The Origin and Development of Eurythmy 1920–1922

GA 277c — 10 September 1922, Dornach

Eurythmy Address

The performances on September 10, 12, and 14, 1922, all took place in the dome room of the Goetheanum. No records exist of the address given on September 12, 1922. The “French Course” took place in Dornach from September 6 to 15, 1922 (see GA 215), which is reflected in the programs.

Harmonious prelude with music by Max Schuurman
“They that have power” (Sonnet 94) by William Shakespeare
“World Soul Spirits” by Rudolf Steiner
Andante grazioso by W. A. Mozart
“From Old Fairy Tales” by Heinrich Heine
“Memory” by Anton Bruckner
“Perse et Andromede” by J. Heredia
Music by Anton Bruckner
Scene with Luciferic and Ahrimanic beings from the 6th picture from “The Guardian of the Threshold” by R. Steiner with music by Max Schuurman
“Dirge: Fear no more” from “Cymbeline” by William Shakespeare ‘Spring’ by Rudolf Steiner with music by Leopold van der Pals “Mignonne” by Pierre de Ronsard
“Laughing Song” by William Blake
Satirical overture with music by Leopold van der Pals
“Die Spröde” and “Die Bekehrte” by J. W. von Goethe with music by Max Schuurman
“Balthazar's Song: Sigh No More” from “Much Ado About Nothing” by William Shakespeare
“Norwegian Folk Tune” by Edward Grieg
“Clown's Song: When That I Was” from “Twelfth Night” by William Shakespeare

Ladies and gentlemen!

Allow me to say a few words before our eurythmy performance. This is not done before such eurythmic attempts in order to explain the performance, which would be an inartistic beginning, because everything artistic must speak for itself in the immediate impression. So here, in these attempts at eurythmy, we are dealing with artistic creation from hitherto unfamiliar artistic sources and with an artistic formal language that is still unfamiliar today.

What is intended here as eurythmy can very easily be confused with related arts, such as pantomime or dance. Without wishing to detract in any way from these arts, it must be emphasized that eurythmy, as it is to be presented here, should not be confused with these related arts. It is something completely different. It is an attempt to create art through a real, visible language. This visible language is, to use Goethe's expression, gained through sensory-supersensory observation, namely through the study of what underlies human speech and singing as a tendency toward movement—I do not say movement, but only a tendency toward movement. This does not refer to the movements that humans actually perform when singing and speaking, but rather to tendencies toward movement that actually underlie the entire human system of will and that specialize and actually disappear in status nascens, at the moment of their emergence, in order to transition into those movements that are then performed by the larynx and the other organs of speech and singing, and which communicate themselves to the air for hearing.

I could also describe the characteristic in the following way. Let us assume, my dear audience, that one person is speaking and another is listening to them. The other person, the listener, actually has a constant urge in their unconscious soul life, in their finer organs, to accompany the speaker with movements that are not arbitrary on the outside, but rather result from the entire organization. One actually always wants to accompany the speaker in the unknown parts of one's being. These movements are suppressed when listening quietly. Yet they arise from the human organism with the same necessity as speaking and singing. So that it is possible to bring about that which can now correspond in forms of movement from the whole human being to that which is otherwise audible in singing and spoken language, that it is possible to bring about that which is performed through the movements of the whole human being or through groups of people, which you will see here on stage.

Preferably, the most expressive limbs of the human organism, the arms and hands, are used in this visible language of eurythmy. Of course, this results in something that is no more mimetic, pantomimic, or dance-like than human spoken language or singing are mere mimetic or pantomimic art. Artistically, however, eurythmy is not yet a visible language. But just as spoken language can be used as an artistic medium in poetry, so too can this visible language of eurythmy be used as an artistic medium. And that is precisely what is attempted in such eurythmic performances.

It should be noted that if one attempts to interpret the individual gestures made by the eurythmist in a pantomimic or mimetic way, one will always be mistaken, just as one would be if one attempted to interpret individual human sounds as individual. What is important here is that, just as in musical art, the sequence of movements of one person or groups of people should flow into each other like a melody. This means that everything pantomimic must be eliminated and that it is necessary to devote oneself purely to what one sees as movement. It is not necessary to be able to interpret what one sees as movement in any abstract way. That is not important. What is important is that it makes an artistic impression when viewed directly.

If I had to say how eurythmy fits in with the other arts, I would say something like this: When we stand in front of a sculpture, when we see a plastic art form – if we allow our whole being to be open to the impression of the plastic work of art, we have the feeling that the silent human being, the silent soul, expresses itself in the gesture captured by the sculptor. By allowing the human being—and we must take the living human being—to express themselves through the eurythmic art in constant movement, we are now dealing with a moving sculpture, with that which does not express the silent soul, but rather that which expresses the speaking soul.

And one could also say: Music is the art that shapes sounds in such a way that their form lies in the inner feeling of the human being. And poetry is the art that shapes thoughts and ideas in such a way that they are expressed through language, lying more on the periphery, the exterior of the human being, than music does. So what is experienced in ideas becomes poetic; what is experienced in feelings becomes musical. What is experienced in perceptions, when one experiences the spirit of the world in direct contact with the perceptible sensory outer world, can only be expressed by bringing the whole human being into moving activity. So if music is the moving expression of feeling, and poetry is the moving expression of imagination, then what appears as visible language in eurythmy is the moving expression of the external interaction of the senses in the external world, when the spiritual is experienced at the same time in the external world. This is how eurythmy could be classified among the other arts.

Eurythmy is performed in such a way that either the musical element or the recitation and declamation run parallel to it. The musical element can be sung through visible singing, just as it can be sung audibly. That is what will happen here. Or, through recitation and declamation, the poetry will become audible in this way, and through recitation and declamation, the visible language of eurythmy will also be accompanied.

We have convinced ourselves that especially that which is already conceived as an expression of the supersensible poetic—such as the little experiment that will be done after the break, a piece of mine from the poem “The Guardian of the Threshold”—can be expressed particularly well in the language of eurythmy. Here, conflicting forces come to light in human beings: the enthusiastic, mystical forces and the pedantic forces, that is, the Luciferic forces and the Ahrimanic forces. The former draw people up into Lucifer's cloud cuckoo land, the latter bind them to the earth in an unjustified way. And human beings, in a sense, hover between the two in their struggle for life. This is what is brought to life in this scene, which is to be presented today not as pantomime, but as eurythmy.

In recitation and declamation, when they accompany eurythmy, it is particularly important to note that they cannot be recited or declaimed in the manner that is particularly popular today in a somewhat inartistic age, where only the prose content of the poetry is emphasized, [but] that it is necessary to bring out the eurythmic element already present in the true poet's poetry itself through recitation and declamation, taking into account the speech formation, the musicality of the language, and the imagery of the language in the sound formation, especially in recitation and declamation.

This recitation and declamation, which Goethe, for example, practiced in an even more artistic age than ours, where he rehearsed his iambic dramas with the actors like a piece of music, conducting with his baton – this recitation and declamation should be revived and can be revived precisely through the visible art of speech in eurythmy. This must be taken into account when the perhaps unfamiliar recitation and declamation that you will hear today reaches your ears.

At the beginning of such presentations, it must always be said that we are still in the early stages of eurythmic art, but that in a higher sense, Goethe's words, which he used of all art, perhaps apply to this eurythmic art: When human beings are placed at the summit of nature, they see themselves again as part of nature as a whole, they bring forth a summit within themselves, they bring together order, harmony, measure, and meaning, and they rise to the creation of works of art. Now, when human beings draw harmony, order, and proportion from within themselves, they express—by making themselves instruments of art, as happens in eurythmy—the entire macrocosm in all its mysteries within their human microcosm.

If art is the fulfillment of the hidden mysteries of the world, then precisely because it uses human beings as instruments, we can hope that the art of eurythmy is a further development—even though it is only in its infancy today—that will go on indefinitely. We ourselves are still our strictest critics today. After a while, we always try to add something new. Recently, greater importance has been attached to lighting, so that it is not the lighting of individual scenes that is required, but rather a eurythmic effect in the lighting itself, which should correspond to the eurythmic movement that is to be brought out by individuals or groups of people.

But we know that we still have to ask for leniency today. As I said, we are our own harshest critics, we know the mistakes that still exist today and that need to be improved. But we are also convinced that, because human beings, with all their inner secrets brought to the surface, are made into instruments of art, this eurythmic art is capable of infinite perfection and will one day be able to stand alongside the fully-fledged older arts as a younger sister art.