The Origin and Development of Eurythmy 1923–1925

GA 277d — 14 April 1923, Dornach

Eurythmy Performance

From April 15 to 22, 1923, on the initiative of Swiss teachers, an educational course took place (“Educational Practice from the Perspective of Spiritual Science Knowledge of Humanity,” GA 306), which also included three eurythmy performances. The performances on April 15 and 21 were advertised as “Eurythmy as Art,” while the performance on April 18 was advertised as “Eurythmy as an Educational Tool.” Approximately 80 Swiss and 30 foreign teachers took part, along with around 50 parents of students.

“Lebenszauber” (Magic of Life) by Edward Grieg
“Mitternacht” (Midnight) by Eduard Mörike
‘Berceuse’ op. I1 by Franz Neruda
“Geister am Mummelsee” (Ghosts at Mummelsee) by Eduard Mörike
“Davidsbündler Tänze” (Davidsbündler Dances) op. 6,11 by Robert Schumann
“Nixe Binsefuß” by Eduard Mörike
“Schmetterling” op. 33, No. 6 by Walter Niemann
“Zwei Liebchen” by Eduard Mörike
Adagio cantabile by Giuseppe Tartini
‘Möwen’ by C. F. Meyer
“Bei einer Sonate Beethovens” by Christian Morgenstern
“Davidsbündler Tänze” op. 6,2 by Robert Schumann
“Uf'm Bergli” by J. W. v. Goethe
“Das Vöglein” by Edward Grieg
“Offne Tafel” by J. W. v. Goethe
Czech folk song
Humoresques by Christian Morgenstern “Die Tapetenblume”; “Die Schuhe”
Musette in G major from the “3rd English Suite” by J. S. Bach “Ein modernes Märchen” by Christian Morgenstern

Ladies and gentlemen!

The art of eurythmy, which we will once again attempt to demonstrate to you, should be distinguished from pantomime or dance. Not that we have anything against the art of mime or dance. That is not the case. But eurythmy aims to be something quite different. In pantomime, one deals with gestures that suggest something; suggestive gestures are pantomimic, mimetic. In dance, one deals with exuberant gestures, gestures in which the soul loses itself. Eurythmy, although it also works through gestures, through the movements of the human organism, does not want to be suggestive gestures, nor does it want to be exuberant gestures, but rather strives for expressive gestures, namely gestures that are as expressive as the word itself, as everything that works through human language.

In language, we are ultimately dealing with a kind of gestural art, except that the gesture is performed by the outflowing stream of air. In this outflowing stream of air, which in its form—if one could see it, one would see—follows exactly what is contained in the word, in the sentence, in this outflowing stream of air one is dealing with a merging of the human will from the soul and thinking from the soul. The will is what, I would say, causes the air stream to flow out more radially. Thought is what causes the cross-section of the wave-like rhythm.

When we are dealing with the artistic design of language, we see the poet struggling to overcome, as far as possible, the thought that lies in language when it is prose. In rhetoric, in speech that strives to flow in beautiful language, the aim is already to shape the language itself; and the poet attempts to overcome the purely prosaic thought through the musical element inherent in language, or through the plastic-pictorial element inherent in language, and to express what is to be expressed in the shaping of language itself. Therefore, the task of a true art of recitation or declamation, which is not fully cultivated in our unartistic age, will be to reshape the word in a musical and plastic-pictorial way. For what, for example, is to be suggested in poetry as being moved by passion in the soul is expressed by a different rhythm in the sequence of words than what seeks to express grief or introspection of the soul and the like.

In prose language, it has become the case that the content of the soul's experience now lies in the content of the word itself. And in poetic language, one must reveal through the treatment of language what lies in the content of prose. It is therefore not declamation and recitation when one emphasizes the prose content of a poem, as is often done today, but recitation or declamation when one brings out the secret eurythmy that the poet has already put into the language.

But by becoming aware of how language has a musical and a plastic-pictorial quality, by becoming aware that not only dance movements but also certain expressive gestures based on the natural organization of the human body can be used to express music, one can develop a real, visible language. This real, visible language is only present in hints in temperamental people who feel that they cannot express everything they want to express through spoken language. Then they help themselves by making gestures. But these gestures—one might say they are babbling gestures. Just as a child learns to speak by starting with babbling and then moving on to articulate speech, so the gestures that you will see on stage, the eurythmic gestures, will relate to eurythmy in the same way that babbling relates to real speech.

Eurythmy came about through studying, through sensory-supersensory observation, how the air stream flows from the larynx and the other speech organs when speaking and singing. This form, which is appropriate to the soul experience, is then allowed to flow into visible human limbs—the most expressive human limbs are the arms and hands, but the rest of the body can also move eurythmically, although the other limbs are less characteristic of eurythmy, mainly the arms and hands— it is mainly the soul experiences, as in speaking or singing, that must flow into the shaped air. They must flow in such a way that the expressive forms of the arms and hands, of the other human limbs, are experienced.

Then one can experience – and this is how it should be understood in eurythmic art – that with certain content, either music is played or recited and declaimed, that one first hears sounds, hears aloud what the artist has created. But the same thing can be translated into visible song or visible speech with reference to what is already hidden within eurythmy, and that is eurythmy. This can then be seen in the moving individual human beings or in moving groups of people, in groups of people in relation to each other, who reveal the human soul from the stage through this moving language or moving song.

Eurythmy is therefore not an invention of random gestures that are added to a poem or a piece of music. Just as it is impossible for what is expressed in words to be embodied in any arbitrary way through sounds, so too does a specific sequence of sounds correspond to every content of the soul. It is not an arbitrary gesture that one could invent in the moment, but a very specific gesture that corresponds to a specific soul experience.

So if you have expressed something in a poem, there is a vocal sequence that the poet has used to express musically and pictorially what he wants to express in this particular vocal sequence, so of course, when you recite, you must treat this vocal sequence in the appropriate manner. You cannot express the poem in one way in sounds and in another way another time – the sounds are connected with harmonies between the human body and the soul life. Similarly, only unambiguous movements of the human organism are available for eurythmy. You will always see the same motif expressed with the same gestures; indeed, down to the sound, everything is expressed by the same, fixed gesture. Just as an “i” is something very specific in sound, so too is it something specific in gesture. Just as an “i” can be spoken brightly or dully, loudly or quietly, long or short, especially in poetic language, so too can the movements that are very specific in eurythmy be treated in different ways.

From this you can already see that in eurythmy, the most important thing is that the developed, trained gesture is treated in a truly artistic way. Every movement must then be treated artistically. And this is what makes it a truly independent art form, an art of spatial movement, alongside the other arts. Of course, this art is still in its infancy today. However, it has great potential for development because it makes use of what one might call the most perfect human instrument, the human organism itself.

The human organism contains all the secrets of the world and all the laws of the world within itself. It is a microcosm, a small world compared to the big world, the macrocosm. And in making use of this microcosm, eurythmy makes use of it in a more perfect way than, for example, the art of mime, which uses the body in a more imperfect way to suggest gestures that have to be guessed at, so to speak, and where intellectual understanding has to come into play. It also makes more perfect use of the organism than the art of dance, which overflows into movement in space. Eurythmy can also spill over into movement in space, but not in such a way that it flows out into movement, so to speak, but rather that it is held by the inner organization of the human organism itself. No movement should be performed in eurythmy that does not show through its own essence that there is something spiritual underlying it.

However, if eurythmy has to express something that is, I would say, similar to when we resort to all kinds of mimicry and physiognomy in ordinary speech, for example when we grin because we are expressing something by rising above something else, when we twist the corners of our mouths mockingly and the like, in other words, when we express physical feelings on one side through facial expressions, then eurythmy can also resort to facial expressions if the poet demands it. But if eurythmy itself resorts too strongly to facial expressions, then it becomes unchaste. Similarly, when eurythmy expresses, say, someone hitting someone else or someone running around the world passionately for my sake, it can degenerate into dance. But this overflow must still be grounded in eurythmy itself, otherwise eurythmy, when it becomes dance-like, appears brutal.

Eurythmy must avoid these two pitfalls of mimicry and dance-like movement, considering them only as its two boundaries, otherwise it degenerates into the unchaste or the brutal. From this you can see that eurythmy really must be perceived as an art in its own right. This can be seen particularly when eurythmy is performed to music. There is no dancing, but instead of dancing there is animated singing. Once you have acquired a feeling for the difference between this animated singing to orchestral music and dance, you will also have the right feeling for how eurythmy really stands between the art of mime and the art of dance.

Eurythmy makes use of the human organism in a more complete way than these two arts. And we can therefore hope that, because the human organism is the most perfect instrument, eurythmy will be able to perfect itself more and more. We emphasize this constantly. There is another aspect to this. Recently, we have been trying to bring the lighting and the timing of the lighting into harmony with the eurythmy in a certain way, so that this interaction on stage creates an ever more perfect picture. And we can hope that eurythmy will one day be able to stand alongside the other fully justified arts as a perfect, fully justified art in its own right.

It should also be mentioned that, unfortunately, Dr. Steiner is unable to perform the recitation for this eurythmy, which she usually always does. Miss Mitscher will replace her today. Hopefully, those who are here today will also be able to hear Dr. Steiner recite again next time.

So, in a few words, I would like to have indicated how eurythmy aims to be a special art form alongside the others, not something that has developed from this or that art form, but an art form that draws on hitherto unfamiliar artistic sources and makes use of an as yet unfamiliar artistic language of form.