The Origin and Development of Eurythmy 1920–1922

GA 277c — 13 November 1921, Dornach

56. Eurythmy Performance

The eurythmy performance took place in its entirety in the carpentry workshop. - Helene Finckh only took partial notes of the speech and did not transcribe it herself.

Poster for the performance

My dear audience!

Please allow me to introduce the attempt at our eurythmy performance with a few words, as is usually done before these performances. And not in order to somehow explain the performance - that would be inartistic; the artistic must work through itself in direct observation. But that which forms the basis of our eurythmic attempt as a formal language and as an artistic source is something that is still unfamiliar at present, and therefore a few things can be said about this source and about this artistic formal language.

It is very easy to confuse what we offer in eurythmy with all kinds of mimicry, pantomime or dance-like performances, but this would ignore the essence of this eurythmic artistry. After all, all mimicry and pantomime is based on the fact that the human being begins to express what he can express through the context of sound or tone with gestures or similar movements based on his individual feelings and sensations.

What you will see here on the stage are also movements of the individual human being or also movements of groups of people. So everything that is revealed here in terms of movement is based on a careful study of what, if I may use Goethe's expression, can be seen through the senses as movement tendencies. I am not saying movements, but rather tendencies of movement that underlie the linguistic or musical expression of the human soul. Singing or speaking must therefore be studied carefully, and in order to create eurythmy one must become familiar with those movement intentions of the human organism which then do not emerge, but only emerge, I would like to say, as in the moment of emergence, already disappear as such in the status nascens and transform themselves, metamorphose into the movement of the speech organs and then into the movement of the air, which convey the singing and the sound context of speech to the hearing ear.

Whatever movement intentions are aroused in the human organism are perceived and then transferred to the whole human being. So that the whole person or even groups of people can express themselves through real visible speech or visible singing. This enables us to expand the poetic as well as the musical by revealing our inner movements as they lie in human nature.

You need only pay proper attention to that which is expressed in this way in a truly visible language or a truly visible song, and you will find it: All mimicry and pantomime is such that it leads from the actual content of speech and sound into something more intellectual, which then urges the person himself to give it sensual expression in gesture, mimicry and so on. That which is stimulated in the spectator is then something intellectual and sensual. If, on the other hand, the actual movement tendencies of singing and speaking are transferred to the whole person, then what is revealed appears to be less of the intellectual and sensual and more of the emotional and volitional elements of the human being. And in grasping the eurythmic, we constantly have a stimulus for the feeling, and basically look at the lawfully working will.

This also expresses the considerable distance between mime and pantomime and eurythmy, that one must say: Because there is more of the whole world, of the laws of the world, in man's will than in the imaginative, and this then proceeds inwardly in a purely individual-personal way in man, everything that is shown through eurythmy also appears not as something personal that reveals itself through man, but as something that connects man with the whole world. So that what is revealed by the arbitrary in man and what the world reveals through man himself - which is also expressed in real poetic, musical art - can be brought forth precisely through the art of eurythmy.

One could also compare the two by saying that when mime and pantomime merge into dance, the human being actually completely loses his inner humanity in the forms of dance. The form can therefore also be viewed in this way: In the art of dance, the human being moves, I would like to say - if one expresses it radically - in such a way that the human being is lost, while in eurythmy, in the eurythmic movements, the human being receives his soul. So you could say: In dance the human being loses form, in eurythmy the human being gains form as a soul-spiritual being. This gaining of form is what eurythmy must actually do.

In the eurythmic revelation of a poem, one therefore sees something that is definitely revealed in the poem by the real poetic artist. And in the same way that one can sing audibly through sound, one can also sing visibly through the eurythmic movements, one can also see how the soul is actually constituted, which is expressed in the sound work. So that anyone who takes real pleasure in the artistic must basically see something thoroughly satisfying in such an expansion of the artistic as is revealed in eurythmy.

The fact that eurythmy expresses something deeper in poetry and music is also evident from the fact that recitation and declamation, by acting as companions to eurythmic art, must return to the truly artistic aspect that has been lost in today's inartistic age. Today's age is truly inartistic and can hardly appreciate properly what it means that Schiller, for example, did not always have the literal content of a poem living in his soul, but above all a musical, thematic content. It was this musical, thematic aspect that stirred the waves of his soul. And then, as it were, he first absorbed the literal prose content of the poem into these musical waves of the soul.

And it must be emphasized again and again how Goethe himself rehearsed his jamb dramas like a musician, like a bandmaster with a baton for his actors, in order to express the rhythmic and rhythmic, the musical and thematic, the imaginative and pictorial in the performance over and above the merely prose-like content. These were truly poetic artists.

And the declamatory and recitative must also return to the truly artistic. For one could not accompany eurythmic art with today's recitation, which is only concerned with making the prose content more pointed, so to speak. One can say that one can grasp this in a very special way when the prose content of a poem is particularly pointed in recitation and declamation, apart from all rhythmic and rhythmic, all musical and thematic and all imaginative-formal aspects.

Because the truly poetic is already a restrained eurythmy, one might say an invisible eurythmy, which is only made visible through our eurythmy, declamation and recitation, as we love them today, would not work at all as an accompaniment to eurythmy. We must therefore return to what was regarded as the requirements for recitation and declamation in more artistic eras. This must be felt again today, especially in the echo of eurythmy, so that one can probably also find a revival of the art of recitation and declamation through eurythmy.

This is one side of eurythmy, the artistic side, which is particularly important in a performance of this kind. Eurythmy also has two other sides, two other elements. One is the therapeutic-hygienic element: the movements that are performed in eurythmy are indeed such that they bring about a healthy organization of the human being, and they can therefore also be trained in the same way as they already appear today as the therapeutic-medical side of eurythmy. This is not the same as what occurs artistically, but a metamorphosis, a transformation of the speech movement. But it is also quite possible and is already being practiced today [as eurythmy therapy]. It is justified because every single movement of eurythmy is taken from the healthy human organization and can therefore, when performed in the appropriate way, have a healing effect on the human organization that has become disordered.

You only need to see how a moving human organism challenges the form, the movement, and how the movement in turn reminds us of the form and [how] these inner organic connections between forms of the human organization down to the very core - not only the spatial [come] into consideration here, but also the form of the intensive [interior?] - how this form is connected with all human movements in order to approach the thoroughly healthy aspect of eurythmy.

Just look at a human hand: it can initially be understood as a form, but the form of the human hand would have no meaning if one did not see in it, for example - even when it is at rest - that which can be accomplished in the movement of the fingers or the whole arm. One can really say of everything that man has of form: The form of man is like a movement that has come to rest. And again, if we can look at the movement of the human being in the right way, then it is actually only the form brought out of its rest, so that one sees the human being itself flowing over into the eurythmic in its whole being, that is then what leads over to the hygienic-therapeutic parts.

A third element is the pedagogical-didactic area. In the Waldorf School in Stuttgart, founded by Emil Molt and directed by me, eurythmy was introduced as a compulsory subject for all classes - from the classes with the six to seven-year-old children right up to the last class - alongside physical gymnastics as a kind of spiritual gymnastics. And it can be said that experience already shows how the children perceive this art of movement, this inspired, spiritual gymnastics, as a matter of course. Just as the child in its early years finds its way into human language as a matter of course through its human nature, so the older child, if the matter is properly cultivated, finds its way into the visible language of eurythmy as a matter of course. For the child instinctively feels very soon: here it has something that not only sets its body in motion like gymnastics based on physiological movement, but the child has something that sets the whole person in motion - body, soul and spirit. And the child perceives this as something inwardly satisfying, without realizing it, it feels it instinctively.

But there are many other things to consider. I can only mention that gymnastics can certainly benefit the human organism. One day we will think more impartially [about gymnastics] than we do today, where these things are often overestimated out of materialistic judgments. Eurythmically inspired, spiritualized gymnastics does not neglect the body, but it does take the soul and spirit into consideration. And therefore one can say that while ordinary gymnastics is only concerned with the development of the body, eurythmy, for example, if it is practiced in the right way with children, is particularly concerned with the growing child, with the initiative of the will. Anyone who considers the whole misery of the present time will admit: This is something that the present and the following generation will need very, very much, [this will initiative].

Apart from these last two aspects, we are only dealing with the artistic elements of eurythmy in our performance today. And one may well say, although every time we perform such artistic performances, I must ask the audience for their indulgence, as I do today, one may well say: because we ourselves are the strictest critics, we know how much imperfection is contained in this beginning. But one can also have the conviction, if one considers the innermost nerve, the essence of eurythmic art: It is not finished, it is capable of development.

From month to month, we ourselves have endeavored to bring ever different and ever newer sides of eurythmy to the surface. And those of our audience who have seen earlier mental images will also be able to observe how we have tried to make progress, especially in the introductions and endings of the poems that are not accompanied by music or poetic language, where the mood of the poem is introduced or fades away. But in all this we are still at the beginning. The art of eurythmy is by no means finished, and one guarantee of this is that it does not make use of an external tool, but of the human being himself. In its lawful inner organization, the things can be developed that enter into movement from form, that want to pass over, if one is able to look at it in the right way.

And because it makes use of the human being himself, this eurythmic art need not be finished. Goethe says, characterizing the artistic in its relationship to man in a deeply meaningful way: "When man has reached the summit [of nature], he sees himself again as a whole nature, which in itself has to produce another summit. To this end, he increases himself by imbuing himself with all perfections and virtues, by calling upon choice, order, harmony and meaning, and] finally [elevates himself] in this way to the production of the work of art." - Goethe means that man, by elevating himself to the production of the work of art, creates a higher nature out of nature itself through his powers. But this must be particularly the case when man makes himself an instrument, when he does not merely take order, harmony, measure and meaning from the outside world, as in the external, musical instruments, or even from his arbitrariness - as in mimic and pantomimic revelation - but when he takes order, measure, harmony and meaning from the secrets of human organization itself. Man is [now] a small world and contains in his own organization all the secrets that are otherwise poured out over the rest of the world. Therefore, that which makes use of man as an instrument must also artistically reveal the secrets of the world.

One may therefore hope that this eurythmic art, which today is perhaps only an attempt at a beginning, will continue to develop and will one day be able to stand alongside the older, legitimate arts as a fully justified younger art