The Rudolf Steiner Archive

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

Dear attendees!

I have not chosen these few introductory words to precede our eurythmy because I want to explain what will be seen from the stage later on, but because this eurythmic art attempts to achieve something from particular artistic sources and in a particular artistic formal language.

Eurythmy should be a kind of visible language, a language performed by movements in a single person, by a person in space or by groups of people. But these movements that are performed should not just represent pantomime or mime, especially in relation to what is to be expressed. We will see how the recitation runs parallel to this eurythmy when the content of a word or a poem is to be expressed in the visible language of eurythmy. Musical content can also be expressed in eurythmic forms in the way that it can be expressed through tones.

However, it is not just about expressing content; it is also about ensuring that this eurythmy has been developed from a careful study of the basis of our audible language, our phonetic language. In this phonetic language, it is not just the movements that are carried out by the larynx and other speech organs that are transmitted to the air, so that they then impinge on the organ of hearing as a result of this transmission and thus convey the sound and tone, but rather, movement tendencies come into question. These inner movement tendencies of the larynx and its neighboring organs, when transformed, can be studied as if through sensory-supersensory vision. They can then be transferred from certain individual organs of speech to the whole person: then the whole person performs the same movements that are also performed by the speech organs, but in the speech organs these movements are immediately transformed into air vibrations and thus convey the sound. They are not transformed into vibrations, but proceed in the way that otherwise only the movement tendencies of the speech organs proceed. By placing the whole person or even groups of people on the stage as a living, moving larynx, you see what you would otherwise hear.

This makes it possible to go back to deeper artistic sources in the human being than is possible with mere spoken language, especially since, with a more developed spoken language – and all civilized spoken languages today are already developed – the conventional and the conceptual come into play. We have to infuse our words with that which thoughts have as a thought content or conventional content, which is necessary for people to understand each other. Both are elements that destroy the artistic. In particular, the fact that the content of thought - all thought as such is unartistic - is pushed into the sounds, thereby giving spoken language a particularly unartistic element.

And the poet has to struggle to create art in poetry despite the fact that phonetic language actually goes against the artistic. This is also the reason why in the most difficult art of all, in poetry, everyone believes they are a poet if they can just make verses, while what is essential is to see how, in true the literal is not the main thing at all, but rather that which is formal about poetry, the beat, the rhythm, the musical, entirely pictorial, that which underlies it, not the literal.

But what underlies poetry as a kind of eurythmy is then poured into visibly moving forms when one moves on to eurythmy. In this way one arrives at a kind of language that, in the immediate impression, already strings together images in front of the unspoiled aesthetic sense of the human being who is not prejudiced. Today, however, what appears in eurythmy as a law is not what is important, saying that the individual of the form expresses that, the individual of the movement expresses this, but where it depends on the succession of movements, as the organism also allows the succession of tones to have an effect on it in the musical. It is still often thought today that the human being does not feel what is to be presented in this moving music or speech of eurythmy. But then eurythmy is only at the beginning of its development and will find its way into the general realm of art.

What needs to be considered, however, is that the content of thought is indeed receding and that the content of will, that which is also artistic in poetry, the inward content of the soul, is expressed through that which is moving speech. So that, to a certain extent, in audible speech, when the content of thought is pushed back a little, the means of expression of the artistic formal language in eurythmy, and all the more so the eurythmic, artistic element, that which cannot be produced by mere phonetic speech, comes to the fore. That is one element [of eurythmics], that a visible language is attempted, and this visible language is then treated artistically.

You will see – especially if there are revered spectators and listeners among you who have been here before – how, especially in the last few months, we have worked to suppress the mere pantomime or mime in all of our work – something that can, of course, work with it if you don't want to), and how it is attempted to express precisely that which the poet first expresses in rhythm, in the inner harmonious and melodious connection of the words, to express that in the forms, that is, to take the actual artistic element and not the prose content of a poem.

Today it is difficult to distinguish between the actual artistry and the prose content of a poem, because in recitation, too, one strives to bring forth the content of the poem purely emotionally. But that is not the point. Rather, one can only accompany the eurythmic art in a recitative if one sees perfection in the recitation as emphasizing the underlying melody, harmony, rhythm, meter or imagery of the poetry, not the prose content.

It must be mentioned again and again that Schiller did not first have the prose content in mind's eye when writing his most significant poems, but rather some indeterminate melody, something musical. Only then, when this musical element had worked inwardly in him, did he invest this melodious element with a content that is basically indifferent to what was melodiously produced. Many examples could be given, especially from the great poets, of how to shape the content out of the form.

Therefore, we must also consider finding a form of recitation for this eurythmy that already contains the eurythmic element. Then you will ensure that precisely through this eurythmy, what otherwise – namely in such poems that have already been conceived in eurythmy, such as my sayings, for example, which are already thoroughly predisposed in the imagination in these eurythmic forms from the outset – that precisely there the eurythmic can come out when what is to be achieved is achieved: that in this way, eurythmy, as a matter-of-course means of expression, gives expression better, one might say, than prose words can give expression. That is the artistic side.

Eurythmy also has an important therapeutic and hygienic side, but to discuss this further would take us too far afield. I would like to speak instead about the significant didactic and pedagogical side of eurythmy, which has already been used in the Freie Waldorfschule in Stuttgart, where it has been introduced as a compulsory subject alongside gymnastics. In the future, people will think differently about these things than they do today.

You will find some examples of children's work, but it is all still in its infancy. The world will one day judge thus: physical education is certainly a very fine thing, but it will not be overestimated, physical education, the purely physiological physical education that studies the forms of movement from the physical body. People will know that we can achieve strong muscles, but what can we do to achieve the strength of the soul's initiative? That is what is important and what can be achieved through eurythmy as inspired gymnastics, when not only physiological movements are performed, but soul lives in every movement, as is the case in eurythmy, that is, inspired gymnastics.

Furthermore, it is not only a special kind of art form, but also has a special pedagogical-didactic side that is important for strengthening the will and developing inner initiative in children. Anyone who observes the present time with an alert soul rather than a dormant one will recognize the extent to which we are led to develop the energy of the soul. For this is something that we truly lack and that is fundamentally connected with our social issues in the most acute way.

It is self-evident that what can be offered in one direction or another is still in its very early stages. We are our own harshest critics and I therefore ask you to be lenient with what we have conceived artistically. Eurythmy is still in its infancy, but it will perfect itself, perhaps through us, but more likely through others. And then it will be able to stand as a young art alongside the older arts, which have already become part of people's habits, tastes and prejudices. It will be able to stand as a young art, as a fully fledged young art, alongside its older sister arts.

Saying from the soul calendar (22nd) by Rudolf Steiner
Saying from the soul calendar (23rd) by Rudolf Steiner
“The Element of Life“ by Friedrich Hebbel
Saying from the soul calendar (24th) by Rudolf Steiner
“Little Dance” by J. $. Bach (children's group with eurythmists)
Saying from the soul calendar (25.) by Rudolf Steiner
“Sommerbild“ by Friedrich Hebbel
Saying from the soul calendar (26.) by Rudolf Steiner
“Scherzo” by Hendrika Hollenbach
Cosmic prelude with music by Leopold van der Pals
“V. Urtrieb“ by Fercher von Steinwand
“VI. Urtrieb” by Fercher von Steinwand
“Soldatenliedchen“ (children's group)
From the ‘Vormittags-Skizzenbuch’ by Christian Morgenstern
“Ein Rätsel” by Rudolf Steiner
“Schwalben” by Christian Morgenstern
“Two Roots“ by Christian Morgenstern
Satirical prelude with music by Leopold van der Pals
“Northward” and “West-East” by Christian Morgenstern
Prelude with music by Leopold van der Pals
The “Magpie” series by Christian Morgenstern

Dear attendees,

As on previous occasions before these eurythmy exercises, I would like to take the liberty of saying a few words in advance today. This is not done with the intention of somehow explaining artistic performances, that would be inartistic - art must speak for itself - but it is done because what is presented here as the eurythmic art is based on certain sources for artistic creation that have not been used in the same way before, and also on a certain formal language that has not been used in art in this way either. The basis of this eurythmy is a kind of visible language, but not a sign language or anything mimetic - anything gestural or mimetic must be avoided here.

Rather, you will see [this language] expressed through the individual human being moving in his limbs – or through the movement of the human being in space or also through the movement of the mutual positions of groups. So you will see movements that are visible linguistic expression in the same way that expression is ordinary language in an audible way. So eurythmy is based on emotional life expressed in a visible language.

What the artist then seeks to shape is, of course, something that is first built on this special language. This special language has not come about in some arbitrary way, through the fixation of this or that movement for the individual sound, for the individual word or for some sentence or some rhythm, or from some other context. Rather, the basis for the eurythmic art has come about through careful study, but on the basis of what Goethe calls sensuous-suprasensuous vision.

Our speech organs – the larynx and the other speech organs – are in constant motion. Everyone knows that they are in motion when we speak, because the sound is simply conveyed through the air by the air being vibrated by the movement of the speech organs. But it is not this movement that is important here, but rather the tendency to move, which in turn underlies this vibratory movement. And this tendency of movement, which can be studied for every sound, for every inflection, and also for that which underlies the expression of speech in the soul, has all been studied and is transmitted from a single organ or a group of organs, such as the larynx and its neighboring organs, to the movements of the whole person.

This is done entirely out of Goethe's world view. Goethe sees the whole plant only as a complicated expression of a single organ, the leaf. This is an expression of Goethe's important theory of metamorphosis, which has not been sufficiently appreciated scientifically by a long way. Just as Goethe's morphology of form thus sees the whole plant as a complicated, developed leaf, so we try, as it were, to place the whole human being on the stage like a modified, moving larynx. And then, in the artistic realm, what has been begun is further transformed. The artistic aspect only really begins when what has been gained through the study of the secrets of human speech is shaped.

Of course, from today's point of view, it is very easy to say: Yes, what movements are performed, that cannot be understood. My dear audience, a new-born child does not understand language either. Language must first be listened to. And for eurythmy this is not as easy as it is for speech. When a person simply abandons themselves to the form of movement on which the art of eurythmy is based, they have an instinctive, intuitive knowledge of it. Every human being has the potential to understand human language; but it must be clear, for example, that poetry first emerges from ordinary spoken language by formally transforming and developing this spoken language in terms of rhythm, rhyme, alliteration and so on. So what can be learned eurythmically as a basic formal language must first be artistically developed. Those of the honored audience who have been here often will notice how we have progressed in recent months in terms of the artistic development of eurythmy. You may have seen how much at that time still recalled facial expressions, ordinary gestures, but how we worked our way out of that, so that little by little there is actually nothing left in what is done in eurythmy but what the poet makes out of the linguistic content. And the further we get at shaping what the poet first makes out of the linguistic content, the more the eurythmic art will develop. The artistic element in eurythmy is to the movement of speech, to visible speech, as poetic language is to language.

The task now is to present a self-contained work of art through the inner laws of eurythmy, just as one creates a musical work of art through the succession of tones or the poetic art through the artistic design of the vocabulary of language. They will become a completely independent art because that is still necessary today, until eurythmy has achieved a certain emancipation, being a completely independent art. However, this may take a very long time, perhaps decades. Today you will still see musical elements presented in parallel, where some soul element is revealed through the sound, through the musical art – and at the same time the same soul element through the eurythmic art – or mainly poetic elements. And here it must be taken into account that when the eurythmic is accompanied by recitation, the recitation itself is forced to return to the earlier, more artistic forms of recitation, which have been more or less lost in our thoroughly unartistic times.

Today, something special can be seen in such recitation, which essentially goes back to the prose of the poem's content and actually takes back what the poet has made from the material of the poem. That is why the poet creates something out of language in rhyme, rhythm, beat and so on. When reciting, this does not have to be taken back by reciting according to the content of prose, according to the pure logic that underlies it. This is considered a sincere, soulful recitation. However, it has become an unartistic recitation. We are therefore trying to shape the art of recitation in a eurythmic way again, namely to give what is already eurythmic in poetic language in recitation as well, to bring out the rhythmic, the pictorial, imaginative, the rhyme and so on. It is precisely in such things that eurythmy, in the wake of which such views must arise, can in turn have a fruitful effect on other artistic endeavors. And that will be of very special importance in our time.

It is already the case, as I have said, that eurythmy is in the early stages of its development. We ourselves are most aware of the mistakes we still make today; but it will perfect itself. Today it must be said that this eurythmic art has, firstly, the artistic on the one hand; on the other hand, however, it has an essentially pedagogical-didactic and hygienic element in it. And in the Waldorf School in Stuttgart, we have introduced eurythmy as a compulsory subject.

One day, when people think about these things more objectively than they do today, they will see that when children are taught eurythmics, they actually add something to ordinary gymnastics that can be called soulful gymnastics, because every movement also comes from the soul. In this way, what is merely physiological gymnastics - that is, something derived only from the physical laws of the human body - is enriched by movements that come from the soul. This has a very strong influence on the whole development of the growing human being. While ordinary gymnastics actually only trains the body, eurythmy - you will also see some examples of children's eurythmy today - has an effect on the child and its development that awakens and appropriately fosters willpower, the soul's initiative. And this is of the greatest possible importance for our time, for the present and the near future, since our age has brought about catastrophic events precisely because people lack awakened souls.

So then, eurythmy has various sides to it: an artistic side, a pedagogical-didactic side. But all this is actually only just beginning today. Hopefully it will be further developed, probably by others, no longer by us. For the one who can really see through the world form language of eurythmy knows what still needs to be done. Then it will be seen that it can stand alongside its older sister arts as a fully justified art. In this sense of a beginning, perhaps also of an attempt at a beginning, I ask you to take up such ideas from the eurythmic art as we want to present to you again today.

Saying from the Calendar of the Soul (24) by Rudolf Steiner
Saying from the Calendar of the Soul (25) by Rudolf Steiner
“Prooemion“ by J. W. v. Goethe
“l. Urtrieb” by Fercher von Steinwand
“Parabasc” by J. W. v. Goethe
“II. Urtrieb“ by Fercher von Steinwand
“Epirrhema” by J. W. v. Goethe
“III. Urtrieb“ by Fercher von Steinwand
“Antepirrhema” by J. W. v. Goethe
“]V. Urtrieb” by Fercher von Steinwand
“The Treasure-Digger” by J. W. v. Goethe
Evoe with music by Max Schuurman
A cheerful prelude with music by Leopold van der Pals
Humoresques by Christian Morgenstern: ‘The Lamb Cloud’; ‘The Stations’; ‘The Salm’ with music by Jan Stuten

Dear attendees! We are taking the liberty of showing you another sample of the eurythmic art today. This art is based on certain artistic sources that are to be newly opened and aims to become a kind of new artistic formal language. For this reason, you will allow me, as I usually do before these performances, to send a few words in advance today - not to explain the performance, but rather, artistic things must work through themselves in the immediate impression, but to suggest the formal language and sources from which what is presented to you here as the eurythmic art comes.

The basis of the art of eurythmy is a kind of visible language. The whole human being performs movements in his gestures, or: he performs movements in space or groups of people perform movements in space. All this could be understood as an ordinary, even representational, ordinary art of dance, but it is neither of these, but is based on a careful study of the ordinary language of the human being. This is what is perceived by the human ear. But at its basis lies a certain tendency of the larynx and other speech organs to move. These tendencies of movement are to be understood as what is communicated as a vibrating weaving of the air: It is not something more highly developed than thought, but something more deeply rooted, something that takes place in a seemingly simpler way than the vibrations of the air, but which is expressed through the vibrations of the air when the tone that underlies this movement tendency expresses itself.

We can study what the larynx and speech organs do when a sound is produced, how they behave in a whole word, in a sentence transition, how they behave when certain sound sequences play out, and so on. All this can be studied – allow me to use this Goethean expression – through sensory-supersensory observation. Then, what is otherwise only assessed – that is why I said: movement tendencies – what is otherwise only assessed in the larynx and the other speech organs, is transformed into small vibrations as it develops, and then transferred. And then what language describes, what the human being performs in his movements or in movements in space, or what groups of people perform, that means what can be experienced, can be experienced on the one hand through language, and on the other hand through the visible language of eurythmy. One can express through this eurythmy what musical creation is – you will also see rehearsals today – one can also express what poetic creation is.

But when the recitation, that is, the artistic reproduction of the poetic, accompanies the eurythmy, then, for example, the recitation must take up the eurythmic element. Today, our age is somewhat inartistic, and one does not have the feeling that the real artistry of a poem only begins when the prose-like, the mere content, the literal content of a poem has been overcome. It is never about what the poet says, but how he says it, how he shapes it in meter and rhythm or how he artistically shapes it and is able to give shape to the image through the word. In the case of a poet like Goethe, for example, we can see how his poetic language has a plastic character, how he imaginatively conceived the transformation of the pictorial. In the case of Schiller, we know that before he wrote any poem, he had a kind of melody living in his soul. At first, it was all the same to him what should arise from this melody as a poem – “The Diver” or “The Fight with the Dragon”: He had it living in his soul as a melody, and the other simply lined up in the poem. That is how you can shape with the melodic, with the plastic poem.

All of this comes to light in a proper recitation. In our unartistic age, what is usually brought out is what is appropriate to the prose content, what is literal. What the poet has artistically done with the content is what is actually formally artistic in the recitation. And then what is offered in the poetry also coincides with what is offered in the visible language of eurythmy and in the recitation. You know how to shape this or that sound, this or that word formation and the like, so that something artistic comes about from the whole, and in particular, that the artistic element of the eurythmic performance is properly formed in parallel with the poetry, the artistic formation of a poem. That is a purely artistic activity. And we must distinguish between the elementary nature of the eurythmic language of form and what is artistically revealed in the process. But it is not the case that eurythmy is pantomime, mimicry or mere gesticulation or dance. Rather, everything is such that actually everything lies in the artistic sequence of movement forms, so that the melodious and musical lies in the sequence, in the interaction of the sounds. Likewise, an inner lawfulness in space and in the time of the eurythmy production underlies this.

Those of you who have been here before will have noticed how, over the past few months, we have been working to develop this element of artistic form-giving more and more in eurythmy, and how we are getting closer to capturing in artfully designed forms what the poet has made of the literal content. In this way one can adapt exactly to the humor or tragedy or ballad-like language or whatever characterizes a poem.

So this eurythmy initially offers something artistic. The human being is the instrument for their eurythmic performances. In the most eminent sense, this eurythmy achieves precisely what Goethe had in mind when he said: When man is placed at the summit of nature, he sees himself again as a whole nature, which in turn has to produce a summit. To achieve this, he elevates himself by permeating himself with all perfection and virtue, invoking number, order, harmony and meaning, and finally rising to the production of the work of art. We should bear in mind that the visible and invisible worlds converge in his being, that all the forces at work in the visible and invisible are reflected in him in some way, are formed in him in miniature. And when the human being makes himself an instrument of artistic expression through his organism, what is particularly expressed is what then strives in the human being's soul towards movement. Eurythmy is an art that, when it arises directly and immediately, truly works out of the movements of the human being.

That is the artistic side of eurythmy. On the other hand, there is something about eurythmy that – quite apart from many other things – can be addressed as a therapeutic-hygienic element, but which I do not want to talk about now. But another element of eurythmy is the pedagogical-didactic element that it contains. At our Freie Waldorfschule in Stuttgart, which was founded by Emil Molt and is run by myself, we have introduced eurythmy as a compulsory subject alongside gymnastics.

One will only appreciate eurythmy as a compulsory subject once one has overcome certain prejudices – which, from my point of view, I do not want to fight so much – regarding gymnastics. Gymnastics is purely physical. One may have one's own opinion about the movements that the physiologist derives from the physical make-up of the human being. I do not want to dispute them here, but it is nevertheless the case that ordinary gymnastics only has a physiological meaning for the harmonization of the physical body of man. Although I do not want to go as far as a naturalist who listened to my introductory words in this regard and who said: He would not even appreciate gymnastics as much as I do. He would not consider it to be something physiologically effective, but simply a barbarism. But the present, dear honored attendees, will object to that, especially if one has to evoke some hostility because of the other branches of one's activity, one would not want to go straight to such sentiments.

But this is what must be particularly emphasized, regardless of whether gymnastics merely trains the human body physiologically or whether it is also a barbarism: the powers of the soul, the initiative of the will, are in any case – and I emphasize this particularly – is trained in children through eurythmy, when the child, through this compulsory subject, becomes so immersed in these eurythmic movements, when they are performed in the right way, as a young child would otherwise naturally become immersed in spoken language. Eurythmy awakens activity in the human soul, so that the drowsiness in which the souls find themselves can be overcome. Otherwise it would get more and more out of hand in the most terrible way. If you imagine, let us say, the next generation, you have to admit that you can only get beyond these things by at least adding this soul-filled gymnastics to the usual external soulless gymnastics, in eurythmy.

Everything in eurythmy is still in its infancy, but you can be quite sure that we are our own harshest critics. We know what we lack and we are constantly striving to make more and more progress in this respect. I have often mentioned that we have made good progress, for example, in shaping the large forms. We will show you these large forms today in a Fercher poem, “Choir of Primordial Instincts”, which is being performed today and which really moves in a strange cosmic directing force, in that it - Fercher von Steinwand - poetically shapes you. When you see this 'Urtrieb' choir, you will perhaps notice how we have tried and are still trying to make good progress again and again. Over time, the art of eurythmy will be perfected more and more, either by ourselves or probably by others, so that it can establish itself as a fully-fledged newer art alongside the older fully-fledged arts.

[Dear attendees!]

Allow me to say a few words to introduce this attempt at a eurythmy performance. I am not doing this to explain the artistic aspect of the performance, which would be an inartistic undertaking in itself. Art must make an immediate impression and be understood in the immediate sensation; otherwise it would not be true art. But what is being attempted here as eurythmic art comes from very special artistic sources and is presented in a special artistic formal language. I would like to say a few words about this source and this special artistic formal language.

We are dealing with a kind of soundless language in eurythmy, a language that comes about through movements that an individual performs with their limbs or in some other way, or that groups of people perform through their movements or changes in their mutual relationships in space and the like. What comes about in this way should not be pantomime or mimicry, but it is important that it is based on the same organic law as the human tonal language as such. What is presented here is not acquired by bringing together some feeling or thought or the like – emotions, for example – with a gesture or something similar through a momentary connection, but it is also this art in the sense of Goetheanism, that is, Goethe's artistic view. And Goethean artistic sentiment is expressed through a kind of visual, sensory-supersensory seeing. This is a mode of expression in Goethe's Theory of Colors that he uses.

Through a kind of sensual-supernatural seeing, one can actually see what kind of movement tendencies are present in the larynx and the other speech organs when the sound language is heard. In the ordinary listening, one is busy turning one's attention to the sound. One does not notice this because one does not have the underlying organ that is based on something moving in the whole organism. One understands what is meant here if one starts, for example, from Goethe's theory of metamorphosis, this theory of metamorphosis, which will only be properly appreciated in the future for knowledge and for life as a whole. Goethe sees in the whole plant only a more complicated leaf and in the individual leaf only a primitive whole plant. Goethe applies this in his morphology in order to understand the living in its becoming, in its weaving. If one transfers this to artistic feeling, artistic creation and if one comes to understand through sensual-supernatural contemplation: what movements the larynx and the other speech organs actually want to carry out? [gap in the text] they only pause so that it is not these movements that are expressed, but rather the transformation of these movements into the fine vibrations of the air, which are then conveyed by hearing. So in ordinary hearing, only a tendency of the speech organs to move comes about - which is immediately transformed into air vibrations.

We will now try to explore this tendency of movement of the speech organs through sensory-suprasensory observation, and then transfer it to the whole human being. In this way, you will basically have a living, moving larynx or living, moving speech organs in front of you in the people or groups of people here on the stage: you will see what is being spoken.

At the same time, there is recitation or musical performance. For basically it is necessary that what is presented in the eurythmic art is also presented in another way, which brings language to revelation in musical form or in speaking, in recitation and declamation. This can be illustrated here, that the recitation practised today, the art of declamation practised today is definitely on the wrong track. It does not really take into account what arises in true poetry from the prose content. Today, we live more or less in an unartistic time, and so we do not always know in the deepest sense how poetry arises through eurythmy, which is brought into the prose content of what is presented in poetry. We must always remind ourselves, for example, of how Schiller first had an indeterminate melody in his soul. He was then able to create one poem or another according to this indeterminate melody. The literal content was not important at all, at least not in essence. This can also be seen in what Schiller then presented as his aesthetics.

What the recitation must now strive for here is to also feel the musicality in the poetic form and likewise the pictorial, the plastic. For language only becomes truly poetic through the differentiation of images, through the poetic and through the details of the musical. What is important here is not the content of what is being expressed, but how it is shaped. Thus, the recitation must accompany the eurythmically presented in such a way. And the eurythmically presented itself will be all the more perfect the less it approaches the content of prose, pantomime, and so on.

Those of our honored audience who have visited Dornach often and have watched our attempts over time will see that we have continued to make progress by overcoming more and more of what was initially there as an imperfection in pantomime and in mime. The same applies to music. We can reveal in the succession of movements, in the inner harmony and disharmony, I would even say in the theme of the movements, what the poet also wants to express by shaping language artistically. And so we can express serious things in a corresponding eurythmic style, and we can also express humorous things. I am working on gradually extending eurythmy to include drama. So far, we can only present the drama of the appearance of the ghosts in “Faust” or of some other sensually or supersensually conceived figures in “Faust”. We can only present the drama that rises into the supersensible. What is being attempted in this area is not yet complete; but a very serious attempt is being made to find a eurythmic form for the purely dramatic. These things take time. They need to be studied in depth through sensory and supersensory observation.

However, this will testify to the fact that, as I have said, a thoroughly solid presentation is being sought for what we call eurythmy here. And the more we gradually bring out all pantomime, all mimicry, all mere gesturing, all mere dancing, the more we approach the ideal that we actually want. That is something about the art of eurythmy.

But this eurythmy has another side. It has a significant therapeutic-hygienic side. I will not talk about that here. But please allow me to say a few words about the pedagogical-didactic side, which you will also see, since children are also performing. We have made eurythmy an obligatory subject at the Waldorf School in Stuttgart. Now, I certainly do not want to go as far as a famous physiologist who was here recently and who also watched such a eurythmic performance, heard my introductory words about eurythmy. And as he told me afterwards, from his physiological point of view, gymnastics is not an educational tool at all, but a barbarism. So I don't want to go that far. I can only say that if we think more objectively about this, gymnastics will be judged differently in the future than it is today. Gymnastics has great value in relation to what the human body is and can be understood physiologically.

But there is something else that goes beyond this. This is what we must also strive for in education: the will initiative, the impulsivity of the whole soul. For this is precisely what today's humanity lacks, and what the next generation in particular needs to receive. After a year of teaching at the Waldorf School, it can already be said that eurythmy has become a powerful factor in teaching, that it has formed a subject, as can already be seen from the way the children engage with into eurythmy, how the children are present, how they take part in what it means to perform soul-filled movement, where soul is truly in every movement, where the body moves in such a way that the child follows the movements with the soul. We can already see from what has been achieved in a year of lessons what else can be achieved and can be achieved through soul-inspired gymnastics. So, in addition to being an art form, eurythmy is soul-inspired gymnastics.

We will therefore endeavor to always give not only the purely artistic but also performances that are given by children. Somehow, through the child's organism, the eurythmic is presented in a very strange, childlike-genius conception.

On the whole, we still ask for forbearance. We are our own harshest critics, we know where the mistakes still lie. But everything is in its infancy. And such a beginning has to be made in all things at some point in the development of humanity. And so I ask you to see the performance as an experiment, or perhaps even just as the intention to experiment. But at the same time we are convinced that what is intended in eurythmy will one day be perfected – perhaps by us, or probably by others. And then this eurythmy, which uses the whole human being as a tool – that is, which basically uses the microcosm itself as a tool and needs it as a means of expression – will become an art in its own right, one that can stand alongside its older sister arts as a fully legitimate one.

The question was raised as to the causes of speech disorders (stammering) and how to treat them.

But then, little by little, we shall also recognize what a significant remedy we have in eurythmy for such and similar defects in the human organism. This eurythmy can, I would say, be pursued in two directions. One is the one I always draw attention to in the introductions I give to the performances. There I show how, through sensory-supersensory observation of today's human being, the speech organism becomes conscious with its movement tendencies, which are then transferred to the whole human organism.

But the reverse path is also important. You see, in what Dr. Treichler has presented to you so well today from a different point of view: in the development of speech, a primeval eurythmy of human beings undoubtedly and certainly plays a very significant role. Things do not have the sound within them, as it were, in the sense that the bim-bam theory asserts, but there is a relationship between all things, between the whole macrocosm and the human organization, this microcosm, and basically everything that happens externally in the world can also be reproduced in a certain way in movement by the human organization in a gestural way. And so, basically, we constantly tend to recreate all phenomena through our own organism. We do this not only with the physical organism, but also with the etheric organism. The etheric organism is in a state of perpetual eurythmy.

The original human being was much more mobile than the human being of today. You know, this development from mobility to stillness is still reflected in the fact that in certain circles it is considered a sign of education to behave as phlegmatically as possible when speaking, with as few gestures as possible to accompany one's speech. Certain speakers are said to always keep their hands in their trouser pockets so as not to make any gestures with their arms, because standing still like a block is considered an expression of particularly good speech delivery. But what is caricatured here only corresponds to humanity's progress from mobility to rest.

And we have to recognize a transition from a gestural language, from a kind of eurythmy to speech sounds, at the very basis of human development in primeval times. That which has come to rest in the organism has specialized in the speech organs, and of course the speech organs have actually developed first: Just as the eye is formed by light, so is the speech organ formed by an initially soundless language. And if we know all these connections, then, little by little, we will be able to use eurythmy very well to counteract anything that could interfere with speech.

And in this direction, if there is even a little leisure time, it will be a very attractive task to develop our current, more artistic and pedagogically trained eurythmy more and more to develop a kind of eurythmy therapy that will then extend in particular to such therapeutic demands as the one we have been talking about here. I don't know if what I have said is already exhaustive, but I just wanted to say a few words about it.

Of course, the more questions that accumulate in the same progression, the more the detail of the answers will have to be reduced.

Question: There is a question here about how the movement of eurythmy is related to the ether body, whether it has the same form as the body in spiritual scientific research. Is the etheric body localized in the larynx? Did the Hungarians, who were recently observed by Dr. Steiner playing cards in a Hungarian border town, themselves fall under the tables, or only their etheric bodies? Was this a process that could only be observed in the etheric body?

Rudolf Steiner: Please understand me correctly: eurythmy is such that it can be performed in the physical body and through the physical body, which today only the etheric body of the human being performs. The fact that a person as a eurythmist performs the movements studied in the ether body with his physical body does not mean that the person who is standing there doing eurythmy, when he has just, I mean any abominable thought, does not perform this abominable thought with his ether body. He can therefore perform the most beautiful movements with his outer physical body, and then the etheric body, following his emotions, may dance in a rather caricature-like manner.

But the people I characterized as playing cards on the Hungarian border were, of course, only characterized by me in terms of their physical behavior. I only said that one could study the passions within them that led them to carry out such things above and below the table and then to scratch and tear each other apart, that one could study this passion in a spiritual-mental way.

I would like to add the following: it is generally the case, when you look at a person at rest, that the etheric body, which is somewhat larger than the physical body, is calm. But this is only achieved because, schematically speaking, the physical body has a dilating effect on the etheric body of the human being in all directions. The etheric body, if it were not held in its form by the physical body, if it were not banished from the physical body, would be a very mobile being. The etheric body has the inherent possibility of moving in all directions, and in addition, in the waking state, it is under the constant influence of the mobile astral, which now follows all soul activity.

So the etheric body itself is something completely mobile. And as a painter, for example, you have the difficulty when you want to paint something ethereal that you have to paint, I would say, as if you could paint lightning. You have to translate the movement into rest. So in the moment when you step out of the physical world, in that moment, distance is also given to the concept. And all these things, which actually only relate to stationary space, all of that ceases, and a completely different kind of imagining begins. A form of imagining begins that can actually only be characterized by saying that it relates to the ordinary imagining of spatial things as a suction effect relates to a pressure effect. You are drawn into the matter instead of touching it, and so on, and so on. Such is the relationship between the etheric body and the physical body.

Eurythmy performances during the first college course at the Goetheanum.

Program for the performance in Dornach, October 9 and 10, 1920

Saying from the Calendar of the Soul (27th) by Rudolf Steiner
“Summer Picture” by Friedrich Hebbel
Saying from the soul calendar (28th) by Rudolf Steiner
“The Convert“ by J. W. v. Goethe
“The Fisherman” by J. W. v. Goethe
Music by M. Ravel (played by L. van Blommestein)
“Little Canon” (children's group)
“Wind, du mein Freund“ by Christian Morgenstern
“The Metamorphosis of Plants” by J. W. v. Goethe
“The Gnome” by M. P. Mussorgsky (played by L. van Blommestein)
Sylphs and gnomes from the 2nd scene of ‘The Awakening of the Soul’ by Rudolf Steiner
“Das Käuzchen“ with music by Jan Stuten (children's group)
“Physiognomisch” by Christian Morgenstern
“Das Mäuschen” with music by Jan Stuten (children's group)
Humorous prelude with music by Jan Stuten
Humoresques by Christian Morgenstern: ‘Palmström am Teich’; ‘Das böhmische Dorf’
Satirical prelude by Leopold van der Pals
Humoresques by Christian Morgenstern: “The Mousetrap”; “The Authority”; “Modern Fairy Tale”

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen.

As always before these eurythmy performances, allow me to say a few words in advance. Not to explain the content of these eurythmy performances, that would be an inartistic undertaking. Art, in whatever form, must work through itself; it must speak for the immediate impression of what it has to reveal as art. However, in the case of this eurythmic art, we are dealing with something that seeks to create a certain formal language and certain artistic means of expression from special sources that have hardly been tapped into so far. And so it is probably necessary to say a few words about these sources of eurythmy and about the special formal language of eurythmy.

What you will see on the stage are movements that individuals perform with their limbs, with their whole physical form, or movements of groups of people in space and the like. None of this is any kind of dance art in the usual sense of the word, nor anything pantomime-like, mimic or so on. Here, there is absolutely no attempt to express any kind of soul content directly through a gesture. Such a connection between a gesture and the content of the soul, brought about, as it were, by the subjectivity of the human being, is not sought here; or rather, since we are still at the beginning of this art, where one should point out such mimic or pantomime expression here or there, there is still an imperfection in our eurythmic art, which it will outgrow. What is needed is a truly visual language, not an audible one, but a visual one, a language that has arisen through the use of sensory and supersensory means of observation - to use this Goethean expression - it is, as it were, read which movement tendencies then prevail in our speech organs, in the larynx and in the other speech organs, when we express ourselves through the sound language.

First of all, we know that spoken language – like sound in general – is also conveyed through movements, through the vibrating air. But that is not what is at issue here. Rather, the issue is that movement tendencies are present in all speech organs, which, as it were, by moving the speech organs,

stir the air, which then translates into the vibrations of the air, these underlying movement tendencies of the speech organs can be observed through sensory-supersensory vision. This can certainly happen, just as something else can be observed sensually and supernaturally, so too can that which simply eludes ordinary attention when listening, because it is based on hearing and seeing, it can be observed sensually and supernaturally. And then, according to the principle of Goethe's metamorphosis, what takes place in an organ, so to speak, invisibly to ordinary vision, can then be transferred to the whole human being.

Goethe sees the whole plant only as a complicated leaf, and in the individual leaf he sees a simplified whole plant. What Goethe brought to light through morphology can be transposed to the artistic-creative through the merely functional. What takes place when we speak – as a sum of movement tendencies in our speech organs, or in a single organ or in organ complexes – can be transferred as real movements to the whole person. So that you will, as it were, see a moving larynx as a whole human being.

In this way, one can evoke a silent language that is just as internally logical as one has a speaking language. Only by the fact that now every sound, every word, the combinations of words, the rising and falling intonations, the rhyme and so on, [that] everything corresponds to something in this language of movement, just as in ordinary language the inner corresponds to the outer, to something factual, only by the fact that our ordinary language is transposed into such a language, something very special is achieved.

In our everyday language, on the one hand, what is organized by thought, so to speak, from the head to the speech organs, and on the other hand, the will element, flow together. Now poetry seeks, so to speak, to push back the inartistic element of thought by organizing the will element into the thought element. But precisely because language is increasingly becoming the language of civilization, it loses the possibility of being a means of artistic expression of poetry. In a more artistic time than today, one would feel how language - by being a means of expression for abstract science on the one hand, and on the other hand becoming more and more the more social life develops - becomes more and more a means of convention, whereby it depends on the content of what is to be communicated, so that language loses the artistic element all the more. The will element is lost, which wants to reveal itself from the whole person, because what lies in thought is one-sided, and the mere thought kills what is actually artistic. And so, in this abstract age, we go back to the place where the will element, the whole person, can reveal itself again. We go back to that in man which is precisely this moving language, and thus we gain the possibility of casting off the conventional as well as the abstract of language, and of expressing, if I may say so, of bringing to light in the representation precisely the more artistic, the will element.

In language, only that which has linguistic, literal content in its development can actually be artistically shaped. Again and again, I have to remind myself how true artists like Schiller did not first have the literal content in their souls when writing a poem, but rather a kind of indeterminate melody, a musical element. Goethe had a pictorial, a plastic element in the scene. Only to the extent that language can be shaped musically or plastically in tone coloration, in tone nuances, can be made colorful and pictorial, only to that extent can language actually be brought to poetry. By having what is represented eurythmically in this moving language accompanied on the one hand by the musical, which moves in the tonal in just the same way as the movements in their succession in eurythmy, or by having the eurythmy accompanied by recitation, the relationship between the individual arts that are presented becomes apparent.

But in recitation, as is necessary, one can already see how to go beyond what today's inartistic taste considers appropriate for reciting great and significant works. I have already pointed out in other parts of this lecture cycle what the essence of declamation and of recitation actually consists of; I will talk about this further. In the sense in which we recite today, where we actually emphasize the prose content of the poetry, in that sense, one cannot recite in parallel to eurythmy. It is self-evident that the eurythmic and plastic element in language should be emphasized in recitation and declamation, that is, that the formative, the creative, that - as the poet does - the content of the prose, that this must be particularly emphasized in recitation, [that] to a certain extent the inner eurythmy of the poetry should already emerge in recitation and declamation. Well, that can still be discussed in the lesson that will be devoted to further presentation of this in the next class. I would like to mention now that this is the artistic element in eurythmy.

But this eurythmy has other moments as well - it has an important hygienic-therapeutic [moment]. I will not speak of that. But I would like to say a word about the pedagogical-didactic element of this eurythmy. We have introduced it as a compulsory subject in Waldorf schools because it will gradually become clear that although ordinary gymnastics, which only follows the physiological laws of the human body, can be very good, what can be given to the child - you have also seen samples of children's eurythmy for children, that which can be given to the child by introducing this soul-filled gymnastics of eurythmy to the child, by showing the child how it can put soul into every movement, how the whole body becomes a means of expression for it, as the speech organs are otherwise a means of expression. In this way something grows in the child that will give something in particular to our time - [which] will extend far into the near future - that is entirely absent from our present time: namely, initiative of the will, initiative of the soul, which ordinary gymnastics cannot give.

And so one would like to say: by animating gymnastics and spiritualizing it, and doing so in an artistic way, one will be able to insert a significant element into it, especially in terms of pedagogy and didactics.

Of course, this should only point to what is at the root of it, what is the means of expression of eurythmy. The artistic must have an immediate effect in eurythmy, that is, what one does first with the help of this means of expression. Above all, it is so important precisely because our language, at least in its present form, does not already have something artistic about it. That is why it is so important that eurythmy can have an effect. As the honored audience has often been told and as those who have been here before will have seen, in recent months we have increasingly been expressing in the forms, in the larger forms, what the poet, what the artist has already done with his poetic art from some material, how we strive to get the mood and temperament of the poetry out of the design, and thus preferably the how, how we strive to distinguish the serious from the humorous. You will see samples of all this presented.

What I would still like to say on this occasion is the following. In all our undertakings here – I ask you to take note of this in particular and to be patient, since everything here with us is in its beginnings, including this eurythmy: We know very well where this and that is still, what is missing here and there. But we are also convinced that if we continue along this path, if we develop eurythmy in the same direction – although it will probably be others who do it rather than us – then, because the path can only be a slow one, in time, as this eurythmy becomes more and more developed, we will see that this eurythmy will certainly be able to stand alongside the older, fully recognized arts as a younger art in its own right.

Program for the performance in Dornach, October 16 and 17, 1920

“Howards Ehrengedächtnis” by J. W. v. Goethe
“Dornröschen“ with music by Johannes Brahms (children's group)Saying from the Calendar of the Soul (28th) by Rudolf Steiner
“Die Freuden” by J. W. Goethe
Saying from the Calendar of the Soul (29th) by Rudolf Steiner
“Cheerfulness“ by F. Hiller
“Will-o'-the-wisp” by Theodora Wertsch
“Seasons“ by Hans Reinhart
“The Wonder of the World” by Hans Reinhart
“Reflection"
From the 6th picture of the ‘Guardian of the Threshold’ by Rudolf Steiner (lucid. a. lucid. beings)
“Fromme Wünsche“ (Pious Desires) by Gustav Graben-Hoffman (group of children)
“Kläffer” (Barker) by J. W. v. Goethe
Humoresques by Christian Morgenstern: “Die Zeit” (Time); “Der Salm” (The Salmon); “Nach Norden” (Northward); “West-östlich” (West-East)
Tropfenauftakt with music by Leopold van der Pals
Humoresques by Christian Morgenstern (Magpie series): “Magpie”; “Enquiry”; “Answer”; “Draft of a Tragedy”
Humorous prelude with music by Jan Stuten

I would like to say a few words to introduce the eurythmy performance we are presenting to you today. I would like to draw your attention to the sources from which the eurythmy art we are cultivating here has been developed and to the artistic means we work with. On the stage you will see movements performed by individuals through their limbs, through their whole bodies, or also movements of groups of people, mutual positions of the groups in relation to each other, of people in relation to each other, and so on.

What needs to be said is this: these are not arbitrary gestures or movements, as one might make in pantomime or mime, or as one might make in dance. None of this is meant here. Rather, eurythmy is based on a real silent, that is, visible language. The movements that are carried out here are a visible language through and through. In particular, these movements are such that – to use a Goethean expression – through sensual and supersensual observation, one can see which movements underlie the larynx and the other speech organs when a person speaks. I do not mean the movements that are then carried out in the air and that convey the sound, the speech, but I mean deep, internal movements in the speech organism itself, which of course cannot be observed externally. But they can be observed and then transferred to all other parts of the human body and also to movements of groups of people. In doing so, one is able to create an equally expressive visible language that the whole person performs, as otherwise only the sound language comes about in the individual person through partial organs, namely through the larynx and its neighboring organs. There is nothing arbitrary about this eurythmy, nor is there anything arbitrary about language itself. Everything is based entirely on intuition and on the transfer of this intuition to the whole person. This enables one to express the same thing that is recited or, let us say, is expressed in music, through this visible language.

Eurythmy itself only comes about through the fact that this visible language is expressed through various forms and the like, which are then not the individual sounds. Everything that is revealed in the formation and artistic design of language is such that it can also be expressed in eurythmy. On the stage you will see poetry or music expressed through visible speech. You will also hear the music itself, for that is only another expression of what is happening on the stage. You will also hear recitation and declamation of poetry, which are in turn expressed through eurythmy. I would like to say: in addition to the fact that eurythmy is an art in its own right, an art in the way that painting, architecture and sculpture should work, I would also like to note in particular that this eurythmy also has a great educational value, a pedagogical value. And since we can see a school here today, I would like to say a few words about this pedagogical value.

The fact is that human speech, as it is used by man, sounds out from an independent part of the human organism, the larynx. But actually, the whole human being is involved in the creation of speech, and speech sounds out of the whole human being. It is just that in the course of human development, that which comes out of the whole human being and through which he wants to reveal that which is felt, sensed and thought in his soul, has gradually been concentrated in his speech organs. You can also see that When less civilized people speak, they accompany their speech with all kinds of gestures; they feel that they have to move their bodies in some way. Among more civilized people, this gradually diminishes and is limited to a few. But basically, everything that is spoken comes from the whole person. Now, however, because language is concentrated in the speech organs – relatively, I might say; it always depends on habit, but on the whole it is true that the whole human being is involved in speech, he lives in every word, in every sentence, but we gradually get used to weakening the will that lives in every word, in every sentence, and to regarding speaking as something that flows indifferently. But we do have the feeling that, when we speak a sentence, when we express a poem, the whole person should live in it.

Now the following may be said here, which is of great importance for the pedagogical relationship. The fact that language is gradually becoming something automatic, conventional, mechanical, especially the further civilization advances, means that the human being's participation in and interest in his own speech is also coming to an end. One can almost say: the more civilized any part of humanity is, the more mechanical language becomes, the more conventional it becomes, the less man is tempted to invest himself in what he speaks with his will, with his whole mind.

And even if it seems strange today, to the extent that it is said, there would be less temptation in the world to speak untruthfully if people were more fully engaged in speech with their whole being. Precisely because language has emancipated itself, becoming only the expression, the manifestation of a part of the human organism, lies, untruthfulness, and especially empty phrases have found their way into it. This will be recognized more precisely later when these things are viewed more objectively. The more a person is present with his whole being in speech, the less he will tend towards lying, towards empty phrases; the less he will be inclined to speak just so that the speech flows. Or he will be less inclined to put only the conventional into speech. He will pay more and more attention to the fact that speech is truly a revelation of his inner being.

For this reason, because it is so, we have introduced eurythmy as an obligatory subject in our Waldorf School in Stuttgart. And we have had the very best experiences with it during the first year of the Waldorf School's existence. Firstly, those who are taught eurythmy feel how eurythmy is truly inspired gymnastics - not in the way that gymnastics takes hold of the mere body, but in the way that soul enters into every movement, how the whole person lives in every movement. The human being is much less inclined to train in untruthfulness or in empty phrases if they have to perform such a silent language with their whole body.

Therefore, two things come into consideration, which then become abilities when eurythmy is introduced as a school subject. Firstly, what cannot come about through mere gymnastics develops in children: initiative of the soul, initiative of the will. The will becomes stronger because speech actually flows from the will. And this will is only suppressed when speech rolls along, relying only on the speech organs, without the person feeling as a whole in what he speaks. And the other thing, which is just as important as this development of the initiative of the will, is that the person actually develops a longing for truth precisely by using this visible speech. One does not like to lie with the gesture. One is much less willing to lie with what is done as a movement than with mere words. So it is in fact – and this is felt particularly strongly in Waldorf schools – eurythmy is a means of education against phrase-mongering, against the parroting of words without feeling the responsibility that everything one says is truly permeated with truth.

So eurythmy can be used as a means of educating the will and an education in truth in the pedagogical and didactic fields, among many others. During our college course, which was held in the last few weeks, the two lecturers who spoke about language emphasized how one only begins to understand the actual essence of language when one observes how speech emerges from human movements, which always underlie it invisibly and supersensibly. The artificiality is gradually improving. After all, human beings actually want to accompany speech with movements – so we also learn to understand languages better when we have this eurythmy.

And especially when reciting and declaiming has to be done at the same time as a eurythmic performance, one notices how one cannot recite and declaim as it is often done today, where one actually only speaks prose, when what is actually to be revealed in terms of rhythm, meter, and the poet's entire use of forms. Here, too, when eurythmy is accompanied by declamation, it must be done in such a way that much more attention is paid to the formal aspects of the language than to the prose content of the word. Everything that is already in the language in the form of eurythmy is particularly evident. Time and again, one has to say that a true poet feels how language is based either on imagery or on music.

Schiller always had an indefinite melody in his soul first, before he had the literal content of a poem. And Goethe himself studied his Iphigenia with his actors using a baton, because he placed the greatest value on the flow of iambic verse in the performance, on that which is not merely the prosaic, literal content. All this is felt by those who are truly brought to life in this eurythmics, where the whole human being becomes a speech organ, or where groups of people become speech organs.

This eurythmy is, however, only in its infancy. Recently, we have tried hard to work out the style of each poem, to find out distinctions, how to eurythmize seriousness - you will see samples of this - how to eurythmize humor in the second part of the program. We have tried to develop the subject, but nevertheless this eurythmy must go further and further if it is to achieve the goal that one sets for it. You will also see children's performances and see how the still youthful body can really put what lies within it out of its inner being through this visible language, so that one actually sees directly soulfulness in the movements that are performed.

Thus eurythmy is not only an art, but also an educational tool of the very highest order, and one that is a joy to practise. Gymnastics, on the other hand, is something that only involves the body. The movements performed in eurythmy are directed towards both the physical and the spiritual. But it is precisely this that enables the human being to feel like a whole human being by performing the eurythmic movements in the appropriate way. By weaving oneself into the artistic process, one does feel that one's own self is the noblest instrument one can possibly use in art.

Goethe said: When man reaches the summit of nature, he feels himself again as a whole nature, takes harmony, measure, order and meaning together to rise to the creation of the work of art. This is best felt when the human being is not just holding the violin or playing the piano or using the paintbrush, but when he uses himself as an instrument to express what is actually going on in his soul.

If this eurythmy, which is still in its infancy and must be treated with forbearance, if this eurythmy continues to develop through us - or probably through others - then it will be able to stand alongside the older, fully-fledged sister arts as an art in its own right. But it will also be recognized as one of the most significant educational tools of humanity - both in terms of the will and in terms of the inner sense of truth in the human being. What is still in its infancy in eurythmy today will be developed and then be able to stand fully entitled alongside the other older artistic and educational tools.

Address on the Song of Initiation

Before Rudolf Steiner delivered the farewell address at the first School of Spiritual Science course at the Goetheanum (in: Grenzen der Naturerkenntnis, GA 322, Basel, 6th ed. 2020, pp. 128-148), “The Song of Initiation” was performed in the domed room - ‘at Dr. Steiner's special request,’ as the stenographer Helene Finckh noted in her transcript: ‘Dr. Steiner had said it would be necessary to have this prelude.’ - Rudolf Steiner introduced the performance with the following words:

We can, my dear audience, just as we turn to a truly spiritual scientific culture, art and so on, we can just as strongly reject everything that turns to the so-called spiritual out of dishonest, untruthful, insincere feeling, what is called “mystical” and the like. And to show you what we can feel about false mysticism, flirtatious mysticism, insincere, dishonest mysticism, we would like to show you a short eurythmy piece.

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen.

Allow me to say a few words before our eurythmy performance, not to explain the performance. Artistic things must not be preceded by an interpretation or an explanation; they must work through themselves, otherwise they would by no means belong to the field of art. But what we have conceived as eurythmy, especially in its further elaboration, does come from certain artistic sources that humanity has so far made very little use of, and it lies in an artistic formal language that has also hardly been used in the other arts and in artistic life in general. For our eurythmy must not really be compared with anything else that is similar, because the similarity could only be an external one with certain pantomime arts, dance arts and the like. Our eurythmy is not meant to be any of those things, because it makes use of a special means of expression, which consists of a kind of silent language that works through movements.

And so you see on the stage the moving human being, that is, the human being who moves from within — the human being who moves his limbs in a certain way or also groups of people who carry out movements [that] change in their mutual relationships in the spatial relationships, so that movement, lawful movement of groups of people, also arises there. All this has not come about in a haphazard way, one might say, a random gesture with what takes place in the soul, but all the movements that are performed are in fact connected to the human soul and spiritual life in the same way as the tone languages themselves. The movements that are performed by the person doing the eurythmy are created in such a way that, through sensory-supernatural observation, to use this Goethean expression, it is observed which movement tendencies the larynx and the other speech organs of the person have when the person reveals himself through the sound language. There are only movement tendencies present. For as soon as a person is in contact with the outside world when speaking, what actually happens directly in the larynx and in the neighboring organs is transferred to the moving air through which the sound is conveyed, and the actual movement tendency is interrupted as it arises.

If we can recognize these movement tendencies, which are excited by the larynx and all of its speech organs, and observe them through sensory and supersensory observation, then we can also, by elevating the principle of Goethean metamorphosis into the artistic, move the whole person and also groups of people in such a way as they would otherwise, I would like to say, want to move, by into the handling of human functions. According to this principle of Goethe's metamorphosis, one can move the whole person and also groups of people in such a way as the larynx and its neighboring organs would otherwise, I would like to say, want to move in ordinary tonal language.

Goethe pointed out – and this will play a much greater role in the future study of the living than humanity can even dream of today – Goethe asserted that the whole plant is nothing more than a more complicated, developed leaf and that the leaf is a simply formed whole plant. So we can also say that what is present in the larynx and its neighboring organs is actually the whole human being. And we can, in turn, observe what is happening in the speech organs and apply it to the whole human being and to groups of people. This is how we arrive at this moving language, which is presented to you as eurythmy. There is nothing mimic, pantomime, nothing merely dance-like in it, but the succession of movements is as the succession of sounds in human language. And the forms in which we execute the movements are, as it were, to represent the artistic design of the literal, these movements are modeled on the pure creation, the design of the human being, as the poet shapes it out of mere prose language and so on.

This indeed gives us a special kind of art that is very much adapted to the demands of our time. The present time must strive for it, if man is not to descend into barbarism, which many people today already predict and which even Spengler wanted to prove scientifically. if we want to achieve a new ascent and not sink into barbarism, then an inner elevation of the human being, an inner illumination with new forces, new forms and so on must take place.

Now, eurythmy is such an inner strengthening of the human being, and in order to show this, I will have to put this eurythmy in the series of the other arts with a few words. For example, we have sculpture. One understands it only, the sculpture, the art of sculpture, if one understands the shaping of the physical human body from its form. Because basically, everything else we sculpt can only be modeled three-dimensionally if we understand the sculpture of the human body.

Architecture is an art that initially appears to have no real model. It appears as it does, through proportionality, symmetry, through a sensed or perceived balance and equilibrium of the individual architectural elements and so on. We feel no model for architecture because this model is in the outer being of the human being himself. What we experience, for example, as a small child, from the state in which we cannot walk, gradually learning to walk, swinging up to the vertical, what we experience as balance when we learn to move our limbs. In short, everything that we experience within ourselves, can experience as the innermost part of the human body's formation, when this body is alive, we carry it out into the outer world and develop it into architecture.

And by giving ourselves to the outer world itself, to its intense impressions in colors and chiaroscuro, we develop painting. But then, when we live with that which is actually below the surface of things, with what essentially painting deals with, when we live with that which the exterior of nature presents in terms of supersensible uniformity, when we can feel that, we can surrender to nature, not as a mere observer, but go along with the inner secrets of nature, and instead of feeling the balance of our own body, the symmetry, which we already do as a child, if we instead feel the enigmatic, mysterious symmetry of natural things outside, the proportionality and symmetry of spatial things, and if we then develop this within ourselves to a certain extent as an echo, holding up to mute nature the counter-image in the secrets contained in it, then we develop the musical through adapting the organization of our own bodily members to the external relationships of symmetry and proportion in nature.

We carry our sense of symmetry and proportionality into the outside world in the form of architecture. For singing, we take into ourselves that which exists in the outside world in the way of symmetry, and we bring it, through our own body, through a part of our body, to a kind of echo of mute nature. And a branch of this is what we make resound in language, especially in the meter, in the rhythm of language, and so on, in declamation, recitation.

But in all this it is our etheric body that remains, so to speak, at rest in itself, but makes parts of itself - that is, its interior - a resonance of natural events. But in the moment when we let the secrets of nature flow into us more deeply than is the case with singing and declaiming, then we will let them flow through the organs of speech and song, into the whole bodily organization, into that which is in outer nature. Then the person does not feel as if they are holding – as they do when singing or declaiming – what they are making sound as an echo of nature, but they feel as if they are immediately transforming into movement what they have overheard from nature as secrets. So although the human being is the instrument for bringing the moving or symmetrical or proportioned supernature to expression, he immediately passes over into nature. He does not retain what he absorbs from song or music, but passes immediately into outer nature. The human being is completely selfless, physically selfless. He becomes an instrument of that which the secrets of nature itself are when he eurythmizes.

Then the eurythmic art is indeed something for internalization, and it is something truly artistic. For that which becomes internalized is somehow manifested in the movements of the objective, sensual world: the spirit of the world in human movement. One could say that eurythmy works entirely in the sense of Goethe's beautiful words: When man is placed at the summit of nature, he in turn perceives himself as a nature, takes in order, measure, harmony and meaning and rises to the production of the work of art. But he rises most beautifully and nobly to the production of the work of art when he gives himself as a tool. He does this, of course, in song and in declamation, but he does it in such a way that he does not form that which he can develop in his own physical organization, but immediately makes it perceptible to the outside world as a visible language in eurythmy.

Thus this eurythmic art has something that makes it particularly suitable for the modern human being in a very special way. It also has a therapeutic-hygienic side, which I do not want to talk about here, but which also needs to be further developed. But it also has a didactic-pedagogical side. That is why we have included it in the curriculum, as a compulsory subject at our Stuttgart Waldorf School. And it has to be said: one day people will think more objectively and impartially about the things we are considering here than they do today.

It must be said that gymnastics may be a good thing; it is based on an understanding of the physiological laws of the human body, and what it achieves relates only to the training of the human body. But for children, what is brought to them through eurythmy has a very special value. Firstly, when they really get to know it, children love eurythmy very much, as has been shown in lessons in the Waldorf school. But then eurythmy is an inspired form of movement. No movement is performed without spirit and soul being put into it. Every movement of each limb is the expression, the revelation of something spiritual and soul-like. This is something that the child grows into, so that initiative of will and strength of soul will be in him. And this is something that should actually be given to humanity today, because it is this that is most closely connected with our decline, that humanity does not have this soul energy, and terrible phenomena of cultural degeneration would occur if the next generation were brought up in the same way, with sleepy souls and without energy, as was largely the case with the generations that then sailed into the terrible catastrophe of the present.

So, dear audience, we are certainly expecting a great deal from eurythmy. But we must ask for indulgence for everything that we can currently give, because we are only just beginning, and what we can already present today must therefore be seen as a beginning. We are our own harshest critics and we know very well what we are still lacking today. But those of our esteemed audience who have been here before will also have seen how we have progressed again in the last few months, particularly in the shaping of the forms. They will also notice how we have worked to truly express the inner artistic form of a poem in a particularly characteristic way.

During the course, I spoke about 'declamation and recitation', and it is indeed the case that our eurythmy, which is accompanied on the one hand by the musical — which is just another form of expression for what eurythmy also presents — on the other hand by recitation and declamation, which is another form of expression. For in recitation the human being uses only a single organ, whereas in eurythmy he uses his whole body. But what becomes apparent is precisely this: it is in eurythmy that one can recognize how justified the things are that I spoke about in our current course on recitation over at the Bauhaus.

In the present unartistic time, people consider recitation art to be something quite different from what it really is. It is believed that it is important to get the prose content across by emphasizing what is often called “feeling nuances”. No, when reciting and reciting - and this becomes apparent when one has to recite to eurythmy - when reciting and reciting, it is important that the inner eurythmy - rhythm, beat, and the form of the of the literal content, as done by the poet — that this is particularly expressed in the formation of the sound, in the shaping, in the tempo and so on, in the rhythm of the sound. And only by practising this art of recitation, as described above, and by practising the recitation that Dr. Steiner recited during the course over there in the building, can one show how, on the one hand, the content is expressed in the visible language of eurythmy movement and, on the other hand, through the eurythmic formation of the sound in recitation or declamation.

But this is all, of course, in the beginning, and it must be further developed, either by us or, more likely, by others, because it will take a great deal to perfect what is only a beginning today. But when it has been perfected to a certain degree, then it will be seen that this eurythmy, which is formed here out of Goethean artistic sense and artistic attitude — like everything else that comes from here — that this eurythmy will be able to establish itself as a fully-fledged younger art alongside the other sister arts. These sister arts also had to gradually conquer their position in the course of human development. Eurythmy will, when some one-sided prejudices or preconceptions have been cast off, eurythmy will also conquer this position alongside the other arts in the future.

Dear attendees:

As always before these eurythmy performances, allow me to say a few words about the whole character and essence of our eurythmy. This is not done to explain the performance – that would be an unartistic undertaking. Artistic work must make an immediate impression and must make this impression naturally without explanation. But since our eurythmy is an art that draws from artistic sources, that is not drawn from forms of previous art, and that also makes use of an artistic formal language that was also not previously in use, it is possible to say a few words about the essence of eurythmy. What you will see on the stage is movements performed by individuals through their limbs or performed by groups of people who also change their mutual positions in relation to each other and so on.

None of this is meant to be pantomime or mime or even dance, but something completely different. It is based on a visible, mute language, but one that is just as much a human means of expression as the spoken word. [pause]

Now, nothing is arbitrarily chosen from these or those gestures. Rather, it is carefully investigated – to use this Goethean expression – through sensual and supersensory observation how the human larynx and the other speech organs want to move, what movement tendencies they have within them when sound language comes about. By this I do not mean movements that are carried out in the air, for example, when speech is conveyed or when I hear what happens through the movement of the air, but I mean what goes on in the larynx and its neighboring organs in order to set the air in vibration in the first place. This is something that one does not notice at all, of course, when one listens to speech, because there one is concerned with the sound, with the tone. But through sensory-supersensory observation, one can study what the speech organs want to carry out but hold back because the forces are to pass into the air waves that then convey the sound. Then, according to the principle of Goethe's theory of metamorphosis, one can expand what Goethe meant only for form, for example in plants or in the growth of animals, by translating it into the artistic, expanding it to the method. So that one can – just as Goethe saw a more complicated leaf in the whole plant and in the simple leaf plan a simply designed whole plant, which is what he meant by his metamorphosis, so one can expand what in ordinary speech is one-sidedly based on the speech organs as a law can be extended to the movement of the whole person [and] to the movement of whole groups of people, so that they will actually see on the stage the whole person or groups of people moving in the way that the speech organs want to carry out their movements, but only hold back.

This gives rise to a genuine mute language, which can then be formed and shaped artistically in the same way as spoken language, and in this way we achieve something that serious artists are striving for right now but cannot be achieved directly with the artistic means of the older arts. I do not want to present eurythmy as a special model art in this direction, but I just want to note that eurythmy, because it uses certain artistic means, wants to be a thoroughly artistic form of expression that achieves what one actually strives for in other arts. In our case, in our structure, there is nothing [conceptual] in painting, and even though the pictorial appears here according to [...][illegible passage], what should be achieved in art is manifested: that thought should be completely suppressed in the work of art above all else.

For to the extent that thought is effective in art, to that extent art is actually inartistic. But in our language, especially in civilized languages, it is at least not the case, as it is with more primitive peoples, that language is an expression of what a person feels as passion, what a person feels in general, and thus of his or her entire being. Our language has gradually developed into a means of expression, into a vehicle for the more abstract thoughts. Of course, that doesn't prevent good poetry from being written today, although – and this is a parenthesis – almost 99 percent of all the poetry that is written today, if it were only a matter of art, would not need to be written. But on the whole, one must say: the more language becomes civilized, the more it loses the character of the truly artistic because it can no longer be a means of expression for the whole human being.

In eurythmy, we have a means of returning to the most original sources of human expression in language and raising this means of expression to a higher level. In ordinary spoken language, I would like to say, thoughts flow from the human head, impulses from the whole human being, and what is in what is presented as eurythmy, but language remains silent. In this way, the thought is also more or less pronounced. But through this, eurythmy is led to the art, and through the fact that those forms are taken out of the whole human organization, which are carried out by the individual human being in his limbs, or are also moved by groups of people, the will mainly works into this movement, and we have a soul-inspired will that is directly seen and, in addition, through the instrument of the human being himself, becomes visible. In the highest degree, this serves that which Goethe expressed so beautifully: “When man is placed at the summit of nature, he perceives himself as a whole nature, taking in order, measure, harmony and meaning, and finally rises to create a work of art.

He rises in particular to create the work of art when he uses his own organism instead of a violin or a piano or a brush and paint. If, as a result, more of that which works so mysteriously in the speech organ is brought out, and is sometimes suppressed, that is brought out of the human being, this microcosm – that is, the human being – this small world really reveals the secrets of world existence. And here too we come close to Goethe, who said: “When nature begins to reveal her secrets, one feels an irresistible longing for her most worthy interpreter, art.” In the human being himself, the highest secrets of the existence of the world truly come to life through the human being in a way that corresponds to his or her entire organization. Then one encounters not only the secrets of humanity but also the secrets of the world in the movements of the human being.

And so one is able to follow the poet and also the musician with eurythmy, by achieving through this silent language of eurythmy what the truly poetic artist seeks to achieve through the revelation of language. On the one hand, you will see the eurythmic presentation often accompanied by music, which is just another form of expression, or also accompanied by recitation or declamation. In particular, you can see very clearly in the recitation or declamation [what peculiarity lies in art] /illegible passage]. With the inartfulness of what is practised today as the art of recitation, one could not accompany eurythmy at all. Today, [illegible word] is basically only recited in passing. But it is just a speaking of prose. This is particularly regarded as art today. What is actually artistic about poetry is suppressed: the rhythmic, the metrical, the musical or even the pictorial. Both the poet's intentions for language can be given greater expression in the silent language of eurythmy.

It must be constantly recalled how Schiller, before he had the literal content of a poem, had an indeterminate melody living in his soul, and this indeterminate melody was for him the actual artistic element. He could, so to speak, think of any content in connection with such an indeterminate melody, because the musical element that lies in the poem is the actual artistic element. In Goethe it is more pictorial. Therefore, when rehearsing his 'Iphigenia', Goethe himself worked with a baton like a conductor, seeing the main thing in the flowing of the iambus, not in the reciting of the literal words. These poems make it possible — precisely through eurythmy — to return to the sources of poetry in a higher sense. And to say this at all in our time, which is so unartistic, was the truly artistic.

In eurythmy, it seems particularly artistic that one has movements in front of one, so one sees something with the senses. Everything artistic must become such that it is, as it were, directly perceived in the physical world with the senses, not with thoughts. But everything artistic must also be shaped. We can observe that the human being itself is the tool for artistic representation, that soul is in each of its movements. What a real poet writes is elevated when, in addition to being recited, his poetry is presented eurythmically – which you will see here.

Now, those of you who have been here before will also see how we are trying to truly penetrate to the stylishness of the poems in the way we present them, how we are trying – for example, in particularly expressive forms in the humorous pieces – to express, through the way we present them, what lies in the artistic form itself, not in the prose content of the poem, which is actually not part of the content of the poem at all, in other words, to express the serious attempts in other forms, – thoroughly like attempts borne by seriousness in other forms, express that which lies precisely in the how of the artistic creation, not in the prose content of the poem, which actually, basically, does not belong to the content of the poem.

These are a few words about what is intended as art with eurythmy. But there are other sides to this eurythmy as well. First of all, I would like to mention what is to be added to the training: the hygienic-therapeutic side, since the movement that is performed comes entirely from the nature of the human organism itself. In this way, a kind of eurythmy therapy can also be developed. A eurythmy [healing] art will be developed and it will speak far more through the therapeutically trained [will], through the movement regained in the [through the trained] sensitivity of the will.

A few more words about the pedagogical-didactic side. I would like to point out that in the future, people will really start to think more objectively about all these things. A famous physiologist who had come to see eurythmy and had listened to my remarks] told me afterwards that gymnastics are not an educational tool at all, but a barbarism. As I said, I do not want to go that far. It is an otherwise very spiritually minded contemporary physiologist who has expressed this. I will just say that gymnastics is concerned with the physiological, with that which is intended to cultivate the body. And it is precisely this eurythmy, which can be practiced in this way, that has an effect on children as a special means of education [as] a soul-filled gymnastics. And precisely according to [our experiences] is yes / gap?] at the Stuttgart Waldorf [School], where eurythmy has been introduced as a compulsory educational offering and has been in effect for a year and one can really see can be seen in what a clearly defined way it can affect children - precisely because of this and [...] the Stuttgart Waldorf School has [already] provided the proof.

So this soul-inspired gymnastics can be applied. Firstly, the child experiences it as something that it naturally grows into, because it feels that the movements that are made belong to the whole organization of the human body. But then, it is not just seen physiologically, as the people are [in terms of their bodies], but every movement is animated. Therefore, the child's body, soul and spirit are educated at the same time, and this is something that the child feels and that is particularly effective as an educational tool. And once this eurythmy is used more extensively as an educational tool, which will certainly be the case in the future, it will be said that it is an important educational tool in other respects as well. I do not want to say that it can already be used as such for adults today; it does not need to be, but when it is used as an educational tool for children, it will be a tool for educating the sense of truth. As I said, it does not need to become that for adults. But it certainly does for children, because that is the dilemma of our civilized language, that it does not come from the whole human being, but only from a part of the human organs. And precisely by the fact that we then achieve the whole human organization expressing (gap), through this, the participation of the whole human being in what he speaks is gradually achieved. Movement comes about that stimulates questioning, that leads to the fact that through this mute language of eurythmy, the human being can participate with his entire organism in what, as meaning, emerges from the soul.

Then, with such a means of education, the sense of truth, if only it is started early enough, will receive very special care. Language is gradually perceived. What is really necessary for it today - that it be stripped of the phraseological - will be achieved by eurythmy: that it becomes a means of education for truth. So much for the pedagogical-didactic side.

Of course, we must ask for your indulgence, because however high the goals we have set ourselves with eurythmy may be, what has been achieved so far is only just the beginning. But it must also be further developed – perhaps by us, but more likely by others. And however much we ourselves are strict critics, however much we also know how imperfect everything still is today, we have already striven. In the near future, there will certainly also be [all kinds of] mere pantomime, mimic and gestural endeavors, and eurythmic movements will flow into them in such a sequence [of] laws, from such successive laws, [as those] that connect melody, the musical. But for that, a further development is needed. [Fragmentary final passage, see notes.]

Program of the performance in Dornach, October 30 and 31, 1920.

Mercury prelude with music by Leopold van der Pals
Devachan scene: 7th picture from the Portal of Initiation by Rudolf Steiner
“In the Sistine Chapel” by C. F. Meyer NZ 2420
Prelude ‘Fateful Question’ with music by Leopold van der Pals
Saying from the Calendar of the Soul (29th) by Rudolf Steiner
Saying from the Calendar of the Soul (30th) by Rudolf Steiner
Opening of the elves
“Erlkönig“ by]. W. v. Goethe
Opening of the planetary dance with music by Max Schuurman
“World Soul” by J. W. v. Goethe
Children's poem (children's group)
“The Walk” by Martin Opitz with music by Max Schuurman (children's group)
Humoresques by Christian Morgenstern: ‘The Problem’ by Christian Morgenstern; ‘Muhme Kunkel’ series: ‘Muhme Kunkel’; ‘The Parrot’; ‘Lore’; ‘Lorus’; ‘Word Art’
“The Pied Piper” by J. W. v. Goethe

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen!

Allow me to say a few words before these eurythmy performances, as I usually do, not to explain the presentation. Art must work through itself, through the immediate impression, through what you are able to see by participating. But this eurythmy, which we cultivate here, wants to draw from artistic sources that have been used less so far. It seeks to express itself in an artistic formal language that has also been used very little. And so I would like to say a few words about the nature of this eurythmic art.

What you will see on the stage is people or groups of people in motion. The movements that are performed are essentially not gestures, they are not a mimic representation, nor are they a completely dance-like , but is in fact a visible language, and a true language at that, a language that is not derived from the interpretation of words or the like, but that is based on a careful study of the essence of the sound language itself.

In the case of sound, we are also dealing with movements that the larynx and the other speech organs want to carry out, but which do not emerge as such, but are, as it were, stopped in their development, so that they then transform into the air movement through which the sound is conveyed. Through sensory-supersensory observation – that is a Goethean expression – one can actually form an idea of how the larynx and the other speech organs want to move, what this inner movement is like as it is developing, and how it is transformed into sound. And then, as it were, through the movement of a single organism or a group of organs of the human organism, one can bring about a visible language through the whole person, so that the whole person moves, namely his arms move in such a way as the speech organs want to move in the sound language, but stop in the will, so that sound comes out.

Now one can say that by making the whole human being the larynx, so to speak, or making groups of people the larynx, to a certain extent speech organs are transformed, that one able to tap into truly artistic sources and an artistic formal language, including for that which is otherwise expressed musically or, in particular, that which is otherwise expressed poetically. This happens in the following way.

The poet must express himself through language. In more advanced civilizations, language becomes more and more conventional on the one hand, but on the other hand, language also increasingly becomes the expression of abstract thought. Neither conventional nor abstract thinking can have any kind of artistic effect. Therefore, if I want to express myself in a somewhat trivial way, it can be said that poetry becomes increasingly difficult in civilized languages unless other elements of expression are used to help.

We can already imagine something under what I call a visible language here, when I refer you, I would like to say, to the other pole, to the abstract, inartistic pole of language development, the other pole in relation to eurythmy, which we will talk about in a moment. To a certain extent, writing, which we then fix on our paper, is also seen as a metamorphosis of speech. It is, in a sense, a kind of visible language. But writing develops in the other direction. We can trace writing back to where it was in its original stages. We see how the thought, the idea that a person formed of an external object, is still placed into the written character or characters, how the mental element becomes a kind of mute language in writing, a kind of visible language.

But then what was initially present as pictographic writing or hieroglyphic writing develops into completely conventional writing. That is one pole. I would like to say that the thought life of language enters into writing. Language becomes mute in writing. The thought element enters into writing. Writing is thus also a kind of visible language.

The further a civilization advances, the less one can tell from its writing how it wells up out of the living language. In the original writings, one would still notice this human-individual-personal element in the writing. You would still feel a kind of silent, visible language in the writing when you look at the original manuscripts. But then, little by little, as humanity develops, the element that lives in language passes completely into the conceptual and the conventional, that is, into the inartistic. And the more man wants to capture the conceptual in writing, the more inartistic writing becomes. Isn't it true that the highest potency of the inartistic is stenography, which is already terrible in itself because of its contrast to everything artistic.

Now one can come to the other pole, where one does not consider the mental element of language, but rather the will element. When a person speaks, the mental element, which is borrowed from the things of the external world, and the will element, the part that the person has in the external world and what wells up from within, flow together in his speech sound element. What flows into writing is completely rejected – it is completely rejected. When one studies the sound language in order to make eurythmy out of it, one introduces, as it were, that which is externalized in writing, thrown out, so that one then has the written word in front of one and nothing more of the human being is in it, it is completely separated from the human being: In a sense, this is incorporated into eurythmy. Through movement, the human being is made to express in his totality, in his wholeness, that which is the will element in speech.

But this means that while in writing, which is also a mute language, the linguistic element detaches itself from the human being, it becomes more and more intimately connected when one moves on to eurythmy, which in turn lives entirely within the human being where the human being does not fixate in a separate sign what is expressed in language, but where the human being makes himself the tool, the artistic tool, of what lives in language, for example in poetry. So one can say: language is structured towards two poles. On the one hand, there is the non-artistic element of writing, which is completely rejected when one studies language inwardly through sensory-supersensory vision in such a way that one then metamorphoses it into eurythmy. In this way, the human being takes everything into his own being, everything that lives in his will, in his mind, lives through poetry and is revived in the movements of eurythmy.

Therefore, for example, on the one hand, what can appear in eurythmy as an artistic movement can be set to music. But basically eurythmy is the best expression of the inner artistic quality of poetry. The inner artistic quality of poetry is not the prose content of the poem, but rather that which lives in rhythm, in beat, in short: in the musical, which is therefore that on which the words move as if only on waves. Or it is the pictorial. Both the pictorial aspect of language and the musical aspect of language are particularly emphasized in eurythmy. Because the human will expresses itself through the human instrumentality, we can say: when we see the human being in motion — but who acts as if he were the soul-content expressing itself in speech — we have before us something that we can see directly, that we do not need to understand first.

Of course, people are not yet accustomed to eurythmy. That is why they say that much of it is incomprehensible to them. But the more accustomed we become, the more we will find that every eurythmic movement, every sequence of movements, is an immediate expression of what is simultaneously evoked in the recitation of the poem. And then one will see this whole human being as an instrument for the soul. One will see it, and at the same time one will have the soul. For naturally the human being puts his soul into eurythmic movement, that soul which the poet can only imperfectly express in language because the unartistic element of thought enters into it.

So what the human being experiences in civilization, I would like to say, in terms of “prosaicization”, if I may choose the expression, where he becomes more and more prosaic and prosaic the more he writes, [is balanced]. Sometimes people no longer have a real inner experience of what is being said; they come to no longer hear the language but actually to transfer it directly into writing, whereby from the outset the human being flows entirely into prose. Poetry will return to human feeling, to human emotion, when we come to eurythmy, by taking language into the inner being of the human being, into his movements.

Therefore, recitation as it is done today in our unartistic time, in our paper age, cannot be done as eurythmy is recited. For eurythmy, it must be recited in such a way that one hears rhythm, beat, and musicality, that one senses the image that lives in the poet, and that the words, so to speak, only provide an opportunity to bring to revelation the deeper, more artistic aspect of the poetry. In eurythmy, the words as such do not live, the heard words do not live. But in this way the inartistic element of the thought also disappears, and in eurythmy only that part of the poetry that is truly artistic comes to life.

In recent times we have often tried to shape through forms that which otherwise lives in the feeling of language. You will see, especially in the case of the things we are performing today, how, on the one hand, in the case of the serious poems, the form expresses the how of the creation, and how, in the case of the humorous and comic poems, we also express the style of the poem through the different style of the forms. That is one side of it.

Eurythmy has many other sides, including a hygienic and therapeutic side, which I will not discuss here. It also has a pedagogical and didactic side, which has already proved to be a blessing in the one year that we had eurythmy as a compulsory subject at the Waldorf School in Stuttgart. There we could see how children benefit from this soul-filled exercise, which is quite different from mere gymnastics that only trains the body, where they do not merely perform movements that are first studied from a physiological point of view to see whether they are beneficial for the body, but where the child puts its soul into every movement it performs.

This is something that adults who engage in eurythmy can no longer feel, that no longer has any great significance for them, but that is evident in children, because in eurythmy the human being has a revelation of his soul nature, and this connects him with his humanity in a very significant way. If eurythmy is used as a teaching tool, it will also have a teaching effect on the sense of truth. The more abstract languages become, the less truthful they are. The element of set phrases is particularly developed in more advanced languages because the language becomes detached from the human being.

In eurythmy, everything that becomes detached in language is taken back into the human being. When we make ourselves an instrument and completely immerse ourselves in what we feel, we cannot be untrue. And when children are allowed to do eurythmy, they develop a sense of truthfulness and an instinctive feeling for all that is meaningful. These are the educational and didactic results that will be found when these things are thought about objectively.

I must always ask for forbearance when it comes to demonstrations, because eurythmy has only been cultivated for a few years. It is in its infancy, it is an experiment. But anyone who engages with the sources and with the artistic language of forms can know that there is an unlimited potential for development in it. We will discover more and more possibilities for presenting the art of eurythmy.

For some time now, I have been concerned with the question of how to express the dramatic. We can now only express the epic and the lyrical, and the actual drama, when it expresses the supersensible, you will find portrayed today, drama that expresses the supersensible, in a piece of one of my “mystery dramas”. The supersensible can also be adequately portrayed in eurythmy in a drama. But the ordinary dramatic, which, so to speak, takes place in the world of the senses, is something I have set myself as a problem, for which we will also find the eurythmic forms.

As you can see, everything is still in flux. Therefore, as I said, I still have to ask for forbearance. We are our own harshest critics and we know very well that eurythmy is still in its infancy. However, we also know that if it continues to develop, the eurythmic art will grow from its beginnings into a complete art that can stand alongside the other, older, fully-fledged arts, so that it will be recognized as equal to them.