The Origin and Development of Eurythmy 1923–1925

GA 277d — 24 June 1923, Dornach

Eurythmy Performance

Rudolf Steiner designed an image (called “Johanni Imagination” or “The Reddish Figure”) that was probably copied by Henni Geck for the performance poster. Rudolf Steiner refers to this at the end of his speech: “Finally, I would like to draw your attention to the program, in which we have also attempted to express the mood of St. John's Day in an artistic and pictorial way.” Henni Geck later dated the picture July 30, 1924; however, this date cannot be accepted on the basis of the eurythmy speech.

Mercury prelude with music by Leopold van der Pals
7th picture (“Devachan scene”) from “The Gate of Initiation” by Rudolf Steiner
Nocturne in B flat minor, Op. 9, No. 1, by Frédéric Chopin
“Dedication” by Novalis
“Davidsbündler Tänze” Op. 6,11 by Robert Schumann
Johanni saying from the Soul Calendar (41.) by Rudolf Steiner
“Davidsbündler Tänze” Op. 6,2 by Robert Schumann
‘Lebenslied’ by Robert Hamerling
“Wanderers Sturmlied” by J. W. v. Goethe with music by Leopold van der Pals
Scenes from “A Midsummer Night's Dream” by William Shakespeare

Ladies and gentlemen!

I have often said in introductory remarks preceding our performances that eurythmy does not attempt to be a random form of mimicry or dance. Eurythmy is really about the attempt to create a visible language—or a visible song. The same laws that underlie the creation of sounds and tones in speech and song the same law that is drawn from the deepest inner being of the human being and the relationship of the human being to the world, is the basis when this law is not transferred to the larynx and other neighboring organs, as in spoken language and singing, but when this inner law is transferred to the human being's system of movement. And if one considers that, basically, spoken language and singing are also a kind of gesture, gestures of what lies in the formation, in the shaping of the outflowing stream of air, if one considers this, then one will not be very far from understanding that, just as in language, for example, there is a kind of gesture of the air flowing within the human being, so too can something like speech or singing be expressed or revealed through the human limbs or through the movement of the whole human being.

However, it must be clear that one cannot understand how language comes about at all if one stops at the physical human being, at the physical organization of the human being, but rather if one takes into account how the higher supersensible is present within this physical human organization. And we must first of all say that those forces which shape the air forming in spoken language and singing are aroused in the supersensible, etheric organism of the human being.

What lives within the human being can be studied, and this leads to the insight that language and singing are based on something that in a certain way lifts the human being above his physical earthly life. Certainly, in human interaction and also in scientific communication, the speech organs and what they produce are initially placed at the service of earthly life. But the ability to speak and sing is something that does not arise directly from the physical organization, but rather, if I may express it this way, flows into the physical organization of the human being. This also underlies a truly invincible human consciousness. It is true that the human being who has risen above the physical-sensory, the human being who masters his physical-sensory body as a supersensible being, lives in speech and song — even if speech and song, as they express themselves in the earthly air element, also initially go into the earthly element in their revelation. Therefore, language and song will also allow artistic expression of what corresponds to human longing, out of the physical-sensual into the spiritual realm, as such correspondence is present in every art form.

Just as we now have in language, as we have it in colloquial speech, for example, an adaptation of a non-earthly element to the earthly, so too do we have in human movements, even in human walking, in human running, the adaptation of that which flows in as supersensible human being into the human limbs, into the earthly. And we can see this both in the formed movement of the legs and feet, but also in the movement that is in any case torn from the earthly, the gestural movement of the arms and hands, which are the most expressive parts of the human being in terms of spatial revelation. In these, we can see the movements that have arisen in adaptation to the earthly, torn from this earthly. One can, so to speak, represent that which lives purely within the human being, that which cannot be overwhelmed by the earthly – as is the case with walking or running, with the arms that serve everyday movement – that which cannot be dominated by the earthly, but which, in the strictest sense, wants to express that which lives in the human being as the highest earthly being.

If we take this into account, we will say to ourselves that an extraordinary amount has indeed flowed into language, especially into the language of civilized peoples, with adaptation to the earthly. And actually, progress in language development consists in the fact that language adapts more and more to the earthly. On the other hand, when we today wrest the movements of the human limbs from earthly service, so to speak, and make these movements purely an expression of the inner human extraterrestrial, supernatural, we have rather given ourselves the opportunity to express the pure human soul through these gestures than through language. For language, especially where it is advanced, is so strongly adapted to the earthly that it cannot easily be brought back into the element of the extraterrestrial. This, my dear friends, is particularly evident when one wants to embody something like a special festive seasonal mood through eurythmy — this visible language and visible song, if I may say so. Today we want to try the experiment of revealing the St. John's mood through eurythmy. As modern people, we have actually completely lost sight of the significance of human life that is in tune with the course of the year. We really do live very much in tune with the course of the day. We eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner, sometimes even at other times of the day, and as human beings we are aware that the position of the sun in relation to the earth has something to do with the daily development of human beings. We are not really satisfied if we cannot participate in the daily cycle of cosmic time, so to speak.

In earlier times – even if this sounds quite unlikely, perhaps even paradoxical, to modern people – experiencing the cycle of the year was still considered to be very similar to experiencing the cycle of the day. People were aware that experiencing the cycle of the day was necessary for the physical body; one simply had to eat at certain times of the day. But people were also aware—something that cultural histories take far too little account of—that human beings also have something abstract, which we still call the soul today, even though we no longer have a clear idea of what it is, even if people do not go as far as Fritz Mauthner, who wanted to abolish the word “soul” altogether and introduce the word “Geseel” instead. He can no longer imagine anything under “soul”; these are such vague emotions. Just as one speaks of ‘siblings’ when one wants to express a vague kind of people who belong together, one can also speak of “geseel” when one does not think of a real soul in the background, when one has thoughts, feelings, and impulses of will flowing together. I hope that in the future people will not speak of the “sensitivity of my geseel” instead of the “sensitivity of my soul” and the like. But efforts to this end are certainly being made by very intelligent people today.

In earlier times, people were aware—even if this sounds paradoxical, because we all know that people today have become so much smarter than they were in earlier times—people were aware that human beings also have needs of the soul. And so, out of this lively awareness of human beings, the annual festivals arose: Christmas—the winter solstice festival, Easter—the spring solstice festival, and above all the summer solstice festival, the festival of St. John. And then there was Michaelmas in the fall. For what was organized in earlier times in comprehensive cult rituals, and later in all kinds of activities that commemorated them, penetrated into human consciousness, into feeling and perception. And such things were considered just as necessary for the inner satisfaction of the soul as the satisfaction of the body through material things.

People were hungry when midsummer approached at St. John's Day; they were hungry to live at least during such festivals, which lifted people out of their earthbound existence and brought them into all kinds of cult-like movement games, we might say, into all kinds of activities that gave people the awareness that they are not merely bound to the earth, but can rise up and look out into the free space of the world, into the ether.

It was this kind of lifting up into the etheric sphere that was celebrated at St. John's Day. If one could express in words what was actually lived unconsciously, but lived unconsciously in people, one could say: The older person said: The body makes you hungry and the day satisfies you; the soul makes you hungry and the year satisfies you. Then there is the spirit with its universal nature, which does not undergo such tremendous changes as the body or the soul. We need food for our bodies every day, and we often need hunger and nourishment for our souls throughout our lives. And in earlier times, the year provided hunger and nourishment for the soul. The spirit was something that remained constant over a long period of time. But in ancient times, it was known that in the great epochs of humanity there are also dawns, midsummers, and dusks of spiritual life.

It was not really necessary to wait for Spenglerism, which in an amateurish way only expresses what was already known from earlier, deeper insights — even if they are not appreciated in the present, they were deeper than some of the current ones — it was not necessary to wait for what has emerged in this way in order to know: The human spirit experiences a kind of passage through morning, noon, evening, spring, summer, autumn, and so on in the historical epochs. Human beings felt themselves placed in the cosmos with body, soul, and spirit. And this gives a true insight into the annual festivals, which are a real recognition of the old, felt, not abstractly defined, but felt soul life.

Today, we need much more concrete revitalization of the human soul life than any philosophy or the like can provide if we want to move beyond materialism. For it is also a kind of materialism in the present that we only have the connection of the body with the cosmos. We need not seek materialism only among natural scientists or monists, we can also look for it in those people—and find it there in a much more comprehensive sense—who only experience the course of the sun in their bodies, who only care about keeping to the times of day with breakfast, lunch, five o'clock tea, and supper, who no longer have the inner intensity to experience the course of the year as vividly. One proof that consciousness has disappeared from the inner soul, that materialism has taken hold of consciousness, is that our festivals have become something conventional, that we no longer enter into the mood of the festivals.

Therefore, an art form such as eurythmy, which strives to draw on new artistic sources, is particularly necessary to point to something new through such sources – but not as a rehash of the old. Ultimately, nature remains constant. The St. John's mood remains the St. John's mood. And it is possible to try to capture the annual festivals, especially through the visible language of eurythmy, which reaches out into the cosmos, into the vast etheric spheres.

I always say, when I precede our performances with my introductory words, that we are only at the beginning. We are our own strictest judges, knowing that eurythmy must continue to develop, but it truly has unlimited potential for development. Today's attempt may also be judged in this way. So today's attempt to capture the St. John's mood in the performance of the program, but especially in the entire design of the stage set and in everything that permeates the eurythmic performance, may still be such that I must ask you, my dear audience, for your forbearance. For this is just a beginning, but one that must be made. For we as human beings must come to feel again what it means for a human being not only to experience the day, but also to experience the other periodic formations of cosmic existence, to experience the course of the day in the cosmos with his body, to experience the course of the year in the cosmos with his soul, to experience the great course of epochs, the historical one, with his spirit.

It may seem strange that it is precisely from an artistic perspective that an attempt is being made to conduct such an experiment in human progress. However, art has always been something that has had the most intense influence in pushing humanity forward, epoch by epoch, piece by piece. So eurythmy may also try to contribute to helping us, as the present human race, to rise above materialism and enter a more spiritual, more intellectual atmosphere. And this is precisely what the St. John's Day mood should aim at, that St. John's Day mood through which, wherever it originally existed, the goal was always pursued of tearing people out of earthly life through the warmth that was poured out from the universe, from the sun onto the earth, through the light that was at its highest point in the middle of summer, where human beings could become aware of how they are enclosed as human beings between a feeling of something flowing in, not merely, but as if in the action of something rising up from below.

This St. John's mood, which has always been used to give human beings the awareness that they are cosmic beings, not merely earthly beings, can also be used in today's humanity to lift themselves up from the earth. And this can best be done by means that arise from the outset from a spiritual deepening of our present civilized life. And one of these means is eurythmy. Therefore, dear guests, allow us to try to develop the St. John's mood in eurythmy today.

Finally, I would like to draw your attention to the program, in which we have also tried to express the St. John's mood artistically and pictorially. It is difficult to describe, but we can enliven what lives within it through the striving of human beings from the earthly into the cosmic, through the striving out of the telluric, earthly human being into the cosmic human being. We would like to achieve this enlivening of the St. John's mood by ensuring that everything today is permeated by the St. John's mood.

That is what I wanted to say in a few words by way of introduction.