The Origin and Development of Eurythmy 1923–1925

GA 277d — 15 April 1923, Dornach

Eurythmy Performance

Nocturne in E-flat major, Op. 9, by Frédéric Chopin
“Christmas” by Albert Steffen
“The Soul, Alien” by Albert Steffen
“The Ghosts” by Albert Steffen
Etude in A-flat major, Op. 25,1 by Frédéric Chopin
“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”; “Korf in Berlin”; “Die Feuerprobe”
Minuet from Sonata Op. 78 by Franz Schubert

Ladies and gentlemen!

Eurythmy, which we would like to demonstrate to you again today, will initiate an artistic movement that draws on previously unfamiliar artistic sources and uses an artistic form of expression that is also still unfamiliar. Therefore, allow me to say a few words in advance—not to explain the performance itself, as that would be somewhat unartistic. Art must speak for itself, and especially an art that is actually created for visibility should not be explained in detail, but simply viewed. Eurythmy presents itself to you, dear audience, in such a way that you will see on stage individual people performing gestural movements, namely with their arms and hands – the most expressive limbs of the human organism – but also with other limbs of this organism. You will see groups of people in certain positions in relation to each other, groups of people in forms of movement, and so on.

These are not meant to be random gestures, but rather a real, visible language or even a truly visible song. Therefore, this eurythmy is accompanied on the one hand by recitation and declamation for the poems, and on the other hand by music. Just as human beings, from their childhood stage of development onwards, move in the course of their lives from a certain babbling that only expresses feelings and sensations in a primitive way to articulated speech, so too can one say that I would like to say babbling in gestures, which people use in everyday life to accompany their speech, to make this or that clearer or more emphatic in their speech through gestures, but which is still only babbling in gestures – one can progress from this gestural babbling to a real visible language that is performed as a movement of the human organism.

What you will see is by no means based on arbitrary invention, but rather on careful study, I would say — to use Goethe's expression — through sensual-supersensual observation of how spoken language or human singing actually come about. This is actually a kind of gesture, but a gesture that does not take place in the normally visible part of the human organism, but rather with the exhaled breath, which is partly directed by the human will and human thought, and partly by the physical organs, of course.

We see that when humans speak, they set the air in motion. If we were to study in detail the individual forms of movement through which humans convey their spoken language to other humans, we would see that every sound, every word formation, every sentence formation corresponds to a very specific formation of the exhaled air. That which emanates more radially from the human being in these forms originates from the human will – as I said, always mediated by the physical organs. That which makes this air gesture wavy, if I may call it that, originates from human thought. And if we could see these air gestures, as can be done through sensory-supersensory observation, if we could see them as we see the moving human being, we would also have, in a sense, an air-like image of the human being in front of us, at least of part of the human being in front of us, and we would see movements, movements of air currents within it.

These movements of air currents are carefully studied. And instead of having the larynx and the other organs of speech and singing perform air gestures as in speech and singing, what would otherwise be air gestures is transferred to the gestures of the arm, the hand, or even the whole person, or [to] the forms in which groups of people move. This results in a visible representation of exactly the same thing that occurs in speech and singing, except that the conceptual aspect is removed from this movement. The conceptual aspect is always inartistic, prosaic.

In order to express themselves artistically through language, poets must combat the intellectual. They wrestle with the intellectual in language. In a sense, they seek to extract the intellectual and retain only the volitional in the formation of language, which they use to express their spiritual experience. That is why we do not express the undulating nature of thought in air gestures, in eurythmy, but rather that which flows radially outward in a sound, a word, or a sentence. This gives us a special opportunity to express clearly and visibly what the poet experiences in the whole of his soul, precisely through the eurythmy that accompanies the word.

It is a prejudice to believe that the human soul and spirit are in contact with any part of the human body. [An incomprehensible sentence follows, see notes.] But the fact is that the soul fills the entire human organism, right down to its outermost peripheral parts, that it lives in everything that is physical expression and revelation. The poet experiences the content of a poem with his total humanity, and he must actually restrain what flows into his limbs. Certainly, there are only a few true poets who really go through this, for it can be said that, in terms of poetic art, ninety-nine percent of what is produced could be dispensed with, and not much would be lost in terms of artistry. But what is truly experienced poetically is experienced by the whole person, and the soul and spirit then pour into the whole person. [It is that] which the poet, by allowing the prosaic content of the word to recede, [wants to achieve], and that which he wants to achieve through the imaginative, painterly-plastic nature of the sound design or also through the rhythmic-metrical, musical-thematic nature of the sound design, which he achieves by [he] basically expresses what is actually poetic and artistic. Real recitation art, if it is to do justice to the poet, must therefore not place the main emphasis on the emphasis of the prose content, which is so popular today in an unartistic age, but must focus on the shaping of language. This has been the aim of the art of recitation cultivated here, to which Dr. Steiner has been devoted for a long time now. The point is that one should not believe that what is to be conveyed in the recitation or declamation of poetry is in any way mechanized or objectified in terms of feeling. That is simply prose. If the content of the word is emphasized in the recitation—even if this is interesting because one believes that it is personal, that the personality of the reciter then comes to the fore in a special way—it is nevertheless unartistic. It is artistic when one is able to bring out what is to be revealed in terms of passionate feeling, emotion, and, in the case of thoughts, also thoughts, through the picturesque and plastic arrangement of the sequence of sounds and the mutual nuances of the sounds, not through the content of the word. For even if the thought is to be revealed poetically, the form of the thought must be suppressed, and what is actually poetic must be sought in the shaping of language.

Just as the painterly-plastic shaping of language is important, so too are musicality, meter, rhythm, and so on. One might say: in prose, of course, there will be no verse; in poetry, verse is needed, because verse creates a connection, and it is this creation of connection, this graphic and painterly quality of language, that is important. Thus, the true poet already has a secret eurythmy in the way he treats language. And so it is not artificial, but something quite natural, that what the true poet must actually suppress is revealed and brought to light again through eurythmy. The poet actually wants to put what he embodies poetically into the world with his whole being. And he must, I would say, hold back artistically and put what he wanted to express with his whole being into his treatment of language. In eurythmy, all of this becomes visible again. So that when you have recitation and declamation on the one hand, and on the other hand, on stage, that which now flows from the soul and spirit into the physical movements, just as it normally flows into the stream of language, you have a direct image of the poetic experience. And that is actually what eurythmy wants: to have the poetic experience painted visibly on the stage through human movements.

If you want eurythmy to have the right effect on the soul, then you must not confuse it with the neighboring arts, with the arts of mime and dance. Eurythmy is neither one nor the other. Certainly, all good things should be said about these arts; their significance should by no means be contested here. But eurythmy aims to be something quite different. If what eurythmy expresses is shaped too strongly by mimicry, if mimicry comes to the fore, this can only be the case if it is based on, say, something in poetry that signifies mockery, a distancing of oneself from something, something where a person turns up the corners of their mouth even when they speak, or where a person winks their eyes when they speak, and so on. Everything mimetic must be viewed from a eurythmic point of view. If one wants to [portray] mimically, that is entirely justified. What I have to say here does not refer to the art of mimicry as such, but only to cases where eurythmy unjustifiably degenerates into mimicry. Then eurythmy becomes unchaste.

Nor does what I want to say refer to the art of dance itself, but only to the unjustified degeneration of eurythmy into dancing. Certainly, eurythmic movements can merge into dance movements, for example, when a poem describes someone hitting another person, doing something to them, expressing powerful passion, then the eurythmic movement, which is otherwise kept entirely in the physical realm, can merge into dance movement. But when eurythmy degenerates unjustifiably into dancing, when dancing appears in eurythmy for its own sake, then it seems brutal. I am not saying that the art of dance is brutal, but rather that the degeneration of eurythmy into the art of dance is brutal.

So that one can really listen to eurythmy, one can say: Eurythmy is not pantomimic, it is not mimetic. Through these artistic forms, suggestive gestures are made, through dance movements, exuberant gestures are made by humans, where passion flows out. So that people do not, in a sense, restrain their movements within what they can comprehend with their consciousness. Eurythmy stands in the middle: it has neither extravagant, dancing gestures, nor suggestive gestures that always point to the intellect. One must have hints, a suggestive gesture — eurythmy, however, has expressive gestures that want to be hinted at and that should have an aesthetic-artistic effect in the hint, gestures that are neither elaborate nor extravagant, that are not meant to be interpreted, nor are they meant to overwhelm the viewer, but rather are perceived as pleasing and beautiful to the eye in the immediate form of the line, in the whole manner of the movement.

One can get a sense of eurythmy by seeing it as moving song. You will also hear pieces of music; eurythmy is performed to accompany them. This eurythmy is not a dance. When done correctly, it differs significantly from dance: it is moving song, not dancing. And it is precisely this moving singing that distinguishes eurythmy from its neighboring arts. And it gives you a sense of what I have just said.

I will talk about what eurythmy means in educational terms to the assembled teachers at the next presentation, which will focus on the educational side. Today, I will only touch on the artistic side with a few words.

But in all this, I must always ask for indulgence at a eurythmy performance. Eurythmy is only at the beginning of its development, and it will take a long time to reach a degree of perfection. We have recently developed one aspect of eurythmy in particular. For example, we have added the light image of the stage to what lies within the moving human being. What appears in the successive lighting effects should, in a sense, act like a light eurythmy and, in turn, serve as a eurythmy for the costumes of the eurythmists, so that the entire stage design actually becomes a eurythmic one. But this stage design as eurythmic will certainly be perfected much more in the future. One can also believe in this perfection, because eurythmy makes use of the most perfect instrument that one can have for artistic expression: the human being himself, who is a microcosm, a small world, and contains within himself all the secrets and laws of the great world. Therefore, when one draws out all the possibilities of the human organism, one has in eurythmy a true artistic image of the secrets and laws of the world. The art of mime makes use of only one part of the human being, as do the other arts that regard the human being itself as an instrument in some way. So one can say: Eurythmy does not depend on an external instrument, nor on a part of the human being, but brings the whole human being — especially that which is most expressive, namely the arms and hands — into a visible language and a visible song. So we can hope that if the potential for development is truly realized through eurythmy, there will come a time when this youngest of the arts will be able to stand alongside the older, fully established arts as an art in its own right.

I have to add today that, unfortunately, Dr. Steiner is unable to give the recitation due to illness; she will be replaced by Miss Mitscher. And hopefully the esteemed teachers will also be able to hear performances in which Dr. Steiner herself will recite.