Lecture III

Perhaps Mrs. Baumann will be so good and make the H again, and once the tone has faded away, Mrs. Baumann will make a D for us. One must pay attention in this case to the following: When you contemplate the H, you will find the movement for it deviates greatly to begin with from what takes place in speaking it; since—in respect to the characteristic of which I am thinking at the moment—the eurythmic element must be polar to the actual process in speech. You know that the speech process as I presented it the day before yesterday is a reflecting back from the larynx. The eurythmic process must express this outwardly. It expresses it in movement. In certain instances one must go over to the exactly opposite pole. This is particularly characteristic of H and D; in the case of other consonants this element must be toned down. Now, what sort of a sound is H? H is esentially a breath sound. The H is actually brought into being through blowing. In the case of H you have a decided shoving thrust[^2] in eurythmy where you have to blow. When you utter “D” you have this thrusting effect in the pronunciation. We must polarize this by transforming it into the characteristic movement that was present in D. Thus the thrusting quality of speech is lamed when one conveys the sound through movement.