The Origin and Development of Eurythmy 1923–1925

GA 277d — 3 June 1923, Dornach

Eurythmy Performance

“The Fairy Tale of Imagination” from the sixth picture of Rudolf Steiner's “The Portal of Initiation”
Prelude “Look within yourself, look around you” with music by Leopold van der Pals
“Autumn Picture” by Friedrich Hebbel
Air in D major by J. S. Bach
“Meine Göttin” (My Goddess) by J. W. v. Goethe “Schmetterling” (Butterfly) op. 33, No. 6, by Walter Niemann ‘Ganymed’ by J. W. v. Goethe Sarabande in A minor from the “2nd English Suite” by J. S. Bach “Die Freuden” (The Joys) by J. W. v. Goethe ‘Séance’ by J. W. v. Goethe Humoresques by Christian Morgenstern: “Das Buch” (The Book); “Der Gingganz” (The Gingganz); “Das Polizeipferd” (The Police Horse) From a sonata by Josef Haydn Humoresques by Christian Morgenstern: “Etikettenfrage”; “Der Werwolf” “Hansel and Gretel” “Die Probe” by Christian Morgenstern Musette in G major from the “3rd English Suite” by J. S. Bach

Ladies and gentlemen!

Allow me, as usual before these eurythmic experiments, to say a few words about the art of eurythmy. I have often remarked that I do not do this in order to explain the performance as such. Explanations of works of art are something inartistic. Eurythmy, however, should have an effect precisely through its artistic impulse, an effect that is immediate when viewed directly.

Well, in this regard, it has become apparent recently in connection with various performances that what eurythmy aims to achieve as pure art is not yet fully understood everywhere. When you watch people moving on stage—individuals moving their limbs or groups of people—accompanied by music or poetry, you realize that this is not some kind of particularly sophisticated mimicry, pantomime, or dance. Eurythmy does not want to be either of these things. It does not want to be mimicry or pantomime, nor does it want to be dance-like, but is based on something that cannot be conceived at all, something that is certainly not intellectual in any way. It is based on the fact that all our spoken language is based on human movement.

We need only think of how, even in everyday life – especially if we have a somewhat lively temperament – we feel compelled to accompany our words with all kinds of gestures. But by uttering words and making gestures at the same time, as is also done in the art of mime and acting, we are already showing that we want to add something to the words with these mimics. We become mimetic when we feel that words cannot express everything we actually want to express. Eurythmy does not strive for this kind of human expression, but is itself a thoroughly visible language, not something that wants to be added to words, but something that reveals words in a different way. And just as language, which is acquired by humans in childhood, develops from the whole human nature as language, as spoken language, even quite unconsciously without any intellectual involvement, so too is this visible language of eurythmy drawn out of the whole human being without intellectual thinking.

However, it is taken into account that the human being adapts externally with his movements to the conditions of the earth, to the conditions of gravity, balance, and so on. In these earthly conditions, within which the human being must live, he puts, so to speak, everything that he first develops in his physical body in terms of movement possibilities. Now, however, it must be said, even though it still sounds scientifically heretical today: just as humans have a physical body, if I may express it that way, flesh, muscles, bones, so too do they have an etheric body, a finer body, a supersensible body, which forms the mediator between the actual soul and the dense physical body. This etheric body is oriented toward different movements than the physical body. With the physical body, we actually only make movements in ordinary life that serve external locomotion, to find our way into the outside world. With the etheric body, however, we constantly have the need to follow our soul.

Now, what we entrust to language in particular contains our soul, especially in terms of feelings. So we constantly feel the urge to move an invisible body, which is inside our visible body, in the sense of what is spoken. We actually make gestures with this invisible body all the time, but these gestures are not the same as the visible gestures we sometimes make with our physical body. We also make gestures in language, in reality. We say vowels, consonants—and combine them to form the structures of our spoken language. These are gestures that we actually make with the help of the larynx and neighboring organs through the air we exhale. Everything that is spoken and sung is basically also an air gesture. These air gestures come about through the inner power of our etheric body.

But our etheric body can also express itself in the other direction. When something is spoken, it can perform the specific movements it wants to make in the physical body, and then the same thing happens in the physical body through movements as otherwise happens in the spoken word through the air. If someone could photograph what a person develops in all these figures when they expel air, which they develop when forming the language with the i, the u, or any other sound, if one could study what arises in speech and then compare it with what is presented here as eurythmy, one would find complete agreement. It is therefore nothing other than what is otherwise revealed through the air and formed into spoken language: this is transferred into the visible through the physical body.

In eurythmy, we therefore have a real visible language that brings out the artistic in the whole human being in exactly the same non-rational, non-intellectual way as spoken language is unconsciously brought out in children – in imitation of what they hear outside. So eurythmy is not a mimetic game, but a truly visible language, or even a visible song. So that everything that is expressed in musical motifs, everything that is expressed in poetic motifs, can also be expressed through this visible language or this visible song of eurythmy.

So, ladies and gentlemen, on the one hand you hear something musical, and on the other hand you see people on stage moving their limbs, or groups of people, and you see visible singing. I emphasize: visible singing, not dancing. Dancing is something else. We will say a few words about this in a moment. Or you hear a poem being recited or declaimed and at the same time you see the same thing represented in the visible language of eurythmy by the people in their movements on stage. In this way, we really get a kind of orchestral interaction between declamation, recitation, or instrumental music and what is happening in terms of human movement on stage, so that there is a new attempt at artistry. One might think that this is something contrived. It is not. It is drawn entirely from the whole nature of the human organism.

For recitation or declamation in eurythmy is done in such a way that, in order to achieve what eurythmy is supposed to achieve in recitation or declamation, we must return to more artistic times in our unartistic age. In recitation and declamation, less emphasis was placed on the emphasis of the prose content of a poem than is the case today, but rather on the imaginative expression of sound – how one sound shades and colors another, this painterly quality of language that the reciter or declaimer should develop through their particular art – or on the melodious, the rhythmic, rhythmic, in other words, the musical element. Only to the extent that there is musicality or picturesque imagination in language is there real artistic language formation. This must now be brought out, because eurythmy does not convey the prose content of the poem, but rather its actual artistic content, that is, precisely the picturesque and musical elements contained in a poem.

Dr. Steiner developed this type of recitation over many years, and it must be brought to bear in eurythmy so that a time may come again when people understand why Goethe, for example, rehearsed his “Iphigenia” like a conductor with a baton, ensuring that the artistic aspect of language was developed and not the prosaic content.

Eurythmy is thus a visible language, not merely a play of gestures. It expresses the same thing that the word expresses. While gestures accompany words and focus on the meaning of the word, eurythmic gestures reinforce it, if I may express it that way. They do not seek to reinforce the meaning of the word, but rather to convey exactly what is contained in the form of the word—not in its prosaic content, but in its form or musicality. Therefore, through this eurythmy, one can sing in movement, as I would say, speak in movement. It is entirely possible for one person to declaim and recite and the other person or persons to perform eurythmy, whereas it does not work well for one and the same person to recite and perform eurythmy, because in a sense the person overloads the instrument that serves as a tool.

But on the other hand, eurythmy is not dance art either. In the art of dance, it is specifically the will of the human being that is revealed. What is otherwise merely placed in the world for utilitarian reasons, for reasons of expediency, in human movements, is always an expression of the human will – for all movements performed with the limbs are expressions of the will. This is brought out in dance in such a way that it is derived from practicality and the human being surrenders so strongly to pleasure and delight that, in a sense, their consciousness broadens, that their consciousness, I would say, transitions into dreamlike movement.

This volitional element is emphasized in eurythmy, but always in such a way that the human being does not allow the entire movement that is performed eurythmically to expand, to flow out, but rather controls it internally, controls it within themselves. As a result, eurythmy is not an expansive dance, but a movement that is withdrawn into the human being, a movement that is truly attuned to language and music. While dance is also based on music, it is inspired by music in such a way that the person surrenders to the waves of music, loses themselves in the waves of music, while in eurythmic movement they make available to music and the word that which they can bring out of their own organism with full consciousness from their own movement possibilities. So they present what they have at their disposal in such a way that they do not allow themselves to be carried away by the waves of music, but rather add their own contribution to these waves of music, just as they would otherwise consciously add what they have to add artistically through eurythmy.

Eurythmy thus stands between mimicry and dance, but if it is to be complete, it must, I would say, “borrow” from both sides. If, for example, something is to be expressed in accordance with a poem or a piece of music, where the person is so deeply involved with their feelings that they, let's say, smile about something or become more serious about something, then the eurythmic gently, I would say, and delicately transitions into the mimetic. If this happens too strongly, then the mimetic – which, when used correctly in an artistic context, is entirely appropriate – appears, but if the eurythmic, which is supposed to be something else, transitions unjustifiably into the mimetic, then it appears unchaste. If it transitions unjustifiably into the dance-like, it appears brutal – while the dance-like, of course, has its own full justification.

So, ladies and gentlemen, eurythmy stands as an independent art form that wants to reckon with new art forms, with new sources of art, right in the middle of dance, mimicry, and mimetic art, and wants to be understood directly as artistic, that is, to be viewed. Again and again, however, I would like to emphasize that we ourselves are our strictest critics and know what can still be objected to in eurythmy today. For we are only at the beginning of the art of eurythmy — it must first be perfected in order to show what it is capable of. So before each performance, I must ask the esteemed audience for their indulgence. But today I must do so especially, because alongside the older, more mature artists, there are younger artists who are just beginning their eurythmy careers. And that is particularly interesting when one sees how this art emerges from human nature. But they are still young artists, and some of the older ones are only graciously participating in today's performance.

There is a strong conviction that eurythmy is still in its infancy, but on the other hand, there is also the conviction that it has development potential that is actually immeasurable. For the human being himself becomes a tool for art, more so than is the case in mimicry or dance. And the human being is a small world, the human being is a whole microcosm, containing all the secrets of the world. That is why all the secrets of the world can be revealed artistically when the human being makes himself a tool, an instrument, not an external instrument, as the other arts make use of external instruments. Therefore, we can hope that eurythmic art—even though it is still in its infancy and we must ask for indulgence—will gradually develop into a fully valid younger art form alongside the fully valid older art forms.