The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Dear attendees,

I am taking the liberty of saying a few words in advance, not to explain our eurythmy performance – for artistic things must speak through their own impression, through direct perception, and to want to explain them would be unartistic – but for the reason that I would like to say a few words in advance because what we are trying to do here at the Goetheanum with eurythmy is to research and create from artistic sources that have been little considered by art so far, and because this eurythmy wants to express itself through a particular artistic formal language that has also been little used so far.

It is very easy to mistake what we see here on the stage, with people and groups of people moving, for something borrowed from neighboring arts. But eurythmy is not meant to be what dance art is, what pantomime is, what mimic performance is, and so on. Rather, eurythmy wants to develop as an art, building on a special visible language. And this visible language, which is revealed through the moving human being, is not something arbitrarily conceived. The individual gestures, the individual movements that you see are also not at all arbitrarily conceived, but have come about in such a lawful way as human speech, the speech of sounds, comes about in a lawful way.

What is expressed as sound language is based on movements of the larynx and the other speech organs. These movements, however, take place in a special way, in such a way that basically these speech organs only attempt the movement; the movement is arrested and converted into air movement. And it is through the vibrations of the air that the sounds and tones of the speech sounds are conveyed.

But that which is actually only present in the speech organs during ordinary speech, which is held back in order to become external air movement, can, if I may use Goethe's expression, be truly recognized through sensory-supersensory observation. It is possible to recognize, if one is able to turn one's attention to these movement tendencies of the larynx and the other speech organs through sensuous-supersensuous observation, it is possible to recognize from which speech predispositions of these individual organ groups the speech sounds actually arise. And then, based on Goethe's artistic attitude and view of art, one can build a mute language, construct a visible language, by having the whole human being or groups of people perform the movements that are actually present in the speech organs and are transformed into sound language.

In this way the whole human being – or groups of people – become the bearers of a silent language. Admittedly, at first one has the impression that this silent language cannot be readily and obviously understood. But, dear assembled, we must be clear about the fact that we do not immediately understand ordinary spoken language either, in any form; we have to learn it.

Now, one does not need to learn the eurythmic language in this way, but there are many preconceptions - if I may use the word in analogy to prejudices - against it, when one sees the individual moving in his limbs, and at first one has to overcome the unfamiliar a little. But then, once you have overcome this unfamiliarity a little, you will feel that the inner life of the soul can be revealed just as much through the movements and sequences of movements that are performed here as it is through the language of sound. And that what is expressed through the language of sound can be translated, I would like to say, my dear audience, into the visible, for this we have a very ordinary fact in our writing.

The writing that emerged from pictographic writing or from sign writing can no longer be understood today in such a way that one sees great similarities between it and language. But this is only the case with writing that has already been developed in more advanced civilizations, writing that has already completely transitioned into abstract signs. The original writings bear the character of how they emerged from a reproduction of speech.

But this development of writing, I would say, is at the opposite pole to eurythmy. When language develops into writing, it is allowed to penetrate into the conventional. In relation to writing, we are very dependent on the people, on the community of people, within which we stand. And we have to adapt to this human community, to the community of the people - you let it flow out completely in writing. There is nothing personal or at least very little personal in it. Man does not reveal himself in his soul life through writing, or at least only to a small extent. The writing is separated, carried out into the prosaic, and actually visualized. What is writing for if not a mute language? Writing is a mute language for that which lies in our language as thought-life. Thus writing becomes something inartistic. And something horribly inartistic becomes the trained writing that wants to adapt completely to the thought: the stenography, of course, which is somewhat outrageously inartistic, which strives to drive what is spoken into the inartfulness of language.

Thinking, then, is what kills all art. Art lives in the elements of feeling, will, and mind.

Eurythmy, on the other hand, develops speech in the opposite direction. It allows speech to radiate back out from the human being, to be taken back by the human being. Instead of speech being transformed into written characters, it is taken back by the human being. This means that the human being's will element, their personal element, is activated through the movements that are expressed in eurythmy. And in that we see the human being, or groups of people, as it were, as a moving larynx, in that this silent language of eurythmy reveals itself, we have something before us through which the human being's soul life can directly reveal itself in silent language through the instrument of the human organism.

And so, on the one hand, we can regard what appears before us in a musical form – what is accompanied on one side, what is presented on stage – as another expression of eurythmy, but what is still to be presented through eurythmy is that which emerges from language into the artistic realm. It can therefore be accompanied, and will be accompanied, by recitation or declamation. These bring out precisely how the artistic element of poetry comes into play as the conceptual element is stripped away in the eurythmic movement.

But you cannot, as is believed today, recite or declaim, you cannot accompany eurythmy with this purely prosaic, inartistic recitation, which, precisely because we live in an inartistic time, is not seen as inartistic at all. You could not accompany eurythmy with it. This is just one sign of the lack of artistry in our time, that there is no longer any inclination for the formal element to immediately come into its own at the moment when a poem is to be recited or declaimed.

In artistic declamation, the prose content of the poem does not have to be effective, which, after all, is only intended to serve as a point of reference, so to speak, through which rhythm, meter, the musicality and the imagery of the poem develop. That is why poetry today basically has a hard time rising from language to become real art. In civilized languages, in particular, on the one hand, the abstract expression of thought becomes predominant. This is inartistic. Or, on the other hand, they become the expression of conventional communication between people – again inartistic. Language is only artistic when it is the direct expression of the soul, the inwardly moved expression of the soul's feelings. Real poets, like Schiller, for example, have first of all had an indefinite melody in their soul for each of their poems. And in Schiller's case, the prose content of the poems only followed on from this melody.

And on the other hand, on the prose side, today the emphasis is somehow created and so on. And so, from the outset, something that is popular with many people today in the art of recitation is something that has nothing to do with real recitation. Real recitation art must look at the rhythm, the beat, the musicality, or the poetic content of the poetry, not at the prosaic.

Real eurythmy shows that when in a poem that which is to be felt in terms of content or what is to be felt musically [gap in the text]. If, on the other hand, it is to be eurythmized that which, in a just civilized language, is basically unartistic in poetry, that is, mere prose content - however beautiful or witty the prose content may be - if that is to be eurythmized, it becomes extremely difficult. That is why such poems, as you will see in what you are about to see in my presentation of the spiritual realm to which the human being can rise with his feelings and thoughts, in what is written from the outset in a simple language or in a more complicated language only when one forms new word connections for what is thought eurythmically from the outset, is viewed eurythmically - it more or less eurythmizes itself. Whereas the eurythmic form is extremely difficult to find for what is carried out of a civilized language, as is usually the case with our art poets, where it depends on the witty content.

That is precisely the peculiar thing, that through the eurythmic art, poetry as the expression of the human soul can be taken back into the human being. Therefore, the artistic pole is developed in eurythmy in contrast to the spiritual, which, on the one hand, develops language into a mute language, and is brought to the human being in such a way that everything personal, everything conceptual, everything volitional is carried into movement. Therefore, in our time, which is so unartistic in many respects, one will be able to experience a genuine artistic feeling, a genuine feeling for the artistic, through eurythmy. On the one hand, this could be said about the artistic that is attempted with our eurythmy.

But eurythmy also has other sides. Just as it brings forth the mute language of eurythmy from the artistic, it has also brought forth a natural side of the human being, the therapeutic and hygienic side. I will not go into this today, as it would take us too far afield. But I would like to mention very briefly that this eurythmy also has a significant pedagogical-didactic side. We have therefore introduced it as a compulsory subject in the Waldorf School in Stuttgart, and already in the first year it has become clear how this moving, soulful gymnastics - this is how it initially affects the child - has an extraordinarily beneficial influence alongside ordinary gymnastics. By performing the movements, the child finds that the body moves as if by itself. It perceives this as something quite different from the gymnastics that is taught to the child. I certainly do not want to go as far as a famous physiologist of the present day, who told me some time ago that gymnastics is not an educational tool at all, but a barbarism. Once we think more impartially and objectively than we do today, we will realize what a difference it makes to the child whether the movements used in gymnastics are devised purely on the basis of physiological observation or whether a soul-filled, spiritualized form of gymnastics is used, as eurythmy is for the child, where it feels soulfully and spiritually in the movements it performs, where it knows itself to be completely within, not, I would say, forcibly, through bodily movements that have been thought up, as it were, and which it must follow.

That is what I would have to say about eurythmy if it is introduced as a subject in schools. And it must be introduced because it will develop the will initiative in children in particular, because it will bring initiative into the human soul and because it will bring out another element, which can no longer emerge so strongly when adults learn eurythmy, but which will emerge to the greatest extent in children: that our language, especially when it is a civilized language, tends more and more to fantasy. We speak because we want to speak. And language becomes - as can be seen by anyone who can really study the soul in this respect - language gradually becomes more and more untrue, the more civilized it becomes.

By taking language back into the movements of his own body, the human being must be present for everything that the soul wants to express. When introduced at the right time, this has an effect on the child such that the sense of truth, the sense of the opposite of all phraseology, will emerge in the child at the same time. In the future, people will think much more freely about these things. These things are only just beginning.

For this reason, I always have to ask the esteemed audience for their forbearance when we present a eurythmy experiment here. We are our own harshest critics and know very well what we are only just able to do with our eurythmy art today. But we also know that what is just beginning to emerge today can be developed further and further by ourselves or, more likely, by others. Then the time will surely come when developed eurythmy, which uses the noblest tool, the microcosm itself, and which uses the human being as a tool and thus comes so close to Goethe's word so close: When man is placed at the summit of nature, he in turn sees himself as a summit of nature, takes harmony, measure and meaning together and rises to the production of the work of art.

Man rises to the production of the work of art, not when he [gap in the text], but when he makes himself the tool of artistic revelation. For this reason, although we are only at the beginning of the eurythmic art today, I would like to emphasize that all of this is already possible in the development of the eurythmic art. Therefore, if you look at things impartially, you have to be convinced that eurythmy can continue to develop and will be able to stand alongside its older sister arts as a fully-fledged, youngest art in the future.

Public performance with presentations by children from the Waldorf School in Stuttgart at the Kasinosaal Freiburg.

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

Dear attendees!

Allow me to say a few words before our eurythmic presentation begins. This is not intended to explain the eurythmic presentation, which would be inartistic. Art must work through what it is able to reveal in direct contemplation and does not need any explanation. But what we are presenting here as the art of eurythmy is something that makes use of artistic means of expression and an artistic formal language that we have not been accustomed to much until now. I would like to say a few words about these artistic sources that we use in eurythmy and about the special artistic formal language.

Eurythmy as such has nothing to do with any seemingly related arts, such as dance or the like, or mimic arts, and it should not be confused with them. What is at the basis of eurythmy is that it seeks to create a kind of visible language, or I could also say: a kind of visible song. That which is otherwise expressed through the medium of speech in poetry or that which is expressed in song or music through sound, is to be expressed here in eurythmy through movements. Through movements that a person makes with their limbs as an individual, or also through movements of groups of people. These movements, however, are by no means merely mimic, nothing gestural.

Now, I will explain how it came about. Eurythmy was created, to use this Goethean expression, through the sensory and supersensory observation of the underlying movement tendencies of the larynx when singing or even when speaking. I am not saying that the movements that are the basis for eurythmy are those that are expressed in speech or in the sound of air and that convey hearing, but rather that they are the movements to which the larynx merely sets out, so to speak, which it does not actually carry out, which it wants to carry out, so to speak, which can be observed and which can then be transferred to the whole person.

What we do, dear attendees, whether in the field of spiritual science or in other fields, of which this eurythmy is also a single field, from which this eurythmy comes from, we also like to refer to it as 'Goetheanism' to suggest that everything that lives in this spiritual science is fundamentally linked to Goethe's spiritual attitude. And that which lives in eurythmy should be linked to Goethe's view of art and especially to Goethe's artistic attitude.

Perhaps I can best explain what I have to say by briefly recalling what Goethe presented to explain the essence of life. He was of the opinion – and this can be seen in his magnificent essay on the metamorphosis of plants, which he wrote in 1790 – that the idea of an individual organ or the organism of a living being actually contains the whole living being. And so he said: In the single leaf, basically, only in a simpler way, the whole plant is contained. In the whole plant, only in a more complicated way, a single leaf is given. What Goethe has incorporated into his view of science - it will only be fully appreciated in later times - can also be used artistically, and that is what will be done here.

It is not just the shaping in the Goethean sense that is to be utilized metamorphically, but rather what takes place in the human larynx, what leads to sound, to tone, that is to be transferred to the activity of the whole human being or groups of people. So that on the stage, with the eurythmy accompanied by recitation or music, we have a different revelation: that we are actually dealing with a moving larynx that is the whole human being. As paradoxical as this may still seem today, it is something that will gradually be recognized as artistic in the most eminent sense. For what is actually achieved by this? What is achieved is that the spiritual experience of the human being, which the musician as well as the poet wants to represent, comes to light through other means of expression – in such a way that the matter is not detached from the human being, but is still revealed in the human being itself.

When we look at the musical, we find that this musical reveals spiritual experience. We can follow this soul experience particularly in song. But the means of expression are, as it were, detached from the human being. In music, the tone carries the soul life on its wings, one could say, but it is detached from the human being. It becomes detached in song. In spoken language, the thought is actually inserted as an inartistic element into the sound. In contrast to this, in eurythmy the human movement itself is used as a visible language, and to a certain extent also as a visible music. This means that the whole human being stands as a physical expression of the soul. By being a physical expression of the soul, it can be observed in artistic perception - and one has an immediate soul that comes to expression through the external senses.

But what is all art actually if not the sensory representation of something supersensible, something spiritual? When the human being becomes a tool, not a dead instrument, but the human being themselves becomes a tool of art, then the artistic is truly expressed in the highest, most beautiful sense.

In particular, one can notice how music can find its special expression again through eurythmy. I would just like to point out that if you let the movements in eurythmy work on your senses more closely, you will see that what is expressed in a major and what is expressed in a minor mood when musical eurythmy is presented. Then we have movements flowing directly from the human will in this eurythmy. They adhere closely to the human being, so to speak. Now we can always see how we have to present everything that is in a major key in the eurythmy through movements that come from the person, and everything that is in a minor key through movements that approach the person, articulating themselves in the appropriate way. So that what is artistically revealed in music on the wings of sound can become visible through the movements of the human limbs.

Likewise, when that which is presented in poetry through speech is presented eurythmically through movements that are more detached from the human form, these movements are more akin to the pictorial. But all this is, in the realm of the eurythmic presentation of the musical as well as the eurythmic presentation of the poetic, far removed from all facial expressions, far removed from all the art of dance, from all mere gesturing. It is that which is actually artistic. It is either a plastic, but moving plastic effect, or a musical effect.

Therefore, it is also necessary that the recitation, which occurs at the same time, is only a different expression of the same thing that one sees in the eurythmy, which itself already forms eurythmically. What is often seen today as the perfection of recitation or declamation, the prosaic element that should resonate in recitation, is basically not what can accompany eurythmy. For poetry is only truly artistic to the extent that it contains either sculpture or music. Therefore, we must always remember how a true poet – Schiller, for example – worked. Before he had the content in prose, an indeterminate melody lived in his soul. What is rhythmically, what is tactually, what is melodically behind the poetry – and not the prose content, the literal content – that is what is truly artistic about the poetry. And so, in this new means of expression of movements in the human body, we can create a visible language, a visible music, which we will demonstrate in a few examples today.

But this is only one side of eurythmy. The other side will be presented today by the fact that we were able to bring a number of children from our Stuttgart Waldorf School here. We have introduced eurythmy as a compulsory subject at the Stuttgart Waldorf School. And for the children of this independent Waldorf School, which is based on anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, eurythmy is at the same time a form of gymnastics that is imbued with soul. I am not saying that I object to gymnastics as such, but it is only based on physiological and physical laws. I certainly do not want to go as far as a famous contemporary who recently said that gymnastics is not an educational tool, but a barbarism.

I will concede that gymnastics has its significance for the physical development of young people. But it is quite another thing when this inspired gymnastics, this eurythmy, is presented to children, which is an art in its own right. Children love to perform and express what arises artistically out of the whole human organization. When eurythmy is introduced to children, something very special comes about, which does not appear in the same way when older people do eurythmy. Children, in expressing the soul's content in visible language, cannot lapse into empty phrases. In our spoken language, especially in the languages of the more highly developed civilizations, empty phrases and conventionality play such a great role that truth can very gently become untruth. When a child is led back to the original, elementary expression of soul experience, to the movements of its own limbs, it cannot lie or fall into empty phrases. That is why this art of eurythmic education is at the same time something that brings up children in truthfulness, so that one has an important means of education in this eurythmy. The Waldorf school has only existed for a year. It has shown in other areas what the art of education applied there can achieve in all subjects. But it has also shown in particular how eurythmy can work with children as soulful gymnastics.

Today we are only able to show children's group eurythmy, where eurythmy is performed by groups of people, while we will have adults perform solos. Of course, because there are only a few people who can perform eurythmy, we were unable to bring together groups of adults for today's performance and therefore had to limit ourselves to solos. The Waldorf children, however, will perform groups, they will perform both musical and poetic pieces. And it will be shown, at least in a rehearsal, how this soulful gymnastics, this eurythmy, works through the child's organism.

I could also mention a third element that is to be realized in eurythmy: the therapeutic and hygienic element. Because eurythmy is derived from the natural structure of the larynx, it is derived from the whole human being and nature and is therefore a healthy movement in the most eminent sense. It can be used for hygienic and therapeutic purposes, and over time it most certainly will be.

If Goethe – and, as I said, what we practise as eurythmy emerged from Goethe's artistic ethos – if Goethe says: “When nature begins to reveal her secrets to someone, they feel a longing for her most worthy interpreter, art.” It may be said: the secrets of nature are most fully revealed through the artistic means that appear in the human body itself, and so something of the highest must come about in art. And to those who ask: why do we actually need new artistic means when we have music and other arts? – [they can be told:] anyone who truly loves art understands that it strives for new means of expression, for means of expression that present the supersensible and spiritual, which is to be presented sensually through art, in ever new forms.

And when man himself is used as a tool, one may well recall the saying of Goethe, which arose from his artistic attitude: “By placing man at the summit of nature, he sees himself again as a whole nature, which in turn has to produce a summit. To this end, he elevates himself by permeating himself with all perfections and virtues, invoking choice, order, harmony and meaning, and finally rising to the production of the work of art [...]. But in the most beautiful sense, man rises to the production of the work of art when he allows his own nature to become a work of art.

Let me finally mention that we ask for your forbearance for the reason that, despite striving for the highest art, we are still at the beginning and must absolutely rely on the fact that what is a shy beginning will reach perfection. But we are convinced that because this art draws its means of expression from the natural essence of man, this art will perhaps still be further perfected by us, probably by others, and that it will then be able to present itself as a fully fledged young art alongside the older arts.

Program for the performance in Dornach, December 5, 1920

The Fairy Tale of the Miracle of the Springs from The Testing of the Soul by Rudolf Steiner
Saying from the Calendar of the Soul (33rd) by Rudolf Steiner
“To the Young Mineralogist” by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Saying from the Calendar of the Soul (34th) by Rudolf Steiner
“Mächtiges Überraschen“ by J. W. v. Goethe
“Wiegenlied” folk song (children's group)
“Those evening bells“ by Thomas Moore
Saying from the soul calendar (34.) by Rudolf Steiner
Folk song (children's group)
“Mailied” by J. W. v. Goethe
“Vöglein“ folk song (children's group)
“Hubâ” [?]
“Ein Rätsel - ein Männlein steht im Walde” (children's group)
Humoresques by Christian Morgenstern: ‘Korfs Geruchssinn’; ‘Geruchsorgel’; ‘Der Aromat’

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen.

Allow me to say a few words to introduce the eurythmy presentation that we will be treating you to. I do not do this in order to explain the content of the performance as such, because it goes without saying that everything artistic must speak for itself; explaining an artistic performance would itself be something inartistic. Rather, I do it because what we are doing here as a eurythmic art draws in a certain way on new artistic sources and a new artistic, at least a hitherto unfamiliar artistic, formal language. And I would like to say a few words about this.

You will see, first of all, the individual on the stage moving the limbs of this physical organization in a certain way. You will also see groups of people performing coordinated, lawful movements. These artistic achievements in movement will be accompanied, on the one hand, by music and, on the other, by recitation. It is exactly what we have here as eurythmy, conceived as a real visible language. Therefore, what is called eurythmy here should not be confused with anything mimic, pantomime or even dance-like.

Our eurythmy has nothing to do with any of this. Rather, it is about creating a real visible language that comes about through movements of one's own human body. If I may use Goethe's expression, this language is studied through sensual and supersensory observation of what takes place in the human larynx and the other speech organs in terms of their structure and movement tendencies, while the human being develops speech or song. And precisely for this reason, what is represented through eurythmy approaches the musical on the one hand, and thus comes close to the purely musical, the instrumental, while on the other hand it approaches the thinking, which is expressed through poetry.

But, as I said, it is not a matter of some random gesture, of something mimed, so that a single gesture might be sought for the stirring of the soul, for the feeling. Rather, it is a matter of seeking out that what the larynx and its neighboring organs want to do when a person forms this or that sound, when they form this or that sequence of sounds, when they bring language into those laws through which it can form the basis for the poetic arts and so on. So that one does not see the essence of eurythmy in the individual gestures – it is not about gestures at all – but in the sequence of gestures, just as one has to look for the essence in the sequence of notes in music and in the sequence of sounds in speech, which is what matters.

In this way the whole human being becomes, as it were, a visible speech organ. The whole human being becomes a larynx and presents speech or song and music on the stage. And the laws of this language are derived from the same foundations as human speech. The only difference is that in the latter case, it is only the larynx and the other speech organs that make the initial movement. Then the movement is held in while this movement tendency comes into contact with the external air. What is set in motion in the larynx is transformed into an outward movement of the air, and speech is created. What is present in the larynx or in the other speech organs before speech is formed is transferred to the whole person and expressed through the whole person.

It is based on both Goethe's view of nature and art, namely Goethe's artistic attitude. Goethe founded the theory of metamorphosis, that magnificent view of the inner lawfulness and essence of living things, which is still far from being appreciated and which will most certainly continue to play a major role in the future, scientifically. If we take just one aspect of Goethe's view of nature, not to present it as a theory but for a different purpose, which will be shown in a moment, if we take just one aspect, we have to say that in the individual plant leaf Goethe sees the whole plant in its potential; in the whole plant he sees a complex leaf. So that to him, life is a combination of details that are equal to the whole in idea, but which in turn are formed according to the same principle into a unity on a large scale. What Goethe has as an insight into form in his theory of metamorphosis should meet you artistically in eurythmy.

When a person formulates speech, one aspect of their organization, the speech organs, is activated. In a sense, the entire human organization is active, localized in the human speech organs, just as Goethe saw the whole plant localized in the plant leaf from the outset, so to speak. But what can be observed through sensory-supersensory vision in the larynx can be transferred to the whole human being in the same way that one can think of the organizing force of the [whole] plant being transferred to the [single] leaf. In this way one has a real, visible language, governed by natural laws, which can then be given artistic form. Of course, as a visible language it is not artistic at first; it must be given artistic form, and then it can be used to express the same things that the poet or the composer express through their artistic forms.

If we judge what eurythmy is meant to be by its gestural expression, then we will not be able to judge it at all. We will only be able to judge it if we see the laws of movement in eurythmy in the same way that we see the melodious element in the lawful progression of tones. In this, my dear audience, the human being is taken as an instrument for artistic expression, and in this way, too, we come close to the highest sense of Goethe's artistic spirit. Goethe spoke beautifully about the relationship between the human being and the rest of the world. He said: When the human being is placed at the summit of nature, he in turn feels himself to be all of nature, taking in order, harmony, measure and meaning and rising to the creation of the work of art.

The best way for a person to create a work of art is to see themselves as an instrument that combines order, harmony, measure and meaning. This is precisely what eurythmy does, not by using an external musical instrument but by using the human being themselves, the human organization, as a tool. But, my dear audience, one comes very close to the artistic through this eurythmy, closer than through many other artistic means and formal languages. For let us take the poetic language: Especially in the civilized languages, since language is on the one hand thoroughly permeated by a moving (?) Element that actually serves only human communication. What is originally a direct poetic, artistic element in language thus passes into prose. Likewise, the linguistic element in a civilized language passes into prose through the inclusion of the thought element. Thought as such is the inartistic element, and the more form something contains, the less it contains of artistic effects.

In our languages, it is therefore difficult to produce something truly artistic without resorting to new means of expression. After all, poetry is basically only as artistic as its musicality - rhythm, meter, and so on - and its pictorial-plasticity. The literal is not the essence of poetry. That is why I must always point out that true poets, who as poets are also artistic through and through – such as Schiller, for example – did not initially place the main emphasis on the literal content of a poem , but rather he had a certain indeterminate melody in his soul, and it was from this indeterminate melody that he first shaped that to which he, so to speak, gives the literal content. And Goethe placed so little value on the literal in poetry, even in drama, and much more on the rhythmic, the metrical, the musical and pictorial, that he himself studied his Iphigenia with his actors, conducting it with a baton like a piece of music.

You can see how eurythmy, by observing it, leads back that which becomes prosaic in thought, that which, in thought, leads away from art in poetry, how that which is prosaic in thought is led back into the will element, in which the whole human being becomes a means of expression. But because everything conventional and everything conceptual is gone from the language, because the language works as a visible means of expression through the whole human being, through this, especially in poetry, it is reduced to the actual artistic basis of it.

This can be seen from the fact that, for example, when recitation is done in parallel with the eurythmic presentation, it cannot be recited in the same way as an unartistic time like the present imagines recitation. One recites according to the literal content, that is, according to the prose. Today recitation is basically only done according to the prose. The literal content is taken as the basis and then articulated and so on. But the artistic basis of poetry must also be incorporated into the recitation and declamation as rhythm and meter. Today it is not loved. Eurythmy can only be accompanied by this artistic element of recitation and declamation. In this way, eurythmy can have a healing effect on the art of recitation and declamation. Therefore, recitation must be done somewhat differently than is popular today. This is something I wanted to note about the artistic element of eurythmy.

Now eurythmy also has other meanings for the whole culture of the present. First of all, it has an element - which I do not want to discuss here because it requires too much detail - a hygienic-therapeutic element, which is also a social element, so that eurythmy can also be used in therapy and hygiene. But the third element, and this I wish to emphasize here, is the didactic-pedagogical element. We have introduced eurythmy as a compulsory subject at the Waldorf School in Stuttgart, which was founded by Emil Molt and is now under my direction. We have seen that in the one year since the school has had eurythmy, it has been able to achieve something very significant for children by including it.

What is eurythmy for the child? The child derives great joy from practising eurythmy simply because it can move in forms that are taken directly from the laws of its own physical organization. It feels at home in its element, so to speak, and feels that it can do what the body wants to do. We did not introduce eurythmy to replace gymnastics, but as a supplement to it. For the child, eurythmy is like soul-filled gymnastics. Gymnastics is - I do not want to go so far as I was recently told, even after I had spoken such words before a eurythmy performance, a famous contemporary physiologist who was here. He told me that from his physiological point of view, he saw no educational value at all in gymnastics, only barbarism. But I just want to say that gymnastics trains the physical side of the human being. This soul-filled gymnastics, eurythmy, trains the whole human being in body, soul and spirit. And so children benefit from it greatly, especially in terms of what is most urgently needed at the present time: we must have more inner willpower, more soul initiative, in the next generation than we have at the present time. And eurythmy, when introduced to the child at the right age and in the right pedagogical and didactic way, has an effect on the development of the soul and the will.

Furthermore, when children from the age of seven, eight, nine, when they have not yet reached sexual maturity – later this is no longer an issue, but at this time it is very much an issue – when children perform this, they have to devote themselves entirely to the expression with their whole organization, then it has an effect in the sense of truthfulness. And in our time – when language itself becomes a temptation to use empty phrases due to the conventionalization of our words and thus a temptation to untruthfulness – it must have a beneficial effect pedagogically when we eurythmy has something that draws us directly to truthfulness, because you cannot learn a lie or learn a phrase if you have to work with the whole human being as a tool for language.

And much more could be said. I just wanted to point in the direction of how eurythmy can become significant as a pedagogical-didactic tool. But all this, ladies and gentlemen, is in its infancy. Those who have been here often will see how we have tried to progress in the last few months. We have now also found forms for what was there before, which emphasized the means of expression, so that we can either introduce the poetry or let it fade away in forms that are intended to work without musical or declamatory accompaniment. This way, we can show how this art of movement is a real visible language that can also speak for itself. In general, we have made progress in terms of shaping the successive formations in recent times.

We will try to continue to make progress. But nevertheless, it must always be taken into account in such a performance that the audience is asked to be forgiving. We ourselves are our own harshest critics and know that we have not yet come very far. But we also know that this eurythmic art carries something within it that can be further developed, perhaps to some extent still by us, but probably by others. And then what is now present in the germ can be further developed. And all those who see through the nature of the eurythmic art are convinced that eurythmy will be able to position itself as a worthy younger art alongside its worthy older sister arts.

Program for the performance in Dornach, December 11 and 12, 1920

“Zum neuen Jahr” (On the New Year) by J. W. v. Goethe
“Der Spaziergang” (The Walk) by Martin Opitz
Saying from the Calendar of the Soul (35.) by Rudolf Steiner
“Mächtiges Überraschen“ by J. W. v. Goethe
“Waldkonzerte” by Christian Morgenstern with music by Max Schuurman
“The evening bells“ by Thomas Moore
“Morgenlied” by C. F. Meyer
Saying from the soul calendar (38.) by Rudolf Steiner
“Forest Song“ by Nikolaus Lenau with music by Walter Abendroth
“Evening Feeling” by Friedrich Hebbel
“Yes“ by C. F. Meyer
“To a Dead One” by Rudolf Steiner with music by Walter Abendroth
Scene with Sylphs and Gnomes from the 2nd picture of The Awakening of the Soul by R. Steiner

Dear attendees!

Allow me to say a few words in advance of our attempt at a eurythmic presentation – not to explain the content of the presentation (artistic work must speak for itself, and an explanation would naturally be out of place because it would be inartistic itself), but it is necessary to say a few words in advance because what we are calling eurythmic art here draws from previously unfamiliar artistic sources and also makes use of an artistic formal language that is also unfamiliar.

You will see a kind of spatial movement art: the individual human being moves on stage, moves in his limbs or also groups of people, groups of people in their mutual relationships, in reciprocal movement and so on. The movements involved are not gestures, they are not facial expressions, so what is presented here as the eurythmic art is not to be understood as anything like dance. And it is precisely a new art that uses the human being as an instrument, and the movements are entirely lawful movements.

This conformity to law has come about through the fact that the movements that a person makes in their larynx and other speech organs when they engage in spoken language have been studied through sensual and supersensible observation – to use this Goethean expression. Only: in spoken language, the movements that the larynx and the other speech organs want to carry out – the inner movements, or better said, the movement systems – are stopped in their development and transformed into smaller vibrational movements that carry the sound through the air so that it can be heard. That which still takes place inside the human speech organs is transferred to the whole person or to groups of people. The basis for this is what Goethe's metamorphosis is. Since everything that comes from this spiritual place is in the sense of Goetheanism, so too is this eurythmic art as a detail.

Goethe formed the doctrine of metamorphosis out of his universal world view. And if I want to characterize something abstractly – not to develop some kind of theory, but just to explain myself – the simple way in which Goethe applies this doctrine of plant metamorphosis, I would have to say the following: Goethe sees in each individual leaf, as he himself says, a whole plant, so that if everything that is ideally present in each individual leaf really grows out, the whole plant arises. The whole plant is thus a complex leaf, and each individual leaf is a primitive, elementary plant, in idea. What Goethe has expounded for the metamorphosis of organisms – for he extended this to all organisms – can also be applied to the functions and formations of the organism and then transferred to the artistic. If we take what is present in a single group of organs, in the larynx and the other speech organs, in terms of their structure and also in terms of their idea, and transform it into movements of the whole human being, thus making the whole human being or groups of people into a larynx that is vividly moved, we get a visible language. And this visible language is the basis of what our eurythmy art should be.

It is only natural that such an art, which makes use of unusual artistic means, will initially meet with resistance. All this resistance will fade away over time. What is being created here is not random gestures, in which, if they are supposed to be mimic gestures, random connections are sought between this or that arm movement and the like and some kind of emotional state. That is not being done here. Rather, just as a certain nuance of sound in spoken language corresponds to a certain process of the soul, as sequences of sounds correspond to processes of the soul, and so on, so it is here with the lawful sequence of movements. That which is otherwise expressed in spoken language, in song, in music in general, is simply represented by a different artistic means, by a different formal language, in eurythmy.

Therefore, as you will see at our performance, the very same thing that comes to light in eurythmy can be accompanied on the one hand by music. In this way, what is expressed through the sound is also expressed through human movement. But it can also be accompanied by visible speech, audible speech, recitation, declamation, so that on the one hand the poem is recited, and on the other hand the actual artistic content of the poem is translated into the visible language of eurythmy. This shows how, in our somewhat inartistic times, this eurythmy can in turn have an effect on how we develop artistic feelings, for example, in relation to recitation and declamation.

Today, what is considered particularly important in terms of recitation and declamation is the literal content of a poem. Actually, it is not the literal content that is important in a poem, but only that part of it that is either plastic-pictorial or musical. Therefore, the recitation and the declamation, in that they are to accompany the eurythmy, must take this into account, they must particularly emphasize the artistic, rhythm, beat, and inner shaping of the language, and one will again come back to the conception of the art of recitation as it existed in artistic epochs. I need only remind you that Goethe used the baton to rehearse his iambic dramas with his actors, just as one rehearses a piece of music, and thus also emphasized the iambic structure of the verse, not the literal content of the prose. It will also have an effect on the art of recitation, because this art of recitation must accompany the eurythmic, that which underlies the artistic aspect of eurythmy in the first place.

You will see, especially those of the honored audience who have seen these performances before, how we are even progressing from month to month. Earlier, we used this visible language of eurythmy to simultaneously present the poetic content during the recitation. Now we are trying to present the entire main content of a poem or the like through preparatory and concluding movements that are given purely through movements, so that the silent, visible language of eurythmy alone can also be shown to advantage now.

That, dear attendees, is the artistic element. It is one element of our eurythmy. The second element is what I would like to call the pedagogical-didactic element. This eurythmy is, in addition to being something artistic, also something that could be called soulful gymnastics. And as such it is effective in our Waldorf School, which was founded by Emil Molt in Stuttgart and which I have established and continue to lead. We have introduced eurythmy as a compulsory subject in all classes alongside gymnastics. It must be said that something like gymnastics will be judged differently by more artistically impartial ages than today's [people]. We really do not need to go as far as a famous contemporary physiologist who was here recently, who heard these introductory words and looked at eurythmy, as he said that from his physiological point of view gymnastics is not an educational tool at all, but a barbarism. Well, ladies and gentlemen, I am not saying this, but a contemporary physiologist, whose name would certainly command great respect from people if they heard it.

But I do not want to go that far. I want to say that gymnastics is something that is carried out according to the laws of physics and is designed according to the physiological foundations of the human being. If a child is allowed to perform the same movements that are meaningfully revealed in eurythmy, then the body, soul and spirit, that is, the whole person, is engaged. And we have already seen, now that we have been at the Stuttgart Waldorf School for more than a school year, how the children feel their way with great love into what is offered to them as the eurythmic art. They simply feel that these movements are drawn from the human organization itself.

And just as it is natural for a child to feel an inner, organic joy when learning to speak, so children between the ages of seven and fourteen or fifteen experience learning these eurythmic movements as something that is rooted in the whole organization, finding their way into this eurythmic. They find their humanity guided in the right direction. And one can say that of the almost four hundred children we have in the Waldorf School, there were perhaps at most two or three who did not enjoy it as much as all the other schoolchildren. So those who, for whatever reason, have found it difficult to get into eurythmy for a short time are a very small number compared to the great majority who take part in these lessons with tremendous enthusiasm. I may also say that this teaching educates the children in such a way that we really need: soul and will initiative, which gymnastics as such cannot do.

We will first present individual pieces in the first part of our performance. In the second part - after a short break - we will try to present a scene from one of my “mystery dramas”. Everything that relates to the supersensible, that is, that which means the supersensible reaches into the sensory world, is presented in eurythmy, while that which, I would like to say, takes place entirely in the prose of the day, that is, that which takes place in the sensory world, while that must of course be presented in a naturalistic way in the drama, at least initially. However, I do intend to find a kind of eurythmy for drama as such. But that is still to be created. It will then become clear that the imbalance that still exists today between the eurythmic and the purely naturalistic in drama will be overcome. But these are works that still need to be done. It just so happens that it is precisely this that is being shown – we have also shown, by attempting to present Goethe's “Faust” in such a way that we eurythmized what relates to the supersensible within it – we have shown and it could be seen from this that precisely these supersensible elements of the drama come to full revelation when eurythmy is applied to them.

I would just like to say a few words about the second part, which is performed after the interval. It presents a stage in the development of a soul. The soul encounters its own youth, externalized, at a certain point in its development, and other soul forces encounter it. That which otherwise takes place in the human being, not tangibly, is exposed, presented not as a symbolic figure, not allegorically transferred, but actually in such a way that it is presented in direct, supersensible spiritual reality. And for that, because it cannot be thought of in any other way than eurythmically – one cannot think of it in any other way than eurythmically, feel it eurythmically – eurythmy is particularly suitable.

From all this, however, you will see that we still have a great need to ask the esteemed audience for indulgence, because we ourselves are the strictest critics of what we are not yet able to achieve today. Eurythmy is still at the very beginning of its development. But as well as we can know that we are only making an attempt at a beginning, we can also still claim, out of our connection with our cause, that as our cause develops, whether through us or probably through others, that eurythmy will become ever more perfect and that one day it will truly stand as a young sister art alongside the older, fully-fledged sister arts and be able to be seen as a fully-fledged young art.

It was a performance with children's presentations for teachers. In the evening, there was a lecture by Rudolf Steiner on “Anthroposophy and the Art of Education”. The program for the performance is not available.

Dear attendees,
I would like to speak these introductory words not so much to explain our performance, but rather to draw attention to the artistic sources and artistic language of form from which that which we call our eurythmy seeks to express itself. Explaining an artistic achievement would, after all, itself be something inartistic. All art must work clearly through itself in the immediate impression. But here we are dealing, first of all, not with something that can be compared with neighboring arts, with dance arts or pantomime performances or the like, but with something that works from hitherto unfamiliar artistic sources and in a hitherto unfamiliar artistic formal language. Eurythmy, as we understand it here, is truly a kind of visible language. You will see movements performed on stage by individuals or groups of people in mutual positions to one another, in movements in space. These movements are by no means arbitrary, not something that has been thought up somehow, nor are they put together in such a way that one wants to make a gesture out of some feeling of the soul. Rather, they are based on the observation, to use this Goethean expression, of the movement tendencies, movement intentions, I would say, of the human speech organs – the larynx and its neighboring organs – when the human being comes to speech. In speech, it is not the movements that are carried out and that become airborne that reveal themselves, but rather the movements that arise from the whole human being when it wants to reveal itself through the forces, which are then stopped, as it were, stop in front of the larynx and the other speech organs and are then converted into those movements that become air movements and convey the sound to the human ear.

So what remains latent in man, what is not actually expressed in speech, but is only a tendency, because the spiritual is behind language, is observed by means of sensory and supersensory observation – carefully – and what is then transferred to the whole human being according to the method of Goethe's metamorphosis teaching. I would just like to point out that in his theory of metamorphosis, which unfortunately is still far too little appreciated today, Goethe views the organism in such a way that he says, for example: a single plant leaf is actually a whole plant, and the whole plant plant is an intricate leaf, the leaf is a simpler plant, a primitive plant, and the whole plant is an intricate leaf that can be recognized in its entirety. Each individual organ is such that the whole being can be recognized in it, in spirit.

In the same way, the human being as a whole is also found in the organs of speech, and what is expressed in the organs of speech through phonetic language can be transferred back to the whole human being. You will therefore see certain movements of people and groups of people as living speech organs, which appear not only to the ear but also to the eye. For everything that is otherwise expressed through music or poetry can be expressed in this visible language.

Only, for example, in declamation, recitation, must the rhythmic, the metrical, be adhered to, not the prose content, as is particularly popular today in declamation. If the poetry is recited at the same time as it is presented in eurythmy, if the two are parallel, then one is compelled to have eurythmy in the recitation as well. This is just as unusual today as eurythmy as a whole, and that is why many people reject it. However, it will become more accepted once people understand eurythmy better.

I just want to talk about the artistic side of things with these few words; but since we have come together here primarily for pedagogical reasons, I would like to point out that this eurythmy, in addition to its artistic side, has an essential pedagogical one and was introduced as a compulsory subject in the Free Waldorf School in Stuttgart, which is built entirely on our anthroposophical principles. We have seen how, during the year she has been working at the Waldorf School, she has been received by the children, I might say, with tremendous love and as a matter of course, especially by the children.

What is eurythmy for them? What is eurythmy for children? It is soul-inspired gymnastics. Gymnastics today are so developed that movements are only formed according to the laws of the human body. It is therefore something essential that is based on the physiology, the physical nature of the human being. Here we are dealing with something that is based on soul and spiritual observations in every movement. The child notices that the whole person is transformed into movement. That is why you can achieve something with children through this eurythmy that you cannot achieve through ordinary gymnastics.

I certainly do not want to go as far as a famous contemporary physiologist who recently spoke these kinds of introductory words. He later told me: gymnastics is not an educational tool at all, but barbarism. As I said, I did not say that myself, but an excellent physiologist; he did not want to accept that any educational value was attached to gymnastics at all. It has a significance as a physical educational tool. But here, with eurythmy as a subject to be taught, it is important that, above all, what the next generation needs so much – will need even more than before – the initiative of the will, the inspired initiative of the will, is expressed in this physical education. With adults, eurythmy has less of an effect in this sense, but with children, the following also comes into play: when a person is forced to express himself through visible movements, he is at the same time compelled to fight within himself everything that is empty verbiage. And if we remember how we live in the present in the phrase - and the phrase is only the lesser sister of the lie - so we can regard what eurythmy shows as an educational tool for children, as an educational tool for truthfulness. And above all, it must be emphasized that children feel how these things are drawn from the laws of the human organism, how natural being flows from these things. The child feels this. This is what makes eurythmy particularly suitable as an educational tool.

Finally, I would like to add that we are well aware that eurythmy is in its infancy in terms of both its educational and artistic aspects. We know this very well. But we also know that if this beginning - we ourselves are the strictest critics of what we can already do today - but if this beginning is perhaps expanded by us and later by others, the time will come when not only will this eurythmy be able to stand as a fully-fledged younger art alongside the older fully-fledged arts, but it will also be taken for granted as a means of educating young people in the richest way. We are convinced that this will certainly be recognized one day. For the time being, however, we still need to ask for patience and forbearance for what we can do today – we are just at the beginning, perhaps only at the beginning of an attempt. But for us it is a promising beginning.

Dear attendees!

Allow me to say a few words to introduce this eurythmy performance, as I usually do. Not to explain the matter, may I be allowed to speak to you about these words; rather, because what we are doing here is based on an artistic form that is still unfamiliar and also comes from artistic sources that are still unfamiliar. What you will see on the stage are movements of the individual human being through his limbs, and also movements of groups of people, spatial forms and the like. At first glance, all this could be seen as a kind of gestural art, as a kind of mimic or pantomime art, and could be confused with all kinds of neighboring arts, movement-like arts and the like. However, this is not what is meant here at all. What can be seen here as eurythmy would be misunderstood if lumped together with pantomime or gesticulation. This is a presentation of a visible language that is performed by the whole human being, as audible speech is otherwise performed by the larynx and other speech organs, that is, by a very specific, localized part of the human organism.

Just as everything else that comes from this place is called Goetheanism by us, so too can we, in a sense, describe this eurythmic art as a part of Goetheanism. I can best describe the underlying principles by saying a few words about them. It may sound somewhat abstract, but that is not what I mean at all. What Goethe meant in theory in his theory of metamorphosis is meant entirely artistically. This theory of metamorphosis will one day play a much greater role than it has already played, when it is realized that the organism, the human being, can actually be wonderfully explained by the theory of metamorphosis, be it in plants, animals or humans.

This theory of metamorphosis can be initially illustrated using the object with which Goethe himself first presented it: the plant. For Goethe sees in the individual plant leaf only a simpler version of the whole plant. So each individual leaf is the idea of a whole plant, and the whole plant in turn is only a more complicated leaf. But in this way, everything alive can be understood in the Goethean sense. A single organ or a group of organs always represents the whole in a certain way – according to its disposition. And the whole is basically only – only more complicatedly formed – some organ or a group of organs.

What Goethe applies to form can also be applied to the activity of the organism and then elevated to the artistic. So we can say: What a person develops as a certain inner tendency of movement when he speaks – in every sound, in every turn of phrase, in everything that becomes audible through speech – is based on an inner tendency of movement. This is precisely why the whole human being reveals himself in language.

What takes place in a particular group of organs when a person communicates through speech or, in particular, when he or she expresses it artistically in poetry or song, what is communicated through a single group of organs, can be seen just as as the individual leaf is taken by Goethe as the whole plant, so that which is revealed in a single organ group, once one has learned to observe it through sensory and supersensory vision and has applied this observation over the course of years, can be extended to the whole human being: And so a visible language comes into being that can be used, on the one hand, as a different form of expression for that which also resounds in music. In music, we have, on the one hand, what is to be revealed out of the nature of the soul in the beginning; in poetry, we have the other side. And since we are dealing here with movements in a visible language, in which the whole human being or groups of people become visible larynxes on the stage, what wants to reveal itself musically on the one hand and poetically in recitation or declamation on the other can be revealed through this eurythmic art. It is not about mimicry or pantomime.

One can see that this is still unusual today, because I am repeatedly confronted with an accusation that is often raised at eurythmy performances: that the movements might be quite nice, but that our eurythmy artists are missing something, namely a certain expression on their faces. People then miss that.

But in doing so, they show that they have not yet grasped what eurythmy is about. If the artists were to convey what can be expressed in facial expressions, pantomime, in the physiognomy, then this would appear as an appendage to the eurythmic art, in the same way as grimaces can appear when speaking. That is what is usually not understood: that it is a visible language. Once you grasp that, you also know that if what is expressed in the face, head and so on is to be developed, then it will also be used, but it must lie within the meaning of the eurythmic line of movement itself. In this sense, eurythmy is something, let us say, like the musical art itself, where it is not the individual note that matters, the individual movement, but the lawful sequence of movements in the melody and so on. That is what our eurythmy is based on. Everything is a real language. And just as a momentary gesture cannot be anything other than an aid to speech – for instance, for the speech of sounds, when particular passions or particular emotions are to be expressed through this speech of sounds – in this sense, something of ordinary gestures or ordinary facial expressions cannot accompany that which is eurythmy. But the eurythmic element is present in every single movement, even in the smallest, and is something that is based on sensual and supersensory observation and that is extracted from the whole human organization as an independent element, just as the physiognomy of the larynx and the other speech organs is otherwise brought about from the whole of the human being in the production of speech sounds.

Therefore, what asserts itself as a eurythmic movement cannot be compared to any other naturalistic movement. Above all, it would be a dilettantish misunderstanding of eurythmy to believe that what comes about through distortions or through the facial expressions that are already formed, that this is somehow something like language; but something cannot be there because it does not belong to the thing.

On the one hand, you will see how that which is to be revealed spiritually in song and music is expressed through the visible, musical-linguistic expressive movement that lies in eurythmy. And on the other hand, you will hear poems recited in an artistic way, through recitation and declamation, which on the other hand will be performed in front of you in the movements of individuals or whole groups of people. This shows how the art of declamation and recitation is not really understood in its true artistic element today. Today, people think that recitation should be done in such a way that the prose content of the poetry is expressed. Somehow – with particular intensity, as one might think – this or that element of the prose content is emphasized, while something else is dropped or the like.

In this way, one would never be able to accompany eurythmy declamatory or recitative, but because in eurythmy the main thing is inner movement, what forms are, what is truly artistic, must also be emphasized in the poems that are recited to the accompaniment of eurythmy. Great poets like Goethe have always placed the greatest value on this form and design of language. It must be emphasized again and again how Goethe himself rehearsed “Iphigenia” - that is, iambs - with a baton in order to place the main emphasis on the melodious flow of speech, on rhythm and on the beat, and not on the prose content. And with Schiller it was always the case that before he developed any kind of poetry, he had a kind of melodious element in his soul. And this musical, melodious element dominated him; at first it was completely wordless, the words only came later.

So what is musical or plastic in language, which is not the prose content, is what comes to the fore through eurythmy. This is why, when eurythmy is accompanied by declamation and recitation, it must also come into its own in this art. And so the unartistic element, which is even admired in much of our declaiming and reciting today because our time is somewhat unartistic, will in turn lead us back to an artistic element. I just wanted to mention this in relation to the artistic element of our eurythmy.

Today, however, you will also see performances by children, in addition to the artistic eurythmy performances. And I would like to point out another element here. There is also a third element, the therapeutic and hygienic element. It does not belong here to discuss that, but the second. I would like to point out: In the Waldorf School founded by Emil Molt and directed by me, we have something like an animated gymnastics, [we have] introduced eurythmy as a compulsory teaching subject into the classroom. And we can truly say – the lessons have been going on for a little longer than a year now – that it is really as one might expect: this subject is perceived by the children as something that they feel and experience quite emotionally as emerging from human nature. So that the children feel: the body wants to move in the way that is performed in eurythmy.

You don't have to go as far as – as I have repeatedly stated – a very famous contemporary physiologist, who was present here recently. And when I spoke to him about it, he told me from his physiological point of view that gymnastics is not an appropriate subject for teaching at all, but is something barbaric. As I said, I do not want to go that far, it is not necessary, but I do want to admit, contrary to this physiologist: gymnastics is of great value for physical education, and we certainly do not want to ban it from the classroom. But we place at its side a spiritualized gymnastics that truly not only trains the body but also trains the will and soul. It will be seen that the next generation will already have a great need for what eurythmy can give - this applies less to adults, but more to children. It must be emphasized that in the civilised languages, where much has become conventional, this conventionality, which often leads to phrase-mongering and then to lies, takes hold of the soul so easily. If we introduce eurythmy into the school, it is a language that comes from the whole human being. In this language, the child cannot learn to lie. That is why it is so extremely important that eurythmy is also used as a form of soul training in schools, alongside the usual physical education. As a teaching subject, it is then also a school of truthfulness, of breaking the habit of using empty phrases, of merely outward convention and the like.

Dear audience, although these intentions are all connected with eurythmy, I have to emphasize again and again before each performance that we have to ask for a great deal of forbearance, and that is because it is all only just beginning. We are our own harshest critics, and those who have been here often, especially months ago, will have noticed that we have recently put a lot of effort into the musical aspects, especially in the design of the forms on which the poems are based, and that progress can certainly be seen. But we are just at the beginning. If, on the one hand, we are to some extent our own harshest critics, we know from the sources, from the formal language of this art, about its developmental possibilities. And we know that when this eurythmy is fully developed - perhaps we will be able to develop it further, but in any case it has potential for development that requires a long period of training - and when it is developed, perhaps by others, it will in any case, according to its potential, one day be a fully fledged art alongside its older sister arts.

Program of the performance in Dornach, February 6, 1921

From the “Chymischen Hochzeit” by Valentin Andreae with music by Max Schuurman
Saying from the Calendar of the Soul (44.) by Rudolf Steiner
Saying from the Calendar of the Soul (45.) by Rudolf Steiner
Saying from the soul calendar (46.) by Rudolf Steiner
“Little bird“ by Edward Grieg
“Question - Answer” with a musical prelude by Max Schuurman
“Where does evil come from?“ from: The test of the soul by R. Steiner
“Elf music I” by Jan Stuten
“Elfe“ Joseph von Eichendorff
“Elfenmusik II”
“Abendgefühle“ by Friedrich Hebbel
“Elfenmusik III”
“Mein Kind“ by Heinrich Heine
“Urtrieb VII” by Fercher von Steinwand
“Urtrieb VIII” by Fercher von Steinwand
Humoresques by Christian Morgenstern: “The Corf Clock”; “Palmström's Clock”; “The Water Donkey”; “The Mouse Trap” Address on Eurythmy, Dornach, February 6, 1921

Dear attendees!

Allow me to say a few words about our eurythmy performance. Artistic work must speak for itself, and it is not explained. The performance will speak for itself. But here in our eurythmy we are dealing with the attempt to achieve something from unusual artistic sources and with unusual art forms. And therefore a few words may be said about these art sources and this particular artistic language of forms.

You will see the moving human being as a human being, the movements of the individual limbs of the individual human being; you will see forms being performed by individuals and groups of people in space. All this is to be understood as a language that is to function in movement as a visible language. This visible language is constructed according to exactly the same principle as the spoken language.

Perhaps I may draw attention to Goethe's theory of metamorphosis, which even today has not been sufficiently appreciated in terms of the insights it can provide for man for an understanding of nature and life. For everything that emanates from the Goetheanum is, after all, based on what Goethe had already presented in The Elements, in both his view of nature and his view of art. Now, Goethe is of the opinion that every single organ or group of organs in a living being can be understood by looking at it as a more primitively formed individual, but still representing the whole in the idea: a single plant leaf is, in idea, a whole plant, only more primitively, simply formed. The whole plant is in turn only a precious [more complicated?] simpler leaf. Goethe tried to explain this on the basis of the forms of the plant kingdom, the animal kingdom, and also the human kingdom.

But it can also be said, by further expanding the mode of explanation, let us say, of the activity of the organism. And then one can raise it to the artistic level, and one gets, in a certain way, what we call the eurythmic art. One can, to use this Goethean expression, namely, state through sensual-supersensible observation, as a preliminary stage, which movement tendencies are inherent in the larynx and the other speech organs when one prepares to speak or when one speaks. These are not exactly the movements that are transmitted to the air for hearing, but rather they are the tendencies of movement. Only through sensory-supersensory observation can one study this for the individual sound, for word formation, for sentence formation. Then one can transfer it. Just as what the individual leaf offers for observation relates organically to the whole plant and extends to it, so, according to the Goethean principle, what takes place in the larynx and its neighboring organs can be extended to the whole human being, so that this visible eurythmic language arises. So, in a sense, you see the moving larynx in front of you in the individual person and in groups of people.

It is usually misunderstood that one is dealing with a real, visible language. It has often been said by people who have seen such a eurythmy performance that what should be emphasized is not emphasized, namely a certain physiognomic expression in the face, a play of expression and the like. Well, to a certain extent that may be correct; but it is not correct in the extent to which it is demanded. For it is not a matter of some kind of mimic performance or pantomime, nor is it a matter of ordinary dance and the like, but rather of a language that has been specially developed through study. And just as one cannot accompany ordinary spoken language with gestures, so one cannot accompany the visible language of eurythmy with any old gestures or with a facial expression borrowed from the moment. Rather, what is presented here as eurythmy cannot be reduced to anything mimic or pantomime, but the lawfulness only comes to expression when one contemplates the organic, or I might say, melodic succession of the movement.

My dear audience, it is also the case with spoken language that we are dealing with sounds that do not mean something clearly and directly. For then one would not be able to form something artistic out of spoken language in the poetic arts. Therefore, what is pantomimed or mimicked or the like is never really artistic. Rather, just as the artistic element in poetry is based on the fact that phonetic language leaves something behind when one takes its mere meaning, so eurythmy is based on the fact that it is by no means the case that a hand movement or the like means what a hand movement presents when one uses hand movements or the like to help with something that is spoken. Rather, through the inner laws of the human organism, something is brought forth from this organism that expresses the inner soul life through this movement in exactly the same way as the inner soul life is expressed in spoken language.

And so we can shape eurythmy artistically, which is by no means a random gesture, but something that wells up out of the human organism with such regularity when the organism experiences something, just as speech wells out of it. Just as speech is something that comes out of the human organism, so the art of the eurythmic gesture is one that, although the gestures are unequivocally connected with the sound and so on , but which are not thought up at all, and cannot be invented as such for any poem or piece of music, but which so regularly reflect what lies in a poem or piece of music, just as spoken language itself does.

You will then find, on the one hand accompanied by music and on the other by corresponding poetry, what is presented in eurythmy itself, on the stage in the visible language of eurythmy. Precisely that which is expressed in a different form in music or in poetry is revealed in a special way through eurythmy, so that it can be seen. And what is suppressed is more that which is the life of thought, the inner life in speaking, and more consideration is given to the will element that is rooted in the whole human being, which emerges from deep foundations of the human soul. This is precisely what comes out of the movement. Just as speech sounds are, so too are the gestures of eurythmy, which are not thought up at all, nor can they be invented as such for a poem or a piece of music, but which regularly reflect what lies in a poem or a piece of music, just as speech sounds themselves do.

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

On the whole, it can be said that what is presented in the visible language of eurythmy actually happens in a much less conventional sense. This is because in our civilized life, the linguistic element has acquired a conventional or even a mental coating. However, these two are a thoroughly inartistic element, especially in the civilized languages.

Then I would like to say a few words about the fact that, in addition to the artistic element, this eurythmy also has a thoroughly hygienic-therapeutic side. These are also movements that can be drawn from the organism itself and that also have a healing effect for the child. This hygienic-therapeutic direction is not developed in the same way as in art, but it is developed in a different way.

And above all, there is a third side, the pedagogical-didactic. We have introduced eurythmy as an objective [compulsory?] subject in the Waldorf School in Stuttgart. Although we have only been able to observe these effects for five quarters of a year or a year and a half, it is already quite clear that the children empathize with and immerse themselves in this eurythmy with great naturalness. For the children sense this soul-inspired movement – which is eurythmy, as well as being an art form – as something that arises directly from the organism. They find their way into it, and what develops is what one might call an initiative of the soul life. This cannot develop at all through ordinary gymnastics.

It must be said – although I am not sure whether many people today would still find it almost offensive if one thought about gymnastics so objectively, but I would not want to go as far as it happened to me a few weeks ago, when a very famous physiologist of the present day, who had seen one of our who had seen one of our eurythmy performances and with whom I later spoke about gymnastics and told him that gymnastics was more for the body and eurythmy more for the whole person because it encompasses body, soul and spirit, said: gymnastics is not an art at all, but a barbarism. As I said, I did not make this statement up. I only mention it because we still face so much hostility towards our eurythmy. But perhaps people will soon think more objectively about these things. They will recognize what such inspired gymnastics is in the classroom and will also recognize that, especially with children (this is less relevant for adults), eurythmy works as a means to wean them of the conventional, the trite, and the untruthful. It is truly a training in truthfulness. When the child is to express this with his whole body, this visible language of eurythmy, he cannot become untruthful, cannot become formulaic, cannot incline towards lies. It is a school of truthfulness for seven-, twelve- or fourteen-year-olds when they undergo these eurythmy lessons at school.

These are the different sides of eurythmy. Today, as I always do at these events, I would like to emphasize: we are definitely only at the beginning with our eurythmy; it may only represent the attempt at a beginning. We ourselves are the strictest critics with regard to what is still missing; but we are also convinced that if you see these performances more often, as I hope you will, you will also be able to see that what was present in the germ has already grown. You may remember how we have been working precisely to create silent forms or to further develop the forms in general, especially in the last few months. If we continue to work in this direction, we will see that there is something in this eurythmy that can be developed in an incredible way, so that we may believe that for this eurythmy, even if it is no longer developed by us but by others, the moment will come when it will be recognized as a fully fledged art alongside the other sister arts. So that is what I wanted to say in a few words in advance of our eurythmic presentation.

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

From February 19 to March 3, 1921, Rudolf Steiner went on a lecture tour through the Netherlands, which included public eurythmy performances. The performances took place in Hilversum (February 20), Amsterdam (March 22 and 3), Rotterdam (26) and The Hague (February 27, 1921). Only Rudolf Steiner's eurythmy speeches in Hilversum and The Hague were recorded; in Amsterdam on March 3, Jan Stuten gave the introduction. A program with the German texts was created for the performances.

Dear attendees!

Allow me to say a few introductory words, not to explain the performance, that would be an inartistic undertaking. Eurythmy is intended to be an artistic performance, and that which is art must have an immediate effect, must have an effect by being directly absorbed - and not only through some kind of explanation. If I say this in advance, however, it is because our eurythmic art does make use of certain artistic means and an artistic formal language that one was previously hardly accustomed to.

What we call the eurythmic arts should not be confused with pantomime or mime or any kind of dance. Eurythmy is not any of these. Eurythmy wants to be a real visible language, and the more it resembles mime or pantomime, the less it corresponds to its true essence. Eurythmy is based on the fact that careful study has been made, through what can be called sensory-supersensory observation and observation, of the movement tendencies of the human larynx and the other speech organs when the sound language is heard. The speech organs do not make these movements, they do not carry them out, but they have the disposition for them within them. These tendencies, which are thoroughly grounded in the human organism when speaking and which are realized in the ordinary audible speaking in sounds, in movements in the air, these movements are now transferred to the whole human being according to Goethe's law of metamorphosis.

So you will have the whole human being on stage – if I may express it in such a paradoxical way – like a moving larynx. You will see speech as you are accustomed to hearing it. Therefore, one should not expect the inner movements of the soul, the emotions, passions and so on, which are expressed in poetry or music, to be portrayed by momentary gestures. That is not the case. Some people say, for example, that they do not see the facial expressions in our eurythmy. It would be a misunderstanding to want to see the facial expressions differently than one sees them in ordinary speech. Just as one does not make faces with one's face when speaking normally, one cannot have an unnatural facial expression accompany eurythmy.

In eurythmy, every sound, every combination of sounds, and now that we have come a little further with the eurythmic art, every sentence structure, everything that can be expressed in language, has its specific eurythmic form, just as one always articulated the very same forms in speech, just as one also articulates a sound in speech in one way or another, depending on how it is embedded in the overall context. The laws of eurythmy are the laws of language. In the presentation of eurythmy as an art, these laws go beyond what language can offer in terms of rhythm, beat and so on. This is how the artistic aspect of eurythmy is then developed. This can be seen particularly clearly in the accompaniment of the eurythmic. Since eurythmy is just another form of expression for the audible word, everything that is in the music is expressed in eurythmy. It is, so to speak, just as possible to sing while doing eurythmic movements – to sing not audibly but visibly – as it is to perform a poem in eurythmy.

To make this more understandable, the eurythmy presentation is occasionally accompanied on the one hand by the corresponding music, which is then only a different expression of the eurythmic, or on the other hand by recitation and declamation.

The importance of the eurythmic can be seen from the fact that the eurythmic can only be accompanied in a certain way in declamation and recitation. Today, we live in an unartistic time, and people love to work out the prose content of a poem, especially in declamation. Great and significant artists did not consider this to be the right approach. Rather, they always regarded as truly poetic that which is either pictorial or musical in language. Schiller, for example, always had an indeterminate melody in his soul before he had the literal prose content of the poem; this prose content then merely leaned against this indeterminate melody.

In eurythmy, this rhythmic element must be brought out, because it is the real artistic content of poetry. That is why poetry comes to the fore in this visible language of eurythmy. So don't look for something pantomimic or mimetic in what we present, but look for a visible language. That is all I have to say about the artistic side.

But eurythmy has other meanings as well. For example, it has a very important hygienic and therapeutic significance. It can be developed in a special way for the field of health. I do not want to talk about that now.

We have also developed eurythmy in a pedagogical-didactic sense. We introduced it as a compulsory subject alongside gymnastics in the Free Waldorf School in Stuttgart. This shows how beneficial this soul-filled physical activity is, because it is an art: a soul-filled physical activity in which the human being not only moves as the body requires, but as the body, soul and spirit require. This has an enormously beneficial effect on children. It educates them to be proactive and truthful. For one can fall back on conventional phrases when speaking with words, but not when one places the whole human being in a visible language. Then one cannot present anything conventional, or in the form of empty phrases or lies. Less so with adults, but as a means of education for children, eurythmy is highly effective as an education in truthfulness. We were able to confirm this in the short time that we were able to use it at the Waldorf School.

So we will try to incorporate eurythmy into our cultural life from these aspects - the artistic, the medical-therapeutic and the pedagogical-didactic.

It must be said that the whole human being, with his natural disposition for the most diverse movements of his limbs, is used as an instrument, as a tool, for this eurythmic performance. And what could be a nobler tool for artistic performance than the human being himself, who is an image of the whole universe? This is what we hope for: that people will increasingly understand how art must be stimulated by using not only external tools, but also the human being itself.

Recently, we have tried to express what is directly linguistic through the movements that the human being himself performs with his limbs. What is syntax, rhythm, and meter is represented by the movements in the context of the mutual position of the individual players. You will see solo performances and group performances. In the latter case, the group is a living larynx. Both are artistically designed visible language. And one may well say with Goethe that this eurythmy strives, if not remotely in a perfect way, then at least in the Goethean sense, for what this poet and artist expresses with the words from his art and world view: 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 within itself. To this end, he rises to the challenge by permeating himself with all perfections and virtues, invoking order, harmony and meaning, and finally rising to the production of the work of art.

If the human being now gives himself as a tool to bring about the presentation of the work of art, then at least a higher level is striven for in art. Nevertheless, I must ask for your indulgence for our presentation. We are still our own harshest critics. Eurythmy is at the beginning of its development. Although we have added a lot to the initial form in recent years, especially in terms of design, we know full well that the eurythmic art floats before us like a lofty ideal. But it should be presented, because it is the secret of artistic work that it can only develop in the right way if understanding is awakened in the broadest circles for the whole process of becoming. We can develop an art by developing understanding for it. And as much as we are fully convinced that we must ask for forbearance, we must also be able to look at how, at some point, this eurythmic art - if no longer by ourselves, but perhaps by others, can be developed into something that, even if it is the youngest art, can still stand alongside its older sister arts as a fully-fledged art.

Dear attendees,

First of all, I would like to apologize for the fact that neither these introductory words nor the accompanying poems are spoken in Dutch. Since we are using German, you will have to make do with receiving these words and the accompanying poems in German.

If I, dear attendees, say a few words of introduction to our presentation, a performance of eurythmic art, it is not to explain the art of eurythmy itself, which you will see afterwards. To explain art would itself be an inartistic endeavor. And eurythmy is meant to be art first and foremost. I am sending these words ahead for the sole reason that our eurythmic art makes use of particular artistic means of expression that we have not been accustomed to before, and because it also draws from artistic sources that we have not been accustomed to either. It is very easy to confuse what is meant here with pantomime or mime or even with some kind of dance.

So, my dear attendees, we are not dealing with the forms of movement that are then translated into the air to convey the spoken word, but rather with the movement tendencies in the larynx and the other human speech organs that do not come to real manifestation. These have been carefully studied. Then, according to the principle of Goethe's theory of metamorphosis, according to which the whole plant is in the form of a leaf and in this sense everything alive can be understood and represented, then that which otherwise only comes to revelation in one group of human organs - and there in a different way, through spoken language - is transferred to the whole human being, to groups of people.

So you will really hear a visible language coming from the stage. Through this visible language, both the musical and the poetic can be expressed. On the one hand, you will therefore see the eurythmic performances accompanied by the musical: one can sing in this silent, visible language to the musical. One can also present the poetic in eurythmy. Every single sound, every sequence of sounds, the formation of words and sentences: just as they have their corresponding manifestation in the language of sound, they also have this manifestation in this visible language, which will now appear before you. The only difference is that everything that is initially eurythmic speech is realized in artistic forms corresponding to the poetry or music.

Therefore, what you will encounter as accompanying recitation and declamation will have to take on a different character from that which is particularly loved in a somewhat inartistic age in terms of declamation and recitation. The great poets always have, before the literal content of a poem, an artistic form, something melodious, something musical or something imaginative and real, which is at first only a moving rhythm, a moving beat, something like a melodious theme, and so on, to which the literal prose content is then added. This word-for-word recitation and declamation, which we love today, could not accompany eurythmy. Here the recitation and declamation must itself become eurythmy, that is to say: not by particularly emphasizing the prose content of the poem and the like, but by shaping the sound forms and sound laws. Those who no longer experience an inner aesthetic joy in language and its configuration – quite apart from the content of the thoughts – will hardly do justice to the recitation and declamation that eurythmy must accompany.

In this way, eurythmy is truly visible language or visible song. Anything pantomime-like, anything mimetic, anything dance-like is excluded. This is a common misunderstanding. And there is another misunderstanding that is also common. People demand a certain physiognomic expression because they think that eurythmy has something to do with facial expressions or the like, and they miss it here. We deliberately do not give it in the usual form, but only in the form that every movement of the face and head must correspond to the eurythmic. Just as one cannot accompany the sound movements with the face, which would be perceived as grimacing if exaggerated, one cannot accompany the eurythmic speech with what people demand as the “moved countenance” out of misunderstanding.

You will see how – just as in music in a melodious theme – the artistic element is expressed in the lawful sequence of movements when eurythmizing. We are trying more and more to transform the ordinary eurythmic into artistic eurythmic through complicated forms, which in turn have inner simplicity and harmony. You will notice this particularly in some group movements. In the second part, the humorous part, you will see how the eurythmic style, the eurythmic form, can also do justice to this difference in style - the serious on the one hand, the picturesque on the other - in the outer, visible form.

That is the artistic aspect of eurythmy. I would just like to mention in conclusion that this eurythmy also contains other elements, first of all what I only want to hint at, the hygienic-therapeutic aspect. Since the movements involved here are drawn from the whole human being, from the physical-organic foundation as well as from the soul-spiritual, they have an eminently healing effect. If they are developed in a certain way, the result is a hygienic-therapeutic eurythmy from which much can be expected for the future.

And there is a third element that we can study initially in its effect in our Waldorf School in Stuttgart, which was born and established as an independent school out of anthroposophical spiritual science by Emil Molt in Stuttgart and which I run. We have introduced eurythmy as a compulsory subject for children entering primary school until the years when they leave it again. For the children, it is not just an art, but a form of gymnastics that is imbued with soul and spirit. And we have seen how the children take these eurythmic movements, which are born entirely out of the human organization, for granted. Unlike gymnastics, which is born out of physiology, eurythmy is born out of soul and spirit. The children have an intimate joy and feel that their whole being is absorbed in this eurythmizing.

It can also be said that this eurythmy has a particular effect on the development of the will initiative, which we so urgently need in our time. And a third point may be suggested. It is not as applicable to adults who do eurythmy, but for children it is considered to be a particularly important educational tool. When we speak in ordinary language, we can conform to convention and lapse into empty phrases. A phrase is, after all, the less harmful, sometimes also very harmful, sister of the lie. But when we engage our whole being and use it as a means of expression, then we cannot lie, least of all teach lying, through a form of expression such as eurythmy. Therefore, eurythmy in schools proves to be a means of education for truthfulness. And to look for new means of education seems to me to be a particularly important task of the present.

That about the three elements of eurythmy. We are our own harshest critics, and we know that what we can present today is only the beginning, perhaps even an attempt at a beginning. We do not misjudge this, but we also know that Goethe's words are absolutely correct: 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 do this, he rises by permeating himself with all perfection, invoking order, harmony and meaning, and finally rising to the production of the work of art. When man rises to the production of a work of art in such a way that he does not use external tools, but his own organization, this human organism, which is a small world, a microcosm, containing all the secrets of the world, then, by using his own organism as a tool, man must indeed be able to represent the artistic that is hidden in the world at a particular level.

However, we are still a long way from reaching this level. Therefore, we must always apologize to the honored audience, who are already showing interest in this incipient eurythmic art. We know that we are dealing with a beginning, but we also know — because we know the conditions of origin, the special sources of this eurythmic art, because we have great respect for the most comprehensive tool, the human being — we know that if this beginning of a eurythmic art is perfected, something will certainly arise that will be able to join the older, fully-fledged sister arts as a fully-fledged, younger art. With this in mind, we ask for leniency in your judgment, because we do not want to present more than a beginning with our attempt at a eurythmic art today.

The three gypsies“ by Nikolaus Lenau, with music by Jan Stuten
“The drunken song” by Friedrich Nietzsche
Evoe with music by Max Schuurman
“Merlin“ by Nikolaus Lenau
“Elfe” by Joseph von Eichendorff
Saying from the soul calendar (51.) by Rudolf Steiner
“The brittle” and ‘The convert’ by J. W. von Goethe
Saying from the soul calendar (52.) by Rudolf Steiner
“Primal words, Orphic ” by J. W. v. Goethe with music by Leopold van der Pals
From the “Chymischen Hochzeit” by Johann Valentin Andreae
“Meine Weisheit tat der Sonne gleich“ by Friedrich Nietzsche
“Mein Kind, wir waren Kinder” by Heinrich Heine
Satirical prelude with music by Leopold van der Pals
Humoresques by Christian Morgenstern: “Die Oste”;
“The Waistcoat“; ‘Bim-Bam-Bum’; ‘Northward Look’;
“The Corf Watch”; “Palmström's Clock”; “The Authority”
Humorous prelude by Jan Stuten

Dear ladies and gentlemen.

Allow me to say a few words by way of introduction to our eurythmy presentation. I do not wish to explain the presentation, but to say what eurythmy artistry generally seeks to achieve. This eurythmic art uses the human being and his movements as his tools. In its expression, it is a kind of language, visible language - and in the truest sense, a visible language. You will see the moving human being, also moving groups of people, forms of these moving groups of people in space and so on. What is performed there as movements of people is not to be understood in the sense of gestures that are invented to mean something, or in the sense of a mimic dance or the like, but these movements come about through sensual and supersensible observations of what lies in the conditions of spoken language itself and, further, in the conditions of the musical in people, namely singing.

It is important to emphasise that these are not arbitrary movements, any more than they are in the musical expression of tones, their interrelations and their movements, or in human speech. And it is precisely these inner tendencies of movement that are present in these movements of the musical and in human speech that are carefully observed through sensory-supersensory observation and are then transferred to the whole person. In this way, one can see in the person or group of people doing eurythmy an embodiment of the human speech organism. Whereas this is otherwise expressed through tone or sound, here it is expressed through the whole human being or through groups of people. One can say that one thereby creates something which – as visible language artistically processed – has the possibility, initially, as it also happens here, of accompanying that which is given by the poetry on the one hand, and that which is given by the music on the other.

What is actually the poetic content of the poetry, which is already eurythmic - a movement in the theme, in the rhythm, in the beat and so on - can be expressed very succinctly through this visible language. But just as one can sing to a piece of music using the human vocal chords, one can also, I would say visibly sing, which can be done through the eurythmic. Now, however, it is precisely through this eurythmic art that one comes particularly close to the content of the poetry as well as to that which is expressed in music. And perhaps you will be able to agree with me about what this eurythmic art seeks to achieve when I say the following.

What is initially present in the human being as his highest characteristic, so to speak, is his thinking. And the fact that the human being is the bearer of thought distinguishes him from all other beings, to which he belongs as part of nature as a whole. Now, thought can be expressed in an abstract form in the communications of what the human being experiences inwardly, spiritually, in relation to the things of the world, as such a thought, as it lives in science, as it also lives in the communications that one person makes to another in everyday life. As such a thought, it is initially an inartistic element. And the more one strives towards the thought, the more one expresses oneself through the mere thought, the more one falls into an inartistic element.

The poet, who can only see the formation of thoughts, and also the formation of the sound as the expression of the thought, has to struggle with the thought. He must, as it were, lift what he experiences inwardly and emotionally out of the mere thought element. Otherwise he would become prosaic. He becomes poetic, that is, artistic, only by making use of thought, but in a certain sense overcoming thought. Thought is not just the abstract element that lives in our soul when we communicate, but thought is an active element in the whole of the world. And in poetry, in particular, we can see how thought is an active element.

Poetry, right, is divided into epic poetry, or narrative poetry, lyric poetry, and dramatic poetry. Take dramatic poetry, for example. Even if you don't see a play on stage, but only read it, you have not grasped it artistically in life if you read it, I might say, in a certain way, abstractly, and merely familiarize yourself with its content. You have only really read the drama, that is, taken it in as a work of art, when you can transform in your creative imagination what lies in the words, in the moving human being, that is, in human form. So that only those who, when they read it, can see the drama in the form have a real idea of the content of a drama.

Or take poetry itself, which is relatively detached from the form: real, genuine poetry always leads us to the human being, and we cannot help but find the song or poem good when it presents us with a human being, albeit in his or her spiritual form, as a feeling human being, through a very mysterious inner being. , the human being, albeit in his or her emotional form, as a feeling human being. Only then can we really have an understanding of a song. There is no abstract understanding of a song if it presents us with an emotional figure of a human being.

In epic, in creative poetry, I need only remind you how the real, the folk, the great epic poet is always striving to add to what he presents, something that draws us out of mere thought and leads us to imagine the figure: “Hector, the hero with the flowing crest”; ‘the fleet-footed Achilles’. But then our perception of the whole ‘Iliad’ expands to include the figures of the country [?].

What we form from our thoughts into a figure is expressed in its highest element in the place where we can grasp this thought with the expression of the thought - but now in its artistic form, where we can get to the highest level with it: this is expressed in the human form itself. We may take any form in nature - which we want - we will see that everything we see in nature, that which we see in terms of form, that which we see in nature, that which we see in nature, that which we see in nature, that which we see in nature, that which we see in nature, that which we see in nature, that which we see in nature, that which we see in nature, that which we see in nature, that which we see in nature, that which we see in nature, that which we see in nature, that which we see in nature, that which we see in nature, that which we see in nature, that which we see in nature, that which we see in nature, that which we see in nature, that which we see in nature, that which we see in nature, that which we see in nature, that which we see in nature, that which we see in nature, that which we see in nature, that which we see in nature, that which we see For there is no thought, in any abstract form, ladies and gentlemen, that could grasp the human form. [We cannot only not reach it with thoughts, we can only grasp the human being as a creation when the thought first feels its powerlessness in the face of the form, before it can proceed to grasp the form.]

This is what shows us how, basically, poetry is worked out and worked towards in order to grasp what is formative in man.

On the other hand, we find that the other element in man is what continually wants to work its way up through him. But in ordinary life the will is not the pure will; in ordinary life the will follows instinct and even arises from the drives. And the ordinary acts of the will are entirely driven or instinct-driven. And so we come to the point where we say that if a person strives for that which expresses itself in him as will and which in its purity can only be grasped through movement – that is what the musical strives for, through which a person does not move, but in which is expressed that which, after all, lives only in its true form in human movement.

There is a remarkable relationship between human movement and musical movement, between the musical in harmony, melody and so on, and one can well believe that someone who has a feeling for this powerful relationship between nature, between human movement and that which lives in the musical, that such a person can delve tremendously deeply into that which, as an is so mysteriously at the basis of man.

Thus one comes, especially when one lives in the musical itself, to see how the purest expression of the will as movement strives to present itself musically in its purity, and how, on the other hand, in the human form itself, there is an external expression of the thought, which, however, is powerless because it is itself inartistic. I would say that when it passes over into the artistic, realizes itself as artistic in the human form.

All this is indicated in human speech, which permeates the will with the thought, the thought with the will. This is what the poet struggles with when he wants to form something artistic out of speech, seeks to overcome the prosaic, the inartistic.

Thus, we can only recite a poem correctly – and not as it may be done by others – if the recitation is to be accompanied by eurythmy. In this case, we must not place the main emphasis on the prose element of the poem, but rather on what lies at its basis as musical and plastic elements, and these must be brought out in the declamation and recitation. Therefore, it will sometimes not be possible to present what must be striven for in a true art of declamation, especially as an accompaniment to the artistic, and also [according to] the habits that prevail today, in a way that is satisfactory for the same. But it is a return to times when more was understood about declamation and recitation than is the case today. And this return is virtually demanded by the sensory-supersensible gaze. It is self-evident that the movements that are performed all appear to arise directly from the human form. Movements in our eurythmy only exist in such a way that one develops them in such a way that one can think of these movements as creative, as being created, and they bring about what is inherent in them.

Then, as a result, the human form comes about, I would like to say. If everything that you see in the eurythmic movements, scurrying across the stage, everything you see in the individual movements, whether concentrated or expressive, is brought together in a plastic way, you will find the human form, which contains everything that the eurythmic art points to as its goal.

Now, if you imagine that in the human being – the musical element, which wants to merge into dance, already expresses – [that] there is something in the human form itself that forms rudiments [of it] everywhere. You cannot imagine a human limb, especially not the hands, without realizing that you can study the human form itself to see how the desire to move is fundamentally there, and you can find out how it must actually transition into movements. All this forms, gives that visible language which is actually, fundamentally, what the human being can form out of his form in terms of movements, which can give that out of the movements at the same time - like the most beautiful result of the movements, which aims at the human form itself: moved form, human form, how undulating and surging, but also how resting on human movements that is what wants to be expressed artistically through the eurythmic art.

So that which actually lives in the poet as a fully human being — which does not merely speak out of thought and the desire to communicate, but which speaks out of the whole human being and nature — when the poet expresses this and when one listens to it in him: one can also express it through this visible language of eurythmy. And just as one can express what is alive in musical art through the singing voice, so one can also sing in the forms of the art of movement that is eurythmy.

All this basically gives us the opportunity to make of eurythmy what we have tried to do in our Waldorf school, where we have introduced eurythmy as a soul-filled form of exercise alongside gymnastics. From the very earliest stages of their teaching and education, children find that the eurythmic movements that can be produced come naturally from the human organization. Man's knowledge of his own form, if I may use the expression, not just his form but what is formed, is unconsciously artistic. No science could ever describe or encompass what lies in the human being's overall perception, which he has in life and which corresponds to his being shaped. But he also knows, this human being, that this being shaped in himself is actually basically only held-still movements. He knows, so to speak, that by feeling his hand, he is feeling the organ that receives its meaning through movement and that receives its form when one thinks of the movements, the manifold movements that the arm and hand can perform, crystallized, I would say, in the form of the arm and hand.

This feeling for eurythmic movements as a natural consequence of the human form, this feeling for the human form even in the child, is what expresses the diversity of movements. It is this that makes the child feel the eurythmic art so strongly as an educational tool. One can say that the child knows very well, if only it is pointed to the possibility, that when it romps around, this romping around is basically nothing other than the shape itself that has flowed out, and it feels the shape that it carries within itself. The child senses that which is the frozen movement as it now passes over into musical regularity in eurythmy as something that it can also feel at the moment when it becomes acquainted with it, when it is a healthy child in body, soul and spirit. And that is why it likes eurythmy as a means of education.

All that I have been able to describe – eurythmy also has a special hygienic-medical value. Eurythmy therapy has already been developed, and I will only mention it briefly here. All of this, ladies and gentlemen, is still in its infancy today. It is therefore absolutely necessary, again and again, to ask the esteemed audience to be lenient. We ourselves are our own harshest critics when it comes to everything we can already do. But those who are aware that what we can already do today is just a beginning, perhaps only the beginning of an attempt, also know what developmental possibilities lie within this eurythmy. And so we may believe that out of this beginning something will develop that is a fully developed art, which will be able to stand with truly artistic expressions alongside its older sister arts, which have been recognized for a long time and which, if understood with the right feeling, basically point to what will emerge in eurythmy, where not external instruments but the human being themselves are used as the instrument through which the artistic can be particularly enlivened.

And if Goethe says: When the human being is placed at the summit of nature, he takes harmony, measure and meaning together, produces a summit within himself and rises to the production of the work of art, then on the other hand it may be said: It is to be hoped that when man makes use of his own form and movement as a tool and means of expression for the artistic, then in the end that which can be placed as a younger sister art next to the older, fully-fledged sister arts must arise.