The Origin and Development of Eurythmy 1923–1925

GA 277d — 7 January 1923, Dornach

Eurythmy Performance

Scene of the gray women from “Faust II,” Act 5 (midnight), with music by Jan Stuten
Chorus of spirits from “Faust I,” study, by J. W. v. Goethe
“Funeral March” by Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy
“Zum neuen Jahr” by Vladimir Solovyov
‘Träumerei’ by Max Reger
“Fairie's song: You spotted snakes” from “A Midsummer Night's Dream” by William Shakespeare
“Elfentanz” by Edward Grieg
“Epiphany” by Jose Maria de Hérédia
“Repos en Egypte” by Albert Samain
Allegro in E flat major, Op. 7 by L. van Beethoven
Humoresques by Christian Morgenstern: “Notturno in White”; ‘Rehearsal’; “The Priestess”; “The Two Bottles”; “The Finger”

Ladies and gentlemen!

Allow me to say a few words before our eurythmy performance, not to explain eurythmy – art must speak for itself – but because this art draws on previously unknown sources. It is based on a real, visible language. To use a Goethean expression, through sensory-supersensory observation, one can discover how language and song come into being in human beings. Thus, if one studies the speech organs, the larynx and its neighboring organs, which [in a certain sense are also singing organs], one finds that the special arrangement of these organs brings about—in the sung tone, with the spoken sound—the volitional in the human being and the thoughtful in the human being; the thinking aspect of the human being through the organization of the larynx, but the volitional aspect through the whole human being.

Now, in ordinary speech and singing, [that] the inner gesture that humans always have within them unconsciously when they speak or sing is suppressed, so to speak, and that the entire human posture when speaking or singing causes a kind of shutdown of the entire rest of the organism—except for the part that is concentrated in the speech or singing organs. However, the rest of the organism is actually always present when we speak or sing. And those who have acquired a certain finer sensitivity to this know that when they are not only speaking but also just listening, they actually always want to perform certain movements internally, movements that can be just as much an expression of the soul and spirit as spoken language and singing. These movements are actually always suppressed in everyday life – especially the most important ones.

Those who speak more animatedly accompany their speech with all kinds of gestures. But these gestures, which are used in everyday life, are to our trained eurythmy what a child's babbling is to real speech. For just as speech itself is drawn out of the whole organization of the human being, just as the rest of the organism is switched off and the speech organs are switched on, so too can the speech organs be switched off and what is otherwise suppressed—the trained gesture—can be evoked in the movement of the human organism.

And then, instead of spoken language or sung tones, visible language emerges, visible singing, which you will see here on stage. There is not a single arbitrary movement in it. There is just as little arbitrary movement in eurythmy as there could be in someone arbitrarily saying, for example, an o or an i instead of an a in a word. You have to say “roof” and not “you” or ‘but’ if you mean “roof.” So the sound is in its right or wrong place. In this way, each individual gesture stands for a sound, for a phrase in the visible language of eurythmy.

It goes without saying that what is achieved in this way through a trained sign language can be elevated internally to art, just as human sound or human tone can be elevated in poetic treatment or in song. You will therefore find that what you encounter on stage through the movements performed either by individuals or by groups of people is accompanied by declamation and recitation on the one hand, or by musical elements on the other.

What is played on instruments can be accompanied by ordinary singing. But one can also sing visibly. So on the one hand you hear the musical instrument, and on the other you see movements performed on stage by individuals or groups of people, which are a visible song, not a dance, but a real visible song. You also hear recitation or declamation accompanying what is being performed on stage. What is performed on our stage is the same content that is recited or declaimed in the visible language of eurythmy.

It must be understandable that the organs of the human being that are most intensively connected with the life of the soul, the arms and hands, are used most in eurythmy. For there are no other organs of the human being as expressive as the arms and hands. But the other limbs also come into play. And the movements or formations of groups of people also come into play.

You will see that eurythmy must be worked through completely, not only because we will show individual people on stage, but also because we will show people in a specific color and light image. You will see this, for example, in the lighting effects, which must correspond to the color effects of the performers' costumes, which in a sense visibly reflect what is heard through the sequence of lighting, through the coordination of the individual lights at the same time, and so on.

It must also be understood that recitation and declamation in eurythmy must be somewhat different from what is usually done in this day and age. In a certain sense, our time loves the extremely unartistic, and today it is no longer understandable why, for example, Goethe himself rehearsed his iambs with his actors with a baton in his hand like a conductor, paying much more attention to the treatment of language than to the emphasis of the content. Goethe was an artist through and through, whereas today, in an unartistic age, the art of recitation and declamation is usually seen in the expression of the prose content of a poem. In fact, unartistic sensibilities go so far as to consider the recitation and declamation of a poem to be all the more beautiful the less artistic and prosaic it is.

We must move away from this again. And this kind of recitation could not be performed in eurythmy at all. [Eurythmy] could only be accompanied by [recitation] in the right way if it were taken into account that there is already an unconscious seed of eurythmy in every linguistic accompaniment, because the whole human being is always present. When he expresses himself, he suppresses the movements that want to come out of him. It is the element of will that is in language.

The element of thought is always unartistic. Just because language is also used for cognitive thoughts or for ordinary thoughts that serve conventional communication, this unartistic element of thinking must be mixed into language. In eurythmy, one is able to completely eradicate this unartistic element of thinking and to reveal the pure artistic element, the element of will, in the movement of the individual or groups of people. It is also quite natural that when a person expresses themselves through the visible language of eurythmy, for example, they cannot speak or sing at the same time. Speaking or singing requires—because the whole activity of the person is directed toward one group of organs, because the other movements are more or less eliminated, because the organism is treated in this way by the inner will of the person—unconsciousness. In these movements, which you will see here in a moment, which are unfolding here on stage, it is different.

That is why it seems unattractive when someone performs eurythmy and recites or sings at the same time. Therefore, as you will see, we have arranged it so that only eurythmy is performed on stage. When singing or recitation occurs, it is performed by another person on the side. Nevertheless, the whole thing works together as a work of art. It is similar to what happens in music with an orchestra: here we are dealing with a kind of orchestra: on the one hand, the musical or recitative, declamatory elements, and on the other hand, the movement art of eurythmy, the visible language. This harmony, this orchestral shaping of an entire work of art, is particularly important in eurythmy.

It is quite understandable that many people today still find eurythmy unfamiliar. Some make completely unartistic judgments.