The Origin and Development of Eurythmy 1923–1925

GA 277d — 17 June 1923, Dornach

Eurythmy Performance

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” (Two Sweethearts) 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 “Etikettenfragen” by Christian Morgenstern Septet Op. 20 by L. v. Beethoven
Humoresques by Christian Morgenstern: “Das Grammophon” (The Gramophone); “Die Kronprätendenten” (The Crown Pretenders); “Der eingebundene Korf” (The Bound Korf); “Das Nilpferd” (The Hippopotamus); “Die wirklich praktischen Leute” (The Really Practical People); “Das Polizeipferd” (The Police Horse)
“Humoristisches Rondo” (Humorous Rondo) by Max Schuurman

Ladies and gentlemen!

Whenever it has been a question of creating something in art that is in a certain sense new in relation to the traditional, it has been necessary to take into account the spiritual foundations of existence and to respond to them. Of course, this does not happen in an intellectual way, but can only happen if it is based on a genuine spiritual view. And this is the case with what is attempted to be created as eurythmy.

It is a matter of bringing what is gained as another form of expression when one sees through people in a certain way to immediate perception, to immediate impression, through the most perfect tool through which the spiritual can be revealed at all, through the human being, artistically, to immediate perception, to immediate impression, that which is gained as another form of expression when one sees through the human being in a certain direction, as another form of expression for what can be expressed through song or language.

If you are interested in how wonderfully our language works and approaches us, you really have to, especially when considering language, often give in to what I would call amazement. For language is actually smarter than the individual human being. The individual human being actually learns to think through language, and the individuality of thought develops from, I would say, the intelligence and wisdom contained in language.

To substantiate what I have just said, I would like to give a few examples. It is extremely interesting, for example, to see how language sometimes contradicts what we often mean today with our abstract thinking. We refer to what we think about things when we consider ourselves as “ideas.” We say we have an “idea” of something—precisely when we have been led to this idea through thinking. This is extremely interesting because when we use the word “idea,” if we really think about it, if we don't just use it abstractly as we do today, we have an expression for something we put in front of us. It arose from the unconscious of the linguistic genius in such a way that we achieve something in our thinking that we place before us. If, on the other hand, we speak of the experience of wanting and want to describe in a similar way the thing that we make into an idea when we think, then we will see that the inner impulses of language bring about the strange thing that we arrive, for example, at the word “intention,” which is connected with feeling, with perception, with seeing. “Intention” — the prefix “ab,” as we have it in “departure,” “process,” and so on, provides, in a sense, that which is expressed in the actual word is destroyed. When we speak of “intentions” in volition and of “ideas” in thinking, we actually have, so to speak, the opposite world to what we understand abstractly today, the opposite world indeed. We speak of “ideas” as if we had actually created something through our will; and we speak of “intentions” as if we had perceived something, as we believe we do in thinking, which we then destroyed, which then disappeared, while the idea remains.

I mention this to point out that when human beings surrender to the unconscious of the genius of language, they still talk about their own activities in a way that they would certainly not do according to abstract thinking, according to the intellectualism that prevails today. But if one goes into what the spiritual-supernatural aspect of human beings is like, if one goes into what human beings also have – their etheric body or formative body as opposed to their physical body – and then try to apply what we have in language to what the etheric body does, we come to the conclusion that language is very well suited to the experience and activity of the etheric body. This points us to that time in human history when language was first formed, when inner experiences, feelings, and sensations were even more vivid than is possible for abstract humanity today, when the etheric body, in union with the soul, actually experienced these things. Now, of course, language itself comes into being with the physical body. But it comes into being with organs, the larynx, neighboring organs, and so on, which are organized according to the inner self, in which what is formed like an inner air gesture in the respiratory stream when speaking actually has a negative effect. If one understands this speaking in spoken language or in singing in its totality, one finds that it is also a kind of gesture. It is an air gesture that the human being forms – and he forms it by counteracting the outflowing air, the outward air stream, with the speech organs.

If one compares not the superficial anatomy and physiology that prevail today, but a real understanding of human nature, what lies in the human speech organization and what is expressed in the human movement organization, in the limbs, namely in the most expressive ones, the arms and hands, one actually has two completely opposite things in these two parts of the human organization.

And anyone who can now—I would like to use Goethe's expression—follow through sensual-supersensual observation how, as the air gesture is formed out of the etheric body—because it is done unconsciously in the way I have just described—how the gesture is formed out of the etheric body, the air gesture is formed with the help of what grows inwardly, so to speak, in the speech organs, then the question immediately arises: Is it not possible, with regard to the will that is sent through speech, that this will then captures the formation of feeling and the formation of thinking in speech, is it not possible that this is also sent into the limbs?

Is it not possible, if one really goes back to the etheric body, to its inner gesture, to that which it actually experiences in any poem, piece of music, is it not possible to go back to the etheric body, to its inner gesture, to that which it actually experiences in any poem, piece of music,

Is it not possible, if one really goes back to the etheric body, to its inner gesture, to what it actually experiences in any poem, piece of music, in language or music in general – is it not possible that, just as it is otherwise sent through the air stream, informed by the speech organs, that it can be sent in the same way, by the same movement organism that otherwise lies outwardly in the outflowing air and is thoroughly organized, organically formed in the same impulse, sent through the limbs and then formed accordingly in them. If one grasps this — as I said, it cannot be followed with the intellect — if one grasps it artistically in immediate observation, one comes to the conclusion that it is entirely possible to form a visible language by transferring the whole process, the whole procedure that otherwise takes place through the speech organs, — but with the inner understanding of the experience of the soul and the etheric body when speaking — that one transfers this same process — only then, in a certain sense, the opposite process according to the human organization — to the limbs, then one obtains a real, visible language.

This real, visible language is what eurythmy strives for. Underlying this is a real artistic view of the speaking human being, an artistic way of seeing how the speaking human being can, in a sense, be transferred to their limbs, that this is the basis and is then developed in a directly artistic way, just as the formation of the air stream, these syllables, that sentence comes about, that it has come about in exactly the same way through the movement of the limbs. Then [eurythmy] can arise: when what arises, [which is otherwise] audible singing, spoken language, audible spoken language, [when that] can appear in visible movements, [which] can be revealed through the human limbs or even through human movements in general.

It is therefore completely wrong when, especially in recent times, it has often been emphasized in relation to eurythmic ideas that this is something invented. There is just as little that is invented in the basis of eurythmy as there is in a child learning to speak from the unconscious at a tender age. The fact that it is based on perceptions that are directly directed towards the spiritual world, which not everyone has without first striving for them, tempts people to say that it is something invented or conceived. In truth, eurythmy is just as much a product of human nature as language itself.

And so it becomes possible that when a piece of music is played on one side and a poem is recited or declaimed on the other, what is perceived through sound and tone can be accompanied, as it were, by an orchestra, by what can be visibly expressed through the human organism of movement, as if through another instrument.

Therefore, when eurythmy is performed on stage on one side and music is played or recited and declaimed on the other, we can understand this as a kind of orchestral interaction. However, this is linked to the realization that as soon as language itself is artistically shaped, we are no longer dealing with the prose content of language, but with the artistic shaping of language, and that therefore the reciter or declaimer does not, as is often the case in our unartistic times, focus on the prose punctuation, but rather tries to bring out what is solely artistic in poetry – let's say the way one sound colors another – that is, what lives imaginatively in language or what lives musically in language — the rhythmic, the melodious-dramatic — that this is brought to life above all by the reciter.

In this direction, Dr. Steiner has tried for years to retrain the art of recitation, and today it is actually impossible to accompany eurythmy with the prosaic art of recitation that focuses solely on pointing out the main points, because it is precisely there that the artistic nature of speech must be expressed in the visible language of eurythmy. This eurythmy must then also be accompanied by a recitation or declamation which, for example, I would say, reveals on another level what is already felt by the poet as a secret eurythmy. One might therefore say: what the human being holds back when he speaks artistically, but what lies in the shaping of what he reveals linguistically, is then visibly emphasized in the stage design, which interacts with the audible aspect of the declamation or which is also a visible singing, so that it interacts with the audible, tonal aspect of the musical.

In this way, I wanted to clarify from a particular perspective how eurythmy actually came about, namely by returning to the spiritual, to the foundation of our spiritual outlook. In every age of artistic development in which something new has emerged, it has always come about by returning to the spiritual sources. Otherwise, the development of art consists only of what lives on in tradition. First it was brought forth from the spiritual realm; then the schools that arose took shape. Those who followed them then only imitated the form and so on. That is how it is in the arts: if something new is to come forth, it must first be brought forth from the spirit.

But of course it is always my duty to ask the esteemed audience for their indulgence before attempting such a presentation. For what is intended is only in its infancy, and only those who truly find their way into the spirit of the matter will see that it has unlimited possibilities for development. So we can hope that this visible language and visible song of eurythmy will, perhaps over a longer period of time, come to stand alongside the older, fully established arts as a younger art form in its own right.