The Origin and Development of Eurythmy 1923–1925

GA 277d — 9 June 1923, Dornach

Eurythmy Performance

Nocturne in E-flat major, Op. 9 by Frédéric Chopin
“Weihnacht” by Albert Steffen
“Die Seele fremd” by Albert Steffen
“Die Geisterscharen” by Albert Steffen
Etude in A-flat major, Op. 25,1 by Frédéric Chopin
“Als wir auf der goldenen Insel” (When We Were on the Golden Island) by Albert Steffen
Sarabande in A minor from the “English Suite” by J. S. Bach
‘Ganymed’ by J. W. v. Goethe
“Der Sänger” (The Singer) by J. W. v. Goethe
“Sehnsucht” (Longing) by Dschung Tsü with music by Jan Stuten
“Selige Leichtigkeit” (Blissful Lightness) by Christian Morgenstern
“Slavonic Dance, Op. 46, No. 2” by Antonin Dvořák
Humoresques by Christian Morgenstern: “Der Rock” (The Skirt); “Notturno in Weiß” (Nocturne in White); “Korfs Witze” (Korf's Jokes); “Korf in Berlin”; “Palmström in Stuttgart”
Minuet from Sonata Op. 78 by Franz Schubert

Ladies and gentlemen!

Goethe speaks of sensual-supersensual perception for that which is to be captured artistically. If one now endeavors to capture the entire linguistic and vocal organization of the human being artistically, one arrives at something that actually lies behind language and behind singing, something that has to do with the whole human being, whereas language and singing have to do only with individual organ groups. But who could fail to feel that when a person reveals themselves through speech or song, their entire soul is involved, and that this soul is involved in such a way that one actually feels the soul's weaving and working through the entire organism. Therefore, one can also say that, especially when language is not merely used to communicate something conventional or purely logical thoughts, but when language is artistically crafted, then the whole human being actually wants to express itself, and this expression, this revelation of the whole human being, is only concentrated on a limited group of organs.

One can now also go back and ask oneself: What inner movement is required when we sing this or that or say this or that? And then one comes to the conclusion that those movements which are actually converted into air movements by the larynx and its neighboring organs, i.e., which are discharged outwardly, so to speak, can also be traced in reverse as movements toward the inner human being; only in ordinary life they are suppressed. Human beings are actually inclined to accompany everything that is said to them with an inner movement. Or [they] suppress this movement, and it is precisely this suppression that then reveals itself inwardly in the empathy we feel with the world and with other people when we hear something. In the same way, we actually always want to accompany what we ourselves express verbally with movements, with gestures. We suppress these gestures because what is to be expressed is expressed through language, through spoken language.

Now, however, everyone is aware that there is style in singing and also in artistically crafted language, that language is treated in a certain way by poets, for example. Something rhythmic and metrical is created, and melodious themes are also incorporated into the language. The sound design follows a certain imagination. All of this is something that underlies language, but which cannot constantly enter into language. Those who empathize intimately with human life feel how, when they transfer what lies in their soul to their larynx, they externalize it. One might say that what is handed over to the larynx is handed over to the objective spiritual realm. What the soul experiences more inwardly can now be expressed through stylized gestures. And in eurythmy, it is expressed through stylized gestures, so that a real, visible language or a real, visible song emerges. Everything that appears in the form of gestures in individual people or groups of people in this eurythmy is drawn out of the human organism in the same way as the individual sounds of speech, the vowels, consonants, sentence structures, and so on.

The visible language and visible singing that result from this can be easily understood if one observes how, on the one hand, the declamatory, the recitative, which sounds at the same time as the eurythmy, is accompanied by this eurythmy, but also how the musical motif is accompanied by eurythmic movements. One is inclined to regard this as dance from the outset. However, eurythmy is not dance; it is singing in movement, real singing, except that the singing does not come about through sound, but through movement. So that only those who are able to understand eurythmy as singing in motion, rather than as dance, can truly understand our eurythmy. And in a similar way, that which is expressed through language, through sound, accompanies the eurythmic movement. This leads to the following: when human beings express themselves through language, through the language of sound – and this can be seen particularly clearly in the languages of higher civilizations – what emerges through language is that the spiritual element, which is objectively separate from human beings, lives more and more in language. In more advanced languages, we perceive it as something unpleasant, and rightly so, when the subjective element plays into language in the form of emphasis, prose punctuation, and the like. We perceive it as almost unseemly when too much subjectivity is expressed in language. Language should spiritualize the soul, thereby detaching it more or less from the human being. In return, however, we can bring back into human movement that which is expressed in stylized language, for example.

Then the soul expresses itself more in the moving human being, whose movements, especially those of the most expressive organs, the hands and arms, become a visible language. When we speak consonants through the language of sound, the processes in things live in the consonants in a more objective way. The vowels contain the sensations and feelings we have about the processes of the outside world, but separated from the human being, spiritualized. One might say: in what is expressed here as visible language in eurythmy, the human being lives completely with that which is revealed, for example, in poetry; that which lives in the human spirit is animated by eurythmy. Eurythmy, like language, is also capable of shaping the vowels in movement, as well as the consonants.

But when the vowels are shaped in eurythmy movements, it is a revelation of what the soul experiences in its innermost depths. When the consonants are revealed in eurythmic movement in this visible language, it is the empathy with all things that the human being expresses through the movements of his own physicality. While ordinary language increasingly urges the spiritualization of the soul, eurythmy brings what the human being experiences inwardly to expression in direct animation. And so, in fact, every movement that can be seen here on stage becomes a visible expression of the most intimate soul.

If we then accompany eurythmy with recitation or declamation, then I would say that the secret eurythmy that the poet invisibly weaves into the speech must already be expressed in the declamation and recitation accompanying the eurythmy. Therefore, one cannot declaim and recite to eurythmy as is often done, where the actual artistic aspect of speech formation is not taken into account, but where the prose content is emphasized, where only the prosaic is actually pointed out.

Here, recitation and declamation should be performed in such a way that the artistic treatment of the language element is particularly prominent. Then the tone and sound formations of the recitation coincide particularly well with the movements that come to the fore in eurythmy. And one can say: when, as I would like to say, in a special orchestral interaction, recitation and declamation resound simultaneously and eurythmy becomes visible, then it is as if, in recitation and declamation, the spoken language were added to the style used by the poet in order to bring the style closer to us as human beings.

The style represents, as it were, an elevation into the supersensible; the tonal language brings the supersensible closer to us as human beings. If we eurythmize at the same time, what is recited or declaimed is elevated before our eyes to style, and the style is in turn withdrawn. This is why we feel that eurythmy must be stylized as much as possible, just as we strive to bring recitation and declamation back to the good old days, when Goethe, with his baton in hand like a conductor, rehearsed his iambic dramas with his actors, thus indicating that he placed more emphasis on the treatment of language than on prosaic punctuation. Thus, in order to elevate recitation and declamation to an art form, we must return to the secrets of imaginative and musical speech formation. In this way, truly artistic recitation and declamation can be re-established in eurythmy.

But one has the feeling that eurythmy is also leading to a change in style in other areas. Those esteemed audience members who have often seen our eurythmic performances here will have noticed how we have recently been striving to add lighting effects that are not naturalistically related to the individual to the stage design created by the moving impulses of individuals or groups of people. Just as the musical, the melodious must be sought in the sequence of tones, so here in eurythmy, what is actually being sought must be seen in the sequence of lighting effects. So that the moving eurythmic image is placed in appropriate lighting sequences, which are now themselves a kind of light eurythmy. And so we will try to develop eurythmy further and further.

Today, as I always do before these performances, I would like to ask the esteemed audience to bear in mind that we are only just beginning with our eurythmy. We ourselves are most aware of our imperfections. However, we must also say to ourselves: as true as it is on the one hand that what is intended with eurythmy will only be fully developed at a later time, because it makes use of an instrument in a much more perfect way than mere mimic art, which only makes use of the moving human being in accompaniment, while eurythmy claims to bring out everything that is in the human being I would say, so that he is, as a whole, a visibly weaving and living larynx, to bring out in his movements everything that is inherent in him in his form, that can be brought out in him himself as art.

If one considers that the human being is a small world, a microcosm that contains a whole world within itself, then one must say: Eurythmy has a future because it is precisely through it that the most important, the most comprehensive secrets of the world can be revealed artistically. For if the human being is a microcosm, a small world, and contains all the secrets of the world within itself, then the secrets of the world will become visible to the eye. Then the whole human being can be used as an instrument of expression. And that is what eurythmy wants. And that is why we can hope that, as a young art form, it will gradually develop to such an extent that it will be able to stand alongside the older, fully established arts as a fully-fledged art form in its own right.