The Origin and Development of Eurythmy 1923–1925

GA 277d — 21 April 1924, Dornach

Eurythmy Performance

“Vom Sieben-Nixen-Chor” (From the Seven Nixies Choir) by Eduard Mörike with music by Jan Stuten
Intermezzo in A-flat major, Op. 116,5 by Johannes Brahms
“Schön-Rohtraut” by Eduard Mörike
Romance in F major, Op. 118,5 by Johannes Brahms
“Die traurige Krönung” (The Sad Coronation) by Eduard Mörike with music by Jan Stuten
Larghetto by G. F. Handel
“Du denkst dein Leiden” (You Think of Your Suffering) by Albert Steffen
“Es träumt die Braut” (The Bride Dreams) by Albert Steffen
Aria from the opera “Clearco in Negroponte” by Domenico Gabrielli
“Wind, du mein Freund” by Christian Morgenstern
Allegro by G. F. Handel
Prelude in B major by Frédéric Chopin
Gavotte from the orchestral suite in D major by J. S. Bach
Allegro con brio in D major Hob. XVI.37 by Joseph Haydn

Ladies and gentlemen!

The experiment with eurythmic art, of which we would like to present a sample here, stems from the endeavor to create something from hitherto unfamiliar artistic sources and with the help of an artistic language of form that is still unfamiliar today, something that, as a moving expression of the human organism itself, is neither mimic art on the one hand nor dance art on the other, although what has been achieved shows similarities in both directions.

This is not to say anything against these related arts. Their value should be fully recognized. However, eurythmy aims to be something other than merely mimetic art and something other than merely dance. As in mimetic art and dance, you will see moving individuals or groups of people on stage. All the movements that occur in this context relate to the art of mime in such a way that one can say: the art of mime endeavors to clarify what is being said by adding gestures to the spoken word that are more personal than spoken language can be in a civilized society. But these gestures are actually signs for what can also be expressed through spoken language. Dance, on the other hand, is an outpouring of passion, of the element of will. And it comes about because what lives in the soul according to its nature of will is transferred into movement, just as movement in general is the expression, the revelation of human will. Eurythmy should now be a real, visible language or a truly visible song in its movements, so that what lives in the soul — lives in such a way that it expresses itself in spoken language and song when the mood and occasion are right — is revealed through gestures, through movement of the human body, in individuals or in groups of people. This comes about because, as human beings develop, they initially want to express what they experience inwardly through their whole moving being.

The child, the very young child, whose inner experiences are initially chaotic, turns its gaze everywhere, allowing its soul life to play out inwardly from one physical impression to the next. What the child experiences inside is completely chaotic. This is also reflected in its external movements; they are chaotic, they are disoriented, they express what is going on in the soul of the very small child in a dreamlike, chaotic way. And when the small child encounters what it experiences in the outer world, what bubbles up chaotically in the soul is, in a sense, smoothed out by what is experienced in the outer world. Now, the child would actually like to first translate everything it experiences into movement according to its inner organization. If it has a pleasant impression, it wants to perform a kind of movement that caresses the world; if it has an unpleasant impression, it wants to perform a kind of thrust.

But all of this is something that the world cannot flow into. The world rejects all of this, and it is precisely in childhood that human beings learn to restrain themselves in terms of how they want to move. By sticking to this – more so in the case of people of one nation, less so in the case of people of another – what wants to be expressed through the whole body is transformed into the revelation of individual organ systems when speaking or singing.

But now, every manifestation of singing, i.e., sound and tone, can be transformed back into the corresponding movements. If, for example, one wants to express amazement, one actually grows up wanting to indicate this amazement with outstretched arms. One cannot do that. The world pushes you back. Therefore, what is wonder is compressed into an organ system. It becomes the sound a. And so, if you understand how all possible movements arise from the human form, you can always say: a certain movement is associated with a certain sound of wonder, of astonishment, of inner affirmation, and so on.

You no longer notice this when language has really taken hold or when singing is present. But it is nevertheless the case that we owe our speech and singing to the fact that we bring our movements to rest. Now you can bring out again what has gone into the sound, into the tone, into the singing. If one then shapes it evenly, artistically – if one did not do this, it would be shaped unevenly – if one then shapes it artistically when one brings it out, then there is also a movement for everything that can be given in sound and tone: that is eurythmy. So that it really is visible singing, visible speech.

Now, through a precise knowledge of human nature, one must know which movement corresponds to a particular sound and tone. You can see from the fact that it was begun in 1912, first establishing eurythmy in its early stages, then continuing to work on it, and only recently I held a course in tone eurythmy here within the framework of the School of Spiritual Science, where tone eurythmy in particular has been further developed. But the other aspects are also part of it. For example, we are only at the beginning today, but there are enormous possibilities for development in this very eurythmy.

Now one can already say: when a real poet writes a poem, there is something behind it, apart from what he puts into the words. Certainly, many people listen to poetry as if it were prose, focusing on the content. They have no concept of poetry at all, but there is something behind every poem that is a work of art, something that can be summed up in one word: enthusiasm. That is what lies behind poetry: enthusiasm. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, where is the enthusiasm? Just think about the inner state you are in as a human being when you are enthusiastic, enthusiastic in sadness or enthusiastic in joy. And now imagine that the poet experiences some situation, something. He actually wants to express it by moving his whole being. He wants to live in his whole being. He cannot do that; he has to suppress it. It wants to go outward, but it goes inward: there is the enthusiasm, it continues, modifies itself, becomes sound or tone.

Spoken language, especially among civilized peoples, has something conventional, something abstract, and so on. The soul no longer lives entirely in language, but in enthusiasm, which is usually something generally nebulous; what the poet wants actually lives there. That is brought out. Enthusiasm made pictorial, made truly pictorial in human beings—that is eurythmy again. So that when a poem is presented here, you can also say: what lives in the poet's enthusiasm – and when we think of enthusiasm, we imagine something generally nebulous – is brought to life, made vivid, and emerges in the arm and hand movements, in the leg movements of the groups. That is the specific thing that lies behind the whole poem. - And likewise, it is the musical enthusiasm that finds expression in eurythmy. This really comes about through this eurythmy.

In addition to what can be seen, you have the instrumental music on the one hand, or the recitation and declamation on the other. This must be done as it is here, so that the recitation and declamation already contain a certain eurythmic quality. In this respect, eurythmy is still not widely understood today; but today we also do not understand the eurythmic quality in the imaginative aspect of language, in the imaginative aspect of singing, in the musical aspect of language in particular, and in the actual melos of singing. These things are taken far too unartistically today. That is why there are even people who say that one should emphasize the meaning of a poem as much as possible and suppress rhythm, meter, rhyme, and so on. But these things must come to the fore in true recitation and declamation. The musical and imaginative elements that can be found in language must be particularly prominent.

And so we can say: it is precisely what the poet can only put into the treatment of language by somehow shaping the language rhythmically – or in repetitions, in echoes, rhymes, and so on – that is visible in eurythmy.

It must always be emphasized that we are at the beginning of the development of eurythmy, but eurythmy uses the human being itself as the most perfect instrument that can be had. All other instruments are external. Human beings, however, contain all the secrets of the world, of existence, of the cosmos; they are a true microcosm. So when we use human beings as an artistic tool, we really have the opportunity to express all the secrets of the cosmos that the soul can experience. That is why eurythmy, even though it is still in its infancy, will continue to develop toward ever greater perfection. And we can hope that what we feel today, when we see the possibilities for development that lie in the mobility of the entire human organism, will come true; we can hope that what he predicts – namely, that eurythmy will one day stand alongside the other arts as a fully-fledged art form – will indeed come to pass in the future.