmy, in a certain way, must return to the original source of the artistic in this field as well. In our thoroughly unartistic time, one sees in declaiming and reciting an art in the literal shaping of language — not one that the poets have struggled for — where the literal content and the prosaic is to be emphasized. That which strives for this side no longer knows anything of what Goethe, for example, wanted when he rehearsed his iambic dramas with his actors, baton in hand, like a conductor, so that particular emphasis was placed on speech formation and speech treatment. It would not be possible to accompany eurythmy correctly in the way we want to recite or declaim today; instead, what comes to the fore is what reciting, declaiming, what speech treatment, what tone, rhyme, meter, what thematic development is. This must truly prevail in the recitation and declamation of the artistic treatment of language, in contrast to the mere prosaic content. The prosaic content is the unartistic element. The form in which it is expressed must come from the artistic source. And so, gradually, we can strive for a complete correspondence between what is recited and what appears before the spectator as eurythmic speech, which can then also be judged artistically.

This is essentially the artistic side of eurythmy. But there are other sides to it as well. I would like to mention just one: the therapeutic, hygienic and medical aspects, which are also included in the training. The movements that arise in the human being during eurythmy are truly drawn from the human organism. Therefore, it cannot reveal itself in the same way as it does artistically, but in a way that almost promotes what the human organization is in a certain way. It can therefore be applied in a healing way, so that the human organism is transformed into healing movements. This work of developing eurythmy as eurythmy therapy has already begun. I just want to mention that.

A third aspect is the pedagogical-didactic one, which has already been applied in the Waldorf School founded by Emil Molt in Stuttgart, which I run, where eurythmy is taught to children from the first grade, from the youngest children to the highest grades, as a kind of mental gymnastics.

One need not, as I always say, go as far as a famous contemporary physiologist – you would be amazed if I were to mention his name, because he is perhaps mentioned as the most famous today – who told me, as I also indicated gymnastics, that it is actually only a physical means of education and later, when one has come back from one-sided prejudices, it will not be as much as it is today. I could not go that far, although, as I said, you would be amazed if you knew the name of this physiologist. But one can say that what is developed as gymnastics is based entirely on the culture of the physical, while what appears as movements in eurythmy comes from the whole human being, from body, soul and spirit, and yet body, soul and spirit are increasingly more and more harmonized.

Therefore, one can see that children perform the movements they are asked to do as something natural, with elementary strength, coming from their own bodies. And they feel that the whole human being is incorporated into these movements. Hence the inner satisfaction of this spiritual-soul gymnastics, which is not at all one-sided, for instance, in that it leaves the physical unattended to. The whole human being is engaged, for in anthroposophy the physical is not neglected. This spiritual-soul gymnastics is therefore a significant educational tool that has already proven itself as such. I should also like to add that, while one can continue to practise external physical gymnastics, one needs just as much the spiritual-soul gymnastics, which is eurythmy, because it has an effect on the will.

Due to the limited time available, we can only show you the artistic aspects that are hinted at in this eurythmy. As always before these performances, I must ask for your forbearance. For although something is being aimed at that arises artistically from the whole being of the human being, eurythmy is only just beginning to have an effect today, so the viewer's forbearance must be called upon again and again.

Nevertheless, the following may be said. If Goethe says: “When nature begins to reveal her secrets to someone, they feel the greatest yearning for her most worthy interpreter, art,” then we may say: “When someone is revealed the entire inner, essential natural order of the human organism, they want to create a tool in this human organism that, like a microcosm, a small world, also contains natural secrets and can therefore also express them artistically.

When Goethe says elsewhere, for example, that “man is placed at the summit of nature, so he sees himself again as a whole nature, which in itself has to produce another summit. To do so, he elevates 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.” So one must probably add: When the human being takes order, measure, harmony and meaning, as they are present in his own organism, and develops them, then, if he does not yet merely use an external tool, but uses his own human organism itself with all its possibilities as a tool, then something must come out that is artistic in a higher sense.

Therefore, those who inaugurate this eurythmy may believe that, even if it is still in its infancy and therefore imperfect today – we are our own harshest critics in this regard – it will continue to develop, still partly through us, but certainly through others; so that ultimately, because it draws from the genuine artistic realm and even from the human, this eurythmy will one day be able to stand alongside its older, fully recognized sister arts as a worthy, fully recognized younger art.