The Origin and Development of Eurythmy 1923–1925

GA 277d — 2 February 1924, Dornach

Eurythmy Performance

Larghetto by G. F. Handel
“Ich sah ein bleiches Licht” (I saw a pale light) by Albert Steffen
“Ein riesenhaftes Antlitz” (A giant face) by Albert Steffen
Largo by G. F. Handel
“Du starrst den Himmel” (You stare at the sky) by Albert Steffen
“Zum Adam und Eva Tag” (On Adam and Eve Day) by Albert Steffen
Allegro from the 1st Violin Sonata in A major by César Franck
“Es träumt die Braut” (The bride dreams) by Albert Steffen
Allegro in C minor by Johann Ernst Galliard
“The rune of the four winds” by Fiona Macleod
“Bächlein im März” (Little stream in March) by Jan Stuten
“Over Hill, Over Dale” from “A Midsummer Night's Dream” by W. Shakespeare with music by Leopold van der Pals
“Fairy's Lullaby” from “A Midsummer Night's Dream” by W. Shakespeare with music by Max Schuurman
“Waldesrauschen” by Franz Liszt
“Spring” from “Love's Labour Lost” by William Shakespeare with music by Jan Stuten
‘Winter’ from “Love's Labour Lost” by William Shakespeare

Ladies and gentlemen!

I would like to say a few words before explaining our artistic performance. Art must speak for itself, otherwise it would be inartistic. However, what we are presenting here as art involves artistic means, artistic sources, and a special artistic formal language that are still unfamiliar today. And so, not to explain the artistic, which would be inartistic, as I said, but perhaps to aid understanding, a few words of introduction are necessary. On stage, ladies and gentlemen, you will see moving people, and in these moving people, you will see above all moving human arms and hands; but you will also see groups of people performing movements in space. At first glance, this looks like art in gestures, mimic art, or even dance art. However, neither of these is immediately intended. Of course, there is nothing wrong with the art of mime or the art of dance; they have their full justification; but eurythmic art wants to be something completely different. It wants to be a real language, a visible language, a language that is expressed through the movements of human beings themselves, or even through the movement of human beings in space.

Spoken language consists of us setting the air in motion, which then reaches the ear of the other person, and the movement of the air, which is also a kind of gesture, a gesture expressed in the air, conveys what the soul of one person wants to reveal to the soul of another person. Nowadays, this is achieved through a certain relationship between human movement and spoken language. I would say that this is a small part, a very small part of what can then – when recognized in more detail – lead to the art of eurythmy.

We now know that the speech center is located on the left side of the brain. If this speech center is damaged, the person cannot perform these vocal gestures, which then become spoken language in their rapidity. However, the fact that the speech center is located on the left side of the third frontal gyrus is true for most people, for the vast majority of people, because they are right-handed. And the strange thing is that in left-handed people, the speech center is on the right side. This leads to the tiny insight that what the child pours into it as experiences of its soul, from impulses of its soul into the gestures of the right arm, which always moves more than the left, is internally connected with what is formed in the left hemisphere of the brain, while the corresponding organ of the right hemisphere of the brain also shows convolutions in normal people, but undeveloped in the physical sense. So we can say that there must be a certain movement of the arm and fingers that has an inner connection with what is forming in the brain as speech.

One could then, as you all understand, my dear audience, return to any sound – i, u, l, m, n – combine sounds into words or sentences, or, since a rhythmic or metrical formation of sounds or words is a converted movement, one must also be able to convert them back into movement. Humans do this by accompanying their sounds with the usual gestures when they become more animated in speech. But what comes about in ordinary life as support for the spoken word is to our eurythmy as a child's babbling is to fully articulated speech. For if one pursues the connection between human movement and speech with what is presented here as anthroposophy or spiritual science, one finds that everything in speech has its counterpart in movement.

In language, we have, let us say, the reinforcement of sound, the emphasis of sound. This emphasis of sound occurs when, out of our character, out of the importance we attach to something, we place weight on it, when we emphasize a word or part of a sentence in a very special way. This emphasis is expressed in particular in what our legs and feet do. And through the way we position our feet, through the movement of our legs, we can express what is hidden in language, I would say as a secret eurythmy, in the movement of this visible language. Through the movements of the head, we can express what is hidden in language, let us say as the irony of language, as the laughter of language, or also as the seriousness of language. But the deep soul is expressed in the rhythmic movement.

And so everything that is present in language can be transferred back into the movements of the individual human being or also into the movements of groups of people, in forms such as you see here. - We are therefore dealing with a trained language of movement that appears as eurythmy.

However, one need not imagine that one must understand how the individual eurythmist learns: this is how I do the i, this is how I do the #. That is not important, just as it is not important when listening to a piece of music to study the laws of music like a musician. What is important in eurythmy is that the movements themselves make an impression of beauty, pleasure, and joy—in short, the impression that spoken language otherwise makes.

In order for what is given in poetry, for example, to be understood in the right way in this visible language of movement, eurythmy is accompanied on the one hand by recitation or declamation. However, it is then apparent that one cannot recite or declaim to eurythmy in the way that is particularly popular today, but must recite and declaim in the way that Dr. Steiner has taught for many years. Today, people like to place the main emphasis in declamation and recitation on the punchline of the prose content. But what the soul actually wants to reveal in a poem does not come through in the prose content of the poem, not through understanding, through thoughts, not through the thought content of the words, but through rhythm, meter, through the melodious, pictorial nature of the language. But this must also be mastered in recitation and declamation. One would not be able to recite and declaim in the manner that is popular today, but rather the secret eurythmy that the poet cherishes within himself must already lie in the treatment of the language itself.

Before writing each of his most important poems, Schiller did not have the content of the words in his soul, but rather an indefinable melodiousness, a melodious mood. One can well imagine that Schiller could have shaped this inner melodious current, which flowed so freely in his poetry, into a completely different poem with completely different content, instead of using it to create “The Diver.” It all came down to the musicality. Similarly, one can imagine that when something so imaginative and pictorial stands before the soul, such as Goethe's “Faust,” he had the last scene of the second part of “Faust” before him as something pictorial, [imaginatively] painted, which he then copied down. - Since language can express not only the musical but also the plastic and pictorial in language, this must also be expressed as a declamatory and recitative accompaniment to eurythmy.

On the other hand, eurythmy is accompanied by instrumental music. Just as one can sing to instrumental music in tones, so one can develop the visible song of eurythmy. And precisely when one acquires a finer feeling for eurythmy, which accompanies instrumental music, one will overlook the difference between eurythmy and dance. It is not dancing, it is visible singing that accompanies eurythmy. The difference can only be felt, sensed.

And so eurythmy brings about what could be called a moving sculpture. What does sculpture seek to develop? It expresses in static forms that which in human beings lies primarily in static forms. Those who have a feeling for such things say to themselves from the immediate impression of such a sculpture: this static form primarily expresses the experience of the silent human soul. The human soul does not speak unless it has dramatic, lyrical, epic experiences.

So when it emerges from silence into speech, the sculpture must transition into movement. One can certainly sense this. A human hand in its resting form is a contradiction in itself. One can only express the human hand in its resting form if one also has a lively feeling for life: The form of the fingers, of the whole hand, only has meaning insofar as this hand also transitions into movement and makes all kinds of movements. The resting hand is what movement demands. And movement is what rest demands. And so it must be said: those who understand the human form also understand how this human form transitions into human movement. And so, from the right experience of plastic art, which represents the quiet form, arises the moving form, the art of eurythmy.

Overall, I would like to say again and again that we know very well – because we are our own strictest critics – that the art of eurythmy still has many imperfections today. But it will perfect itself, and we can have very good expectations of this perfection. For the human being is a world in miniature. All the laws that exist in the universe are present in miniature, not in a static form, but in the possibilities of human movement. And since eurythmy makes use of the human being itself, not an external tool, but this noblest, most perfect tool that one can have, one may hope that it will succeed more and more in expressing the emotional, inner experience of the human being, all the human mysteries that can be felt – the whole world as a work of art in the world of the moving human being. And because this is so, we may hope that eurythmy, as the youngest art form we are striving for, will gradually be able to stand alongside the older arts as a fully-fledged art form.