The Origin and Development of Eurythmy 1923–1925

GA 277d — 21 April 1923, Dornach

Eurythmy Performance

Intermezzo in A major, Op. 118, No. 2, by Johannes Brahms
“Christmas” by Albert Steffen
“The Ghosts” by Albert Steffen
“The Soul, Alien” by Albert Steffen
Intermezzo in E minor, Op. 116,5, by Johannes Brahms
“Traumverwandlung” by Joseph Kitir
Intermezzo in A-flat major, Op. 76,3, by Johannes Brahms
“Als wir auf der goldenen Insel” by Albert Steffen
Adagio cantabile by Giuseppe Tartini
“Valet” by J. W. v. Goethe
“To the Originals” by J. W. v. Goethe
“The Crown Pretenders” by Christian Morgenstern
“The Frozen One” by Rudolf Steiner
“Slavonic Dance” by Antonin Dvorák
Humoresques by Christian Morgenstern: “The Gramophone”; “Korf in Berlin”; “The Trial by Fire”; “The Police Horse”; “The Really Practical People”
“Humorous Rondo” by Max Schuurman

Ladies and gentlemen!

Eurythmy attempts to create a means of artistic expression through a kind of visible language—both for what is otherwise revealed in words, or [also] in music, in song, by people [from] the world or their environment. On stage, you will see moving people, individual moving people or moving groups of people. What you see is a series of gestures. However, these gestures should not be understood as random movements conceived in the moment, but rather as something that is just as naturally drawn from the human organism as speech and singing themselves.

One must simply be aware that articulated speech or singing also involves a kind of gesture; only here the gesture is not expressed by the visible parts of the human organism, but by that which lives in the human being in his respiratory organ, lives as the inhaled and exhaled air stream. This air stream is released during exhalation, passing through the larynx and its neighboring organs, and in doing so it takes on a very specific form and, due to its inherent form, also has a very specific type of movement, radially outward. At the same time, what moves outward as such a stream, or, let's say, as an air gesture, is undulating within itself. Perpendicular to its main direction is another wave movement. All of this is, one might say, like “air limbs” that humans send out through their speech organs, revealing what comes from the human will or even from human thinking. Every sound, every word, every sentence formulation drills, as it were, an air gesture into the air surrounding the human being, which is so defined in itself that one could actually draw its contours if one could bring down into the realm of the visible what exists in the air only in density or thinness.

And visible gestures can be found in what is air-forming in human beings in speech and singing. If one studies these forms, which are entirely derived from the way in which the human organism is adapted to the life of the soul and spirit, one can then transfer what one has learned in this way in the moving, plastic forms to the human arms and hands as the most expressive limbs of the human physical body. but one can also transfer it to the other limbs. So that in these movements, which then become visible to the eye, the same thing is achieved as was achieved for the ear through singing or speaking.

But there is more to be said. One can become aware of how, in addition to their physical, bodily soul, human beings possess a finer spiritual being, which underlies the soul-spiritual as the air gestures revealed in speech or song. This soul-spiritual is not entirely at rest when we listen to speech or song. A more refined physiology, a more refined observation of the human organism shows how there is actually a kind of inaudible singing and speaking consisting of the inner movement of certain organs when we are not speaking or singing ourselves, but when we are listening to speaking or singing.

It is not only the person who actively speaks or sings who is in motion in relation to their speech and singing organs – they are only in more intense motion – the listener is in a finer, inner motion. This [movement] is now the same again, which, when studied, can be transferred to the visible physical organism of the human being in such a way that one might say that what is spoken or sung weakly inwardly in listening appears outwardly in gesture. This creates eurythmy, in that [the movement] is vividly transformed in the air and in finer organs into the outward-facing organs of the human being, so that a real spatial art emerges, which can actually be called a moving sculpture.

Here you will now see, on the one hand, these moving people, the eurythmically moving people or groups of people on stage. On the other hand, you will hear the musical motif or the poetic motif in the recitation or declamation. And you can now imagine that what is in the air for audibility in music or language has been transferred to the visible movements of the human being through the study of air forms, and that you thus have a second revelation of music or language.

But what I am saying here is the same as if I were to say: you can also imagine that the musical instrument is sounding, that there is recitation and declamation, that there are people listening on stage. But these [people] translate what otherwise, in the immobility of the organism, proceeds inaudibly toward the chest and brain as song or recitation through fine, inward vibrations within them, so that this is, in a sense, reversed and flows over into the visible organs of human movement. You could also say that you have people [moving] on stage who experience what you hear – from musical instruments or recitations – with such strong inner involvement that they translate the otherwise very weak gestures, which are not noticed at all in everyday life, into the whole human organism.

So what we encounter in eurythmy is by no means something artificially evoked or arbitrarily formed, but rather that which is simply held back in ordinary life when human beings express themselves through a part of their organism, through their speech or singing organs, instead of expressing themselves through their whole organism.

The following can be seen precisely in what is created poetically and artistically. We know that the human soul is not something that sits in any particular point of the organism, but that the spiritual-soul permeates the body to the outermost peripheral points of the human body — both at rest and in motion. When you realize how this spiritual-soul element permeates the body, you will also easily gain a sense of how, in the intense way that the poet experiences the contents of his soul when he shapes language into poetry, drama, or epic, what he himself experiences flows into it, just as the poet always wants to experience this not only in his soul, but with his whole being, including his physical organism. But this is held back in ordinary life.

In poetic creation, however, it is nevertheless revealed in a kind of secret eurythmy: in the shaping of language lies the plastic, imaginative form of sounds, sound sequences, the mutual influence of sounds, or even the musical, the rhythmic, the musical-dramatic in the treatment of language. For the poet, it is much less important what the prose content of his words is, how he expresses, for example, some kind of joy by pouring the meaning into the word “joy,” but rather, it is important for the poet that, at the point where he wants to reveal “joy” poetically, he brings the speech itself into such a movement that “joy” is expressed through a special sequence of sounds, through a special rhythm of sounds, or through such a sequence of sounds that the subsequent sound interacts with the preceding one in a very specific, picturesque way. The same applies to sadness. This is the case with everything that is spiritual content. The poet already puts the eurythmic element into his language in an invisible way. And then one only brings out what is invisibly contained in the language; one brings out the visible [in eurythmy]. Therefore, when one sees a person performing eurythmy, one can get the impression of seeing an image of what lives in the poet's soul when he shapes that which then becomes audible through recitation or declamation at the same time as the eurythmy.

With this, my dear [attendees], I have just tried to indicate what is actually attempted in eurythmy – that is, with the art form of eurythmy. Last Wednesday, I was able to point out to the esteemed visitors to our teacher training course how eurythmy also has its pedagogical and didactic side. Today, I would just like to mention that this is also significant for therapeutic eurythmy, a medical therapy. What lives in artistic revelation, as we are trying to demonstrate to you again today, but which is also a means of education and teaching, as I explained last time, cannot be found in exactly the same gestures, but in slightly different gestures that are appropriate to the diseased human organism, which can find healing for this or that through such gestures. [that]. This can be trained as therapeutic eurythmy. This [therapeutic eurythmy] is indeed practiced in the Clinical-Therapeutic Institute of Dr. Wegman here and in the Clinical-Therapeutic Institute of the Coming Day in Stuttgart as a branch of therapy in the art of healing, truly practiced.

For the artistic, we can say: We can have hopes for this eurythmy because it makes use of the most perfect instrument that can be had, the human organism itself. Of course, the arts of mime and dance, which should not be confused with eurythmy, also make use of the human being — and there is not the slightest objection to their value here. These arts make use of the human organism, but only in certain parts of it. Eurythmy makes use of the whole human being. Only the movements in the most expressive organs, the arms and hands, appear most prominently, because the human organism, in its entirety, can live most fully and expressively in these limbs. But it is the movement of the whole human being that is used here in a lawful manner.

Since the human being is a small world, a microcosm, in relation to the large world, the macrocosm, the secrets of the world in their totality appear to you in an artistic way in eurythmy [gap?]. Therefore, we can hope that what is only in its infancy in eurythmy today will become more and more subordinate and that [it] will one day stand on an equal footing with the other arts. I should also mention that in eurythmy, the accompanying art of recitation and declamation must correspond in sound to what is clearly visible on stage in movement, and that this recitation [s-] and declamation art must in turn be brought back to the way it was cultivated in more artistic ages than today, where recitation and declamation [in] expression easily strive for the pointed, the prosaic.

But for the poet, it is not the prosaic that matters, but the linguistic form. For many years now, Dr. Steiner in particular has endeavored to express the art of recitation and declamation in such a way that the secret eurythmy is already present in the recitation and [declamation] itself. This is what Goethe wanted when he rehearsed his iambic dramas with his actors, baton in hand. He wanted to show that he was less concerned with the prosaic and pointed nature of the content than with the artistic expression of the sound. Unfortunately, Dr. Steiner is also unable to recite and declaim today. She must again be replaced by Miss Mitscher, and so we are unable to present this special art of recitation by its creator to the esteemed teachers who have so deeply delighted us with their visits during this course. I regret this very much, but due to Dr. Steiner's illness, there is no other option.