The Origin and Development of Eurythmy 1923–1925

GA 277d — 16 June 1923, Dornach

Eurythmy Performance

From the member lecture Dornach, June 16, 1923

Intermezzo in A major, Op. 118, No. 2, by Johannes Brahms
“Um Mitternacht” (At Midnight) by Eduard Mörike
Intermezzo in B-flat major, Op. 76, No. 3, by Johannes Brahms
“Die Geister am Mummelsee” (The Ghosts at Mummelsee) by Eduard Mörike
Intermezzo in E minor, Op. 116,5 by Johannes Brahms
“Zwei Liebchen” by Eduard Mörike
Andantino by Franz Schubert
“Nixe Binsefuß” by Eduard Mörike
Adagio cantabile by Giuseppe Tartini
“Das Buch” by Christian Morgenstern
Musette in G major from the “3rd English Suite” by J. S. Bach
Humoresques by Christian Morgenstern: “Die Kronprätendenten” (The Crown Pretenders); ‘Etikettenfrage’ (The Question of Etiquette)
Septet, Op. 20, by L. v. Beethoven
Humoresques by Christian Morgenstern: “Das Grammophon” (The Gramophone); “Der eingebundene Korf” (The Bound Korf); “The Police Horse”; “The Really Practical People”; “The Hippopotamus”;
“Humorous Rondo” by Max Schuurman

Ladies and gentlemen!

In the course of my lectures, I have spoken about linguistic genius in this or that context. By saying this or that about linguistic genius, I wanted to suggest that when people try to explore those connections that arise as purely spiritual connections, those connections that lie in language itself, they actually find, so to speak, their own soul in language, a soul that takes hold of them and shapes them. By growing into language, they form themselves. What I wanted to suggest as the genius of language is something objectively spiritual.

Now I would like to briefly point out something that can be a single example of such a turning to linguistic genius. We talk about this when we think about something in a very clever and intelligent way and can combine it with what we otherwise think, that we “grasp” it. We talk about this when we use the German language: “I grasp this or that.” - Now let us turn to the word “understand.” What does that mean? It means to grasp something, to touch it. I understand the clock by taking it. So we describe the relationship we have with things in our thoughts using an expression that actually means an external action through which we relate to external things in a very tangible way.

Why does language bring us something so peculiar? It speaks—one might say, from the standpoint of today's intelligent enlightenment, that language speaks foolishly. It speaks as if one were touching something with one's hands, as if one were “grasping” it alone. And yet language does not speak foolishly. And it is one of the most beautiful experiences to realize that language does not speak foolishly in such a case. For when one does what one says, “I grasp something,” one does not grasp a thing with one's physical hand, but with a hand that one first forms out of the so-called etheric or formative body. And language is right: when the etheric body understands something, it performs a movement that signifies a pointing and a rounding of its limb formed for this particular purpose when something is understood. The expression “to understand” is meant in the truest sense. Only it is not a matter of grasping on the part of the physical body, but of grasping on the part of the etheric body.

One must ask oneself: Where does such wisdom, as found in language, come from? It comes from those times when people still felt more vividly what they were actually doing when they thought. If the word did not sound so paradoxical, it would be correct, but it does sound paradoxical, so I do not want to excuse it, but I would almost like to apologize for expressing it: such a phenomenon comes from the times when people still felt how active they were inwardly when they thought.

Today, one actually thinks the least when one thinks. One feels the least today when one thinks. Today, we don't really know what we are doing when we think. When we touch something, we feel that we are moving our arm, our hand. When we think, we no longer feel anything. But when people developed their understanding from the depths of their soul, they still felt that they were doing something: they were touching with a finer body than the physical one. And when people still felt this way, when they still felt that when you think, you reach out, you feel something with your etheric body, they knew how closely speech is connected to this understanding that is contained in thinking, and what caused the close relationship between breathing and understanding.

One knew that the human brain—not in the way we know it today, of course, but that is not very valuable anyway—one knew that the human brain extracts what it then uses as a fine—if I may say so—fine substance for comprehension from the breathing processes. When one said, for example, that the day is clear and the night is dull, one felt in the “clear” that one encountered no resistance when reaching out. The etheric or formative forces body finds no resistance where it is clear and can reach out. Where it is dull, it encounters resistance everywhere; it cannot reach out, it encounters obstacles everywhere; it cannot reach out.

Now, you see, one felt how the breath works in speech, but how in thinking, that which one uses to comprehend is, as it were, drawn out of the breath, so that speech is a denser “comprehension,” a “comprehension” that takes place in the air. And if you now notice in “comprehension” that this is a gesture, an action, a grasping, a pointing to things with the image-forming body, then you will also understand how the denser breathing in speech is actually gesture, only the condensed gesture of thinking. Why is the gesture condensed? Because through this condensation, thinking is brought down to feeling, because it is immersed in feeling.

Now, in our thinking, we draw the formative forces body out of our physical body, out of our bodily movements, and make the invisible movement. Eurythmy takes the opposite path. It does not ask for abstract thoughts, but for feeling: How do we understand things? How does one understand, in particular, that which is correctly grasped artistically? And it pushes the gesture of the etheric body back into the physical body, allowing it to carry out what is in the fine emotional and volitional artistic understanding – as the poet also has when he forms his poem, as it is in music. She allows that which lies in “comprehension,” in soul activity, to fall back into bodily movements, so that the physical body then moves in the way that is natural to the etheric body.

This gives us the gait that is created by the soul experience, from comprehension to speech — we take it a step further. We go even deeper into our physicality than when speaking; we move from airy things to semi-solid things, in short, to that which is in the body, which is then the organic basis for external movements. But because there is no purpose to these external movements, it is precisely the gestures that are drawn out of the etheric body that come to the fore in eurythmy. This makes the human being free in a high degree in the inner sense. His soul life is carried out into external visibility.

You see, here again we can distinguish between the outer human being and the inner human being. This explains many things. Just imagine – it doesn't have to be like Demosthenes, you don't have to put stones in your mouth – but imagine you have a bite of food in your mouth and you want to speak – you are prevented from speaking. The speech apparatus must be free if one does not want to be prevented from speaking freely. In thinking, some people are sometimes provided with such a bite; then they cannot comprehend, then there are inhibitions. These inhibitions could be described in detail. So, with regard to thinking, one has torn out the inner life of the soul; one then has obstacles to speaking, that is, to the gestures already pressed down into the air, through a morsel or a plug that one puts in one's mouth.

When I was a little boy—about the same age as Herman Markus is now—I was once taken to a church fair. There was a special amusement there. It consisted of young boys—I don't think there were any girls—being tied up in sacks and having to move forward in this way. Every few moments, one of them would fall over. There were guards every five steps; they picked them up again, and then they continued on their way inside the sack. Well, that was an external obstacle. People only do what they are limited to doing, just as when you have a foot in your mouth, you can only say what can be said despite the obstacle.

But the whole physical body of the human being is a kind of obstacle to what the etheric body actually wants to do in terms of continuous movements in understanding the outer world. If one now makes the etheric body completely free and asks it what it feels about this or that in the world, and then allows this to flow freely in the physical body, the opposite of what is caused by these inhibitions of the inner human being comes about.

Just as one can constrict the outer human being in a sack and still inhibit him externally, so again the physical body of the human being is a kind of sack that inhibits the free movements of the etheric body. And now, by studying the possibilities of movement of the etheric body, one can train the physical body to such an extent that it is no longer an inhibiting sack, but follows the movements of the etheric body. Then one brings it to the point where the soul life, insofar as it takes place in the etheric body, is expressed through the physical body — not merely as with air, as with spoken language — but is expressed in a real language from the physical body, which otherwise also comes from the etheric body: Language is the reflection of the etheric body out of astral feeling.

And so the possibility is actually created to produce a real visible language in eurythmy. Eurythmy is really not something invented, but something drawn out from within nature and transferred to the outer physical body, just as in early childhood that which is still enclosed within the human being in finer organs is transferred to the larynx and its neighboring organs – and then becomes air gestures. Just as ordinary singing takes place in air gestures, so eurythmic speaking and singing takes place in gestures that are now performed by the physical body. I would like to say: wherever one approaches the consideration of the human being, one can find the possibility, one can find a way to explain eurythmy.

You see, that is precisely the difference between what is so often done today in a programmatic way, where you have definitions and then you arrange reality according to those definitions. When you talk about such a thing, you just reel off your program. But you can talk about eurythmy from a wide variety of perspectives because it is not a program, but something alive that can be illuminated from many different angles.

No matter how often I have tried to illuminate eurythmy from all possible angles, just as one can photograph an object from many different sides, it is always the same object. But it must be said again and again that when we are dealing with eurythmy, eurythmy is a kind of human revelation which, in its own way, through articulated gesture, not through mimicry or dance, but through articulated gesture, expresses what on the one hand resounds in musical motifs and on the other hand is declaimed or recited. The declamation must take on the character that looks to the truly artistic in poetry, that is, to the formation of speech, to the formation of sound, to the way one sound colors another, in other words, to the painterly in language, or to the musical in language, meter, rhythm, melodious theme, and so on. So that this mere pointed recitation and declamation, which is so popular in our somewhat unartistic times, must be traced back to the real art of declamation and recitation in eurythmy.

Dr. Steiner has endeavored for years to develop this art of recitation, which was already felt in more artistic ages than today's, more and more. The art of declamation and recitation that is popular today cannot accompany eurythmy at all, because eurythmy must go back to the actual artistry in poetry. And when one practices musical eurythmy, one does not dance, but actually sings visibly. It is visible singing. One must acquire a feeling, a sense of the difference between visible singing and actual dancing.

In any case, one should not believe that eurythmy is about any kind of interpretation, but rather that it is about feeling, through direct observation, how that which comes from the inner harmonious nature of the human being as something beautiful, as something artistic, has an effect through observation, not through explanation or interpretation.

Today, as always before these events, I would like to ask for your indulgence. We are our own harshest critics, but eurythmy is still in its infancy; it uses the human being itself as its instrument in a broader sense than the art of mime or dance. And that is why we can hope, because human beings as microcosms contain within themselves all the secrets and laws of the macrocosm—the greater world—and everything that is essential, that eurythmy, however imperfect it may still be today, will one day become more and more perfect. It has immeasurable potential for perfection within itself and will one day be able to stand alongside its older, fully-fledged sister arts as a younger, fully-fledged art form in its own right. I believe we can already see this today.