The Origin and Development of Eurythmy 1923–1925

GA 277d — 1 July 1923, Dornach

Eurythmy Performance

On this day, a meeting of the Swiss School Association took place at the Goetheanum, for which a eurythmy performance was given at 3:30 p.m. and the following speech was held.

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

Dear guests!

Let me first express my particular joy and satisfaction that we are once again able to present a eurythmy performance to the assembled teachers here today. I already attempted to characterize the essence of eurythmy during the last visits we received from this side, and today I would like to precede the performance with just a few introductory words.

Eurythmy can enter our present life in three forms: first, as art, as artistic eurythmy; second, from a pedagogical-didactic point of view, as a kind of animated, spiritualized gymnastics: pedagogical-didactic eurythmy; and then as a certain branch of therapy: as therapeutic eurythmy. Eurythmy as an art is based on the fact that human beings not only have the ability to reveal what lives in their inner being through audible speech and audible song, but also through the movements of their own bodies, their limbs, or through the movements of individual people or groups of people in space, thereby creating a truly visible language. Human beings do not speak and sing from their physical bodies, but from their souls. And the origin of speech and song can only really be found by going back to the supersensible nature of human beings.

The outer, physical-sensory, bodily nature of the human being is based primarily on the so-called formative forces or etheric body, which represents a connection between the spiritual-soul nature and the physical body. When we reveal ourselves through spoken language or singing, this comes about because the two extremes that are diverging in human beings today in the current stage of human development — breathing and thinking — come together, so that what is formed in the exhaled air is shaped by thought, by imagination. And then, in what is formed in the exhaled stream of air, which manifests itself in sound, in tone, we have a kind of gesture formed by thought.

In this gesture shaped by thought, the human being remains, at least in essence, calm with his limbs. Only when he feels that he cannot fully express the inner experience he wants to express through sound, that he cannot express it completely through the mere sound formed by thought, does he urge himself to gesture. And they support what they are saying with the usual gesture, adding, as it were, something even more inner to the more conventional language. But these are suggestive gestures. These suggestive gestures actually never mean more than a kind of babbling. Just as language begins with babbling and then becomes developed, articulated speech, so too can the ordinary babbling of gestures that we all do to a greater or lesser extent in life be developed into fully artistically articulated gestures, and this is what happens in eurythmy.

Breathing and thought form a whole in ordinary language. In the same way, however, the rhythm that lives in the blood circulation and the movements of the human limbs can also form a whole. Just as breathing and thought relate to each other at one pole of the human being, so at the other pole the blood circulation, which dissolves and burns the material, relates to the movement of the limbs. And while we express more of what lives between human beings when we reveal ourselves through the connection of thoughts and breathing in language, we can reveal more of what human beings experience in their relationship to the cosmos, to the whole world, when we reveal those mysterious inner processes that take place in the connection between the gestures of movement and the inner consumption of the substance that surges and weaves in human beings in the blood circulation. we can reveal more of what human beings experience in their relationship to the cosmos, to the whole world, although in ordinary consciousness this is often experienced in an unconscious way.

If we take our knowledge of the human being back to the etheric body, we find that When we express ourselves through the physical body, thoughts, feelings, and will are revealed through the physical body in movement. But, my dear audience, thinking, feeling, and willing merge into one another. And as paradoxical as it may sound, in the etheric or image-forming body, it is the will that thinks and thinking that wills.

These two activities, willing and thinking, can merge into one another; feeling always remains in their midst. Language comes from feeling. It goes from feeling into the breath, and thought forms what is spoken. In the same way, feeling goes into the blood circulation. And movement, the gesture of movement, can form what the human being has within themselves through the fact that they - You know, blood is a very special fluid; it contains the innermost essence of the human being in relation to the world - by modeling the corresponding relationship between that rhythm, which is actually a rhythm of the macrocosm and which is represented macrocosmically in the human blood circulation, when the world in the macrocosm, in the human being, in the human microcosm, wants to speak: This can be expressed through the visible language of eurythmy, through expressive gestures.

Just as nature unconsciously drives spoken language out of the child, so, if one truly understands the human being, with an understanding of the relationship between the will and the blood circulation through the etheric body, one can bring out meaningful movements, as meaningful as the sounds of language, where each individual movement belongs to a particular expression of the soul, like the individual letters of language. In this way, one can develop a visible language that contains nothing arbitrary, that does not consist of momentary, invented gestures, but of an inner, lawful human organization — like spoken language or singing itself. This enables us to represent what can be expressed in poetry from one pole of the human being, the pole of breathing and thinking, from the pole of movement and blood circulation. This creates the orchestral interaction that you encounter in artistic eurythmy, where you see in the stage design how the human being speaks the cosmic language; on the other hand, the poem is declaimed and recited, brought to life through declamation or recitation. I would say that this happens in the same way that two instruments interact in an orchestra. However, declamation or recitation, which is already inner eurythmy, must also be contained in every true poem — in today's somewhat unartistic times, people have no real feeling for true declamation and recitation — in order to bring it to life.

Real declamation, real recitation, can still be misunderstood today. When recitation and declamation accompany eurythmy, one will see how necessary it is that, on the one hand, the pictorial-imaginative and, on the other hand, the musical-thematic, rhythmic, rhythmic, and metrical aspects come to the fore in this recitation and in all real recitation and declamation – not the prosaic emphasis where every dilettante believes that he or she can also declaim and recite. Rather, it is the artistic shaping of language, in which the actual poetic lies, that corresponds to the artistic nature of eurythmy. Eurythmy then has its pedagogical-didactic side. It allows people to perform movements, but each individual movement is imbued with spirit and soul. This makes it something that places people in the world, in life, in a way that mere gymnastics cannot. Gymnastics arose, ladies and gentlemen, at a time when materialism was beginning to flourish. It was recognized that the human will could be exercised in gymnastics – but it was a time when people were accustomed to looking only at the human physical organism. As a result, the question always arises: Which movements should be performed according to the laws of the physical organism? But this does not take the whole human being into account.

I certainly do not want to say anything against gymnastics. We ourselves introduced gymnastics in the Waldorf school as soon as we had the material resources to do so. And today, physical gymnastics is practiced just as eagerly as the soulful, spiritual gymnastics of eurythmy is practiced in Waldorf schools. But it must be taken into account that while ordinary gymnastics only ever addresses the physical body of the human being, and therefore actually suppresses the spiritual and soul aspects, eurythmy, in a pedagogical and didactic way, brings the whole human being into motion in body, soul, and spirit in such a way that his soul being lies in every single movement, flowing out of his lips, so to speak, when he speaks.

This also means that children of school age and other ages find their way into eurythmy with the same naturalness with which they find their way into speech as very young children. For when eurythmy lessons are taught correctly, children feel that eurythmy is actually a natural revelation of human nature. Just as it is natural for human beings to pour out their souls through language, sending them out into the world through song, so it becomes quite natural for human beings to orient their entire soul being more toward the will in gestural movements of their limbs and in movements in space that are designed to reveal themselves outwardly, and to work toward strengthening, inspiration, and spiritualization work inwardly.

The third thing is that eurythmy also represents a kind of therapy. We certainly do not want to devise remedies in an amateurish or dilettantish manner. But when the artistic or pedagogical-didactic eurythmic movements are transformed in such a way that they have a certain effect on human nature, improving certain conditions in nature, then one obtains – not with the same movements that you see here in artistic eurythmy, but with slightly transformed, metamorphosed movements – something that can have a healing, therapeutic effect on people with certain diseases and debilitating conditions. At Dr. Wegman's Clinical-Therapeutic Institute in Arlesheim, as well as at our Clinical-Therapeutic Institute in Stuttgart, curative eurythmy is practiced as part of therapy and, as is already clearly demonstrable, bears fruit just as pedagogical-didactic eurythmy bears fruit in Waldorf schools.

But today, as always before such presentations, attempts at presentation, I would like to ask the esteemed audience for their indulgence. We know that we are still in the early stages of developing this art, this pedagogical part, this therapeutic addition, in all areas of eurythmy, and we know that much development is still needed. But those who familiarize themselves with these things can also see that there is immense potential for development, because we are using the most perfect instrument available to us, the whole human being – something that even the art of mime does not do, which only uses the whole human being to a limited extent, as a supplement to language, so to speak. And so we can hope that eurythmy will become more and more perfected, that the time will come when we will no longer have to ask for indulgence because eurythmy is only at the beginning of its development, but that the time will come when eurythmy will be recognized as a fully valid younger art alongside the other fully valid older arts.