Address on Eurythmy

When we recite or declaim in parallel with eurythmic performances, we notice that we must not focus on this prosaic emphasis that is so popular today, but that, especially in speech formation in poetic and musical themes, in the underlying rhythm and beat, when the poet creates poetically, that one must see in it precisely what needs to be emphasized in declamation and recitation if one wants to declaim or recite in the right way to eurythmy. But then one will also notice how a secret eurythmic element underlies the poetic treatment of language, how the poet really experiences the musical and the imaginative in his organism more or less unconsciously and imaginatively when he is truly creating poetry. Schiller, who believed that in poetic creation the least is actually created, always had an indefinite melody, something musical in his soul, before he even strung together the literal content of a poem on this melodiousness. The main thing for him was the musical shaping of language, just as for Goethe the main thing was the imaginative shaping of the poem he had in mind. This must be taken into account if one wants to do justice to the necessary form of declamation and recitation that accompanies eurythmy.