25. Eurythmy Performance

One need only recall the better days of the art of poetry to feel that recitation must nevertheless take a different path, that today, to a certain extent, it has gone astray. I would like to remind you that Schiller, in most of his poetry, especially in those that speak most warmly to our souls, did not initially have the meaning of the words in his soul; the meaning of the words was not there at all at first. He had something melodious, something musical, and only to the music that lived in his soul did he find the meaning of the words to go with it. And then I would like to mention something else: when Goethe rehearsed his “Iphigenia” - even a dramatic poem - with his actors in Weimar, he rehearsed it with a baton like a conductor, just as one rehearses a piece of music.