The Origin and Development of Eurythmy 1923–1925

GA 277d — 27 February 1923, Stuttgart

Eurythmy Performance

The performances on February 27 and 28, 1923, in Stuttgart were intended exclusively for an anthroposophical audience and were therefore, exceptionally, not open to the public. For this reason, the character of Rudolf Steiner's address is also somewhat different, more presumptive, in that it goes into background information. No documents relating to the speech of February 28, 1923, have been preserved.

“Der Mond geht auf” (The Moon Rises) by Albert Steffen with music by Jan Stuten
Ghost choir from “Faust I,” Study Room, by J. W. v. Goethe
“Funeral March” by Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy
‘Geisterscharen’ by Albert Steffen
“Als wir auf der goldenen Insel” by Albert Steffen
Nocturne in E-flat major, Op. 9, by Frédéric Chopin
“Fahrt bei Nacht” by Albert Steffen
“Der Sänger” by J. W. v. Goethe
“Sehnsucht” (Longing) by Dschung Tsü with music by Jan Stuten
“Selige Leichtigkeit” (Blissful Lightness) by Christian Morgenstern
Allegro in E-flat major, Op. 7 by L. v. Beethoven
“Mein Kind” (My Child) by Heinrich Heine
“Das Vöglein” (The Little Bird) by Edward Grieg
“Deine Tänze” (Your Dances) by Albert Steffen
“Caprice” by Max Reger

Address to members at the eurythmy performance,

My dear friends!

It gives us particular satisfaction to be able to present a eurythmy performance here today exclusively to an anthroposophical community. The art of eurythmy was born directly from the same sources as other aspects of anthroposophy. We can therefore assume that the hearts and artistic understanding of anthroposophical members will be able to immediately grasp what is actually meant and intended artistically in eurythmy. I have often emphasized that eurythmy aims to be a truly visible language. Not a dance and not something mimetic, but a real, visible language.

This can be felt particularly when eurythmy appears as so-called tone eurythmy accompanied by music. Otherwise, dance is performed as a movement of the human organism accompanied by music. What appears here as tone eurythmy is not dance, it is singing, but singing in which the tone and the tone poems are expressed visibly through movement. And it is the same with speech eurythmy, the actual language eurythmy, in which the linguistic, which is otherwise conveyed to humans through hearing, is expressed through the face, that is, in the form of a visible language. Just as ordinary spoken language develops in early childhood through the development of unconscious or subconscious forces from the child's organism, so too does what is visible language in eurythmy develop from the whole human organism – albeit with full consciousness, but no less naively and immediately elementally.

To this end, however, it was necessary to study, in direct observation of the supersensible in the human organism, what underlies singing in the human organism and, on the other hand, what underlies speech. First of all, singing and speech are revealed through the larynx and its neighboring organs, i.e., a certain limb or system of limbs of the physical organism, being grasped by human beings. Through the special relationship of the human soul life to the outside world, through the perception of the outside world either through feelings — as in singing — or through imagination, as is the case with speech, this special physical manifestation, which is singing and speech, comes about as a reaction of the human organism. But those who are able to follow language with spiritual perception or follow singing with spiritual perception receive, I would say, an imagination as the background to every sung tone or every spoken sound. So for those who can develop a supersensible perception of language or singing, language and singing take place in the etheric element of the world. And if one then pursues the imaginations that one receives, so to speak, by seeing through language or the sound of singing, one then receives the imagination as a background. If one pursues what one has developed as supersensible perception, trying, as it were, to penetrate deeper into this sound or tone imagination, then one can, I would say, if one sits there somehow, perhaps looking somewhere—with the eyes of the soul, of course—focus one's attention somewhere and initially have these imaginations. You look through them, as it were, but you get nowhere. They prove to be transparent.

But then you can get the impulse—and you get it when you connect a real human feeling with these imaginations—to turn inwardly, spiritually, as it were. I am speaking of images, of course, but that is necessary when talking about these things. One gets the impulse to turn, not physically, of course, but then one falls into a state of calm, as it were, in one's supersensible perception of the imagination — one must stop, you cannot turn endlessly, you are stopped, and then you find that the imagination you have grasped from the language or the singing penetrates and comes to rest in the human etheric body of the singer or the speaker. And one comes to the conclusion that speaking or singing is essentially based on certain images being evoked in the etheric body of the human being, starting from the physical organization. These images are then repelled, and a certain current flows through the human organism, which has the direction through the heart towards the head, but is stopped in the larynx: speech and singing come about.

So that, with regard to the singer's or speaker's perception of what they are dealing with, the physical body is decisive, but the actual speaking and singing receives its original impulse from the etheric body. If we develop this kind of view further and set out to discover what the imagination of this or that sound, this or that sound pattern or tone or tone pattern is, then one can immediately gain the impression that the imagination, when originally aroused in the etheric body, does not originate in the physical body, but is aroused by the inner impulse of the etheric body, which takes the opposite path. It begins at the heart and does not go to the larynx, but to the whole human being.

And so, if one has previously studied singing and sound images, the corresponding imaginations, one can, by following these imaginations in the physical body — for when the etheric body evokes forces that go from the heart to the body, it brings about physical movements of the whole human being, while speaking and singing go upward and bring about the movements of the larynx, [which] go into the air — in this way, one can reverse the whole process of speaking and singing in the human being; one can give the human being guidance through the impulse he gives to his will, not merely to his feelings and thinking when speaking and singing, or through support of the will, insofar as he wants to go upward.

By letting people move their arms and hands, one can immediately reproduce in them the imaginations in the etheric body that correspond to speech or singing. This gives rise to eurythmy – as speech or singing directed inward and then expressed through the whole human being. So one could say that singing and spoken language are what become eurythmy after the corresponding imaginations, which are always present when speaking or singing, have been aroused and take their path [from the heart to the head] and are taken up by the larynx. Eurythmy is the language or singing in which the imagination of the etheric body flows from the heart to the human limbs, the organs of movement, actually wanting to go out into the outside world, wanting to pour out through the fingertips, through the tips of the toes, but is held back by the human being, so that the corresponding movements arise. That is eurythmy: language brought forth from the etheric body of the human being, which is simply taken in the other direction.

Both languages, the sounding and the visible, originate from the heart, only once the path is taken to the head, the other time to the whole human being. [What the poet can actually develop in order to elevate the abstract and prosaic to a poetic work of art can only be found in what underlies the prosaic content of his poetry as meter, rhythm, music, as sound formation, as the imaginative, which the reciter or declaimer can only bring to life by treating language and poetry, by adhering to the how of speaking, which in the reciter, in the real singer, also lies in a flow – which, in a sense, proceeds colorfully through the voice from sound to sound, from sentence to sentence, while what is immediately revealed is the filling in of the actual words and sounds – what remains in the background with the reciter and singer can be expressed in direct viewing in eurythmy.] That is why it results in a true work of art when either moving song and music or moving speech and recitation and declamation interact orchestrally.

However, we live in an unartistic age. Often, the greatest importance is attached to reciting in such a way that the prose content of the poetry is emphasized. This is considered particularly excellent. But it must be remembered that Goethe himself rehearsed his iambic dramas with his actors, baton in hand, placing more emphasis on the way the verse, the beat, and the rhythm actually treated the imaginative in the sound coloring than on emphasizing the prose content of the words. In order to be able to recite and declaim in eurythmy, one must return to this art as it existed in a more artistic age. That is why Dr. Steiner had to spend years training the art of recitation and declamation, which can only be achieved in this special orchestra that is created when the person moving on stage visibly sings the music and recitation and declamation work together – a special art of recitation and declamation must be developed. And we have endeavored, namely Dr. Steiner has endeavored, to develop this over the years, so that the revival of the artistic in recitation and declamation can be found again in eurythmy.

And what we now see visibly in the people and groups of people on stage gives something that forms the actual spiritual background of a truly artistic poem. For the poet struggles with this — the true poet — to overcome an element that he must have in his poem — the intellectual — through the treatment of language, so that what the poet says is not merely to be understood, but should resound artistically. The poet struggles to overcome the abstract nature of either conventional or [knowledge-seeking] thought, because thoughts are inartistic. Will and mind are artistic. By allowing the language that comes from the heart through the whole person, through the will of the person, to reveal itself in eurythmy, one arrives at what moves the poet in his deepest inner being.

And it is fair to say that in the truly artistic poet, in the inner movement of his soul pulsating through his body, in this setback, there is always — the real poet is, after all, completely vibrant inwardly at the moment when poetry truly arises in him; in this vibration lives what poetic art is; the poet holds it back, he lets it recede, so to speak, he holds it within himself, because he must transform it so that the poem can be heard by the world, so that it can be absorbed by the thought that communicates itself in spoken language. The poet must hold back in his organism that which actually moves him. He must transform it into audible language. This led a poet such as Schiller to say: “When the soul speaks, alas, the soul no longer speaks.”

The opposite could be said of eurythmy. When a person moves while speaking or singing, the soul that weaves through and lives through the body and becomes conscious in it is immediately revealed to that person's own self. Therefore, if one truly feels eurythmy in what is happening on stage, one can get a sense of what went on in the poet's quiet room in his own organism when the poem was born in him. And if one understands eurythmy correctly, one is led directly, through a soul-spiritual connection — I do not want to use the prosaic word “telephone connection through the eurythmizing person” — one is led through a spiritual-soul connection to a direct experience of the creative poet. For the creative poet creates from the whole human being. Eurythmic art, in turn, reveals itself from the whole human being. In this way, it connects us more closely to poetry than mere language can.

But what connects us most to the poet is when we feel his two inner struggles side by side: on the one hand, we see through eurythmy what he has experienced, what he has fought for as the mystery eurythmy hidden within him, which lives in him, how he has poured this into the sounds of language. And when we then let the secret eurythmy [in the recitation] sound in our ears and let what is happening on stage flow into our ears [eyes?], then we basically have the whole inner life of the creative poet, because eurythmy uses the most perfect tool that art can have, the human organism itself. Because this is the case, we can hope that, however imperfect eurythmy still is today — it is only a beginning, and we must ask for the indulgence of those who see it for the first time — but we can hope that eurythmic art, precisely when people return more and more to their natural, uninhibited artistic sensibility, when they no longer speculate and constantly ask: what does this or that mean, but when they follow with their eyes the expressive movements of the eurythmists, will convey the impression of the inner experience of the artistic.

For human beings are microcosms. They contain all the secrets of the world within themselves. When they reveal these secrets through their organism, it is an artistic revelation of the most essential secrets of the world. Artistically, the macrocosm is revealed most fully when the microcosm of the human being is made an instrument of art. Therefore, we can hope that because this is the most perfect tool for the physical world, in which art alone has its meaning, because this is used, eurythmy has immeasurable possibilities for development and that it will one day stand alongside other fully-fledged arts as a fully-fledged art in its own right.