The Origin and Development of Eurythmy 1920–1922
GA 277c — 27 November 1921, Oslo
Address on Eurythmy
The eurythmy performances in Kristiania (Oslo) took place under difficult conditions, which Rudolf Steiner described in detail after his return to Dornach. His report is reproduced below (from: “Zur Geschichte der Anthroposophischen Gesellschaft 1913-1922” [On the History of the Anthroposophical Society 1913-1922], GA 251, Dornach 2023, pp. 575-578). An undated letter from Marie Steiner to Henni Geck, in which she asks for her cooperation, provides an interesting insight into the preparations for the trip.
From a letter from Marie Steiner to Henni Geck, November 1921 Dear Miss Geck, It now seems that the trip to Norway will become a reality, once the last passport difficulties have been resolved. As agreed, I have been counting on your cooperation and would just like to receive confirmation by telegram that you will be in Norway until December 4. You could then let me know by letter whether you will be able to come with us to Bremen and Hamburg afterwards or not. I am counting on you for Kristiania at your old place in the miracle of the springs, with the accompanying Ahrimanic thought-being, the “treasure hunter.” If we have several performances (Dr. Steiner is thinking of two matinees at the National Theater, November 27 [November] and December 4, and perhaps something on Wednesday, but I fear that our Norwegian friends might find this too much, also in view of the audience attendance), then we would perform the scene with the doppelganger from “Der Seelen Erwachen” that has been played here recently. Miss Savitch was an excellent doppelgänger. We would only be missing Ahriman. Flossy played him. For individual scenes like this one, Ahriman can also be turned into a character similar to Alberich. He doesn't necessarily have to be tall here. Since it is a solo piece thrown into the scene, you could practice it alone; Flossy was given a podium for herself in the building, to the right of the audience, on which she laid her form; she did not mix with the others. If we perform this scene, it would be on December 4 as a matinee, then we would also have time for joint rehearsals. (Flossy has just traveled to England.) It would also be very nice if Miss Roth, Miss Geelmuyden, and Halvorsen, or whoever else you have, could be prepared to play “whistles” and rats in “The Pied Piper,” then we would have two very nice closing numbers. Of Norwegian pieces, we could only rehearse “Olaf Åsteson” again. Peer Gynt would have required too large a choir. But we need a large stage for Olaf Å.; there are now new forms for him in honor of the Norwegian trip; Stuten makes music. The piece lasts half an hour. Hopefully everything will now come to fruition. Best regards and wishes for your work. Yours, Marie Steiner.
“The Fairy Tale of the Miracle Spring” from “The Trial of the Soul” by R. Steiner with music by Walter Abendroth
“Erlkönig's Daughter” by J. G. v. Herder
“Elfe” by Joseph von Eichendorff
‘Ariel’ by William Shakespeare
“The Harpist I” by J. W. v. Goethe
Elegiac prelude
“The Harpist II” by J. W. v. Goethe
Romantic prelude with music by Max Schuurman
“World Soul” by J. W. v. Goethe with music by Max Schuurman
Music by Anton Bruckner
Scene with Luciferic and Ahrimanic beings from the 6th picture from “The Guardian of the Threshold” by R. Steiner
“Vereinsamt” by Friedrich Nietzsche ‘Tonbild’ by Edward Grieg
Humoresques by Christian Morgenstern: “Das Perlhuhn”; “Der Ästhet”
Satirical overture with music by Leopold van der Pals
Humoresques by Christian Morgenstern: “Palmström at the Pond”; “The Lion”; “Saint Expeditus”; “Bim Bam Bum”
“The Pied Piper” by J. W. von Goethe
Ladies and gentlemen!
Allow me to introduce our eurythmic performance with a few words. Of course, this is not done for the purpose of explaining the performance. Artistic expression must speak for itself, and any explanation would naturally be somewhat inartistic. However, what we are attempting with our eurythmic art is based on artistic sources and an artistic language of form that is still unfamiliar. Allow me to say a few words about these artistic sources and this language of form to aid your understanding.
It is easy to confuse what is presented here on stage with pantomime or dance. However, it is neither pantomime nor dance, but rather makes use of a truly visible language. On stage, you will see individual people or groups of people in motion. The forms of movement that appear there are not arbitrary gestures or movements drawn from the soul's feelings, but are as regular and lawful as nature itself draws spoken language and song from the human organism. If I may use the expression: through sensual-supersensual observation, it has been explored what movement intentions the human larynx and the other speech and singing organs have when singing and speaking. I do not say “movements,” I say “intentions of movement.” For what actually underlies the whole, complete human being in speaking and singing as tendencies of movement is transformed in speech and song into small movements, which then communicate with the air and convey the tone or sound.
Just as nature transforms and metamorphoses the movement tendencies that are present in humans into small movements, so too can one transform what underlies them into large movements that can then be distributed to the human limbs or even to the moving human being, the moving group of people. In this way, the eye sees the same thing that the ear hears as song and speech. However, this brings us closer to the artistic essence underlying a poem or a piece of music than sound or tone does, because sound and tone must make use of the medium of thought. But thought always has something inartistic about it. Especially in civilized languages, thought is regarded as a means of expression in conventional communication or as a means of expressing what is more or less rooted in knowledge. But all this is unartistic. And when the ordinary, intellectual experience of the soul is expressed in gestures and facial expressions, it is always the intellect that takes particular pleasure in this, in the viewer or listener. Something inartistic enters into human revelation.
But when one takes [the movement tendencies] into movements that are formed eurythmically as visible language, as is the case here, then the will and feeling are revealed through the person who represents this. So in the movements of the people on stage, one sees feeling and will revealed in movements. In dance, the person loses themselves in the forms of movement of the dance. In eurythmy, the person expresses themselves fully as a human being with their whole being, even in the movements and forms that are created.
Therefore, as will happen here when eurythmy is accompanied by recitation and declamation, this recitation and declamation must also take this into account: if it is truly artistic, poetic performance already contains something of, I would say, secret, hidden eurythmy. For every truly artistic poem is actually based not on the prose content, on the pointedness of the prosaic content, but on rhythm, meter, on something musical and thematic or even on something imaginative and pictorial. In his treatment of language, the poet seeks to embody something that lies behind the prose.
And this secret eurythmy must be taken into account when reciting or declaiming to accompany the eurythmic performance. One must therefore recite and declaim in a different way than is the case today, where, in a more naturalistic age, the prose content of poetry is taken into account when declaiming. One must pay more attention to the musical-rhythmic, metrical, thematic, and pictorial aspects of recitation and declamation. This, however, also brings this art of speech back to artistic forms, particularly in eurythmy. You will see how eurythmy appears parallel to what is presented musically on the one hand; for in this visible emphasis that comes about through eurythmy, one can sing, visibly sing, just as one can sing audibly; one can speak visibly through eurythmy, just as one can speak audibly. In this eurythmy, it is [much more] than the individual movement, the movements, the sequence of movements that come into consideration, so that it is really like music in this eurythmy, in music, where tone follows tone – so here it is that movement follows movement. How one movement emerges from another is more important than the individual form. That, ladies and gentlemen, is the first thing I wanted to say about the aspect of our eurythmy that I would like to emphasize here today, namely the artistic aspect.
But this eurythmy also has another side, namely a medical-therapeutic-hygienic side. This is already being taught in our institutes in Dornach and Stuttgart. Since all the movements that occur here are drawn from the human organism itself, it is also possible to form movements that are thoroughly conducive to the healthy nature of the human being. These are not exactly the same movements that you will see here in the artistic performance; they are slightly different, altered, modified movements. However, they are movements which, when performed in the right way, have a healing and hygienic effect on human nature because they are drawn from human nature.
The third aspect is the pedagogical-didactic aspect. At the Waldorf School founded by Emil Molt in Stuttgart, which I run, we have introduced eurythmy as a compulsory subject for all pupils, all children, alongside gymnastics. And after two years of school practice, it is already clear that school-age children grow into eurythmy in the same way that younger children naturally grow into language. If it is done correctly, the child feels inner satisfaction by being able to express and reveal themselves through eurythmy, just as the child feels inner satisfaction and pleasure in learning to speak. This can already be seen today.
And something else: in our age, it is so necessary for the present generation – and it will also be so for the next generation – that [not only] the physiological, the physical and bodily aspects are developed, as happens through ordinary gymnastics, but that the whole, complete human being, body, soul, and spirit, is developed in eurythmy—the elementary aspects of the physical must not be neglected—but that every movement that is performed is imbued with soul and spirit. Therefore, while gymnastics stimulates only the child's physical body, eurythmy stimulates the other side, the spirit and soul, and the child feels truly at home with the whole human being in eurythmy. And eurythmy particularly develops the will, the initiative of the will, which is so badly needed in our catastrophic times, both now and in the future. The body is developed through ordinary gymnastics, but the soul is promoted extraordinarily – indirectly through physical movement – by educational, didactic eurythmy.
These, ladies and gentlemen, are the three aspects that eurythmy strives to achieve. Of course, eurythmy as an art form comes to the fore here. It is clear that what can be revealed in this way through meaningful, soulful, spiritual forms is particularly suitable when one wants to represent what is happening in the supersensible world. You will see this in the performance of my fairy tale, which will be presented right at the beginning. You will also be able to perceive it in particular when a scene from one of my “mystery dramas” is performed here. In these mysteries, nothing is allegorical or symbolic, but everything is conceived in a soulful and spiritual way. The little scene that will be performed here shows how thoughts are formed from spatial figures – the thought is represented by figures on the stage. What thoughts play in the human soul, what lives in the soul through thoughts, can be expressed in particular through the meaningfully stylized form of eurythmy.
Every time we give such a performance, however, I must ask the esteemed audience for their consideration. For as much as we advance eurythmy from month to month, since everything on stage is a visible language – down to the lighting sequences, to the individual sequences of light nuances, everything on stage should be a visible language. Nevertheless, we are only at the beginning today. We are our own strictest critics and know that what we have today as a beginning will only be fully developed in the future.
But we also know that what eurythmy offers contains the seeds of immeasurable, unlimited perfection. And when one considers that all other arts still use facial expressions, gestures, and external instruments, [that] in the mimetic arts, the human being initially follows what is presented to him naturalistically, but that in eurythmy, the human being himself, in his inner form, reveals himself solely from the soul, and that the human being is truly a small world, a microcosm in relation to the macrocosm, then one will say to oneself: If it is true that in all other arts, order, measure, harmony, and meaning are taken from the natural environment, from the non-human, in order to rise to the representation of the work of art, then something particularly artistic must come about when the human being expresses what is, one might say, already naturally artistic in his inner organization. And eurythmy does not make use of an external instrument, but of what human beings themselves have in their organization: human beings represent a world; and the world that they represent through themselves is in turn expressed in the revelation of nature.
Finally, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to say that we are only at the beginning with our art of eurythmy, but that it is capable of unlimited perfection and that one day it will be able to stand alongside the older, fully recognized arts as a fully recognized younger art form.