The Origin and Development of Eurythmy 1923–1925

GA 277d — 26 January 1924, Dornach

Eurythmy Performance

Dear guests!

One should not really talk about art and artistic expression. However, if I nevertheless take the liberty of introducing our eurythmy performance with a few words, it is because our eurythmic art draws on sources and a special artistic language of form that are still unfamiliar today and may require some explanation. Ladies and gentlemen, on stage here you will see moving individuals and groups of people moving in certain forms within the space. All of this is accompanied on the one hand by poetry and on the other by music, or in such a way that poetry and music interact with each other.

However, this is not meant to be anything mimetic—for it is definitely an art form that is very significantly different from mere mimetic representation—nor is it meant to be a dance art, but rather something that actually stands between the mimetic art and the dance art, representing a real language in the movements of people, in the movement of groups of people in space, a language that contains nothing arbitrary or created in the moment of inspiration. Rather, it is a language that is just as subject to natural human laws as spoken language or singing itself.

Today, we actually know very little about the connection between human language and the whole human being. But one thing is widely known: that the actual speech organ is located in the brain, on the left side of the brain. We know that this is the case for most people who are right-handed. And it is a striking fact that those people who are exceptionally left-handed have their brain language center on the right side. This points to a certain connection in the depths of the human organism that is still little known today and that relates to human movements and what comes out of the human throat as speech with the help of the brain as a tool.

However, a more detailed study of all this is only possible for those who practice spiritual science here in eurythmy and at the Goetheanum in Dornach. This makes it possible to recognize how not only the right or left hand or the right or left arm, but the entire human organism is connected with what is revealed as language from within the human being. It can be said that what human beings actually want to reveal from their hearts, from their whole souls, through articulated movements as an expression of their sympathy and antipathy with the world, is concentrated in a separate organ – the larynx and its neighboring organs. But in this ordinary spoken language, the intellectual element tends to flow in, and the more developed a language is, the more difficult it is, the more it basically distances itself from the originality of the human soul, so that the poet is not wrong in saying: “When the soul speaks, / alas, the soul no longer speaks.” It is precisely what we have as spoken language, so that the element of thought is mysteriously incorporated into it as an expression of our insights, our knowledge, or even for what we want to communicate in ordinary interaction—one person to another. As a result, something that separates humans from each other enters into spoken language.

Just as in a child's development, what the child's disposition actually wants to express through the movement of the whole body, but then, if I may use the expression, calms down and concentrates in the speech organs as “body movement,” one can trace back what lies in the speech organs to lawful body movements. Then we will see that what is expressed in ordinary dance is actually what flows passionately and willingly into the emphasis of our words and sentences, while what comes from the head, what comes from thought, flows more into the grammar, into the form of expression of our sentences. In both directions, we move away from the actual soul. [In eurythmy, however], we bring every sound, every word, but also grammatical turns of phrase, poetically formed language, rhythm, meter, and so on, back to the corresponding movement. In this way, we actually obtain a language that consists of movements in space, of which it can be said that each individual movement represents a soul experience just as much as the individual sound, and each sequence of movements represents a soul experience just as much as the sentence, the sequence of words in poetry, and so on.

Just as in this way what moves the soul can be represented not through language but through the moving human being or movements of groups of people in space, so too can what is sung, accompanied by instrumental music in song, be expressed through such forms of movement in sound. One then obtains real singing through human movements. And precisely when one acquires a certain understanding of the nature of this singing, which consists of movement, one will already feel the difference between the art of eurythmy and the art of dance – against which, of course, nothing is to be said. Eurythmic art is something completely different from the art of dance. Therefore, one will initially find it striking that [leg movement] is, in a sense, only a secondary element in eurythmic movement, while the main expression of the human being through eurythmy is also revealed in music through the movement of the arms and hands. These are the most expressive gestures, the organs of the human organism closest to the soul. On the one hand, what is deeply rooted in the human mind and soul can indeed be expressed through the moving human being.

What is seen on stage is then accompanied either by music and orchestra or by the recitation and declamation of poetry. And it is precisely the way in which declamation and recitation must accompany eurythmy that can in turn lead us more intimately into the whole essence of the art of eurythmy. Precisely that which spoken language cannot actually express when one merely emphasizes its prosaic content must be brought out through recitation and declamation, I would say through a eurythmy that is already inherent in the language itself. This eurythmy was actually always present in recitation and declamation in those eras when people knew how to emphasize the artistic nature of the art of speech. In more recent times, this has largely been lost. Today, more emphasis is placed on emphasizing the prosaic nature of the content. But this cannot accompany eurythmy, because eurythmy brings out precisely what is expressed in the manner, in the whole way of treating language; it brings it to light. And so, in the way that Dr. Steiner has been teaching the art of recitation and declamation for years, eurythmy must accompany recitation and declamation in a way that is unusual today. Special attention must be paid to meter, rhythm, the musical or pictorial.

This, ladies and gentlemen, shows that eurythmy in particular will shed the right light on the stylistic elements of poetry and music. Goethe himself rehearsed his iambic dramas with his baton in hand, like a conductor with his actors. We are a long way from that today. But to elevate what is in the ordinary prose of life to the poetic means at the same time to elevate it to style. This can be seen particularly clearly when something like the first scene of the second part of Goethe's Faust, which is presented in the first part of today's program, is brought to life through eurythmy. This also illustrates where eurythmy actually has its justification. If one takes the poetic representation as it appears in Goethe's Faust, it is particularly interesting because Goethe has expressed the supersensible, dreamlike element, the spiritual element, so beautifully in his use of language, before he lets Faust speak again in the prose of life, which is also thoroughly poetic in this Faust. And in these presentations that we are giving today, you will see how that which leads human beings up into the supersensible in the “Ariel scene,” in their experiences in dreams, you will see how eurythmy can be brought in, especially when the poetic-artistic rises up into the supersensible. [An unclear passage follows, see notes.]

Well, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to have said this with regard to the artistic nature of eurythmy. I would just like to add, as an aside, that eurythmy, as it is presented here as an art, also has two other elements: An educational element, which we have already established in the Waldorf School in Stuttgart for all elementary school classes, including the higher grades. It is evident that this setting in motion through the visible language of eurythmy is absorbed by older children with the same naturalness with which spoken language is absorbed by children at a much younger age. This shows that this animated language is born out of a real, comprehensive understanding of the human being and is by no means arbitrary. A second element is that the healthy nature of the human being always wants to move from form into movement. It is impossible to imagine that anything in the human being—a finger, a hand—has form for the sake of form alone; form as such is meaningless. Form shows everywhere how it wants to move. Therefore, movement is also what can be brought out of the human organism as something healthy under certain circumstances. And this is the basis of the third branch of eurythmy: therapeutic eurythmy, which is cultivated in particular at the Clinical-Therapeutic Institute in Arlesheim. The fact that certain healing processes are supported by therapeutic eurythmy shows that eurythmy can indeed be beneficial in many cases.

Today, as I said, eurythmy is still something unfamiliar. But since it is drawn out of the whole human nature and, so to speak, the whole human being is brought into language, the whole human being comes to express [himself] in how he presents himself outwardly, how he moves outwardly, how he forms himself outwardly, one may well see [eurythmy as something in which] one shows that the human being is a real small world, a microcosm, and reveals himself as a microcosm, that through him everything that is world laws and world secrets is revealed, what is formed in the big world, in the macrocosm.

And so we can express everything that makes an artistic impression on us from the greater world precisely by seeking it out again in the small world, in the whole human being, and bringing it to bear as a soul experience emanating from the human being. In this respect, eurythmy makes use of the most perfect instrument. Eurythmy does not make use of external tools or instruments, but of the human being itself in its movements. It thus becomes a moving communication, a real expression of the deepest secrets of the world – just as the human being itself is such an expression of the secrets of the world. In this respect, we can believe that eurythmy will one day be able to stand alongside other, older arts as a perfect art form in its own right.

I would just like to mention again and again in such prefaces that eurythmy is certainly still in its infancy today, but that it is necessary and will become increasingly so. And however imperfect it may still be today – we think of it in the most modest terms, we know what eurythmy can be today – but because it comes from the deep mysteries of the human being, it must gradually be able to perfect itself further and further. I would also like to mention that Mr. Froböse from the Zurich Schauspielhaus will be participating as the actor playing Faust in the Ariel scene, and that the recitation of the choruses in the Ariel scene will be given here from the side box.