The Origin and Development of Eurythmy 1923–1925

GA 277d — 27 April 1924, Dornach

Eurythmy Performance

Sarabande in A minor by J. S. Bach
“Die Mutter träumt” (The Mother Dreams) by Albert Steffen
“Liegt der bloße Erdenleib” by Albert Steffen
Prelude in B-flat minor by J. S. Bach
“Ich lief hinweg” by Albert Steffen
“Vernichtung oder Verjüngung” by Robert Hamerling
Andante by Wilhelm Lewerenz
“Legacy” by Robert Hamerling
Prelude by Pugnani-Kreisler
“Full fathom five” from “The Tempest” by William Shakespeare
“Persée et Andromède” by Jose Maria de Hérédia with music by Jan Stuten
Harmonious prelude with music by Max Schuurman
“Er ist's” by Eduard Mörike
Gavotte in G major by J. S. Bach
“L'Agneau et le Loup” by Jean de La Fontaine
“Vanitas! Vanitatum vanitas!” by J. W. v. Goethe
Gigue by Georg Philipp Telemann

Ladies and gentlemen!

In eurythmy, which we now have the pleasure of presenting to you once again, we attempt to create what initially appears to be the developed gestures of human beings from the movement possibilities of the human organism, which are then transferred to the movements of groups of people. And on stage, you will see in the moving human being, in the moving group of people, what initially reveals itself as gestures. But in this eurythmy, the gestures become a real language.

Isn't it true that, before children learn to form speech sounds, they express what lives in their souls in a kind of babbling that must first be transformed into articulate speech? And then, in everyday life, when people feel compelled to give more intimacy to their spoken language, they try to accompany their speech with gestures, making it more personal, more intimate, more soulful. If we then take these gestures, which arise simply from a certain involuntary feeling, as a kind of babbling through movement, they can be continued further. Just as the babbling of a child becomes a true revelation of the soul, so too can the continuation of gestures, which are used by different people or peoples in different ways, depending on how they want to come across, be applied with varying degrees of intensity. These gestures can also be developed further into real language. This cannot be done arbitrarily, by simply taking any content and then, as one believes one should express this content in movements, simply abandoning oneself to one's movements. This will never result in a truly expressive movement. It would be just as if one left language to chance and allowed oneself, where in language an “a” should be used to express the soul, but instead put a z or something similar in its place. Rather, it is a matter of ensuring that, just as every sound – be it a vowel or a consonant – reveals what the soul experiences, so too can this or that movement reveal what the soul experiences.

One must simply be aware that in civilized languages, speech has strayed very far from its origins. And it is precisely this that is the reason why we have a multitude of languages, because languages gradually strayed from their origins. In simple sounds, one can still see everywhere how they are expressions of certain soul experiences. The a or ach remains in the expression of wonder, the e remains in the expression of disturbance, and so on. And when we then feel emotions in the vowels through the expression of inner soul experiences, scales of emotions and sensations, we have in the consonants everywhere that which imitates external events or external existence. In this respect, our language is really a continuous interweaving of what we imitate externally in the consonants with what we add to it from our feelings in response to external events that affect us in one way or another—sympathetically, antipathetically, or something in between.

Now, just as sound, sentence, then the sentence structures, interrogative sentence, exclamatory sentence, ordinary declarative sentence, or in poetry the rhyme, the meter, and so on—just as in language this corresponds to the soul experience, so in exactly the same way a movement expression of the human organism can be found, and in such a way that this movement expression is as unambiguous as the sound itself. And that is one side of eurythmy, speech eurythmy.

The other side is tone eurythmy. Here, the movement possibilities of the human organism become visible song. Just as we have accompanied the sounds of sound eurythmy, in which individuals or groups of people move, with recitation or declamation, so too do we have, on the other hand, visible song, tone eurythmy, accompanied by instrumental music. And just as every sound, every combination of sounds, every arrangement of the sentence, every form of the sentence, so that the sentence is an expression of the soul, just as all this is expressed in spoken language, so too can every tone, every musical phrase, every melody, the rhythm in music, the harmony, all of this can be expressed as visible song. And in this way, one actually obtains, in a special formal language, an art that uses the human being itself as its instrument, and does so in such a way that everything that the human being contains as a resting form is set in motion in accordance with this resting form.

Now we study the dormant form in its inner expressive potential and come to sculpture, to plastic art. If one has an unbiased perception, one sees the silent soul in what one creates in plastic form. And actually, any sculpture that does not seek to express the enduring nature of the soul—temperament, character, the entire inner soul situation of the human being, in short, everything that has come to a labile rest in the soul—is, when it seeks to express the momentary movement of the soul, actually no longer sculpture. There is a complete contradiction between the fact that the sculptural work of art rests in space and should express something other than the silent soul, the soul at rest within itself.

But if we want to represent the soul that speaks within itself, then we must use the human being itself as our instrument, as our tool. And then we must be clear that everything that is form in human beings actually wants to be in constant motion. Just think about how a human hand, when it is at rest, is basically a contradiction in itself. The form of the human hand shows that this human hand, in its form, should be transformed into movement. The hand that is held already carries within itself, in embryonic form, the pointing, gesturing, waving hand. One cannot imagine one without the other. But at the moment when the resting hand transforms into the waving hand, into the grasping hand, at that moment the movement of the human being becomes an expression of the speaking soul, just as the works of sculpture are an expression of the silent soul.

Now it is the case that human beings actually contain the entire universe within themselves. You see, ladies and gentlemen, if we only consider earthly conditions, our view is extremely limited. We look out into the world and see many things around us; then within us is the sum of our thoughts and ideas, to which our feelings are attached.

And one could now say the following: I take a person who has experienced much of the world, who has been an attentive observer of his entire surroundings. Now I look at the surroundings. And then, if I were able to look into this human soul through some process, I would find a spiritual photograph of the surroundings. What lives in human thought is a spiritual photograph of the environment. But now, in human beings—this is an apparent contradiction, yet it is so—there is much more than their thoughts. Human beings are an organization. At first glance, this seems physical, but is the physical really so important in human beings? In our materialistic age, we believe that the physical is what matters. But if we believe that the physical is what matters, then it is as if I go there, look at this picture (eurythmy program) and say: I am examining the violet color, the brownish-violet color, I am examining all the details. I then describe how the blue color is above the violet color, the yellow color below the green color, I describe all of that. But that is not the essential thing; the essential thing is what is expressed there. The material is not the essential thing.

And now, you see: that is how it is when I look at the physical human being. It is actually a rather childishly naive view that is taken by today's science. This organization of the human being expresses, when viewed as an image, the entire universe. Our soul, our so-called spiritual ideas, express the physical environment, and what we carry physically within us, if we can only view it correctly, expresses the entire universe. For the human being is a microcosm. That is the form. And when he sets this microcosm in motion, he expresses everything that lives in the form by allowing it to move, then indeed the entire divine-spiritual universe speaks through the instrument of the human being, so that one can say: The human being is, in relation to the macrocosm, the great world, a microcosm, a small world.

When we consider art in its activity, it is, in relation to the great work, the great creation, a small creation, and in the most eminent sense, one can accomplish the small creation when one accomplishes it through the instrument that contains within itself all the secrets and laws of the world: that is the human being. Therefore, for example, through eurythmy, when one detaches oneself from the resting human form that expresses the silent soul, when one brings this out, when one allows the form to move, one can express all the secrets of the world.

If the true poet wants to express the true secrets of the world, he already puts a kind of secret eurythmy into his language. If one accompanies eurythmy with declamation and recitation, one must do so as shown here: that is, without emphasizing the prose content of the poetry and without reciting in such a way that one artificially—not artistically, but artificially—pumps feelings into the recitation and declamation. This is what an inartistic age such as ours is so fond of doing in recitation and declamation: pumping feeling into the content, into the prose content, or even pumping enthusiasm into it. But if it is to remain art, one cannot pump this into the content of poetry; one can only understand how, on the one hand, the poet truly represents imaginations in the sounds, how there is something musical or plastic in the treatment of language. This must be expressed in the recitation. Then what proceeds, for example, in the real, correct fast rhythm will automatically express what is to be revealed with a feeling; what proceeds in the slow rhythm will reveal something else. When melos intervenes in language, the whole range of feelings will consist in the treatment of language, not in the artificial pumping of feelings into it. There is already a secret eurythmy in the way the poet treats language. This must also be expressed through recitation and declamation.

And so it is a matter of creating a real, visible song and a visible language through eurythmy. Precisely because tone eurythmy is performed here accompanied by instrumental music, one can see the difference, one can see what a difference there is between dance and what is expressed through tone eurythmy, that is, through movement and singing—not dancing. If you learn to distinguish eurythmy and tone eurythmy from dance, then you will understand what tone eurythmy actually aims to achieve, and then you will also find the transition to a proper understanding of what speech eurythmy aims to achieve.

But it is quite understandable that in our time, when people are so dismissive and hostile towards everything new, there is generally less understanding both of what eurythmy aims to achieve and, for example, how declamation and recitation should be done. We understand all this, we know this on the one hand, but we also know that what is being done here is the beginning of a certain development in art that will come to full fruition in the future. On the other hand, we know very well that this is only the beginning. In this respect, we are our own strictest critics, and we ourselves know very well what can be objected to. We take this into account as we seek the transition to ever greater perfection. Just recently, a tone eurhythmics course took place here at the school, which in turn is intended to take us a step further.

But when people say so lightly that everything that is being attempted here already exists in the other arts, that we could just stick with language, stick with the beginning, it shows that they do not have the right feeling for the artistic. For those who have this right feeling for the artistic also have within themselves a longing for an expansion of the artistic field. And it is truly from this longing to expand the artistic field, that is, from entirely artistic motives, that what is to appear here as eurythmy of sound and tone has arisen.

And that is why we remain convinced that more and more understanding for this eurythmy will arise, especially in artistically sensitive hearts, for it will be as genuine artists such as Anastasius Grün so beautifully expressed it when “The Last Poet” will live. He will live when the earthly world itself is heading toward its demise; for as long as there is life on earth, there will be poetry. But as long as there is life, there will also be art and artistic sensibility. And we are convinced that as long as there is artistic sensibility, there will also be joy in the expansion of art. Eurythmy emerged from this desire for the expansion of art, from this joy in the expansion of art. Therefore, we can hope that it will gradually establish itself alongside the other arts and also contribute to the artistic development of the other arts.