22. Address on Eurythmy

You can also see how language works in eurythmy when recitation or declamation accompanies the eurythmic, as you are experiencing here, [by seeing] how one cannot recite as is often the case today in an unartistic age, where the main emphasis is placed on the prose content of the poem, but which is by no means the main emphasis. Rather, in every truly artistic piece of writing, it is the rhythm, the beat, the melody that is the main thing. One could say – somewhat presumptuously – that there is only as much art in a piece of writing, even if it could have a completely different literal content, as there is in the beat, rhythm, and melodious weaving. This is not felt today, when it is thought that this or that must be emphasized from the prose content and other things should be left out. This is actually an unartistic recitation. Artistic recitation begins only where the musical form, the sound, is grasped. And so one would not be able to accompany eurythmy with recitation in the sense of today's unartistic recitation.