The Origin and Development of Eurythmy 1923–1925

GA 277d — 2 April 1923, Dornach

Eurythmy Performance

Address on Eurythmy, Dornach, April 2

Ladies and gentlemen!

What we are attempting here as eurythmy is derived from the organization of the human organism and from the relationship of the human being to the entire environment, just as human speech or human singing is. So that eurythmy can be called visible speech or visible singing. It is the same in human speech, when it emerges from the child's organism, that the child begins to utter inarticulate sounds, to babble, and then the organism gradually becomes more supple, so to speak, in order to transform the babbling of speech into articulate language, which can then serve not only for mutual human understanding and as a means of expression for human thought, but can also serve the revelation of the human soul that comes about through the art of poetry. But everything that language is—and in a similar sense, what I have to say about language also applies to singing—everything that human language is can also be transformed into movements of the individual limbs of the individual human being or into movements or mutual positions of entire groups of people. Then eurythmy arises, then visible speech arises.

When you see this visible speech on stage, it initially gives you the impression of a sign language – a sign language that expresses what lives in the soul as content in the form of movements, in the formations and shapes of the limbs. But if we want to understand eurythmy in the right way, we must take the following into account. The more lively, not temperamental person also accompanies their ordinary speech with some kind of gestures. But these gestures, which are repeated in the same way for the same sounds, for the same way of expressing something, for expressing a conviction or a doubt or the like, these gestures, which are repeated in the same way, remain, so to speak, throughout human life, alternating “gestural babbling” for the ordinary expression of the soul.

The art of eurythmy shapes this babbling of gestures in the same way that the human organism unconsciously shapes the babbling of speech into real language. So in eurythmy, one should not expect something that can be explained as slightly modified gestures, as they occur in ordinary life. That is not the case. Rather, eurythmy is drawn out of the whole organism in such a way that the entire human organism, from ordinary mimic or dance-like activity to eurythmy, undergoes the same inner formation and inner development as the speech organism from babbling to articulated speech.

We must be clear that, in reality, ordinary speech is also a kind of mimicry, a mimic, a gesture. Only the gestures do not come about, say, through the movements of the arms and hands or other limbs of the organism, but the gesture is formed from the flow of breath. And one can now distinguish precisely in the flow of breath that which comes from one side of the human organism, as it were, from the whole human being as an expression of will. This is formed by the larynx and the other speech organs and, in a sense, radiates into space as a formed gesture. And one can then distinguish precisely whether such an air gesture, brought about by the will, so to speak, pierces sharply into the surrounding air space, whether it widens, and so on. But into that which is, as it were, driven into the human environment by the will as an expression of the soul, there then flows that which comes from the other pole of the human organization, from the nerve pole, from the brain-sense pole, which comes from the side of thought.

When we speak, I would say that the “radiating” part of our air gesture is formed by the exercise of the will. It becomes that which then always arches vertically in the radial direction, in the direction of radiation, and which causes the air to vibrate and the spoken word to be heard through the mediation of the air vibrations, that which causes the undulation of the air – this is caused by the pole of thought. And so, flowing together in what comes about as an air gesture, we have something will-like and something thought-like. Now, the thought-like is always inartistic. The more the thought, which is subject to logic, occurs in any expression of the human soul, the more inartistic is that which is revealed through language. The poet therefore struggles to overcome prosaic thought. He shapes language in such a way that he either colors it in a certain way by treating individual sounds more strongly or more weakly, longer or shorter, or the like, or he overcomes thought with the help of imagery or music in the combination of sounds or whole words.

In fact, what the poet achieves linguistically, and what constitutes his actual art, is always first wrested from the thought. For the poet, the main thing is not to give prose content to his poem, but rather to know how to shape this prose content pictorially and musically through imaginative means, through tact, rhythm, melody, drama, rhyme, alliteration, and so on.

But this is already an inner eurythmy, a eurythmy that comes about in the following way, so to speak: in his artistic work, the poet is actually always engaged with his whole being, including in a physical sense. It is a prejudice that our soul and spirit are located in a specific place in our organism. That is not the case at all. In truth, our soul and spirit fill our entire physical body, right down to our fingertips, to the outermost peripheral parts of our organism. And the poet, who is with his whole being in his creation, in his artistic creation, must hold back that which pours into the whole organism as will. He must, in a sense, direct that which wants to radiate throughout the whole body and reveal itself in the movements of the limbs of the body to the other side. He directs it into that which then forms in his imagination into a speech gesture. But one can also take the opposite path. For example, in a poem, one can transfer back into bodily gestures what the poet himself has transferred into the speech gesture as inner movements of his organism; then something comes into being, namely what eurythmy is. And in this way, for every single sound, every sequence of sounds, every word and every combination of words, one can create an outwardly visible form of expression through the whole human organism in exactly the same way as one can create in language through the special shaping of the I would like to say “air body®” that moves through speech and through the vocal organs, just as one can create that which is then perceived as the spoken word. So there can certainly be this visible language and also visible singing, just as there can be audible language and audible singing.

You will see this visible singing on stage when what is performed musically is accompanied by corresponding movements that, just like the sound, visibly reproduce what is contained in the music in terms of the soul. You will see, as you watch the recitation or declamation accompanied by eurythmy, how every sound, every sequence of sounds, and so on, corresponds visibly to an external revelation, just as it corresponds audibly to a revelation through recitation or declamation. But recitation and declamation must be harmonized with eurythmy in the right way, [which is why] we must return to the style of recitation that was practiced in ages that were more artistic than our own.

In our time, recitation and declamation are sometimes performed by simply emphasizing the prose content of the poem with great zeal. Schiller always had an indefinite melody before he had the prose content of a poem, and only then, I would say, did he insert the words into the movement of this indefinite melody. One could even imagine that Schiller could have written two completely different poems with completely different prose content based on the same melodious theme that resounded in his soul.

Dr. Steiner has now spent years trying to reshape the art of recitation and declamation in such a way that it can only be performed in conjunction with eurythmy, namely by allowing the secret eurythmy already present in the poet's speech formation to find expression in declamation and recitation, by placing the main emphasis not on prosaic punctuation but on bringing out the imaginative and musical aspects of artistically formed language. In this way, it is possible to have truly harmonious artistic expressions – from the recitation table and from the stage – which interact like an orchestra. This is what creates the overall effect – through declamation, recitation, or also through the appropriate use of music and through what appears on stage as visible singing, visible speech.

It is necessary to distinguish eurythmy from the neighboring arts. If we consider dance, for example, it arises entirely from the volitional element of the human being; it transfers what is first experienced in the soul of the human being through the volitional element into movements of the human being in his limbs or in space. Dance flows outward. Mimic art, on the other hand, flows more inward. But between the two lies eurythmy, which is closely linked to the human organism itself.

Eurythmy can – let us say in certain expressions of poetry, when something particularly passionate is expressed, when, for example, the description of beating, scolding, raging and the like is expressed in poetry – eurythmy can then transition into something dance-like. On the other hand, when the linguistic element turns into mockery, into the inarticulate, then what is eurythmy can turn into mere mimicry. But the real eurythmic lies in between. And those who can feel this eurythmic element in the right way will see how, on the one hand, the eurythmic movements can transition into dance movements and, on the other hand, into mimicry, but also how, if this does not happen in the right place, the dance-like element in eurythmy becomes brutal and the mimicry becomes unchaste.

Once you have these feelings, you will also realize how eurythmy actually provides a special artistic expression through the most perfect instrument you can have — the human organism itself. And because eurythmy makes use of this most perfect instrument — for the human being is a microcosm, a small world, and also contains in its physical form all the secrets and all the laws of the great world, the macrocosm — because eurythmy makes use of this most perfect instrument, one may well say, as I do this time, [that] when eurythmy is performed, the audience's indulgence is requested; but we can nevertheless know today that eurythmy can continue to perfect itself further and further.

We have recently introduced the elements of light and color into eurythmy. I would like to say: what appears on stage in the movements of individuals and groups of people emanates from the human soul, from the human spirit. But the human soul is always connected with the elemental forces of the outside world. And what takes place on stage in the formation of human movements can be harmonized by continuing and developing harmoniously in what now floods the stage as color and light effects, which on the one hand are attuned to the clothing of the eurythmist, and on the other hand, in their sequence, give a musical element born out of sound, I would say. So that the lighting element of the stage can also be treated eurythmically.

The stage design of eurythmy is still imperfect today, but it will continue to improve. And then we will see that eurythmy will truly be able to stand alongside the older arts as a fully-fledged younger art form.