The Origin and Development of Eurythmy 1923–1925

GA 277d — 25 March 1923, Stuttgart

Eurythmy Performance

From March 25-29, 1923, an educational conference was held in Stuttgart, featuring artistic eurythmy performances by the Goetheanum Stage on March 25 and 27, a eurythmy performance by the Stuttgart Eurythmy School on March 26, and eurythmy performances by Waldorf school students on March 27 and 28.

Nocturne in E-flat major, Op. 9, No. 2, by Frédéric Chopin
“Christmas” by Albert Steffen
“Die Seele fremd” (The Alien Soul) by Albert Steffen
“Die Geisterscharen” (The Ghosts) by Albert Steffen
Etude in A flat major, Op. 25,1 by Frédéric Chopin
“Als wir auf der goldenen Insel” (When We Were on the Golden Island) by Albert Steffen
Allegro in E flat major, Op. 7 by L. v. Beethoven
“Traumverwandlung” by Josef Kitir
‘Proteus’ by Friedrich Hebbel
“Der Sänger” by J. W. v. Goethe
“Sehnsucht” by Dschung Tsü with music by Jan Stuten
“Mein Kind” by Heinrich Heine
“Slavonic Dance” by Antonin Dvořák
Humoresques by Christian Morgenstern: “Der Rock”; “Die steinerne Familie”; “Korf's Witze”; “Die weggeworfene Flinte”
“Little Bird” by Edvard Grieg
“Toilet Arts” by Christian Morgenstern
Minuet from Sonata Op. 78 by Franz Schubert

Ticket to the performance in Stuttgart, March 25, 1923

Address on Eurythmy, Stuttgart, March 25, 1923

Ladies and gentlemen!

I am not offering these words in order to explain the eurythmic performance as such, for art, and eurythmy in particular, must speak for itself in the immediate perception of the immediate sensation, without explanation. Explaining art is something inartistic. So it is not to explain that I am saying these words beforehand, but because eurythmy attempts something that speaks in artistic norms that are still unfamiliar and draws on artistic sources that are equally unfamiliar. Let me say a few words about these norms, about their origin and form, and about these artistic sources.

On stage, you will see moving people, moving groups of people, groups in relation to each other, and so on. What this creates can very easily be mistaken for something mimetic, pantomimic, or dance-like. Of course, there is nothing wrong with these related arts. They have their own value. But eurythmy should not be confused with these related arts. For it wants to be something completely different; it wants to speak in a completely different artistic language than these related arts.

Eurythmy is a truly visible language or even a truly visible song. It must be clear that the movement of the individual human limb, which is gestural, is not somehow arbitrarily added to a poem or musical content out of feeling, but that everything you see here in terms of human movements arises from the content of spiritual life with such inner necessity as language itself. And just as one cannot produce any arbitrary sound in order to express something of the soul, so one cannot form any arbitrary gesture in order to express something of the soul eurythmically. Eurythmy has arisen, albeit in a conscious way, from the human organism in exactly the same way as human speech and human singing arise from a part of this human organism, from the larynx and its neighboring organs. And the development of eurythmy is based on an intimate, sensory-supersensory knowledge of the possibilities of movement and expression of the human organism. We know that language originates from a kind of babbling, from more or less unformed sounds and sound formations. In everyday life, we always carry with us, I would say, a kind of “gestural babbling.” People who are reasonably animated, who are not fish-like in their feelings and emotions, but who have lively blood, always feel compelled to accompany what they say, what they express, with some kind of gesture. But these gestures, which then also become mimicry in a certain artistic transformation, are to what is striven for in eurythmy as a truly visible language or visible singing in the same relationship as the babbling of a child is to developed speech.

If we recognize the essence of language itself, we see that it is, in a certain sense, something gestural. However, the gesture does not come about by moving any part of our body, but rather by shaping the flow of breath through the larynx and the organs associated with it. And in this stream of breath, which is also a gesture, I would say an air gesture, two types of impulses flow together when we speak and sing: one type of impulse that rises up from the entire human organism and is actually an expression of will. If human speech were merely this expression of will, we would not perceive speech as speech, we would merely perceive speech as currents sent into the air, straight currents, bent currents, and so on. We would perceive real air gestures if only the volitional aspect of these speech gestures, these air gestures, came to the fore.

But the intellectual element flows into language from another pole of human organization. The air stream, the stream of gestures in the air, is constantly, I would say, “intersected” by the type of musculature that is innervated (?) by the other pole, the intellectual pole of the human being. And as thought flows into the air gesture, what would otherwise be merely an air gesture sent into space ripples in the cross-section. And because this air gesture forms in waves, it becomes the mediator of the sound that can then be heard. So that in what we speak, we have a gesture of will modified by thought and performed in the air. Thought and will truly flow together in what our speech and singing apparatus can form.

If the poet now wants to wrest the artistic element of his poetry from language, he does so by emancipating himself as far as possible from the intellectual element. For the intellectual element is actually always unartistic: thoughts are there to convey knowledge, they are there for the conventional understanding of human beings. Thoughts always bring the non-artistic element into what is said. Only when one moves from the differentiated thoughts found in language to a certain synthesis of thoughts, to a summarization and shaping of thoughts — whether by making this summarizing vivid, by shaping the sound in a vivid way, so to speak, by letting the preceding sound vividly fade into the following one, by letting the sounds crowd together and the like, or by bringing the musical element into language, meter, rhythm, melodic theme. In rhyme, it is the case that the poet, through this summarizing of the thought element in language, wrests from this language, I would say, something that leans more toward the will. With the genuine poet — and there is really hardly one percent of genuine poets among those who really write poetry today — one can sense how the genuine poet struggles to drive the intellectual element out of language and bring in the musical, plastic, painterly element, thereby turning what is now poetic-artistic language into a kind of restrained eurythmy.

Thus, in poetry we already see how, I would say, the linguistic element is taken down from the head and brought closer to the whole human being. In eurythmy, this linguistic element is now taken back into the whole human being. And the same is true of the vocal element. In eurythmy, everything that is inarticulate, contained within the human being's [gap in the text] human gesture, everything that the poet needs in order to have, I would say, some content for what is actually artistic, for the formed language, is eliminated. All of this is, so to speak, discarded, and only the manner in which the poet treats language is transferred into gesture. That which is the continuous flow is taken out of the air gesture, into which the thought element sends the cross-sections, so that the continuous flow is less prominent, but instead the volitional element, which then passes through the air vibrations into sound, into noise.

Thus, that which is the element of will in language is brought out through sensual-supersensual vision. And then the whole becomes appropriate, depending on the sounds that are also expressed in the flowing element and according to the sound compositions, everything that is otherwise only an air gesture is transferred into the real gesture, which is then performed by the whole human being through his limbs, performed in space, whereby it is also possible that the relationships between the individual elements of the words, let us say of a poem, can be revealed eurythmically through the positions and relationships of the individual people in a group of people, which can then also be used to express the corresponding meaning eurythmically.

So one can say: by extracting the dance-like element from language, one arrives at what is truly visible language, which is then particularly suited to expressing what the poet has put into his poetry. And so you will see that, on the one hand, what appears to you as visible song is accompanied by music, and on the other hand, what appears to you as visible language on stage is accompanied by declamation and recitation. The art of declamation and recitation must be trained in eurythmy, in order to serve eurythmy, in the way that Dr. Steiner has been training it for years. So that what emerges is not, as is popular today in an unartistic age, the prosaic emphasis of the content of a poem, but rather that the musical or pictorial element of speech formation comes to the fore, preferably in recitation and declamation. In the prosaic, emphatic manner, one could not accompany eurythmy recitatively or declamatorily.

Thus, what must accompany eurythmy in the form of the art of recitation or declamation is unfamiliar to many today, just as eurythmy itself is still unfamiliar to many today. And in particular, one will gradually realize that in the special way in which recitation and declamation are given here, what appears is what poetic art must, in a sense, pay tribute to the more imaginative element, but to this tribute is added—through the manner of declamation in rhythm, beat, melodious theme, and the pictorial shaping of sound — whereby this tribute is accompanied by eurythmy in the manner of handling language. This eurythmy, which is invisible, which one must experience through the special manner of recitation, can then be seen physically on stage when the eurythmic art is actually performed. Thus, one must say that, for example, in the accompaniment of music, eurythmy does not become a dance, but rather a visible singing. One must gradually become accustomed to this special way of viewing eurythmic movements. One will then find that, on the one hand, eurythmy can indeed transition into dance-like movements. I would like to say that in certain movements, the purely eurythmic, which the human being receives within his organism in full deliberation, is joined by the dance-like. But it must join in a discreet, I would say “dntim” way, so that at most, on the one hand, the eurythmic flows into dance.

This will be particularly the case when something particularly passionate occurs in the course of the poem, because in dance there is not the same self-restraint that is present in eurythmy; rather, in dance, I would say that human consciousness flows into something unconscious. What could be characterized as the soul having power over the body in every single movement, in every single vibration in eurythmy, in dance the soul continually flows into the body's letting itself go. In eurythmy, this should only occur in those places where, for example, what should be revealed turns into ranting, quarreling, or similar expressions of human anger, one might also say. That is one pole where eurythmy should not go, because if eurythmy as eurythmy strikes too strongly into dance—dance has its own justification, it is something else—but if eurythmy strikes too strongly into dance, it becomes brutal as eurythmy.

And the other danger is on the other side, when eurythmy has to express something that is, I would say, a smirk, a smile, a disregard for something in the course of speech: then eurythmy can swing over to the other pole, into mimicry. But as much as the art of mimicry is justified in itself, eurythmy, if it is too strong — where there is no particular reason for smirking, smiling, and so on — if it swings too strongly toward mimicry, then it becomes, I would say it is like when a person constantly grins while speaking, or when, instead of saying something that expresses antipathy, they stick out their tongue. There is something about the transition from the linguistic to the mischievous element of human life when eurythmy swings over into mimicry.

These things must be felt, then one will understand that what may be extremely justified in facial expressions is unjustified in the art of eurythmy. It must also be clear that it is not a matter of interpretation or explanation, but rather of being able to truly feel the sequence of recitative gestures in direct observation and to surrender to the feeling, just as one might surrender to a painting or a musical theme or the like. Thus, eurythmy wants to stand alongside the other arts, drawing on these particular artistic sources that I have characterized.

Of course, wherever eurythmy is performed today, we must ask the esteemed audience for their forgiveness and forbearance, because we are really at the beginning with the art of eurythmy, and the eurythmic stage design – if I may express it that way – will be quite different in the future. We have also recently begun to design the lighting in such a way that, on the one hand, it matches the costumes of the eurythmic performers and, on the other hand, in its sequence itself — not in harmony with the literal content or [the musical motif] – but in its sequence itself, so that it forms an ensemble with what else appears vividly in the stage picture. So that one can say: the stage design is expanded by the movements in the light. It is precisely through such things that the artistic legitimacy of eurythmy becomes apparent. It shows how human beings can grow together with the flowing elemental forces of nature through eurythmy, how the flowing colors become one in a natural way with what flows out of human beings as movement.

So perhaps, even though we must ask for indulgence today because eurythmy is still in its infancy, we can nevertheless say – if we look at all the unlimited possibilities for development that lie within eurythmy – that eurythmy will become more and more perfect. It truly makes use of the most perfect instrument, and in turn it makes use of the most perfect instrument in a perfect way. Human beings contain within themselves all the secrets and laws of the universe. Therefore, when all the movements and expressive possibilities are drawn out of the human organism, a microcosm truly emerges in human beings, artistically speaking, in contrast to the macrocosm, to the greater world. And even if the art of mime and the art of dance also use the human being as a tool, it must be said that these arts only use the human being partially, only partially as their instrument. Eurythmy truly makes use of the whole human being, body, soul, and spirit, which resonate together in eurythmy, making use of the whole human being as its tool, and therefore we can hope that, because of this perfection of the eurythmic instrument and because of the perfect way in which this instrument is used, eurythmy will gradually, albeit slowly, mature as an art form that will be able to stand alongside the older, fully-fledged art forms as a fully-fledged younger art form.