The Origin and Development of Eurythmy 1920–1922

GA 277c — 23 August 1922, Oxford

Address on Eurythmy

Program for the performance

Allow me to say a few words about the significance of eurythmy lessons and the education that children can gain from them. I would like to explain this using the figures that were made in the studio in Dornach, which represent in a certain artistic way what eurythmy is actually about. First of all, however, these figures are intended to provide a basis for the artistic perception of eurythmy. But I will also be able to use these figures to explain individual points relating to pedagogy and didactics. The point is that eurythmy is truly a visible language, not a mimetic expression, not a pantomimic expression, and not ordinary dance art either. Just as a person brings partial organs into activity when singing or speaking, so too can the whole person be brought into those movements that the larynx and its neighboring organs actually want to perform. But they do not get to do so; they suppress them immediately, and then the other movements take place in such a way that what actually wants to become, let us say, this movement in the larynx, so that the laryngeal wings open outwards: a, this is undermined at the moment of its emergence, in the status nascendi, and is transformed into a movement into which the thought content of language can be transferred, and into a movement that can then pass into the air and be heard. The underlying movement, the inner human movement, let's say of the a, you have it here [the figure is shown]. This is what the whole human being wants to do when he bursts out in a. And so every utterance of song and speech can be made visible in the movement that the whole human being actually wants to perform, but which is held back in the status nascendi. In this way, one can arrive at every such form of movement. Just as there are formations of the larynx and the other speech organs for a, i, I m, so there are the corresponding movements, forms of movement. These forms of movement are therefore the revelation of the will, for which the revelations of thought and will otherwise exist in speech and singing. The intellectual, the purely abstract intellectual, which is in language, is taken out here and everything that wants to be expressed is transferred into the movement itself, so that eurythmy is, in the broadest sense, an art of movement. Just as you can hear the a, you can see the a; just as you can hear the i, you can see the i.

Now, the aim in these figures is that the movement is captured above all in the plastic design of the wood. The basic color is there, which is actually supposed to express the form of movement everywhere, but just as feeling flows into our spoken language, so too can feeling flow down into movement. For we do not just speak a sound, we also give the sound a feeling coloration. We can do this in eurythmy as well. And here a strong subconscious element comes into play in eurythmy. If the actor, the performer, is able to artistically incorporate this feeling into their movement, then one will also feel this feeling when one sees the eurythmic movements. Here, it is also taken into consideration that the veil that is worn should follow these feelings. So that what is used here as a second color, preferably on the veil, represents the emotional nuance for the movement. So you have a first basic color that expresses the movement itself, and a second color superimposed on it, which is preferably expressed in the veil and expresses the emotional nuance. But the eurythmic actor must have the inner strength to put this feeling into the movement, just as it makes a difference whether I say to someone: Come to me! in a commanding tone, or: Come to me! in a friendly invitation. That is the emotional nuance. So what is expressed here in the second color and then continued in the veil represents the emotional nuance of eurythmic language. And the third brings in character, the strong element of will. This only comes into eurythmy because the eurythmic actor is able to empathize with his movements and express them within himself. The head of a eurythmic actor looks completely different depending on whether he tenses the muscles on the left side of his head and leaves the right side somewhat relaxed, as is indicated here, for example, by the third color. You can observe this: the third color always indicates the element of will. Here, for example, something is tensed on the left side, and here across the mouth; here the forehead is slightly tensed, the muscles of the forehead slightly tensed. This then gives the whole an inner character, radiating from this gentle tension, because what is gently tensed here radiates throughout the whole organism. And from this movement, which is expressed by the basic color, from the emotional nuance, which is expressed by the second color, and from this element of will — the whole element is an element of will, but the will is added to it in a special way — the actual art of eurythmy is composed.

If one therefore wants to capture anything eurythmically, one must extract from the human being that which is purely eurythmic. If there were figures here with beautifully painted noses and eyes and beautiful mouths, they could be beautiful paintings: but that is not what eurythmy is about; here, only what is eurythmic in the eurythmic person is painted and formed.

The person performing eurythmy is such that their specific face is not important. It does not matter. Of course, a healthy eurythmist does not automatically make a grumpy face when performing a joyful movement, but that is also the case when speaking. But a physiognomy of the face that is not eurythmic is not what is sought. For example: someone can make a “movement” by holding the axis of their eyes outward. That is eurythmic, that works. But it is not acceptable for anyone, as is the case in the art of mime, to make special little movements with their eyes – as we say in German – which look like grimaces, which are often required as a special facial expression. Everything about the eurythmist must be eurythmic.

Therefore, in a kind of expressive art, what is purely eurythmy was brought out of the human being, everything else was left out, and in this way one actually only obtains an artistic expression. For it is the case in all art that only with certain artistic means can one express what art can represent. You cannot make a statue speak: you must therefore express what you want to convey as a spiritual expression in the shaping of the mouth, of the whole face. So it is of no use to paint naturalistic people here, but rather to paint what immediately comes out as eurythmic. Now, of course, when I speak of the veil here, one cannot change the veil after every sound: but one gradually discovers that once one has put oneself into this emotional nuance, into this mood for a poem, then the whole poem has a "mood or a b-mood. Then you can arrange the whole poem in a certain veil color.

The same applies to the color scheme. Here, I have depicted the veil, shape, color combination, and so on for each individual sound. In a poem, you have to have a basic note, so to speak. The basic note then determines the color of the veil, the entire composition that you have to maintain throughout the poem, otherwise the ladies would have to constantly change their veils, constantly throw off veils, put on other veils, and things would become even more complicated than they already are, and people would say they understand them even less. But it is certainly the case that once you have the sound mood, you can maintain it throughout an entire poem, varying only the movement, the transition from one sound to another, from one syllable to another, from one mood to another, and so on. Now, since I have educational and didactic purposes today, I have arranged the eurythmy figures here so that you can see them in the order in which the child learns the sounds. From an early age, children learn sounds in such a way that the first sound is essentially the one that sounds like “a.” Progressing in this order, approximately of course—there are all kinds of variations among children—but in this order approximately: a, e, o, u, i are the vowels that are learned on average by small children. When children are allowed to practice this visible language of eurythmy in this way, it is like a resurrection of what they experienced when learning sounds as very young children, like a resurrection on another level. The child experiences once again what it experienced earlier in this eurythmic language. And it is a reinforcement of what lies in the word, through the means of the whole human being.

Then, with the consonants, the children learn m, b, p, d, t, l, n: there should also be an ng, as in “gingen” (went), for example, which is not yet formed; then f, h, g, s, r. r, this mysterious letter, which actually has three forms in human language, is only mastered by children at the very end. There is a lip r, a tongue r, and an r that is pronounced completely backwards.

So what the child learns in language in a partial organism, in the speech organism and in the singing organism, can be transferred to the whole person and developed into visible language.

If there is sufficient interest in this kind of expressionistic art, we will then be able to develop further aspects such as joy, sadness, antipathy, sympathy, and other emotions that can be expressed in eurythmy. Not only grammar but also rhetoric has its place in eurythmy. We will be able to train all of this. Then we will see how this spiritual-soul gymnastics, which not only has a physiological effect on the physical human being, but also forms the human being spiritually, soulfully, and physically, can indeed have its pedagogical-didactic value on the one hand and its artistic value on the other.

Now, allow me to add in parentheses that these figures can be used by eurythmy students to memorize after eurythmy lessons. For one should not believe that eurythmy is something so easy that it can be taught in a few hours. Eurythmy must be learned thoroughly, but such eurythmy figures can also serve as a means of repetition for those who seek eurythmic art, enabling them to delve deeper into it. One will see that there is a great deal to be found in the forms themselves, which are relatively simply carved and painted here.

That is what I wanted to say today about eurythmic art, namely insofar as it can be integrated into the pedagogical-didactic principle that we seek to cultivate in the Waldorf school.