The Origin and Development of Eurythmy 1923–1925

GA 277d — 2 January 1924, Dornach

Eurythmy Performance

Largo from the opera “Cleopatra in Negroponte” by Domenico Gabrielli
“Ruler Earth” by Vladimir Solovyov
“Immanuel” by Vladimir Solovyov
Prelude in F minor by J. S. Bach
Ghost Chorus from “Faust I,” Study Room, by J. W. v. Goethe
“Funeral March” by Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy
“Die Sonne schaue” by Rudolf Steiner
Pastoral in G major from the Christmas Oratorio by J. S. Bach
“Zum neuen Jahr” by Vladimir Solovyov
“The Dream Song of Olaf Åsteson”

The following speech was originally dated December 28, 1923. However, a speech on the eurythmy performance already exists for this date. The context and the arrangement in Helene Finckh's shorthand notes suggest that it was a speech from January 1924, which, as the opening words suggest, was intended for a performance that was not publicly announced, i.e., took place in a more internal context. Since Rudolf Steiner mentions the Mercury staff, the speech can most likely be linked to the medical course that began on January 2, 1924, following the Christmas conference (see “Meditative Considerations and Instructions for Deepening the Art of Healing,” GA 316). It is also possible that this was the address for the performance on January 9, 1924, which was the final day of the medical course.

My dear friends!

I have often spoken about the significance of eurythmy within our circle of friends—and such friends are especially present here today—and the essentials of this have also been published in our magazine “Goetheanum.” Therefore, today I would like to preface the eurythmy performance with a few words that may arise from the fact that eurythmic art, by its very nature, has grown out of anthroposophical endeavors. And this then leads to the obvious question of what significance the cultivation of art should have within the anthroposophical movement.

When the anthroposophical movement began within the bosom of the theosophical movement, it first had to shed everything that was sectarian within the theosophical movement and had remained sectarian within it. From the outset, the anthroposophical movement was not in the least inclined to act in a sectarian manner, for from the beginning it sought to grasp spiritual life in all its diversity and, through what it is, was able to draw threads to all the individual branches of human, spiritual, and practical activity. It was therefore not surprising – given the sectarian character of the theosophical movement – that the cultivation of art was initially perceived as something foreign, as it is still perceived as something foreign within the theosophical movement today. But it was already possible within the framework of the theosophical movement – for example at the congress in Munich in 1907 — to develop artistic elements when we performed Schur's “Mystery of Eleusis.” And once things had caught fire, so to speak, the awareness gradually arose within our society of how natural it is for the cultivation of art to find an ever broader basis within this society.

You see, when artists joined our ranks, say, twenty, eighteen, fifteen years ago, they felt more or less alienated as artists. The anthroposophists, who called themselves theosophists, seemed to them like artistic botoks. I am only quoting; this has often been said to me. And when I entered some of the local branches, which were still formed and decorated – I can only say: decorated – from a theosophical artistic point of view, here and there, on which I had even less influence because of the views that existed there, then I felt quite strange when I saw the barbaric paintings on the walls, let's say, for example, of the Rosicrucians, or even saw those schematic representations on the walls: below, the physical world, then the astral world, the spiritual world, then higher and higher up, a higher world. But all these things had a boundlessly inartistic character, so that it was not without difficulty to bring the artistic element into the anthroposophical movement. But work was done on it.

We then also came to the mystery performances in Munich. We came to conceive the plan for the Goetheanum, where all kinds of good advice was also given. I can still see many people sitting there who were also involved in thinking about the plan for the Goetheanum at that time, how to incorporate the pentagram here and there, how to find a center point between I don't know what, how to symbolize a center point. All kinds of things were held together there. Only art was something foreign! And I had some difficulty bringing in the purely artistic element.

Well, precisely with the plan to build the Goetheanum, the circumstances I have already described also gave rise to the opportunity to create this art of movement in space, eurythmy. And there, for once, it was possible to create something from the ground up. For once, it was possible to say: Everything can be new here.

Certainly, the art of dance was there, and even today there are still people who judge eurythmy and think that because people move in space, it is a form of dance. People don't look any deeper; they judge eurythmy as a form of dance. But after they have made their judgment: this is a dance art, they then notice that the leg movements, which are less important here, are only there to create spatial forms, and that the essential thing is the revelation of human nature that comes about through the movement of the arms and hands. This is how a strange judgment comes about. Then people say: there are movements that are made – so it is a dance art; but they wave their hands and arms around, that is not a dance art; so it is bad.

And now, what is expressed in human language, what is entrusted to words, to word formation, what is entrusted to all this, what is formed from words, is the localized movement potential of the whole human being. The whole human being is present according to his physical body, in that he has fixed contours, according to what influences his etheric body; that is everything that is juices, fluid, circulation in him. Man is ruled by an astral body that sends its forces into everything that happens in man through the effects of air – such as breathing, inner breathing too, and so on. And human beings are ultimately what is called the ego organization, which expresses itself in their warmth organism, in the differentiation of warmth, in the organic warmth difference, which is brought about practically by the fact that everything that actually wants to come out of the whole human being is brought together in the air organism — in the respiratory system and in what belongs to the respiratory system.

What is localized there in the breathing rhythm, in the spiritualized, plasticized breathing rhythm, can be brought back into the movements of the whole human being. And in this way the whole human being then becomes in fact a speech organ, as I have often said: as a whole organism, a visible larynx in its movements. By going to what is available in the whole human being as possibilities for movement, one has new material. And by studying the imaginations of language, by realizing that when a person utters an o-sound, something like an encompassing, circular shape actually forms in front of them, and when a person utters an e-sound, something like a mercury rod appears in front of them, and so on, if one grasps these things in such a way that one understands the corresponding imaginations contained in language, which in language only pass into air movements and thereby produce sound – if one considers this, then one has, in addition to the material, a completely new way of bringing artistic forms into this material, into the possibilities of human movement.

But everything that comes to light here can only be seen through spiritual science, so that in fact only spiritual science was able to create this eurythmy. For it captures the supersensible human being, expressed through the sensory form of his movements. Only spiritual science can grasp the supersensible human being. When we had reached the point where, I would say, the organism of the anthroposophical movement itself had taken on an artistic disposition, it was also possible to produce a distinct art form, an art form that could only arise from this artistic disposition of the anthroposophical movement.

And all this led us to say that the entire anthroposophical movement is actually predisposed, deeply predisposed, to support what it seeks through spiritual means by also seeking artistic means. And I am even convinced that if the artistic element increasingly finds its way into our ranks, it will become more and more possible for our friends to overcome the difficulties of spiritual scientific vision. For the artistic is something that leads to spiritual vision. That is simply the way it is. If one grasps the supersensible human being in his pre-earthly existence, for example, he actually reveals himself as is attempted to be imitated in eurythmy. Therefore, eurythmy stimulates the soul's gaze to turn toward the supersensible human being. But true art has always been, I would say, the manifestation of the supersensible in the sensible, so that one had a direct perception of the supersensible in the sensible, nothing symbolic, nothing allegorical; that is all straw, it is not artistic.

From all this, however, it is clear that it can be close to one's heart to urge the friends of the anthroposophical movement once again to take up the artistic endeavors within our ranks quite intensively. This will pour life into the entire anthroposophical movement. Artistry will be an elixir of life for the anthroposophical movement.

And if one really wants to say that the anthroposophical movement has become as strong artistically as it could not be artistically at the beginning, since it grew out of a non-artistic foundation, then something will actually have been done not only for art itself within the anthroposophical movement, but for the entire momentum of the anthroposophical movement. And then, when you enter the anthroposophical movement as an artist, you will no longer say: These are all botokuden in art – but you will say: This is something that, in our world, which often behaves so barbarically in artistic terms, has a genuine, true artistic spirit and artistic enthusiasm. And that is what we want, and what can now be achieved through the corresponding enthusiasm for the eurythmic movement – with everything that goes with it.

That is something I wanted to say today in a few words about the anthroposophical movement's relationship to art.