The Origin and Development of Eurythmy 1923–1925

GA 277d — 3 February 1924, Dornach

Eurythmy Performance

“Anmutige Gegend” (Graceful Region) from “Faust II” by J. W. von Goethe with music by Jan Stuten
Prelude in E-flat minor by J. S. Bach
“Weihnacht” (Christmas) by Albert Steffen
‘Erinnerung’ (Memory) by Anton Bruckner
“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
“April” by William Watson
Theme with Variations in G major, K. 379, by W. A. Mozart
“Evening” by Albert Giraud, translated by O. E. Hartleben, with music by Leopold van der Pals
“The Chicken” by Christian Morgenstern
Allegro in C minor by Johann Ernst Galliard
“Among Black Magicians” by Christian Morgenstern
“Slavonic Dance” by Antonin Dvořák

Ladies and gentlemen!

Allow me—even though it is not really my conviction to speak explanatorily about art in general or about particular artistic representations—to say a few words about our eurythmic performance, not so much to explain it as to bring about an understanding of the artistic sources, still unfamiliar today, from which eurythmy is drawn, and about the special formal language of this eurythmy.

Here you will see eurythmy as an expression of the human being moving in its own limbs or as movements of groups of people in space. At first glance, this looks like an art of gestures and movements – but that is not what eurythmy wants to be. Through its movement in space, it also looks like the art of dance; however, eurythmy does not want to be the art of dance either, but rather a real, visible language that can be elevated to art through special treatment—as language is otherwise—or even a visible song that accompanies instrumental music.

When we speak, we pour what our soul experiences into sounds that form words, sentences, and so on. And the poetic and artistic treatment of language in turn shapes this into something rhythmic, pictorial, vivid, and so on. We need only remember how every sound consists of a certain configuration, a certain shaping of the exhaled air. The exhaled air is shaped by the larynx, its neighboring organs, the palate, the tongue, the lips, and so on. What comes out of the human being, reaches other human beings, and metamorphoses into spoken language has its origin in the whole human being. Today, we have little knowledge of this origin.

But I would like to say that there is a tiny bit of knowledge available. It consists in the fact that we know that in normal human beings, the speech center of the brain—that is, the organ from which the impulses to speak originate—is located on the left side of the brain. But this is not the case for all people. In a few, it is located on the right side; these are left-handed people. When we learn that normal people, who are right-handed, i.e., who prefer to perform certain tasks with their right hand, have their speech center on the left side of the brain, this does not initially suggest any connection. However, when we discover that left-handed people have this speech center on the right side, we must assume that there is a connection.

Now let us consider what lies in the most expressive organs – the arm and the hand. The soul works in us in such a way that we feel compelled, even when we speak, when we become particularly animated, to accompany what we say with movements, to pour what we say into the movements of our arms and hands. And we learn from the special form of arm and hand movements, which can be very expressive in some people, sometimes even understanding people much better when we want to understand them in this animated language of the hands than in spoken language, which, especially in civilized languages, on the one hand takes on something conventional and, on the other hand, something of an expression, a revelation of abstract knowledge. So that Schiller's words literally apply: “When the soul speaks, / alas, the soul no longer speaks.”

We become accustomed to the conventional or even the cognitive aspects of language, whereas when we express something through a gesture, we express ourselves much more individually. Just as we can move and give movement through arm gestures, we can also do so through gestures of other limbs. However, everything that appears as a gesture, as a sign, relates to what eurythmy aims to be here in the same way that a child's babbling relates to fully developed, articulate speech. And this comes from the fact that, for those who delve deeper into human nature, what goes into spoken language, which is ultimately an air gesture — because these air gestures convey the sounds — depends on what the whole human being actually wants to express through gestures. And that is why this is a tiny piece of the knowledge of the connection between the possibility of movement in the human body and what is spoken language through the speech center.

Precisely what is being pursued here as anthroposophy can go very far from the knowledge of this connection. When we have a linguistic object before us, we first have what comes from emphasis: we emphasize one word particularly strongly when we want to be expressive in one direction or another; we emphasize another word much less; we move from the softly emphasized to the strongly emphasized in varying degrees. This has less to do with what actually inspires us to let the gesture flow into our arms and hands than with our entire human personality, insofar as it walks and appears in one way or another while walking. Those who have a sense for observing such things know exactly from the way someone appears—whether they prefer to walk on the balls of their feet or on their heels, and so on—they know exactly how that person is then able to emphasize this or that in their spoken language.

Again, language contains what is revealed, for example, by grammar, the intellectual aspect, for example. It is the most inartistic element in language. That which we shape in language, particularly with our intellect, is expressed more—if it is to be expressed gesturally—through gestures of the head. For example, if someone is a slow-witted smart aleck who wants to imply that he is careful in his judgments, he makes these gestures or touches his nose. So this is somehow connected with the head.

On the other hand, everything that lies between the intellect and the will — for the emphasis of language comes from the will — everything that lies between in feeling and what the poet pours into rhythm and rhyme, into the whole treatment of the stanza and so on, that is the actual artistic element of language. This can, of course, be expressed – supported by the other movements of the human being – preferably through the movement of the arms and hands. And while dance emphasizes the element of the human will, and mime emphasizes the intellectual, eurythmy expresses what is the actual element of feeling.

And one can already say: When the poet feels that the soul is no longer present in what is revealed in spoken language, when one then withdraws language in the same way that a child unconsciously concentrates what it actually wants to express in gestures on the speech organs, when one then withdraws language into the movement possibilities of the human organism, one obtains a visible language. All individual movements mean something just as a single sound does. All movement contexts mean the same as the sound contexts, the sentence contexts, and so on and so forth. So that eurythmy is actually a visible language. It can then also become a visible song.

As a visible language, it is accompanied here by recitation and declamation. And this immediately shows how eurythmy, in its treatment of a poem, actually goes back to the actual artistic content of the poem. In our unartistic age, we have no real sense of this today. Today, people like to emphasize the prosaic content of the poem, but that is not what matters. Rather, it is the stylish, higher expression that comes across either through the musicality of the language or through the plastic, vivid, and picturesque nature of the language. Therefore, the art of recitation and declamation must be restored to the state it was in with Goethe, who, with a baton in his hand like a conductor, rehearsed his iambic dramas with his actors himself. The reason for this was that he knew that the essence lies in the treatment of language, in the musicality and imaginative musicality of language. A feeling is expressed poetically in a very different way when the beat or rhythm is changed in recitation than when this is achieved solely through the prosaic content of the word. Therefore, the secret eurythmy that already lies in the treatment of language must come to the fore, especially when, as must be the case here, eurythmy is accompanied by the art of recitation and declamation.

Just as eurythmy itself is still unfamiliar today, so too is this art of recitation and declamation, which focuses more on the treatment of language than on the prosaic. And one can only hope that eurythmy will once again lead to a proper understanding of how the art of recitation and declamation should work. But one can get a sense of what eurythmy is actually meant to be when it becomes a visible song accompanied by instrumental music. If someone were to sing and perform eurythmy at the same time – eurythmizing the same thing as the content of the song – you would immediately get the feeling: Yes, what is the point of that? Anyone who wanted to perform eurythmy to singing does not really understand the essence of eurythmy. It would be like someone else wanting to sing along to a solo singer.

It is important to feel that eurythmy is not dancing to music, but visible singing. And once you have felt this difference between dance and what eurythmy is to music, then you have actually understood the essence of eurythmy very well. You can only understand this through feeling.

Now you might say: yes, you would first have to study eurythmy in order to understand what these movements mean. That is not necessary; it is simply a matter of the movements and sequences of movements making an impression that has an artistic effect. Eurythmy must have an effect when viewed directly as art. And it will have this effect when you watch what is happening while a poem is being recited, you will have the impression that this can only be eurythmized in this way. It can only be eurythmized in this unambiguous way. There is nothing arbitrary about even the smallest movement – just as when you speak, you cannot place any sound anywhere you like – for example, if you want to say “bread,” you cannot say “brat.” It doesn't matter if you say “Brat” or “Bret” instead. You can't do that. Similarly, no eurythmic movement can be anything other than the one that corresponds to the sound in question.

In this way, eurythmy becomes a moving sculpture. With sculpture, one has the feeling that it expresses the silent soul in its resting form, with all its silence. But the soul that struggles and speaks within itself can only be expressed when one sets the human being in motion in his or her own form. In this respect, eurythmy is truly a moving sculpture.

We know very well—because we are our own strictest critics, dear audience—that we are only at the beginning with eurythmy. Here and there, eurythmic performances are repeatedly presented from a wide variety of perspectives, and they are criticized in particular by those who consider themselves to be professional critics. However, we believe that we ourselves are still the most convinced that our current beginnings in the art of eurythmy are not yet perfect.

But at the same time, we are still confident that eurythmy, even though it is still in its infancy, has unlimited potential for development – if only because it uses the most perfect instrument that can be had for an art, namely the human being himself. It will develop, we can already say that today, because everything has to start somewhere. It will develop, and it can do so because, as I said, it has the human being as its instrument of expression and can therefore truly express all the secrets and laws of the world artistically. Human beings are, in a sense, small worlds, microcosms that can express the secrets of the greater world, the macrocosm. And that is why – because it makes use of this most perfect instrument and will always do so, exploring more and more of the secrets of the moving human being and revealing them artistically – that is why eurythmy will make its way in the world. It is the same with eurythmy as everywhere else: every beginning is difficult; but even the artistic sources that are still unfamiliar today and the artistic language of form that is still unfamiliar will be understood.

When we look at what eurythmy must actually be capable of, at how it uses the human being as its organ of expression, we must have confidence that eurythmy has unlimited potential for development, which will one day enable it to stand alongside its fully-fledged older sister arts as a fully-fledged art form in its own right.