The Origin and Development of Eurythmy 1923–1925

GA 277d — 21 July 1923, Dornach

Eurythmy Performance

From July 20 to 22, 1923, an international conference of delegates of the Anthroposophical Society took place at the Goetheanum, during which two eurythmy performances with speeches by Rudolf Steiner were given, which were therefore aimed at a more internal audience. Although the following draft announcement is undated, the dates and content correspond exactly to the following performances.

Nocturne in B flat minor, Op. 9, No. 1, by Frédéric Chopin
Chorus of the Spirits from Faust I, Study, by J. W. von Goethe
Funeral March by Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy
“Du starrst den Himmel” (You stare at the sky) by Albert Steffen
“Du denkst dein Leiden” (You think your suffering) by Albert Steffen
“Ein riesenhaftes Antlitz” (A giant face) by Albert Steffen
“Lasst uns die Bäume lieben” (Let us love the trees) by Albert Steffen
Larghetto from a sonata by G. F. Handel
“Lebenslied” (Song of life) by Robert Hamerling
“Schmetterling” (Butterfly) op. 33,6 by Walter Niemann
“Le Samourai” by Jose Maria de Heredia
“Melodie sans paroles” by Peter Tchaikovsky
Scenes from “A Midsummer Night's Dream” by William Shakespeare

My dear friends!

The fact that eurythmy emerged from the anthroposophical movement is not arbitrary, even though the immediate cause may seem almost coincidental. But the development of eurythmy has taken place in such a way that, basically, its actual character has only emerged over the years, and has emerged in such a way that it could only have come out of the anthroposophical movement as the movement intended for the modern age, for the present and the near future.

In eurythmy, we are dealing with a very specific art, an art that arises when an expression of the human being itself, a revelation of human nature through the individual human being in his limbs or also through the people in the room, when such a revelation of the human being is used in an artistic sense. Now, I have often referred to what occurs there as an expression of the human being, a visible language. It is a visible language insofar as it is revealed in a completely lawful manner through human movement – just as it is revealed in a lawful manner through language or song – which can be created poetically or musically, that is, artistically.

True artistry has always emerged from foundations sought in the spiritual world. We must simply be clear that architecture, for example, emerged from a very specific supersensible perspective. We can link this to the external fact that, the further back we go, monumental buildings were essentially erected over burial sites. And when we call to mind the idea associated with such a monumental building as a burial place, it looks something like this. We must say to ourselves: Man is not complete in his earthly existence in his whole being. He leaves the earthly body with his own being by passing through the gate of death. In a sense, they continue their existence beyond earthly existence.

Those who are able to see this human mystery as imagination, to imaginatively answer the question: How does man actually want to be received by the universe when he leaves his physical body? – then the answer to this question reveals the forms of monumental tombs. What emerges is a monumental structure erected above a burial site, as if it were concealing the lines along which the soul, leaving the body, wanted to swing out into the vastness of the cosmos. And the tomb answers the question: What are the paths of the soul out of the earthly body?

Here, the architectural idea confronts us in its most extreme form. For, basically, we can also extend this architectural idea to the utilitarian buildings intended for earthly life. We can also ask the question this way—only then it seems more prosaic: If human beings on this earth are compelled to have what they have to give within their earthly existence through their soul in a very specific, final environment for this soul, how must they then architecturally surround their physical body for what they already have to do on earth? I can only hint at these things, but I would like to point out how something like architecture, for example, has arisen from a supersensible foundation, from contemplation.

And again, one can ask about sculpture, and one will find that the origin of sculpture lies in the answer to the question: What have the gods done with the human form, and what does man do with the human form during his earthly life? What is divine in this human form? What does man bring to the divine through his soul life? What man brings to the divine through his soul life is omitted by the sculptor as something that does not belong to art. That which is a gift of the gods in the human form is originally that which is realized through the plastic arts.

And just as monumental architecture arose from the age in which people thought specifically about the paths the soul takes after death — you can still see this in Catholic churches, where the altar is the tomb and even the Gothic church is built over the tomb — just as the architectural cultural idea was born out of a supersensible vision, so the plastic idea arose from an age when people thought more about how the human body is a gift from the gods. And in the same way, we can point out for each individual art form how, in the relevant epoch, the origin of the art form arose from the elevation of human beings into supersensible worlds, and how everything that tends toward naturalism in the individual arts, everything that departs from the supersensible, is decadent art, the decline of art. From this, however, it can be seen how the origin of art can only be sought in the supersensible.

If we look at our present time, it speaks in many ways of the subconscious or unconscious that surges and swirls in the human spirit and soul. But most of our contemporaries leave this unconscious unconscious. In the past, it was said of those who gave themselves over to a certain mood of the soul that they let God be a good man, meaning they did not concern themselves with him. Today, it can be said of most people who talk about the unconscious that they let the unconscious be the unconscious; they do not concern themselves with it any further. In contrast, anthroposophical spiritual knowledge has the task of bringing this unconscious to the surface, bringing it together with the superconscious, and grasping that which lives directly in the human being as spiritual-soul, in its connection with the higher spiritual.

But, my dear friends, my esteemed audience, what is human expression in this regard is, I would say, only a partial revelation of human language. Human language primarily takes up thoughts. The way it takes up thoughts, especially within our present-day civilization, has even led to our losing poetry through the intellectualization of poetry. This is most evident in the fact that, although reactions against this have rightly made themselves felt, we are no longer able to recite and declaim in the usual way. Dr. Steiner has spent years working hard to rediscover declamation and recitation in their true form.

It is precisely the right art of recitation and declamation that reveals the true essence of poetry. For only those who can say with the poet, with complete inner understanding, “When the soul speaks, / alas, it is no longer the soul that speaks,” can find the essence of poetry. When the soul comes to our lips, into our words, which have long since lost their connection with the essence of the world, then we have prose, then we no longer have poetry. We only find poetry again when we return to the way in which, I would say in large and small waves, in oscillating waves and in angular waves, the sounds and words move in the verse, in the stanza, how the imagination flows through the iambus or the trochee or the like; when we gain the image, the imagination, or when we gain, as the real poet seeks, through meter, rhythm, through the melodic theme, to strike music out of language. Then we have arrived at what lies beyond the words, what is artistically shaped in the words, whereas today, in recitation and declamation, one often seeks mere prose punctuation, even if, as I said, a reaction is already taking place.

But on the whole, we must hold fast to the fact that one can only fully appreciate a poetic creation if one takes the following into account: the reciter, the declaimer, is only able to utter words. Everything artistic depends on how he utters the words. Then, for those who really know how to listen to recitation and declamation with an artistic ear, either an imaginative or a musical image must arise, an image either in sound or in tone, something that is far higher than the thought.

The thought represents the sensual. We ascend into the supersensible. When we express thoughts through language, the thought calls upon that which, living in the breath, connects with the breath. The blood pulse connects with the breath. The blood pulse, even in its slightest fluctuations, expresses what the soul feels and senses; it expresses the life of the soul. Those who have the right insight into these things know that when we say a word like “klingen” (to sound), the blood pulsation in the first syllable “kling,” which goes to the i, is different from that in the second syllable “en,” which goes to the e. We invoke by allowing the thought to flow into the word with the help of the breath, the blood pulsation, the inner movement of the human being.

We do this as long as we remain with the thought. When the image for the thought opens up to us – and this can happen with words – then we have a different task than merely invoking the pulsation of the blood to movement. When we pronounce a z, we pronounce it today, I would say, with extreme phlegm. It is just an i, it is just the letter that is in so many words. But that is not how it was originally, when the : arose within humanity; it is not that the i really breaks away from the essence of the human being. Anyone who feels the : feels how it passes through the breath and how the breath becomes intertwined with the pulsation of the blood, knows that when the i is pronounced, the human being places his own essence into the space. Whereas when he pronounces the e, he has the feeling that something spiritual is happening within him. When he pronounces the o, he must have the feeling, the image: something spiritual is revealing itself before him. Each individual sound transforms itself before those who can feel language into an image, an image that stands before them in a very specific form. Language itself is full of feeling as one moves from one sound to another. It has become silent, indifferent. Human beings have, in a sense, become sour in their soul nature.

That is why, when contemporary civilization speaks, one usually has the feeling that something like a mixture of salt and vinegar is getting on one's tongue. It is precisely the most civilized languages that strike you when spoken, when everything approaches the squishing sounds, that strike you like a mixture of salt and vinegar on the tongue. But the original language of humanity is actually flowing honey, is actually something immensely sweet, is that through which the human being expresses itself through sound.

And poetry today is desperately searching for a way to express feeling, because we have already lost feeling in language. But if we want to reawaken this feeling today, then we must raise the whole language, I would say, to a higher level; then we must give everything that human beings can speak something like a heaven above speech, in which what lives in human souls is actually lived out in powerful forms. And when one comes to see that which language is but a shadow of, then an imaginative language emerges, where imaginations can be expressed through that which is now the microcosm, which is a small world, which is the human being, who can express all mysteries through his own form as a spatial being.

When one knows the imaginations that arise for the individual forms of language, then one can also move on to the individual forms of singing. When one incorporates these into human movements, one obtains eurythmy. And one would like to say: there is an imaginative revelation of language. Our language today has become intellectualistic. If we return to the imaginative aspect of language – and we must do so, because we must return to the spiritual in all areas – then this requires us today to bring imagination into language, into that which can be expressed in human beings as spatial movement, as the most significant artistic element.

But then, when we express what lies deeper in language, what we can no longer express merely through the movement of blood in connection with the breath when we speak, but when we want to express a connection between what, in a sense, hovers above the head, above thought, above abstract language, when we want to express what corresponds to the imagination of language, then we need not only the blood movement that is carried out when we stand still and speak, but we also need that which causes the blood movement to pass into the visibly moving human being. And then we get visible gestures for what is otherwise just air gestures when we speak—because we unconsciously imprint the imagination into the air gestures—then we get visible gestures. And these visible gestures are eurythmy.

Eurythmy thus emerges from a deepening of our age, from the deepening of our age that is necessary for this very age. And just as one can prove for each individual age why architecture, sculpture, painting, and music had to arise in that particular age, so one will one day understand that eurythmy, this art of human movement, had to arise in our age.

Therefore, even if we must ask our esteemed audience again and again for their forbearance, because eurythmy is still in its infancy, it must be said: those who know the origin, the source of eurythmy, know that it is capable of immeasurable perfection, that it already once stood in the ranks of the arts, such arts as painting, sculpture, music, recitation, declamation, and so on—I have already indicated elsewhere that I even count the art of clothing, which is so terribly maltreated in our time, among the arts—that it will take its place in the series of arts as a fully entitled younger art alongside the fully entitled older arts.