The Origin and Development of Eurythmy 1920–1922

GA 277c — 6 August 1922, Dornach

Eurythmy Address

“Show me the way” by Ella Wheeler Wilcox with music by Leopold van der Pals
“Let me not” by William Shakespeare
Prelude “Look within yourself” with music by Leopold van der Pals
“Fairyland” (Sonnet 116) by William Shakespeare Impromptu by Franz Schubert “Der Fischer” (The Fisherman) by J. W. v. Goethe ‘Erinnerung’ (Memory) by Anton Bruckner “Elfin Stroke” by J. G. Herder “Orpheus” by William Shakespeare with music by Max Schuurman
“Ariel's Song: Come unto” from “The Tempest” by William Shakespeare with music by Max Schuurman
“Hark hark” from ‘Cymbeline’ by William Shakespeare
“The Singer” by J. W. v. Goethe
“Butterfly” by Edward Grieg
“Laughing Song” by William Blake
Satirical overture with music by Leopold van der Pals

Ladies and gentlemen!

Allow me, as always, to introduce today's eurythmic experiments with a few words. This is never done in order to explain the performance as an artistic achievement, because art cannot be explained – attempting to explain art would itself be something inartistic – but because our eurythmic experiments are based on artistic means and sources that are still unfamiliar today. And perhaps a few words can be said about these artistic means and sources.

It is very easy to confuse what is happening here with mimic or pantomime art, or even something resembling dance. Without wishing to say anything against these arts, it must be emphasized that eurythmy is something completely different. You see, dear audience, people moving, or groups of people engaged in movement. What is seen here as a form of movement or manifestation is intended to be a truly visible language. Human spoken language and singing, the musicality within human beings themselves, are brought out of the human organism. They are based on the fact that movements exist within the human organism that reveal the soul through sound in language or through tone in singing.

However, this can now be studied through what one might call, in Goethe's sense, sensual-supersensory observation. One can study the movement tendencies in the human organism on which sound or singing tone, singing or speaking in general, are based. I am not saying that this is the actual movement of the larynx and the other organs of singing and speech, but rather that it is the movement tendencies, the predispositions for movement. There is always a certain inner form of experience underlying this in human beings, which then concentrates itself — by disappearing as a form of movement — into what is the trembling of the speech or singing organization, which then communicates itself to the air and leads to hearing.

That which is not actually developed in speaking and singing, but which is always predisposed in speaking and singing, can be recognized through sensory-supersensory observation and can now be revealed visibly by the human being—namely through the most expressive organs, the arms and hands. Of course, other organs are also used to assist in this. What is really brought out of the human organism is a visible language. Or one could also say: with musical accompaniment, one can sing in a visible way, just as one can speak visibly through it.

Eurythmy is therefore a truly visible language that can be methodically developed into real art forms. In eurythmy, it is not a matter of interpreting the individual movements as such – these must be accepted as something self-evident, just as one does not interpret the individual sounds a or i on their own – but rather of how something is created through the shaping of sounds, sound composition, so it arises in the shaping of movement, in the sequence of movements, in the harmony of the movements of different people, so it arises that which can then truly reveal itself through the soul, through this visible language.

In this way, a new means of artistic expression is created. And those who misunderstand it still confuse it with mimicry or pantomime and want to interpret it in such a way that each individual movement is meant to refer to this or that. That is not the case. It would be just as if one did not want to listen to language naively or listen to singing naively, but wanted to interpret every single utterance in some way mimically or pantomimically or the like.

This, however, leads to what I would call a human form of expression that was taken for granted artistically in earlier periods of culture. There are even languages that have a single word for the expression of tone and for individual gestures, so that one can feel how tone and sound and also movement can be the same in the same way. Today, however, when these are still unfamiliar means of expression, it is necessary to allow declamation and recitation to proceed in parallel, or even the musical, which is then visibly sung, just as the poetic should be expressed in visible language.

Now, ladies and gentlemen, on the one hand, this actually creates something like a moving sculpture. If you have some artistic sensitivity for this, you could say that an artistic statue, which confronts us in its tranquility, expresses the silent soul in its frozen gesture. If we set people themselves in motion, so that these movements are not arbitrary but are drawn out of human nature in the same way as sounds are drawn out in learning to speak, then we can indeed let the soul speak in these movements, let it speak, just as we can express its silent experience through sculpture.

However, this means that when, for example, recitation and declamation accompany eurythmy, they must have a different effect and use different forms of expression than those that are popular today in a somewhat unartistic age. Today, the truly poetic, the truly artistic in declamation and recitation has receded, and in recitation the poetic is treated more by emphasizing the prosaic content of the poetry – so that what actually constitutes the artistic in poetry comes out in declamation and recitation – the prosaic.

What underlies the truly artistic is the shaping of language. Poetry is artistic to the extent that the poet succeeds in shaping language in a pictorial or musical form. The more inner shaping there is in language, the more pictorial or musical it is, the more poetry there is in it. It must be said that prose language should not convey the same understanding as recitation and declamation. For in recitation and declamation, it is already the inner eurythmy, a kind of eurythmy captured in the shaping of words, that must also be expressed in recitation and declamation. Goethe, for example, already sensed this when, like a conductor with his baton, he rehearsed his iambic dramas with his individual actors, placing less emphasis on how they should be punctuated than on how they should be made understandable through the formation of speech itself.

On the other hand, we can say that just as music is a world of feelings that has been shaped, and poetry is artistically shaped language, eurythmy is artistically shaped perception, that which we experience directly with the world. With eurythmy, we can make movements that correspond entirely to our inner perception. We can say: when someone perceives the color red—those who understand language also know how these perceptions are then translated into language—but they can just as easily, I would say, be translated directly into [movement] by being experienced more spiritually on the surface of the human being. So that we can say: when we allow the moving human being to express themselves through visible language, what they experience directly with their surroundings becomes apparent through the human being. This moving language can find all possible nuances of expression for what the already internally transformed spoken language cannot so easily find nuances for. And yet, it would be wrong to see something pantomimic in this eurythmy. Pantomime relates to this eurythmy as the babbling of a child relates to this already developed language.

This is, of course, something that one has to find one's way into. But eurythmy will continue to develop. And we must take into account that each of the individual art forms we have has undergone a long process of development. Eurythmy is still in its infancy today. That is all I have to say for now, ladies and gentlemen, about the artistic aspect in a few words.

Eurythmy has other aspects too: a second aspect is the hygienic-therapeutic one. The movements that occur in eurythmy are drawn entirely from healthy human nature. They can therefore be transformed in such a way that they help sick human nature. It is entirely possible to train in therapeutic eurythmy, hygienic eurythmy, in a justified manner, as is already happening in our clinical-therapeutic institutes in Stuttgart and Arlesheim. However, the movements used there are not exactly the same as those used in the artistic form and demonstrated to you, but rather metamorphosed movements, which are mainly aimed at helping sick people in a hygienic or, if the individual case allows, therapeutic relationship. So there can be a therapeutic eurythmy.

The third aspect is the pedagogical-didactic one. What is carried out here emerges from the whole human being: from body, soul, and spirit. Ordinary gymnastics is derived solely from the physical organization of the human being. So that what emerges here from eurythmy, when used for the growing human being, can be used in such a way that it becomes a form of mental or spiritual gymnastics. This is then a form of gymnastics that takes into account the body, soul, and spirit.

At the Waldorf School in Stuttgart — the Waldorf School in Stuttgart founded by Emil Molt and directed by me — eurythmy has been included as a compulsory subject alongside ordinary gymnastics in all school classes, from the lowest compulsory school age up to the highest class. And it can be said that it is already becoming apparent that these older children are finding their way into this eurythmy, this visible language, with the same naturalness with which they found their way into spoken language as small children. As I have described, learning to speak is based on the child perceiving language as something that necessarily arises from the organism. In the same way, this mental and spiritual exercise is perceived in later elementary school age and even later as something that arises naturally from the physical organization.

And since very special physical and spiritual abilities are developed when the whole human being has to be developed, when what is physiological in him is set in motion, eurythmy is an excellent pedagogical and didactic tool that serves education and teaching in an extraordinary way. Ladies and gentlemen, for example, the initiative of the will can be developed in a particularly strong way through eurythmy. This should indicate how eurythmy should be integrated into life as a whole today. In its pedagogical and didactic use, the physical aspect is by no means neglected, but is brought to the fore precisely because the whole human being is involved in physical movement, including the soul and spirit.

As I said, eurythmy is still in its infancy today. I have to say this every time there are distinguished guests in the audience, whom I must therefore ask to be lenient in their judgment. Over time, many things have developed, and much has been added to what we had to show at the beginning.

For some time now, we have also been trying to design the lighting effects as they occur one after the other in this eurythmic sense, so that they are a kind of visible language and reflect it. Therefore, a single colored light cannot be judged on its own, but rather in the same way as the eurythmic movements themselves: colors will be perceived in their sequence, and the mood depends on how the individual colors follow one another, as in a poem or something similar. Here, too, we try to incorporate eurythmy.

Today, we will accompany most of what is presented with the English language, with the exception of a few German [poems]; we will accompany it in English. You will be able to see for yourself how the character of the language really comes to expression when the subject is reproduced in the visible language of eurythmy. One can see the special character of each language in the special way in which the movements come out in eurythmy. While one can actually only attempt to convey the content from one language to another—translations work through other artistic means—in eurythmy it is actually the case that eurythmy can adapt to any language. It is a visible language in its own right, not one language or another, and does not simply transfer the peculiarities of one language or another to another, but through its own essence takes on the character of the other language.

In all this, however, it must be emphasized that eurythmy is still in its infancy. And as much as we are our own strictest critics in this regard, knowing what is still imperfect, it must be said again that those who familiarize themselves with the inner essence of this eurythmic art can see for themselves that it is capable of unlimited perfection. For it uses the human being itself as a means of artistic expression, as a tool—it does not use an external tool. And since the human being is truly a small world, containing all the forces and secrets of the world and all the laws of the world, it is truly possible to express the entire revelation of the world with the help of the human being, when he or she becomes our artistic tool.

Therefore, we may hope that, in a certain sense, Goethe's words about art in general will be fulfilled: When human beings are placed at the summit of nature, they feel themselves to be the whole of nature, taking harmony, measure, and meaning together in order to rise to the production of works of art. - And in the other arts, human beings take harmony, measure, order, and meaning from the world around them in the same way. To a much greater extent than in the mimetic arts, human beings take order, measure, harmony, and meaning from their own being, from their microcosm, in eurythmy. And through this microcosm of the human being, if handled in the right way, it is indeed possible to express all the secrets of the world. We can therefore hope that eurythmy will one day be able to stand alongside the other fully-fledged arts as a fully-fledged art in its own right.