The Origin and Development of Eurythmy 1923–1925

GA 277d — 4 February 1923, Dornach

Eurythmy Performance

“The Goetheanum in its Ten Years IV” (from: “Das Goetheanum,” February 4, 1923)

Draft announcement and newspaper advertisement for the performance

“Rêve” by Victor Hugo with music by Jan Stuten
“Christmas” by Vladimir Solovyov
Sarabande in B flat major by G. F. Handel
“The Nile Delta” by Vladimir Solovyov
“Prélude op. 28,15 (Raindrops)” by Frédéric Chopin
“Auf leichten Füßen” (On Light Feet) by Christian Morgenstern
Nocturne in E flat major, op. 9 by Frédéric Chopin
“Das Verhängnis” (The Doom) by Fercher von Steinwand
“Der Gnade Wesen” (The Nature of Grace) from “The Merchant of Venice” by William Shakespeare
“Feuerrotes Fohlen” (Fire-Red Foal) by Albert Steffen
“Waldszenen, Eintritt” (Forest Scenes, Entrance), Op. 82 by Robert Schumann
“Die Libelle” (The Dragonfly) by J. W. v. Goethe
“Sehnsucht” by Dschung Tsü with music by Jan Stuten
“Deine Tänze” by Albert Steffen
“Caprice” by Max Reger

Ladies and gentlemen!

Allow me to introduce today's performance with a few words. What we refer to as eurythmy should not be confused with related arts such as mime, dance, or the like. Without, of course, objecting to these arts in any way, it must nevertheless be emphasized that eurythmy is [something] fundamentally different.

Eurythmy is intended to be human speech brought before the eye. In order to develop this language—and what you will see in the performance is by no means a series of arbitrary gestures, but rather a trained, visible language—one must first become acquainted with the whole spirit of the speech organism. When we as human beings speak or sing, the whole human being is actually involved in an inner soul movement; and that which lives in the whole human being comes to expression in the isolated, separate organs of the larynx and what belongs to it.

The fact is that with every sound, with every tone, the human being gives of himself, and that this is based on intentions of movement which are actually held back by being converted by the larynx and its neighboring organs into movements of air, which then convey the tone or sound to the ear. So that one must first seek out what lies deeper within the human being if one wants to penetrate the full secrets of speaking and singing. What lies deeper within the human being is expressed in eurythmy through the movement of the individual limbs of the individual human being—namely, the most expressive limbs, the arms and hands—or also through the movements of groups of people.

You will see, dear audience, that not only such eurythmic things — namely eurythmic forms — are expressed in parallel with recitation or declamation, but also in parallel with music. We are now accustomed to understanding that which parallels music in the art of human movement as dance. Here, however, it is not meant as dance, but as visible singing, so that the whole human being appears before us in motion, while at the same time the musical motifs are heard, so that the whole human being sings in his movements — not dances, but sings — in a visible way to the music, just as he otherwise sings in an audible way through [the] larynx and so on.

This can then be directly applied to the eurythmic accompaniment of the vocal, linguistic element, i.e., the poetic, which basically already consists of a kind of inner eurythmy, a kind of invisible eurythmy. For the real poet, it is not simply a matter of communicating some inner content in a language of arbitrary design. Rather, it is important that poetic language formation be sought out of the possibilities of language itself, so that what is actually poetic in a poem is that which proceeds in the manner of music or in the manner of the imaginative.

The imaginative shaping of sound, the imaginative shaping of entire sentences, or even meter, rhythm, the melodious element: that is what is truly artistic. And it lives much more in the sense of poetic art, let's say, to express something that is to be expressed as passion in a poem through a fast rhythm than through the prosaic content of the words. Or let's say, not expressing superiority by describing it prosaically, but expressing it by letting things unfold in a slow rhythm of language.

Those who have an imaginative way of seeing things instinctively translate correct declamation and recitation into images anyway. For the true poet has this inner spiritual movement of the whole human being in mind when he composes his poetry. He does not have the prosaic content of the poem in mind. Therefore, the recitation that accompanies eurythmy must be completely different from the way recitation and declamation are often performed today in an unartistic age – in which we live. It is therefore very difficult to get used to the way recitation is done here in eurythmy, because it is a matter of reciting or declaiming according to the speech formation, not according to the prosodic accent.

Otherwise, it would not be possible to accompany the way in which the whole person approaches you here on stage in their movements with recitation. For this recitation and declamation to eurythmy consists in the fact that, certainly, the individual gesture expresses something, but that what matters above all is the sequence of gestures, what I would call the angular, the round, the angular-round, and so on, of the gesture. It is not important that one performs this gesture here, but that one allows it to work as a whole. For art should not be interpreted intellectually – that kills it – but should work in the immediate sensory impression. And that is precisely what eurythmy can do.

In eurythmy, it is also important to be clear that we are not dealing with arbitrary gestures of the moment, just as in the language of sound, in spoken language, we are not dealing with arbitrary sounds that we utter to express the content of our soul, but with something that emerges from the human organism. Just as humans instinctively and unconsciously move their vocal cords and other speech organs in a way that cannot be seen because it is transformed into sound, so too, according to the same inner laws of the organism, after having learned the whole essence of speaking and singing through supersensible perception, one brings the whole human being, so to speak, into those movements that truly express the same thing that spoken language or singing otherwise expresses. What people otherwise add to their verbal expression in the form of facial expressions is to eurythmy what a child's babbling is to the developed language of human beings. In eurythmy, one should not imagine that one can make this or that movement on the spur of the moment. One can do this just as little as one can express oneself linguistically on the spur of the moment if one has not learned the language. For every detail and the whole of eurythmy is drawn out of the whole of the human organism. Therefore, just as a person must adhere to the laws of language when they want to express the content of a civilized language – they do this instinctively – so too must those who perform eurythmy on stage they must adhere to very specific movements, which they do not perceive as being constrained by a movement pattern, but rather as individual movements that must be shaped in a very specific way. [Just] as when one speaks aloud, an “a” must be an “a” and cannot even be pronounced as an “ä” or an ‘ü’ instead of an “a.” So eurythmy is a truly visible language. It is based on the same inner laws of the human organism as spoken language itself, except that spoken language is acquired instinctively by humans. But eurythmy is acquired by humans just as naturally, albeit in a conscious way. If one therefore thinks that what is presented here as movements of individual humans or groups of humans is based on some kind of arbitrariness, then one has not yet arrived at an understanding of what eurythmy actually aims to achieve. The whole human being can reveal itself in its soul content in many different ways, and one of these revelations is precisely the language of eurythmy.

Now we know – and I must emphasize this today, as I always do at the beginning of such presentations – we know that we must ask our esteemed audience for their indulgence, because eurythmic art is only in its infancy today and still needs a great deal of refinement. But at the same time, anyone who has brought out piece by piece from the inner laws of human nature for this eurythmic art knows that it truly has immeasurable potential for perfection, which must come one day. Such a thing can only be worked out piece by piece.

Recently, for example, we have added a kind of eurythmic lighting art to the movement of people that can be seen on stage. So that the stage design not only has moving people and moving groups of people, but also, in harmony with this, a sequence of lighting effects, a kind of eurythmy through lighting. And you may notice something right away. Whereas in a conventional stage design, when something dramatic or mimetic is being portrayed on stage, the lighting is chosen in such a way that it is, so to speak, pointedly adapted to the situation at that moment – let's say, if a scene is being played out in the morning, morning lighting and the like is used – here, the lighting is not naturalistic, but rather the lighting sequences must be coordinated like the notes in a musical melody. It depends on the sequence of lighting effects. And this sequence of lighting effects must in turn be coordinated with what we see as movements.

This makes one aware that in eurythmic language, one avoids what must otherwise be present in poetry: the intellectual. Thought, in its dryness and abstractness, kills what is truly artistic, especially in civilized languages. In our language, an element of will and an element of thought flow together. The element of will is expressed primarily in eurythmic art. And again, it must be said that while in the art of dance, which also shows people in motion, people essentially lose themselves in the movements, in eurythmic movement people retain their full consciousness. There is also nothing dreamlike in eurythmic movement. But then again, there is nothing that could be interpreted in any abstract way; rather, one must feel the roundness or angularity, all the other peculiarities that can be expressed through the means of human movement.

In all this, however, eurythmy is only a beginning today. However, anyone who considers what instrument eurythmy actually needs must recognize its immeasurable potential for development: it needs the human being itself, not external instruments. And it does not need the human being in the imperfection in which the art of mime uses it as a moving human being, but uses it in such a way that every movement is drawn from the depths of the organic human being. Since the human being is truly a small world, a microcosm, containing all the laws and secrets of the universe, they must also reveal themselves as an instrument that can truly reveal the secrets of the world through the secrets of the human soul. In the eurythmically moving human being, one already has something like the language of the cosmos, but one that works through the human soul in the movement of the human limbs. Therefore, because eurythmy strives to develop the human being itself more and more as an artistic element in living movement, we can believe that it will one day be able to reveal itself to the world as an art form just as legitimate as its older sister arts have been for a long time.