The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Dear attendees!

The art of eurythmy, of which we are once again presenting a small sample to you today, is something that we ask you to receive in such a way that what we are able to offer is a beginning, an attempt that must lead in the future to what we actually envision as an ideal for the renewal of a certain field of art.

It is not based on the opinion that we want to present something equal to other, similar art forms, which are actually only seemingly similar art forms – dance arts and the like. What we call the eurythmic art here has been fully thought out, or perhaps I should say felt and sensed out of the Goethean world view. Indeed, when one speaks of the Goethean worldview in such a context, one must not think in a scholastic way of the Goethe who died in Weimar in 1832, but of that which lived and lives on as a spirit in Goethe and can be taken up anew by each generation.

It is an artistically defined area, an artistic area that is to be developed out of Goethe's world view as a eurythmic art. I do not wish to theorize, but I would like to say a few words about the sources of this eurythmic art.

Particularly when such an art form first appears in cultural development, it is important to realize that - especially in the Goethean sense, it is intended that way - what we enjoy artistically, aesthetically, is actually there in terms of the mysterious depths of things, that we also try to reveal this through our knowledge. Goethe had the peculiarity that for him art and science were not strictly separate fields. It is a very characteristic expression of Goethe's when he says: one should not actually speak of the idea of truth, of the idea of beauty, of the idea of goodness; for Goethe thought that the idea is one and everything, and it reveals itself sometimes as the goodness of man, sometimes as beauty, sometimes as truth. In saying this, Goethe had in mind something much more alive and spiritual than the abstract idea that many people today have in mind. He had in mind the idea of what is alive and animates nature itself, and what man in turn finds in himself if he only descends deep enough into the depths of his own being.

But we must enter into that which is most significant and characteristic of Goethe's world view if we want to see through what is actually meant here with eurythmy. The essence of Goethe's great view of nature, which is also an artistic view because it reveals itself artistically, is something that has not yet been sufficiently appreciated. Our science is basically a science of the dead, and we strive more and more, if we want to be true natural scientists, to understand the living as a dead thing, to think of the living as composed of the dead. Goethe wanted to look at the living directly. He called this looking at the living directly his metamorphosis doctrine.

Once this doctrine of metamorphosis has been extended to cover the entire field of the human world view, something powerful will emerge from this expansion of our view of nature, from the transformation of all human views of nature and the world. It may look primitive and theoretical to explain the simple basic principle of Goethe's world view, which he advocates in his doctrine of metamorphosis. But when it is fully developed, it is something great and powerful that leads us deep into the essence of things and also of man.

Goethe imagines that in every single plant organ, namely in every single plant leaf, be it a green leaf or a colored petal, a whole plant should be contained in a simple way. In turn, Goethe imagined that the whole plant, however complicated it grows, is just a transformed leaf. Each individual plant leaf can become a whole plant, and the whole plant, each individual organ, can in turn become a plant. And this is how Goethe imagined all living things, especially the living human organism.

But Goethe's observations were limited to the form. This was due to the time in which he lived. By translating Goethe's observations into artistic expression through our eurythmy, we do not want to stop at the forms, but move on to human activity. And here it becomes possible, with a certain intuitive higher perception, with a real seeing, to bring to mind in a different way what one hears from one's fellow human beings through the sense of hearing as one's fellow human being speaks or sings. In particular, by shaping language in a song-like way, that is, in a musical or poetic way.

In our daily lives, we direct our attention to what we can hear, to the activity of a single organ, the larynx and its neighboring organs. But he who, with a higher, supersensible gaze, looks through what happens in man as it reveals itself through a single organ, the larynx and its neighboring organs, can also , just as Goethe saw the individual leaf in the whole plant, so the one who has the gift of seeing can see the fine movements that are only potential in the larynx and its neighboring organs as movements of the whole human organism. And so what is presented to you here on the stage is, in essence, what language is, language made visible. What otherwise takes place invisibly in the human larynx is revealed here from the human organism as a whole, from all its limbs.

In this way we can create an art that can go hand in hand with the musical art. What is happening on stage will be accompanied by the person himself, who is like a large, living larynx, accompanied by music on the one hand, and on the other hand by the recitation.

However, it then becomes necessary, especially when what the whole person presents as a visible language is accompanied by recitation and by artful poetic language, to return to the good old forms of the art of recitation. The art of recitation today has basically gone astray. As much as people today dislike hearing it, it still has to be said. The art of recitation today has become more prosaic. What lies in the content of a poem is expressed through the art of recitation. This was not the case with the art of recitation in earlier times. The further back we go, the more the poetic artist was aware that rhythm, beat, the form of speech, the formal aspects, are the main thing.

I need only remind you that when Schiller set about a poem, he did not first feel the content of the words of the poem in himself, but something like a melody, an indefinite melody, something musical. This, which lies in the language, apart from the thought, the content of the image or the word, is actually the most important and significant thing artistically. This is what must also be particularly expressed in the art of recitation. Goethe, when he rehearsed his “Iphigenic”, even a drama with his actors, rehearsed it with the baton in his hand, seeing everywhere less what the word content is. This is basically only the prosaic ladder by which the actual poetic art climbs up. He looked at the poetic power of creation, at the formal.

In our art of recitation, which accompanies the eurythmic, you will see that essentially there is an inner rhythm in inner harmony of movement. What is really recitation art must also be expressed in recitation. Now, if you take the word as it is artistically designed, or even as a word, it is expressed in our visible language, which represents eurythmy, through what a person can initially reveal in his limbs as possible movements. But what we express, especially when we shape it musically or poetically, is imbued with inner warmth of soul, with joy and sorrow, with delight and pain. All this can also be presented in eurythmy.

In the movements that are less attached to the individual limbs of the human being, but which the whole person performs or which he performs in space or in the circumstances in which he enters when we give group performances, in addition to the other performances of the groups, in these movements, in the more spatial movements, and in the temporal, that which shakes and vibrates through our speech, our audible speech, as soul warmth, as desire and suffering, as joy and pain, as enthusiasm and so on, is then expressed. But there is nothing arbitrary about it. And this is precisely how our eurythmy differs from certain neighboring arts, which could easily be confused with it: everything is always lawful. Not a momentary gesture is taken to express anything in the soul. Just as music itself consists of a lawful succession of notes in its melodies, so eurythmy consists of a succession of movements. If two people or groups of people perform the same thing in eurythmy, it is just as if two pianists perform the same Beethoven sonata. Individual expression plays no greater a role in eurythmy than it does, for example, when playing a single note or a piece of music.

If you still see in our beginnings, in our first attempts, pantomime and mime, then this is still an imperfection that will also be overcome in the future. For it is precisely the pantomime, the facial expression, the gesture of the moment, that which otherwise inspires the art of dance, that is just as little included in our art as musical sound painting is included in real music. For us, it is not about somehow expressing moments through a gesture, through facial expressions, but rather about revealing these outwardly in accordance with an inner law that is inherent in the human organism, and thus, in reality, to fulfill in a particular limited area that which Goethe so beautifully expressed when he said: “To whom nature reveals her secret, longs for her most worthy interpreter, art.” For, since the human being is the synthesis of the laws of the harmonies of the whole universe, it is possible to artistically represent, in fact, something - one can say: of the laws of the whole universe - that is inherent in the human organism. While our knowledge presents the concept before that which is the secret of the world, art should express the secrets of the world directly.

If I give an explanation of what is presented in eurythmy, it is only to point to the source; because it is self-evident that everything artistic must be felt directly in aesthetic contemplation and must reveal itself as sympathetic to the soul.

But with Goethe, in particular, you see, esteemed attendees, one has the feeling that the art of eurythmy can pass the test. We have tried to present certain scenes from the second part of Goethe's “Faust” in eurythmy, namely the earlier performances here. You may know how difficult the second part of Faust is to present on stage. Yes, you may also know how many people say that the second part of Goethe's Faust is a late effort that no longer contains the power that Goethe expressed in his art in the first part.

Those who speak thus are very much mistaken. In the second part of his Faust, Goethe did indeed reveal as art that which, after a mature life experience, had opened up to him as the sources of art. But when you represent in eurythmy that which enters completely into the forms, which no longer has anything to do with the content of prose but has become pure art, you arrive at the subtleties. But starting from that, we then came to the point of, I would say, going through the Goethean poems to see to what extent that which lived artistically in Goethe's soul can be expressed through the special art of eurythmy, that is, through a visible language. And more and more it turns out that in the moment when Goethe's artistic thinking passes over into the supersensible, into that which does not live in ordinary outer life, that then the eurythmic art enters into its full right.

Of course, it is a daring statement to say today that Goethe's artistic thinking was such that, where he rises above the sphere of the everyday, one feels the necessity to move on to something that also goes beyond ordinary artistic representation and into eurythmic representation. But perhaps one can say something like this when one has gradually, over a long period of time, worked one's way up to that Goethean insight, which I believe is necessary, and which also takes Goethe seriously. When a lot of people, out of philistinism – Vischer and other people were, after all, also German aesthetes in a certain sense – when certain people feel they have to reject what Goethe created later – it's so hard to to grasp what one does not immediately understand, to struggle to understand, one much prefers to blame the poet for presenting it in such an incomprehensible way.

Goethe once made a harsh statement about people who also appeared during his lifetime, who, for example, appreciated his “Iphigenia” and his “Natural Daughter” less than, say, we might say, those parts in the first part of Faust, which ultimately welled up from his soul in an elemental way and are less artistic than what Goethe first achieved as an art form in the course of a long life. Goethe was angry with those who valued what he produced in his youth – including the parts of Faust, for example – more highly than what he later produced after he had developed a more mature view of art. It was this kind of anger that led to Goethe's remark, found in his estate, where he says in reference to the audience that no longer understood him:

They praise my Faust
And what else
In my works roars
In their favor.
The old Mick and Mack,
That pleases them very much,
[It means] the pack of ragamuffins
One would no longer be.

I am convinced, my dear attendees, that Goethe would express himself in a similar way about the understanding of Goethe, the presumed understanding of Goethe, that is spreading today.

But precisely when one encounters what Goethe has achieved, then one also feels the necessity to advance to new forms of art in order to express what Goethe presented in his early works.

Today, after the break, we are dealing with the beginning of the first part of Goethe's “Faust”, which is an early work. But we will try to do just those parts where what is otherwise ordinary life is led up into a higher sphere - where the human soul rises to a higher, supersensible one - [we will try to do that] just in the first part of “Faust” by means of eurythmy, so that one can get a sense of how the human being in his physical, sensual, earthly existence is connected to a higher existence.

In this way, we would like to use eurythmy to bring to revelation everything in the human being that lies deeply hidden as the actual secret of the world. But you will only do justice to this eurythmic art if you see it, as we are already able to offer it today, only as a beginning, as a weak attempt at what is to come. We are our own harshest critics and we know what is still lacking. But we believe that if our contemporaries show interest and attention to what is being attempted, it will be possible to bring this beginning to ever greater and greater perfection.

In short, we are convinced that the art form that we are in the process of creating in eurythmy will perhaps be developed further by ourselves, albeit weakly, but by others it will be developed more and more and that it will then be recognized as a fully-fledged art form alongside other fully-fledged art forms.

The program was the same as for the performance in Zurich on October 31, 1919, see p. 194. However, in keeping with the character of the day (All Souls' Day), without Christian Morgenstern's “Galgenlieder”.

Dear ladies and gentlemen.

Today we would also like to present a sample of our eurythmy art. This eurythmy art should be kept entirely in line with everything that is connected with this building of ours, with all that we call Goetheanism in connection with this Goetheanum of ours, in terms of world view and artistic endeavors. In this connection, I would ask you to bear in mind that we are dealing here with the very beginnings of this eurythmy art movement, with a first attempt that for the time being must be treated with forbearance. What we are striving for is not meant to compete with neighboring arts, dance-like arts and the like. We know very well that these are much more complete in their way than what can be achieved here. But it is something completely different. And I would not like to give these few words as some theoretical introduction, but rather to point out the sources from which this particular art form is drawn, which uses the human limbs themselves and the human possibilities of movement in space as artistic means.

So it is a kind of movement art that we are striving for in this eurythmy. And we will most easily understand how what we are striving for here has been brought forth out of Goethean sentiment and Goethean world view if I remind you of what is known as Goethe's theory of metamorphosis. Goethe achieved something with it that is still far, far from being appreciated enough. In the future, it will become a basis for an understanding of the living. Because the view that we have precisely through our so-glorious science – I mean this quite seriously, because for these areas to which it is applicable, this science is glorious – what we have through contemporary science, that basically only relates to the dead mineral, not to the living. Goethe tried to grasp the living. And as simple as it still looks today, it will one day lead deep into life: what Goethe saw, that the whole plant in all its complexity, even if it is a whole tree, is only a complicated, transformed individual leaf, and the individual leaf is in turn only a primitive whole plant. And again, if we look at an organ of the plant, for example, the colored petal of a flower, and compare it to the green leaf of a plant, for Goethe it was essentially the same, one and the same, only different in its outer form.

What Goethe applied to form and shape in this way could now be applied to the whole human being and his or her potential for movement if it is imbued with artistic sense at the same time. And that is precisely what the eurythmic art attempts to do. When we listen to a person, we direct our attention through the ear to what is spoken or sung. But then we do not perceive what is also present: the movement of the larynx and its neighboring organs. All of this vibrates - larynx, palate, tongue, lip and so on - by itself. And in turn, the ability to move, which is expressed in the larynx, extends to the lungs and their wings and so on. And we only need to remember from the physical that, while I am speaking here, the air is in motion. And each sequence of movements expresses something of the sound and so on.

What is expressed in the larynx in a single organ and its neighboring organs, what cannot be seen, can be perceived by those who have supersensible vision. And then one can express the way in which a word or that which is expressed in the word is connected: just as it is audibly expressed through the larynx, through which one hears the sound and does not see the movement, so one can express it through the movement of the human limbs, the hands, the feet, the whole body. Then what the whole person does becomes a visible language, then the whole person becomes a part of the artistic expression, the artistic revelation. A person would be very surprised if they were to see, especially when speaking poetically or artistically, the wonderful movements – which are largely just movement efforts – in the larynx and neighboring organs for rhyme, for rhythm, and so on. This can be seen and transferred to the arms, to the feet of the person, to the head, and so on. And one can create something that fully corresponds to Goethe's artistic ethos, which Goethe once expressed with the beautiful words: 'Style is based on a kind of recognition, on a becoming visible of the essence of things, insofar as we are able to approach it in tangible and visible forms.

And especially that which is the mystery of human nature itself comes out when we want to reveal these secrets of human nature in eurythmy. In another context, Goethe has so beautifully drawn attention to the human being's relationship to artistic apprehension of the world. For him it was always clear that whoever nature - as he once said - reveals its manifest secret to, feels the deepest longing for its most worthy interpreter, art. Wherever we sense the secrets of nature, without going to concepts, ideas or the abstract, but in direct devotion to what lies in the lawfulness of natural things, we perceive art, art form, artistic design. We will be able to perceive this most when the human being becomes a means of art. For here too, Goethe says so beautifully: When the human being is placed at the summit of nature, he finds himself again as a whole nature, taking number, measure, harmony and meaning together, in order to rise to the production of the work of art by bringing forth a new summit. How much more must this be said when man himself becomes the means of art and expresses the secrets that lie in his own organism through the movements of his limbs, whereby a living language is brought to view.

However, that which is artistic must be perceived in direct aesthetic contemplation. It does not need to be explained. But it is precisely by taking a deeper sense of the lawfulness in things, which is not grasped conceptually but is directly contemplated, that one arrives at the artistic.

And this is to be done with that which lies within the human being, by bringing its limbs into a visible language, everything that otherwise expresses itself only through the laws of the larynx and its neighboring organs. Whether it is the individual moving their limbs, forming groups of people or the individual moving in space, relationships between people in groups are presented – everything that is otherwise expressed through speech in terms of warmth of soul, joy and sorrow, happiness and pain and enthusiasm, but also in terms of rhythm, rhyme, meter and so on, is incorporated into the language that has become visible. All of this is expressed through the movement of the person in space or is expressed through the movement of groups, while the word itself is expressed through the movement of the individual person, who, as it were, remains calm.

Now it is important to realize that this offers a new art form. There is nothing directly arbitrary between the gesture of the limbs and what the soul experiences or wants to express. Rather, just as music itself consists of the lawful succession of tones, of melody and so on, so the successive movements that you see here on stage are based on a very definite lawfulness. And if two people were to perform the same thing in eurythmy, there would be no arbitrariness in the movement, but these two representations at different places, by two people at completely different places, could only be as a Beethoven sonata is performed by two different people at the piano, each with their own individual interpretation, but in principle, of course, they must not differ.

All pantomime, all mimicry, all mere momentary gestures are avoided here. If any of this still seems to be the case, it is because we are still at the beginning of our work. All that is still pantomime and the like will be left out altogether later on, and the pure, natural laws of the human being speaking through its limbs and their possibilities of movement will emerge in the eurythmic art.

Today, the eurythmic is still accompanied on the one hand by the musical, because that is just another expression. So you will see on the stage the visible language of the human limbs, and at the same time hear how it is presented musically. On the other hand, you will see how it is presented by way of recitation, although it will become clear that we must return to the older art form of declamation and recitation. Today, people have more or less lost the actual artistic aspect of language. One could say that speaking artistically is in a state of decline, of decadence. Not only do many people think that speaking artistically is not art at all, that anyone can do it, but also the professional reciters, the professional actors themselves, they only emphasize in their present art of recitation the prose content, the literal meaning or that which is the content of the prose, not that which is the real art, what the poet actually has in mind – the rhythm of the language, the beat, the inner structure of the language. Schiller, I need only mention this, always had a melody, or at least a melodious tone, inside him before he had his poem literally written down. Only then did he find the words for it, because what mattered to him was the rhythm, the beat, the inner shaping of the language. And Goethe stood with his “Iphigenia”, although it is a drama, he stood with the baton and studied the iambs.

This is what leads back to the healthy old art of artistic recitation or declamation, where the shaping of language is in the foreground, not the prose content of the language, which underlies today's art of declamation. One could not accompany eurythmy, which has the task of revealing and expressing the inner art of movement, with today's art of declamation, but rather one must allow eurythmy to be accompanied by the right and good art of declamation, which looks less at the content than at the rhythm, at that which underlies the shaping of language.

All in all, I would ask you to view this presentation with some leniency, for we are just beginning in all areas, and I would ask you to consider what we are able to present today as an experiment that will certainly be continued, either by ourselves or by others, if our contemporaries give the necessary attention and interest to such an endeavor. The flourishing of the artistic depends on this, on the interest of our contemporaries. But if the interest of our contemporaries is present, if one will understand how a total work of art is striven for here through the evocation of that which lies hidden in the human being himself, who feels this will be able to be convinced that once the weak beginning that now exists is perfected by us or others, this eurythmic art will be able to present itself as a fully-fledged art form alongside other art forms.

[After the break:]

We will now present a scene from the second part of Goethe's “Faust”. The second part of “Faust” was only written in Goethe's old age and arose from the pinnacle of his artistic development. The manuscript was only discovered after his death and only then given to the world after Goethe's death, the manuscript of the second part of “Faust”. But Goethe would undoubtedly have been extremely annoyed, artistically speaking, if he had still been able to judge it, just as he was annoyed by the way in which some of his works from his youth, which he published in his youth without artistic maturity, were treated. There is a beautiful quatrain, which – I already mentioned it here the other day – Goethe left behind and in which he expressed how his early works, his “Iphigenia”, his “Tasso”, his “Natural Daughter” had been received, how people seem to reject what Goethe created from a state of maturity because they did not understand it. The words arose out of a certain annoyed mood.

But they praise my Faust
and what else

— he means the first part of his “Faust”

In my works roars
In their favor

The old Mick and Mack,
That pleases them very much,
And then the riffraff believes
They would no longer be.

Goethe would undoubtedly have judged the same way if he had thought of it about some of the things that otherwise quite clever people, for example the Swabian Vischer, whom I otherwise esteem very much, this V-Vischer, who, as I said, is a great esthete, he has written a tremendous work about aesthetics – nothing can be said to his disadvantage in his own field. But he understood nothing of the mature art of Goethe. He praised the first part at the expense of the second part, so he was one of those of whom Goethe said: “The old Mick and Mack, / That pleases them very much.” The great esthete also praised that very much, and that is why he also belonged to the “bunch of ragamuffins” of whom Goethe says: And there the bunch of ragamuffins believes that they are no longer! Vischer then wrote a third part of Faust himself – it is also after him! And the Faust that Goethe left behind, he called a cobbled-together, glued-together concoction of old age.

But, my dear attendees, there are artistic possibilities in there that lead from the ordinary, lowly existence of man into the supernatural, not by some kind of artistic use of an unhealthy mysticism or obscurantism, but by the fact that what man really experiences in his inner being when he goes beyond what is represented in everyday life.

And so we see how a scene like this one at “midnight”, where “Faust” also faces the four enemies of human life at the end of his life, namely worry, lack, guilt and need, and how everything that happens in “Faust” reflects this whole relationship to the supersensible world, how Goethe tries to express it in language. But if you take everything that has been tried so far to present the second part of 'Faust' on stage, you are always left unsatisfied. I myself have seen a lot, everything, for example, that came from the second part, especially in the 80s of the last century at the Vienna Burgtheater with the lovely Wilbrandt adaptation and direction, to the performances that then took music as an aid, for example, the Devrient's mystery play of “Faust”, part two, there was always something unsatisfactory about it, because Goethe had just discovered the deepest secrets of life in his mature years, and because he had incorporated these deepest secrets of life into the second part of “Faust”. Nevertheless, for those who understand it, this second part of Goethe's 'Faust' is a thoroughly artistic work. It contains not some kind of symbolic or abstract allegory, but life, but the life of the spirit. And I am convinced that this cannot be brought out by ordinary theatrical means; it can only be brought out by eurythmy. And such figures, which otherwise only look like allegorical or symbolic ones - want, guilt, sorrow, need - only come to full revelation through eurythmy when they mean what they are for human life.

Please also consider this presentation as a first attempt. But I do believe that if one turns to eurythmy as an aid – of course only where the everyday rises into the supersensible – you will see how we set this eurythmy in the dramatic art, where it is undoubtedly suitable when it is necessary to go beyond the ordinary human and enter the universal and the spiritual.

Automated Translation

Dear ladies and gentlemen.

We would like to take the liberty of presenting a sample of our eurythmic art to you today. This eurythmic art is in the early stages of its development and is in great need of further refinement. So we will have to present a kind of experiment to you. Therefore, you will allow me to say a few words in advance.

Of course, the aim of the eurythmic art is not to be understood through any kind of theoretical prediction. Every artistic activity should be grasped directly through the aesthetic impression itself. However, I do not wish to speak these few introductory words in order to provide theoretical discussions about what is to be imagined, but rather to explain to you how an attempt is being made here to create a new art form from certain sources. This new art form should not be confused with all kinds of neighboring arts that seemingly want something similar - such as dance art and the like - but it is an art form that is taken entirely from the Goethean worldview, from the inner possibilities of movement of the human individual himself. If I am to express in a few words what this eurythmic art actually is, I would have to say: it attempts to reveal itself through the whole human being in a toneless language, in the same way as a person would otherwise speak through the larynx and its neighboring organs. The possibility for this is derived from a psychology, from a soul science, which is based entirely on the principle of Goethe's world view. Let us just consider, my dear audience, what human speech actually is. We still do not give sufficient account of this today. And that is why such attempts as the eurythmic art - which reveals a different artistic language from the other art forms - will be more difficult to understand because we are not yet accustomed to understanding.

Human speech is such that human will works together with the whole human organism. However, this human will is, as it were, toned down by what pours in from the other side of the human organization, from the side of the thought organization. In ordinary human speech, human volition, which mobilizes forces that we can describe as muscular and other forces, and everything that otherwise works in thinking, but which is discharged through organic transmission to the larynx and its neighboring organs, really do flow together. That which is the thought form of speech, that which pours out of the thought side into speech, brings us together with our fellow human beings in life, and brings us together with the outside world in general. This is also the element in which the outside world is mirrored.

Now, in this eurythmic art, an attempt is made to bring about such a metamorphosis of language that the sounding of the thought is eliminated and only that is brought out of the possibilities of movement of the human organism, which pulsates from the will into language. In this way, this silent language, which expresses itself through the limbs of the whole human being, this eurythmy, is made an expression of the human being himself in a much more intense sense than ordinary language, into which, because it is also the means of communication for the human being, much that is conventional must flow.

Thus it comes about that we are able to bring to manifestation in eurythmy, through the possibilities of movement given in the human organism, precisely that which is subject to language from the soul of man.

When man speaks, I would like to say that he is always willing to make the same movements that come to manifestation in eurythmy. Particularly when listening to something spoken, the human being would like to make these movements. He suppresses them because the thought element dulls and paralyzes that which lives in the whole human being. In this way, the thought element is completely suppressed. Then it no longer paralyzes that which comes from the will element: the whole human being becomes an expression of the will, which is suppressed in ordinary language. But through this, my dear audience, the bridge is created over to the musical element, which is also a kind of language that expresses the depths of life, and on the other side, but also to poetry.

In poetry, the main thing is not the content of the words, but rather what is actually suppressed in ordinary life when speaking: In poetry, the main thing is rhythm, meter, everything that underlies the spoken word as its form. Hence you will see how, on the one hand, in certain pieces, the eurythmic element - which is a silent language spoken by the whole human being - is accompanied by the musical element, which in this case expresses the same thing as that which is expressed in the movements of the human limbs on stage. On the other hand, you will see that the truly poetic in poetry must be expressed when poems are recited at the same time, which on the one hand work through the word itself, but on the other hand but also through the silent language, the language of the will, which is presented on the stage and says the same thing as is spoken from the mouth in poetry, through the spoken word.

The basis of the art of eurythmy is not an arbitrary movement of the human limbs. Anything that is merely a gesture, merely facial expression, merely pantomime, is avoided. There is an inner lawfulness, as in the melodious element of music itself, for example. It is all based on the sequence of human movements. What the human will does with one sound follows, one might say, a melody of movement, what the other sound does. And so the inner connection is a lawful one. When two groups or individuals perform the same piece in eurythmy, the individual conception is no more at issue than it is for two pianists playing one and the same piece of music, such as a Beethoven sonata. Nothing arbitrary remains in the eurythmic art. Everything is in accordance with inner law.

Therefore, in the accompanying recitation, it must also be taken into account that, in poetry, the main thing is not the content of the words - which is particularly emphasized today when reciting; in this respect today - but rather it is actually the main thing. It would not be possible to accompany eurythmy with recitation in any other way than by making this the main thing: the underlying rhythm, the beat. Everything that is the formal expression of poetry must also underlie the recitation. Both are still poorly understood today. However, both should be the beginning of a new art form. And in the interaction of poetry, music and eurythmy, something should be created that truly corresponds to what Goethe felt: Art is based on the insight and visualization of the work of art by the human being, in visible and tangible forms to represent what has been seen through. Goethe once said, when he was writing his book about Winckelmann, where he delved particularly deeply into the essence of artistry: “Because man is at the pinnacle of nature, he in turn feels like a whole nature. He takes measure, order, harmony and meaning together to finally rise to the production of the work of art.

Is it not right, dear assembled here, when the human being's own deep conformity to law, which lies in every possible movement of his limbs, is brought forth into a mute language, which is, however, a fully valid form of expression for that which can also be speech? Must we not say that when something so deeply mysterious is drawn from the human instrument – for there is an imprint of the whole world in human nature, a microcosm – must we not say that something eminently artistic must emerge? As I said, there is nothing arbitrary about this eurythmy; it is simply the possibilities for movement that the larynx itself makes when we speak: These are captured in supersensible vision, are transferred to arms and hands and the other limbs of the human body, so that one might say that the human being itself acts like a large larynx, in order to create possibilities for expression that work through the mute movements, but which can be much richer, namely much more inwardly soulful, than what is achieved through conventional phonetic language.

If it is to be justified that something like this is possible, then it must be said that a bridge between poetry and such an art of movement, which is drawn from the human organism itself, is already given by the fact that the true poet does not feel the literal as the actual content of his creation, but rather that which formally underlies the poetry. In the case of Schiller, for example, in the best of his poems it was not the literal content that was first in his soul, but rather he had something musical, something melodious in his soul; only then did he add the literal content.

And Goethe studied Iphigenia with his actors, which is even a dramatic poem, with a baton like a conductor, so as not to emphasize the literal content, but rather what is based on the rhythm, the inner musicality of the matter. This inner musicality, we say, which we can otherwise express in language only partially, should be brought out of the human organism through eurythmy.

But all this, ladies and gentlemen, is really only at the beginning, and it is very necessary that this attempt at a eurythmic art be perfected more and more. To do this, it is of course necessary to find the interest of our contemporaries. If this interest of contemporaries turns to the art of eurythmy, as it has already partly turned to it, then the beginnings that have been made today will be further perfected, either by ourselves or, probably better, by others. And we are convinced that eurythmy will be able to create something that can stand alongside other art forms as a fully fledged art.

We are our own harshest critics when it comes to what we are able to offer today. We are well aware that it is a beginning that will gradually grow, but that it can already be presented because this art form, born out of Goetheanism, is something different, something that can be introduced as something new in our overall spiritual development. Therefore, because it is a beginning, we ask you to take the performance with indulgence. As already mentioned, we are our own harshest critics, but we do believe that what we can give today is worth the interest of our contemporaries.

[Before the break:] Since a wish has been expressed in this regard, we will present a scene from Goethe's “Faust”, part one, the scene that takes place in the study [night], with the Easter scene that follows. We want to present this scene with the help of the eurythmic art.

The many attempts that have been made to bring Goethe's “Faust” to the stage are well known. The difficulties lie in the fact that Goethe not only depicted what takes place for people and around people here on earth, but that in many places Goethe raised the scenes into the spiritual and supersensible. This is where the art of directing, the ordinary art of directing, very often fails. Anyone who has seen a variety of different “Faust” performances, for example the charming production by Adolf Wilbrandt, or Devrient's mystery play, which broke with the customary style and tried to present the matter in a more mysterious way, knows how difficult it is, especially with “Faust”, to bring to the stage that which is the transference of the plot into the supersensible, to bring truly shaped forces onto the stage.

Now, of course, we will present everything that takes place in the ordinary world of the senses on the ordinary stage; but where the situation involves raising the whole situation into the supersensible, we will use eury thmy, which is particularly suitable for dealing with these scenes, as it has already been shown in certain scenes of the second part of “Faust”, the mysterious depths of which cannot otherwise be fully explored.

So I think you will be able to see, if you let this experiment take effect on you – because it can only be an experiment – this scene in the study with the subsequent Easter scene, you will be able to see how, with the help of eurythmy, the supersensible aspects of this first part of “Faust” can easily be revealed in a way that is appropriate to the scene. Note 129, 5.56

Archduke Eugene of Austria, who was staying in Basel at the “Hotel Des Trois Rois” and was affectionately known to the people of Basel as “Erzi”, attended this performance. From time to time he came to Dornach to watch a performance.

Dear attendees!

We would like to take the liberty of presenting a sample of our eurythmic art to you. Since this eurythmic art is still in its infancy and can easily be confused with all kinds of neighboring arts, please allow me to say a few words before the performance.

In what we call the eurythmic art, we do not want to compete with any dance-like arts or the like, which we know to be more perfect in their way than what we can already present as the eurythmic art today. But in this eurythmic art, something is being attempted that can stand on its own alongside all the other arts.

Just as basically everything that is to be connected to this structure, and for which this structure is to be the external representation, is taken from Goethe's world view - and I would like to point out how I would like to point out how this has been done, because it shows the sources from which this eurythmic art actually flows – in this way, this narrow field of eurythmy is also taken from the Goethean world view.

Of course, everything that is intended to have an artistic effect must be perceived directly through the eye or through the senses in general, and any theoretical explanation that is given about an artistic work would not only be superfluous, but it would also have to be fundamentally mistaken. I would therefore like to preface these words not in order to say something about the artistic formalities themselves, but to show the artistic sources from which this eurythmic art draws. And I may begin with a few words – truly not to give a theoretical explanation, but to point out something that is at the same time most eminently artistic and also a form of knowledge within the Goethean world view – I may begin by pointing out in a very elementary way what is known as Goethe's metamorphosis theory. It is something that has not yet been sufficiently appreciated in the present, but which will play a major role in the spiritual life of the future.

We basically only have a science of the dead. That which is grasped by our knowledge is only that which is dead in all world phenomena and world facts. Understanding the truly living will only be reserved for a time when the Goethean worldview will play a greater role than it already does in the present. Today it looks simple, but it is not so simple when one only understands it in its full depth, what Goethe says, for example, about the growth and structure of plants. Goethe is of the opinion that the whole plant - and even if it is the most complicated tree - is only a complicated leaf. And each leaf is in turn a whole plant, only simple and primitively formed. But it is not only so with plants; it is so with all living things. The most important links of each living thing are a repetition of the whole living being.

Goethe initially developed this view only with regard to the formation of living things. He also extended it to humans, but only in terms of form. If we extend what Goethe did for form in his own way to human activity, then we can gain from it what we call the eurythmic art here, when we transfer mere observation into artistic creation. However, one must approach it in such a way that one grasps what would otherwise remain hidden from external impressions, from sensory impressions, in a kind of supersensible vision.

You see, my dear audience, when a person speaks, we listen to him; we listen to him with our ears, we grasp the spoken language. But while the person is speaking, the larynx and its neighboring organs are in a state of constant internal movement, at least by nature. Physically speaking, everyone is aware that when I speak here, I cause the air to vibrate, to move in regular waves. What is being done by the larynx and its neighboring organs is not seen when we listen to a person. But the person who is able to see supersensibly is also able to see what potential movements are present in the human larynx when the person speaks, especially when he speaks artistically or when he sings or when he wants to express something musical at all.

These inner possibilities of movement of the larynx and its neighboring organs can be grasped, imagined and then transferred to the human being as a whole. Just as Goethe imagines that the large plant is only a more intricately designed leaf, so can the movements that otherwise remain invisible be transferred to the movements of the limbs of the whole human being. Thus, on the stage, you will see the human being in motion. And what is revealed in these movements is not arbitrary, it is not something invented, but it is exactly the same as what happens invisibly when a person speaks audible language.

What is presented is a mute language, but a visible one. There is so little arbitrariness in it that one can say: all pantomime, all mere facial expression, all gesturing with the eyes are absent from eurythmy. So that it cannot be compared with any of the now familiar dance arts, for example. Just as what is truly musical does not consist in the mere painting of colors, so our eurythmic does not consist in the mere external expression of what is going on in the soul, but in the lawful succession of movements performed by the human limbs.

I could therefore figuratively say: when you see the human being moving here on the stage, the whole human being has become the visible larynx. It is indeed part of Goethe's world view that the artistic consists in the fact that we do not see the secrets of the world through our ideas, through our concepts, but that we see the secrets of the world without concepts, without representations, through direct observation. Eurythmy seeks to bring the movement possibilities, the secrets of movement possibilities that lie in the human organism, into a visible language.

If two people in different places or two groups were to perform the same thing in eurythmy, they would have to perform exactly the same thing. The individual interpretation is given only as much leeway as when two people in two different places play one and the same Beethoven sonata in their own personal interpretation.

Just as the melodious element in music moves forward in a lawful manner, so the possibilities of movement of the human organism move forward in a lawful manner here. It is a melody of movement that one should actually observe. If what lies in the individual sounds of the word is expressed through the human limbs, through the movement of the individual limbs, then what is expressed through the outer movement in space or through the relationships and mutual movements of the eurythmists united in a group is that which lies in the soul warmth, in what is joy and suffering, joy and enthusiasm.

You will see that the silent language of eurythmy is accompanied on the one hand by the eurythmic through the musical element, which basically expresses the same thing in other words, and on the other hand by the art of recitation and declamation. And it is precisely in this recitation and declamation that it becomes clear how the artistic element of poetry must be expressed through eurythmy.

Today, we are convinced that the most highly regarded and well-liked art of recitation has gone astray. Today, when reciting, the same thing is emphasized that is the literal content, that is, not the truly poetic, but the prosaic. The truly poetic element in poetry lies in the underlying musical elements – in the rhythm, in the beat, in the formal structure, in the rhyme – and all these elements will be expressed here in the eurythmy that parallels the recitation.

That this is the case with real poetry can be seen if we go back to what was regarded in earlier times as the real art of recitation and as the basis of poetry. I would just like to remind you that Schiller, for example, did not first have the literal content in his mind when writing the best of his poems – not at all – but he did have a melodious element in his mind, an indeterminate melody or at least something melodious, and only then did he grasp the literal element, which he then clothed in. Goethe rehearsed his “Iphigenia”, which is a iambic drama, with his actors, with the baton, like a conductor. He did not place the main emphasis on the literal content, but placed the main emphasis on the art of verse, on the form of the poetry.

All of this must be brought out again – what underlies the poetry. It is precisely that which is actually artistic that is actually overlooked today, especially in the art of recitation. Those who still had the opportunity to see primitive recitation of simple folk poems, as they were practiced in villages in Central Europe until the last decades of the 19th century, for example, now increasingly less so, could, I would say, perceive a primitive eurythmy originating from the prehistory of mankind. The recitation was not just about the prose content of the poem, as it is today. Rather, to use a harsh expression, the ballad-monger who always recited his ballad went about gesticulating in very regular movements. So that one can study how the eurhythmic actually emerged from that deep element of the human soul, from which the art of poetry actually also emerged, in the development of mankind.

What underlies this is genuine Goethean psychology, Goethean soul teaching. When a person speaks, especially when they speak artistically, we can study this. Then, in speech, thoughts flow from one side, thoughts pour, so to speak – excuse me for putting it so crudely, but it could also be expressed in a very, very learned, scientific way – thoughts pour onto the larynx, and the will permeates from the whole human being that which lives in thoughts. Speech is the synthesis of what lies in man as will and of what emanates from the brain in thought forms. Both are synthesized in speech by the human mind. The human mind sends its waves through this element of thought, through the human mind. Here, we are attempting to omit that which can be conventional, that which serves to facilitate human communication in the external life, and which thus leads away from the artistic, and to make visible language only that which emerges from the whole human being as the element of will.

But as I said, what is being attempted here is only a beginning, and I therefore ask you to be lenient with this beginning. We are our own harshest critics. We know what this eurythmy art can become, but we also know that we are at the very beginning. And only that which is needed for art, my dear audience, is, I would say, the interest of contemporaries. Further perfection can grow out of the interest of contemporaries. And as much as we are fully convinced that we are now at the beginning of this eurythmic art, we ask for your forbearance. But on the other hand, we are fully convinced that something will develop from this eurythmic art - either through us or probably through others - that will one day be able to stand alongside the old, fully recognized art forms as a fully recognized art form in its own right.

The art of eurythmy, of which we would like to show you another example, is still in its infancy, and I would ask you to bear this in mind as we demonstrate it. It is the expression of the anthroposophical movement, born out of Goethe's world view. And so this narrow circle, for that is what it is in our overall work, has been brought out of the Goethean worldview and Goethean artistic ethos. This has made it possible to turn the human being himself, with his inner possibilities of movement, into a kind of artistic instrument. What you will see on stage is an attempt at a visible, seen language. The human limbs are used to express in the same way what is expressed by the human larynx in phonetic language, in the same way as a person otherwise expresses himself in his movements through gestures.

However, the fact that the human body produces these movements does not mean that they are in any arbitrary connection with what the human soul feels, or with what the human soul would otherwise express in words. Rather, that through a kind of sensory-supersensory seeing, the larynx and its neighboring organs have truly overheard the possibility of movement that becomes reality in them, revealing itself when they are spoken, when the sound is formed into speech. What we pay attention to when a person speaks is the audible. But the audible is based on an inner movement of the larynx and its neighboring organs, which is transmitted into the outer air, which we also set in vibrations, in wave-like movements. Those who, through a kind of seeing, are able to form an image of these movements that underlie spoken language can translate, in a lawful way, what would otherwise only express itself in audible sound, into the silent language that is eurythmy. This enables us to separate out everything in language that is based only on convention, only on the nature of human interaction, and which is therefore the inartistic part of language.

When we speak to one another as human beings, the formation of the sound and the content of the sound are based on the needs of human interaction. This is how prose enters our language. We must now study how language is actually based on two elements: soul and, as the soul expresses itself in the physical, body and physicality. When we speak, the expression of our thoughts, our ideas, first enters into speech. This expression connects with the expression of the will as we speak. The expression of the thought comes from the head, as we grasp the matter physically. But the expression of the will comes from the whole human being. When we speak, we actually draw out of our whole being that which then concentrates in the organs of will, which produce the audible sound.

Now this supersensible observation of the possibilities of movement of the larynx and its neighboring organs allows one to truly translate into that which is otherwise held back from the human being when speaking: the possibility of movement of the whole body, that which is otherwise heard. So for the eurythmic presentation, we start by leaving out what is the conceptual part of speech and only take up what comes from the human will element, but now take it up in the movements of the whole human being.

You see: in this way eurythmy, which is such a mute language, becomes the expression of something much more inward in the human being than can be revealed through speech. Through speech we transfer, as it were, what we experience inwardly more to the surface of the human body, indeed to the surface of the human being. Through the fact that we allow the whole human being to carry out the same movements, the same lawful movements that underlie spoken language, we involve the whole human being in what is otherwise the content of speech. And if you have a feeling for what is expressed and revealed through the inner possibilities of movement of the human body, you can truly present a silent but no less eloquent language as eurythmy.

This kind of soul science can certainly be derived from Goethe's world view. The whole human being becomes, as it were, a larynx and its neighboring organs on the stage in front of you. And what otherwise glows through speech as the soul's enthusiasm, as joy and suffering, as joy and pain, is expressed in the movement of the human being in space, in the movement of groups that relate to each other in such a way that the individual human being inner possibilities of movement, which are modeled on the movements of the larynx; while that which is presented to one in the group, or is revealed in the movements of the individual human being in space, expresses more the real soul content.

But nothing is a mere gesture or a mere pantomime. Anything that is mere pantomime, anything that is merely gestural is excluded. What you see is based on an inner, lawful sequence of movements. When two people or groups of people in different places express one and the same thing through the silent language of eurythmy, there is no more personality in it than there is in the personal interpretation when two pianists in two different places play one and the same Beethoven sonata. Just as in music the truly artistic element lies in the conformity to law of the succession of notes, so here the truly artistic element lies in the conformity to law of the eurythmic movements. It may be said that the artistic element always excludes the directly imaginative through ideas, which otherwise play their great part in knowledge. Where concepts are involved, there is no artistic element.

You see, here we consciously exclude the imagination and bring out what - like a secret of the human organs themselves - can be guessed in a mute language, I would say, directly in looking at it. To penetrate into the secrets of existence in direct observation without the mediation of concepts is a true art. That which can be expressed musically from the soul life of the human being on the one hand, and that which poetic speech brings forth artistically from speech sounds, is expressed in a different way through the mute speech of eurythmy, which has been developed into an art form. Therefore, on stage today you will see on the one hand the mute eurythmic language, or that which can be expressed musically; on the other hand you will hear certain contents recited, although you will have to bear in mind that with the emergence of a new art such as eurythmy, which is a different kind of language, it places demands that recitation should also be returned to the old, good way of reciting.

Today, in the art of recitation, more attention is paid to the prose element, to the purely content-related element of language; to bring out, by reciting, from the content of a poem that which corresponds more to the prose content of the poem. That is not the truly artistic element. What is truly artistic is the underlying meter, rhythm, rhyme, and so on. These, in turn, must be sought out and brought out. And so, the art of recitation must be led back to its good, old forms, away from the wrong path it has taken today. Goethe, who knew a great deal about these good old forms, took a conductor's baton and rehearsed his “Iphigenia” with the actors himself, in order to show how the real rhythm was at the core, not what is actually the prose in the artistic elements within.

Today we will present you with a piece from the first part of Goethe's “Faust”, the study scene. You may know how hard people have tried to bring Goethe's “Faust” to the stage, and what directing skills and the like have been used to create a worthy performance of Goethe's “Faust”. When one thinks of a stage production of Goethe's Faust, there are two things to be considered above all: first, that Goethe, in writing his Faust (he worked on the poem for sixty years), first wanted to express through this world poem the deepest things that can take place in the soul of a striving human being. Goethe wanted to express the experiences of the human breast, from the most oppressive, tied to ordinary life on earth, to the highest spiritual striving. All this, as Goethe felt it at times in his younger years – often still immaturely – he put into the first parts; what he felt later, he put into the later parts of the first part of “Faust”. He then put the most mature into the second part.

How little Goethe himself initially thought of presenting “Faust” as a stage play can be seen from the following. When at the end of the 1820s a deputation headed by the actor La Roche went to see Goethe after they had decided to stage the first part of “Faust” in its entirety - parts had, however, already been performed earlier - Goethe himself thought it was somewhat impossible. And yet, with a number of esteemed gentlemen standing before him, he leapt from his seat after the matter had been explained to him, shouting angrily: “You fools!” Thus he had spoken to those who wanted to undertake the first part of his “Faust” on the stage. He saw best the difficulties that arise when one wants to present on the stage not what is sensual, earthly-physical in nature, but what is spiritual in nature. But the presentation of Faust has been recognized, and rightly so, as something that, one might say, meets the deepest artistic needs. And so a wide variety of approaches have been used to bring Faust to the stage, from Devrient's mystery plays to Wilbrandt's charming direction. But certain parts, which rise directly from the earthly into the supernatural, can, in our opinion, only be presented if the silent language of eurythmy is used. And so, in this little piece of “Faust” that we are presenting to you, we have called upon the eurythmic art for those parts where the spiritual world enters into the human.

After the break, we will also present a number of Goethe's poems, and it will be shown that where Goethe, in his magnificent “Cloud Poems”, describes wonderful cloud formations with wonderful natural intimacy, following the instructions of Howard, can be perceived in nature itself in accordance with his artistic and ideological view, can also be poetically realized, so that one can naturally feel what is otherwise shown by the transformation of cloud forms in nature itself in the forms that are performed, which are very similar to those in the poem. This inner transformative power, which Goethe describes as the metamorphosis of natural phenomena, which he observed in all living things, was revealed to him by observing the formation of clouds. And in these transformations of cloud formations, he saw something artistic, something that works like the power that the ancient Indian worldview perceived in the cosmos and called Kama Rupa. That is what he wanted to express in his beautiful cloud poems, which can best be recreated in the silent language of eurythmy.

With this, I wanted to show you the sources from which the forms actually arise that you will see as eurythmy. Once again, I would like to emphasize that everything that is intended with eurythmy is actually only just beginning and that further development will take place, either through ourselves or through others, if it meets with the interest of our contemporaries. However, we are thoroughly convinced that if this art can continue to develop, it will one day be able to establish itself as a fully-fledged art form alongside other art forms.

Dear attendees!

We will attempt to give you a sample of our eurythmic art. Please allow me to precede this presentation with a few words about what our eurythmic art actually seeks to achieve. It is, after all, only at the beginning of its development, and we can only hope that, when what is inherent in this eurythmic art has been developed, it will be able to stand alongside the other art forms as something that is truly drawn from the highest artistic sources. But I would ask you always to bear in mind that we are only at the beginning of this artistic development.

Like everything that is done here as an anthroposophical movement, and of which this building, when it is finished, is intended to be the representative, the representation, so too, even if in a very limited area, this eurythmic art is drawn from a spiritual teaching based on Goethe's world view and his view of art. What Goethe's world view is, what Goethe's attitude towards art is, has not yet been sufficiently appreciated, and it will probably play a much greater role in the future spiritual development of humanity than today's humanity can even dream of.

What is being attempted here can invoke a beautiful saying of Goethe's, used by Goethe when he begins to glorify the great, art-loving Winckelmann, to bring him to full recognition. Goethe says: When man is placed at the summit of nature, he feels himself in turn as a whole nature, and he brings together in his own soul life measure, harmony, meaning, in order to rise to the production of the work of art. - If one now tries to make the whole human being, with his inner possibilities of movement, into an instrument of the work of art, then something like a summary of the secrets of the world must indeed come out of such art. For in the human being himself, as in a great context, all the secrets of the world are expressed.

What we want to try through eurythmy, my dear audience, is to help the whole person to express a silent language, a language that arises from making the whole person a larynx, so to speak. You know that when we listen to a person speaking, we first of all exercise our sense of hearing. We turn our attention to what can be heard. But the one who – to use this Goethean expression – can see, sensually and super-sensually, what is hidden as the actual essential secrets behind the outer appearances of nature and the human being, knows that in the larynx and its neighboring organs, while the sound reaches our ear, movements are constantly taking place or at least movement systems are active.

We can also imagine the same thing physically by saying: when I speak here, for example, my speech organ sets the air in regular motion. These movements are basically the outward expression of the movement systems present in the larynx and its neighboring organs. If you observe this, learn to recognize it, in contrast to the way you tend to ignore it in your daily life, then you can transfer it to the movement of the arms and the movement of other limbs of the human organism, and then you can create a mute language in which the whole person brings to full expression, to full revelation, that which is otherwise hidden as movement patterns in the larynx and its neighboring organs.

The same thing can also be expressed differently. We can say: when we speak, two elements of the human being flow together. From the head, more visibly speaking, what we have in our thoughts flows into our speech. But combined with these thoughts is what comes from the human will. We can feel it if we have a predisposition for such feeling, that actually, when someone speaks, especially when we listen to artistic language, to poetry, our whole human being comes into a kind of inner resonance, a kind of inner coexistence, in a sense into a dancing movement. In ordinary life, we suppress this dancing movement. Only someone who is familiar with our speech organism knows that something is actually always resonating in our larynx and neighboring organs when we listen to another person.

This is something that science is now beginning to recognize: that more delicate vibrations and movements also take place in the speech organs of the person listening. There is something mysterious in the whole human being, especially when listening, but also when speaking. We only try to keep the human being himself calm and [gap in the text], that is, movements of the will and those organs that are connected with the larynx and its neighboring organs when we speak in ordinary life.

What is otherwise brought to rest by the will in ordinary life is particularly brought to expression in eurythmy. So that the whole human being expresses that which otherwise, I would say, is only expressed more on the surface of the body, at the larynx and its neighboring organs. In doing so, we suppress our thinking and imagining life of our own accord. We shut out ideas completely. So that a mute language is expressed through the whole human being, who, as it were, moves on the stage as an enlarged larynx,

If we create such a language, we must be clear about the fact that it must be different from what is otherwise effective as pantomime, as mimicry, as representations by any gestures. Everything that is arbitrary movement, mere facial expression, mere pantomime, must actually be excluded in this eurythmic art. Just as the actual artistic quality of musical art does not lie in tone painting, but in the lawful succession of melody [and other elements], so too in eurythmy everything rests on the lawful succession of those movements that the whole human being expresses. Everything arbitrary is eliminated. Everything that is based on the laws of eurythmy can be seen in the movements of the human speech organism itself.

Therefore, when two people or two groups of people in different places present the same thing, there is no greater scope for personal interpretation than when two pianists in different places play the same Beethoven sonata in their own way and with their own personal interpretation.

On one side you see the actors, and with them what is taking place on the stage, for certain parts of it the musical element – for the musical element is only another way of expressing what lives in the soul than eurythmy – and again other parts you will find accompanied by recitation, by the artistically formed language of poetry. What is expressed audibly in poetry and recitation is made visible in eurythmy, albeit silently. But the recitation must be taken back to its good old forms. Today recitation has gone astray. In modern life, it is actually the prosaic element that underlies poetry that is given special consideration, not the metrical, rhythmic, or artistic-formal element that underlies the actual poetry. It would not be possible to accompany eurythmy with today's art of recitation.

This is only possible if one goes back to the true art of recitation, as Goethe, for example, also had in mind when he did not rehearse his “Iphigenia” - that is, even a a dramatic work - with his actors: He rehearsed it with the baton in his hand like a conductor, in order to place the main emphasis on the rhythmic, on the actual artistic design. Today, we do not have a very clear idea of how Goethe actually wanted a drama to be staged. But if we look into the soul of the poet, then, ladies and gentlemen, we will also find that the actual artistry of the poetry does not lie in the literal content. Schiller did not initially have the literal content in mind for many of his best poems, but rather a melodious element. At first, the meaning of the poem was unimportant to him; the melodious content was what mattered to him, and only then did he seek out the literal content to go with it. As a companion to eurythmy, we too must lead the art of recitation back to the truly artistic.

In eurythmy itself, you will see everything that is otherwise expressed in spoken language through the laws of spoken language, in the silent language of eurythmy itself. But you will find everything that otherwise glows through speech with inner warmth of soul, with joy and suffering, with delight and pain, represented in the movements of the eurythmists in space, in the relative movements of the groups in relation to each other. Everything that can be represented by spoken language can also be represented by eurythmic silent language.

In the second part, after the break, we will now give a sample of how poetry can be presented through eurythmy. However, we are convinced, my dear attendees, that we can also bring spiritual sources of expression to the dramatic arts, especially to a dramatic art that rises from the merely realistic human, from the mere physical earthly existence to the supersensible spiritual existence, through eurythmy. This is particularly the case in Goethe's “Faust” poetry.

Goethe has his Faust, namely [in] the first part – you know, Goethe worked on his “Faust” for 60 years – he has secreted into this “Faust” all the inner experiences of a sensual and supersensory nature that he has experienced in his long life. In its first part, he did not even consider shaping the “Faust” poem in such a way that it should be staged. As he himself says, when he was a youth and was working on the first part of his Faust, Goethe had only the secret of what lived in his soul in mind when he was working on this great poem. It was far from his mind to think of any theatrical representation.

Individual parts were indeed soon presented, with or without music. But Goethe was never quite in agreement – my dear audience, you know that the second part, which he then conceived in a completely theatrical way, was only published after his death – Goethe was never in agreement when the first part was to be brought to the stage. And how little he was inclined to bring what he had only in his mind's eye to the stage, is evident from a fact that is truly characteristic of this matter.

One of the greatest German actors, Laroche, was a contemporary of Goethe and a friend of Goethe's in Weimar. I myself knew a good acquaintance of Laroche through my old teacher, Karl Julius Schröer. And Laroche told old Schröer how he, Laroche, as a respected actor, went with a deputation of respected gentlemen in Weimar to Goethe to present the plan of bringing “Faust” to the stage to Goethe - relatively late, at the end of the twenties. At that time, since only the first part was available, it could only be a matter of staging the first part. And Laroche described how he still had the old Goethe before him, as present, in his anger. Goethe's anger was so strong that they thought of staging the “Faust” play that was never intended for the stage, that in his anger, despite having a number of respected gentlemen in front of him, he hissed at them: “You fools!” This is how Goethe met the first deputation that wanted to stage his “Faust”.

Now, of course, no one would dream of excluding Faust from the stage. However, those who deal with such things know how difficult it is in the art of directing to really present this Faust in such a way that everything that lived in Goethe's soul comes out.

Now, with regard to those scenes in which, as is always the case in Goethe's “Faust”, supersensible processes intermingle with purely earthly processes – processes that reach into the spiritual world with regard to the life of the human soul – we have tried various things to make use of eurythmy. And so, in the first part before the break, we will show you the scene where Faust translates the Bible, sits in his study and meets Mephisto. We will show you this scene, where the supersensible world actually plays a part in Faust's life, where you have to look for ways to express in outwardly visible forms what plays a part there as the supersensible world.

This and other scenes have shown us how to present something that is not possible with other stage techniques with the help of eurythmy. So in the first part before the break, we will present you with a Goethean scene, a scene from Goethe's “Faust”, which will of course be presented in its other parts in the usual dramatic way. But where the plot takes a turn towards the supersensible, eurythmy is used to help with the presentation. We will therefore see a rehearsal of how eurythmy can be a great help in the theatrical presentation of poetry and dramatic poetry when they take on a supernatural element.

After the break, we will present poems that have been eurythmized from beginning to end. Before we begin with such performances, I would like to ask you to bear with us, as what I said at the beginning is meant seriously: we are only at the first attempt at this eurythmic art. We are, however, convinced that if our contemporaries show an interest in these attempts, eurythmy will develop to ever greater perfection, either through us or probably through others, the results of which will be presented today as a beginning, so that eurythmy can establish itself alongside other art forms as a fully-fledged new art form.

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen.

Allow me to say a few words in advance of the rehearsal of our eurythmic art that we will present to you.

Human speech, through which we communicate in life and which is used by poetry to express artistic things, is, as is well known, a product of the human larynx and its neighboring organs. Everything that we pay attention to in ordinary life with regard to human speech is the audible. In contrast to ordinary audible speech, eurythmy is conceived as a silent but visible language. But eurythmy is not conceived as a silent but visible language in the same way that ordinary human gestures or pantomime are conceived as a silent language. Rather, what is attempted in eurythmy is derived from the human being himself in a completely lawful way, derived from the human being himself in such a way that it is based on Goethe's world view and artistic attitude.

Just as Goethe tried to gain a lifelike understanding of nature by examining living beings to see how the individual organ expresses the whole organism, and how the whole organism is only a more complicated structure that represents a transformation of the individual organ , then we try to listen to an activity of the person that is produced by an organ system – in this case the larynx and its neighboring organs – in order to then apply it to the possibilities of movement of the whole person.

By means of a certain kind of – to use this Goethean expression – sensual-supersensible seeing, we can see what we do not see in ordinary life when we listen to the person speaking. You only need to remember how it is clear even from physics that, as I speak here, my speaking sets the air in motion, in wave-like motion, so you already have a concept of that movement, which is a concomitant of what we ourselves hear. But one can go further back, precisely through a kind of sensory-supersensory seeing. If one has this ability of sensory-supersensory seeing, one can convince oneself of the movements, and namely the movement structures, that are present in the human larynx and its neighboring organs when a person speaks.

These movement possibilities can then be transferred to the whole person. Just as, in Goethe's sense, the whole plant is only a more complicated leaf, so the whole person can move his limbs in the way that the larynx, tongue, palate and so on move when a person speaks. Visible language is therefore what is attempted through eurythmy.

But this is how you come particularly close to an artistic element. Isn't it true, my dear audience, that the artistic is based on our ability to delve into the essence of things, without abstract concepts and ideas. All that is mere knowledge, all that is developed imagination, disturbs what is actually artistic. We must delve into the riddles of existence, and you can take on the mediation of presentation and concept. It is precisely this that happens unconsciously through the eurythmy on the part of the spectator. It happens quite consciously on the part of those who are performing this eurythmy.

For in our ordinary language, two sides are confused: one is the element of thought that permeates our words from the soul. This is something that is lost from the artistic side of language; it is also something that is more closely aligned with the conventional way in which we communicate in life, and which is how the philistine, everyday, inartistic element of language comes about.

But the other aspect of the soul also works in language: the will element. In ordinary language, the thought element works together with the will element. Now, esteemed attendees, we omit precisely this thought element by bringing the will impulses out of the human being in the silent language of eurythmy. And we express these impulses of will through the entire world of the human limbs. So you see, as it were, the human being himself becoming a mute speech organ on the stage before you. And what he expresses through these movements of form, and also through his movements in space, is the same as what is otherwise expressed through audible speech.

By immersing ourselves in the human being itself, in order to allow ourselves to be revealed what is predisposed in the innermost part of the human being as possibilities of movement, we switch off the very element of language, and thus penetrate deeper into the essence of the human being without concepts and ideas, in direct contemplation. And in this way we achieve something that is fundamentally artistic. You can see that here we are attempting something that avoids mere gesture, pantomime, mimicry, and arbitrary connections – as is often the case in dance – between the content of the soul and the external impression.

In this way, eurythmy is something like the art of music itself. Just as musical art does not achieve its full value when it is merely tone painting, so eurythmic movements do not achieve what we are seeking artistically if they merely express in pantomime what is going on in the soul. They do not do this; but just as in music the essential lies in the lawful succession of the tones, in the melodious element, so here the essential lies not in the direct expression, but in the lawful sequence of the movements. Eurythmy is therefore music that is visible on the outside. And so it is that there is nothing arbitrary about two people or two groups of people in different places eurythmizing or performing the same thing, because the individual possibilities for expression are not allowed to differ any more than when two pianists play the same piece of music according to their personal interpretation.

And all the feelings that otherwise animate our speech, such as passion and sorrow, joy and enthusiasm, and so on, we can also express through the forms and especially through groups – whereby the individual personalities interact through the different movements of these groups. So it is a mute language of people in motion through which eurythmy seeks to work.

Of course, everything aesthetic must have an immediate effect, and I am only saying these few words to you in advance so that you can see the artistic sources from which this eurythmy is drawn. Just as in music there is an inner lawfulness of tones in the sequence of tones, of melody and so on, here we come to the lawfulness of human movement itself.

You will hear the silent language of eurythmy performed before you accompanied, on the one hand, by music, which is essentially just another expression, an expression with different means. You will also hear the recitation on the other hand. What is heard in the recitation becomes visible on the stage through the movements of the people there. The two will run in parallel. A piece of poetry, for example, will be recited, and the art of poetry will be presented in eurythmy at the same time – one and the same.

However, it must be taken into account that the art of recitation, as it is practiced today, is not well suited for eurythmy. For today, in the art of recitation – and it is precisely in this that the greatness of the art of recitation is seen – the prose content of the poems is actually taken into account, not the rhythmic, the metrical, the rhyming that underlies them. But this must be taken into account precisely in the art of recitation that is intended to serve the rhythmic presentation. So we have to go back to the good old forms of recitation – and [in doing so] we want to develop a feeling for the artistic again, a better feeling than our current, somewhat inartistic times. In the artistic, our present humanity also often seeks the prose content of a poem, the literal content in a poem.

One need only recall how Schiller, for example, before he had the literal content of some of his poems in mind, had a melody in mind; and it was only for this melody, which now lived in his soul in a certain way, that he then sought the literal content. This is how the best of Schiller's poems came into being. The real poet needs the formal element that underlies the prose element of life.

Now we will first have to perform a scene from the first part of Goethe's “Faust” for you. There we will, of course, present what are, so to speak, everyday events, in a manner appropriate to the stage. However, anyone who has seen many of the attempts that the directorial art of modern theater has made to bring Goethe's “Faust” to the stage in a dignified manner knows how difficult it is to that Goethe has put into Faust, to really bring it out in the presentation, when Goethe, as is the case in so many places in Faust, allows the supersensible, the spiritual, to play into his poetry. In many places, as you know - also in the first part, but especially in the second part of Faust - the spiritual and the supersensible play a role. One can go through the various directorial skills that have been applied: a great deal was really achieved in the 1880s, even in the 1880s. I myself got to know Wilbrandt in the 1880s, with his amiable directorial skills, who tried to bring the whole of “Faust” to the stage. It was also a kind of deepening for the interpretation of the mystery play that Devrient brought to the stage and so on. Much has been tried; but something unsatisfactory always remains, especially in the scenes where the spiritual and supersensible play a role and should be presented.

So now, while we present the rest of the scenes in a purely theatrical way, we are trying to bring out the “ghost scene” through eurythmy. Before the break, we will present the first scene of the first part of “Faust” in a purely theatrical way, as far as this can be considered. So the scene in the study, the poodle scene, where the poodle disturbs Faust while he is translating the Bible; and then the ghosts enter, and through the silent language of eurythmy we try to bring out what is in this world poem with regard to the ghost scene.

Goethe was aware that he had put so much inwardly human into his “Faust” poetry that he had not actually thought of staging the first part of “Faust” until the 1820s. He was then aware that he had adapted “Faust II” for the stage; but it was not performed until after Goethe's death. But you see, Faust was such a huge piece of world literature that other people came up with the idea of staging Faust, of actually bringing it to the stage. Goethe hadn't thought of that; for him, Faust was simply something portrayed from within, from the human perspective.

My old friend and teacher, Karl Julius Schröer, was very friendly with Laroche, who was still a famous actor at the time of Goethe. Laroche came to Goethe at the head of a deputation with the proposal – it was only at the end of the 1790s – to bring Faust to the stage. Laroche reported to Schröer: “Yes, Goethe gave us a good telling off! He was furious when he heard that we wanted to stage Faust. He said to us, 'You fools!' You see, with Goethe, a good deal of anger was needed – and surprise. Goethe, who had really become a well-mannered gentleman by that time, the “fat privy councillor with the double chin”, was not easily so naughty to such excellent people as, for example, Laroche, when he called them “donkeys”. He must have really believed that it was not possible to stage “Faust”. He also spoke about it more often later on.

But attempts were repeatedly made to bring Faust to the stage, and rightly so. We now believe that for certain scenes, the mystery that Goethe has woven into his Faust can be brought out by means of eurythmy in certain places. Of course, you, esteemed attendees, should consider this as just an experiment; and I would ask you to consider what we are able to present to you today as just the beginning of the art of eurythmy, which will be perfected later.

So, before the intermission, we will present the first part of the first scene from the first part of Faust, and then after the intermission we will present poems, poetry, and music, where we will do everything entirely in eurythmy. In the presentation of the scene from Faust, only a few parts are in eurythmy. But in the second part of our program, we will then present everything to you in full eurythmy. And so I ask you to please take the whole performance as an exercise in forbearance; for we are actually only at the beginning with the eurythmic art that seeks to achieve what I have presented.

However, we believe that if our contemporaries show the right interest in this new art, it can be perfected, either by us or by others – probably the latter – and that the time will come will come when this art, which uses the whole person as an instrument, thus the highest thing we have in existence, will be able to establish itself as a fully-fledged art alongside other older fully-fledged arts.

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen.

Before we take the liberty of presenting a small sample of our eurythmic art, allow me to say a few words about the source of this eurythmic art. It is this small area from the spiritual current that we represent here and for which our building is the external representation. Like everything else, this small piece actually originated from the whole world view. This world view also encompasses, in the broadest sense, a certain artistic attitude towards the world.

Now, of course, it is not immediately apparent how exactly what we call eurythmy here flows out of the whole world view; but I will be able to make myself understood in the following way.

What we express through our human language – whether in ordinary life, when we simply communicate with words and sentences in human interaction, or when we express ourselves artistically in poetry or recitation – what we express in these two ways through language, that flows together in the human being from two currents: From a stream that could be called the stream of thought, the stream of imagination - in a sense, from everything that pours out of the organs of our head into the larynx, palate and so on - everything that belongs to language. Into this, now, mingles, interpenetrating with the element of imagination, that which comes from the whole human being – the element of will. In speech, the elements of perception and will truly flow together. And the two are only permeated by the element of feeling, by the feelings, by pleasure and suffering, joy and pain, which we pour into what comes about as a perceptual and volitional movement in speaking, also in artistic speaking.

By listening to this speech, we naturally turn our attention to what we hear. But while the human being makes himself audible through speech, his speech organs – larynx, tongue, palate and so on – are in motion. And what is even stronger than this movement is the disposition to move. Furthermore, everyone can understand the connection between the movement in the tone – even in ordinary speech outside of music – if they realize that when I speak here, I set the air in motion, in vibration. And hearing is based precisely on that.

And if, through what Goethe calls sensory-supersensory perception, you focus your attention on what underlies speaking in the larynx and in the other speech organs, you can see precisely that through a certain supersensory spiritual recognition, to which you do not pay attention when you simply listen to what you hear. What we hear in terms of the possible movements of the larynx, tongue, palate and so on can be applied to the limbs of the whole human being. And the people you see here on stage doing eurythmy will then perform movements with their arms, hands and so on. These movements are not arbitrary. It is not like ordinary dance or ordinary pantomime. These are not momentary gestures, but rather what is brought out of the human being in accordance with the laws of nature, which is also the basis of the laws of movement in the larynx and its neighboring organs when speaking.

So in our eurythmy there is nothing invented, but everything is drawn from the secrets of human existence, of nature. In a sense, the whole human being becomes a larynx; only, of course, a mute language is produced by this. This silent language is what we call eurythmy. But in this silent language, the element of imagination that we have when we understand what we are saying is absent, and it is taken over by the limbs. When they move, only the will element is expressed, which is otherwise more or less even stimulated when speaking.

If you now consider that everything truly artistic actually consists in this, that you recognize everything truly artistic by letting the secrets that are in things reveal themselves in direct contemplation, to the exclusion of representations, ideas and thoughts, you will admit that precisely by using the secrets of the human being, which you yourself use like a musical instrument for your inner movements, that precisely by doing so, the artistic is taken into account to the highest degree through eurythmy — precisely by excluding the conceptual and including the mysterious will, which we can only sense. By seeing the movement, that which is most eminently artistic for the beholder is generated.

And so in this silent language, which we call eurythmy, the possibility of working artistically comes about in a very special way. You see, our ordinary everyday language, which the poet must also use, has increasingly deviated from its original character. If we go back to the early days of humanity, we find that the original languages were much more poetic, much more artistically shaped in themselves. Our language has become very abstract, very prosaic. As a result, we no longer feel in all cases where people write poetry that language can produce something truly artistic. Indeed, it would be no exaggeration to say that 99 percent of all poetry could just as well be left out of our intellectual culture. Perhaps only one percent of what is written today is truly worthy of being performed. For our language, and almost all European languages, with the exception of the eastern ones, is already beyond the stage where it can fully express the actual formal artistic aspect.

Therefore, it is precisely possible, through this silent language of eurythmy, to fulfill something that corresponds to Goethe's artistic ethos. Goethe said so beautifully in his book on Winckelmann: When man is placed at the summit of nature, he in turn sees himself as a whole of nature, and once again brings forth the one natural summit within himself, by taking up the order, measure, harmony and meaning of things and rising to the production of the work of art. And if we use the whole human being as an instrument – this most perfect instrument of our earthly existence – then we can certainly find secrets of the universe within him that can be shaped artistically much more than what we can get out of our conventional language today.

And so we can say that this eurythmy is - only that it is for the eyes and not for the ears - permeated by an inner lawfulness, just like music. Just as the artistic element in music does not consist in tone painting but in the lawful succession of tones, so too in eurythmy everything is built on the lawful sequence of movements; nothing is arbitrary - everything must be so. Just as it must be in music, as it is always formed according to law, it is no more arbitrary that when two groups or two individuals perform the same eurythmic action in two different places, their subjective perception cannot be more different than, for example, the subjective perception of two pianists playing the same piece of music.

All pantomime and all arbitrariness has been removed; if something still occurs, it is only because we are only at the beginning of our eurythmic art and some things are not as perfect as we would like them to be in our eurythmic performances.

But in eurythmy language we can also express everything that gives life to language, everything that streams out of our soul through human speech as enthusiasm, as passion and suffering, as joy and pain. We express this through what the individual does in space, what is done through the relationships of the group movement to one another. So on the one hand, what moves the soul is presented on stage. You will hear it accompanied in part by music, which is just another expression, an audible expression of what is expressed in silent language through eurythmy.

On the other hand, you will also hear it accompanied by recitation. We are essentially presenting poetry, but precisely when recitation or declamation is used on stage as an accompaniment to the silent language of eurythmy, we have to go back to the good old forms of recitation and declamation. We must go back to the times when people were not yet as abstract as they are today. Today, great importance is attached to emphasizing the prosaic content of language in poetry in the art of recitation. This achieves a certain refinement. But that was never what really mattered to the poet.

We need only recall how Schiller, when he wrote his most important poems, did not first have the literal content in his soul, but something melodious that hummed in his soul. And only when he had this melodious, musical element within him, still entirely without words, did he then add words, which are, so to speak, only of secondary importance to the inner meter and rhythm. If we go back to certain stages [of recitation] that we can hardly see or hear today, we can see, I would say — how a certain primitive eurythmy was already present. The people, balladeers mostly, as one could still hear them in our youth in the countryside, sing, could hear, they walked reciting, gesticulating up and down, in which they often presented their quite inferior poems.

The actual artistic element of human life has indeed been greatly reduced, and few people today still have any idea that in relatively recent times - at least for certain areas of the world - work was strongly connected with rhythm. When one did this or that work, one moved rhythmically. This actual rhythmic element was then also applied to what is actually artistic about spoken language.

We must go back to this artistic, rhythmic element in spoken language, in the art of recitation and declamation, and emphasize it again. Therefore, you will notice how we emphasize the rhythmic, the element of meter in recitation, which accompanies the eurythmy here. Otherwise, it would not be possible to accompany eurythmy with today's art of recitation and recitation, because eurythmy, which is essentially born of the element of will, demands that prose recitation, the emphasis of the literal content, recedes and the direct perception of what lies in rhyme, rhythm and so on comes to the fore, that this is expressed precisely through recitation and declamation.

Now, before the break, we will present a dramatic scene from the first part of Goethe's “Faust”, in the study, where he [Faust] is translating the Bible and is disturbed by the poodle. What we are presenting here is not, of course, done in a very eurythmic way, but is done as it is usually done, for the stage. But in Goethe, especially in this world poem of his, in Faust, we come across elemental moments that enter into the supersensible, into the spiritual. The spiritual world continually intrudes into the human world.

It is extremely difficult to present. And in the second part of Faust, Goethe always thought in terms of the stage – by then he had already somewhat modified his own artistic vision – but in the first part of Faust, he did not think of a performance at all. He simply wanted to infuse these works of art, on which he had been working for decades, with the kind of human soul-life, pleasure and suffering, the kind of oppression and sublimity that could be brought to bear on them.

And as I said, he really did not think of the first part of his “Faust” as a stage performance. The result was that parts were performed – and especially the music relatively soon – but that there was never a complete performance of the first part of “Faust”, that – the second part was not published until after Goethe's death – no one even tried. But in the 1820s, a group of respected people in Weimar put together a troupe, putting the great actor La Roche at its head. This deputation then went to Goethe to propose that his “Faust”, which had been around for decades, should now be staged.

Goethe had been a Weimar courtier for decades, had already become the “fat privy councilor with the double chin,” a well-mannered gentleman – really a well-mannered gentleman who knew how to behave otherwise. And lo and behold: when the esteemed La Roche, at the head of a petition of otherwise also esteemed Weimarers, suggested staging Faust, Goethe had one of his outbursts and shouted at them, these people: “You fools!” The actor La Roche still knew my revered friend and teacher Karl Julius Schröer, to whom he personally said: “Yes, yes, old Goethe, he still called us ‘donkeys’ back then!” He couldn't have imagined – not even himself – that “Faust” could be brought to the stage.

And we know how much effort has been made, how much effort people like the amiable director Adolf Wilbrandt or Devrient with his mystery-like structure of “Faust” or others have put into it. They have tried to bring “Faust I” to the stage. And of course it is fully justified to perform that which Goethe himself did not yet think of.

But we are convinced that one can only succeed if one uses eurythmy movements, because the supersensible element in 'Faust', which is expressed, for example, in the appearance of spirits and sprites of various kinds in this scene in the 'study', can only be properly portrayed with the help of eurythmy movements. Because something comes into play that ordinary language and ordinary directorial skills cannot actually achieve.

And in this respect, it seems to me – although what we are doing here can also be seen as an experiment – that a way can be found with the help of eurythmy, in which, of course, everything else that is purely earthly dialogue is presented in a purely earthly sense. Only where the supersensible world plays a part, I believe that a way can be found, with the help of eurythmy, to present these scenes on the stage, because of the strange interplay of the sensual and the supersensible in a dramatic poem such as Faust. At least I have the feeling that we have sometimes succeeded in doing this. And eight days ago today, when it seemed that there was a good mood here on stage, I had the feeling that what was played into the study of ghostly scenes, that it was something that could express what Goethe had secretly put into this ghost play. I hope that today, too, we will be able to let the mood come to the fore. This, ladies and gentlemen, indicates how the dramatic arts can also be enlivened by the silent language of eurythmy.

After the break, we will then perform individual poems, rehearsed by eurythmists, which are also partly by Goethe, from which you will then see how the poems can be presented through eurythmic performance. We hope that our contemporaries will take an interest in the art of eurythmy and that it will be supported by people paying attention to this art of eurythmy – even if we still have to ask for their forbearance today because it is only just beginning to emerge. We hope that one day, either through ourselves or more likely through others, this eurythmic art can be so perfected that it can stand alongside the other, older arts as a fully realized new art.

Public eurythmy performance in the presence of English friends

Dear attendees,

We would like to take the liberty of presenting a sample of what we call the eurythmic arts here. However, the art we are able to practice here is only just beginning. It is the attempt at the beginning of a new art. And so, just as everything that is striven for here in connection with this building, which is intended to represent our efforts in a certain sense, how everything here wants to tie in with what I would like to call Goetheanism, so this eurythmic art also wants to tie in with Goethe's artistic and world-view attitude. Just by saying this, I ask not to be misunderstood. It is not, so to speak, that which is to be linked to what has already emerged through Goethe, who died in 1832, but rather Goetheanism, which has been thrown into the evolution of humanity like a seed and which can produce the most diverse blossoms and fruits. We are not talking here about the Goethe of 1832, we are talking about the Goethe of 1919, about an evolved Goetheanism.

And an attempt has been made to educate this eurythmic art from the same meaningful, deep sources from which Goethe drew his worldview and his artistic endeavors, in line with the progress that the human spirit has made since then. And it is not to explain this art that I would like to speak these introductory words, because that which is art must explain itself, must reveal everything that is in it in the direct gaze for the aesthetic impression. But I would like to speak to you about the sources of what we call eurythmic art here. This eurythmic art makes use of the whole human being as a means of expression. It attempts to express all the possibilities of movement that are inherent in the human organism.

On the stage here before you, you will see people moving, groups of people moving. What is it that these people are meant to present? It is also a language, an inaudible, mute language. But it is not just a comparison that I use when I say that eurythmy should be a language, but it is the expression of a reality. When people speak in such a way that our spoken words become audible, then, spiritually speaking, two elements of the human being flow together in what we speak: from one side - I would say from the head side - the element of thought; and from the whole human being, the will element encounters this element of thought, which works through its organs – today this can also be proven physiologically. In every single word we speak, there is a revelation of the confluence of the element of thought with the element of will.

Now, when we listen to a spoken word, we first turn our attention through the ear to the tone, the sound, the sound context, and so on. But behind what reaches us as sound, as tone, as tone and sound relationships, in the vocal, in the musical and in the literal, lie the underlying possibilities of movement of the larynx and its neighboring organs, the tongue, the palate and so on. We do not pay attention to these movements. We simply hear the sound. Through a certain kind of looking – in the Goethean sense, one could speak of a sensual-supersensory looking – the one who enables himself to do so can perceive which movements, in particular which movement tendencies, underlie the spoken word. These movement tendencies of the larynx and its neighboring organs are to be grasped.

And from this knowledge of what really happens in the human being, through movements, when he speaks, the art of eurythmy has arisen from observation of this. In the training of this eurythmy, too, we have proceeded, if I may say so, in a Goethean way. You are familiar with – I do not want to theorize, but I just want to briefly mention an important principle of knowledge and art of Goethe – you are familiar with what is called the Goethean theory of metamorphosis. It has not yet been sufficiently appreciated today, because once its foundations are recognized, it will be the gateway to a meaningful world view that leads into the living. Goethe's view, if I am to express myself in popular terms, is that in every living thing, for example in plants, a single organ, the green leaf, is the simpler expression, the simpler revelation of the whole plant. And again, the whole plant is only the complicated expression of the individual leaf. And what Goethe applied only to form can be applied to the movements that find expression in an organism.

And it becomes particularly meaningful when this view is applied in such a way that one artistically brings out of the human being what is present in the whole human being in the way of movement. Something very interesting comes to light here. It turns out that the movements that can be perceived through the characterized sensory-supersensory vision as underlying our language can be transferred to the whole person. Just as the whole plant is morphologically, formally, a complicated development of the individual leaf, so can the whole person be moved in his limbs so that he becomes a living larynx. Then the whole human being performs that which otherwise remains invisible and unnoticed to us when we listen to speech.

On the one hand, you create a tool for an art. You create the whole human being as a tool for this eurythmic art. And since the same movements that the larynx and its neighboring organs make can be extracted from the whole human being, the whole human being becomes a visible expression of speech. When you consider that the human being, as he stands before us in his organization - in fact, you only have to look through him to see this - is a summary of all that is otherwise spread out in the whole universe that is accessible to us , then one recognizes that eurythmy uses as its instrument of expression the most complicated tool, the tool that contains the most secrets of the universe. By turning the whole human being into a larynx, one comes very close to what Goethe so beautifully characterized as his view of the relationship between man, nature and art, when he says: “When man is placed at the top of nature and feels himself to be this summit, he in turn produces a higher nature within himself, so that he finally elevates himself to the production of the work of art by combining measure, order, harmony and meaning.

But at the same time, something else is achieved. The essence of art lies in the fact that, by immersing ourselves in the work of art, we silence all understanding, all intellectual activity, everything that lives only in concepts and ideas. The more art contains ideas and concepts, the less it is art. If you bypass everything conceptual and imaginative and immerse the whole person in the revelation of nature's secrets, you come closer to excluding ideas, to the true weaving and reign of nature's secrets. Then this perception, this perception without ideas or concepts, and this immersion in things is precisely the artistic.

And working with such secrets of the universe, which cannot be grasped conceptually but only by immersing the whole human being in them, excluding the conceptual and the imaginative, can be achieved to the highest degree through eurythmy. For I have told you: in ordinary speech, two elements flow together, the thought element and the will element. By transferring the movement tendencies of the larynx and its neighboring organs to the whole human being, so that one creates a mute language through this whole human being, one excludes precisely the thought element and the will element, which is rooted in the whole human being. This is then expressed through the movements that you see on stage. And so, on the one hand, you will see in the individual representations something like the whole human being as a moving larynx; you will see groups of people; you will also see movements of the individual human being in space, and the relationships of movement between the individual members of the groups.

If we shape the art of eurythmy as I have described, it becomes quite natural for us to want to express the warmth of soul, the enthusiasm, the joy and suffering, the delight and pain, the uplift and so on that flows through our words. Everything that flows and permeates the speech element more from the heart, so to speak, is expressed through the movements of the individual in space and through the movements of the groups, through the relationships of the groups among themselves, while the actual speech element, that is, that which lies in the sound and in the sequence of sounds, is expressed by the whole human being moving his limbs.

But this is what distinguishes what we are attempting here with eurythmy from all neighboring arts. We certainly do not want to compete with these neighboring arts, with the various types of dance. We are well aware that they are, of course, more perfect in their way than our eurythmy, which is only at the beginning of its endeavors. But it is something completely different. These arts create a connection between the gesture of movement and the soul, which is, so to speak, an instantaneous connection. But everything that can be expressed in this way through pantomime, through momentary gestures, is not what we strive for in our eurythmy. Just as speech itself is thoroughly lawful, just as the musical is lawful, so there is also a strict inner lawfulness in what we strive for in eurythmy. If something pantomime-like or mimic-like still comes through, it is still an imperfection and will be discarded later when the eurythmic art becomes more and more perfect.

Therefore, there is nothing arbitrary about it. If two people or two groups of people in different places were to present one and the same thing in eurythmy, no greater leeway would be allowed for individual interpretation than is allowed when two pianists present one and the same Beethoven sonata according to their own interpretation. Everything arbitrary is excluded. It is a lawful, silent language. Therefore, today, when of course not everyone can be present at the eurythmic as such, this eurythmic can be accompanied on the one hand by the musical, which is, after all, the expression of the same, but can also be accompanied by the recitation.

And it is precisely in recitation that it becomes clear how art finds its way to art when combined with eurythmy. You can't recite as it is popular to recite today. Today, when reciting, the unartistic element of poetry is particularly favored. Today, when reciting, a great deal of attention is paid to the fact that the content of the prose is expressed through the recitation. And that is also what one loves. This is the unartistic element. One feels this unartistic element when one remembers, firstly, how certain types, I would like to say of primitive recitation, have been emphasized in primitive cultures. Those of us who are older could still experience this in the countryside; we could see how the storytellers, as they traveled around, accompanied their tales with gestures that were very natural, not in the sense as one would call it today, but which were actually very similar to our eurythmic gestures, accompanied with such gestures, often with the whole body moving around, what they presented in the recitative.

And after all, it is not the content of prose that is the main basis of real poetry, but rather the rhythmic, the formal, the formal, the rhythmic, the lawful in the succession of the audible. When writing his most significant poems, Schiller did not begin with the literal content in mind, but rather had something vaguely melodious in his soul, and it was only later, when he added the literal content to this vaguely melodious quality, that the literal content was added. The formative process that underlies all real poetry should be felt everywhere. Most of the things we call poetry today are not really poetry. So much is written today that, in fact, ninety-nine percent too much is written. But eurythmy could not be used to accompany the art of recitation, which is so popular today and which pays particular attention to the literal content of prose.

So here we are trying to go back to the truly artistic in the art of recitation as well. Goethe, with the baton still in his hand like a conductor, rehearsed his “Iphigenia”, a dramatic poem, with his actors, looking at what lies at the heart of the truly artistic. The formal elements of the prose, the literal content, are not the basis for the truly artistic expression. And so it is particularly the case that what is otherwise expressed in poetry through the word, can be represented in its will element through the eurythmic art. You will therefore hear recitations of poems, and you will see these poems presented on stage in the silent eurythmic language.

I believe that Goethe's poems in particular demonstrate the validity of this eurythmic art. Today we will show you, for example, eurythmy performances for Goethe's cloud poems. Goethe also applied his metamorphic view - more externalizing it, but thereby precisely translating it into art - to the transforming cloud formations stratus, cumulus, cirrus, nimbus. Goethe has illustrated in beautiful verses how these cloud formations transform into one another, an insight that came to him when he read the cloud observer Howard. He wrote a very beautiful poem “To Howard's Honorary Memory”, which we will also present to you today in eurythmy. But especially when one has such poems by Goethe, in which it is so important to follow a process in nature in poetry with such forms that the process in nature wells up and surges in the rhythm and shaping of language, then one can also follow the poetry with the forms of eurythmy. And that is why I believe that Goethe's Cloud Poems are particularly suitable for beautifully expressing how eurythmy can be found to be completely adequate for expressing what can also be expressed poetically.

Now there is a poem by Goethe in which Goethe himself has expressed the whole nature of his metamorphic thought, his metamorphic feeling, in the poem “The Metamorphosis of Plants”. The whole poem lives in the presentation of form observation. From line to line, we actually have the feeling that we must not cling to the abstract idea, but that we must show ourselves obedient with our whole soul to the forms that surge and swell in the poet's imagination. And that is why the eurythmic presentation can be fully adapted to this particular poem of Goethe's about metamorphosis. And for today's performance, we have also tried to cast this poem by Goethe about the metamorphosis of plants in eurythmic forms. Especially where the poetry itself becomes like an imprint of the secrets of nature, directly created by the soul, the artistic development of human feeling reveals itself on the one hand, on the other hand, the possibility of presenting this artistic element in the way it can be presented when the whole human being is used, as I have indicated, as a kind of musical-linguistic instrument. Thus we can indeed penetrate deeply into the secrets of nature if we seek these secrets in this formal language, which we strive to reveal in eurythmy.

I only ask you to consider everything that we can present today, everything that we can currently offer as a sample of our eurythmic art, as a beginning, perhaps as an attempt at a beginning. We are our own harshest critics, even in relation to what we can already do today. However, we are also convinced that if what is alive in the attempt at a new art is further developed, either by ourselves or probably by others – and there are many, many possibilities for development in this – then this eurythmic art will certainly be able to present itself as a fully-fledged art form alongside other fully-fledged art forms. As I said, we are being modest in what we can offer today, and I therefore ask you to also accept what we will present to you with indulgence as the beginning of a new art form.