The Origin and Development of Eurythmy 1923–1925

GA 277d — 22 July 1923, Dornach

Eurythmy Performance

“The rune of the four winds” by Fiona Macleod
“The moonchild” by Fiona Macleod
From “Kinderszenen” by Robert Schumann
“The Fairy Tale of Imagination” from the 6th scene of “The Portal of Initiation” by Rudolf Steiner
“Davidsbündler Tänze” op. 6,2 by Robert Schumann
“Sind unsere Wünsche so flüchtig” by Vladimir Solovyov Prelude in E-flat minor by J. S. Bach “Als am dritten Tage” by Albert Steffen Adagio con esprit, Op. 27,1 by L. v. Beethoven “Feuerrotes Fohlen” by Albert Steffen “Edward” in the adaptation by J. G. Herder
“Erinnerung” by Anton Bruckner
‘Schlummerlied’ from Op. 124 by Robert Schumann
“April” by William Watson
Theme with variations in G major, K. 379, by W. A. Mozart
“Who is Sylvia?” from “The Two Gentlemen of Verona” by William Shakespeare ‘Spring’ from “Love's Labour Lost” by William Shakespeare with music by Jan Stuten

My dear friends!

Yesterday I spoke more about the view of art in general, and today, on the occasion of the important fact that numerous anthroposophical friends are here, some of them from very distant places, I would like to say a few words about the emergence of eurythmy — as I mentioned yesterday — about the emergence of eurythmy from a spiritual perspective such as that provided by anthroposophy. I would like to illustrate this in greater depth. Therefore, please forgive me today if I build on anthroposophical premises and say a few words about eurythmy from a purely anthroposophical perspective.

That which emerges from the human being — be it thoughts, feelings, impulses of the will, or even linguistic, vocal, recitative, or declamatory performance — does not originate from any partial aspect of human nature, but rather from the whole of human nature. And we can only really understand how human beings reveal themselves in one way or another if we examine the contribution that the various parts of human nature, of human being, make to such a revelation of the human being.

Now, based on a piece of knowledge that is as accurate as any other piece of knowledge in today's scientific life — indeed, probably much more accurate — we must, when we speak of human nature, say that Human beings are structured according to their physical body, according to the first supersensible part of their being, according to the so-called etheric or image-forming body, then according to that which is already connected with the inner soul life itself, according to the astral body, and then according to the ego organization. We have the entire human being before us when we visualize these four members of this being before our soul's eye. These four members are now involved in every human manifestation according to their different fundamental forces and elements, and it only matters how they are involved.

Of course, I can only hint at what I have to say. But, as I said, since this is a gathering of anthroposophists from all over the world, I would like to speak about eurythmy in a completely anthroposophical way. Popular discussions can be had at other eurythmy performances.

First, I would like to draw attention to how what we call the ego organization and the astral body separate from the physical body and the etheric or life body, the formative forces body, every time a person is asleep. As a result, however, the ego and the astral body are related to the things and processes of the earth in a way that is initially unconscious to the human being. When we are awake, our inner being — that is, our ego and astral body — does not have the same intimate relationship with the outside world as it does when we are asleep, because when we are awake, we perceive the outside world only with the help of the physical body and its organs, with the help of the etheric body and its organs. Now, because the ego and the astral body enter into closer connections with the outside world during our entire earthly existence, every time we are asleep, they are in fact, I would say, in a very intimate relationship with the outside world and can thus also convey what enters the conscious mind as the unconscious in the revelations of human nature.

So let us remember: we speak; we speak in vowels, we speak in consonants. Then, for the view that is almost exclusively accepted today – the view of the senses and the intellect that combines sensory impressions – this speaking is bound to the physical body. Speech is the expression of the form of certain organs, and of course what happens with the physical body can be represented more or less accurately. But the other supersensible members of human nature are also involved in this speech.

Now we must consider what this etheric or formative body, which is closest to the physical body and does not separate from it even at night during sleep, actually means for human beings. This etheric or life or formative body is the carrier of the thought element, the carrier of all those forces that form thoughts in human beings. The truth is that we form thoughts with the help of the physical and etheric bodies, and that we are only distant from thoughts during sleep — encountering them, so to speak, but in a chaotic way, dreaming when waking up or falling asleep — because in the state of sleep we are separated from our own inner being, from our ego and astral body, and also from the part that contains our thought life. In truth, we think all night long, but we are unaware of it.

So the mind lives in the etheric or life body. And this also makes education, which a person undergoes in relation to their physical body, but also in relation to their etheric or formative body, more important than one might think for the way a person thinks. If a person is brought up to be sloppy in the way they handle their organization, if I may put it that way, then this is also expressed in the sloppy handling of their thoughts. How a person is organized internally – only when the formative body is included in this organization – is how they are in their thinking.

But what flows into language or even into singing as thoughts comes from the physical body and the etheric or formative body. But the elements of the outside world actually flow into language – let us speak mainly of language. We must recognize in our language that which enters our speech and also our singing via the Ego and astral body, indirectly through respiration and blood circulation. What enters our speech and singing via the detour through breathing and blood circulation originates from the ego and astral body, which have the opportunity to connect intimately with the inner world again and again when they are separated from the outer world. If, for example, we look for the peculiar shape that, say, the human lip apparatus assumes in order to form certain consonants, we cannot stop at the human being if we want to understand this, I would almost say mysterious, shape of the lip, tongue, and so on. In this respect, our present-day, so-called scientific age is extremely superficial.

As you know, there are two types of language theories that may be less prominent today, but once caused quite a stir. One is called the Bimbam theory and the other the Wauwau theory. Well, these theories have been advocated by learned people, and you could, of course, read more about them in the works of Max Müller, the Oxford professor, than what I am telling you now. But essentially, the Bimbam theory assumes that, just as the sound of a bell strikes from within the outer object, so too – not always through hearing, but through the perception of the other senses – is it with the processes and things of the outside world that humans are able to empathize with them. Now, this is not as external as the Bimbam theory suggests, but it comes about through the inner intimate communion that the ego and astral body always enter into when they are separated from the outside world.

We do not adapt to animal sounds in such an external way as the woof-woof theory assumes, but we experience external things precisely through our ego and astral body. And one will only understand the wonderful formation of the lips and tongue and palate and so on, down to all the various organs of speech, when one properly considers the fact that not only from within — which could be explored through physiology, for example — but also from outside, the tongue, lips, palate, and so on are formed from the outside into the human being, so that the things of the outside world really live in the formations of the organs that underlie speech.

If this were not so, human beings would never have been able to speak. For language is not merely a revelation of what human beings experience within themselves, that is, within their skin, but languages also contain what lives in the mysteries of the earthly things around us and what we become aware of precisely because our ego and astral body are separated from our physical and etheric bodies. And it is language that we learn in the outside world. Up to the vocal cords, there vibrates, there undulates, there reverberates that which the ego and the astral body experience in intimate acquaintance with the outside world. And it is indeed the case that in our civilized languages, that which connects language with the outside world in an immensely intimate way has already been completely worn away. Therefore, it should not be underestimated when it is said, from a deeper understanding than today's materialistic physiology or what can be built on this basis, that when we pronounce a z or an e or an " for example, this is not merely an expression of human nature, but something that human beings experience in their entire being with the external environment.

One need only consider the images that immediately conjure themselves before the mind's eye when one learns about the relationship of an i or an « to the things of the outside world. But anyone who is able to empathize with an i knows that in this i lies something which, when felt and sensed correctly, is like what gives us our own existence from the outside world. Therefore, all languages that have the i in the [word] “I” simply give people a sense of existence through language that languages that do not have the i in “I” cannot give people. The “I” stands before the soul, as when two elements of the outside world that are supersensible come into contact with each other, touch each other, and humans must be attentive to this contact.

And so there are either musical or plastic images that stand before our soul when we want to enter into the intimacies of language. And when we understand these images, only then do we come to understand the wonderful connection that exists between our entire soul life, our entire emotional life, and language. And we learn to recognize how, on the one hand, ordinary speech in humans extends to thinking, but on the other hand, it extends physically down to the blood circulation. For even though it is not possible to feel the pulse changing when saying “i” and “u,” the change is nevertheless present on a small scale. One could even speak of a microscopic—you know, figuratively speaking—of a microscopic change in the pulse when a person feels deeply what the soul experiences in the course of a word or a sentence by living into the intimacies of the speech sounds or singing tones. We would have to look for those movements that correspond to ordinary speech or singing, which therefore carry within them the thought, which is actually an inartistic element; we would have to look for this human movement in human blood.

But if we move from language to the imaginations – be they musical, plastic, or pictorial – then we find the possibility of expressing what lies in language, just as lawfully as it behaves in language itself, through real visible spatial movements of the individual human limbs or of the whole human being in space. And [we] thereby obtain a truly visible language that can reveal what in audible language can only be revealed through the how, through the treatment of language. If one is able to color one sound with another in the course of speaking, if one is able to embody rhythm and melodious themes in the right way in poetically and artistically treated language, then one gradually enters into the secrets of recitation and declamation. Dr. Steiner has tried to study this over the years in order to go beyond what is sought in a prosaic manner in an unartistic age such as ours, in order to achieve this in real recitation and declamation, that is, in the treatment of what is poetically and artistically shaped out of language.

This secret eurythmy, which already lies in the treatment of language, is actually already present in every true poet. But true poets – they really do not make up even one percent of those who are considered poets today. We can say outright that ninety-nine percent of those who write poetry today are not really poetic artists. But by going into what the how is in the treatment of language, [one recognizes] how this how of the treatment of language gives a much greater possibility of expressing something soulful than the prosaic content of the word. For the prose content of the word actually expresses the non-artistic, while the how expresses the artistic. One must always, through a kind of divination, first redeem the artistic from that which can only be given to one indirectly through the medium of print when communicating the poem.

The poet feels the whole human being by expressing himself linguistically. And again and again I must recall the beautiful poetic words: “When the soul speaks, / alas, it is no longer the soul that speaks.” This applies to language that focuses primarily on the prose content of language. The language that lives in the plastic and coloristic qualities that sound can give to sound, that the treatment of sound can give, the language that lives in the musical elements of language, of which it can be said: when the soul speaks through it, the soul tries to say what it cannot say through language that has already become prosaic, language that has become inartistic. But this is precisely what can be brought out of language and song through eurythmy, since the most expressive human limbs are set in motion, unlike in dance, which sets the less expressive human limbs – the legs and feet – in motion. Eurythmy is not a dance, because it does not primarily set these limbs in motion, although it must do so, but it has no kinship with dance. But in relation to what was indicated earlier, the specific shaping of the arms and hands—the most expressive limbs of the human organism—is the corresponding visible language.

And if one is able to gain such an insight into human nature as I have only been able to hint at, one is able, on the basis of such an insight, to find for every finger, for every arm movement, for every change in the human organism in space, one can find an expression as lawful as nature and its spirit itself have found, by letting us learn language and song in a naive way from the unconscious of human beings during childhood, then one is able to create such a visible language in such a lawful way, then this visible language is, I would say something that plays the same on another instrument as singing or declamation or recitation plays on the one hand. One really gets a kind of orchestral interaction between what is happening on stage and what is being played on musical instruments or what is being recited or declaimed by the human voice.

This gives us the opportunity to draw from the sources I mentioned yesterday to create an art that has not yet been discovered by humanity, for the simple reason that every art can only be created from the specific cultural conditions that have existed in successive epochs within the development of humanity.

In eurythmic art, one encounters a new kind of art that makes even more use of the human being itself as an instrument than the art of mime. And since human beings already contain within themselves all the secrets of the world, like a microcosm in relation to the macrocosm, we can safely say – even though we must still ask our esteemed audience for their indulgence before every eurythmy performance – that we are our own strictest critics, knowing that we are still in the very early stages of eurythmy. but it can also be said that precisely because of the special way in which we make use of the human being, who contains all the secrets of the world within himself as a microcosm in relation to the macrocosm, we can hope that eurythmy will one day become what it cannot yet be today: a fully-fledged younger art form alongside the fully-fledged older art forms.