The Origin and Development of Eurythmy 1920–1922

GA 277c — 24 September 1922, Dornach

Eurythmy Address

The performance took place in the dome room of the Goetheanum.

“Rêve” by Victor Hugo with music by Jan Stuten
“To a Rose” by Albert Steffen
“Lonely Wanderer” by Edward Grieg
“White Bells I” by Vladimir Solovyov
Prelude “We Want to Search” with music by Max Schuurman
“White Bells II” by Vladimir Solovyov
Sonata by W. A. Mozart
“Mignonne” by Pierre de Ronsard
Scene with Luciferic and Ahrimanic beings from the 6th picture from “The Guardian of the Threshold” by R. Steiner
“Der Salm” by Christian Morgenstern with music by Jan Stuten
“Das Scholastikerproblem” by Christian Morgenstern
Andante grazioso by W. A. Mozart
“Das Weiblein mit der Kunkel” by Christian Morgenstern
“Das Reich der Interpunktionen” by Christian Morgenstern Czech folk song
“Ex-libris” by Christian Morgenstern
“Fée dragée” by Peter Tchaikovsky
“Die Mitternachtsmaus” (The Midnight Mouse) by Christian Morgenstern with music by Jan Stuten

Ladies and gentlemen!

We hope that the electric lighting will soon come back on so that we can begin the performance. For the time being, however, this is not yet the case. I will take the liberty of giving the short introduction that I always give before these performances. Not in order to explain the ideas behind the eurythmic experiment we are undertaking here. Explanations of art are themselves unartistic, for art must speak for itself in its immediate impression. This is particularly true of eurythmy. But what we are attempting here as eurythmy draws on artistic sources that are not yet familiar today and makes use of an artistic form of expression, artistic means that are also still unfamiliar today. And allow me to say a few words about these artistic means and sources.

You will see, dear audience, people moving on stage, individual people moving, groups of people moving. However, what emerges through a kind of gesture should not be understood in the same way as the related arts – the arts of mime, pantomime, or dance. Eurythmy does not seek to be any of these things, but rather to have an effect through a real, visible language.

Everything you will see in the moving individuals and groups of people is intended to be an expression of the human soul and spirit, just like spoken language or singing. Just as what comes to life musically in human beings is expressed through singing, and just as the soul life can be expressed through poetic language, so too can what human beings experience in their souls be expressed through gestures and movements that arise just as naturally from the human organism as singing or spoken language.

What underlies this is not an arbitrary outpouring of this or that mimetic gesture when this or that comes into consideration poetically or musically. Rather, it is a matter of being able to elicit every sound, every tone, just as through the human larynx and its neighboring organs, so also through what humans represent to the eye with their limbs or in connection with other humans. Every single sound, every single tone, but also every sequence of tones in the melodic sense, every combination of tones in the harmonic sense, every formation of language in sentences and sentence forms, can be expressed visibly through the whole human being, just as through the organs of speech and singing. So that, in a sense, the whole human being or the whole group of people becomes the larynx, which here only visibly performs its movement, while in reality the larynx transforms its movements, metamorphoses them into small vibrating movements, which are then transmitted to the air and conveyed through the air to the ear.

So I can say: Eurythmy is the visualization of those movements that are experienced in the whole human being when speaking and singing, but which are immediately transformed into laryngeal movements as they arise. So I must say: Eurythmy studies, through sensory-supersensory observation—to use Goethe's expression—the movements of the vocal organs, the movements of speech, that which can only be seen through sensory-supersensory observation, because it does not manifest itself externally in the larynx, but becomes very small vibrations, in inaudible, invisible movements, but communicated in small vibrations of the air. This is revealed in eurythmy as a visible language, namely through the most expressive human limbs, the arms and hands. And this visible language can also be shaped artistically – just as spoken language can be shaped artistically by the poet.

So if one wanted to classify eurythmy as an art form alongside the other arts, one could say: Eurythmy is sculpture in motion. Those who have an artistic sensibility for such things will perceive language as if the silent but deeply inner soul were revealed in the, I would say, rigid, fixed gesture of the sculptor's work. But the living soul, not the apparent soul, is revealed through this visible language of eurythmy, which uses the living human being and their body as its artistic tool.

This does not yet create eurythmy itself; but what can be set aside for those sounds or sound sequences as a necessity of the inner lawfulness of human nature, what can be formed as a visible language, can also be transformed in a purely artistic sense. And as such a transformation, it confronts us here in such a way that either the musical is accompanied by such movements – which can then also sing through sensually visible sounds, just as one can sing through the larynx – or one can accompany the poetry when it is recited or declaimed.

It should be emphasized, however, that recitation and declamation, running parallel to this visible language of eurythmy, must in turn be traced back to what they were in ages that spoke more artistically than today. Goethe himself, with his baton in hand, rehearsed his iambic dramas with his actors in the same way that a conductor rehearses operas, because he was more concerned with the artistic expression of language than with emphasizing the content of the prose. This is what we must return to, reciting and declaiming in an artistic manner. So that either the musicality of language or the pictorial-imaginative aspect of language is revealed through recitation or declamation. And that is the way we train recitation and declamation here, by returning again and again to more artistic ages than today's, through Goethe's vision.

That is what I would like to say first and foremost about the nature of eurythmy. For today, I would just like to add that at the end of the first part, after the intermission, you will be able to see an excerpt from my “Mystery Dramas.” We have become convinced that eurythmy is particularly suitable for use on stage when the performance is not a conventional, naturalistic stage presentation, for which conventional stage performance is also appropriate here. But when what is portrayed is that which rises from the human soul into the sensual-supersensual, you will see how the weaving of thoughts in a human being, which loses itself as if in a dream, is represented by movements that form a kind of bond between those worlds that want to lead one somewhere enthusiastically and mystically and alienate one from the earth, and those who want to pull one down to the intellectual, the philistine, the more materialistic, the intellectualistic. This can only be represented in a stylization that is not possible with ordinary facial expressions, but which is possible with what can be expressed as eurythmy. That is the truly artistic side of eurythmy.

It then has two other sides. One is the medical-therapeutic side. Because the movements demonstrated here are drawn from healthy human nature, they can – not as they are seen here, but somewhat transformed, here everything should only be considered artistically – but somewhat transformed, these movements act as healing eurythmy. And such therapeutic eurythmy has been introduced in our therapeutic clinics here and in Stuttgart.

The third aspect is the pedagogical-didactic one. In the Waldorf school founded by Emil Molt in Stuttgart and directed by myself, this visible language of eurythmy has been established as a spiritual-soul gymnastics for all elementary school classes and higher grades. And it is evident that the children find their way into this eurythmy, this spiritual gymnastics, as if by themselves. Ordinary gymnastics is more focused on the physical body, while eurythmy allows the body to perform a spiritual-soul movement at the same time as every movement it performs as eurythmy. This visible language, this spiritual-soul gymnastics, is therefore an extraordinary aid to school education and teaching. Children take to it with the same naturalness with which they used to immerse themselves in spoken language as small children, as something that was completely natural.

All of this, ladies and gentlemen, testifies to the fact that eurythmy is also an important educational and teaching tool. By acting in particular on the initiative of the will, a healthy, spiritually strong child is educated and trained in this way. And many other things can also be brought out in the human soul.

Nevertheless, I would like to ask the esteemed audience for their forbearance today. We ourselves know best what is not yet perfect in this eurythmy; we know that it is only in its infancy. But on the other hand, we also say to ourselves: this eurythmy, even though it is still imperfect and only in its infancy, has unlimited possibilities for development. Human beings themselves are its instrument—not an external instrument assembled from some materials, but human beings themselves are the instrument.

And when Goethe says: When the human being is placed at the summit of nature, he in turn produces a summit within himself, sees himself as a whole nature, taking together measure, harmony, order, and meaning, and rises to the production of the work of art — then one must surely say: if man takes order, harmony, measure, and meaning from his own nature, making his own nature the instrument of art, then such art must be capable of infinite perfection. For man, as a small world, as a microcosm, contains all the secrets of the macrocosm. So that what is spread out in the world as the secrets of this world can truly be expressed in the moving forms that man can represent eurythmically.

And [when] Goethe says: Art is a manifestation, a secret revelation of secret laws of nature that could not come to light without it — then we can say in turn: The secret laws of nature that are spread throughout the universe can ultimately be made visible by bringing them out in artistic representation in this human organism, in which they are interwoven in a certain way. And so we can hope that, however imperfect eurythmy still is today, it will become more and more perfect, that it will one day be able to stand alongside the other arts as an equal art form.

Before the intermission, there will be a performance depicting the mental activity of a person striving in their soul for the highest spiritual revelations. After this, there will be an intermission, and in the second part, we will present something serious and, especially today, something humorous.