The Origin and Development of Eurythmy 1920–1922

GA 277c — 26 August 1921, Dornach

48. Summer Course and Summer Art Course III

The performance was announced in the course program as “Eurythmy with Mystery Scenes” or “Eurythmy with Scenes from the Mystery Plays”. The first part took place in the domed room of the Goetheanum, the second in the provisional hall of the carpentry workshop.

Part 1 (Goetheanum building)
Sylph and gnome scene from the 2nd picture of “Der Seelen Erwachen” by R. Steiner with musical introduction by Max Schuurman
“Prooemion” by J. W. v. Goethe
“Elfe” by Joseph von Eichendorff
“From old fairy tales” by Heinrich Heine “Butterfly” by Edward Grieg
“The Metamorphosis of Plants” by J. W. v. Goethe “Who in the History of the World” by J. W. v. Goethe “My Wisdom” by Friedrich Nietzsche
“A sparkling brook” by Friedrich Nietzsche “Scratching cats” by Friedrich Nietzsche Part II (Carpentry) Music by Bruckner
Scene with Luciferian and Ahrimanic beings from the 6th picture from “The Guardian of the Threshold” by R. Steiner
“Vereinsamt” from Friedrich Nietzsche
“For Dancers” by Friedrich Nietzsche
“The Reviewer” by W. v. Goethe
From Pierrot Lunaire by Albert Giraud in the translation by Otto Erich Hartleben: “Souper”
“On a stage” by Christian Morgenstern
Satirical prelude with music by Leopold van der Pals
“Among black artists” by Christian Morgenstern

“Eurythmy with mystery scenes”. A Report on the Event

For the English-speaking audience of the eurythmy performance, Rudolf Steiner prepared the following written summary of his speech of August 24, 1921. Baron Carl Alphons von Walleen-Bornemann translated it into English and read it out after Rudolf Steiner's speech in German before the start of the eurythmy performance.

Introductory words to the eurythmy performance in the evening at 8 o'clock

I took the liberty of explaining the sources and the artistic language of eurythmy in the introductions to the two previous mental images. Today I would like to ask you to allow me to talk about how eurythmy can be used in the service of drama. For in this mental image, among other things, dramatic scenes will be presented with the aid of eurythmy.

The movement of the person and the group of people serves as a means of expression in eurythmy art. Through this means of expression, that which underlies the poet's treatment of language and the composer's treatment of sound can be brought to the fore. This is the element through which the poet and composer can place their creations in the sphere of the spiritual. For sound and sound content lead down into the sensual, sound and sound design lead up into the spiritual.

Naturally, eurythmy also presents the spiritual in sensually perceptible movement. But this movement only represents the spiritual, which is experienced through tone and sound. It therefore brings the spiritual directly into the sensory world.

This is why scenes can be given in drama with the aid of the art of eurythmy, which rise out of the physical-sensual events into the realm where a direct contact of the human soul with the spiritual world comes into question.

Scenes in Goethe's Faust such as the “Prologue in Heaven”, the “Ariel Scene” etc. only reveal their poetic content when the naturalistic stage mimicry is not played with, but when it is lifted up into the stylishly carried eurythmic representation.

I believe that this also applies to many scenes in my mystery dramas. Not only are many scenes in them the representation of supernatural processes. But they are already conceived in eurythmic form.

I may perhaps say, without wishing to be immodest, that every detail of these dramas stood vividly before my soul in their full spatiality and temporality. They do an injustice to these dramas that dissolve them symbolically into abstract concepts. I never had such abstract concepts in my soul. I only saw the characters, heard their words, perceived their actions. For me, everything was there on a mentally seen stage, except for the scenery.

What is seen in the mind, however, has stylish, not naturalistic movement, even if the content is spiritual. Therefore, eurythmy will be the natural form of stage expression for many scenes.

I have not yet succeeded in finding a satisfactory eurythmic form of expression for the reproduction of processes of the physical-sensual world in dramatic art. I hope that this will still happen.

I may perhaps also draw attention to the way in which attempts are made in individual poems to introduce and conclude the mood of a poem in eurythmic forms to which no speech is added. This can provide proof that eurythmy can certainly be regarded as an independent form of speech in its own right.

I hope that this mental image will also support the proof that eurythmy art has a right to exist alongside the other arts, that it expands the field of artistic activity precisely through something that is particularly close to people.

Eurythmy Address

My dear audience!

I took the liberty of saying something about the educational and artistic aspects of eurythmy in the introductory words to the last and penultimate mental image here. If I now take the liberty of saying a few words before our mental image today, it is for a special reason. In today's mental image we will not only have eurythmized poetry and the like, but also dramatic scenes, namely dramatic scenes from my “Mystery Dramas”. Here we are dealing with the use of eurythmy in the theatrical representation of the dramatic.

Now the peculiarity of eurythmy is that from the treatment of speech and sound, as practiced by the poet and the composer, we go back to that visible language which expresses through the movements of people or groups of people that which is otherwise expressed by music or language. But now, in order for poetry, the tonal, to be real art, we must go back from the mere content of what we hear to the deeper treatment of the tone, the sound, the word, the word contexts and so on. One must go back to what rhythm, meter, the treatment of rhyme is, what the musical or imaginative theme is and so on. For what reason do we have to go back from the literal content or the musical content to this eurythmy, which is basically only an invisible eurythmy? Because all art, ladies and gentlemen, must carry that which can be experienced up into the realm of the supersensible, the spiritual. And it is precisely in this way, for example, that one is able to carry the linguistic up into the spiritual, that one carries this formal, rhythmic and so on into the treatment of speech.

Inasmuch as eurythmy is particularly concerned with bringing this imperceptible - or rather, only indirectly perceptible - to direct, sensual perception, it is also particularly suitable for representing the dramatic in cases where scenes occur in the dramatic, which move the actions that otherwise take place on earth in the sensual-physical realm up into the supersensible-spiritual realm, when something is to be represented on stage through which man in the innermost essence of his soul is connected with the world soul and with the world spirit, with the supersensible in general.

We have had this experience first of all in performances of individual scenes of Goethe's “Faust”, where Goethe is compelled by his entire “Faust” plot to carry the individual actions up into a supersensible realm, to reveal that which cannot be represented by ordinary actions in the sensory-physical realm: the “Prologue in Heaven”, the “Ariel Scene” at the beginning of the second part, the scenes in the Classical or Romantic Walpurgis Night, much that is found especially in the second part. Goethe's language already treats it in such a way that you can see: The poet as artist has the feeling that in this case he must depart from the more or less naturalistic of stage representation in gesture to something that stylishly carries up also that which man represents through himself on the stage into a stylized realm and thereby brings the supernatural to revelation on the stage. Such scenes, in which the supernatural is at play, do not tolerate the usual gestures that must be used in the reproduction of such actions that take place in the physical-sensual realm.

And in particular it may be said that this can become clear in my “Mystery Dramas”, which in so many cases have to carry up the developmental impulses that play out in these mysteries into the supersensible realm. And here you can say: they can easily be carried upwards. For, you see, ladies and gentlemen, these mysteries are slandered if one believes that something inside them is abstractly conceived in terms of the concept, the idea, and then brought into poetic, pictorial form. I may well say, without being immodest, that these mysteries, as they appear before the eye today in their sequence of images, were originally seen in the spirit in images. Everything in these mysteries has been conceived in images, right down to their spatiality and temporality. And I always feel annoyed when people appear who somehow interpret these mysteries symbolically, because I had nothing symbolic in mind. I also envisioned the supernatural scenes in imaginations, in images, so precisely, down to the hearing, the inner hearing of the sound of the words, as they stand there. They were conceived literally and are only copied from what is seen.

Therefore, however, the scenes that play into the supernatural realm had to have a certain eurythmic quality in their conception. And this is expressed, I would say, particularly in an elementary way in the art of eurythmy. So we can believe that precisely where drama has to rise into the supernatural, eurythmy can also be of great service to drama.

I hope, however, that even ordinary stage naturalism, where gesture is used in imitation of natural gesture - even if not in relation to the gestural-mimic expression of the individual action, but at least in relation to the stylization of the style that runs through the whole drama - will one day be able to be treated in some way with eurythmy. It is possible that a eurythmic style can be found for more naturalistic dramas. So far I have not succeeded, but I cherish the hope that, like lyric, epic and so on, drama will one day be able to use eurythmy on a larger scale where it does not rise into the supernatural.

But precisely because of what can perhaps be achieved today in the dramatic field with the aid of eurythmy in a way that is convincing for the audience, we can perhaps also say - from a different point of view than before - that eurythmy can become something, even if it is still in its infancy and even if we are basically only able to make attempts today, that eurythmy can become something that will one day be able to stand alongside the other fully authorized arts in all their individual branches.