The Origin and Development of Eurythmy 1923–1925

GA 277d — 17 February 1924, Dornach

Eurythmy Performance

Ballade in A flat major, Op. 47,3 by Frédéric Chopin
“Schön-Rohtraut” by Eduard Mörike
“Intermezzo in A-flat major” by Johannes Brahms
“At Midnight” by Eduard Mörike
“Forest Murmurs” by Franz Liszt
“From the Seven Nixen Chorus” by Eduard Mörike
Romance in F major, Op. 118,5 by Johannes Brahms
“An den Mistral” by Friedrich Nietzsche
Etude in E major by Frédéric Chopin
“Christine” by Charles Leconte de Lisle
‘Warum’ by Robert Schumann
“An den Mistral” by Friedrich Nietzsche
Prelude in B major by Frédéric Chopin
“Die Tafeln” by Christian Morgenstern
Gavotte by Giovanni Mossi
“Der Bahnvorstand” by Christian Morgenstern
Gavotte in D major by J. S. Bach

Ladies and gentlemen! I would like to say a few words before explaining the eurythmy performance. Explaining art is inartistic, and eurythmy should above all be a true art form. You are about to see an art form, ladies and gentlemen, which seeks to make an impact through artistic means that are still unfamiliar today, through an artistic language of form that is also still unfamiliar, and let me say a few words about these artistic means and this artistic language of form to help you understand.

You will see and hear three things: moving individuals and groups of people on stage, recitation and declamation on the one hand, and instrumental music on the other. Whatever can be expressed in words or musical tones should always be expressed through moving people—either individuals moving within themselves, in their limbs, or groups of people performing movements in space. At first glance, this looks as if the intention is to create an art form that is a mixture of mime and dance. Without wishing to detract in any way from these related art forms – which should of course be fully recognized – eurythmy does not seek to be either of these things: neither dance on the one hand, nor mime on the other, but rather a truly visible language.

In the same way that what is revealed in spoken language, in which the inner life of the human soul is revealed through the organs in a physical way, through the movement of air and, in a sense, with the help of an air gesture, produces the audible – in exactly the same way as the soul flows into this air gesture that appears in spoken language, so too should the soul and spirit that live in human beings flow into their movements in a completely natural way, namely into the most expressive movements, those of the arms and hands. And just as a certain sound and a very specific sequence of sounds in language corresponds to a spiritual content, so too in eurythmy a very specific movement of a human limb or a system of human limbs corresponds in a lawful manner to a spiritual content. Just as one cannot replace an o with an a in a word, one cannot, in eurythmy, replace a stretching movement of one arm with a half circle or a half circular movement with one or both arms. It is entirely possible that human beings express themselves through the movement of their limbs in the same way that they express themselves through spoken language. Indeed, there is a certain connection in the natural organization of the human being between the movement possibilities of the limbs of the organism and spoken language.

Today's knowledge actually knows very little about this, but one thing is decisive: Right-handed people have the language center of their brain on the left side. And because we can see that the few left-handed people we encounter have the language center on the right side of their brain, we can assume — and all the facts that have been carefully examined and oriented toward this insight confirm this — one can certainly assume that in the small child, that which wants to reveal itself from the soul wants to pour out into the arm and hand just as it pours out on the other side into the inner weaving and life that then emanates from the language center of the brain as stimulation to produce the sounds and sound connections of language.

Those who continue to investigate these connections in the anthroposophical manner cultivated here at the Goetheanum will find not only analogies but also completely lawful connections between all the possibilities of movement of the human organism and what is expressed in spoken language. So that one can truly say: a connoisseur of these relationships can actually guess, say, from the way someone walks—whether they walk more on their heels or more on the balls of their feet, whether they bend their knees more or less, and so on—the connoisseur can guess what particular stylization the person in question has in their speech. For it is not only the arm and the hand that express themselves in the actual organs of thought underlying language, but the whole person. For example, in the intonation of speech: whether one uses high or low tones is expressed in the movements of the feet and legs. In turn, the entire articulation of the face is expressed in the internal structure, the rhythmic, even grammatical structure that someone gives to their speech. And actually, the whole person is included in speech.

One can say that because this is the case, eurythmy can be contrasted with sculpture, which reveals the inner life of the human being through the calm human form. And anyone who has a feeling for this will sense in the sculptural work that depicts the human being what kind of temperament, what kind of character, even what kind of mood, inclination, or passion the soul of the human being being depicted has. But one always has the feeling that it is the calm, silent soul that comes to the fore through sculpture. But when the soul speaks, it does not want to reveal the resting human form, but the moving human being. So one can say: sculpture depicts the silent soul in its own nature; eurythmy depicts the soul speaking inwardly.

On the one hand, the soul speaks through poetry. And when it speaks as a soul—and ordinary language is more for external communication or for reproducing knowledge—but when the soul speaks, it speaks in rhythms, in time, in musical or vocal images, in the imagination. Or the soul speaks by revealing its innermost being through music. Just as just as one can recite and declaim what poetry brings forth, just as what can be expressed in the soul as emotional tensions, resolutions, and so on through music, and one can accompany the music in tonal singing, so too can one speak visibly in eurythmy through movements, and one can sing to instrumental music in visible song, also through movements. When you see in the following presentation which movements accompany the instrumental music in the musical pieces, you will feel and sense the difference between dance and what is presented here as eurythmy. Accompanied by music, this is not dance, it is visible singing. It is something different from dance.

Now, it must be said that a deeper understanding of the entire human organism is required in order to translate the spoken language, which has concentrated the movement potential of the whole human being in the larynx and its neighboring organs, back into movements, so that the movements speak just like the spoken language. But when viewed directly, eurythmy should by no means have an effect by always speculating on what this or that movement means, but rather the individual movement and the sequence of movements should have an effect through direct viewing and direct impression. And in this respect, what appears here as eurythmy has a thoroughly musical character.

And [because] musicality is expressed in the sequence and simultaneity of sounds in such a way that [it] corresponds to eurythmy in the sequence of movements and in simultaneity — as well as in beat, rhythm, and so on — this should actually be a joy to anyone who has a sense for the expansion of art in its means. — It is actually astonishing that anyone could say that art should not be expanded in the way that it is expanded through eurythmy.

I should also mention that when recitation and declamation occur in parallel with eurythmy, it becomes clear in the recitation how invisible eurythmy is already present in real poetic language. Today, in a somewhat unartistic age, people tend to prefer emphasizing the prose content when reciting and declaiming poetry. Goethe, with his baton in hand like a conductor with his actors, rehearsed his own iambic dramas because he placed much more value on the musical and artistic aspects of language than on the prose content in the external presentation. And the real poet, the one who is an artist as a poet, does not primarily have the prose content, the novella-like aspect, in mind, but rather the shaping of language, which takes place either in the imaginative sound design, the rhythmic design of the sentence, the rhyme design, and so on, or he also has the musical aspect in mind. So that recitation and declamation are also promoted in a way by eurythmy, in that the actual artistic nature of poetry, the musical and plastic-picturesque nature of language, are expressed, rather than the prosaic point.

That is why the recitation and declamation offered here, which has been developed by Dr. Steiner over many years, is still considered somewhat strange today — as is eurythmy as a whole. So it is fair to say that eurythmy is still in the early stages of its development, and we are well aware of this. And we are our own strictest critics, knowing that we can still achieve very little of what is possible in eurythmic expression. But on the other hand, eurythmy is the art that actually uses the most perfect, the most self-contained instrument, namely the human being, the living human being itself, not an external instrument, but the living human being itself. This living human being is a small world in itself. Everything that is contained in the greater world in the broadest sense of secrets and laws is carried within this human being. And when one seeks out the beautiful movements in the human form, then one can also bring out of these movements, I would say, everything artistic in the universe. And what emerges is truly a microcosmic artistic representation of the great macrocosmic work of art, brought about, one might say, by the human being.

Therefore, precisely because the human being itself is used as an instrument for this speaking sculpture, for this now moving sculptural art, one may believe that — as imperfect as it still is today in its infancy, this eurythmy — will one day reach its perfection, enabling it to stand alongside the older arts as a fully-fledged art form.