The Origin and Development of Eurythmy 1920–1922

GA 277c — 7 May 1922, Dornach

Address on eurythmy

Harmonious prelude with music by Max Schuurman
“Schwing Dich auf die Sattelflügel” (Swing Yourself onto the Saddle Wings) by Albert Steffen
Fugue by J. S. Bach
“Wie die Blumen im Garten stehen” (Like the flowers in the garden) by Albert Steffen
Prelude by J.S. Bach
“Tage der Wonne” (Days of bliss) by J. W. v. Goethe
“Kein Hälmchen” (Not a blade of grass) by Friedemann Bach
“Perse et Andromede I, II, III” by J. Heredia
“Der Rabe Ralph” (The Raven Ralph) by Christian Morgenstern
“Der Erfrorene” (The Frozen One) by Rudolf Steiner
“Igel und Agel” (Hedgehog and Agel) by Christian Morgenstern
Minuet by L. v. Beethoven
Humoresques by Christian Morgenstern: “Die Tapetenblume” (The Wallpaper Flower); “Der Papagei” (The Parrot); “Das Hemmed” (The Hemmed)

Ladies and gentlemen!

Allow me to precede our attempt at a eurythmy performance with a few words, which are not intended to explain the performance itself—that would be unartistic, because art must speak for itself, and any attempt to explain it would be something thoroughly unartistic. However, what we are attempting as eurythmy has very special artistic foundations that are still unfamiliar today and makes use of artistic means of expression that are also still unfamiliar today, so that it is necessary for understanding to say something about these artistic foundations and sources and about the means of expression.

On stage, you will see individual people and groups of people in motion. What is performed by people in movement is not gesture as gesture is usually understood; nor is it, in the usual sense, something mimetic or pantomimic, nothing dance-like, but rather eurythmy is a truly visible language, a visible language that has come about in the following way and can only be explained on the basis of these principles.

If I may use Goethe's expression, one can learn through sensory-supersensory observation what movement tendencies are present in the entire human organism when a person sings or speaks. What a person expresses—musically through sound, linguistically through speech—can, in a sense, be sought out, since it is a revelation of the whole person, as it is predisposed in that whole person. We see that the whole person—with the exception of the gestures to which they are inclined—remains at rest while singing or speaking. But I would like to say that, in a certain intimate way, this remaining at rest is something that the human being imposes on themselves as a compulsion. The human being actually wants to participate with their entire organism in what is then concentrated in the movements that the larynx and its neighboring organs perform when singing or speaking. These movements, which are performed by a single organ system, are listened to and transferred to the whole person. So that, if I may use the paradoxical expression, you will have before you on stage the whole person as a moving larynx, or even groups of people in such a movement.

So everything that occurs in terms of movement flows out of the human organism in the same way as what is otherwise revealed through speech or singing. These are gestures that would be added from a general emotional sense to what occurs musically at the same time or what occurs poetically through declamation or recitation, for these two arts accompany what is also to be revealed through eurythmy in our performances.

Thus, in eurythmy, one sees something that can then be further developed into art, just as in poetry, language is artistically developed through the treatment of language. Therefore, if one has a poetic work or a musical work, one can express the poetic through this visible language of eurythmy, just as one can sing the musical through these movements, which represent a sequence of tones. One can sing visibly. It is not a matter of viewing the individual gestures in direct connection with the poetic sound or musical tone, but just as one sees the musical itself in the sequence of tones and in the harmony, so one must artistically perceive this harmony in the movements in our eurythmy. This must be taken into account, and one really cannot speak of eurythmic representations in such a way that one says it is a matter of first understanding the individual gesture. That would be exactly the same as wanting to examine the individual sound in something that appears as poetry in declamation and recitation.

It is a matter of simply surrendering oneself with one's aesthetic sense to the forms that arise from the nature of the organism; of surrendering oneself to these forms, without going into the details, in the same way that every single linguistic or tonal phenomenon in eurythmy is presented in a lawful manner – because it is done lawfully. This is necessary if one is to feel in one's immediate impression what can be artistically represented in this way.

And so eurythmy stands alongside the other arts as a special art in the following way. When we see how, for example, the human being is captured in sculpture, we must have the feeling that in its form, in its plastic, sculptural form, the soul life actually expresses itself as a silent feeling. Silence is best expressed through sculpture. If we want to create a kind of contrast that also complements it, then we can, of course, take the human being itself, the living human being, and we must set it in motion. So that when silence is expressed through sculpture, speech can best be represented by the moving human being in space.

The fact that the movement of the arms and hands in particular come into consideration is simply because these are the most expressive movements that can be performed with the arms and hands, the ones most similar to speech and singing. It is important to bear in mind that this visible language is something that is naturally brought out of the human organism in a healthy way. Therefore, it does not show a particular understanding of eurythmy when people repeatedly say that the human face should be made much more mobile and expressive than our eurythmists do. That would be like making faces while speaking normally. For what we are accustomed to expressing in facial gestures does not belong in the line of moving language, visible language, as it appears in eurythmy.

But eurythmy can also be related to the performing arts in a certain way. What a person experiences in their feelings is something that takes place intimately within the human being and which, I would say, is only expressed externally in an intimate way, for example when a person blushes with shame or turns pale with fear. We can already see that what lives in the feelings pours into the human organism, but in a restrained way. In contrast, we can shape feelings artistically in the musical element – and music has rightly been described as the art that deals primarily with human feelings. If we then consider another element in human soul life that is closer to the outside world than feeling, it is thinking, the world of ideas. This is then expressed through the will in language itself, and there we have in the linguistically formed world of ideas precisely what poetry shapes as art.

Now, however, we can add to feeling and imagination the perception, that is, the immediate apprehension of the outside world through the senses. We experience the outside world in colors, in sounds, [by] being immediately sensually devoted [to] this outside world. And the question arises as to whether what we experience in the outside world can be shaped spiritually. We can, but we must then — just as we resort to musical sequences of tones for the spiritual shaping of feelings, just as we resort to linguistic forms of expression for the imaginative, to the art of poetry — one must resort to the willful movement in eurythmic art if one wants to artistically shape what human beings experience in the outer world through sensory perception at the outermost periphery of their being. Thus, eurythmy joins music, language, and sound as a third element, as a linguistic form of perception, just as poetry can make the imagination visible and music is the artistic expression of the human emotional world. One can see how organically eurythmy joins the other arts and complements them.

The fact that eurythmy has something to do with music and poetry, appearing in a sense as a sister art, becomes particularly clear when one is compelled to accompany the eurythmic performance with what can be expressed in poetry through recitation, the declamation of the poem itself. An unartistic age such as ours demands that recitation emphasize the prose content of a poetic work of art. This is something that artistic sensibilities—such as those of Goethe or Schiller—did not understand at all.

When we recite or declaim in parallel with eurythmic performances, we notice that we must not focus on this prosaic emphasis that is so popular today, but that, especially in speech formation in poetic and musical themes, in the underlying rhythm and beat, when the poet creates poetically, that one must see in it precisely what needs to be emphasized in declamation and recitation if one wants to declaim or recite in the right way to eurythmy. But then one will also notice how a secret eurythmic element underlies the poetic treatment of language, how the poet really experiences the musical and the imaginative in his organism more or less unconsciously and imaginatively when he is truly creating poetry. Schiller, who believed that in poetic creation the least is actually created, always had an indefinite melody, something musical in his soul, before he even strung together the literal content of a poem on this melodiousness. The main thing for him was the musical shaping of language, just as for Goethe the main thing was the imaginative shaping of the poem he had in mind. This must be taken into account if one wants to do justice to the necessary form of declamation and recitation that accompanies eurythmy.

This is one side of eurythmy, the artistic side, which you will see here. It has two other sides. One is the medical-hygienic side. For it is possible – not exactly with these movements, which appear here as the artistic side, but with a certain metamorphosis of the movements – to establish what can be called therapeutic eurythmy. For these movements that occur in eurythmy are drawn entirely from the healthy human organism. And the human organism, which is diseased in some way, can be treated hygienically or even therapeutically by performing the healing movements. And such therapeutic eurythmy is already, if I may say so, in the works here.

A third aspect is what must be described as pedagogical-didactic. And it has certainly proven itself at the Waldorf School in Stuttgart, where eurythmy is a compulsory subject in every class from the beginning of elementary school to the highest grades we have today. I must say that in education, eurythmy is a kind of animated, spiritual gymnastics, whereas ordinary gymnastics is based solely on human physiology, that is, on the physical. This is not to say anything against ordinary gymnastics, but it only takes the physical aspect into account. When children are taught this soulful gymnastics, which is what eurythmy is for them, they put their whole being – body, soul, and spirit, and certainly their body too – into the movements. This develops something very special in the child, above all, for example, initiative of will, which is not cultivated at all by ordinary gymnastics, but which is and will be so necessary for our generation in the near future.

One can also see that one gives the child something in this visible language of eurythmy, in which the child immerses itself with the same natural satisfaction as it did in its younger years when it was taught spoken language or singing. It is definitely something in which one feels how the human organism lives as if in its own element. You can see this in children who take eurythmy lessons at school. And you can see that when eurythmy is introduced to the child in the right way, the child perceives it as something that is as appropriate to the human being as spoken language itself. This makes eurythmy an excellent educational and teaching tool, and it is fair to say that The extent to which eurythmy aids language teaching, for example, is truly astonishing, as demonstrated by the corresponding teaching successes achieved in this area. And it is precisely those teachers who deal with languages who must emphasize again and again that they gain enormously from eurythmy in their use of language in the classroom.

These are the three aspects of eurythmy, of which only one, the artistic aspect, will be shown here. Before such a performance, it is always necessary to ask the esteemed audience for their indulgence. We are our own harshest critics and know very well that what we are attempting with eurythmy is only in the early stages of development. We are aware of the shortcomings that still exist, but at the same time it must be emphasized that eurythmy has truly unlimited potential for development, because it makes use of the tool that most art forms can offer, namely the human organism itself. What is only possible to a limited extent in the dramatic arts, in the art of mime, namely the use of the human organism as a tool, is carried out in a wholly artistic manner in eurythmy, in that what manifests as movement and mobility is drawn out from the innermost laws of this organism.

Furthermore, I would like to say that eurythmy is also truly human in that the individual does not lose themselves in it as they might in dance, for example, but always remains fully conscious, so that one has the feeling that it is the whole person who is surrendering to these movements. But they do not lose themselves in these movements, as must be the case in all forms of genuine artistic expression. When Goethe says, to characterize his artistic sensibility: When human beings are placed at the summit of nature, they regard themselves as a complete work of art, take harmony, order, measure, and meaning from everything in their environment, and rise to the production of the work of art—then this must apply especially when human beings do not take order, harmony, measure, and meaning not from external nature and does not realize it through external tools, but when he takes it from his own organism and realizes it through it. For man, as a microcosm, contains all the secrets of the world concentrated within himself. And so, by drawing order, measure, harmony, and meaning from his own organism, he must also be, I would say, a perfect image within himself of the order, harmony, measure, and meaning of the macrocosm, the greater world.

And so we can hope that, even though eurythmy is still in the early stages of its development today, it will gradually be able to stand alongside its older sister arts as a fully-fledged art form.