40. Eurythmy Performance

In the recitation that will follow, you will notice a somewhat different approach to the art of recitation than you are otherwise accustomed to – especially in the present day. What can be brought out of poetry through the art of eurythmy is, after all, what is truly artistic. We need only recall how Goethe, even when he rehearsed his dramas, his Iphigenia, with his actors, did so with the baton in his hand – not as one today believes that the main thing lies in reciting the prosaic, in bringing out the content in particular. Rather, these still very artistic natures of Goethe's time – we find something similar in Schiller, something similar in Herder – they knew that the rhythmic, the formal, which underlies the shaping of speech, is the actual element of poetry and that this must be taken into account first and foremost when reciting.