The Origin and Development of Eurythmy 1920–1922

GA 277c — 27 May 1922, Dornach

Address on eurythmy

“Urträume” (Primordial Dreams) by Fercher von Steinwand with music by Leopold van der Pals
“Elfe” by Joseph von Eichendorff with music by Max Schuurman
“Abendgefühl” by Friedrich Hebbel
‘Erinnerung’ by Anton Bruckner
“Auf Flügeln des Gesangess” by Heinrich Heine
“Amien's Song: Under the Greenwood Tree” from “As You Like It” by William Shakespeare
“Winter: When icicles hang” from “Love's Labour's Lost” by William Shakespeare
“Ariel's Song: Come unto” from “The Tempest” by William Shakespeare with music by Max Schuurman
Satirical overture with music by Leopold van der Pals
“Der Papagei” (The Parrot) by Christian Morgenstern
“Tonbild” by Edward Grieg “Der Zwölf-Elf” by Christian Morgenstern

Ladies and gentlemen!

These introductory words are not intended to explain the performance, for art must speak through its own essence in the immediate impression—otherwise it would be inartistic—but rather, allow me to say these introductory words because eurythmy represents something that arises from other artistic sources and through a different artistic form of expression than what we are accustomed to. And because of this unfamiliarity of the artistic form of eurythmy itself, as well as the special sources from which it draws, I would like to say this in advance.

What we are dealing with here is that the esteemed audience sees moving individuals and groups of people on stage. We are not dealing with individuals performing movements with their limbs or groups performing movements in space, [we are not dealing with] gestures, facial expressions, or dance-like movements being expressed. It would be a complete misunderstanding of eurythmy to believe this. Rather, it is a real visible language, a visible language that is drawn out of the human organism like audible language or singing.

What underlies our singing or our spoken language are movement tendencies—I do not say movements, but movement tendencies—of the entire human organism. The human being is truly in a kind of movement when he speaks, and indeed he is in a kind of movement when he merely listens. However, at the moment of their emergence, they suppress these movements and transform them into movements that are then expressed in a single group of organs—the larynx and its neighboring organs—which in turn communicate with the air, thereby mediating the hearing of the tone or sound. That which is otherwise suppressed at the moment of its emergence, so that when a person speaks or sings, their organism is at rest, is transformed into a special movement which then becomes a sound or tone. This is brought forth through sensory-supersensory observation — that is Goethe's expression — through sensory-supersensory perception from the organization of the human organism and is then revealed in the individual human being or through groups of people. And that is eurythmy.

Just as there is a very specific configuration of the vocal cords, which moves so quickly that nothing of the movements is perceived, but only the result of the tone or sound, so, for example, any arm movement, hand movement, movement of the whole human organism, movements oriented in relation to each other in groups of people, are sought out in a very specific way in terms of sound or tone, and are rooted in the nature, in the essence of the human organism. So one can say: there is spoken language and tonal singing on the one hand, but there can also be this visible language, which is the basis of the artistry of eurythmy. And just as the larynx and other adjacent organs are used to produce sound in singing, so too can singing be produced through movement. Then one sees the singing or sees the language.

So it is not a matter of gestures, it is not a matter of pantomime, it is a matter of dealing with a truly visible language. What is language must first be translated into art, just as, for example, in the case of a poet, what is initially only the prose content of a poem is translated into art by the poet through the metrical, rhythmic treatment of language. Therefore, it is also wrong to relate the individual movements, the apparent gestures, in eurythmy to anything else. Just as in music it is the sequence of tones or the harmony of tones that is important, here it is the sequence of movements, the interaction of movements in groups of people performing these movements, that is important.

This enables one to either sing visibly to music or to view a poem, which is recited or declaimed at the same time, in this visible language, artistically and eurythmically.

Those who generally enjoy the arts will always be happy about any expansion of the artistic field. Therefore, in the case of truly artistically gifted people, there can be no doubt that eurythmy – however imperfect it may still be today – can in principle be accepted as something that is fully justified. For the more means of expression a person finds to reveal what lives in their soul, the happier they should actually be.

Eurythmic art can now be placed among the other arts in a variety of ways. For example, when we look at plastic or sculptural art – let's say the human form – we have the feeling that the forms created by the sculptor express what is generally silent in the human soul. Anyone who has a certain impartial feeling will even demand that the silence in the soul be expressed particularly through the art of sculpture. But that which speaks in the soul cannot be expressed through any other medium than through the human being themselves, through the moving human being. So that one can call eurythmy a moving sculpture, because one cannot use any non-human material for its embodiment, but only human beings themselves.

But eurythmy can also be classified in another way within the family of the arts. One can think, for example, of how music is an expression of what human beings experience in their feelings. Music can be the artistically shaped expression of everything that echoes in the soul from all the experiences we can have in the external world of nature and in external human life. If we then move from what is primarily musical—because it represents the revelation of feeling, the innermost part of the human being—if we move from this to the external, then the human being takes in this external world through their ideas. The idea is in turn embodied in language. In working with language, poetic art makes use primarily of the ideas or thoughts embodied in language, shaped ideas, shaped thoughts. That is poetic art.

But human beings relate to the outside world not only through their thoughts, but also through their immediate sensory perceptions. What we experience in the external world through our sensory perceptions themselves, that is, what is not in feeling, what is not expressed through ideas, what is immediate sensory perception, where human beings immerse themselves completely in the external world, can also only be artistically shaped by human beings bringing their own organism into activity.

Therefore, one can say that language is just as deeply rooted within the human being as a means of expression as thought itself. And all the more so because the eye, whose perceptions can also be processed by the poet and the musician, at least in their results, in their effects on the human being, insofar as the eye and the ear are separate from feeling and thought, so far does that which is revealed externally through the movement of the eurythmist from what merely takes place within the human being and is revealed through external means of expression. When Schiller uttered the beautiful words from his poetic experience:

My immeasurable realm is thought
and my winged tool is the word,

one could say: Such a statement could be expanded to say: My living interaction with the world is that in which the senses view this world artistically. But then it is not the winged tool, but the tool with which the human being himself reveals in his own organism what he experiences artistically in his interaction with the world that is brought to revelation through the art of eurythmy.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is what I have to say about art. It should be mentioned that when reciting or declaiming to eurythmy, one can certainly consider today the necessity of returning to more artistic ages than our own. Today, many people seek – even if they sometimes stray from this approach – to achieve the true purpose of declamation and recitation by emphasizing the prose content of a poem. They try this or that, depending on the meaning of the words and the sense they convey, and seek to emphasize this particularly in recitation and declamation.

This would not allow one to recite and declaim in parallel with the eurythmic performance. What is essential in the art of poetry is not the prosaic presentation of some content—that is the novelistic aspect, which is not actually artistic—but the rhythmic, the metrical, which must be emphasized and must also be expressed in the reciter's or declaimer's use of language. We return to the artistic in ages that had more artistic sensibilities than our own. Goethe himself rehearsed his iambic dramas with his actors using a baton like a conductor, whereby he was not so much concerned with the meaning of the prose, but with the rhythmic, metrical, melodious form that the language had taken on in the artistic elaboration of what underlies poetry.

Now, ladies and gentlemen, eurythmy has two other sides to it: a medical-therapeutic-hygienic one. Because all the movements involved here can be drawn from the healthy human organism, they can be used in a medical-therapeutic way if they are transformed so that they can be used in a hygienic, therapeutic context. So they can be transformed, and they are healing movements; they are not the same as the artistic movements you see here, but metamorphoses of them, transformations, changes of them. They are used in eurythmy, in therapeutic eurythmy, for therapeutic and hygienic purposes. This is already being cultivated in our institutes in Stuttgart and Arlesheim.

The third aspect is the pedagogical-didactic one. At the Stuttgart Waldorf School, eurythmy has been introduced as a compulsory subject alongside gymnastics. It is taught in all elementary school classes, right up to the higher grades. And one can say that eurythmy is a spiritualized, soulful form of gymnastics. Ordinary gymnastics deals only with the biological aspects of the human being, with the training of the body. In the movements performed here through eurythmy, spirit and soul are always present in every movement. Therefore, when children are introduced to eurythmy in the right way, one can see that they derive just as much inner satisfaction from growing into this visible language as they do from growing into the audible language at a younger age.

From this we can see that the movements performed really come from an inner urge of the human organism, because the children accept them as a natural expression of this organism. It can be said that the initiative of the will is particularly stimulated, whereas this cannot happen through ordinary gymnastics. The initiative of the will is stimulated by this purposeful and spiritualized gymnastics. In any case, it is an extremely important teaching and educational tool, and teachers are gradually realizing that all other teaching is also essentially promoted by eurythmy, through the liveliness that comes to the children in a moderate way – everything else in teaching, in education, but especially in language teaching. This eurythmic element provides essential support.

These are the different aspects of eurythmy. Today, in the first part, we will present a longer poem in eurythmy, the poem of an Austrian poet who, unfortunately, remains unknown despite his truly great significance – Fercher von Steinwand. In addition to some extremely interesting dramatic, lyrical, and epic poems, which are equally great in terms of their charm in art as well as their intellectual depth and emotional, enthusiastic verve, Fercher von Steinwand he also has what I would like to call his “cosmic poems,” poems that lose themselves in the archetypal creation of the world. He develops thoughts that seek to trace the course of the world back to the most distant primeval times, as if in dreams or imaginations.

This, however, gives rise to thoughts that can then stand before us in pictorial form. They are sometimes—and I ask you to bear this in mind as you listen and watch today—they are sometimes not immediately comprehensible at first glance, but they represent broad perspectives and deep empathy with cosmic events in the world. And because they reach into the cosmic realm as thoughts, feelings, and sensations, and because what is represented by the moving human being [and] because the human being is truly a small world, which can also express itself in the most noble way when the great movements of the cosmos are imitated: Fercher's poems are therefore particularly well suited to eurythmic representation. These wonderful nuances of thought and feeling with which he follows world events can be expressed particularly well with this animated language, especially when the various aids available to human beings are used.

However, it will only be properly understood when viewed if one is willing to respond to all the nuances of movement that are always actually connected with what the world speaks to the human mind in the greater sense, when this human mind is able to open itself to what underlies this world in the greater sense. An older art form that was similar to eurythmy, but not the same, a temple dance art in ancient times, revealed the movements of the stars, as they were understood in earlier times, in human dance and mimetic movement. And that is something that cannot be brought about directly today, but which can certainly appear in eurythmy in another form that is appropriate for the present day.

And so, although I would like to say today the words I always say before these eurythmy performances—that I ask the esteemed audience for their forgiveness and forbearance, because we are only at the beginning of this eurythmic art—I would still like to say: Those who are fully aware that this eurythmy is still in its infancy and therefore still has many imperfections – we are our own harshest critics – those who are involved in it, know at the same time that this beginning holds immeasurable possibilities for development. And because it turns to the instrument that, by its very nature, must be the most perfect, because it turns not to external instruments, not to external tools, but to the human being itself, then one day this eurythmy must also be able to become something that stands alongside the other art forms as a perfect art form.

Goethe had this beautiful thing to say about art: When man is placed at the summit of nature, he sees himself again as the whole of nature, which must once more produce a summit within itself. To this end, he elevates himself by imbuing himself with all perfections and virtues, invoking choice, order, harmony, and meaning, and finally rising to the production of a work of art that takes a shining place alongside his other deeds and works. So: in order to rise to the creation of the work of art, Goethe believes that man brings together order, harmony, measure, and meaning from other phenomena — perhaps also from physical phenomena — [for example] in the art of drama. But here in the art of eurythmy, it is a matter of seeking out the conscientious inner laws of the human being, as they lie in his organism, through sensory-supersensory observation, of listening to measure, harmony, order, and meaning, and that what lies within the human being as a microcosmic reflection of the mysteries of the entire universe is drawn up into the realm of the artistic.

Therefore, we may well hope that what is today only a beginning, with all the imperfections of a beginning, will one day be able to develop artistically and become a fully-fledged younger art form that can stand alongside its fully-fledged older sister arts.