The Origin and Development of Eurythmy 1923–1925

GA 277d — 4 May 1924, Dornach

Eurythmy Performance

Prelude in E major, Op. 28, No. 9, by Frédéric Chopin
“Vernichtung oder Verjüngung” (Destruction or Rejuvenation) by Robert Hamerling
Andante by Wilhelm Lewerenz
“In the Head” by Albert Steffen
“Fire-Red Foal” by Albert Steffen
“You Have My Heart” by Albert Steffen
Aria by J. S. Bach
“The Holy Supper” by Albert Steffen
Prelude by J. S. Bach
“Time: I Saw a Happy” by Fiona Macleod
“Christine” by Charles Leconte de Lisle
‘Warum’ by Robert Schumann
“My Heart's in the Highlands” by Robert Burns
“Poetic Tone Picture” by Edward Grieg
“The Moonchild” by Fiona Macleod
“Hark, hark! The lark” from ‘Cymbeline’ by W. Shakespeare with music by Jan Stuten
“When daffodils begin to peer” from Winters Tales by W. Shakespeare
Bourrée by J. S. Bach

Ladies and gentlemen!

The eurythmy that we would like to perform again today draws on artistic sources that are not yet familiar to us and uses an equally unfamiliar artistic language of form. Allow me to say a few words about this. On stage, you will see moving individuals and groups of people. At first glance, it appears as if the recitation and declamation accompanying the performance are being illustrated by the people on stage, in the sense that a kind of gesture is being used to express something of the spiritual content of the poetry and so on, which is being recited and declaimed in parallel. Or, in the case of performances accompanied by instrumental music, one might think that the gestures of individuals and groups of people are dance-like movements. But eurythmy is neither mimetic in relation to the spoken language that accompanies it, nor is it dance-like in relation to the music that accompanies it. Certainly, this is not to detract in any way from these related arts, which deserve our full appreciation; but eurythmy aims to be something fundamentally different.

As I said, you see moving individuals or groups of people on stage. The movements that come into consideration here are derived from a precise knowledge of the human organism, from the human form, from its entire shape. It is important to understand how, in eurythmy, the human being is transformed from its resting form into movement. Let us consider the human hand, the human arm. We can see how this human hand has a certain shape, a certain form. We try to reveal this shape, this form artistically in sculpture. But this resting form of the hand is not actually something complete in itself.

One would never understand the entire structure of the human hand if one were to perceive it only as something at rest. [I can move the hand to point, to grasp, to shape] when I express some kind of emotional content through the hand. For example, one can express completely felt sentences through a hand movement: someone says something, one says, just once and nothing more—and yet the sentence is fully expressed through this hand movement. And if you start from this, you can see it for the whole human organism. The human organism is not primarily something that wants to be confined to form and shape; it always wants to transition into movement. Form only has meaning if we understand it in this way: How can a certain movement arise from this form?

Now, of course, a whole number of movements that we perform in the organism are there to mechanically propel this organism forward or to support it and the like. These movements must be disregarded at first, because they cannot be used artistically. But other movements, which are expressions of the soul, everything we need in primitive sign language to express the soul more precisely — all of this can be artistically shaped, and in a perfect way. The child babbles. The babbling of the child, which at first is only a kind of chaotic expression of the soul, articulates itself and forms itself into a fully developed language. A kind of language that is still babbling also comes to the fore when, in everyday life, we cannot fully express what we want to say with words. If we want to express something personal, something more spiritual, we need gestures such as those I have just described. But they are still babbling.

We can now articulate and develop this babbling in gestures in the same way that a child's babbling naturally develops into articulate speech. But then the developed gesture emerges in human movements as a perfected gesture, a perfect revelation of the human form. This creates a real, visible language. This visible language is just as much a part of the human organism as spoken language. Anyone who can observe the human organism knows that every hand movement can correspond to an expression—let's say amazement or something similar.

But the expression remains even when we use, I would say, the air gesture, and we perceive it [not only] as an air gesture, but as a sound. When we pronounce the sound “a,” we actually form an air gesture in our speech organ. This air gesture remains invisible. It is expressed in what we hear. We transform the air gesture into sound. But we can also determine the details of what we bring into motion as a language in the manner indicated, just as the details of spoken language are determined. And so a completely lawful, visible language emerges. That is what we see here on stage. We hear declamations and recitations in a way that expresses poetry in the visible language of eurythmy.

It would even be conceivable for people to acquire the same understanding of the visible language of eurythmy as they have of spoken language; then it would be possible to present the artistic aspect of a poem through eurythmy alone. I say: the artistic aspect, not the prose content. For one must be aware of the following, especially when it comes to artistic feeling. Ultimately, the poet does not want to express the prose content in his poetry, but regards it only as a kind of reproach, a kind of material. He shapes this prose content. He shapes it according to the sequence of sentences, according to the melos, the melody of the sounds, he shapes it according to high and low tones, length and brevity, according to the meter. So he shapes it according to rhyme or alliteration. There is already a certain eurythmy in what the poet then makes of the material, what he does beyond the prose content. One could see this completely in a performance if it were not accompanied by recitation and declamation. But as it appears here, the recitation and declamation interact with the eurythmy, I would say orchestrally, so that we hear from two different instruments [working together] what constitutes the whole of the poem.

In music, again, what you see on stage in a moving person or group of people is not a dance, but real, visible singing. Just as one forms the tone in singing, forms the tonal context in singing, so what the soul experiences in forming the tone can be expressed not only through this tone formation, but also through movement. And so, alongside eurythmy, there is a very different form of eurythmy, which in turn accompanies musical instruments and is not a dance, but a truly visible song.

In all these things, what is most important artistically is that we have the moving human being as our material and at the same time as our tool, that is, actually the most perfect tool we can obtain for artistic expression. For the human being, as a microcosm, as a small world, contains within itself all the laws of the world and all the secrets of the world.

And especially in civilized languages, language has actually become conventional. It is the abstract expression of knowledge and the abstract expression of social life. Therefore, the poet rightly says: “When the soul speaks, / alas, it is no longer the soul that speaks.” But when we move on to visible language, or begin with visible language, then the soul speaks all too clearly. And actually, one can say: what the poet secretly puts into his poetry – let's say by using a meter, the iambic or trochaic, by using a certain sequence of sounds that you see as having a melodic effect: all this shaping, this formal, this actually artistic, is expressed in eurythmy. So that through the moving human being, the soul that stirs within, the soul that wants to communicate the deepest of its contents, is expressed. The silent soul, the resting soul, is expressed in sculpture, in sculpting. And in eurythmy, one actually has a moving sculpture, a moving sculpting.

Of course, when eurythmy is accompanied by recitation or declamation, it is not, as is popular today in a somewhat unartistic age, the prose content that is emphasized in the poetry, whereby one believes that one is reciting correctly in terms of meaning. But this does not do justice to the poetry. Goethe himself rehearsed his iambic dramas—that is, a relatively simple meter—like a conductor with a baton in his hand, proving that he paid much more attention to the poetry, the meter, than to emphasizing the prose content. Therefore, even today, an unfamiliar art of recitation and declamation must be developed that is appropriate to a more artistic age than the present, and this is precisely what is being developed here.

I believe I have thus characterized in a few words what eurythmy actually aims to achieve. Anyone who really wants to understand art cannot do so unless they enjoy art. But then they enjoy everything artistic. And we must say: with such people, we will meet with understanding when we attempt to expand art and the means of art. Only those who do not really have an artistic attitude towards art will raise objections to a new art form in view of what they are accustomed to through the old arts. But anyone who really pays attention to what a genuinely artistic human being feels towards art will not raise such objections.

I always found it an extraordinarily beautiful—well, how shall I put it, I don't want to say definition, but a beautiful description of art when I read Herman Grimm's last essay on Raphael: What is art? Herman Grimm, who was a truly artistic human being, says: Art is what gives pleasure. This is actually the only true definition of art: Art is what gives pleasure. And if we really take this into our hearts: art is what gives us pleasure, then, because pleasure can be expanded, can become more comprehensive when new artistic means are found, we will increasingly regard eurythmy as a legitimate art form. And that is what we devote ourselves to as a hope.

We know very well that eurythmy is still in its infancy today. Just recently, I expanded on this idea a little further in a tone eurythmy course here. We have also recently been able to bring the lighting eurythmy and the entire stage design to a conclusion in a certain sense, so that what emerges in human movements continues to reveal itself in the movement of the lighting effects. As I said, we only recently made this expansion. And I would like to point out that—even if probably not by ourselves, but by others—eurythmy will be perfected more and more. This is because it makes use of the most perfect instrument, the human being, and also of art itself. It is precisely for these reasons that we can hope that more and more people will enjoy eurythmy – as they do other arts. And then eurythmy, alongside the other arts, will continue its course in the world.